LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: PRIVA

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LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: PRIVA

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:11 am

LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: PRIVATE BRIDGE BETWEEN VATICAN-PANEUROPEAN AND ANGLO-AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE
by Joel van der Reijden
November 18, 2006

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Table of Contents:

• Intro
• Origins
• "Europe's founder" Jean Monnet
• Franco-German rapprochement
• Crozier's anti-communist propaganda network
• Cercle leadership
• Subversive tendencies
• The 61
• More on the American Cercle members
• The Vatican-Paneuropa network
• Franco-German vs. US-supported Anglo-German alliance
• The dilemma of the British Tories (Conservatives)
• Religious extremism and concluding summary
• New in 2010: Le Cercle and the Struggle for the Eurasian Continent
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:17 am

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Hotel Negresco in Nice, France. Once a meeting place of the Cercle.

"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', p. 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.


Tip: Also read David Teacher's Rogue Agents book, which originally was scheduled to be published almost 20 years ago. This never happened, but recently it was made available to ISGP by the author. Also, in 2010 an important follow-up paper was written to this article, entitled Le Cercle and the Struggle for the Eurasian Continent.

Intro

To get right to the point, Le Cercle is a secretive, privately-funded and 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 important members tend to be affiliated with the aristocratic circles in London or obscure elements within the Vatican, and accusations of links to fascism and Synarchism 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.

In addition, the Cercle is also strongly focused on European integration, going back to the efforts of its early members to bring about 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 there's an agenda in the background to some day bring about a new Holy Roman Empire with 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 keen on joining the European Union, now do everything in their power to keep Britain out of the emerging European superstate, having lost faith they can become a significant force within Europe. Their American associates, however, would like for them to continue the effort of breaking into the Franco-German alliance and possibly to establish a new Anglo-German alliance.

It seems like a cold war is raging in Europe. One that doesn't directly involve the Soviets.

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Known Cercle Meetings

Date / Location / Source

December 1, 1979 / Madison Hotel, Washington, U.S. / Langemann papers (November 1988, Lobster Magazine, #15, 'Brian Crozier, the Pinay Circle and James Goldsmith')

January 5-6, 1980 / Zurich, Switzerland / Langemann papers (November 1988, Lobster Magazine, #15, 'Brian Crozier, the Pinay Circle and James Goldsmith')

December 1980 / Washington, U.S. / 1993, Brian Crozier, 'Free Agent', p. 217

October 1986 / Hotel Negresco, Nice, France / 1990, Xan Fielding, 'One Man in His Time - The life of Lieutenant-Colonel NLD ('Billy') McLean, DSO'

November 30, 1990 / Al Bustan Hotel & Al-Baraka Palace, Muscat, Oman / 1993, Alan Clark, 'Diaries', p. 369-374

1996 / Amman, Jordan / June 29, 1997, The Independence, 'Aitken dropped by the Right's secret club; Is it the ultimate dishonour'

1997 / Berlin, Germany / June 29, 1997, The Independence, 'Aitken dropped by the Right's secret club; Is it the ultimate dishonour'

June 2000 / Lisbon, Portugal / Lobster Magazine, Issue 40, winter 2000-2001 (orginal source: June 18, 2000, Sunday Telegraph)

June 27 - July 1, 2002 / Morocco / 2002 UK Parliament record of William Hague (Register of Members' Interests)

June 18, 2004 / Belgrade, Serbia, Royal Palace / June 18, 2004, Chancellery of HRH Crown Prince Alexander II of Yugoslavia, 'Reception in honor of the "Le Cercle" conference

Late 2004 or early 2005 / Washington, U.S. / September 5, 2004, Sunday Times, 'Le Cercle of the elite'

June 16-17, 2005 / Paris, France / June 21, 2005, Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia - London / Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 'Ambassador talks to major foreign policy-security group'


Other conferences have been held in Bucharest and Frankfurt, according to the Independence of June 29, 1997.
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:18 am

Origins

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 real 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 this claim, it is known that Jean Violet was arrested after the war for having collaborated with the enemy. 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 (or, possibly, he became a member first, which resulted in his release). In 1951, Violet came into contact with Antoine Pinay, a Catholic also said to have been in bed with 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 the European Centre of Documentation and Information (CEDI) in 1949 (7). Habsburg was chairman for life of CEDI and later also of the Paneuropa Union. Sanchez Bella was the Spanish ambassador to Rome under Franco in the 1960s while his brother was head of Opus Dei in Spain (8). Violet also became an associate of Father Yves-Marc Dubois, a senior member of Vatican intelligence and possibly its head (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 institutions, founded by Antoine Pinay and Jean Violet, became Cercle Pinay, and besides that it was set up "somewhere in the 1950s" (10), the exact date remains unknown. The claim that Cercle Pinay was put together in 1969 (11) is wrong and has probably been a mix-up with the Belgian Cercle des Nations, which was founded that year by a secretary general of CEDI (12). Violet was one of the few French members of this Cercle des Nations (13) that was part of the same Opusian Vatican-Paneuropa network. The crowd of Cercle des Nations has featured in a number of Belgian conspiracies and some were involved with the "Dutroux network" that allegedly didn't exist. Bit more about that later.

