Le Cercle

Formed in the Fifties... One of the most influential, secretive, and, it goes without saying, exclusive political
clubs in the West... One member contacted by this newspaper said he could not talk about it "even off, off the record". Another simply put the phone down... The source of its funding is a mystery..."
- June 29, 1997, The Independent, 'Aitken dropped by the Right's secret club', one of the very few mainstream reports on Le Cercle.

Articles on Le Cercle by Joel Van Der Reijden at http://www.isgp.eu/organisations/Le_Cercle.htm

Membership List http://www.isgp.eu/organisations/Le_Cercle_membership_list.htm

Im also attaching the book of David Teacher who wrote a full lenght book about Le Cercle


ROGUE AGENTS
The Cercle Pinay complex 1951 - 1991
by
David Teacher
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Copyright 1993 and 2008, David Teacher. All rights strictly reserved.
A former translator at the EU, the author now works as an international
administrator in Geneva. He may be contacted at david-teacher@hotmail.com.
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The author does not necessarily endorse or espouse the contents or opinions
of any website which may host this article or any interpretation of this
research that may be produced by third parties.
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PREFACE
(2008)
The text which follows is the 100,000 word manuscript of a book intended for
publication in 1992-1993 as the culmination of several years of research on the
Cercle Pinay complex of groups, some of which had previously appeared in the
Lobster magazine in the UK in 1988-1989.
Back in those pre-Internet days, publication meant paper; as the text had
soon swelled beyond the limits of a Lobster Special Issue, this meant commercial
publishers. Ironically foreshadowed in the Introduction, the manuscript fell victim to
its main claim to any merit – that it was the first multinational investigation of a
paneuropean covert complex, the Cercle Pinay and its many national associates.
Editors in several countries expressed great interest in publishing the manuscript …
providing that the "foreign bits" could be reduced and the book refocused on their
respective countries.
With little chance of integral publication, the book project was shelved and,
apart from one major revision in 1993-94 to integrate Brian Crozier’s memoirs which
confirmed the main thrust of this investigation, the manuscript gathered dust for the
next fifteen years. The world moved on, and the events described below, hot news
when the book was completed, became old history.
Things would have remained like that had I not recently come across the ISGP
website run by Joel van der Reijden (www.isgp.eu) - as far as I can see, the only
serious investigation of the Cercle Pinay since the original articles by Robin Ramsay
and myself in the Lobster twenty years ago. In appreciation of Joel's efforts, I am
happy to dust off the manuscript again and add it to his impressive research in the
hope that the information contained here will serve those who wish to continue the
investigation.
In revisiting the manuscript in 2008, I have not integrated print sources
published after the book was last revised in 1993-94, a mammoth task and a
superfluous one in the light of the ISGP website. The most recent print source
integrated here is therefore Alan Clark's diaries, published in 1994; a list of
unintegrated print sources can be found at the beginning of the Bibliography. I have
however expanded the biographical information on some individuals mentioned in
the original manuscript, taking further details from the Web, recent press reports
and the ISGP site. Apart from that, I have not integrated Joel van der Reijden's
research which stands on its own; this investigation should therefore be read in
conjunction with his and, of course, with Crozier's memoirs.
David Teacher
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INTRODUCTION
(1993)
One of the paradoxes of modern political journalism is its inherent cultural
isolation. Whilst no-one would deny that the major political developments in a given
country may owe much to international forces, the investigation of political
processes has remained overwhelmingly confined within national boundaries. This is
partly due to the linguistic problems, specialist knowledge and additional burden
involved in researching foreign politics; however, this cultural isolation is also
compounded by a vague and usually unexpressed opinion that the connections of a
foreign Conservative MP cannot be of great import to a better understanding of the
murkier side of politics at home in one's own country. Yet it is clear that no country
is an island. This is nowhere more true than in the field of parapolitics, the networks
of unofficial power that, usually via serving or retired friends in the world's major
intelligence and security services, exert greater influence than is generally realized
on national political life. Both the private networks of influence and the intelligence
services work internationally; more often than not, they work hand in hand in a
shady world that brings together top politicians and veterans of covert action,
counter-subversion and media manipulation. An investigation to delineate such
networks of covert transnational cooperation must, to succeed, tackle the
complexities of the unseen political world in many countries.
This study is an attempt at a preliminary transnational investigation of the
Paneuropean Right and particularly of the covert forum, the Cercle Pinay and its
complex of groups. Amongst Cercle intelligence contacts are former operatives from
the American CIA DIA and INR, Britain's MI5, MI6 and IRD, France's SDECE,
Germany's BND, BfV and MAD, Holland’s BVD, Belgium's Sûreté de l’Etat, SDRA
and PIO, apartheid South Africa's BOSS, and the Swiss and Saudi intelligence
services. Politically, the Cercle complex has interlocked with the whole panoply of
international right-wing groups: the Paneuropean Union, the European Movement,
CEDI, the Bilderberg Group, WACL, Opus Dei, the Moonies, Western Goals and the
Heritage Foundation. Amongst the prominent politicians associated with the Cercle
Pinay were Antoine Pinay, Konrad Adenauer, Archduke Otto von Habsburg, Franz
Josef Strauss, Giulio Andreotti, Paul Vanden Boeynants, John Vorster, General
Antonio de Spinola, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Despite a wealth of covert operations centring on media campaigns to
promote or denigrate election candidates, the international impact of the Cercle
complex has not yet [1993] been the main focus for an investigation in any language.
The information contained in this study was compiled from a sheaf of internal
documents from the Cercle Pinay and its partners, the Belgian AESP, the British ISC
and the Swiss ISP, as well as over one hundred books and numerous Press reports
in English, French, German and Spanish (all translations by this author).
The insight afforded is only partial; as Brian Crozier wrote in his memoirs
about this author's previous research on the Cercle complex: "There are pitfalls in
writing about confidential matters from the outside, and drawing on similarly
handicapped material" (1). However, the publication in 1993 of Crozier's memoirs,
Free Agent - The Unseen War 1941-1991, served to confirm the main thrust of this
investigation and filled in some but by no means all of the loopholes; in turn, this
investigation has uncovered some of what Crozier preferred to conceal. Once the
fragmented information is pieced together, the network that emerges cannot be
overlooked: the Cercle complex can be seen to be an international coalition of rightwing
intelligence veterans, propaganda assets and top politicians who would shape
the 1970s and 1980s.
To take the British example, much of the destabilization of British democracy
in the 1970s can only be fully understood by analysing the international support
given to groups like the Anglo-American “deniable propaganda” outlet, the Institute
for the Study of Conflict. The Cercle Pinay was a major source of support for the ISC
virtually from its inception on; the Cercle Pinay and the ISC also tied in with another
key British group, the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, heavily funded by BOSS,
apartheid South Africa's secret service. BOSS's other incursions into domestic
politics in Britain, notably their smear operations against leading Liberals such as
Jeremy Thorpe and Peter Hain, were a significant factor in the hijacking of British
democracy in the 1970s. Three Cercle members on the FARI Board assisted FARI's
actions from 1976 through to the early 1980s. FARI in many ways was the British
successor to a previous Cercle operation to support South Africa; the Cercle and the
ISC had been active partners in setting up a Paris-based propaganda outlet in 1974
as part of South Africa's covert media campaign later exposed in the "Muldergate"
scandal.
German intelligence reports on the Cercle Pinay written in late 1979 and early
1980 which were published in Der Spiegel in 1982 also shed new light on a
"Thatcher faction" within MI6 in the lead-up to the Conservatives' 1979 election
victory. Whilst receiving wide publicity in France and Germany, these reports have
never been covered by the British Press. This serious omission is astounding in the
light of the undeniable authenticity of the reports and the startling allegations they
contain: one of the German intelligence reports dated November 1979 quotes a
planning paper by Crozier about a Cercle complex operation "to affect a change of
government in the United Kingdom (accomplished)". The report goes on to describe a
working meeting held at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country residence, just after
the Conservatives' election victory which brought together Prime Minister Thatcher,
serving MI6 Chief Sir Arthur Franks, and two Cercle complex members - Brian
Crozier and former MI6 Division Head Nicholas Elliott. Crozier's planning paper
quoted by the German report also specifically mentioned international Cercle
campaigns "aiming to discredit hostile personalities and/or events".
This is no isolated example; throughout the 1970s the Cercle Pinay complex
was active in similar ways in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Belgium.
In the latter three countries, the Cercle complex also had close links to those waging
a strategy of tension to support a right-wing coup, the latest example of which was
the strategy of tension which killed 32 people in Belgium from 1982 to 1985. The
Cercle complex’s other covert campaigns to promote right-wing candidates
concentrated in two key periods: the mid-1970s and 1979-80, both central to the
electoral defeat of the Left throughout Europe generally.
In order to make the complexities of the Right in several European countries
understandable to readers, I have focused on the personnel links between groups in
the Cercle Pinay complex. The Cercle Pinay itself is an informal but confidential
strategic talking-shop consisting of a core of "regulars" who invite occasional guests
to Cercle meetings and who are assisted by a range of associates in many nationallybased
groups. As one of the tendencies of such groups is for their members to "play
musical chairs", changing place frequently on the raft of names sponsoring an
organization, a personnel-based research approach can give rise to the danger of
over-estimating the ties that link some characters or organisations. Sharing a Board
membership with someone does not necessarily imply intimate knowledge of the
other's various activities.
The fragmentary nature of the information available does not allow us to draw
definite conclusions about to what extent a particular group or person was aware of
Cercle operations, particularly of those run by several of the Cercle "regulars" with
intelligence experience who would later form a private covert intelligence service, the
6I, within the Cercle complex. Crozier himself makes the point that many of the
prominent politicians invited to sit in on Cercle strategic sessions had no knowledge
of their hosts’ more clandestine operational activities – if only because of the "need to
know" principle. Nonetheless, a stalwart multi-functionary on the Boards of several
groups linked to the Cercle can be presumed to have some deeper involvement
beyond just lending his name to the cause. This study can only be a beginning; a
closer look at some of those involved at national level could shed more light on the
significance of the Cercle complex. The only point of certainty beyond the
information given here is that the Cercle merits further investigation.
Finally, this book is dedicated to the small community of unpaid parapolitics
researchers who have done much to uncover the truth that lies behind the history of
the 20th century. Two in particular deserve thanks for the help and encouragement
they have given me in compiling the information given here: Robin Ramsay of the
Lobster and Jeffrey M. Bale of the University of Berkeley, California. Many journalists
have already covered fragments of the Cercle Pinay complex: Péan, the Spiegel, Roth
and Ender, Ramsay and Dorril of the Lobster, Dumont, Mungo, the Arbeitskreis
Nicaragua who produced IGfM, the Young European Federalists, Herman and
O'Sullivan, Gijsels, and Brewaeys and Deliège were all important sources.
David Teacher
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1945 - 1965
POSTWAR PANEUROPEANS
THE PANEUROPEAN REVIVAL: THE PEU, HABSBURG AND CEDI
In the immediate post-war period, several political figures jostled for position
in setting up movements for European unity. The oldest movement was the
Paneuropean Union (PEU), a movement for European Union that had been founded
in 1922 by Comte Richard Coudenhove Kalergi, the PEU's Life President.
Coudenhove Kalergi had also set up the Interparliamentary Union, a debating forum
for members of parliament from many countries, which still exists today.
Serving as Vice-President of the PEU under Coudenhove Kalergi was
Archduke Otto von Habsburg, born in 1912 as eldest son of Karl, the last Austro-
Hungarian Emperor, and heir to his throne as well as Opus Dei's candidate as
monarch to rule over a united Catholic Europe (2). As well as his imperial
pretensions, Habsburg was a prominent advocate of European Union and the regal
mentor of the Bavarian Christian Social Union party (CSU), the future fief of Franz
Josef Strauss (3).
In 1948, Habsburg founded the Centre Européen de Documentation
Internationale (CEDI), an international grouping of conservatives which aimed to
break the isolation of Franco's Spain in Europe by organizing annual congresses in
Madrid (4). CEDI held annual congresses in Madrid from 1952 onwards, although it
would only be formally incorporated in 1957 with headquarters in the Bavarian
capital of Munich, a reflection of Habsburg's influence as CEDI Life President. CEDI
would grow rapidly; by the early 1960s, it had sections in eleven European
countries. As one might expect, Habsburg's political protégé Strauss was a regular
early participant at CEDI's annual conferences.
Co-founder of CEDI with Habsburg was future Spanish diplomat and Minister
Alfredo Sanchez Bella, at the time of CEDI's foundation working as Director of the
Instituto de Cultura Hispanica. In 1957, Sanchez Bella was appointed Spanish
Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, then Colombia in 1959, and finally Italy
from 1962 to 1969 before being recalled to serve in Franco's Cabinet. He also had
influential contacts within Opus Dei: his brother, a leading member of Opus Dei,
founded Opus Dei's University of Navarra in 1952 (5). Sanchez Bella would later
become one of the key figures in the Cercle Pinay complex when serving as Franco's
Minister for Information and Tourism (6).
THE EUROPEAN MOVEMENT, THE CCF AND THE BILDERBERG GROUP
One of the hidden architects of post-war European politics was Polish exile
Dr. Joseph Retinger. Retinger's campaigning, always clouded in secrecy, would give
rise to the creation of open political bodies such as the Strasbourg-based Council of
Europe as well as CIA-funded rivals to the PEU, the European Movement and the
European Youth Campaign, and more clandestine bodies like the powerbrokers'
covert forum, the Bilderberg Group.
Retinger's European Movement was the main component in the CIA's
campaign to infiltrate and control the wave of political sentiment favourable to
European union in the immediate post-war period. The European Movement was
financed from the outset by the CIA, receiving some £380,000 between 1949 and
1953. The CIA also supported another Retinger creation, the European Youth
Campaign, which received £1,340,000 from the CIA between 1951 and 1959. The
conduit for CIA funding of the EM and EYC was the American Committee on a
United Europe, launched in 1949 specifically to support the creation of the EM.
ACUE's list of officers included four top figures from the American intelligence
community. The post of ACUE Chairman was filled by Bill Donovan, former Director
of the CIA's wartime predecessor, the OSS; another prominent ACUE post was held
by General Walter Bedell Smith, CIA Director from 1950 to 1953. ACUE's Vice-
Chairman was Allen Dulles, Bedell Smith's successor as Director of the CIA from
1953 to 1961; its Executive Director was Thomas Braden, head of the CIA's
International Organization Division, responsible for setting up CIA front groups
throughout the world (7).
Despite early post-war collaboration between Coudenhove Kalergi and
Retinger, represented by EM co-founder Duncan Sandys, conflicts soon emerged (8).
Coudenhove Kalergi's authoritarian leadership style was only one of the bones of
contention; it was also felt that he did not take a robust enough position in relation
to the Cold War. Indeed, in his later book entitled From War to Peace written in 1959,
Coudenhove Kalergi called for the public recognition of the division of Germany -
anathema to conservatives and to many PEU members. In his book, Coudenhove
Kalergi also criticized the position of Retinger's European Movement: "this new
European Movement felt that its first task was not the strengthening of world peace
but the defence of Europe against the imperialism of the Soviet Union and the
liberation of the oppressed nations of Eastern Europe. It received considerable
support from the United States via the Marshall Plan and therefore was an integral
component of the anti-Bolchevik alliance set up by the Americans in both the East
and the West" (9).
In the light of his conciliatory – or rather, inflammatory – position, the CIA
preferred not to count on Coudenhove Kalergi's Paneuropean Union but rather to set
up a new organization for European unity over which it could have greater control.
Led by Retinger and Sandys, the cold warriors decided to go their own way, founding
the European Movement as a rival to the PEU. The two complexes - Retinger's and
Coudenhove Kalergi's - would co-exist in competition until Coudenhove Kalergi's
death in 1972. Under his successor Habsburg, the PEU was relaunched both
materially and ideologically; after some internal controversy, Habsburg brought the
PEU over to a Cold War philosophy, opening up the possibility of collaboration
between the PEU and the EM.
Besides the 1949 foundation of the European Movement, the CIA's
International Organizations Division headed by Thomas Braden also created another
front organisation, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which aimed to bring
together Western intellectuals in the cause of anti-Communism. The CCF would see
the light of day in dramatic circumstances; on the day of the CCF's foundation at a
West Berlin conference on 24-25th June 1950, North Korea invaded its southern
neighbour.
The CCF would run several features services spanning the globe: Forum
Information Services in English, Preuves-Informations in French and El Mundo en
Espanol in Spanish. The CCF would also publish a range of literary magazines such
as Encounter and Survey in London, Quadrant in Australia, Cuadernos in Buenos
Aires and Cadernos Brasileiros in Rio de Janeiro. The CCF has been the subject of
extensive research (10); at this stage, it is sufficient to note that the CCF would hire
Brian Crozier in 1964 and would launch him as a media asset for the Western
intelligence services by creating the CIA-funded news agency Forum World Features
in 1965.
Alongside the European Movement and the Congress for Cultural Freedom
which functioned as mass political and cultural fronts, Joseph Retinger and the CIA
created a third forum which was to be far more secretive and more influential than
the EM or the CCF – the Bilderberg Group. On the 25th September 1952, a small
group of eminent statesmen and dignitaries met with the aim of creating the new
forum; the distinguished - and discreet - guests included from the Netherlands
Prince Bernhard, from France the new Prime Minister (11) Antoine Pinay
accompanied by politician Guy Mollet, from Belgium the Foreign Minister Paul Van
Zeeland, from Italy Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi and from the US General Walter
Bedell Smith, CIA Director from 1950 to 1953 and member of the Board of the
American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE), the funding conduit for the
European Movement. Named after the venue for their first formal meeting in May
1954 in the De Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek near the Dutch town of Arnhem, this
international group of decision-makers still meets at least once a year for
confidential discussions of world affairs (12).
PINAY, VIOLET AND STRAUSS
One of the most prominent members of the new Bilderberg Group was the
French politician Antoine Pinay who served as Minister of Public Works, Transport
and Tourism from July 1950 to March 1952 before becoming President of the
Council (Prime Minister) and Minister of Finance until January 1953. He would later
serve as Minister for Foreign Affairs from February 1955 until February 1956, and
Minister of Finance again from June 1958 to January 1960 (13). Apart from his
distinguished career in public office, Antoine Pinay had other less obvious attributes.
Convinced of the need for Franco-German reconciliation, Pinay would create a
network of contacts that would finally take form as the Cercle Pinay; via the select
club of Bilderbergers, Pinay had easy access to the top figures in international
politics and finance.
Pinay's less overt political consultations owed much to his confidant, righthand
man and eventually successor at the helm of the Cercle Pinay, Jean Violet. It
was in 1951 that Antoine Pinay first met Violet, a Parisian lawyer close to the CNPF,
the French employers' federation. Pinay sought out Violet for legal advice about war
reparations payments for a Geneva-based firm whose German factory had been
seized during the war. Pinay was evidently satisfied with Violet's work as he
recommended the lawyer to Pierre Boursicot, head of the French secret service, the
Service de Documentation Extérieure et Contre-Espionnage (SDECE). Violet
helped the SDECE where he could; as he has said: "Aware of the fact that I could be
of some use to my country thanks to my professional situation on the international
chessboard, I chose to fight for France within the ranks of the SDECE" (14).
After the arrival of General Grossin as head of the SDECE in 1957, Violet was
taken on as an agent and given missions of increasing political importance. Violet
would rise to become perhaps the SDECE's most valued 'Honourable Correspondent'
with the title of Special Advocate to the service. One indication of Violet’s significance
as a veteran covert operator is the fact that throughout his fifteen years of service
with the SDECE, his case officer was the head of the service - first Grossin from
1957 to 1962, then Jacquier from 1962 to 1966, and then finally Guibaud until
1970. Reporting directly to General Grossin, "Violet was masterminding a Service
Spécial to promote the General's [de Gaulle’s] objectives in defence and foreign
policy" (15), a rather ironic fact bearing in mind that Brian Crozier, Violet’s future
associate in the Cercle, was monitoring de Gaulle’s defence and foreign initiatives
with some suspicion from the other side of the Channel.
An early associate of Violet's in his work for the SDECE was fellow SDECE
agent Rev. Father Yves-Marc Dubois, foreign policy 'spokesman' for the Dominican
order, unofficial member of the Pontifical Delegation to the UN, and believed by the
SDECE to be the head of the Vatican secret service. The pair were active in the
United Nations in the mid-1950s when Violet was attached to the French delegation
headed by Antoine Pinay, at that time Minister of Foreign Affairs. Violet's task at the
UN was to win over the twenty republics of Latin America so as to block UN
condemnation of France's Algerian policy. Violet's lobbying in the UN would also
pave the way for de Gaulle's tour of Latin America in 1964.
Another major focus for Violet and Dubois' activities for the SDECE was
Eastern Europe: they received half a million francs a month from General Grossin to
run the "Church of Silence", Catholic networks behind the Iron Curtain. These
activities focused on the countries in what was sometimes referred to as the
"Catholic Curtain": Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania (16).
Besides these operations for SDECE, Violet would act as the homme de
confiance of Antoine Pinay in assisting the process of Franco-German reconciliation.
Pinay had already played a considerable part in the conclusion of prior agreements
on the construction of Europe, notably the Paris Treaty and Bonn Agreement of 1952
whose ratification in May 1955 allowed Germany to attain full sovereignty and
created the Western European Union, the first postwar European defence pact.
Following this, the signature in March 1957 of the Euratom and European Common
Market Treaties would lead to the creation of the European Economic Community as
of January 1st, 1958.
"Violet played an historically key rôle between 1957 and 1961 in bringing
about this [Franco-German] 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 rôle was played by his SDECE colleague Antoine
Bonnemaison [described in the next chapter]. 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 ... The Pinay Cercle was a natural offshoot of Jean Violet's
Franco-German activities" (17).
Franz Josef Strauss, the "Lion of Bavaria", would be a key figure in the
Cercle complex from the founding of the post-war Federal Republic until his death in
1988. Born in 1915, Strauss was first elected to the German Parliament in 1949 as
an MP for the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party, coalition partner of
Adenauer's CDU; that year, he was also appointed CSU General Secretary. In 1953,
four years after his entry into the Federal Parliament, Strauss gained ministerial
rank as Minister without Portfolio; he would again serve in Adenauer's CDU/CSU
Cabinet as Nuclear Power Minister from 1955 to 1956 and as Defence Minister from
1956 to 1962.
Meanwhile, on the regional level, the CSU Party Chairman Hanns Seidel, a
former Bavarian Prime Minister, had died in 1961; Strauss replaced him as Party
Chairman, a post he would hold until his death twenty-seven years later. Within a
year of his elevation to Chairman, the CSU won a landslide victory in the 1962
regional elections, gaining an absolute majority in the Bavarian Parliament that it
would not lose for another 46 years until its electoral rout in September 2008 forced
the CSU into coalition.
As the German constitution forbids regional premiers serving as federal
ministers, and as Strauss was the rising CSU star in national government as former
Defence Minister, he stayed on the federal level and served as Finance Minister
during the Grand Coalition with the SPD in 1966-69. In 1978, he returned to
regional politics, being elected Prime Minister of Bavaria as a springboard for a 1980
bid for the Federal Chancellorship. Despite substantial Cercle support, his bid would
fail; Strauss would nonetheless remain Prime Minister of Bavaria for a decade until
his death in 1988.
Besides his public career in German government office, Strauss had had
other more private connections; he was an early ally of Pinay's in the mid 1950s
when both Strauss and Pinay were at the height of their political careers, as Strauss
described in his memoirs:
"Since 1953 [having first been appointed minister], I had had close ties to
Antoine Pinay; these later changed into a kind of paternal friendship for me from a
man who was 25 years my senior ... [in 1955] I met Pinay in the office of one of his
confidants [Maître Violet?] on the avenue Foch. I was well acquainted with this circle
of opponents of Pierre Mendès-France, ousted in early February; one could trust
them; with a little imagination we could have considered ourselves to be coconspirators"
(18).
Strauss also met Pinay during the closeted discussions of the Bilderberg
Group, a forum which Strauss had frequented since the September 1955 Bilderberg
conference in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, close to Munich. Strauss and Pinay met, for
example, at the Bilderberg conference in Cannes in May 1963 (19); the same year,
Strauss also attended the CEDI Congress in Madrid with Habsburg (20). One early
example of cooperation between Strauss, Pinay and Violet came in 1964, when
Violet, acting for Pinay and recommended by former Defence Minister Strauss,
presented enormous claims for reparations to the German Finance Ministry,
allegedly for deliveries of metals to the Germans during the occupation of France.
Strauss advised that the Ministry pay up in the interests of Franco-German
friendship, but it transpired that the delivery notes were fake, and the swindle was
exposed (21).
THE BONNEMAISON FORUM AND INTERDOC
In March 1955, the Bilderberg Group met in Barbizon near Paris to discuss
"Communist influence in the West, European Communist parties and political,
ideological and economic ripostes to the Red Menace" (22). This CIA-linked
powerbrokers' forum was not the only group of covert decision-makers to debate the
issue; the European intelligence services were also sponsoring attempts at Franco-
German rapprochement with an aim to strengthen anti-communism. One key early
figure was the French SDECE's Colonel Antoine Bonnemaison, who under the
cover of a SDECE front group called the Centre de Recherches du Bien Politique,
was responsible for coordinating all psy-ops work carried out by the Cinquième
Bureau (23). From 1955 on, Bonnemaison began acting as organizing secretary for a
series of informal meetings, held alternately in France and in Germany, which
brought together top intelligence veterans from three countries: France, Germany
and Holland. "The blend of 'delegates' [in 1959] was basically the same in all three
[national] groups: intelligence, both civil and military; leading academics; nonacademic
political or economic specialists; one or two trusted politicians; leaders of
industry; trade union leaders; and clerics of various denominations ... these
meetings ... were very productive in terms of facts, background, analysis and
intelligent discussion" (24).
The idea of a covert European alliance to fight communism was discussed in
1957, when a Franco-German group met in the South of France to discuss what
steps could be taken to combat Communism. Their first decision was to reinforce
their network; by the following year, the circle had widened to include
representatives from Holland, Italy, Switzerland and Belgium. A further expansion to
include the UK came in 1959 following Bonnemaison's chance encounter the
previous year with the then Editor of the Economist Foreign Report, a man who would
later become undoubtedly the most prominent propagandist for several Western
intelligence services and the key character in the UK counter-subversion complex -
Brian Crozier (25).
Born in 1918, Brian Rossiter Crozier started his career in journalism in 1936.
Having worked in aeronautical inspection in 1941, he was hired by the news agency
Reuters, which had links to MI6, in 1943. After a spell at the News Chronicle in 1944
and the Sydney Morning Herald in 1948, he returned to Reuters in 1951. From 1952
to 1954, Crozier toured the South-East Asian conflicts in Vietnam and Malaya for
Reuters and the New Straits Times, which was used during the Malayan emergency
as a channel for British disinformation prepared by the Foreign Office's Information
Research Department (IRD). It was in Saigon that Crozier started his long
partnership with MI6 by meeting "Ronald Lincoln", a friendship renewed back in
London when both men had returned home in 1954. Crozier would then also meet a
second MI6 officer "Ronald Franks" who would act as his link for several years.
Thanks to the fruitful exchange of information with his MI6 contacts, "Lincoln" and
"Franks", Crozier joined the staff of the Economist in September 1954 as Editor of
their prestigious Economist Foreign Report, a post he filled until 1964 (26).
Having met Crozier in 1958, Antoine Bonnemaison invited Crozier as the first
ever British visitor to attend one of his colloques, held this time near Frankfurt.
There were three delegations present from France, Germany and the Netherlands,
and each included senior intelligence officers. The French delegation was led by
General Jean Olié, de Gaulle's Chief of General Staff, seconded by SDECE's Colonel
Bonnemaison.
The German delegation was led by General Foertsch, "a senior deputy" to
General Reinhard Gehlen, founder of Germany’s post-war intelligence service, the
Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). The delegation also included two other members
close to the BND, "Professor Lades and Kernig, both specialists on Communism in
general and East Germany in particular. There was a German equivalent of
Bonnemaison's Centre: the Deutsche Vereinigung für Ost-West Beziehungen (the
German Union for East-West Relations). The Vereinigung was based in Munich,
appropriately close to the headquarters of the BND at Pullach" (27). Although
nothing else is known of this Vereinigung quoted by Crozier, Professor Hans Lades
and Dr. C. D. Kernig also belonged to another mysterious body, the Verein zur
Erforschung sozial-politischer Verhältnisse im Ausland (Association for the Study
of Foreign Socio-political Relations), a registered charity also conveniently based in
Munich. Amongst the Verein's members, Professor Lades and Dr. Kernig regularly
attended Bonnemaison's meetings whilst Dr. Norman von Grote would join them as
the third German founding member of INTERDOC in 1963. Von Grote had been an
officer in Wehrmacht FHO (Fremde Heere Ost - Eastern Front intelligence) with
special responsibility for liaison with Russian General Vlassov and his army of Nazi
collaborators, the NTS (28). FHO was commanded from 1st April, 1942 onwards by
General Gehlen; it was Gehlen himself who had adopted Vlassov and defended the
idea of an anti-communist army under Vlassov against strong pressure from
Himmler (29).
The Dutch delegation was represented by two top veterans from the
Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst (BVD), the Dutch internal security service, Louis
Einthoven and C. C. 'Cees' Van den Heuvel. Einthoven had been Chief
Commissioner for Police in Rotterdam in the 1930s. After the war, he was appointed
by General H. J. Kruls to head the Bureau Nationale Veiligheid, renamed the BVD in
1946; Einthoven would then serve as the BVD's first director, retiring only in 1961.
He played a key role in the Dutch Gladio component, Operaties & Inlichtingen (O&I -
Operations and Intelligence), also founded in 1946 by General Kruls. Einthoven
commanded the Operations Division of O&I which was in charge of preparing for
armed resistance but was also crucially tasked with "sensitizing people to the danger
of communism during times of peace" (30). As for Van den Heuvel, he was a civil
servant in the Dutch Interior Ministry and a former head of the Research
Department of the BVD, in which capacity he liaised closely with O&I. Having played
"a heroic rôle in the Dutch Resistance during the Nazi occupation", Van den Heuvel
was already well acquainted with the principles of stay-behind networks (31).
In August 1959, Van den Heuvel set up a foundation for research into human
ecology based in the Hague. The title is indicative, if not conclusive: in 1955, the CIA
had founded a Society for the Study of Human Ecology which changed name in 1961
to become the Human Ecology Fund. Both American organizations were funding
conduits for the CIA's MK-ULTRA programme of research into mind control and
brainwashing (32). Van den Heuvel's human ecology foundation would soon change
titles to the Oost-West Stichting (East-West Foundation), which received funding
from the BVD. According to an Italian secret service (SIFAR) report dated October
1963, the BVD funded a meeting in Barbizon near Paris on 5th - 8th October 1961
where "the participants decided to unite all efforts and initiatives of the struggle
against Communism within a new organization and place these on a serious and
expert footing" (33).
An international documentation centre to pool efforts against Communism
became particularly necessary after Charles de Gaulle's decision to close down
France's psychological warfare unit, the Cinquième Bureau, too full of ex-Algeria
hands for de Gaulle's comfort. The demise of the Cinquième Bureau also meant the
withdrawal of SDECE's support for the Bonnemaison group. Bonnemaison himself
resigned from the SDECE and set up a private-sector structure, the Centre
d'Observation du Mouvement des Idées, receiving funds from Péchiney and Air
Liquide. This could provide for continuing the colloques, which became dominated by
the French, but such a structure would clearly be insufficient to support the scale of
operations planned for the documentation centre, and so the Dutch BVD took over
where the SDECE had left off. A new organisation was formally incorporated in the
Hague in February 1963 under the name INTERDOC - the International
Documentation and Information Centre - with Van den Heuvel as its Director.
Alongside Einthoven and Van den Heuvel, two other Dutch founding members of
INTERDOC were Herman Jan Rijks and Dr. J. M. Hornix. The news was broken at
the Bonnemaison forum's meeting in Bad Godesberg near Bonn in late March 1963
(34).
According to the registration papers deposited in the Hague, INTERDOC's
task was "documentation in the field of Western values and world communism and
the informing of the public on these matters. This aim is to be pursued through the
establishment of an international documentation centre, which will cooperate with
national centres in different countries". An internal INTERDOC report indicates that
swift progress was made in setting up "an index system, a library, a collection of
newspapers and a collection of special reports, documents, etc" which were made
available "to official departments responsible for the East-West question,
international companies and employers' organizations" (35).
Initial funds for INTERDOC were provided by Royal Dutch Shell, who would
later be a benefactor to the ISC and to other MI6 front groups like the Ariel
Foundation (36). The most eminent administrator of Royal Dutch Shell was Prince
Bernhard of the Netherlands, President of the Bilderberg Group from its formal
creation in 1954 until his resignation in 1976 as a result of the Lockheed bribes
scandal (37). In the early days of INTERDOC, Einthoven, now retired from the BVD,
was active as a fundraiser; in his 1974 autobiography published in Holland (38),
Einthoven states that he was lobbying for support for INTERDOC from France,
Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Israel and Indonesia. During the 1960s, INTERDOC also
seems to have received funding from the US, Germany and Britain. Crozier reports
that INTERDOC "depended largely on West German subsidies" (39).
The British intelligence community also offered considerable high-level
support for INTERDOC even before its creation. Crozier reports that he "was involved
from the start" with INTERDOC; amongst the other founding members in 1963 were
two senior British intelligence officials: Charles H. "Dick" Ellis of MI6 and later of
the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation ASIO, and "an ex-MI5 man" who
Crozier declines to identify. As for Ellis, he had first encountered INTERDOC at their
preparatory meeting in Mont Saint Michel in the late spring of 1962 (40). The
following year, when INTERDOC was founded, Ellis wrote to Sir William Stevenson,
Ellis's former boss within the wartime US/UK liaison group in New York, the British
Security Coordination, to tell him that he had been recommended to a new
organization by Sir Stuart Menzies, the MI6 Chief who had founded several of the
European Gladio components:
"I am kept busy with this INTERDOC organization. And, together with other
chaps, I have formed a working committee which is organizing an
international conference at Oxford in September [Ellis was at this time
attached to St. Antony's College, Oxford, close to MI6]. We have raised money
from [deleted] and some professional groups, much to the astonishment of the
Foreign Office who said that it couldn't be done. They are now wondering if it
was a good thing to kick me out [of MI6] ... as several of us are now doing
privately what they have never succeeded in doing - getting an "action group"
going. We are keeping it "private and confidential", as publicity could kill it"
(41).
INTERDOC's other link to British Intelligence, the "ex-MI5 man" not named by
Crozier, was Walter Bell. During the war, Bell like Ellis had served under Stevenson
at BSC in New York before moving to London in 1942 to act as liaison officer
between MI6 and the OSS. Bell then joined MI5 in 1949 and worked as an adviser to
various Commonwealth governments and as personal assistant to MI5 chief Roger
Hollis. After his retirement from MI5 in 1967, Bell worked on obtaining funding for
INTERDOC from British sources (42). British help for INTERDOC came from,
amongst others, the anti-union outfits Common Cause and the Economic League;
by 1969, Neil Elles of Common Cause and John Dettmer of the Economic League
would sit with Crozier, then Director of Forum World Features, on the Consultative
Council of INTERDOC (43).
INTERDOC's Italian founding member in 1963 also had intelligence
connections. Professor Luigi Gedda was a well-known figure of the Catholic Right in
Italy and one of the CIA's main agents in their massive intervention in the 1948
elections which banished the spectre of a Communist victory and installed the
Christian Democrats in power. Part of Gedda's rôle was to set up a national network
of 20,000 anti-communist groups, the Comitati Civici. Funded by the CIA and
supported by the Vatican, the Comitati each had their own intelligence department
and a radio transmitter, and played a key part in ensuring a Christian Democrat
victory: "according to the American Embassy and the CIA representative in Rome,
they undertook 'psychological warfare' and were considered by the Embassy to be
the most important anti-communist group, which the Embassy felt justified a
subsidy of $500,000 from the State Department to the CIA" (44).
After 1948, as head of Azione Cattolica, Gedda had powerful political
connections within the ruling Christian Democratic Party. His leadership of Azione
Cattolica and his intimate friendship with Pope Pius XII, to whom he was medical
adviser, gave him high-level access to the Vatican, access which he used to help
Joseph Retinger of the CIA-funded European Movement and the Bilderberg Group.
In May 1950, Gedda arranged an audience with Pope Pius XII for Retinger, who
hoped to win Vatican support for the cause of European Union. The meeting was
also attended by the Vatican's Substitute Secretary of State, Monsignor Montini,
the future Pope Paul VI. Despite a very positive meeting, objections from the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Fisher, caused the plan to fail. Nonetheless, Gedda
later gave Retinger "a good deal of help in Italy" (45).
ALBERTINI, GRAU AND SAGER
A number of front groups referring to East-West relations would be set up by
the European intelligence services in the late 1950s. Of these, the German BND
front group the Deutsche Vereinigung für Ost-West Beziehungen and the Dutch
BVD front group the Oost-West Stichting were certainly involved in the
Bonnemaison forum and its reincarnation as INTERDOC in 1963. However, three
propagandists active in the late fifties and early sixties in France, Germany and
Switzerland also need some mention at this stage. Whilst their links with INTERDOC
remain unclear, all would later be involved in the counter-subversion operations
organized by the Cercle complex in the mid-1970s.
Georges Albertini, one of the mainstays of post-war French anti-communism,
had had a controversial war-time past: a former right-hand man of the pro-Nazi
collaborator Marcel Déat during the Occupation, Albertini had been a member of the
Vichy administration working in the Secretariat of the Vichy Prime Minister Pierre
Laval. After being jailed for two years for collaboration, Albertini became an ardent
Gaullist, helped by his schooltime days with Georges Pompidou. Through his
contacts in politics and his work as a political adviser to the Worms banking and
business consortium, Albertini set up "a huge network of informants and helpers",
and acted as an 'honourable correspondent' of the SDECE, as well as an unofficial
adviser to Pompidou and later to Jacques Chirac. Albertini was a longstanding
associate of Antoine Pinay: both men had attended a series of conferences on Soviet
political warfare organized in 1960-61 by Suzanne Labin of WACL's French section
(46). Besides his network of contacts, Albertini also produced the fortnightly
magazine Est-Ouest, "the most authoritative publication in the French language on
the problems of Communism" in Crozier's view, a publication which may well have
been part of the INTERDOC network (47). As well as serving as one of the major
channels for anti-Socialist propaganda in the mid-1970s, Albertini would also
become closely involved in the Cercle complex, publishing the ISC's output in
French, attending Cercle meetings and playing a significant part in Crozier's private
intelligence service, the 6I.
Karl-Friedrich Grau, Federal Secretary of PEU Germany until 1975, was one
of the shadier figures within the CDU, acting as a bag-man for illegal election fund
contributions from various foundations for both the CDU and for its Bavarian sister
party, Strauss's CSU. Grau acquired a considerable reputation for the ruthless
tactics he used to support the conservative cause; he ran several smear and
disinformation campaigns for the CDU/CSU through a network of anti-communist
propaganda groups which he controlled. The first group in this network was the
Studiengesellschaft für staatspolitische Öffentlichkeitsarbeit (Study Group on
Political Communication), founded in Frankfurt in 1958 by Grau and CDU member
Dr. Walter Hoeres. The Study Group's stated goal was to give "reliable and effective
information and revelations about powers and their plans to destroy the fundaments
of our Christian, free, democratic social organization" and to "strengthen and
reinforce the free, democratic State and social form, and to coordinate all efforts and
measures to defend it against all kinds of totalitarianism". As "the largest and most
influential of the political front groups within the Federal Republic", the Frankfurt
Study Group and Grau's other groups would be major German disinformation
outlets throughout the 1970s and would act as German relays for the Cercle
complex’s counter-subversion operations (48).
Dr. Peter Sager was a well-known Swiss "éminence grise of anti-communist
propaganda" and later member of the Swiss Parliament. Born in 1925, Sager had
been educated in Switzerland, the Soviet Union (as part of Harvard University's
study programme) and the UK. In 1948, Sager created the Schweizerische
Osteuropa-Bibliothek (Swiss Library on Eastern Europe, now part of the University
of Berne). In 1959, one year after Swiss representatives had joined the debate on
Communism in Europe, Sager founded the Schweizer Ost-Institut (SOI, Swiss
Institute for the East) in Berne. SOI’s publications would be widely circulated
throughout the German-speaking world, as well as being distributed in the UK.
Major support for the SOI was provided from its inception by Karl-Friedrich Grau. In
1961 Grau and Sager founded a Frankfurt-based SOI support group with the name
Schweizerisch-Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ostforschung (Swiss-German Society for
Research on the East). Sager was President and Grau Secretary-General, whilst the
Board of the new group included Sager's partner Heinz Luginbühl. Grau also
ensured the distribution of the SOI magazine in Germany throughout the 1960s.
1964 - 1970
MOBILISATION
THE BIRTH OF THE STRATEGY OF TENSION
The Paneuropeans and Europe's private spies were not the only people to
mobilize; in the mid-1960s, the forces of renascent fascism in Europe would regroup,
most notably in Italy and in Portugal. In order to give an all-too-brief account of the
main facts of interest to this history of the Cercle complex, we must first look at the
Italian General Giovanni De Lorenzo.
Appointed head of the Italian secret service SIFAR in 1956, De Lorenzo would
combine this post with that of Commandant of the Carabinieri from 1962 onwards.
Following the 1963 elections, in which the Communists gained 25% of the vote, De
Lorenzo used his unprecedented powers to launch a vast anti-communist operation
which started with the training of the 'gladiators' the same year. Simultaneously,
with some twenty top Carabinieri commanders, De Lorenzo finalized Plan Solo, a
coup d'état scheduled for the summer of 1964 which included the assassination of
Prime Minister Aldo Moro and his replacement by a right-wing Christian Democrat.
Opposition to the coup would be minimized by a wave of preventive arrests based on
the files that De Lorenzo had built up on 157,000 people since 1959. The coup was
cancelled at the last moment as the result of a pact between the Socialists and the
Christian Democrats, but De Lorenzo continued planning for a later coup.
Also in 1964, under De Lorenzo's leadership, SIFAR (renamed SID in 1966)
funded the creation of the Alberto Pollio Institute which would organize a year later
the now infamous conference which marked the ideological birth of the strategy of
tension. Held in the Parco dei Principi hotel from 3rd - 5th May 1965, the
conference was attended by the elite of the Italian military and the extreme Right,
including Europe's most notorious fascist terrorist, Stefano delle Chiaie, a key actor
in the stragi which rocked Italy throughout the 1970s.
Delle Chiaie's group Avanguardia Nazionale (AN) was founded in 1959 with
funding from prominent industrialist and banker Carlo Pesenti, a future backer of
the Cercle complex and the sniffer plane project, detailed below. AN had been
preparing for a strategy of tension since the spring of 1964 when the Italian neofascist
militants had followed courses in terrorism and psychological warfare. As well
as the AN militants Franco Freda and Giovanni Ventura, another close associate of
delle Chiaie's during this period was Guido Giannettini, a journalist on military
affairs, expert in revolutionary warfare and SIFAR informant. A veteran in fascist
circles, Giannettini also had high-level transatlantic connections: in 1961, he had
been invited to give a presentation at the US Marines' College in Annapolis on "The
techniques and possibilities of a coup d'état in Europe", a lecture attended by
Pentagon officials and CIA officers (49). Giannettini did not confine himself to theory,
giving shelter to former OAS members who had fled to Italy after their abortive coup
attempt in 1962 (50). Whilst visiting Spain in 1962, Giannettini was awarded the
honour of 'Captain of the Crusade' by the OAS for his services (51). Through his
contacts with SIFAR/SID, Giannettini could also ensure a certain degree of
protection for delle Chiaie's militants. Giannettini and delle Chiaie both attended the
Parco dei Principi conference; Giannettini himself gave a presentation on "The variety
of techniques for the conduct of revolutionary warfare", a subject he tackled in
greater depth in his book published the same year, The techniques of revolutionary
warfare.
The year after the Parco dei Principi conference, the paramilitary far Right and
the OAS joined forces to set up the now-notorious revolutionary fascist group
Aginter Press in September 1966. Sheltered in Lisbon under the protective wing of
dictator Salazar, Aginter Press was run by former OAS activist Yves Guérin-Sérac,
with delle Chiaie one of the pioneers of the strategy of tension. Aginter Press worked
under the cover of a press agency, but in reality was a coordination centre for
destabilization. In close cooperation with the Policia Internacional e de Defesa do
Estado (PIDE), Salazar's secret service, one section of Aginter Press ran a parallel
intelligence service with links to the CIA, the German BND, the Spanish DGS, the
South African BOSS and the Greek KYP. Another section of Aginter Press organized
the recruitment of terrorists for bomb attacks and assassinations - an important
contact here was delle Chiaie. A third group dealt with psychological operations, and
Aginter Press's fourth section, called Ordre et Tradition, was an international fascist
contact network with a clandestine paramilitary wing, the Organisation Armée
contre le Communisme International.
Aginter Press's Italian contacts included delle Chiaie and Giannettini, one of
the most active Aginter Press members, responsible for liaising between Aginter's
Lisbon offices, delle Chiaie's AN and the Italian secret services. Aginter Press started
up in Lisbon in September 1966, and the Italian strategy of tension would be
launched in April 1969 with AN's bomb in Milan. After the failure of Plan Solo in
1964, another coup attempt would be launched on the night of 7th December 1970.
In Operation Tora Tora, now known as the Borghese coup after its fascist leader
Prince Borghese, the putschists who included delle Chiaie and other AN and Fronte
Nazionale militants seized the Ministry of the Interior but then withdrew,
abandoning the operation on "orders from above". News of the coup attempt was
suppressed by SIFAR, and none of the participants were prosecuted. Amongst those
implicated in the Borghese coup were several of the members of the Istituto di
Studi Strategici e per la Difesa (ISSED) in Rome, an Italian body that would
cooperate closely with Brian Crozier's Institute for the Study of Conflict in the 1970s,
described in the next chapter.
ISSED's founder, General Diulio Fanali, a former Chief of General Staff of the
Airforce, was one of the people accused with delle Chiaie and Giannettini of
involvement in the Borghese coup. Fanali's name would also crop up in the judicial
inquiry into the Rosa dei Venti network. The Director of ISSED's magazine Politica e
Strategia was Filippo de Iorio, a close friend of Giulio Andreotti with links to the
Italian secret service. A future member of the P2 lodge run by Licio Gelli, de Iorio was
forced to flee Italy after being implicated in the Borghese coup with Fanali,
Giannettini and delle Chiaie. The Co-Director of the ISSED magazine was Eggardo
Beltrametti, who with Giannettini was one of the speakers at the 1965 Parco dei
Principi conference. Beltrametti would also be mentioned alongside Giannettini
during the judicial inquiry into the Milan bombings which launched the strategy of
tension in 1969 (52).
IRD, FORUM WORLD FEATURES AND THE ISC.
Amongst the Allied partners in the immediate postwar period, it was the
British who had first recognized the need to check the threat of communism
throughout the colonies and at home. Unlike the CIA's future programme which
concentrated on the creation of mass movements like the European Movement and
the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the British Foreign Office had decided in 1947-
48 to counter the ideological offensive launched by Stalin by setting up a covert
propaganda and disinformation unit called the Information Research Department
(IRD) (53). The IRD would grow to become the biggest department in the Foreign
Office with some 400 staff. The IRD network of 'press agencies' which distributed
both attributable research papers and unattributable briefings would serve as the
model for one of the CIA's most important clandestine media manipulation
operations.
In 1965, the International Organizations Division of the CIA decided to use its
intellectual front, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, to create a new propaganda
outlet, a press agency called Forum World Features. This CIA features service,
which, at its peak, supplied over 150 newspapers worldwide, would be run from its
launch in 1966 until its exposure in 1974 by Brian Crozier. Whilst still Editor of the
Economist Foreign Report, Crozier had already provided articles for the CCF journal
Encounter as well as working on commission for the IRD for whom he "transformed a
thick folder of IRD documents into a short book" later published under the title Neo-
Colonialism as part of a series called Background Books. After his departure from the
Economist in February 1964, Crozier accepted a part-time consultancy for IRD,
advising departments and writing research papers. A few weeks later, Crozier was
contacted by the CCF who offered him the job of taking over the CCF's features
service and commercialising its output. Tied up with the IRD consultancy and other
contracts, Crozier refused but accepted a second more limited commission: to tour
South America and report on how the CCF could improve the distribution of the
Spanish-language version of their magazine, Encounter. Concerned by Crozier's
involvement with a CIA front, his MI6 contacts invited Crozier to MI6 headquarters
upon his return in November 1964 and commissioned him to write an extensive
background report on Sino-Soviet subversion in the Third World; a sanitized version
of the report would be published in 1966 as part of the Background Books series
under the title The Struggle for the Third World (54).
In May 1965, Crozier finally accepted the post of Director of the CCF features
service, Forum World Features, and Crozier started at FWF that July. Initial control
of FWF ran via two CIA officers, CCF President Michael Josselson, and FWF auditor
"Charles Johnson". The legal and financial infrastructure for FWF was provided by
one of the CIA's "quiet channels", millionaire John Hay Whitney, a wartime member
of the OSS (55), former US ambassador to Britain during Crozier's time at the
Economist and future publisher of the International Herald Tribune. Whitney
obligingly registered FWF under his own name as a Delaware corporation with offices
in London (56); CIA funding for FWF was channelled through Kern House
Enterprises, a publishing firm run by Whitney. For a while, wrangles between
Crozier and the CCF continued about FWF's independence from the CCF; Crozier
eventually ensured complete separation of FWF from the CCF and direct control via
a CIA case officer he calls "Ray Walters". Walters brought in an office manager, Cecil
Eprile, and FWF opened its doors on January 1st 1966.
Crozier was however absent for much of 1966, researching a biography of
Franco in Spain. An interview with the Caudillo won Crozier high level access within
the Phalangist government and particularly with Manuel Fraga Iribarne, Franco's
Minister for Information and Tourism from 1962 to 1969 when he handed over the
post to Alfredo Sanchez Bella, co-founder of CEDI with Otto von Habsburg. Fraga
would later become a key Spanish partner in the Cercle complex and a leading
conservative politician in the post-Franco era (57).
It was also in Madrid that Crozier met one of the future main backers of the
UK counter-subversion lobby: Frank Barnett who ran the New York-based National
Strategy Information Center (NSIC) with the assistance of his Director of Studies,
Henry Trager. Barnett had had long experience in propaganda and the CIA, having
served in the late fifties and early sixties as Program Director of the Institute for
American Strategy, a Cold War propaganda group founded in 1958. Barnett's
colleagues in the IAS were IAS Administrative Director Edward Lansdale, an
architect of CIA covert operations in Vietnam, and William Kintner, a CIA planning
officer for 11 years. The IAS had been founded as the response of the Military-
Industrial Conference of 1958 to a National Security Council Directive the same year
recommending that "the military be used to reinforce the Cold War effort". The IAS
became the vehicle for the National Security Council's propaganda campaign and
ran into controversy in 1961 for its political indoctrination of the military and its use
of active-service military personnel for its foreign policy propaganda in civilian
forums. After the IAS, Barnett would go on to found the NSIC in 1962 together with
wartime OSS veteran William Casey, Reagan’s future campaign manager and his
first Director of the CIA (58). During their 1966 meeting in Madrid, Barnett invited
Crozier to come over to the United States once his Franco research was over. The
visit would not occur until 1968 but would ensure substantial backing for a future
Crozier venture (59).
Soon after Crozier returned from Spain, his previous insistence on a complete
separation of FWF from the CCF in early 1966 was vindicated. In March 1967, the
American magazine Ramparts exposed covert CIA funding of a series of
organisations. This revelation was compounded by an article by Thomas Braden,
head of the CCF's parent body, the International Organisations Division of the CIA,
which linked the CCF to the CIA. Despite the attention devoted to the CCF as a
result of this exposure, FWF prospered and by the 1970s had added a Spanish
service followed by French and Chinese, becoming one of the CIA's main covert
propaganda outlets which would run for eight years before its exposure in 1974. In
reflection of FWF's importance, Crozier recalls flying to Washington and Langley
three or four times a year in the early seventies for briefings with Cord Meyer and the
Covert Action department (60).
Crozier's operation with FWF would considerably expand with the advent of
1968 which brought student revolt and a major change in intelligence and security
service tasking: subversion from the New Left. IRD asked Crozier to prepare a
briefing paper on the New Left which was circulated in 1969 under the title The New
Apostles of Violence; a condensed version was marketed by FWF and placed with the
Washington Post and the London Times. For IRD, Crozier then expanded his paper
"on the basis of a vast supply of classified documents" into a book entitled The
Future of Communist Power which "incorporated, with slight amendments, the paper
on political violence I had prepared for IRD" (61).
As Crozier noted: "In this increasingly threatening situation, I saw a serious
gap. Existing institutes or research centres (or 'think tanks' as the Americans called
them), however worthy, were either too academic, or too neutral, or too heavily
concentrated on hardware strategy ... they failed to take account of the more
dangerous Soviet strategy of takeovers by 'non-military' means, such as subversion
and terrorism ... The need, as I saw it, was for a research centre which would
produce studies on the ever-widening range of groups and forces bringing violence,
chaos and disruption into our societies, but always in the context of Soviet strategy"
(62). Crozier therefore set up a low-key features service within FWF called the
Current Affairs Research Services Centre in 1968. CARSC started publication of a
series of monthly monographs on conflict, the first one appearing in December 1969.
Crozier records that "the Agency had permitted me to produce the first five Conflict
Studies under CARSC as a commercial imprint" using the FWF address; the sixth
would go out in January 1970 under the name of Crozier's new venture, the
Institute for the Study of Conflict (63).
Kern House provided the start-up capital for the ISC, and Crozier functioned
both as Director of FWF and of the ISC. Several of FWF's research staff and the FWF
library were absorbed into the ISC; FWF then paid the ISC the sum of £2,000 for use
of the library it had once owned. Oil companies put up seed capital: first was Shell,
who put up £5,000 a year for three years, and British Petroleum £4,000 for two
years (64). Then the real money came in, thanks to the Agency and via an old
American friend: Frank Barnett of the NSIC (65). Having met Barnett in Madrid in
1966, Crozier visited him in New York in 1968. When the ISC was then set up in
1969-70, the NSIC provided substantial assistance. Apart from a guaranteed regular
purchase of each issue of the Conflict Studies, Barnett’s NSIC also provided the
salary for one of the ISC's researchers and footed the printing and publicity bill for
the ISC's annual publication, the Annual of Power and Conflict (66).
Above all, beyond NSIC funding, Barnett could provide contacts, arranging a
meeting with Dan McMichael, who would remain a true friend to Barnett’s NSIC for
more than fifteen years, serving on the Advisory Council at least until 1984.
McMichael was administrator of the trust funds of the Scaife family, major
shareholders in Gulf Oil. Barnett persuaded Richard Mellon Scaife ("Dick Scaife
as he liked to be called – a tall, fair-haired man with film-star good looks", as
Crozier puts it) to provide $100,000 a year for the ISC as well as taking over the
FWF subsidies from Jock Whitney. According to Crozier: "From that moment on,
the ISC took off" (67). Between 1973 and 1981, Dick Scaife would donate a total of
$6 million to the NSIC and their London friends at the ISC.
The Foreign Office's covert propaganda arm IRD also contributed to the
setting-up of the new Institute; indeed, "IRD became the midwife of the ISC" (68).
When seeking initial funding to set up the ISC in January 1970, Crozier wrote to a
powerful friend, Sir Peter Wilkinson, a senior SOE veteran and former head of IRD
later to become Coordinator for Security and Intelligence in the Cabinet Office.
Wilkinson arranged for a retired Major-General, Fergus A. H. Ling, to act as a
fundraiser for the ISC in military circles; Ling would serve as the ISC's Financial
Director before becoming its Defence Services Consultant. This early assistance for
the ISC by a former head of IRD was only the beginning; almost all the key ISC staff
were former MI6, IRD, CCF or FWF personnel:
- Brian Crozier was Director of both FWF and the ISC, and a consultant to IRD.
- Iain Hamilton, a former Editor of the Spectator, replaced Crozier as Managing
Editor of FWF before moving to the ISC as its Editorial Director. Both Crozier and
Hamilton were fully aware of the CIA's role in supporting FWF and the ISC.
- Michael Goodwin, the ISC's Administrative Director, had been involved with the
CCF since January 1951 when he was a founding member and Honorary Secretary
of the British Society for Cultural Freedom, subsidized by the CCF to the tune of
£700 a month deposited in Goodwin's account. As the editor of the journal The
Twentieth Century and a contract employee of the IRD, Goodwin was considered by
the CCF's Paris office to be "a vital contact", and as such the CCF bailed out
Goodwin's endebted journal in 1951 with a lump sum payment of some £3,000 and
a monthly subsidy of £150. As for the British Society, it had gotten off to a shaky
start and was soon riven by dissensions centred on Goodwin; he resigned in January
1952, and worked for the IRD from 1952 to 1956 as editor of the Bellman Books
series for Ampersand, the IRD's publishing outlet. Goodwin's post as Secretary of the
British Society was then filled by the IRD's John Clews (69).
- Nigel Clive, a former MI6 officer, was head of IRD from 1966 to 1969 before writing
for ISC and acting as ISC's editorial consultant.
- Kenneth Benton retired in 1968 after a 30 year career in MI6; he then joined the
ISC whilst their Conflict Studies were still published by the Current Affairs Research
Services Centre of FWF.
- David Lynn Price, a regular author of ISC Conflict Studies, first worked for IRD
before moving to FWF in 1969 and the ISC in 1970.
- Peter Janke, the ISC's senior research officer, had also worked for IRD.
- Patrick 'Paddy' Honey, a Vietnam expert and former colleague of Brian Crozier on
the Economist Foreign Report, wrote for both IRD and ISC.
- Tom Little, another Economist journalist, was a central figure in an IRD front, the
Arab News Agency, before writing Conflict Studies for the ISC (70).
Another important staff member of the ISC who would become Crozier's
inseparable partner throughout the 1970s and 1980s was Australian-born Robert
Moss. Moss, educated at the University of Canberra and the London School of
Economics, first met Crozier in 1969 when Moss came to see him with an
introduction from his father-in-law Geoffrey Fairbairn, a founding member of the ISC
Council (71). A central figure in the ISC and many later Crozier ventures, Moss
would follow Crozier's precedent in becoming Editor of the Economist Foreign Report
in the mid-1970s and would rise to become one of the CIA's main disinformation
assets, particularly in the campaign to destabilize Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973.
Besides its staff's extensive links to MI6, IRD and FWF, the ISC also had on
its Council senior figures from MI5 and the military intelligence community:
Leonard Schapiro, ISC Chairman from 1970 on, had been a war-time member of
MI5 and an adviser to MI6's G. K. Young some time between 1953 and 1956, when
Young as Director of Requirements was reorganizing MI6's chaotic information
collation and analysis methods (72). In the 1970s, Schapiro held the Chair of Soviet
Studies at the London School of Economics; he would later be a foreign policy
adviser to Thatcher. A top military intelligence officer was Vice-Admiral Sir Louis Le
Bailly, Director-General of Intelligence at the MoD from 1972 to 1975 and a member
of MI5's recruitment panel, who would later serve on the ISC Council, as would Sir
Edward Peck, former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Two leading counter-insurgency experts would also join the ISC Council, the
first being Sir Robert Thompson, a key figure in the British Army's campaign
during the Malayan Emergency of the late 1950s. As Deputy Secretary of Defence for
Malaya in 1957 and Permanent Secretary for Defence from 1959 to 1961, Thompson
had drafted the Briggs Plan, introducing the "strategic hamlet" concept, a plan
implemented by Sir Gerald Templer. From 1961 to 1965, the year in which he
received his knighthood, Thompson would be the main architect of early American
counter-insurgency strategy in Vietnam as Head of the British Advisory Mission (73).
Thompson's books on his experiences of counter-insurgency in Malaya and in
Vietnam were published by Forum World Features. He would also arrange for the
ISC's initial grants from Shell and BP. The second leading counter-insurgency expert
was another old Malaya hand, Major-General Sir Richard Clutterbuck, who was
Senior Army Instructor at the Royal College of Defence Studies when he joined the
ISC Council (74). The early ISC Council also included Brigadier W. F. K. Thompson,
the military correspondent of the Daily Telegraph from 1959 to 1976. Another senior
military figure who would later join the ISC Council was General Sir Harry Tuzo,
General Officer Commanding Northern Ireland from 1971 to 1973 and Deputy
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe from 1976 to 1978.
Through these extensive contacts with the British security establishment, the
ISC gained a unique rôle as an unofficial (deniable) but powerful propaganda tool,
which could put over the intelligence community's views to the Press under the
guise of a 'neutral' academic research body. It could also take over some of the
networking with private bodies that IRD had recently abandoned. As Crozier reports,
by the end of the 1960s, IRD had "decided to sever all relations with two major
continental networks with which I had been associated. One was the Hague-based
INTERDOC group. The other was admittedly more controversial. This was a private
but highly effective French group controlled by a friend of mine, the late Georges
Albertini. ... In return for all information and the contacts he gave me, I made sure
that he received the IRD output, of which he made good use. ... There was no
question of restoring these official contacts, however, once they had been broken. In
any case, INTERDOC's value had decreased sharply after the advent of Willy Brandt
as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in September 1969. As for
Albertini, whom I met frequently in Paris or London, I made sure both that he
received IRD material likely to be useful to him, and that I made good use of his own
information and influence" (75). Albertini's influence would indeed be of use to
Crozier, particularly after the presidential election of June 1969 when Albertini's old
schoolmate and Bilderberg member Georges Pompidou replaced Général de Gaulle.
The ISC also developed excellent relations with four private anti-union
blacklisting groups: the Economic League, Common Cause, Aims for Industry and
the Industrial Research and Information Service (IRIS). In 1970, whilst the ISC
was being established, Crozier had edited the anti-communist anthology We Will
Bury You, published by Common Cause. Alongside Neil Elles of Common Cause and
John Dettmer of the Economic League, the authors included Charles Ellis of
INTERDOC and two founding members of the ISC, Crozier and Brigadier W. F. K.
Thompson. This early joint venture was the first in a series of collaborative efforts
throughout the 1970s and 1980s; Aims for Industry and IRIS, in particular, would
work with the ISC during their counter-subversion campaigns.
Besides its intelligence and industrial allies, the ISC also gained considerable
political support, particularly in the favourable political climate following the election
victory of the Conservatives under Edward Heath in June 1970. The main political
group echoing the ISC's concerns on Communist subversion was the Monday Club,
a ginger group within the Conservative Party which included many Members of
Parliament, several of whom were intelligence veterans.
THE MONDAY CLUB AND SIF
The Monday Club had been set up within the Conservative party in 1961 to
bring together defendants of South Africa and White Rhodesia who opposed the new
decolonisation policy announced by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan
in his "winds of change" speech. One of the earliest members of the Monday Club,
joining in 1962, was Sir John Biggs-Davison, a Conservative MP from 1955 until
his death in 1988. From at least 1965 on, Biggs-Davison served on the PEU Central
Council with Vice-President Otto von Habsburg and the PEU International Events
Secretary and future Belgian coordinator of the Cercle complex, Florimond
Damman, described in the next chapter (76). A stalwart in the Monday Club, Biggs-
Davison would serve as its President from 1974 to 1976.
Another Monday Club member with links to the Cercle complex – indeed a
future Chairman of the Cercle Pinay itself - was Julian (Lord) Amery. Amery was a
prominent MP on the Conservative Right with a long history of extensive intelligence
contacts. Having served in the Balkans with MI6's Section D and the Special
Operations Executive (SOE) during the war, he was one of the major figures that
pushed MI6 in the immediate post-war period to adopt its disastrous plan "to
liberate the countries within the Soviet orbit by any means short of war", notably the
catastrophic attempts to "set the Soviet Union ablaze" by landing armed bands of
émigrés in Albania, Latvia, the Caucasus and the Ukraine. In June 1950, Amery
attended the founding conference in Berlin of the CIA-funded CCF and served on its
International Steering Committee (77); at the time, Amery was also one of the leading
members of the Central and Eastern Europe Commission of Retinger's CIA-funded
European Movement. The same year, Amery was elected to Parliament and also
married Harold Macmillan's daughter. He went on to hold several government posts
under Macmillan, firstly as Under-Secretary of State at the War Office in 1957 and
the Colonial Office in 1958, before being promoted to the post of Secretary of State
for Air from 1960 to 1962; he would then serve in the Cabinet as Minister for Air
until the Conservatives' electoral defeat by Labour's Harold Wilson in 1964. Amery
had joined the Monday Club soon after its creation in 1961; he was the guest of
honour at the Club's annual dinner in 1963. In 1966, he would lose his
parliamentary seat but regain it in 1969, remaining MP until 1992, when he was
created a life peer. By the time of the ISC's creation in 1970, the political pendulum
had just swung back to the Right. New Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath
appointed Amery Housing Minister, where he served until 1972 when he became
Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (the cover department for MI6),
holding the post until Heath's defeat by Wilson in 1974 (78).
Another Monday Club associate was Amery's Private Secretary as Housing
Minister, Winston Churchill. Churchill's father Randolph had been one of the
founding members of the SAS and a life-long intimate of SAS co-founder David
Stirling, who would contribute to the counter-subversion campaign of the mid-
1970s by founding the citizens' militia GB75 in 1974.
One of Amery's oldest political allies in the Monday Club was Rhodesian-born
Sir Stephen Hastings. During the war, Hastings had served with Stirling in North
Africa as one of the founding members of the SAS before moving to SOE and then
MI6; he would be stationed in Cyprus at the same time as Peter Wright of MI5.
Hastings was a close friend of Christopher Phillpotts of MI6 - the two had served
together in Paris. As Head of MI6 Counter-Espionage, Phillpotts would work
extensively with MI5's Peter Wright in the molehunts of the late 1960s. Having left
MI6, Hastings became a Conservative MP in 1960; his first appearance in the House
of Commons was sponsored by Amery, then Aviation Minister. Hastings would then
join Amery in the Monday Club as one of the Club's eleven MPs in 1963. In 1965,
Amery and Hastings would campaign with newly elected Conservative MP Cranley
Onslow against the cancellation of the TSR2 aircraft. Onslow shared Hastings' and
Amery's intelligence connections, having served in MI6 until 1960; he would work
briefly for the IRD before being elected to Parliament in 1964, remaining MP until
1997.
Another early member of the Monday Club from 1964 on was Geoffrey
Stewart-Smith, later a Conservative MP from 1970 to 1974. In 1962, Stewart-Smith
had founded the Foreign Affairs Circle, the British section of WACL until 1974,
which produced the hardline anti-Soviet journal East-West Digest, a fortnightly
publication sent free of charge to all MPs. Stewart-Smith's journal East-West Digest
would appear to be one of the last outlets created around INTERDOC following the
foundation in the late fifties of the Deutsche Vereinigung für Ost-West Beziehungen
in Germany, the Oost-West Stichting in Holland, the Schweizer Ost-Institut in
Switzerland and Albertini's Est-Ouest magazine in France. Stewart-Smith would later
create the Foreign Affairs Publishing Company (FAPC), which continued the East-
West Digest and published many works by Crozier and other figures on the British
Right. The FAPC also distributed the publications of the British anti-union groups
(Aims for Industry, Common Cause, the Economic League and IRIS) and acted as
agent for the SOI's press in Switzerland, SOI-Verlag, and for INTERDOC in Holland
(79).
Last and very definitely not least amongst the Monday Club members was
George Kennedy Young, a veteran MI6 coup-master closely involved with MI6's
Albanian landings in the immediate post war period, strongly supported by Amery.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the top MI6 officer in charge of liaison with the CIA
for the operation was Kim Philby, who promptly blew it to the KGB. Young was also
notably involved with Project Ajax, the coup against Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, the
year that Young would be promoted to Deputy Chief of MI6. Young retired early in
1961 and joined Kleinwort Benson, the merchant bankers.
Young was brought into the Monday Club by Biggs-Davison in 1967, and was
largely responsible for the Monday Club's rapid lurch to the extreme Right,
particularly on the issues of immigration and subversion. In 1969, the Monday Club
published Young's Who Goes Home, an anti-immigration pamphlet that stirred up
controversy due to its call for mandatory repatriation of black people. Besides
running the Halt Immigration Now Campaign from within the Monday Club, Young
chaired the Monday Club Action Fund, which he used to pay for his supporters to
work in Monday Club regional offices. In short, as a trained intelligence officer,
Young planted his cadres throughout the Monday Club's national and regional
groups; an ally of Young's, Bee Carthew, controlled the administrative structure of
the Monday Club as Meetings Secretary (80).
The Monday Club Subversion Committee was chaired by another associate of
Young's, Ian Greig, one of the four founding members of the Monday Club in
January 1961 and a close partner of the ISC and Crozier throughout the 1970s. In
January 1970, Greig's Committee organized a Monday Club seminar on subversion,
at which the panel included Greig, Young, Charles Lyons of the FBI and the ISC's Sir
Robert Thompson. Young and Greig's preoccupation with subversion was certainly
shared by the main speaker at the Monday Club's seminar: General Giovanni De
Lorenzo, former head of SIFAR and of the Carabinieri and main actor in the aborted
1964 coup attempt, Plan Solo. De Lorenzo, now an MSI MP, had been invited by
Young, who was an expert on Italian fascist policing methods, having dismantled the
German intelligence service's networks in Italy for MI6 after the war. De Lorenzo’s
speech to the Monday Club came midway between the beginning of the strategy of
tension in April 1969 and the Borghese coup in December 1970; at the time of his
visit, De Lorenzo was also a key figure in an anti-communist resistance network
within the Carabinieri and the secret services codenamed Rosa dei Venti (Compass
Rose), which had been set up after the failure of Plan Solo. The Rosa dei Venti group,
a major component in the Italian Gladio network, would later be implicated in a
further coup planned for the spring of 1973 (81).
As the same time as he was taking over the Monday Club, G. K. Young was
tightening his grip on another right-wing group, the Society for Individual
Freedom, formed by the fusion of two other groups in 1942. By 1970, Young had
succeeded in becoming Chairman of SIF; the remaining posts on the National
Executive were filled by Young's allies, such as Biggs-Davison and Gerald Howarth,
a Conservative MP and member of Young's Monday Club Immigration Committee.
Other associates of Young's on the SIF National Executive included Michael Ivens,
Director of the anti-union outfit Aims for Industry from 1970 on, and Ross
McWhirter; Ross and his brother Norris were veteran figures on the British ultraright
and publishers of the Guinness Book of Records. Another member of the SIF
National Executive member was Sir John Rodgers, Conservative MP from 1950 to
1979 who became SIF President in the summer of 1970; we shall meet Rodgers
again later as a member of CEDI and the AESP (82).
A final SIF National Executive member was the Conservative MP Sir Frederic
Bennett, who acted as Chairman of the SIF Parliamentary Committee. Bennett was
Senior Director of the Kleinwort Benson bank alongside G. K. Young, and also a
Director at Commercial Union Assurance, where he worked with another retired MI6
officer with long experience in the Middle East, Ellis Morgan. Bennett would later
assist Young in creating the 'private army' Unison in 1976. Besides being a close ally
of Young's, Bennett was also a member of the Bilderberg Group and attended the
April 1974 Bilderberg conference in Megèze together with the President of Kleinwort
Benson, Gerald Thompson (83). Bennett's importance within the Bilderberg group
can be judged by the fact that Bennett was chosen as host for their 1977 conference,
crucial for the restoration of the Bilderbergers' tarnished reputation after the
Lockheed bribe scandal which led to the cancellation of their 1976 conference and
the resignation of the Bilderberg President, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. The
conference, organized in the UK to commemorate the Jubilee, was held in Bennett's
constituency of Torquay in April (84).
In 1970-71, SIF was active in opposing demonstrations led by Young Liberal
Peter Hain protesting against sporting tours in the UK by South African teams: one
photograph illustrating a SIF action shows Young, Howarth, Biggs-Davison and
McWhirter carrying an urn of "ashes of English liberty". In 1971, SIF set up the Hain
Prosecution Fund which raised £20,000; its Chairman was Ross McWhirter, its
Treasurer Howarth. A valuable partner of SIF's in support of their actions against
anti-apartheid demonstrators was the South African Bureau of State Security
(BOSS). Gordon Winter, one of BOSS's key agents in London working under
journalistic cover (including seven years for FWF), had regular meetings with
Howarth to coordinate BOSS/SIF collaboration. Winter was cautious about SIF
however, as his BOSS handler had informed him that SIF was a British intelligence
front run by two senior British intelligence operatives - Young and McWhirter. On
Young, the information was certainly right.
As a journalist, Winter had attended all of the matchs during the Springboks'
tour with the task of photographing the demonstrators for BOSS files. Winter then
offered Howarth over one thousand mug-shots of the demonstrators as well as his
60-page report for BOSS on the tour and Hain's anti-apartheid campaign. Winter
also offered to stand as the main witness in SIF's private prosecution of Hain, but
withdrew at the last moment on orders from BOSS, who wanted him to maintain his
cover for a much more important task - the ultimately successful attempt to smear
Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe (85). BOSS did not give up on Hain however, using a
double in an attempt to frame him for a bank robbery in Putney in October 1975. A
month before Hain's trial, he escaped a letter-bomb posted from Vienna, and the
case against him was ultimately dismissed (86).
FLORIMOND DAMMAN AND THE AESP
At the same time as the IRD and FWF were organising their new Institute
under Brian Crozier, Jean Violet was working to provide a new logistical basis for the
Cercle Pinay and for the political alliance of Pinay, Strauss, Habsburg and Sanchez
Bella. The man chosen for this crucial support rôle was a longstanding Belgian
contact of Habsburg's - Florimond Damman. Damman was a key Belgian linkman;
together with a few close friends, Damman represented the Belgian end of almost all
the international right-wing networks such as the PEU, CEDI and WACL. Damman
had been a close associate of Habsburg's since at least 1962, when Damman served
as Secretary of the Belgian PEU section, Action pour l'Europe Nouvelle et
l'Expansion Atlantique (AENA), before rising to become Chairman of the
International Events Committee on the Central Council of the PEU in 1966 alongside
PEU Vice-Presidents Habsburg and Biggs-Davison, PEU International Secretary
Vittorio Pons and Pons’ deputy and Damman's close associate, Belgian Baron
Bernard de Marcken de Merken.
Damman's chairmanship of the PEU International Events Committee reflected
his ceaseless energy in organizing and networking amongst the European Right. One
particular form this took was the organisation of banquets, Grand Charlemagne
Dinners as Damman called them, to bring together representatives and personalities
from the fragmented paneuropean movements. Starting in the early 1960s, these
dinners were organized in Brussels or Aachen by Damman and the Belgian PEU
section; the renamed Conseil Belge pour l'Union Paneuropéenne would hold the IXth
Grand Charlemagne Dinner in Brussels in January 1966 in the presence of "His
Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Otto von Habsburg". By 1969, the Belgian
PEU group would again change name to become the Mouvement d'Action pour
l'Union Européenne (MAUE), but would still be run by Damman who also liaised
with the Habsburg-Sanchez Bella group CEDI, being close personal friends with
Sanchez Bella (87).
The Belgian section of CEDI was run by Damman's close associate Paul
Vankerkhoven, who served on CEDI's International Council and also acted as
Damman's Vice-President within the PEU section MAUE. 1969 would be a watershed
year for the two men who would set up a series of right-wing groups that year,
amongst them the Belgian section of WACL, the Ligue Internationale de la Liberté
(LIL), founded by Vankerkhoven. The same year, Vankerkhoven also set up a select
right-wing club, the Cercle des Nations, which became a frequent meeting place for
members of the PEU, CEDI and WACL (88). In April 1970, for example, Damman and
Vankerkhoven would organize a Cercle des Nations reception in honour of the Greek
colonels; another collaborative venture for Damman and Vankerkhoven was the joint
organization of the 1970 Brussels Congress of the Anti-Bolshevik Block of Nations
(ABN), an anti-communist group of mainly Ukrainian exiles financed by the CIA and
the BND. The ABN was also strongly supported by Strauss's CSU; its headquarters
were in Munich (89).
