Le Cercle and the Struggle for the European Continent: CIA, MI6 and Opus Dei Covert Politics

Contents

"I had first learned about it in October 1967 when Carlo Pesenti, the owner of a number of important Italian corporations, took me aside at a Chase investment forum in Paris and invited me to join his group... The discussions were conducted in French, and usually I was the sole American present... Members of the Pesenti Group were all committed to European political and economic integration... My Chase associates, who feared my membership could be construed as "consorting with reactionaries," eventually prevailed upon me to withdraw."

2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', pp. 412-413.

"Formed in the Fifties... One of the most influential, secretive, and, it goes without saying, exclusive political clubs in the West... One member contacted by this newspaper said he could not talk about it "even off, off the record". Another simply put the phone down... The source of its funding is a mystery..."

June 29, 1997, The Independent, 'Aitken dropped by the Right's secret club', one of the very few mainstream reports on Le Cercle.

"Coudenhove said: "You know, it is awfully difficult to make Europe with the English, but without them, it is impossible". That is very true."

Otto von Habsburg, key founder of Le Cercle, head of the Paneuropa Union and one of the most central players in the underground Vatican-Paneuropa network, with Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta at its core. He is a son of Zita de Bourbon-Parma.

Cercle summary

To get right to the point, Le Cercle is a secretive, privately-funded, transnational discussion group which regularly meets in different parts of the world. It is attended by a mixture of politicians, ambassadors, bankers, shady businessmen, oil experts, editors, publishers, military officers and intelligence agents, who may or may not have retired from their official functions. The participants come from western or western-oriented countries. Many historical members tend to be affiliated with aristocratic circles in London or obscure elements within the Vatican, and accusations of links to fascism are anything but uncommon in this milieu. The greatest enemy of the Cercle has been the Soviet Union and members have been crusading against communist subversion for many decades. During this process, Cercle members unfortunately have accused almost every nationalist and socialist government, every labour union, every terrorist, and every serious investigator of western intelligence of being in bed with the KGB.

Worse, more than a few of its core members can be linked to the CIA's Cold War "Strategy of Tension", in which underground fascist militias almost certainly were used to carry out "communist" terror campaigns to push countries moving too far to the left back towards the right. Some of these campaigns were extremely bloody and cost a lot of innocent lives.

In addition, the Cercle has always been strongly focused on European integration, the efforts of its members going back to the early days of Franco-German rapprochement. The significant presence of Paneuropa-affiliated Opus Dei members and Knights of Malta, together with statements of the Vatican and Otto von Habsburg, clearly indicate that there has been an agenda in the background to some day bring about a new Holy Roman Empire, its borders stretching from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and from the Baltic Sea to North Africa.

Interestingly, the latest generation of British Cercle members, whose predecessors were interested in joining the European Union, now do everything in their power to keep Britain out of the emerging European superstate, having lost faith that they can become a significant force within Europe or that the interests of mainland Europe - France in particular - will align with those of Great Britain.

Click picture to get a list of dates, locations, and sources.

Origins of Le Cercle, origins of the EU

Le Cercle used be known as the Pinay Circle, or Cercle Pinay by its original French founders. Although the group was named after a French statesman who was prime minister from March to December 1952, the primary organizer of this group was a person named Jean Violet, a close associate of Pinay since 1951. [1]

Jean Violet has a murky past to say the least. In French and later English literature, Violet is named as a pre-WWII member of the Comite Secret pour l'Action Revolutionnaire (CSAR), a secretive fascist group which, like Freemasonry, had its own initiation rites. [2] Some authors have suggested that CSAR, popularly known at the time as the Cagoule, or "hooded ones", was one of the most important branches of the legendary Synarchist Movement of Empire and worked to undermine the French Republic in preparation for the coming Nazi invasion. [3]

Whatever truth can be found in the Synarchy claims, it is known that Jean Violet was arrested after the war for having collaborated with the Nazis. He was released however "on orders from above" [4], went to work as a lawyer in Paris, and decided to become a member of Opus Dei. In 1951, Violet came into contact with Antoine Pinay, a Catholic also said to have belonged to Opus Dei, who asked him to solve a problem with a Geneva-based firm that had been sieged by the Nazis during WWII. As the story goes, Pinay was so impressed with the way Violet handled his assignment that he recommended him to French intelligence, the SDECE. [5] Also, Violet soon managed to hook up with Opus Dei luminaries as Alfredo Sanchez Bella and Otto von Habsburg [6], who had founded an influential think called the European Centre of Documentation and Information (CEDI) in 1949. [7] Habsburg was co-founder and chairman for life of CEDI and later also of the Paneuropa Union, a group he inherited from his more moderate countryman Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi. Sanchez Bella was the Spanish ambassador to Rome under Franco in the 1960s while his brother, Florencia, was head of Opus Dei in Spain. [8] Violet also became an associate of Father Yves-Marc Dubois, an obscure individual who has been described as a senior member of Vatican intelligence. [9]

CEDI was one of the first in a long line of hard-right, often aristocratic institutions part of the Vatican-Paneuropa network. One of these institutes, founded by Antoine Pinay, Jean Violet and Otto von Habsburg, with key financing coming from controversial Italian business magnate Carlo Pesenti II [10] was Cercle Pinay. These individuals felt that the basis for a strong, stable united Europe would be Franco-German reconciliation. Therefore they recruited into their Cercle the most important individuals that were working towards this aim, with a particular focus on politicians from Catholic political parties. In Germany they approached the long time chancellor and foreign minister Konrad Adenauer, and two of his closest associates, Franz Joseph Bach, who ran Adenauer's office; and Franz Joseph Strauss, the controversial hard-right political figure from Bavaria who was a defense minister in Adenauer's second cabinet. Together they founded Le Cercle.

Pinay and especially Violet were the official founders of Le Cercle, with Habsburg, vice president of the Paneuropa Union under Coudenhove-Kalergi, acting as Violet's patron - and Carlo Pesenti II largely financing the endeavor. These men initially brought together Schuman, Monnet, Adenauer and a number of other leading individuals. All of these men, except Monnet, were either members or sympathizers of Opus Dei. Monnet was connected to leading bankers in London and New York, and used to be secretary general of the League of Nations.

For the longest time, it was only known that Le Cercle had been set up "somewhere in the 1950s" [11], but a 1995 document unearthed by Swiss researcher Adrian Hanni that made its way to this author in 2012, reveals that "Le Cercle was founded in 1952/1953 by the Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, minister Franz-Josef Strauss, president Antoine Pinay, and Jean Violet." The document lists Adenauer and Violet as early presidents, with Violet serving as secretary general, followed later on by Franz Joseph Bach. Obviously men as Otto von Habsburg and Carlo Pesenti were also very important early players.

To dispel any confusion, there actually have been even claims that that Cercle Pinay was organized in 1969. [12] This date is wrong and seemingly a mix-up with the Belgian Cercle des Nations, founded in 1969 by a secretary general of CEDI. [13] Violet was one of the few French members of this Cercle des Nations. [14] So were a number of Belgian Cercle Pinay visitors. The crowd of Cercle des Nations has featured in a number of Belgian CIA-related conspiracies, with some even appearing in the notorious X-Dossiers of the Dutroux child abuse affair. Such ties, as we shall see, are far from uncommon in the ranks of Le Cercle.

Early Cercle members representing the Paneuropa Union, the European Coal and Steel Community, France, Germany and Italy.

There were more important individuals involved in the early days of Le Cercle. Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, in addition to Antoine Pinay himself, were invited from France. Schuman was French prime minister from 1947 to 1948 and French foreign minister from 1948 to 1953. Jean Monnet, as Planning Commissioner of the National Economic Council from 1945 to 1952, and appointed by De Gaulle, carried out essential work for the reconstruction of the French economy. He was connected to the highest financial and political circles in North America, Great Britain, and mainland western Europe, and was one of the major players in the push for an integrated Europe in the aftermath of World War II. As founding vice-chairman of the Committee for European Economic Co-operation (CEEC), which oversaw the Marshall Plan aid, he was the most influential players in this organization. This short description doesn't even begin to describe the life of this extraordinary Frenchman, so lets take a more in depth look at him.

Monnet and Retinger: EU founders, but hardly pro-Cercle

Right before and after World War I, Monnet hooked up with leading figures in the Anglo-American establishment. One of the first was Lord Kindersley, who, over the course of his life, was a partner in Lazard Brothers, a chairman of the Hudson's Bay Company, and a director of the Bank of England. Kindersley's son is known to have become an executive of the Pilgrims Society [15], a group researched in great detail by this author as it has been the embodiment of the liberal Anglo-American establishment throughout the 20th and early 21st century.

Jean Monnet in Time in 1961.

Another very important person was Lord Arthur Salter, whom Monnet first met in 1914. [16] Salter and Monnet would become involved in setting up the Inter-Allied Maritime Transport Council, the Supreme Economic Council at Versailles, and the League of Nations. In 1931, Salter wrote a book entitled The United States of Europe, in which he favored a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations. Probably not by coincidence, Monnet's post-Word War II proposal for a political structure of a united Europe was almost exactly the same; it must have been inspired by Salter. Three years after writing The United States of Europe, in 1934, Salter became a professor at Oxford and a fellow of the university's All Souls College, referred to by Professor Carroll Quigley as the center of the Round Table Group. In fact, Quigley identified Salter as a member of the Milner Group [17], which was one of several incarnations of the Round Table Group. It is also known that Salter shared a number of boards with Lord Astor and Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, both members of prominent Pilgrims Society and reportedly Round Table families (the Cecils later also appeared in Le Cercle). Salter himself became a regular visitor of Pilgrims Society meetings right after he wrote The United States of Europe. He joined as a formal member in later years.

Others whom Monnet became close to were Sir Eric Drummond (the 16th Earl of Perth), a member of a very aristocratic Catholic family in Britain; Lord Robert Brand, of Lazard Brothers, whose brother married Lady Nancy Astor; Andre Meyer and Pierre-David Weill of Lazard, John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson, John McCloy, Douglas Dillon, and many others. [18] Most persons mentioned here belonged to the Pilgrims Society, with the two British individuals once again having had close ties to Quigley's Round Table Group.