Like many others, Pinay and Violet understood that the basis for a stable united Europe would be a Franco-German reconciliation. Therefore they recruited in their Cercle the most important individuals that were working towards this aim.

From Germany they invited 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.

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Early Cercle members representing the Paneuropa Union, the European Coal and Steel Community, France, Germany and Italy. Andreotti was not a founding member; the others were.

Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, in addition to Pinay, were recruited from France. Schuman had been 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, the UK, and western Europe, and was one of the major players in the push for an integrated Europe in the aftermath of WWII. As founding vice-chairman of the Committee for European Economic Co-operation (CEEC), which oversaw the Marshall Plan aid, he was the most influential player 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.

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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. These men initially brought together Schuman, Monnet, Adenauer and a number of other individuals. All of these men, except Monnet, were either members or sympathizers of Opus Dei. The financial empire of Pesenti, who has no known direct ties to Opus Dei, was funded by the Vatican Bank and he turned out to be Banco Ambrosiano's largest minority shareholder when it collapsed in 1982. Monnet, as the only one among these names, was connected to leading bankers in London and New York, and used to be secretary general of the League of Nations. N.b. Pesenti might not have been a founding member, but used to be a top level player in the 1960s, chairing meetings and inviting David Rockefeller. He later also financed some of the work of Violet and Crozier.
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:18 am

"Europe's founder" Jean Monnet

Right before and after WWI Monnet hooked up with leading figures in the Anglo-American establishment. One of the first was Lord Kindersley, who during 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 a Pilgrims Society executive (14).

Another very important person was Arthur Salter, whom he first met in 1914 (15). 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 'The United States of Europe', which favored a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations. Probably not by coincidence, Monnet's post-WWII proposal for a political structure of a united Europe was almost exactly the same. Three years after writing 'The United States of Europe', Salter became a professor at Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, named by Quigley as the center of the Round Table Group. In fact, Quigley identified Salter as a member of the Milner Group (16), and it is known that Salter shared a few boards with Lord Astor, a prominent Pilgrims Society family, and the Viscount Cecil of Chelwood of that time, a member of the family that is said to have coordinated the Round Table group (and appears in both Le Cercle and the Pilgrims). Salter also became a member of the Privy Council in 1941.

Others Monnet became a close associate of were Sir Eric Drummond, the 16th Earl of Perth, who was a member of a very aristocratic family in Britain; John Foster Dulles; Douglas Dillon; a Lazard Brothers' banker whose sister-in-law was Lady Nancy Astor; and John J. McCloy. He also was a long time business associate of Elisha Walker (American International Corporation; Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; CFR), with whom he clandestinely tried to take over A. P. Giannini's Transamerica Corporation and its Bank of America network. It 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 (17).

He then went into business with the leaders of the Chinese Green Gang Triad, Tse-Ven Soong and Chiang Kai-shek. He took his assistant, David Drummond (the future 17th Lord Perth; from a catholic Hungarian family which emigrated to Scotland in the 11th century; two members of this family were among the eight original founders of the Order of the Thistle; raised by the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, a very old catholic aristocratic family; later Privy Councillor; later chair of the Ditchley Foundation for 3 years; later representative of the Queen to the Vatican; became a member of the extremely elite Roxburghe Club, together with members of the Cecil, Cavendish, Howard (Dukes of Norfolk), Mellon, Rothschild, and Oppenheimer families), the son of Monnet's superior at the League of Nations, to China where he lived until 1936.

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, André Meyer, and the Rockefellers in the United States. He was considered among the most connected persons of his time (18). John Dulles of Sullivan & Cromwell provided the financial backing for the partnership. 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 (19). Nothing came of this investigation, but the Nazi-cooperation of some of Monnet's close friends, like Douglas Dillon and John Dulles, or Murnane's earlier firm, Lee, Higginson & Co., is well documented (20).

When WWII 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 accepted, 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. But Monnet also began to reorganize the whole of Europe.

Together with an equally mysterious Joseph Retinger (connected to both MI6 and the Vatican; founder of Bilderberg), who was raised by European nobility (21), Monnet organized the May 1948 Congress of Europe, which met under the auspices of the United Europe Movement in The Hague. Chairman was Winston Churchill, whose son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, worked closely with Joseph Retinger and CIA heads Allen Dulles and Bill Donovan. Later Cercle members as Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer were in attendance, just as Alcide de Gasperi and Paul Henri Spaak. The CIA would become the primary source of funding for the United European Movement in the following decades (22).

In 1949, with the support of Adenauer, Robert Schuman proposed the so called "Schuman Plan", which became the basis for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It was established in 1952 and 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". And interestingly, even this might only partially be true, as Monnet's structure for Europe turned out to be a slightly adapted version of Arthur Salter's 1931 paper 'The United States of Europe', which originally advocated a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations (23). Both men worked high up in the League of Nations and had a close relationship to the leading Anglo-American families, as has already been discussed.

One year later, on 24 October 1950, the French prime minister René Pleven introduced his "Pleven Plan". As happened earlier with Schuman, who didn't support this latest proposal, this document too had been written entirely by Jean Monnet (although he might have discussed it with his friend Arthur Salter). 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, and Europe's defense forces remained part of the newly-established NATO, which was (and is) mostly international, instead of supranational.