Of greatest interest though for the Cercle complex was another club, set up by
Florimond Damman in January 1969, the Académie Européenne des Sciences
Politiques (AESP). Damman was Secretary-for-life of the AESP; Paul Vankerkhoven
served as a member of the AESP organizing core, the Permanent Delegation. The
AESP would continue the tradition of organizing the Grand Charlemagne Dinners
and act as a right-wing clearing house, as Damman described in his note 229:
"Everywhere in Europe, there are people who share our ideology and who are
unable to contribute to it because they are, and above all, they feel, isolated.
The same applies to the small, restricted and regional groups which are
jealous of their independence and their individuality, and we have to allow
them that. We should not impose a line of conduct on them, we should
suggest certain initiatives to them, but also find a way of bringing together
their leaders on a individual basis, setting up permanent liaison between
them without giving them the impression that they are linked, consult them
for certain missions and make them believe that they have taken the initiative
in giving us their approval" (90).
Besides bringing together the fragmented forces of national right-wing groups,
another intention behind the fledgling Academy was to absorb the other
transnational European right-wing movements, particularly CEDI and the PEU.
Whilst these two organizations would continue to exist, the AESP would act as a
forum for a meeting of minds between fractions within both international groups.
This goal of integrating the movements working for European union was in part due
to a latent power struggle between political positions and personalities in European
federalism.
Within the PEU-AESP complex, the struggle was one which opposed PEU
founder and 'dove' Comte Coudenhove Kalergi with CEDI founder and 'hawk'
Archduke Otto von Habsburg. The 1969 creation of the AESP may well have been
initially intended as a means of stripping the PEU of its more influential members
and sidelining Coudenhove Kalergi, a move rendered unnecessary by Coudenhove
Kalergi's death on 27th July, 1972, which cleared the way for Habsburg to become
President of all three organizations - the PEU, CEDI and the AESP. In 1969,
however, it seems that Coudenhove Kalergi could not be ousted immediately - his
prestige could do much to gain acceptance for the new Academy, and so it was
decided to at least start up the AESP with Coudenhove Kalergi as honorary
President.
Before the latent power struggle between Coudenhove Kalergi and Otto von
Habsburg within both the PEU and the AESP had been resolved, Damman had
considered setting up another group to replace the AESP if Coudenhove Kalergi
would not give way to Habsburg. Damman had already started the groundwork for a
new group, CREC, to be run by Damman and a new ally, Yves Guérin-Sérac, leader
of the revolutionary fascist group, Aginter Press, founded in Lisbon in September
1966.
It is possible that Guérin-Sérac saw the new group CREC as an opportunity to
provide Aginter Press's international fascist contact network, Ordre et Tradition, with
links to top conservative politicians, a bridge between the revolutionary fascist
underground and 'respectable' public figures, whilst at the same time pursuing the
strategy of tension that Aginter Press had developed. After an initial contact in late
1968, Guérin-Sérac came to Brussels in January 1969 as Damman's guest to
develop contacts amongst the elite conservative circles Damman frequented.
Damman started by inviting Guérin-Sérac to the AESP's XIIth Grand Charlemagne
Dinner on 27th January, 1969, just four months before the Milan bomb blast that
launched the Italian strategy of tension. Amongst the illustrious guests were
Habsburg and Belgian Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens; one of Guérin-Sérac's
dinner companions at table G was the Belgian neo-fascist Emile Lecerf, later to
become notorious in connection with rumours of a planned coup in 1973 and a
strategy of tension in Belgium in the 1980s.
Guérin-Sérac soon became involved in the internal power struggle within the
AESP between Count Richard Coudenhove Kalergi and Archduke Otto von
Habsburg. In a letter to Damman on Ordre et Tradition headed paper dated 26th
March 1969, Yves Guérin-Sérac gave the following description of the power struggle
between Coudenhove Kalergi and Habsburg three months after the AESP’s creation:
"Dear Mr. Damman,
Thank you for your kind letters of the 19th and 20th March which bring me
here at the extreme tip of the continent [Portugal] the reviving spirit of
European aspirations from the very heart of Europe!
If I may give my opinion, I also feel that the maximum effort should be given
to the Academy and the College [of Young European Leaders, an AESP youth
offshoot], because it is from here that the most active and dynamic elements
will come. However, and you are right on this as well, so as to create the
necessary climate, we must contact a wider and more diversified elite.
Removing the Count and replacing him with the Archduke is a solution, but if
it turns out to be impossible, I feel it is logical to think of setting up another
organization"(91).
By the summer of 1969, Guérin-Sérac and Damman had concluded an
"agreement in principle" to found the new group, CREC, which would try and
reconcile two conflicting positions: the traditional Right, anti-communist but not
anti-parliamentarian, and the revolutionary extreme Right represented by Aginter
Press. Guérin-Sérac and Damman then met at least twice more, as detailed in a
progress report written by Guérin-Sérac on 19th May, 1969 and sent out by Aginter
Press to their correspondents:
"We should take stock of the progress made in our effort to set up CREC. I
must admit that little progress has been made since the beginning of the year,
i.e. since the agreement in principle on the two syntheses ... the major
reasons for this delay are:
- the difficulties suffered by the group of our Italian friends as a result of the
chaotic and revolutionary situation in their country;
- the centrifugal tendencies of the French group, whose reconversion has not
yet been completed.
... We should not however give up. In a Franco-Belgian preparatory meeting
held in Brussels in March, we agreed on the following work programme:
A - Definition of basic political positions with regard to European union.
B - Definition of goals and strategy.
C - Organization of a structure for CREC: bases and statutes.
D - Preparation of a political plan and a psychological plan to be implemented
by CREC.
E - Organization of a financial committee.
In the meeting in Vienna at the beginning of this month, it was suggested we
drew up a questionnaire so as to facilitate the definition, classification and
alignment of the political ideas held by the various groups active on the
subject of European union. Please find annexed a questionnaire covering
paragraphs A and B of the above plan.
I would suggest you send me your answers and any points you would like to
add. I will then prepare a summary and if necessary highlight the conflicts or
major disagreements and try to find an acceptable compromise with those
concerned before finally submitting the conclusions to you" (92).
In his report, Guérin-Sérac refers to the "chaotic and revolutionary situation"
in Italy, a climate stoked by the Italian correspondents of Aginter Press, centred
around the Avanguardia Nazionale group under the leadership of Stefano delle
Chiaie. Almost exactly one month after Guérin-Sérac wrote to Damman about CREC
in March 1969, the Italian neo-fascists working with Aginter Press carried out the
bomb attack that announced the beginning of the strategy of tension in Italy. The
bomb that exploded in the Fiat Pavilion at the Milan Fair on the 25th April 1969
wounded twenty people; by the end of this first year of terror tactics, 149 bomb
attacks would occur, as compared to fifty in the four years from 1964 to 1968.
Whether Damman knew of Guérin-Sérac's terrorist connections or not is
uncertain, but it is clear that Aginter Press's neo-fascist terrorists were in contact
with conservatives throughout Europe, as Guérin-Sérac explained:
"Our troop consists of two types of men:
i) officers who joined us after the fighting in Indo-China or Algeria, and even
some who signed on with us after the battle for Korea;
ii) intellectuals who, during the same period, turned their attention to the
study of the techniques of Marxist subversion ... having created study groups,
they shared their experience to try and expose the techniques of Marxist
subversion and develop a counter-strategy. Throughout this period, we had
systematically forged close ties with like-minded groups that were being set
up in Italy, Belgium, Germany, Spain or in Portugal with the aim of forming
the nucleus of a truly European league to resist Marxism" (93).
In an 1974 interview, Aginter Press’ key Italian representative, Guido
Giannettini, alluded to the contacts between Ordre et Tradition and groups like the
AESP and specifically mentioned one of the main contacts for the Academy and for
Aginter Press, Franz Josef Strauss's CSU party (94):
"I passed my information on to some friends in certain milieux of the
international Right. They passed me theirs ... the practical form for this
exchange was private bulletins which circulated amongst certain European
groups of the Centre-Right ... such as, for example, the Bavarian CSU party,
the French 'geopolitical groups' [e.g. the Cercle Pinay], and other groups in
Belgium [e.g. the AESP], Switzerland, and almost every country in Europe"
(95).
Despite Guérin-Sérac's interest in the new group, CREC never got beyond the
planning stage. Nonetheless, journalist Serge Dumont who infiltrated the AESP at
the time states that contacts between Damman and Guérin-Sérac continued until
May 1974 when the Lisbon offices of Aginter Press were occupied by left-wing
soldiers during the Portuguese revolution, blowing the operation's press agency
cover (96). There was however one person who would not forget Guérin-Sérac's
insurrectionary message - his table companion at Damman's Grand Charlemagne
Dinner in January 1969, Belgian neo-fascist Emile Lecerf. In 1973, the names of
Lecerf and several eminent members of Damman's Academy would be included in a
Gendarmerie report on plans for a coup d'état in Belgium, detailed in a later chapter.
Despite the failure of the CREC project, Damman would soon overcome the
internal struggle within the AESP and expand its activities. At a symposium
organized by Habsburg in Vienna in May 1969, Damman met Jean Violet (97). By
October, Violet was looking for a group that could provide an operational framework
for the Cercle Pinay, and thought of Damman and his AESP. On 21st October 1969,
Violet wrote to Damman saying that he would like to meet him, having been
"mandated by President Pinay to carry out a study of European perspectives after
the German elections" i.e. Willy Brandt's September election victory.
The meeting took place one week later on 28th October in Brussels, where
Violet was accompanied by two of his contacts, the first of whom was Marcel Collet,
who had just retired as director of Euratom. Violet's second companion was certain
to ensure a favourable reception from Damman - none other than the International
Secretary-General of the Paneuropean Union, Vittorio Pons. Over lunch, Violet,
Damman, Collet and Pons agreed on a new rôle for the AESP to act as a forum
linking the PEU and CEDI under Habsburg and Sanchez Bella to the Bilderberg
Group and Cercle Pinay, represented by Pinay and Violet. The revamped Academy
would be run by Damman directed from behind the scenes by Violet and his trio of
associates Collet, Father Dubois and François Vallet, an industrialist in
pharmaceuticals. Violet announced that he would go to Pöcking, Habsburg's seat
just outside Munich, to confer with the Archduke and Strauss about the financing of
the AESP.
Within eight months of the Academy's relaunch, the process of interlinking
was already well under way, as a membership list dated 21st June 1970 testifies
(98). The honorary figurehead of the AESP was PEU founder Coudenhove Kalergi,
but the position was only symbolic: as on all future AESP documents, Archduke Otto
von Habsburg's name is first on the list of names, whereas Coudenhove Kalergi's
name appears only in third place under the letter C. The PEU/CEDI axis was
represented by Habsburg, Sanchez Bella and Pons, the Cercle Pinay by Pinay, Violet,
Father Dubois, Pesenti and Collet.
The operational core of the AESP, the Permanent Delegation, brought together
the Belgian sections of the PEU, CEDI and WACL - the duo of Damman and de
Marcken represented the PEU Central Council and the Belgian PEU section MAUE,
whereas Vankerkhoven ran the Belgian WACL section LIL and the Belgian section of
CEDI. CEDI's Belgian section was also represented within the AESP by the
Chevalier Marcel de Roover, a veteran anti-communist who had played a major
part in the early post-war creation of two private anti-communist intelligence
services linked to the Belgian Gladio network, Milpol and the Delcourt network. It
was de Roover who had founded the Belgian section of CEDI in 1961 and still served
as its President when the AESP was created; he was also Belgium's representative
within WACL from the late 1950s on. Following de Roover's death in 1971, his WACL
post was taken over by Paul Vankerkhoven, who was also appointed Secretary-
General of CEDI, moving CEDI's offices into his Cercle des Nations (99).
The most prominent Belgian members of the AESP however were the Belgian
Prime Minister, Gaston Eyskens, and the future Belgian Prime Minister and Defence
Minister throughout most of the 1970s, Paul Vanden Boeynants. VdB, as he is
known, would become a national institution in Belgian political life, the Belgian
Andreotti. VdB first entered politics at the age of 29 in the ranks of Retinger's
European Movement. Before being elected to Parliament, he served as one of the five
Belgian representatives at the second conference of the Union of European
Federalists, the most powerful group within the European Movement. The UEF's
second conference was held in Rome in November 1948 shortly after massive
intervention by the CIA to ward off an electoral victory by the Socialist-Communist
Popular Democratic Front in the April 1948 elections. As we will see below, one key
Italian politician in this anti-communist propaganda effort would also figure amongst
the AESP's members in 1970.
Through the UEF, Vanden Boeynants made a valuable contact in the person
of the UEF Treasurer, the Belgian Pierre Bonvoisin, who in 1952 would be one of the
founding members of the Bilderberg Group with Antoine Pinay. When VdB was
Belgian Defence Minister in the mid-1970s, he would show his gratitude to Pierre
Bonvoisin by appointing Bonvoisin's son, Benoît, as his political adviser. Baron
Benoît de Bonvoisin was at the time the most notorious patron of Belgian fascism
and a key international linkman for the far Right.
Alongside the international leadership of the PEU and CEDI and its Belgian
affiliates, the newly founded Academy also included three top members of the
German PEU section, the most influential of the national delegations. The first of
this trio of German AESP members was a man we have already met, the conservative
bag-man and German PEU Federal Secretary until 1975 Karl-Friedrich Grau,
longstanding coordinator of the Frankfurt Study Group and German partner of
Sager’s Swiss SOI. Grau would be one of Damman's major partners in the early
1970s; Damman's private diary reveals at least 25 meetings with Grau from 1969 to
1973, as well as joint plans to set up a certain 'Collège de Coordination' in Cologne
with Grau as President (100).
Throughout the 1970s, Grau’s Frankfurt Study Group would be a key source
of German anti-communist propaganda via its private newsletter entitled interninformationen.
Although the Study Group produced the bulletin, the legal
publication address was that of a Swiss affiliate - putting Grau and the bulletin's
contributors out of the reach of German law, and for good reason: the bulletin,
which included contributions from BND officers, regularly published defamatory
articles about Centre-Left politicians (101). As one of the founding members put it in
an interview with Swiss television, "the Swiss branch was set up to ensure that the
left-wing German government [under Willy Brandt] can't touch us". Grau gave a
similar explanation during a meeting with militants of the neo-fascist NPD party in
December 1973: "We have compiled lists of Socialists, Reds and trades unionists. To
be certain that only authorized people can get at them, we have deposited them in a
vault in Switzerland" (102).
Grau's Swiss affiliate, the Internationale Studiengesellschaft für Politik
(International Study Group for Politics, ISP) was founded in Interlaken in 1971 and
was funded by a grant of 10% of the Frankfurt Study Group's income. Throughout
the 1970s, the ISP would act as a major German-language outlet for Cold War
propaganda, in many ways similar to the British Institute for the Study of Conflict.
With participants and speakers coming from the military, the police and the
intelligence and security services of Switzerland and other European countries, the
ISP held conferences on Soviet subversion of Western society: typical titles of
speeches included "Is the Bolchevisation of Europe inevitable?" and "The threat of
German reunification - under the hammer and sickle!".
Considerable support for the ISP was given by Dr. Peter Sager and his SOI.
For many years, Grau's smear sheet intern-informationen was produced by a printing
company that belonged to Sager. Sager himself spoke frequently at ISP conferences
in the 1970s, and the Secretary-General of the ISP from 1973 on was Sager's partner
Heinz Luginbühl. Support for the ISP was also given by Habsburg and the AESP: the
Austrian Archduke gave speeches and contributed articles to the Frankfurt Study
Group from 1965 onwards, and several other German or Swiss members of the AESP
would work as speakers for the ISP in the mid-1970s.
Alongside Grau, another German who joined the AESP in 1970 was Hans-
Joachim von Merkatz, a senior CDU politician first elected to the German
Parliament in 1949 as a member of the small Deutsche Partei (German Party). Von
Merkatz served in the Cabinet (alongside Strauss) as Minister for Senate Affairs from
1955 to 1962, and simultaneously as Justice Minister from 1956 to 1957. He would
switch party allegiance to the CDU in 1960 and served a second simultaneous
mandate from 1960 to 1961 as Minister for Expellees, Refugees and War Victims –
the former German populations expelled from the Eastern European countries
behind the Iron Curtain were a notable factor in post-war German politics. Leaving
national politics in 1962, von Merkatz served as German representative on the
Executive Council of UNESCO from 1964 to 1968.
More significant than von Merkatz's political career was his rôle in
paneuropean politics. In 1967, he had replaced Coudenhove Kalergi as the President
of the German PEU section, serving on the PEU Central Council as Vice-President.
This succession was the first victory for the Habsburg fraction of the PEU to which
von Merkatz belonged; von Merkatz was also Vice-President of Habsburg's CEDI and
a member of an institute that shared CEDI's Munich headquarters, the
Europäisches Institut für politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Fragen (European
Institute for political, economic and social issues). As we will see later on, von
Merkatz would also serve on the Boards of several other organizations within the
Cercle Pinay complex.
The third German member of the AESP in 1970 was Brussels-based Rudolf
Dumont du Voitel, a Board member of the German PEU section. Dumont du Voitel
would be involved in the running of the AESP as a member of the core group, the
Permanent Delegation; he would also give the AESP access to the European
Community and the media thanks to his position as Head of the Audiovisual
Division of the EEC.
Franco's government in Spain was also well represented in the AESP in 1970.
CEDI co-founder Alfredo Sanchez Bella was, of course, one of the AESP founding
members; at this time, he had just taken over as Franco's Minister for Information
and Tourism, a post he would fill until 1973. Also on the 1970 membership list of
the AESP was his immediate predecessor as Minister of Information and Tourism
between 1962 and 1969, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, whom we have already met as a
contact of Brian Crozier's from 1965 on (103).
If the Spanish members of the AESP are of interest, one French member is no
less so: in the 1970 AESP membership list, André Voisin is credited as an adviser in
the French Prime Minister's Private Office. Voisin however had other connections not
mentioned by the AESP: he was one of the earliest collaborators of Dr Joseph
Retinger, founder of the European Movement and the Bilderberg Group. Voisin was
Vice-President of the European Movement, and therefore provided the AESP with a
channel for contacts between the PEU and the EM. Voisin was also one of the
founding members of the Bilderberg Group, having attended the meeting in
September 1952 which decided to create the powerbrokers' forum alongside with
Antoine Pinay and Pierre Bonvoisin.
On top of the Academy's early contacts in Belgium, Germany and France, an
Italian member of the Academy in 1970 is of note: Ivan-Matteo Lombardo.
Lombardo, a textile industrialist and director of several American companies in Italy,
had been one of the most prominent politicians in the immediate post-war period,
serving as the Italian Ambassador Extraordinary who negotiated post-war
reparations with the American government in 1947. The same year, Lombardo as
Secretary-General of the Socialist Party worked with future Italian President
Giuseppe Saragat to oppose a Socialist-Communist electoral alliance, leaving the
Socialist Party to form the right-wing PSLI (later PSDI); he subsequently served as
Minister for Industry, Commerce and Foreign Trade in de Gasperi's coalition
government elected in April 1948 after massive intervention by the CIA (104). At
least one of Lombardo's electoral campaigns was financed by the American State
Department; he would later cross the Atlantic as Italian Ambassador to Washington.
Lombardo was a frequent participant at conferences on the defence of Europe
against Soviet subversion: in December 1960, he served with Pinay and Albertini on
the Sponsors' Committee of the "International Conference on Soviet Political
Warfare" organized by the French section of WACL (105). Lombardo was also closely
connected to WACL via his rôle as President of the Comitato per la Liberta d'Europa,
the Italian section of the European Freedom Council. The EFC shared its offices in
Zeppelinstrasse 67 in Munich with the ABN which had intimate links with WACL
(106); in 1971, Lombardo would contribute the foreword to a book by the ABN
condemning Russian colonialism.
Within Italy, Lombardo defended American interests as President of the
Comitato Italiano Atlantico and Vice-President of the Atlantic Treaty Association
which in 1965 called for the carabinieri and Italian police to be given powers to
intervene in Italian domestic politics to protect the NATO Alliance. The same year,
Lombardo would be one of the speakers at the Parco dei Principi conference that
gave birth to the strategy of tension. In his contribution, "The Communist War
against the West", he called for "universal counter-guerrilla warfare". At this stage,
he evidently had considerable international outreach - the closing speaker at the
Parco dei Principi meeting, Colonel Adriano Magi-Braschi, mentioned that he had
"had pleasure in meeting Mr. Lombardo in the most diverse parts of the world". As
part of this ambassadorial rôle for counter-guerrilla warfare, Lombardo also attended
a later conference on "Unconventional Warfare and Defence" held in June 1971. In
1974, according to the Italian Press, he would be implicated in the Sogno coup (107).
To sum up this overview of the Academy afforded by the June 1970
membership list, we can see that only eight months after its relaunch, the Academy
had succeeded in bringing together the leadership of the PEU, CEDI, European
Movement and the expanded Cercle Pinay, including all the key personalities
involved in conservative campaigns for European Union. Internationally, it could call
on friends in high places who belonged to the Bilderberg group. On a European
political level, the Academy's members included former or serving Ministers from
Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain; at the same time, behind the scenes,
the AESP shared common ground with Aginter Press and its terrorist army.
THE SNIFFER PLANE PROJECT
At the same time as Damman and Violet were busy setting a new foundation
for the AESP, they were also working on the trials and marketing of "an incredible
technological breakthrough" - the ability to detect underground liquid deposits from
the air. The procedure had been developed by the Italian Aldo Bonassoli working
with the Belgian Alain Comte de Villegas. De Villegas was no stranger to Damman;
his elder brother Diego de Villegas was married to Damman's sister, and Alain de
Villegas himself was a member of the AESP Permanent Delegation, the inner circle
that dealt with AESP business. At the end of 1969, the three AESP core members
Damman, de Marcken and de Villegas met Violet at the Westbury hotel in Brussels
to discuss how to proceed with the sniffer plane project. De Marcken attended the
meeting as he had been involved in an earlier project of de Villegas and Bonassoli's,
a water desalination plant which had been tested on a holiday campsite on Ibiza that
belonged to de Marcken.
The crucial question was to get an impressive first contract for field trials to
help secure funding. After an abortive attempt to obtain financing for the project
from an American industrialist, Crosby Kelly, de Villegas visited the Spanish
Embassy on 6th April 1970 to lunch with Ambassador La Orden, a member of Opus
Dei and fellow founding member of the AESP; La Orden had been Sanchez Bella's
top civil servant as Director-General of Information and Tourism. Sanchez Bella's
rôle as Minister for Tourism allowed him to promote de Villegas' scheme: de Villegas
flew out to the Canaries in December 1970 with a contract to discover underground
sources of drinking water on a site belonging to Entursa, the Spanish Tourism
Agency.
The financing was also provided thanks to a longstanding client of Violet's
whom we have already met as delle Chiaie's backer - Carlo Pesenti, "that most
Catholic of financiers" who ran one of Italy's largest industrial conglomerates,
Italcementi, inherited from his uncle whose close contacts with Mussolini had given
the firm privileged access to contracts for concrete in Italian-occupied Ethiopia. After
the war, Pesenti would expand his business empire via his financial holding
company Italmobiliare, active in banking, insurance and newspapers (108). Pesenti
was the most senior of a trio of Vatican financial backers, the other two being P2
members Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi (109). Pesenti had a long history as a
patron of far-Right groups; in the early 1960s, Pesenti gave a regular gift of 3.5
million lire to delle Chiaie's group Avanguardia Nazionale, which had begun training
its militants in revolutionary warfare in the spring of 1964 (110). Pesenti would be a
major source of funds for the Cercle Pinay and for Damman's Academy throughout
the early 1970s until Sindona's attempted takeover of his business empire would
force Pesenti to cut their funding.
Whilst Pesenti provided the initial financial backing for the sniffer planes,
Sanchez Bella used his contacts as adviser to the Union des Banques Suisses to
arrange for UBS Director Philippe de Weck to come and witness the trials. De Weck
was the main financier later implicated in the sniffer plane scandal; he would serve
as Chairman of de Villegas' sniffer plane company, Fisalma (111). The invention
would turn out to be a massive fraud; although de Weck would succeed in retrieving
some £50 million of the funds provided by Elf, the French state oil company which
had invested heavily in the project, another £50 million would never be recovered,
spent, according to de Weck, on "religious charities and other good causes" (112).
Other developments simultaneous with the genesis of the sniffer plane project
might well explain the exact nature of some of these 'good causes'. Whilst the launch
of the AESP was progressing so well, the nascent Cercle network suffered three
serious setbacks in 1969-70. The first was, as mentioned above, the decision by the
British IRD to cut off contacts with INTERDOC and the Albertini network; the second
was the advent in September 1969 of a "hostile" government in Germany under Willy
Brandt. The third setback seemed at first sight to be promising – the election victory
in June 1969 of Georges Pompidou, which considerably strengthened the network
run by his old schoolfriend, Georges Albertini.
For Jean Violet however, Pompidou’s victory would soon turn into disaster;
his fifteen year relationship with the SDECE would be abruptly severed. In October
1970, Pompidou appointed a new head of the SDECE, Alexandre Comte de
Marenches. De Marenches carried out a major purge within the SDECE, and
together with many other staff, Violet found himself evicted from the cosy niche the
SDECE had offered him since 1957. The SDECE under de Marenches was no longer
prepared to pay the exorbitant cost of Violet's operations. In the secret intelligence
reports he wrote on the Cercle Pinay in 1979-80, Hans Langemann, the top
Bavarian civil servant in charge of security matters, reported that General Jacquier,
head of SDECE from 1962 to 1966, had been giving Violet DM 72,000 a year and
that Violet had been getting the same sum from the BND's General Gehlen.
In his testimony to the French parliamentary inquiry into the sniffer plane
scandal, de Marenches stressed the financial burden of Violet's operations:
"One figure [in agents' budgets] attracted my attention because it was followed
by a lot of zeros. I asked who was this champion of intelligence. It was
intimated that 'he was top of the range, an extraordinary person, he is an
agent of the Vatican' ... with considerable difficulty, after two or three days, I
obtained his reports: a normally gifted person could have compiled them by
reading Le Monde, Le Figaro, and three or four other magazines and adding a
few personal touches. That was his entire production. I therefore decided to
dispense with his services" (113).
It is also possible that Violet, the éminence grise par excellence, had
accumulated too much power for comfort, as de Marenches hinted in his 1986
memoirs:
"Before my arrival, the service included a picturesque personality (I won't say
'charming' because I have never met him myself) who was one of these more
or less imaginary sources of intelligence for the service for many years. He
became well-known later on in connection with the planes whose smelling
powers were front-page news for a while. I dispensed with his services several
weeks after I had taken over. On the basis of the reports I had been shown, I
noticed that his services were very expensive. The results of the funds that
had been given him in the past were not those one was entitled to expect from
a good 'honourable correspondent' [intelligence source]. For a press review
that anybody could have compiled, he had been paid the highest fees in the
service. I was told he ran a pay-off system within the SDECE itself. I put an
end to his exploits and had him dismissed within half an hour ... some [of the
SDECE staff dismissed] were quickly hired by a private parallel network that
had nothing to do with the official services of the State [Elf's PSA, see below].
The sniffer plane affair is a skillful fraud whose outcome is unknown ... in the
maze I had discovered in 1970, there were a certain number of parasites who
were not serving the State or France but were involved in lobbies,
organizations whose foreign ramifications at times gave rise to serious
problems" (114).
One such lobby was the newly expanded Cercle Pinay network, and thanks to
funding from Pesenti, Violet was able to overcome the withdrawal of SDECE support
and extend the Academy's international outreach in those countries where Cercle
contacts were weakest, notably Britain. The natural partner for this veteran French
covert operator was Brian Crozier and his Institute for the Study of Conflict, thus
forging a Franco-German-British axis for the Cercle complex.
1971 - 1975
OUTREACH AND OPERATIONS
THE CERCLE, THE ACADEMY AND THE INSTITUTE
It was in mid-1971 that Violet contacted Crozier, following the publication in
US News and World Report of a long interview with Crozier on the subject of
terrorism and Communist intentions (115). Violet suggested that the ISC should
organize a study group on the problems inherent in the détente process; Violet's
group would put up the funds thanks to Pesenti. Violet brought along the report of
an initial study group he had chaired, which was circulated to all members of the
ISC and which provoked objections from one unidentified Board member for its
"extreme right-wing views". Once those objections had been overcome, an ISC study
group was set up including Crozier, Moss and two experts of interest: Sovietologist
Robert Conquest, and Leo Labedz, editor of the CCF magazine Survey and one of the
most important sources of material throughout the FWF operation (116). The study
group met between July and November 1971 with, as a backdrop, Edward Heath's
expulsion of 105 Soviet diplomats and officials on charges of spying. These concerns
were integrated into the ISC's deliberations; as Crozier records, "a Whitehall friend of
mine had brought me a detailed analysis of Soviet spying activities and techniques
which I fed into our discussions" (117). The Study Group's findings were published
in January 1972 as an ISC Special Report entitled European Security and the Soviet
Problem. The Cercle Pinay were delighted with the result, as an internal ISC memo
dated 21st January, 1972 shows:
"Report on European Security and the Soviet Problem; Visit of Maître Jean Violet.
The Chairman said that from what he'd heard, the report had been a remarkable
success. He was impressed with the way in which M. Pinay had accepted the views
of the ISC on how the Institute thought it should be handled, and it was gratifying
that the Pinay Committee had been so delighted with the finished result.
Mr. Crozier said that M. Violet, who had commissioned the report on behalf of the
Pinay Committee, had come to London with M. Pinay during that week and that he,
with Mr. Goodwin, had met them over lunch. Pinay had given Mr. Crozier documents
relating to their next project. M. Pinay had presented a copy of European Security
and the Soviet Problem to President Nixon and Dr. Kissinger in America. Earlier that
week he had had a three hour session with President Pompidou, during which time
he had presented him with a copy of the publication in French. Maître Violet had
also presented copies to a number of German politicians, mainly Christian
Democrats, who are having the report translated into German. And he had shown a
copy to the Spanish Minister [probably Sanchez Bella, Minister for Information] and
to the Pope. NSIC in New York had bought 500 of the ISC's initial print order
[providing the ISC with an immediate income of £2,000], and another 500 had been
bought by the American Bar Association. In effect, we were out of print on the day of
publication. Numerous orders were in hand for the reprint. A leader in the Daily
Telegraph of 14 January spoke highly of the publication" (118).
To give wide promotion to the Cercle/ISC study, Violet used the AESP
network; in a letter dated 28th January, 1972, Violet asked Damman to send out
four pages from the ISC report to all addresses on the Academy's mailing list. On
11th February, Violet told Damman to make use of the Institute's services and to
keep in touch with Crozier. An AESP\MAUE activity report for the first quarter of
1973 gives a picture of the intensity of Damman's operation; a note indicates that
the total number of mailings sent out by the Academy in 1973 would exceed 50,000.
As the ISC Council minutes record, the Cercle Pinay was delighted with the
results of their collaboration with the ISC, and the Cercle and its backer Pesenti
were to become a major source of funding for the ISC. ISC Council minutes of 11th
July 1972 report that "Mr Crozier said that he had recently spoken about the future
of the ISC with members of the Pinay Committee in Paris. He was hopeful of this
committee putting up some £20,000 in 1973." This grant represented a major part of
the ISC's annual budget of some £30,000 and replaced the CIA funding channelled
via Kern House Enterprises:
"The Kern House subsidy continued until at least the middle of 1972, by
which time other sources of finance had materialized. Together with 2,000
odd subscriptions to ISC publications, they make up ISC's budget of, as of
1976, over £30,000" (119).
The significance of the Cercle Pinay grant can be judged by comparison to
other gifts to the ISC by multinational companies: the Ford Foundation donated
£20,000 over three years, and, in 1971, Shell had contributed a lump sum of
£30,000 (120).
The success of the collaboration between the Cercle and the ISC led to a
second joint venture in 1972-73, the production of another ISC Special Report to
"analyse the crisis in Western societies in the light of Soviet subversion" (121). In
September 1972, a study group was convened including Irish expert Iain Hamilton,
former managing editor of FWF and Director of Studies of the ISC. "This time the
Whitehall input was even more substantial than with the previous study group. It
included comprehensive details of the Soviet KGB and GRU presence throughout
Western Europe. The only country missing was Britain itself, partly no doubt for
reasons of national security, but mainly because of the still recent expulsion of the
105 Soviet spies. Without revealing the name of my informant, or his department, I
made it clear to the participants that the material provided came from an official
source. ... Our report, The Peacetime Strategy of the Soviet Union, was published in
March 1973. It provided individual country studies of Soviet subversion covering the
United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Italy and the United States, with shorter
entries for smaller countries. It was probably the most comprehensive compilation of
facts and analysis to have been presented in public. ... the former Prime Minister
Antoine Pinay, then over eighty but still wonderfully energetic, was so fired with
enthusiasm on reading the report that he came to London to present it in person to
Prime Minister Edward Heath" (122).
Jean Violet recognized that the ISC and their publications were the most
appropriate source for a Western propaganda counter-offensive against Soviet
subversion, but the ISC's Conflict Studies were only published in English. From
1973 onwards, one of the major concerns for the Cercle Pinay complex was therefore
to ensure European distribution, and particularly French-language publication, of
the ISC's output. The Cercle's existing French-language outlets were not adapted to
running an international campaign of this scope; the AESP's monthly bulletin,
Europe Information, was an amateurish production with a print run of only 2,000
copies. Violet felt that the Academy's bulletin was not prestigious enough to be the
vehicle of Cercle\ISC material, and so in 1973 an existing journal, the Bulletin de
Paris, was taken over, and a second, Le Monde Moderne, was founded with funding
from Pesenti (123). Over the next few years, these two publications were to be major
French-language outlets for ISC reports.
The Bulletin de Paris, close to the conservative white-collar union CGC, would
concentrate in 1974-75 on similar themes to the ISC: the chaotic situation in
Portugal, communist designs on Southern Africa and threats to the Cape route for
the West’s supply of commodities, the deception of détente and the war of
subversion waged by the Soviet Union. Amongst its correspondents were Franz Josef
Strauss and General Jean Callet, a veteran of Indochina in 1950 and Algeria in
1956 who directed the Institut des Hautes Etudes de Défense Nationale from 1972 to
1974.
Le Monde Moderne, a quarterly foreign affairs magazine, reached a more
prestige audience and was edited by a close associate of Violet's, Jean Vigneau,
together with former SDECE officer Jacques Leguèbe, and Bernard Lejeune, editor
of the Courrier austral. Le Monde Moderne was a regular French-language vehicle for
the ISC's publications - the first issue in 1973 consisted mainly of a translation of
the 1972 ISC Special Report commissioned by the Cercle Pinay, European Security
and the Soviet Problem. In an issue later that year, Le Monde Moderne published the
ISC's Cercle-sponsored Special Report from March 1973, The Peacetime Strategy of
the Soviet Union, followed in 1975 by the ISC’s March 1974 Conflict Study Marxism
and the Church of Rome. Other contributors to Le Monde Moderne included Strauss,
Sanchez Bella, Moss and General Callet (124).
THE AESP IN 1972 AND PEACE WITHOUT FRONTIERS
In January 1972, at the same time as the ISC published their first Special
Report commissioned by the Cercle Pinay, the AESP held its XVth Charlemagne
Grand Dinner in Brussels. The attendance list of the Grand Dinner, held on the 15th
January 1972 at the Cercle des Nations, reveals other early contacts that the
Academy enjoyed. The top members of the Academy and the PEU were in
attendance: Habsburg and Coudenhove Kalergi presided over the dinner. Reduced to
a figurehead in Habsburg's Academy, Coudenhove Kalergi’s death in July 1972
would clear the way for Habsburg to take over full control of all three organisations,
the PEU, CEDI and the AESP.
At the January 1972 dinner, Habsburg and Coudenhove Kalergi were
seconded by the Brussels organizing group of Damman, Vankerkhoven, de Villegas
and Jacques Jonet, a former political secretary of Otto von Habsburg's and a Vice-
President of MAUE, the Belgian PEU section run by Damman. Germany was
represented by the Federal Secretary of PEU Germany, Karl-Friedrich Grau, the
coordinator of the Swiss ISP set up the year before, and also by Rudolf Dumont de
Voitel, the EEC official who was a member of the AESP's Permanent Delegation and
Board member of PEU Germany.
From Paris came the French coordinators of the AESP, Jean Violet and Marcel
Collet, accompanied by René-Louis Picard, President of the International Society of
Wilton Park, who regularly attended AESP events from at least 1971 onwards. Picard
is an interesting contact for the AESP, as Wilton Park was a forum for propaganda
activities by the British Foreign Office. In his 1966 study of "anti-communist political
warfare", future Conservative MP and partner of Crozier Geoffrey Stewart-Smith lists
Wilton Park with the IRD:
"It is generally felt that the Research Department and its sister organization,
the Information Research Department ... have a staff which is woefully
inadequate in view of the growing importance of its work, and that its
personnel are underpaid. Now if any British taxpayer's money is being spent
on strategic political warfare, it is spent in the work of these two
departments... Wilton Park at Steyning, Sussex, controlled by the Information
Executive Department, 'is an institution sponsored by Her Majesty's
Government. But, while the Government finds about seven-eighths of the
money required to run it, the Warden has a free hand and is responsible for
the planning of conferences... Wilton Park conferences of which there are
usually ten a year, are a British contribution to the creation in Europe of an
informed public opinion' (H. Koeppler, The Aims of Wilton Park, Central Office
of Information, 1960, pg 8)" (125).
In other words, whilst the IRD and its 'private' offshoot the ISC ensured the
surfacing of black propaganda in the international media, Wilton Park offered an
official but confidential forum for discussions with foreign dignitaries. An
international network of "Friends of Wilton Park" was set up from 1968 onwards with
branches in France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. By
1978, the Cercle would succeed in dominating this Wilton Park network by creating
a European Liaison Committee whose nine founding members included four from
the AESP: Picard as President, Violet, Sanchez Bella and Jonet (126).
Two Spanish diplomats at the AESP's January 1972 Grand Dinner also had
influential contacts. The first was Roberto Jacobo, whose title of Counsellor at the
Spanish Embassy in Brussels concealed his activities as a member of Franco's
intelligence service. Jacobo would remain in touch with Damman throughout the
1970s; Damman's diaries published by his deputy Aldo Mungo reveal contacts
between Jacobo and Damman in February 1977, by which time Jacobo had risen to
become the Brussels head of station. The second influential Spaniard was Alberto
Ullastres, Head of the Spanish Mission to the EEC, a Life Member of the AESP and,
more privately, a high-ranking member of Opus Dei (127).
Another of the Academy's guests at the XVth Grand Dinner was Dr Erno
(Ernest) Töttösy, European President of the World Organization of Free Hungarian
Lawyers and leader of the Hungarian section of WACL. Sentenced to twelve years
imprisonment for "participation in a US-inspired coup plot", Töttösy escaped during
the 1956 revolution and fled to Belgium, obtaining Belgian citizenship in 1964.
Töttösy had been in contact with Damman since at least 1961; on 3rd October of
that year, Töttösy spoke on "The Modern Inquisition in Hungary" at a conference
organized by the Partisans de L'Europe Nouvelle, one of several short-lived Academy
precursors founded by Damman. After the foundation of the AESP in 1969, Töttösy
would be a regular attendant at Academy events; in the late 1970s and again in the
1990s, Töttösy would found associations for European-Hungarian co-operation with
Habsburg and other Cercle friends.
The attendance list for the XVth Grand Dinner included a certain Mr. Valori,
credited as Secretary-General of the Institute for International Relations in Rome.
Giancarlo Elia Valori was far more than that - at the time of the Grand Dinner, he
was one of the most powerful men within P2 and right-hand man to P2 Grand
Master Licio Gelli. As an international financial adviser for important sectors of
Italian industry (128), Valori had excellent overseas connections, particularly to
Latin America, connections which he used to assist Gelli. Only one year previous to
the 1972 dinner, Valori had personally introduced Gelli to the Argentinian
strongman Peron, then in exile in Spain (129). At the time of the meeting with Peron
in early 1971, Gelli had just been named organizing secretary of the P2 lodge, but by
July of the same year, his infiltration of Masonic circles and his plans for a coup had
gone far enough to provoke Grand Master Salvini into warning a meeting of the
Governing Council of the Grand Orient of Gelli's intentions.
When Peron returned to Argentina temporarily in November 1972 - ten
months after this AESP Grand Dinner - Valori and Gelli accompanied him. After
Peron's permanent return to Argentina in June 1973 and his investiture on 12th
October as Argentinian President, a ceremony observed by Valori, Gelli and Giulio
Andreotti, Peron appointed Gelli his Honorary Consul in Florence, a post that gave
Gelli Argentinian nationality and diplomatic immunity. Gelli's contact with Peron via
Valori also gave the P2 Grand Master an essential powerbase in Argentina, where
Gelli set up a sister lodge to P2, just as well-connected to government as was the
Italian lodge; the Argentinian P2 included Admiral Emilio Massera, head of the
three-member ruling Junta of the 1970s and 1980s.
Gelli's relationship with Peron was more than intimate; Andreotti was amazed
to note that Peron treated Gelli with remarkable deference and respect. Having won
over Peron, Gelli then tried to cut Valori's contacts to Peron. The two became bitter
rivals for economic and political influence, and Gelli finally expelled Valori from P2 in
1974. Valori would go on to provide some very significant testimony about Gelli's
activities in Argentina and Uruguay to the Italian parliamentary commission
investigating P2 in 1983. A likely cause for the rivalry was the extremely lucrative
nature of Gelli’s Argentinian business activities. Together with Gelli's confidant and
fellow P2 member Umberto Ortolani, Valori and Gelli had founded a company called
Ase (Agenzia per lo sviluppo economico or Agency for Economic Development), with
the capital being divided into 50% for Gelli, 25% for Valori and 25% for Ortolani.
“Gelli brokered three-way oil and arms deals among Libya, Italy and Argentina
through the quaintly named Agency for Economic Development, which he and
Umberto Ortolani owned. In 1976 Italy sold Argentina $239 million worth of arms;
by 1978 the total had hit $1.27 billion” (130).
This impressive list of AESP contacts would be the platform for another joint
operation between Crozier, Violet and Damman - the launching of an international
appeal for human rights and freedom of movement and persons. "The three of us -
Damman, Violet and I - drafted an appeal for 'Peace without Frontiers', in which we
defined "our" concept of a true détente. ... The appeal, dispatched to distinguished
people in Western Europe from the Académie in Brussels, collected many hundreds
of signatures in favour of 'Peace without Frontiers'. It is no exaggeration to claim that
this initiative led to the Western insistence on 'Basket III' in the Helsinki
discussions. Basket III was the third of the packages of themes for discussion at the
proposed European Security Conference. It dealt with human rights, freedom of
information, and cultural exchanges. It was the most fundamental and therefore the
most important of the 'baskets' " (131).
An AESP/MAUE activity report for the first quarter of 1973 gives a glimpse of
the work carried out by the Academy on this operation:
24.1.73: Contact dinner at the Cercle des Nations - Minister von Merkatz,
Archduke Otto.
25.1.73: Meeting of the Permanent Delegation of the AESP. XVIIth Charlemagne
Grand Dinner - more than 200 attended - wide press coverage of
Archduke Otto's speech.
26.1.73: Assembly of the Academy and lunch at the Cercle des Nations - over
one hundred participants - wide-ranging and lively debate on Mr.
Violet's speech about the Helsinki Appeal.
27.1.73: Contact meeting at the Westbury - Mr. Violet, Mr. Vallet, Comte de
Villegas and Mr. Damman.
Contact meetings with Mr. Vandoros from Athens, Schwarzer from
Bonn, Greig from London, Trainar from Limoges.
5.2.73: Mailing of 2,000 copies of Europe Information.
15.2.73: Start of dissemination of the 10,000 Helsinki Appeals: printing.
Printing of 7,000 accompanying letters and 7,000 reply coupons. This
operation will continue throughout March, April, May and June, 1973.
17.2.73: A MAUE delegation attended the Assembly of the Beweging voor de
Verenigde Staten van Europe (Movement for the United States of
Europe) in Antwerp. Further meetings with Mr. André Voisin and Mr.
Max Richard. Contact with Mr. Thomson (Labour Party), British
member of the Commission of the EEC, Mr. Molenaar, President of the
Dutch European Movement, Mr. Koppe of Europa Union Deutschland,
etc.
5.3.73: Damocles, the monthly journal of the Ligue Internationale de la Liberté,
distributed 1,000 Helsinki Appeals.
10.3.73 Distribution of 2,000 copies of Europe Information.
20.3.73 Participation of Mr. Damman at the Board Meeting of the Association
Atlantique Belge. Preparation of the General Assembly of the ATA
Atlantic Treaty Association to be held in Brussels in September 1973.
22/23.3.73 Meeting of the Permanent Delegation of the AESP in Hotel Tulpenfeld
in Bonn. Organization of the Helsinki Appeal Action in Germany.
Working meeting with Messrs von Wersebe, Dirnacker and Mertes MP.
Debate in the evening with some forty VIPs including the Secretary to
former Chancellor Ehrhard.
30.3.73-
1.4.73: Participated in the Wilton Park meeting in Madrid. "The economic
future of Europe and inflation". Belgian delegation: Mr. and Mrs. de
Limelette, General Vivario, Mr. Damman, Mr. Jonet, Miss Verlaine,
Mrs. Bauduin.
Academy contact meeting: Messrs. Violet, Vallet, Jonet and Damman.
Contact with Don Manuel Fraga Iribarne, former Information Minister,
who is completely won over to our cause" (132).
At the January 1973 Charlemagne Grand Dinner in Aachen mentioned in the
report, Damman, de Villegas and Habsburg had the honour of welcoming a
distinguished guest - Giulio Andreotti, seven times Italian Prime Minister, implicated
in many of the scandals that shook Italy during his terms of office and a
longstanding friend of Pesenti and Violet who had been in contact with the AESP
since at least 1972 (133).
Another important guest at the January 1973 Grand Dinner - indeed, with
Violet and Crozier, a future member of the ruling triumvirate of the Cercle Pinay in
the 1980s - was the German diplomat and Count Hans Graf Huyn, born in Warsaw
where his father had been the German Embassy's Press Attaché. Huyn would serve
as a diplomat from 1955 to 1971; between 1963 and 1965, he would work on the
implementation of the 1963 Elysée Treaty, concluded after the secret negotiations
between Pinay, Adenauer and Strauss that had been facilitated by Violet.
Huyn was another of the CEDI recruits to the Academy; a 1972 CEDI
publication lists Huyn as a member of the International Council of CEDI alongside
AESP members Habsburg, Sanchez Bella, von Merkatz and Vankerkhoven. At the
time of the 1973 Grand Dinner, Huyn was working as Strauss’ foreign policy adviser
in the German Parliament, a post he would fill from 1971 until elected himself as a
CSU MP in 1976. Huyn would go on to serve in the German Parliament until 1990,
acting as the key foreign and defence policy spokesman for the CSU; his CDU
counterpart, Dr Werner Marx, had served with him on the CEDI International
Council since at least 1972. Besides representing Strauss within the Cercle Pinay,
Huyn would also become a central linkman for the Cercle in Germany, serving on
the Boards of numerous propaganda outfits of the German Right, described in later
chapters (134).
Damman's mention in the activity report of a meeting in January 1973 with
"Mr. Greig from London" almost certainly refers to Ian Greig, at the time Chairman of
the Subversion Committee of the Monday Club and a close associate of the ISC since
its creation in 1970. The ISC would also assist the Academy’s outreach to other ISC
friends. A letter from Damman to Violet dated 12th September, 1973 stated that "a
contact meeting was held with one of the staff of Brian Crozier, founder and director
of the Institute for the Study of Conflict" (135). During that meeting, the ISC
representative must have given a favourable report about the longstanding
collaboration between the ISC and INTERDOC, for the AESP decided to contact
INTERDOC to discuss future cooperation, starting a relationship between the two
groups that would be formalized in 1978 by the Director of INTERDOC becoming an
AESP member (136).
THE AESP, CEPIC AND THE 1973 COUP
In 1972, whilst Violet and Damman were cooperating closely with Crozier’s
ISC and Grau's German and Swiss groups, several leading AESP\MAUE members
set up a right-wing ginger group within the major Belgian conservative party, the
Parti Social Chrétien (PSC). The group, CEPIC, the Centre Politique des
Indépendants et des Cadres Chrétiens, would later become an official section of the
PSC. In September 1973, a Gendarmerie report by Major de Cock implicated several
prominent AESP\CEPIC members in funding an extreme right-wing group, the NEM
Clubs. A 1976 Gendarmerie report by Chief Adjutant Roger Tratsaert further alleged
that the NEM Clubs had been major participants in plans for a coup d'état by
elements of the Gendarmerie in the early 1970s (137).
The most prominent founding member of CEPIC to belong to Damman's
Academy was former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, commonly known as
VdB. An AESP Member of Honour since at least June 1970, he would rise to become
President of CEPIC from 1977 onwards and leader of the PSC. VdB was implicated
by the de Cock report in funding groups planning a coup d'état; at the time, he was
Belgian Defence Minister, the minister responsible for overseeing the Gendarmerie.
Another figure common to CEPIC and the AESP was Baron Bernard de
Marcken de Merken. A member of the PEU Central Council with Habsburg, Pons,
Damman and Biggs-Davison, and also a Board Member of MAUE, de Marcken had
been a member of the AESP core group, the Permanent Delegation, since the
Academy's inception in 1969. As we have seen, de Marcken had been present at the
1969 meeting with Violet, Damman and de Villegas which launched the sniffer plane
scheme. De Marcken was also named in the de Cock report.
A third central figure in CEPIC named in the de Cock report was the CEPIC
treasurer, Baron Benoît de Bonvoisin, Vanden Boeynant's political adviser whilst
VdB was Defence Minister (138). De Bonvoisin is one of the most notorious
characters in European fascism with particularly close links to the Italian MSI and
Stefano delle Chiaie; in 1975, de Bonvoisin would host a gathering of European
fascists at his castle at Maizeret, attended by the heads of Ordine Nuovo, the MSI,
the National Front, Fuerza Nueva and the French Forces Nouvelles, amongst others.
The Belgian representatives at the 1975 fascist summit were AESP contact Emile
Lecerf, editor of the NEM, and Francis Dossogne of the Front de la Jeunesse, the two
organizations that the CEPIC members were accused of financing in the de Cock
report.
De Bonvoisin's close relationship with AESP leaders would not be confirmed
by formal membership of the Academy until the late 1970s, but as VdB's factotum,
he would be a regular participant at AESP administration meetings. He was also an
intimate of Archduke Otto von Habsburg, and was in close contact with Jean Violet,
as indicated by a diagram of connections between various persons drawn up by
leading Belgian fascist Paul Latinus, in which Violet's name figures directly under de
Bonvoisin's. Significantly Violet is not linked by Latinus to any other person on the
list – possibly a gateway into a different network. Aldo Mungo, Damman's former
deputy as AESP Delegate-General and MAUE Secretary-General, offers an
interesting and no doubt well-informed claim in his pseudonymous exposé Enquêtes
et Reportages:
"What links are there between this man [de Bonvoisin] and lawyer Violet?
Apparently none, except for the declarations made by de Bonvoisin who,
amongst friends, claimed to have the warmest relations with the mysterious
lawyer ... Before the sniffer plane affair got juicy, de Bonvoisin and Damman
were on good terms ... once Violet's funds began flowing to Damman, relations
between the two took a turn for the worse, each clearly seeking to be the sole
beneficiary of such manna. If we are now certain that Damman and his
friends benefited royally from Violet's 'subsidies', it is more difficult to prove
the same for de Bonvoisin. One point is certain: the hostilities between the
two camps ended with the end of the sniffer plane affair. It is not proof, but it
does allow us a hypothesis: what if Violet, like the Red Brigades, had set up
two 'columns' in Belgium, applying the old principle of not putting all one's
eggs in the same basket?" (139).
Beyond his contacts with Violet, de Bonvoisin also enjoyed a privileged
relationship with Antoine Pinay; de Bonvoisin's father Pierre had been one of the
founding members of the Bilderberg Group with Pinay in 1952. When de Bonvoisin
was attacked in the Press in a 1981 revival of the charges of funding the Front de la
Jeunesse and NEM, the NEM Club magazine retaliated by printing a picture of de
Bonvoisin in Washington in the company of two Bilderberg members: David
Rockefeller and Antoine Pinay (140).
The NEM Clubs themselves were formed of readers of the fascist magazine,
Nouvel Europe Magazine, edited by Emile Lecerf. The history of the Nouvel Europe
Magazine is interesting: it was founded on 14th December 1944 as Grande-Bretagne
by British intelligence agent Cecil H. de Sausmarez. De Sausmarez had been Press
Attaché at the British Embassy in Brussels in 1939; evacuated to Britain in 1940, he
took over control of the Belgian and Dutch resistance networks run by the Political
Warfare Executive, and as such forged links with a branch of the Flemish New
Order, the Verdinaso movement. De Sausmarez also coordinated psychological
warfare in the form of radio broadcasts to the two countries. In 1945, he returned to
the British Embassy in Brussels where he worked until 1948. The editor of the
magazine de Sausmarez founded was a personal friend, the Verdinaso militant Pierre
Blanc; the editorial writer of the journal, working under the pseudonym Ossian
Mathieu, was Emile Lecerf, the magazine's future editor and protégé of de Bonvoisin.
The magazine would soon be retitled Europe-Amerique before becoming Europe-
Magazine and then Nouvel Europe Magazine (141). The magazine had a long history
of being involved in underground paramilitary groups; one of Europe-Amerique's
correspondents was André Moyen, a key figure in the Belgian Gladio network (142).
Europe-Amerique was also the launching ground for a young Belgian journalist and
close friend of de Bonvoisin's who would later become a leading American
disinformation asset, Arnaud de Borchgrave.
Emile Lecerf was a longstanding acquaintance within AESP circles: he ran
the Belgian WACL section LIL with AESP\MAUE member Paul Vankerkhoven in the
early 1970s. As we've seen, Lecerf was a guest at the January 1969 Charlemagne
Grand Dinner organized by Damman, where he shared a table with Guérin-Sérac of
Aginter Press, just four months before the Milan bomb that launched the strategy of
tension in Italy. This contact between Lecerf and Aginter Press, masters of
destabilization, would soon bear fruit: in April 1971, one month after Lecerf became
editor-in-chief of NEM and two years to the dot after AN's Milan bomb, the magazine
made the first of several references to a coup d'état in a long article entitled The
technique of an ideal coup d'état (143). Such incitation to revolt evidently did not
alienate Lecerf's backers: the next month, the NEM moved to new premises, owned
by de Bonvoisin.
The same allegations of funding for the NEM Clubs and the Front de la
Jeunesse provided by VdB and de Bonvoisin would again surface in connection with
coup plots in the 1980s, covered in a later chapter. Despite the contact between
Guérin-Sérac and Lecerf in 1969 and the links between Lecerf and the AESP\MAUE
from the early seventies through to the eighties, the official enquiries into
destabilization in Belgium have paid scant attention to Aginter Press, the AESP and
their contacts with Emile Lecerf.
CONSULTANTS IN COUNTER-INSURGENCY
In 1972-73, whilst producing the two Special Reports commissioned by the
Cercle Pinay and working on the Academy's Helsinki Appeal, the ISC was also active
on the British domestic scene. Although it was an 'unattributable' asset, the ISC
developed unprecedented links with the State by lecturing on subversion not only to
industry but also to the British Army (including the SAS) and at the National Police
College.
In 1972, John Alderson, Commandant of the Bramshill Police College wrote to
Peter Janke of the ISC requesting their assistance in developing a course on
terrorism and counter-subversion. As Janke wrote in a report of his visit to
Bramshill in July 1972, "the Commandant assured me that he would like to keep in
touch more frequently with the Institute and would bear very much in mind our
capacity to be of service to Bramshill" (144).
Following this collaboration between the ISC and Bramshill, "as a sign of
renewed mutual confidence", IRD commissioned the ISC to produce a Manual of
Counter-Insurgency, consisting of a series of seven separate Counter-Insurgency
Studies. "This enabled IRD to distribute the studies selectively, according to the
character of the government at the receiving end", Crozier notes (145); despite the
stamp "for official use only", the Foreign Office might indeed not have wanted to
distribute studies such as Psychological and Information Measures and The
Rehabilitation of Detainees too widely.
The Manual of Counter-Insurgency might have "contributed significantly to the
international reputation of the ISC" but it was also stepping on someone else's
bureaucratic turf, as Crozier noted: "IRD had always had its enemies within the
Foreign Office, however. With some logic, many high officials objected to its
involvement in domestic affairs ... Logically, a counter-subversion organisation
should have been run by the Home Office" (146). This concern within the Foreign
Office led in 1973 to what Crozier calls "the IRD massacre", when IRD's budget was
removed from the secret vote, unattributable briefings were ended and a quarter of
IRD's four hundred staff were transferred elsewhere in the Foreign Office. Although
depriving the ISC of a powerful patron, the reduction in IRD activities made the ISC
even more important as a propaganda outlet.
The ISC's rôle as consultants in counter-insurgency would also lead it to
study the war in Northern Ireland. The ISC Council minutes from January 1972
mention an ISC conference on Ireland that was held at Ditchley Park under
conditions of extreme secrecy. Ditchley Park is a conference centre at Enstone in
Oxfordshire used for private VIP meetings which are guarded by Special Branch and
MI5. Ditchley Park was closely linked to the Bilderberg Group, fourteen of whose
members sat on the centre's Board of Governors at one time or another (147). One of
the results of the ISC’s Ditchley Park conference on Ireland would seem to be the
creation in November 1972 of the British-Irish Association, founded by Iain
Hamilton, Managing Director of Forum World Features and later Editorial Director of
the ISC. Professor, the Lord Vaizey, a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation from
1973 on, would serve as Honorary Treasurer of the BIA; other BIA founding
members included Moss and Crozier, the latter asking specifically for his name not
to be included in the list of BIA sponsors. The BIA organized its first conference in
Cambridge in March 1973 and a second in July 1974.
Another major domestic campaign run by the ISC in 1972-73 - without the
support of the secret services, Crozier claims - was to support counter-subversion
operations run by industry, a campaign which in February 1974 would give the ISC
the greatest media coup it ever had. In January 1972, the Deputy Director-General
of the Confederation of British Industry John Whitehorn - "one of our converts" as
Crozier puts it - had sent out a long memorandum to all CBI subscribers in which he
expressed "the concern of industry at the rise of subversive influences in British
industry" and appealed for contributions to five "anti-subversive organizations" (148).
Four of these groups were already well-known for their reports on industrial
subversion and the blacklists of militant trades unionists that they supplied to
employers: the Economic League, Aims for Industry, Common Cause and IRIS. The
fifth anti-subversive organization destined for industry's contributions was the ISC.
As we have seen, Crozier had already been working since at least 1969 with both the
Economic League and Aims for Industry within the Consultative Council of
INTERDOC.
As Crozier records, "by the spring of 1972, I had decided that a special study
on subversion in industry had become necessary; the stark fact was that the trades
unions virtually owned the Labour Party" (149). As industry was being slow to
support the ISC's campaign, Crozier asked Nigel Lawson, whom Crozier had known
at the Spectator, to produce a brief report entitled Subversion in British Industry. In
November 1972, thirty copies of the Lawson report were printed and distributed to
the captains of industry, thanks to the help of John Dettmer, Chairman of the
Economic League, and Michael Ivens, Director of Aims for Industry. The Lawson
report succeeded in raising the funds to convene a study group on subversion in
industry which began working in the autumn of 1973. The backdrop at the time was
the confrontation between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Heath
government over Heath's Industrial Relations Act, culminating in Heath calling an
election for February 1974 under the slogan "Who governs Britain?" As Crozier
records: "Just before polling day, the Institute's report, Sources of Conflict in British
Industry, had been published with unprecedented publicity" (150). This media coup
would be a major contribution by the ISC to a concerted campaign against the
Labour candidate Harold Wilson, a campaign described further below.
Besides its British and European operations in 1972-73, the ISC was also an
active partner in the CIA's media campaign against Allende when its material would
also be surfaced by a Chilean CIA front group, the Institute for General Studies. The
most prolific author in this campaign was Crozier's partner Robert Moss, a central
member of the ISC who had visited Chile in early 1972 as a correspondent for the
Economist. In February and March of 1973, the ISC published two Conflict Studies
on Chile written by Moss, The Santiago Model: Revolution within Democracy and The
Santiago Model: the Polarisation of Politics. The ISC would also focus on alleged KGB
support for Allende in the Caribbean region at this time, producing a Conflict Study
by Crozier entitled Soviet Pressures in the Caribbean in June 1973 and a Special
Report by Moss, The Stability of the Caribbean, in November 1973, the latter being
republished in book form by the Georgetown Centre for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) (151). Forum World Features itself would publish the most notorious
contribution to the anti-Allende campaign, Robert Moss’ Chile's Marxist Experiment.
The book would arrive too late to contribute to the campaign - Allende had already
been killed in the military coup - but the book still had its uses: the Chilean Junta
bought nearly 10,000 copies for distribution by the Chilean Embassy in Washington.
Moss would add his conclusions on the coup in March 1974 in an article entitled
Chile's Coup and After published by Encounter, the journal of the FWF parent body,
the CCF. Moss would also come back to Allende and the coup in his 1975 book The
Collapse of Democracy (152).
THE WAR AGAINST COMMUNIST SUBVERSION
By the mid-1970s, the Cercle complex had succeeded in creating an
international contact network of groups working on anti-Soviet and countersubversion
propaganda. In Belgium, the Cercle worked hand in hand with the AESP
and could count on the help of the Defence Minister and his aides. In France, the
prestige of a former Prime Minister and intelligence contacts from SDECE days
ensured the Cercle's influence. In Britain, the complex found parliamentary friends
in the Monday Club and amongst the discreet gentlemen from the world of black
propaganda, public and private. In the Netherlands, they could turn to the archivists
of INTERDOC, well connected to the BVD. In Germany, former BND agents,
clandestine fundraisers and Bavarian conservative MPs consolidated the power of
the "Lion of Bavaria", and in Switzerland an untouchable disinformation outlet could
spread the complex's message.
But despite such wide-ranging contacts, the various components of the
Cercle's network, brought together to defend the conservative cause, felt their vision
of the world to be threatened as never before. Between 1974 and 1976, a paranoid
feeling of apocalypse, of imminent Armageddon spread through the private clubs, the
lobby rooms and the secret services throughout Europe: the Left was coming! In
Britain, humiliated by the National Union of Mineworkers, the Conservative
government fell and Labour won the two elections of 1974. In France and in
Belgium, the Left seemed well-placed to break the electoral monopoly of the
conservatives. In the Iberian peninsula, the longstanding geopolitical stability was
soon overturned: in Portugal, the dictatorship of Salazar crumbled before the leftwing
soldiers of the Armed Forces Movement, and in Spain, the Caudillo died and
democratic elections were called. Everywhere, the trades unions, the socialist parties
and the peace movements, nests of Soviet subversion, gained ground. The Right
were convinced that they were witnessing the total collapse of Western society as
they knew it; this was the second emotional peak of the Cold War, a renaissance of
the atmosphere of the 1950s. But they would not take defeat lying down, and the
Cercle and their friends organized to confront this wave of subversion. In his note
no. 167, written at the beginning of April 1975, Florimond Damman sets the tone of
the age:
"The Soviet Union gains no advantage in provoking a war, because under the
cloak of détente, it continues to wage a war of subversion, and is winning
everywhere. The West puts up no opposition to this war of subversion, and
encourages it through its weakness due to both splits in the domestic policy
field and clashes on foreign policy between European countries and also
within the Atlantic Alliance.
I propose a meeting of an urgent brain-trust which should establish:
1. the effects of the war of subversion in each of the countries of the Atlantic
Alliance, in Europe as well as in the United States;
2. the effects of the war of subversion throughout the world: Korea, Vietnam,
Middle East, Portugal, trade routes of raw materials;
3. the means that the Western block can use to initiate its own effective
subversive action both within the Warsaw Pact countries and in the other
contaminated countries around the world;
4. how to encourage countries within the Atlantic Alliance to take immediate
steps to define effective tactics for an ideological offensive, which is the only
way to win this war of subversion. The free movement of persons and ideas is
one offensive tactic; we must find others.
5. consider setting up an action centre for offensive tactics in the US or
Canada. Free movement of persons and ideas" (153).
In response to this challenge, the Cercle Pinay would intensify its actions and
create new outlets. In Britain, between 1974 and 1976, the ISC and its allies would
unleash a propaganda offensive against the Labour government and its union
supporters. With the help of the counter-subversion lobby, Edward Heath would be
replaced as leader of the Conservative Party by the hard-right candidate Margaret
Thatcher; by sustaining their media war, the complex helped to ensure that she
became Prime Minister in 1979.
In France in 1974, the friends of the Cercle Pinay would assist a massive
smear campaign against the Socialist candidate for the Presidency, François
Mitterrand. In Germany and in Switzerland, the two groups run by Karl-Friedrich
Grau would organize an intensive programme of conferences and seminars on Soviet
subversion attended by Swiss and German government, police and intelligence
officials. In Belgium, members of the AESP would set up a semi-public semi-private
counter-subversion unit under the aegis of the military intelligence service, a unit
which had close links to the putschist extreme Right.
On the Iberian peninsula, the complex would do what it could to limit the
damage caused by the fall of the two dictatorships. In Portugal, it supported the
putschist aspirations of General Spinola and his underground army, the ELP, who in
1975 waged a strategy of tension with the expert help of the unmasked Aginter Press
group. In Spain, the complex would channel clandestine funds to its friends amongst
Franco's former ministers who were standing as candidates in the first democratic
elections in 1976.
Internationally, with funding from the South African intelligence service
BOSS, the Cercle complex would establish a pro-apartheid propaganda bureau in
Paris, and then a second in London. The complex would also extend their operations
to the US by setting up the Washington Institute for the Study of Conflict as a
transatlantic relay for the complex's concerns.
Finally the 'Peace without Frontiers' Helsinki Appeal launched by Crozier,
Violet and Damman would bear fruit in July 1975 when the Helsinki Final Accord
was signed within the framework of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE).
A VERY BRITISH COUP
The complex's UK connections lead us into the heart of a major manipulation
of British domestic politics, concentrating in the period from Wilson's two election
victories in 1974 to Margaret Thatcher's selection as Conservative Leader in
February 1975 and culminating with her election as Prime Minister in May 1979
(154). A substantial body of information confirms the existence of a conspiracy to
undermine the Labour Government of Harold Wilson, to discredit Liberal leader
Jeremy Thorpe and to have Conservative leader Edward Heath replaced. Colin
Wallace - a former psy-ops officer within the IRD-founded Information Policy Unit
in Northern Ireland and a key witness on MI5 intervention in domestic British
politics in the 1970s - writes:
"Various key members of the Intelligence community - past and present -
assisted by influential figures in the public service, politics and commerce produced
a series of political and psychological warfare projects which were designed to:
a) prevent the election and re-election of a Labour Government;
b) prevent any coalition between the Labour and Liberal parties;
c) discredit key figures in both parties;
d) collate and disseminate 'black' information which could be used to discredit
or 'control' various politicians who were deemed to hold power behind the
scenes in all three major political parties;
e) have Mr Edward Heath removed as leader of the Conservative party and
replaced by someone of a more resolute approach to the political and
industrial unrest" (155).
It is possible to divide the conspirators roughly into two groups, the first of
which centred on Peter Wright and a group of other serving MI5 officers who had
transferred from MI5's K Branch (counter-espionage) to F Branch (countersubversion)
when MI5 strengthened its rôle as a political police in the early 1970s.
The second group was a private-sector coalition of retired MI6 officers, IRD
disinformation assets and prominent members of the Tory Right, several of whom
who would later serve as Ministers under Thatcher. Whilst the Fleet Street Press
concentrated on Peter Wright and the MI5 faction in their reports of the Wilson
destabilization, the ex-MI6/IRD/Tory MP coalition and their partners in the
industry-funded anti-union outfits were major actors in the psychological warfare
campaign being waged, a contribution that has generally been underestimated. It is
this coalition - the "counter-subversion lobby" - that was closely connected with the
Cercle Pinay complex, not only through the ISC but also through two future groups,
NAFF and FARI.
Following his resounding defeat by the miners after power cuts, massive
strikes and the introduction of a three day working week, Conservative Prime
Minister Edward Heath called a General Election on the issue of "Who governs
Britain?" The campaigning for the February 1974 election was held with the
backdrop of widespread MI5 smear campaigns about a "Communist cell in the
Labour Party"; Wilson himself was placed under blanket surveillance by MI5 during
the election campaign. For the first time, troops and tanks were deployed at
Heathrow airport, and joint Army/police patrols started.
On 18th January, the Times reported that the CIA and NSA were also
stepping up counter-subversion operations in Britain; in the article, former senior
CIA officer Miles Copeland declared that MI5 had their hands tied and were too timid
to expose subversion. The following week, on the 25th, the Times published largely
unfounded allegations by Josef Frolik, a Czech intelligence defector to the CIA, who
claimed that several Labour MPs were spying for the Soviet Union. Frolik was a key
witness for the counter-subversion lobby and the ultras within MI5, "confirming"
their fears that the Labour Party was indeed a nest of Soviet spies; it is perhaps not
coincidental that the MI5 officers in contact with Frolik were Peter Wright, "head" of
the ultra faction, and Charles Elwell, later Head of Counter-Subversion and a
notorious right-winger who we will meet again in the 1980s as a partner of Brian
Crozier's in anti-Labour smear operations. On the 28th January, the Daily Telegraph
carried a full-page article entitled Communists Aim to Dictate Labour Policy which
described "the grip of Communist trades unionists on the Labour government". The
anti-union outfits' contribution to cranking up the tension was considerable: Aims
for Industry, run by SIF's Michael Ivens, launched an appeal for £500,000 to prevent
the election of a Labour government. The considerable sums raised from Aims's
4,000 member companies (156) paid for a massive media scare campaign which ran
newspaper adverts depicting Stalin hiding behind a grinning mask.
Another important contributor to the media barrage was the veteran MI6
coupmaster, G. K. Young. Having stood unsuccessfully as Conservative candidate for
Brent East in 1972, Young brought the ideological struggle in the Monday Club to a
head in 1973 when he stood for Chairman. Young lost by 455 votes to 625, and left
the Monday Club. He then developed another tack, working with Ross McWhirter
and two former MI6 officers, Anthony Cavendish and Colonel Ronald Wareing, to set
up the Unison Committee for Action, a citizens' militia to keep essential services
running, perhaps the most significant of the three private armies formed in the mid-
1970s. Unlike the militias formed in Belgium in the early 1970s and early 1980s, the
private armies in Britain would seem to have been not primarily a military but a
psychological operation. Unison may have only been intended to be a "paper tiger",
whose aim of strengthening the public feeling of a climate of disorganization and
impending chaos was achieved simply by the news of its creation. That news came
on 1st February 1974, when Young first announced to MI5 friend Chapman Pincher
the formation of Unison.
Two days later, the ISC followed with a major media coup when over a page of
the Observer was given over to a summary of the ISC's Special Report Sources of
Conflict in British Industry under the banner headline The Communist Connection.
Using information from the ISC's right-wing anti-union partners Aims for Industry,
the Economic League, IRIS and Common Cause, the report claimed that the unions
were rampant with "red wreckers" plotting to bring British industry to its knees. On
the 20th February, eight days before the election, the London Evening News carried a
claim by G. K. Young that there were "40 or 50 Labour MPs for whom the Labour
ticket is a cover for more sinister activities". Another element in the anti-union
campaign was death threats against union leaders; the police took the threats
seriously enough to arrange for police protection for several TUC officials (157).
Despite this barrage of propaganda, the election on the 28th February 1974
did not give any party a clear majority. After the Liberals refused a coalition with the
Conservatives, Edward Heath was forced to resign. The counter-subversion lobby's
fears had become reality; having won the largest number of seats, Labour formed the
new government. However, the new Prime Minister Harold Wilson had an
unworkably small majority, and so he called fresh elections for October. In between
the two elections, the MI5 and counter-subversion lobby conspirators went all out to
ensure a Labour defeat.
One major focus for their campaign was Northern Ireland. Whilst MI5 tacitly
encouraged the Ulster Workers' Strike of May 1974 in which the Loyalists rejected
and eventually brought down Labour's policy of power-sharing, the Army stood by
and did nothing to break the Loyalists' grip. At the same time, at the IRD's
Information Policy Unit in the Army Press Office in Northern Ireland, Colin Wallace
received floods of MI5 smears on several dozen Westminster MPs from the Centre-
Left of the Tory Party, the Liberal Party and the Labour Party, including the Prime
Minister and most of the Ministers in the Cabinet. Using the MI5 files, Wallace was
tasked to create disinformation documents as a part of a comprehensive smear
operation called Clockwork Orange 2 (158).
In June 1974, the three major private armies - Young's Unison, Sir Walter
Walker's Civil Assistance (which appears to have grown out of Unison) and David
Stirling's GB75 were exposed in the Press – as was probably their original intention.
In June, July and September, troops and tanks again made their appearance at
Heathrow Airport whilst the Army continued joint patrols with the police. In August,
Geoffrey Stewart-Smith joined in the anti-Left campaign by publishing a brochure
called The Hidden Face of the Labour Party, which claimed that "over 10% of all
trades union officials in the major industrial unions are Communists or far left-wing
revolutionary Marxists". However, again, the smear campaigns and "reds under the
beds" scare tactics were not quite enough to ensure a Conservative victory; in the
October election, Labour scraped through with a majority of three seats.
Despite Labour's election victory, the propaganda barrage went on; the
allegations made by the Czech defector Frolik were revived through the intermediary
of Czech exile Joseph Josten, the Director of the Free Czech Information News
Agency, close to MI6. Josten had served with SHAEF Psychological Warfare during
World War II and immediately after the war had won the Czech Defence Ministry's
prize for his study Propaganda and Peace during the War before leaving
Czechoslovakia in 1948. In 1974-75, Josten was in close contact with the countersubversion
lobby; he would join the ISC, SIF and Monday Clubs members in NAFF
the following year, and would later write an ISC Conflict Study. Through Josten,
Frolik accused Labour Minister John Stonehouse of being a Czech agent; Wilson
angrily denied this in Parliament on 17th December 1974. On 19th December,
Stewart-Smith wrote to Josten offering him and Frolik money to prove that Wilson
was lying (159).
The 11th February 1975 brought the highpoint of a long campaign when
Edward Heath was finally deposed as Leader of the Conservative Party and replaced
by a relatively unknown outsider, his former Education Secretary, Margaret
Thatcher. Thatcher's leadership campaign, which culminated in her victory over her
rival William Whitelaw by 146 votes to 79, had been run by her private secretary,
Tory MP and former MI6 officer Airey Neave, who has been accused of playing a
central rôle in the Thatcher conspiracy together with Peter Wright, G.K. Young and
the Crozier complex. During the war Neave had served in MI9, the escape network of
MI6, after having been imprisoned in Colditz Castle along with two other key figures
in the counter-subversion lobby: David Stirling, founder of the SAS and creator of
the private army GB75, and Charles Elwell of MI5 who, with Peter Wright, would
handle Frolik.
After the war, Neave studied law with Margaret Thatcher before becoming a
Conservative MP in 1953. With the reputation of a war hero and with his MI6
contacts, Neave rose quickly in politics and in 1974 threw his influence on the Tory
backbenches behind Thatcher as candidate for the Conservative leadership. After
her victory, Thatcher showed her recognition for the crucial part he had played in
her leadership campaign by appointing him to the key position of Shadow Minister
for Northern Ireland; his deputy as Shadow Minister was John Biggs-Davison. Once
in power, Thatcher also planned to nominate him to head a new government
department to oversee the security and intelligence services. Neave would never take
the post; he would be killed by an Irish National Liberation Army bomb blast in the
House of Commons car park on 30th March 1979, five weeks before Thatcher was
elected Prime Minister.
