Seymour Hersh: Many in Joint Spec'l Ops Command ... Kinghts of Malta

[Jan Klimkowski]

Of course over the years many researchers have found crucial leads ending up with SMOM.

Here's an old, but important, Covert Action article:

"The Catholic Right and the Knights of Malta, in particular Baron Franz von Papen (see sidebar), played a critical role in Hitler's assumption of power and the launching of the Third Reich's Twentieth Century Crusade."



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

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

WINTER 1986 Number 25

Pages 27-38

[1 of 4 ....... 27-29]

KNIGHTS OF DARKNESS

THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA

INTRODUCTION

The Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, known also as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, or SMOM, is juridically, politically, and historically unique in the world today.

Representing initially the most powerful and reactionary segments of the European aristocracy, for nearly a thousand years beginning with the early crusades of the Twelfth Century, it has organized, funded, and led military operations against states and ideas deemed threatening to its power. It is probably safe to say that the several thousand Knights of SMOM, principally in Europe, North, Central, and South America, comprise the largest most consistently powerful and reactionary membership of any organization in the world today.

Although an exclusively [Roman] Catholic organization, in this century it has collaborated with, and given high awards to non-Catholic extremists in its current crusade against progressive forces in the West, the national liberation movements, and the socialist countries.

To be a Knight, one must not only be from wealthy, aristocratic lineage, one must also have a psychological worldview which is attracted to the "crusader mentality'' of these "warrior monks." Participating in SMOM � including its initiation ceremonies and feudal ritual dress � members embrace a certain caste/class mentality; they are sociologically and psychologically predisposed to function as the ''shock troops" of Catholic reaction. And this is precisely the historical role the Knights have played in the wars against Islam, against the Protestant "heresy,'' and against the Soviet ''Evil Empire."

The Catholic Right and the Knights of Malta, in particular Baron Franz von Papen (see sidebar), played a critical role in Hitler's assumption of power and the launching of the Third Reich's Twentieth Century Crusade.

SMOM's influence in Germany survived World War II intact. On November 17, 1948 SMOM awarded one of its highest honors, the Grand Cross of Merit, to Reinhard Gehlen, the Nazi chief of intelligence on the Soviet front. He was subsequently installed by the Americans as the first chief of West Germany's equivalent of the CIA, the Bundesnachtrichtdienst (BND: federal secret service), under West German Chancellor Adenauer, a devout Catholic who had received the Magistral Grand Cross personally from SMOM Grand Master Prince Chigi.

After the appointment of Knight of Malta William Casey as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and another Knight, James Buckley, as head ot U.S. propaganda against Eastern Europe at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, several historians noted with interest President Reagan's call during the summer of 1982 for a "crusade" against the "Evil Empire" in Eastern Europe.

[ including Balkans ...... JP ]

In addition to Casey, and James Buckley, its current members, or Knights, after the feudal fashion, include Lee Iacocca, John McCone, William Buckley, Alexander Haig, Alexandre de Marenches (the chief of French Intelligence under Giscard d'Estaing, himself a Knight of SMOM), Otto von Hapsburg, and various leaders of the fascist P-2 Masonic lodge in Italy. While its organizational funding is relatively modest, its leverage is maximized by the presence of its Knights in key positions in other private and governmental structures throughout the world.

FRANZ von PAPEN

A leading figure in Hitler's coming to power was SMOM Franz von Papen, known as "the devil in a top hat." A devout Catholic aristocrat from an old family of Westphalian nobility, a former military attache and spy against the United States in 1915, von Papen became Chancellor in May 1932, with the support of the Nazis. In June he ordered the dissolution of the Reichstag, calling for new elections in July, in which the Nazis emerged as the largest party in the new Reichstag. After a meeting with Hitler, von Papen persuaded President von Hindenberg to offer Hitler the Chancellorship, which he assumed on January 30, 1933. Von Papen became his Vice-Chancellor.