After the failure of his European Defence Community (EDC), Monnet doubled his efforts and 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). 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 member 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. Antoine Pinay was another important member of ACUSE, the organization that Time Magazine dubbed a "European shadow government" in 1969 (24).

In 1961, Monnet managed to replace the OEEC, initially established to oversee the Marshall Plan, with the broader Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (25). The OECD since then 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 Atlantic Institute of International Affairs, which also was founded 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 while the Vatican-connected Paneuropa members have always played a minor role in the institutions above and tend to criticize the Anglo-American Liberal establishment.

Around the same time Monnet replaced the OEEC with the OECD, he met with Edward Heath (As Lord Privy Seal 1960-1963 responsible for the initial talks to bring Britain into the European Common Market; head Conservative party 1965-1975; Conservative prime minister UK 1970-1974; very committed to the EU; a close Sun Myung Moon associate) at the house of his good friend David Drummond, the 17th Lord Perth (26), a member of an old aristocratic family with very good connections to both the Vatican and the highest levels in British society, including the Rothschilds, Oppenheimers, Mellons, Cecils, and Howards (27). Lord Perth was a chairman of the Ditchley Foundation and his father was the initial secretary-general of the League of Nations while Monnet was his deputy. Heath became a member of Monnet's Action Committee and in 1973 he signed Britain into the European Economic Community. This only became possible after De Gaulle had ceased to be president of France.

Monnet was an early supporter of de Gaulle, as he was of the opinion that this legendary general was the only person who might be able to reunite the French people after WWII. However, in later years some friction developed between these two men. De Gaulle was a nationalist who supported a strong intergovernmental Europe, preferably with France being the major influence. Monnet, on the other hand, was a no holds barred supranationalist.
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:20 am

Franco-German rapprochement

Jean Monnet clearly was among the most influential and secretive of the Cercle members that pushed for a united Europe. However, according to Brian Crozier, a former chairman of Le Cercle, 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]" (28)


The Treaty of Elysée is a relatively unknown agreement (for the average person) 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 was made at the time that de Gaulle first vetoed the accession of Britain into the European Economic Community (EEC). The decision was 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 (29). Of course, it's far from unreasonable to think that de Gaulle's primary reason was that he saw Britain and its ally the United States as a threat to France's influence within the European Union. A few years later de Gaulle also withdrew from NATO, expelled all Allied forces from France, and tried to get on good terms with the Soviet Union. In addition to the enemies he had made when he withdrew from Algeria, he now also angered people like Brian Crozier and his French intelligence associate Colonel Antoine Bonnemaison. Bonnemaison ran a Cercle-like operation (let's shorten it to Le Centre), of which Crozier had become a member (30). Members of the Centre had already labeled de Gaulle "the enemy" in 1965, and were looking for ways to evict him from office (31). Within four years they got what they wanted, although it's not known if they had any active involvement in ousting de Gaulle, besides spying on him. But they certainly had the connections to do that.

It would still be several years before the Opusian Jean Violet and Anglo-Saxon Brian Crozier would meet and join hands. Ironically, at this time, when Crozier was involved in spying on de Gaulle, 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 head of Le Cercle from 1980 to 1985, 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. 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." (32)


Violet saw Franco-German rapprochement as de Gaulle's most important foreign policy objective, but judging by his association with people who wanted Britain in the European Union as a "third pillar" it is doubtful he supported all of de Gaulle's later decisions. In 1980, Violet picked Crozier as his follow-up to the presidency/chairmanship of Le Cercle (33). Crozier had been recruited by the Frenchman nine years earlier, and introduced by a person who had been a close assistant to Cercle member Jean Monnet (who struggled for a long time to get Britain into the EEC).

"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." (34)


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 in the EEC under the dictations of the Treaty of Rome. He remained on the board until 1963. During this time, he suffered a nervous breakdown for some unknown reason. In 1963, he went on to become leader writer for the Economist and from 1967 to 1969 he was a Ford Foundation fellow (a huge US intelligence-connected foundation). 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 the high financial circles. In 1974 or 1975, Duchene became the European deputy chairman of the Trilateral Commission, working under Max Kohnstamm, Monnet's partner at the Action Committee (35).

So, as can be concluded from the above text, during Duchene's time as a director of the IISS, he approached Brian Crozier on behalf of Jean Violet, and very likely on behalf of the Cercle in general, as Crozier mentioned that his involvement with the Cercle started that same year (36). 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." (37)

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 Reinhard Gehlen recruited him at one point for his involvement with Le Cercle (38). Whereas Jean Violet is tightly locked into the Paneuropa-Vatican network, his associates Jean Monnet, Francois Duchene, Brian Crozier and several other (Duchene is not confirmed as a Cercle member) British Cercle members seem to be more connected to the Anglo-American interests.
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:20 am

Crozier's anti-communist propaganda network

In the 1950s and early 1960s Crozier worked as a journalist and editor for the Sunday Times, the Economist, and the BBC. During this time he made his first intelligence contacts and used them for scoops. When John Hay "Jock" Whitney was ambassador to Great Britain from 1957 to 1961, Crozier was invited to his inner circle (39). Whitney was a Rockefeller associate, a friend of the British royal family, a CIA associate, and a Pilgrims Society vice president until the day he died (40). A few years later, Crozier went to work for the IRD, doing studies (some prefer to call it "disseminate 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. The CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) also approached him 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). 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 (41). In his book 'Free Agent' Crozier summarized the purpose of his ISC:

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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)

"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." (42)


Crozier and associates rejected Kissinger's Détente, aimed at reducing tensions between the superpowers, because, this group claimed, the Soviets continued to infiltrate and significantly influence Western Labour 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 that the Soviets conquered had to be taken back.