With a new hard right leader at the helm of the Conservative Party, the
counter-subversion lobby's campaign continued. On 26th February, two weeks after
Thatcher's election as Conservative leader, a House of Lords debate on "Subversive
and Extremist Elements" which again aired the Frolik allegations was initiated by
Lord Chalfont (Alun Gwynne-Jones), a former military intelligence officer and Times
defence correspondent. A Labour Party member ennobled by Harold Wilson in 1964
and appointed Minister for Disarmament, Chalfont would leave the Labour Party ten
years later and rapidly veer rightwards to become a significant player in the anti-
Wilson counter-subversion lobby. Allegedly "the CIA's man in the House of Lords",
Chalfont certainly had been a member of the Executive Committee of the CIA-funded
European Movement.
MITTERRAND MENACE
In France, 1974 saw the first challenge by Mitterrand to unbroken Republican
rule in France since 1945. The Cercle Pinay's sympathies were clearly with Giscard
d'Estaing, who had received his first ministerial post from Antoine Pinay; several
Members of Parliament from Giscard's party were members of the AESP. Propaganda
operations against the Left intensified after June 1972, when Mitterrand's Socialist
Party concluded an electoral alliance with the Communist Party on the basis of a
Common Programme. In the run-up to the Parliamentary elections in March 1973,
the CNPF – the French employers’ confederation that was Violet's stamping ground -
and the Union des Industries Métallurgiques et Minières (UIMM) ran extensive
propaganda campaigns highlighting the national disaster that would result from the
election of France's first post-war Socialist government. In the six months from
October 1972 to March 1973, the UIMM alone published nearly 9 million anti-
Mitterrand brochures:
Revelations, an eight page newspaper: 3.5 million copies
Monsieur Dupont sees red, 16 page photo-novel: 4 million copies
Open letter to left-wing intellectuals, 8 pages: 600,000 copies
The nightmare or the application of the Common Programme, 40 pages: 210,000 copies
France deserves better than Chile, 8 pages: 300,000 copies
Letter to doctors, Letter to hairdressers: 40,000 copies each (160).
Crozier's close associate Georges Albertini also ran several groups which
organized discrete coups for the CNPF, denouncing communism and syndicalism,
and assisting 'independent' trade unions such as the CFT. One of Albertini's groups
was to play a major part in propaganda support for Giscard in the 1974 Presidential
elections; at the height of campaigning, Albertini's Association pour la Liberté
économique et le Progrès social (ALEPS) produced 750,000 letters to executives,
170,000 brochures to teachers and 8 million copies of a fake daily newspaper called
France-Matin, all of which described the catastrophic results if Mitterrand were to
win the elections. France-Matin, however, never quite had the impact it could have:
print workers seized and destroyed many of the copies before they could be
distributed.
News of Giscard's victory was welcomed by the complex, as Damman
described in a letter to Habsburg on 8th May, 1974:
"So Giscard has got into power but with a very narrow margin, we have simply
won a little time which we must put to good use so as to organize our
movements into active forces. The meeting of the 8th May has been an
excellent springboard for setting up the regional teams of MAUE which we are
building up mainly in Belgium and in France, and this strategy for action has
proved to be very fruitful.
Maitre Violet will be arriving in Brussels tomorrow (Tuesday) and will stay
until Thursday. Now that we are concentrating on the provisional fate of
France, we can draw up a plan for action. The key point is to ensure that the
majority wins the next parliamentary elections which should normally be held
in three years time, and, once again, it will be a close-run fight. It's clear now
that each important domestic event in each of our countries will have a major
impact on a European scale, and we must strengthen our influence in those
countries where we have very few structures: the Netherlands, Denmark and
Great Britain" (161).
The extent of the Academy's influence becomes clear from a letter dated 7th
August, 1974, from de Villegas, in Pretoria to test his sniffer planes, to Damman:
"The meeting planned for Washington seems to me to be a major chance for
the Academy. It will be an opportunity for us to make new contacts and to be
given a budget which is a kind of consecration [for the Academy]. You chose
well and showed good judgment in naming Mr. Destremeau a permanent
member of the Academy. Your choice was a wise one, as President Giscard
d'Estaing has appointed him Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. All this
promises much for the future ...As far as the European relaunch is
concerned, here too you have a good card in your hand, particularly as it is
President Giscard d'Estaing who will himself take the initiative for this
relaunch" (162).
The mention of a meeting in Washington in the late summer of 1974 is
interesting as, at this time, the British end of the Cercle complex was working on the
creation of a transatlantic bridgehead - the Washington Institute for the Study of
Conflict (WISC). Four months later, in November 1974, the Cercle core of Violet,
Vallet, Crozier and Huyn would host a future WISC Board member, Admiral John S.
McCain Jnr, former Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces during the early Vietnam
War, at the Paris launch of the Centre du Monde Moderne. In March 1975, the WISC
would be formally founded as the American counterpart to the London and Paris
outlets.
As Damman's letter to Habsburg in May 1974 shows, the complex was
concentrating "on the provisional fate of France". The ISC would also support this
campaign by publishing in January-February 1975 a Conflict Study entitled Social
Conflict in France, written by none other than Crozier's old SDECE friend from the
1950s, Antoine Bonnemaison.
Another old French friend of Crozier's would be active in this campaign:
Georges Albertini. In May 1975, Albertini launched another magazine, La Lettre de
l'Homme Libre, together with Colonel Maurice Robert who had resigned as SDECE
Deputy Director of Research in 1973. Robert had started his career in the French
military, training counter-gangs in Vietnam in the early 1950s before joining SDECE
in 1953 and directing their Africa Service from 1960 on. Albertini and Robert's
magazine concentrated on Communist subversion in France and would continue
publication until at least 1979. During this time, Robert was a Director of Elf, having
been previously mandated by Elf President Pierre Guillaumat (himself a former
French war-time intelligence agent) to set up and supervise a private intelligence
network for Elf, to be run by Colonel Jean Tropel, another former SDECE officer.
Tropel had spent his career in the SDECE Counter-Espionage Division where
he was responsible for security within Section 7, the SDECE's team of 'plumbers'.
Dismissed after the Ben Barka affair in 1966, Tropel then joined Elf and from 1969
onwards set up Elf's intelligence network, called PSA (Protection, Security,
Administration) which would be very active, particularly in Africa. Its members
included many of the SDECE agents fired along with Violet by de Marenches in 1970
as well as former officers of the French security service DST and mercenaries such
as Bob Denard (163).
As we have seen in previous chapters, having developed the sniffer planes
project and ensured preliminary trials in Spain and a prospection campaign in
South Africa, Violet and the two inventors Bonassoli and de Villegas had still not
found a commercial outlet for their discovery. Violet however hoped to get Elf to
accept the project, and his Trojan Horse for working his way into Elf was its
intelligence network. Violet knew Tropel well - they had been active together in
Catholic organisations in the early 1970s - and Tropel had previously hired Violet's
services as a lawyer for Elf in 1972. However, Violet did not approach Tropel directly,
but first went to see Colonel Franck who functioned as Violet's SDECE case officer
whenever Violet's usual contact - the Head of the SDECE himself - was not available.
Franck knew Tropel very well; during the war, when Franck had commanded the
Andalousie resistance network around Bordeaux, Tropel had been his adjutant.
Informed by Violet of this "incredible technological breakthrough", Franck
wasted no time in contacting his former adjutant, now head of security at Elf. Tropel
was to remain intimately involved in the sniffer plane project after its acceptance by
Elf; Tropel would be responsible for security during the numerous trips taken by
Violet and the team of inventors. Tropel would also take care of some of the financial
arrangements: in 1976 some of the initial payments by Elf to Fisalma, de Villegas'
sniffer plane company, would be channelled through Unindus, a Swiss subsidiary of
Elf's run by Tropel. When the sniffer plane project expanded in 1978, the Unindus
staff would be reinforced by the addition of Paul Violet and Alain Tropel, the sons of
the two former SDECE agents (164).
WHITE RULE, BLACK PROPAGANDA
Besides carrying out its own domestic and international operations, the
Cercle complex was soon to become a partner in one of the largest covert
propaganda campaigns since the Second World War: the media war waged by the
South African Department of Information (DoI) in the mid-1970s, later exposed by
the "Muldergate" scandal (165). The South African government's Erasmus
Commission which investigated the scandal reported that between 1974 and 1977
the DoI channelled at least $73 million into a five-year clandestine operation to
"finance secret propaganda and influence-buying projects abroad".
Under Information Minister Connie Mulder and his deputy Dr Eschel
Rhoodie, some 160 projects were launched, several of which aimed to buy out
newspapers both in South Africa and abroad. One of the projects within South Africa
consisted of a failed bid to buy a majority shareholding in South African Associated
Newspapers so as to control the Rand Daily Mail, the liberal opposition newspaper
that was part of the SAAN stable. Abroad, the projects included channeling $11
million to US conservative publisher John McGoff to buy the Washington Star. When
this second attempt to buy a newspaper failed, McGoff used the money to purchase
the Californian daily, the Sacramento Union. In 1986, McGoff would be charged for
having failed to register as a foreign agent of the South African government; the
charges were later dropped because the Justice Department had exceeded the five
year statute of limitations in bringing the case. A later project of the DoI's in the US
was the funding in 1978 of an Iowa Republican Senate nominee, Roger Epsen, who
defeated a key opponent of apartheid, Senator Dick Clark.
The Cercle complex also benefited from funds from the DoI. Between 1974
and 1976, Cercle members worked in close collaboration with the DoI and the South
African intelligence service BOSS in a propaganda campaign that aimed to highlight
the Soviet menace and Kremlin aspirations in Southern Africa. Le Monde Moderne
was a major outlet for this common campaign; besides republishing the 1972 ISC
Special Report, the first issue of Le Monde Moderne also contained an article by
Jacques Leguèbe calling for the defence of South Africa. The same theme dominated
the second issue, which included a piece by Dr. Eschel Rhoodie. But the most
important step was taken on 6th November, 1973, when Le Monde Moderne
organized a three-day restricted "brain-trust" meeting on South Africa, attended by
Crozier, Violet, Vallet, Damman and Mr. Burger, South African Ambassador to
France. The Ambassador presented a two-page report drawn up personally by Prime
Minister Vorster, Information Minister Connie Mulder, his deputy Dr. Eschel
Rhoodie and General Hendrik van der Bergh, head of BOSS. Then a discussion was
held as to how the ISC, the Academy and Le Monde Moderne could assist the
campaign that the South African government was conducting through such Pretoriafunded
publications as To The Point, a newspaper with which Le Monde Moderne
worked (166). The meeting decided to launch several campaigns to put over South
Africa's point of view to influential figures in Europe. One targeted Members of
Parliament:
"A Franco-South African Friendship Association was set up a while ago. Now
we have to breathe life into it. Increase its numbers and quality. We must
organize manipulation of the Members of Parliament - but with subtlety"
(167).
This campaign was successful; from 1974 on, the number of French MPs
visiting South Africa increased considerably. Another campaign targeted
industrialists, a third the French and Belgian Press, particularly by inviting over
South African journalists. The significance of the French group's campaigns were
confirmed in a debate on Information held in the South African Parliament in April
1975, when the Deputy Minister for Information told the Assembly "that an
estimated 11 million French people had read favourable reports about South Africa
as a result of his Department's careful planning concerning the type of guest invited
from France" (168). The brain-trust had also taken the decision to set up a second
group to promote South Africa: the group would be created in 1978 as the Amis
Français des Communautés Africaines (AFCA, French Friends of the African
Communities), chaired by Pinay and including Leguèbe (169).
However, the November 1973 "brain-trust" meeting also decided that the
greatest need was to create a prestigious French equivalent of the ISC, a 'neutral'
geopolitical institute that could back up the more personal influence of VIP visits for
Pretoria friends with 'academic' data on strategic considerations. According to the US
Justice Department's charges against John McGoff, his attempt to buy the
Washington Star for Pretoria aimed to ensure that "positive material relating to the
strategic and economic importance of South Africa to the US and the West would be
published and disseminated to policy and opinion makers within the US capital".
The ISC/Le Monde Moderne team would be a powerful European source or relay for
such propaganda. A key theme was to be oil: the oil crisis of October 1973 had
focused the attention of Conservatives on the need to protect the West's vital fallback
for oil supplies - the Cape route. The DoI's campaign aimed to ensure that the West's
need for a strategic outpost on the Cape overrode any objections about apartheid;
the propaganda line to be used was, predictably, Soviet designs on world energy
resources, as Violet described to Damman, Crozier and Ambassador Burger at the
seminar:
"Oil is the vital weapon of the Cold War. The Soviet Union controls its sources
and seeks to dominate the main oil trade routes - South Africa and the
African territories owned by Portugal" (170).
The first result of the campaign came in March 1974 when the ISC brought
out two Special Reports, both of which stressed the importance of South Africa for
Western oil supplies: The Security of the Cape Oil Route and Soviet Objectives in the
Middle East. The security of oil supply was also of interest to the South Africans
themselves: after personal contacts between Pinay and Vorster, de Villegas travelled
to South Africa in the summer of 1974 to run a series of tests of the sniffer planes for
South Africa's state oil company.
By the end of 1974, the plan to establish a South African-backed propaganda
institute in collaboration with Le Monde Moderne and the ISC had been completed.
With funding to the tune of one million francs provided by BOSS via Rhoodie (171),
the Centre d'Etudes du Monde Moderne was launched in November. Amongst its
members were activists from the extreme Right and senior officers from the French
armed forces such as General Jean Callet (also of the Bulletin de Paris), General Pin
and Rear-Admiral Peltier (172). On 6th November, 1974, a year to the day after the
initial brain-trust meeting, the Centre d'Etudes du Monde Moderne held an
inaugural conference on the theme of the defence of Africa against the threat of
communist subversion. The French core group at the launch were Violet and Vallet,
and the Monde Moderne team of Leguèbe and Lejeune.
Attending for the ISC were Crozier and Peter Janke, author of ISC Conflict
Study No. 52, Southern Africa: End of Empire, which had just been published the
month before. Much of the study's information on 'terrorism' in Mozambique came
from P.J. De Wit, a senior BOSS operative. Janke, formerly of IRD, was the ISC's
Senior Researcher and South Africa expert. In 1973, Janke had played host to
Michael Morris, a South African 'journalist' working in London. Morris was soon
exposed as a sergeant in the South African Security Police (173) who had 'resigned'
earlier that year from their Special Branch to write a book South African Terrorism. In
1974, Janke was able to renew his friendship with Morris whilst visiting Capetown to
collect information for Conflict Study No. 52 from De Wit at BOSS headquarters.
Morris later became head of a BOSS propaganda front, the South African Terrorism
Research Centre, "a direct copy of the British Institute for the Study of Conflict, but
not half as good", according to BOSS's one-time London agent, Gordon Winter (174).
Also attending the launch of the Centre d'Etudes du Monde Moderne was
CEDI member Count Hans Huyn, Strauss's foreign policy adviser. The new centre's
launch in 1974 is the earliest recorded meeting of all three men who would form the
triumvirate coordinating the Cercle complex in the late 1970s: Violet, Crozier and
Huyn. It is unlikely however that this was the three men's actual first meeting: Huyn
had served since at least 1972 on the International Council of CEDI with Habsburg,
Sanchez Bella, von Merkatz and Vankerkhoven – all AESP members. At the time of
the 1974 launch, the AESP and the Cercle had already been working closely with the
ISC for some time. Huyn had also attended the January 1973 AESP Charlemagne
Grand Dinner in the company of Habsburg, Damman and Giulio Andreotti.
Alongside Violet, the Monde Moderne team, the ISC and Huyn, two
representatives of major American propaganda institutes with links to the ISC also
attended the Centre's launch: James L. Winokur, a Board Member of the NSIC
which had already supported the first Cercle/ISC joint venture by buying 500 copies
of the Cercle-sponsored 1972 ISC Special Report, and Admiral John S. McCain Jnr,
former Commander in Chief of US Pacific Forces (CINCPAC) from 1968 to 1972 and
Board Member of the American Security Council, the ASC (175). At this time,
McCain was working closely with the ISC on final preparations to create a
Washington ISC offshoot, founded four months later in March 1975.
The launch of the Centre d'Etudes du Monde Moderne also hosted a sizable
military contingent. Attending for the South African Defence Force was Major-
General Robbertze, Director of Strategic Studies (176). The French armed forces sent
Generals Callet and Pin, Colonel J.M. Bonnier, former Africa specialist at the
General Secretariat for National Defence, and General François Maurin, an observer
from the Chief of General Staff of the Army. The Spanish armed forces were
represented by Colonel J.M. Sancho Sofranis, aide to the former Chief of General
Staff of the Navy (177).
The Centre d'Etudes du Monde Moderne soon started work; the following
year, 1975, it would publish the book Africa and the Defence of the West by Jean
Vigneau of the Monde Moderne staff (178). In parallel to their considerable input to
the Centre d'Etudes du Monde Moderne, the ISC also helped South Africa by passing
on the ISC's 1974 Special Report Sources of Conflict in British Industry, "which would
be useful for indicating how South African unions might be attacked as recalcitrant
or strike-prone, not on account of any real grievances, but only because of left-wing
militants and outside agitators" (179).
THE WASHINGTON ISC
At the same time as the Cercle complex was intensifying pressure on left-wing
candidates in France and Britain and supporting BOSS in their international
propaganda campaign, the ISC had been working in 1974 on plans to set up an
American satellite. By early 1975, the final preparations had been made, and the US
Committee of the ISC (USCISC) was formally launched on 3rd March 1975, two
weeks after Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party (180). The USCISC
would be the parent body for the Washington Institute for the Study of Conflict
which was designed to be materially independent of the London ISC and therefore
had its own facilities for research and publication. The Washington ISC would
however closely mirror the political agenda of its London predecessor; in its
Statement of Purpose, the WISC declared: "the United States, the pre-eminent power
in the Free World, is experiencing its own problems with subversion. The US
Institute for the Study of Conflict has thus been established to address this complex
problem which has not been fully recognized in this country" (181). Much of the
WISC's funding was provided by Dick Scaife whose Scaife Foundation had been a
longstanding source of support for the the NSIC and the ISC.
The WISC was able to call on the same kind of high-power coalition of senior
politicians and intelligence veterans that the Cercle Pinay enjoyed in Europe. The
USCISC or WISC Committee was chaired by former Under-Secretary of State George
Ball, one of the founding members of the Bilderberg group with Pinay, Voisin and
Bonvoisin; Ball had in fact been one of the rapporteurs at their inaugural meeting at
the Hotel Bilderberg in 1954. One month after the launch of the USCISC, Ball would
attend the April 1975 Bilderberg conference, held in Cesme, Turkey, along with
Strauss, Thatcher and Sir Frederic Bennett of SIF (182).
Another Bilderberger and crucial political figure on the WISC Committee was
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had proposed to the 1972 Bilderberg conference in
Knokke, Belgium, to create a similar forum to bring together the three economic
world powers, the US, Europe and Japan. The new body, the Trilateral Commission,
was founded in late 1972; its first Director from 1973 to 1976 was Brzezinski.
Brzezinski would also attend the 1975 Bilderberg conference with Ball, Strauss,
Thatcher and Bennett. At the time the USCISC was founded, Brzezinski was working
for the Research Institute on Communist Affairs and was Democrat candidate
Jimmy Carter's top foreign policy adviser; Brzezinski and Ball were considered to be
the main Democrat frontrunners for the post of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,
a measure of the WISC's political influence.
The WISC Committee also included former senior CIA officers, the most
famous of whom was Kermit Roosevelt, a veteran CIA coupmaster who had worked
closely with G. K. Young of MI6 on Project Ajax, the 1953 coup against Mossadegh in
Iran. Young's action plan had been adopted by the CIA; infiltrated into Iran,
Roosevelt reported to Young, based in Cyprus. Another former senior CIA officer on
the WISC Committee was Robert Komer who had worked as an intelligence analyst
in the Directorate of Intelligence and the Office of National Estimates from 1947 to
1960. He then served on the National Security Council until 1965 when he was
appointed Special Assistant to the President. In February 1967, he was posted to
Saigon with ambassadorial rank to take over responsibility for all civil and military
pacification programmes in Vietnam, previously run by Sir Robert Thompson, Head
of the British Advisory Mission to Vietnam from 1961 to 1965. Together with his
deputy (and, in November 1968, his successor) William Colby, a former covert
operations chief in the CIA’s East Asia Division, Komer would be the main architect
of the notorious Phoenix programme (183).
In 1968, Komer was appointed Ambassador to Turkey but had to resign from
the post before Senate confirmation of the appointment following growing
controversy about allegations of war crimes committed under the Phoenix
programme. Komer then left public service and joined the Rand Corporation, writing
a study of the Malayan Emergency for them in 1972 which was "a celebration of
Thompson's counter-revolutionary expertise". He would continue to be consulted by
high political circles, particularly during the Carter Administration whose national
security policy was coordinated by fellow WISC Committee member Brzezinski.
Komer also found favour with Carter's Secretary of Defence Harold Brown; Komer
accompanied Brown on his groundbreaking trip to China between 4th-13th January
1980 when Brown solicited Chinese aid for the covert war against the Soviet troops
occupying Afghanistan. The negotiations were successful; on 24th January, the
United States granted Most Favoured Nation trading status to China, whilst China
reciprocated over the following six months by supplying weapons to the Afghan
mujaheddin and granting unprecedented permission for the CIA and NSA to set up
two electronic listening posts at Qitai and Korla in Xinjiang (184).
Komer was not the only expert in counter-revolutionary warfare to figure on
the WISC Committee; another WISC Committee member was Dr. George Kilpatrick
Tanham, an expert on South Asia for the Rand Corporation since 1955. Tanham
served as Associate Director for Counter-Insurgency at the US Agency for
International Development in South Vietnam from 1964 to 1965, then as Special
Assistant for Counter-Insurgency to the American Ambassador to Thailand from
1968 to 1970 before returning to America to work as Vice-President of the Rand
Corporation’s Washington office from 1970 to 1982. Tanham would take over as
President of the WISC late in 1975 when the first President, James Theberge who is
presented below, was appointed Ambassador to Nicaragua; WISC would then move
into the Rand Corporation’s Washington office (185).
Another WISC Committee member with CIA connections was NSIC President
Frank Barnett; the NSIC was also represented on the WISC Committee by Admiral
William C. Mott, a former Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Forces. The NSIC was not
the only geopolitical study group which had a representative on the WISC
Committee; as mentioned above, American Security Council Board member Admiral
John S. McCain Jnr, another former Commander-in-Chief of Pacific Forces, was one
of the USCISC's founding members.
The WISC Committee also included four academics with links to the CIA, the
first being James Theberge, who acted as the WISC's first President. Having first
spent a year from 1969 to 1970 as a Research Associate at St Antony's College
Oxford, close to MI6, Theberge then became Director of Latin American studies at
the Georgetown Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the ivory tower
for CIA retirees. There, Theberge would write two books for publication by CSIS,
Soviet Naval Power in the Caribbean and Russia in the Caribbean, in which Theberge
launched the propaganda myths of a camp run by Koreans for training Chilean
guerrillas, and a KGB plan for a Chilean submarine base. The CIA would make use
of Theberge's books as part of their destabilisation campaign against Allende by
ensuring that the two books were quoted at length in the Chilean Press, notably in
the CIA-funded El Mercurio, just before the March elections (186). In late 1975,
Theberge was appointed US Ambassador to Nicaragua, a post he filled until 1977;
Tanham replaced him as President of the WISC.
The second university professor to serve on the WISC Committee was
Professor Edward Shils, a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, Professor of Sociology
at Chicago University and Chairman of the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania. Shils would take over publication of the magazine Encounter after the
Congress for Cultural Freedom was exposed as a CIA front in 1967. From 1975 to
1977, Shils would serve on the ISC Study Group on Higher Education which
produced a Special Report on "communist subversion in the education system"
(187).
Another academic on the WISC Committee in 1975 was the Sovietologist
Professor Richard Pipes. Pipes had been working with the ISC since at least late
1973 when he served on an ISC Middle East Study Group whose findings would be
published in March 1974 as the Special Report Soviet Objectives in the Middle East.
In 1976, a year after the foundation of the WISC, CIA Director George Bush would
ask Pipes to work with General Daniel O. Graham, Director of the Defence
Intelligence Agency DIA in 1975-76, on the staff of a new CIA thinktank called
Team B. Team B was tasked to 'beef up' the CIA's assessment of the Soviet threat,
which was considered to be too soft on Communism, so as to highlight an alleged
"missile gap". Pipes would later be an adviser on Soviet Affairs to the National
Security Council and a Professor at Harvard University (188).
The fourth university professor on the WISC Committee was also a
Sovietologist who had worked for the CIA, Professor Robert F. Byrnes. Byrnes had
served in the CIA's Office of National Estimates between 1951 and 1954; from 1979
onwards, Byrnes would be a member of the Board of Directors of Radio Free Europe,
the radio station long financed by the CIA.
A final member of note of the WISC Committee was Adolph W. Schmidt,
former American Ambassador to Canada. Schmidt also had contacts in the
intelligence community, having served in the OSS, the precursor of the CIA, from
1942 to 1946. In 1957, he would be part of the American delegation to NATO before
moving on in 1959 to the Atlantic Congress in London, returning to NATO in 1962.
In 1967, he was an adviser to the US Commission for Europe before serving as
Ambassador to Canada between 1969 and 1974. A year after the foundation of
WISC, Schmidt would meet the core members of the Cercle complex at a CEDI
Congress; he would go on to serve on the Advisory Board of Frank Barnett’s NSIC at
least until 1984 (189).
As can be judged from this list of Board members, the Cercle could count on
friends on the highest levels of the intelligence and political hierarchy in the United
States. Pinay himself had a privileged relationship with Nixon and Kissinger,
personally handing the two men the Cercle-sponsored ISC Special Report European
Security and the Soviet Problem in 1972; he would visit them again later in 1975 to
lobby for the ISC. The foundation of the WISC would ensure that, despite Nixon’s fall
from power, the Cercle would continue to enjoy unparalleled access to the American
national security apparatus under both Presidents Ford and Carter. Within a year of
the WISC’s creation, Pipes would be working on the CIA's re-assessment of the
Soviet threat and later act as adviser to the National Security Council. Brzezinski
would serve on the NSC throughout the Carter Presidency and fill the top job of
National Security Adviser to the President from 1977 to 1981.
One opportunity in the US came only months later in May 1975, when the
Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, run by
Robert A. Fearey, convened for hearings on international terrorism. One major
witness was Brian Crozier who records: "My rôle, although it was not spelt out, was
to define various types of terrorism and above all to produce the evidence (which the
State Department was anxious to conceal) of the key rôle of the Soviet Union and its
satellites in the recruiting, training and financing of terrorist gangs. The tactic
worked. Not only were my speech and answers to questions written into the record,
but so were extensive extracts of my Institute's publications" (190). Fearey provided
Crozier with a second opportunity ten months later; in March 1976, Fearey chaired a
major international conference on terrorism in Washington, whose keynote speaker
was Crozier, accompanied on the podium by Robert Moss and two other ISC authors
whom we will meet later, Hans Josef Horchem and Professor Paul Wilkinson.
1975 - 1976
CRISES AND CONTINUATION
EXPOSURE AND RELAUNCH
Turning back to the spring of 1974, the Cercle complex's domestic and
international operations were reaching new heights; indeed at this time, Crozier
resigned as Chairman of FWF to turn his attention fully to the ISC and its
international contacts via the Cercle. Iain Hamilton, "fully conscious and in touch
with the CIA officers in London" took over as Chairman (191). Unbeknownst to
Crozier and the Cercle, the first of two major leaks was about to expose the CIA
sponsorship of Forum World Features. The seeds of disaster were sown in the spring
of 1974 by the publication of the groundbreaking book The CIA and the Cult of
Intelligence by CIA veteran Victor Marchetti and former State Department Intelligence
official John D. Marks. Although the CIA temporarily staved off the crisis by forcing
the suppression of 168 passages from the book, several of which referred to FWF as
a CIA operation and one of which named Crozier specifically, it could only be a
matter of time before the FWF's cover was definitively blown.
The blow would come a year later. Ironically the leak that would expose FWF
and then the ISC came not from a CIA dissident like Marchetti but from the heart of
the CIA itself. Due to the CIA's sloppy security procedures, a British World in Action
television crew filming at CIA Headquarters in Langley in April 1975 caught sight of
a very explosive CIA memorandum. Dated May 1968, the memorandum was from
then-IOD head Cord Meyer (192) to CIA Director Richard Helms and described CIA
funding of Forum World Features, stating: "In its first two years, FWF has provided
the United States with a significant means to counter Communist propaganda, and
has become a respected feature service well on the way to a position of prestige in
the journalism world". A handwritten note on the document also indicated that FWF
was "run with the knowledge and cooperation of British Intelligence". At the same
time, the CIA discovered that Marchetti and Marks were planning to release the
suppressed material in London. The CIA took the decision to close down FWF in May
1975, just ahead of the publication in June of an article The CIA Makes the News in
the alternative London weekly Time Out which quoted Cord Meyer's 1968
memorandum (193).
The closure of FWF after the exposure of its CIA links was only the first
setback; no doubt due to the Press revelations about FWF, the offices of the ISC were
burgled in June 1975, and some 1,500 documents were taken. Many of the
documents found their way to Time Out which published further long articles in
August and September detailing the ISC's links to the British, American and South
African intelligence communities (194). The revelations however largely overlooked
the ISC’s international collaboration with the Cercle, even though the haul from the
Institute’s offices had included the January 1972 Council minutes describing Cercle
sponsorship of the ISC Special Report and their £20,000 grant to the ISC for 1973,
and also an internal ISC memo dated 2nd June 1975, detailing a very recent meeting
between the ISC and the Cercle held at Ditchley Park in May:
"Mr. Crozier told the meeting that after the conference at Ditchley Park, the
Pinay group should organize similar sessions in Madrid, Rome, Milan,
Brussels and Bonn in the autumn with the object of raising money for the
Institute and enhancing its reputation" (195).
Crozier records that the conference was a study group which yielded a further
ISC Special Report, New Dimensions of Security in Europe. Amongst the notable
participants were Pinay himself, Carlo Pesenti and another Italian business leader,
Cefis of Marconi. A helicopter had to be sent to pick up "the aged President Pinay",
but whilst certainly elderly, Pinay was still sprite: as well as attending the Ditchley
Park conference, Pinay made an extensive European tour of prominent Cercle
friends throughout 1975 to muster support for Crozier's Institute. Amongst those he
visited were Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Pope Paul VI, Manuel Fraga Iribarne
(then Spanish Ambassador in London), Franz Josef Strauss, Giulio Andreotti and
Prince Bernhard of Holland, President of the Bilderberg Group (196). With such a
powerful coalition of political and intelligence contacts to call on, the ISC overcame
its temporary crisis (197) and intensified its activities, notably through a new
alliance of the British Right, the National Association for Freedom (NAFF).
NAFF AND SHIELD
One month after the Cercle launched its international campaign to raise the
profile of the ISC, a new organization was formed to bring together the various
groups that were "concerned about the relentless spread of subversion" (198). The
new group, the National Association For Freedom (NAFF), was formed in July
1975, although not formally founded until December. NAFF's first action in August
1975 was to organize a seminar on subversion where veteran espionage journalist
and MI5 friend Chapman Pincher served as guest speaker. By mid-1977, NAFF
boasted 30,000 members (199). The list of members of the Executive and National
Council of the NAFF shows that the new alliance was a merger of the SIF, the ISC
and the Tory Right, including many of the figures involved in the anti-Labour
operations of the past two years.
The Director of the NAFF and first editor of its bulletin The Free Nation was
Robert Moss. Moss enjoyed close links to the Conservative leadership and would
soon become one of Thatcher's favourite speechwriters - it was Moss who would coin
the term "Iron Lady" for her, first used by Thatcher in a speech in January 1976,
only six weeks after NAFF's foundation. Alongside Moss on the NAFF Executive, we
find Norris McWhirter, a member of the SIF National Executive, and author with his
brother Ross of the NAFF Charter. Ross McWhirter would be assassinated by the IRA
just before NAFF's official launch in December 1975 (200).
With Moss and McWhirter on the NAFF Executive was Michael Ivens, the
Director of the anti-union outfit Aims for Industry. Aims for Industry had bankrolled
many of the anti-Labour operations in the early 1970s; it also provided the start-up
capital for NAFF. Like McWhirter, Ivens had also served on the SIF National
Executive. Aims for Industry was further represented on the National Council of
NAFF by William E. Luke, a Board member of Aims since 1958. A former MI5 officer
during the war, Luke later served as Chairman of the London Committee of the
South Africa Foundation and in 1965 was the founding Chairman of the UK-South
Africa Trade Association, active in the pro-Pretoria campaign (201).
The NAFF National Council also included the indefatigable Crozier, who
provided NAFF with their first offices - in Kern House, headquarters of Forum World
Features. Several other ISC friends would serve on the NAFF National Council,
amongst them the Czech exile Josef Josten, who ran the Free Czech Information
News Agency, close to MI6. Josten would be the channel for dissemination of the
allegations made by Czech defector Josef Frolik. Another ISC friend on the NAFF
National Council was Dr Kenneth Watkins, an author of pamphlets published by
Aims. A month before NAFF's foundation, Watkins had joined an ISC Study Group
on Communist subversion in higher education that included Lord Vaizey of the
Ditchley Foundation and Professor Edward Shils of the WISC Committee. The Study
Group's findings would be published as an ISC Special Report, The Attack on Higher
Education, in September 1977.
Alongside Crozier in the National Council of NAFF was another of the key
actors in the counter-subversion lobby, ex-Deputy Director of MI6, G. K. Young,
founder of the Unison Committee for Action. As Chairman of SIF, Young brought
with him into NAFF almost all of SIF's leaders; besides McWhirter and Ivens who
served with Moss as NAFF's "inner core" on the Executive, SIF recruits to NAFF also
included Bilderberger Sir Frederic Bennett, Chairman of the SIF Parliamentary
Group, and John Biggs-Davison, former Chairman of the Monday Club, member of
the SIF National Executive and Deputy Shadow Minister for Northern Ireland under
Airey Neave.
Biggs-Davison would be joined in NAFF by other top Tory MPs from the
Monday Club, notably the former MI6 officer Sir Stephen Hastings and Winston
Churchill, both of whom were members of Thatcher's Shadow Cabinet. Also on the
NAFF National Council were three other members of Thatcher's Shadow Cabinet who
would later hold ministerial office in Thatcher's government: Rhodes Boyson, David
Mitchell and Nicholas Ridley.
The NAFF National Council also included three senior military figures, two of
whom would serve on the ISC Council. The first was Vice-Admiral Sir Louis Le Bailly,
who had just retired as Director-General of Intelligence at the Ministry of Defence
(202). The second ISC Council member on the NAFF Council was Sir Robert
Thompson, a leading counter-insurgency expert with experience in Malaya. The third
military figure was Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, a former Chief of Staff of the
Army who had implemented Thompson's counter-insurgency strategy during the
Malayan campaign. At the time he joined NAFF, Templer occupied a key post for
those fighting subversion: as Lord-Lieutenant of London, he was in charge of all
contingency planning for Military Assistance to the Civil Power. Templer had also
played a part in the genesis of the private armies by introducing G. K. Young to
Major General Sir Walter Walker, the former Commander-in-Chief of NATO forces
in Northern Europe. Walker of the Gurkhas was a former Malayan colleague of
Templer and Thompson's, having founded the Jungle Warfare School during the
Malayan Emergency and served as head of Britain's counter-insurgency campaign in
Borneo in 1962-64. Walker worked with Young within Unison before splitting off to
form Civil Assistance. Throughout 1976, Civil Assistance held long negotiations
with NAFF about a possible merger of the two groups; the talks were abandoned in
October 1976 when Civil Assistance shut down due to lack of active support.
The NAFF National Council also included an impressive array of the leaders of
industry - Lord de L'Isle of Phoenix Assurance who functioned as NAFF's President,
Sir Frank Taylor of Taylor Woodrow, ex-CBI chief Sir Paul Chambers and Sir
Raymond Brookes, Chairman of GKN Engineering, a member of the CBI Council and
a member of William Luke's UK-South Africa Trade Association.
As to the day-to-day running of NAFF, Crozier records: "To avoid the delays
implicit in formal Council meetings, a small group of us decided to function as an
informal action committee, without reporting to the Council. Bill De L'Isle presided,
and the other members were Winston Churchill MP, John Gouriet, a former Guards
officer and merchant banker, Robert Moss and myself" (203).
By bringing together the ISC, SIF, leading industrialists and top Tories from
Thatcher's Shadow Cabinet, NAFF acted as an unprecedented alliance between the
operators from the counter-subversion lobby and the candidate they worked to
promote. On the links between Thatcher and NAFF, I can do no better than to quote
Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril:
"NAFF pulled together all the elements of the previous networks: the spooks,
the propagandists, the anti-union outfits, and - this is the difference between NAFF
and its predecessors - it brought in a group of Tory MPs with connections all the way
to the top of the post-Thatcher Tory Party ... NAFF was formed just after Mrs
Thatcher became leader of the Tory Party. It is difficult not to view it as essentially
formed around her ... Mrs Thatcher duly gave her public blessing to this group,
appearing as guest of honour at NAFF's inaugural subscription dinner in January
1977" (204).
"In its first eighteen months, NAFF initiated what an intelligence officer would
have called 'political actions': legal actions against strikes, propaganda about
'scroungers', and 'Marxists' in the Labour Party - and, most spectacularly, its strikebreaking
intervention in the strike at the Grunwick factory. These brilliantly
successful psychological operations gained them oceans of favourable coverage in
the Tory Press, anticipating (and to some extent, setting) the agenda for the
Conservative Government of 1979 ... the first Thatcher administration was the
National Association For Freedom Government" (205).
Besides these NAFF actions, the counter-subversion lobby kept up the
pressure on the Labour Party in the foreign Press: the smears against Labour
politicians and Heath and Thorpe were channelled across the Atlantic, reaching
American newspapers in September and October, 1975. The message was repeated
for a domestic British audience in January 1976, when Lord Chalfont provided a
platform for Brian Crozier's warnings of the Red Menace in a television programme
on subversion called It Mustn't Happen Here (206).
An indication of this close relationship between NAFF and the new Leader of
the Conservative Party came on the 19th January 1976 when Margaret Thatcher
gave her historic "Iron Lady" speech - which had been written for her by Robert
Moss. However, the close cooperation between NAFF and Thatcher went far beyond
speechwriting and public political support: as Crozier revealed in his memoirs,
several members of NAFF would set up a secret advisory committee on security and
intelligence matters to brief the Conservative leader. The initiative for the committee,
called Shield, came from the ex-MI6 officer and NAFF National Council member
Stephen Hastings who would be active in 1977 in giving a Parliamentary platform to
NAFF's psy-ops campaigns. On 9th March 1976 at a dinner hosted by Lord de l'Isle,
and attended by Margaret Thatcher and NAFF founding members Crozier, Moss,
Gouriet and McWhirter, the creation of the Shield committee was given the go-ahead
(207). The timing for Shield's creation could not have been more critical; within days,
the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson resigned, worn down by the psy war fought
by his enemies within the British counter-subversion lobby, MI5, MI6, the CIA and
BOSS. In the vacuum created by Wilson's mid-term resignation, NAFF and their
friends in MI5 and MI6 feared that Michael Foot, the left-wing candidate, might be
Wilson's successor. NAFF caused a storm in April 1976 by publishing an editorial in
the Free Nation urging the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call fresh elections if a
Labour government under Foot were to succeed Wilson. Another article alongside
Crozier's was written by "a recently retired counter-subversion chief of MI5". This
was almost certainly Dirk Hampden, who had been MI5 Head of Counter-
Subversion in June 1975 at the time of the exposure of Forum World Features (208).
THE CERCLE’S ALPINE ALLIES
Whilst the counter-subversion lobby mounted their campaign in Britain
against "Communist infiltration" of the government and the unions, Karl-Friedrich
Grau and his Frankfurt Study Group had also been spreading much the same
message from the ISP’s safe refuge over the Swiss border. At the same time, Grau
was the lynchpin of the German PEU section, acting as its Federal Secretary through
until 1975. Whilst cooperation between the Belgian, French, British and German
components of the Cercle went well in the period 1974-76, Grau himself ran into
controversy, first in Germany, then in Switzerland.
Grau's far-right views became an embarrassment for the CDU party hierarchy
when it was revealed in early 1974 that he had held meetings with militants of the
neo-fascist NPD party with a view to concluding an alliance for the Hesse regional
elections. The controversy led to the resignation in May of five CDU MPs from Grau's
Frankfurt group, the Studiengesellschaft für staatspolitische Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
(Study Group for Political Communication) and Grau's formal exclusion from the
CDU in June. In the interim, the co-founder of the Study Group, the CDU's Dr.
Walter Hoeres, took over as President. The storm did not last long however, and in a
Study Group circular in November, Grau could boast that the loss of the five CDU
members had been offset by applications for membership from CSU MPs. In any
case, Grau's services as clandestine fundraiser for the CDU/CSU were too valuable
to lose, and the CDU quietly readmitted him in May 1976 in time for the national
elections (209).
Grau would score a coup for his Swiss group, the ISP, in early 1976 when he
got the agreement of Swiss Air Force General Ernst Wetter to act as President of the
ISP; at the time, Wetter was Head of Personnel in the Département Militaire Fédéral
(DMF), the Swiss Ministry of Defence. However, Grau's coup rebounded on him and
became an own goal; a few months later, Wetter was forced to resign from the ISP
Presidency by the DMF which did not take kindly to Swiss military personnel using
their rank in their private lives. The incident led to an investigation of the ISP and
trouble for Grau. To obtain Wetter's agreement, Grau had claimed that the three
International Vice-Presidents of the ISP were the CDU foreign and defence policy
spokesman Dr Werner Marx, Jean Violet, and a Viennese lawyer called Wolfram
Bitsonau. Grau had the habit of using people's names without taking the trouble of
asking them, and, on checking, all three men denied any knowledge of being an
International Vice-President of the ISP.
The denials ring hollow: although they may never have actually held office
within the ISP, all three men had links with Grau. Marx had been a longstanding
speaker for Grau’s Frankfurt Study Group, even if he had been one of the five CDU
MPs to “leave” the Study Group after the 1974 scandal about Grau’s contacts with
the NPD. Together with Huyn, Marx had also represented Germany on the
International Council of CEDI since at least 1972. As for Violet, Grau was one of the
earliest and closest allies of Violet's AESP, and several AESP members including
Habsburg and Huyn spoke regularly at ISP seminars. Bitsonau also had connections
to Grau via the AESP; the following year, 1977, Academy documents would list
Bitsonau as an AESP member in his capacity of President of the Institut für
Internationale Zukunftstudien (Institute for International Studies of the Future)
(210). The official investigation into the ISP drew attention to the murky nature of
Grau's political activities, and he was issued with a formal warning by the Swiss
government in May 1976. Following a parliamentary question, the Swiss government
declared "Mr. Grau has received a warning for interference in Swiss internal affairs
and for undesirable political activities and has been threatened with expulsion under
Article 70 of the Federal Constitution" (211). Whilst Grau had to tone down his
operations for a while, the Swiss government would never follow up on its threat to
expel him.
What then were these "undesirable political activities" of Grau's that
interfered with Swiss internal affairs? An examination of some of the ISP's
conferences in 1975 and 1976 shows that Grau was doing in Switzerland exactly
what the ISC had started doing in Britain in 1972: giving seminars on Communist
subversion to government and police officials. One of the ISP's subversion seminars
was held between 29th September and 3rd October 1975 in the Tenigerbad Hotel in
Rabius; with heavy irony, a poster in the hotel lobby announced an "Agricultural
Seminar on Pest Control". Inside, the keynote speaker on "farming" was General
Reinhard Gehlen, former head of the BND. One third of the audience were officers
from the Swiss political police; apart from Grau's Swiss partner Dr Peter Sager of the
SOI, all the other speakers were Germans.
The conference timetables for two further ISP seminars on industrial
subversion and counter-espionage in March 1976 give us a fuller picture of the ISP's
"undesirable activities". At their height, the seminars were held at the rate of two a
month; each lasted five days and included some fifteen presentations by government
or police officials from Germany, Switzerland and several other countries.
The first of the two March 1976 seminars opened with a presentation by Ernst
Wetter, at that time still President of the ISP. Then Grau gave a lengthy introduction
to the ISP before handing over to the keynote speaker, Dr Peter Sager of the SOI who
spoke on "the global political situation in the politico-revolutionary war: an analysis
of psychological warfare". In the afternoon, a certain Mr. I Reinartz closed the first
day of the seminar with a speech on "the importance of industry for Communist
strategy and tactics - the company as the battlefield of Communism". Reinartz also
gave the morning lecture on the second day on the subject of "the destabilization of
companies by radical left-wing forces - from agitation to action"; the afternoon
included two presentations on "protection of data from internal or external access"
and "the Communist intelligence services - mission, organization, function". The
seminar would follow the same vein for the five days, giving details of technical and
human resources for industrial espionage and counter-tactics against Communist
subversion of industry. Inspector W. Dibbern from the Criminal Police, for example,
spoke on "the protection of the State today - modern forms of defence" and "when,
where and how an infiltration is mounted - how the agent works".
Another five-day ISP subversion seminar was held at the end of March 1976,
and covered much the same topics. This time however, the keynote speaker was not
Dr Sager but Lt-Colonel Ernst Cincera, the most notorious figure in Swiss
parapolitics whose long history of collecting files on "subversives" is described below.
At the seminar, Cincera spoke on "the clandestine struggle on all levels", a theme
that was picked up by the following speaker Dr Kurt Klein, Director of the German
Army’s Psychological Warfare School in Euskirchen, who gave two presentations on
industrial subversion. Chief Commissioner Georg Pohl of the German Criminal Police
spoke on "terrorism and anarchism in the Federal Republic - a threat to trade and
industry", and retired Colonel Rudolf Mischler closed the seminar with three lectures
on "action in case of attack by explosive or incendiary bombs (with practical
examples)", "what to do in case of attack and hostage-taking?" and "preparations for
sabotage and counter-measures".
No wonder the Swiss, touchy about their neutrality, found Grau's seminars
undesirable. An ISP speakers' list for 1975 gives us more information about who was
working with Grau in the ISP. Grau himself was of course the most frequent
speaker, speaking fourteen times in 1975. Grau's speeches concentrated on the Red
Menace with titles such as "Is the Bolchevisation of Europe inevitable?" and "The
strategy of Communism's clandestine forces". Military psy-ops expert Dr Kurt Klein
would be a regular fixture, contributing no less than thirteen speeches such as
"Soviet espionage in Germany" and "Areas of activity for Communist clandestine
forces in Germany". Dr Walter Hoeres, at this time standing in for Grau as President
of the Frankfurt-based parent group, would speak eight times throughout the year.
Dr Peter Sager would speak at three seminars in 1975 on predictable themes such
as "The changing face of Communism - a narcotic to dupe the West" and "Why the
Communists in the non-communist world do not want peace". At this time, the SOI
was expanding its activities, adding a second monthly review SOI-Bilanz to its bimonthly
journal Zeitbild (212).
Certainly the most controversial Swiss guest of the ISP, speaking at at least
eight seminars in 1975-76, was Lt-Colonel Ernst Cincera who would soon become
the subject of a national scandal in November 1976. "Colonel Ernst Cincera, member
of the Radical Party, is well-known for his long and stormy activity as a 'snooper'.
Carried out as a private citizen, his activities benefited from close cooperation with
the Federal Military Department (DMF) ... Cincera's information was included on the
DMF microfilm files and Cincera worked in extremely close coordination with René
Schmid's bureau, the DMF's specialist 'counter-subversion' unit" (213).
For many years, Cincera had been running a private counter-subversion
service called Informationsgruppe Schweiz (Information Group Switzerland) which
from 1974 on published its denunciations in the private bulletin
WasWerWieWannWo - Information über Agitation und Subversion des politischen
Extremismus in der Schweiz (WhatWhoHowWhenWhere - information on agitation
and subversion by political extremists in Switzerland). Cincera and his agents
worked closely with the Schmid bureau, a secret counter-subversion unit set up
within the DMF's Health Department under the leadership of Colonel René Schmid,
Chief Medical Officer of the Swiss Army (214). The exchange of information between
Cincera's group and the Schmid bureau was direct: in 1975, one of Cincera's young
agents, Andreas Kühnis, supplied the Schmid bureau directly with a list of
participants at a seminar organized by the Salecina Foundation. On the orders of
Colonel Schmid, his bureau then sent back to Cincera's group a request for further
information and included for each "suspect" an identity photo and a specimen
signature drawn from the DMF's personnel records (215). In exchange for its
services, Cincera's group regularly received DMF files from the Schmid bureau, a
case of illegal access which would be exposed - with the help of Andreas Kühnis - by
members of the Democratic Manifesto in November 1976. The national scandal that
ensued would be repeated the following year when the members of the Democratic
Manifesto revealed that over 1,700 pages of material from Cincera were stocked on
one single computer cassette amongst the thousands held by the Army in its
MIDONAS database, the Military Document Reference System, which included all
articles written about the Swiss Army and military service.
Cincera's material included personal and political data on each "suspect", one
of whom was journalist Jürg Frischknecht of the Tages-Anzeiger, one of the authors
of Unheimliche Patrioten. Frischknecht's case shows the kind of cooperation between
Cincera's network and Grau's ISP. At the second ISP seminar in March 1976,
described above, Grau had accepted to answer written questions from Frischknecht,
but in fact never did so. In 1977, when the members of the Democratic Manifesto
obtained the MIDONAS cassette, they found in Cincera's file on Frischknecht the list
of questions that he had submitted to Grau the previous year. The DMF kept an
embarrassed silence about its cooperation with Cincera, but the newspaper close to
Cincera, Abendland, confirmed the facts: "One of the people responsible for setting
up the DMF's new computer system stayed in contact with Mr. Cincera for several
months to clarify to what extent his archives could be linked to this information
system" (216).
Despite his notoriety, Cincera would be a frequent speaker at ISP seminars,
speaking no less than seven times in 1975 as well as his contribution to the March
1976 seminar mentioned above. His subjects included "agitation and subversion as
a means of Communist strategy" and "agitation against the Army - agitation within
the Army" (217). Amongst the other ISP speakers, we find a rare British guest –
Reginald Steed, foreign policy lead writer for the Daily Telegraph in the mid- to late
1960s, who would speak four times for the ISP in 1975 – as well as the main figures
of the Cercle's German network of friends. Habsburg himself would speak at four ISP
seminars in 1975; he had been contributing articles to Grau's Frankfurt Study
Group since at least 1965. The CSU foreign policy spokesman Count Hans Huyn
would be one of the most frequent speakers for the ISP, giving eight lectures at ISP
seminars in 1975. His presentations at the ISP were mostly on his specialist theme
of Ostpolitik, Germany's relationship with Eastern Europe.
Besides the Swiss ISP and Belgian AESP, Huyn would also work with Grau
within another group, the Deutschland-Stiftung (Germany Foundation), a political
trust founded in Munich in 1966 which brought together many German right-wing
politicians. The Foundation published the journal Deutschland-Magazin and awarded
the Adenauer Prize, an event given Oscar-like coverage by the German conservative
Press. The founding President of the Deutschland-Stiftung was Professor Georg
Stadtmüller, an expert on Eastern Europe for Hitler. A trio of early German
members of the AESP would serve within the Deutschland-Stiftung - Grau was its
Vice-President, von Merkatz sat on its Honorary Presidium, and Huyn served on its
Board. Another member of the Foundation's Board from 1968 on was the aristocrat,
former Nazi party member and wartime officer in Gehlen's FHO Professor Freiherr
Bolko von Richthofen; he would be excluded from the Deutschland-Stiftung in
1972 for his overt support for the neo-nazi NPD party. Richthofen also acted as
Board member of SOI's German support group, founded by Grau and Sager in 1961.
Several other members of the Deutschland-Stiftung were also friends of Grau's ISP,
amongst them Dr. Walter Hoeres, co-founder of the ISP's Frankfurt parent body and
a frequent speaker at the ISP's seminars on subversion, and Brigadier-General
Heinz Karst who would speak at six of the ISP's seminars in 1975.
The close links between the Deutschland-Stiftung and Grau's ISP would be
illustrated by one incident when the Deutschland-Magazin quoted Grau's smear
bulletin intern-informationen in accusing German Minister Horst Ehmke of contacts
with the Czech secret service. After losing a libel suit, the Deutschland-Magazin was
forced to retract its allegations - Grau however could continue to publish them with
impunity from intern-informationen's address in Switzerland (218). The Deutschland-
Magazin would also work closely with the magazine Zeitbild published by Sager's
SOI; as we have seen, it was Grau, Vice-President of the Deutschland-Stiftung, who
distributed SOI's publications in Germany (219). When SOI celebrated its jubilee in
1984, it was attended by the President of the Deutschland-Stiftung from 1977 to
1994, Gerhard Löwenthal.
Gerhard Löwenthal was, with Grau and Huyn, perhaps the most important
right-wing multifunctionary in Germany throughout the 1970s and 1980s (220).
Born in Berlin in 1922 as the son of a Jewish businessman, Löwenthal survived
internment in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. However, the Communist takeover
in East Berlin radicalised him, and he joined the PEU in 1947. Having started a
career in broadcasting in 1945 with the American Occupation Forces station RIAS
(Radio in the American Sector), Löwenthal was appointed RIAS Deputy Director in
1951, later moving over to the Berlin radio station Sender Freies Berlin after its
creation in 1954. After a spell working at the OECD in Paris from 1959 to 1963,
Löwenthal returned to broadcasting, joining the second German television channel
ZDF as its European Correspondent and head of the Brussels bureau. He would
however soon rise to become one of Germany's most prominent television
anchormen as presenter of the fortnightly current affairs programme, ZDF Magazin,
which he would present from January 1969 right through until December 1987.
This programme gave Löwenthal the media power and public recognition of a Robin
Day or a Jeremy Paxman, television access which he used to focus heavily on Soviet
repression in Eastern Europe and particularly in East Germany. He was a close
political ally of Franz Josef Strauss who was a frequent guest on Löwenthal's
programme; Brian Crozier would also later benefit from television airtime thanks to
Löwenthal. Löwenthal also had excellent contacts with the BND and particularly
with Gerhard Wessel, Gehlen's deputy during and after the war and his successor
as BND President from 1968 to 1980; Löwenthal was a frequent personal guest of
Wessel's at BND headquarters (221).
An early example of cooperation between Löwenthal and the Cercle complex's
German contacts was the creation in 1973 of the Freie Gesellschaft zur Förderung
der Freundschaft mit den Völkern der Tschechoslovakei (Free Society for the
Promotion of Friendship with the Peoples of Czechoslovakia). Alongside Löwenthal as
founding members of the Free Society we find three future speakers at Grau's ISP
subversion seminars: Count Hans Huyn, Ludek Pachmann and Walter Becher.
Ludek Pachmann was a Czech exile and former Chess Grand Master who would
give five presentations on Czechoslovakia at ISP seminars in 1975. Throughout the
1970s and 1980s, Pachmann would be an inseparable sidekick of Löwenthal’s, a
German Crozier-Moss act. Walter Becher was from the Sudetenland, the Germanspeaking
part of the Czech Republic. In 1931, Becher joined the Sudetendeutsche
Partei (Sudeten German Party) led by Konrad Henlein, who would be appointed
Reichskommissar of the Sudetenland when it was annexed by Hitler in October
1938; Becher then joined Hitler's NSDAP (Nazi Party). He would play a prominent
part after the war in exile politics, sitting in the Bavarian Parliament for a small
exiles' party between 1950 and 1962. In 1965, he was elected to the German Federal
Parliament; after joining the CSU in 1967, he would continue in the Federal
Parliament as a CSU MP until 1980. Besides his parliamentary rôle where he was
one of the most outspoken opponents of Brandt's Ostpolitik, Becher would also
speak at an ISP seminar on subversion in 1975; the ISP's speakers' list gave Becher's
address as Pullach bei München, the location of the BND's headquarters, where he
still lived when he died in 2005.
Two further founding members of the Free Society were Jaroslyv Pechacek,
Head of the Czech Division of Radio Free Europe, the CIA-funded radio station, and
Rainer Gepperth, Director of the International Department of the Hanns-Seidel-
Stiftung, the CSU's political foundation, examined in later chapters. The final
founding member of the Free Society in 1973 was a person with close links to two
early anti-communist propaganda groups, one in Britain and one in Germany:
Cornelia Gerstenmaier.
Cornelia Gerstenmaier was the daughter of Eugen Gerstenmaier, from 1954
to 1969 the longest serving President of the German Parliament and an early CEDI
member. In 1970, she would be one of the founding members of the British-based
Centre for the Study of Religion and Communism, run by Canon Michael
Bourdeaux. The CSRC would later change names to Keston College and more
recently to Keston Research, but would remain focused on the same theme: the
repression of the freedom of worship in the Communist bloc. It has been alleged that
the CSRC was an IRD/MI6 front, similar to the ISC in London and the Information
Policy Unit in Northern Ireland, both created around the same time. The attribution
of the CSRC to IRD is given credence by the revelation in Crozier’s memoirs that
shortly before the CSRC's foundation, the IRD had officially curtailed publication of
its own Christian anti-communist output, the Religious Digest (222).
The young CSRC certainly had close ties to other intelligence-linked
propaganda outlets such as the ISC: Bourdeaux was one of the contributors to
Crozier's 1970 anthology for Common Cause, We Will Bury You, and the CSRC's
publications were distributed by the same outfit used by the counter-subversion
lobby, SOI and INTERDOC: Stewart-Smith's FAPC. The KGB was always interested
in Keston: one of the special tasks for former KGB London Resident Oleg Gordievsky
was to monitor Keston's activities, and former KGB Major-General Oleg Kalugin later
confirmed that the KGB's Counter-Espionage department kept a close eye on Keston
(223).
However, Cornelia Gerstenmaier's real significance lay in her rôle in running
an organization which acquired a certain notoriety in the 1980s, the Internationale
Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (IGfM) or International Society for Human Rights
(ISHR) (224). The IGfM/ISHR was first founded in Frankfurt in 1972 as a purely
German organization, the Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (GfM, Society for Human
Rights), which would be chaired from 1973 to 1978 by Gerstenmaier. It is interesting
to note that the GfM was founded around the same time as the trio of ISC, Cercle
and AESP launched their Helsinki Appeal on human rights; the foundation of the
GfM may represent a German pillar to the complex's campaign.
The GfM's future political orientation was illustrated by its founding
members, who stemmed from the NTS, a group of former Russian Nazi collaborators
funded by the CIA and intimately linked to WACL. The founding members of the GfM
included Ivan Agrusov, President of the NTS, and Leonid Müller, the NTS Treasurer.
The IGfM/ISHR also had close connections to the German Right; on the Board of the
GfM or IGfM at one time or another were Habsburg, von Merkatz, Pachmann and
Sager. The GfM became international in 1981, and by 1988 it had 16 foreign
sections; its campaigns in the 1980s are described in a later chapter.
Another early organization of note created by Löwenthal was the
Konzentration Demokratischer Kräfte (KDK, Concentration of Democratic Forces,
also known as Korrigiert den Kurs - Correct the Course), a right-wing ginger group
that campaigned for the CSU. Löwenthal's partner for the 1974 creation of KDK was
Dr Lothar Bossle, whom we will meet again in the late 1970s as a partner in the
Cercle's German operations.
No presentation of the Cercle's German friends in the mid-1970s would be
complete without mentioning Hans Josef 'Jupp' Horchem, from 1969 until 1981
Director of the Hamburg regional branch of the German security service Bundesamt
für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) or Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Having joined the BfV in 1957, Horchem rose to become one of its top analysts on
left-wing extremism before moving over in later years to concentrate on right-wing
extremism. Horchem's first known appearance in Cercle matters came in March
1973 when he wrote a Conflict Study for the ISC, West Germany: "The Long March
through the Institutions"; this would soon be followed by two further Conflict Studies,
West Germany's Red Army Anarchists published in April 1974 and Right-wing
Extremism in Western Germany published in November 1975. In March 1976,
Horchem joined the ISC trio of Crozier, Moss and Professor Paul Wilkinson as
speakers at a major international conference on terrorism in Washington chaired by
Robert Fearey (225). In 1978, he served as a special consultant to the Spanish
government in anti-terrorist measures, and from 1980 on would also advise the
Basque regional government. In the early 1980s, Horchem would also work closely
with Löwenthal within the right-wing ginger group Konservative Aktion, as well as
acting as a prime German channel for Crozier's private secret service, the 6I (226).
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA
In the mid 1970s, right-wing fears about the rise of the Left were reinforced by
the fall of the Iberian dictatorships following the Portuguese revolution of April 1974
and the death in November 1975 of the Spanish Caudillo. Coming after Wilson's
victory in the February 1974 elections and Mitterrand's favourable position in the
run-up to elections in France, the Portuguese revolution provided further
confirmation to the Right of a left-wing landslide throughout Europe. The ISC's
1974-1975 annual review, the Annual of Power and Conflict, focused specifically on
Portugal: "An introductory article by Brian Crozier, the editor, on Subversion and the
USSR makes special reference to the Soviet Union's activities in Portugal" (227), and
in his article for the Annual, Western Europe's Year of Confusion, Kenneth Mackenzie
summarized the situation in saying: "By early 1975 Portugal looked in distinct
danger of becoming the first country in the Alliance to fall under Communist control"
(228).
Apart from the weakening of NATO's southern flank, the Portuguese
revolution also had strategic implications outside of Europe, due notably to the new
Portuguese regime's decision to withdraw from its African colonies of Angola and
Mozambique, riven by war between Cuban-backed pro-Soviet forces and pro-
Western forces supported by the CIA and the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Office.
The Portuguese withdrawal from Africa coincided with the death in Spain of a
bastion of Western values, Caudillo Franco. Following the American doctrine of the
"domino theory", the Right feared that Spain would also be contaminated by the
"Portuguese disease" and that the left-wing upheaval in Portugal could drag Spain
down with it. The worrying situation of the Iberian peninsula would be one of the
major focuses for the ISC's publications between 1974 and 1976, which included
two Special Reports and two Conflict Studies: Revolutionary Challenges in Spain (a
Special Report by Robert Moss, June 1974), Southern Europe: NATO's Crumbling
Flank (June 1975), Portugal - Revolution and Backlash (September 1975) and Portugal
and Spain: Transition Politics (May 1976), a Special Report which was the product of
an international seminar held in London in mid-1975 and sponsored by the ISC,
Georgetown University's CSIS and the Institute for International Studies of the
University of South Carolina.
Whilst the geostrategic experts at the ISC alerted their readership to the
danger of a Communist take-over in the Iberian peninsula, the ISC's allies in the
Cercle complex channelled aid to right-wing leaders in Portugal and Spain through
Franz Josef Strauss and Otto von Habsburg. In Portugal, the main beneficiaries of
Cercle support were two putschist Generals who would be central figures in the
political developments in Portugal from 1973 to 1976: General Kaulza de Arriaga, a
former Commander of Portuguese Forces in Mozambique and leader of a group of
extreme right-wing Army officers, and General Antonio de Spinola, the future
President of the post-revolutionary Junta of National Salvation. Strauss would give
generous clandestine funding to both Arriaga and Spinola until at least 1979, and
both men would be in contact with the top members of the Cercle Pinay. Within a
year of an attempted coup in March 1975, Arriaga would attend CEDI's 1976 annual
Congress in Spain with top Cercle members; according to the reports on the Cercle
Pinay written by Hans Langemann, head of Bavarian State Security, Spinola would
be a guest at meetings of the Cercle itself (229).
Cercle contacts Arriaga and Spinola would be key actors in the history of the
Portuguese revolution and its aftermath. After the death in 1970 of dictator Salazar
and his replacement by his deputy since 1968, Marcello Caetano, the extreme rightwing
sympathizers in the military became impatient for a return to the good old
days. In December 1973, Arriaga and a group of extreme right-wing officers and
politicians approached Spinola to canvass his support for a coup against the
Caetano government. Spinola however refused to become involved and revealed the
plot to Caetano who imprisoned Arriaga and rewarded Spinola by appointing him
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. This promotion would however be shortlived;
following the furore caused by Spinola's book Portugal and the Future, which
indicated that the wars in Portugal's African colonies could not be ended by military
means alone but also required reform at home, both Spinola and his superior Costa
Gomes were dismissed in March 1974.
After the Armed Forces Movement's bloodless coup which overthrew Caetano
on the 25th April, Spinola was appointed President of the seven-man Junta of
National Salvation on 15th May. However, after rumours of his involvement in a
planned simultaneous counter-coup in Lisbon and Luanda scheduled for the 28th
September, Spinola and other conservatives were dismissed on 30th September, and
Kaulza de Arriaga and three former Caetano ministers were detained. Spinola's
supporters then went underground; Spinolist Army officers with experience of
counter-insurgency with the FNLA in Angola joined with former agents of Salazar's
dismantled intelligence and security service PIDE to form a clandestine army, the
ELP or Army for the Liberation of Portugal. With its cover blown and its offices and
archives seized by the Armed Forces Movement, Aginter Press also took up the fight
within the ELP: Guérin-Sérac and his lieutenant Jay Salby were prominent ELP
commanders. Other partners of Aginter Press included members of Movimento
Independente para a Reconstruçao Nacional (MIRN), a group set up by Arriaga after
his release from prison. Spinola and the ELP made a second coup attempt on 11th
March, 1975, which also failed, and Spinola was forced to flee Portugal.
In exile in Switzerland, Spinola founded the MDLP (Democratic Movement for
the Liberation of Portugal), a coalition of former Caetano officials and members of the
ELP. Throughout 1975, whilst the ELP carried out several hundred bomb attacks in
Portugal to destabilize the government of the left-wing Armed Forces Movement,
Spinola travelled around Europe, seeking support for a putsch, should the Left win
the Parliamentary elections to be held on 25th April, 1976, the second anniversary of
the 1974 revolution. After meeting the CIA's Frank Carlucci in the US base at
Torrejon in Spain at the beginning of August, Spinola travelled to Bonn where he
met a key contact: Franz Josef Strauss, who also arranged for Spinola to meet a
friend with international influence in the field of finance, Hermann Josef Abs. Abs,
described by David Rockefeller as "the leading banker of the world", was a former
head of the Deutsche Bank who also served as a close adviser to Chancellor
Adenauer.
Abs had been head of the Deutsche Bank from 1940 to 1945. The Deutsche
Bank was the Nazis' bank throughout the war; Abs was in effect Hitler's paymaster.
Abs was also on the Board of chemicals conglomerate I. G. Farben and participated
at company Board meetings when members discussed the use of slave labour at a
Farben rubber factory located in the Auschwitz concentration camp (230). The
Deutsche Bank's collaboration with the Nazi regime did not lead to a purge of its
staff; after the war, Abs continued on the Board of the bank, serving as spokesman
for the Board from 1957 to 1967 before being appointed Honorary Chairman of the
Board in 1976.
Besides his banking activities, Abs was also one of the key German partners
of Dr Joseph Retinger in his efforts to set up the CIA-funded European Movement
and the Bilderberg group. Abs was one of the two leaders of the German section of
the Independent League for Economic Cooperation, one of the five organizations that
made up the European Movement (231). Abs was also one of the founding members
of the Bilderberg group, having served on the 1952 organization committee with
Pinay, Voisin, Ball and Bonvoisin. The friendship between Abs and Strauss dated
back to at least the mid-1950s when the two men met at meetings of the Bilderberg
group; Strauss, then Nuclear Power Minister, had attended the Bilderberg
conference in Garmisch-Partenkirchen in September 1955. One year before the 1975
meeting between Abs, Strauss and Spinola, Abs and Strauss had both attended the
1974 Bilderberg conference held in April in Megèze, France (232). Abs was also a
longstanding member of CEDI; together with Strauss, Abs attended the XIth CEDI
Congress in 1963 (233). Together with AESP and CEDI member von Merkatz, Abs
was a member of the Europäisches Institut für politische, wirtschaftliche und soziale
Fragen (European Institute for political, economic and social issues), which shared
its Munich headquarters with CEDI.
After his meeting with Abs, Spinola moved on to Paris, where he met a
representative of the arms company Merex, founded in 1966 by former SS Colonel
Gerhard Mertens, a colleague of Otto Skorzeny, the Nazi commando in exile in Spain
who was a major rallying point for European fascism. Besides its links to the
extreme Right, Merex also had a close working relationship with the BND (234). In
Paris, Spinola also had the opportunity of soliciting the support of Western
intelligence agencies for his planned coup, meeting the CIA Head of Station Eugen
Burgstaller and attending as guest of honour a meeting organized at the Paris
Sheraton by Colonel Lageneste, in charge of SDECE foreign relations (235). The
Sheraton meeting was in fact a major conference bringing together all the anticommunist
forces in Portugal; amongst those present were Spinola, CDS party
leader Freitas do Amaral, Manuel Allegre of the Portuguese Socialist Party and
Jorge Jardim, leader of the Portuguese colonists in Mozambique, who would later
also meet top Cercle members at the 1976 CEDI Congress. Amaral also had close
links to the Cercle, as a letter from Habsburg to Damman of 29th August, 1975
shows:
"I sent replies to your previous letters via Pöcking [the Archduke's Bavarian
residence] because of my trip to Portugal during which - for good reasons - I
didn't dare to write or even take notes. I had very interesting contacts,
particularly with the leadership of the CDS, who deserve our support. I am
planning to bring their leaders - this is highly confidential - Amaro da Costa
and Freitas do Amaral to Bavaria in the second half of September. In the
meanwhile, I have suggested to Mr. Strauss that we should set up Portugal
Support Committees, whose aim would be to give moral and financial support
to the freedom forces in Portugal. We should act as the Communists did in
relation to Vietnam in organizing public demonstrations, collections, appeals
and support groups formed by intellectuals, etc. I hope that Strauss will
accept the idea. I don't see why the Communists should be the only ones to
support their friends or why we should practice non-intervention" (236).
By the end of September, Spinola was in Lausanne where he met John
McCone, a former director of the CIA who then worked for ITT; ITT promised
$300,000 for Spinola's putsch. Despite the support of several foreign intelligence
services and pledges of several hundred thousand dollars from ITT and other
multinationals, Spinola's plans were wrecked just before the April, 1976 elections by
investigative journalist Günter Walraff who, posing as a right-wing militant, had
tape-recorded Spinola's conversations about his plans for a putsch (237).
In Spain, the death of Caudillo Franco in November 1975 set a challenge for
the Cercle: could the "Portuguese disease" be prevented? From 1975 to 1977,
Strauss channelled clandestine funds to a trio of former Franco Ministers who led
parties within the Alianza Popular (AP) coalition, founded in October 1976. We have
already met the most important of the three, AP's founder and President from 1976
until 1986: Manuel Fraga Iribarne, Franco's Information Minister from 1962 to
1969, Crozier's contact since 1965, and AESP member from 1970 on. From 1973
until Franco's death, Fraga Iribarne would serve as Spanish Ambassador in London;
he would receive a personal visit there from President Pinay as part of Pinay's 1975
European tour to promote the ISC. After Franco's death, Fraga Iribarne returned to
Spain in December 1975 to serve in the first post-Franco government as Vice-
President of the Government and Interior Minister, and to join the eight-man
committee that drafted the 1978 Constitution.
The other two Strauss beneficiaries were Federico Silva Munoz, leader of
Accion Democratica Espanola and a prominent member of Opus Dei, and Cruz
Martinez Esteruelas, President of the Union Democratica del Pueblo Espanol; the
latter had served in Franco's last two cabinets as Planning and Development
Minister in 1973 and Education and Science Minister in 1974. All three were given
generous covert funding by Strauss: in 1977, Fraga Iribarne received at least DM
135,000, and Silva Munoz and Martinez Esteruelas DM 100,000 each. Fraga
Iribarne had had an opportunity that year to discuss funding with Strauss; the two
men met in April 1977 at the Bilderberg conference organized in Torquay by Sir
Frederic Bennett.
Strauss's support for Fraga Iribarne would continue well into the 1980s via
their respective party foundations:
"In 1986, like its sister foundation the [CDU’s] Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the
[CSU's] Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung would choose the same path for backdoor funding of
its activities in favour of the Contras. On the 6-7th October 1986, a seminar on Latin
America with representatives from the Contras was held in Geneva, organized by the
Institut Economique de Paris which has close links with the Heritage Foundation.
The conference was sponsored amongst others by the Fundacion Canovas [del]
Castillo, politically close to the right-wing conservative Alianza Popular. The former
President of Alianza Popular - Manuel Fraga Iribarne - is not only an old friend of
Strauss and his CSU, but also a well-known right-wing radical in Spain. The
Fundacion Canovas [del] Castillo is supported by the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, which
benefits the Alianza Popular. In 1985 the German Federal Ministry for Cooperation
[which gives funds to party foundations like the HSS] approved a grant of 5 million
DM to the HSS for the Madrid foundation" (238).
THE AESP, VDB AND PIO
Whilst Strauss was funding Franco friends in Spain, and AESP associates
Crozier and Grau were organizing seminars on subversion in Britain and in
Switzerland, the Belgian members of the AESP were active on the domestic front:
Defence Minister and AESP member Paul Vanden Boeynants (VdB) and his adviser
de Bonvoisin set up a military counter-subversion and propaganda service, the
Public Information Office or PIO. PIO was headed by a longstanding associate of
VdB and de Bonvoisin, Major Jean-Marie Bougerol. Bougerol would be a central
figure in Belgian parapolitics implicated in previous coup plots: the 1976
Gendarmerie report by Roger Tratsaert stated that one of the plans for a coup d'état
in 1973 was jointly organized by the NEM Clubs (funded by VdB and de Bonvoisin)
and a group of gendarmes and Army officers centred around Bougerol.
PIO's genesis - and that of the coup plots in Belgium and elsewhere - lay in
the political upheaval in America and Europe at the end of the 1960s. By 1970, the
Army had become seriously concerned by the "internal threat" posed by the anti-
Vietnam movement and the students' movement after 1968. Moves to create the
Army's own counter-subversion agency bore fruit in April 1970, when Chief of
General Staff Lt-General Georges Vivario (by 1973, part of an AESP delegation)
together with Colonel Paul Detrembleur established the Division des Services
Spéciaux (DSD) as an independent unit reporting directly to the Minister of Defence.
The unit, headed by a general, brought together members of the Minister's office and
representatives from the General Staff of the Army and the Gendarmerie. Composed
of five sections, the DSD's specific task was to counter "protest and subversive
propaganda". Part of its task was to set up a "Speakers Bureau", a pool of military
personnel trained as media representatives for public debates, television
appearances, etc - this bureau would later give birth to PIO. Despite press uproar
and the resignation of the Deputy Chief to the General Staff in protest, the creation
of the DSD went ahead.
New impetus was given to the DSD's work in 1972-73 when the new Defence
Minister, VdB, introduced reforms of the Army including a plan for the "military
defence of the territory" (DMT) designed to counter leftist/pacifist influence by a
dramatic reinforcement of the Gendarmerie and greater involvement for the Army
and reserve officers in counter-subversion work. Faced with massive student
protests in early 1973 against the DMT plan and a tightening of military service
rules, the Army hardened its stance; in a "study on objectivity and the media" dated
13th September, 1973, Lt-Col. Weber, head of Counter-Information in the Belgian
military intelligence service SDRA (239), wrote in apocalyptic terms of the threat to
freedom and democracy posed by professional agitators within the media and the
peace movement, and urged the creation of a permanent group within the SDRA to
combat subversion. Weber's study came at a critical moment: in mid-August, the
Press had reported the existence of a planned coup. Three days before Weber wrote
his study, the Gendarmerie General Staff received Major de Cock's report alleging
links between VdB, de Bonvoisin and the NEM Clubs (240). Weber's report and
similar concerns within the Army General Staff led to a decision in 1974 to
strengthen the Army's counter-subversion and propaganda rôles by creating the
Public Information Office PIO, headed by Major Bougerol, as an autonomous group
within the Army General Staff.