In April 1933 von Papen was elevated to Knight Magistral Grand Cross of SMOM. After the murder of Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in Vienna in July 1934, von Papen became Hitler's Ambassador to Austria, and, in March 1938 stood by the Fuhrer's side at his triumphal entry into Vienna. From 1939 until August 1944 he was the Nazi Ambassador to Turkey, and at the Nuremberg trials he was charged with conspiracy to wage aggressive war. He was one of several Nazi leaders acquitted, and subsequently received a generous pension from the first postwar Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.

Page 28

The President of the American Eastern Association of SMOM is J. Peter Grace, President of W.R. Grace Company, who was a key figure in Operation Paperclip, which brought Nazi scientists to the U.S. 1

SMOM's Sovereign Diplomacy

As its name suggests, SMOM is both a ''sovereign'' and, historically, a "military" organization. Its headquarters, occupying a square block in Rome at 68 Via Condotti, enjoys the extra-territorial legal status granted to an embassy of a sovereign state. The Italian police are not welcome on its territory, it issues its own stamps, and has formal diplomatic relations and exchanges ambassadors with a number of countries.

On November 13, 1951 Italian President Alcide de Gasperi recognized the diplomatic sovereignty of SMOM, although he held off formal exchange of diplomatic envoys.2 On January 11, 1983 the New York Daily News announced that,

"The Vatican and the order of the Knights of Malta, believed to be the smallest sovereign state in the world, have agreed to establish full diplomatic relations, a joint statement said today. "

President Reagan's Ambassador to the Vatican, William Wilson, is, coincidentally, a Knight of Malta.3

On September 5, 1984 French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson signed a formal protocol with SMOM for various cooperative projects includlng "aid to victims of conflicts."4 (See below on Americares.)

Historical Antecedents

Already in existence at the time of the first Crusade in 1099, in 1113 the Order of St. John was given its independence by Pope Pascal II, permitted to elect its own Grand Master, and soon the Order began military participation in the Crusades along with with the Knights Templar and Teutonic Knights. The Order of St. John recruited successfully among the Eurupean aristocracy and soon controlled extensive estates throughout the continent, assimilating those previously belonging to the Knights Templar which it had helped crush during the first two decades of the 14th Century, with the Templar leadership burned alive as heretics.

J. Peter Grace and Project Paperclip

On January 16, 1980 ABC-TV broadcast a special "News Closeup," "Escape from Justice: Nazi War Criminals in America" which discussed Grace's Role in Project Paperclip.

The transcript of the program, available from ABC on request, states,

"Project Paperclip ....... from the end of WW II to the mid-1950's brought more than 900 German scientists to the United States. ..... Otto Ambros ..... was a chemist and a Director of the notorious I.G. Farben Company which supplied gasoline and rubber for Hitler's war effort. Ambros ...... played a supervisory role in the construction of Farben's plant in the Polish village of Auschwitz. For I.G. Farben, Auschwitz concentration inmates provided a plentiful source of cheap labor. ..... The Nuremberg prosecution charged that each day at Farhen's plant one hundred people died from sheer exhaustion. ...... Otto Ambros was convicted of slavery and mass murder and sentenced to eight years in prison. But even while on trial at Nuremberg, Ambros was a target for U.S. recruiters from 'Project Paperclip.' His prison sentence was commuted after only three years by American officials and he was helped in a bid to enter the United States by ...... J. Peter Grace, President of W. R. Grace, a major American chemical company. .....

An internal State Department document describes how J. Peter Grace helped Otto Ambros in his efforts to enter the U.S. In a memorandum to the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Grace acknowledges that Ambros was a war criminal. But he adds that in the years he's known Ambros, ...... 'we have developed a very deep admiration, not only for his ability, but more important, for his character in terms of truthfulness and integrity.'

Today Otto Ambros does consulting work tor W. R. Grace and Company and lives here in Mannheim, Germany. In a recent telephone interview Ambros [said] 'I'm happy to still be working as a chemist ...... but it's funny. Now I'm helping the Americans.' "

In June 1981, largely in response to the efforts of well known war crimes researcher Charles Allen, Yeshiva University cancelled a $150-a-plate dinner it had organized to honor Grace. (See also, Joe Conason and Martin A. Rosenblatt, "The Corporate State of Grace," 'Village Voice', April 12, 1983.)

