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

[Jan Klimkowski]

Covert Action on the Sovereign Military Order of Mala continued:

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

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

WINTER 1986 Number 25

pages 27-38

Pages picture captions, from page 32 and 34-35

[3 of 4 ]

KNIGHTS OF DARKNESS

THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA

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

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

[Picture caption] - James Jesus Angleton.

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

[Picture caption] - Roger Pearson.

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

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

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

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

From page 32

THE CHECKERED CAREERS OF JAMES ANGLETON AND ROGER PEARSON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

According to Joseph C. Goulden,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Page 34

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SMOM and P-2

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

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

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

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

Page 35

According to Larry Gurwin's The Calvi Affair,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SMOM, Americares, and Central America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

20. Journal de Geneve, November 11, 1981.

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

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

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

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

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

- END QUOTE -

[ continue to 4 of 4 ]

COVERT ACTION INFORMATION BULLETIN

P.O.BOX 50272 WASHINGTON, DC 20004

http://mediafilter.org/MFF/

Pages 27-38

[4 of 4 ....... 36-38 ]

KNIGHTS OF DARKNESS

THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA

Page 36

The Washington Post of December 27, 1984 reported as follows:

A private humanitarian organization called the Americares Foundation, working with the Order of the Knights of Malta, has channeled more than $14 million in donated medical aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala over the last two years. ......

Part of $680,000 in aid to Honduras went to Miskito Indians linked to U.S. backed rebels fighting the leftist government in Nicaragua, according to a Knights of Malta official in Honduras.

Much of the $3.4 million in Americares' medical aid to Guatemala has been distributed through the armed forces as part of its resettlement program of "model villages" aimed at defeating leftist insurgents, said the official, Guatemalan businessman Roberto Alejos.

Alejos, co-chairman of the Knights of Malta in Honduras [said], ...... the Guatemalan army delivers Americares medicine to people in model villages, which are along the Mexican border.

Alejos, a major sugar and coffee grower, lent his Guatemalan estates to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1960 to train Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Asked why the Knights of Malta turned to Americares rather than to established aid groups, such as the Red Cross, Grace said,

"The Knights have been doing this for 900 years. They have their own cross [the Maltese cross]. ... They'd consider themselves way beyond the Red Cross." ....

At least one pro-government group, the Air Commando Association of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., claims to have used Knights of Malta warehouses in El Salvador. Retired general H. C. Aderholt, head of the 1,500-member group, said that the commandos delivered food and medicine to the Knights' facilities and that together they ''get good support from the Salvadoran air force commander."

Aderholt said the association has distributed to El Salvador $4.5 million in food and medicine provided by the Christian Broadcasting Network and World Medical Relief. He said liberals in Congress have tried to "tie to some sinister plan with the CIA" [sic], which he said is incorrect.

While the Post story does mention that CIA Director William Casey is a SMOM, it fails to point out that Aderholt is the "Unconventional Operations'' Contributing Editor of Soldier of Fortune and was a member of the ''Singlaub panel'' of the Pentagon, set up to devise new counterinsurgency strategies in the developing countries.

Russ Bellant, in the Detroit Metro Times of October 9, 1985, says Aderholt claimed that Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network had given the Knights of Malta $2 million for operations in Central America.

CONCLUSION

For many years progressive groups in the U.S. and else where have been engaged in extensive research into so-called "secular" state and private organizations such as the CIA, NSC, the military, private corporations, and foundations.

This article highlights the operative importance of members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which unlike traditional corporate, governmental, and foundation entities, has not yet adequately come under the scrutiny of progressive researchers. Curiously, European researchers have all but ignored the Orders of Chivalry in analyzing The structural role of their own aristocracy in organizing support for international reaction and fascist terror.

Research into the current role of SMOM and its individual members is just beginning. The most serious problem is the dearth of documents available, due to the extreme secrecy of the organization. Except for a few scattered references in various books, magazines, and newspapers, and a few romanticized stories about ancient glories of the Order, the necessary amount of materials has not yet surfaced. and this account represents only a starting point for further research.26

In the U.S., for example, although the 1980 membership list was published (National Catholic Reporter, October 14, 1983), since then the Order in the U.S. has grown and been divided into an Eastern, Southern (based in D.C.), and Western Association. The published 1980 list comprises primarily members in the Northeast. Although some others are known, complete and current lists of members in other regions is obviously crucial. Lists for other countries would also be helpful.