Despite its independent status, PIO had considerable links to the SDRA:
Bougerol claims he was given the use of an office within the Counter-Information
section of SDRA in 1974-75 whilst he was setting up PIO, and one of his closest
collaborators was Commissioner Fagnart of the Military Security section of SDRA.
PIO's official mission was twofold: firstly, to expose Soviet disinformation in the
media, largely through the publication of a press review called Inforep. PIO's second
task was to act as a clearing-house for information on subversion, distributing
information to the Army, the Gendarmerie, the Sûreté de l'Etat - Belgium's internal
security agency, and the Foreign Ministry Security Division. Unofficially, Bougerol
used PIO to mount the same kind of aggressive counter-intelligence programmes
that the FBI had been conducting against the Left, the peace movement and the
American Indian movement in America from 1969 until at least 1976 (241). It is
probably no coincidence that PIO's title - unusual for being in English in the original
- copied FBI jargon:
"PIO (Public Information Officer): the FBI classification for the agent whose
speciality is providing intentionally inaccurate "facts" (disinformation) to the
media; the FBI counterpart to the military psychological operations (psy-ops)
specialist" (242).
Amongst PIO's operations were organized sabotage of left-wing conferences,
promotion of groups favourable to the Army, and seminars on Soviet subversion.
Through such operations, Bougerol set up a network of unofficial correspondents
baptised the Miller network, a pseudonym he used when writing for Belgian
newspapers. The 445 known correspondents were a gathering of officers from the
Sûreté, the SDRA, the Gendarmerie and police, members of the EEC's security
department, militants from the NEM Clubs and other fascist groups, private
"security operatives" and innocent or not so innocent journalists (243).
To gain experience of counter-intelligence and propaganda operations,
Bougerol went on a European tour in 1976, visiting Northern Ireland, Spain,
Portugal, Italy, France and Holland. In several of these countries, Bougerol was
hosted by AESP contacts. It is likely that during his visit to the UK, Bougerol had the
opportunity of meeting Brian Crozier and the AESP's partners at the ISC - as we will
see in the next chapter, Bougerol, de Bonvoisin and Crozier had already met in
February 1976 at the AESP's IXth AESP Chapter Assembly and would meet again in
December that year at the CEDI Congress. Bearing in mind that SDRA
Commissioner Fagnart's 1978 letter, quoted in full below, warned Bougerol "we
could imagine another danger ... if there was a leak about the Saoud affair or the
affairs concerning Formosa, Spain or the UK", it would be interesting to know what
Bougerol was up to in the UK. The AESP also provided Bougerol with a host for his
visit to Italy the same year: Ivan-Matteo Lombardo (244), present at the Parco dei
Principi birth of the strategy of tension in 1965, a member of the AESP since 1970
and implicated in the 1974 Sogno coup only two years earlier.
The mention of Formosa in SDRA Commissioner Fagnart's 1978 letter refers
to another 1976 trip, this time to Taiwan for training in psychological warfare and
counter-information. In this context, it is interesting to note that the Political
Warfare Cadres Academy in Peitou (Taiwan), which trained counter-subversion
forces for many of the Latin American death-squad states, had extremely close links
to WACL who both prospected for business for the Academy and recruited WACL
members from the ranks of Academy graduates (245). The Academy has in fact had
the closest links with both WACL and the CIA since its foundation: the co-founders
were Chiang Kai Shek's son and Ray S. Cline, CIA Chief of Station in Taipei from
1958 to 1962. During this period, Cline was also a channel for financial and
logistical support for the founding meeting of WACL in 1958. Cline would rise to
become CIA Deputy Director of Intelligence from 1962 to 1966, and, after resigning
from the CIA in 1969, would serve as Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research (INR) at the State Department, where he contributed considerably to the
anti-Allende operations of 1973, the year which saw his official retirement from
intelligence work. The interconnections between the Academy, WACL, the CIA, Cline
and Bougerol seem all the more significant in the light of a reference by Cline in a
1992 BBC interview about Gladio to "the counter-insurgency training given to the
Belgian Major Jean-Marie Bougerol and his men in the US" in the early 1970s (246).
Whatever Cline's possible links to Bougerol and PIO in the early 1970s, the
CIA veteran and the PIO chief would later share a common friend who did much to
help PIO - the American disinformationist of Belgian descent, Arnaud de
Borchgrave. Arnaud, Comte de Borchgrave d'Altena, sixteenth in line to the Belgian
throne, started his "journalistic" career after the war as a correspondent of Europe-
Amerique, forerunner of the Nouvel Europe Magazine subsidized by Bougerol's
political master Benoît de Bonvoisin. De Borchgrave then spent a long spell from
Vietnam until the Reagan Presidency as a top reporter for Newsweek, ending up as
Paris bureau chief. During this period, de Borchgrave played a key rôle in the
genesis of PIO; as Bougerol recalled in an interview (247), it was de Borchgrave who,
in the early 1970s, introduced Bougerol to PIO's future patron, Benoît de Bonvoisin.
According to a May 1981 Sûreté report on de Bonvoisin's contacts in Paris, de
Borchgrave also allegedly acted as an intermediary between de Bonvoisin and the
CIA (248).
In the late 1970s, de Borchgrave was one of PIO's prized foreign press
contacts; when PIO chartered a plane to fly journalists to the Zairean province of
Shaba in 1978, the plane had to wait on the tarmac for one late VIP - de Borchgrave.
De Borchgrave subsequently filed reports for Newsweek alleging Cuban involvement
in the Katangese invasion of Shaba; Moss drew attention to de Borchgrave's
Newsweek articles in a piece he wrote for the Washington-based Policy Review in its
Summer 1978 issue (249). De Borchgrave and Moss were already longstanding
friends; they had met in 1972 when de Borchgrave, in hiding in London after writing
an article on Black September for Newsweek, asked to meet a specialist on
subversion (250). The meeting would herald the beginning of a long partnership
between the two men which would reach its peak in the 1980s.
De Borchgrave would also benefit from close contacts with SDECE chief
Alexandre de Marenches, who, when asked where would be an interesting place to
spend the Christmas of 1979, advised de Borchgrave to go to Afghanistan. De
Borchgrave was one of the few Western journalists on the spot during the Soviet
invasion (251). De Borchgrave would be fired as Newsweek Paris bureau chief in
1980 after he was discovered to have been building files on his colleagues for several
years. At the time, he was working with Robert Moss on the first of two notorious
disinformation novels, The Spike and Monimbo, filled with plots of Soviet subversion
launched with the assistance of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the
complicity of left-wing journalists in Europe.
In 1985, de Borchgrave would become editor-in-chief of the Moonies'
newspaper, the Washington Times. The Moonies would be a forum for cooperation
between de Borchgrave and Cline: Cline was on the Editorial Board of The World and
I, the Moonies' monthly edited by de Borchgrave. De Borchgrave was a former Board
member of the Moonies' US Global Strategy Council, chaired by Cline in the late
1980s. Cline and de Borchgrave also shared a platform with William Casey as
speakers at a special conference series on intelligence held at the Ashbrook Center,
Ohio in 1986, one of Casey's last public appearances before his death in May 1987.
At this time, de Borchgrave was working with Moss and John Rees of the John Birch
Society in a "risk analysis" company, Mid-Atlantic Research Associates (MARA); the
three also edited a monthly private intelligence report called Early Warning (252).
To return to PIO, from the outset, Bougerol used his earlier contacts with the
extreme Right for PIO operations. As part of his counter-subversion work, Bougerol
gave lectures to reserve officers, many of whom were recruited as PIO agents. One of
the reserve officers' clubs at which Bougerol lectured was the Brabant Reserve
Officers' Club (BROC), which in 1975 was given the task of bolstering the patriotism
of other reserve officers' clubs. BROC's members included not only AESP member
Baron Bernard de Marcken de Merken and Colonel Paul Detrembleur, who helped
set up the DSD and would later head the SDRA from 1981 to 1984 at the height of
the strategy of tension in Belgium, but also Paul Latinus, the Belgian delle Chiaie,
protegé of de Bonvoisin. A former leader of the Front de la Jeunesse financed by de
Bonvoisin, Latinus would later emerge as commander of the fascist parallel
intelligence service Westland New Post (WNP), a key component in Belgian
parapolitics in the 1980s covered in detail in a later chapter. According to Sûreté
sources, Latinus was recruited into PIO by Bougerol in 1977; in his testimony to the
Belgian Parliament's Gladio Inquiry, Bougerol at least admitted having met Latinus
(253).
Bougerol's contacts with the extreme Right also extended to de Bonvoisin's
other protegé, veteran fascist putschist Emile Lecerf, editor of the Nouvel Europe
Magazine, and to future WNP militant Michel Libert, who was introduced to Bougerol
by Lecerf. Bougerol and Lecerf were not only personal friends; Bougerol also gave
lectures on subversion to the NEM Clubs. These close links between de Bonvoisin's
protégés Latinus and Lecerf and Bougerol's PIO are not surprising in the light of the
considerable support given to Bougerol by de Bonvoisin, political adviser to Defence
Minister VdB under whose jurisdiction PIO fell. De Bonvoisin had already provided
PIO with much of its logistic structure and would play an ever-increasing part in the
running of PIO in the late 1970s. PIO's offices were located in the same building
which housed CEPIC, the political ginger group run by VdB and de Bonvoisin; de
Bonvoisin's company PDG was also housed at the same address and ensured the
printing of the PIO press review Inforep. From 1976 onwards, PDG contributed more
than a million Belgian francs a year to PIO, which received total external funding of
some 600,000 Belgian francs a month. De Bonvoisin exerted increasing influence on
PIO; by early 1980 the editorial team producing PIO's Inforep consisted of Emile
Lecerf and Jacques Van den Bemden, drawn from the other PDG beneficiary, the
neo-nazi magazine Nouvel Europe Magazine. The PIO/PDG operation was finally
blown in May 1981 when the CEPIC/MAUE/PDG/PIO building was raided as a
result of a Sûreté note about de Bonvoisin's patronage of fascist groups. It quickly
became apparent that PIO's files had been transferred wholesale to PDG.
Apart from this funding of PIO by de Bonvoisin and the links that Bougerol
had with Detrembleur and AESP member de Marcken within the reserve officers
club BROC, Bougerol also had frequent direct contacts with the leadership of the
AESP and the Cercle. The first trace we find of direct links between the AESP and
Bougerol dates from February 1976 when Bougerol attended the IXth Chapter
Assembly of the AESP together with many of the Cercle's international contacts.
THE ACADEMY IN 1976
On the 6th and 7th February, 1976, the AESP held its XIXth Grand Dîner
Charlemagne in the Hotel Métropole in Brussels, before meeting the next day in the
more private setting of the Cercle des Nations club for the IXth Chapter Assembly of
the AESP, devoted to the subject "After Helsinki" - the Helsinki Final Accord had
been signed in July 1975. The attendance lists of these two events give us an
overview of the Academy's contacts and of their preoccupations. Besides continuing
its work on the theme of free movement of persons and ideas linked to the Helsinki
Conference on Security and cooperation in Europe, the Academy was a vocal
advocate of the Doomsday message that the Third World War had already begun and
was being lost by the West, passively submitting to a war of Soviet subversion
corrupting the very pillars of Western civilization. Under the title "Are we at war?",
Damman's editorial on the front page of the January 1976 issue of the AESP/MAUE
journal Europe Information which announced the Charlemagne Grand Dinner and
the AESP Chapter Assembly opened with the words:
"One would have to be blind not to notice that the Third World War is in full
swing with a new weapon of extraordinary power, acting upon the spirit, the
intellect and morale: subversion, slowly contaminating all sectors of society
and all regions of the world, is gaining the upper hand because we refuse to
confront it head on. All of our political parties including the Communist Party
are infiltrated by the agents of Soviet imperialism which has never renounced
its goal of world hegemony. The West is still unaware of the power of the
subversive forces infiltrating every organization under the most varied
disguises, both in Europe and America and in the countries of the Third
World. The Atlantic Alliance ignores this tactical weapon following an
extraordinary reasoning which has led it since the end of the last World War
to surrender on all fronts to Soviet imperialism ... Soviet imperialism has in
the Western camp a gigantic and ever-active organisation, skilfully structured
to maintain anarchy and confusion where they are needed, studied in exact
detail to confuse the mind and stoke antagonism. We have become puppets,
and it is our enemies who pull the strings".
This apocalyptic vision of the West slowly being strangled by the invisible
forces of Soviet subversion fits entirely with the philosophy of intelligence-backed
counter-subversion and disinformation operations such as the ISC, the Monde
Moderne and PIO, all three of which were represented at the 1976 XIXth
Charlemagne Grand Dinner and the subsequent IXth Chapter Assembly of the
AESP: the list of participants includes Crozier from the ISC, Vigneau and Leguèbe
from the Monde Moderne, and Benoît de Bonvoisin and "Major de Bougerolle" from
PIO (254). This would be the first of at least two occasions for the Cercle's countersubversion
propagandists to meet in 1976; as we will see in a subsequent chapter,
the same people would meet again at the 25th CEDI Congress in December.
At the February AESP gathering, the Belgian Academy team were fully
represented by Damman, de Merken, Jonet, Vankerkhoven and de Villegas. Also
attending were two longstanding AESP members whom we have not yet met,
Vincent Van den Bosch and Bernard Mercier. Van den Bosch was another key
partner of Damman's, serving not only as International Secretary-General of CEDI
but also as a member of the AESP Permanent Delegation, and Secretary-General of
Damman's MAUE. Mercier, an Academy member, served on the Board of the
Conservative ginger group CEPIC alongside Benoît de Bonvoisin and AESP members
Vanden Boeynants and Vankerkhoven.
Although Jean Violet was not present, most of his closest associates from
France were in attendance: Collet, Vallet, Father Dubois and Picard of Wilton Park.
The Academy's German members, Dumont de Voitel and von Merkatz, were there,
bringing along the CDU Vice-President of the German Parliament, Kai-Uwe von
Hassel. As well as serving as Regional Prime Minister for Schleswig-Holstein from
1954 to 1966, von Hassel had replaced the disgraced Strauss as Defence Minister
after the 1962 Spiegel Affair, serving until 1966 when he was appointed Minister for
Expellees, Refugees and War Victims in the Grand Coalition Cabinet in which
Strauss was Finance Minister. In 1969, von Hassel replaced Eugen Gerstenmaier as
President of the German Parliament, serving until the SPD's victory in 1972, when
he became CDU Vice-President of the Parliament, a post he filled until 1976. The
roll-call of core Academy members was brought to a close by Pons of the PEU and
Sanchez Bella of CEDI.
However, it is the Italian connections of the AESP that are the most
fascinating. The former high-ranking P2 member Giancarlo Elia Valori attended
both the Charlemagne Grand Dinner and the AESP Chapter Assembly; he would
become a member of the AESP's organising core, the Permanent Delegation, the
following year. His presence is particularly interesting in the light of the allegations
concerning P7 - two of the Academy members allegedly involved in P7, Pons and
Töttösy, were also at these meetings with Valori. Valori's attendance at Academy
events from 1972 on also points to possible connections between the sniffer plane
scandal and P2. Most of the key members in the sniffer plane negotiations were
present at the 1976 Grand Dîner and Chapter Assembly with Valori: de Villegas,
Father Dubois and Vallet. Vallet and de Villegas would join Valori on the AESP
Permanent Delegation by 1977. At the time of these February 1976 AESP events,
final agreements were being reached with Elf; the contract between de Villegas'
Fisalma and Elf would be signed at the end of May, saving the Cercle Pinay complex
from financial ruin, as described in the next chapter.
Valori and Lombardo already provided the AESP with high-calibre contacts to
P2 and the group involved in the 1974 Sogno coup. A new face at the February
gathering strengthened the Academy's links to Italian politics and to the Sogno coup:
former Minister Giovanni Malagodi, a participant at the Bilderbergers' inaugural
conference in May 1954 (255). Sogno had fought Communism during the war as a
contact of the British secret service; in 1953, he was one of the founders of the
Italian section of Peace and Freedom, a ferociously anti-communist propaganda
group whose Belgian section was run by the Chevalier de Roover (256). President of
the Liberal International, Malagodi was the President of the Italian Liberal Party PLI
and an influential member of the PLI's Sogno faction in 1974 when Sogno, a future
member of P2, was insisting that a coup of "liberal" inspiration was necessary to save
Italy from Communism. The "liberal coup" that Sogno proposed was scheduled for
August 1974 and included the capture of the Presidential Palace, the dissolution of
Parliament and the nomination of a government of technocrats, but the plan was
aborted shortly beforehand.
Despite the failure of their plan, the Sogno fraction continued to insist that
the rise of Communism threatened the very basis of the Italian State. One month
after the planned Sogno coup, in September 1974, Malagodi participated in the 7th
Study Conference of the PLI's youth group along with Manlio Brosio, a former
Secretary-General of NATO and former Italian Defence Minister, who had been
responsible for the post-war organization of the Italian intelligence community and
the establishment of SIFAR (257). At the September conference, Brosio declared that
only communism - and not fascism - presented an immediate danger to stability in
Italy. The judicial inquiry into the Sogno coup was blocked in November 1974 by the
death of the main witness, secret service Colonel Giuseppe Condo. Condo, aged 42,
died of a "heart attack" a week before magistrates were due to question him. Sogno
and one of his co-conspirators were arrested on charges of attempting a coup d'état
in 1976, but this second inquiry failed to get to the bottom of the coup plans
because of the State secrecy imposed on documents showing foreign support for
Sogno's plans (258).
CASH CRISIS AND THE SNIFFER PLANES
In the midst of such international networking, the Cercle Pinay went through
a severe financial crisis. The main source of funding for the Cercle had been Carlo
Pesenti, who had also financed the launch of de Villegas' sniffer plane project.
However, threatened by takeovers from P2 financier Michele Sindona, Pesenti was
forced to make drastic cuts in his funding of Violet. Pesenti was able to beat back
Sindona's offensive with the help of Philippe de Weck, Director of UBS Zürich and
administrator of de Villegas' sniffer plane company Fisalma. The Bank of Italy
investigated Pesenti after de Weck helped him to stave off Sindona: "the inspectors
went through the books of the banks of Pesenti, exposing the dubious means by
which he had extricated himself from Sindona's grip" (259).
This was not the first time Pesenti had been raided by Sindona; Sindona's
1968 attempt to take over Pesenti's empire permanently weakened Pesenti's
finances. Obliged to borrow money from his own three banks to buy Sindona out,
Pesenti was later forced to sell off those banks one by one to settle his debts. Pesenti
also shored up his indebted Italmobiliare group by substantial borrowings from
Banco Ambrosiano and its various Italian offshoots, secured by large blocks of
shares in companies controlled by Pesenti. Another of Pesenti's suspect dealings
later to be investigated was "a curious 50 billion lire loan granted to Pesenti in 1972
- apparently by the IOR - and indexed to the Swiss franc. The latter's appreciation
meant that the sum eventually reimbursed was 185 billion lire. A decade after that
loan was signed, magistrates in Milan were still unsure whether the Vatican Bank
had excogitated a brilliant deal, or whether it had acted as a 'fiduciary' once more,
this time for an irregular capital export by Pesenti" (260). Pesenti used the loan
capital to buy shares from Roberto Calvi, head of the Banco Ambrosiano, but kept
the loan off Italmobiliare's books until 1979 when it fell due. This led some
Italmobiliare shareholders to challenge the very existence of the loan, believing that
Pesenti was under pressure to pay the vast sum to IOR for other unspecified
reasons. The case wound up in court but was not resolved before Pesenti's death in
1984 (261).
Following Sindona's attack on Pesenti's financial empire and Pesenti's
reduction of funds to the Cercle, the Cercle went through a disastrous cash crisis,
above all in the light of the ambitious scope of its operations. Violet's cassette
message to Damman of 31st March, 1976 was so serious that, despite specific
instructions to the contrary, Damman transcribed it in full:
"Considerable financial difficulties mainly due to the storm on the lira. The
situation that has arisen has led to people cancelling their contributions,
having to submit to a fait accompli.
Closure of the Centre du Monde Moderne and probably of the Bulletin de
Paris.
With these limited means, the keystone to any action is money. I will devote
myself to setting up structures of financial groups so as to essentially develop
the Academy and all that revolves around it, as well as the London group [the
ISC], and set up Edicercle on a serious basis, and launch the Bible-prisoners
operation on that basis ... we will ensure the vital minimum for the Academy
which is a priority" (262).
On the 16th April, Damman received another cassette from Violet, which this
time he only partially transcribed: "Search for backers in progress. Meeting in Paris
end of May/beginning of June" (263). The timing and the mention of backers allows
us to make an almost certain connection to the negotiations taking place between
Elf, the French state oil company, and Fisalma, the sniffer plane company set up by
de Villegas, represented by de Weck of UBS and assisted by Violet. Elf had been
testing the sniffer planes for some time and was now interested in acquiring
exclusive rights over the invention. At the meetings with Elf, de Villegas was
accompanied by the "inner circle" of Pinay members: not only Violet, but also Pinay
himself and Father Dubois frequently participated. The contract between Elf and
Fisalma was signed on 29th May, 1976, and the meeting between Valéry Giscard
d'Estaing, Elf President Pierre Guillaumat, and Pinay, representing Violet, was held
on 2nd June.
For exclusive rights over the invention for a period of one year, Elf undertook
to make four quarterly payments of 50 million Swiss francs to Fisalma, the first
scheduled for the 15th June, the second for 15th October. The Cercle's financial
situation dramatically improved after the key discussion between Pinay and the
French President. On 8th October, Violet sent another cassette to Damman, this
time much more optimistic about funding for the AESP: "Good perspectives for 1977.
The President [Antoine Pinay] and a group of friends. Essential resources.
Modifications to means". Damman replied to the good news from Violet on 13th
October: "I was very happy to receive your cassette message guaranteeing funding
for the Academy for 1977 ... my warmest thanks for the essential minimum you have
provided us with, we will do the rest" (264).
THE FOREIGN AFFAIRS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Shortly after attending the Academy's Grand Dinner and Chapter Assembly in
Brussels in February 1976, Brian Crozier would launch a new regrouping of British
Cercle friends, the Foreign Affairs Research Institute (265). The new geopolitical
institute brought together under one roof the disinformation assets of the ISC and
top Conservative politicians in the Thatcherite NAFF and SIF who had worked with
BOSS to oppose demonstrations against sporting links with South Africa. FARI
appears to have been the British-based counterpart to the Centre d'Etudes du
Monde Moderne, the Cercle's Parisian pro-Pretoria outfit. As had been the case with
the Centre du Monde Moderne, it was the South Africans who footed the bill for
FARI, providing £85,000 a year for several years; South Africa continued to finance
FARI until at least 1981 (266). It would seem that FARI was another of the 160
projects launched by the South African Department of Information in their
clandestine propaganda war to support apartheid in the 1970s. Funding for FARI
was reportedly also forthcoming from the Lockheed and General Dynamics
corporations.
In terms of personalities, FARI represented a coming together of Stewart-
Smith's groups (the Foreign Affairs Circle and the Foreign Affairs Publishing
Company, publisher and distributor for the UK counter-subversion lobby and SOI)
with Crozier's NAFF and ISC. The President of FARI was Bilderberger Sir Frederic
Bennett, a member of SIF and NAFF; the FARI Director was Geoffrey Stewart-Smith;
the Deputy Director was Ian Greig, the Chairman of the Monday Club Subversion
Committee and probable contact of Damman's since 1973. On the Council of FARI
we find the inseparable duo of Crozier and Moss of the ISC, NAFF and Shield, who
also brought along Air Vice-Marshal Stuart Menaul, an ISC Council member.
Michael Ivens of Aims, SIF and NAFF also joined the FARI Council.
The political support FARI enjoyed is illustrated by the Council membership
of four influential Tories from Thatcher's entourage. The first and most significant
was Airey Neave, Thatcher's campaign manager during the Conservative leadership
elections in 1975 and her Shadow Minister for Northern Ireland; once in office,
Thatcher planned to create a new post to oversee the intelligence and security
services which would be filled by Neave. Neave's membership of FARI was indicative
of Thatcher's close links to the counter-subversion lobby. Neave was joined on the
FARI Council by his deputy as Shadow Minister for Northern Ireland, John Biggs-
Davison, Vice-President of the PEU from 1965, former Chairman of the Monday Club
and a member of SIF and NAFF. Alongside Neave and Biggs-Davison, the FARI
Council also included Julian Amery, another top Tory with strong MI6 links who
would later be a member and then Chairman of the Cercle Pinay. The fourth top
Conservative on the FARI Council was Lord Chalfont, a member of the Executive
Committee of the European Movement and allegedly "the CIA's man in the House of
Lords". A final member of the FARI Council was Colonel Ronald Wareing, a former
MI6 agent in Portugal and an associate of G. K. Young's within Unison (267).
FARI continued publication of Stewart-Smith's previous fortnightly bulletin
East-West Digest, distributed free to all British MPs, and cooperated with the ISC and
FAPC's foreign associates, notably INTERDOC and Dr Peter Sager's Swiss SOI (268).
Working in partnership with FARI, the ISC continued their campaign in favour of
South Africa with a total ISC budget for 1976 of over £30,000. In June 1976, Peter
Janke visited Swaziland to speak at a conference organized by a South African
Department of Information front group, the Foreign Affairs Association; at the
conference, "Janke of the Institute of the Study of Conflict in London stressed the
importance of South Africa's minerals to the West and dangers of the Soviet threat"
(269). Grau's Swiss group, the ISP, also supported the pro-Pretoria campaign with a
brochure called Südafrikas strategische Bedeutung für die Rohstoffversorgung des
Westens (South Africa's Strategic Significance for the West's Supply of Commodities)
which stated: "The cutting-off of contacts between South Africa and the
industrialized countries of the West as the result of a Soviet Navy blockade or as a
result of the fall of the current South African government and its replacement by a
Communist or Communist-influenced government would leave the West entirely
defenceless" (270). July 1976 saw the publication of a Conflict Study by Janke,
Southern Africa: New Horizons. At the same time, FARI prepared an edited version of
the conference speeches for distribution to "persons of influence". The ISC followed
this in November with another Conflict Study, Soviet Strategic Penetration of Africa by
David Rees. A further project to support South Africa was The Angolan File, a 1976
South African television "documentary" which attacked the Americans for pulling out
of Angola. The programme, broadcast on South African television, had been
produced by the South African Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), who had
commissioned Crozier of ISC/FARI to write the script (271).
Besides its defence of apartheid, FARI was also active in domestic politics in
the UK, one of the major propaganda themes being the laxity of the Labour
government in dealing with a "Soviet-dominated" IRA. On three occasions between
August and September 1976, the two Conservative spokesmen for Northern Ireland,
Neave and Biggs-Davison, both FARI Council members, used IRD disinformation to
attack the "failure" of the Labour government to combat the "Czech and Cuban
agents stoking revolution in Northern Ireland". The source of this disinformation was
Colin Wallace of the Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland. In 1974-75, Infpol
was being pressured by MI5, rival to MI6 for control of the province, to go beyond
black propaganda against the IRA and to turn its disinformation capability to the
themes of KGB penetration of the Labour Party and Soviet manipulation of the IRA.
As mentioned above, in 1974 Wallace was tasked by MI5 to produce
defamatory documents for press release on the basis of smears and analyses of
political, sexual and financial vulnerabilities of several dozen Westminster MPs.
When Wallace refused to participate in this operation codenamed Clockwork Orange
2 without guarantees of ministerial approval, MI5 arranged for his removal from the
province and his dismissal from the Civil Service, a fate that befell other actors in the
secret war who would not toe the MI5 line. With a broken career behind him,
Wallace did not refuse when in 1976 Neave, Shadow Minister for Northern Ireland,
proposed that Wallace work for him as a consultant. Part of Wallace's work consisted
in providing the Neave-Biggs-Davison team with the information that Wallace had
collated on Soviet subversion in Northern Ireland. Wallace has given the Press a
letter addressed to him from Neave, written in August 1976, in which Neave asked
specifically for a report that Wallace had prepared for Infpol, Ulster - a State of
Subversion. This document of Wallace's was based on a unattributable IRD Press
briefing called Soviets Increase Control Over British Communists. Neave then recycled
the report's main allegations of Soviet subversion in Northern Ireland and KGB
penetration of the Parliamentary Labour Party in a speech given in August. A few
days later, FARI published a brochure written by Neave's deputy Biggs-Davison
entitled The strategic implications for the West of the international links of the IRA in
Ireland. The brochure was also based on the unattributable IRD briefing and made
the same references to the alleged laxity of the Labour government in dealing with
Soviet subversion in Northern Ireland. Neave would repeat the allegations in a
second speech on 11th September, and the same theme of Soviet manipulation of
the IRA would be featured in a Conservative Party Position Paper on Northern
Ireland published later the same month (272).
THE MADRID MEETING
Three months later, in December 1976, CEDI held its 25th International
Congress in Madrid, a second international gathering of Cercle contacts after the
February Chapter Assembly of the AESP described above. The Madrid meeting
brought together most of the major characters we have met so far. Presiding over the
Congress was Archduke Otto von Habsburg, assisted by two familiar faces: Alfredo
Sanchez Bella and Hans-Joachim von Merkatz. The conference participants came
from all over the world, showing the kind of international outreach CEDI and the
Cercle enjoyed; besides more than one hundred Spanish delegates, some 120 foreign
guests from Europe, America and South Africa gathered in Madrid. Of the national
campaigns listed above, the CEDI Congress brought together the Cercle, the
AESP/MAUE and PIO from Belgium, Le Monde Moderne from France, the ISC, Shield
and FARI from Britain, the WISC from the US, one of the Portuguese financial
backers of Spinola and the Aginter Press, election candidates from Spain and
Portugal supported by the Cercle, and senior South African diplomats - a true
reunion of the international Right and their friends with intelligence links.
From Belgium came CEDI's Secretary-General Vincent van den Bosch and his
colleagues within the core of AESP/MAUE organizers: Florimond Damman, Aldo
Mungo – the later whistle-blower, Paul Vankerkhoven and Jacques Jonet. One new
face from Belgium was Jean-Paul R. Preumont, Chairman of the Belgian Board of the
European Movement, who would join the MAUE Board by 1979, completing the
Belgian merger of the EM and the PEU.
Another significant figure attending a CEDI Congress for the first time -
according to the documents at our disposal - was Baron Benoît de Bonvoisin, who,
as at the February AESP Chapter Assembly, was accompanied by Major Bougerol,
described in the participants' list as Head of the Public Information Office of the
Army General Staff. At this time of course, PIO was in full swing; Bougerol had just
completed his European tour, visiting AESP contacts and gathering experience in
counter-subversion for use in PIO's Belgian operations. Bougerol's visit to Madrid
was sensitive - in his 1978 letter to Bougerol warning him of the growing hostility in
official circles to PIO's wide-ranging missions, Commissioner Fagnart of the Belgian
military security service specifically mentioned the dangers of a leak concerning four
dubious operations: the "Saoud affair" and Bougerol's visits to Formosa, the UK and
Spain. Bougerol came to the Madrid Congress in the company of CEPIC Senator
Angèle Verdin and CEPIC Board member Bernard Mercier; the latter had also
attended the February Chapter Assembly. Along with fellow CEPIC members de
Bonvoisin and Vankerkhoven, Mercier would also be implicated in the funding of the
fascist NEM Clubs and the Front de la Jeunesse in the 1980s. Before arriving in
Madrid, Bougerol, Mercier and Verdin had stopped off to pay their respects at the
grave of the recently-deceased Caudillo Franco; Mercier wore a black shirt for the
occasion.
A final important member of the Belgian delegation was Ernest Töttösy, the
Hungarian WACL leader who, as we will see later, would be accused of being a
member of P7, a covert CIA funding channel for Gelli's P2 lodge. Also present at the
CEDI Congress was another alleged member of P7, the PEU International Secretary-
General, Vittorio Pons from Lausanne. Pons was already increasing contact with the
ISC at this stage: in September 1977, the ISC would publish a Conflict Study written
by Pons, The Long-term Strategy of Italy's Communists.
Ten Britons attended the CEDI Congress, four of whom were members of the
Cercle Pinay itself. The first three were the key FARI Board members Crozier, Moss
and Amery, who brought along his former colleague in SOE's Albanian operations,
Lord St Oswald (273). FARI had cause for celebration: the counter-subversion lobby's
campaign against Harold Wilson had finally borne fruit in mid-March that year,
when Wilson tendered his resignation and was succeeded by James Callaghan.
The CEDI Congress also provided an opportunity for the veteran
disinformation team of Crozier and Moss to advise Bougerol and de Bonvoisin on the
PIO operation. Bearing in mind the ISC's collaboration with the AESP over the last
five years, and in particular the meeting earlier in 1976 between the de
Bonvoisin/Bougerol team and Crozier at the February AESP Chapter Assembly, it
seems probable that Bougerol had looked up Crozier and Moss during his visit to the
UK later the same year before the CEDI Congress in December. In the light of
contacts between Crozier and Bougerol, Fagnart's 1978 note of warning to Bougerol
about the consequences of a leak about "the affair concerning the UK" is intriguing -
if Bougerol did visit Crozier and Moss in the UK in 1976, what might they have been
up to to arouse Fagnart's concern? Whatever the truth about possible FARI/PIO
collaboration, Moss could reminisce with de Bonvoisin and Bougerol about a
common friend, Arnaud de Borchgrave, who had brought Bougerol and de Bonvoisin
together some years earlier and who by 1976 was a prized PIO contact on the staff of
Newsweek. Bougerol was no doubt keen to add Moss to his PIO Press list; as editor
of the Economist Foreign Report, Moss would be a powerful relay for PIO's output.
Apart from Crozier, Moss and Amery, the fourth British Cercle member to
attend the CEDI Congress was banker Sir Peter Tennant who, as Crozier records,
would share the chairmanship of Cercle meetings with himself, Amery and Pesenti
(274). Tennant was one of the earliest members of SOE, recruited in 1940 by Sir
Charles Hambro, a later head of SOE in 1942-43. Tennant would gain experience of
propaganda broadcasts to the German armed forces during the war before being sent
as an Information Counsellor to the British Embassy in Paris from 1945 to 1950,
where he may have had contacts with Antoine Pinay, soon to become French
Premier. Tennant would then serve as Deputy Commandant of the British sector of
Berlin from 1950 to 1952 before occupying various senior posts in the Federation
and later Confederation of British Industry, acting as Director-General of the British
National Export Council from 1965 to 1971. At the time of the CEDI Congress,
Tennant was President of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry and a
longstanding adviser to Barclays’ bank (275).
Besides Amery, two other Monday Club members, both Conservative MPs and
former ministers, attended the CEDI Congress. The first was Sir Peter Agnew,
Conservative MP between 1931-1950 and again between 1955-1966. Agnew had sat
on CEDI's Steering Committee since at least 1972; this CEDI Congress would be his
last as CEDI International President, a post he had filled since 1974. The second
Monday Clubber was CEDI Vice-President Sir John Rodgers, Conservative MP from
1950 to 1979, who in 1970 had served with Biggs-Davison and Young on the SIF
National Executive. Both Agnew and Rodgers would join Biggs-Davison as AESP Life
Members by 1977.
From France came the Cercle core: Antoine Pinay himself, accompanied by
Violet, Vallet and Father Dubois. Also attending was René-Louis Picard, who we have
met as President of the International Society of Wilton Park. A Swiss section of
Wilton Park had been set up earlier in 1976 and an Italian branch would be founded
the following year. In 1978, Picard would join with three of the other 1976 CEDI
Congress participants - Violet, Sanchez Bella and Jacques Jonet - to set up CLEW,
the European Liaison Committee of Associations and Friends of Wilton Park.
The editorial team of the Monde Moderne, Jean Vigneau and Jacques
Leguèbe, were also present at the 1976 CEDI Congress, giving the South Africanbacked
propaganda outfit another opportunity that year to confer with their British
sister organization FARI, represented by the three FARI Board members Crozier,
Moss and Amery. As we have seen, the Monde Moderne team had already met
Crozier earlier at the beginning of 1976 at the AESP's Charlemagne Grand Dinner
and Chapter Assembly when the PIO duo of de Bonvoisin and Bougerol were also in
attendance.
At the December Congress, not only could the Monde Moderne team and the
FARI group compare notes, they could also talk directly to their South African
paymasters: the most prominent diplomatic representatives at the CEDI Congress
were none other than the South African Secretary of Foreign Affairs Brand Fourie,
and South African Ambassador to France Mr. Hating, who had taken over Cercle -
Pretoria coordination after the departure of Mr. Burger, his predecessor.
The Cercle's representation would, of course, not have been complete without
some members from Germany. We have already noted the presence of Otto von
Habsburg and Hans-Joachim von Merkatz as Chairmen of the Congress; also
attending was Strauss's right-hand man in the Cercle, Count Hans Huyn. The 1976
Congress therefore again brought together the Cercle's 1980s triumvirate - Violet,
Crozier and Huyn.
Another future "leading German member of the Cercle" at the 1976 CEDI
Congress was Franz Josef Bach. A qualified engineer, Bach later studied political
science at the University of Virginia in 1949 before attending the German Diplomatic
Service school in 1950-51, being posted to Sydney from 1951 to 1954 and to
Washington from 1954 to 1957. After returning to Germany, he would fill the posts
of Head of Foreign Office Affairs in the Chancellor's Office in 1957 and ministerial
adviser in 1958 before running Adenauer's private office from 1959 to 1961.
Returning to foreign duty, Bach would serve as General Consul in Hong Kong until
1964 when he was posted to Teheran as German Ambassador until 1968. Between
1969 and 1972, Bach then represented Aachen – Charlemagne's city - as a CDU MP
in the German Parliament. In 1975, Bach would be interviewed by Senator Church's
committee investigating bribes paid by aviation manufacturer Northrop. By the late
1970s, Bach would work closely with Crozier in taking over the practical
organization of Cercle meetings from Jean Violet (276).
Three other Germans of note attended the 1976 CEDI Congress: Dr. Richard
Jaeger, Vice-President of the German Parliament, Dr. Fritz Pirkl, Chairman of the
CSU's Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung from its creation in 1967 until his death in 1993, and
Major-General Heinz Hückelheim from Cologne. Hückelheim had an interesting
tie-in to the Belgian Gladio network; as a colonel of the German military security
service, the Militärischer Abschirmdienst MAD, in the 1950s, Hückelheim had
been the German partner of André Moyen in his clandestine campaigns against
Communism (277).
The Italian participants at the CEDI Congress were characterized by their
links to the world of Catholic high finance. One Italian Congress participant we've
already met before was Carlo Pesenti of Italcementi and Italmobiliare, financer of the
Cercle, the AESP and the sniffer plane project. Along with Pesenti at the CEDI
Congress was another Catholic financier, Orazio Bagnasco. Both Pesenti and
Bagnasco would later be central figures in the Banco Ambrosiano just before its
collapse in 1982.
Amongst the hundred or so participants from Spain were three Cercle
contacts. CEDI founder Alfredo Sanchez-Bella was one of the co-chairs for the
Congress; also attending was one of the Cercle's candidates in the Spanish elections,
Cruz Martinez Esteruelas, President of the Union Democratica del Pueblo Espanol
within Fraga Iribarne's Alianza Popular. The CEDI Congress was an opportunity for
Martinez Esteruelas to meet Franz Josef Strauss's foreign policy representative,
Hans Huyn; over the next twelve months, Strauss would channel some DM 100,000
to Martinez Esteruelas for his election campaigns. Besides this German-Spanish
axis, the French Monde Moderne team of Vigneau and Leguèbe also met an old
friend, Colonel Juan Manuel Sancho Sofranis, a Spanish military representative at
the 1974 Paris launch of the Centre d'Etudes du Monde Moderne.
Another Cercle election candidate - this time Portuguese - attending the CEDI
Congress was Kaulza de Arriaga, former Commander-in-Chief of Portuguese Forces
in Mozambique, who had been arrested eighteen months earlier for his involvement
in the coup planned for March 1975. Arriaga would also benefit from considerable
largesse channelled through Strauss over the coming years. During his spell in
Mozambique, Arriaga had liaised closely with millionaire Jorge Jardim, another
Portuguese participant at this 1976 CEDI Congress.
Jardim, "former king of the Portuguese colonists", was the secret backer and
leader of the Uniao Nacional Africana de Rombezia (UNAR), a splinter group from
FRELIMO whose goal was to set up a buffer state between Tanzania and Zambese to
block FRELIMO's advance - Jardim would be closely linked to the murder of
FRELIMO leader Walter Mondlane. Jardim had set up "counter-gangs" in
Mozambique; together with leading counter-insurgency expert Captain Alpoim
Calvao, later one of the commanders of the Aginter Press/Spinola underground army
ELP, Jardim had created the Flechas, black mercenaries under white leadership who
operated from Jardim's estates on the Mozambique/Malawi border. Besides his
Aginter Press/ELP contacts, Jardim was also active on an international level to
support Spinola's plans for a coup, attending the SDECE's Sheraton Hotel
conference for the putschists in September 1975. After Machel's victory in
Mozambique, Jardim fled to Gabon and became a major source of finance for
RENAMO, the Mozambiquan counter-revolutionary guerrilla force set up by the
Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (278).
The Cercle's transatlantic contacts were also represented at the CEDI
Congress. Eighteen months earlier, the ISC had set up their American offshoot, the
Washington ISC; Adolph W. Schmidt, a member of the US Committee of the ISC,
would attend the 1976 CEDI Congress. Schmidt would go on to serve on the
Advisory Council of the NSIC at least until 1984. A second American participant of
note was Crosby Kelly, the American industrialist originally intended as a source of
seed capital for the sniffer plane project. A third American participant was Charles
T. Mayer of the Foreign Policy Discussion Group, a group about which little is
known. The FPDG must however have continued contact with the Cercle complex, as
Mayer would later be invited to attend a 1989 Cercle meeting with Pinay, Huyn,
Crozier and Amery, all present at the 1976 CEDI Congress.
A final participant of note at the CEDI Congress was Alfons Dalma, Director
of News and Information for Austrian radio and television, who had represented
Austria on CEDI's International Council since at least 1972. Dalma may have
discussed the Washington ISC with Schmidt at the CEDI Congress. Dalma had met
two WISC Committee members one month after WISC's foundation in March 1975,
when he attended the April 1975 Bilderberg conference in Cesme, Turkey, with
George Ball and Zbigniew Brzezinski of WISC, Sir Frederic Bennett of NAFF and
future President of FARI, and two Cercle beneficiaries, Franz Josef Strauss and
Margaret Thatcher.
This CEDI Congress allows us to draw certain conclusions about the Cercle's
operations. In 1976, there would be two opportunities for the main Cercle
propagandists to meet; the ISC/FARI team, the Monde Moderne staff and the PIO
duo of de Bonvoisin and Bougerol would all meet at both the AESP Chapter
Assembly in February and the CEDI Congress in December at a critical time for their
respective operations. Without being able to deduce any indication of mutual
assistance, these meetings do indicate the close communication between the
national groups that made up the Cercle complex. The few internal documents from
the ISC, the AESP, the ISP and CEDI that are available can only afford a glimpse of
their international networking. Despite the lack of documents from other years,
there can be no doubt that this coalition of top right-wing politicians and covert
operators held meetings several times a year throughout the 1970s. This glimpse in
1976 and another in 1979-80 may be fragmentary, but they certainly show only the
tip of the iceberg.
1977 -1980
ELECTION FEVER
A SHIELD FOR THE IRON LADY
The late 1970s would be a period of intense activity for the London end of the
Cercle complex. During this period, Crozier and his associates concentrated on two
main projects: setting up Shield, the advisory group on subversion which personally
counselled Margaret Thatcher, and the creation of an international private
intelligence service which came to be known as the Sixth International or 6I (sixeye).
As we have seen, Shield was created in March 1976 by the inner core of NAFF
members: Crozier, Moss, McWhirter, Gouriet and Lord De L'Isle, all present at the
March 1976 dinner with Margaret Thatcher. Crozier records: "Thereafter we had
many meetings, either at the Thatchers' London home .. or in her room in the House
[of Commons]. Later they continued, usually at Chequers, but sometimes at
Downing Street. Mostly we met alone. In the early days, however, I was often
accompanied by a well-known (some would say notorious) ex-senior man in Britain's
Secret Intelligence Service [MI6], Nicholas Elliott" (279). In MI6 Counter-Intelligence
with postings to Berne, Istanbul, London and Beirut, it was Elliott who had
confronted Philby in Beirut in 1963, precipitating his flight to the Soviet Union (280).
As described in later chapters, Elliott would go on to play a key rôle not only in
Shield, but also in the Cercle's international private intelligence service, 6I, that
Crozier would create in 1977.
As for Shield's structure, Crozier records that Shield's providers were made up
of Crozier, former MI6 officers Elliott and Stephen Hastings and Harry Sporborg, a
Norwegian-born former Deputy Head of the wartime Special Operations Executive
then working for Hambro's Bank, the third SOE veteran within the Cercle together
with Tennant and Amery. "With the resources of the Institute for the Study of
Conflict at our disposal, we produced some twenty papers on various aspects of
subversion. The researchers were Peter Shipley and Douglas Eden. The papers were
made available immediately to Margaret Thatcher and, on request, to other members
of the committee on the 'receiving' side. Apart from Mrs Thatcher, there were three of
them, all members of her shadow cabinet: Lord Carrington, William (later Lord)
Whitelaw, and Sir Keith Joseph [responsible for foreign, domestic and economic
affairs]" (281). Thatcher's Shadow Minister for Northern Ireland – and intended
intelligence supremo - Airey Neave and his deputy John Biggs-Davison were of
course other shadow cabinet members intimately linked to Shield.
"The work of the Shield committee fell into two broad categories. One was
strategic: it concerned the state of Britain's existing counter-subversion machinery,
proposals for fundamental change, and contingency planning for a major crisis - a
widespread paralysis caused by political strikes and riots ... The other category was
tactical: to provide short, factual and accurate research papers on the Communist
connections of Labour MPs and trades unionists in the increasingly critical
industrial scene, especially in late 1978 and early 1979" (282).
As regards the latter category for Shield actions, the initiator of Shield, former
MI6 officer and Tory MP Stephen Hastings also gave a parliamentary platform for the
counter-subversion lobby's charges concerning Labour MPs' Communist
connections. In 1977, Hastings relaunched the Frolik allegations that Labour MPs
had spied for the Czech intelligence service. In 1976, veteran espionage journalist
and MI5 friend Chapman Pincher had sent Hastings tape recordings of interviews
with Frolik who reiterated his charges. This contact between Pincher and Hastings
was not surprising; Pincher had been the guest speaker at a NAFF seminar on
subversion organized in August 1975 before NAFF's formal creation. In December
1977, under Parliamentary privilege, Hastings named the Labour MPs whom Frolik
accused of having worked for the Czech intelligence service; in January 1978,
Hastings stepped up the pressure by sending to Prime Minister Callaghan a copy of
a letter from Frolik to Josef Josten (a member of NAFF like Hastings), in which Frolik
said he was afraid to visit Britain because the Czech intelligence service had British
friends in high places (283).
As for the first category for Shield actions, "Shield's first move was to
commission an extensive report on the current state of subversion and on the
existing official agencies that were supposed to handle the problem. The report,
which ran to about 100 pages, was drafted by a former senior member of the Secret
Intelligence Service: an old and trusted friend of Stephen Hastings and myself. After
revisions by Stephen, Nicholas and me, the final draft was ready in May 1977" (284).
The most likely candidate for this anonymous author is NAFF National Council
member G. K. Young, former Deputy Director of MI6. Having failed to take over the
Monday Club in 1973, Young had launched the private army Unison in 1974 with
Ross McWhirter and two former MI6 colleagues, Anthony Cavendish and Colonel
Ronald Wareing, the latter joining the FARI Council with Crozier, Moss et al in 1976.
The direct line to Mrs Thatcher that Shield provided allowed disgruntled
former MI5 or MI6 officers to condemn what they saw as the previous fatal
weakening of Britain's counter-subversion effort. IRD had been cut back in the late
1960s; the ISC would step into the breach following its creation in 1969-70. The
completion in May 1977 of this first Shield report on the need for a reorganization
and reinforcement of the official counter-subversion effort coincided with the
decision of Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen finally to close down IRD.
According to Crozier, this was at least in part motivated by the close links between
IRD and the ISC which had hit the headlines a year previously. In the eyes of the
counter-subversion lobby, the decision smacked of treachery: "Thus, the Labour
Government had destroyed the only active instrument of counter-subversion in the
United Kingdom ... as a sop to the Left. The KGB had won, possibly when it least
expected victory" (285).
The radical tone of Shield's report can be judged from Crozier's analysis of the
challenge Shield sought to combat: "The problem was subversion: the deliberate
undermining of the State and society. Subversion is an insidious man-made disease,
a creeping paralysis in which the State's defensive organs are invaded and
neutralized, until they cease to function: the political equivalent to AIDS. In Britain,
as in other affected countries, the ultimate aim was to turn the country into a
'people's democracy' on the East European model. ... In Britain in particular the
problem had become more threatening. The main reason was simply that the trades
unions and the Labour Party had been largely taken over by the subversive Left.
Many other areas of life were affected: the schools and universities, the media, the
Churches" (286). Crozier further states that Shield's actions were "a question of
survival in a nation in which the dominant rôle, increasingly, was played by extreme
Left Labour MPs and constituency managers and by trades unions whose long-term
goal ... was to transform Britain into another East Germany or Czechoslovakia"
(287). The Shield report concluded that MI6 was "basically in good shape" but that
MI5 was not, due to its charter restricting surveillance (officially) to threats of "the
overthrow of the government by unlawful means". "In that initial paper, therefore, we
had proposed an urgent redefinition of the terms of reference of MI5, along with
fresh directives to both the Services enabling them not merely to report on
subversion, but to go over to the counter-offensive. For MI6, too, the counteroffensive
angle was emphasized" (288).
Whilst work progressed on the review of Britain's counter-subversion effort,
Shield also turned its attention to reporting on current subversive threats. "Between
May 1977 and July 1979, Shield produced no fewer than fifteen strategic papers,
recommending counter-action to meet the subversive challenge and defeat it" (289).
"One, dated April 1978, gave details of joint Labour-Communist activity ... in
November of that year, we identified forty-eight Labour Party prospective
parliamentary candidates with extreme Left views and connections ... on 15 January
[1979], a Shield paper traced the origin of the [lorry drivers'] strike to Alex Kitson,
General Secretary of the Scottish Commercial Motormen's Union ... well known for
his pro-Soviet sympathies ... on 17 January, a further paper analysed the potential
consequences, which included the possible use of troops for essential services ... In a
further paper, on 29 January, Shield dwelt on the extremist influences within the
National Union of Public Employees ... In a longer paper dated 12 February 1979,
Shield looked at the strike policy of the Communist Party ... In another paper, dated
26 February 1979, we gave details of various Labour groups which had been
campaigning for the overthrow of the Shah of Iran" (290).
Crozier also felt that Thatcher's confidence needed strengthening so as to
"cultivate and consolidate a public image of clear-headedness and resolution. To this
end, at one of our private Flood Street meetings, I handed her a programme of
'Psychological Action' ... a practical technique originally formalized by my close
French friend, Maître Jean Violet ... What I had done was to borrow Violet's tried and
tested principles, and adapt them to current British needs". This programme of
'Psychological Action' focused on identifying people's needs and fears, and on that
basis developing questions to be inserted into political speeches. Crozier notes that
"many, though not all, of the points made surfaced in her speeches and those of her
followers in the run-up to the next elections" (291).
As the industrial action of the "winter of discontent" under Wilson's successor
James Callaghan intensified, Shield revised their initial paper on the British
counter-subversion effort and in a "Mechanism Paper" dated May 1978 proposed the
creation of a "Counter-Subversion Executive" "not only to counter anti-British
subversive activity both in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the world, by
clandestine means both offensive and defensive, but also actively to conduct a
clandestine offensive against Soviet power" (292). Several weeks later, Crozier,
Elliott, Hastings and Sporborg met with Thatcher, Whitelaw, Joseph and Carrington
to discuss the Counter-Subversion Executive. Difficulties arose as to the
administrative accountability of the proposed CSE; Lord Carrington objected to
Crozier's suggestion of housing it within the Foreign Office and to Thatcher's
suggestion of accommodating it within the Cabinet Office or in Downing Street.
Sporborg then wrote to Hastings, Crozier and Elliott to suggest that the CSE should
be a secret appendage of MI6, thus ensuring the necessary confidentiality for the
proposed new body.
Shield's view of the necessity for such a body was reiterated in a Shield
strategic paper written in June 1979 "by a senior officer of MI5 who had just retired".
The former MI5 man described MI5 as "an intellectually weakened organization no
longer prepared to take Marxist-Leninist influences seriously. Too much time and
resources were devoted to the trailing of foreign spies ... and too little to domestic
subversion" (293). The perspectives for the creation of the proposed CSE as a remedy
to such perceived failings of MI5 had been given a boost by Thatcher's election
victory in May 1979, but ultimately Lord Carrington's hostility to the countersubversion
lobby could not be overcome, and in a July 1979 meeting at Chequers
with the new Prime Minister, the Shield team was informed that Shield's efforts were
no longer necessary and that the CSE would not be created. Although the rejection
of the CSE was a blow to the Shield group, it was not fatal: since early 1977, Crozier
had been running a private international secret service called the Sixth International
or 6I; as Crozier records, "the London end of the 6I simply took over Shield's work."
PRIVATE SPY – SIX EYE
The initiative for formalizing Cercle contacts into a private secret service came
in early 1977, a year or so into Shield's operations. As Crozier records: "Something
bigger than Shield was needed to deal with the wider threat from the Soviet Union
and its worldwide subversive network" (294). At the time, the Western countersubversion
effort was in disarray: the IRD would be formally closed down in April-
May 1977, and the American intelligence community was still reeling from the
exposure of the Watergate scandal and the four hundred posts shed by the CIA after
the appointment of Admiral Stansfield Turner. Crozier voiced the counter-subversion
lobby's point of view in saying: "This catastrophic decision completed the selfemasculation
of American intelligence" (295).
"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 joining us; Jean Violet was with us in
spirit" (296).
Crozier does not identify the host of the first 6I meeting, although one likely
candidate is SOE veteran Sir Peter Tennant of Barclays', the co-Chairman of the
Cercle who, only two months before this first 6I meeting, had attended the December
1976 CEDI Congress in Madrid alongside Crozier, Moss and Amery from Britain,
Pinay, Violet and Vallet from France, Damman and Vankerkhoven of the AESP, de
Bonvoisin and Bougerol of PIO, Vigneau and Leguèbe from Le Monde Moderne and
Adolph W. Schmidt from the US Committee for the ISC. Other possible hosts for the
6I could be either Harry Sporborg of Hambro's Bank or G. K. Young of investment
bankers Kleinwort Benson. Crozier goes on to identify the third Briton as Nicholas
Elliott, but conceals the German's identity with the following words: "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 firstrate
books" - all of which is a perfect fit for Count Hans Huyn, who had also attended
the 1976 CEDI Congress.
As for the Americans, the most notable participant at the 6I meeting was
General Vernon 'Dick' Walters, who served as Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence (under William Colby, himself a Cercle guest) from 1972 to 1976, retiring
shortly before this first 6I meeting. Fluent in six European languages as a result of
his childhood in the UK and France, Walters would become a veteran coupmaster
involved in most of the CIA’s dirtiest operations – Iran, Italy, Vietnam, Chile, Angola,
Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Fiji, often working with other Cercle
contacts. As American Military Attaché in Teheran, Walters had worked with Kermit
Roosevelt and G. K. Young in the 1953 Operation Ajax to overthrow Iranian Prime
Minister Mossadegh. From 1967 to 1972, when the Cercle and AESP were being set
up, Walters was Military Attaché in Paris responsible for the Benelux region.
The three remaining American participants at the 1977 founding meeting of
the 6I were "two able and diligent Congressional staffers, and the Viennese born
representative of a big Belgian company". Although no definite identification of this
trio has yet been possible, one should note the considerable assistance provided to
Crozier over the previous two years by Robert Fearey's Senate Internal Security Sub-
Committee which had invited Crozier to testify at terrorism hearings in May 1975. In
March 1976, Fearey then chaired a major international conference on terrorism
whose speakers included Crozier, Moss, Wilkinson and Horchem from Germany.
Three contenders for the two anonymous US Congressional staffers emerge
from Crozier's later work in the early 1990s within the International Freedom
Federation, which included Huyn, Horchem and several other 6I members, described
below. According to his IFF biography, "Herbert Romerstein investigated Soviet
espionage and influence operations for eighteen years as a professional staff member
of the US House of Representatives' Committee on Internal Security and the
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. From 1983 until 1989 he was a senior
policy adviser for the United States Information Agency, where he was Director to the
Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures and Disinformation". In his 1993 memoirs,
Crozier recalls that Romerstein was "one of the leading American official specialists
on the Soviet intelligence system, whom I have known for many years".
The IFF would also include two other American contacts of Crozier's with
Congressional careers. From 1967 to 1976, Sven Kraemer served as an arms
control expert on the National Security Council under Johnson, Nixon and Ford; we
then lose sight of him until 1979 by which time he "held senior staff positions in the
Congressional branch of government, working with Senator John Tower (R-Tex) and
the Republican Policy Committee of the US Senate (1979-80)". He would return to
the NSC in 1981, serving as Reagan's Director of Arms Control until 1987, during
which period he would be one of Crozier's regular contacts in the White House; he
also served as Program Director of Barnett’s NSIC. If Kraemer started his
Congressional career before 1979, he may the second of the 6I's Congressional
staffers. Alternatively, there is David Holliday, who would switch in 1976 from being
Capitol Correspondent of KWTV Channel 9 (CBS) to serving as "Administrative
Assistant to Governor David L. Boren of Oklahoma and between 1978 to 1985 as
Chief Assistant for Legislative Affairs to Senator Boren. Between 1985 and 1987, Mr.
Holliday served as a Professional Staff Member of the US Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence ... Between 1987 and 1991, Mr. Holliday was the Special Assistant to
the Chairman and Official Spokesman of the US Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence" . Holliday himself wrote: "During the years that I spent with the Senate
Intelligence Committee, the area that I was primarily responsible for was covert
action. I got very much involved with that subject" (297).
At the inaugural 6I meeting, Crozier proposed to Elliott, Huyn, Walters and
the other participants to create "a Private Sector Operational Intelligence agency,
beholden to no government, but at the disposal of allied or friendly governments for
certain tasks which, for one reason or another, they were no longer able to tackle. I
must make it clear that 'these tasks did not include any acts of armed force or
physical coercion' " (298).
The tasks of the 6I would rather be in the field of intelligence-gathering,
psychological warfare and covert funding; Crozier summarizes the tasks of the 6I as
follows: "to provide reliable intelligence in areas which governments were barred
from investigating, either through recent legislation (as in the US) or because
political circumstances made such inquiries difficult or potentially embarrassing; to
conduct secret counter-subversion operations in any country in which such actions
were deemed feasible" (299). The future rôle of the 6I in circumventing domestic
restrictions on intelligence operations and in coordinating private sector countersubversion
efforts is stressed by Crozier: "We planned both to initiate secret
operations in our various countries, and to coordinate the existing overt actions of
the many private groups involved in the resistance to Soviet propaganda and Active
measures ... Unlike existing agencies, we would not be hampered by prohibitions on
functioning in our own or Allied countries" (300).
The name of the Sixth International or "six-eye" (following the five Communist
or Trotskyist internationals) was suggested some months later by "a distinguished
Argentine associate of ours, a former Justice Minister (and anti-Peronist) named
Jacques Perriaux" (301). Elliott and Crozier undertook to find the funding necessary
for the 6I's operations from industrial sponsors; an initial estimate of $5 million a
year was suggested, although as Crozier notes: "our initial estimate of financial
needs was too high: not for the requirements, but for the realistic limits of generosity
on the part of the necessarily small number of sources we approached" (302). "At the
height of the 6I's activities in the mid-1980s, we were spending around $1 million a
year" (303).
As for the 6I's members, Crozier records that its network of agents and
informants grew swiftly. "The main requirement for recruitment was "access". We
needed well-placed men and women, with access to leaders, to intelligence and
security services, to selected politicians, to editors of potentially useful publications.
All that was needed was for those selected from the contacts each had built up
before and after the birth of the 6I, to be conscious of our existence and our goals. ...
In addition to our own network, we gained access to a number of existing networks,
both private and official. In Germany, we had three prime sources. One was the exdiplomat
turned politician, Count Hans Huyn, a close friend of the Bavarian leader
Franz Josef Strauss ... Another was the ebullient, ever-cheerful Hans Josef 'Jupp'
Horchem ... The third source was one of the senior intelligence officials who had
resigned in disgust when Chancellor Brandt emasculated the former Gehlen office
(304). I shall call him Hans von Machtenberg. With him, into early retirement, he
took a substantial network of agents, whose identities he had refused to disclose to
his new political masters. Hans lived near Pullach, in Bavaria, headquarters of the
BND. There, with the approval and backing of Strauss, he secured financial backing
to continue his work, in the private sector ... I invited him to join our directing
committee (which we called our 'Politburo'). Thereafter, he received our bulletin and
a selection of our secret reports. In return, I received his regular intelligence reports
in German, with full discretion to use them, unattributably" (305).
Hans Christoph Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg had been an
Information Evaluator with the BND before leaving to set up a private intelligence
service within Strauss's CSU party. Von Stauffenberg's network liaised closely with
former BND special operative Hans Langemann, head of the State Protection
Department within Strauss's Bavarian Interior Ministry, and as such the top link
man for the security and intelligence services. The technical adviser for von
Stauffenberg's secret service was Langemann's former boss in the Strategic Service
of the BND, retired Brigadier-General Wolfgang Langkau, who had resigned in 1968
when Wessel abolished the Strategic Service due to Langkau's overt right-wing
sympathies. Much of von Stauffenberg's information came from Langemann, who
received over DM 300,000 from von Stauffenberg between 1977 and 1982.
Langemann in turn used an intelligence slush fund, "Positive Protection of the
Constitution", to finance a registered charity, the Arbeitskreis für das Studium
internationaler Fragen (Working Group for the Study of International Issues) which
supported von Stauffenberg's group. 100 copies of each von Stauffenberg report were
printed: recipients included Strauss and Gerold Tandler, Bavarian Interior Minister -
Langemann's political bosses (306).
The CSU not only had its private intelligence-gathering agency run by Hans
von Stauffenberg, but also used the CSU's political foundation, the Hanns-Seidel-
Stiftung, as its external covert action arm. The Chairman of the Board of Directors
since 1975 and Director of the International Department was Archduke Otto. HSS
operations were truly international: active in pro-Contra fundraising and
propaganda, exporting intelligence equipment to Idi Amin, supporting Mobutu in
Africa, diverting state development aid from Germany into right-wing party coffers in
Ecuador. HSS activities notably accelerated after 1977 when the foundation
obtained a massive increase in funding from the State: its grant from tax-payers'
money went from DM 1.9 million in 1977 to DM 13 million in 1980 (307). The scale
of HSS parapolitical operations can be judged by a report, circulated amongst the
CSU leadership and believed by them to stem from the BND, on the CIA's operative
interest in the HSS:
"23rd March, 1979.
Personal and confidential: recipient's eyes only.
CIA operative interest in the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung.
1. Initially unconnected indications of CIA focuses for intelligence-gathering
on the Federal Republic of Germany have confirmed that the Konrad-
Adenauer-Stiftung [CDU foundation] and above all the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung
are of operative interest to the American agency. Up until now the Friedrich-
Naumann-Stiftung [FDP foundation] and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung [SPD
foundation] have not been mentioned.
2. The interest in the HSS is due to indications that have led the CIA
management to believe that the HSS is active directly on behalf of the
Bavarian Prime Minister both for foreign intelligence-gathering as well as for
the execution of quasi-diplomatic or clandestine measures (covert action*) [*in
English in the original].
It appears that the CIA believes that some of the HSS representatives abroad
are "private intelligence gatherers for the CSU" who "can only be distinguished
from the BND residents by their lower level of typical intelligence tradecraft".
The CIA attributes these "para-intelligence service" and "covert action"
activities (political and financial exertion of influence, "business mediation
useful for the party including arms trading") to the HSS in the following
countries: first Namibia, Zaire and Nigeria, then Morocco, Togo, Greece,
Portugal, Turkey, Manila, Hong Kong/Peking, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, finally
the United States itself and "South America". For the business mediation,
alleged HSS links to Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohn, Krauss-Maffei, Airbus
Industries and companies in the foodstuffs and pharmaceutical sectors are
supposed.
3. According to all appearances, the CIA reckons on systematic intelligence
tasking by the MfS [East German intelligence] and the KGB against HSS
representatives (and their offices) abroad, and [the CIA] sees here a potentially
rich source for tips for their own counter-intelligence service working against
the Eastern Bloc agencies" (308).
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGION
A major activity for the Cercle complex from 1975 onwards was a relaunch of
the Cercle/AESP's 1973 'Peace without Frontiers' appeal to collect prominent
signatures on the theme of free movement of persons and ideas. Damman details the
uses for the thousand signatories to the Academy's appeal in his Note 229:
"This group of a thousand people can constitute a force if we manage to use it
wisely. The organization and the use of this force should be studied by a
brain-trust like the one organized at Mr. Vallet's house which dealt with the
problems facing South Africa ... Europe must convince America that beyond
the nuclear strike-force, the ideological weapon is more powerful if we have
the means to use it ... The funding for an ideological campaign represents one
tenth of a percent of the enormous budget allocated to nuclear and
conventional weapons ... A spiritual alliance between Europe and America
must find means more powerful than those available for the Soviet strategy of
propaganda. We must make ourselves masters of the media in the free world"
(309).
The negotiations in Helsinki which included Basket III, the human rights
chapter, had culminated in July 1975 with the signature of the Final Act.
Nonetheless, the Cercle complex was sceptical about the Soviet Union's willingness
to respect its commitments. Crozier records that a senior KGB officer felt that the
Helsinki Agreements were "one of the Soviet Union's greatest triumphs since World
War II" (310). The complex therefore pursued the issue of human rights in the mid to
late 1970s. In a cassette message to Damman dated 16th October, 1975, Violet
referred to the campaign as part of the Academy's programme for the coming year:
"The Soviet Union had tried to hurl a spear at the heart of Western Europe,
but, whilst it was in the air, the West succeeded in changing the spear into a
boomerang ... if, by 1977, the Soviet Union does not want to liberalize its
regime, it will have to confront a growing pile of dossiers on human rights
violations. And all of this is due to the active campaign for free movement ...
we must talk of the release of political prisoners ... that is an outline of the
programme for the Academy for the beginning of 1976" (311).
In 1977-78, the Cercle intensified its campaign against the Soviet Union on
the theme of human rights violations, coordinating its actions as in the past between
the four main pillars of the Cercle's European network - Belgium, Britain, France
and Germany; indeed, the coordinated campaign may well have been one of the first
operations of Crozier's newly founded 6I. The first indication of this relaunch is given
in a notation in Damman's diary dated 6th January, 1977 which reads:
"7.19 am: Quartier Leopold station, departure for Zürich. Arrival 1.59 pm -
Hôtel Baur au Lac. 5 pm: meeting with Jean Violet and Alain de Villegas.
Dolder Dinner - plan prepared for Operation H2 [Helsinki 2]" (312).
This meeting came just before the conference in Belgrade that was to study
the implementation of human rights under the Helsinki II treaty. The Academy
launched a mailshot campaign attacking the Soviet Union for human rights abuses:
on 3rd April, 1977, Damman noted in his diary: "Start of Operation H2, the first
letters have been sent" (313). Damman's diary also records that part of the campaign
involved the AESP buying full-page advertising space in Le Figaro for its appeal. In
May 1977, the ISC relayed the AESP campaign with the publication of a Conflict
Study entitled Human Rights - Soviet Theory and Practice.
Another angle to the complex's human rights attack on the Soviet Union was
to mobilize right-wing Christian groups on the issue of the repression of religious
worship in the Soviet Union. This was of course familiar territory for Violet and
Dubois who had worked with Catholic networks behind the Iron Curtain in the
1960s for the SDECE. The complex's activity was both intense and influential:
Damman's diary for 1st October, 1977 records that AESP representative Jacques
Jonet was received by the Pope, no doubt in connection with the complex's
campaigns. Besides the Helsinki II operation, the Cercle also ran a specific religious
campaign called the "Bible-prisoners" action, referred to in Violet's note of 31st
March, 1976 about the Cercle's cash crisis, quoted above. Further details of this
campaign emerge from another entry in Damman's diary dated 31st October, 1977:
"Vincent van den Bosch has announced a demonstration for Saturday, 10th
December at 2pm, to be held in front of the Soviet Embassy. Free circulation
of the Bible, freedom of religion and thought, re-opening of churches, release
of prisoners - organized by Solidarité Chrétienne Internationale (international
committee for freedom of conscience and religion)" (314).
Besides running SCI, Vincent van den Bosch, Secretary-General of CEDI, was
a central figure in Damman's complex of groups, serving as a member of the AESP
Permanent Delegation and as Secretary-General of MAUE - and also having met
Crozier twice in 1976 at the February AESP Chapter Assembly and again at the
December CEDI Congress. The campaign for religious freedom in the Soviet Union,
like the general human rights campaign, was coordinated between three of the main
pillars of the complex: Belgium, Britain and Germany. To support the
demonstrations and mailing actions undertaken by the AESP in late 1977, the ISC
brought out a Conflict Study on the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference in
January 1978, The CPC - Human Rights and Religion in the USSR.
The AESP and the ISC were not the only Cercle associates to support these
campaigns; the Cercle's German friends also contributed. As we have seen, the
German pillars of the Cercle throughout the 1970s had been Strauss's CSU,
represented by Cercle/6I member Count Hans Huyn, and the Swiss group ISP, run
by AESP partner Karl-Friedrich Grau. In late 1977, the Cercle's German friends set
up a specialized group to support the campaigns on religious freedom being run by
the ISC and the AESP – a German equivalent to the earlier British-based
CSRC/Keston College.
This new group was the Brüsewitz Centre, a "Christian" group whose aim
was to "publicize human rights violations and particularly the violations of the
freedom of worship in the so-called German Democratic Republic". Founded in
October 1977, the Brüsewitz Centre was named after Oskar Brüsewitz, an East
German priest who burned himself alive in August 1976; the priest's widow tried in
vain to prevent the group using his name. The founding body for the Brüsewitz
Centre was the Christlich-Paneuropäische Studienwerk (Christian Paneuropean
Study Group), itself founded in July 1977 and chaired by Otto von Habsburg's
teenage daughter, Walburga von Habsburg (315). The Brüsewitz Centre's Board
included several well-known faces: Habsburg, Huyn and von Merkatz, all three early
associates of the AESP. On the Board of the Brüsewitz Centre, we also find the
Czech exile Ludek Pachmann, whom we have already met as a speaker for Grau's
ISP in 1975-76 along with Habsburg and Huyn. Habsburg, von Merkatz and
Pachmann of the Brüsewitz Board would all also serve on the Board of Amnesty
International's right-wing rival, the IGfM/ISHR.
The Brüsewitz Centre's Board would also include five other Germans who will
crop up in later Cercle operations in the 1980s. The first of these was Hans
Filbinger, member of the PEU Council and CDU Regional Prime Minister of Baden-
Württemberg from 1966 to 1978, when he was forced to resign following a scandal
about his past as a military judge in Hitler's Navy; he died in 2007. In July 1977,
four months before the creation of the Brüsewitz Centre, Filbinger had been one of
the founding members of the Ludwig-Frank-Stiftung, a far-right pressure group of
German politicians and businessmen that organized conferences together with
fascist parties such as the German NPD and Italian MSI. Based in Munich, the LFS
set as its aim "to resist the dangers of a Popular Front and Eurocommunism". LFS
activities concentrated on right-wing trades unions, and it had close links to the far
Right including the Comitato Tricolore degli Italiani nel Mondo, a PEU affiliate close
to the Italian MSI. The LFS journal was another channel for anti-Socialist
disinformation, e.g. "There are people in Bonn who are financed by the East. One of
them is Mr. Brandt". Many German associates of the Cercle complex would be Board
members of the LFS, amongst them Habsburg. The LFS's inaugural international
conference in February 1978 was attended by representatives of several groups close
to the Cercle complex: the Paneuropean Union, the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, the
Brüsewitz Centre, the IGfM and the IfD (described below).
The second of the five new faces on the Brüsewitz Board was also a cofounder
of the LFS, the Bavarian Heinrich Aigner. A CSU MP in the German
Parliament from 1957 to 1980, Aigner would represent the CSU in the European
Parliament throughout the 1980s; he died in 1988. A Chairman of the Bavarian PEU
section, Aigner also served as Board member and later Vice-President of the German
PEU section. In 1982 Aigner would visit Paraguay with Filbinger as part of an LFS
delegation paid for by the German Foreign Office. In 1983, Heinrich Aigner's son
Heinz, a CSU member and intimate of Strauss, founded the Institute for German-
Paraguayan Relations for the Promotion of Trade and Culture, a pro-Stroessner
propaganda group, which organized a planned visit by Stroessner to Germany in
1985. With Löwenthal, Heinz Aigner attended the 1981 joint WACL/CAUSA congress
in Asuncion, hosted by Stroessner and Pinochet.
The third Brüsewitz Board member of note was Dr Lothar Bossle, a member
of the Central Committee of German Catholics and one of the most vocal opponents
of liberation theology. Having been a socialist student activist in his youth, Bossle
would switch to the CDU in 1959; from 1960 to 1963, he worked at the German
Army School in Koblenz before being assisted by Filbinger in becoming Professor at
the Pedagogical High School in Lörrach. In 1972, Bossle was active within the Aktion
der Mitte group which used industry millions to publish election propaganda against
the socialist-liberal coalition ("One dose of socialism – from 1933 to 1945 – was quite
enough!"); in 1974, he was a co-founder of the pro-CSU campaign group KDK. In
1975, he courted controversy in calling Allende a "socialist Hitler" and then applying
the same treatment to Willy Brandt and Olof Palme. Bossle would become one of
Pinochet's most fervent supporters in Germany ("Chile is on the path to true
democracy" (316)) and a key contact person for the German group in Chile, Colonia
Dignidad, linked to the Chilean secret service DINA, which Bossle visited at least
four times.
Bossle's big break would come in 1977 when Strauss intervened with Culture
Minister Hans Maier to override the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg's
Academic Senate, Nomination Committee and Faculty Council and have Bossle
appointed as Professor of Sociology. His inauguration would be marred by massive
faculty protests, and Bossle's Sociology Department would later become notorious as
a 'degree mill', handing out doctorates to those who had the money and who shared
Bossle's world-view. In 1977, the year of his university appointment, Bossle joined
Filbinger and Aigner within the Ludwig-Frank-Stiftung and the Brüsewitz Centre.
Like fellow Brüsewitz Board members Habsburg, von Merkatz and Pachmann, Bossle
would serve in the IGfM, sitting on its Honorary Presidium. The Sociology Professor
would also sit on the Scientific Council of the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung and frequently
attend seminars organized by the International Conference for the Unification of the
Sciences, the Moonies' scientific front group (317).
More significantly, whilst at Würzburg, Bossle would act as Director and later
President of the Institut für Demokratieforschung (IfD, Institute for Democracy
Research), one of whose Board Members was Cercle member Count Hans Huyn. In
1977, the IfD published Huyn’s contribution to the Cercle’s post-Helsinki human
rights campaign, Menschenrechte und Selbstbestimmung (Human rights and selfdetermination).