When the scandal broke in West Germany over the Flick company paying huge sums of money to various politicians and parties, it was learned that additionally Flick had taken improper tax waivers and used the money to pump millions of dollars into W. R. Grace Co., becoming a major shareholder. Friedrich Karl Flick himself sits on the Grace Board. As the Moscow New Times reminded its readers (No. 8, 1983, citing Der Spiegel), Friedrich Karl's father, Flick Sr., had poured money into the coffers of the Nazi party in January 1933, and, ''after Goering had promised the Ruhr magnates that "the March 5 elections will be the last elections in this decade and perhaps in this century,'' he contributed another 200,000 marks; this sum was handed to SS Reichfuhrer Himmler. Flick Sr. was subsequently sentenced at Nuremberg to seven years for using slave labor, spoliation and being an accessory to the crimes of the SS. To ensure a good beginning for his son, the war criminal sent him after the war for early training with W. R. Grace.

Page 29

In 1187 the Order was driven militarily from Jerusalem by Saladin. The Knights were forced to flee successively to Acre, Cyprus (1291), and finally Rhodes (1310) where they subdued the local population and establishcd a military dictatorship enjoying territorial sovereignty for the first time. In 1522 they were defeated by Sultan Suleiman's forces of 200,000 troops and 250 ships after a six-month siege. By 1530 under Grand Master Villiers de l'lsle-Adam, the Knights established their headquarters on the island of Malta which had been given to them by Charles V.

Martin Luther was born in 1483, the same year that Torquemada unleashed the fury of the Inquisition, and while the Knights waged war against foreign heresies, they were soon confronted by the liberalizing Reformation challenge to Catholic Orthodoxy.

In England Henry Vlll's assertion of an independent national policy was complicated by his marriage to Katherine who was the aunt of Emperor Charles V, patron of the Knights of Malta who in England were a militant bastion of Papal loyalty. By 1534 Pope Clement VII had excommunicated the King and two years later Pope Paul III published a Bull deposing the King and charging the Emperor with its execution. According to King and Luke's authoritative history 5 of the Order in England

The staunchest supporters of Papal supremacy were naturally to be found among the religious Orders, and ....... the Knights were the loyal servants of the Pope, whose claims to universal dominion [the King] had repudiated, ....... it was thus a sheer impossibility for the King to permit the existence in England of an Order so powerful and so highly organized unless it was prepared to renounce its loyalty to his most determined enemy. Inevitably the Knights would become a center of disaffection and a rallying point for all the forces of reaction. ......

In July 1539, after two of the Knights had already chosen the martyr's crown, the King wrote letters to the Grand Master which practically constituted an ultimatum, demanding that the Papal supremacy should cease to be recognized by the Order in England. ..... But it was impossible to accept the King's conditions. In April 1540 ..... Parliament passed an Act dissolving the Order in England and conferring its estates upon the Crown. ...... 6

Meanwhile on the continent and in the Mediterranean the wars against the infidels of the East continued. Since the military defense of Christendom required naval support, the Order created a powerful fleet and patrolled the seas of the Eastern Mediterranean fighting many naval actions.

Military operations ranged as far as Egypt and Syria, and by 1565 under Grand Master Valette, they resisted the Turkish siege of Malta. In 1571 SMOM's fleet participated in the defeat of the Turks at the naval battle of Lepanto, and remained a major military presence in the Mediterranean until 1789 when Napoleon defeated the Knights and occupied the island. The Order finally sought temporary protection under the Russian Emperor Paul I in 1797; in 1834 Pope Leo XIII established its headquarters in Rome.

- END QUOTE -

[ continue to 2 of 4 ]

COVERT ACTION INFORMATION BULLETIN

P.O.BOX 50272 WASHINGTON, DC 20004

http://mediafilter.org/MFF/
"All studies [of the post-WWII Nazi networks] have shown the determining role played by the [Roman] Catholic Church in the flight of war criminals."