CAIB in its Winter 1983 issue, The CIA and Religion, and Spring 1985 issue, Disconnecting the Bulgarian Connection, began to explore the operational role of specific religious, or non-secular, organizations such as Opus Dei 27 and the fascist Masonic lodge P-2 in western intelligence operations and in furthering imperialism's plans.

Page 38

The recent P-2 scandal in Italy and new evidence on the importance of various ancient Orders of Chivalry (in particular SMOM) indicate that further research into these additional non-secular "parapolitical'' structures is necessary both to understand their role as independent organizations and to gain a better understanding of factional alignments within organizations which have already come under scrutiny.

As with "secular" organizations, rivalries among these "non-secular" organizations takes place within an environment of selective interlinking memberships which include secular structures as well. The way competing policies and loyalties of these non-secular structures influence members in their secular roles needs considerable further research.



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SMOM, GRACE, and OBANDO Y BRAVO

On August 1, 1985 the New York Times reported that during a visit to New York in May, Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo of Nicaragua said that he is actively directing efforts by his diocese to prevent the government from imposing a communist system in Nicaragua. The Archbishop said efforts included ''dividing his diocese into old and new units, including parishes, districts and smaller groups, for leadership and religious training.'' He claimed the training he established in Managua was for ''pastoral cadres, not military cadres. .... '' Following a meeting with Archbishop Obando, executives at W. R. Grace arranged for the Sarita Kenedy East Foundation to contribute copies of the Bible, rosary beads and other supplies to aid the church effort, a company executive said. The foundation is headed by J. Peter Grace.

Whatever the real purpose of the "leadership training" and "pastoral cadres," it apparently seemed like such a splendid idea to the Knights that a June 21, 1985 press release from the Erlich-Manes & Associates News Service of Bethesda, Maryland stated that the Southern Association of SMOM had sent a $5.5 million shipment of "40 massive containers'' to be loaded on the ship "Freedom'' to be sent to Maputo, Mozambique. "Roughly half of the shipment will go to aid agricultural development in northern Mozambique; and half will be distributed directly to the poor through the Archbishop of Maputo's Catholic Charities.'' Eugene I. Kane, a Knight and head of the trucking company Intermodal, Inc. organized the project. Official documents of SMOM list such "charitable" projects in many countries throughout the world.



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WELL-KNOWN KNIGHTS

In addition to those listed in the article, the following are some other Knights of SMOM of interest:

- Francis Vincent Ortiz, Jr.: according to the 1982-83 'Who's Who in America', had been, among other posts, "dep. chief of mission Am. Embassy, Montevideo Uruguay, 1970-73,charg'e d'affairs,1973; country director for Argentina, Uruguay, and . Paraguay, Dept. of State 1973-75, dep. exec. sec., 1975-77; Amb. to Barbados and Grenada, spl. rep. to Antigua, Dominica, St. Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, from 1977; U.S Amb. Guatemala 1979-81, to Peru 1981-; spl. asst. for international affairs U.S. So. Command, Panama 1980-" since November 18, 1983 he has been the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina.

- Patrick J. Frawley, Jr.: also a Knight of the Order of St. Sylvester of which William [ head of WWII OSS .... JP ] Donovan was a member. He is a longstanding funder of right-wing causes including Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. His wife is a Dame of SMOM and is Publisher of the National Catholic Register of California, whose editor, Francis X. Maier was formerly with National Review. Maier was the first Chairman of the Catholic Center for Renewal, whose President, Philip F. Lawler, is the Director of Studies of the Heritage Foundation (which was chaired by Knight of SMOM Frank Shakespeare, newly appointed Ambassador to Portugal).

- Paul-Louis Weiller: Grand Cross of Merit SMOM, a close friend of Richard Nixon, member of the Board of Directors of Renault and several other French industrial corporations, former Administrateur of Air France, whose son married the cousin of Spanish King Juan-Carlos. (See also, Jim Hougan, Spooks (New York: William Morrow, 1978), pp. 209-225, which suggests that Weiller was "the French Connection. ")

- Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn: Munich correspondent of William Buckley's National Review.