A European Conference for Human Rights and Self-
Determination, no doubt another forum for the Cercle complex, had been founded
in Bern in 1974; Huyn had been a co-founder of the Conference and would later
serve as its Vice-President. In 1977, the IfD would also support the fledgling
Brüsewitz Centre, publishing the report Oskar Brüsewitz: Sein Protest – sein Tod –
seine Mahnung (Oskar Brüsewitz: his protest – his death – his warning). The IfD
would later publish a German version of Crozier's Conflict Study Surrogate Forces of
the Soviet Union which had originally appeared in February 1978, and Bossle would
organize a 1979 conference by Crozier at the Sociological Institute of Würzburg
University (318).
Bossle's IfD had extensive intelligence contacts - the IfD's scientific director
was prominent CDU MP and later Brüsewitz Board member Heinrich Lummer,
whose numerous Libyan trips were financed by the BND; the deputy scientific
director was former Major-General Gerd Helmut Komossa, from 1977 to 1980 head
of Germany's military security service, the MAD. A close associate of Bossle's on the
Board of the IfD was Prof. Dieter Blumenwitz, Professor of International and
Constitutional Law at Würzburg University from 1976 on, who shared Bossle's close
links with Chile and would reportedly visit Colonia Dignidad with Bossle. In 1979,
Blumenwitz was one of the co-authors with Crozier of Pinochet's Chilean
Constitution; in 1980, Blumenwitz intervened on behalf of Colonia Dignidad in legal
proceedings seeking to block Amnesty International's German section from
publishing allegations that the colony had served as a secret DINA torture centre
(319). Like many of the Cercle's German friends, Blumenwitz was also a Board
Member of the IGfM and an adviser to and author for the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung.
Another partner of Bossle's was Dr. Günter Rohrmoser, a frequent speaker for both
the LFS and the IfD, and one of the most active Board members of IGfM. An
Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Cologne University in the 1960s, Rohrmoser like
Bossle would be assisted in his academic career by Filbinger, who secured his
appointment as Professor of Social Philosophy at Hohenheim University in 1976
where he would serve for twenty years until becoming professor emeritus in 1996.
With connections like these, it is not surprising that the IfD attracted notoriety;
Bavarian SPD MP Dr. Heinz Kaiser tried unsuccessfully to raise questions about the
IfD in the Bavarian Parliament, speculating that it might be a covert BND training
centre.
To return to the Brüsewitz Centre, the fourth new face on the Board was CSU
MP Hans Hugo Klein, a former Development Minister (therefore in charge of
government grants to the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung), and a member with Grau and
Huyn of the Deutschland-Stiftung. In 1977, the same year the Brüsewitz Centre was
founded, Klein led a parliamentary delegation from the CDU/CSU on a trip to South
Africa; their conclusions, reported in Deutschland-Magazin, were that "South Africa
must not fall". Klein was also a member of the Bilderberg Group, later attending
their 1986 conference in Gleneagles. He would later serve as Vice-President of the
German Parliament from 1990 to 1994 and died in 1996.
The final new face on the Brüsewitz Board that we will meet again in the
1980s was Professor Nikolaus Lobkowicz, an Austrian aristocrat born in Prague
who would later acquire American nationality. A former President of Munich
University and later President of the Catholic University of Eichstätt bei München in
the 1980s, Lobkowicz was, with Rohrmoser, one of the most active Board Members
of IGfM where Lobkowicz was responsible for links with the "freedom fighters" group
Resistance International, of which he was a Member of Honour (320); he also served
as a member of the prize jury of the CSU's Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung.
Amongst the speakers for the Brüsewitz Centre, we find the television
presenter Gerhard Löwenthal, inseparable team-mate of Ludek Pachmann. In 1977,
the year the Brüsewitz Centre was founded, Löwenthal became President of the
Deutschland-Stiftung. That year, the Deutschland-Stiftung's Adenauer prize was
awarded to Otto von Habsburg; the guest speaker was Franz Josef Strauss. In 1980,
Crozier, Löwenthal, Pachmann and Huyn would work together in one of the Cercle's
most ambitious operations: the attempt to ensure "Victory for Strauss" in the 1980
Chancellorship elections. Another speaker for the Brüsewitz Centre was Brigadier-
General Heinz Karst, a speaker for the Swiss ISP in 1975-76 together with Habsburg,
Huyn and Pachmann of the Brüsewitz Board. Karst was also a member of the
Deutschland-Stiftung with Löwenthal, Grau, Huyn and Klein.
THE AESP IN 1977-78
As we have seen, the danger that the AESP would be forced to close its doors
as a result of the 1976 cash crisis was soon averted thanks to the provision of
minimum financing by Violet. By 1977, the Academy's finances were again healthy:
Damman's diaries from 1977 to 1979 make frequent mention of large cash transfers
from de Villegas to Damman. At this time, Elf was paying the bulk of the enormous
sums that would change hands for the sniffer plane project. As with the last-minute
rescue of the Academy, it is not possible to prove that the considerable funds
passing through Damman's hands from Violet and de Villegas came from the sniffer
plane project. The only evidence we have is Damman's diary; it is however eloquent
(321). On 7th January 1977, Damman's diary records the payment from de Villegas
of "one million plus two hundred thousand"; the next day, Damman received FS
4,000 from Jonet and 100,000 from Violet. The payments from de Villegas to
Damman would continue: in November, 200,000, in December, 50,000, in January
1978 75,000 (4/1/78) and in March 20,000. Aldo Mungo, Damman's deputy and
later author of an exposé on the AESP, claims that the unspecified currency is in fact
Swiss francs. In July and August 1978, de Villegas' contribution would be enormous:
315,000.
De Villegas' generosity in July and August 1978 may well have been
connected with the signature of a second contract between Elf and de Villegas'
sniffer plane company Fisalma on the 24th June 1978. The new contract stipulated
that Elf would pay Fisalma a further 500 million Swiss francs, half of which was due
upon signature. The contract gave Elf the right to inspect the internal workings of
the sniffer plane technology which would allow them finally to detect the fraud in
May 1979 after warnings from Alexandre de Marenches that the sniffer plane deal
had been set up by an "international swindler". However, before the house of cards
came crashing down, de Villegas provided the total funding for a new central
secretariat for the AESP and all of its satellite groups. The Cercle Charlemagne, as
the new offices were called, was equipped with its own printing press and a central
file of the 10,000 AESP contacts. However, the Cercle Charlemagne would not last;
inaugurated in April 1978 by Habsburg in the presence of Damman, de Villegas, de
Bonvoisin and many leading lights of the European Right, the centre burnt down
only five months later.
Despite this setback, the AESP would continue to expand throughout 1978.
On the 12th May that year, the AESP's earlier contacts with the International Society
of Wilton Park via its President, René-Louis Picard, were formalized by the creation
in Rome of CLEW, the European Liaison Committee of Associations of Friends of
Wilton Park. According to CLEW's statutes, four of the nine founding members were
members of the AESP: Violet, Sanchez Bella, Jonet and Picard, the latter being
appointed President of CLEW for a three year term (322).
Another internal AESP document gives us a clear picture of the Academy's
international outreach in 1978: an AESP membership list from the month of June,
headed "Strictly confidential document for the exclusive use of H.E. the Ambassador
of H.M. the King of Morocco" (323). The interconnection between the sniffer plane
project and the AESP are clearly demonstrated by this mention. On 29th May, 1978,
the King of Morocco was informed by Elf that "a new detection procedure" had
located two oil fields near Fez and Taza. On 21st June, 1978, Damman's diary
records that a dossier had been prepared for the Moroccan Ambassador; the
membership list undoubtedly stems from this dossier. From 19th to 30th August,
1978, de Villegas' sniffer planes carried out a comprehensive oil prospection
programme in Morocco.
The membership list shows that by 1978 the AESP had become a major nexus
point for the Cercle complex. The Academy's aim of absorbing the members of CEDI
and PEU had been achieved, as most of the international and national leaderships of
both organizations figured on the AESP list. Another recurring theme was the
Atlantic Alliance - the AESP now included the Presidents of the Atlantic Committees
in Italy, France, Germany and Belgium, and spokesmen from NATO and Radio Free
Europe. Former Allied combatants were represented by their international and
European associations, alongside Lt-Colonel Dr Jean-Victor Marique, the President
of the Brussels Reserve Officers organization and President of the AESP Military
Committee since at least November 1974 - interesting in the light of Bougerol's work
with reserve officers in the Brussels region from 1974 on.
The AESP's executive body, the Permanent Delegation, had also grown to now
include Huyn, van den Heuvel, Vallet and Valori, an indication of the closer
international ties the AESP now possessed. Besides this broadening of organizational
contacts, the AESP's Life Members also expanded to include several prominent
politicians, a reflection of the political influence the AESP wielded by 1978. Joining
the previous core of Life Members composed of Habsburg, Pinay, Violet, Father
Dubois, Sanchez Bella, Fraga Iribarne, Andreotti, Pesenti, Lombardo, von Merkatz
(who died in 1982) and Vanden Boeynants were politicians such as Jacques
Soustelle of OAS fame, and a trio of Monday Clubbers - Sir John Biggs-Davison of
the PEU Central Council and SIF, CEDI International President Sir Peter Agnew, and
CEDI Vice-President and SIF President Sir John Rodgers.
The German presence in the AESP in 1978 would illustrate a future major
focus for the German Paneuropeans – the European Parliament, for which the first
direct elections were held in June 1979. Having controversially acquired dual
German nationality in 1978, Habsburg himself would be elected as a CSU MEP
during the EP’s first term and would serve twenty years there, sitting on the Political
Affairs Committee from 1979 to 1992, chairing or co-chairing the Delegation on
Relations with Hungary from 1989 to 1999 and sitting on the Committee on Foreign
Affairs, Security and Defence Policy from 1992 to 1999. From 1979 on, Habsburg
would be assisted by CSU MEP Heinrich Aigner, who held the powerful post of
Chairman of the EP Committee on Budgetary Control continuously until his death in
1988.
Two new German Life Members of the AESP in 1978 would later join
Habsburg and Aigner in the EP. The first was CSU MP and Bavarian Minister Dr
Fritz Pirkl, Chairman of the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung from its creation in 1967 until
his death in 1993; two years before joining the AESP, Pirkl had attended the 1976
CEDI Congress. The second new AESP Life Member and future MEP was the
German Count Franz Ludwig Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, a CSU MP from 1976
to 1987 and a Vice President of the German PEU section (324). Both Pirkl and von
Stauffenberg would sit in the European Parliament from 1984 to 1992 and serve
with Habsburg on the Bureau of the European People's Party group within the EP.
Von Stauffenberg would sit on the key EP Committee on Legal Affairs and Citizens'
Rights from 1984 to 1987 before becoming its Chairman from 1989 to 1992; Pirkl
would function as Chairman or Deputy Chairman of the Delegation for Relations
with Austria from 1985 to 1993, just before Austrian accession to the EU on 1st
January 1995.
A third significant German Life Member of the AESP in 1978 was Dr Heinrich
Böx, former ambassador and head of the CDU's Bureau for Foreign Relations, who
died in 2004. In 1949, Böx had been appointed by Adenauer to a short-lived post as
Secretary of State in the Chancellor's Office. By 1961, he worked as German trade
representative in Finland, before serving as German Ambassador in Norway from
1964 to 1966 and in Poland from 1966 to 1970. In 1976, whilst working as Head of
the CDU's Bureau for Foreign Relations, Böx was suspected of espionage activities
for a foreign power. Böx was presumably cleared by the investigation, as the 1978
AESP membership list still referred to him as Head of the CDU's Bureau for Foreign
Relations. Böx would complete the Cercle complex's networking of German
conservative foreign policy spokesmen - the CDU's Dr. Marx and the CSU's Count
Huyn had served within Habsburg's CEDI since 1972, and both men had been close
allies of Grau's Frankfurt and Swiss groups throughout the 1970s.
The AESP Study Groups also encompassed new members: Grau, a
longstanding member of the Study Groups, brought in Swiss Colonel Fernard
Thiebaud Schneider, a speaker for Grau's ISP from 1975 onwards, bringing the
total of ISP speakers within the AESP to four: Grau himself, Habsburg, Huyn and
Schneider. A new Italian member of the AESP's study groups with parapolitical links
is Professor Leo Magnino, an official in the Ministry of Public Education and listed
by the AESP as President of the University of the Mediterranean. The University
started life as the International Academy of the Mediterranean, founded in Palermo
in 1951; Magnino was its Chancellor from 1971 to 1974. The President of the
Academy was Gianfranco Alliata di Montereale, a major figure in Italian parapolitics.
A right-wing monarchist prince and mason, Alliata was a member of P2 and close
associate of Gelli's with links to American intelligence dating back to the Second
World War. At Alliata's initiative, an American Academy of the Mediterranean was
founded in Mexico City in 1958, the same year that would see the creation of the
Tecos, the Mexican branch of WACL, which perhaps more than any other branch,
was responsible for WACL's opening-up to fascism. Other sponsors of the American
Academy were Salazar and Andreotti. In a meeting held on 26th October, 1968 at
Palazzo Barbarini, plans were drawn up to establish the International University of
the Mediterranean, no doubt the organization headed by Magnino in 1978. In the
1968 meeting, it was decided that the pro-rector was to be Monsignor Antonio de
Angelis, previously pro-rector of the University for Social Studies Pro Deo, Pro Deo
being the right-wing Catholic organization subsidized by U.S. intelligence and run by
the Belgian priest Felix Morlion.
On the domestic (Belgian) front, the AESP had been continuing close
cooperation with the PIO counter-subversion group. Contacts between Bougerol,
Damman and PIO's political master Benoît de Bonvoisin intensified in the late
1970s. Having visited the AESP Chapter Assembly in February 1976 and the CEDI
Congress in the following December, both times accompanied by de Bonvoisin and
both times meeting Brian Crozier, Major Bougerol remained in touch with the AESP
throughout 1977. In the September/October 1977 issue of the MAUE/AESP journal
Europe Information which also circulated the Cercle’s post-Helsinki "Appeal for
Freedom", Florimond Damman announced: "December 1977, date yet to be fixed: a
lecture by Major Bougerol at the Université Libre de Bruxelles on the theme
"Subversion, the ultimate weapon?" with slideshow on the events of May 1968".
Entries in Damman's diary confirm that Bougerol gave his lecture for MAUE
members on 13th December, 1977, and a further entry in Damman's diary dated
30th December 1977 makes reference to a meeting with Bougerol to discuss Inforep.
The close cooperation between the AESP and de Bonvoisin was formalized by
the latter's inclusion in the 1978 AESP membership list as a member of the AESP's
Study Groups. A MAUE circular produced for the European elections in June 1979
shows that by then de Bonvoisin had also been taken up as a Advisory Board
member of MAUE. In 1978, de Bonvoisin was at the height of his official power,
serving as adviser to Defence Minister Vanden Boeynants as well as providing
considerable financial and logistical backing for PIO. Indeed, since 1976, de
Bonvoisin's company PDG had been subsidizing PIO to the tune of over one million
Belgian francs a year. As would later become apparent, de Bonvoisin and VdB had
also continued funding for the NEM Clubs implicated with Bougerol in the rumours
of a coup d'etat in 1973. By 1978, the fascists funded by these two CEPIC/AESP
members were setting up a network of cells within the Gendarmerie who would later
be the main suspects in the wave of destabilization in Belgium in the early 1980s.
However, de Bonvoisin's support for PIO and Bougerol's ambitious expansion
of PIO activities was not without risk. In a 1978 letter, Bougerol's partner
Commissioner Fagnart of the SDRA military security service warned him of growing
concern within the Belgian military and intelligence community about his apparently
limitless horizons for PIO:
"I don't want to give details of the defects of your ship, as you know them as
well as I do, if not better. However, offhand, I quote:
a) the discretion of your "network" is insufficient (whether this be your
fault or not);
b) the infiltration of this network must be considered not as possible but
as probable, if not certain;
c) you are invading other people's turf - don't yell! You want examples:
- how would you, or can you, justify your rôle in the occasional missions
of people going to Zaire or elsewhere?
- are you sure that all you ask of your correspondents is justified within
the strict framework of your activities?
d) what do your correspondents in the official services - Gendarmerie,
Sûreté, etc - think of you, and what rôle do they think you are playing?
But .. I don't think I have to convince you!
We could imagine another danger:
a) if a "plumber" [burglar] visited the avenue d'Auderghem [PIO military
branch] or perhaps the rue Belliard [PIO civilian offices in a building
shared with CEPIC, PDG and later MAUE];
b) if messages or telephone calls were intercepted;
c) if what you said at the "secret" meetings were to be divulged;
d) if there was a leak about the Saoud affair or the affairs concerning
Formosa, Spain or the UK, incidents which you should consider as "to
be foreseen".
It's impossible for you to fit these into the framework of your official duties (for
PIO or others).
- of course, I know as well as you do that without taking risks, you
would remain inefficient. But I want to convince you to reduce these
risks to what is strictly necessary. (Sorry if I am being tough, but our
friendship allows me to be, and forces me to be so.)
- what to do?
a) start again on the basic principle of absolute need-to-know, above all
for those matters that go beyond your official mission;
b) create an unassailable and solid justification with reference to the
official mission in each of your actions;
c) for this, re-define this official mission and always advance this cover to
everyone.
- Last argument which isn't scientific at all: I feel that the danger is
imminent" (325).
The danger was indeed imminent; the "semi-private, semi-public" PIO was
removed from the Army hierarchy in December 1978 after the death of Bougerol's
protector, Lt-Gen Roman, Chief of the Army General Staff. Despite this, PIO
continued to function until at least 1980 as a private group financially supported by
de Bonvoisin (326).
THE AESP, P2 AND P7
We have already noted the presence of former top P2 member Giancarlo Elia
Valori in AESP circles from 1972 onwards; Valori figures on the 1978 AESP list as a
member of the Academy's executive body, the Permanent Delegation. According to
allegations made in 1988 by Richard Brenneke, three other leading AESP members
were involved in a CIA funding channel for P2 called P7. Before detailing Brenneke's
claims about P7, it is necessary to learn more about the man as a source.
Brenneke's reliability has frequently been called into question, not least of all
because his statements revived media investigation into alleged negotiations
between future CIA chief William Casey and senior Iranian officials in October 1980.
The negotiations by Reagan-Bush campaign manager Casey aimed to ensure that
the 52 US hostages captured in the Teheran embassy would not be released before
the November 4th presidential election to ensure that no "October surprise" would
allow President Carter to gain another term in office (327).
Whilst there clearly was a campaign to discredit his "October surprise" claims,
Brenneke made matters worse by embroidering his evidence to inflate his personal
involvement in the "October surprise" and P2/P7 stories. His claimed rôle in actually
going to Paris for the October 1980 negotiations was proved to be false when
investigation of his credit card records showed him to be at home in Oregon at the
time. Nonetheless, his account of the Paris meetings was corroborated by multiple
witnesses from America, Iran, France and Germany; a court challenge on charges of
perjury in May 1989 ended with Brenneke being acquitted unanimously on all
counts. With all its resources, the US government was unable to prove that the main
participants named by Brenneke (Bush, Casey and Donald Gregg) were where they
said they were on the weekend of the meetings - and this two weeks before the
presidential election. On Brenneke's reliability, Sick comments:
"The bottom line on Brenneke was that he had access on occasion to
information that was extremely sensitive and known to only a few individuals.
When he spoke publicly about any of these issues, however, he exaggerated
his own rôle and tried to place himself at the centre of the action. The basic
information was often true, but the flourishes and claims of firsthand
knowledge were often false" (328).
Having seen the strengths and weaknesses of Brenneke's testimony, we can
consider his allegations about P2/P7. Brenneke claimed to have been personally
involved in CIA funding of the P2 lodge via P7 from 1969 through to the 1980s. On
the strength of his past record, one can doubt the degree of his personal
involvement, but the details he gives of P7 as a funding channel for P2 are
persuasive. Brenneke provided a 30-strong list of members of P7, amongst whom we
find three of the longest-serving AESP members: Ivan-Matteo Lombardo (joined
AESP in 1970; by 1978, a Life Member), Vittorio Pons (AESP founding member, by
1978 on the Permanent Delegation) and Ernest Töttösy (in contact with Damman
since 1961; by 1978 a member of an AESP Study Group). In 1972, Valori, Pons and
Töttösy attended the Academy's XVth Grand Dîner Charlemagne; in 1976, all three
attended the XIXth Grand Dîner Charlemagne. Pons and Töttösy met a second time
in 1976 at the 25th CEDI Congress. In 1977, Töttösy set up the Comité Hongrie
1956-76 to commemorate the revolution; its address was the familiar building at 39,
rue Belliard, home to CEPIC, PDG, PIO and later MAUE. The list of its Board
members is revealing: alongside Töttösy, the Board included Damman, Lecerf, Victor
de Stankovich, Bernard Mercier, Francis Dessart and Jacques Borsu.
The late Victor de Stankovich was another Hungarian exile who also figured
on the P7 list - of the five Belgians on the P7 list, three were linked to Damman:
Pons, Töttösy and de Stankovich. De Stankovich was a fervent Atlanticist and a
former contributor to Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Report and Dispatch
from NATO. Bernard Mercier was a Board member of CEPIC, named with de
Bonvoisin and Vankerkhoven in the 1981 Sûreté report as financial backers of the
Front de la Jeunesse and the NEM Clubs. An intimate of Bougerol's, Mercier
accompanied Bougerol and CEPIC Senator Angèle Verdin to Spain after Franco's
death to visit his grave; all three then went on to attend the 25th CEDI Congress
where they met Töttösy and Pons. A 1983 Sûreté report repeated allegations by WNP
members that Mercier was a regional representative/inspector of the WNP. Francis
Dessart was closely linked to the Moonies, WACL and the ABN; he was also one of
Aginter Press's contacts in Belgium along with two other Board members of the
Comité Hongrie 1956-76, Damman and Lecerf. Jacques Borsu was a former
comrade-in-arms of French mercenary Bob Denard and leader of the neo-nazi Parti
Européen. Having organized paramilitary training camps for the Flemish fascist
Vlaamse Militanten Orde (VMO), he was one of the co-defendants in a 1981 trial of
VMO leaders (329).
Whilst Brenneke's testimony frequently exaggerated his own involvement and
falsified the truth in the process, the fact that Damman's AESP connected key P2
member Valori and alleged P7 members Lombardo, Pons, Töttösy and de Stankovich
seems to give some credence to Brenneke's allegations.
FARI AND FREEDOM BLUE CROSS
Jean Vigneau, editor of Violet's ISC outlet, Le Monde Moderne, was also listed
as a member of the AESP's study groups in 1978. Although the Bulletin de Paris and
the Centre du Monde Moderne had had to close as a result of the 1976 funding
shortage, Le Monde Moderne magazine continued publication, and carried an article
on Angola by Robert Moss in 1977. In 1978 however, whilst continuing to work with
Le Monde Moderne, Crozier launched a new vehicle for ISC reports. Together with
Cercle and 6I member Georges Albertini, Crozier founded Le Monde des Conflits, a
magazine devoted exclusively to circulating ISC studies in the French-speaking
world. Seven issues had appeared by September 1979, but the publication was not
yet financially viable (330).
Despite the collapse of the Centre du Monde Moderne, the Cercle's
propaganda effort on behalf of Pretoria was not weakened; with funds from the
South Africans, Cercle members Crozier, Moss and Amery had set up a new outfit,
FARI, in 1976. Throughout 1977, FARI supported the Cercle's campaign in favour of
South Africa by stressing Pretoria's strategic importance for the West: An American
View on the growing Soviet Influence in Africa (FARI no. 5, 1977), The Need to
safeguard NATO's Strategic Raw Materials from Africa (FARI no. 13, 1977), and two
publications by FARI Deputy Director Ian Greig, Barbarism and Communist
Intervention in the Horn of Africa (FARI no. 15, 1977) and Some Recent Developments
affecting the Defence of the Cape Route (FARI no. 17, 1977), an update of the ISC's
Special Report of March 1974 (331).
Greig followed these in December 1977 with his book, The Communist
Challenge to Africa, which included a preface by Lord Chalfont. The book was
published in the UK by Stewart-Smith's FAPC and in South Africa by the South
Africa Freedom Foundation (SAFF), a Department of Information front which also
paid for trips to Pretoria for Robert Moss and Major-General Sir Walter Walker (332).
The FAPC would follow this publication by that in 1978 of The Bear at the Backdoor -
the Soviet threat to the West's lifeline in Africa, written by Walker with an introduction
by Amery. The book, whose cover illustration showed a Soviet bear cutting a petrol
line running from the Gulf around the Cape to Europe, accused the US intelligence
community of harbouring pro-ANC sympathies. Also in 1978, Janke of the ISC
would help Jan du Plessis of the Foreign Affairs Association, another South African
DoI front, to compile the 1978 Freedom Annual (333).
Much of the FARI output would be recycled by Count Hans Huyn in his
October 1978 book, Der Angriff - Der Vorstoss Moskaus zur Weltherrschaft (The
Attack - Moscow's Thrust for World Domination). Huyn's book, a German-language
vehicle for the UK counter-subversion lobby, illustrated the degree of mutual
recycling of Cercle propaganda, listing no less than sixteen ISC Conflict Studies,
eleven FARI reports and four issues of the East-West Digest and quoting prolifically
from Crozier, Moss, Greig and Amery, all FARI members. Huyn also recycled the
anti-Labour propaganda produced before the 1974 British elections, particularly Not
to be trusted - Extremist Influence on the Labour Party Conference by Geoffrey Stewart-
Smith, future director of FARI. Besides these British Cercle friends, Huyn also drew
on several of the Cercle's international contacts for his book: Vigneau of Le Monde
Moderne and AESP, Barnett of NSIC/WISC, Gerstenmaier and Rohrmoser of the
IGfM, and Sager of SOI, five of whose publications were quoted.
In 1978, the British and American ends of the Cercle complex would also seek
funding from multinational companies for Crozier's recently founded private
intelligence service, the 6I. In June 1978, the NSIC, FARI, the ISC and Aims held a
joint conference in Brighton on "NATO and the global threat" which aimed to raise
private-sector funds to supplement the activities of the official agencies, "crippled"
after the earlier US Congressional Committees and the official "closure" of Britain's
IRD in the spring of 1977. The "Brighton Declaration" adopted by the conference
stated that "the destruction of the CIA and other assaults on Western intelligence
sources make it imperative that the US and its allies should again take the initiative
on intelligence, information and counter-intelligence". The conference called for the
establishment of a "new" industry-funded group, Freedom Blue Cross, to carry out
these private propaganda activities and also to act as a further relay for the South
African Department of Information's campaign. In all likelihood, Freedom Blue Cross
was intended to be merely a funding front for Crozier's 6I.
For the Cercle complex, the Brighton conference was attended by Crozier,
Greig, Chalfont, Tanham of the WISC Board, and NSIC/ISC benefactor Dick Scaife.
The South African delegation included the former head of the South African Navy
Admiral James Johnson, Cas de Villiers and Jan du Plessis of the DoI front group,
the Foreign Affairs Association, and Gideon Roos of the South African Institute of
International Affairs. Besides other ex-military personnel and academics from
Britain, Europe, South Africa and Japan, the conference also brought together
representatives of many of the British-based multinationals which had also been
funding the four British anti-union groups: Taylor Woodrow, Tate & Lyle, Barclays
(Tennant?) and National Westminster banks, Vickers, British American Tobacco and
the British subsidiary of ITT, Standard Telephone Cables (STC).
Despite the impressive roll-call of companies, big business' interest was
lukewarm (National Westminster and STC formally disassociated themselves from
the Declaration; the other companies did not), and nothing apparently came of
Freedom Blue Cross. However, the following year, Crozier would continue trying to
raise funds from British and German industry for his "transnational security
organisation" by circulating a planning paper entitled The Multinationals and
International Security, as detailed in secret German intelligence reports by Hans
Langemann, described below (334).
THE AESP, THE ISC AND 6I IN 1979
1979 would bring two major organisational upheavals in the Cercle complex.
In Belgium, Florimond Damman died in July, and the AESP would be riven by
internal rivalries for his succession, a struggle eventually to lead to its closure. In
Britain, some of Crozier's colleagues in the ISC had become concerned at Crozier's
other activities. "Partly for security reasons, partly because I did not want to involve
the ISC Council in my extra-curricular activities, I had not taken any member of it
into my confidence about the creation of the 6I. I can only assume some indiscretion
within Whitehall, presumably from one of the few officers of SIS [MI6] who were
aware of it: Lou [Le Bailly] and Leonard [Schapiro] both had intelligence contacts"
(335). Things came to a head when Le Bailly offered a letter of resignation from his
post on the ISC Council, stating that Crozier's high profile and other activities were
undermining the objectivity and efficiency of the ISC. The conflict escalated to end as
a straight choice: Crozier's resignation as Director of the ISC or the resignation of
several if not most of the ISC Council members. As Crozier felt that "my 'other' work
was more important than running the ISC" (336), Crozier resigned his position in
September 1979, to be replaced as ISC Director by Michael Goodwin with Ian Greig
becoming Senior Executive (337). "Within weeks of my departure, the entire research
staff of the ISC had been sacked. Not long after, the research library I had built up
over many years was disposed of ...". Despite this upheaval, the ISC would continue
under a different guise, as will be described in a later chapter.
Crozier's resignation from the ISC did however allow him to concentrate his
efforts on the 6I which left ISC premises to set up in offices on Trafalgar Square.
With a reserve of $30,000, Crozier expanded the staff of the 6I and began publication
of a monthly restricted newsletter, Transnational Security. "The recipients of
Transnational Security ... fell into three categories. The top layer, which included the
President [Reagan] and Mrs Thatcher, consisted of the Western and friendly Third
World leaders, selected politicians, and friendly secret services. In the second layer,
as of right, were contributors to our funds. The third layer consisted of our own
people: agents and associates in various countries" (338). The bulletin would later
change title to become Notes and Analysis.
One early task for the 6I was to recreate the ISC's liquidated research library
by compiling "a reference archive of quotations from the already published words of
hundreds of extremist politicians and trades unionists, as raw material for analytical
reports in the Shield manner. In charge was a former MI5 man who had brought me
disquieting information about the paralysis of the Security Service in the late 1970s"
(339).
Crozier records that two early operations for the 6I were in Latin America and
in Iran prior to the 1979 revolution. In Argentina, Uruguay and Chile, the 6I advised
the armed forces and the security services in "the use of some of the non-violent,
psychological techniques with which we had been experimenting in Europe" (340).
Crozier also spent several days closeted with General Pinochet, drafting fourteen
articles of the new Chilean Constitution.
Apart from supporting Pinochet and other Latin American regimes, the 6I was
also increasingly concerned by the instability of the Shah's regime in Iran in the
months preceding the Islamic revolution. Here again, the 6I's experience in
psychological warfare techniques was needed; the brutal repression by the Shah's
secret service SAVAK and the armed forces served only to feed the rising tide of
Islamic fervour. Jean Violet in particular urged Crozier to travel to Iran to talk with
the Shah. General Douglas Brown who managed the Dulverton Trust, one of the
ISC's financial backers (341), found an intermediary for the Cercle in the person of
General Alan Fraser, South Africa's Consul-General in Iran. The only non-Afrikaner
to hold the post of Chief of Staff of the South African Defence Force, Fraser was a
personal friend of the Shah. In the spring of 1978, Crozier flew to Teheran where he
met Fraser; the two men were then received by the Shah, who seemed reluctant to
heed Crozier's warning that the CIA would not act to save the Shah and that
psychological operations by the 6I were necessary to counter the climate of
revolutionary unrest.
Shortly after this first visit to Teheran, Crozier met Prince Turki ben Faisal,
brother of the Saudi Foreign Minister, who six months earlier had replaced his
uncle, Turkish-born Kamal Adham, as head of the Saudi intelligence service. As
such, Turki ben Faisal would become a key link in the covert war waged against
Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan by the coalition of the CIA, the ISI - the
Pakistani military intelligence service which created the Taliban - and the Afghani
mujaheddin, including one of Turki's personal contacts, Osman bin Laden. In
recognition of his services, Turki would be one of the Taliban's guests of honour at
the proclamation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Kabul on 28th April 1992.
Turki would become one of the world's longest-serving intelligence chiefs, his
reign lasting from September 1977 until August 2001 just prior to the WTC attack
when, as an all-too-visible personification of US-Saudi links, he was removed as
head of the Saudi intelligence service to assuage growing anti-American feeling in
Saudi Arabia. However, he was too valuable a man to lose and after a "decent
interval", he would re-emerge in 2003 as Saudi Ambassador in London where he
played a prominent rôle in the media drive for war with Iraq (342).
This first contact between Crozier and Turki ben Faisal was arranged via Dan
McMichael, administrator of the Scaife family's trust funds, a major source of
funding for the ISC. Crozier briefed the Saudi prince about the 6I and its initial
contact with the Shah. A proposed second meeting with Prince Turki ben Faisal in
the summer of 1978 would not come off, but Crozier and the Cercle would finally
meet the Saudi intelligence chief again at a Cercle meeting in Bavaria in the spring of
1979 when Turki ben Faisal would accept to act as the main backer for a planned 6I
radio propaganda operation in the Middle East, detailed in the next chapter.
In the meanwhile, the Shah was reconsidering Crozier's offer of 6I help for
psy-ops campaigns and contacted Turki ben Faisal, who put in a good word for the
6I. Turki ben Faisal's recommendation of the 6I carried a lot of weight for the
Iranians; Turki ben Faisal was the Saudi representative on the Safari Club, a
network for covert cooperation between the French, Saudi, Iranian, Moroccan and
Egyptian intelligence services, founded by Alexandre de Marenches on 1st
September 1976 with headquarters in Cairo (343). Besides Turki ben Faisal's
recommendation, General Fraser had also been advising the Shah to accept the 6I's
help: "he had raised with the Shah the question of financial assistance for our group,
in return for our advice and expertise in combating the wave of subversion that
threatened to sweep him off his throne" (344). Fraser advised Crozier to involve ISC
Council member Sir Robert Thompson whose counter-insurgency experience during
the Malayan campaign and the early stages of the Vietnam War could be useful in
the Iranian context.
In August 1978, the Shah reversed his previous decision and invited the
Cercle to Teheran; although Violet was prevented from travelling due to ill-health,
Crozier, Elliott, Thompson, and a team of advisers flew to Teheran on 3rd September.
The Cercle team stopped off in France to pick up Antoine Pinay, whose long
acquaintance with the Shah would add authority to the Cercle's proposals. The
Cercle team met the Shah for two and a half hours, but were struck by his apathy.
They then went on to discuss the situation with two top SAVAK officials, General
Motazed and the head of the research department, Kaveh. The Cercle and SAVAK
officials discussed a plan to distribute leaflets to split the tacit alliance between the
Shiite fundamentalists and the Communist Tudeh party.
The time was past however for such subtleties; the commander of the Teheran
garrison General Oveissi, who had planned to meet the Cercle team, was unable to
attend due to the unrest in the Iranian capital. The Cercle's visit came at a crucial
time: the caretaker Prime Minister resigned the day after the Cercle's meetings, and
martial law was declared four days later, just after the Cercle team's return to
London. In early November, the Shah finally decided to give the go-ahead for the
Cercle to intervene, and the top civilian in SAVAK flew to London to spend a full
week closeted with Robert Moss transforming a pile of SAVAK reports on Communist
influence in the revolution into an ISC Conflict Study, The Campaign to Destabilise
Iran. Following publication of the Conflict Study in November 1978, the Shah
authorized a first annual payment of £1 million to the 6I for a psychological action
operation, but the decision to involve the 6I further would come too late as the Shah
would be overthrown in January 1979 before the payment could be made.
The exiled Shah's death in July 1980 would not however end the 6I's interest
in Iran; Crozier "felt that there remained at least a fighting chance of a coup to
overthrow Ayatollah Khomeini's fledgling regime. The outbreak of the Iraq-Iran War
encouraged this view" (345). Crozier therefore flew three times to Cairo between July
and November 1980 to meet the Shah's widow and President Sadat, but nothing
would come of these meetings apart from a 6I report circulated to Mrs Thatcher and
President Reagan.
THE LANGEMANN PAPERS
Whilst the 6I launched truly global operations in Latin America and in Iran in
late 1979, they were not neglecting the European scene. Once Margaret Thatcher
had won the general election in Britain in May 1979, the next priority was the 1980
election for West German Chancellor, where longstanding Cercle friend Franz Josef
Strauss was standing as a candidate.
An unprecedented insight into Cercle/6I operations at this time was given by
the 1982 revelations of Hans Langemann, the head of Bavarian State Security. We
have already met Langemann as a close collaborator of key German 6I member,
Hans Freiherr von Stauffenberg and his private CSU intelligence service. Langemann
had served in the BND from 1957 to 1970, where he rose to become Gehlen's deputy
for "Special Operations" working closely with Brigadier-General Wolfgang Langkau,
head of the BND's Strategic Service and future technical adviser to the von
Stauffenberg network (346). In 1972, Langemann was appointed security chief for
the Munich Olympics before being purged by the SPD government for being too close
to Strauss's CSU party. Langemann then left federal employ to join the Bavarian
Interior Ministry as head of the "State Protection" Department, in which capacity he
acted as top link man between the Bavarian government, Strauss's CSU party, the
Bavarian regional office of the BfV security service and the BND based in Pullach, a
suburb of the Bavarian capital Munich.
Unbeknownst to Crozier and the 6I, Langemann had been receiving full
reports on the Cercle from von Stauffenberg (347), information which Langemann
then repeated in a series of secret intelligence reports, addressed to either Gerold
Tandler, Bavarian Interior Minister, or to Tandler's Private Secretary, Dr. Georg
Waltner, who also received the private intelligence reports from the von Stauffenberg
network. Langemann's reports to Tandler and Waltner quoted a planning paper of
Crozier's describing the efforts being made to provide a solid operational basis for the
6I by canvassing leaders of industry for financial support. The reports also detailed
the high-level support Crozier could count on - amongst those named in the
Langemann papers were two serving intelligence chiefs: Sir Arthur "Dickie" Franks,
Chief of MI6 from 1978 to 1982, and the Comte Alexandre de Marenches, Director
of the SDECE from 1970 to 1981. Langemann's reports also revealed that one of the
major goals for the 6I was to shape the future decade by supporting three key rightwing
election candidates in 1979-1980: Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Franz Josef
Strauss in Germany, and Ronald Reagan in America.
"PROTECTED SOURCE
Contributions to State Protection
Minister's Eyes Only
*****
Brian Crozier, London
- The Multinationals and International Security (348).
- Project Victory for Strauss
*****
1. The militant conservative London publicist, Brian CROZIER, until
September 1979, Director of the famous Institute for the Study of Conflict,
has been working with his wide circle of friends in international politics to set
up an anonymous action group ("transnational security organization") and to
widen its field of operations. His intention is to approach multinational
companies about this group, which was the reason for drawing up this
planning paper. Not least of all, so as to obtain the necessary funding:
$750,000 to start with and up to $3 million. CROZIER has already
approached German industrialists and shown them this paper, despite it
being stamped "Secret". A new publication Transnational Security is being
prepared so as to promote this project. For the reasons mentioned under item
2, it should be pointed out that CROZIER has worked with the CIA for many
years. One has to assume, therefore, that they are fully aware of his activities.
He has extensive contacts with members (or more accurately, former
members) of the most important (Western) security and intelligence agencies,
such as the Comte de MERONGES [sic], ex-Director of the French SDECE
(349). Furthermore, it is known that he has a good relationship with Mr.
"Dickie" FRANKS, Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (so-called
MI6) (350); his closest assistant, Mr. N. ELLIOTT was a Division Head in MI6.
CROZIER, ELLIOTT and FRANKS were recently invited to Chequers by Mrs.
THATCHER for a working meeting. It must therefore be concluded that MI6 as
well is fully aware of, if not indeed one of the main sponsors of, the
anonymous security organization.
Also very closely connected to Mrs. THATCHER is the prominent journalist
Robert MOSS, who is involved in the promotion of the group's media actions
together with Fred LUCHSINGER (351), Dr. KUX (352) of the Swiss
Intelligence Service (Colonel BOTTA), and Richard LÖWENTHAL (353).
Amongst other points in the planning paper are:
- V, i
Specific aims within this general framework are:
To affect a change of government in (a) the United Kingdom (accomplished)
and (b) in West Germany, to defend freedom of trade and movement and to
oppose all forms of subversion including terrorism ...
-VI A
What the group can do:
Get certain well-known journalists in Britain, the USA and other countries to
produce contributions. Access to television.
Guarantee a lobby in influential circles, whether directly or through
middlemen, witting or unwitting.
Organize public demonstrations in particular areas on themes to be selected.
Involve (exploit) the main security and intelligence services both to obtain
information and to pass on (feed) information to these agencies.
Covert financial transactions for political purposes.
- VI B
What the group can do if funding is available:
Conduct international campaigns aiming to discredit hostile personalities
and\or events.
Create our own intelligence service specializing in particular themes.
Set up offices under suitable cover, each run by a full-time coordinator.
Current plans include London, Washington, Paris, Munich (!), Madrid ...
2. As far as can be judged by an outsider, CROZIER has, together with his
group, launched the project "Victory for Strauss" using the media or covert
tactics applied in Great Britain (major themes, amongst others: communistextremist
subversion of the ruling party and trade unions, KGB direction of
terrorism, crippling of internal security). He will support and direct the future
development of the project on an international level.
However, for the present time, consideration must be given to the fact that the
personal connections of the CROZIER group, in particular his affinity to
personalities from the secret services, and the tactical and conspiratorial aims
and proposed methods for the "Victory for Strauss" project described in the
planning paper, can in fact be completely identified, even if this was not their
intention. It also appears almost certain that on the basis of his project,
CROZIER must provoke sharp defensive reactions from those security and
intelligence services whose supervisory heads do not follow his political line,
such as the BND and BfV. As CROZIER mentions both his basic plan and the
Victory project to those he talks to, the problem this causes is obvious.
The possible, but avoidable, consequence may be definitely undesirable
negative publicity.
Munich, 8th November 1979
Dr. Langemann, Department I F" (354).
The mention by Langemann of a working meeting at Chequers between
Thatcher, Franks and the 6I team of Crozier and Elliott shortly after Thatcher's
election victory is highly significant. Franks' presence with Crozier and Elliott at the
Chequers 6I meeting raises the question whether the support given to Thatcher by
the retired MI6 officers and IRD assets in the counter-subversion lobby was not
echoed by serving MI6 officers such as Franks - MI6 Chief from 1978 to 1982.
Franks was renowned as a hard right-winger who had sat uncomfortably as deputy
to Maurice Oldfield, a man of liberal views. A few months after the Langemann report
was written, Franks would play a key rôle in circulating the manuscript of the
Chapman Pincher\Peter Wright book Their Trade is Treachery around Whitehall; his
letter dated 15th December, 1980 was produced as evidence in the Australian
Spycatcher trial as proof that the British Government, MI5 and MI6 had known long
in advance that Wright was passing on his allegations of Soviet subversion within
MI5 and the Wilson government to Chapman Pincher.
Referring to this author's previous research on the Cercle published in Lobster
magazine in 1988-89, Crozier writes: "Much has been written about the Cercle, from
the outside, and much of it has been false or misleading. For example, it has been
alleged that it was a forum for bringing together 'international linkmen of the Right',
such as myself and Robert Moss, with secret service chiefs like Alexandre de
Marenches, long-time head of the French SDECE, and Sir Arthur ('Dickie') Franks,
sometime head of MI6. There are pitfalls in writing about confidential matters from
the outside, and drawing on similarly handicapped material. In fact, neither [de]
Marenches nor Dickie Franks ever attended a Pinay Cercle meeting during the years
I was involved with it: between 1971 and 1985. There was a very good reason why
[de] Marenches would never have been invited. The inspirer and long-serving
organizer of the Pinay Cercle was Jean Violet, who for many years had been retained
by the SDECE as Special Advocate ... Inevitably he had made enemies. One of them
was a close friend of the Comte de Marenches who, on being appointed Director-
General of the SDECE in 1970, closed down Violet's office without notice. The two
men – [de] Marenches and Violet - never met. As for Dickie Franks, he never
attended Cercle meetings, for the reason that Directors of SIS do not involve
themselves in such private groups. So he was never invited" (355).
This denial of links between the Cercle and Franks and de Marenches is
certainly disingenuous, seeking to use the lack of formal involvement in the Cercle to
discount any cooperation with it. Whilst serving Directors of SIS or the SDECE might
not like to be seen at Cercle meetings, Langemann repeats information from Cercle
insider von Stauffenberg that Franks did accompany the 6I core of Crozier and Elliott
to a working meeting with Thatcher shortly after her election victory. As for de
Marenches, despite any animosity with Violet, the French Count had been an
intimate adviser to key Cercle member Franz Josef Strauss for many years.
The "undesirable negative publicity" feared by Langemann did indeed arise:
the Spiegel got wind of Strauss's international links and published a two-part series
in February and March 1980. Besides documenting Strauss's contacts with Spinola
and Arriaga and his covert funding of Fraga Iribarne, Silva Munoz and Martinez
Esteruelas, the Spiegel articles revealed Strauss's close friendship with the Comte de
Marenches, reporting that Strauss frequently met de Marenches, either at the Piscine
(SDECE headquarters) or at Strauss's Paris hotel. The Spiegel also reproduced a
letter from Huyn to Strauss dated 13th February, 1979, which mentioned the Cercle
Pinay for the first time:
"Furthermore, I would like to inform you that I have just received news from
Riyadh confirming that Prince Turki ben Faisal, head of the Saudi intelligence
service and brother of the Foreign Minister, will be attending the Cercle
meeting in Wildbad-Kreuth [since 1975, the international conference centre of
the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung]. I think his participation will be of particular
interest in view of the Middle East situation [i.e. the overthrow of the Shah
one month previously]" (356).
Following the initial contact between Crozier and Prince Turki ben Faisal in
the spring of 1978 and the subsequent Cercle meeting in early 1979 referred to
above, the 6I and the Saudi intelligence chief would work together on a propaganda
project detailed in another report by Langemann written on 7th March, 1980. At the
same time as Voice of America was rushing to expand its broadcasts to the Islamic
border populations of the Soviet Union (357), the Cercle/6I was preparing for its
radio debut. Together with the Saudi intelligence service, the Cercle/6I planned to
set up a powerful transmitter in Saudi Arabia for propaganda broadcasts to the same
target audience as VoA: the Soviet Islamic world radicalized by the Iranian revolution
in January 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Huyn
had already proposed similar action in his October 1978 book Der Angriff - Der
Vorstoss Moskaus zur Weltherrschaft (The Attack - Moscow's Thrust for World
Domination), where, as a conclusion, Huyn gave a list of twenty proposals for action
to be undertaken if the West was to "survive in freedom". The ninth proposed action
on the list explains the background to the joint Cercle/6I-Saudi project: "The people
in the Soviet zone of domination must be given more intensive exposure to objective
news from the free world …In the hermetically sealed system of non-freedom of the
Soviet bloc, the people can only be reached very partially by a few shortwave
broadcasts. These options must be considerably strengthened and expanded; all the
developments of modern technology - including satellite television broadcasting -
should be used" (358).
Langemann's March 1980 report also gave general background information on
the Cercle and specifically dealt with the damaging revelations that had just
appeared in the Spiegel:
"Contributions to State Protection
Confidential note for Dr. Waltner, as agreed in conversation.
CERCLE
(Spiegel, 10/80, pg 23)
1. As far as my previous BND knowledge and my current information go, this
Circle, obviously named with the aim of defaming it, consists of a loose
gathering of various conservative and anti-communist politicians, publicists,
bankers and VIPs from other professions that meets about twice a year in
various parts of the world. Its origins lie with the former French Prime
Minister, Antoine PINAY. The Circle, which also invites guests, still exists
today.
The last meeting of the PINAY CIRCLE was held over the weekend of 1st
December 1979 in the Madison Hotel in Washington. Amongst the
participants were former Minister NARJES (Germany), former Air Minister
Julian AMERY (UK), former CIA Director William COLBY, Federal Bank
Director VOLKERS and Heritage Trust Foundation President FEULNER (USA)
(359), as well as Finance Minister PANDOLFI (Italy) (360) and General
FRAZER [sic] (South Africa) (361).
2. Acting as a kind of coordinator from the original French side is the Parisian
lawyer Jean VIOLET who took over the operational side of the Circle as PINAY
himself got older (362).
VIOLET has connections to several Western intelligence services; certainly to
the CIA, to the French SDECE, to the British SIS and to the Swiss Military
Intelligence Service, particularly to its Head of Procurement, Colonel BOTTA.
3. GEHLEN, who was always interested in the undertaking, its personalities
and its results, recruited VIOLET as a "Special Contact" and for many years
provided him with DM 6,000 a month. GEHLEN claimed that this sum had
been agreed with the head of the SDECE, at that time General JACQUIER
[1962-1966], because VIOLET was receiving the same amount from the
SDECE.
As I was the main operative for GEHLEN's "Special Operations", I met with
VIOLET on many occasions in his Paris flat, together with my fellow operative,
the late Marchese de MISTURA.
Certainly, VIOLET and I never discussed the PINAY CIRCLE in any detail.
However, I did once give him DM 30,000 from GEHLEN "for this purpose". The
reporting to this complex, which also included the French statesman POHER,
was essentially channelled through Special Contacts Dr. Johannes SCHAUFF
and the late Klaus DOHRN. Later, the Parliamentary Secretary of State in the
Chancellor's Office, Baron GUTTENBERG, personally gave me the task of
keeping "the dubious Mr. VIOLET" (cover name: Veilchen - Little Violet) under
observation for counter-espionage purposes. Nothing came of this for reasons
I don't need to go into here.
One should stress however that VIOLET himself has never boasted of possible
contact with the Prime Minister [Strauss], although GEHLEN and
GUTTENBERG always insisted on this. As politically coloured gossiping and
rumour-mongering are basically "not professional" in counter-espionage, I
never attempted to ask VIOLET about this, whether directly or by hinting at it.
GEHLEN accepted this, and in particular, my direct superior at the time,
General LANGKAU (Strategic Service), specifically approved it.
4. Recently, we have noted the establishment of a "command staff" or Inner
Circle which develops suitable lines of action for current political questions.
The activities of Brian CROZIER (Transnational Security) have already been
the subject of previous reports.
On the 5th and 6th January, 1980, a group from within the Circle met in
Zürich to discuss executive measures. VIOLET led the meeting; amongst
others present were Count HUYN MP, Brian CROZIER (previously a longtime
CIA agent), Nicholas ELLIOTT (former Division Head in the British SIS), former
General STILWELL (ex-US Defence Intelligence Agency), and Mr. JAMESON
(ex-CIA).
The main themes for discussion included:
a) international promotion of the Prime Minister [Strauss].
b) influencing the situation in Rhodesia and South Africa from a European
Conservative viewpoint.
c) the establishment of a powerful directional radio station in Saudi Arabia
aiming at the Islamic region and including the corresponding border
populations of the Soviet Union.
Note:
These commendable goals have not been tackled with sufficient attention paid
to protecting secrecy in my view. Therefore, negative publicity cannot be ruled
out. There is simply too much "loose talk". There is an urgent need for
professionally restricted consultation on foreign intelligence service influences
both here and abroad.
Munich, 7th March, 1980
Dr Langemann, Department I F" (363).
Langemann's comment about the emergence of a "command staff or Inner
Circle" illustrates the difficulty in separating the functions of the Cercle as a
confidential discussion forum and the 6I as a covert intelligence agency. Crozier
himself comments on this in referring to this author's previous articles on the Cercle:
"To describe it [the Cercle] as a forum is strictly accurate. There were no members in
a formal sense. It was an informal group of broadly like-minded people, who met
twice a year, once in America, once in Europe. Usually, some distinguished figure
was invited to speak. Amongst the guest speakers at times when I was present were
Strauss, Henry Kissinger (for whom I interpreted), Zbigniew Brzezinski, David
Rockefeller, and Giulio Andreotti. Within the wider Cercle, a smaller gathering called
the Pinay Group met on occasion to discuss possible action. ... Some outsiders have
jumped to the wrong conclusion that the Pinay Cercle was the same as my 'secret'
organization. ... There was in fact some minor overlapping, but the functions of the
6I, which I have been describing, were quite different. Some members of the 6I's
'Politburo' also attended the Cercle meetings; others did not. Most members of the
Cercle were unaware of the existence of the 6I. Many on the 6I's networks had no
connection with the Cercle" (364). Certainly, Langemann's "Inner Circle" or is
virtually identical to the 'Politburo' of the 6I: Violet, Crozier, Elliott, Huyn, Stilwell
and Jameson, the latter two being described below. Only a few of the 6I 'Politburo'
members were not in attendance at this "command staff" meeting, amongst them
Walters, von Stauffenberg, Albertini and Horchem.
Langemann also mentions for the first time two further intelligence veterans
who served on the 6I's 'Politburo', the first of whom was four-star Army General
Richard G. 'Dick' Stilwell, formerly of the Defence Intelligence Agency. Stilwell had
worked closely with the CIA in the 1950s and 1960s to develop US counterinsurgency
policy, being the author of "one of the most influential documents of the
past quarter-century" (365), the 1959 report Training under the Mutual Security
Program which coined the term "pacification" (366). Stilwell's policies laid the
groundwork for the American pacification program for Vietnam which would be
implemented successively by three Cercle contacts - Thompson, Komer and Colby
(367). After serving in the DIA, Stilwell was appointed Reagan's Assistant Secretary
of Defence in charge of administration, and joined the ASC Board and the 'Politburo'
of the 6I while in this post (368).
The second 6I 'Politburo' member mentioned by Langemann was Donald
'Jamie' Jameson, the CIA officer and Russian expert who had first debriefed
Golitsyn, the defector who "confirmed" the fears of the ultras within the CIA, MI6 and
MI5 about Soviet penetration of the British government. Whilst at the CIA in the
early 1950s, Jameson had played a peripheral rôle in the creation of the Congress
for Cultural Freedom (369). After leaving the CIA in 1973, Jameson set up the
"private" defector reception group, the Jameson Institute. Besides this, Jameson was
also Vice-President of the Washington-based "risk assessment consultancy",
Research Associates International, Ltd, and worked with General Graham and Cline
as an adviser to the Nathan Hale Institute, founded by Raymond Wannall, former
Assistant Director of the FBI's Intelligence Division (370).
VICTORY FOR STRAUSS
The outlines of the operation to promote Strauss as candidate for the German
Chancellorship in the 1980 elections are quite clear: within a month of the January
Cercle meeting, Crozier in Britain and Löwenthal in Germany had launched a
coordinated pro-Strauss campaign. The task was not easy: Strauss's previous run
for the Chancellorship in the early 1960s had been dashed by his murky reputation,
already tarnished in the 1962 "Spiegel Affair" which revealed that he had
orchestrated the illegal extradition from Spain of the magazine's chief editor, Conrad
Ahlers. In June 1963, the Spiegel alleged that Strauss had been involved in a fraud
whilst serving as German Defence Minister; he was later exonerated but the scandal
scotched his chances of rising from Defence Minister to the Chancellorship. In the
mid-1970s, Strauss would be implicated in the Lockheed bribes scandal and
disastrous German purchase of the Starfighter or "Widowmaker" aircraft (371). This
time around, the Cercle was determined to discredit the Spiegel's relentless
revelations of Strauss's parapolitical links. The tactic used was the old ploy of
accusing awkward journalists of being in the pay of the Kremlin. Within a month of
the January 1980 Cercle meeting, Löwenthal had founded a Strauss support group,
the Bürgeraktion Demokraten für Strauss. The group's posters alleged the
existence of a systematic anti-Strauss campaign steered from Moscow:
"Germans! Do you know who is behind the anti-Strauss campaigns?
Journalists financed by East Germany, cheque fraudsters, dope smokers,
terrorist sympathizers, Communists and unfortunately also Social Democrats.
Stop this left-wing Popular Front!" (372).
The same theme was played on by Crozier who from February on
planted pro-Strauss articles in Sir James Goldsmith's magazine NOW!, for which
Crozier edited an entire section from 1979 to 1981. One article by Crozier, published
on 15th February 1980, dealt in depth with the allegations made by the Spiegel in
1963. Goldsmith himself later joined in the campaign; on 21st January 1981, he
addressed the Conservative Media Committee in the House of Commons on "The
Communist Propaganda Apparatus and Other Threats in the Media". In his speech,
he quoted the Czech defector Major-General Jan Sejna who "admitted that the
campaign by the German news magazine Der Spiegel to discredit Franz Josef Strauss
was orchestrated by the KGB". The Spiegel naturally sued. Goldsmith then employed
20 researchers for three years to back up his case, claiming to have interviewed
every major defector from the Eastern bloc in the last three and a half years (373).
By 1984, however, Goldsmith was seeking to retreat from his previous claims:
in a speech to the Defence Strategy Forum of the NSIC in Washington on 24th May,
1984, whilst repeating that the KGB was behind the campaign against Strauss, he
added: "this does not mean that the publications or journalists in question were
knowingly involved or that they were aware that their views were being manipulated
and used by the Soviets for their own purposes" (374). Goldsmith's case collapsed
when one of his star witnesses, the temporary Soviet defector, Oleg Bitov, returned
to the Soviet Union. Bitov later wrote of the episode in the Moscow Literary Gazette
(375), in which he alleged that Crozier was coordinating the research from his
Regent Street office. Goldsmith tried to postpone the case but eventually an out-ofcourt
settlement was reached between the Spiegel and Goldsmith, with Goldsmith
paying his costs. Despite this legal retreat, Goldsmith took out full-page adverts in
the British and German Press, declaring the Spiegel to be "a victim of the
propaganda techniques of the KGB" (376). Much of Goldsmith's research was later
recycled by Chapman Pincher who devoted three chapters to this second "Spiegel
Affair" in his 1985 book, The Secret Offensive.
THE REAGAN CAMPAIGN
The final Cercle document from this period came not from Langemann but
from German investigative journalist Jürgen Roth, who published the minutes of the
next Cercle meeting, held in Zürich on 28th and 29th June, 1980. The "Victory for
Strauss" campaign was in full swing, but despite Crozier and Löwenthal's efforts, it
was not going well, particularly because of the revelations in the Spiegel in February
and March. Besides following progress on the Strauss project and the radio station
in Saudi Arabia, the Cercle turned their attention to the looming American
Presidential elections:
"A further meeting of the Circle was held under the chairmanship of Violet
and attended by those present at the previous meeting, including Colonel
Botta of the Swiss Intelligence Service and Fred Luchsinger, head of the Neue
Zürcher Zeitung.
1. The prospects for positive influence on the election campaign in favour of
Strauss cannot be judged to be very favourable. While the many promotional
influences in US, UK and Swiss newspapers were welcomed by their readers,
their impact in the Federal Republic lagged far behind. Furthermore, it seems
doubtful that Strauss will be able to match the dynamic foreign policy
initiatives that Federal Chancellor Schmidt has been able to make. In contrast
to the situation in the US, where President Carter is confronted with the
shattered remains of his foreign policy - difficult to present favourably for the
election campaign, even in part - Schmidt has understood how to make clear
and prominent political steps which represent an achievable goal for the
population's desire for peace. Luchsinger said that he was prepared to
produce a series of three leading articles highlighting the tendency of current
government policy in Bonn to weaken NATO. Crozier felt that similar steps
could be tried again through Moss in London and the Baltimore Sun in the US
(377).
2. Count Huyn reported on his meeting with the head of the Saudi security
service about the establishment of a short-wave radio transmitting towards
the Soviet Union. The Saudis were interested, he said, and had guaranteed
finance on the condition that a situation such as that created in Moscow by
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty must be avoided at all costs.
3. A discussion was held about a series of appropriate measures to promote
the electoral campaign of Presidential candidate Reagan against Carter. Elliott
reported that in this context, positive contact had been made with George [H.
W.] Bush as well (378).
4. Colonel Botta stated that in his opinion, support must be given to the
Israeli intelligence service. It was noted that, as far as Europe was concerned,
the efficiency of the service had diminished considerably" (379).
The presence of several former CIA or DIA officers during the Cercle's
discussions on the promotion of Ronald Reagan is indicative: participants at the
Cercle's earlier "command staff" meeting in January 1980 had included not only
Violet, Crozier, Elliott and Huyn, but also Jameson and Stilwell, the latter an ASC
Board member. At the time of the Cercle meeting, the ASC Foundation was
launching an intense media campaign against Carter for "disarming America to
death" through the SALT 2 Treaty. The ASCF produced a film called The SALT 2
Syndrome that was notably used in South Dakota to oust Senator George McGovern.
The film was shown eleven times on the three major state television channels and as
a film or videotape it was screened to over 1,000 audiences. ASC official John Fisher
stated:
"In the last three months of the campaign ... ASCF increased its average TV
showings from 30 a month to 180 bookings per month for a total of 1,956
showings during this election year" (380).
Within ten days of the Cercle meeting of 28th-29th June, Crozier flew out to
Los Angeles to brief Reagan personally on the 6I and offer its services. Crozier was
not the only one to contact Reagan or his campaign team; also in early July, the
Comte de Marenches met William Casey, Reagan's campaign manager, in Paris. De
Marenches, who wrote in his memoirs that "under Carter, the Americans committed
voluntary suicide", shared with Casey not only a total disdain for Carter but also a
past in the Resistance during the Second World War and an arch-conservative
approach to both politics and intelligence work. De Marenches was well placed to
advise Casey on the Iranian hostage crisis; he had been the driving force behind the
Safari Club, founded in 1976 to coordinate covert cooperation between the French,
Iranian, Saudi, Moroccan and Egyptian intelligence services.
One month after the de Marenches-Casey meeting, Casey would fly to Madrid
for a series of meetings with senior Iranian officials to negotiate the framework for a
deal to delay the release of the Teheran Embassy hostages. The key meetings to
finalize the "October surprise" deal were held in October in Paris under the
benevolent eye of de Marenches's SDECE; in September, Alain de Marolles, SDECE
Director of Operations and principal deputy to de Marenches, had given the goahead
for French arms dealers to supply Iran with military equipment in direct
violation of Carter's embargo (381). After Reagan's election victory, de Marenches
was invited to meet the President-elect and flew to California on 21st November,
1980 to advise him on selection of Administration personnel and policy. Above all, de
Marenches warned Reagan not to trust the CIA, particularly because of its lack of
purposefulness:
"Reagan repeated [de] Marenches's warning - "Don't trust the CIA" - to George
Bush, who had been CIA chief in 1976-77. Bush thought it was hogwash, but
all the same it obviously left a deep impression on Reagan. Bush had already
told one of his CIA friends that, given Reagan's detached management style
and his unfamiliarity with intelligence matters, it was important the President
have a CIA director he felt close to, someone he trusted fully, particularly on
the issue of purposefulness. Now, after the [de] Marenches warning, that was
even more important" (382).
The man to whom Reagan offered the job - within days of his meeting with de
Marenches - was someone the French spymaster approved of entirely: William
Casey.
So, of the three Cercle candidates, Thatcher and Reagan were victorious.
Although the campaign to promote Strauss for German Chancellor failed and the
Bürgeraktion Demokraten für Strauss disbanded, it was revived in June 1981 as a
political pressure group called Konservative Aktion. The KA President was Ludek
Pachmann; Löwenthal was Chairman of the Board, which also included Dr Lothar
Bossle. KA also had excellent contacts with the German security and intelligence
services: the adviser for KA's Internal Security Working Group was Crozier's old ISC
friend Horchem, who had just retired as head of the Hamburg BfV. KA's speaker on
German and East European policy was Prof. Hans-Werner Bracht, from 1961 to
1972 a senior lecturer at the German Army Psychological Warfare School in
Euskirchen, with a spell from 1969 to 1970 in the Political Division at NATO
headquarters in Brussels. In this context, it is interesting to note that the Army
Psychological Warfare School had previously provided Grau's ISP with one of its
most frequent speakers in the mid-1970s, the School's Director Dr Kurt Klein. One
further KA member was Brigadier-General Heinz Karst, also an ISP speaker, and a
member of Löwenthal's Deutschland-Stiftung and of the Brüsewitz Centre. Whilst
marginal, KA would draw headlines due to its uncompromising hard-right slant and
the frequent violence shown by younger militants at KA anti-immigration
demonstrations and during attempts to storm squatted houses. In 1983, KA would
pierce a hole in the Berlin Wall; it would also circulate letters in Turkish urging
Turkish immigrants to return home. In 1986, a KA demonstration for the release of
Rudolf Hess and a KA circular insulting Willy Brandt would lead to dissension
amongst KA's leading members; several prominent conservatives including Karst
resigned, and the Board was purged by Pachmann and Löwenthal. KA would file for
bankruptcy in September 1986 and be finally dissolved in 1989 (383).
As we have already seen in the early 1970s, the Belgian members of the
Cercle complex often had more robust plans than election rigging in mind. In the
early 1980s, the Belgian politicians linked to the Cercle were again implicated in
funding fascists who were planning another coup d'état with a group of extreme
right-wing sympathizers in the Gendarmerie (384).
1981 - 1991
FORWARD TO VICTORY
THE BELGIAN STRATEGY OF TENSION
A 1981 report by the Sûreté de l'Etat makes it clear that the Belgian members
of AESP\MAUE who had been implicated in the rumours of a planned coup in 1973
had not given up hope. The Sûreté report dated 11th May, 1981 was submitted by
Justice Minister Philippe Moureaux to the Wijninckx Committee, a Senate committee
investigating the extreme Right and their private armies (385). The report revealed
that leading members of CEPIC, including Paul Vankerkhoven, Bernard Mercier and
Benoît de Bonvoisin (now running MAUE after Damman's death in 1979), had been
funding two extreme right-wing groups also implicated in the 1973 coup plans: the
Front de la Jeunesse, a major Belgian fascist group run by Francis Dossogne and
Paul Latinus, and the Nouvel Europe Magazine, edited by Emile Lecerf. Lecerf and
Dossogne had represented Belgium at the 1975 gathering of European fascists at de
Bonvoisin's castle. The Sûreté report further revealed de Bonvoisin's continued
financial support for Bougerol and the PIO publication Inforep, Bougerol's rôle as a
speaker at NEM Club events and his close links with Bernard Mercier of the CEPIC
Board.
The NEM Clubs, composed of readers of Lecerf's Nouvel Europe Magazine, had
been implicated with Major Bougerol in the 1973 coup plans by the de Cock and
Tratsaert reports; the de Cock report had already alluded to the financing of the NEM
by VdB and de Bonvoisin in the early 1970s. By the 1980s, the NEM Clubs were also
the recruiting pool for the most notorious of the fascist private armies, Westland
New Post, headed by former Front chief Paul Latinus. The WNP was far more than a
group of rowdies: it appeared to run a full-blown parallel intelligence service with
links to the Sûreté; Latinus himself was a major Sûreté informant. The links
between the WNP, the Front de la Jeunesse and CEPIC were multiple: besides the
funding of the Front and the NEM Clubs disclosed in the 1981 Sûreté report, 1976
CEPIC election candidate Joseph Franz had joined CEPIC straight from the Front.
Former CEPIC President Jean-Pierre Grafé appealed directly to the Front for help
with his election campaign. Front billstickers ensured CEPIC's election poster
coverage - when they couldn't cope, the WNP's poster team filled the gap. Lecerf
published appeals to vote for CEPIC in his Nouvel Europe Magazine. A 1983 Sûreté
report repeated allegations by WNP members that Mercier of the CEPIC Board was
also a regional representative/inspector of the WNP.
The WNP had been infiltrated by Commissioner Christian Smets of the
Surêté, after Smets's superior, Chief Commissioner Victor Massart, had recruited
WNP leader Latinus as a Sûreté informant (386). Massart appointed Smets as
Latinus's case officer, and Latinus duly introduced Smets into the group as "the
Duck", a sympathizer from the Sûreté. To prove his good faith, after checking with
headquarters, Smets gave the WNP lessons in surveillance and counter-surveillance.
In February 1982, in the middle of Smets's training course, WNP militants used their
newly-gained knowledge to stalk and then kill two people. The arrest of the WNP
militants and the confession of the killer, Latinus's lieutenant Marcel Barbier,
brought Smets's "membership" of the WNP to light by 1983, whereupon the
establishment and left-wing Press had a field day. It was clear that a serving Sûreté
officer had been caught red-handed training a fascist private army guilty of a double
murder. The uproar was enormous, leaving the Sûreté compromised and Smets
accused of being a fascist sympathizer colluding with the WNP through political
conviction. Fired on by the Press and by de Bonvoisin, Smets could only weakly
claim to have been following orders from his Sûreté superior Massart who was in the
front ranks of his attackers, proclaiming Smets had acted totally without authority.
Smets was condemned on all sides; even the NEM and other fascist publications
vociferously joined in, covering Brussels with posters reading "Sûreté assassin!".
With hindsight and later information, the situation looks radically different: it
now appears that the WNP scandal was the successful culmination of an operation
to sabotage Sûreté investigations into de Bonvoisin's patronage of fascist groups. The
operation was as effective as it was ingenious: Smets, whose investigations posed a
real threat to de Bonvoisin, Bougerol and the extreme Right, was tarred with the
fascist brush and publicly vilified. With Smets disgraced and his team closed down
as a result of the WNP scandal, the investigations into the links between de
Bonvoisin, Bougerol and the fascist militias came to an end. If collusion there was
between the Sûreté and the WNP, it was between Massart and Latinus with the aim
of compromising Smets. Later investigations into Gladio and PIO revealed that
Massart, Smets's superior, had been the principal contact in the Sûreté for VdB/de
Bonvoisin's intelligence chief, Bougerol. Massart gave open access to Sûreté files for
Bougerol and his team. Smets's enquiries were a threat not only to CEPIC and the
NEM Clubs, but also to Massart. Bougerol's visits were no secret at the Square de
Meeûs (Sûreté headquarters); after it could no longer be overlooked that PIO had
officially been closed down, Massart's cooperation with Bougerol continued via
Bougerol's secretary, Mirèze Legon, who regularly visited Massart to view Sûreté
files. To deflect criticism, Massart had informed his colleagues that Legon no longer
worked with Bougerol; Smets, though, working on the de Bonvoisin/Bougerol/NEM
triangle, had Legon followed from Massart's office to ... the PIO military branch office.
With the discovery of Massart's ongoing illegal cooperation with PIO, Smets was
simply getting too close for comfort.
It will come as no surprise to learn that the WNP leader Paul Latinus
"committed suicide" in April 1984 as the WNP scandal gathered pace. Opinions
remain divided about whether the suicide was arranged or not. Latinus could have
been a key witness not just in the WNP case but also in a vice scandal that hit the
headlines at the same time as the May, 1981 Sûreté report on CEPIC's links to the
NEM. Shortly before dying, Latinus had referred to a file that was his "insurance
policy" - a dossier compromising top politicians in a vice ring: the Pinon file. Dr.
Pinon's wife ran a child vice ring in which VdB and other right-wing notables were
allegedly compromised. In early 1981, details of the ring reached Lecerf who wrote
an article; perhaps not surprisingly in view of his connections, Lecerf never
published the piece. Lecerf may have been the source for Latinus's file. In mid-June,
1981, Dr. Pinon gave details of the ring to the left-wing magazine Pour, which had
originally exposed de Bonvoisin's fascist connections. Pour's editor, Jean-Claude
Garot, was preparing to go into print when he received a phone call from a lawyer
attempting to prevent publication: Garot refused. Ten days later, the premises of
Pour were burnt to the ground by a joint commando group from the Front de la
Jeunesse/WNP and the Flemish fascist group VMO. Garot never identified the
lawyer who phoned him by name, but did reveal that it was "a lawyer from the
extreme Right, a member of MAUE". A subsequent detailed study of the Pour case
stated that the lawyer was Vincent van den Bosch, a close associate of the late
Florimond Damman's and longstanding member of the Permanent Delegation of the
AESP who served with de Bonvoisin as a Board member of MAUE (387). Van den
Bosch would later figure in the WNP trials as counsel for WNP killer Michel Barbier.
THE BRABANT WALLON KILLERS
The involvement of AESP\CEPIC members with the extreme Right may tie
into the most notorious of Belgian parapolitical affairs - the "Brabant Wallon
killers", a gang of alleged "bandits" who specialized in holding up supermarkets with
maximum violence and minimum loot, killing 28 people between 1982 and 1985.
The theory that the killers were motivated by criminal gain – an idea pushed hard by
the Belgian Justice Ministry - was demolished by the wanton killing of unarmed and
unresisting shoppers, the highly professional and military approach taken to the
attacks, and the provocative tactics employed: on one occasion, having needlessly
gunned down several people and seized takings of only several thousand Euros, the
killers sat in the supermarket car-park to calmly await the arrival of the police before
making good their getaway. Such provocation, together with the concentration of
their attacks in one limited area (the Brabant Wallon), even to the extent of driving
directly from one attack to hit another supermarket only ten miles away, all pointed
to a strategy of tension with political motivations rather than to organized crime.
The multiple investigations into the Brabant Wallon killings have thrown up
considerable evidence that points to the authors of the attacks being extreme rightwing
sympathizers within the ranks of the Gendarmerie. One of the actions of the
killers was to break into a warehouse and steal prototype bulletproof vests, whose
existence was only known to the Gendarmerie and a handful of ballistic experts. It
also became clear that those carrying out the supermarket attacks must have had
intimate knowledge of the tactics called "Practical Shooting", a preserve shared by
the Diane group, the Gendarmerie's anti-terrorist unit, and a series of private
"Practical Shooting Clubs" dominated by the extreme Right. Some of the weapons
used in connected attacks had been "stolen" from the barracks of the Diane group
on New Year's Eve, 1981-82.
In 1989, sensational allegations about Gendarmerie involvement in the
killings were made by Martial Lekeu, a former member of the Diane Group and also
of the Gendarmerie's political intelligence section, the BSR. Lekeu alleged that in the
mid-1970s he was recruited into a secret neo-nazi organization within the
Gendarmerie, Group G. The Gendarmerie officer who recruited him was Didier
Mievis, a BSR member and recruiter for the Front de la Jeunesse within the
Gendarmerie (388). Lekeu claimed that the two external controllers of Group G were
Francis Dossogne and Paul Latinus, heads of the Front. Lekeu's first contact with
Group G was during a Front meeting held in Latinus's house; Latinus was Lekeu's
next-door neighbour. From 1975 onwards, the Front and Group G, together with a
corresponding group in the Army, Group M, planned a coup d'état to bring CEPIC to
power. At this time, Vanden Boeynants was President of CEPIC and Belgian Defence
Minister, the supervisory authority for the Gendarmerie. The 1981 Sûreté report
reveals that during this period VdB and de Bonvoisin were giving substantial
funding to Dossogne and Latinus for the Front. Lekeu alleged:
"When I joined the Gendarmerie, I was a convinced fascist. I got to know
people in the Diane group who shared my opinions. We used to exchange the
Nazi salute. Every time we smacked our heels together in the canteen or in
the corridors of the BSR headquarters, we heard others doing the same. It
was a sign of brotherhood ... during the Front meetings, a plan was developed
to destabilize Belgium and prepare for an authoritarian regime. This plan was
divided into two stages: a phase of political terrorism and a phase of
gangsterism. I worked on the second phase. I was one of the specialists who
would train the young people in extreme Right ideology; we had to turn them
into a group of individuals that were ready for anything. Then, I should break
off all contact with them so that they would become a completely autonomous
group who would commit armed raids without being aware that they were
part of a perfectly planned plot".
The Intelligence section of the BSR were well aware of Group G's activities:
according to a BSR report drawn up by Chief Adjutant Tratsaert in October 1976,
the BSR had several of Group G's documents, and had infiltrated some of their
meetings, photographing the group's members. The 1976 report confirms Lekeu's
claim that Dossogne was a member of the group. Lekeu stated that he left Group G
when they started committing the Brabant killings; a 1985 BSR report by Agent
Bihay declared that Group G included at least one other gendarme closely linked to
the killings: Madani Bouhouche, who was also a member of the WNP. Lekeu further
claimed that Group G was behind the 1981 theft of Group Diane's weapons:
certainly, Bouhouche was seen in the Diane barracks on the day of the robbery and
used one of the Gendarmerie's vans taken later that night by the thieves.