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

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

WINTER 1986 Number 25

Pages 27-38

[2 of 4 ....... 30-33 ]

KNIGHTS OF DARKNESS

THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA

Page 30

The American Association of SMOM

In Europe SMOM's membership had been traditionally limited to those who could prove a requisite purity of noble blood for several generations. Nevertheless, as a concession to the rising political, economic, and military power of the United States, in 1927 SMOM agreed to incorporate an American National Association whose members were not obliged to prove their genealogical pedigree.

When the American Association of SMOM was created in 1927 the founding members included Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Edward L. Hearn, Nicholas F. Brady, Howard F. Carry, Patrick E. Crowley, James A. Farrell, James A. Fayne, Edward N. Hurley, James J. Phelan, Morgan J. O'Brien, John J. Raskob, and John D. Ryan.

By 1941 Francis Cardinal Spellman was listed as the "Grand Protector" and "Spiritual Advisor" of the Order, with John J. Raskob as Treasurer. Members included John Farrell, then President of U.S.Steel, Joseph P. Grace, and John D. Ryan. In 1934 Raskob, inspired by the French fascist Croix de Feu, and working closely with Morgan Bank's John Davis, had been a principal financier in the plot to organize a fascist coup in the U.S. The plan failed when General Smedley Butler, who had been set up to lead the project, denounced it.

The 1941 list also included Joseph J. Larkin. According to Charles Higham's Trading With the Enemy (see review in this issue),

Joseph J. Larkin . . . [vice-president of Chase Manhattan Bank in charge of European affairs] kept the Chase Bank open ....... in Nazi-occupied Paris throughout World War II. .... [He] had received the Order of the Grand Cross of the Knights of Malta from Pope Pius XI in 1928. He was an ardent supporter of General Franco and, by extension, Hitler. Morgenthau first suspected him as a fascist sympathizer in Octoher 1936. ..... With the encouragement of Schacht, Larkin took on the Franco account and the Reichsbank account, though the Reichsbank was under the personal control of Hitler. ..... 7



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The Role of Felix A. Morlion

In the latter part of April 1948 the Romanian Timpul published an article, "The Vatican Espionage Service," cited in the Soviet journal New Times, No.31, 1948, at pp. 5, 6. As reported, the article indicated that,

"In 1946 the Pope entrusted the Dominican friar [Felix A.] Morlion, a Belgian, with the reorganization of the Vatican intelligence service and its merger with the jesuit espionage network. The central intelligence department of the Vatican is headed by Janssens, a general of the Jesuit Order. His deputy is Montini, the acting Vatican Secretary of State, and his assistants are Schmider, the administrative director of the central jesuit espionage bureau, and Morlion, director of Centro d'informazione pro Deo. The central intelligence department is subdivided into branches and sections dealing with the various countries. One of the main branches is the so-called 'special division' which operates under the signboard of the Centro d'informazione pro Deo press agency. Similar divisions have been set up in the Centro d'informazione pro Deo units in all parts of the world. In New York the 'special division' is directed by Cardinal Spellman, in Innsbruck (Austria) by Regent, the rector of a jesuit college, in Coblenz (Germany) by the Catholic priest Poelaert who is also director of the Catholic press agency. The branch in charge of espionage in Eastern and Southeastern Europe is supervised by Schmider and Preseren, the jesuits' chief expert on the Slav countries and adviser to the Vatican Secretary of State."

In August 1966, Morlion approached H. L. Hunt for funding Vatican anti-Communist operations in Latin America. Hunt gave an interview to the British Guardian Weekly, February 27, 1969:

" 'I was approached by Paolo Cardinal Marella, who said he spoke for the Pope and asked if I would supply members of my [20,000 member] Youth Freedom Speakers' movement who spoke Spanish to be sent south [to Latin America] to engage in speechmaking and activities. I was told the Pope was thinking in terms of 11 million dollars a year support for the entire movement against communism in Spanish-speaking countries.' ......... The project was now centered in New York, at the Asian Speakers Bureau, with the Free Pacific Association, Inc., on Riverside Drive [another front for the Rev. Moon's Unification Church]. A key figure in this papal concern over Leftist threats to the Vatican's greatest stronghold was thc Rev. Felix A. Morlion, who was present at the original discussions. "

Subsequently, Morlion emerged as a key figure in the "Bulgarian Connection" hoax when the fascist Grey Wolf Agca attempted to assassinate the Pope: It appears that Morlion lived in Rome directly below the apartment of the Bulgarian Antonov, and was a possible source of Agca's description of Antonov's apartment. (See, Il Mondo, April 8, 1985; L'Espresso, May 19, 1985.)