- Admiral James D. Watkins, Reagan's recently named Chief of Naval Operations.

- Thomas Bolan: law partner of Roy Cohn. Bolan is also Counsel to the Human Life Foundation of which former CIA officer and Managing Editor of National Review, Priscilla Buckley (William's sister) is a Director.

- Jeremiah Denton: U. S. Senator from Alabama, 1980-present; former rear admiral, captured by the Vietnamese while murdering people and held as a POW 1965-1973, consultant to Pat Robertson of Christian Broadcasting Network, 1978-80.

- Pete Domenici: U.S. Senator from New Mexico 1972 - present.

- Spiros S. Skouras: President Prudential Lines 1960-present, bought Grace Lines 1969.

- William A. Schreyer: President Merrill Lynch 1978-present; Chairman since 1981.

- Walter J. Hickel: former governor of Alaska 1966-69, Secretary of the Interior 1969-1970. [ Governor of Alaska again in early 90s .... JP ]

- Antoine Pinay: Grand Cross of Merit, head of Government in France in 1952. He led the right-wing party CNIP and was linked to the ''Sniffing-plane" scandal, as well as a project with Brian Crozier and American agents to make Franz Joseph Strauss head of the German government.

- Mme. Raymond Barre: Grand Cross of Merit, wife of the rightist French politician.

- Bernard Dorin: French attache to Ottawa 1957-1959, Ambassador to Haiti 1972-1974, and Ambassador to South Africa from 1978 until at least 1981.



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THE "OTHER" ORDERS OF THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA

Not only are there many existing orders of chivalry today, generally under the aegis of a reigning monarch or ruling house, but there are also rival organizations each claiming to be the rightful heirs to the same order. Nowhere is this more true than with the Knights of Malta.

According to the Catholic Herald of August 23, 1985, there are more than twenty organizations claiming to be the "real" Knights of Malta. On September 9, 1985, evidently in response to growing interest in the question, the 'Wall Street Journal' ran a cover story, "Looking for a Title or Hot Controversy? See Knights of Malta. The Problem Is Which Ones; Catholic Order Maintains Rival Groups are Bogus." (The New York Sunday News had described the rivalry as early as June 15, 1975.)

The legitimacy battle is often intense and steeped in the presentation of increasingly obscure documentation. Arnaud Chaffanjon and Bertrand Galimard Flavigny's Ordres et Contre-Ordres de Chevalerie (Paris: Mercure de France, 1982), is one of the more useful references.

Some of the rival "Orders of Malta,'' all with slightly different names, in fact claim important and extremely rightwing members. We believe that the Catholic, Rome-based Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) remains the most important, with the endorsement of the Vatican and most of the Catholic ruling houses of Europe, and members like those discussed in the text of this article. The British (and generally, though not exclusively Protestant) Venerable Order, discussed in the text, is affiliated with a number of European, Protestant Orders, such as the Johanniterorden, sometimes known as the Bailiwick of Brandenberg.

Two of the "Orders of Malta'' which have received particular attention recently are what may be called the "Shickshinny" Order and the "von Brancovan" Order.

The Shickshinny Order, officially called "The Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem," has been headed by Col. Thourot Pichel in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, although a few years ago the Order was torn by serious internal rifts between Pichel and the late Frank Capell, Contributing Editor of the John Birch Society's Review of the News. (See, Rev. Anthony Cekada, Light on the OSJ, from the Oyster Bay, New York The Roman Catholic, December 1981, for an article critical of the Order and discussing some of its recent history.) It traces its legitimacy from a dispute during the time the Order spent in Russia under Czar Paul after it fled Malta. This Order achieved some notoriety a few years ago when it officially recognized the claims of controversial defector Michael Goleniewski to be Aleksei Romanoff, heir to the Russian Imperial House of Romanoff.