A noble and intelligent idea you would think. Unfortunately, many people who headed this lobby from behind the scenes just happen to be so far to the right they could actually be labeled as fascists. And in between these left and right wing extremists you had the Rockefeller clique, seemingly with their own agenda, encouraging technology to be sold to the Soviets (43). Even Crozier and some of his associates criticized that, probably never entertaining the idea that these people might know a thing or two they didn't (44).

In his book Crozier claims that the people who exposed his Forum World Services, The 61, and his Cercle were mostly manipulated or working for the KGB. He also presents information in such a way that will lead you to conclude that people like Mohammed Mossadeq and Harold Wilson were KGB paws, and that Pope John Paul I & II were both targeted by the KGB for assassination (only John Paul I died of that, allegedly). The KGB is basically behind everything. Crozier even repeated a 1978 claim by Time Magazine that the most effective KGB propaganda was that of discrediting the CIA (45). He also likes to state that "neo-colonialism" was a term invented by the Soviets, etc. Many of his accusations are based on statements from anonymous intelligence officers. At times, although he normally focuses on his own connections, he has used or referred to such reliable sources as the CIA sponsored Encounter magazine, the CIA sponsored Reader's Digest, his own CIA sponsored ISC think tank, the CIA sponsored journalist Claire Sterling, or to the CIA connected Zionist extremist Michael Ledeen.

It is important to consider that Crozier perfectly fits the profile of someone like Colin Wallace, the British intelligence agent who was handed all kinds of forged material to be put into circulation (46). And just recently, a Belgian associate of Jean Violet, Crozier's closest colleague for years, was caught forging KGB documents that had to prove a vast left wing conspiracy against this person (47). Crozier's good friend Richard Perle (48), and some of the other people he is associated with, would also know a thing or two about cooking or inventing evidence to sway public opinion. Crozier himself has been very influential in the late 1970s and early 1980s in setting up the war on terrorism. His friend Perle would take it to the next level after 9/11. More about that later, as Crozier's bio is a lot longer.
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:23 am

Cercle leadership

We briefly discussed the history of some of the key players in Le Cercle: Jean Violet and Antoine Pinay, the official founders; and their patron, Otto von Habsburg; how Violet and Pinay recruited individuals like Jean Monnet, Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman, and influenced the early history of the European Union. We also discussed how an agent of both Monnet and Violet recruited a well-connected member of British and American intelligence, Brian Crozier, and made him head of their Cercle in 1980. We also discussed the anti-communist and pro-Europe activities of its key members.

However, more key people were involved with Le Cercle over the years. Take Carlo Pesenti from Italy and Sir Peter Tennant from England. Pesenti was a close associate of the Vatican's financial circles; Tennant an important trade promoter for the City of London. They acted as chairmen of Cercle sessions when it was under the presidency of Jean Violet (49). Another important person was Franz-Josef Bach, who used to run Konrad Adenauer's political office. Bach co-organized Cercle meetings from at least 1980 to at least 1991 (50). A quick summary follows of who these people were. Look in the membership list attached to this article for more details, including the source of each individual name.

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Carlo II Presenti

Scion of what was one of the wealthiest families of Italy until the 1970s, together with the Agnellis and Pirellis. Financier of some of the enterprises of Jean Violet and Brian Crozier; possibly also of Le Cercle. Chaired some of the meetings of Le Cercle and invited David Rockefeller. 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. Italmobiliare was the largest minority shareholder of Banco Ambrosiano at the time of its collapse in 1982. Pesenti was investigated for his role in the collapse but died during the court proceedings.

Sir Peter Tennant

Recruited into the SOE (WWII rival of MI6) by its founder, Colonel Sir Charles Hambro (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. Chaired some meetings of Le Cercle. Co-organized a fundraising in 1976 with a bunch of Pilgrims Society members and leading officers to save Canterbury Cathedral. 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.

Franz-Josef Bach

Ran Konrad Adenauer's office, who was chancellor of the Federal Republic of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. German ambassador to Iran. 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 had "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." (51) Senator Church of the Church Committee said about the Northrop arrangement: "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." (52) Commercial and financial advisor to the Siemens Corporation.

Other important members of Le Cercle were-are Lord Julian Amery, his protege Jonathan Aitken and Lord Norman Lamont, all three members of the Privy Council. In 1985, Amery was picked by Brian Crozier as his follow up as president of Le Cercle (53). Aitken was Amery's protege and is known to have chaired at least some meetings in the early 1990s (54). Lord Lamont, the Rothschild employee, has repeatedly been named chairman of Le Cercle since 1996 (55). Here are some additional details on these people:

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Julian Amery

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 (56), 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, although it isn't really known what he has been doing in this function. 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, Pilgrims Society member 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, he 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 (57). 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 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.