Monnet also was a long-time business associate of Elisha Walker, a CFR member who could be found at Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and the American International Corporation. With Walker he clandestinely tried to take over A. P. Giannini's Transamerica Corporation and its Bank of America network. The effort failed after a lawsuit in which Giannini vowed to fight the "Wall Street domination" on the board of his company. In February 1932, Walker and Monnet were ousted as chair and vice chair respectively. [19]

At that point Monnet went into business with the leaders of the Chinese Green Gang Triad: Tse-Ven Soong and the much better known Chiang Kai-shek. He took his assistant, David Drummond, the son of Monnet's aristocratic superior at the League of Nations, to China. He lived here until 1936, leaving just before China's war with Japan escalated.

In 1935, when Monnet was still in Shanghai, he became a business partner of George Murnane in Monnet, Murnane & Co. Murnane was connected to the Wallenbergs in Sweden, the Bosch family in Germany, the Solvays and Boëls in Belgium, and John Foster Dulles, Andre Meyer, and the Rockefellers in the United States. He was considered among the most connected persons of his time. John Dulles of Sullivan & Cromwell provided the financial backing for the partnership. [20] After Monnet got back to the United States, he was briefly investigated for tax evasion. Then, in 1938, Monnet, Murnane & Co. was briefly investigated by the FBI, who suspected it of having laundered Nazi money. [21] Nothing came of this investigation, but the Nazi-related business enterprises of some of Monnet's close friends, like Douglas Dillon and John Foster Dulles, or Murnane's earlier firm, Lee, Higginson & Co., is discussed in great depth in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article.

When World War II broke out, Monnet was one of the most important individuals in contact with both the French resistance and the Churchill government. While in London at the time that France was overrun, Monnet proposed to General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the French government in exile, the creation of a Franco-British Union: a plan to completely unite France and Britain. The Churchill government accepted, even a desperate de Gaulle went along, but eventually the (supposedly Synarchist) opposition in France, headed by Marshall Petain, killed the plan. They saw it as an attempt of Britain to wrestle control over France. Petain subsequently became the leader of Vichy France.

After the war, Monnet was appointed by de Gaulle to reorganize the French economy. However, Monnet also began to reorganize the whole of Europe. He wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the May 1948 The Hague Congress of Europe, from which flowed the umbrella group the European Movement in October of that year, apparently because he thought there were too many competing voices and agendas in the mix. He was present though at the The Hague Congress, along with numerous politicians he considered close friends and associates: Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi, Paul Henri Spaak, Francois Mitterrand, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and others. As the conference was held in the Netherlands, Prince Bernhard and Queen Juliana were also part of the event. [22]

The Hague Congress and the European Movement were largely put together by a "competitor" of Monnet: international man of mystery Jozef Retinger, described by one author as "the East European equivalent of Jean Monnet" because he was not a politician yet still had great influence on the birth of European Union. Retinger's other endeavors included the founding of the European League for Economic Cooperation (ELEC) in 1946 and Bilderberg in 1954. None of this Retinger would have been able to accomplish without his friends in the American liberal establishment as the Rockefellers and numerous of their Pilgrims Society friends, all of whom he got to know during World War II as an advisor to prime minister Władysław Sikorski, head of the Polish government-in-exile. As discussed in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article, this elite American clique also was completely synonymous with the CIA. The best example of this is probably the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), which, stacked with CIA directors and individuals from the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, funneled millions of dollars to Retinger's European Movement. [23] Despite the fact that Monnet operated a little to the outside of this group, he still came to play a major role in the birth of the European Union.

In 1949, with the support of Konrad Adenauer of West-Germany, French prime minister Robert Schuman proposed the so called "Schuman Plan". This plan formed the basis for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Established in 1952, the ECSC is usually seen as the birth of the European Union. In reality, Monnet, who became the first chairman of the ECSC's High Authority, had entirely written the "Schuman Plan". Then again, as we already discussed, Monnet's structure for Europe was a slightly adapted version of Arthur Salter's 1931 book The United States of Europe, which originally advocated a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations. [24] As was the case with Retinger, who actually died a poor man, Monnet also was only able to bring his plans to fruition because of his highest-level connections to the Anglo-American establishment.

Moving back a little from the establishment of the ECSC in 1952, on 24 October 1950, the French prime minister René Pleven introduced the so-called "Pleven Plan". As happened earlier with Schuman, this document too was written in its entirety by Jean Monnet. It proposed the creation of the European Defence Community (EDC): a Paneuropean defense force. Eventually this proposal was defeated by the Gaullist nationalists in France - Schuman opposed it as well - and Europe's defense forces remained part of the newly-established NATO, which was (and is) operating mostly at the international level, instead of supranationally.

After the failure of his European Defence Community (EDC), Monnet doubled his efforts and, in 1956, founded the very low-profile Action Committee for the United States of Europe (ACUSE). It brought together leading international members of governments and labour unions, mainly to discuss European economic integration. ACUSE, together with the US State Department, lobbied and pressured a great deal behind the scenes in the run up to the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which created the actual European Economic Community (EEC; "Economic" was dropped in '91). Once again, all of Monnet's most important associates in this process were members of the Pilgrims Society: David K. E. Bruce, the Dulles brothers, John J. McCloy, George Ball, C. Douglas Dillon, and president Eisenhower. Cercle participant Konrad Adenauer was among the signers of the treaty, just as Paul Henri Spaak. Also, the founding vice president of the ACUSE was Max Kohnstamm, who became the initial 1973 European chairman of the Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission. Kohnstamm used to be private secretary to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Cercle founder Antoine Pinay was another important member of ACUSE, the organization that Time Magazine dubbed a "European shadow government" in 1969. ACUSE received a degree of financing by the CIA-allied Ford Foundation, but this financing was more limited than the European Movement, which focused more on building ties between wealthy industrialists and right-wing politicians instead of the more socialist-oriented elements of society. Monnet also was more careful to hide any ties with the United States [25], although in the end he maintained all the same ties as Retinger to the clique of the Rockefellers and Dulles brothers. We also know that the Ford Foundation has been excellent at financing far more socialist-oriented, activist and counter-culture NGOs than Monnet's ACUSE.

Monnet wasn't done after helping to establish the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952, the Action Committee for the United States of Europe (ACUSE) in 1956 and the Treaty of Rome in 1957. In 1961, he managed to replace the OEEC, initially established to oversee the Marshall Plan, with the broader Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). [26] Since then, the OECD has been one of the most influential institutions promoting globalization and free trade, today working in partnership with the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization. Mainland European governors of the very elite Atlantic Institute of International Affairs, which also came about in 1961, have had a relatively strong presence in these institutions, especially in the OECD. Pilgrims Society members have been dominant in the other institutions.

Around the same time that Monnet replaced the OEEC with the OECD, he met up with future prime minister Edward Heath, who at that point, as Lord Privy Seal, was responsible for the initial talks to bring Britain into the European Common Market. The meeting transpired at the house of Monnet's earlier-mentioned good friend David Drummond, the 17th Lord Perth [27], a member of an old Catholic family with very good connections to both the Vatican and the highest levels in British society, including the Rothschilds, Oppenheimers, Mellons, Cecils, and Howards. [28] Lord Perth was a chairman of the Ditchley Foundation and his father had been the initial secretary-general of the League of Nations, with Monnet serving as his deputy. Heath became a member of Monnet's Action Committee for the United States of Europe (ACUSE) and in 1973 signed Britain into the European Economic Community. This only became possible after Georges Pompidou, a protege of Guy de Rothschild, had replaced the anti-American, anti-British and anti-NATO Charles de Gaulle as president of France.

Monnet had been an early supporter of de Gaulle, as he was of the opinion that the legendary general was the only person who might be able to reunite the French people after WWII. However, in later years friction developed between the two. De Gaulle was a nationalist who supported a strong intergovernmental Europe, preferably with France being the major influence. Monnet, on the other hand, had always been a no-holds-barred supranationalist. The same goes for all his past and present backers in the liberal establishment.

Franco-German rapprochement; De Gaulle rejecting Britain and NATO

While much of the groundwork for the European Union was laid by Jozef Retinger, Jean Monnet and their liberal establishment backers, according to Brian Crozier, a president of Le Cercle in the early 1980s, Cercle founder Jean Violet himself also played an important behind the scenes role several years after the European Economic Community (EEC) had been founded:

"By far the dominant theme in de Gaulle's foreign policy (as Violet interpreted it) was Franco-German reconciliation. A genius at (non-violent) operations of influence, Violet played an historically key role between 1957 and 1961 in bringing about this rapprochement, which is the real core of the European Community. He had developed a close friendship with Antoine Pinay, who had served as French Premier in 1951 under the unstable Fourth Republic. At a lower level, a complementary role was played by his SDECE colleague Antoine Bonnemaison. Violet was the go-between in secret meetings between Pinay and the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, and his coalition partner Franz Josef Strauss. These paved the way for Charles de Gaulle's own encounters with Adenauer, which culminated in the Franco-German Treaty of January 1963. [Treaty of Elysée]" 29]

The Treaty of Elysée is a relatively unknown agreement between France and Germany in which both countries agreed to consult with each other on important foreign policy and economic issues, ahead of time of general EEC meetings. It is the core of the often-discussed Franco-German alliance, which has had great influence on the European project ever since. Some say, too much.

The Elysée agreement came into being at the time de Gaulle first vetoed the inclusion of Britain into the European Economic Community (EEC), a decision quietly backed by Adenauer. De Gaulle argued that Britain's economy was based on trade with its Commonwealth and did not have a large agricultural economy, like France and most other countries in mainland Europe. This, together with Britain's historical "special relationship" with the United States, convinced de Gaulle that Britain would never be fully committed to the interests of Europe. [30]

Of course, it's far from unreasonable to suggest that de Gaulle's primary reason for the veto (and Adenauer's quiet backing) was to prevent Britain, and its ally, the United States, from diminishing France's influence within the European Union. A few years later, in June 1966, de Gaulle also withdrew from NATO, expelled all Allied forces from France, and tried to get on good terms with the Soviet Union. This in particular did not exactly please members of Le Cercle nor the British and U.S. allies it was starting to make. De Gaulle also ran into increased resistance with the French public, who considered him too old, too authoritarian and self-centered, too conservative, and too anti-American. In April 1969 he was forced to resign.