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The American-Italian Conneclion

From 1932 until 1938 Myron Charles Taylor was the Chairman of U. S. Steel. In 1939 he became the U.S. envoy to Pope Pius XII, a post he would maintain until 1950. Meanwhile, according to Anthony Cave Brown, OSS chief William Donovan secretly had established an intelligence connection with the Vatican as early as 1941, when he evacuated from Lisbon to New York the Dominican Father Felix A. Morlion, who had founded "a European Catholic anti-Comintern'' called Pro Deo. (See sidebar.) Throughout the war Donovan financcd Morlion's Pro Deo service and in June 1944 he "went to considerable expense, time, and trouble to transport Morlion from New York and establish him at the Holy See.''8

Subsequently Morlion became a key figure in Vatican intelligence, working closely with Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Paul VI.

According to Frederic Laurent,

"All studies [of the post-WWII Nazi networks] have shown the determining role played by the Catholic Church in the flight of war criminals. Since April 1943, following negotiations between Pius XII and the ultra-reactionary American archbishop Francis Spellman, the Holy See became the clandestine center of Anglo-American espionage in Italy. This collaboration in fact had begun the previous year ...... between Earl Brennan, a veteran of the American State Department and Gian Battista Montini, at the time a bishop and Under-Secretary of State at the Vatican. This close collaboration between the future Paul VI and the Ameriean secret services continued after the war through the intermediary James Angleton. ..... 9"

With the American Grand Protector of SMOM already in contact with the Vatican, and Allen Dulles busy negotiating with Nazis in Switzerland, the Amerieans entered Rome June 4, 1944. On July 7 General Mark Clark was made a Knight Grand Cross of SMOM.

According to British journalist Stuart Christie,

25 April 1945 [three days before the German forces capitulate in Italy] Admiral Ellery Stone, U.S. Proconsul in occupied Italy, instructs James Angleton to rescue Prince Valerio Borghese from the possibility of arrest by the Resistance Committees which had sentenced him to death for war crimes .......... Stone is a close friend of the Borghese family.10

Borghese was to be heard from again on the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (See below.)

- Truman's Vatiean envoy Myron C. Taylor received SMOM's Gran Croci Al Merito Con Placca May 23, 1945.

- On June 12, 1945 Admiral Ellery W. Stone was awarded the Croci Al Merito Di Prima Classe Con Corona from the SMOM.

- On December 27, 1946 James Angleton received the Croci Al Merito Seconda Classe from the Order, the same day as George Raymond Rocca. Rocca went on to become Angleton's deputy chief of Counterintelligenee Division of the CIA and was the liaison between the Warren Commission and the CIA following the Kennedy Assassination. (See sidebar.)

[Also, about this same time, head of OSS "Wild Bill" Donovan was decorated by the papacy ....... JP ]

According to declassified documents from the American Department of State, in February 1948, in anticipation of the upcoming elections scheduled for April 18, the Vatican created organizations called 'Civic Committees' under the leadership of Luigi Gedda, a 45-year-old doctor from Turin who was also the leader of the rightist 'Catholic Action'. By March 17, 1948 Gedda became a Knight of the Grand Priory of Lombardy and Venice. The liaison to Gedda was through an Ecclesiastical Assistant, Mgr. Fiorenzo Angelini, a member of the National Executive of the Civic Committees, who had become a ranking member of the Rome Priory of SMOM also on March 17, 1948.11 At that time the Grand Priory was headed by Ferdinando Thun Hohenstein, Director of Ceremonies of SMOM, a member of the all powerful five-member Sovereign Council of the Order, and nephew of a former SMOM Grand Master.