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Jonathan Aitken

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.

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Lord Lamont

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. 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.

There is some confusion these days about who is 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

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 - today
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:27 am

Subversive tendencies

At some point a more exclusive coordinating group, or "executive committee", was formed within the wider Cercle, initially referred to as the Pinay Group. Few details are available about this group, besides the fact that it worked out possible action on political issues that were current at the time. Both Crozier (58) and Langemann (59) acknowledged this, and David Rockefeller's reference to a "Pesenti Group" (60) likely was a reference to this inner circle. The Group might have been the same as the "Pinay Committee" that appeared in documents of the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC), leaked in 1975 to Time Out Magazine (the first known public references to the Cercle). The Pinay Committee commissioned Crozier's institute to produce several reports, which were then spread to right wing officials on both sides of the Atlantic. Unfortunately, the 1500 ISC documents that were leaked have mostly gone missing (61).

Several years after the ISC leak, German intelligence officer Hans Langemann provided more details on this coordinating group. Langemann was head of Bavarian State Security in the 1970s and early 1980s. One of his colleagues was Hans von Machtenberg (a pseudonym) who attended meetings of Le Cercle. Von Machtenberg agreed to pass on full briefings to Langemann about the Cercle meetings in exchange for information gathered by Langemann from his own intelligence contacts. Seemingly after questioning the motives of the Cercle, Langemann wrote down and recorded what he knew about it and eventually sold it to Kronket Magazine in the early 1980s. Der Spiegel soon picked up on the story of Kronket and exposed the role of their political enemy it, Franz Josef Strauss. The 1980 and 1982 articles of Der Spiegel were based on internal memos of Hans Langemann, seemingly informing persons within the German government about the clandestine efforts of the Cercle to get Franz Josef Strauss elected Chancellor. According to Der Spiegel, Langemann had written the following text on November 8, 1979 (translated) (62):

Protected source contributions to state security. Personal for the state minister only.

"The militant conservative London publicist, Brian Crozier, Director of the famous Institute for the Study of Conflict up to September 1979, has been working with his diverse circle of friends in international politics to build an anonymous action group, a 'transnational security organization, and to widen its field of operations. Crozier worked with the CIA for years. One has to assume, therefore, that they are fully aware of his activities. He has extensive connections with members, or more accurately, former members, of the most important western security and intelligence services..."

What the group can do:

• provision of contributions by certain well-known journalists in Britain, the US and other countries
• access to television
• creation of a lobby in influential circles directly or indirectly through middlemen whether they are informed of this or not
• organization of public demonstrations in particular areas on themes to be decided and selected
• the involvement of the main intelligence and security agencies both as information sources and as recipients for information in these institutions
• undercover financial transactions for political aims.

What the group can do if financing is available.

• Conduct international campaigns aiming to discredit hostile personalities or events.
• Creation of a (private) intelligence service specialising according to a selective point of view.
• The establishment of offices under suitable cover each run by a co-ordinator from the central office. Current plans cover London, Washington, Paris, Munich and Madrid.


As one can imagine, the secrecy surrounding Le Cercle is not that much of a mystery, as most people would disapprove of a secret group consisting of persons tied to questionable corporate, political and religious interests, that is involved in political manipulation. More from Langemann (63):

Amongst other points in the (Crozier) planning paper are:

Specific Aims within this framework are to affect a change of government in

1. the United Kingdom - accomplished.

2. In West Germany to defend freedom of trade and movement and oppose all forms of subversion including terrorism ..

"On 5 and 6/1 1980 members of the Circle met in Zurich to discuss executive measures..."

The main things discussed were:

1. international promotion of the Minister President (Strauss) in international publications

2. influencing of the situation in Rhodesia and South Africa following a European Conservative guideline and

3. the establishment of a powerful directional radio station aiming at the Islamic region and including the border populations of the Soviet Union.

"As far as can be judged by outsiders Crozier has initiated with his group the project 'Victory for Strauss' using the tactics applied in Great Britain, of major themes such as the communist, extremist subversion of government parties and trade unions, KGB manipulation of terrorism and damage to internal security."


Langemann presents a list of conspiracies which we know more about these days. Let's take a more in depth look into each of them and see who was involved specifically.

THE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT in the United Kingdom refers to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 in which Crozier's Shield, a covert advisory committee, played a crucial role (64). The initial idea for Shield came from MI6 agent Sir Stephen Haskings, a friend of Crozier who had formerly been a SAS soldier and SOE officer. Crozier put together Thatcher's election campaign by adopting Jean Violet's Psychological Action program, a technique to find quick, short answers to three basic questions: What do people want? What do they fear? And what do they feel strongly about? Shield also completely convinced Thatcher about the severe threat of domestic communist subversion. After Crozier and Haskings handed her their paper 'The diabolical nature of the Communist conspiracy', Thatcher's reaction was, "I've read every word and I'm shattered. What should we do?" (65). Harry Sporborg and Cercle member Nicholas Elliot were the other two members of inner circle of Shield. Sporborg worked at Hambros Bank and used to be a deputy head of the SOE during WWII. Elliot was a former MI6 agent who specialized in sabotage and unconventional warfare. He also had been a director of Lonrho.