GREAT BRITAIN JOINS LE CERCLE

Le Centre, De Gaulle and OAS terrorism

One very interesting aspect of Le Cercle is that it used to be a strictly Catholic group from mainland Europe involving Vatican representatives, Italians, French and Germans. Much more recent reports, however, reveal that the leadership of Le Cercle has been in the hands of the British for many decades. This change set in 1971 when British intelligence asset Brian Crozier was brought into Le Cercle and soon started chairing meetings. In this chapter we'll be looking how the Cercle arrived at Crozier's doorstep.

Starting a career as a reporter for Reuters and a few other outlets, Brian Crozier first got in touch with British and French intelligence in Saigon in the early 1950s during the French Indochina War, the predecessor of the Vietnam War. In 1954 he joined The Economist, serving as editor of The Economist Foreign Report from 1958 to 1964. In this role, in 1959, he was invited by Colonel Antoine Bonnemaison, a colleague of Jean Violet in French intelligence, to a "mysterious outfit" named Le Centre de Recherche du Bien Politique.

Founded in 1955, just two years after Le Cercle, essentially Le Centre operated in the same fashion as Le Cercle: about twice a year a small group of international representatives from the intelligence services and academics would come together and mainly discuss Franco-German rapprochement. Although, the German BND participants answered directly to General Reinhardt Gehlen while the Dutch participants, Louis Einthoven and especially Cees van den Heuvel, not only were quite close to Prince Bernhard, but also played key roles in setting up the Dutch version of Gladio. CIA agent Carl Armfelt, who earlier set up Sweden's Gladio with future CIA director (and Cercle participant) William Colby, aided them in this. Van den Heuvel also brought a chapter of the MK-ULTRA-linked Human Ecology Fund to the Netherlands, so it should be clear that these people were involved in more than just discussing European integration. Obviously both Le Centre and Le Cercle were extremely anti-communist, the main difference between the two groups seemingly being the level at which they were operating. Le Centre is known to have brought together senior intelligence officers from Germany, France and the Netherlands, while Le Cercle has included a good number of heads of state.

Opium trafficker and OAS general Raoul Salan.

How Crozier got involved with Le Centre and then Le Cercle is an intriguing story that he details in his biography Free Agent. In February 1958, while flying back from French Algeria, he was seated next to Colonel Antoine Bonnemaison. Crozier noticed that Bonnemaison was reading "a letter from General Raoul Salan, thanking him in unusually warm terms for the series of talks on psychological war he had been giving to the French Army in Algeria." Crozier asked him about the letter in French, which apparently was so perfect that Bonnemaison assumed he was French, prompting him to give Crozier "a hair-raising torrent of revelations." Bonnemaison was an arch-nationalist who wanted France to fight its way back to "greatness" after the loss in Indochina (Vietnam). He was in Algeria to boost morale of the French army and help it succeed in holding onto the French colony. Only after an hour or so, Crozier informed Bonnemaison that he actually was British and worked as the editor of The Economist Foreign Report. Luckily for Bonnemaison, the two men were cut from the same political cloth, so his revelations did not result in any political fallout. A relationship was struck up and in 1959 Crozier was invited by Bonnemaison to join a Frankfurt meeting of Le Centre. [31]

One wonders if it was a total coincidence that Crozier ended up sitting next to Bonnemaison on that plane from Algiers. While that might be the case, there actually are more stunning coincidences.

General Raoul Salan, whose complimentary letter Bonnemaison was reading when Crozier started talking to him, used to be a key officer in overseeing Operation X, a French opium trafficking operation during French Indochina War carried out to fund covert operations. The operation peaked from 1951 until the end of the war in 1954. [32] From 1952 to 1954 Salan was the commander in chief of all French forces in Indochina.

Next stop for Salan was the Algerian War of Independence that lasted from 1954 to 1962 and saw massive amounts of torture from both sides. During 1956 Salan served as the commander in chief of the French forces in Algeria. He retired soon after. Thinking De Gaulle would continue the Algerian War under all circumstances, in this period Salan still was a supporter of the old general. This support changed in January 1961 when 75% of the French public voted in favor of granting Algeria its independence, with De Gaulle agreeing. This was followed in March 1962 with the Evian Accords that officially granted Algeria its independence: along with De Gaulle, 91% of the French public supported the accords. This major increase in already widespread support appears to have had something to do with the activities of Salan and friends.

In response to the January 1961 peace referendum, Salan co-founded the fascist-terrorist Organisation de l'Armée Secrète (OAS), becoming the group's head in mid 1961. In the January 1961 - June 1962 period the OAS carried out an enormous amount of terrorist attacks in an effort to derail the peace talks and reignite the French-Algerian War. 2,000 people, including peace activists, suspected enemy operatives, random French soldiers, and completely innocent civilians, died in a never-ending barrage of bombings, shootings and assassinations. A number of assassination attempts were made on De Gaulle, one of them a very close call, but it all led to nothing: De Gaulle survived all attempts, Algeria became independent in 1962 and most leaders of the OAS were arrested. Some were even executed.

Unsurprisingly, the CIA, partly through their Gehlen Org, was deeply involved with OAS, encouraging and seemingly even financing its actions in opposition to President Kennedy. [33] In fact, the New Orleans network linked to Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination - Clay Shaw's Permindex, Guy Banister, the elite French-American Schlumberger company and Maurice Brooks Gatlin - were all accused of direct involvement in financing various OAS assassination attempts on De Gaulle.

Based on Crozier's description, it's quite clear that Antoine Bonnemaison at least was a spiritual ally of the anti-De Gaulle coup plotters who wanted the French-Algerian War to continue. In fact, members of Bonnemaison's group openly labeled De Gaulle "the enemy" even before he withdrew from NATO in 1966. As we will discuss later in this article, Brian Crozier and other core Cercle members, as well as the CIA, supported every colonialist-fascist regime on the planet. The OAS was no exception. OAS co-founder and CIA favorite Jacques Soustelle later attended conferences with various Cercle members. Another OAS co-founder, Yves Guerin-Serac, was a Portuguese CIA-Gladio assassin and terrorist who also liaised with key Cercle members during the 1960s through venues as the Charlemagne Dinners. It's no surprise then that Bonnemaison's Centre de Recherche was shut down by De Gaulle in early 1963, after two years of OAS terrorism and continued OAS assassination plots against him. However, Bonnemaison set up the Centre d'Observation du Mouvement des Idées, this time financed by French corporations as Péchiney and Air Liquide. The group lost its international character, and only Crozier remained a regular participant from outside France. Other privately-funded anti-communist groups were available as well, however. One of them was Interdoc in the Netherlands, in which Crozier became involved alongside MI5 and MI6 representatives and occasionally the French.

A relevant detail related to the OAS and Brian Crozier at this point is that Jacques Soustelle had dinner with Richard Bissell, Jr., head of the CIA's covert operations department, and Bissell's successor, Richard Helms on December 7, 1960 in New York City, one month before Soustelle helped set up the OAS. [34] The dinner was organized by a French intelligence agent, Philippe de Vosjoli, whom De Gaulle referred to as "a defector to the CIA". In 1968 De Vosjoli would be featured in detail in a Life magazine article. [35] In addition, in April 1961 Salan is said to have met with CIA officer John Philipsborn in Algiers, right before Salan and three other generals organized a coup to take over Algeria, hopefully followed by France. [36] The coup was a massive failure, but the OAS was far from done yet at that point. In 1965 Philipsborn was hired by David Rockefeller to Chase Manhattan Bank where he served for over 30 years, primarily as Chase's key European agent. [37] In 1991 Philipsborn joined the Pilgrims Society, similar to CIA directors Allen Dulles and Walter Bedell Smith and the family of Richard Helms.

The Pilgrims Society and David Rockefeller link is not mentioned without reason. We'll run into both on other occasions in this article. For starters with John Hay Whitney, a lifelong Pilgrims Society member and eventual vice president. Whitney was an OSS veteran and close friend of David Rockefeller deeply immersed in big business CIA coups. In between, in the 1957-1961 period, Whitney was ambassador to Great Britain. That's relevant, because it was in this period that Brian Crozier described to have been invited to Whitney's "inner circle". [38] According to his own biography, in 1958 Crozier started to work with a variety of security services, the same year that he ended up sitting next to Colonel Antoine Bonnemaison on a plane from Algiers, resulting in him becoming the first British representative to the secretive Centre group. Even without any admissions from Crozier, it should be clear that by 1958-1959 he was becoming an ideal liaison between the security services of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States.

Soon after his international intelligence contacts developed, Crozier went to work for the Information Research Department (IRD) where he did studies (some prefer to call it "disseminating propaganda") on KGB subversion. He also started to work with the CIA, MI6, and the intelligence agencies of France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Morocco, Iran, Argentina, Chile, and Taiwan. Crozier visiting Le Centre meetings since 1959 and Interdoc meetings since 1963, the latter alongside MI5 and MI6 agents, are among the first clear instances. The CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), with its heavy-duty ties to the Eastern Establishment, approached him in 1964 to reconstruct and commercialize their organization. Crozier, however, turned down this offer as he was too busy with his other undertakings. He later did a study for the CCF, investigating its South American network. Some time after that study, in 1965-1966, he reconstructed the CCFs Forum Service, turning it into Forum World Features (FWF). His old British contact John Hay Whitney was the one who took over the financial burden of FWF from the CIA when it was commercialized. Another billionaire CIA associate, Richard Mellon Scaife, later took over funding of FWF from Whitney. Scaife also funded Crozier's Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), which he founded in 1970, and showed up at gatherings of the Foreign Affairs Research Institute, an anti-communist and anti-terrorist propaganda group headed by several British Cercle members, including Crozier. [39] In his book Free Agent Crozier summarized the purpose of his ISC:

"Throughout my period as Director, the Institute for the Study of Conflict was involved in exposing the fallacies of 'détente' and warning the West of the dangers inherent a policy of illusion." 40]

Crozier and associates rejected Henry Kissinger's Détente policy, introduced at the end of the Vietnam War and aimed at reducing tensions between the superpowers, because they were of the opinion that the Soviets continued to infiltrate and, more importantly, significantly influence Western labour, socialist and green parties, trade unions, media, and intelligence agencies. Also, they were of the opinion that the initial post-WWII policy of Containment (the Truman Doctrine) was flawed. Instead, they argued that the West not only should resist a further communist encroachment, but also that it had to liberate countries that had fallen under the control of the Soviet empire. Every piece of territory the Soviets conquered had to be taken back. This was termed Rollback, the key policy supported by the American Security Council, World Anti-Communist League and Cercle network of anti-communist activists.