Page 32

On March 22, 1948 the New York Times reported that Gedda had appealed to American Catholics to provide financial assistance to Italian Catholics in their fight against communism. On April 5, it was reported that

"Myron C. Taylor arrived from Madrid for what Catholic circles described as an 'important mission' closely related to the Italian general elections."

By April 13 the paper reported that Taylor would meet with Pius once a week, and that based on the information recently received, the Pope was "considerably more optimistic'' about the outcome of the elections.

Page 33

Two days later with the Italian military staging massive parades and as fascist gangs attacked leftists in the streets, C. L. Sulzberger reported from Rome that Catholic Action "is armed, active, and tough."

The State Department documents cite Angleton as "feel[ing] quite strongly that Gedda can be effectively used to further our interests in Italy in the political, labor and social fields," and that the Civic Committees were to receive CIA funds. The Pope had allegedly met with Gedda three times during the month after the elections.

One of those reported to have loeen involved in interference in the April 18 election was Baron Luigi Parrilli. Parrilli, son of an Italian admiral, and who had reportedly worked for the American firm Kelvinator before the war, was a fascist and had extensive industrial interests in Italy. He was made a Knight of Malta on December 7, 1942 and by early 1945 had excellent contacts with the top Schutzstaffel (SS: elite guard) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD: secret service) German officers in Northem Italy. By April 1945 he became a representative of SS General Karl Wolff to Allen Dulles and U.S. Gen. Lemnitzer during the period that the latter two were involved in private negotiations to recruit top Nazis before the end of the war. It has been rumored that Parrilli also had "concocted a plan to transport ex-Nazis from Germany to Paraguay."12 (See article by Peter Dale Scott in this issue.)

In 1949 SMOM published an Official General Roll of the Grand Magistery with a preface by Pius XII which referred to "The ancient laurels collected on the battle-fronts" of earlier wars. As noted above, among only four recipients of the Order's Gran Croci al Merito con Placca at the time was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's Chief of Intelligence on the Eastern Front, who received the award November 17, 1948.

By this time Reinhard Gehlen's brother had already been in Rome serving as the Secretary to Thun Hohenstein. Conveniently for Reinhard, who was negotiating with the U.S. for the preservation of his Nazi colleagues, Thun Hohenstein was Chairman of one of SMOM's grand magistral charities, the Institute for Associated Emigrations, and had arranged for two thousand SMOM passports to be printed for political refugees.

Thun Hohenstein was also related to the leading German Knights of SMOM, and at a crucial time in an internal SMOM controversy after the war had received the active support of Prince Frederic von Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Honorary Chairman of the Silesian Association of the Order, the head of the Catholic Hohenzollerns, of which several members were Knights of SMOM. The Silesian Knights, led by their Chairman Prince von Hartzfeld and Graf Henckel von Donnersmark, maintained a refugee camp at Ulm which in 1951 alone had received 134,000 refugees from the East.13 Meanwhile, both the Polish and Hungarian Associations of SMOM had also relocated safely to the West.

In 1950, the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism was created. The trustees included J. Peter Grace, Charles Edison, William Henry Chamberlain, H. J. Heinz II, Isaac Don Levine, and Eugene Lyons. The Committee (now known as Radio Liberty), under the guiding hand of the CIA's Frank Wisner, funded numerous emigre "research institutes'' which, according to John Loftus [see UNHOLY TRINITY ], were "little more than front groups for ex-Nazi intelligence officers.''14



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CROCI AL MERITO

(PRO PIIS MERITIS)

GRAN CROCI AL MERITO CON FASCIA

10 4 1948 S.E. Gen. PAUL DARIUS DASSAULT

CRAN CROCI AL MERITO CON PLACCA

23 5 1945 S. E. HAROLD ALEXANDER, visconte di Tunis

23 5 1945 S. E. MYRON C TAYLOR

11 11 1948 Brig. Gen. Barone DEAN de MARGUERITTES

17 11 1948 REINHARD GEHLEN

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



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footnotes

1. See generally, Clarence G. Lasby, Project Paperclip (New York: Atheneum, 1975). Grace had also served as the Chairman of the Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty Fund, a CIA front infested with Nazi collaborators, and of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), another CIA-funded organization. The Chairman of the W. R. Grace Executive Committee Felix Larkin, is also a SMOM. The Chancellor of the Order, John D. J. Moore, was a Director of the Grace company until at least 1982 having been with the company since 1946 managing its Peruvian operations from 1947-1950. From 1969-1975 Moore was the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland. See sidebar on J. Peter Grace.

