11-12-2009, 08:10 AM
Game, Set and Match
THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT POSTING I HAVE EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF MY ENTIRE JFK ASSASSINATION INVESTIGATION.
Anastase Vonsiatsky has finally been linked to Wickliffe Draper's Pioneer Fund cronies like Major John B. Trevor, Sr., Lt. Gen. Pedro A. del Valle, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso, OSJ and even to John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles as well as to "Wild Bill" Donovan, OSJ through even more pro-Nazi White Russian Spies involved with either The Knights of Malta or the even more sinister Shickshinny Knights of Malta chapter. And the threads from Boris Brasol through The Coudert Brothers Law Firm include both a young Robert J. Morris who worked on the Rapp-Coudert Committees in the early 1940's and later to William F. Buckley, Jr. whose NYC Mayoralty campaign was run by a partner in the Coudert Brothers Law firm who ran the White Russian Rat Lines from Paris, France to either the USA or Canada. This means that at least 10 of Richard Condon's Dirty Dozen from The Manchurian Candidate, were part of this document and part of The Shickshinny Knights of Malta. And both identified participants in The Winnipeg Airport incident are referenced here, too. GLK Smith via Wm. Dudley Pelley and The Silver Shirts plus Wickliffe Draper, of course. Stick a fork in it, the JFK Final Solution is done. Finito. Completo.
Even Col. Robert T. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune is listed just below who was among his close fiends and associates
And good old boy, William Dudley Pelley founder of the Nazi Silver Shirts during World War II where GLK
Smith cut his Nazi-loving eye teeth, YES Reverend Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith from the Winnipeg Airport Incident is included by reference herein for all to see.
When everything comes together like this in one single document, within one single organization for all to read for themselves, it is almost magical.
1) Draper and his evil cronies at The Pioneer Fund like Pedro Augusto del Valle, and the Trevors Sr. and Jr.
2) Richard Condon and the Manchurian Candidate Dirty Dozen included in his dirty rotten scoundrels
3) The Shickshinny Knights of Malta (Philip J. Corso, Pedro del Valle, Charles Willoughby, Bonner Fellers, Sir Barry Domville)
4) Anastase Vonsiatsky and his ROND friends plus the Russian Orthodox Church.
5) The Dulles Brothers and William J. Donovan, OSJ who was a Knight of Malta first and foremost
Who knows why Jupiter, Florida was the headquarters of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem?
Name two military crustaceans who retired to Jupiter, Florida who had the OSJ credentials?
Free Gift Certificate to Taco Bell for the winner.
One of them ran the Nazi Rat Lines behind the back of Giovanni Battista Montini. (Pope Paul VI) He also
was in charge of pushing the UFO brainwashing theories into the public domain and he was once the hero of
John Armstrong, too. And he worked for J. Strom Thurmond.
The other one was a McCarthyite who served as Oswald's Travel Agent and worked as head of The Passport Office in
the State Dept. Security Office (SY). He got fired over the Walt Whitman Rostow confirmation hearings.
I can count on either the crack Australian research duo (Richards and Parker) or Tom Scully to get this one right.
These two suspects both used the OSJ honorary title in their signature with their correspondence. As in Lt. Col. XXXXXX Y ZZZZZ, OSJ
Holier than though Nazi Super-Catholics, and Conservative Military Right Wingers who took their role as the Protectorate of the Holy See saw JFK as an obstacle to the removal of the Communists in Korea, Viet Nam and Latin America.
ABOUT TEN OF RICHARD CONDON'S DIRTY DOZEN ARE MENTIONED OR INCLUDED BY REFERENCE HEREIN.
And how about this one. Even Major John Trevor, Sr. of The American Coalition of Patriotic Societies founded
by Wickliffe Draper, and his son John Trevor, Jr. of The Pioneer Fund also founded by Wickliffe Draper are mentioned herein.
John B. Trevor opposed Brown vs. Board of Education on eugenic grounds.
The Shickshinny Knights of Malta were his friends too: Charles Willoughby, Pedro A. del Valle, Bonner Fellers,
Sir Barry Domville, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso...
I hate to say I told you so.... but I told you so.
And I hate to say that Richard Condon told you so... but he did. You just wouldn't listen.
Get on this aspect of the JFK case or you will forever be inhaling the dust from the fast-trackers.
Anyone see any other obvious suspects in the JFK mayhem here? Lemmie know.
This is a long and tedious posting, but it is well worth the effort. I posted it intact and will add comments later after I find out the name of the person who actually wrote this.
I now think that Richard Condon's informant was a member of the Military-Religious Protectorate. Who else could have given him ALL the names of those plotting to kill JFK when he was a Senator by 1958 when he was writing this historical novel? No one. Except maybe Wilbur Baldinger who worked for the Reuther Brothers, or Armen Dernounian (a/k/a John Roy Carlson) who wrote both The Plotters and Undercover during World War II. One was the NY Times bestseller for 1944. Thanks to Andy Winiarzyk who brought this work to my attention.
Here is the complete article... verbatim:
SOVEREIGN ORDER OF SAINT JOHN OF JERUSALEM
History and Lineage Charts Since 1797
Founded near Our Lord’s Holy Sepulcher c. 1050, the Brothers of the Hospital of Saint John is one of
the oldest orders of the Catholic Church. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem was elevated to a monastic order
in 1098 by which time it had developed into a military brotherhood known as the Hospitallers. The Brethren
defended their Hospital and ensured the health and safety of pilgrims coming to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The King of Jerusalem confirmed the Hospitallers as an international corporation in 1104. The Apostolic See
became its perpetual Protector in 1113 by a Papal Bull of Paschal II. Renowned for skilled hospital care and
prowess in battle, the Hospitaller Knights became indispensable defenders of Christendom and the Order was
recognized as a sovereign state in 1191. The Order was forced by the Moslems from the Holy Land in 1291
and from Rhodes in 1523. The Convent of the Order was on the island of Malta, and its 70th Grand Master was
Prince Ferdinand von Hompesch, when the humanist revolution was creating widespread change on the
political map of Europe. The Knights of the Order used strategic foresight in gaining the Czar of Russia as a
secondary Protector because in 1798 Malta was seized by General Napoleon Bonaparte. A large contingent of
French Knights of Malta, who had accepted the precepts of the revolutionaries, joined Napoleon’s army. Most
of the remainder rallied to St. Petersburg, Russia, which was the home of their new powerful Protector.
There have been many questions concerning the legal and historical validity of the SOSJ after its
transfer from Malta to Russia, and later to the United States of America. This essay addresses various aspects
of the continuity of the Order’s government starting from the late 18 th century in St. Petersburg, and following it
to the United States of America in the beginning of the 20th century. The knights compromised their principles
as they focused on the survival and independence of their brotherhood, but they succeeded in preserving their
lineage intact. Other provincial groups of Knights of Malta eventually became sufficiently organized to warrant
their respective national monarchs to recognize them as distinct orders later in the 19th century. This is the
cause of the several orders of St. John and of Malta that we know today. The Sovereign Order of Saint John of
Jerusalem is, in contrast, the factual continuation of the Order from Malta, and was supported as such by the
Russian monarchy continuously until the death of Czar Kirill I in 1938.
THE SOSJ PRESERVES ITSELF BY DEFENDING MONARCHY
Shortly after their arrival in Russia, the exiled Knights of Malta joined with the Catholic Grand Priory of
Russia and elected their Orthodox and married Protector, Czar Paul I, as the 71st Grand Master. Grand Master
Czar Paul I helped to settle the SOSJ in the Russian capital city. He decreed that their Convent would remain at
the Imperial residence of St. Petersburg, and that his successors would continue as its protectors. He created a
second Grand Priory principally for his Orthodox nobility. He then invited non-Catholic Europeans, mainly
Lutherans, to join this new priory for the purpose of preserving the SOSJ and European monarchism by
perpetual opposition to the Humanist Revolution. His plan to return the Russian Orthodox Church, of which he
was the head, to full communion with the Catholic Church had created enemies among his closest advisors and
relatives. Czar Paul I, an unrecognized champion of the Order, was martyred, allegedly by Freemasons, in
1801.
The Holy See had often desired in the past to control the election of the Grand Master and the Order’s
history shows that the knights always successfully resisted this interference. The election of Czar Paul I had
broken the lineage of unmarried Catholic grand masters, but continued the jealously guarded tradition of
independent election of their leader by the knights. The Knights of Malta believed that the unusual
circumstances in world affairs which resulted in the relocation of the convent to Russia called for nontraditional
action to salvage the Order and to counter the Revolution. Election disputes developed after the death of Grand
Master Czar Paul I and this created a permanent split between the Sovereign Order in Russia and the surviving
Italian priories of knights. The Sovereign Council in Russia and Czar Alexander I asked the Pope to name the next Grand Master
“for one time only” from a list of candidates presented from the various priories of knights. The Pope selected
the Russian Catholic Grand Priory’s candidate, who became the 72nd Grand Master, John Baptist di Tommasi.
Tommasi died in 1805, and then the Pope tried to name Tommasi’s successor. This intervention was not
acceptable to the Sovereign Council and to the majority of the Knights of St. John who were determined to elect
their own leader as was the tradition and historic right of the Order. It was also generally known that Napoleon
was directing the Pope’s choice for Grand Master. The SOSJ chose the Russian Czar as the head and Protector
of the Order which was being managed by the Sovereign Council. They refused to recognize the papal
appointments which followed thereafter, for they were not legitimately initiated by the Order. Early in the 19
th
century, the Italian priories adopted the name Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The members of the fledgling
SMOM declared themselves the legitimate continuation of the Order and refused to recognize the Sovereign
Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The knights of the SOSJ reciprocated by not recognizing the splinter group
in Italy. The disagreement continues today. Indeed, it has only been in the past few years that the SMOM has
grudgingly accepted Czar Paul I, but as the 72nd Grand Master of the Order. They continue to describe him as
Grand Master “in fact” but not “in justice” because the Czar was a married Orthodox Christian.
Nevertheless, the Order became an influential institution in Imperial Russia deeply involved with the
preservation of the European monarchies in general, and with the Romanoff dynasty in particular. The two
grand priories in Russia, one Catholic and the other principally Orthodox, educated young men at their school,
the Corps des Pages, in St. Petersburg. The Corps des Pages was the academy for the creation of new Knights
of Malta. The graduates of this school became leaders of the exclusive Guard Divisions and thereby protectors
of the Imperial Family of Russia. Their tradition of health care was continued through the hospital and relief
agency known as the Russian White Cross. The Sovereign Council, consisting of senior Knights of Justice,
governed the Order and ensured its legal continuation. Initially the Order was led by Lieutenant Grand Master
General Soltikoff after the death of Czar Paul I. Eventually the leadership of the SOSJ consisted of a President
of the Sovereign Council who was assisted by a Grand Chancellor. These men reported directly to each
reigning Russian czar who was described as the “Head of the Chapter.” Each Czarina was likewise traditionally
the honorary head of the White Cross. The czars took personal custody of the Order’s famous icon of Our Lady
of Philermos and the two relics which are the hand of St. John the Baptist and a piece of the True Cross. These
were kept either at the Winter Palace or at the SOSJ Priory Chapel of the Gatchina Palace, depending upon the
liturgical calendar. This arrangement continued until the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917.
Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Grand Protector
Sovereign Council Chancellor
1797 Prince GM Ferdinand Pope Pius VI
von Hompesch Czar Paul I
1798 GM Czar Paul I LGM J Count de Litta Prince de Conde GM Czar Paul I
1799 GM Czar Paul I LGM Field Marshall Prince de Conde GM Czar Paul I
Count Soltykoff
1801 LGM Field Marshall Undetermined Czar Alexander I Czar Alexander I
Count Soltykoff
1803 GM John Baptist di Tommasi Undetermined Czar Alexander Czar Alexander I
1805 Undetermined Czar Alexander Czar Alexander I
1825 Undetermined Senior Grand Duke Czar Nicholas I
1855 Undetermined Senior Grand Duke Czar Alexander II
1881 Undetermined Senior Grand Duke Czar Alexander III
1894 Undetermined G D Vladimir Czar Nicholas II
THE INTERNATIONAL WHITE CROSS OF THE SOSJ
In 1893 the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Prince Cantacuzene, Russian Admiral Grand
Duke Alexander Michaelovich and Russian Transportation Commissioner Colonel A. Cherep Spiridovich,
introduced the Russian SOSJ White Cross at the Chicago World’s Fair to American civic leaders. Pope Leo XIII
promised prominent civic leader Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago his support for her chairmanship of “Women of
the World” presentations at the Fair and assigned Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota to work with
her. Thereby began the SOSJ affiliation with an American White Cross movement supported by the Catholic
Church. The American Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland continued their affiliation with the White
Cross and the Knights of St. John for at least twenty years thereafter. Archbishop Ireland was the head chaplain
for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic and therefore had a responsibility for the welfare of
American servicemen. Their initial efforts resulted in a White Cross headquarters in Portland, Oregon which
coordinated American nurses sent to Cuba and the Philippine Islands during the Spanish-American War.
The next public result of this Russian-American-Catholic coordination was an attempt in 1899 to get a
Title 36 Charter from the U.S. Congress for the National White Cross of America. The proposed charter would
have allowed the organization to continue hospital and relief work exclusively for the American military
community. While it was passed through both the House and Senate without dissension, it was not ultimately
signed into law by the President of the United States. General Nelson Miles and George Westinghouse of
Pittsburgh were among those involved directly in the White Cross charter effort. The charter bill was passed to
the foreign affairs desk and stalled indefinitely by those concerned about Russian and Catholic influence in the
organization. After all, the White Cross was a Russian institution of the SOSJ, and Roman Catholic Archbishop
John Ireland would be one of the founding members of the proposed American affiliate. Though the American
White Cross proposed exclusive support for the American military community, the obvious competition with the
American Red Cross which did similar work also concerned some politicians. Archbishop Ireland, Chief
Chaplain for the Grand Army of the Republic, General Miles, commanding General of the U.S. Army, George
Westinghouse of Pittsburgh, founder of Westinghouse Electric, Chicago industrialist Richard Teller Crane,
Chicago real estate mogul Potter Palmer, and many others continued life long affiliations with Russia or with the
Russian-American White Cross movement.