According to Lekeu, Group G was not only responsible for carrying out the
Brabant killings, but also for launching earlier attempted assassinations which
targeted Gendarmerie colleagues whose investigations into fraud scandals linked to
VdB were getting too close to the truth. Lekeu specifically mentioned the 1981 attack
on Gendarmerie Major Herman Vernaillen as a Group G operation. Vernaillen had
certainly been treading on toes: besides investigating VdB's links to financial and
drug scandals, Vernaillen had been following up indications of VdB's involvement in
coup plots. In May 1989, Vernaillen declared that in 1980 the Brussels banker and
CEPIC member, Leo Finné, had informed him of a planned coup d'état in the 1980s
which involved several senior figures in Opus Dei and a former Minister. Finné was
in a position to know: it has subsequently emerged that he was involved with VdB in
one of the planned coups in 1973. In a confidential report, Vernaillen gave further
details and named participants in the 1980s plot as CEPIC President VdB, former
Deputy Prime Minister and CEPIC member José Desmarets (in 1986-87, President of
WACL, whose Belgian section LIL had worked closely with Damman), State
Prosecutor Raymond Charles, former Gendarmerie General Fernand Beaurir, ex-
Chief of General Staff Lieutenant-General Georges Vivario (389) and CEPIC
member Jean Militis, a paratroop colonel implicated in the rumours of a planned
coup in 1973. Vernaillen's allegations were backed up in November 1989 by the
testimony before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry from another Gendarmerie
officer, Chief Adjutant Dussart, who confirmed the names of the participants in the
1980s plot and stated that several of the 1980s plotters had also been involved in
the 1973 plans for a coup: the de Cock and Tratsaert reports had detailed the NEM
Clubs' involvement in the 1973 plans and named CEPIC members VdB and de
Bonvoisin.
Whilst some figures in CEPIC appear to have been the beneficiaries of the
strategy of tension, others were definitely its victims. As Hugo Gijsels points out,
closer examination of some of the people murdered by the Brabant killers during
their attacks throws up a remarkable series of coincidences. Several people were
coldly executed with bullets to the head, in contrast to the shooting in the
supermarkets that claimed most victims. Amongst those executed in September-
October 1983 were three CEPIC members: Elise Dewit and Jacques Fourez, a
business contact of VdB's, and Jacques van Camp, innkeeper of the "Auberge des
Trois Canards", a favourite haunt for VdB, General Beaurir, Dewit and Fourez. In
October 1985, the killers claimed an even more significant victim amongst the ranks
of CEPIC: banker Leo Finné, Vernaillen's informant, the first person killed in the raid
on the Delhaize supermarket in Overijse.
This is a very brief summary of an extremely complex series of events, and
although much remains unknown, it is clear that those who gravitated in the
AESP\Cercle Pinay environment were closely linked both to the rumoured plans for
a coup in 1973 and to the Belgian strategy of tension in the 1980s. Certain parallels
can be drawn to two previous cases of a strategy of tension: Italy from 1969 onwards
and Portugal in 1975-76. In all three countries, the beneficiary of the strategy of
tension was a Cercle Pinay contact - Andreotti, Spinola and Vanden Boeynants. In
all three cases, the operational experience in running a strategy of tension came
from Aginter Press, Stefano delle Chiaie and fascist militants in the ranks of the local
police and Army. The most promising avenue for investigation to understand the
coup plots and strategy of tension in Belgium in the 1970s and 1980s lies no doubt
in exploring contacts between Aginter Press and the AESP. It is significant that
Damman, Lecerf and Guérin-Sérac met only two years before Lecerf's NEM made its
first appeal for a coup d'état - at the beginning of its long and close relationship with
de Bonvoisin and VdB. Belgian justice has been notably timid in its investigations,
and a full exposure of those behind these events will probably never come, but as
one of the top police investigators working on the Brabant killings said about the
sniffer plane scandal:
"If you're looking for the motives behind the killings in the Brabant, start by
understanding the motives behind that gigantic swindle" (390).
THE CERCLE PINAY AND BANCO AMBROSIANO
The close links connecting the Cercle Pinay and the sniffer plane scandal of
the late 1970s have already been documented above; in the early 1980s, it emerged
that several Cercle Pinay contacts, including key players in the sniffer plane scandal
such as Carlo Pesenti, were connected to the 1982 crash of the "P2 bank", Banco
Ambrosiano. Under a permanent threat of take-over by Michele Sindona, Pesenti had
shored up his indebted Italmobiliare group by substantial borrowings from Banco
Ambrosiano and its various Italian subsidiaries, secured by large blocks of shares in
companies controlled by Pesenti. The relationship between Banco Ambrosiano,
Pesenti and the Cercle complex became more explicit in the final months before the
bank's collapse in June/July 1982. In late 1981, the Vatican, concerned about the
growing scandal surrounding Roberto Calvi, had canvassed support for a successor.
Their favoured candidate was another prominent Catholic banker, Orazio Bagnasco,
active in property-based mutual funds and by 1980 the owner of the CIGA group of
hotels. Bagnasco was known to be very close to Giulio Andreotti; what is less known
is that both Andreotti and Bagnasco had links to the AESP and the Cercle Pinay
complex. Bagnasco was a participant at the 1976 CEDI Congress along with the
main Cercle members involved in the sniffer plane scandal - Pesenti, Pinay, Violet,
Damman and Sanchez Bella. As we've also seen, two of the other CEDI participants
were Dr Ernest Töttösy and Vittorio Pons, accused by Richard Brenneke in 1990 of
being members of P7, a covert group of lawyers and bankers used by the CIA as a
funding channel for P2. Despite Calvi's objections, Bagnasco was appointed Deputy
Director of Banco Ambrosiano on 26th January, 1982.
Shortly afterwards, the bank secretly underwrote a loan of 100 billion lire to
Pesenti to allow him to buy into Banco Ambrosiano. On 10th March 1982, Pesenti's
Italmobiliare became the largest declared shareholder in Banco Ambrosiano, and
Pesenti was appointed an Ambrosiano director. When the bank finally collapsed in
June/July, Pesenti lost 100 billion lire on his Ambrosiano shareholding alone, and
was forced to sell off another of his banks six weeks after Calvi died. Already in poor
health, Pesenti did not long survive the Ambrosiano fiasco; he died in September
1984. Following the Banco Ambrosiano crash, the Vatican appointed a four-man
commission of inquiry to "investigate" the scandal; of the four commissioners, two
were Cercle Pinay contacts. One was Hermann Josef Abs, the German Bilderberger,
European Movement and CEDI member who had met Spinola at Strauss's behest
during the General's 1975 tour to raise funding for a coup d'état. The other was none
other than Philippe de Weck who, with Pesenti, was the main financier implicated in
the sniffer plane scandal. There are further links between the sniffer plane scandal
and Banco Ambrosiano quite apart from the repeated presence of the two major
players, Pesenti and de Weck: the company used as a conduit for Elf's initial sniffer
plane payments to de Villegas' Fisalma, Ultrafin, was owned by Calvi and linked to
Ambrosiano Holding Luxembourg. One of the Ultrafin shareholders was Ernst Keller,
a member of de Weck's Zürich UBS staff responsible for overseeing transfers of
sniffer plane money to Fisalma. De Weck's UBS bank had been one of the major
channels used by Calvi for milking Banco Ambrosiano; UBS was also one of the
principal Swiss banks used by P2. Amongst UBS accounts was one of $55 million for
Gelli and another of $30 million for Calvi and his partner Flavio Carboni (391).
PEACE PROPAGANDA
A major factor in 1980s politics was the intensified nuclear confrontation in
the European theatre following Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles from 1977 on.
Besides continuing to run the post-Helsinki human rights campaign in the late
1970s, the Cercle complex also acted to highlight the Soviet nuclear build-up. After a
glowing recommendation by Violet, Crozier's ISC commissioned French nuclear
strategy expert General Pierre M. Gallois, formerly of SHAPE, to produce a Conflict
Study on the SS-20 threat, published in June 1978 under the title Soviet Military
Doctrine and European Defence. Gallois was no stranger to the Cercle complex; he
had attended the 1965 Bilderberg conference in Villa d'Este in Italy along with Pinay,
Pompidou and Voisin, and since at least 1972 had also sat on CEDI's International
Council alongside Habsburg, Sanchez Bella, von Merkatz, Vankerkhoven, Huyn and
Agnew – by 1978, all AESP members. Gallois would go on to attend Cercle Pinay
meetings (392).
After considerable internal debate, NATO decided in December 1979 to station
new medium-range nuclear weapons - Cruise and Pershing II missiles - in Britain,
Germany, Italy, Belgium and Holland, a deployment which provoked a wave of
protest from the peace movement unseen since the Vietnam demonstrations of the
early 1970s. The European Right and the intelligence services reacted in the early
eighties much as they had done a decade earlier: by a wave of aggressive counterintelligence,
agents provocateurs and smear campaigns to discredit peace activists
as potentially violent KGB dupes or stooges.
The Cercle and particularly Crozier's London-based 6I would play a key part
in these anti-disarmament campaigns throughout the 1980s; indeed, Crozier's
chapter on this period starts with the words: "The best thing the 6I ever did was to
penetrate and defeat the Soviet 'peace' fronts and the Western campaign groups ... in
the absence of government reaction in any of the affected countries [sic, see below],
it was left to private groups to counter the Soviet campaigns. At the 6I, we took a
decision to create new peace counter-groups wherever necessary, and to assist such
groups where they already existed, both financially and with ideas. It was a
considerable international coordinating effort which paid off in the end" (393).
The most intense of these anti-disarmament propaganda campaigns targeted
the British peace movement. Between 1980 and 1987, the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND), was subjected to an unprecedented propaganda and
harassment campaign run essentially by three complexes: firstly, the private-sector
groups, several of which had links to the Cercle Pinay; secondly, official but covert
propaganda units within the Ministry of Defence; and lastly but certainly not least,
MI5's F Branch (Internal Subversion) (394). As we will see below, these State and
private initiatives interlocked on several levels. One notable link was Charles Elwell,
head of F Branch, who had taken the decision to put CND under blanket
surveillance. After retirement from MI5 in 1982, Elwell would work throughout the
1980s with Brian Crozier to produce a smear bulletin targeting the Labour Party,
progressive charities and church groups, described in a later chapter.
FARI fired one of the first shots in the UK anti-unilateralist campaign in the
form of a 1980 brochure by Crozier entitled The Price of Peace - a Plain Man's Guide to
Current Defence Issues; the cover of the FARI brochure illustrated the launch of an
SS-20. Published by Stewart-Smith's FAPC and distributed also by the Monday
Club, the brochure's tables of the East-West nuclear balance in the brochure were
produced by the ISC, and the defence expenditure table came from NATO Review.
Having conceded that many peace campaigners were sincere, Crozier then went on
to ask: "But how many realize that the campaign against nuclear arms
modernisation, in which they are involved, is manipulated by Moscow?" Crozier later
revealed in his memoirs that the basic research had been done by "a Dutch friend"
and that an updated and enlarged version of the brochure would be published in the
US three years later by the Heritage Foundation, on which more below (395).
In 1981, with continued if reduced South African funding (396), FARI
organized the first Annual World Balance of Power conference which brought
together many of the Cercle's American contacts: Feulner of the Heritage
Foundation, General Graham of the ASC, Barnett of the NSIC and also of the
Committee on the Present Danger (397), and Cline of CSIS. The conference, which
aimed "to consider the need of the entire non-communist world to respond to the
Soviet global political and military threat" started with a message of goodwill from
President Reagan.
Beyond FARI's efforts, the Cercle also created several new British groups
specializing in anti-disarmament propaganda, thanks to American funding. In his
memoirs, Crozier records that, after initial hesitation, Reagan's Director of Central
Intelligence Bill Casey provided £50,000 in 1981 and $100,000 in 1982 for the
Cercle's anti-disarmament campaigns. Major funding would also be provided by the
Heritage Foundation, whose President Edwin Feulner had attended the December
1979 Cercle meeting. The Heritage Foundation, whose rôle is concealed in Crozier's
memoirs, provided the infrastructure and funding for three Cercle-linked groups
active in anti-peace movement propaganda in Britain (398). The main beneficiary of
Heritage Foundation funds - receiving an estimated half a million dollars from 1982
to 1985 - was the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies (IEDSS).
Founded in 1979, the IEDSS set as its goal "to assess the impact of political change
in Europe and North America on defence and strategic issues, in particular, to study
the domestic political situation in NATO countries and how this affects the NATO
posture". The IEDSS Chairman was Heritage President Feulner; the IEDSS Council
included Heritage Fellow Richard V. Allen, later appointed as Reagan's first but
short-lived National Security Adviser, in which post he would be a recipient of the
6I's confidential briefing papers, Transnational Security (399). Serving on the Council
with him was an old ISC stalwart: Leonard Schapiro. The IEDSS was closely linked
to the ISC from its inception on; the IEDSS initially shared the ISC's Golden Square
address before moving to new premises - two doors away. Several ISC associates also
wrote reports for the IEDSS - Brian Crozier (Communism - why prolong its death
throes?), the ISC's Turkey expert Kenneth Mackenzie, Richard Pipes of the WISC
Board and Lord Chalfont, the latter serving as a Council member of IEDSS and as a
Board member of FARI with Crozier, Moss and Amery. Heritage Foundation control
over the IEDSS was eloquently illustrated by US Internal Revenue Service figures for
the year 1985: Heritage contributed $151,273 of a total IEDSS budget of $185,611.
According to IRS figures, the Heritage Foundation donated $427,809 to the IEDSS
for the three years 1982, 1983 and 1985 (400).
Besides its Heritage Foundation/ISC links to the "private sector" for antidisarmament
propaganda, the IEDSS was also directly tied in to the British State's
anti-CND campaign through two IEDSS Council members: Conservative MP Ray
Whitney and senior Tory Sir Peter Blaker - an old friend of Crozier's from
Cambodian days (401). Sir Peter Blaker served as a junior Minister in the Ministry of
Defence from 1979 to 1983 when Defence Minister Michael Heseltine appointed him
to head a secret Ministerial Group on Nuclear Weapons and Public Opinion. This
Ministerial Group led to the creation of Defence Secretariat DS19, an MoD group
which generated films and literature attacking the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament. This official but clandestine campaign by Heseltine and Blaker was
assisted by Conservative MP Ray Whitney, who served with Blaker on the IEDSS
Board from 1979 to 1984.
Whitney had previously had considerable experience in black propaganda;
prior to being elected to Parliament and becoming a junior Minister under Mrs
Thatcher, Whitney was the last head of IRD before it was officially "closed down" in
April 1977; like many other IRD staff, he would then transfer to the IRD's "purged"
successor, the Overseas Information Department. After releasing a letter purporting
to prove communist domination of CND and the Labour Party, Heseltine commented:
"Our colleague Ray Whitney has added a valuable contribution to our knowledge of
the political motivations of CND". The IEDSS allowed Blaker, Whitney and the MoD
team to recycle their anti-unilateralist propaganda under the guise of "academic
respectability"; one such IEDSS publication was Perception and Reality - An Opinion
Poll on Defence and Disarmament, published in 1985 and written by Blaker together
with Sir Clive Rose, former deputy secretary in the Cabinet Office from 1976 to
1979 - another old ISC friend. The IEDSS later promoted the disinformation theme
that the Soviet special forces spetsnaz used women peace-campers as cover to
reconnoitre the Greenham Common Cruise missile base (402).
The IEDSS's anti-CND campaign was supported on an altogether more vicious
level by another Heritage beneficiary, the Coalition for Peace through Security.
The CPS was founded in the autumn of 1981; the Heritage Foundation's tax returns
show a 1982 donation of $10,000 to the CPS, and a letter from CPS to the
Foundation thanks it for a further contribution of $50,000 in October of the same
year. The general coordinator appointed by Thatcher for the Government's attack on
CND was Winston Churchill MP, a FARI member alongside Chalfont and the Cercle
trio of Crozier, Moss and Amery; the CPS shared offices with FARI. The CPS enjoyed
close links to the Conservative Party Central Office - the three directors of the CPS
were all prospective Conservative parliamentary candidates. Immediately after its
foundation in 1981, the CPS obtained the list of Conservative Party agents around
the country and was given free access to the Party's mainframe computer. One of its
earliest actions was to set about infiltrating CND so as to gain access to its 1982
annual conference; this was the beginning of a savage smear campaign, running
slogans such as "CND = KGB" and "Communist Neutralist Defeatist". In one typical
action in August 1986, CPS activists disrupted a two minute silence commemorating
Hiroshima by playing the national anthem full-blast over a loudspeaker system.
The main CPS activist was "a gifted young man named Julian Lewis.
Introduced to me by Norris McWhirter, Dr Lewis became the 6I's leading activist in
Britain, notably as the scourge of [CND leader] Monsignor Bruce Kent and the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament ... in Britain, the energetic Julian Lewis and his
young assistants wrote letters to the press, hired light aircraft trailing anti-CND
slogans, organised counter-demonstrations, and challenged Bruce Kent and other
speakers at CND rallies. Books, pamphlets, folders, posters were produced, all of
them pithy and telling " (403).
Lewis would go on to run other anti-Left operations for the Cercle complex
throughout the 1980s, one of which would be the Media Monitoring Unit, founded
by the Conservative Central Office in 1985, a re-run of the ISC's 1970s actions
against leftist infiltration of the media. To raise funds for the MMU, Lewis would call
on Cercle member Sir Peter Tennant: "The Media Monitoring Unit was conceived and
created last year by a small group of self-described Right-of-centre political activists.
The driving force is Julian Lewis ... He runs a political pressure group called Policy
Research Associates which pops up now and again in debates on such matters as
council corruption, trade union law and CND [all Crozier campaigns]. Lord Chalfont
is a patron as is Norris McWhirter, who founded the Freedom Association, and
Edward Leigh, MP ... The increasing activity of the PRA and the decision to form the
monitoring unit is indicative of a more aggressive approach in Right-of-centre circles
to getting across its message... To get the unit off the ground he approached Sir
Peter Tennant, 75, a senior City businessman and adviser to the CBI. Tennant in
turn drew together a nucleus of sympathisers, mostly from the City, who put up the
£25,000-or-so to hire a director, buy a video recorder and publish the report".
Crozier recounts: "We produced several occasional issues of the Monitoring Report, an
impressively researched survey of the political attitudes in the media, which showed,
in my view beyond doubt, that there was a predominantly left-wing bias, especially
in television. The first yearly report, at the end of 1986, attracted much press
attention, most of it favourable" (404).
The Heritage Foundation also provided funds for another group, the
International Freedom Fund Establishment, which acted as a clearing-house and
conduit for Heritage Foundation funding of other groups. The IFFE was run by Brian
Crozier, who thus became the Heritage Foundation's bag-man in Britain. IRS tax
returns for the Heritage Foundation show that it donated a total of $140,000 to the
IFFE for the three years 1982, 1983 and 1985. In an interview, Heritage Vice-
President Herb Berkowitz described the IFFE as "a networking operation .. we
support them and he [Crozier] does the work" and admitted to a further Heritage
donation to Crozier of $50,000 in 1986 (405). Crozier himself said that the IFFE
received a total of £200,000 from the Heritage Foundation between 1982 and 1986,
whilst declining to identify the ultimate beneficiaries of such largesse (406).
Many of these groups produced anti-CND publications; in 1982, the post-
Crozier ISC brought out a Conflict Study entitled Political Violence and Civil
Disobedience in Western Europe, whilst Crozier himself put together a 1984
anthology, This War Called Peace, published by his Sherwood Press. The major anti-
CND publication by the Cercle/6I complex would however be "Peace" of the Dead by
Paul Mercer, "one of the best of our activists" according to Crozier. The massive 400-
page book, "an exhaustive and authoritative analysis of the CND and its affiliates",
was published in 1986 by Lewis's Policy Research Publications. The book's tone was
set by the cover illustration of the CND symbol cut through the middle by a hammer
and sickle; joining Mercer in his exhaustive efforts to prove Moscow's domination of
CND were the Coalition for Peace through Security, the Freedom Association, Brian
Crozier, Lord Chalfont (who contributed the foreword), John Rees and Peter Shipley,
whose Conflict Study, Patterns of Protest in Western Europe, would also be published
in 1986.
Whilst Crozier and the London groups kept up the propaganda barrage
against CND, they would also be active in giving practical assistance to pro-Cruise
groups in Holland. When the operation was launched in 1983, Holland was a key
country, being the only NATO member government holding out against the
deployment of Cruise; it was only in 1985 that the Dutch government reluctantly
accepted the principle of Cruise, and deployment itself did not start until 1987. A
number of groups were set up in Holland to support deployment, using the same
tactic as in the UK of accusing the largely Church-based Dutch peace movement of
being Soviet-controlled. Crozier states that the Dutch group"that was proving the
most useful in countering the Soviet-led campaign was the Stichting Vrijheid,
Vrede en Verdediging (Freedom, Peace and Defence Foundation)" (407).
According to a Guardian report in 1987, the ISC acted as a channel for covert
American funding to certain Dutch pro-Cruise groups. Frank Brenchley, ex-GCHQ
and a former Chairman of the ISC Council (408), told the Guardian that the ISC
produced a private, unpublished report on the Dutch peace movement. Sir Clive
Rose acknowledged using ISC information on Holland when writing his book,
Campaign against Western Defence. The research was carried out, he said, by two
ISC members, Professor Leonard Schapiro and Nigel Clive, the latter a former head of
the IRD. Michael Goodwin, ISC Director since Crozier's departure in 1979 and also a
former IRD member, confirmed that Holland was of particular interest to the ISC in
1983 (409). The Dutch peace movement was evidently a focus for the CIA as well;
besides the ISC propaganda operation to counter the Dutch peace movement in
1983, the BVD and CIA infiltrated an agent provocateur amongst Dutch and Belgian
peace-campers in early 1984 in an attempt to compromise them in the theft of live
ammunition from the Belgian Cruise base at Florennes; the ammunition was later
recovered near the peace-camp at the Dutch Cruise base of Woensdrecht (410).
Although the British-based campaign may have been the most intensive, the
Cercle complex also set up several European institutes specializing in antidisarmament
propaganda. In his memoirs, Crozier records Cercle cooperation with
two existing groups, the German Bonner Friedensforum (Bonn Peace Forum) and the
French Comité Français contre le Neutralisme, as well as the creation of a Belgian
Cercle front group, the Rassemblement pour la Paix dans la Liberté (Rally for
Peace in Freedom), whose "influence spread not only through the Belgian
Parliament, but into the schools, with the distribution of officially approved booklets
on defence" (411).
However, Crozier's account omits any mention of several other European antidisarmament
groups with links to the Cercle. One was the Europäisches Institut
für Sicherheitsfragen (European Institute for Security Issues), founded in 1981 by
Belgian General Robert Close, who had resigned from military service a year
previously in protest at the Belgian government's reluctance to accept Cruise
deployment (412). Founding members of the EIS were:
General Robert Close Vice-President of MAUE from 1980 on;
Belgian Senator for the PRL conservative
party from 1981 to 1987; World President of
WACL in 1983-84; West European Union
Vice-President from 1986 on; President of
Western Goals Belgium; frequent
Resistance International signatory.
Archduke Otto von Habsburg
Martin Bangemann Chairman of German Liberal FDP Party,
Finance Minister, later Vice-President of the
EEC Commission.
Gerhard Reddemann CDU MP.
Hans Filbinger CDU former Regional Prime Minister of
Baden-Württemberg; PEU Council;
Brüsewitz Centre; Ludwig-Frank-Stiftung.
former Maj-Gen Jochen Löser Western Goals.
former Gen Wolfgang Schall CDU MEP from 1979 to 1984; leader of
German WACL delegation from 1981 on.
former Gen Kielmannsegg Former NATO Commander of Central
Europe; Board of the magazine Beiträge zur
Konfliktforschung – Psychopolitische Aspekte
(Contributions to the Study of Conflict –
Psychopolitical Aspects, founded in 1971
and funded by the Federal Defence
Ministry. Took free trips to South Africa in
1971 and 1975.
former Col Josef Goblirsch
Lt-Col Gerhard Hubatscheck speaker for Grau's SWG.
Kai-Uwe von Hassel CDU former Regional Prime Minister of
Schleswig-Holstein; former Defence
Minister; former President and Vice-
President of the German Parliament until
1976. Attended AESP Grand Dîner
Charlemagne in January 1976. Vice-
President of the Council of Europe
Parliamentary Assembly in 1977. President
of the WEU Assembly from 1977 to 1979.
CDU MEP from 1979 to 1984. Resistance
International signatory, visited US to lobby
Congress to support Contras as part of RI
delegation. Participant with Huyn at secret
meeting on 8-10/6/87 on "The Future of
German-American Relations", organized by
International Security Council, a group
within the Moonies' political arm, CAUSA.
Died in 1997.
Leo Tindermanns former Belgian Prime Minister, Foreign
Minister in 1985.
former Gen Pierre Cremer Belgium.
Pierre Pflimlin Bilderberg Group, President of the
European Parliament in 1985, longstanding
supporter of PEU.
The first conference of the EIS, held in the Belgian Foreign Ministry's palace,
concentrated on how to promote NATO against peace movement opposition. In
March 1982, the EIS Board expanded to include a number of new members, several
of whom would attend the second EIS conference in Luxembourg in April 1982:
Franz Josef Strauss
Gerhard Löwenthal ZDF; President of the Deutschland-Stiftung
from 1977 to 1994; Brüsewitz Centre;
Bürgeraktion Demokraten für Strauss;
Konservative Aktion; Resistance
International; WACL; CAUSA.
Dr. Heinrich Aigner CSU MEP from 1979 to 1988; Vice-
President of the German PEU section;
Brüsewitz Centre; Ludwig-Frank-Stiftung.
former Brig-Gen Heinz Karst ISP; Deutschland-Stiftung; Brüsewitz
Centre; Konservative Aktion.
Alfons Goppel former Regional Prime Minister of Bavaria,
CSU MEP from 1979 to 1984, Board
member of PEU.
former General Rall Chief of the German Air Force until August
1974, then German representative to the
Military Council of NATO. In October 1974,
took a free trip to South Africa, sponsored
by the South Africa Foundation, touring the
Pelindaba nuclear research site. Exposure
of the visit in September 1975 led to great
public controversy. A stalwart defender of
South African interests in Germany.
Dr Ludwig Bölkow Bilderberg Group, Managing Director of
Messerschmitt Bölkow Blohn, the major
armaments company (Strauss sat on the
MBB Board), prominent CSU member and
linked to Starfighter scandal with Strauss,
named President of NATO arms
standardization committee in 1976.
Nicolas Estgens Luxemburg, MEP, former Vice-President of
European Parliament, member of Bureau of
the European Parliament conservative
fraction EPP with Archduke Otto, served on
PEU International Council from 1984 on.
In 1983, the EIS split because of policy differences, and Close left to found the
Brussels-based Institut Européen pour la Paix et la Sécurité (IEPS), perhaps a
remoulding of the earlier Cercle group in Belgium, the Rassemblement pour la Paix
dans la Liberté. The IEPS would also be well-connected to the Cercle complex:
besides Close's rôle as MAUE Vice-President, other IEPS members included Jacques
Jonet, also a MAUE Vice-President, Crozier and Huyn. Within the IEPS, the Heritage
Foundation and ASC were represented by Generals Robert Richardson and Daniel O.
Graham, both members of the Political Action Committee of the ASC involved in the
anti-Carter campaign of 1980. One IEPS Vice-President was Wolfgang Reinecke
from Germany, a speaker for Grau’s Swiss ISP in 1975 and member of the
International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. The IEPS administrator was
Belgian Colonel Henri Bernard, former history lecturer at the Belgian Military
School. Bernard had been one of Damman's earliest partners, serving as a speaker
for the Belgian PEU section in the early 1960s when it was still called AENA;
Bernard was also a longstanding CEDI member. Other IEPS luminaries included
IEPS Vice-President Belgian Count Yves du Monceau de Bergendal, a PSC senator
and supporter of Opus Dei, the former Belgian Justice Minister during the strategy
of tension Jean Gol, EEC Commissioner Willy Declercq and prominent figures from
the Belgian French-speaking Liberal Party, the PRL (413).
The Cercle Pinay also had a presence in several other anti-disarmament
propaganda institutes. Key Cercle and 6I member Huyn was a Board member of the
American European Strategy Research Institute (AESRI), an offshoot of the
German section of Western Goals, founded in 1981 (414). A meeting to discuss
setting up a German section of Western Goals was held in Bonn on 17th May 1981,
attended by Huyn, Hans Klein of the Brüsewitz Centre and the Deutschland-
Stiftung, former Admiral Poser (former head of NATO Security and Intelligence), EIS
member former Major-General Jochen Löser, Carl-Gustav Ströhm of the newspaper
Die Welt, Larry McDonald of the John Birch Society, and former Generals George
Patton and Lewis Walt. Larry McDonald put up $131,982 starting capital. Western
Goals Europe and AESRI were then founded in Munich on 8th July 1981 by Huyn,
Klein, McDonald, Patton, CDU MP Helmut Sauer, BND agent Stefan Marinoff and
American industrialist Robert Stoodard. AESRI had branches in Heidelberg, Bonn
and Munich.
In May 1982, AESRI member Huyn aroused a media storm with a publication
entitled Für Frieden in Freiheit (For Peace with Freedom), which "documented" the
KGB's control of the peace movement and returned to an old theme, Soviet
subversion in the Churches. Huyn's conclusions would also be reported in the
Dutch daily, De Telegraaf as well as other European and American newspapers
(415). Another frequent writer for AESRI and Western Goals Europe was Professor
Hans-Werner Bracht, the former senior lecturer at the Army School for Psychological
Warfare who had worked with Löwenthal in the Deutschland-Stiftung, the Brüsewitz
Centre and Konservative Aktion. Bracht would serve on the Western Goals Europe
Board from 1983 on before becoming its President.
One main transatlantic relay in the propaganda chorus was of course the
NSIC; another significant US strategy group with links to the Cercle was the ASC
and its main operational arm, the Coalition for Peace through Strength, one of the
most vocal anti-disarmament groups in the 1980s. The ASC had links to the Cercle
complex through five ASC Board Members:
Gen. Richard G. Stilwell attended the January 1980 Cercle/6I meeting, senior 6I
member;
Gen. Daniel O. Graham ASC/Heritage representative on IEPS Board in 1983;
Gen. Robert Richardson ASC/Heritage representative on IEPS Board in 1983;
Gen. Lewis Walt founding member of Western Goals Germany in 1981;
Adm. John S. McCain 1974 launch of Centre du Monde Moderne; Board
member of US Committee for the ISC (416).
Generals Stilwell and Graham also ensured Cercle access to the Moonies'
CAUSA and their American geostrategic propaganda outlet, the US Global Strategy
Council (USGSC), the two Generals serving on the Board with Pipes under the
Chairmanship of Ray Cline in the late 1980s. Graham was also Vice-President of the
American branch of WACL and held posts on honorary committees of the American
Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (417).
SMEAR!
As we have seen, the Cercle complex could use its international links to
intelligence-backed private disinformation outlets to intervene in each country's
domestic politics by promoting their favoured political candidate, and by accusing
politicians or movements of the Left or Centre of being Soviet dupes or stooges.
Crozier's 1979 Transnational Security planning paper bluntly stated that one of the
functions of the group was to "conduct international campaigns aiming to discredit
hostile personalities and\or events". In the late 1980s, it emerged that quite apart
from the energetic 6I staff, Crozier could count on other friends to smear the Left.
After Thatcher's election victory in 1979 and her subsequent working meeting
at Chequers with MI6 chief Franks and the 6I team of Crozier and Elliott, the UK
counter-subversion lobby's smear campaign against the Labour Party continued
right through the 1980s with scarcely an interruption. In 1988, it emerged that
Brian Crozier had been working with Charles Elwell, former head of MI5's F or
Internal Subversion Branch, and with Peter Wright one of the MI5 officers most
closely connected with the Frolik allegations central to the anti-Labour campaigns of
1974-76 (418). Elwell had later been a major factor in MI5's decision in the mid- to
late 1970s to shift operations away from counter-espionage towards countersubversion,
strengthening MI5's rôle as a political police. It was Elwell, for instance,
in his capacity as Assistant Director of MI5, who defined the National Council of Civil
Liberties as a "subversive organization", allowing blanket surveillance that blew up
into a national scandal after revelations made by Elwell's former subordinate, Cathy
Massiter, in 1985.
In the late 1970s, Elwell set up a special unit within MI5 to produce a report
on "subversion and left-wing bias in the media". The unit investigated journalists
judged to hold anti-establishment views as well as those appointed to what MI5
considered politically sensitive or influential posts – at this time, MI5 was vetting all
BBC News and Drama staff from an office in the BBC's Broadcasting House,
stamping suspect journalists' personnel files with a Christmas tree symbol. Although
Elwell's MI5 media monitoring unit was disbanded a few years later, MI5 held on to
its files – or maybe not too tightly, bearing in mind the ISC Study Group on
subversion in the media which met from May 1977 to April 1978 and which
published its findings as an ISC Special Report, Television and Conflict, in November
1978.
Soon after his retirement from MI5 in 1982, Elwell started producing a secret
smear bulletin called Background Briefing on Subversion, revealed by the
Guardian in late 1989. Elwell's newsletter targeted many of the same politicians and
reproduced many of the same smears as MI5's previous "Clockwork Orange 2"
operation (419). Despite parliamentary questions, it was not until late 1990 that
further details of the smear bulletin were published in the Observer (420), which
reported that the bulletin, later called British Briefing, was assisted for much of its
existence by Brian Crozier.
Available only to a select few, and containing strict warnings not to reveal its
existence, the bulletin accused many prominent Labour politicians of Communist or
Stalinist affiliations. Amongst the targets were Neil Kinnock, shadow health secretary
Robin Cook, social services spokesman Michael Meacher, and Labour MPs Harriet
Harman (a previous MI5 target during her spell at the NCCL), Harry Cohen, Chris
Mullin, Harry Barnes and David Blunkett. Several progressive organizations were
also tarred with the Communist brush, notably the housing charity Shelter, the
Institute for Race Relations and the World Council of Churches. All were smeared by
association using quotations from left-wing newspapers such as the Morning Star –
exactly the tactic that the ISC and 6I used, thanks to their research libraries.
The bulletin, usually 35 pages long, brought out two special General Election
supplements in March and April, 1987: the March supplement, 29 pages long,
contained smears on nearly 50 candidates. The tone of British Briefing can be judged
by the following declaration in the February, 1987 issue:
"The march of communism through the trades unions, the Labour Party, local
government, religion, education, charity, the media under the leadership of
communists who may or may not be members of the Communist Party, is
what BB is all about. BB seeks to provide those who have the means to
expose the communist threat with clear evidence of its existence."
Funding for the smear operation came through a registered charity, the
Industrial Trust, financed by many of the UK's leading companies (421). Publishing
was carried out at the address of IRIS, Industrial Research and Information Services,
one of the right-wing blacklisting services which published its own newsletter, IRIS
News, aimed at a trade-union audience. The Industrial Trust's accounts showed that
since 1985 the Industrial Trust also had given more than half a million pounds to
IRIS, as well as £5,000 a year to Common Cause (422). The Trust would later be
investigated by the Charities Commission for possible breaches of the ban on
political activity by charities. Further funding for British Briefing came from media
magnate Rupert Murdoch, who provided some £40,000 a year for Elwell's smear
sheet. An old friend of Crozier's, Murdoch also bailed out Crozier's publishing
company, Sherwood Press, which by 1987 had accumulated a deficit of £65,000.
Murdoch's News International took a half-stake in the company and agreed to meet
losses then totalling over £90,000. Crozier also had legal costs to pay after losing a
libel case brought by Richard Barnet, director of the Institute for Policy Studies
(423).
Perhaps because of this considerable financial strain, publication of British
Briefing was taken over in 1988 by David Hart, a close aide to Mrs Thatcher. From
1977 to 1981, Hart had been research assistant to Archie Hamilton, the man who,
as Minister of State for the Armed Forces, had to bear the fall-out from the Colin
Wallace case. In 1979, Hart worked as campaign organizer for the Corby and
Kettering election campaigns of Rupert Allason, Tory MP for Torbay - alias Nigel
West, the spooks' favoured historian. In 1984, during the strike by the National
Union of Mineworkers, Hart made media fame by setting up the Working Miners'
Committee from a suite in Claridges. Hart also set up the Committee for a Free
Britain, which ran newspaper adverts during the 1987 election. In 1986, Hart
applied to Tory Central Office to become a candidate for the 1987 general election;
despite having powerful sponsors (Malcolm Rifkind, Transport Secretary, Lord
Young, later Tory Party chairman, and Ian Gow, Thatcher's private secretary for her
first four years in office), he was turned down. Besides his intelligence links in
Britain, Hart had contacts in the US: CIA director Bill Casey used Hart to run a UK
campaign in favour of Star Wars, and Hart was also friends with Fred Ickle, former
No 2 at the Pentagon (424). Hart would also finance anti-CND propaganda by Lady
Olga Maitland to counter a demonstration against the first Iraq War on February
2nd, 1991.
THE "TERRORIST THREAT"
By the late 1980s, the focus for scare tactics by the disinformation institutes
had shifted from Moscow manipulation of the peace movement to Soviet backing for
international terrorism. The Cercle's London partner, the ISC, had carried out much
of the early propaganda work on terrorism, providing consultancy services in
training for the police and armed services. One of the right-wing academics who
lectured at police colleges in the early 1970s at the suggestion of the ISC was
Professor Paul Wilkinson, who went on to cut his propaganda teeth with ISC Conflict
Study No. 67, Terrorism versus Liberal Democracy: The Problem of Response,
published in January 1976. Two months later, in March 1976, with Crozier, Moss
and Horchem, Wilkinson would be one of four ISC speakers at a major international
conference on terrorism in Washington, chaired by Robert Fearey. In 1979, the same
ISC team attended two Israeli conferences on terrorism, the first organised by the
Israeli Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, where Wilkinson was accompanied by
Moss and Horchem (425). The second Israeli conference was in July in Jerusalem at
the founding conference of the probable Mossad front, the Jonathan Institute, a
major gathering of Cercle assets. At the Jonathan Institute's launch, speakers
included not only the ISC team of Crozier, Moss, Wilkinson and Horchem, but also
ex-CIA chief George H. W. Bush, Ray Cline, Lord Chalfont, Jacques Soustelle and
Gerhard Löwenthal (426).
Wilkinson, later professor at Aberdeen and St. Andrew's universities, rose to
become a prominent adviser on terrorism to Margaret Thatcher; this is not
surprising when one looks at the Board members of Wilkinson's Research
Foundation for the Study of Terrorism (427). The RFST, which operated from the
address of Aims for Industry, included on its Board many figures from SIF, NAFF,
FARI, the ISC and the Cercle complex:
Michael Ivens Director of Aims, SIF National Executive with G. K.
Young, FARI Council, NAFF National Executive and inner
core with Moss, Vice-President of the Freedom
Association.
Norris McWhirter SIF, NAFF National Executive and inner core with Moss
and Ivens, Chairman of the Freedom Association.
Ian Greig Founding Monday Club member, Deputy Director of
FARI, Senior Executive of the ISC, probable early AESP
contact.
John Biggs-Davison SIF National Executive with G. K. Young, FARI Council,
Monday Club President, longstanding PEU Council
member, AESP Life Member.
Nicholas Elliott MI6, 6I/Cercle with Crozier.
In 1989, the RFST merged with the rump of the post-Crozier ISC under the
title of the Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism (RISCT).
Alongside Wilkinson as RISCT Director was RISCT's Chairman Frank Brenchley,
former Chairman of the ISC Council, and RISCT Executive and Editorial Director
Professor William Gutteridge, an ISC author from 1971 onwards. RISCT offered for
sale the whole series of Conflict Studies from 1970 onwards, and proclaimed itself
successor to the ISC in its publication list:
"The Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism was
established in 1989, primarily to undertake research and publishing activities. It
continues to produce the well-established monthly series, Conflict Studies, begun in
1970 by its predecessor, the Institute for the Study of Conflict".
Besides Wilkinson and his RFST and RISCT, the Cercle and 6I also had links
to several other 'terrorism research' outfits in the 1980s and 1990s, of which
perhaps the most prominent was Control Risks Information Services. After leaving
the ISC, the Institute's Senior Researcher and South Africa expert Peter Janke
became chief researcher at Control Risks, which also included Major-General
Richard Clutterbuck, a former Council member of the ISC, and Richard Sims, who
had been the ISC's librarian. Control Risks would continue the ISC's previous
assistance to South Africa: in 1986, it set up a syndicate for British companies
trading with South Africa. For a price of £1,500 per place, Control Risks informed
the syndicate's members of "the activities of anti-apartheid groups in Europe, their
relationship to terrorist groups and their intentions" (428).
FARI would also provide the Cercle and 6I with connections to another
terrorism disinformation outlet - besides serving on the Governing Council of FARI
with Crozier, Moss and Amery, Lord Chalfont also chaired the London Institute for
the Study of Terrorism run by Jillian Becker. Both Chalfont and Becker were
authors for the IEDSS - Becker's contribution was typically entitled The Soviet
Connection - State Sponsorship of Terrorism. Moss himself then went on to run Mid-
Atlantic Research Associates, a "risk analysis firm" together with Arnaud de
Borchgrave and John Rees of the John Birch Society.
A German terrorism propaganda outlet intimately linked with the Cercle
complex and 6I was the Bonn-based Institut für Terrorismusforschung (Institute
for Terrorism Research), created in 1986 by Hans Josef 'Jupp' Horchem, former
Director of the Hamburg BfV. In the mid-1970s, Horchem had been a prolific author
for the ISC, joining Crozier's 6I soon after its creation in 1977. Together with Moss
and Wilkinson, Horchem attended the two 1979 Israeli conferences on terrorism
organised by the Israeli Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies and the Jonathan
Institute. After taking early retirement in January 1981, Horchem became a
Research Fellow of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv and of the Institute for
Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. He would also sign up
with the Axel Springer Verlag, the newspaper group which publishes both Die Welt
and Bild, the newspaper with the largest circulation in Europe. Besides railing
against communists and peace campaigners in Die Welt, Horchem also served as
adviser to the "Internal Security Working Group" of Konservative Aktion, whose Vice-
Chair was Löwenthal, another participant at the Jonathan Institute's launch in
1979.
In the mid 1980s, Horchem produced his fourth ISC Conflict Study, Terrorism
in Germany, and also contributed sections on terrorism in Germany to publications
by Wilkinson and Ariel Merari (429). Horchem's views were evidently in favour with
his previous employers: in 1987, a thousand copies each of two of his publications
were bought by the BfV for purposes of "positive protection of the constitution by
information work", i.e. propaganda (430). In July 1988, Horchem was one of the
former intelligence officers interviewed as part of the BBC Radio programmes on the
intelligence services, My Country, Right or Wrong?, broadcast after the government's
temporary injunction banning the programme was lifted. The programmes also
featured two ex-CIA officers, fellow 6I member Jamie Jameson and Cercle guest
William Colby.
A transatlantic outlet for Cercle output on terrorism would be provided by the
Canadian Centre for Conflict Studies (CCS), founded in 1979 by Brigadier
Maurice Tugwell, former head of the Northern Ireland black propaganda unit,
Information Policy, and a participant in ISC Study Groups. Although CCS was
attached to the University of New Brunswick, it gave no academic courses and its
activities consisted largely of contract work for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
Canadian Police College, Canadian Department of National Defence, US Department
of Defence, and NATO. The CCS would work with both the ISC and its successor
RISCT; the editorial advisory board for the CCS quarterly journal, Conflict Quarterly,
included Professor Paul Wilkinson. It would also collaborate with the American
NSIC, contributing a paper entitled Special Operations and the Threat to United States
Interests in the 1980s to a 1984 study entitled Special Operations in US Strategy
compiled by the NSIC for the US National Defense University. In 1988, the
publication of Combatting the Terrorists was announced, a book sponsored by the
ISC in London and the Washington office of the CCS. The book brought together old
friends: the editor, H.H. Tucker, was a former Deputy Head of IRD, and the book
included a chapter by the ISC's Peter Janke. Tugwell combined his anti-Soviet
disinformation activities with pro-South African propaganda: he served as a director
of the Canada-South Africa Society, a pro-apartheid support group funded by South
African "businessmen". Tugwell would later found the Mackenzie Institute for the
Study of Terrorism, Revolution and Propaganda in the mid-1980s (431).
CHANGES IN THE CERCLE AND 6I
Whilst the Cercle and 6I could count on this panoply of friends to promote its
message throughout the 1980s, time had been taking its toll. By the mid-1980s,
many of the people and the groups making up the Cercle complex in France,
Belgium and Germany had disappeared. The Cercle's extensive operations had also
not gone unnoticed by journalists, and the 1980s would see publication of the first
damaging revelations of some Cercle activities.
To turn first to the original French node of the Cercle Pinay complex, Violet's
withdrawal from the Cercle in the early 1980s (leaving it to Crozier and Bach) and
Albertini's death in 1983 had seriously weakened the operational French end of the
Cercle/6I. This would be compounded four days before Christmas 1983 by the
revelation of the sniffer plane scandal by distinguished French journalist Pierre Péan
in an article in Le Canard Enchainé, followed in 1984 by his book V (V for Violet,
Villegas, Vatican, Vorster and Valéry Giscard d'Estaing), a comprehensive exposure
of Violet, whose activities were highlighted by a French parliamentary inquiry into
the sniffer plane scandal.
The AESP itself did not fare much better, riven by personality clashes after
Damman's death in 1979. The Cercle's attempts to revive their Belgian axis failed; in
1983, the Cercle/6I's European anti-disarmament group EIS under General Close
split, and its successor, the IEPS founded by Close, Crozier, Huyn and Jonet, would
soon become moribund. In 1984 came a further double blow: the death of core AESP
members Carlo Pesenti, under investigation by the Italian financial authorities, and
Karl-Friedrich Grau, who died in circumstances that matched his conspiratorial
nature. After being arrested in Luxembourg following a fraud investigation into
movements of millions of marks deposited with Luxembourg banks, Grau faked a
medical emergency and was transferred under police guard to a hospital; he broke
his neck whilst jumping out of a window trying to escape (432). The same year, the
publication of Péan's book on Violet and the AESP would not be the only exposure of
the Cercle's activities; Crozier also records being confronted with the Langemann
papers in French translation during a visit to a Belgian Atlantic Association meeting
in October 1984 (433).
Whilst the French-speaking axis of the Cercle was lamed by exposure and
official investigations in three countries, the German and Swiss components of the
Cercle complex also suffered setbacks. Grau's death seriously handicapped the
network of groups he had established in Germany and Switzerland. The complex's
other German associates, Löwenthal and Pachmann, also ran into difficulties;
following a split within Konservative Aktion, KA filed for bankruptcy in September
1986. The following year, Löwenthal's unrivaled media access as moderator of ZDF
Magazin also came to an end; long uncomfortable with the controversy generated by
his programme, the ZDF management took the opportunity of Löwenthal's 65th
birthday to force him into retirement and to discontinue ZDF Magazin in December
1987. The Cercle's political frontman Franz Josef Strauss then died in October 1988.
The Cercle, and particularly the 6I, would increasingly rely on Huyn and Horchem
for their German outreach.
The British axis of the Cercle complex also underwent changes in the 1980s.
As the French and Belgian connections declined, the Cercle and the 6I parted ways.
With funding in the early 1980s, first from Casey's CIA and then from the Heritage
Foundation, Crozier could rejuvenate the 6I network by hiring several young
activists (notably Julian Lewis and Edward Leigh) to run the 6I's anti-CND and anti-
Labour campaigns in the UK. This was, Crozier says, the 6I's peak period of
operations; due to the intense activity, Crozier withdrew from the Cercle in 1985,
leaving it to continue as a bi-annual talking-shop under the Chairmanship of Julian
Amery. Two other British bodies associated with the Cercle complex would soon shut
down: both FARI and the FAPC would be wound down in 1986. According to Crozier,
the 6I was then going through a funding crisis; although new sources of funds would
be found, Crozier, now seventy, decided that "it was time to pull back and hand
over". Having "paid off all the 6I's agents, mainly in Britain, France, Belgium,
Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal and the United States", Crozier records shutting
down the 6I in the late summer of 1987 (434). However, Crozier's claims to have left
the Cercle in 1985 and to have shut down the 6I in 1987 need to be treated with
scepticism, as we will see below.
GLASNOST - SOVIET PROPAGANDA
By mid-1988, Crozier was concentrating on a new campaign against Mikhail
Gorbachev "as a necessary corrective to the wave of adulation about the Soviet
leader at that time sweeping the West. My prime discovery was that Gorbachev's first
concern was not ... the 'restructuring' of the Soviet economy and Party organisation,
but of the entire apparatus of disinformation and other Active Measures. My aim was
to present, in factual detail, the Soviet involvement – since Gorbachev's advent to
supreme power – in 'peace' disinformation, including forgeries, in international
terrorism and drugs-running, in penetration of the Western Churches, and in
deliberate cheating in arms control negotiations" (435).
Crozier's claims to have withdrawn from the Cercle in 1985 and to have shut
down 6I in late 1987 are belied by the minutes of a Cercle meeting held on 21st
February 1989 and continued in Washington on 10th April. The February meeting
was attended by Pinay, Crozier, Cercle Chairman Amery, Huyn, Barnett of the
NSIC/WISC, Charlie Mayer of the Foreign Policy Discussion Group, P.K. van Byl, a
former senior BOSS agent, and a certain Professor Theodor Bach. The main theme
on the agenda for the British, German, American and South African veteran
operators was "What can be done to contain the pro-Gorbachev mood in the Federal
Republic?" The minutes of the meeting reveal that one item discussed was a
campaign to discredit German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher from the
Liberal FDP party.
"The problem:
Genscher's power is unbroken. He determines Bonn's foreign policy, even
though he has been responsible for it for 14 years and makes the Chancellor
dependent on the FDP.
- the weakness of Kohl, the great appeaser,
- the popularity of Gorbachev in public opinion in the Federal Republic,
- the media.
Possible methods:
- in the Federal Parliament? Support from Alfred Dregger [Leader of the
CDU\CSU group]? Support from Otto Lambsdorff?
- Can Genscher be discredited? Certainly there is enough 'dirt' available.
- Have we got any allies in the media? Horchem? Die Welt?
- Is all of West German television contaminated?
- Outside of Parliament (extra-parliamentary action). Can we use the Bonn
Peace Forum? (436) Possible themes or slogans for demonstrations: Stop Rearmament
in the USSR; don't pay Gorbachev's bills,
- Diplomatic pressure, particularly through the new US ambassador, Dick
Walters (437),
- A comment: the modernization of weapons (Lance) is relatively insignificant.
The most important problem is the general atmosphere of a policy of
reconciliation" (438).
But even as the 6I was preparing to intensify its anti-Gorbachev campaign, it
would be overtaken by events on the ground; 1989 would bring the long-awaited
collapse of the Iron Curtain with the fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9th-10th
November. The fall of the Wall was however only the final act in a seven-month
process in which Habsburg and the PEU played a prominent part. The process had
started within weeks of the Cercle/6I meetings in February and April - on 2nd May
1989, when Hungarian border guards began dismantling the watch-towers on the
Austro-Hungarian border, an act officialised on 27th June when the Foreign
Ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn respectively,
personally cut the border fence near the Hungarian town of Sopron.
The PEU then obtained 'official permission' to hold a "Paneuropean Picnic" on
the same spot on August 19th under the combined patronage of Hungarian minister
Imre Pozsgay and Otto von Habsburg of the PEU, to open – for three hours - the
border gate sealing the old Pressburg (Bratislava) highway between Sankt
Margarethen in Austria and Sopronköhida in Hungary. The PEU ensured advance
publicity for this 'peace demonstration' as far as Poland, particularly targetting the
annual crowd of East German holiday-makers. On the day, Habsburg's daughter
Walburga symbolically cut the barbed wire fence, the gate was opened, and 661 East
Germans crossed into the West whilst the Hungarian border guards observed
without intervening.
Despite an immediate crackdown on border security by the Hungarian
government, the writing was on the wall; the Austro-Hungarian border would be
fully opened for East Germans on September 11th, followed by the Czechoslovak-
German border in the first few days of November. Faced with massive numbers of
East Germans preparing to use these breaches, the East German government was
powerless to prevent the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Whilst the PEU had been working on bilateral contacts with Eastern
European countries, notably through the European Parliament where Habsburg
and Pirkl held powerful posts on the Delegations for Relations with both Austria
and Hungary, the Cercle/6I group continued to gun for the Soviet leader, trying to
dampen the West's enthusiasm for glasnost and perestroika.
Despite Crozier's claim to have closed down the 6I in late 1987, the network
still existed "with old and new outlets in New York, Washington, Paris, Madrid and
other places" (439). Although not all of these outlets can yet be identified, the
mention of Paris referred to a relaunch of the Cercle/6I's outreach in the Frenchspeaking
world. The new forum, the Institut d'Etudes de la Désinformation (IED)
with headquarters on the Champs Elysées, held its "First International Assizes on
Disinformation" in Nice from the 13th to 16th November 1989 – barely four days
after the fall of the Wall (440). According to the programme, the seminar was devoted
to:
"Day One - The new methods of seduction of the Communist countries:
Gorbachevism, analysed from inside by true dissidents, a presentation of countries
generally targeted by Soviet disinformation, a study of all those who contribute,
voluntarily or otherwise, to this disinformation by acting as its channels in the West;
Day Two - The rôle of the State: the omnipotent State which exerts an ideological
domination over its essential bodies such as the Army, the police or the judiciary ..
analysis of disinformation which presents capitalism, and not socialism, as a
corrupting force and which wants social progress to be linked to Statism and a
government of the Left;
Day Three - Daily Disinformation: an analysis of the major fears which reject the
very idea of progress and cultural disinformation which ... contributes to the
corruption of our society leading to the collapse of the pillars of the State;
Day Four - An insider's view of the French Press: having analysed different examples
of disinformation from the most varied fields, understanding the mechanisms which
make such a phenomenon possible so as to act more efficiently at a later stage".
Attended by numerous French academics and journalists, the seminar was
introduced by the IED top brass - IED President Daniel Trinquet and then the host
as Mayor of Nice, former French minister and now editorial writer for the IED's
weekly bulletin Désinformation Hebdo, Jacques Médecin - an AESP member since
1977.
Alongside them as speakers, the 6I trio of Crozier, who as an "expert on
international relations" spoke on "The myth of Gorbachevism: the difference between
promises and reality. Does the West want to be disinformed?", Huyn ("Soviet
methods of destabilization of Europe") and Horchem, "Director of the Bonn Institute
for the Study of Terrorism". The 6I brought along two friends as fellow speakers, one
American and one English: General Richardson of the ASC and Heritage Foundation
who had served on the IEPS Board with Crozier and Huyn, and David Hart, "leader
writer at the Times" who the previous year had taken over from Crozier as backer of
Elwell's smear-sheet British Briefing.
Three French speakers rounded off the list: Suzanne Labin, veteran leader of
the French section of WACL, Prefect Jean Rochet, from 1967 to 1972 head of the
French DST internal security service, and Joel-François Dumont, a senior
journalist specializing in security and intelligence issues at the French FR3 regional
television network (441).
Of the three 6I speakers at these IED Assizes, Horchem had just produced the
first contribution to the 6I's anti-Gorbachev campaign, his 1989 book Pro pace - der
zweite Weg sowjetischer Aussenpolitik. Der Kampf des Kremls um Herzen und Hirne
(Pro pace - the second path of Soviet foreign policy. The Kremlin's struggle for hearts
and minds). Alongside Horchem as co-authors were Dr. Iain Elliott of the IEDSS
Board and Roy Godson of the NSIC’s Washington office. This book was then followed
in 1990 by Huyn's Gorbachev's Operation: A Common European House - Soviet
Strategic Deception and Crozier's The Gorbachev Phenomenon: Peace and Secret War
(442).
The last sighting of the Cercle or the 6I covered by this investigation came in
November 1991, when the 6I trio would turn up, again with Dumont, under a
different guise - the International Freedom Foundation (IFF), about which
relatively little is unknown. According to a 1995 Newsday article (443), the IFF was
founded in 1986 and fronted by notorious American lobbyist Jack Abramoff, later to
be jailed for his corrupt relationship with several congressional legislators. With a
staff of twenty under Chairman Duncan Sellars, the IFF operated from prestigious
offices in Washington, lobbying Congress, organising high-profile conferences and
award ceremonies and publishing an extensive range of journals, reports and
briefing papers. With branches in London, Rome, Hamburg, Brussels and
Johannesburg, the IFF's stated aims were that it "works to foster individual freedom
throughout the world" and "encourages and mobilizes support of indigenous
democratic movements".
In reality, the IFF's purpose was the exact opposite – to counteract pressure
in the US for sanctions on South Africa by denigrating Nelson Mandela and the ANC
as Soviet stooges. Over half the IFF's funding was provided by the South African DMI
– the Directorate of Military Intelligence - which gave at least $1.5 million a year from
1986 on (444). In 1992, President de Klerk would end DMI funding of the IFF as part
of a withdrawal from 'Third Force' operations negotiated with Mandela; the IFF would
close down the following year.
Before its closure, the IFF provided a platform for the 6I in the autumn of
1991 by organising a series of three conferences on intelligence in Washington and
in Potsdam; the proceedings would be published the following year by the IFF's
German branch (445) under the book title Intelligence and the New World Order. The
speakers at the two Washington seminars, Assessing U.S. Intelligence Needs for the
1990s: Congressional Oversight of the Intelligence Community – Finding the Proper
Balance, included Romerstein, Holliday and Kraemer as well as CIA veterans George
Carver and Theodore Shackley. Of greatest interest though was the third IFF
intelligence conference, held in November 1991 in Potsdam under the title National
Intelligence Agencies in the period of European Partnership.
Hard by the Berlin Wall breached almost exactly two years earlier, the IFF
venue symbolized the changes since the fall of the Iron Curtain and German
reunification, "closing the circle of the superpower era, at a conference in Schloss
Cecilienhof, Potsdam, where Stalin initiated the Cold War", as the IFF book put it.
The two keynote speakers in Potsdam also reflected the meeting of East and West:
General Oleg Kalugin, former head of KGB Counter-Intelligence, and William Colby,
ex-Director of the CIA and a Cercle guest. Alongside them on the podium as
speakers were the 6I trio of Crozier, Huyn (446) and Horchem (447) together with
their companion from the 1989 IED seminar, French security journalist Joel-
François Dumont (448). Finally, amongst the participants at the IFF conference was
another familiar face, Cercle/6I member Jamie Jameson. In new times, there's
nothing like old friends.
A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS
In contrast to the public conception of "conspiracy theory", the links
uncovered by parapolitical research are rarely lines of command. Parapolitical
activity is not pyramidal like a government hierarchy; it is connective, a network of
nodes like a circle of friends. The links between the nodes are lines of support
arising not from a command structure, but from a community of interest, shared
objectives and interlocking memberships. Individual groups do not so much set the
agenda or run the show as act within their own sphere of influence or speciality,
occasionally supporting actions taken by others. Many are isolated and have little
impact outside their own country, and here the Cercle came into its own as a group
with a world-wide agenda, connecting and, to some extent, coordinating the
activities of groups in many different countries. The Cercle complex stands almost
alone as an active international network linking secret service veterans and their
media manipulators to top right-wing politicians. As to its significance, I can do no
better than to quote Ramsay and Dorril:
"One of the conclusions to be drawn from this essay is about networks. One
common response to the delineation of a network is to say, 'Yes, all that is
interesting, but where is the actual transmission of power?' To which we
would argue - and this is the only claim we make which might be called
theoretical - that the network is the power. A network of people who are,
elsewhere, powerful, is per se a powerful network."
Through its network of private-sector spies and their disinformation outlets,
the Cercle complex could promote or denigrate public figures not only in their own
country, but throughout Europe and America. Its activities - covert funding, black
propaganda, smear campaigns and, at least, connections to planned coups d'état -
were those of any intelligence agency, and, in many ways, that is what the Cercle
complex has been: the rogue agents of the international Right.
FOOTNOTES
(1) Crozier, pg 191.
(2) The major source on Habsburg and the Paneuropean Union is the Young
European Federalists. Quite apart from Habsburg's political credentials, he was, as
heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the last in the line from
Charlemagne, ruler of the first Holy Roman Empire, whose seal would be the symbol
of the AESP. The first Holy Roman Empire, founded in 800 AD, covered more or less
the same territory as the original EEC, created in 1957. Charlemagne's Holy Roman
Empire was, of course the First Reich, Kaiser Wilhelm's the Second, and Hitler's the
Third. Habsburg had to renounce his claim to the Imperial and Regal Throne (KuK)
to be allowed back into Austria after the war. Nonetheless, as nominal heir to
Austro-Hungary, Habsburg was Opus Dei's candidate for the European Catholic
throne; Pinay and Violet were staunch supporters of Opus Dei, as were many
members of the Cercle complex. This essay does not attempt to cover the vast field of
the Catholic Right, Opus Dei and the Vatican - the lack of references here to these
groups is certainly no indication of a lack of Cercle-Opus Dei connections. For a
revealing account of Opus Dei's contacts in Belgium and with the AESP, see Van
Bosbeke.
(3) With his seat in Pöcking just south of Munich, Habsburg has acted through
post-war German history as the elder statesman of the Christian Social Union (CSU),
the conservative party in the independence-minded Free State of Bavaria, an
essential German Federal coalition partner of the CDU. Despite hosting the post-war
negotiations to create the Federal Republic of Germany, Bavaria would never sign its
founding act, agreeing only to abide by it. Already a citizen of Austria, Hungary and
Croatia, Habsburg would controversially receive dual [sic] German nationality in
1978, just in time for him to be elected to the European Parliament as a CSU MEP in
June 1979 – at that time, Austria and Hungary were not EU members. For the next
twenty years, Habsburg would sit in the European Parliament, notably chairing or
co-chairing the Delegation on Relations with Hungary from 1989 to 1999, by which
time Hungary's accession to the EU was assured. He would later play a significant
part in creating the first breach in the Iron Curtain ... between Austria and Hungary
- see below on the Paneuropean Picnic.
(4) An account of CEDI and biographic details on Habsburg can be found in
IGfM, pgs 59-60, 75-76 - an outstanding piece of research on the international
Right; for a full biography, see Young European Federalists.
(5) Walsh, pg 66.
(6) The post of Minister for Information and Tourism filled by Fraga Iribarne and
Sanchez Bella was a significant one; the Ministry of Information was responsible not
only for government communications but also for the licensing and censorship of the
media, whilst the Ministry of Tourism's sizable budget gave the Minister considerable
latitude for funding foreign contacts. Sanchez Bella died in 1999.
(7) Braden was replaced as head of the CIA's IOD by Cord Meyer in 1954, when
Meyer took over responsibility for the CIA's clandestine funding of the EM and EYC,
and later FWF.
(8) On the early relationship between the two complexes, see Young European
Federalists and Retinger pgs 209-216; on CIA funding of the EM and EYC, see The
European Movement 1945-1953, F. X. Rebattet (son of the EM Secretary-General
Georges-Louis Rebattet), unpublished thesis, Oxford University, 1962; Eringer pgs
19-21; The CIA backs the Common Market, Steve Weissman, Phil Kelly and Mark
Hosenball, and How CIA money took the teeth out of British Socialism, Richard
Fletcher, both published in Dirtywork 1: The CIA in Western Europe, various authors.
(9) Van Doorslaer and Verhoeyen, pgs 149-150.
(10) A major source, not fully integrated here, is the exhaustive - and exhausting -
sanitized book by Saunders, which refers to Forum World Features only in passing
and makes no mention at all of Crozier.
(11) Since March 1952.
(12) On the Bilderberg Group, see Retinger; Eringer; Gonsalez-Mata. Gonsalez-
Mata was particularly well informed on the Bilderberg Group, being a former head of
Spanish intelligence; not least because of this, his statements should be treated with
caution. The Hotel De Bilderberg, flagship of the Bilderberg Groep Hotels and
Restaurants, is itself also still running – see www.bilderberg.nl.
(13) Pinay's political career is dealt with in depth in Rimbaud; the book makes no
mention of the Cercle Pinay and includes only a passing reference to Maître Violet in
connection with the sniffer planes scandal, detailed below.
(14) Faligot and Krop, pg 194.
(15) Crozier, pg 191.
(16) On Violet's links to the pre-war Cagoule, his SDECE career and his early
relationship with Antoine Pinay, see Faligot and Krop, pgs 193-200; Péan, pgs 33-54
- the major book on the sniffer plane scandal; Mungo - a key AESP\MAUE insider
source; Lobster 18, pgs 24-25; Crozier pgs 97 and 191-192. On the Cagoule in
general, see Bourdrel. Europe-Amerique would publish an interesting article on the
Cagoule just after the war – see the 7th February 1946 issue.
(17) Crozier, pg 192. The significance of these Franco-German encounters can be
judged from a contemporary article in the International Herald Tribune: "The warmest
expression of French-German friendship and cooperation since the end of World War
II was contained in a joint communique issued last night [Sept. 14] by French
Premier Charles de Gaulle and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer following
a meeting in Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises. 'We are convinced', the communique said,
'that close cooperation between the German Federal Republic and the French
Republic is the foundation of all constructive action in Europe. It contributes to the
reinforcement of the Atlantic Alliance. It is indispensable to the world'. 'We feel', the
communique further declared, 'that the hostility of the past is forever at an end and
that Frenchmen and Germans are called upon to live in accord and to work
together.' Mr. Adenauer spent the night in the general's home" - International Herald
Tribune, 15/9/58, republished in the IHT on 15/9/08.
(18) Mémoires, Critérion, Paris 1991, pgs 285-286.
(19) Le Figaro, 2/4/63, quoted by Gonsalez-Mata, pg 38. At the 1955 Bilderberg
conference in Bavaria, Strauss was accompanied by General Gehlen, head of the
BND - see Gonsalez-Mata, pg 27.
(20) Frankfurter Rundschau, 13/9/63, reproduced in IGfM, pg 75.
(21) Spiegel, 10/1980, pg 23; Spiegel-Buch, pg 110, an invaluable source on
Strauss.
(22) Gonsalez-Mata, pg 26.
(23) Crozier, pg 33.
(24) Crozier, pg 32.
(25) Crozier, pgs 29-31.
(26) Many MI6 officers and agents worked on the staff of the Economist at one time
or another, amongst them the famous double agent Kim Philby (who had been
recommended to the journal by top MI6 officers Sir John Sinclair and G. K. Young),
Tom Little and Patrick Honey, two IRD writers who would join Crozier in the ISC,
and last and most certainly not least, Robert Moss.
(27) Crozier, pg 32. As part of the post-war decentralisation of German government
offices, the BND had been located in Pullach near Munich in the heart of Strauss's
fief, Bavaria. This geographic consideration and shared political convictions led to a
longstanding close relationship between Strauss's CSU and the BND under Gehlen
and Wessel right up until the FDP's "Kinkel coup" of 1980, when Wessel was
replaced by Genscher's man, Klaus Kinkel, a future German Foreign Minister,
putting an end to the "Gehlen dynasty" and the BND's longstanding affiliation with
the Right. The relationship between Strauss and Gehlen did not however always run
smoothly - see Höhne and Zolling. By 1962, Foertsch would be the Inspector-
General of the German Army; it would be an article on Foertsch by Spiegel editor
Conrad Ahlers in September 1962 that would trigger the Spiegel Affair – see Höhne
and Zolling, pg 216.
(28) Dorril and Ramsay, 1990, pg 6. After the war, the NTS would be the parent
body for the IGfM - see IGfM.
(29) Höhne and Zolling, pgs 33-36.
(30) “As in neighbouring Belgium, the Dutch stay-behind army was also made up
of two branches. One branch was called Operations, or O for short. It was directed
by Louis Einthoven, a cold warrior who died in 1973 [incorrect; aged 83, Einthoven
died in 1979] and throughout his life had warned of the dangers of communism.
Einthoven, who ran the O branch for 16 years in secrecy, was also the first director
of the Dutch post-war domestic security service Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst
(BVD). “The double function of Einthoven as chief [of] BVD and of O was of course
very valuable to us,” a former unnamed member of O recalled, for this helped to
firmly integrate the secret army into the Dutch intelligence community. The second
branch of the Dutch stay-behind was Intelligence, or I. It had been set up after World
War Two by J.M. Somer, but was commanded by J.J.L. Baron van Lynden after
Somer was dispatched to the Dutch colony of Indonesia in 1948 to fight the
independence movement there. … The O unit, under Einthoven, carried out
sabotage and and guerrilla operations, and was charged with strengthening the local
resistance and creating a new resistance movement. O was also in charge of
sensitizing people to the danger of communism during times of peace. Moreover, O
was trained in covert action operations, including the use of guns and explosives,
and possessed independent secret arms caches.” - Ganser, pgs 85-86. Those
interested in Gladio should see the excellent book NATO’s Secret Armies – Operation
Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe (Frank Cass, London 2005) by Ganser, who
is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of
Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. ETH also hosts the Parallel History Project
on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP) at www.isn.ethz.ch/php, a cooperative research
project run by the Centre for Security Studies at ETH Zurich and the National
Security Archive at the George Washington University. On Einthoven, see Jan. H.
Kompagnie, 'Einthoven, Louis (1896-1979)', in Biografisch Woordenboek van
Nederland 3 (Den Haag 1989). It is interesting to note that the Intelligence Director
of the Dutch Gladio network, J.J.L. Baron van Lynden, had been imprisoned during
the war in Colditz Castle, as had Neave, Stirling and Elwell – see Paul Koedijk, Gladio
in Nederland inVrij Nederland, 25/01/92.
(31) Crozier, pg 32.
(32) See Marks, chapter 9; Thomas.
(33) Laurent, pg 303, quoting Zangrandi.
(34) Crozier appears to be mistaken in claiming that INTERDOC was created
"shortly after" the Bad Godesberg meeting in March; the registration papers actually
date from February 1963.
(35) Dorril and Ramsay (1990), pg 6. On INTERDOC in general, see Zangrandi;
Libération, 9/10/75; Laurent, pgs 303-304; Verhoeven and Uytterhagen; Dorril and
Ramsay, 1990, pgs 6-8; Crozier, pgs 29-33, 45-49. INTERDOC and CEDI are the
most promising subjects of research to understand the early Cercle complex.
(36) See Bloch and Fitzgerald.
(37) It is interesting to note that the 1955 Bilderberg conference was held in
Barbizon, the same venue as the seminal INTERDOC group in 1961. Prince
Bernhard's role may be indicative of possible help given by the Bilderberg group,
only recently created itself, to the fledging INTERDOC organisation.
(38) I have not been able to track down Einthoven's memoirs (Tegen de stroom in:
levende vissen zwemmen tegen de stroom in, alleen de dooie drijven mee, Apeldoorn,
1974, ISBN 90-6086-596-0) – it would no doubt be a useful source.
(39) Crozier, pg 49.
(40) Crozier, pg 46.
(41) Stevenson, pg 253. Ellis's intelligence career is given in Dorril. On Menzies'
rôle in Gladio, see his letter to the Belgian Prime Minister of 1949 in Gijsels (1991),
pgs 149-150. Crozier also notes that "Ronald Franks" of MI6, to whom Crozier
reported on the Bonnemaison/INTERDOC meetings, expressed "great interest" in
them - Crozier, pg 31.
(42) Dorril and Ramsay, pgs 6-7; biography in Dorril.
(43) On the links between INTERDOC, the ISC and the Monday Club, see Time
Out, 29/8/75; Ramsay and Dorril, pgs 3 and 40-41. On the history of the anti-union
outfits Common Cause and IRIS, see Dorril and Ramsay's In a Common Cause – the
anti-communist crusade in Britain 1945-60 in Lobster 19 (May 1990), pgs 1-8, and
Ramsay’s The Clandestine Caucus – anti-socialist campaigns and operations in the
British Labour Movement since the war, Lobster Special Issue, undated.
(44) Van Doorslaer et Verhoeyen, pg 143; Laurent, pg 41 et seq; Gladio, pg 77;
Willan, pg 33.
(45) Retinger, pgs 236-237.
(46) Laurent, pgs 302-303.
(47) Crozier, pgs 102-104. From 1961 on, Est-Ouest would produce a Latin
American edition, Este y Oeste, and an Italian edition, Documenti sul communismo. In
the 1950s, one of the editorial team working on Est-Ouest with Albertini was Roland
Coquillot, alias Gaucher, present at the 1975 fascist summit at de Bonvoisin's castle
- Brewaeys and Deliège, pg 34. Gaucher, a former militant in Marcel Déat's RNP,
would work for Albertini's magazine for over ten years – see CelsiuS no. 52, August-
September 1992.
(48) Young European Federalists, pg 208. Grau was co-founder of another political
front group similar to the Frankfurt Study Group, the Hamburg-based Staats- und
Wirtschaftspolitische Gesellschaft (Political and Economic Society, SWG), created
in Cologne on 9th April 1962. The SWG still exists today and is notorious for its far-
Right sympathies. Their website (http://www.swg-hamburg.de/index.html) gives a
list of previous SWG speakers, many of whom belonged to CEDI and later groups in
the Cercle complex, notably Grau's Swiss ISP, the IfD and the EIS, on all of which
see below. Amongst SWG speakers, we find Filbinger, Habsburg, Col. Gerhard
Hubatschek, Huyn, General Karst, Kurt Klein, Major-General Komossa, Dr. Marx,
von Merkatz, von Richthofen, Professor Rohrmoser, Dr. Sager and Reginald Steed.
Another of the SWG's speakers was Father Lothar Groppe, a Jesuit Military Chaplain
from 1962 on, who worked from 1963 to 1971 as Military Chaplain and lecturer at
the German Army's Command School, also based in Hamburg, with which the SWG
was closely linked. Groppe would later lecture for the Austrian Army Command
School from 1973 to 1987, and would direct the German section of Radio Vatican for
some years. With Huyn and Löwenthal, Groppe would go on to found a Conservative
Bureau in Bielefeld, of which little else is known. A web article on the SWG from
Antifaschistische Informationen, Rechte Organisationen in Hamburg, Nr. 1 of
02/06/95 (online at http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/Antifaschismus/
Organisationen/Diverse/AIswg.html) names as further SWG speakers Löwenthal,
Dr. Böx of the AESP, General Schall and Polish-German exile Herbert Hupka, a
Board member of Grau's earlier Frankfurt Study Group, a fervent opponent of
Ostpolitik and CDU MP from 1969 to 1987. A series of SWG documents are
included in the invaluable annex in Young European Federalists, including a 1976
issue of Vertrauliche Mitteilungen aus Politik und Wirtschaft (Confidential News from
Politics and the Economy), another newsletter produced by Grau, which advertised
a three-day lecture tour by Habsburg jointly organised by the SWG and PEU.
(49) Willan, pgs 123-124 - the best English-language account of the manipulation
of democracy and terrorism in Italy in the post-war period, and very highly
recommended.
(50) For details of delle Chiaie, Giannettini and Aginter Press, see Christie's
excellent book; Laurent; Bale, pgs 2-18; Willan, particularly Chapters 6 and 7.
(51) Christie (1984), pg 28.
(52) Laurent, pg 304; Roth and Ender, pg 54; Willan, pgs 41 and 95; Gonsalez-
Mata, pg 78.
(53) On the IRD in general, see Bloch and Fitzgerald; Smith; Fletcher - a major
source on the IRD; Guardian, 27/1/78; Observer, 29/1/78; New Statesman,
27/2/81; Leveller, 64/1981; Guardian, 18/12/81; Tribune, 2/9/83, 9/9/83. A later
source not integrated here is Paul Lashmar and James Oliver's book Britain's Secret
Propaganda War, published in 1998 by Sutton Publishing.
(54) Crozier, pgs 56-57.
(55) Saunders, pg 261.
(56) Saunders, pgs 311-312.