2. Roger Peyrefitte, Knights of Malta (New York: Criterion Books, 1959), at p. 137.

3. See the illustrated feature story on SMOM in Town and Country, April 1984, pp. 194, ff. 4. Point de Vue, September 23, 1983.

5. Sir Edwin King and Sir Harry Luke, The Knights of St. John in the British Realm, 2d ed. (London: St. John's Gate, 1967).

6. Ibid., pp. 103-105. Subsequently in England in the 19th Century, since each monarch has the authority to create any Order it wishes, Queen Victoria chartered, alongside the Rome-based British Association of SMOM, a predominantly Anglican Order called "The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem" under the aegis of the British crown.

On November 26, 1963 the Venerable Order and the Bntish Association of SMOM signed a treaty of mutual recognition and respect which can be seen in the Library of the Venerable Order in London. SMOM continues to regard the Venerable Order with somewhat amused score; while SMOMs are members of the highest levels of the Venerable Order, there do not appear to be any Anglican members of the Venerable Order in the British Association of SMOM.

7. Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemy: An Exploration of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933 -1949 (New York: Delacorte, 1983), pp. 20-31.

8. Anthony Cave Brown, Wild Bill Donovan, The Last Hero (New York: Times Books, 1982), pp. 683, 684.

9. Frederic Laurent, L'Orchestre Noir (Paris: Editions Stock, 1978), at p.29; see also Charles Allen, The Vatican and the Nazis, in Reform Judaism, Spring/Summer and Fall 1983; and Saul Friedlander, Pius XII and the Third Reich (New York: Knopf, 1966).

10. Stuart Christie, Stefano delle Chiaie, Portrait of a Black Terrorist (London: Anarchy Magazine, 1984), at p.6. One member of the family, S.E. Don Giangiacomo, Principe Borghese, had been a Bailiff Grand Cross Of Honor and Devotion of SMOM since June 4,1932. Christie's book includes a photo of Borghese driven by an unidentified SS officer in 1944, with the caption, ``Borghese was then [1944] head of 'XMAS' (Decima MAS), a special forces corps of 4,000 men founded in 1941. Borghese assumed command after the Italian armistice and XMAS was officially recognized by the Nazi High Command on September 14, 1943. Under his direction, XMAS was responsible for the torture and mass murder of Italian partisans. Ibid., p. 7; see also Laurent, op. cit., n.9.

11. Declassified documents of May 17, 1948 and October 11, 1948. Gedda was listed as a member of the "Comite de Patronage" of the French neo-Nazi 'Nouvelle Ecole' in April 1982 along with Robert Gayre. Gedda also served on the Advisory board of Gayre and Pearson's Mankind Quarterly from at least the mid 1960s until 1979.

12. R. Harris Smith, OSS, The Secret History of America's First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University Of California Press, 1972), at p.114; and Bradley F. Smith & Elena Agarossi, Operation Sunrise (New York: Basic Books, 1979). And see Peter Dale Scott's article in this issue.

13. See, Peyrefitte, op. cit., n. 2, pp. 172, 173, 214.

14 John Loftus, The Belarus Secret, ed. by Nathan Miller (New York Knopf, 1982), pp. 106-107, 178. [and see UNHOLY TRINITY by Loftus]

- END QUOTE -

[ continue to 3 of 4 ]

COVERT ACTION INFORMATION BULLETIN

P.O.BOX 50272 WASHINGTON, DC 20004

http://mediafilter.org/MFF/