Several things occurred in 1901 which would have long term effects on the SOSJ. Grand Duke Boris
Vladimirovich, son of the Russian OSJ Grand Prior, assisted Richard Teller Crane of Chicago with plans to
organize the American White Cross in New York City. It is believed that they created the American
International Academy and named explorer and geologist Francis C. Nicholas as its first president. This pan-
American organization was designed for intelligence gathering operations. In 1901, the SMOM (Sovereign
Military Order of Malta headquartered in Rome) and Cardinal Gibbons announced that an American Grand
Priory would be started solely for the American Catholic members of a fraternal organization called the
“Knights of St. John” which had been started about 1880 in imitation of the old order. Colonel Cherep
Spiridovich, mentioned previously, became President of the Slavonic Society of Moscow. For five years, he
had been Serbian Consul to Moscow, and was a member of the Serbian and later of the Russian Secret Services.
The Slavonic Society was an intelligence operation which funneled arms and resources to nationalist elements
in the Balkans. The patron of the Society was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. His wife, Grand Duchess
Ella, was the elder sister of the Russian Czarina.
In 1903 the American Red Cross administrators restructured their organization and curtailed the authority of their founder, Clara Barton. Barton had been influenced in her famous work by the Russian White Cross and by the Johanniter Orden relief services in Europe. Her friend, Princess Louise of Baden, was the daughter of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, Herrenmeister of the Johanniter Orden. The American Red Cross Field Service Superintendent was Edward Howe from the English St. John’s Ambulance Association. Barton resigned from the American Red Cross and established the National First Aid Association of America in the District of Columbia in 1904. She was assisted in this by men who had tried to start the American White Cross,
namely General Nelson A. Miles and Field Superintendent Edward Howe. In 1904, R. T. Crane, U.S. Consul for Persia, built an emergency hospital clinic in Chicago in memory
of a niece killed in a disastrous inner city fire. Mrs. Palmer sent funds from Chicago to the Russian Czarina,
Patroness of the Russian White Cross, to be used for relief of victims of the Russo-Japanese War. St. Andrew’s
Ambulance Society of Scotland received its new name and independence from the St. John’s Ambulance
Association of England.
In December, 1904 the American White Cross First Aid Society was started in Chicago by civic leader
Mrs. Potter Palmer, Roman Catholic Cardinal Gibbons, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, representatives of
the U.S. Army and Edward Howe, formerly the American Red Cross Field Superintendent. Edward Howe was
thus the field superintendant for both the National First Aid Association and for the American White Cross First
Aid Society. A similar arrangement existed in England between the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem
and the British Red Cross. The Catholic Church, American civic leaders, the U.S. Army and the English St.
John’s Ambulance Association were thus working together with the Russian White Cross. This was the
“ecumenical beginning” of the SOSJ of which Grand Chancellor Pichel described in his history of the SOSJ in
1958. The American White Cross First Aid Society had Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. H. McCormick, Andrew
Carnegie, R. T. Crane, General J. D. Irwin and Cardinal Gibbons as Vice Presidents. By association, this
brought the Crane Family, the Cantacuzene Family, the McCormick Family, Nicholas Murray Butler, the
American military medical community, and the Catholic Church into the White Cross ambulance work which
soon followed.
Besides Edward Howe, the moving force in the White Cross was the famous Chicago surgeon and Illinois militia officer Dr. Nicholas Senn. Dr. Senn had been President of the American Medical Association and a founder of the Association of U. S. Military Surgeons. He had also been involved with the early organizing activities of the White Cross. He was associated with the Knights in Russia and had visited them in St. Petersburg in 1902. He was instrumental in the organization of the program in New York. Unfortunately he died prematurely in 1908. After his death the American Red Cross was assured of the lead in national relief work, and in 1910, reinstated their “First Aid to the Injured” program. The American White Cross therefore
eventually focused on large-scale relief overseas during war and famine. As we will later see, a 1921 relief
association of American Catholics from the White Cross evolved into a new American Association of the
SMOM in 1927.
The Chicago Crane family affiliation with the White Cross eventually led, in 1941, to their daughter Frances’ marriage to OSJ Hereditary Knight Commander Belosselsky-Belozersky, in New York City. The White Cross work of the Chicago Palmers was continued by their relatives, the Cantacuzenes. Prince Michel Cantacuzene and Julia Grant Cantacuzene were members of the Romanian Prince Cantacuzene and President General Ulysses S. Grant families. An early and prominent member of the American White Cross was Wall Street lawyer William Nelson Cromwell, who was responsible for the success of, among many other projects, McCormick Harvester and Carnegie’s U.S. Steel Corporation. He became Grand Prior of the American SOSJ in 1912. Charles R. Crane, son of R. T. Crane, became a philanthropist, diplomat, and, unfortunately, a financial supporter of the first Russian revolution of February, 1917.
IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST INTERNATIONAL ANARCHISTS THE SOSJ ADDS AN AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY The late 19th and early 20th centuries was an era of anarchist activism. (Meaning Sacco and Vanzetti) The SOSJ in Russia searched for potential allies in its ongoing defense of Christendom. An epidemic of political assassinations and the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905 prompted the expansion of the Order into the United States. In 1905 Count Alexis Ignatiev, Commander of the SOSJ Chevalier Guards, was assassinated in Russia. Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich was also assassinated. The Grand Duke was the patron of the Slavonic Society of Moscow, of
which Cherep Spiridovich was president. As mentioned previously, this agency was an intelligence organization
funneling arms into the Balkans in support of nationalists struggling against the Turks, and is believed to have
been an arm of the SOSJ. These events hastened the development of a permanent presence of the Knights of St.
John in America, in addition to their White Cross First Aid Society, to ensure the Order’s survival and to tap the
resources of the American Republic. At the time of his death, Grand Duke Sergei was the Military Governor General of Moscow and had worked to uncover the cells of anarchists who were responsible for constant murders of government officials to include his own father’s assassination. His wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth, sister of Czarina Alexandra, was involved in the research to unmask the anarchists and this interest brought them both into contact with an Orthodox spiritual writer named Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus. Nilus was one of the earliest men to produce a copy of the “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” and Grand Duchess Ella introduced him and the Protocols to her sister and to Czar Nicholas II. Major General Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich, President of the Slavonic Society, was thereby one of the earliest members of any Intelligence Service to see the Protocols. He was given the mandate by the Russian Imperial family to investigate the matter and to spread the alarm about “the hidden hand” of international Zionism and its conspiracy to gain global control. He was made a Count of the Catholic
Church by Pope Pius X about 1907. He was President of the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, which he referred
to as the Celtic-Latino-Slav League, and was one of the principal organizers of the American branch of the
SOSJ. His patronesses, Czarina Alexandra and Grand Duchess Ella, were convinced of the authenticity of the
international conspiracy and eventually both were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
After the death of Dr. Nicholas Senn in 1908, the American White Cross movement with headquarters
in Chicago was expanded further by union with the Knights of St. John and Malta Hospital and Relief
Association of Brooklyn, New York. The organization was named White Cross Hospital and Relief Association.
The main offices of the relief association remained at the GAR Hall, at 990 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. The
headquarters of this new association was apparently being prepared at what is now called the Audubon Terrace
on North Broadway in New York City. Senior knights were building a facility to be complete in every aspect for
the conduction of the affairs of the Order. The proposed headquarters on Broadway in New York City can be
seen at http://www.museumplanet.com/tour.php/nyc/at/5. Charles Hayward and George Bruce, formerly of the
Knights of St John and Malta Hospital and Relief Association, had joined with senior SOSJ knights, many of
whom were agents of the Imperial Russian Secret Service. Most of them were Catholic Knights of Malta of the
Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, and represented many of the nations of Europe. They considered this
American association not only as a new organization for the Americas, but as the continuation of the old Polish
Grand Priory that had been in the minority in Russia since 1815.
Major General Arthur Cherep Spiridovich, President of the remnant Catholic Grand Priory of Russia,
was among the coordinators of this expansion. By this time the general was also an emissary of Czarina
Alexandra of Russia, Patroness of the Russian SOSJ White Cross and of her sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth. As
an intelligence operative, he was handled by the Russian Ambassador to the U. S., Baron Rosen. He was also an
agent of the Serbian royal family. This began a long relationship between the OSJ in America and the
Yugoslavian royal family.
The four orders of St. John jockeyed for positions of influence in American society. These included the
SOSJ, the SMOM, The German Order of St. John and the British Venerable Order of St. John. The constant
interaction with the aristocracy, nobility and royalty of the Old World motivated some American members to
become involved in genealogical and racial studies. To qualify for knighthood in accordance with the ancient
rules of the SOSJ was nearly impossible for Americans. The result of the strict admittance qualifications was the
founding by private individuals of the National Genealogical Society, the interaction with an unrecognized
College of Arms of Canada, the founding of the American Heraldry Association, and, to some degree, the
support of the early racial eugenics movement. Various patriotic and genealogical societies were established
during this period to qualify Americans and Canadians for OSJ knighthood. The Lords of Manors of Baltimore,
Scions of Colonial Cavaliers, Order of Colonial Dames, Imperial Order of the Yellow Rose, and the Order of the
White Crane are some of the societies the American knights started.
In 1909, Grand Duke Vladimir was assassinated in Russia, and his son, Grand Duke Cyril, thereby
became Grand Prior of the OSJ Russian Grand Priory. Grand Duke Vladimir had cultivated relations between
the SOSJ in Russia, the German Order of St. John and the Spanish Order of St. John the Baptist. The German
and Spanish orders were branches of the original Order. He had also encouraged the American members of the
White Cross to further develop those relationships. German influence on the new OSJ American Association
through the Johanniter Orden Protector Emperor Wilhelm II and his brother Prince Henry of Prussia was evident
before World War I with exchange visits by the industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt and President of Columbia
University Nicholas Murray Butler. German influence also came from the Czarina and her sister Ella who were
both members of German royalty. That relationship, which developed with both the Protestant Johanniter Orden
and with the Catholic Malteser Orden, continued from joint efforts in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War
through the redevelopment of the German Intelligence Service after WWII.
Colonel Dr. Wm. Sohier Bryant, MD, of New York City, and lawyer Wm. B. Stites of New Jersey wrote
a constitution in 1911 to form an American Grand Priory of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem from
members of the American White Cross. The American Grand Priory constitution was accepted by the
membership in 1912. The new Grand Priory included the Grand Priory of Russia, i.e., the former Catholic OSJ
Grand Priory of Poland. The headquarters of the knights was initially the meeting hall of the Knights of St.
John and Malta at Wurzler’s Building, 315 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Most early meetings
were held at Joseph Burrows office at 56-58 Pine Street, near Wall Street. Wall Street lawyer William Nelson
Cromwell became American Grand Prior in 1912, and meetings thereafter were usually held at his offices in the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. According to Pichel, this continued until 1929, after which the meetings were held at
Dr. Bryant’s office in the Murray Hill section of New York City.
In 1912 the Order consisted of the Russian Grand Priory in Russia and the new American Grand Priory
and its subsidiary, the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, which included remnants of the Spanish Caballeros
Hospitalarios de San Juan Bautista. The Russian Grand Priory was composed mainly of Slavic Knights of the
Orthodox Faith. The American Grand Priory leaders were mostly socially prominent Protestant Episcopalians
from New York City and Chicago. There was also a small group of American descendants of Catholic Celtic
Jacobites, who were still followers of the old Stuart Pretender to the throne of England and Scotland. The
Pretender at the time was Queen Mary IV of Bavaria, and an army physician named Edgar Erskine Hume was
among the Knights of Malta who later considered Mary’s successor, Crown Prince Rupprecht, as their “rightful
sovereign.” The American Grand Prior, William Nelson Cromwell, and Dr. Francis C. Nicholas had had contact
with Spanish Knights of St. John during years of preparation work for the American Panama Canal project.
Interaction with the Spanish knights was also the result of Americans meeting Spanish knights during the
Spanish-American War from 1898 to 1900, and later during the Mexican civil wars. The remnant Castellany of
Guadalajara, Mexico, of the Spanish Order of St. John the Baptist joined the American Grand Priory with their
monarchist Pretender, Don Agustin Yturbide. King Alphonso XIII of Spain was the protector of the remnants
of the Spanish Order which was given a papal blessing as late as 1879. He expanded his association to the
SOSJ in America.
American Catholics, however, had been joining a fraternal organization similar to the present day
Knights of Columbus, called the Knights of St. John, since it was founded in the 1880’s. By the turn of the
century, a union of all military style fraternal associations of the Catholic Church in America, to be called the
Roman Catholic Union of the Knights of St. John, was supported by Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland.
Therefore, Catholic knights of the SOSJ had difficulty determining their loyalties, not only because of the
broad spectrum of their own origins and nationalities, but also because of the presence of this non-chivalric
fraternal organization supported by the Catholic Church. Prominent Catholics associated with the SOSJ who
were disenchanted with their order’s political leanings eventually founded, in 1927, the American Association
of the SMOM. Edgar Erskine Hume, MD, was among this group of former members of the SOSJ.
Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Grand Protector
Sovereign Council Chancellor
1912 Undetermined Czar Nicholas II
Russian Grand Priory G D Cyril
American Grand Priory W S Bryant W N Cromwell J G B Bulloch
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich (Celtic-Latin-Slav League)
a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. G H Bruce
THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY VENTURES INTO FOREIGN SERVICE
The English started a private intelligence gathering operation supported by their government in 1904
called the Legion of Frontiersmen. This organization, composed of wealthy patriotic English volunteers,
prefigured MI6. Members of this group, traveling worldwide as was their customary lifestyle, became an
important source for the British Empire’s constant need for information. The American White Cross was being
used in similar fashion, and the new American Grand Priory expanded on that practice. The most prominent
families in the United States joined the American Grand Priory of the SOSJ, and thereby developed the first
American civilian foreign intelligence network.
American Grand Priory leaders, Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, Archer
Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America, William Nelson Cromwell, Wall Street lawyer and
Francis C. Nicholas, founder of the American International Academy, are among those who crafted the
American Grand Priory into an intelligence organization. Nicholas, a mining engineer and explorer, had done
Cromwell’s Panama Canal construction feasibility studies. He had also done geological research in Central and
South America for Archer Huntington and Colonel William Lamb, who were supplying fuel coal to the Russian
Navy. These men wielded significant influence in the United States during the late 19th through the mid 20
th centuries.
Some results of their careers include the founding of the Republic of Panama, and the successful
purchase and construction of the Panama Canal. They were also responsible for the founding of the Pan-
American “Organization of American States” and directly influenced the founders of the Central Intelligence
Agency. Others prominent in the OSJ at this time included John Jacob Astor until his death on the Titanic, J. P. Morgan, J P Morgan, Jr. and the extended Cornelius Vanderbilt and Chicago Crane families. The
Mexican White Cross association was promoted by Don Agustin Yturbide, OSJ, Pretender to the royal throne of Mexico.
Cromwell used the College of Arms of Canada, of which Yturbide was President, to create dissension during
congressional hearings into the Panama Canal controversy. Legalistic maneuvering about ancient French noble
rights in Canada brought pressure on Great Britain to drop complaints about the U. S. control of the canal. This
preceeded by many decades the modern secession movement of French speaking Canada. Grand Chancellor
Bulloch was involved in this movement which tended to divide the OSJ into Anglophile and Francophile
factions. Cromwell had become a seasoned veteran at creating trusts, monopolies and even countries by using
revolution if necessary. The principle White Cross societies besides America and Russia were located in Spain
and Mexico. Dr. Francis C. Nicholas was involved during the Mexican Civil War from 1912 to 1914 as a
White Cross “observer.” The English St. John’s Ambulance Brigade was started in Canada, and may have
helped with the founding of the White Cross in Brooklyn as well.
The American Grand Priory also had a history of cooperation with members of the monarchist and anti-
Semitic Russian Black Hundred’s Movement due to their association with Cherep Spiridovich. Admiral Grand
Duke Alexander Michaelovich, OSJ, was the head of Russian Naval Intelligence. He spent time in the United
States developing relationships with the wealthiest people in American society. His regular traveling
companion became Major Barclay Harding Warburton of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence community.
Warburton was a member of the “East Coast Establishment,” and was closely related to the Wannamaker and Vanderbilt families. The American Grand Priory cooperated with Russian Naval Intelligence and the Russian Secret Service directed by Baron Rosen. Grand Duke Alexander was elected the 73rd Grand Master of the SOSJ in 1913 during meetings in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Grand Protector
Sovereign Council Chancellor 1913 Grand Master G D Alexander Michaelovich Undetermined Czar Nicholas II
Russian Grand Priory G D Cyril
American Grand Priory W S Bryant W N Cromwell J G B Bulloch
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich
a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. W W Butcher A MacNaughton
The First World War found the American Grand Priory allying itself with the Entente. In 1915 Colonel
Robert R. McCormick, of Chicago Tribune fame, reported from the Russian front lines while interviewing Knights of Malta who were graduates of the SOSJ Corps des Pages.
The White Cross Hospital and Relief Association named its overseas work “The American Ambulance” partly because Socialists had taken to the use of the “White Cross” name. Anarchists embedded themselves into the Red Cross movement as well. This was similar to the use of the so-called “Peace Movement” by internationalists, socialists and Communists in the 1960’s. Members of the American Grand Priory quickly became the leaders of massive relief efforts during WWI. W.N. Cromwell helped to start the Lafayette Escadrille Flying Corps with Cornelius Vanderbilt and Dr. Ed Gros of the American Ambulance. This Corps was later supported by the Order of Lafayette. Rep.
Hamilton Fish of New York was both a member of this order and the reinstituted Order of Lafayette following
WWII. Unfortunately, the SOSJ is implicated in the support and possibly in the direction of the “bloodless
revolution” in Russia in the opening months of 1917.
REVOLUTIONARIES WITHIN THE SOSJ CONTRIBUTE TO ANARCHY
Until the First World War, relations between the German Order of St. John, the English Venerable Order
of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, and the SOSJ were mostly cooperative. The leaders of these
organizations, many of them members of royal houses, were often close family relatives and/or financially
interdependent. The European royal families were well aware of the survival of the SOSJ in Russia. Queen
Victoria’s son, the Duke of Connaught, led the English Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem for many
decades. He was closely associated with, and related to, Grand Duke Alexander and others of the Romanoff
family. He had been present in 1894 at the marriage of Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra of Germany in the tiny
Winter Palace Chapel, in which the chief relics and icon of the SOSJ were prominently venerated. Before
Alexander I became its king, the Duke of Connaught had been seriously considered for the throne of
Yugoslavia. He was Grand Duchess Victoria Melita’s uncle, and at one time was the potential father-in-law of
Grand Duke Alexander’s daughter.
The Duke of Connaught, led for many decades both the English Venerable Order and, as Grand Master
of the United Grand Lodge of England, the Masonic Knights Templar. As the English Governor-General of
Canada from 1910 to 1916, he had a relationship with the American Masonic Knights of Malta. He also had
some influence over the American Masonic Knights Templar. Unfortunately, the new American members of
the White Cross and SOSJ American Grand Priory did not heed the prohibitions on Freemasonic affiliation that
had been enforced in Russia. When they joined with the SOSJ from Russia, some persisted in their Masonic
affiliation as Templars. The amalgamation of the SOSJ with the Knights of St. John and the Malta Hospital and
Relief Association brought Freemasons into the ranks of the American Grand Priory. The new Grand Priory of
1912 was thereby influenced by Freemasonry and Anti-Catholicism. The Freemasons who came into the Grand
Priory had believed in a descent of their fraternity from an ill-defined Templar-Malta Order from France, or
from the old “reformed” Torpichen Preceptory in Scotland. Some of the new members were the
aforementioned Catholic Jacobites but there was also a small but significant number of Rosicrucians. A
significant philosophy of the Rosicrucians included an anti-Semitic and racial superiority agenda. Some
prominent members appear to have persisted in the Freemasonic quest for humanistic “freedoms” which had
caused the downfall so many Christian kingdoms. In Imperial Russia it was widely known that Freemasonry
had been prohibited because it is a fraternity designed for Revolution. Their personal philosophies supported
the exportation of “democratic” ideals of the United States of America, which did not translate peacefully into
the needs for social change in Imperial Russia.
The American Grand Prior, William Nelson Cromwell, was a well known adept at high level regime
change. The lifestyles enjoyed by Americans, combined with the Wilsonian theme of spreading Democracy
worldwide, appear to have seduced both Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander and Russian Grand Prior Grand
Duke Cyril into revolutionary scheming against Czar Nicholas II. Many others in the Imperial Romanoff
family were sympathetic to liberal Socialist plans to end the absolute monarchy in Russia, and the American
Grand Priory of the SOSJ is implicated in their revolutionary activities. Unfortunately the Czar and his wife
were also influenced by occultism which was in vogue in their society, and of which Rasputin was an infamous
practitioner. This behavior during wartime on the part of the Czar and his family caused extreme anxiety in
Russia and helped to prompt militant action among the diverse forces determined to transform the monarchy.
The story of Rasputin’s influence on the Imperial family and on the politics of Russia is widely known. It is not
generally known, however, that Grand Duke Alexander directed the assassination of the spiritualist monk
Gregori Rasputin in late 1916. The men directly involved in the murder of Rasputin were the Grand Duke’s
sons, son-in-law, cousin and a member of British MI6. The Russians were all students or graduates of the SOSJ
Corps des Pages. Grand Duke Alexander afterward successfully interceded with the czar on behalf of the
assassins, all Knights of St. John.
Grand Duchess Ella was the head of the White Cross Supreme Council in Russia which oversaw all
Hospitaller activity during WWI. In 1916, the OSJ “American Ambulance in Russia,” which was organized by
Hamilton Fish III, Dr. Philip Newton, Capt. Philip Lydig, Nicholas Murray Butler, Colonel Robert McCormick
and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt of New York City and Chicago, started service on the Russian Front. Their
patroness was a daughter of the Czar, Grand Duchess Tatiana Romanoff. The American Grand Prior, William
Nelson Cromwell, distanced himself from the adventure as his name was too well connected with American
engineered foreign revolutions of the recent past. Instead, Charles Richard Crane of the Chicago White Cross
assisted with financing revolutionary change in Russia. The American Ambulance in Russia, at least
financially and philosophically, supported the Kerensky Regime. The Knights may have also tactically
supported the first Russian revolution in the early months of 1917. Prime Minister Kerensky was on the payroll
of the American Ambulance. Grand Duke Cyril was in charge of the troops available to defend the Czar in St.
Petersburg. He used his naval guard corps to passively support the forced abdication of Czar Nicholas II.
Though many blamed both the February and later the October Revolutions on Jewish revolutionaries supported
by Germany, both Grand Duke Cyril and Grand Duke Alexander were ostracized by many Russians because of
their alliances with the Freemasons and other Social Humanists. Grand Duke Alexander was able to retain his
elevated status due to the position of his wife, the Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the Czar.
THE KORNILOV AFFAIR
A Counter Revolution was soon planned by Russian Guard officers under Generals Keller, Markov and
Kornilov. General Count Keller, OSJ, an intimate of the Russian Imperial family and friend of German
monarchists, had refused to accept the abdication of the Czar. As an influential member of the SOSJ he
singlehandedly started the resistance of the Knights whose historical charge was the defense of Imperial Russia
and the Romanoff family. These monarchists managed to place many of their sympathizers in command of the
armed forces in St. Petersburg. Colonel Pavel Bermondt, who served in an Ussuri Cossack unit of Keller’s 3rd
Cavalry Corps, was one of these officers and was given command of an Ulan cavalry regiment in St.
Petersburg. Captain Sidney Reilly of MI6 was also in charge of a cavalry contingent during this conspiracy. A
coup d’etat was planned which would coordinate the armed members of a large number of Russian patriotic
societies to join with an approaching Guard army under General Kornilov to depose Kerensky. Kerensky was
forewarned and he armed the Bolsheviks to defend his government and the city against the Monarchists. The
Kornilov uprising attempt failed and most of the conspirators, including Bermondt, were jailed. Many were
able to escape with the assistance of sympathizers. Kerensky had armed the Bolsheviks and the failed Kornilov
coup d’etat had thus prepared the way for a third, but violent revolt, in October of 1917. The October
Revolution of the atheistic Bolsheviks was successful and merciless.
THE SOSJ RESPONDS TO THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
As noted above, the first response against the socialist revolutionaries of the Kerensky Provisional
Government came from Count Keller, OSJ. The Count immediately started working with German General
Rudiger Von der Goltz to build a German-Russian army of monarchist volunteers in the Baltic states. This
cooperation between the German and Russian orders of St. John was the attempt to return both Germany’s
Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czar Nicholas II to their thrones.
On September 15, 1917, J. G. B. Bulloch, MD, first cousin of President Teddy Roosevelt, incorporated
the Order of Lafayette in New York City with an international membership as a recruiting front for the SOSJ.
An American counter revolutionary effort became immediately prominent since it became apparent from both
government and military intelligence reports that Jewish anarchists were in the majority in the new Bolshevik
government in St. Petersburg. The revolutionaries had developed their operational base in the Lower East Side
district of New York City. The American Grand Priory became isolated due to its support of the first
“Bloodless Revolution” in Russia and thereafter remained in the hands of operatives of the anti-Bolshevik
intelligence communities. The American Grand Priory of the SOSJ concentrated its activities in NYC,
Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. It worked to defeat the international anarchist
movements and to expose their aligned secret societies.
The Poles responded both to stop the Bolshevik advance into their territory and to take advantage of
their new found independence from both Russia and Germany. The Polish White Cross was founded in New
York a few days after the Bolshevik Revolution. Its president was Count Jerzy Potocki, OSJ, who became
Polish Ambassador to the United States. Ignace Paderewski, the famous pianist, helped to start the Polish
White Cross in New York in October and used the resources of the American Ambulance in Russia. His wife,
Madame Paderewski, daughter of Baron Rosen, OSJ, was Patroness of the Polish White Cross. The Polish
effort was both an intelligence operation and relief service of the old Polish Grand Priory which was now part
of the American Grand Priory. The Catholic Knights of the Polish White Cross eventually renamed their
organization the Grand Priory of Podolia in honor of the birthplace of Ignace Paderewski. Captain Sidney
Reilly of MI6 and Colonel William J. Donovan, US State Department Intelligence, were also associates of
Ignace Paderewski, who became the first President of Free Poland.
COUNT KELLER, PRINCE AWALOFF AND GRAND DUKE CYRIL
SALVAGE THE RUSSIAN GRAND PRIORY
After the failed Kornilov Affair, imprisonment and the October Revolution, many Guard officers were
able to escape and flee to the Don Cossacks in the Ukraine. There they helped to create the Volunteer Army
with the assistance of Ukrainian separatists. Generals Alekseev, Denikin and Kolchak were the early leaders
and they started the Russian Civil War to defeat the Bolsheviks.