(57) Crozier, pgs 72-74. Crozier's biography of Franco would be translated into
Spanish by Esteban Perruca, in charge of the newsreels section of the Information
Ministry.
(58) The IAS was an affiliate of the American Security Council Foundation - see
Bellant, pgs 30-31. On the NSIC, Casey would testify at the Senate hearing to
confirm his CIA appointment: "As a founding Director of the National Strategy
Information Center, I supported the establishment of chairs and professorships in
national security on 200 campuses throughout the United States" – see State
Research no.22, February-March 1981, pgs 86-87.
(59) Crozier, pg 74.
(60) Crozier, pg 90.
(61) Crozier, pgs 85-86.
(62) Crozier, pg 86.
(63) This study is too brief to cover all of the activities of the ISC in any depth: see
Time Out, 20/6/75, 29/8/75, 5/9/75, 30/9/77; CIA, Students of Conflict, Steve
Weissman, Embassy Magazine, August 1976, reprinted as The CIA makes the news
in Dirtywork 1: the CIA in Western Europe, pgs 204-210; Searchlight no.18, November
1976, no. 20, January 1977; Guardian, 20, 21, 31/12/76; Daily Mail, 22/12/76;
Private Eye, 7/1/77; State Research no. 1, pgs 13-17; Laurent, pgs 304-305;
Gonsalez-Mata, pgs 162-163; Winter, 1981, pgs 170-171, 321, 543-544; Bloch and
Fitzgerald, pgs 98-99; Freemantle, pgs 189-191; Péan, pgs 65-70; Ramsay and Dorril
- essential reading; Norton-Taylor, pgs 73-74 - an excellent overview of the British
security and intelligence services; Herman and O'Sullivan, pgs 108-112, an
invaluable study on terrorism and propaganda groupings; Dorril and Ramsay (1991)
- indispensable; Toczek - an outstanding summary of the British Right including the
Monday Club, SIF, NAFF, ISC and FARI; Crozier – from the horse’s mouth, albeit
guardedly...
(64) Both donations were organised by Sir Robert Thompson - Crozier, pg 90.
(65) As the NSIC was to play a crucial role in the birth and life of the ISC, it is
worth including the full NSIC article by GroupWatch as an annex below.
(66) Minutes of the ISC Council meeting on 2/1/72 in Knight, pg 176.
(67) Crozier, pg 90.
(68) Leveller, 64/1981. It is interesting to note that two IRD offshoots were created
at roughly the same time: the ISC in London in 1970 and the Information Policy Unit
in Northern Ireland in 1971 - both were involved in anti-Left propaganda in the
critical period 1973-75, InfPol providing forged documents to discredit politicians,
the ISC railing on about Communist subversion in the unions, media, etc. InfPol's
operations would be exposed by top operative Colin Wallace in 1985: see Ramsay
and Dorril; Foot; Dorril and Ramsay (1991).
(69) Saunders, pgs 107-111. In his memoirs, Crozier writes about recruiting
Goodwin to the ISC: "[in 1970] I had known Goodwin for eight or nine years from the
time he had commissioned a long study from me on Communist China's steel
industry. A publishing venture he was involved in had collapsed, and I had helped
him find a job with the Congress for Cultural Freedom, from which I now lured him"
(Crozier, pgs 89-90). This seems to confuse chronologies: Crozier says he knew
Goodwin from around 1961-62, yet the only recorded collapsed publishing venture
and CCF involvement of Goodwin's dates back to the early 1950s. Saunders adds
that Goodwin would later become a Features and Drama Director at the BBC.
(70) For biographic details of many ISC authors, see Dorril; on ISC/IRD links, see
Ramsay and Dorril.
(71) Crozier, pg 98. For a biography of Moss, see Covert Action Information Bulletin
nos. 7 and 10; Coxsedge, Coldicut and Harant, pg 124 (who report that Moss was
"son of a senior Australian Defence officer"); Ramsay and Dorril, pgs 53-54; Dorril
and Ramsay (1991); Toczek.
(72) Toczek, pg 29.
(73) All three pacification supremos in Vietnam would later develop links with the
Cercle Pinay: Thompson (ISC Council), Robert Komer (Board of the ISC's American
offshoot WISC) and William Colby (guest at a Cercle Pinay meeting in December
1979).
(74) Clutterbuck would later combine forces with Peter Janke and ISC librarian
Richard Sims in Control Risks, perhaps the world's most prominent business
security and kidnap ransom agency – see below. Clutterbuck died in 1998.
(75) Crozier, pgs 102-104.
(76) By 1978 Biggs-Davison would be a Life Member of the Habsburg-Violet-
Damman group, the AESP.
(77) In 1951 he served on the Board of the British Society for Cultural Freedom
alongside Michael Goodwin, the future Administrative Director of the ISC. See
Saunders, pgs 76, 88, 110; Crozier, pg 15.
(78) Howarth devotes a chapter to Julian Amery in his history of the SOE; also see
Amery's Sons of the Eagle (1948) and Nigel West's The Secret War, Coronet, London
1993. Amery was responsible for British links with General Draza Mihailovic, leader
of the Chetniks, Serbian monarchist irregulars fighting the German occupation.
Charged with collaboration, Mihailovic was shot by Tito in 1946. The British
rendition of anti-Tito resistance fighters to Yugoslavia after the war (leading to their
execution) was heavily criticized by Count Nikolai Tolstoy in his mid-1980s books,
Victims of Yalta and The Minister and the Massacres, the latter attributing blame to
Macmillan; Amery sided with Tolstoy who was feted at a Monday Club dinner in
1988. For Amery's more recent contacts with the Chetniks, see Observer, 17/5/92.
On the Albanian operation, see Leigh, pgs 11-13 for a brief summary, Verrier for an
intelligent insider's view; the main documentary work is Nicholas Bethell's The Great
Betrayal, London 1984, which has many references to Amery. Tom Bower's The Red
Web, Aurum Press, London 1989, details MI6 landings in Northern Russia. After
service in the Balkans, Amery would serve from 1945 until demobilisation in China
as aide to General Carton de Wiart, British representative to General Chiang Kai
Shek. Around this time, Julian's brother John, a convinced fascist, was hung by the
British government for having gone to Germany, joined the Nazis and organised the
British Free Corps to fight alongside the Germans on the Russian front. As well as
being a prominent member of the Monday Club during G. K. Young's ascendancy,
Julian Amery was allegedly linked with Young to South Africa's development of a
nuclear programme. Amery was a Director of the South African Vaal Reefs
Exploration and Mining Corporation, and a consultant to the Bank of Credit and
Commerce International, implicated in many cases of money laundering from arms
and drugs trafficking, which collapsed in July 1991. BCCI's London branch was
used as a conduit for CIA payments to 490 of its British contacts - see Guardian,
26/7/91. Amery resigned from the Monday Club in February 1991 in protest at its
takeover by racist extreme right-wingers - see Observer, 24/2/91. A biography of
Julian Amery is given in Dorril, pg 2; he died in 1996.
(79) On Stewart-Smith, see Ramsay and Dorril; Dorril and Ramsay (1991); Toczek.
FAPC would be liquidated in 1986; Stewart-Smith died in 2004.
(80) The major sources on Young are Lobster 9-21, and particularly nos. 11
(Ramsay and Dorril) and 19, pgs 15-19, for an autobiographical obituary written by
Young some time before his death in May 1990 - Young's account studiously avoids
his days in the Monday Club, NAFF and Unison; Christie (no date), pgs 123-130 for
a preliminary investigation; Toczek for an essential piece of research on Young and
the Tory Right; Dorril and Ramsay (1991) which puts Young's efforts into context;
Dorril for his MI6 career. Also see Bloch and Fitzgerald; Foot, pgs 78-79, 435;
Verrier, chapters 3 and 4. Young's own book on subversion is well worth a read.
(81) Christie (1984), pgs 35-36; Willan, pgs 99-102 et seq.; Gladio, pgs 78 - 96;
Herman and Brodhead, pg 80.
(82) Toczek, pgs 15-16.
(83) Gonsalez-Mata, pg 315. Bennett's mother Marguerite was a Kleinwort. The
merger between Kleinwort and Benson in 1961 was facilitated by the fact that Cyril
Kleinwort (Bilderberg participant, 1966 and 1971) and Mark Turner of Benson's were
already working together as Directors of Commercial Union. Kleinwort Benson was
bought by the Dresdner Bank in 1995; since 2006, the company has been known as
Dresdner Kleinwort. Kleinwort Benson still maintains its longstanding contacts with
the Bilderberg Group; Simon Robertson, the former Chairman of the Kleinwort
Benson Group plc, attended the 1997 Bilderberg meeting in Atlanta – see Lobster 35,
pg 31.
(84) Gonsalez-Mata, pgs 290-291. The conference was held in the Paramount
Imperial Hotel in Torquay, the constituency (renamed Torbay in 1974) that Bennett
held for thirty-two years from his victory in a 1955 by-election until his retirement
from Parliament in 1987. His successor as Torbay MP would be Rupert Allason who
writes authorised intelligence histories under the pen-name Nigel West. Between
1963 and 1984, Bennett would attend fourteen annual Bilderberg conferences
(1963, 1964, 1966-68, 1971, 1973-75, 1977-80, 1984). Bennett's part in Young's
Unison was described in Peter Cadogan's Unlicensed Rebel of the Right: "15 July
1976: Today I had lunch with GKY [Young] ... he told me that when he first had the
idea that is now Unison, he saw General Templer about it. Templer was interested
but too old and sick to act and he suggested General [Sir Walter] Walker ... The form
the thing now takes is that of an instant communications network capable of acting
at the highest level if the established machinery and government breaks down ... The
key man in the [House of] Commons is Sir Frederic Bennett and with him are some
twenty other MPs ... Unison will go public later this year" – see Dorril's Lobster no.
26, pg 23. In 1979, Bennett published Reds under the Bed, or the Enemy at the Gate
– and Within which went into a third edition in 1982 and which may well have been a
contribution to the Cercle/6I UK propaganda campaign. From 1979 to 1987, Bennett
was the leader of the UK delegation to and also Chairman of the Council of Europe
and Western European Union Assemblies; his predecessor as Chairman of the WEU
Assembly from 1977 to 1979 was Kai-Uwe von Hassel, guest at a 1976 AESP
meeting. Bennett died in 2002.
(85) See Winter (1981), pgs 382-383; Penrose and Courtiour.
(86) See Hain's book A Putney Plot, Spokesman Books, London 1986, which
includes information from Colin Wallace. Wallace's 1974 notes show that Thorpe,
Hain and other Liberals had also been targetted by MI5 in an attempt to prevent a
coalition between the Liberals and Wilson's minority Labour government.
(87) Dumont, pgs 174-179. Dumont obtained his information by infiltrating AESP
circles under the pseudonym of Maurice Sartan.
(88) Gijsels, L'Enquête, pg 224 et seq. - despite some inaccuracies and no index,
the best introduction to the '70s plans for coups d'etat, the 'Brabant Wallon killers',
the extreme right and the strategy of tension in Belgium. It should however be read
in conjunction with Brewaeys and Deliège, who have produced the (so far) definitive
work on de Bonvoisin, PIO and the WNP scandal.
(89) Dumont; Laurent, pgs 297-298. The ABN and its sister group, the European
Freedom Council, held their joint conference entitled "Our Alternative" in Brussels
from November 12th to 15th 1970. A previous joint ABN/EFC conference on "How to
Defeat Russia" was held in London on October 15th to 22nd, 1968.
(90) Péan, pg 76.
(91) Le Vif/L'Express, 19/5/89.
(92) Dumont; Le Vif/L'Express, 19/5/89.
(93) Christie (1984), pgs 28-29.
(94) Aginter Press's contact within the CSU was Strauss's secretary, Marcel Hepp,
who also edited the Strauss newspaper, Bayern Kurier – see Laurent, pg 133.
(95) L'Espresso, 24/03/74, quoted in Péan, pg 83.
(96) Dumont, Le Vif/L'Express, 19/5/89.
(97) Péan, pg 65. It is worth noting that in his progress report on CREC, Guérin-
Sérac also mentions a meeting with Damman in Vienna in May 1969: could the
three men have met at the same symposium?
(98) Published in Péan.
(99) On De Roover, Milpol, the Delcourt network and Gladio, see Van Doorslaer
and Verhoeyen; Histoire de glaives, Michel Bouffioux, in Gladio, various authors, pgs
29-60. On Vankerkhoven and CEDI Belgium, see Van Bosbeke, pg 15.
Vankerkhoven would sit in the European Parliament for the PSC from 1982 to 1984.
(100) Roth and Ender, pg 73.
(101) Unheimliche Patrioten, pg 437 - an indispensable encyclopaedia of the Swiss
Right.
(102) Unheimliche Patrioten, pg 431.
(103) Crozier, pgs 72-74.
(104) Laurent, pg 302.
(105) " "These conferences [Paris, December 1960; Rome, 1961], attended by public
figures from some fifty countries, had the aim of bringing together "beyond the
bounds of nations or of doctrines eminent persons from political, academic,
diplomatic, trade-union and media circles for the defence of freedom". Its Board of
Sponsors notably included Senators Dodd, Keating, Mundt, Admiral Burke,
Presidents Paul-Henri Spaak, Paul Van Zeeland, Antoine Pinay, René Pleven,
Maurice Schumann, Heinrich von Brentano, Fulbert Youlou, Ivan Matteo Lombardo,
Pacciardi, Carlos Lacerda, Jules Romain and Gabriel Marcel" (Henri Coston:
Dictionnaire de la politique française). Amongst the other French representatives were
General Vanuxem, François Duprat, former leader of Ordre Nouveau ... the lawyer
Georges de Maleville, member of the National Front, Georges Albertini and many
exiles from Eastern European countries" (Laurent, pg 302). Suzanne Labin and her
husband Edouard, the two mainstays of the French section of WACL, were amongst
the earliest contacts of Aginter Press; a contact list of Aginter Press published by the
inquiry into Aginter Press carried out by the post-revolutionary Portuguese
intelligence service SDCI mentions a meeting between the Labins and Aginter Press
in December 1966, only a few months after Aginter Press's creation - see Laurent, pg
302.
(106) At a July 1973 meeting of the European Freedom Council in London, the
participants included Lombardo, Otto von Habsburg, WACL notables David Rowe,
Kuboki and Raimundo Guerrero, and French General Paul Vanuxem, who had had
links to the OAS and would be involved in the last-ditch stand of the Vietnam war -
"Vanuxem was present at the closing stages of the Vietnam War, urging the
incoming South Vietnamese President, General Minh, to keep fighting until the bitter
end, which came only a few days later" (Decent Interval, Frank Snepp, Penguin,
London 1980). Vanuxem would later figure on a 1978 AESP membership list as a
member of an AESP Study Group. The European Freedom Council, sister group to
the ABN, is certainly worth further investigation; it continued in existence until at
least 1991 - see the obituary in the Times, 3/3/06, of one UK member, Ukrainianborn
Stefan Terlezki, CBE, outspoken Conservative MP for Cardiff West from 1983
to 1987. The ABN/EFC would hold joint conferences in London in 1982 ("The
West’s Strongest Allies") and again in 1985.
(107) L'Espresso, 17/12/74; Willan. I am indebted to Jeff Bale for information on
Lombardo and other Italian members of the AESP.
(108) Naylor, pg 259, who points out that a water-sniffing plane would be of great
use to Pesenti’s cement company.
(109) The Cercle Pinay complex had multiple links to Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano
which are described below. This essay cannot however attempt to give a full account
of the financial links between the Vatican Bank, P2, Sindona, Calvi and Pesenti - see
Cornwell; Yallop; Raw; Naylor.
(110) Christie (1984), pgs 20-21, 33, 47-49; Willan, pg 44.
(111) Péan, pgs 97-102. The UBS's German title is the Schweizerische
Bankgesellschaft, SBG.
(112) Péan, pg 213.
(113) Bacelon, pgs 243-244; Wolton, pg 258.
(114) Dans le secret des princes, Christine Ockrent et le Comte de Marenches,
Livres de poche Stock 1986, pgs 135-137. An English translation was published as
The Evil Empire, Sidgwick & Jackson (Chapman Pincher's publishers ...), London
1988. Crozier suggests personal rivalries as a cause for Violet's dismissal – see
Crozier, pg 191, also quoted below.
(115) Crozier, pg 97 et seq.
(116) Crozier, pg 64.
(117) Crozier, pg 98.
(118) Reproduced in Péan, pg 236.
(119) Bloch and Fitzgerald, pgs 98-99.
(120) State Research no. 1; Ramsay and Dorril, pg 38.
(121) Crozier, pg 100.
(122) Crozier, pgs 100-101.
(123) 1972 saw a major investment in expanding the Cercle's output from the ISC
and Le Monde Moderne, much of it financed by Pesenti. Interestingly, Pesenti's
financial operations in 1972 were a particular focus of Italian magistrates
investigating the Banco Ambrosiano scandal: "Of particular interest was a 1972
"loan" to Pesenti from the IOR. It was indexed to the Swiss franc and, when repaid,
cost him three times the sum originally contracted. Whether it was a smart business
operation by the IOR, a cover for Pesenti's pumping money into the Vatican bank, or
simply a device for the IOR to help Pesenti illegally move a large sum of cash abroad
will likely remain a mystery" - Naylor, pg 127.
(124) Péan, pgs 92-93.
(125) Stewart-Smith, pgs 66-67.
(126) Mungo, pgs 39 - 40; Gijsels, L'Enquête, pgs 156-157. See footnote 322 below
for other CLEW members.
(127) Walsh, pgs 133-134; Van Bosbeke, pg 66.
(128) By 2002, Valori would be the President of the Industrialists Union of Italy
(Confindustria) and a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador - see the UNESCO Appeal in
International Herald Tribune, 12/06/02.
(129) Peron's Italian contacts came via his wartime service as Argentinian Consul in
Rome.
(130) Naylor, pg 138; information from Jeff Bale; Raw, pg 143; Willan, pgs 60-61;
Buongiorno, pgs 111-115; Cecchi, pgs 75-85.
(131) Crozier, pgs 99-100.
(132) Péan, pgs 237-239.
(133) Péan, pgs 52 and 68; Roth and Ender, pg 72. Bacelon claims that Andreotti
had attended one of the AESP's earlier Charlemagne Dinners on 6th May 1970, also
held in Aachen and attended by Pinay, Violet and de Villegas. Bacelon is generally
unreliable, but gives accurate details of the 1973 Dinner mentioned here; his
information about the 1970 Dinner may well be correct.
(134) Brewaeys and Deliège, pg 129; Roth and Ender, pgs 72-73; Joel van der
Reijden. Longstanding CDU foreign policy spokesman and one of Brandt's most
prominent opponents on Ostpolitik, Dr Werner Marx would serve as a CDU MP from
1965 until his death in 1985; he would chair the German Parliament's Foreign
Affairs Committee from 1982 to 1985.
(135) Roth and Ender, pg 72.
(136) Péan, pg 82.
(137) See notably Gijsels, L'Enquête, pg 197 et seq., Benjamin and Dethy, and the
other books on Belgian parapolitics listed below. The Tratsaert report is quoted in
full in Gijsels, Het Leugenpaleis, pgs 61-66.
(138) On de Bonvoisin, see CelsiuS, numbers 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26,
29, 30, 31, 34; Brewaeys and Deliège, and the other books on Belgian parapolitics
quoted below.
(139) Mungo (as "Michel de Frocourt"), pg 22. Van Bosbeke states (pg 18) that this
was a quarterly publication whose second issue named Mungo as the author; I have
been unable to obtain it.
(140) Brewaeys and Deliège, pg 180; Brewaeys and Deliège also note (pg 39) that de
Bonvoisin arranged a contract for a business contact by taking him to Paris in 1986
to meet Paul Violet, Jean Violet's son and deputy to the Mayor of Paris, Jacques
Chirac. Violet junior was also Vice-President of the Regional Council of the Ile-de-
France, member of the National Council of Chirac's RPR and founder in 1991 of the
Chirac lobby group, République et Valeurs (Le Monde, 20/9/91).
(141) De Bock quoted in CelsiuS No. 17, pgs 17-18; Brewaeys and Deliège, pgs 24-
25.
(142) See Gladio, pgs 29-60.
(143) Extracts are given in CelsiuS no. 17, pgs 14-19.
(144) Searchlight, no. 18, Nov 1976, pg 4.
(145) Crozier, pg 104.
(146) Crozier, pg 104.
(147) Eringer, pgs 37-40.
(148) Reproduced in the Morning Star, the official British Communist newspaper,
31/1/76.
(149) Crozier, pg 106.
(150) Crozier, pg 107.
(151) James Theberge of the CSIS and future Washington ISC President, also
contributed to the campaign - see below on the WISC.
(152) Herman and O'Sullivan, pgs 82-83; ISC publications list; Ramsay and Dorril,
pgs 38-39; Robert Moss, The Collapse of Democracy, Maurice Temple Smith, London
1975; Crozier, pgs 109-111.
(153) Péan, pgs 72-73. Curiously, Damman does not know of or does not think of
the Cercle offshoot in the US, the Washington Institute for the Study of Conflict,
founded the previous month. A whole series of ISC Conflict Studies in 1975-76
focused on the areas named by Damman under point 2 - Korea, Vietnam, the Middle
East, Portugal, and the security of supply of raw materials: Iraq: the Search for
Stability (May 1975), Southern Europe: NATO's Crumbling Flank (June 1975), Portugal
- Revolution and Backlash (September 1975), North Korea - Undermining the Truce
(March 1976) and Stability in the Gulf: The Oil Revolution (May 1976).
(154) On the destabilization of democracy in the UK in the 1970s, see Penrose and
Courtiour; Lobster 9 -21 and notably No. 11 (Ramsay and Dorril); Wright; Leigh;
Foot; Dorril and Ramsay (1991). On these sources, Penrose and Courtiour were the
first and came very close but then were led astray. Lobster pursued the story and
produced much invaluable information, launching the Wallace story before Wright
had even appeared. Wright, whilst being an inside source, is partial in its opinions
and in its content. Leigh thoroughly documented one aspect - the straight Wilson-
Wright struggle (see however Lobster 17) but has grave omissions, particularly in
only focusing on Wilson to the exclusion of Heath, Thorpe and the many other
politicians targeted, and in totally omitting Winter and Wallace as key witnesses, and
the counter-subversion lobby and other MI6 friends as key actors. Foot concentrates
on the major witness, Wallace, and does an excellent job. Dorril and Ramsay (1991)
continue the investigation they started in Lobster 11, and produce the most complete
account of the destabilization to date.
(155) Ramsay and Dorril; Foot. It is interesting to note that various figures
mentioned in Wallace's 1974 notes about this manipulation of domestic politics
include G. K. Young, Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, John Biggs-Davison and Julian Amery,
all four members of the Monday Club. Biggs-Davison and Amery were mentioned as
possible contenders for the leadership of the Conservative party once Heath had
been removed; it seems Young and Stewart-Smith were intended as channels for
InfPol's disinformation.
(156) Times, 6/5/73.
(157) Dorril and Ramsay (1991), pgs 229-233.
(158) On Wallace and CO2, see Ramsay and Dorril; Foot; Dorril and Ramsay (1991).
Wallace's testimony - and the mass of documentary evidence to support it -
represents without a doubt the most serious exposure of the British secret state’s
intervention in domestic politics – the British Watergate - since the Second World
War. The three sources listed above are essential reading for anyone interested in
"the very British coup".
(159) Leigh, pgs 163-180, 239-241.
(160) Wolton, pgs 168-169. The cash slush fund run for decades by the UIMM
would be the subject of extensive French press revelations in 2008 following the
appointment of a new director.
(161) Péan, pg 71.
(162) Péan, pgs 240-241.
(163) On the Elf network and the Gabon connection, see Péan (1983). The Elf
network would also intervene in domestic politics during the 1981 elections - the Elf
network was the channel chosen to transfer FF 2,000,000 from Gabonese oil
revenue to support Giscard d'Estaing's 1981 election campaign. In 1979, Robert had
been appointed French Ambassador to Gabon on Gabonese President Bongo's
insistence, and much to the disquiet of the French Foreign Office. See Péan (1983),
pgs 139-150.
(164) Péan, pgs 117-119, 135-136, 156; Wolton, pg 266.
(165) On Muldergate, see Winter (1981), (1989) and (2004); Manz; Rees and Day;
The Great White Hoax .
(166) The first editor of To The Point was Dr. Eschel Rhoodie for the nine months
preceding his appointment to the Department of Information - The Great White Hoax,
pg 32.
(167) Péan, pg 110.
(168) The Great White Hoax, pg 4. A similar campaign targeting German MPs and
military officers was equally successful – see below.
(169) Péan, pgs 92-93, 107-113.
(170) Péan, pg 108.
(171) Péan, pg 113.
(172) Laurent, pg 305.
(173) Guardian, 30/3/73.
(174) Winter (1981), pgs 320-321; Time Out, 5/9/75, and Herman and O'Sullivan,
pgs 110, 116-117, 134. Morris’ book South African Terrorism was published by
Harold Timmins in 1973. A certain Michael A. Morris would write Conflict Study no.
230, Conflicts in Latin America: Democratic Alternatives in the 1990s, published in
April 1990 by the ISC's successor, RISCT.
(175) On the ASC, see Bellant, a outstanding piece of research on Reagan's links to
the American far Right. Son of World War II navy aviation pioneer and four-star
Admiral John 'Slew' Sidney McCain, four-star Admiral John 'Jack' Sidney McCain
Jnr would participate in the bombing of Hanoi as Commander US Pacific Forces
(CINCPAC) during the early Vietnam war whilst his Navy pilot son – the 2008
Republican presidential candidate, John Sidney McCain III – was being held in the
'Hanoi Hilton'.
(176) Janke would later send Conflict Study no. 52 to Robbertze; see the letter of
28/1/75 to Janke from Lt-Gen. K. R. Coster of the DGSS published in Searchlight
no. 20, Jan 1977, pg 4.
(177) Données pour un moment in Bulletin du Centre de recherches et informations
sociales et économiques (CRISE), no. 2, 15/6/77, quoted in Faligot, pgs 181-182;
Péan, pgs 113-114.
(178) See bibliography in Huyn.
(179) Herman and O'Sullivan, pgs 109-110; Time Out, 5-11/9/75.
(180) See founding document in Searchlight no. 18, November 1976, pg 5.
(181) Covert Action Information Bulletin no. 10, August-September 1980, pg 42.
(182) Gonsalez-Mata, pgs 149-155; Eringer, pgs 45 and 49.
(183) See Valentine, Snepp; for a discussion of Thompson and Komer's part in the
Phoenix programme, see State Research no. 17 (April-May 1980), pgs 105-106.
(184) See Cooley.
(185) Covert Action Information Bulletin no. 10, August-September 1980, pg 42;
RAND Corporation obituary.
(186) See El Mercurio, 28/2/73 amongst others.
(187) State Research no. 1, pgs 13-17.
(188) On Team B, see the chapter in Peddlers of crisis - the CPD and the Politics of
Containment, Jerry W. Sanders, Pluto (UK)/South End Press (USA), 1983. Another
prominent member of Team B was Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Head of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, later Director of the NSIC and Board member of the ASC and
Western Goals – see NSIC Annex below. Many of those who had been on Team B or
on the White House staff at that time - notably Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and
Perle - would repeat this exercise of sidelining a politically awkward CIA finding as a
part of the WMD fiasco during the second Iraq war in 2003. The wish of the neo-cons
to override CIA assessments and develop their own pro-war intelligence channels,
largely reliant on the exile Iraqi National Congress under Chalabi, would be a
catastrophic own goal – the INC intelligence network, infiltrated by the Iranian
intelligence service, obligingly provided “firm evidence” of Iraqi WMDs, triggering the
American invasion which, in one fell swoop, reduced Iran’s regional rival to chaos
and discredited Iran’s greatest geopolitical adversary, the US neo-con clique, in the
eyes of the world. Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the
State Department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out, we'll see that Iran
has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They
persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy" - Guardian,
Tuesday May 25, 2004. Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA counter-terrorist
officer, stated: "It's pretty clear that the Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and
dinner … I think Iran saw an opportunity here to feed information into the United
States through [INC intelligence chief] Aras Habib Karim and Chalabi that influenced
the US decision … it seems that they were able to spread disinformation that found
its way into the speeches of policy makers in the United States … I think it was a
pretty artful operation by the Iranians” - Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The
World Today, 26/05/04.
(189) Other members of the USCISC included Leonard D. Theberge, Vice-
President of Rohr Industries; John Diebold of the Diebold Group; US Ambassador
to Venezuela Robert McClintock; Professor Donald Treadgold, Chairman,
Department of History, University of Washington; Dr Ernest Lefever of the
Brookings Institute. Lefever would be involved in the 1980s anti-disarmament
campaigns assisted by the Cercle complex – as Director of the Ethics and Public
Policy Program at Georgetown University, he would receive $200,000 from the US
Information Agency to coordinate anti-disarmament activity in the Churches –
World in Action, 24/10/83, reported in Lobster 4 (1984), pg 16. "Ernest Lefever
used the $200,000 given by USIA to help “highly placed and influential leaders in
Western Europe to gain a solid understanding of US defence and arms control
policies, with special reference to their religious and moral implications.” One
conference was organised in Britain in May (New Statesman, 20th May 1983) with
church leaders in attendance. It was sponsored by the British Atlantic Committee
(BAC) and the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies." - see Steve
Dorril’s American Friends: the Anti-CND Groups in Lobster 3 (1984), pgs 16-21. The
May 1983 conference organized by Lefever was also attended by Sven Kraemer,
then Program Director of the NSIC. On the BAC, IEDSS, CPS etc, see the excellent
pieces by Lobster contributor William Clark at http://pinkindustry.wordpress.com.
(190) Crozier, pg 124.
(191) Crozier, pg 113.
(192) Ironically, the death-blow to Crozier’s FWF could not have come from a better
friend. As former head of the CIA's IOD from 1954 on, Cord Meyer had overseen CIA
support for FWF since its inception. In the early 1970s, Meyer would direct the
Covert Action department with the rank of Deputy Director. At this time he was a
very close associate of Crozier's; Crozier records that he flew to Langley three or four
times a year to visit Meyer at Langley - Crozier, pgs 90-91. At the time of FWF’s
exposure, Meyer was CIA Chief of Station in London - Crozier’s main linkman to the
CIA throughout the crucial period of the mid-1970s.
(193) Time Out, 20/6/75.
(194) Conflicting Accounts, 29/8/75; Subversion Inc., 5/9/75.
(195) ISC memo, 2/6/75 quoted in Péan, pg 86; as this is translated from the
French, the text given here will not match the exact wording of the English original.
See Ramsay and Dorril, pg 39. The same year as this ISC conference at Ditchley
Park, one of its Governors, Professor the Lord Vaizey, whom we have already met as
Honorary Treasurer of the British-Irish Association founded by Hamilton, Crozier
and Moss after the ISC's 1972 Ditchley Park conference on Ireland, would serve as
an adviser to an ISC Study Group on subversion in higher education which started
work in November 1975 and which published its findings in September 1977 as an
ISC Special Report, The Attack on Higher Education. The ISC Education Study Group
also included Professor Edward Shils of the WISC and Dr Kenneth Watkins of NAFF
and Aims. See State Research no. 1, October 1977, pg 17; Time Out, 30/9/77.
(196) Roth and Ender, pg 54; Gonsalez-Mata, pg 163; Crozier, pgs 124-125.
(197) The exposure of FWF in June and of the ISC in August may have killed off the
Washington ISC, created in March; nothing further is known of any specific WISC
action - it is probable that it was (sub)merged into the Rand Corporation. Crozier
also records that what he calls "the Great Smear Campaign" against himself and
FWF would lead to the ending of Crozier's official links to MI5. A few days after the
CIA/FWF story broke in the summer of 1975, Crozier claims to have had his last
meeting with Sir Michael Hanley, head of MI5 and the MI5 Director of Counter-
Subversion, Dirk Hampden - Crozier, pg 114. However, in April 1976, Crozier's NAFF
would publish a controversial article by "a recently retired counter-subversion chief
of MI5" – if not Hampden, then his successor, Charles Elwell, with whom Crozier
would work after Elwell's retirement in 1982.
(198) Crozier, pg 118.
(199) The Scotsman, 8/8/77.
(200) NAFF was renamed the Freedom Association in January 1979. The FA
continued with many of NAFF's personnel; Norris McWhirter was FA Chairman,
Ivens FA Vice-President, both being on the editorial committee of Freedom Today, the
FA journal. Until April 1989, Crozier also served on the Freedom Today editorial
committee. Robert Moss remained NAFF/FA Director until 1981. FA Board members
included the ISC's Vice-Admiral Sir Louis Le Bailly, SIF's Gerald Howarth and
Rhodes Boyson, and Professor R.V. Jones who served with the ISC's Leonard
Schapiro and G. K. Young in the group set up to reorganize MI6 in the 1950s. FA
would use the same tactics of legal action against strikers that NAFF had used in
1976, most notably during the 1984 miners' strikes leading to the foundation of the
breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers.
(201) The Great White Hoax, pgs 59-60.
(202) Time Out, 8/7/77.
(203) Crozier, pg 118.
(204) Ramsay and Dorril, pg 15.
(205) Dorril and Ramsay (1991), pg 288.
(206) Chalfont had excellent security and intelligence contacts such as Jeremy
Wetherell, formerly a member of K5, MI5’s Soviet Counter-Espionage department. In
the 1980s, Wetherell would work for the private detective agency Zeus, founded by
Chalfont and Sir James Goldsmith, which was involved in political surveillance
activities on behalf of the nuclear power industry - see Observer, 29/1/89.
(207) Crozier, pgs 127-129.
(208) Crozier, pgs 114 and 118.
(209) Grau had previously worked with the NPD within a group set up for the
1972 parliamentary elections - see Hirsch, pg 313; Hirsch is an excellent and
exhaustive encyclopaedia of the German Right which gives further details on many
of the Germans mentioned in this book. On Grau and his groups, see Young
European Federalists, pgs 158, 167, 208-214, 265 et seq. including its annex of ISP
documents; Unheimliche Patrioten, pgs 427-442; IGfM, pgs 78-79; Hirsch.
(210) Unheimliche Patrioten, pgs 433-435.
(211) Unheimliche Patrioten, pgs 428-429.
(212) Unheimliche Patrioten, pg 589.
(213) Fiche et Fouine, ça suffit No. 1, February 1990, the journal of the Comité En
finir avec l'Etat-fouineur (Stop the Snooper State Committee), founded after a
parliamentary inquiry revealed the existence of a longstanding secret political police
department within the DJPF, the Swiss Justice and Police Ministry. A second
parliamentary inquiry into the DMF, the Swiss Ministry of Defence, uncovered two
secret components of the Gladio network in Switzerland, the armed resistance group
P26 and the intelligence group P27. P26 worked closely with MI6 who had created
Gladio's European operational basis. The last secret agreement between MI6 and
P26 was signed in 1987, three years before the parliamentary inquiry. See back
numbers of Fiche et Fouine, ça suffit and the Committee's book Schnüffelstaat
Schweiz (Snooper State Switzerland).
(214) Colonel Schmid would commit suicide in February 1981 when faced with a
judicial inquiry into his collaboration with Cincera.
(215) Non-Swiss readers should note that as Switzerland has compulsory military
service and places rigorous restrictions on conscientious objection, almost all Swiss
men will have an Army personnel file.
(216) Abendland, March 1981, quoted in Unheimliche Patrioten, pg 670; Fiche et
Fouine, ça suffit No. 1, February 1990; Schnüffelstaat Schweiz, pgs 133-137. For a
résumé of "the Cincera affair" and "the MIDONAS affair", see Unheimliche Patrioten;
the revelations were published at the time in three brochures by the Democratic
Manifesto, Dossier Cincera (1976), Dossier DM-Prozess (1977) and Cincera als Cäsar:
wir waren Cinceras Berner Spitzel (1977).
(217) In 1983, Cincera would be elected to the National Council, the Swiss
Parliament, at the same time as Dr Peter Sager of SOI; the two men would work
together on the Parliamentary Committee on the Media - see Unheimliche Patrioten,
pg 676. Cincera would serve on the National Council until 1995; he died in 2004.
Sager would serve on the National Council until 1991; from 1984 to 1991, he was
also a Swiss representative at the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe. Sager would
become the leading pro-Contra propagandist in Switzerland; his Vereinigung
Demokratischer Nicaragua (VDN, Association for a Democratic Nicaragua) was one of
the main outlets for anti-Sandinista disinformation in Europe in the mid-1980s.
Sager was particularly useful for the Contras due to his rôle within the Council of
Europe; in 1984, he headed a Council of Europe delegation to Nicaragua. In 1985,
he was part of a Swiss National Council delegation that strongly condemned the
Sandinistas after their return to Switzerland. On 16/2/86, Sager founded the VDN
together with Contras Evenor Valdivia and Jaime Pasquier and industrialist
Alexander Eugster. In March 1986, Sager travelled with a second Swiss National
Council delegation to Nicaragua, and on 31/5/86, the VDN gave a press conference
with CIA agent Roberto Ferrey. In 1986, Sager's pro-Contra book, Case Study of
Slander - media manipulation by Nicaragua, Propagandists in Switzerland was
published by SOI. The SOI would close due to a lack of funding in 1994, thirty-five
years after its foundation; Sager died in 2006. On Sager, see IGfM, pgs 63-64; Die
Contra Connection, pgs 84-87, 245; Dorril and Ramsay, 1990, pg 6; Unheimliche
Patrioten.
(218) Unheimliche Patrioten, pg 437.
(219) Unheimliche Patrioten, pgs 431 and 593.
(220) On Löwenthal and his various groups, see IGfM; Young European Federalists;
Hirsch. Together with Huyn, Löwenthal has also served as a major German linkman
for WACL and CAUSA, the political arm of the Moonies; Löwenthal frequently
attended international conferences organized by WACL and CAUSA, such as the
joint WACL/CAUSA congress hosted by Stroessner and Pinochet in Asuncion,
Paraguay in 1981. On WACL and CAUSA (the Confederation for the Association and
Unity of Society in the Americas), see Anderson and Anderson; Boyer; Die Contra
Connection. Löwenthal was also a Member of Honour of the "freedom fighters"
alliance, Resistance International (see footnote 320), and an Honorary Member of the
Board of the right-wing students' group Hochschulring Tübinger Studenten which
had links to the neo-nazi Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann - Spiegel, 41/1980, pg 31, and
Hirsch, pg 406. Löwenthal died in 2002.
(221) Stern, 8/1978.
(222) Ramsay and Dorril; Crozier, pg 102.
(223) Observer, 10/2/91. Keston has certainly been the major British outlet for this
kind of disinformation with excellent contacts to the BBC World Service: Keston's
Jane Ellis did three "Words of Faith" programmes for the World Service in November
1990 which were nothing less than a party political broadcast for a newly-formed
Christian Democrat party in the Soviet Union. Three years later, Crozier revealed in
his memoirs who exactly was behind the new party: "In 1990, taking advantage of
glasnost, the NTS had emerged as a Christian Democrat opposition party. It was
allowed to hold meetings in Russia and a USSR-wide congress in Leningrad in
November 1990" – Crozier, pg 271. The head of the BBC World Service in 1990, John
Tusa, had been company secretary of Forum World Features in 1966-67, resigning
over editorial disputes with Crozier, unaware of FWF's CIA links. See Crozier, pgs 70-
71 and 73; Ramsay and Dorril, pgs 4 and 34; Guardian, 31/12/76 and 11/10/89.
(224) The IGfM/ISHR should not be confused with the legitimate Paris-based
human rights organisation, the Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme
(FIDH).
(225) Crozier, pg 124.
(226) On Horchem, see Spiegel, 36/1981, pg 16; Crozier; Various authors (IFF), pgs
viii-ix.
(227) ISC advert for the Annual in Conflict Study no. 60, August 1975.
(228) ISC Annual of Power and Conflict 1974-75, pg 16.
(229) Spiegel, 10/80, pg 23 et seq.; Roth and Ender.
(230) Yallop, pg 456; State Research no. 15, Dec 1979 - Jan 1980, pgs 50-51.
(231) Retinger, pg 212; State Research no. 15, Dec 1979 - Jan 1980, pgs 50-51.
(232) Two other participants at the 1974 Bilderberg conference would soon set up
groups within the complex: George Ball, Chairman of the US Committee of the ISC,
founded in March 1975, and Sir Frederic Bennett of SIF, a founding member of
NAFF in July 1975 - Gonsalez-Mata, pgs 21, 27 and 312-315, who gives the 1974
Bilderberg participants list.
(233) Frankfurter Rundschau, 13/9/63 reproduced in IGfM, pg 75.
(234) Gonsalez-Mata, pg 107.
(235) On Lageneste, see Faligot and Krop, pgs 334-335.
(236) Péan, pg 242. Habsburg has lived in Spain and Portugal for much of the time
- both are former possessions of the Habsburg empire. For Habsburg's Portuguese
connections, see his biography in IGfM, pg 59-60.
(237) See Günter Walraff in Stern, 7/4/76 and Libération, 9-10 + 11/4/76, and his
Die Aufdeckung einer Verschwörung.
(238) Die Contra Connection, pg 164. The HSS published a celebration of sixteen
years of cooperation with the Fundacion Canovas del Castillo in its Informationen
1/2 1995 (pg 14), which quoted HSS Chairman Alfred Bayer: "Over the past sixteen
years we have held no less than 7,350 seminars with over 335,000 participants, over
80% of which [were organised] in cooperation with the Fundacion". Bayer and the
Fundacion's head, Carlos Robles Piquer, were received by King Juan Carlos as part
of the 1995 celebration. Robles Piquer was Fraga Iribarne's brother-in-law and had
twice served under him, firstly in the 1960s as Director-General of Information,
Fraga's top civil servant and main contact of Crozier's when Fraga was Minister (see
Crozier, pg 72), and then again in the first post-Franco government of December
1975 – July 1976 when Fraga was Vice-President and Interior Minister and Robles
Piquer was Minister for Education and Science. Having become President of the
Alianza Popular in 1976, Fraga Iribarne would be official Leader of the Opposition
from 1982, when AP became the second strongest party in Spain, until 1986 when
he resigned from AP. In 1989, Fraga Iribarne would refound AP as the Partido
Popular, serving as its Honorary President and selecting future Prime Minister Jose
Maria Aznar as PP's President. Withdrawing from national politics, Fraga Iribarne
was then elected President of the Region of Galicia in 1990, a post he held until
2005. After his 2005 regional election defeat, he was selected to represent the
Galician Parliament in the Senate, a post reconfirmed in 2008. As for Silva Munoz,
having joined Fraga's Alianza Popular in 1976, he would soon leave to undertake a
failed attempt to unite the Spanish extreme Right on a joint ticket with Blas Pinar in
the 1979 elections. On post-Franco politics, see the useful Diccionario de la
Transicion, Victoria Prego, Plaza & Janes, Barcelona 1999.
(239) The Service de Documentation, de Renseignements et d'Action, a branch of
the Army’s Service Général de Renseignements. Part, at least, of the Gladio network
in Belgium was run by SDRA-8.
(240) Brewaeys and Deliège, pg 58.
(241) See Blackstock; Churchill and Vander Wall, 1988 and 1990.
(242) Churchill and Vander Wall, 1988, pg xiv.
(243) It is interesting to note that one of PIO's Press contacts was René Haquin, the
journalist whose book Des taupes dans l'extrême droite - la Sûreté de l'Etat et le WNP
first exposed the Latinus/Smets story, detailed in a later chapter. It appears with
hindsight that Latinus's fascist militia WNP served to entrap Smets and other Sûreté
officers investigating de Bonvoisin and the extreme Right, and that it was
subsequently deliberately blown by its members to discredit the Sûreté - this would
explain the revealing interviews Latinus gave Haquin for his book. Haquin got
sucked in and became as much an actor in parapolitical developments as a reporter
of them; it would seem that Haquin was at least unwittingly manipulated into
blowing the gaffe and sinking the Sûreté's investigations. Haquin's association with
PIO several years previous to the WNP scandal may however indicate a less innocent
involvement. Haquin, having paved the way, subsequently withdrew from further
investigation into the extreme Right and returned to his previous field of crime
reporting.
(244) Bougerol in conversation with Philippe Brewaeys.
(245) See Anderson and Anderson.
(246) Interview with Ray Cline by Alan de Francovitch and the BBC team preparing
the programme Gladio Story, quoted by Bouffioux in Télémoustique, 23/4/92 – this
experience may explain PIO's English-language title. On Cline, see notably Herman
and O'Sullivan who cover his later career as a disinformationist in depth.
(247) Brewaeys and Deliège, pg 55.
(248) Brewaeys and Deliège, pg 118.
(249) Covert Action Information Bulletin, no. 10, Aug-Sept 1980, pg 37.
(250) Boyer, pg 283.
(251) See Cooley.
(252) On de Borchgrave and the joint Moss/de Borchgrave group MARA, see Boyer;
Lobster no. 19, pg 20; Herman and O'Sullivan; Brewaeys and Deliège.
(253) Prominent Flemish journalist Walter de Bock investigated Latinus in depth in
a series of articles entitled Latinus, de spiderman, published in De Morgen, 1-
12/7/89, and collected and translated into French as a special issue of CelsiuS,
December 1991.
(254) Damman's misspelling of Bougerol's name is no indication of a lack of contact
between Damman and Bougerol at this stage - the same Chapter participants' list
includes Damman's misspelling "Totossy"; Töttösy had been in touch with Damman
since at least 1961.
(255) Eringer, pg 50.
(256) Van Doorslaer and Verhoeyen, pgs 150-154; Willan, pgs 107-100.
(257) During his period at NATO in the 1950s and 1960s, Brosio also attended the
conferences of the Bilderberg group, such as the October 1957 conference at Fiuggi
devoted to security within NATO (also attended by Cord Meyer) and the
extraordinary Bilderberg conference convened in Wiesbaden in March 1966 to deal
with the urgent question of a reorganization of NATO. The latter conference was also
attended by Pinay, the then Secretary of State George Ball and a future Deputy
Director of the CIA, General Vernon Walters – later all Cercle associates. See
Gonsalez-Mata, pgs 27 and 58; Eringer, pg 45.
(258) Information from Jeff Bale; Willan, pgs 107-110. For a fictionalized account of
the various coup attempts in Italy, see Morris West's The Salamander, William
Heinemann, London 1973. As for Brosio, in March 1975, he attended a conference
on European security organized by the Centro Italiano di Documentazione e Azione
Sociale (CIDAS) which included amongst its participants Gianno Accame, a former
Italian correspondent of Aginter Press, and General Diulio Fanali of ISSED,
implicated in the Borghese coup and the Rosa dei Venti conspiracy - Laurent, pg
304.
(259) Cornwell, pg 90.
(260) Cornwell, pgs 166-167.
(261) The loan taken by Pesenti was only one of the extremely complex financial
transactions by Calvi which allowed him to steal $250 million for P2. The most
recent and comprehensive account of the Banco Ambrosiano is given by the
respected financial journalist Charles Raw, who details Pesenti's relationship with
Banco Ambrosiano. See Raw, pgs 91-92 for this episode.
(262) Péan, pg 90. Nothing is known of the Edicercle project - one possibility is
indicated in footnote 322 below.
(263) Péan, pg 91.
(264) Péan, pg 92.
(265) Crozier makes no mention of FARI or of BOSS in his memoirs, no doubt
because of the sensitive issue of covert South African funding.
(266) Coxsedge, Coldicut and Harant, pg 124; Guardian, 11/2/83.
(267) Guardian, 6/5/80 and 11/2/83; Ramsay and Dorril, pgs 4-5 and 40; State
Research no. 7, Aug/Sept 1978; Observer, 29/1/89; Dorril and Ramsay (1991);
Toczek; Herman and O'Sullivan, pg 269, note 62.
(268) Christie (1982), pgs 126-127.
(269) The Great White Hoax, pg 32.
(270) Annex of ISP documents in Young European Federalists.
(271) Winter (1981), pgs 543-544.
(272) Dorril and Ramsay (1991), pg 365, note 10; Foot.
(273) The 4th Lord St Oswald, D.L., M.C., whose plebian name was Rowland Winn,
had reported on the Spanish Civil War for Reuters and the Daily Telegraph before
serving with the SOE in Albania and Thailand from 1940 to 1945. He would later
volunteer for service in Korea from 1950 to 1952, winning a Military Cross. After
demobilisation and having inherited his title in 1957, he sat as a Conservative Peer
in the House of Lords until his death in 1984, serving as a government whip from
1959 to 1962 and Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture from
1962 to 1964. One regular focus of his was on Poland - in 1971-72, he would
campaign with Airey Neave for British official recognition of the 1940 Katyn
massacre as a Soviet war crime, serving with Neave as Deputy Chairmen of the
Katyn Memorial Fund, one of whose patrons was Winston Churchill MP. From 1973
until the first direct elections in 1979, he would sit as an appointed MEP in the
European Parliament. Apart from his parliamentary career, Lord St Oswald was also
Vice-President of Stewart-Smith’s Foreign Affairs Circle – see Lobster 19 (May 1990),
pg 7. He wrote the introduction for Joseph Josten's Unarmed Combat, 1973, first
published in Contributions to Conflict Studies, Markus Verlag, Köln, which also
quoted SOI and Sager, and also provided the introduction for The Soviet Threat to
Peace, published jointly by Foreign Affairs and Markus Verlag, which included
contributions by Brzezinski and Ball. The Markus Verlag (Press) in Cologne, which
operated between 1951 and c. 1994, seems to have been a significant Germanlanguage
disinformation outlet; according to its German Wikipedia entry, "the
Markus Press was specialized in political propaganda books on military policy and
the Eastern Block, sometimes published in close cooperation with the Federal
Interior Ministry and the Federal Defence Ministry ... The Press was the publisher
from 1951 to 1973 of the illustrated magazine of the Federal Border Protection Force
... From 1971 to 1990, the Press published the magazine Beiträge zur
Konfliktforschung – Psychopolitische Aspekte (Contributions to Conflict Studies –
Psychopolitical Aspects), launched by General Johannes Gerber which was funded
by the Federal Defence Ministry and set itself the task of acting as a counterweight
to the generally pacifist-inclined peace research of the day."
(274) Crozier, pg 193.
(275) Career information from Joel van der Reijden. Tennant died in 1996. Tennant
would later play a significant part assisting the mid-1980s anti-disarmament
propaganda operations run by Cercle/6I associates – see below. Van der Reijden also
notes that Tennant was a member of the Academic Council of Wilton Park. It is
unclear whether Tennant was ever active within CEDI; his name does not appear on
a 1972 list of CEDI office-holders, which does however name other British CEDI
members besides Agnew and Rodgers: the Rt. Hon. Geoffrey Rippon, Minister for
Europe (Monday Club member from at least 1970 on, participant at the 1974
Bilderberg conference in Megèze together with Frederic Bennett and Gerald
Thompson of Kleinwort Benson); the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Corfield, QC, MP, former
minister; Sir Denys Lowson, Bt, investment banker; Francis Bennett, Chief Whip;
Kenneth Clarke MP, later a Bilderberger. CEDI's 1972 General Assembly was held in
London. Francis Bennett, Alderman QLC, would attend this 1976 CEDI Congress, as
would a certain Martin McLaren of London, and Bernard Woodford, Director, Witney,
Oxfordshire.
(276) Crozier, pg 193. Bach died in 2001. On Bach's involvement in the Northrop
bribes scandal, see Van der Reijden.
(277) Van Doorslaer and Verhoeyen, pg 164.
(278) On Jardim, see Laurent, pgs 153, 329, 335; Péan (1983), pg 149. On Kaulza
de Arriaga, see the Sunday Times Insight team's book on the Portuguese revolution.
(279) Crozier, pgs 127-128.
(280) In 1988, Elliott proposed giving a posthumous honour to Philby as a
deception operation to mislead the KGB. Elliott's career details are given in Dorril
and Observer, 2/2/92. Elliott's memoirs are bizarrely- in reference to Georgi
Markov? - entitled Never Judge a Man by his Umbrella (Michael Russel, Salisbury
1991).
(281) Crozier, pgs 129-130. Peter Shipley was a specialist on revolutionary groups
in Britain, and author of a March 1977 ISC Conflict Study, Trotskyism: ‘Entryism’
and Permanent Revolution; he went on to do a spell in Thatcher's Cabinet Office,
leaving in 1984 to rejoin the ISC.
(282) Crozier, pg 137.
(283) Pincher (1978), pgs 115 and 137-139; Ramsay and Dorril, pg 13. In February
1977, during a heated Parliamentary debate, Hastings had also drawn the Home
Secretary's attention to the 'bias' in a World in Action television programme in favour
of those journalists who had exposed the CIA funding of FWF. Hastings died in 2005.
(284) Crozier, pg 128.
(285) Crozier, pg 120.
(286) Crozier, pg 128-129. The ISC had already dealt with subversion in education
and in the Churches: in March 1974, the ISC had produced a Conflict Study entitled
Marxism and the Church of Rome, which was republished by Le Monde Moderne in
1975. An ISC Study Group on subversion in higher education, which included Dr
Kenneth Watkins of NAFF and Aims, started work in November 1975; its findings
would be published in September 1977 as an ISC Special Report, The Attack on
Higher Education. From May 1977 to April 1978, an ISC Study Group would meet to
discuss on subversion in the media; the ISC Special Report Television and Conflict
would finally be published in November 1978 - see Crozier, pgs 150-155.
(287) Crozier, pgs 137-138.
(288) Crozier, pg 139.
(289) Crozier, pg 138.
(290) Crozier, pgs 139-140.
(291) Crozier, pgs 131-133.
(292) Crozier, pg 142.
(293) Crozier, pg 144. The most likely contenders are MI5 Head of Counter-
Subversion Dirk Hampden, Crozier's official liaison who retired sometime after the
summer of 1975 but seems not to have had a later private career, or alternatively
Hampden's successor Charles Elwell, who wouldn't in fact retire until 1982 but who
did actually effect this crucial shift of operations from counter-espionage to countersubversion
in the late 1970s; after retirement, Elwell would work with Crozier
throughout the 1980s.
(294) Crozier, pg 133.
(295) Crozier, pg 134.
(296) For all quotes by Crozier on the 6I below, see Crozier, pg 135.
(297) Biographical information on Romerstein, Kraemer and Holliday from Various
authors (IFF), pgs v-xiii; on Romerstein, see Crozier, pg 11; on Kraemer, see Crozier,
pg 185; for Holliday's quote from an IFF presentation he gave with Romerstein, see
Various authors (IFF), pg 131.
(298) Crozier, pg 135.
(299) Crozier, pgs 135-136.
(300) Crozier, pgs 180-181.
(301) Crozier, pg 136.
(302) Crozier, pg 136. Nothing more is known of Perriaux’s involvement in the
Cercle, which would certainly be worth investigating further.
(303) Crozier, pg 187.
(304) One of the enduring political lessons illustrated by this investigation is that
purges of or restrictions on the security and intelligence services often simply
displace rogue agents into the private sector as 'retirees'. The Cercle and 6I drew
much of their support from intelligence veterans displaced following purges in
Germany (1969), the UK and France (1970), the UK and the USA (1977) and
Belgium (1978). As Wikipedia has commented on the Western Goals Foundation:
"After the Watergate and COINTELPRO scandals of the early 1970s, several laws
were passed to restrict police intelligence gathering within political organizations.
The laws tried to make it necessary to demonstrate that a criminal act was likely to
be uncovered by any intelligence gathering proposed. Many files on radicals,
collected for decades, were ordered destroyed. The unintended effect of the laws
was to privatize the files in the hands of 'retired' intelligence officers and their most
trusted, dedicated operatives".
(305) Crozier, pgs 189-190.
(306) Spiegel, No. 37/1982, and Roth and Ender, pgs 57-58. Hans Christoph
Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg, who died in Munich in 2005, was a member of
the junior branch of the von Stauffenberg family, being the son of Reichstag Nazi MP
Franz Wilhelm Karl Maria Gabriel Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg.
(307) In Germany, party foundations distribute grants from the Ministry for
cooperation and Development to 'deserving partners' in the Third World, and are an
important and official component in political parties' foreign policy bodies.
(308) Spiegel, 10/1980, pgs 26-27; Spiegel-Buch, pgs 118-119. Handwritten notes
on the original are revealing: "GS/BK/HSS" indicates that the document should be
passed to the CSU General Secretariat, the Strauss newspaper Bayern Kurier and
the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung itself. Several countries are underlined by hand in the
original: Nigeria, Turkey, Manila, Hong Kong, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. A further
country not mentioned was Angola. On the 16th October, 1976, Strauss
accompanied by CDU MP and foreign and defence policy spokesman Dr Werner
Marx met Holden Roberto in the backroom of the Munich pub "Franziskaner"; the
FNLA leader wanted Strauss's help in unfreezing arms shipments promised by
Kissinger - Spiegel, 10/1980; Spiegel-Buch, pg 119. On HSS activities, see Die Contra
Connection; Spiegel, 9/1980, 10/1980; Tageszeitung, 24/1/87, 16/3/87, 13/5/87,
18/5/87, 20/5/87, 22/5/87, 6/6/87, 12/6/87, 3/7/87; Lobster 14, September
1987, pg 33.
(309) Péan, pgs 76-77.
(310) Crozier, pg 125.
(311) Péan, pgs 72-74.
(312) Mungo, pg 24.
(313) Mungo, pg 26.
(314) Mungo, pg 27. Keston College had earlier contributed to this campaign for
religious freedom in the Soviet Union: "After a World Council of Churches meeting in
Nairobi in 1975, there was a request for the pooling of resources to produce
documentation on religion in Eastern Europe. This was eventually published under
the title Religious Liberty in the Soviet Union (published by Keston College, Kent,
England, a centre for the study of religion and communism, and edited by the Rev.
Michael Bourdeaux)" – Deacon, pgs 69-70. On Deacon, see this author and Robin
Ramsay’s piece Truth Twisting: notes on disinformation in Lobster 19 (May 1990) pgs
20-22.
(315) On the Brüsewitz Centre, see IGfM, pgs 69-70, Young European Federalists,
pgs 188-214, and Hirsch. Habsburg's youngest daughter, now Walburga Habsburg
Douglas, would play an active part in her father's political life from a very early age.
In 1973, at the age of fifteen, she would be co-founder of the German PEU youth
wing, Paneuropa-Jugend Deutschland; at the age of nineteen, she was co-founder of
the Christian Paneuropean Study Group and the Brüsewitz Centre before going on
to study law and canonical law in Salzburg. She would then work with her father in
the European Parliament from 1979 until 1992 with a spell in 1983 studying
journalism in the National Journalism Centre in Washington and working in the
Washington office of Readers' Digest. From 1985 to 1992 she worked as Information
Counsellor in the Information Ministry of the Sultanate of Oman, and from 2004 on
sat on the Board of the Arab International Media Forum in London. She would not
however neglect the PEU, serving as PEU Deputy International Secretary-General
from 1980 to 1988, PEU International Secretary-General from 1988 to 2004, and
since then as PEU International Executive Vice-President. In August 1989, she and
her father would be key organisers of the Paneuropean Picnic which punctured the
Iron Curtain and accelerated the fall of the Berlin Wall, described below. In 1992,
she married the Swedish Count Archibald Douglas and became active in the
Swedish Moderata samlingspartiet, standing on their list for the European
Parliament in 1999 and 2004, and for the Swedish Parliament in 2002 and 2006,
when she was finally elected. Since 2006, she sits on the Swedish Parliament's
Foreign Affairs Committee.
(316) Spiegel, 9/11/87. On Colonia Dignidad, see below. Roth and Ender add (pg
79) that Bossle and Huyn served on the Presidium of a Deutsch-chilenischer
Freundeskreis (German-Chilean Friendship Circle).
(317) Die Contra Connection, pg 258. Pachmann was also an author for the Moonie
newspaper Integral.
(318) Roth and Ender, pg 62; IGfM, pg 80; Van der Reijden; Huyn bibliography. The
latter book includes different information on Huyn's European Conference, citing as
a source "Résumé of the Founding Meeting of the European Conference on Human
Rights, Lucerne 1-3/3/74"; the Conference probably changed title before Huyn's
1977 publication mentioned here.
(319) For biographies of Bossle, Blumenwitz and Rohrmoser, see IGfM, pgs 59, 63
and 65. Bossle would die in 2000, Blumenwitz in 2005, Rohrmoser in September
2008 – see Rohrmoser's obituary in Die Welt, 18/9/08. In 1981, Rohrmoser would
work with the Federal Government on a publication covering the philosophical bases
of terrorism; in 1987-88, he would work several times as speaker for the German
section of CAUSA. On Colonia Dignidad and its links to DINA, see Gero Gemballa's
Colonia Dignidad, Rowohlt rororo aktuell, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1990, pgs 148-151.
The legal proceedings against Amnesty International's German section would run for
more than twenty years and would trigger a Chilean court inspection in 1988,
leading to a Chilean government decision to close Colonia Dignidad in February
1991 - see Guardian, 24-25/8/91. Blumenwitz' Chile – Rückfahrt zur Demokratie
(Chile – Return to Democracy) would be published by the IfD in 1987. On DINA's
Washington assassination of Orlando Letelier, see John Dinges and Saul Landau's
Assassination on Embassy Row (Pantheon, New York 1980; McGraw-Hill, New York
1981); Taylor Branch and Eugene Propper's Labyrinth (Penguin, London 1983). On
DINA's international cooperation within Operation Condor, see John Dinges's
excellent The Condor Years (New Press, New York 2004). On DINA's 1975 production
of nerve-gas using precursor chemicals purchased from Britain, see Observer,
23/4/89.
(320) On Lobkowicz, see IGfM, pg 62; Die Contra Connection. Resistance
International was active throughout the 1980s, defending the Nicaraguayan Contras,
the Afghan mujaheddin, RENAMO in Mozambique and Jonas Savimbi’s Angolan
UNITA. Several Cercle associates signed two RI appeals widely published in the
international press, one in March 1985 just before Reagan imposed a trade embargo
on Nicaragua (Close, Huyn, Lobkowicz, von Hassel, Graf von Stauffenberg, Bukovsky
and Crozier), and another in October 1987 (Close, Löwenthal, Lobkowicz, von Hassel,
Graf von Stauffenberg, Bukovsky, Crozier and Stewart-Smith) – see Die Contra
Connection, pgs 264-267. Löwenthal was also a German Member of Honour of RI;
RI's American Members of Honour included former US Ambassador to the UN Jeane
Kirkpatrick, Midge Decter, a personal friend of Reagan's and Chair of the Committee
for a Free World (on which see State Research no.22, February-March 1981, pgs 88-
90), and WACL President General Singlaub, a former Chief of Staff of US forces in
South Korea until 1977 and then Chief of Staff of the Army Forces Command. A
close collaborator of Col. Oliver North, Singlaub would be one of the major players
implicated in the Irangate scandal. On Resistance International, see Die Contra
Connection and IGfM; on Singlaub, see below, Bellant and Crozier. Crozier would play
a considerable part in the anti-Sandinista campaign in the UK, working within the
Committee for a Free Nicaragua – see Die Contra Connection pgs 90-91 and Lobster
no.16 (July 1988), pg 18.
(321) Mungo, pg 24 et seq.
(322) The Vice-President of CLEW was Egidio Ortona, host for the founding
ceremony and President of the Italian branch set up in 1977. A former Italian
Ambassador to the US, Ortona was a founding member of the Trilateral Commission
and served on its Executive Committee in 1979 as European Chairman – see
Eringer. The other members of CLEW were Sir Heinz Koeppler, former Rector of
Wilton Park, Düsseldorf lawyer Klaus F. Beckmann, Doctor Georges Ladame,
President of the Swiss Society of Friends of Wilton Park, and Jean J. Richard, Vice-
President of the International Society of Wilton Park - see Mungo. The statutes of
CLEW also mention an offshoot of Wilton Park called the European Discussion
Centre (E. D. C.), which may be the same as the "Edicercle" mentioned by Violet in
his message to Damman of 31st March, 1976 about the funding crisis of the
Academy. Van der Reijden also notes that Sir Peter Tennant of the Cercle was a
member of the Academic Council of Wilton Park.
(323) The 1978 AESP membership list published by Mungo is also reproduced in
Gijsels (1991), pgs 152-157. An earlier internal membership list dating from around
1977 already included many of the new names in the AESP in 1978, listing Huyn,
van den Heuvel, Vallet and Valori as members of the core organising group, the
Permanent Delegation, whilst Soustelle, Biggs-Davison, Agnew, Rodgers, Pirkl and
Graf von Stauffenberg figured as AESP Life Members, and Grau, de Bonvoisin,
Vigneau, Marique, Magnino, Schneider and Bitsonau served as AESP Study Group
members.
(324) This von Stauffenberg, only distantly related to the Freiherr von Stauffenberg
who ran the CSU’s private intelligence network, was part of the main branch of the
von Stauffenberg lineage, being the third son of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
who with his brother Berthold was executed in 1944 for plotting to kill Hitler. In
contrast to the parliamentary information given here, taken from Wikipedia, a CDU
Pensioners Union information sheet from 2008 states that von Stauffenberg was a
German Federal MP from 1972 to 1984 before being elected to the European
Parliament.
(325) Le Soir, 4/9/91 and Brewaeys and Deliège, pgs 62-63 quoted from the Senate
Gladio Commission findings. No details are known of the "Saoud affair", but the
reference is intriguing. In the spring of 1978, Crozier had met the recently-appointed
head of the Saudi intelligence service, Prince Turki ben Faisal, and briefed him on
the 6I and its activities - could that be what Fagnart refers to?
(326) On PIO, Bougerol, de Bonvoisin, Latinus, De Roover and the Belgian Gladio
network, see Histoire de glaives, Michel Bouffioux, published in Gladio (pgs 29-60);
Michel Bouffioux in Libertés, 9, 10, 11, 13-15, 17, 18, 19 and 20-22/4/91 (Libertés
was a short-lived Belgian left-wing daily which appeared from March to June, 1991)
and in Télémoustique, 27/6/91; Le Soir, 4/9/91; Gijsels (1991); Brewaeys and
Deliège.
(327) The hostages were released five minutes after Reagan's inauguration on
January 20th, 1981; Reagan's first Presidential address was to announce their
liberation. On the "October Surprise", see Reagan campaign assistant Barbara
Honegger's October Surprise (Tudor, NY 1989); An Election held Hostage? A
Compendium, ed. David Marks (Fund for New Priorities in America, NY 1991) which
includes many declassified documents; Sick, a cautious but conclusive investigation
by a National Security Council staffer under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan,
principal White House aide for Iran during the 1979-81 hostage crisis, and later of
Columbia University, New York.
(328) Sick, pg 149. "One example [of Brenneke's inside knowledge] was his
statement to a DIA official on 3rd January, 1986, that 'Admiral Poindexter had given
permission to sell 10,000 missiles to Iran'. On that date, a draft presidential finding
was being prepared ... that provided for the sale of TOW missiles to Iran. President
Reagan signed the finding on 6th January" - Sick, pg 210. Sick devotes several pages
to discussing Brenneke's claims and reliability; for other accounts of his claims, see
Roth; Gijsels (1991).
(329) All information on P7 and the Comité Hongrie 1956-76 from Gijsels (1991),
pgs 91-96. Töttösy also worked directly with Habsburg and Jacques Jonet within the
Association Europe Hongrie, a right-wing Catholic group set up in 1990. The AEH
brought together bankers, industrialists and politicians with the aim of promoting
industrial and commercial development in Hungary. The AEH's task was made
easier by Habsburg's rôle as Chairman or Deputy Chairman of the European
Parliament's Delegation for Relations with Hungary from 1989 to 1999. See CelsiuS
39 (April 1991), pgs 3-4.
(330) Crozier, pg 172. Albertini would die in 1983 – see his biography in van der
Reijden. There are two works on Albertini, neither of which I have yet obtained:
L'Homme de l'Ombre – Georges Albertini 1911-1993 (surely a misprint for 1983],
Laurent Lemire, Ed. Balland, 1989, and Le Dossier Georges Albertini – une intelligence
avec l'ennemi, Jean Lévy, Ed. L'Harmattan-Le Pavillon, 1992. Lévy, who worked for
CelsiuS, was interviewed about his book in CelsiuS no. 52 (August-September 1992).
(331) Listed in Huyn's bibliography.
(332) People's News Service, 6/2/79, pg 3.
(333) Ramsay and Dorril, pg 53. The previous year, du Plessis's report, Moscow's
Control over Mozambique and Angola, had been published by Stewart-Smith's East-
West Digest (no. 23, 1977). The ISC would return to the significance of South Africa
for the West's oil supply in a May 1979 ISC Special Report, The Security of Middle
East Oil.
(334) On Freedom Blue Cross, see Rees and Day, pgs 196-197; State Research no.
7 (Aug-Sept 1978) pgs 130-132 and no. 16 (Feb-March 1980) pg 71. Gonsalez-Mata,
writing with less direct information a year after the Brighton conference, gives a
slightly different take, seeing Freedom Blue Cross as the reactionary rump of a
"cleansed" post-Lockheed Bilderberg Group: having described "... the reorganisation
of the Bilderberg Group rid of its "black sheep", politicians, bankers and
industrialists belonging to right-wing organisations which cannot be integrated,
reserve officers, former intelligence chiefs, etc", Gonsalez-Mata adds in a footnote:
"These marginalized sectors would set up in London a new organisation, "worthy
successor to the Bilderberg Club of heroic times" (sic), called Freedom Blue Cross
whose main aim is to "hinder Soviet expansionism in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin
America" " – see Gonsalez-Mata, pg 297. The two DoI front groups, the FAA, charged
with European and American outreach, and the SAFF, mostly active within South
Africa itself, would be closed down shortly after the Brighton conference following
their exposure in the media - People's News Service, 6/2/79, pg 3.
(335) Crozier, pg 167.
(336) Crozier, pg 171.
(337) Michael Goodwin later became a financial adviser to the International
Association for Cultural Freedom which took over from the CIA-funded Congress for
Cultural Freedom. Ian Greig died in 1995.
(338) Crozier, pgs 187-188.
(339) Crozier, pg 188.
(340) Crozier, pg 157.
(341) The Dulverton Trust provided the ISC with a grant of £50,000 in 1978 -
Crozier, pg 174.
(342) On Turki ben Faisal and the mujaheddin, see Cooley, an outstanding book;
US and the Taliban: a done deal, Pierre Abramovici, Le Monde Diplomatique, English
edition, January 2002. After his London posting, ben Faisal would serve as
longstanding Saudi Ambassador in Washington.
(343) See Haykal.
(344) Crozier, pg 159.
(345) Crozier, pg 161.
(346) Many of Langemann's operations are described in Heigl and Saupe, which
unfortunately tells us nothing more about the Cercle Pinay.
(347) “Hans von Machtenberg’s indiscretion [in providing Langemann with
information on the Cercle] was nevertheless considered unacceptable, and the 6I’s
directorate decided to sever relations with him. I was personally very sorry about this
rift, as I held Hans in high esteem”, Crozier pg 193.
(348) Given in English in the original, this is no doubt Crozier's title for his second
attempt to get multinationals to fund the 6I after the failure of Freedom Blue Cross
described above.
(349) Besides spelling his name wrong, Langemann also was wrong in calling de
Marenches ex-Director; he would remain Director of SDECE until 1981.
(350) It is interesting to note that Franks was Bonn station chief at the time of the
Spiegel's initial allegations about Strauss in 1963 - see Dorril.
(351) Born in 1921, Luchsinger was chief editor of the influential Swiss daily
newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung from January 1968 to January 1985. Having
studied at Yale in 1951-52, Luchsinger joined the NZZ and would work as its Bonn
correspondent from 1955 to 1963 when Strauss and von Merkatz were Federal
Ministers; he would then serve as head of the NZZ foreign desk before becoming
chief editor in 1968. According to his biography in van der Reijden, Luchsinger
would receive the Freedom Prize in 1985, the year of his retirement, and was a
member of the Löwenthal-Pachmann-Horchem group Konservative Aktion, the
IGfM/ISHR, Resistance International, WACL, CAUSA, the Jonathan Institute, and
the European Institute on Security, the latter no doubt the EIS detailed below.
(352) This is probably the Dr Stefan Kux whose Europe's Neutral States: Partners or
Profiteers in Western Security? was published by the IEDSS in 1986. Colonel Botta
was Head of Procurement for the Swiss military intelligence service.
(353) Langemann is confusing two prominent journalists called Löwenthal: the
friend - Gerhard, the Cercle contact obviously intended here, and the enemy -
Richard, Professor of Foreign Policy at the Free University of Berlin, a close friend of
Willy Brandt; the two had worked together to formulate the opening to East Germany
and the Soviet Union under Ostpolitik that won Brandt the Nobel Peace Prize.
(354) Spiegel, 37/1982, pgs 28-31, and Roth and Ender, pgs 58-60.
(355) Crozier, pg 191.
(356) Spiegel, 10/1980, pg 23; Spiegel-Buch, pg 109.
(357) Spiegel, 12/1980.
(358) Huyn, pg 258.
(359) Whilst some Heritage/Cercle links are described below, the Heritage
Foundation deserves more attention than can be given within the scope of this
study; Herman and O'Sullivan and Bellant are useful starting points.
(360) Elected to Parliament in 1968, Filippo Maria Pandolfi served as Under-
Secretary of State for Finance under Aldo Moro from 1974 to 1976 before becoming
Minister of Finance and then Treasury Minister under Andreotti in 1978. Six months
before this Cercle meeting, after the Italian elections in June 1979, Pandolfi had
tried to form a government after first Andreotti, then Socialist leader Craxi had failed
to raise a workable majority. Pandolfi also failed; the new administration was formed
by Christian Democrat Cossiga in August. Pandolfi would then serve as Minister for
Industry and Commerce from 1980 to 1983 and Minister for Agriculture and
Forestry from 1983 to 1988 before joining the European Commission as Italian
Commissioner and Commission Vice-President in charge of research and
development from 1989 to 1993.
(361) General Alan Fraser, South Africa's Consul-General in Iran and the Cercle's
intermediary for its contacts with the Shah as mentioned above.
(362) When Langemann wrote this document in 1980, Pinay was already 88; he
would die on 13th December 1994, a fortnight short of his hundred and third
birthday. Later in 1980, Violet would himself hand over the organization of Cercle
meetings to Crozier and Franz Josef Bach - Crozier, pg 193. Bach had previously
attended the December 1976 CEDI Congress in Madrid with Crozier, Violet, Pinay
and Huyn.
(363) Spiegel, 37/1982, pgs 28-31.
(364) Crozier, pgs 192-193.
(365) Prouty.
(366) See Prouty, Appendix III for the full text.
(367) See Valentine. Colby had attended the previous Cercle meeting one month
earlier in December 1979. Colby himself had had early experience in unconventional
warfare - one little-known part of his CIA career was his involvement in setting up
and training the the Gladio network in neutral Sweden and Finland and in the NATO
members Norway and Denmark whilst stationed at the Stockholm CIA station in
1951. Colby’s Scandinavian Gladio network would soon get into controversy – the
Swedish network would be exposed in 1953 after the arrest of a right-wing militant,
and in 1957, the director of the Norwegian secret service NIS, Vilhelm Evang, would
strongly protest against the domestic subversion of his country by the United States
and NATO and would temporarily withdraw the Norwegian stay-behind army from
the CPC Gladio coordination meetings. See the website of the Parallel History Project
on NATO and the Warsaw Pact (PHP), www.isn.ethz.ch/php, a cooperative research
project run by the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich and the National
Security Archive at the George Washington University on behalf of the PHP network.
(368) Crozier, pg 177. In the late 1980s, Stilwell would serve on the Board of the
Moonies' geostrategy offshoot, the US Global Strategy Council: chaired by Ray Cline,
the USGSC's Board also included Richard Pipes of WISC and General Daniel O.