Shield was hardly a new phenomenon, and its success can actually be seen as the culmination of twenty years of manipulation by the British far-right to get a prime minister elected they truly desired. This far-right group, which was, and is, closely affiliated with the British establishment, had already been meddling a great deal in Britain's domestic politics since the election of Harold Wilson as prime minister in 1964. Although the aristocrats, centered around the royal court, have never embraced Labour, the serious economic recession of the late 1960s and early 1970s caused so much concern that many individuals within these circles actually began planning a coup. It started with a dirty tricks campaign against Wilson, mainly orchestrated by rogue elements within MI5 and MI6 and with overseas support of CIA head James Jesus Angleton. During his two terms in office, and especially during his second term from 1974 to 1976, Wilson was smeared with accusations that he was a homosexual, a supporter of the IRA, and that he was a KGB agent. Private armies and action groups were set up to take over essential services in case the country broke down. In March 1976, Wilson unexpectedly decided to step down. Publicly he claimed that he was physically and mentally exhausted, but also that this is what he had always planned to do at age 60. Privately he explained that "business groups and other anti-democratic agencies", and also pointing to a rogue element in MI5, had made it absolutely impossible for him to run the country (66). Wilson's secretary, Baroness Marcia Falkender, supported his statements.

"MI5 were making a mockery out of us. Those people ought to be exposed for what they really are... but you can't identify them. We could be sitting in a room and you might be MI5 and I wouldn't know. Or I might have have been all these years and you wouldn't know." (67)


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The group that was working to oust Wilson was the same group that got Thatcher elected. Lord Julian Amery, one time head of Le Cercle, was a good friend to both David Stirling and General Walter Walker, respectively the third and fourth person from the left. Crozier, another Cercle head, was involved in spreading KGB rumors about Wilson and later wrote Thatcher's election strategy. Interestingly, two men in the anti-Wilson plot were assassinated in 1979; Airey Neave (5th from left) in March and Earl Mountbatten (2nd from left) in August.

Among the people named that have been involved in the plot to get rid of Wilson were SAS founder David Stirling, Sir James Goldsmith (known Cercle associate), the 7th Earl of Lucan, Sir Val Duncan (chair of Rio Tinto Zinc; 1001 Club; Edmund de Rothschild associate), Cecil Harmsworth King (nephew Lord Northcliffe; MI5 agent; Bank of England), George Kennedy Young (ex-deputy director MI6; helped to overthrow Mossadeq; Monday Club; Kleinwort Benson; set up Tory Action; set up civilian armed resistance cells), Airey Neave (MI6/MI5 insider; set up Tory Action; set up civilian armed resistance cells), Army General Sir Walter Walker (set up private armies and Civil Assistance/Unison), Major Alexander Greenwood (set up private armies), the 4th Earl of Cromartie (WWII commander), Lord Mountbatten of Burma (uncle of Prince Philip; would have headed the provisional junta), and the Queen Mother. Angleton, a Knight of Malta, provided assistance from across the Atlantic (68).

Besides Brian Crozier, who was aware of the planned coup and actively supported it with his anti-communist lectures to military officers (69), a few other Cercle members have also played a supplementary role in the coup against Wilson and Labour in general. The president of Le Cercle after Crozier, Julian Amery, was a good friend of General Walter Walker and wrote the foreword of Walker's book 'The Next Domino'. Amery also was a member and later patron of the Conservative Monday Club, a center of anti-Labour activity. Additionally, Cercle member Anthony Cavendish was a member of the Unison Committee for Action, one of the anti-Labour action groups set up by George Kennedy Young and General Walter Walker (70). Cavendish also worked with James Goldsmith and was on good terms with Julian Amery. Cercle member Robert Moss was a protege of Brian Crozier and helped him internationally to spread the word of communist subversion. In 1975, Moss and Crozier, together with Viscount De L'Isle (Knight of the Garter; Privy Council) and others, were co-founders of the National Association for Freedom (NAFF), an anti-Labour and anti-Wilson pressure group that acted as a follow-up of GB 75 and the later Civil Assistance/Unison. Quite a number of NAFF members would find their way to prominent political positions under Thatcher (71).

Even after Wilson was ousted in 1976, many right-wing individuals were still not content with the new Labour prime minister James Callaghan. Only after three more years of underground politicking they were able to maneuver the hard-right Conservative Thatcher into office.

THE PROMOTION OF STRAUSS is a reference to articles written by Brian Crozier, his associate James Goldsmith, and others to improve the image of Franz Josef Strauss within and outside Germany. They denounced all the accusations against Strauss as KGB propaganda, again with testimonies from defectors of Czech intelligence, like they used in their campaign against Wilson (72). Although Strauss never made the Chancellorship, he was a well known German politician, and in terms of political convictions somewhere to the right of Margaret Thatcher. His home base was the hard-right Roman Catholic Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU), together with his co- Cercle friends Otto von Habsburg, Count Hans Huyn, and Alois Mertes. He went to the Bohemian Grove in 1962 and gave a speech there (73). After a long career, riddled with numerous scandals, he died in 1988 while on a hunting trip with Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis. More scandals followed after his death, some involving his son.