Brian Crozier's 1971 Cercle invite

Despite his involvement in Colonel Bonnemaison's Le Centre since 1959, Interdoc since 1963, the CIA's Congress of Cultural Freedom since 1964, IRD of British intelligence and other intelligence-linked groups, Brian Crozier was not invited to Le Cercle until 1971. Crozier described the process of his recruitment in his biography Free Agent:

"On 1 March 1971, a long interview I had given to Joseph Fromm appeared in US News and World Report. The theme was terrorist and Communist intentions. On reading this interview, a Frenchman named Maitre Jean Violet came to see me in my Piccadilly office, with an introduction from Francois Duchene, my former Economist colleague and Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.... Violet impressed me with the clarity and precision of his arguments - Gallic logic at its best - and with the breath of his intellectual grasp of world problems." 41]

Duchene had met Monnet in exactly the same way as Crozier met Violet. In 1950, Duchene wrote a series of articles for the Manchester Guardian which came to the attention of Jean Monnet. In response, Monnet invited Duchene to become one of his assistants in building a united Europe. Duchene followed Monnet when the latter became head of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). He then followed Monnet to Paris and became an editor of The Economist. In 1958, Duchene became a director of Monnet's Action Committee for the United States of Europe (ACUSE), which struggled to get Britain into the EEC under the dictations of the Treaty of Rome. He remained on the board until 1963. During this time, Duchene suffered a nervous breakdown for some unknown reason. In 1963, he went on to become leading writer for The Economist and from 1967 to 1969, apparently as part of his career as a CIA asset, served a Ford Foundation fellow. From 1969 to 1974 he was a director of the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a think tank on international affairs with directors linked to intelligence and high financial circles. In 1974 or 1975, he became the European deputy chairman of the Trilateral Commission, working under Max Kohnstamm, Monnet's partner at the Action Committee. [42] As should be clear,

Brian Crozier: "[Reagan] shared my view that Nelson was more intelligent than his banker brother, David. He was critical of the role of David Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank in easing technology transfers to the Soviet Union. Reagan also mentioned, with mild distaste, the role of the Trilateral Commission in sponsoring Jimmy Carter." (Free Agent, p. 182)

As can be seen above, Duchene approached Crozier on behalf of Jean Violet during his time as a director of the IISS, and possibly on behalf of the Cercle in general, as Crozier mentioned that his involvement with Le Cercle began this same year. [43] Interestingly, Duchene not only introduced Violet as a person who worked for French intelligence, but also as a person who "represented a powerful consortium of French business interests." [44] It seems there's no end to the interests Cercle-founder Jean Violet represented during his lifetime: the fascist CSAR group, Opus Dei, Paneuropa, the French government, French business, French intelligence, and even German intelligence, as former Nazi General Reinhardt Gehlen recruited him at one point to brief him on his Cercle meetings. [45]

There's a big difference though between Jean Violet and associates as Jean Monnet, Francois Duchene and several other British Cercle members. Violet, as a French Opus Dei member and assistant to Otto von Habsburg, was part of what ISGP terms the ultraright Vatican-Paneuropa network while the others were part of the liberal Anglo-American establishment. Crozier also was not part of the Vatican-Paneuropa Network, but operating on the fringes of the liberal Anglo-American establishment, crossing over into its conservative, security state-tied counterpart.

Ironically, until very recently Crozier was involved in spying on De Gaulle while Violet was carrying out De Gaulle's defense and foreign policy objectives, and possibly was the French president's most important intelligence agent. Even when Crozier was president of Le Cercle from 1980 to 1985 on Violet's recommendation, he did not know Jean Violet's full background:

"It was not until the spring of 1993 that I learned the details of Jean Violet's real secret service role when General de Gaulle was in power [until 1969]. A background document was given to me by one of Violet's ex-colleagues. Ironically, a few years before Gabriel Decazes and I started spying on de Gaulle, Violet was masterminding a Service Spécial to promote the General's objectives in defence and foreign policy.



"The document began with a paragraph of wistful praise for Britain's remarkable achievements in intelligence and clandestine action. But France, too, offered a precedent: Louis XV had set up a special service known to the few who were aware of it as the Secret du Roi. This service reported directly to the King, bypassing the Foreign Ministry of the day.



"Only two people were aware of de Gaulle's latter-day model: General Grossin, the then head of the SDECE, and a certain 'Monsieur X'. It required no great deductive powers to assume that Monsieur X had to be Maître Violet, but Jean refused to comment when I asked him. My other source, however, confirmed my supposition. No wonder, in retrospect, that Violet's shadowy role and apparently bottomless purse stirred resentful envy among his colleagues and poisoned Alexandre de Marenches's mind against Violet, whom he had never met." 46]

As already discussed, Violet and his Cercle group saw Franco-German rapprochement as De Gaulle's most important foreign policy objective. However, judging by his association in Le Cercle with people who wanted Britain in the European Union as a "third pillar" and the entire European Union in NATO it is doubtful Violet supported all of De Gaulle's later decisions.

Past and present Cercle leadership

We briefly discussed the history of some of the key players in Le Cercle: Jean Violet and Antoine Pinay, the official 1953 founders; their patron, Otto von Habsburg, and key financier, Carlo Pesenti II; how Violet and Pinay invited individuals as Konrad Adenauer, Franz Joseph Strauss, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, and influenced the early history of the European Union. We also discussed how an agent of both Monnet and Violet in 1971 recruited a well-connected member of British and American intelligence, Brian Crozier, and made him head of their Cercle in 1980. Finally we discussed the anti-communist, anti-De Gaulle and pro-Europe and pro-NATO activities of its early key members.

According to Brian Crozier, a certain Sir Peter Tennant was chairing a number of Cercle meetings during the time that Jean Violet was president - which would be the 1970s. Carlo Pesenti chaired other meetings of Le Cercle in this period. [47] Tennant was an important trade promoter for the City of London. His name appears on a 1974 Pilgrims Society membership list, demonstrating he was part of a small elite. In contrast, Pesenti was a close associate of the Vatican's financial circles. Another important participant was Franz-Josef Bach, who used to run Konrad Adenauer's political office and later, from at least 1980 to at least 1991, co-organized Cercle meetings, in succession to Jean Violet. [48]

Le Cercle has gone by a number of names in the media. Some of these names appear to refer to the more exclusive coordinating group, or "executive committee", discussed in these early chapters. Both Crozier [58] and Hans Langemann [59], the source of a Cercle leak who will be discussed later, acknowledged the existence of such an inner group. David Rockefeller's reference to the "Pesenti Group" [60] might also have been a reference to this inner circle. The same goes for the "Pinay Committee" that appeared in documents of Brian Crozier's Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), leaked in 1975 to Time Out Magazine - the first known public reference to the Cercle. The same "Comite Pinay" could be found in a 1986 Belgian police report on Opus Dei.

A quick summary follows of Cercle leadership not discussed in detail yet, all of whom could be considered part of the "inner circle". The reader can look in the attached membership list for more details, including the source for each individual name.





Scion of what was one of the wealthiest families of Italy until the 1970s, together with the Agnellis and Pirellis. Head of Italcementi/Italmobiliare, one of the few key firms in cooperation with the IOR, or Vatican Bank. Boards of some of the companies it owned were loaded with aristocrats and SMOM members. Financier of some of the enterprises of Jean Violet and Brian Crozier and the Cercle itself. Chaired some of the meetings of Le Cercle, which sometimes was called the Pesenti Group, and invited David Rockefeller in 1967. Company funds were also used to help finance Stefano Delle Chiaie fascist-terrorist Avanguardia Nazionale. Italmobiliare was the largest minority shareholder of Banco Ambrosiano at the time of its collapse in 1982, with Pesenti serving as Roberto Calvi's vice president. Like Calvi, Pesenti was to be investigated for his role in the collapse but died during the court proceedings, albeit under slightly less suspicious circumstances than Calvi, who was found swinging from a bridge in London. Sir Peter Tennant (head of Hambro, a Pilgrims Society bank; close friend of Churchill and the Wallenbergs; his son went to live with the Wallenberg family during WWII; head of the SOE 1942-1943; Sir Hambro's deputy in the SOE, Henry "Harry" Sporborg, also of Hambro Bank, ended up in the small inner circle committee of Crozier's Shield) as one of its first members. Helped Sefton Delmer, the Lord Beaverbrook agent who used to be in contact with Hitler's inner circle, with material for his propaganda broadcasts to the German armed forces. Deputy commandant of the British sector in Berlin 1950-1952. Went on to become a long time major trade representative for the City of London and had a lot of involvement in the negotiations leading up to the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Joined Barclays Bank in the City of London as a director and industrial advisor in 1972. Member of the elite Recruited into the SOE (WWII rival of MI6) by its founder, Colonel Sir Charles Hambroas one of its first members. Helped Sefton Delmer, the Lord Beaverbrook agent who used to be in contact with Hitler's inner circle, with material for his propaganda broadcasts to the German armed forces. Deputy commandant of the British sector in Berlin 1950-1952. Went on to become a long time major trade representative for the City of London and had a lot of involvement in the negotiations leading up to the 1957 Treaty of Rome. Joined Barclays Bank in the City of London as a director and industrial advisor in 1972. Member of the elite Pilgrims Society , along with names as Cecil, Rothschild, Warburg and Windsor, in the early to mid 1970s. Co-organized a fundraising in 1976 with a bunch of Pilgrims Society members and executives to save Canterbury Cathedral. Chaired some meetings of Le Cercle. Joined the board of the International Energy Bank in 1981, which financed worldwide oil and gas explorations, starting with the United States and Europe. Helped to establish the right-wing political pressure group Policy Research Associates and was a governor Atlantic Institute, along with the Rothschilds, Agnellis, Wallenbergs, and many other elites. Franz-Josef Bach "advised them [EDC] about political things - the stability of a country, whether it was going to be an industrial country or not, whether it was going to be stable or not... I go to the country, see the country and make a report." 52] "an intelligence network like a government would employ to get inside information, to pull the strings... the records itself show that Northrop has been doing it." 53] Ran Konrad Adenauer's office, who was chancellor of the Federal Republic of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. German ambassador to Iran, which was ruled by the controversial but pro-West Shah. Conservative member of the Bundestag from 1969 to 1972. Went to work for the Swiss-based Economic and Development Corporation (EDC), an unacknowledged lobbying group for Northrop. Named as a shareholder of EDC and acknowledged that he hadSenator Church of the Church Committee said about the Northrop arrangement that it wasLess controversially, Bach was also a commercial and financial advisor to the Siemens Corporation.