Graham of the ASC. Besides Stilwell, the 6I could count on several contacts within
the Reagan Administration: Reagan's first three National Security Advisers, Dick
Allen, Bud McFarlane and Admiral Poindexter, DCI Casey himself of course, and four
further friends: former NSIC Program Director and later IFF speaker Sven Kraemer
who dealt with arms control in the NSC; Ken deGraffenreid, Senior Director of
Intelligence Programs; WISC Board member and NSC adviser Richard Pipes; and last
but not least Colonel Oliver North. Reagan would initially appoint an old Californian
friend, William A. Wilson, as his special contact for the Cercle and the 6I; Wilson was
appointed US Ambassador to the Vatican in 1982. See Crozier, pgs 184-186.
(369) See Saunders.
(370) Herman and O'Sullivan, pg 99.
(371) Ironically, the Spiegel Affair had been triggered by Spanish Information
Minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne who gave a Press conference on 6th November 1962
revealing the illegal extradition of Spiegel Chief Editor Conrad Ahlers, then on
holiday in Spain, following a request from Bonn – see Spiegel-Buch, pg 126 et seq.
Strauss and many of the leading public figures implicated in the Lockheed bribes
scandal were members of the Bilderberg Group. For Lockheed-Bilderberg links, see
the two books on the Bilderberg Group mentioned above and the factual novel by
Bernt Engelmann.
(372) Spiegel, 35/1980, pgs 22-25, and 36/1980, pg 250. Langemann alleged in
another report that the anti-Strauss campaign was "covertly coordinated" by the rival
news magazines, Stern and Spiegel; he however made no mention of the Moscow
angle: see Spiegel, 32/1982, pgs 30-31. On Löwenthal's continued support for
Strauss in his ZDF Magazin programme, see Spiegel, 9/1983, pgs 104-106.
(373) Sunday Times, 7/10/84.
(374) Spiegel, 41/1984, pg 290, and Fallon, Chapter 25.
(375) 6/3/85 issue.
(376) The full-page adverts appeared in the Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian,
Financial Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt. See Spiegel, 41/1984,
pg 290, and 42/1984, pgs 3 and 290. A robust defence of Goldsmith's actions in the
Spiegel case was included in Deacon; Goldsmith's own account was distributed by
the Monday Club.
(377) Robert Moss's column in the Daily Telegraph would be a regular outlet for
Cercle disinformation. One report from Langemann to his minister's office dated 21st
February, 1980, revealed a further example of a Cercle-inspired article in the British
press and alluded to the CSU's private intelligence service, with which Langemann
liaised closely: "The enclosed article ["The KGB's plans for the Games"] from the Daily
Telegraph of 11/2/80, written by our friend Robert Moss, is the result of steps taken
together with the office of the Freiherr von Stauffenberg". Another occasion when the
Daily Telegraph was used by Moss to plant propaganda came in August 1980 when
Moss recycled a CIA report in his Telegraph column. The CIA report, which alleged
that the Nicaraguan Sandinistas' final offensive against the dictator Somoza had
been planned by the Cuban General Staff, had been provided by "a senior member of
the 6I in the Pentagon", probably General Stilwell, Reagan's Assistant Secretary of
Defence in charge of administration - see Crozier, pg 164.
(378) It’s worth noting that George H.W. Bush’s brother Prescott S. Bush Jnr had
been a founding director of the NSIC with Barnett and Casey in 1962, and was still
serving as a member of its Advisory Council in 1984. Crozier had had the
opportunity of "a long private talk" with George Bush a year before this Cercle
meeting when both men attended the July 1979 launch of the Jonathan Institute in
Jerusalem – see Crozier, pg 178.
(379) Roth and Ender, pgs 89-90. The Cercle/6I had already assisted the Israelis a
year earlier at the July 1979 launch of the propaganda outlet, the Jonathan Institute
– see below. Crozier reveals that the next Cercle meeting would be held in December
1980 in Washington, a meeting attended by Carter's adviser on Soviet Affairs,
Professor Marshall Shulman of Columbia University – see Crozier, pg 261. Crozier
also reveals another guest at that meeting: "At the Cercle meeting in Washington in
December 1980, Georges Albertini had brought along a quiet Frenchman named
François de Grossouvre. This was an impressive example of his foresight. De
Grossouvre, a physician, was the closest friend and confidant of the Socialist leader
and presidential candidate François Mitterrand. For many years, de Grossouvre had
carried out special missions for Mitterrand. By nature and training, he was selfeffacing.
He played no part in our debates, but listened carefully, taking notes. Five
months later, François Mitterrand narrowly defeated Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in
France's presidential elections. One of his first actions was to appoint de Grossouvre
as his coordinator of security and intelligence. Shortly after, having obtained his
direct line from Albertini, I went to see him in his modest office in the Elysée Palace.
We had reacted with alarm to Mitterrand's victory, but de Grossouvre reassured me"
– Crozier, pgs 217-218.
(380) Bellant, pg 32, which gives details of the ASC's election programme. The
ASC's campaign included briefing or campaigning for 67 candidates; the two main
ASC members involved were General Daniel O. Graham, Executive Director of the
ASC Political Action Committee and a former head of DIA and Deputy Director of
CIA, and General John Singlaub, Chairman of ASC's action arm, the Coalition for
Peace through Strength, and World President of WACL, former CIA operative and a
central figure in the Irangate scandal.
(381) Sick, pgs 110-111.
(382) Woodward, pgs 39-41. At that time, although he did not know it, de
Marenches himself had less than six months left as head of the SDECE; after eleven
years at the helm, the arch-conservative signalled his disapproval of the May 1981
election of France's first post-war socialist government by resigning his post without
even staying for his replacement's customary "breaking-in" period. De Marenches
was certain to be replaced; his covert manipulation of domestic politics had earned
him the anger of Mitterrand's advisers. In 1978, Le Monde alleged that "under de
Marenches's leadership, terrorism and also disinformation - the influencing of public
opinion - were extensively pursued [by the SDECE]" (Le Monde, 24/2/78). The rightwing
in SDECE fiercely resisted Mitterrand; the Action Service rebelled, purged
Socialist sympathizers amongst the NCOs and refused to remove Giscard's portrait
from the officers' mess. The rebellion of the Action Service centred around the diving
base in Aspretto, Corsica, from which the divers for the 1985 anti-Greenpeace
"Operation Satanic" were drawn. The theory that the Greenpeace operation was
deliberately blown (inter alia by drawing MI5's attention to the "covert" purchase of a
Zodiac boat in London and by leaving French Navy issue equipment at the scene) so
as to sabotage the Socialist government (particularly Defence Minister Charles
Hernu) draws substance from the identity of the "Operation Satanic" action team:
the commander of the operation was Lt-Col Jean-Pierre Dillais, in 1981 rebel base
commander of Aspretto. The captured Capt. Alain Mafart was Dillais' deputy at
Aspretto and another of the ringleaders of the revolt. The team that actually laid the
limpet mines were all involved in the Aspretto revolt. See this author’s article French
Vendetta in Lobster 16, July 1988.
(383) Spiegel, 44/1983, pgs 76-78, 28/1986, pgs 36-39, and 42/86; Die Zeit,
24/06/83 Nr. 26.
(384) All uncredited information in the section on the Belgian strategy of tension is
taken from Gijsels, L'Enquête which, despite certain inaccuracies and no index, is
the best overview of Belgium from a parapolitical perspective. Brief biographies of
CEPIC figures can be found in a supplement to CelsiuS 29, May 1990. Other books
on the rumours of a coup in 1973, the strategy of tension in the 1980s and the
extreme right in Belgium are de Bock; Haquin; Willems; Dupont and Ponsaers; De
Bende Tapes, various authors; Gijsels, Het leugenpaleis; Brewaeys and Deliège, the
latter being highly recommended. The official report of the investigation into the
Brabant killings is published as Les Tueries du Brabant, various authors.
(385) The report is published in full in Gijsels, L'Enquête. Amongst other things, the
Sûreté report stated: "The registered office of CEPIC is located at 39, rue Belliard in
Brussels. The building also houses the Belliard auditorium, the registered office of
the Mouvement d'Action pour l'Unité Européenne* and the offices of the Société de
Promotion et de Distribution Générales (PDG) controlled by Benoît de Bonvoisin
through front-men. *This is an otherwise unknown organization run by Benoît de
Bonvoisin bringing together various distinguished persons". MAUE was not so
unknown to some at the Sûreté: one year previous to this report, as a MAUE bulletin
dated May, 1980 indicates, the President of MAUE, under whom de Bonvoisin served
as Board member, was Robert Nieuwenhuys, a former Sûreté Division Chief from
1943 to 1945, attaché to Kings Léopold III and Baudouin until the end of the 1950s
before becoming Head of Protocol for NATO Secretary-General Joseph Luns and
serving with the Belgian Atlantic Association and the CEPIC Study Centre.
Damman's diaries show that Nieuwenhuys had been in contact with the
AESP/MAUE since at least 1977.
(386) Latinus would later officially apply to become a regular officer within the
Sûreté. Massart would give his version of the Latinus affair in Les dés étaient pipés
(The dice were loaded), Editions Quorum, Ottignies, 1997.
(387) See Bouffioux; Brewaeys and Deliège.
(388) It is not difficult to understand why the Brabant Wallon investigations never
exposed the truth when one learns that Didier Mievis was a member of one of the
Gendarmerie investigation teams from the very beginning.
(389) Vivario, honorary aide de camp to the King, was an associate of Damman's,
attending the March 1973 Wilton Park meeting as a member of the AESP delegation
with Damman and Jonet. Vivario's alleged involvement in coup plots is perhaps not
surprising, bearing in mind his rôle in creating the DSD, forerunner of Bougerol's
PIO, in 1970. Vivario died in November 1990 - see above; Brewaeys and Deliège, pg
56; CelsiuS no. 36, January 1991.
(390) Libertés, 14/2/91.
(391) See Cornwell; Yallop, pgs 454-456. On Bagnasco, also see CelsiuS no. 42,
July/August 1991. Despite the sniffer plane scandal, in June 1989 de Weck would
be appointed to the five-man Supervisory Board of the IOR, charged with selecting a
successor to former IOR President, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus.
(392) Gonsalez-Mata, pgs 52-53; Crozier, pgs 239-241.
(393) Crozier, pgs 239-243.
(394) On MI5's surveillance of CND, see Guardian, 21, 22 and 28/2/85; Reeve and
Smith; Hollingsworth and Taylor, pgs 131-133; Campbell and Connor, pgs 282-284;
Norton-Taylor, pgs 80, 83-84.
(395) The Price of Peace, pg 1; Crozier, pg 246.
(396) A letter reprinted in the Guardian (3/10/80) from John Adler at the South
African Embassy to Stewart-Smith states that funding from Pretoria was to be cut
from the 1980 figure of R175,000 ($96,000) to R125,000 ($68,000) for 1981. On this
period of FARI, see State Research no 7; New Statesman, 15/2/80; Guardian, 7/6/78
and 6/5/80; Lobster 11 (Ramsay and Dorril), pg 40; Herman and O'Sullivan, pg 269,
note 62; Coxsedge, Coldicutt and Harant, pg 124.
(397) On the CPD, see "Peddlers of crisis - the CPD and the Politics of Containment",
Jerry W. Sanders, Pluto (UK)/South End Press (USA), 1983, and State Research no.
16 (February-March 1980).
(398) On CIA funding for Crozier's anti-CND camapigns, see Crozier, pg 245. On
the Heritage Foundation's UK groups, see Guardian, 30/4/83, 8/10/83, 26/11/85,
26/6/87 and New Statesman, 29/5/87. On IEDSS, see City Limits, 14/8/86; Lobster
13, pg 18; Herman and O'Sullivan, pgs 80-81; IEDSS 1991 Publications List. Also
see footnote 352 above.
(399) Crozier, pgs 184-185.
(400) Herman and O'Sullivan, pg 81.
(401) Crozier, pg 189.
(402) On IEDSS disinformation on the "spetsnaz threat", see this author and Robin
Ramsay’s piece Truth Twisting: notes on disinformation in Lobster 19 (May 1990) pgs
20-22.
(403) Crozier, pgs 243-246.
(404) On Tennant's involvement in the creation of the MMU, see Daily Telegraph,
20/11/86, from Joel van der Reijden; on the MMU, see Crozier, pg 279. On the
Crozier/Lewis group, the Campaign against Council Corruption (CAMACC), see
Crozier, pgs 255-257. Julian Lewis studied at grammar school in Wales before
graduating from Oxford in Philosophy and Politics; he received a DPhil in Strategic
Studies from St Antony's College, Oxford in 1981. From 1981 to 1985, he was
Research Director of the Coalition for Peace through Security; he then became
Director of Policy Research Associates which, according to his website,
"successfully campaigned for changes in the law on Educational Indoctrination,
Media Bias, Propaganda on the Rates [local taxes], and Trade Union Democracy".
From 1990 to 1996, Lewis was a Deputy Director of the Research Department at
Conservative Central Office (CCO) and Director of the CCO's MMU. In May 1997,
he was elected to Parliament and still serves as MP today; since November 2002,
he has been Shadow Junior Defence Minister specialising in the Royal Navy, Royal
Marines, nuclear deterrent and other strategic issues. Lewis’s colleague since 2002
as Shadow Junior Defence Minister with responsibility for defence procurement
and the Royal Air Force is another old Crozier friend – SIF’s Gerald Howarth who
was elected as MP for Aldershot, a major Army base, in May 1997. A third Crozier
ally within the Conservative Party is Edward Leigh, since 1997 "an enthusiastically
Thatcherite MP" (Crozier, pg 243) who has held the powerful post of Chairman of
the Select Committee on Public Accounts since 2001. Having served as Thatcher’s
private correspondence secretary from 1976-77 when she was Leader of the
Opposition (briefed by Shield), Leigh worked closely with Lewis from 1981 to early
1985 within the 6I’s Coalition for Peace through Security, of which Leigh was
General Director and Lewis Research Director. "In Parliament, CAMACC’s main
activist was Edward Leigh, who had earlier played a leading rôle in our Coalition
for Peace through Security" – Crozier, pgs 256-257. To return to Lewis, he has
twice won the Trench Gascoigne prize awarded by the Royal United Services
Institute for Defence and Security Studies for his essays Nuclear Disarmament
versus Peace in the 21st Century (2005) and Double-I, Double-N: A Framework for
Counter-Insurgency (2007) - see www.julianlewis.net/index.php. Described by the
Daily Telegraph as "one of the most vigorous rightwingers in the Commons" and by
the Guardian as the Conservative Party's "front bench terrier", the man who
Crozier called "the 6I's leading activist in Britain" is a man certainly worth watching.
His involvement in Lamont's Cercle, if any, is unknown. A typical quote from a
press interview on his site: "I am not surprised that the Stasi were worried about
those of us who were working for the vital deployment of NATO Cruise missiles in
Britain in 1983, and for the retention of our own nuclear deterrent. However, I am
increasingly alarmed at the determination of the Labour government to take no
action whatever to expose the identity of these despicable hacks and traitors who
were spying for our potential enemies at a crucial turning-point of the Cold War.
Three-quarters of Labour MPs at that time were committed to one-sided nuclear
disarmament, and several were fellow-travellers of the Soviet system, so it is not
surprising that the Government wishes to hush the matter up. What is more
worrying is that MI5 – our domestic security service – is colluding in this or was so
incompetent that it failed to discover what was going on in the first place" –
Lymington Times, 23/09/2000. He has mostly recently cropped up in the news as
coordinator of a ultimately successful campaign by MPs to prevent disclosure of
their second-home addresses by amending the Freedom of Information Act - "Dr
Lewis admitted that it would already be possible for someone to "target" a
particular MP. However, he warned of a situation where "someone with a grudge"
or a follower of al-Qa'eda "conveniently finds 646 addresses and sends 646
packages containing something explosive, horrible or, at the very least, abusive to
646 unprotected mail boxes"." – Sunday Telegraph, 5/7/08.
(405) New Statesman, 29/5/87.
(406) Guardian, 26/6/87.
(407) Crozier, pg 245.
(408) Guardian, 26/6/87. Brenchley was a former ambassador to Norway and
Poland, and former head of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat in the Cabinet
Office from 1975 to 1978; after serving as Chairman of the ISC Council, he would
later chair the ISC successor, Paul Wilkinson's RISCT. A full biography of Brenchley
is given in Lobster 11.
(409) Guardian, 26/6/87.
(410) The "Gardiner case": a certain Mr Wood had infiltrated the Dutch peace
campers under the name of Gardiner, acting on orders from the BVD; it was later
confirmed that the man named by Wood as his case officer was indeed a member of
the BVD. According to Wood, the operation was coordinated by an American Colonel
Stevenson, based in Frankfurt, and Mr. Blackburn, a US Embassy official in the
Hague. Wood alleged his mission was to use "all means" to encourage violent actions
by the Dutch peace-campers; to this end, he promoted and participated in the theft
of the ammunition with Belgian peace campaigners - see Le Soir, 4/9/91.
(411) Crozier, pgs 245-246. The Bonner Friedensforum (Bonn Peace Forum) was an
anti-disarmament propaganda group active during the upswing in the peace
movement in the early eighties; Crozier recalls that it was "largely composed of
students alerted to the dangers of unconditional pacifism. Our funds contributed to
the cost of posters and banners displayed during demonstrations" – see Crozier, pg
246; footnote 436 below. The Belgian Rally had been created by "our man in
Brussels", probably Jacques Jonet, the former political secretary to Habsburg who
had assumed much of the mantle of the late Florimond Damman. Crozier's mention
of "a well-known general" (pg 246) almost certainly refers to Close.
(412) Close, who died in 2003, had one interesting early posting as Belgian
Military Attaché in London from 1967 to 1970. On the EIS, see Die Contra
Connection, pgs 282-284, Roth and Ender, pgs 80-81; Van Bosbeke, pgs 17-18. On
MBB, see Gonsalez-Mata, pgs 58, 158. Details of the creation of the EIS and its
proper title are sketchy; the three sources on the EIS give slightly inconsistent
information. Roth and Ender, the earliest source, and Van Bosbeke both seem to be
unaware of the 1981 Brussels conference, mentioned only in Die Contra Connection,
which gives the fullest list of names. Van Bosbeke gives the EIS title in German,
citing Roth and Ender. However, if the EIS was founded by Close and met in
Brussels and Luxembourg before dissolving, one would expect the organisation's
name to be in French.
(413) On IEPS, see Van Bosbeke, pgs 16-17.
(414) On AESRI, see Die Contra Connection, pgs 272-274, and Roth and Ender, pg
48. The US-based Western Goals Foundation would not long survive the death in
September 1983 of its founder, Democratic Congressman Larry McDonald, ironically
killed on Korean Airlines flight KAL007, part of a Pentagon 'black' programme testing
Soviet air defences that was shot down by Russia.
(415) Roth and Ender, pg 61.
(416) Another member of the Coalition for Peace through Strength was Richard
Perle, appointed by Reagan as Deputy Defence Secretary, the fourth Reagan
appointment of Cercle contacts to high positions, Casey, Allen and Stilwell being
the other three – see Crozier, pg 243. On the Reagan Administration's links to
many right-wing defence strategy groups such as the CPS, CPD and CFW, see the
background paper The Reagan Administration in State Research no.22, February-
March 1981, pgs 78-90.
(417) Herman and O'Sullivan, pg 99.
(418) Hollingsworth and Norton-Taylor, pg 132 - an excellent book. For Elwell's MI5
career, see Dorril; Leigh; Norton-Taylor, pgs 19, 85, 88 - one of the best books of its
day on the British security and intelligence services.
(419) Guardian, 2/10/89, 14-15/12/89; Norton-Taylor, pg 19; Lobster 18, October
1989, pg 34. On Clockwork Orange 2 and Colin Wallace, see Foot, and Lobster 11 -
20.
(420) Observer, 9/12/90 and 16/12/90. Also see the television programmes This
Week (26/4/90) and World in Action (10/12/90).
(421) Contributions varying between £5,000 to £10,000 were made by Boots,
Unilever, Bass, BP, the Hanson Trust, Courage, GKN, Allied Lyons, ICI and United
Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Express and Sunday Express. The Trust's
secretary was John Arkell, a former Boots director; trustees included Lord McAlpine
and Lord Boyd-Carpenter, former chairman of backbench Tory peers. Council
members included Sir Austin Bide of Glaxo, Peter Calazet of BP, and Sir Derek
Palmar of Bass and United Newspapers.
(422) On IRD, Common Cause and IRIS, see Dorril and Ramsay (1990).
(423) See Lobster 19, pg 20, and Observer, 2/10/88.
(424) Paul Foot, Daily Mirror, 14/12/90.
(425) Herman and O'Sullivan, pg 107.
(426) Herman and O'Sullivan, pg 105.
(427) On Wilkinson and the RFST, see Lobster 16, pg 16 (list of Board Members),
pgs 23-24 and insert; Lobster 17, pgs 17-18; Herman and O'Sullivan.
(428) Observer, 7/12/86.
(429) See The Terrorism Reader, Walter Laqueur and Ariel Merari, Meridian NAL
Penguin, New York, 1987 (Horchem's contribution was originally published in
Terrorism - an international journal), and Contemporary Research on Terrorism, Paul
Wilkinson and Alasdair Stewart, Aberdeen University Press, Aberdeen 1987.
(430) Gemballa, pg 130: the two books were Krieg im Frieden - Theorien des
Terrorismus (War in Peacetime - Theories of Terrorism) and Die verlorene Revolution
(The lost revolution). Horchem is also author of Extremisten in einer selbstbewussten
Demokratie (Extremists in a self-aware democracy), Herder, 1975 and Zum
Entwicklungsstand des Rechtsextremismus im demokratischen Rechtsstaat (On the
development of right-wing extremism in the democratic State of law), Funke, 1978.
(431) On all of the above groups, see Herman and O'Sullivan. On Tugwell and the
CCS, see Lobster 16, July 1988, pgs 22-23; Lobster 17, November 1988, pg 17; Manz
- a major piece on South African propaganda in Canada; Herman and O'Sullivan,
pgs 115-116, 173-176; Foot, pgs 16, 18, 22. On the Mackenzie Institute, see Crozier
pg 204 and Lobster 16.
(432) Spiegel, 51/1984, pgs 92-93 and Unheimliche Patrioten, pgs 609-611.
(433) Crozier, pg 193.
(434) Crozier, pgs 287-288.
(435) Crozier, pg 290.
(436) The Bonn Peace Forum was also mentioned in a letter from Crozier to Huyn,
dated 9th January, 1989, which prepared for this Cercle Pinay meeting the next
month: "My dear Hans, I hope that the Bonn Peace Forum still exists, or, if not, that
something similar exists or can be built up. The idea is to use such an organization
to circulate particular slogans" - see footnote 438.
(437) Having served as Deputy Director of the CIA from 1972 to 1976, Vernon
"Dick" Walters was a founding member of Crozier's 6I in February 1977. In 1981,
Walters was appointed roving US Ambassador by Reagan and would serve as
Ambassador to the UN from 1985 to 1989. In April 1989, he was appointed
Ambassador to West Germany, a post he would fill until August 1991, ushering in
German reunification in October 1990. Walters died in 2002.
(438) Translated from the German given in Roth, pgs 31-33. Roth's book was on the
theme of the "October Surprise", recycling much of Barbara Honegger's book and
including a series of contacts with Dirk Stoffberg, South African hit squad leader.
Roth claimed to have been given the 1989 Cercle minutes and Crozier's letter quoted
above by a British intelligence officer based in Bonn. The diaries of Minister of State
for Defence Alan Clark, published in 1994, revealed that a later meeting of the
Cercle was held in Oman in November 1990. Attendees at the meeting at the Al
Bustan hotel, Muscat, included Lord Julian Amery (joint Cercle Chairman), Sheikh
Qaboos (Ruler of Oman), Jonathan Aitken (Minister of Defence Procurement), Paul
Channon (former secretary of State at the Dept. of Trade & Industry), General
Norman Schwarzkopf (Commander of the Allied forces in the Gulf), the unnamed
Head of the Dutch Secret Service, and an unnamed French Admiral. Another Cercle
guest around this time was former SOE and MI6 officer and later Conservative MP
for Inverness Lt-Col. 'Billy' McLean, named in the 1990 book, One Man in His Time:
the Life of Lt-Col. N. L. D. 'Billy' McLean, DSO by Xan Fielding (Macmillan, London
1990), pg. 205, which also mentioned that Cercle meetings were held in Bonn,
Munich and Washington and first named Amery as Chairman of the Cercle - see
Lobster 22, pg 17. McLean, Fielding, Amery and Roland Winn (Lord St Oswald)
would serve together in SOE in Albania and/or Siam.
(439) Crozier, pg 291.
(440) The IED would hold its Second International Assizes on Disinformation in the
French Assemblée Nationale on 10-11th April 1992. The choice of the French
Assemblée Nationale as venue for the IED's Second International Assizes on
Disinformation reflected a move away from the internationalism of the First Assizes
towards a more French-centred attendance. The participants at the two days of
presentations on "Disinformation in the world" and "Disinformation in France" were
almost all from French academic or media circles with a scattering of senior security
officials, notably former DST Director Jean Rochet who had attended the First
Assizes, and former Renseignements Généraux Director, Roger Chaix. The
attendance at the First Assizes of many of the Cercle's international contacts had
been slimmed down by the Second Assizes to just Brian Crozier, "Sovietologist", who
spoke on "The story behind the Moscow coup and the exact historic rôle of Mikhail
Gorbachev". The only other foreign speakers were from the former Eastern bloc,
notably the ex-Soviet dissident and vocal right-winger Vladimir Bukovsky, who had
already worked in the Cercle's earlier anti-disarmament campaign, see Crozier, pg
246.
(441) Dumont "has, over the last twenty-four years [i.e. since 1967], gained
considerable experience of international affairs: first as Brussels-based EC and
NATO correspondent, and more recently in his present capacity as a political and
diplomatic analyst in Paris. Mr. Dumont is a former Auditor [auditeur, free pupil] of
France's National Institute for Advanced Defence Studies (IHEDN, whose Director
from 1972 to 1974 was Cercle associate General Callet) and a graduate of the
Institute of Security Studies at Kiel University, Germany. He is also currently
Director of the Centre for Intelligence Studies (Europe). He has published and
contributed to a number of studies, among which: The Peace Movements in Europe
and America (London, 1985); Für ein Deutschland in der Zukunft [For a Germany in
the Future] (Berlin, 1985); and La Désinformation Stratégique et les Mesures Actives
Soviétiques [Strategic Disinformation and Soviet Active Measures] (Paris, 1987)" –
see Various authors (IFF), pg vii. The date of Dumont's last book seems to indicate
that the IED was founded some while before its first 1989 Assizes.
(442) Horchem's book was published in 1989 by the Deutsches Strategie-Forum;
the other two were Gorbachev's Operation: A Common European House - Soviet
Strategic Deception, Count Hans Huyn, Center for Intelligence Studies Reprint Series
2, Alexandria VA, USA, September 1990, and The Gorbachev Phenomenon: Peace and
Secret War, Brian Crozier, Claridge Press, London 1990, on which see Crozier, pgs
290-291. Canon Michael Bourdeaux, director of Keston Research, Oxford, would also
weigh in with Gorbachev, Glasnost and The Gospel, Hodder and Stoughton, 1990.
Bourdeaux had been refused a visa by the Soviet authorities in October 1989 – see
Guardian, 11/10/89.
(443) Front for Apartheid in Newsday, 16/07/95. The article was reported by Dele
Olojede in South Africa and Timothy M. Phelps in Washington, and written by
Olojede – see the IFF annex below for the text and further details.
(444) Interestingly, the IFF's creation in 1986 coincided with the closure after ten
years of the London-based FARI, previous beneficiary of DoI/DMI funds. The IFF's
major publication was the book Glasnost, New Thinking and the ANC-SACP Alliance:
A Parting of Ways, a title which sums up the IFF's propaganda line; its regular
publications included the journals laissez-faire and terra nova, OPPORTUNITIES
Briefing (Eastern and Central Europe) and Perspectives (former Soviet Union). The
IFF would also follow a hard anti-EU line with the research papers Sir Leon's Invisible
Hand – Competition Enforcement in the EC and Culture Vultures – the EC's Imposition
of Cultural Conformity. One author for the IFF's magazine terra nova would be
Bilderberger Sir Frederic Bennett, from 1970 an associate of G. K. Young's in
Kleinwort Benson, SIF and Unison, and from 1975 a companion of Crozier's in NAFF
and FARI.
(445) No other activities of the IFF's German branch are known. The IFF would also
spawn a British offshoot, IFF (UK), largely independent of its American parent and of
little direct relevance to the Cercle or 6I – on which see Lobster 16, July 1988, pgs
18-19. The IFF UK's address was at Suite 500, Chesham House, 150 Regent's Street
... perhaps coincidence, but for British parapolitical researchers, reminiscent of 'Box
500', a longstanding government cover-name for MI5.
(446) According to German Wikipedia, Huyn withdrew from public life after the
death of his wife in 2004.
(447) Earlier in 1991, Horchem had helped to prop up the allied war effort during
the first Iraq War by resurrecting the "threat" of international terrorism; during an
interview for the British Channel 4 television programme Dispatches on 30th
January 1991, he warned that over one thousand Iraqi hitmen lurked in every
corner of Europe. His Bonn Institute for Terrorism Research would close in 1993, the
year he published his memoirs, Auch Spione werden pensioniert (Even spies retire),
E.S. Mittler & Sohn, Herford, Berlin and Bonn. Rolf Tophoven, Horchem's deputy in
the Bonn institute, would go on to found the Essen-based Institut für
Terrorismusforschung und Sicherheitspolitik (Institute for Terrorism Research and
Security Policy, IFTUS) in 2003 and is a notable terrorism commentator in Germany
today.
(448) In the late 1990s, Dumont would write for the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung,
contributing to the HSS bi-monthly Politische Studien (Political Studies) no 351 of
January-February 1997, a special issue devoted to "New Threats to State Security";
Dumont's article on the evolution of terrorism quoted abundantly from Horchem.
NSIC ANNEX
1989 text taken from: http://rightweb.irc-online.org/gw/2806.html.
GroupWatch: Profiles of U.S. Private Organizations and Churches, was
compiled by the Interhemispheric Resource Center, Box 2178, Silver City,
NM 88062. Check when each article was last updated as much material is no
longer current. This material is provided as a source for historic
research.
National Strategy Information Center
Acronym/Code: NSIC
Updated: 8/89
Categories:
Political
Background:
The NSIC is a right-wing think tank for military strategy. It has a
history of working with hard-line, anti-Soviet groups promoting an
aggressive U.S. foreign policy. (10)
In a 1961 article in the Military Review on the subject of political
warfare, Frank Barnett wrote,"Political warfare in short, is warfare--not
public relations. It is one part persuasion and two parts deception. It
embraces diverse forms of coercion and violence including strikes and
riots, economic sanctions, subsidies for guerrilla or proxy warfare and,
when necessary, kidnapping or assassination of enemy elites.
"The aim of political warfare... is to discredit, displace, and neutralize
an opponent, to destroy a competing ideology, and to reduce the adherents
to political impotence. It is to make one's own values prevail by working
the levers of power, as well as by using persuasion."(22)
In 1962, Frank Barnett founded NSIC. Among its founding directors,
officers and advisers were such stalwart right-wing figures as beer baron
and funder of many ultra-rightist organizations Joseph Coors; Prescott
Bush, Jr. , brother of President George Bush; Frank Shakespeare, chairman
of the conservative think tank, the Heritage Fdn; and William Casey,
former director of the CIA. (1,11,29)
The stated purpose of NSIC is to "encourage a civilmilitary partnership"
to keep the public informed on issues surrrounding national defense. A
properly informed public, the NSIC believes, will support "A viable U.S.
defense system capable of protecting the nation's vital interests and
assisting allies and other free nations determined to maintain their core
values of freedom and independence."(12) One of the goals of NSIC is "to
train young American labor leaders in the critical issues--philosophy,
military, and political--that divide the free world from the Communist
States."(10) The group focuses its efforts on business, labor,
professional and military groups; academic and mass media; governmental
schools; and colleges and universities. (12)
Funding:
Between 1973 and 1981, Richard Scaife donated a total of $6 million to the
NSIC from the Carthage Fdn, the Sarah Scaife Fdn, and the Trust for the
Grandchildren of Sarah Mellon Scaife. (1) In 1985 the John M. Olin Fdn
gave the Washington office of NSIC three grants: $107,320 for support for
an advisory committee for European democracy; $41,300 for support for a
book by Abram Shulsky on American intelligence and national security; and
$20,000 to support educational programs on the nature of totalitarian
regimes. (3) In the same year, the NY office received the following
grants: $10,000 from the Adolph Coors Fdn for programs and publications on
national security; $35,000 for work on the history of Soviet intelligence,
$30,000 for research and writing on detente, and $15,000 support for a
conference at the Center for European Strategy from the Winston Salem Fdn;
$5,000 of general support from the Samuel Roberts Nobel Fdn; and from the
W. W. Smith Charitable Trust $260,000 for operating support and $70,000
for a Consortium for the Study of Intelligence which examines the
intelligence networks of various nations. (3)
In 1986, the Washington office of NSIC received $41,000 from the John M.
Olin Fdn to support the book by Abram Shulsky on American intelligence and
national security, and $152,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Fdn to
support a program on national defense and intelligence. (4) In 1986, the
N. Y. office received $15,000 from the Smith Richardson Fdn, $5,000 from
the TRW Fdn, and $175,000 from the Sarah Scaife Fdn for general operating
support. (4)
In 1981-1982, the NSIC received a grant from the U.S. Information Agency
to study the feasibility of an Intl Youth Year conference. (2)
The organization lists its 1989 budget as $1,600,000. (12)
Activities:
The NSIC worked with the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) as a
lobbyist for the preservation of containment militarism, a policy
demanding a strong U.S. military build-up and presence throughout the
world. The CPD saw the Soviet Union as a powerful evil force with the goal
of world domination. (10) In order to be more effective in its work with
the CPD, NSIC opened a full-scale office in Washington DC in 1976 to
interact with the White House and the Pentagon, to work with Trade
Associations, and to inform the public of the concepts and plans of the
CPD. (10) In setting up the DC office, Barnett worked directly with
ultra-hawk Eugene V. Rostow of the CPD. Barnett brought Rostow onto the
NSIC board. (10)
The NSIC Washington office, run by Roy Godson, has spent the decade of the
1980s developing a nine volume agenda for U.S. foreign policy, with a
special focus on low intensity warfare and intelligence. (28,29) According
to NSIC's literature the purpose of NSIC's Consortium for the Study of
Intelligence (CSI) is to encourage colleges and universities to offer
in-depth programs of study on intelligence; to promote the development of
a U.S. theory of intelligence and define its place in American national
security policy; to encourage research into the intelligence process; and
to study the tensions between intelligence activities and the democratic
process and values of our society. (31)
Subjects of the volumes include: The Elements of Intelligence; Analysis
and Estimates; Counterintelligence; Covert Action; Clandestine Collection;
Domestic Intelligence; and Intelligence and Policy. (31)
The production of each volume of the series was preceeded by a conference
or symposium of invited guests where the substance of the volume was
developed. Attendees at the conferences became defacto important players
in the activities of the think tank. The CIA, the military intelligence
divisions, and the executive branches of government were well represented
at all of the gatherings. (28,30,31) The second volume in the series,
Intelligence Requirements for the 1980's: Analysis and Estimates, was
published in 1980. It attempts to teach people how to evaluate the quality
of and analyze intelligence information received from agents. (30) Among
those present at the 1979 colloquium that developed the substance of this
volume were such intelligence luminaries as Richard V. Allen of the Natl
Security Council; William Colby, former head of the CIA; Dr. Ray S. Cline,
former deputy director of the CIA; Dr. Fred C. Ikle, former director of
the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Mr. Morris Liebman, chairman of
the American Bar Association; and from the NSIC, Dr. Roy Godson and Frank
R. Barnett. (30)
The subject of the 1981 conference was clandestine collection which led to
the 1982 volume on the subject. This document claims that U.S.
intelligence gathering is far inferior to that of the Soviet Union and
sets out the U.S. intelligence needs. (31) Notable figures attending this
colloquium included: Dr. Ray Cline of the Center for Strategic and Intl
Studies; Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham, former director of the Defense
Intelligence Agency; Dr. Edward Luttwak, ultra-hawk and expert on
terrorism; and Dr. Richard Pipes, former chief Sovietologist at the Natl
Security Council. (10,31)
In 1983, the NSIC, the Natl Defense University, and the Natl Security
Studies Program of Georgetown co-sponsored a symposium on "The Role of
Special Operations in U.S. Strategy for the 1980s."(21) Col. Oliver North,
of Iran-Contra fame, attended as a representative of the National Security
Council. (21) Edward N. Luttwak and Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor of the
Unification Church-owned Washington Times, were present representing the
Center for Strategic and Intl Studies. (21) Margo D. B. Carlisle, staff
director of the U.S. Senate Republican Conference Committee, was also
present. Carlisle, a former aide to Sen. James McClure, attended the 1980
World AntiCommunist League (WACL) conference and has been connected with
WACL activities in Central America. (8) The CIA was represented by a
number of people, including former assoc deputy director Theodore
Shackley. The intelligence agencies of the military-especially the Defense
Intelligence Agency, formerly headed by Gen. Daniel Graham--attended in
number. (10,21)
In its 1984 book, Special Operations in U.S. Strategy, the NSIC showed a
shift in strategy from containment militarism to one promoting low
intensity conflict operations. The new strategy stresses the need for
fulfilling U.S. objectives through "special operations." According to the
strategy, the "special operations" are to be coordinated with the private
sector in the countries where these operations are located, and call for
the use of psychological techniques and operations. (11)
The NSIC strategies, according to an analysis by the Political Research
Associates of Boston, advocate a U.S. policy of low-intensity conflict."In
practice it is an endless, ongoing, permanent form of paramilitary action
against governments and political movements that assert independence from
U.S. domination."(29) Other criticisms of these volumes have ranged from
calling them "authoritarian" to "a political blueprint for a police
state."(29)
On Godson's recommendation, the NSIC paid Arturo Cruz, Sr. of the
directorate of the Nicaraguan contras $40,000 to serve as a research
fellow for six months. (2)
Roy Godson was a key figure in Anglo-American trade union relations,
organizing "educational visits" for British trade unionists to visit the
U.S. during the Reagan administration. (14) The trips were organized under
the auspices of the Labour Desk of the U.S. Youth Council and the Intl
Labor Program of Georgetown University. The purpose of the trips was "to
broaden international education about Western democratic values." A
typical trip included a visit to the naval base at Norfolk, a meeting with
former ambassador to the United Nations (Reagan administration) Jeane
Kirkpatrick, talks on defense at the National Security Council (former
operational base of Col. Oliver North) and talks at the NSIC. The trips
were financed by the Reagan administration. (14)
Government Connections:
Frank Shakespeare was a United States Information Agency director and a
director of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. (15) During the Reagan
administration he served as ambassador to Portugal from 1985 to 1987, and
after that as ambassador to the Vatican. (15)
William Casey was CIA director in the Reagan administration, served as
chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1971 to 1973, and as
Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs from February 1973 to March
1974. (1,23)
Roy Godson served as a consultant to the President's Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board--a group of private citizens that oversees intelligence
operations--in the Reagan administration. (2) Eugene V. Rostow was one of
the architects of the containment militarism policy of the Reagan
administration. He served as President Reagan's head of the Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency. (10)
Richard Pipes served as a National Security adviser to President Ronald
Reagan and was a major figure in the Committee on the Present Danger. (1)
Hon. Antonin Scalia, justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, is listed as a
member of the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence. (13)
Margo D. B. Carlisle was an aide to Sen. James McClure (RID). (8) Margo
Carlisle attended the 1980 WACL conference and is was involved in the
"repackaging" of Roberto D'Aubuisson, the founder and former head of the
ARENA party in El Salvador. (8)
Admiral Thomas Moorer was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a member
of Team B, a group assembled in the mid 1970s by then-CIA director George
Bush to study the Soviet danger. The Team B laid the foundation for the
revitalization of the Committee on the Present Danger. (1,10)
Private Connections:
Frank Barnett was a prominent member of the Committee on the Present
Danger, an anti-Soviet group advocating a strong U.S. military and a
policy of containment militarism. (10) Before founding NSIC, Barnett was
the director of research for the ultra-right Smith-Richardson Fdn and a
program director of the Institute for American Strategy. (22)
William Casey served as pres and chairman of the exec committee of the
International Rescue Committee (IRC), a private voluntary organization
that helps refugees from totalitarian oppression. (24) The IRC worked with
the CIA in Vietnam and cooperates with the U.S. government on programs in
El Salvador. (25)
Prescott Bush, Jr. , a former director of the NSIC, is brother to
President George Bush. He is a member of the Knights of Malta, a
conservative lay Catholic group and has been involved with Americares, a
right-wing private organization that receives grants from the U.S. Agency
for International Development in Central America. (15)
Henry Fowler, former NSIC director, was co-chair of the Committee on the
Present Danger until 1988. Fowler was Secretary of the Treasury under
President Harry Truman. (1)
Admiral Thomas Moorer, former NSIC director, served on the national
advisory board of Accuracy in Media, a right-wing media group that
promotes conservative causes and monitors the teaching of college
professors. (6,7) Moorer has been on the board of the American Security
Council, an ultra-hawk organization that works on Congress to effect an
anti-Soviet foreign policy. ASC runs the powerful lobby, the Coalition for
Peace Through Strength, which has more than 190 Congressional members.
(9,33) He also served on the board of Western Goals, a group that focused
on national security and gathered information on suspected communist
symphthizers. (8)
Frank Shakespeare, former director of NSIC, is chairman of The Heritage
Fdn, a conservative think tank that played an important role in policy
development in the Reagan administration. (10) He is also a member of the
Knights of Malta and the American Catholic Committee (ACC). The ACC is a
group that tried to undercut the U.S. bishops' pastoral on the economy.
(15)
"Joseph Coors," wrote Al Weinrub in the Labor Report on Central
America,"has used the power of the Coors financial dynasty not only to
provide support to the contras, but to set a right-wing political agenda
in the U.S..."(16) Coors was the chair of the Rocky Mountain region
Reagan/Bush campaign in 1984. (17) He provided financial backing for
Accuracy in Media, a media support group for the right wing. (17) He also
supported various groups organized by New Right tactician Paul Weyrich
including the Catholic Center, a religious group that sent conservative
"truth squads" to organize workshops in cities with liberal bishops, and
the Free Congress Fdn, a group dedicated to electing conservatives to
Congress. (18,19) Coors and Weyrich combined efforts again in founding the
conservative think tank, the Heritage Fdn. (19) Coors money has also
supported right-wing religious groups including the Church League of
America, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the Moral Majority, and Campus
Crusade for Christ. (19) Coors supported Lt. Gen. John Singlaub's U.S.
Council for World Freedom (USCWF), the U.S. chapter of the World
Anti-Communist League. USCWF and the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund, (another
Coor's cause) played major roles in funding the Nicaraguan contras. (19)
Both Joseph Coors and his wife Holly were on the 1982-1983 board of the
Council for Natl Policy. (20)
Roy Godson is the Director of the International Labor program at
Georgetown University and was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.
He was a contact person and middle-man in fundraising for Lt. Col. Oliver
North's network to supply the contras. He connected Terry Slease, attorney
for Richard Scaife (wealthy right-wing philanthropist and NSIC donor),
with North, and was present at meetings between National Security
AdviserBud McFarland, North and Slease. (2) Godson was a representative of
the Intl Youth Conference which was one of the organizations used to
channel funds to the Nicaraguan contras. He also was indirectly connected,
through Slease, with the Institute for North-South Issues, a group funded
by the National Endowment for Democracy, that served as a channel for
contra funds. Godson also served as a contact between the private contra
network and Edward Feulner, president of Heritage Fdn. Heritage served as
a pass-through for INSI of a $100,000 donation to the Nicaraguan
opposition. (2) Godson serves on the board of the League for Industrial
Democracy, a neoconservative organization working with labor groups in the
U.S. (26) He is also on the board of the Coalition for a Democratic
Majority, a quasi-governmental group that works primarily within the ranks
of Congress to implement an anticommunist, pro-military agenda. (10,27)
Ray Cline served on the board of NSIC's Consortium for the Study of
Intelligence. Cline is a former deputy director of the CIA, and has been
involved with Major General John Singlaub's U.S. Council for World
Freedom, the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League. (8)
Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham is on the board of the U.S. Council for World
Freedom. He is founder and chairman of the pro-SDI lobby group, High
Frontier, and was on the 1982-1983 board of the Council for Natl Policy.
Graham has also been involved with CAUSA, the political arm of the
Unification Church (UC) and the American Freedom Coalition, another
Christian political offshoot of the UC. (8,20,32)
Richard Pipes was a member of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and
a founding member of the Committee on the Present Danger. (10)
Misc:
Political Research Associates of Boston note that lowintensity warfare as
defined by the NSIC is low intensity only from a U.S. government
perspective where high-intensity warfare means nuclear war. (29)
Comments:
U.S. Address: 150 East 58th St, New York, NY 10155 and 1730 Rhode Island
Ave, NW, Suite 601, Washington DC, 20036.
Principals:
Frank R. Barnett and Morris Liebman, co-founders. (2) Frank R. Barnett,
president; Roy Godson, director of the Washington DC office. (5) Others
listed as officers in 1984 were: Dorothy Nicolosi, vice pres and
treasurer, Paul E. Feffer, intl vice pres, Rear Admiral William C. Mott
(ret. ), vice pres and general counsel, Hugh F. McGowan, Jr. , sec, and
Omer Pace, asst sec and asst tres. (11)
Directors listed in 1984 were: Karl R. Bendetsen, former chairman and CEO
of Champion Intl Corp; D. Tennant Bryan, chairman of the board of Media
General, Inc; Prescott S. Bush, Jr, senior vice pres and director of
Johnson & Higgins; Richard C. Ham; Morris I. Liebman, Sidley & Austin;
John Norton Moore; Admiral Thomas H. Moorer (ret. ); Jerald C. Newman,
pres and CEO of The Bowery Savings Bank; Robert H. Parsley, Butler,
Binion, Rice, Cook and Knapp; Frank Shakespeare, vice chairman of RKO
General, Inc; Charles E. Stevenson, pres Denver West; James L. Winokur,
chairman of Air Tool Parts and Service Co; Major General Richard A. Yudkin
(ret. ), senior vice pres (ret. ) of Owens-Corning Fiberglas Corp. (11)
The 1984 Advisory Council members were: Issac L. Auerbach, Vice Admiral M.
G. Bayne (ret. ), Allyn R. Bell, Jr, Joseph Coors, Henry H. Fowler, John
W. Hanes, Jr, Admiral Means Johnston (ret. ), R. Daniel McMichael, Rear
Admiral David L. Martineau (ret. ), Chuck Mau, Vice Admiral J. P. Moorer
(ret. ), Dillard Munford, Lloyd Noble, Harry A. Poth, Jr, Adolph W.
Schmidt, Frederick Seitz, Laurence H. Silberman, Arthur Spitzer, John A.
Sutro, Albert L. Weeks, Dee Workman, Evelle J. Younger, Admiral Elmo R.
Zumwalt, Jr (ret. ). (11)
The conferences and symposiums sponsored by NSIC play an important part in
the development of the organization's strategy recommendations and
publications. Personnel from NSIC who attended the 1983 symposium,"The
Role of Special Operations in U.S. Strategy for the 1980s," were: Frank
Barnett, president; Sara A. Begley, research asst for the Council on
Economics and Natl Security; Dr. Roy Godson, director of the DC office;
Robert A. Silano, exec dir of the Council on Economics and Natl Security;
and B. Hugh Tovar, research assoc.
Sources:
1. John Saloma III, Ominous Politics (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1984).
2. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra
Affair, Appendix B, Vol. 12, 1987.
3. Foundation Grants Index, Recipients, 1987. 4. Foundation Grants Index,
Recipients, 1988.
5. Phone conversation with Mr. Lovelace of NSIC, Washington DC, Aug 10,
1989.
6. Saul Landau,"Dress Rehersal For a Red Scare," The Nation, Apr 5, 1986.
7. Accuracy In Media brochure, undated.
8. Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League: The Shocking
Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have
Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead &
Co, 1986).
9. Peace Through Strength, American Security Council report, undated,
received Dec 15, 1988.
10. Jerry Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger
and the Politics of Containment Militarism (Boston, MA: South End Press,
1983).
11. Special Operations in U.S. Strategy, NSIC, 1984.
12. The Encyclopedia of Associations, 23rd edition, 1989.
13. Letterhead from the Consortium for the Study of Intelligence, undated.
14."Anglo-American Union Exchanges Linked to Irangate Scandal," Tribune,
Sep 30, 1988.
15. Penny Lernoux,"Who's Who? The Knights of Malta Know," National
Catholic Reporter, May 5, 1989.
16. Al Weinrub,"Coors Brews More Than Beer," Labor Report On Central
America, Sep/Oct 1985.
17. Michael Massing,"The Rise and Decline of Accuracy," The Nation, Sep
13, 1986.
18. Penny Lernoux,"A Reverence for Fundamentalism," The Nation, Apr 17,
1989.
19. The New Right Humanitarians (Albuquerque, NM: The Resource Center,
1986).
20. List of the board of directors of The Council for National Policy,
1982-1983.
21. Participant list from the "Symposium on the Role of Special Operations
in U.S. Strategy for the 1980s," March 4-5, 1983.
22. Frank R. Barnett,"A Proposal for Political Warfare," Military Review,
Mar 1961.
23. Profile of William J. Casey, completed in Oct 1974. Received from
Political Research Associates, Aug 1989.
24. Intl Rescue Commisstion Annual Report, 1986.
25. AIFLD: Agents as Organizers (Albuquerque, NM: The Resource Center,
1987).
26. Letter from the League for Industrial Democracy, July 1989.
27. Coalition for a Democratic Majority letterhead, July 1989.
28. Conversation with Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, Aug
1989.
29."The Coors Extended Family," Political Research Associates, 1989.
30. Roy Godson, editor, excerpts from Intelligence Requirements for the
1980's: Analysis and Estimates, NSIC, 1980.
31. Roy Godson, editor, excerpts from Intelligence Requirements for the
1980's: Clandestine Collection, NSIC, 1982.
32. Phone conversation with the natl office of the American Freedom
Coalition, Sep 9, 1988.
33. Peace Through Strength, American Security Council report, undated,
received Dec 15, 1988.
The underlying cites for this profile are now kept at Political Research
Associates, (617) 666-5300. www.publiceye.org. END OF WEB ARTICLE
IFF ANNEX
Taken from http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807/lhiff.html?200610:
Editors Note:Front for Apartheid, appeared in Newsday, Sunday, July 16, 1995. The article was
reported by Dele Olojede in South Africa and Timothy M. Phelps in Washington. The article
concerns a Washington think-tank called the International Freedom Foundation that had branches in
Johannesburg, South Africa and London, England. The International Freedom Foundation was
actually a front for intelligence operators who worked on psycho-political operations to prolong
apartheid. People involved included United States Department of State Officials, United States
Congressmen, and US Intelligence agents. The article says "jobs" for South African intelligence
provided at least half of the total IFF revenue, and South African military intelligence would send
fees from the "jobs" directly to the IFF Washington office.
The article is a limited hangout that doesn't mention the South African Institute of International
Affairs, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, or the Council on Foreign Relations. The article
has a picture of Secretary of State George Shultz shaking hands with Oliver Tambo, the late exiled
leader of ANC, at the State Department in 1987. The article mentions that people like Henry
Kissinger were invited to International Freedom Foundation seminars to deliver keynote speeches.
Among those in attendance was former CIA director William Colby. Shultz, Kissinger and Colby
were members of the Council on Foreign Relations. The article talks about Americans who were on
the board of Directors of the IFF, and who worked for the IFF in South Africa. Nearly every man
mentioned was a United States Intelligence agent at one time or another. Do former United States
intelligence agents, continuing working as agents even after they become elected government
officials, or are appointed to the US Department of State?
A list of some of the people mentioned in the story with locations and dates of intelligence service
follows:
SHULTZ GEORGE P (Council on Foreign Relations Member) Panama 1984, Grenada 1984, Libya
1986
KISSINGER, HENRY A (Council on Foreign Relations member ) South Africa 1969-1977,
Philippines 1972, Indonesia 1975, Angola 1976, Britain 1976, Chile 1976,China 1989-1997
COLBY WILLIAM EGAN (Council on Foreign Relations member) Norway 1944-1952, Sweden
1951-1953, Italy 1953-1958, Vietnam 1959-1971, Indonesia 1963-1965, Chile 1970-1973, Japan
1985, Singapore 1985
DORNAN ROBERT K (R-CA) Laos 1981
SELLARS, DUNCAN W (Chairman IFF, 1993) South Africa 1986, Nicaragua 1988
ABRAMOFF JACK South Africa 1983
KEYES ALAN L India 1979-1980, Zimbabwe 1980-1981
BURTON DAN L (R-IN) Mozambique 1986
HELMS JESSE A (R-NC) Argentina 1975-1976, Taiwan 1975, Chile 1976-1986, Panama 1977,
Guatemala 1981, Mozambique 1986 ,South Africa 1986
WILLIAMSON CRAIG South Africa 1980-1998
DE KLERK F W South Africa 1986-1996
BOOYSE WIM South Africa 1993
YUILL MARTIN South Africa 1983-1988
CRYSTAL RUSSELL South Africa 1983-1985
LEVENTHAL TODD United States Information Agency
KALUGIN OLEG D USSR 1960-1992
PARKER JAY A South Africa 1984-1985
The description of the International Freedom Foundation printed in the 1993 Encyclopedia of
Associations reads,
"*14748* INTERNATIONAL FREEDOM FOUNDATION (Conservative) IFF
200 G. St. NE, Ste, 300. Phone:(202) 546-5788
Washington, DC 20002. Duncan Sellars, Chm.
Founded 1986. Staff:20 Nonmembership. Works to foster individual freedom throughout the world by
engaging in activities which promote the development of free and open societies based on the
principles of free enterprise, while recognizing and respecting the sovereignty and cultural heritage
of nations. Believes that freedom of though and expression, and free association without government
interference, is essential to human dignity and without protection from violent coercion, liberty and
prosperity are impossible. Works to demonstrate the benefits of a "parliamentary" democracy" and
expose the "failures" of a "people's democracy," which the group says, is often referred to as a
system of "freedom" but is actually a guise for totalitarianism. Considers totalitarian systems to be
the "enemies of freedom" and a threat to the security of the West. Encourages and mobilizes support
of indigenous democratic movements. Organizes forums for dialogue and discussion on issues of
human rights and free enterprise. Sponsors seminars, fellowships, and international exchanges;
maintains speakers' bureau. Telecommunications Services: Fax (202) 546-5488."
"Publications Angola Peace Monitor, monthly Covers developments in the Angolan peace process ·
Price: $105/year. ISSN; 1045-0513 Circulation 2000. Advertising: not accepted. ·Freedom Bulletin,
monthly. Newsletter, includes feature articles on major foreign policy issues. Price: $24/year in U.S.
$30/year outside of U.S. ISSN: 0897-5086 Circulation: 221000. i Advertising: accepted. · Freedom
Bulletin - UK Edition, 6/year. Newsletter including articles on foreign policy issues from British and
European perspectives Price: $10/year; £8 /year in United Kingdom. Circulation 6000. · Freedom
Bulletin - Republic of South Africa Edition, monthly, Newsletter including features on developments
in South Africa. Price: $20/ year in U.S.; R45/year in South Africa. Circulation: 6000. Advertising:
not accepted. · InterAmerican OPPORTUNITIES Briefing, bimonthly. Newsletter; includes business
activity and economic reform in Latin America. Price: $105 /year. ISSN: 1055-9299. · Laissezfaire,
quarterly Journal on European affairs and European-Third World relations; includes book reviews.
Price: $30/year in U.S.; £l0/year in United Kingdom. Circulation: 6000. Advertising; accepted.
OPPORTUNITIES Briefing, bimonthly. Newsletter; includes free market trends and business
opportunities in Eastern Europe. Price: $105/year. ISSN: 0960-5088. Advertising: not accepted. ·
Soviet Perspectives, monthly. Guide to economic reform and business opportunities in the Soviet
Union. Price $225/year ISSN: 1055-1042. · Sub-Sahara Monitor, monthly. Newsletter ; includes
political and economic issues, periodic country reports, aid and trade briefs, investment analysis,
and book reviews. Price: $105/year. ISSN: 1018-1520. · terra nova, quarterly. Journal containing
scholarly articles on foreign policy issues, as related to free market economic and political thought;
includes book reviews. Price: $24/year. ISSN: 1056-8018. Circulation: 7000. · Also publishes
monographs, posters, and reports produces videotapes."
If the International Freedom Foundation is a front for Intelligence organizations do their publications
contain information telling intelligence agents what to do?
Why didn't Newsday connect the International Freedom Foundation to the Council on Foreign
Relations? Did the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigate the Council on Foreign
Relations/Royal Institute of International Affairs/South African Institute of International Affairs role
in creating the racial tension, hatred and genocide in South Africa? If they did, what were their
findings? If they did not, don't you think it is about time they did?
The Newsday article follows:
NEWSDAY Sunday July 16, 1995 Front for Apartheid Washington-based think tank said to be part
of ruse to prolong power This article was reported by Dele Olojede in South Africa and Timothy M.
Phelps in Washington, and was written by Olojede.
Then Secretary of State [CFR member] George Shultz shakes hands with Oliver Tambo, the late
exiled leader of ANC, at State Department in 1987.
Johannesburg, South Africa A respectable Washington foundation, which drew into its web
prominent Republican and conservative figures like Sen.. Jesse Helms and other members of
Congress, was actually a front organization bankrolled by South Africa's last white rulers to prolong
apartheid, a Newsday investigation has shown.
The International Freedom Foundation, founded in 1986 seemingly as a conservative think tank, was
in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation, and was designed to be an instrument for
"political warfare" against apartheid's foes, according to former senior South African spy Craig
Williamson. The South Africans spent up to $1.5 million a year through 1992 to underwrite
"Operation Babushka," as the IFF project was known.
The current South African National Defence Force officially confirmed that the IFF was its dummy
operation.
"The International Freedom Foundation was a former SA Defence Force project," Army Col. John
Rolt, a military spokesman, said in a terse response to an inquiry. A member of the IFF"s
international board of directors also conceded Friday that at least half of the foundation's funds came
from projects undertaken on behalf of South Africa's military intelligence, although he refused to say
what these projects were except that many of them were directed against Nelson Mandela's African
National Congress.
A three-month Newsday investigation determined that one of the project's broad objectives was to try
to reverse the apartheid regime's pariah status in Western political circles. More specifically, the IFF
sought to portray the ANC as a tool of Soviet communism, thus undercutting the movement's growing
international acceptance as the government-in-waiting of a future multiracial South Africa.
"We decided that, the only level we were going to be accepted was when it came to the Soviets and
their surrogates, so our strategy was to paint the ANC as communist surrogates," said Williamson,
formerly a senior operative in South Africa's military intelligence, who helped direct Babushka. "The
more we could present ourselves as anti-communists, the more people looked at us with respect.
People you could hardly believe cooperated with us politically when it came to the Soviets."
The South Africans found willing, though possibly unwitting, allies in influential Republican
politicians, conservative intellectuals and activists. Sen. Jesse Helms, now chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, served as chairman of the editorial advisory board for the foundation's
publications. Through a spokesman, Helms said that he did not know anything about the foundation.
"Helms has never heard of the International Freedom Foundation, was not chairman of their advisory
board and never authorized his name to be used by IFF in any way shape or form. We never had any
relationship with them," Mere Thiessen, a Helms spokesman, said.
Rep. Dan Burton, who was the ranking Republican on the House subcommittee on Africa, and Rep.
Robert Dornan were active in IFF projects, frequently serving on its delegations to international
forums. Alan Keyes, currently a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, also served as
adviser. (He did not return a call seeking comment.) The Washington lobbyist and former movie
producer Jack Abramoff, and rising conservative stars like Duncan Sellers, helped run the foundation.
All those contacted denied knowing that it was controlled and funded by the South African regime.
Although there are strong indications that U.S. laws may have been broken some IFF officials have
admitted in interviews that they knew that South African military intelligence money helped pay for
the foundation's activities in Washington there is no clear evidence that the politicians associated
with IFF either took campaign contributions or otherwise directly benefited financially from the
foundation .
Under U.S. law, anyone who represents a foreign government or acts under its orders, direction or
control, has to register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent. Asked if a "think-tank" sup up
and supported by a foreign government has to register, a Justice official said, "If the foreign
[government] has some say in what they are doing and, obviously, if they are funding it they probably
do then they probably do have to register." Violation of the law carries a fine up to $10,000 and a
prison term of up to five years.
Several key figures involved in the IFF and contacted by Newsday denied any knowledge that the
foundation was a front for the political agenda of a foreign government. Duncan Sellers, now a
Virginia businessman, said, "This is nothing I ever knew about. It's something that I would have
resigned over or closed the foundation over. I would have put a stop to it."
"The Congressman didn't know anything about it," said a spokesman for Dornan, Paul Morrell. "This
is all news to him if it is true." Morrell described Dornan's impression of the IFF as simply "profreedom,
pro-democracy, pro-Reagan."
Phillip Crane, another U.S. representative listed as an IFF editorial adviser, joined the board in 1987
at the request of Abramoff, said an aide, and by 1990 had quit. "He never attended a board meeting
that he can recall," said the aide, Bob Foster. "He had no idea that any such situation [intelligence
connections] existed."
Williamson said that the operation was deliberately constructed so that many of the people would not
know they were involved with a foreign government. "That was the beauty of the whole things guys
pushing what they believed," he said. Helms for example, voted against virtually every punitive
measure ever contemplated against South Africa's white minority government, however mild. And
Burton was nearly hysterical in arguing against sanctions that a large bipartisan majority passed in
1986 over President Ronald Reagan's veto, at one point warning that "there will be blood running in
the streets" as a result.
But in some cases, such as Abramoffs, the relationship with the South African security apparatus was
more than merely coincidental, according to Williamson and others. A former chief of intelligence,
now retired, said emphatically that the South African military helped finance Abramoffs 1988 movie
"Red Scorpion." The movie was a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-communist African guerrilla
commander loosely based on Jones Savimbi, the Angolan rebel leader allied to both Washington and
Pretoria. Williamson also said the production of "Red Scorpion" was "funded by our guys," who in
addition provided military trucks and equipment -as well as extras .
Abramoff reacted with anger when told of the allegations Friday, saying his movie was funded by
private investors and had nothing to do with the South African government. "This is outrageous," he
said.
Details of South Africa's intelligence operations in the last years of apartheid have begun to rapidly
emerge with the imminent establishment of a Truth Commission by the Mandela government. The
commission will elicit confessions of "dirty tricks" by apartheid's foot soldiers and their
Commanders, in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Williamson, for instance, recently
revealed that he was involved in the assassination of Ruth First, wife of the ANC and South African
Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, and other anti-apartheid activists.
In South African government thinking, the IFF represented a far more subtle approach to defeating
the anti-apartheid movement. Officials said the p!an was to get away from the traditional allies of
Pretoria, the fringe right in the United States and Europe, "some of whom were to the right of
Ghengis Khan," said one senior intelligence official. Instead, they settled for a front staffed with
mainstream conservatives who did not necessarily know who was pulling the strings.
"They ran their own organization, but we steered them, that was the point," Williamson said.
"They were very good, those guys, eh?" said Vic McPheerson, a police colonel who ran security
branch operations and participated in the 1982 bombing of the ANC office in London. "They were
not just good in intelligence, but in political warfare."
Starting in 1986, when Reagan failed to override comprehensive U.S. economic sanctions, the South
African government began casting about for ways to survive in an international environment more
hostile to apartheid than ever. A very senior official in South African military intelligence, to whom
IFF handlers reported at the time, said the operation cost his unit between $l million and $1.5 million
a year. The retired general said the funds represented almost all of the IFF's annual operating budget,
although the foundation gained such legitimacy that it began to attract funding from individuals and
groups in the United States.
On at least one occasion, the IFF had trouble accounting for its money. It was unable to comply in
1989 with a New York State requirement that it provide an accountant's opinion confirming that its
financial statements "present fairly the financial position of the organization." It was eventually
barred, in January, 1991, from soliciting funds from New York. According to financial records
provided by Jeff Pandin, the foundation's last executive director in Washington, IFF revenue in 1992
dropped by half of the preceding year's, to $1.6 million. It just so happened that President Frederik
W. de Klerk ended secret South African funding for the foundation in 1992, in response to pressure
from Mandela to demonstrate that he was not complicit in "Third Force" activities. Pandin expressed
shock that much of the organization's money had been coming from clandestine South African
sources. "I worked for the IFF from Day One to Day End," he said. "This is complete news to me."
He said he once had met Williamson when he was in Mozambique, but was unaware of any official
links.
On the surface, the IFF's headquarters was in north-east Washington, D.C., , at 200 G Street, next
door to the Free Congress Foundation, another conservative institution. From that base, it launched
campaigns against communist sympathizers and perceived enemies of the free market. It broadly
supported Reaganism, and its principal officers ran with the Ollie North crowd. But it always paid
special attention to ANC. When Mandela made his first visit to the United States in 1990, following
his release from prison, the IFF placed advertisements in local papers designed to dampen public
enthusiasm for Mandela. One ad in the Miami Herald portrayed Mandela as an ally and defender of
Cuba's Fidel Castro. The city's large Cuban community was so agitated that a ceremony to present
Mandela with keys to the city was scrapped.
The IFF published several journals and bulletins, in Washington and in its offices in Europe and
Johannesburg. One of its contributors was Jay Parker, an African-American who was a paid public
relations agent of successive apartheid regimes throughout the 1970s and 1980s. People like Henry
Kissinger were invited to IFF seminars to deliver keynote speeches. The foundation brought together
the together the world's top intelligence experts at a 1991 conference in Potsdam, Germany, to mull
over the changing uses of intelligence in the post-Cold War world. Among those in attendance was
former CIA director William Colby and a retired senior KGB general, Oleg Kalugin. The IFF also
waged a major but not surprisingly futile campaign for U.S. retention of the Panama Canal. But its
main purpose was always to serve the ultimate goals of the South African government, according to
those who helped nudge it in that direction. The former senior South African military intelligence
official said he traveled to the United States and Canada in 1988 as a guest of the IFF. But the real
reason for his trip, he said, was to try to strengthen South African intelligence operations on the
ground, at diplomatic posts and the North American offices of Satour, the country's tourism
promotion agency.
"I was surprised at the kind of access the IFF operation provided us," said Wim Booyse, who went by
the title of Senior Research fellow at the Johannesburg office of the IFF. Booyse said when he visited
Washington In 1987 to attend IFF-sponsored seminars, part of the propaganda training he and other
visitors received came from a disinformation specialist at the United States Information Service, an
official he identified as Todd Leventhal. Leventhal said in response that he remembered meeting with
Booyse and possibyly a few other IFF people, but gave no formal talk and talked to them only about
countering disinformation, not spreading it
Far from being a mere branch of the IFF, the Johannesburg office was in fact the nerve center of IFF
operations worldwide. According to Martin Yuill, who served as administrator of the "branch," he
began to realize that perhaps Johannesburg was not just a branch office after all, since it was always
deciding how much money the other offices, Including the Washington headquarters, should have. "I
guess one would have to conclude that that was the case," he said.
Although he insisted that the IFF was no clandestine operation, Russell Crystal who ran the
Johannesburg office, said it was vital to the foundation. He said Friday in an interview that "jobs" for
South African intelligence provided at least half of total IFF revenue, and that he sometimes asked
military intelligence to send the fees from these "jobs" directly to the Washington office of the IFF.
"The military intelligence, there were certain things they wanted done -- tackling the ANC as a
terrorist-communist organization," Crystal said. "The projects we did for them, they paid for. " He
added that it was not impossible that South Africa accounted for far more than his estimated 50
percent, of IFF revenues.
As an example of this "tackling," Crystal cited the targeting of Oliver Tambo, whenever the late
exiled leader of the ANC traveled around the world. Once, when Tambo visited with George Shultz,
then-secretary of state, the IFF arranged for demonstrators to drape tires around their necks to protest
the "necklace" killings of suspect ed government informers in black townships in South Africa.
"The advantage of the IFF was that it pilloried the ANC," said Williamson. "The sort of general
western view of the ANC up until 1990 was a box of matches [violence] and Soviet-supporting --
slavishly was the word we latched on. That was backed up with writings, intellectual inputs. It was a
matter of undercutting ANC credibility."
By 1993, the IFF effectively shut down after de Klerk pulled the plug on many politically motivated
clandestine operations. But the IFF did not go down before one final parting shot.
In January that year, the foundation financed a investigation into alleged human rights abuses during
the 1980's at ANC guerrilla camps in Angola. Bob Douglas, a South African lawyer, concluded there
was evidence of torture and other abuses, forcing the ANC to acknowledge some abuses. Douglas
said Friday he did not believe that the IFF worked for military intelligence. "I did a professional job
for which I charged professional fees," he said crossly. "I did my job of work, I finished my work,
and had nothing to do with it since then."
WEB ARTICLE ENDS
Also see:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Freedom_Foundation
SOURCES
NB: I have not integrated print sources published after this book was last revised in
1993-1994. The most important later print sources not integrated here are a series
of articles in British newspapers on Jonathan Aitken, Julian Amery and the post-
Crozier Cercle in the late 1990s, Robert Hutchinson's 1997 book on Opus Dei, Paul
Lashmar and James Oliver's 1998 book on the IRD, Stephen Dorril's 2001 book on
MI6 which (amongst many other things) describes MI6’s pre-war and wartime
relationship with Habsburg, and David Rockefeller's 2002 memoirs detailing the
early days of the Pesenti group – there may well be other sources of which I am
unaware.
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Foundation German Branch, 1992.
Various authors, Les Tueries du Brabant, introd. Jean Mottard and René Haquin,
Editions Complexe, Brussels 1990.
Various authors, L'Extrême Droite et l'Etat, EPO, Berchem undated.
Various authors, Propagandisten des Krieges, Hintermänner der Contra:
"Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte" (IGfM), Arbeitskreis Nicaragua,
Edition Nahua (Postfach 101320, 5600 Wuppertal 1, West Germany), 3rd edition
1987.
Various authors, Schnüffelstaat Schweiz, Komitee Schluss mit dem Schnüffelstaat,
Limmat Verlag, Zürich 1990.
Various authors, Spiegel-Buch – Uberlebensgross Herr Strauss, Rowohlt Taschenbuch
Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1980.
Various authors, The Great White Hoax - South Africa's international propaganda
machine, Africa Bureau, London 1977.
Various authors, Unheimliche Patrioten, Limmat Verlag, Zürich 1979.
Verhoeyen, Etienne and Uytterhaegen, Frank, De Kreeft met de zwarte Scharen,
Frans Masereelfonds, Gent, 1982.
Verrier, Anthony, Through the Looking Glass - British Foreign Policy in the Age of
Illusions, Jonathan Cape, London 1983.
Walraff, Günter, Die Aufdeckung einer Verschwörung, Kiepenheuer und Witsch, Köln
1976.
Walsh, Michael, The Secret World of Opus Dei, Grafton, London 1989.
Willan, Philip, Puppetmasters - the political use of terrorism in Italy, Constable, London
1991.
Willems, Jan, VdB - un citoyen au-dessus de tout soupçon, EPO, Berchem undated.
Winter, Gordon, Inside BOSS, Penguin, London 1981.
Winter, Gordon, Inside BOSS and After, Lobster 18, October 1989.
Winter, Gordon, Vindication is a dish still edible when cold, Lobster 48, Winter 2004.
Woodward, Bob, Veil, Headline, London 1988.
Wolton, Thierry, Les écuries de la Vième, Grasset, Paris 1989.
Wright, Peter, Spycatcher, Heinemann, Australia 1987.
Yallop, David, In God's Name, Corgi, London 1987.
Young European Federalists, Mobilmachung - Die Habsburger Front, Bonn and Berlin
1979.
Young, George Kennedy, Subversion and the British Riposte, Ossian, Glasgow 1984.
Zangrandi, Inchiesta sul SIFAR, Editori Riuniti, Italy 1972.
SPECIALIZED JOURNALS
CelsiuS (Mantrant, BP 2128, 1000 Bruxelles 1, Belgium), numbers 12, 14, 15, 16,
17, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29, 30, 31, 34, 39, 52.
Covert Action Information Bulletin, no. 7 (December 1979 - January 1980); no 10
(August-September 1980).
Fiche & Fouine, (Comité En finir avec l'Etat fouineur, rue de la Borde 11, 1018
Lausanne, Switzerland), number 1, February 1990.
Lobster (214 Westbourne Avenue, Hull HU5 3JB, UK) numbers 3 (1984), 4 (1984), 11
(Ramsay and Dorril, 4/86), 14 (9/87), 16 (7/88), 17 (11/88), 18 (10/89), 19 (5/90),
22 (1991), and Lobster Special Issues, A Who's Who of the British Secret State,
Stephen Dorril, June 1989, and The Clandestine Caucus – anti-socialist campaigns
and operations in the British Labour Movement since the war, Robin Ramsay, undated
(c. 2000).
State Research no. 1, October 1977, and no. 7, August/September 1978 (nos. 1 – 7
published in Review of Security and the State 1978, Julian Friedmann, London
1978); nos. 8 – 13 published in Review of Security and the State 1979, Julian
Friedmann, London 1979; State Research no. 15 (Dec 1979 - Jan 1980), no. 16
(February-March 1980), no. 17 (April-May 1980), no. 22 (February-March 1981).
Top Secret, Number 1/89 (Postfach 270324, 5000 Köln 1, West Germany).
PRESS
City Limits, 14/8/86.
Daily Mail, 22/12/76.
Daily Mirror, 14/12/90.
Daily Telegraph, 20/11/86.
De Morgen, 1-12/7/89
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30/3/85.
Guardian, 20, 21, 31/12/76, 27/1/78, 7/6/78, 6/5/80, 3/10/80, 18/12/81,
11/2/83, 30/4/83, 8/10/83, 21, 22, 28/2/85, 26/11/85, 26/6/87, 2/10/89,
11/10/89, 14+15/12/89, 26/7/91, 24-5/8/91.
International Herald Tribune, 15/9/58 (republished in the IHT on 15/9/08),
12/06/02.
L'Espresso, 17/12/74.
Le Monde, 24/2/78, 21/3/85.
Le Soir, 4/9/91.
Le Vif/L'Express, 19/5/89.
Leveller, 64/1981.
Libération, 9/10/75, 9-10 + 11/4/76.
Libertés, 14/2/91, and 9, 10, 11, 13-15, 17, 18, 19 and 20-22/4/91.
Moscow Literary Gazette, 6/3/85.
New Statesman, 15/2/80, 27/2/81, 29/5/87.
New York Times, 18/4/85.
Observer, 3/2/74, 29/1/78, 7/12/86, 2/10/88, 29/1/89, 9/12/90, 16/12/90,
10/2/91, 24/2/91, 2/2/92, 17/5/92.
Private Eye, 7/1/77.
Spiegel, 9/1980, 10/1980, 32/1980, 34/1980, 35/1980, 36/1980, 41/1980,
36/1981, 32/1982, 37/1982, 9/1983, 44/1983, 41/1984, 42/1984, 51/1984,
28/1986, 9/11/87.
Stern, 7/4/76, 8/1978.
Süddeutsche Zeitung, 24-25/10/87.
Sunday Times, 7/10/84.
Sunday Telegraph, 13/12/87.
Tageszeitung, 24/1/87, 16/3/87, 13/5/87, 18/5/87, 20/5/87, 22/5/87, 6/6/87,
12/6/87, 3/7/87.
Telegraph, 20/11/86.
Télémoustique, 27/6/91.
Time Out, 27/6-3/7/75, 20-26/6/75, 29/8-4/9/75, 5-11/9/75.
Tribune, 2/9/83, 9/9/83.
Vrij Nederland, 25/01/92.