The case would be less interesting if James Angleton were not one of the principal supporters of Goleneiwski and some extremely rightwing members of the military intelligence community were not listed as members in a document issued by the Order in 1970. The Order listed as members of its Military Affairs Committee, under the Chairmanship of Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd, Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, and Gen. Pedro A. del Valle (who according to Stuart Christie's Stefano delle Chiaie, Portrait of a Black Terrorist (London: Anarchy Magazine, 1984), p. 6, invited Italian neo-Nazi Guido Giannettini to the U.S. to conduct a seminar at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, where del Valle was Commander. Foster & Epstein's Danger on the Right (New York: Random House, 1964), p.79; and Janson & Eismann's The Far Right (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963), p. 154, both call del Valle an anti-Semite.)

The Honorary Grand Admiral of the Order is listed as Admiral Sir Barry Domvile who had been jailed by the British during WW II as a Nazi agent, and was listed as a Contributing Editor of Willis Carto's Western Destiny, November 1965, when Roger Pearson was the Editor. The Associate Chief of International Intelligence listed was Herman E. Kimsey, a high-ranking CIA operative, now deceased, who had worked with the Army CIC during the war.

The von Brancovan Order, led by someone who calls himself Prince Robert Bassaraba von Brancovan and several other names as well, including Prince Khimchiachvili, is officially titled "The Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta Ecumenical.'' It is the order which apparently claims Frank Sinatra as a member. It also claims to include Princes Arnaldo and Basilio Petrucci. It appears to have a connection to Umberto Stafanizzi who, with Francesco Pazienza, signed the incorporation papers for something else called the "Sovereign Order of Saint John, Knights of Malta, Inc.," which was incorporated in New York State, June 22, 1983.



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footnotes -

26. Interested readers should also refer to the articles by Martin Lee on the SMOM which appeared in the National Catholic Reporter of October 14, 1983 (the issue which included the complete 1980 U.S. membership list), and Mother Jones of July 1983. (These two articles formed the basis for the references to SMOM in Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts The Year of Armageddon (London: Granada Publishing Ltd, 1984).)

An interesting discussion of some post-WW II SMOM history based around an account of the 1949-53 attempts by Vatican-centered Rightists to restrict the sovereignty of the Order is Knights of Malta by the conservative French author Roger Peyrefitte originally published by Flammarion in 1957, and translated into English and published in New York by Criterion Books m 1959.

King and Luke's The Knights of St. John in the British Realm, op. cit., n. 6, is useful although it does try to elevate Queen Victoria's creation of the Venerable Order to a status equal to that of SMOM.

The Italian journal L'Espresso of June 28, 1981 carried an article by Alessandre de Feo on the SMOM-P-2 connection. The rightist French magazine Historia had a special issue in 1980 on various Orders of Chivalry including SMOM. Also in French is the remarkable Souvenirs et Reflections by Yves Marsaudon, former Minister of SMOM in France who was also one of the highest ranking members of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in the country, (Paris: Editions Vitiano, 20 Rue Chauchat, 75009 Paris, 1976).

27. Francis X. Stankard, Knight of SMOM and Chief Executive Officer of the International Division of Chase Manhattan Bank has led "Evenings of Conversation'' at the Opus Dei Headquarters at the Riverside Study Center, 330 Riverside Drive, New York City. Other SMOMs at these sessions included William Simon and Frank Shakespeare (now Ambassador to Portugal), both of whom are Trustees of the Heritage Foundation, of which Shakespeare was Chairman of the Board. Evenings of Conversation, a pamphlet distributed in 1984 by Riverside Study Center.

Recognition of the importance of Opus Dei at the highest levels of SMOM had already been established in the summer of 1976 when King Juan-Carlos, himself a Knight of Malta, chose Adolfo Suarez, a member of Opus Dei, as new chief of government following the death of Franco. (Point de Vue, January 14, 1983; Paris.) On Opus Dei see also, New Statesman, 1 March 1985, pp.20,21; London Times, January 12, 1981; Le Morule, August 25, and September 28, 29 1982; National Catholic Reporter, September 10, and November 12, 1982; Financial Times, November 11, 1983; New York Times Magazine, January 8, 1984; Time magazine, June 11, 1984, p.74; New Times (Moscow), No.13, 1982, p.27; Wall Street Journal, December 30, 1982.

[Picture caption] - Paul-Louis Weiller, the French Connection?

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