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Strauss, feeling Napoleon.

These Cercle friends of Strauss are interesting people. Otto von Habsburg, who claimed his political views on Europe were very close to those of Strauss (74), is head of the Paneuropa Union (the second head since its founding in 1922), where he followed up the well known Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. Anno 2006, Otto is an advisor to the Coundenhove-Kalergi Foundation, together with Count Hans Huyn, Jakob Coudenhove-Kalergi (nephew of Richard, the founder of the Paneuropa Union), Prince Carlo della Torre e Tasso (Italian branch of the Thurn und Taxis family), and Max Turnauer (ambassador of the Order of Malta in Liechtenstein). Nikolaus von Liechtenstein, the younger brother of Hans-Adam II, is an executive member of the the Coundenhove-Kalergi Foundation (75). The Paneuropa Union has a vast network of underground political organizations all over Europe, which include or included the European Centre of Documentation and Information, Mouvement d'Action pour l'Union de l'Europe, the Académie Européenne de Sciences Politiques, Ordre du Rouvre, the Institut Européen pour la Developpement, Cercle des Nations (renamed to Cercle de Lorraine and a much broader membership these days), and the Mont Pelerin Society. The amount of ties to the Vatican within these institutions, and in particular to Opus Dei and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, is absolutely staggering. Otto von Habsburg is closely associated with both organizations, not to mention his own Order of the Golden Fleece.

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Cercle founder Otto Habsburg. The twelve stars on the European flag literally are a reference to the Virgin Mary and her halo of twelve stars. Until recently, that claim could also be found in an introduction article on the Paneuropa website.

Count Huyn is a German aristocrat, and like Otto von Habsburg and Richard Coudenhove- Kalergi, descended from a prominent Austro-Hungarian family. His wife is a descendant of Archduchess Maria Theresia of Austria (1717-1780), the first and only female head of the Habsburg dynasty. Huyn was a foreign policy advisor to his friend Franz-Josef Strauss from 1971 to 1976. In 1976, Huyn became a long time member of the Bundestag himself and would serve on many government committees. He would also write quite a number of books on Soviet strategy and occasionally speak out in favor of the placement of nuclear weapons in Germany or participation in the Star Wars program, without any regards for public opinion. Crozier acknowledges in his book that Count Huyn was one of three primary intelligence sources in Germany for his 61 intelligence group (more about that later). Huyn might have a long Cercle history behind him, because he was involved in overseeing the 1963 Treaty of Elisée in which Cercle founder Jean Violet played such a crucial role. As a devout Catholic, Huyn used to head the German department of the Catholic organization Aid to the Church in Need.

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Count Hans Huyn

THE STORY OF RHODESIA and South Africa being manipulated by British Conservative politics will often produce the same names as those involved in ousting Harold Wilson.

In the late 19th century, the country later known as Southern Rhodesia was taken over through military force by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), founded by Cecil Rhodes (from which the name "Rhodesia" is derived). BSAC was mirrored on the British East-India Company. In 1953, after calls for independence, Southern Rhodesia became part of the Central African Federation (CAF), which also included Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1965, one year after the CAF had been dissolved and Northern Rhodesia had become the independent Zambia, the White minority government in Southern Rhodesia unilaterally declared itself independent from Britain. This way they hoped to stop any further reforms that would result in black majority rule. Initially, the White minority government did recognize the Queen of England although she would (and could) never accept the title "Queen of Rhodesia".

Two of the biggest supporters of the White minority government at the time were Cercle members Julian Amery and Lord Robert Cecil, today the 7th Marquess of Salisbury (76). From 1961 to 1981, Robert Cecil's father and grandfather presided over the Conservative Monday Club, a center of post-WWII imperialism (and other major supporters of the White minority government). Julian Amery was a member of the club. The 7th Marquess of Salisbury was a good friend of Julian Amery and their families have been involved with each other since the early 20th century. Although Julian's father was a very important individual, working closely with the Rothschilds in building up the state of Israel, the Amery family pales in comparison with the historical influence of the Cecil family. There are only one or two dynastic families that might compete in terms of influence they had on British affairs since the 16th century. In fact, under Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), the Cecils are credited with having created the first known large scale spy network in Britain and Europe. It's possible however that they received some inspiration from Venice at the time.