Grand Duke Cyril was now a potential inheritor of the Russian throne and gave his support to the
remnant of the SOSJ headed by Count Keller and his fellow Knights. The Russian Order of St. John rallied to
form a secretive organization of officers and civilian nobility called the White Cross Society under Generals
Markov and Count Keller. The Russian Grand Duke Cyril and the German Grand Duke of Hesse were
members of the organization as German monarchists assisted the White Cross effort to rescue their kin, the
Czarina Alexandra and her family. American Lt. Col. Joseph Boyle and his machine gun detachment may have
been part of this effort by the Order to rescue members of the Imperial family. Among the conspirators was the
son-in-law of Rasputin and the Czarinas best friend Anna Vyrubova. The Imperial family was murdered by the
Bolsheviks in July, 1918. The historical record shows that Count Keller and most of the well known General
officers from the SOSJ fought for Imperial Russia until killed in action against the Bolsheviks during the
following year.
General Markov had been the Director of the Nicholas Cavalry School in St. Petersburg. This school
was a post graduate school for the elite cavalry Guard officers most of whom came from the SOSJ Corps des
Pages. Markov organized his Guard officers on February 12, 1918 and instituted a black Maltese cross badge
for those in his unit. Count Keller was a graduate of the Corps des Pages and his father had been one of its last
Commandants. General Keller used a large plain white Maltese cross breast badge for all troops under his
command. The belief in an international socialist conspiracy was central to their understanding of the
revolution. Count Keller also worked with monarchist German General Rudiger Von der Goltz to start a
German backed government in the Baltic and recruited Russian POW’s in Germany for this army. As noted
earlier their combined plan was to join their forces in an attempt to replace the rightful monarchs both in
Germany and in Russia. Colonel Bermondt was the chief of counter intelligence for this Volunteer Army and
he promoted the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion and the international conspiracy theory widely among the
White Russian and later among the German troops in the Baltic. General Keller was soon fighting Ukrainian
Socialist formations and was captured in Kiev with the remnant of the Volunteer Army in December 1918.
Bermondt and many of his fellow Monarchists were once again jailed. This time they were scheduled for
execution. Count Keller was shot by the Bolsheviks while in captivity. Fortunately a German army freed many
of the Russian officers, including Bermondt, and took them back to Germany where they were interned in Camp
Salzvedel near Berlin. German Monarchists had already taken up the cause of the Russian White Guard as they
faced the same threat from international Bolshevism and their own Socialist Weimar Government.
The SOSJ ties encouraged with the Germans before the war were bearing fruit for the exiled knights
who had survived the Revolution. Beside his association with William Nelson Cromwell, Colonel Bermondt
now became connected with other members of the American Grand Priory and to Boris Brasol and Major
General Count Cherep Spiridovich due to his work against the one world conspiracy. It was in Camp
Salzvedel during January to April 1919 that Colonel Bermondt and his fellow Russian Guard officers reestablished
the Russian Grand Priory of the Sovereign Imperial Order of St. John of Jerusalem. On March 4,
1919 by Order number 24 he made the Maltese cross breast badge the emblem of his SOSJ army and enameled
it black in memory of General Graf Keller. High level German nationalists backed this re-establishment of the
Russian Sovereign Imperial Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Among them was General Ludendorff who had
been Chief of Staff of the German Army during WWI. His chief intelligence officer Major Walter Nicholai was also involved. The Protector of the Order was the legitimate heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Cyril
Vladimirovich. Grand Duke Cyril continued to finance the SOSJ venture with the help of the American Grand
Priory. Prince Awaloff and Grand Duke Cyril planned to join with German forces to drive the Bolsheviks out
of the Baltic. This idea to cooperate with Germany was unique to these Knights of St. John who believed that
Russian-German cooperation was the only way to rid the world of the Bolsheviks. In 1919 Colonel Prince Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt, supported by the Johanniter Orden, the Romanoff Pretender Grand Duke Cyril, and American financier J. P. Morgan, Jr., OSJ, became Commander in chief of the Russian Imperial Army. He led the SOSJ and apparently Johanniterorden plan, financed through attorney W. N. Cromwell, OSJ American Grand Priory, to clear the Bolsheviks from the Baltic and to set up a pro-German
government. Most of the officials of what became known in the Fall of 1919 as the West Russian Government
were members of the OSJ. Prince Awaloff recorded much of this information in his memoirs which he wrote in
1925 in Hamburg, Germany.
Bermondt was first addressed by the royal title of Prince Awaloff in September, 1919. Prince Awaloff
states that he was adopted at this time by Prince Michael Awaloff from whom he gained the royal title. It is just
as likely that Bermondt was elected Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem which would
have given him the royal title of Prince. We must wait for further information to confirm this suspicion and we
therefore retain the claims of Grand Duke Alexander as Grand Master during this period. During the Baltic
campaign, Baron Rudolf Engelhardt and Baron Engelhardt-Schnellenstein, both close relatives of Lt. Grand
Master Baron Scipio Engelhardt-Schnellenstein (1954-1956) and Admiral Felix Count Luckner, who also
became the Lt. Grand Master of the OSJ (1962-1966) worked with Prince Awaloff in the Baltic venture. The
Bavarian Freikorps, some of whom were associated with the Stewart Pretender Crown Prince Rupprecht, wore
the Maltese Cross. (The possible connection with the Royal Stuart Jacobite Pretender in Bavaria has not yet
been researched by the SOSJ.)
The relics and icon were rescued from the SOSJ Priory at the Gatchina Palace outside of St. Petersburg
in October, 1919, by men of the army of the White Russian General Yudenitch. They were brought to Reval,
Estonia, and delivered to the former Russian Master of Court Ceremonies Count Alexei Ignatiev. Ignatiev was
head of the Russian White Cross in Estonia, a leader of the Russian SOSJ and a son of the murdered Count
Ignatiev, Commander of the SOSJ Chevalier Guards. The relics and icon were then delivered to the SOSJ
headquarters in Mitau and there were solemnly received by Prince Awaloff and General Von der Goltz. Later
the relics and icon were placed in the hands of the Romanov Queen Mother, Dagmar Feodorovna. She kept the
relics at Villa Hvidore, her residence in exile near Copenhagen, until her death in 1928. Awaloff proclaimed
himself Governor-General of Western Russia for a brief time. The short-lived government in the Duchy of
Courland, Latvia, with headquarters in Mitau, was the closest that the Order had come to gaining a permanent
sovereign territory since the loss of Malta in 1798.
There were other plans by Russian exiles to retake their country. One of them was planned and
undertaken by Baron Taube as potential Secretary of State who enlisted Russian Jewish bankers to fund General Yudenitch in an attempt to retake St. Petersburg with a Northwestern Army.
They also would have supported Grand Duke Cyril as the new Czar. Their White Russian army in northwestern Russia ultimately failed in its attempt to take St. Petersburg. Awaloff refused to place his command under General Yudenitch and Baron Taube, whom he considered to be controlled by “conspiratorial forces”, that is, the Jewish bankers. Baron Taube eventually became an antagonist of the SOSJ.
The Western Russian Volunteer Army of Prince Awaloff initially gained advantage and took Riga from
the Bolsheviks. However, the British Naval Squadron that had been supporting the left flank of General
Yudenitch’s drive into St. Petersburg for political reasons abandoned Yudenitch and directed its guns on the
forces of the SOSJ. This intervention caused the defeat of both the SOSJ anti-Bolshevik force of Prince
Awaloff and of the drive into St. Petersburg by General Yudenitch. The Knights of St. John ultimately
retreated into Germany due to lack of support from the socialist Weimar Government and the treason of the
Entente British and French governments. These entities propped up the Bolshevik regime which was about to
crumble. The result of this intervention was 75 years of Communist dictatorship for a large portion of the
world. The Knights of this army of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem became known as the “Baltic
Brotherhood”.
When the SOSJ was exiled from the Russian Imperial City its historic mission as defender of the
Catholic Church and secondary mission to defend Orthodox Russia brought it into opposition to those Orders of
St. John that were connected to Freemasonry. It was widely known that Grand Master Czar Paul I had been
killed by Freemasons, and that Czar Alexander II was killed by anarchists with Freemasonic backgrounds. It
was acknowledged that these same revolutionary philosophies were now responsible for the loss of yet another
Christian monarchy, and for the deaths of Czar Nicholas II and his family. This included, among the many
members of the OSJ who were simply murdered by the Bolsheviks: the Patroness of the American Grand Priory
relief operation, Grand Duchess Tatiana, the Patroness of the White Cross, Czarina Alexandra and the Protector
and leader of the SOSJ, Czar Nicholas II.
Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander’s friend, Major Warburton, was the U.S. Military Charge
d’Affaires in Paris at the end of the war. Grand Duke Alexander and his immediate family survived the
Bolshevik purge of the Romanovs during a long captivity in the Crimea. When rescued by the British navy he
went straight to Paris. He attempted to get into the international peace talks which followed WW I to plea for
help for those trapped inside Russia. He was refused admission to the peace conference and all of his personal
efforts failed to save any of the Russian Imperial Family, who had, unknown to him, already been murdered by
the Bolsheviks. Thereafter, it appears that Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander could not cope with his
involvement in the first revolution which installed the Provisional Government. All of his brothers were killed
by the Bolsheviks soon after they seized power from the Kerensky regime. The Grand Duke spent the rest of
his life involved in spiritualism, apparently attempting to gain forgiveness from his murdered brother-in-law,
Czar Nicholas II.
THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY JOINS THE FIGHT
AGAINST THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALE
The American Grand Priory was peopled with the scions of Wall Street and the “Eastern
Establishment.” These men and women, many of them active or reserve officers in the military, worked with the
fledgling western military intelligence communities and made the Grand Priory the first civilian foreign
intelligence organization in the United States. Their intimate associates included the brothers John Foster and Allen Welsh Dulles who were nephews of U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Both were Wall Street lawyers who worked directly for William Nelson Cromwell, OSJ. John Foster Dulles eventually became President Eisenhauer’s Secretary of State, and Allen Welsh Dulles was instrumental in founding the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. One of the Chicago Crane sons became Asst. Secretary of State under Lansing. Another close associate was Wall Street lawyer “Wild Bill” William J. Donovan, who founded the Office of Strategic Services, and eventually became a knight of the SMOM. As a result of the “success” of SOSJ international ventures President Woodrow Wilson and his friend Colonel Edward M. House had created “The
Inquiry” at the American Grand Priory headquarters in New York City in 1917. This early “think tank” became
the internationalist advisory Council on Foreign Relations in 1921, which, ironically, is widely thought to be in control of the “One World Conspiracy.” The liberal wing of the Knights of Malta continued to be active in international affairs. The Irish White Cross relief effort was run by future founders of the American SMOM, James Phelan and Judge Morgan J. O’Brien.
Grand Duke Cyril became the head of a secret army scattered around the world in which the SOSJ
played a significant role. In New York City alone there were reportedly three thousand former White Russian
military officers organizing for counter-revolution. The SOSJ was an important participant in counterrevolutionary
engagement in Eastern Europe throughout the 20th century. It engaged in small unit warfare in
the regions controlled by the Communists. [B]The Order gathered intelligence on the international revolutionary movements. It engaged in psychological warfare operations including the distribution of anti-Bolshevist information such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This document allegedly details a plot by elite Jews to control the world through finance, and it has been the cause of political and social unrest during the past one hundred years. Because the Communist movement in Russia was dominated by Jews from New York, the
American military intelligence community continued to join the ranks of the SOSJ as sworn enemies of the
“International Conspiracy.” Among those included were the following: Colonel Harris Ayres Houghton, MD, Colonel John Jacob Astor, Major General Ralph Van Deman, Colonel William Sohier Bryant, MD, Major
General Frederick Dent Grant, Colonel Nicholas Biddle, Major Barclay Harding Warburton, Major Walter
Miller, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Major John B. Trevor and Captain Sidney
Reilly. All of these prominent members of the armed forces have close association with their successors in the Military Affairs Committee of the SOSJ that are found in the Order records well into the 1980’s.
Cherep Spiridovich was personally presented to J. Edgar Hoover by the US Ambassador to Romania, T.
Tileston Wells, and was supported by Grand Duke Cyril’s U.S. representative, Boris Brasol, by U.S. Treasury Secretary, Robert McAdoo and of course by the Chicago Crane family. Many of the White Russian armed forces were encamped in the Balkan countries after the Russian Civil War. These forces, often led by Knights of Malta, represented the “fifty American oriented strongholds” which were promised in Eastern Europe by Cherep Spiridovich to (former President Herbert) Hoover and Lansing during his presentations. Presented as a private alternative to the
League of Nations, the A-L-S League, which was the remnant of the SOSJ in Eastern Europe, had been a
bulwark against the spread of Islam. It now was promoted as a force against the new menace of Bolshevism.
This A-L-S League was soon being called the Anti-Bolshevist League. Cromwell, the Dulles brothers, and the
Masonic Knights Templar T. Tileston Wells founded, in 1920, the Society of Friends of Romania as a successor
to the American Roma...
THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST IMPORTANT POSTING I HAVE EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF MY ENTIRE JFK ASSASSINATION INVESTIGATION.