Ever since Brian Crozier was elected president of Le Cercle, leadership stayed British. Subsequent heads of Le Cercle have been MI6 asset Lord Julian Amery, his protege Jonathan Aitken, Rothschild employee Lord Norman Lamont and the even more elite 13th Marquess of Lothian. Jean Violet asked Brian Crozier to take over the Cercle presidency in 1980. Crozier's presidency lasted until 1985, when Julian Amery apparently took over this role. [54] Jonathan Aitken was Amery's protege and is known to have chaired at least some meetings in the early 1990s. [55] Lord Lamont, the Rothschild employee, served as chairman of Le Cercle from 1996 to roughly 2008 [56], after which Lord Lothian took over. [57]

There is some confusion these days about who has been president and/or chairman of Le Cercle. When Pinay was president of the group the chairmanship of the individual meetings was shared out among people like Pesenti, Tennant, and Crozier. The presidency was later handed over to Jean Violet, Brian Crozier, and Julian Amery. However, since then, their successors have been referred to as chairmen of Le Cercle. Following is a list of heads of Le Cercle, compiled by comparing a number of different sources.

Chairman/president Term Konrad Adenauer 1950s-1960s (Carlo Pesenti may have been chair in the 1960s.) Antoine Pinay 1950s-1970s Jean Violet 1970s-1980 Brian Crozier 1980-1985 Julian Amery 1985-1990s (Likely until 1991, when Amery retired from public office.) Jonathan Aitken 1990s-1996 Lord Norman Lamont 1996-2008 (Estimate of resignation, based on rumors.) Lord Lothian 2008-today

Additional details on these latter day leaders:

58]



Leopold had two sons: John and Julian. John went to work for French, Spanish, German, and Italian fascists, and was eventually hanged for it. Julian was Churchill’s personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek in 1945. Reportedly a life-long MI6 operative. In 1950, he became a Conservative member of parliament and served in the cabinets of Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath. Married Harold Macmillan's daughter in 1950. Involved in the founding of the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom in 1950. Representative to the Council of Europe 1950-1956. Representative to the Round Table Conference on Malta in 1955. Involved with the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Club in the 1950s and 1960s, together with the Oppenheimers. Became a member of the Privy Council in 1960. Member of the very aristocratic Other Club since 1960, over the years together with the Duke of Devonshire (Cavendish), the Cecils, Lord Rothschild, Lord Rees-Mogg, Prince Charles, Pilgrims Society president Lord Carrington, Lord Richardson of Duntisbourne, and a whole string of ex-prime ministers.



With his friends David Stirling and Billy McLean, and help from the Cercle-affiliated royal houses of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Amery set up a private SAS war in Yemen in the early 1960s in an effort to get Nasser out. One of the most prominent supporters of the illegal pro-white dictatorship in Rhodesia during the 1970s. In 1975, he claimed that it seemed more and more that the British trade unions were infiltrated by the KGB. Said to have been at a meeting on November 15,1982 with Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis and several known Cercle members about an expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank. 59] Son of Leopold Amery (1873-1955), who was close associate of Lord Milner and the Rothschilds. Leopold was a British imperialist heavily involved in the creation of Israel. He also was a great supporter of Coudenhove-Kalergi's Paneuropa Union, which was initially funded by the Warburgs and Rothschilds, and was later headed by Otto von Habsburg.Leopold had two sons: John and Julian. John went to work for French, Spanish, German, and Italian fascists, and was eventually hanged for it. Julian was Churchill’s personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek in 1945. Reportedly a life-long MI6 operative. In 1950, he became a Conservative member of parliament and served in the cabinets of Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath. Married Harold Macmillan's daughter in 1950. Involved in the founding of the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom in 1950. Representative to the Council of Europe 1950-1956. Representative to the Round Table Conference on Malta in 1955. Involved with the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Club in the 1950s and 1960s, together with the Oppenheimers. Became a member of the Privy Council in 1960. Member of the very aristocratic Other Club since 1960, over the years together with the Duke of Devonshire (Cavendish), the Cecils, Lord Rothschild, Lord Rees-Mogg, Prince Charles, Pilgrims Society president Lord Carrington, Lord Richardson of Duntisbourne, and a whole string of ex-prime ministers.With his friends David Stirling and Billy McLean, and help from the Cercle-affiliated royal houses of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, Amery set up a private SAS war in Yemen in the early 1960s in an effort to get Nasser out. One of the most prominent supporters of the illegal pro-white dictatorship in Rhodesia during the 1970s. In 1975, he claimed that it seemed more and more that the British trade unions were infiltrated by the KGB. Said to have been at a meeting on November 15,1982 with Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis and several known Cercle members about an expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank.Chairman of the London chapter of the Global Economic Action Institute, a free-market organization that was exposed in 1986 as being funded by the Moonie cult. Julian not only was an avid empire-builder, just like his father, but also in favour of Britain joining the European Common Market. He was also a supporter of a strong nuclear deterrent against the Soviets. Picked by Crozier as the new president of Le Cercle in 1985. Consultant to the extremely corrupt BCCI in the 1980s. Mentor to Jonathan Aitken, the controversial next president of Le Cercle. Good friend of the very powerful and dynastic Cecil family, which also was very prominent in the initial Round Table clique. Great nephew of Hitler-intimate Lord Beaverbrook, whose son ended up in the 1001 Club. Served as a war correspondent, and reportedly an MI6 agent, during the 1960s in the Middle-East, Vietnam, and Africa. Became a politician and member of parliament. During the 1980s, Aitken was a director of BMARC, a company that exported weapons to intermediary countries, who sold these weapons again to the intended countries (like Iraq). CEO of TV-Am and chairman of Aitken Hume Plc, a banking and investment group. In 1992, he was appointed Defense Minister. During this time, he stood in close contact with co-Cercle member and MI6 head of Middle-East affairs Geoffrey Tantum. Chairman of Le Cercle. Accused of having lobbied for three arms contractors: GEC, Marconi and VSEL, in an effort to sell many millions worth of arms to Saudi-Arabia. Through multiple offshore companies in Switzerland and Panama, submarines, howitzers, medium-range laser guided bombs, Black Hawks, and EH101 helicopters were sold and shipped. After his trial and brief time in jail, Aitken is one of the few people who had to resign from the Privy Council. Seemingly funded by British intelligence during tough times. Has become an extremely religious evangelist who even went on a few Jesuit retreats. Claims that since Britain has failed to become the dominant power in the European Union, Britain should withdraw its membership in the EU. Very influential British politician who was the campaign manager for John Major. Worked at Rothschilds from 1968 to 1979. Became an important politician and leading eurosceptic under Thatcher, who also led the Treaty of Maastricht negotiations for Britain. Handled Russia's negotiations with institutions as the IMF and World Bank on behalf of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Again director of N.M. Rothschild and Sons Ltd 1993-1995, personally appointed by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild against the advice of the other board members.



Reportedly told a conspiracy reporter in 1986 at a private party that Lord Peter Mandelson, a close friend of the Rothschild, was a pedophile. Rented a basement apartment to high-class prostitute and dominatrix Lindi St Clair, who serviced members of parliament and other government officials.



Appointed chairman of Le Cercle in 1996 after Aitken had to step down. Member of the Privy Council. Director of Scottish Re and many other insurance, banking, and chemical corporations. Advisor to the Monsanto Corporation. Chairman of the obscure Oil Club. Member of the neoconservative Benador Associates, together with Arnaud de Borchgrave, Alexander Haig, and James Woolsey. Director of General Mediterranean Holding of the controversial former Saddam associate and arms dealer Nadhmi Auchi, who also is a member of Le Cercle. Sought the release of Pinochet. Has visited Bilderberg. As chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce, he's been promoting increased trade with Iran while the US is about to attack this country for allegedly trying to create nuclear weapons. As head of the Bruges Group he is a leader in the eurosceptic movement in Britain. Born in 1945. Known as Michael Ancram until 2004. Scion of one of the most aristocratic and enigmatic families in British history. According to Carroll Quigley, the 11th Marquess of Lothian (1883-1940) was an important member of Cecil Rhodes' imperialist Round Table network, centered around All Souls College, Oxford University, and the Rhodes Trust. Family members have been generational Pilgrims Society members and were close to the Morgan interests. Ancram's father, the 12th Marquess of Lothian, was a Knight of Malta.



Ancram married a daughter of the 16th Duke of Norfolk, the oldest and most influential Catholic family in Britain with generations of family members serving as Knights of Malta and Vatican liaisons. In addition, the mother of Michael Ancram's grandfather, the 11th Marquess of Lothian, was the daughter of the 14th Duke of Norfolk.



Member of parliament 1974, 1979-1987, 1992-2010. Minister of state for Northern Ireland 1994-1997. Privy Council member since 1996. Shadow constitutional affairs spokesman 1997-1998. Chairman of the Conservative Party 1998-2001. Deputy of the Conservative Party 2001-2005. Shadow foreign secretary 2001-2005. Shadow internal affairs secretary 2003-2005. Shadow defense secretary 2005. Member of the Intelligence and Security Committee since 2006, similar to at least two other Cercle visitors.



Very Euroskeptic and has participated in conferences of the Bruges Group, largely ran by Lord Lamont, around the turn of century. Known to have visited Le Cercle in 2003. Certainly chairman of Le Cercle by 2012, although most likely replaced Lord Lamont in 2008. In 2005 a founding signatory of the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society principles. Member of the Top Level Group of UK Parliamentarians for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation (TLG).