Anastase Vonsiatsky has finally been linked to Wickliffe Draper's Pioneer Fund cronies like Major John B. Trevor, Sr., Lt. Gen. Pedro A. del Valle, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso, OSJ and even to John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles as well as to "Wild Bill" Donovan, OSJ through even more pro-Nazi White Russian Spies involved with either The Knights of Malta or the even more sinister Shickshinny Knights of Malta chapter. And the threads from Boris Brasol through The Coudert Brothers Law Firm include both a young Robert J. Morris who worked on the Rapp-Coudert Committees in the early 1940's and later to William F. Buckley, Jr. whose NYC Mayoralty campaign was run by a partner in the Coudert Brothers Law firm who ran the White Russian Rat Lines from Paris, France to either the USA or Canada. This means that at least 10 of Richard Condon's Dirty Dozen from The Manchurian Candidate, were part of this document and part of The Shickshinny Knights of Malta. And both identified participants in The Winnipeg Airport incident are referenced here, too. GLK Smith via Wm. Dudley Pelley and The Silver Shirts plus Wickliffe Draper, of course. Stick a fork in it, the JFK Final Solution is done. Finito. Completo.
Even Col. Robert T. McCormick of the Chicago Tribune is listed just below who was among his close fiends and associates
And good old boy, William Dudley Pelley founder of the Nazi Silver Shirts during World War II where GLK
Smith cut his Nazi-loving eye teeth, YES Reverend Gerald Lyman Kenneth Smith from the Winnipeg Airport Incident is included by reference herein for all to see.
When everything comes together like this in one single document, within one single organization for all to read for themselves, it is almost magical.
1) Draper and his evil cronies at The Pioneer Fund like Pedro Augusto del Valle, and the Trevors Sr. and Jr.
2) Richard Condon and the Manchurian Candidate Dirty Dozen included in his dirty rotten scoundrels
3) The Shickshinny Knights of Malta (Philip J. Corso, Pedro del Valle, Charles Willoughby, Bonner Fellers, Sir Barry Domville)
4) Anastase Vonsiatsky and his ROND friends plus the Russian Orthodox Church.
5) The Dulles Brothers and William J. Donovan, OSJ who was a Knight of Malta first and foremost
Who knows why Jupiter, Florida was the headquarters of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem?
Name two military crustaceans who retired to Jupiter, Florida who had the OSJ credentials?
Free Gift Certificate to Taco Bell for the winner.
One of them ran the Nazi Rat Lines behind the back of Giovanni Battista Montini. (Pope Paul VI) He also
was in charge of pushing the UFO brainwashing theories into the public domain and he was once the hero of
John Armstrong, too. And he worked for J. Strom Thurmond.
The other one was a McCarthyite who served as Oswald's Travel Agent and worked as head of The Passport Office in
the State Dept. Security Office (SY). He got fired over the Walt Whitman Rostow confirmation hearings.
I can count on either the crack Australian research duo (Richards and Parker) or Tom Scully to get this one right.
These two suspects both used the OSJ honorary title in their signature with their correspondence. As in Lt. Col. XXXXXX Y ZZZZZ, OSJ
Holier than though Nazi Super-Catholics, and Conservative Military Right Wingers who took their role as the Protectorate of the Holy See saw JFK as an obstacle to the removal of the Communists in Korea, Viet Nam and Latin America.
ABOUT TEN OF RICHARD CONDON'S DIRTY DOZEN ARE MENTIONED OR INCLUDED BY REFERENCE HEREIN.
And how about this one. Even Major John Trevor, Sr. of The American Coalition of Patriotic Societies founded
by Wickliffe Draper, and his son John Trevor, Jr. of The Pioneer Fund also founded by Wickliffe Draper are mentioned herein.
John B. Trevor opposed Brown vs. Board of Education on eugenic grounds.
The Shickshinny Knights of Malta were his friends too: Charles Willoughby, Pedro A. del Valle, Bonner Fellers,
Sir Barry Domville, Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso...
I hate to say I told you so.... but I told you so.
And I hate to say that Richard Condon told you so... but he did. You just wouldn't listen.
Get on this aspect of the JFK case or you will forever be inhaling the dust from the fast-trackers.
Anyone see any other obvious suspects in the JFK mayhem here? Lemmie know.
This is a long and tedious posting, but it is well worth the effort. I posted it intact and will add comments later after I find out the name of the person who actually wrote this.
I now think that Richard Condon's informant was a member of the Military-Religious Protectorate. Who else could have given him ALL the names of those plotting to kill JFK when he was a Senator by 1958 when he was writing this historical novel? No one. Except maybe Wilbur Baldinger who worked for the Reuther Brothers, or Armen Dernounian (a/k/a John Roy Carlson) who wrote both The Plotters and Undercover during World War II. One was the NY Times bestseller for 1944. Thanks to Andy Winiarzyk who brought this work to my attention.
Here is the complete article... verbatim:
SOVEREIGN ORDER OF SAINT JOHN OF JERUSALEM
History and Lineage Charts Since 1797
Founded near Our Lord’s Holy Sepulcher c. 1050, the Brothers of the Hospital of Saint John is one of
the oldest orders of the Catholic Church. The Order of St. John of Jerusalem was elevated to a monastic order
in 1098 by which time it had developed into a military brotherhood known as the Hospitallers. The Brethren
defended their Hospital and ensured the health and safety of pilgrims coming to the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The King of Jerusalem confirmed the Hospitallers as an international corporation in 1104. The Apostolic See
became its perpetual Protector in 1113 by a Papal Bull of Paschal II. Renowned for skilled hospital care and
prowess in battle, the Hospitaller Knights became indispensable defenders of Christendom and the Order was
recognized as a sovereign state in 1191. The Order was forced by the Moslems from the Holy Land in 1291
and from Rhodes in 1523. The Convent of the Order was on the island of Malta, and its 70th Grand Master was
Prince Ferdinand von Hompesch, when the humanist revolution was creating widespread change on the
political map of Europe. The Knights of the Order used strategic foresight in gaining the Czar of Russia as a
secondary Protector because in 1798 Malta was seized by General Napoleon Bonaparte. A large contingent of
French Knights of Malta, who had accepted the precepts of the revolutionaries, joined Napoleon’s army. Most
of the remainder rallied to St. Petersburg, Russia, which was the home of their new powerful Protector.
There have been many questions concerning the legal and historical validity of the SOSJ after its
transfer from Malta to Russia, and later to the United States of America. This essay addresses various aspects
of the continuity of the Order’s government starting from the late 18 th century in St. Petersburg, and following it
to the United States of America in the beginning of the 20th century. The knights compromised their principles
as they focused on the survival and independence of their brotherhood, but they succeeded in preserving their
lineage intact. Other provincial groups of Knights of Malta eventually became sufficiently organized to warrant
their respective national monarchs to recognize them as distinct orders later in the 19th century. This is the
cause of the several orders of St. John and of Malta that we know today. The Sovereign Order of Saint John of
Jerusalem is, in contrast, the factual continuation of the Order from Malta, and was supported as such by the
Russian monarchy continuously until the death of Czar Kirill I in 1938.
THE SOSJ PRESERVES ITSELF BY DEFENDING MONARCHY
Shortly after their arrival in Russia, the exiled Knights of Malta joined with the Catholic Grand Priory of
Russia and elected their Orthodox and married Protector, Czar Paul I, as the 71st Grand Master. Grand Master
Czar Paul I helped to settle the SOSJ in the Russian capital city. He decreed that their Convent would remain at
the Imperial residence of St. Petersburg, and that his successors would continue as its protectors. He created a
second Grand Priory principally for his Orthodox nobility. He then invited non-Catholic Europeans, mainly
Lutherans, to join this new priory for the purpose of preserving the SOSJ and European monarchism by
perpetual opposition to the Humanist Revolution. His plan to return the Russian Orthodox Church, of which he
was the head, to full communion with the Catholic Church had created enemies among his closest advisors and
relatives. Czar Paul I, an unrecognized champion of the Order, was martyred, allegedly by Freemasons, in
1801.
The Holy See had often desired in the past to control the election of the Grand Master and the Order’s
history shows that the knights always successfully resisted this interference. The election of Czar Paul I had
broken the lineage of unmarried Catholic grand masters, but continued the jealously guarded tradition of
independent election of their leader by the knights. The Knights of Malta believed that the unusual
circumstances in world affairs which resulted in the relocation of the convent to Russia called for nontraditional
action to salvage the Order and to counter the Revolution. Election disputes developed after the death of Grand
Master Czar Paul I and this created a permanent split between the Sovereign Order in Russia and the surviving
Italian priories of knights. The Sovereign Council in Russia and Czar Alexander I asked the Pope to name the next Grand Master
“for one time only” from a list of candidates presented from the various priories of knights. The Pope selected
the Russian Catholic Grand Priory’s candidate, who became the 72nd Grand Master, John Baptist di Tommasi.
Tommasi died in 1805, and then the Pope tried to name Tommasi’s successor. This intervention was not
acceptable to the Sovereign Council and to the majority of the Knights of St. John who were determined to elect
their own leader as was the tradition and historic right of the Order. It was also generally known that Napoleon
was directing the Pope’s choice for Grand Master. The SOSJ chose the Russian Czar as the head and Protector
of the Order which was being managed by the Sovereign Council. They refused to recognize the papal
appointments which followed thereafter, for they were not legitimately initiated by the Order. Early in the 19
th
century, the Italian priories adopted the name Sovereign Military Order of Malta. The members of the fledgling
SMOM declared themselves the legitimate continuation of the Order and refused to recognize the Sovereign
Order of Saint John of Jerusalem. The knights of the SOSJ reciprocated by not recognizing the splinter group
in Italy. The disagreement continues today. Indeed, it has only been in the past few years that the SMOM has
grudgingly accepted Czar Paul I, but as the 72nd Grand Master of the Order. They continue to describe him as
Grand Master “in fact” but not “in justice” because the Czar was a married Orthodox Christian.
Nevertheless, the Order became an influential institution in Imperial Russia deeply involved with the
preservation of the European monarchies in general, and with the Romanoff dynasty in particular. The two
grand priories in Russia, one Catholic and the other principally Orthodox, educated young men at their school,
the Corps des Pages, in St. Petersburg. The Corps des Pages was the academy for the creation of new Knights
of Malta. The graduates of this school became leaders of the exclusive Guard Divisions and thereby protectors
of the Imperial Family of Russia. Their tradition of health care was continued through the hospital and relief
agency known as the Russian White Cross. The Sovereign Council, consisting of senior Knights of Justice,
governed the Order and ensured its legal continuation. Initially the Order was led by Lieutenant Grand Master
General Soltikoff after the death of Czar Paul I. Eventually the leadership of the SOSJ consisted of a President
of the Sovereign Council who was assisted by a Grand Chancellor. These men reported directly to each
reigning Russian czar who was described as the “Head of the Chapter.” Each Czarina was likewise traditionally
the honorary head of the White Cross. The czars took personal custody of the Order’s famous icon of Our Lady
of Philermos and the two relics which are the hand of St. John the Baptist and a piece of the True Cross. These
were kept either at the Winter Palace or at the SOSJ Priory Chapel of the Gatchina Palace, depending upon the
liturgical calendar. This arrangement continued until the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917.
Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Grand Protector
Sovereign Council Chancellor
1797 Prince GM Ferdinand Pope Pius VI
von Hompesch Czar Paul I
1798 GM Czar Paul I LGM J Count de Litta Prince de Conde GM Czar Paul I
1799 GM Czar Paul I LGM Field Marshall Prince de Conde GM Czar Paul I
Count Soltykoff
1801 LGM Field Marshall Undetermined Czar Alexander I Czar Alexander I
Count Soltykoff
1803 GM John Baptist di Tommasi Undetermined Czar Alexander Czar Alexander I
1805 Undetermined Czar Alexander Czar Alexander I
1825 Undetermined Senior Grand Duke Czar Nicholas I
1855 Undetermined Senior Grand Duke Czar Alexander II
1881 Undetermined Senior Grand Duke Czar Alexander III
1894 Undetermined G D Vladimir Czar Nicholas II
THE INTERNATIONAL WHITE CROSS OF THE SOSJ
In 1893 the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Prince Cantacuzene, Russian Admiral Grand
Duke Alexander Michaelovich and Russian Transportation Commissioner Colonel A. Cherep Spiridovich,
introduced the Russian SOSJ White Cross at the Chicago World’s Fair to American civic leaders. Pope Leo XIII
promised prominent civic leader Mrs. Potter Palmer of Chicago his support for her chairmanship of “Women of
the World” presentations at the Fair and assigned Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota to work with
her. Thereby began the SOSJ affiliation with an American White Cross movement supported by the Catholic
Church. The American Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland continued their affiliation with the White
Cross and the Knights of St. John for at least twenty years thereafter. Archbishop Ireland was the head chaplain
for the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic and therefore had a responsibility for the welfare of
American servicemen. Their initial efforts resulted in a White Cross headquarters in Portland, Oregon which
coordinated American nurses sent to Cuba and the Philippine Islands during the Spanish-American War.
The next public result of this Russian-American-Catholic coordination was an attempt in 1899 to get a
Title 36 Charter from the U.S. Congress for the National White Cross of America. The proposed charter would
have allowed the organization to continue hospital and relief work exclusively for the American military
community. While it was passed through both the House and Senate without dissension, it was not ultimately
signed into law by the President of the United States. General Nelson Miles and George Westinghouse of
Pittsburgh were among those involved directly in the White Cross charter effort. The charter bill was passed to
the foreign affairs desk and stalled indefinitely by those concerned about Russian and Catholic influence in the
organization. After all, the White Cross was a Russian institution of the SOSJ, and Roman Catholic Archbishop
John Ireland would be one of the founding members of the proposed American affiliate. Though the American
White Cross proposed exclusive support for the American military community, the obvious competition with the
American Red Cross which did similar work also concerned some politicians. Archbishop Ireland, Chief
Chaplain for the Grand Army of the Republic, General Miles, commanding General of the U.S. Army, George
Westinghouse of Pittsburgh, founder of Westinghouse Electric, Chicago industrialist Richard Teller Crane,
Chicago real estate mogul Potter Palmer, and many others continued life long affiliations with Russia or with the
Russian-American White Cross movement.