1980s-1990s U.K. Cercle members: MI6, arms, infiltrations, coups

British Cercle participants that we find in Le Cercle by the 1980s and early 1990s include Julian Amery, Jonathan Aitken, Anthony Cavendish, Sir Erik Bennett and Timothy Landon. One handwritten note of a Cercle meeting organizer lists the name Sir James Goldsmith - although Goldsmith didn't visit on that occasion. All of these individuals are MI6 assets who have been involved in coups throughout the Middle East and Africa, primarily in relation to colonies of the British Empire. These individuals essentially were the counterparts of CIA officers as Ted Shackley and James Critchfield - whom we still need to discuss - so it is no surprise to see them involved in a group as Le Cercle.

Present: Anthony Cavendish, Timothy Landon, Sir Erik Bennett, General Schwarzkopf and others

Elite ultraright Pilgrims Society executive member Lord Alun Chalfont, considered for a Cercle presidency until the early 1990s, is important to mention as well. Apart from his directorshipships at Lazards and IBM UK, in the 1980s Chalfont headed companies as Zeus Security Consultants and Securipol that were involved in anything from hiring Satanist Nazis to infiltrate domestic leftist groups to protecting companies involved in the undersea dumping of nuclear waste. These companies also appear to have been close to Group 13, allegedly the British government's assassination team. The history of Chalfont and some of his extreme-right associates is discussed in more detail in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article.

One interesting British name of the early 1990s to mention is Lord Charles Powell. He was private secretary and key foreign policy advisor to British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1983-1990 period and helped broker the controversial al-Yamamah arms deal with Saudi Arabia involving hundreds of millions of pounds in bribes. Cercle head Jonathan Aitken was the most key player in this affair. After Thatcher, Powell became private secretary to John Major for a year and then went into private business. He became a paid consultant to BAE Systems in arms deals, a director of elite companies as Barrick Gold and Jardine Matheson. He joined the global advisory panel of the Council on Foreign Relations, became a trustee of the Aspen Institute, and an annual visitor of the Munich Security Conference. After 9/11 he joined the advisory board CIA front firm Diligence, LLC, a private security firm partnered with the super-controversial Far West, Ltd. group, tied to global terrorism and drug trade networks. In 2005 he became a signatory of the neocon supergroup Henry Jackson Society, along with future Cercle chairman Michael Ancram.

Meanwhile, Charles' brother Jonathan Powell was chief of staff to prime minister Tony Blair from 1997 to 2007. Jonathan later served on the board of Hakluyt, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the British-American Project, and the European Climate Foundation. Needless to say, the Powell brothers are among the top superclass members for Great Britain and even more so than Lord Chalfont really transcent the ordinary Cercle crowd.

U.S. RELATIONS OF LE CERCLE



1967: Le Cercle reaches out to Rockefeller and Kissinger

By the time the anti-American and anti-NATO Charles De Gaulle left office in April 1969, and before Brian Crozier's 1971 invitation to Le Cercle by Jean Violet, the Cercle leadership had already forged ties with the United States.

In October 1967, key Cercle member and financier Carlo Pesenti II took David Rockefeller aside at a Chase investment forum in Italy and revealed to him the existence of Le Cercle. [60] 7 months later, in May 1968, Rockefeller attended a first Cercle meeting in Rome. [61] At the time, David's brother, Nelson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were competing for the Republican nomination. Eventually Nixon was elected president in November of that year, but, as usual, the Rockefeller influence on successive U.S. government administrations persisted, this time in the form of Rockefeller protege Henry Kissinger being appointed Nixon's national security advisor and eventually also secretary of state. Ironically, not too long before LBJ tried to convince his close friend, Nelson Rockefeller, to run against Nixon has his Democrat successor.

Quite a shocking picture, considering a young Baron de Bonvoisin is standing here next to David Rockefeller. The "Black Baron" was Belgium's most notorious Cold War financier of underground Nazi militias tied to the CIA's Strategy of Tension. The baron and some of his friends have also been repeatedly mentioned in elite child abuse, torture and murder networks.

Based on this ever-present Rockefeller influence, it is no surprise that Le Cercle started making overtures to David Rockefeller in 1967. In fact, on December 6, 1968, immediately after the Nixon election, the very first Cercle meeting was organized in the United States, at Rockefeller Center of all places. [62] It appears a picture of this meeting exists in which David Rockefeller can be seen chatting with former French prime minister Antoine Pinay, Belgian journalist Maurice Brebart and the notorious Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin - also from Belgium. A few months later, in early 1969, David Rockefeller again appeared at a Cercle meeting, this time in Bavaria, in advance of Nixon and Kissinger's efforts to strengthen the ties between the United States and European NATO countries. [63] Kissinger accompanied Rockefeller to Cercle meetings on at least two occasions: one on July 2, 1969 and another on December 2, 1970. [64]

Rockefeller and Kissinger served as a conduit of information from Le Cercle to the Nixon administration and undoubtedly to many of their establishment friends. One great example is David Rockefeller handing Kissinger a document of a group calling itself "Sint Unum" that warns of clandestine "communist" infiltration into the Church network - including Latin America - through "progressism", "modernism" and "liberalism". The report asks the U.S. government to finance "traditionalist" media outlets within the Vatican network. Kissinger cautioned Nixon against direct financial contributions to right-wing elements in the church, but at the same wrote that "much of what [the report says] says is probably true." There's no telling what Kissinger instructed the CIA to do covertly, however.

Upon learning that "Sint Unum" actually was Le Cercle, one probably begins to worry to what extent this "communist" infiltration simply was used as an excuse to keep any kind of political wealth distribution programs at bay. Identifying Sint Unum as Le Cercle isn't particularly hard. In Kissinger's National Security Memorandum, Sint Unum is described by one of its founders as a "clandestine Catholic international organization whose aims are to oppose Communism and to further the principles of Christianity". Regular meetings take place around the world, from Paris to Rio de Janeiro. Key founders include French prime minister Robert Schumann and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Jean Violet is described as an "organizer" and "executive officer", with Carlo Pesenti II being the president and principal financier of the group. Alfredo Sanchez Bella and Franz Joseph Strauss are two individuals with close ties to Sint Unum. [65] All of this is completely similar to Le Cercle, a group Rockefeller and Kissinger had just gotten themselves involved with.

As Rockefeller explained in his memoirs, eventually he withdrew from Le Cercle over concerns that he might be "concerting with reactionaries." [66] However, apart from a much more steady stream of U.S. Christian conservatives, it appears the Rockefeller-Kissinger network always kept some kind of representation within the Cercle. If David Rockefeller or a Henry Kissinger wasn't there, you often had one or two persons with a more liberal Eastern Establishment background attending Cercle conferences. Pilgrims Society members Nelson Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Paul Volcker, Robert Knight and Sir Ronald Grierson come to mind over the decades. Adolph Schmidt Mellon, a member of the Pilgrims Society and CIA-tied Mellon family, is known to have attended Cercle meetings in the 1970s. There are a number of other, even more recent examples, such as long-time Kissinger Associates managing director Paul Bremer or long-term Kissinger protege Brent Scowcroft. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan might be another such example. They have all visited Le Cercle, a group with a dark history that no ordinary person has ever heard about.

As discussed extensively in the Pilgrims Society article, David Rockefeller and friends all moonlighted for the CIA and even formed an "above CIA" network due to close personal relationships to successive presidents and CIA directors, by holding the position of national security advisor and other top government positions, and being at the nexus of basically all key NGOs. David Rockefeller actually was briefed by a variety of division chiefs on everything that was going on, so his role in Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission, the CFR and Le Cercle can all be seen as one large private intelligence operation.

6I: privatizing CIA operations

In the early 1970s the CIA was heavily criticized for its role in the Vietnam War and Watergate. Reporters and investigating committees began looking into the agency and soon plenty of stories emerged about domestic spying, infiltration of the media, subversion of foreign governments, assassinating foreign leaders, and large scale experiments with mind control. Some revelations were highlighted more prominently than others. Additional doubts were cast on the CIA 's role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the midst of all these reports, measures were taken to reduce the autonomy of the CIA. The ban on domestic spying was re-enforced while Congress and the Senate received far more influence over the appointment of CIA officials and the distribution of the CIA's budget. They requested numerous briefings and decided which clandestine operations were or weren't allowed. The CIA was not allowed anymore to subvert any foreign government or assassinate any leader it felt like. Authorization from Congress became mandatory. Furthermore, it was also largely prohibited from working with questionable characters to gather intelligence or aid in their coups.

Obviously plenty of orders for coups and assassinations came down from presidents and national security advisors, a fact Gerald Ford national security advisor and vice president Nelson Rockefeller did their utmost best to hide. Then again, it is not clear to what extent the CIA goes rogue when its leadership does not agree with a president, as primarily was the case under President Kennedy and President Carter.

Why people became sceptical of the CIA. A few newspaper clippings from 1973 to 1979.

These changes to CIA covert operations oversight didn't fall well with many intelligence chiefs and associates like Brian Crozier. They claimed the CIA's (human) intelligence gathering and intervention capabilities were now destroyed almost completely; and even more so after Admiral Stansfield Turner in 1977 began to force half of the CIA's anti-Soviet staff into retirement. Crozier and his Cercle-associates went looking for a solution and came up with the idea to establish a transnational secret intelligence agency of their own. For security reasons this group initially didn't have a name, but within a few months it became known to insiders as "Six Eye", which was shortened to 6I and eventually also became known as "The 61". It's purpose, according to Crozier:

"[6I is] a Private Sector Operational Intelligence agency, beholden to no government, but at the disposal of allied or friendly governments... Our main concerns would be:

"To provide reliable intelligence in areas which governments were barred from investigating, either through legislation (as in the US) or because political circumstances made such inquiries difficult or potentially embarrassing.

"To conduct secret counter-subversion operations in any country in which such actions were deemed feasible.

"It was agreed that no outsiders should be made aware of the existence of this organization, except if, in the judgement of one of us, the person was deemed a suitable candidate for recruitment." [67]

It is often claimed that the privatization of intelligence was the result of increased congressional oversight, which is true to a large degree. However, private intelligence organizations like Le Cercle, Antoine Bonnemaison's Centre, and probably quite a number of other organizations already existed before the CIA oversight crisis began. The Stay Behind networks and the combined Navy-CIA Task Force 157 also had (virtually) no Congressional oversight.

Members of 6I, in existence from 1977 to 1988, came from England, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, the United States, and likely some other countries. It forged links with Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Iran. At least on some occasions, 6I provided intelligence to the Pope. According to Crozier, there only was some "minor overlapping" between the Cercle and 6I. This seems to be a little misleading, as many of the key individuals of Le Cercle were part of 6I, including Brian Crozier, Jean Violet, Georges Albertini, Count Huyn, Hans Christoph Schenk Freiherr von Stauffenberg, and General Stilwell. Others in the know were Cercle members Nicholas Elliot, Robert Moss, William Wilson, General Fraser, and probably quite a number of others. [68] Crozier told us more about the meeting that established 6I in his biography:

"The question was whether something could be done in the private sector - not only in Britain, but in the United States and other countries of the Western Alliance. A few of us had been exchanging views, and decided that action was indeed possible. I took the initiative by convening a very small and very secret meeting in London. We met in the luxurious executive suite of a leading City of London bank on the morning of Sunday 13 February 1977. Our host, a leading figure in the bank, took the chair. Three of us were British, four were American, with one German. Ill health prevented a French associate from attending; Jean Violet was with us in spirit.



"Apart from the banker and myself, the other Briton was Nicholas Elliott. The German was a very active member of the Bundestag, whose career had started in diplomacy. He had a very wide understanding of Soviet strategy, on which he wrote several first rate books.



"The Americans included two able and diligent Congressional staffers, and the Viennese-born representative of a big Belgian company. Also there was the remarkable General Vernon ('Dick') Walters, recently retired as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence..." 69]

The first questions many people will ask is which bank Crozier is talking about and who that chairman was. Crozier doesn't give these answers, but there seem to be only a few possibilities. One candidate is Cercle member Sir Peter Tennant of Barclays (one of the more aristocratic banks with historically many members of the Pilgrims Society, the 1001 Club, and the Order of St. John on its board), which would make all three of the British participants leading members of Le Cercle. Tennant's name appears sixty pages further in Crozier's book as one of the chairmen of Cercle sessions, but he gives zero details about the rest of this person's life. However, in 1977 Tennant was a director and industrial advisor to Barclays Bank, which used to be located in the City of London, near the Bank of England. He had been a long time trade representative of the City of London, the small historical financial district in central London.

However, there's another possibility, and maybe a more likely one. At the start of World War II, Tennant was recruited into Special Operations Executive (SOE) by Colonel Sir Charles Hambro, who would become head of the SOE in 1942. Sir Charles Hambro was chairman of Hambros Bank - another very aristocratic bank, represented in the Pilgrims Society and the 1001 Club. He was a very good friend of both Winston Churchill and the Bilderberg and 1001 Club-linked Wallenberg family. Interestingly, Sir Hambro's deputy in the SOE, Henry "Harry" Sporborg, ended up in the small inner circle committee of Crozier's Shield group. According to Crozier, the Shield Committee included he himself, Sir Harry Sporborg, MI6 asset and Lonrho director Nicholas Elliot. They met "in the boardroom of a City bank" [70] in mid 1978. There are some great parallels here with the meeting to establish 6I only a year earlier. Elliot and Crozier were also present at that meeting, which also took place in a City bank. Is it possible that Sir Harry was a "leading figure" in a City bank? It turns out that's actually a very tough question to answer with certainty.

Sir Harry was a long time director of Hambros Bank until about 1973, but certainly remained closely involved with Hambros until at least 1977 by heading one of its subsidiaries. His son Christopher also came to Hambros in 1962 and was a director in the 1970s and beyond. There's been some talk that Sir Harry was a post-WWII MI6 agent. He has also been named a founding trustee of the Sue Ryder Foundation in the 1950s, together with MI6 agent Airey Neave, the earlier discussed anti-communist crusader who, like Shield, was closely involved in bringing Thatcher to power. Hambros, however, is located at Tower Hill, officially just outside the City. And together with lacking details of Sir Harry's involvement with Hambros in 1978, this is what makes identifying the chairman of 6I meeting, and the bank it was held in, impossible at this moment. But maybe it would be more accurate anyway to say that Shield and 6I were founded by veterans of the SOE, MI6 and the CIA.

Most of the other participants that helped establish 6I remain anonymous, although one can speculate about some of the names. The German delegate almost certainly is the aristocratic Cercle member Count Hans Huyn, who is known to have become an important member of 6I. [71] His background fits perfectly and has been discussed earlier. More information about Huyn can be found in the membership list attached to this article.

Not mentioned by Brian Crozier in his biography is that 6I operations, apparently costing about $1 million per year, were paid for by Richard Mellon Scaife, Rupert Murdoch and Sir James Goldsmith. [72] All these men were wealthy neoconservatives with CIA and suspected CIA and Mossad ties. In Scaife's case, CIA ties are a certainty. Even Brian Crozier wrote in his biography how the CIA referred him to Scaife. Rupert Murdoch is said to have been recruited by the CIA's and Le Cercle's Ted Shackley in Australia before building his Anglo-American-Israeli newspaper network. [73] In 1981 Thatcher helped Murdoch buy up 40% of the British press, including The Times, in return for favorable editorials. [74] Then, in January 1983, CIA and possibly Mossad asset Roy Cohn brought Murdoch to the Reagan White House, where a deal was made that Murdoch would build a conservative media empire that would support the fight against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and that would counter the extreme liberal bias of the media. [75] There are also reports of Sir James Goldsmith and Rupert Murdoch together visiting the Reagan White House. One occasion was in 1983 in relation to European opposition to the stationing of nuclear missiles on the continent. Another report dates to the late 1980s when Sir James Goldsmith and Rupert Murdoch were receiving a private intelligence briefing at the office of Kenneth DeGraffenreid, Reagan's senior director of intelligence programs at the National Security Council. [76] In other words, it's entirely possible, if not likely, that Scaife, Murdoch and Goldsmith were financing 6I.

General Vernon Walters: Gladio, 6I, Condor, Safari Club

While not giving the name of every 6I member, fortunately, as can be read above, Crozier did identify General Vernon Walters - a deputy CIA director from 1972 to 1976 and acting CIA director for two months in mid 1976 - as a co-founder and member of 6I. Walters appears to have represented the U.S. intelligence faction that was very upset with the changes in CIA oversight. Walters was a bit of a mystery man. Although one of the most important behind-the-scenes players in the post-WWII world, not a whole lot of research has been done on him.

Like many leading members of Le Cercle and some in the upper echelons of the CIA, Walters was close to Vatican interests. He was educated by the Jesuits at Stonyhurst College in England and later became a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta [77], providing him with instant access to the Vatican at all times. His participation in the notorious American Security Council in the 1975-1976 period and his involvement in setting up 6I in 1978 and close relation to the founding of the Safari Club in 1976 only serve to substantiate reports about Walters' historic ties with CIA-employed drug traffickers, death squad leaders, and coup plotters.

As for his full biography: Walters went to work for Army Intelligence in 1941. Like Henry Kissinger, he became a protege of Fritz Kraemer in the post-war period. [78] In no small part due to his ability to fluently speak English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian and Chinese, Walters became an aide and interpreter to Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and a number of their administration members, including Henry Kissinger.

During the latter part of World War II, after a number of assignments, Walters served "in a variety of training and liaison assignments, many of which would introduce him to young Allied foreign military officers who in later years would become the leaders of their countries." Among them was Colonel Humberto Castelo Branco [79], who in 1964 took power in a CIA-backed coup in Brazil against Joao Goulart, the last left-wing Brazilian president until 2003.

In the early Cold War Walters first served as a military attache in Brazil in 1947-1948 and was present with President Truman and secretary of state George C. Marshall at the 1948 Organization of American States summit in Rio de Janeiro. In the 1948-1954 period Walters regularly served as an aide to Pilgrims Society member Averell Harriman, first in Europe, where Harriman was put in charge of the Marshall Plan; Korea in 1950, during the outbreak of the Korean War; and then in Iran in 1951, where Harriman was trying to mediate between the nationalist Iranian Mossadegh government and the British over the nationalization of Anglo-Iranian Oil Corporation. Negotiations broke down and a joint MI6-CIA coup in 1953 deposed of Mossadegh, bringing in the anti-communist Shah. More diplomatic mission with Harriman followed in 1954 to Iran and Yugoslavia. In 1951 Harriman was a co-founder of the Psychological Strategy Board, a CIA operations oversight board that came to involve Nelson Rockefeller.

F.l.t.r.: President Eisenhower with General Vernon Walters and Charles de Gaulle, who the Americans had been trying to assassinate since World War II.

In 1951 Walters played a role in setting up and running NATO's SHAPE headquarters in Paris on behalf of President Eisenhower, serving here as assistant deputy chief of staff until 1956. In 1958 Eisenhower sent his vice president Richard Nixon on a Latin American speaking tour with Walters as his aide and interpreter. Walters performed a similar role for Eisenhower at various conferences. In 1958-1960 Walters was U.S. military attache in Paris. Subsequently he served as Army attache in Italy in 1960-1962, at a time that he and the CIA were trying trying to prevent the communists and socialists from coming to power. Then, from 1962 to 1967, he was Army attache in Brazil, a period that overlapped with the 1964 military coup of his old friend Colonel Humberto Castelo Branco. Next, from 1967 to 1972, he was back in Paris, this time serving as Defense attache. De Gaulle, despised by the Americans, was in power until 1969. In 1970 De Gaulle's successor, former Rothschild banker Georges Pompidou, appointed the pro-U.S. Count Alexandre de Marenches as the new SDECE chief. De Marenches, like Walters a Knight of Malta, grew very close to the general and eventually co-founded the private security agency the Safari Club in tandem with the CIA and other allied security services. In 1967 Walters was briefly to be found in Vietnam. In 1969 he helped smuggle Nixon's national security advisor Henry Kissinger in and out of France for secret peace negotiations with North Vietnam.