Several things occurred in 1901 which would have long term effects on the SOSJ. Grand Duke Boris
Vladimirovich, son of the Russian OSJ Grand Prior, assisted Richard Teller Crane of Chicago with plans to
organize the American White Cross in New York City. It is believed that they created the American
International Academy and named explorer and geologist Francis C. Nicholas as its first president. This pan-
American organization was designed for intelligence gathering operations. In 1901, the SMOM (Sovereign
Military Order of Malta headquartered in Rome) and Cardinal Gibbons announced that an American Grand
Priory would be started solely for the American Catholic members of a fraternal organization called the
“Knights of St. John” which had been started about 1880 in imitation of the old order. Colonel Cherep
Spiridovich, mentioned previously, became President of the Slavonic Society of Moscow. For five years, he
had been Serbian Consul to Moscow, and was a member of the Serbian and later of the Russian Secret Services.
The Slavonic Society was an intelligence operation which funneled arms and resources to nationalist elements
in the Balkans. The patron of the Society was Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. His wife, Grand Duchess
Ella, was the elder sister of the Russian Czarina.
In 1903 the American Red Cross administrators restructured their organization and curtailed the authority of their founder, Clara Barton. Barton had been influenced in her famous work by the Russian White Cross and by the Johanniter Orden relief services in Europe. Her friend, Princess Louise of Baden, was the daughter of Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II, Herrenmeister of the Johanniter Orden. The American Red Cross Field Service Superintendent was Edward Howe from the English St. John’s Ambulance Association. Barton resigned from the American Red Cross and established the National First Aid Association of America in the District of Columbia in 1904. She was assisted in this by men who had tried to start the American White Cross,
namely General Nelson A. Miles and Field Superintendent Edward Howe. In 1904, R. T. Crane, U.S. Consul for Persia, built an emergency hospital clinic in Chicago in memory
of a niece killed in a disastrous inner city fire. Mrs. Palmer sent funds from Chicago to the Russian Czarina,
Patroness of the Russian White Cross, to be used for relief of victims of the Russo-Japanese War. St. Andrew’s
Ambulance Society of Scotland received its new name and independence from the St. John’s Ambulance
Association of England.
In December, 1904 the American White Cross First Aid Society was started in Chicago by civic leader
Mrs. Potter Palmer, Roman Catholic Cardinal Gibbons, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, representatives of
the U.S. Army and Edward Howe, formerly the American Red Cross Field Superintendent. Edward Howe was
thus the field superintendant for both the National First Aid Association and for the American White Cross First
Aid Society. A similar arrangement existed in England between the Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem
and the British Red Cross. The Catholic Church, American civic leaders, the U.S. Army and the English St.
John’s Ambulance Association were thus working together with the Russian White Cross. This was the
“ecumenical beginning” of the SOSJ of which Grand Chancellor Pichel described in his history of the SOSJ in
1958. The American White Cross First Aid Society had Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. H. McCormick, Andrew
Carnegie, R. T. Crane, General J. D. Irwin and Cardinal Gibbons as Vice Presidents. By association, this
brought the Crane Family, the Cantacuzene Family, the McCormick Family, Nicholas Murray Butler, the
American military medical community, and the Catholic Church into the White Cross ambulance work which
soon followed.
Besides Edward Howe, the moving force in the White Cross was the famous Chicago surgeon and Illinois militia officer Dr. Nicholas Senn. Dr. Senn had been President of the American Medical Association and a founder of the Association of U. S. Military Surgeons. He had also been involved with the early organizing activities of the White Cross. He was associated with the Knights in Russia and had visited them in St. Petersburg in 1902. He was instrumental in the organization of the program in New York. Unfortunately he died prematurely in 1908. After his death the American Red Cross was assured of the lead in national relief work, and in 1910, reinstated their “First Aid to the Injured” program. The American White Cross therefore
eventually focused on large-scale relief overseas during war and famine. As we will later see, a 1921 relief
association of American Catholics from the White Cross evolved into a new American Association of the
SMOM in 1927.
The Chicago Crane family affiliation with the White Cross eventually led, in 1941, to their daughter Frances’ marriage to OSJ Hereditary Knight Commander Belosselsky-Belozersky, in New York City. The White Cross work of the Chicago Palmers was continued by their relatives, the Cantacuzenes. Prince Michel Cantacuzene and Julia Grant Cantacuzene were members of the Romanian Prince Cantacuzene and President General Ulysses S. Grant families. An early and prominent member of the American White Cross was Wall Street lawyer William Nelson Cromwell, who was responsible for the success of, among many other projects, McCormick Harvester and Carnegie’s U.S. Steel Corporation. He became Grand Prior of the American SOSJ in 1912. Charles R. Crane, son of R. T. Crane, became a philanthropist, diplomat, and, unfortunately, a financial supporter of the first Russian revolution of February, 1917.
IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST INTERNATIONAL ANARCHISTS THE SOSJ ADDS AN AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY The late 19th and early 20th centuries was an era of anarchist activism. (Meaning Sacco and Vanzetti) The SOSJ in Russia searched for potential allies in its ongoing defense of Christendom. An epidemic of political assassinations and the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905 prompted the expansion of the Order into the United States. In 1905 Count Alexis Ignatiev, Commander of the SOSJ Chevalier Guards, was assassinated in Russia. Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich was also assassinated. The Grand Duke was the patron of the Slavonic Society of Moscow, of
which Cherep Spiridovich was president. As mentioned previously, this agency was an intelligence organization
funneling arms into the Balkans in support of nationalists struggling against the Turks, and is believed to have
been an arm of the SOSJ. These events hastened the development of a permanent presence of the Knights of St.
John in America, in addition to their White Cross First Aid Society, to ensure the Order’s survival and to tap the
resources of the American Republic. At the time of his death, Grand Duke Sergei was the Military Governor General of Moscow and had worked to uncover the cells of anarchists who were responsible for constant murders of government officials to include his own father’s assassination. His wife Grand Duchess Elizabeth, sister of Czarina Alexandra, was involved in the research to unmask the anarchists and this interest brought them both into contact with an Orthodox spiritual writer named Sergei Alexandrovich Nilus. Nilus was one of the earliest men to produce a copy of the “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion” and Grand Duchess Ella introduced him and the Protocols to her sister and to Czar Nicholas II. Major General Arthur Cherep-Spiridovich, President of the Slavonic Society, was thereby one of the earliest members of any Intelligence Service to see the Protocols. He was given the mandate by the Russian Imperial family to investigate the matter and to spread the alarm about “the hidden hand” of international Zionism and its conspiracy to gain global control. He was made a Count of the Catholic
Church by Pope Pius X about 1907. He was President of the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, which he referred
to as the Celtic-Latino-Slav League, and was one of the principal organizers of the American branch of the
SOSJ. His patronesses, Czarina Alexandra and Grand Duchess Ella, were convinced of the authenticity of the
international conspiracy and eventually both were murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
After the death of Dr. Nicholas Senn in 1908, the American White Cross movement with headquarters
in Chicago was expanded further by union with the Knights of St. John and Malta Hospital and Relief
Association of Brooklyn, New York. The organization was named White Cross Hospital and Relief Association.
The main offices of the relief association remained at the GAR Hall, at 990 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. The
headquarters of this new association was apparently being prepared at what is now called the Audubon Terrace
on North Broadway in New York City. Senior knights were building a facility to be complete in every aspect for
the conduction of the affairs of the Order. The proposed headquarters on Broadway in New York City can be
seen at http://www.museumplanet.com/tour.php/nyc/at/5. Charles Hayward and George Bruce, formerly of the
Knights of St John and Malta Hospital and Relief Association, had joined with senior SOSJ knights, many of
whom were agents of the Imperial Russian Secret Service. Most of them were Catholic Knights of Malta of the
Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, and represented many of the nations of Europe. They considered this
American association not only as a new organization for the Americas, but as the continuation of the old Polish
Grand Priory that had been in the minority in Russia since 1815.
Major General Arthur Cherep Spiridovich, President of the remnant Catholic Grand Priory of Russia,
was among the coordinators of this expansion. By this time the general was also an emissary of Czarina
Alexandra of Russia, Patroness of the Russian SOSJ White Cross and of her sister Grand Duchess Elizabeth. As
an intelligence operative, he was handled by the Russian Ambassador to the U. S., Baron Rosen. He was also an
agent of the Serbian royal family. This began a long relationship between the OSJ in America and the
Yugoslavian royal family.
The four orders of St. John jockeyed for positions of influence in American society. These included the
SOSJ, the SMOM, The German Order of St. John and the British Venerable Order of St. John. The constant
interaction with the aristocracy, nobility and royalty of the Old World motivated some American members to
become involved in genealogical and racial studies. To qualify for knighthood in accordance with the ancient
rules of the SOSJ was nearly impossible for Americans. The result of the strict admittance qualifications was the
founding by private individuals of the National Genealogical Society, the interaction with an unrecognized
College of Arms of Canada, the founding of the American Heraldry Association, and, to some degree, the
support of the early racial eugenics movement. Various patriotic and genealogical societies were established
during this period to qualify Americans and Canadians for OSJ knighthood. The Lords of Manors of Baltimore,
Scions of Colonial Cavaliers, Order of Colonial Dames, Imperial Order of the Yellow Rose, and the Order of the
White Crane are some of the societies the American knights started.
In 1909, Grand Duke Vladimir was assassinated in Russia, and his son, Grand Duke Cyril, thereby
became Grand Prior of the OSJ Russian Grand Priory. Grand Duke Vladimir had cultivated relations between
the SOSJ in Russia, the German Order of St. John and the Spanish Order of St. John the Baptist. The German
and Spanish orders were branches of the original Order. He had also encouraged the American members of the
White Cross to further develop those relationships. German influence on the new OSJ American Association
through the Johanniter Orden Protector Emperor Wilhelm II and his brother Prince Henry of Prussia was evident
before World War I with exchange visits by the industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt and President of Columbia
University Nicholas Murray Butler. German influence also came from the Czarina and her sister Ella who were
both members of German royalty. That relationship, which developed with both the Protestant Johanniter Orden
and with the Catholic Malteser Orden, continued from joint efforts in the Baltic during the Russian Civil War
through the redevelopment of the German Intelligence Service after WWII.
Colonel Dr. Wm. Sohier Bryant, MD, of New York City, and lawyer Wm. B. Stites of New Jersey wrote
a constitution in 1911 to form an American Grand Priory of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem from
members of the American White Cross. The American Grand Priory constitution was accepted by the
membership in 1912. The new Grand Priory included the Grand Priory of Russia, i.e., the former Catholic OSJ
Grand Priory of Poland. The headquarters of the knights was initially the meeting hall of the Knights of St.
John and Malta at Wurzler’s Building, 315 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Most early meetings
were held at Joseph Burrows office at 56-58 Pine Street, near Wall Street. Wall Street lawyer William Nelson
Cromwell became American Grand Prior in 1912, and meetings thereafter were usually held at his offices in the
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. According to Pichel, this continued until 1929, after which the meetings were held at
Dr. Bryant’s office in the Murray Hill section of New York City.
In 1912 the Order consisted of the Russian Grand Priory in Russia and the new American Grand Priory
and its subsidiary, the Catholic Grand Priory of Russia, which included remnants of the Spanish Caballeros
Hospitalarios de San Juan Bautista. The Russian Grand Priory was composed mainly of Slavic Knights of the
Orthodox Faith. The American Grand Priory leaders were mostly socially prominent Protestant Episcopalians
from New York City and Chicago. There was also a small group of American descendants of Catholic Celtic
Jacobites, who were still followers of the old Stuart Pretender to the throne of England and Scotland. The
Pretender at the time was Queen Mary IV of Bavaria, and an army physician named Edgar Erskine Hume was
among the Knights of Malta who later considered Mary’s successor, Crown Prince Rupprecht, as their “rightful
sovereign.” The American Grand Prior, William Nelson Cromwell, and Dr. Francis C. Nicholas had had contact
with Spanish Knights of St. John during years of preparation work for the American Panama Canal project.
Interaction with the Spanish knights was also the result of Americans meeting Spanish knights during the
Spanish-American War from 1898 to 1900, and later during the Mexican civil wars. The remnant Castellany of
Guadalajara, Mexico, of the Spanish Order of St. John the Baptist joined the American Grand Priory with their
monarchist Pretender, Don Agustin Yturbide. King Alphonso XIII of Spain was the protector of the remnants
of the Spanish Order which was given a papal blessing as late as 1879. He expanded his association to the
SOSJ in America.
American Catholics, however, had been joining a fraternal organization similar to the present day
Knights of Columbus, called the Knights of St. John, since it was founded in the 1880’s. By the turn of the
century, a union of all military style fraternal associations of the Catholic Church in America, to be called the
Roman Catholic Union of the Knights of St. John, was supported by Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland.
Therefore, Catholic knights of the SOSJ had difficulty determining their loyalties, not only because of the
broad spectrum of their own origins and nationalities, but also because of the presence of this non-chivalric
fraternal organization supported by the Catholic Church. Prominent Catholics associated with the SOSJ who
were disenchanted with their order’s political leanings eventually founded, in 1927, the American Association
of the SMOM. Edgar Erskine Hume, MD, was among this group of former members of the SOSJ.
Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Grand Protector
Sovereign Council Chancellor
1912 Undetermined Czar Nicholas II
Russian Grand Priory G D Cyril
American Grand Priory W S Bryant W N Cromwell J G B Bulloch
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich (Celtic-Latin-Slav League)
a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. G H Bruce
THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY VENTURES INTO FOREIGN SERVICE
The English started a private intelligence gathering operation supported by their government in 1904
called the Legion of Frontiersmen. This organization, composed of wealthy patriotic English volunteers,
prefigured MI6. Members of this group, traveling worldwide as was their customary lifestyle, became an
important source for the British Empire’s constant need for information. The American White Cross was being
used in similar fashion, and the new American Grand Priory expanded on that practice. The most prominent
families in the United States joined the American Grand Priory of the SOSJ, and thereby developed the first
American civilian foreign intelligence network.
American Grand Priory leaders, Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, Archer
Huntington, founder of the Hispanic Society of America, William Nelson Cromwell, Wall Street lawyer and
Francis C. Nicholas, founder of the American International Academy, are among those who crafted the
American Grand Priory into an intelligence organization. Nicholas, a mining engineer and explorer, had done
Cromwell’s Panama Canal construction feasibility studies. He had also done geological research in Central and
South America for Archer Huntington and Colonel William Lamb, who were supplying fuel coal to the Russian
Navy. These men wielded significant influence in the United States during the late 19th through the mid 20
th centuries.
Some results of their careers include the founding of the Republic of Panama, and the successful
purchase and construction of the Panama Canal. They were also responsible for the founding of the Pan-
American “Organization of American States” and directly influenced the founders of the Central Intelligence
Agency. Others prominent in the OSJ at this time included John Jacob Astor until his death on the Titanic, J. P. Morgan, J P Morgan, Jr. and the extended Cornelius Vanderbilt and Chicago Crane families. The
Mexican White Cross association was promoted by Don Agustin Yturbide, OSJ, Pretender to the royal throne of Mexico.
Cromwell used the College of Arms of Canada, of which Yturbide was President, to create dissension during
congressional hearings into the Panama Canal controversy. Legalistic maneuvering about ancient French noble
rights in Canada brought pressure on Great Britain to drop complaints about the U. S. control of the canal. This
preceeded by many decades the modern secession movement of French speaking Canada. Grand Chancellor
Bulloch was involved in this movement which tended to divide the OSJ into Anglophile and Francophile
factions. Cromwell had become a seasoned veteran at creating trusts, monopolies and even countries by using
revolution if necessary. The principle White Cross societies besides America and Russia were located in Spain
and Mexico. Dr. Francis C. Nicholas was involved during the Mexican Civil War from 1912 to 1914 as a
White Cross “observer.” The English St. John’s Ambulance Brigade was started in Canada, and may have
helped with the founding of the White Cross in Brooklyn as well.
The American Grand Priory also had a history of cooperation with members of the monarchist and anti-
Semitic Russian Black Hundred’s Movement due to their association with Cherep Spiridovich. Admiral Grand
Duke Alexander Michaelovich, OSJ, was the head of Russian Naval Intelligence. He spent time in the United
States developing relationships with the wealthiest people in American society. His regular traveling
companion became Major Barclay Harding Warburton of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence community.
Warburton was a member of the “East Coast Establishment,” and was closely related to the Wannamaker and Vanderbilt families. The American Grand Priory cooperated with Russian Naval Intelligence and the Russian Secret Service directed by Baron Rosen. Grand Duke Alexander was elected the 73rd Grand Master of the SOSJ in 1913 during meetings in New York City at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
Prince Grand Master Lt Grand Master President of the Grand Prior Grand Protector
Sovereign Council Chancellor 1913 Grand Master G D Alexander Michaelovich Undetermined Czar Nicholas II
Russian Grand Priory G D Cyril
American Grand Priory W S Bryant W N Cromwell J G B Bulloch
1. Grand Priory of Russia MG Cherep Spiridovich
a. White Cross Hospital and Relief Assn. W W Butcher A MacNaughton
The First World War found the American Grand Priory allying itself with the Entente. In 1915 Colonel
Robert R. McCormick, of Chicago Tribune fame, reported from the Russian front lines while interviewing Knights of Malta who were graduates of the SOSJ Corps des Pages.
The White Cross Hospital and Relief Association named its overseas work “The American Ambulance” partly because Socialists had taken to the use of the “White Cross” name. Anarchists embedded themselves into the Red Cross movement as well. This was similar to the use of the so-called “Peace Movement” by internationalists, socialists and Communists in the 1960’s. Members of the American Grand Priory quickly became the leaders of massive relief efforts during WWI. W.N. Cromwell helped to start the Lafayette Escadrille Flying Corps with Cornelius Vanderbilt and Dr. Ed Gros of the American Ambulance. This Corps was later supported by the Order of Lafayette. Rep.
Hamilton Fish of New York was both a member of this order and the reinstituted Order of Lafayette following
WWII. Unfortunately, the SOSJ is implicated in the support and possibly in the direction of the “bloodless
revolution” in Russia in the opening months of 1917.
REVOLUTIONARIES WITHIN THE SOSJ CONTRIBUTE TO ANARCHY
Until the First World War, relations between the German Order of St. John, the English Venerable Order
of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, and the SOSJ were mostly cooperative. The leaders of these
organizations, many of them members of royal houses, were often close family relatives and/or financially
interdependent. The European royal families were well aware of the survival of the SOSJ in Russia. Queen
Victoria’s son, the Duke of Connaught, led the English Venerable Order of St. John of Jerusalem for many
decades. He was closely associated with, and related to, Grand Duke Alexander and others of the Romanoff
family. He had been present in 1894 at the marriage of Czar Nicholas II and Alexandra of Germany in the tiny
Winter Palace Chapel, in which the chief relics and icon of the SOSJ were prominently venerated. Before
Alexander I became its king, the Duke of Connaught had been seriously considered for the throne of
Yugoslavia. He was Grand Duchess Victoria Melita’s uncle, and at one time was the potential father-in-law of
Grand Duke Alexander’s daughter.
The Duke of Connaught, led for many decades both the English Venerable Order and, as Grand Master
of the United Grand Lodge of England, the Masonic Knights Templar. As the English Governor-General of
Canada from 1910 to 1916, he had a relationship with the American Masonic Knights of Malta. He also had
some influence over the American Masonic Knights Templar. Unfortunately, the new American members of
the White Cross and SOSJ American Grand Priory did not heed the prohibitions on Freemasonic affiliation that
had been enforced in Russia. When they joined with the SOSJ from Russia, some persisted in their Masonic
affiliation as Templars. The amalgamation of the SOSJ with the Knights of St. John and the Malta Hospital and
Relief Association brought Freemasons into the ranks of the American Grand Priory. The new Grand Priory of
1912 was thereby influenced by Freemasonry and Anti-Catholicism. The Freemasons who came into the Grand
Priory had believed in a descent of their fraternity from an ill-defined Templar-Malta Order from France, or
from the old “reformed” Torpichen Preceptory in Scotland. Some of the new members were the
aforementioned Catholic Jacobites but there was also a small but significant number of Rosicrucians. A
significant philosophy of the Rosicrucians included an anti-Semitic and racial superiority agenda. Some
prominent members appear to have persisted in the Freemasonic quest for humanistic “freedoms” which had
caused the downfall so many Christian kingdoms. In Imperial Russia it was widely known that Freemasonry
had been prohibited because it is a fraternity designed for Revolution. Their personal philosophies supported
the exportation of “democratic” ideals of the United States of America, which did not translate peacefully into
the needs for social change in Imperial Russia.
The American Grand Prior, William Nelson Cromwell, was a well known adept at high level regime
change. The lifestyles enjoyed by Americans, combined with the Wilsonian theme of spreading Democracy
worldwide, appear to have seduced both Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander and Russian Grand Prior Grand
Duke Cyril into revolutionary scheming against Czar Nicholas II. Many others in the Imperial Romanoff
family were sympathetic to liberal Socialist plans to end the absolute monarchy in Russia, and the American
Grand Priory of the SOSJ is implicated in their revolutionary activities. Unfortunately the Czar and his wife
were also influenced by occultism which was in vogue in their society, and of which Rasputin was an infamous
practitioner. This behavior during wartime on the part of the Czar and his family caused extreme anxiety in
Russia and helped to prompt militant action among the diverse forces determined to transform the monarchy.
The story of Rasputin’s influence on the Imperial family and on the politics of Russia is widely known. It is not
generally known, however, that Grand Duke Alexander directed the assassination of the spiritualist monk
Gregori Rasputin in late 1916. The men directly involved in the murder of Rasputin were the Grand Duke’s
sons, son-in-law, cousin and a member of British MI6. The Russians were all students or graduates of the SOSJ
Corps des Pages. Grand Duke Alexander afterward successfully interceded with the czar on behalf of the
assassins, all Knights of St. John.
Grand Duchess Ella was the head of the White Cross Supreme Council in Russia which oversaw all
Hospitaller activity during WWI. In 1916, the OSJ “American Ambulance in Russia,” which was organized by
Hamilton Fish III, Dr. Philip Newton, Capt. Philip Lydig, Nicholas Murray Butler, Colonel Robert McCormick
and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt of New York City and Chicago, started service on the Russian Front. Their
patroness was a daughter of the Czar, Grand Duchess Tatiana Romanoff. The American Grand Prior, William
Nelson Cromwell, distanced himself from the adventure as his name was too well connected with American
engineered foreign revolutions of the recent past. Instead, Charles Richard Crane of the Chicago White Cross
assisted with financing revolutionary change in Russia. The American Ambulance in Russia, at least
financially and philosophically, supported the Kerensky Regime. The Knights may have also tactically
supported the first Russian revolution in the early months of 1917. Prime Minister Kerensky was on the payroll
of the American Ambulance. Grand Duke Cyril was in charge of the troops available to defend the Czar in St.
Petersburg. He used his naval guard corps to passively support the forced abdication of Czar Nicholas II.
Though many blamed both the February and later the October Revolutions on Jewish revolutionaries supported
by Germany, both Grand Duke Cyril and Grand Duke Alexander were ostracized by many Russians because of
their alliances with the Freemasons and other Social Humanists. Grand Duke Alexander was able to retain his
elevated status due to the position of his wife, the Grand Duchess Xenia, sister of the Czar.
THE KORNILOV AFFAIR
A Counter Revolution was soon planned by Russian Guard officers under Generals Keller, Markov and
Kornilov. General Count Keller, OSJ, an intimate of the Russian Imperial family and friend of German
monarchists, had refused to accept the abdication of the Czar. As an influential member of the SOSJ he
singlehandedly started the resistance of the Knights whose historical charge was the defense of Imperial Russia
and the Romanoff family. These monarchists managed to place many of their sympathizers in command of the
armed forces in St. Petersburg. Colonel Pavel Bermondt, who served in an Ussuri Cossack unit of Keller’s 3rd
Cavalry Corps, was one of these officers and was given command of an Ulan cavalry regiment in St.
Petersburg. Captain Sidney Reilly of MI6 was also in charge of a cavalry contingent during this conspiracy. A
coup d’etat was planned which would coordinate the armed members of a large number of Russian patriotic
societies to join with an approaching Guard army under General Kornilov to depose Kerensky. Kerensky was
forewarned and he armed the Bolsheviks to defend his government and the city against the Monarchists. The
Kornilov uprising attempt failed and most of the conspirators, including Bermondt, were jailed. Many were
able to escape with the assistance of sympathizers. Kerensky had armed the Bolsheviks and the failed Kornilov
coup d’etat had thus prepared the way for a third, but violent revolt, in October of 1917. The October
Revolution of the atheistic Bolsheviks was successful and merciless.
THE SOSJ RESPONDS TO THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION
As noted above, the first response against the socialist revolutionaries of the Kerensky Provisional
Government came from Count Keller, OSJ. The Count immediately started working with German General
Rudiger Von der Goltz to build a German-Russian army of monarchist volunteers in the Baltic states. This
cooperation between the German and Russian orders of St. John was the attempt to return both Germany’s
Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czar Nicholas II to their thrones.
On September 15, 1917, J. G. B. Bulloch, MD, first cousin of President Teddy Roosevelt, incorporated
the Order of Lafayette in New York City with an international membership as a recruiting front for the SOSJ.
An American counter revolutionary effort became immediately prominent since it became apparent from both
government and military intelligence reports that Jewish anarchists were in the majority in the new Bolshevik
government in St. Petersburg. The revolutionaries had developed their operational base in the Lower East Side
district of New York City. The American Grand Priory became isolated due to its support of the first
“Bloodless Revolution” in Russia and thereafter remained in the hands of operatives of the anti-Bolshevik
intelligence communities. The American Grand Priory of the SOSJ concentrated its activities in NYC,
Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. It worked to defeat the international anarchist
movements and to expose their aligned secret societies.
The Poles responded both to stop the Bolshevik advance into their territory and to take advantage of
their new found independence from both Russia and Germany. The Polish White Cross was founded in New
York a few days after the Bolshevik Revolution. Its president was Count Jerzy Potocki, OSJ, who became
Polish Ambassador to the United States. Ignace Paderewski, the famous pianist, helped to start the Polish
White Cross in New York in October and used the resources of the American Ambulance in Russia. His wife,
Madame Paderewski, daughter of Baron Rosen, OSJ, was Patroness of the Polish White Cross. The Polish
effort was both an intelligence operation and relief service of the old Polish Grand Priory which was now part
of the American Grand Priory. The Catholic Knights of the Polish White Cross eventually renamed their
organization the Grand Priory of Podolia in honor of the birthplace of Ignace Paderewski. Captain Sidney
Reilly of MI6 and Colonel William J. Donovan, US State Department Intelligence, were also associates of
Ignace Paderewski, who became the first President of Free Poland.
COUNT KELLER, PRINCE AWALOFF AND GRAND DUKE CYRIL
SALVAGE THE RUSSIAN GRAND PRIORY
After the failed Kornilov Affair, imprisonment and the October Revolution, many Guard officers were
able to escape and flee to the Don Cossacks in the Ukraine. There they helped to create the Volunteer Army
with the assistance of Ukrainian separatists. Generals Alekseev, Denikin and Kolchak were the early leaders
and they started the Russian Civil War to defeat the Bolsheviks.
Grand Duke Cyril was now a potential inheritor of the Russian throne and gave his support to the
remnant of the SOSJ headed by Count Keller and his fellow Knights. The Russian Order of St. John rallied to
form a secretive organization of officers and civilian nobility called the White Cross Society under Generals
Markov and Count Keller. The Russian Grand Duke Cyril and the German Grand Duke of Hesse were
members of the organization as German monarchists assisted the White Cross effort to rescue their kin, the
Czarina Alexandra and her family. American Lt. Col. Joseph Boyle and his machine gun detachment may have
been part of this effort by the Order to rescue members of the Imperial family. Among the conspirators was the
son-in-law of Rasputin and the Czarinas best friend Anna Vyrubova. The Imperial family was murdered by the
Bolsheviks in July, 1918. The historical record shows that Count Keller and most of the well known General
officers from the SOSJ fought for Imperial Russia until killed in action against the Bolsheviks during the
following year.
General Markov had been the Director of the Nicholas Cavalry School in St. Petersburg. This school
was a post graduate school for the elite cavalry Guard officers most of whom came from the SOSJ Corps des
Pages. Markov organized his Guard officers on February 12, 1918 and instituted a black Maltese cross badge
for those in his unit. Count Keller was a graduate of the Corps des Pages and his father had been one of its last
Commandants. General Keller used a large plain white Maltese cross breast badge for all troops under his
command. The belief in an international socialist conspiracy was central to their understanding of the
revolution. Count Keller also worked with monarchist German General Rudiger Von der Goltz to start a
German backed government in the Baltic and recruited Russian POW’s in Germany for this army. As noted
earlier their combined plan was to join their forces in an attempt to replace the rightful monarchs both in
Germany and in Russia. Colonel Bermondt was the chief of counter intelligence for this Volunteer Army and
he promoted the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion and the international conspiracy theory widely among the
White Russian and later among the German troops in the Baltic. General Keller was soon fighting Ukrainian
Socialist formations and was captured in Kiev with the remnant of the Volunteer Army in December 1918.
Bermondt and many of his fellow Monarchists were once again jailed. This time they were scheduled for
execution. Count Keller was shot by the Bolsheviks while in captivity. Fortunately a German army freed many
of the Russian officers, including Bermondt, and took them back to Germany where they were interned in Camp
Salzvedel near Berlin. German Monarchists had already taken up the cause of the Russian White Guard as they
faced the same threat from international Bolshevism and their own Socialist Weimar Government.
The SOSJ ties encouraged with the Germans before the war were bearing fruit for the exiled knights
who had survived the Revolution. Beside his association with William Nelson Cromwell, Colonel Bermondt
now became connected with other members of the American Grand Priory and to Boris Brasol and Major
General Count Cherep Spiridovich due to his work against the one world conspiracy. It was in Camp
Salzvedel during January to April 1919 that Colonel Bermondt and his fellow Russian Guard officers reestablished
the Russian Grand Priory of the Sovereign Imperial Order of St. John of Jerusalem. On March 4,
1919 by Order number 24 he made the Maltese cross breast badge the emblem of his SOSJ army and enameled
it black in memory of General Graf Keller. High level German nationalists backed this re-establishment of the
Russian Sovereign Imperial Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Among them was General Ludendorff who had
been Chief of Staff of the German Army during WWI. His chief intelligence officer Major Walter Nicholai was also involved. The Protector of the Order was the legitimate heir to the Russian throne, Grand Duke Cyril
Vladimirovich. Grand Duke Cyril continued to finance the SOSJ venture with the help of the American Grand
Priory. Prince Awaloff and Grand Duke Cyril planned to join with German forces to drive the Bolsheviks out
of the Baltic. This idea to cooperate with Germany was unique to these Knights of St. John who believed that
Russian-German cooperation was the only way to rid the world of the Bolsheviks. In 1919 Colonel Prince Pavel Awaloff-Bermondt, supported by the Johanniter Orden, the Romanoff Pretender Grand Duke Cyril, and American financier J. P. Morgan, Jr., OSJ, became Commander in chief of the Russian Imperial Army. He led the SOSJ and apparently Johanniterorden plan, financed through attorney W. N. Cromwell, OSJ American Grand Priory, to clear the Bolsheviks from the Baltic and to set up a pro-German
government. Most of the officials of what became known in the Fall of 1919 as the West Russian Government
were members of the OSJ. Prince Awaloff recorded much of this information in his memoirs which he wrote in
1925 in Hamburg, Germany.
Bermondt was first addressed by the royal title of Prince Awaloff in September, 1919. Prince Awaloff
states that he was adopted at this time by Prince Michael Awaloff from whom he gained the royal title. It is just
as likely that Bermondt was elected Grand Master of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem which would
have given him the royal title of Prince. We must wait for further information to confirm this suspicion and we
therefore retain the claims of Grand Duke Alexander as Grand Master during this period. During the Baltic
campaign, Baron Rudolf Engelhardt and Baron Engelhardt-Schnellenstein, both close relatives of Lt. Grand
Master Baron Scipio Engelhardt-Schnellenstein (1954-1956) and Admiral Felix Count Luckner, who also
became the Lt. Grand Master of the OSJ (1962-1966) worked with Prince Awaloff in the Baltic venture. The
Bavarian Freikorps, some of whom were associated with the Stewart Pretender Crown Prince Rupprecht, wore
the Maltese Cross. (The possible connection with the Royal Stuart Jacobite Pretender in Bavaria has not yet
been researched by the SOSJ.)
The relics and icon were rescued from the SOSJ Priory at the Gatchina Palace outside of St. Petersburg
in October, 1919, by men of the army of the White Russian General Yudenitch. They were brought to Reval,
Estonia, and delivered to the former Russian Master of Court Ceremonies Count Alexei Ignatiev. Ignatiev was
head of the Russian White Cross in Estonia, a leader of the Russian SOSJ and a son of the murdered Count
Ignatiev, Commander of the SOSJ Chevalier Guards. The relics and icon were then delivered to the SOSJ
headquarters in Mitau and there were solemnly received by Prince Awaloff and General Von der Goltz. Later
the relics and icon were placed in the hands of the Romanov Queen Mother, Dagmar Feodorovna. She kept the
relics at Villa Hvidore, her residence in exile near Copenhagen, until her death in 1928. Awaloff proclaimed
himself Governor-General of Western Russia for a brief time. The short-lived government in the Duchy of
Courland, Latvia, with headquarters in Mitau, was the closest that the Order had come to gaining a permanent
sovereign territory since the loss of Malta in 1798.
There were other plans by Russian exiles to retake their country. One of them was planned and
undertaken by Baron Taube as potential Secretary of State who enlisted Russian Jewish bankers to fund General Yudenitch in an attempt to retake St. Petersburg with a Northwestern Army.
They also would have supported Grand Duke Cyril as the new Czar. Their White Russian army in northwestern Russia ultimately failed in its attempt to take St. Petersburg. Awaloff refused to place his command under General Yudenitch and Baron Taube, whom he considered to be controlled by “conspiratorial forces”, that is, the Jewish bankers. Baron Taube eventually became an antagonist of the SOSJ.
The Western Russian Volunteer Army of Prince Awaloff initially gained advantage and took Riga from
the Bolsheviks. However, the British Naval Squadron that had been supporting the left flank of General
Yudenitch’s drive into St. Petersburg for political reasons abandoned Yudenitch and directed its guns on the
forces of the SOSJ. This intervention caused the defeat of both the SOSJ anti-Bolshevik force of Prince
Awaloff and of the drive into St. Petersburg by General Yudenitch. The Knights of St. John ultimately
retreated into Germany due to lack of support from the socialist Weimar Government and the treason of the
Entente British and French governments. These entities propped up the Bolshevik regime which was about to
crumble. The result of this intervention was 75 years of Communist dictatorship for a large portion of the
world. The Knights of this army of the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem became known as the “Baltic
Brotherhood”.
When the SOSJ was exiled from the Russian Imperial City its historic mission as defender of the
Catholic Church and secondary mission to defend Orthodox Russia brought it into opposition to those Orders of
St. John that were connected to Freemasonry. It was widely known that Grand Master Czar Paul I had been
killed by Freemasons, and that Czar Alexander II was killed by anarchists with Freemasonic backgrounds. It
was acknowledged that these same revolutionary philosophies were now responsible for the loss of yet another
Christian monarchy, and for the deaths of Czar Nicholas II and his family. This included, among the many
members of the OSJ who were simply murdered by the Bolsheviks: the Patroness of the American Grand Priory
relief operation, Grand Duchess Tatiana, the Patroness of the White Cross, Czarina Alexandra and the Protector
and leader of the SOSJ, Czar Nicholas II.
Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander’s friend, Major Warburton, was the U.S. Military Charge
d’Affaires in Paris at the end of the war. Grand Duke Alexander and his immediate family survived the
Bolshevik purge of the Romanovs during a long captivity in the Crimea. When rescued by the British navy he
went straight to Paris. He attempted to get into the international peace talks which followed WW I to plea for
help for those trapped inside Russia. He was refused admission to the peace conference and all of his personal
efforts failed to save any of the Russian Imperial Family, who had, unknown to him, already been murdered by
the Bolsheviks. Thereafter, it appears that Grand Master Grand Duke Alexander could not cope with his
involvement in the first revolution which installed the Provisional Government. All of his brothers were killed
by the Bolsheviks soon after they seized power from the Kerensky regime. The Grand Duke spent the rest of
his life involved in spiritualism, apparently attempting to gain forgiveness from his murdered brother-in-law,
Czar Nicholas II.
THE AMERICAN GRAND PRIORY JOINS THE FIGHT
AGAINST THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONALE
The American Grand Priory was peopled with the scions of Wall Street and the “Eastern
Establishment.” These men and women, many of them active or reserve officers in the military, worked with the
fledgling western military intelligence communities and made the Grand Priory the first civilian foreign
intelligence organization in the United States. Their intimate associates included the brothers John Foster and Allen Welsh Dulles who were nephews of U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing. Both were Wall Street lawyers who worked directly for William Nelson Cromwell, OSJ. John Foster Dulles eventually became President Eisenhauer’s Secretary of State, and Allen Welsh Dulles was instrumental in founding the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. One of the Chicago Crane sons became Asst. Secretary of State under Lansing. Another close associate was Wall Street lawyer “Wild Bill” William J. Donovan, who founded the Office of Strategic Services, and eventually became a knight of the SMOM. As a result of the “success” of SOSJ international ventures President Woodrow Wilson and his friend Colonel Edward M. House had created “The
Inquiry” at the American Grand Priory headquarters in New York City in 1917. This early “think tank” became
the internationalist advisory Council on Foreign Relations in 1921, which, ironically, is widely thought to be in control of the “One World Conspiracy.” The liberal wing of the Knights of Malta continued to be active in international affairs. The Irish White Cross relief effort was run by future founders of the American SMOM, James Phelan and Judge Morgan J. O’Brien.
Grand Duke Cyril became the head of a secret army scattered around the world in which the SOSJ
played a significant role. In New York City alone there were reportedly three thousand former White Russian
military officers organizing for counter-revolution. The SOSJ was an important participant in counterrevolutionary
engagement in Eastern Europe throughout the 20th century. It engaged in small unit warfare in
the regions controlled by the Communists. [B]The Order gathered intelligence on the international revolutionary movements. It engaged in psychological warfare operations including the distribution of anti-Bolshevist information such as the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” This document allegedly details a plot by elite Jews to control the world through finance, and it has been the cause of political and social unrest during the past one hundred years. Because the Communist movement in Russia was dominated by Jews from New York, the
American military intelligence community continued to join the ranks of the SOSJ as sworn enemies of the
“International Conspiracy.” Among those included were the following: Colonel Harris Ayres Houghton, MD, Colonel John Jacob Astor, Major General Ralph Van Deman, Colonel William Sohier Bryant, MD, Major
General Frederick Dent Grant, Colonel Nicholas Biddle, Major Barclay Harding Warburton, Major Walter
Miller, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Major John B. Trevor and Captain Sidney
Reilly. All of these prominent members of the armed forces have close association with their successors in the Military Affairs Committee of the SOSJ that are found in the Order records well into the 1980’s.
Cherep Spiridovich was personally presented to J. Edgar Hoover by the US Ambassador to Romania, T.
Tileston Wells, and was supported by Grand Duke Cyril’s U.S. representative, Boris Brasol, by U.S. Treasury Secretary, Robert McAdoo and of course by the Chicago Crane family. Many of the White Russian armed forces were encamped in the Balkan countries after the Russian Civil War. These forces, often led by Knights of Malta, represented the “fifty American oriented strongholds” which were promised in Eastern Europe by Cherep Spiridovich to (former President Herbert) Hoover and Lansing during his presentations. Presented as a private alternative to the
League of Nations, the A-L-S League, which was the remnant of the SOSJ in Eastern Europe, had been a
bulwark against the spread of Islam. It now was promoted as a force against the new menace of Bolshevism.
This A-L-S League was soon being called the Anti-Bolshevist League. Cromwell, the Dulles brothers, and the
Masonic Knights Templar T. Tileston Wells founded, in 1920, the Society of Friends of Romania as a successor
to the American Roma...
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