In 1972, and apparently at the recommendation of Henry Kissinger [80], Walters was appointed deputy director of the CIA under Richard Helms, remaining in this position under James Schlesinger, William Colby and George H. W. Bush. From early July to early September 1973, in between Schlesinger and Colby, Walters actually served as acting director of the CIA. Under Helms, Walters appears to have caused the 1972-1973 Watergate scandal by refusing to block the FBI investigation of the Watergate Hotel break-in. [81] Meanwhile, Mark Felt, one of J. Edgar Hoover's key assistants, was leaking details of the Watergate break-in to the Washington Post. To make matters even more curious, the Washington Post was owned by friends of Walters' superior, Richard Helms, and other top CIA men. Post owner Katherine Graham also was a good friend of Helms' boss, Henry Kissinger, who walked away unscathed from the Watergate scandal. "Friends and admirers" have attributed Walters' actions during Watergate to "his superior character and integrity," but questions about his motives have always existed. [82]

Also while deputy CIA director - under President Gerald Ford, vice president Nelson Rockefeller and national security advisor and secretary of state Henry Kissinger - Walters was one the key founders of Latin America's Condor operation, a continent-wide anti-communist and anti-socialist death squad with CIA backing. In the Summer of 1974 Walters went to Santiago, Chile to confer with newly-installed pro-U.S. dictator Augusto Pinochet. [83] Over the next few years Chilean CIA station chief Stuart Burton and Walters were considered "bosom buddies" of Manuel Contreras [84], the head of Pinochet's security service and deeply involved in the torturing and killing of Chile's communists and socialists. On November 25, 1975 it also was Contreras who invited the military intelligence chiefs of the dictatorial regimes of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay to Chile to officially set up the Condor Plan. [85] In this period, starting on January 7, 1975 at the very least, Contreras several times visited General Walters in Washington [86], with Walters briefing Kissinger on these meetings. [87] In part these meetings involved the acquiring of weapons from a company headed by controversial CIA officers Frank Terpil and Edwin Wilson. [88] Walters is also known to have visited Paraguay in June 1976 in light of the Condor network. [89] While ordered by Pinochet and Contreras, the FBI suspected Walters of having played a role in the September 21, 1976 car bomb assassination in Washington, D.C. of Chilean refugee Orlando Leletier. Walters certainly hid the fact from the FBI that he had met more than once with Contreras [90], with the CIA conveniently ruling out Pinochet as a suspect [91] and hiding photographs of the two Chilean security agents that carried out the assassination. [92] It speaks for itself that claims exist that Walters was the primary CIA contact for Operation Condor.

With Jimmy Carter's arrival in 1976, Walters left the government and became a back-channel for arms and oil deals. [93] In 1981, with Reagan elected, Walters was brought back to the U.S. government as ambassador-at-large, apparently by secretary of state and fellow-Knight of Malta Alexander Haig [94], who worked under Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration as deputy national security advisor and therefore was familiar with Walters. Walters stayed on under George Shultz, who succeeded Haig in July 1982. During the Reagan years Walters visited 108 countries, meeting "the heads of state in almost every one of them." [95]

Walters was sent as a "key back-channel emissary to Zaire, Kenya, Morocco, Ceylon, India, Nepal, Angola, El Salvador, Argentina, Zambia, and other countries." [96] Quite regularly the missions involved rather traditional, if strong-arm, diplomacy, such as the time - March 1982 - that Walters had a "four-hour chat with Fidel Castro". [97] Or that time - November 1982 - that Walters went to the Vatican to stop a number of bishops from speaking out against nuclear weapons. Or that time - 1985 - that Reagan sent Walters to France to ask for access to French airspace for bombing runs on Gaddafi. In between all this, Walters served as a "key participant in sensitive negotiations over Central America, the Falklands, and Southern Africa." [98] Possibly even a February 1984 secret visit to Ethiopia could be seen as somewhat conventional and even humanitarian: Walters went there to retrieve a CIA agent who had been arrested and tortured for spreading anti-communist propaganda in the country. [99]

As for more controversial diplomatic missions, among Walters' first assignments for the Reagan administration were visits to a number of murderous Central American regimes in order to organize the fight against the communist and socialist Nicaraguan Contras. In 1981 he twice visited Guatemala, headed by the murderous right-winger General Romeo Lucas Garcia who had seen his financial aid cut off by the Carter administration in 1977. Israel and the Reagan government were all to happy to supply weapons to Lucas Garcia, whose fascist death squads were killing an estimated 300 people per month. Lucas Garcia was reluctant, however, to join the fight against the Contras, necessitating the visits of Walters. [100] In May 1981 Walters met with Honduran colonel (later general) Gustavo Alvarez and other Honduran officials. [101] Alvarez was an important founder of the anti-communist, drug dealing death squad Colonel Gustavo Alvarez, founder of the Battalion 3-16 death squad that was supporting the similarly CIA-backed Contra rebels. In June 1981 Walters was in Buenos Aires, Argentina to convince military dictator Roberto Viola to support the Contra war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. [102] In May 1984 Walters had a "very sensitive" meeting with Contra death squad leader, drug trafficker, CIA and American Security Council favorite and Western Goals Foundation patron Roberto D'Aubuisson and his partner-in-crime Francisco Guirola. Apparently Walters was dispatched to prevent D'Aubuisson from assassinating the U.S. ambassador in El Salvador. [103]

In this same early 1980s period, Walters employed long-time neocon CIA asset Michael Ledeen as an aide. Ledeen was working with Italian intelligence, SISMI, and one of its criminal agents, P2 member Francisco Pazienza, in discrediting President Jimmy Carter during the 1980 elections. [104] Subsequently Ledeen played a key role in spreading disinformation that the 1981 assassination attempt led back to the Soviet Union instead of the CIA-linked Turkish Grey Wolves brigade. Cercle visitor Robert Moss was spreading similar disinformation. [105] In 1985-1987, together with Ted Shackley, by that time the key U.S. player in Le Cercle, Ledeen played a key role in setting up the Iran-Contra scheme. [106] Shackley and Ledeen were close friends and in the business of advising European intelligence agencies on terrorism. [107] Since the late 1970s Ledeen has been one of the most notorious neocons around.

Not entirely unsurprising, at one point Walters was described as a person "involved directly or indirectly in the overthrow of more governments than any other official of the US government." [108] Probably one of many that we missed here apparently too place in the Fiji islands in May 1987 when the newly-elected prime minister Timoci Bavadra, who opposed U.S. nuclear testing and the receiving of nuclear-armed American warships to the island, was replaced by a military dictator. Bavadra urged congress to investigate evidence of a U.S. military coup, citing "reports that [General John] Singlaub and [General] Vernon Walters, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, were in Fiji before, during and after the coup in the Pacific island country." [109] General Singlaub, an OSS veteran and CIA founder, has a similarly long list of accusations against him of involvement in coups around the world. Immediately before, in 1985 and 1986, Singlaub was accused of running a CIA coup in the nearby Philippines. [110]

If this is not enough, South African intelligence named Walters as a key plotter in the JFK assassination. [111] This report is less far-fetched than it might seem. Walters was a military attaché in Rome in the 1960-1962 period where he worked with CIA station chief William K. Harvey in countering the massive communist and socialist influences in this country. Like the rest of the CIA leadership, Walters was not happy with the worldwide soft approach Kennedy took to socialism and nationalism, including the Italian Socialist Party that had recently come to power. [112] The fascist-terrorist Gladio network Walters and Harvey helped to oversee, and from which the P2 Lodge emerged, was crucial in countering the communist and socialist influences in Italy.

Harvey had been banished to Rome by the Kennedys for sending commando teams into Cuba during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. This made his protege, Ted Shackley, head of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami, tasked with overthrowing Fidel Castro. Quite a bit of evidence has surfaced to show that Harvey, his protege Ted Shackley, and their pro-Vietnam, anti-Castro CIA gang, which worked closely with leading mafia bosses, were the key plotters of the 1963 JFK assassination. That having been said, while Walters was part of this inside clique, he did not have the statue to order the JFK assassination. He might well have been a role of some sort.

What we can say with relative certainty is that Walters doesn't appear to have been the most moral guy around. In public he claimed to be against mass killings: "I'm against that stuff for three reasons: It's against the law of God, it's against the law of man, and it generally doesn't work." [113] As usual, he had a tendency to pin criticism of America's support for brutal, murderous dictators - with him as one of the key middlemen - on communist propaganda:

"The Communists and their friends see the need to denigrate those who have defeated them, so they spread the word that the Americans were really behind the Brazilian, Chilean, or any other revolutions they don't like. Unfortunately, many guilt-ridden Americans naively believe them." [114]

The Safari Club in more detail

General Vernon Walters' involvement in setting up 6I in 1977 alongside Brian Crozier and countless other Cercle members is quite significant. It is one of many indications that Le Cercle too came to serve as an extension of privatized CIA operations. Latin America's Condor network might be seen in the same light, considering it was formally put together in late 1975 and to a large extent made use of informal relationships. Then there was another club in this category that needs discussing: the Safari Club.

The primary founders of the Safari Club in 1976 were General Vernon Walters and Count Alexandre de Marenches. [115] The latter was the head of the French SDECE from 1970 to 1981. He was appointed to this position by Georges Pompidou, due to his friendship with Pompidou's brother-in-law, and tasked with cleaning up Gaullism in the ranks of French intelligence and realigning French intelligence with the United States. At the time of Marenches' appointment, Walters was military attache in France. Both men belonged to the Knights of Malta [116] and became lifelong good friends. [117] When Walters was appointed deputy director the CIA, this relationship was taken to an even higher level.

In 1976 Walters and De Marenches, in light of the severe restrictions on CIA covert operations due to all the congressional investigations, secretly recruited Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the Shah of Iran into an anti-communist alliance named the Safari Club. [118] The Saudis were also recruited, possibly as the most important partners, but also another CIA angle was at work here. While Walters was working with De Marenches, Walters' boss, CIA director George H. W. Bush, through his oil connections, played a key role in bringing the Saudis into the Safari Club. Former CIA director Richard Helms, who by that time had become "ambassador" to Iran, and key Cercle member Ted Shackley played a key role in these Saudi liaisons as well. Frank Carlucci, a future CIA deputy director and best friend of Donald Rumsfeld, would also be brought in. The Saudis played a very important role in bankrolling CIA covert operations and also helped the CIA build bridges to the Pakistani ISI, from which the BCCI network sprang. Key Saudis involved include Saudi intelligence chief Kamal Adham, his successor as Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al Faisal; and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who soon came to be 