Another important supporter of the racist illegal government in Rhodesia was Lonrho, a giant Pan-African raw materials corporation headed by reported Cercle-associate Tiny Rowland. Cercle member and MI6 agent Nicholas Elliot was a director of the company in the 1970s, although there seems to have been some friction with the Rowland camp (77). Ian Smith, head of the racist government in Rhodesia, had once helped Rowland to start up his mining business in Africa (78). After that Rowland had grown to become one of the most controversial figures ever to walk around on that continent. He has been accused of bribing numerous officials and working with British intelligence in supporting certain favorable regimes, one of them being UNITA in Angola (79). Together with an equally controversial Adnan Khashoggi, he was involved in selling top-quality military equipment to Libya and supplying it with mercenaries to build up its own special forces capability (80). Rowland used to be a member of John Aspinall's Clermont gambling club in the 1960s, together with Lord Lucan, and the earlier mentioned Sir James Goldsmith and SAS founder David Stirling (81). This group wanted to get rid of Wilson the day he set foot in the prime minister's office. They also loathed James Callaghan, the Labour follow-up of Wilson. Rowland, Lucan, and Aspinall were fascists (82). Sir James Goldsmith, the close associate of Brian Crozier, and David Stirling, a close private warfare buddy of Julian Amery (83) whose (Stirling's) niece married the 7th Marquess of Salisbury, were running the mercenary firm KAS Enterprises. Officially, KAS was hired to protect elephants and rhinos in southern Africa from poachers. But soon accusations arose that the firm was fighting the anti-apartheid movement, reportedly leaving 1,5 million dead. Most details about Operation Lock, as it was called, have been suppressed (84).

Conrad Gerber is another Cercle member with a connection to this region. He worked as an economist in the white minority government of Rhodesia in the 1970s, where he was involved in circumventing international sanctions to purchase oil for his country. He did this with controversial partners as John Deuss and Ted Shackley, the latter becoming one of his closest friends. So close, that Gerber was even present at Shackley's deathbed (85). According to drug lord Khun Sa, Shackley was in charge of Golden Triangle opium exports to the United States from 1965 to 1975 (86). Research into the Nugan Hand Bank and its follow-up Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong (BBRDW) seems to confirm that (87). Besides that, Shackley is credited with having operated a "Secret Team" of assassins, drug traffickers, and arms salesman, which consisted of General John Singlaub, Thomas Clines, Carl Jenkins, David Morales, Raphael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, Edwin Wilson, Richard Armitage and likely a few others. After sanctions were lifted against Rhodesia in 1980, Gerber set up the very successful Petro-Logistics, which acts as a private intelligence group aimed at penetrating OPEC's oil secrets. The International Energy Agency (IEA) considers Petro-Logistics one of its most important sources, if not the most important source, when making oil production and reserves forecasts (88).

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Present: Anthony and Andrew Cavendish, Paul Channon, Sir Erik Bennett, General Schwarzkopf, and others

LANGEMANN'S LAST POINT, aiming directional radio stations at Islamic regions bordering the Soviet Union, has become a very familiar subject these days. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, so the Cercle having these discussions less than a month after is something that could have been expected. Several members of the Cercle played a prominent role in the Afghan war.

In 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security advisor to Carter, claimed that he and Carter actually had provoked the Afghan war by clandestinely supporting the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, six months before the invasion of the Soviet Union (89). Ever since Putin came into office, Brzezinski and his son Mark restarted their war with Russia. Brzezinski is known to have visited Le Cercle at some point.

In 1986 CIA director William Casey, a member of Le Cercle and a Knight of Malta, began organizing a large scale anti-Soviet resistance operation in Afghanistan, which would last until the end of the war in 1988-1989 (90). His Saudi counterpart, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, another member of Le Cercle, financed a large portion of this operation (91). The BCCI has been named as a main conduit for all these undercover transactions. It was set up by Agha Hasan Abedi, whose membership in the 1001 Club indicates he was accepted by the British aristocracy (92). The by now well known Cercle president Julian Amery was an advisor to the BCCI in the 1980s (93).
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:28 am

The 61

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.

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

This didn't fall well with many intelligence chiefs and associates like Brian Crozier. They claimed the CIA's (human) intelligence gathering and intervention capabilities had been destroyed almost completely; and even more so after Admiral Stansfield Turner in 1977 started 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 The 61 (or more correct, 6I). Its purpose, according to Crozier:

"... 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." (94)


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 The 61, 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, The 61 provided intelligence to the Pope. According to Crozier, there only was some "minor overlapping" between the Cercle and The 61. This seems to be misleading, as many of the key individuals of Le Cercle were part of The 61, including Brian Crozier, Jean Violet, Georges Albertini, Count Huyn, and General Stilwell. Others in the know were Nicholas Elliot, Robert Moss, William Wilson, General Fraser, and probably quite a number of others (95). Crozier told us more about the meeting that established The 61:

"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..." (96)


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, which might be more likely. At the start of World War II, Tennant had been 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) and a very good friend of both Winston Churchill and the 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. And according to Crozier, the Shield Committee, including himself, Sir Harry, and Nicholas Elliot met "in the boardroom of a City bank" (97) in mid 1978. There are some great parallels here with the meeting to establish The 61 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.

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 had also come 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 the 61 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 The 61 were founded by veterans of the SOE, MI6 and the CIA.

Most of the other participants that helped to establish The 61 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 The 61 (98). His background fits perfectly and has been discussed earlier. More information about this person can be found in the membership list attached to this article.

Fortunately, Crozier gives us the name of General Vernon Walters, who seems to have represented the US 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.

With very little official education, Walters had become fluent in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and Chinese. He went to work for Army Intelligence in 1941 and like Cercle member Kissinger, he became a protege of Fritz Kraemer in the post-war period. After the war he served for a while as an aide to Pilgrims Society member Averell Harriman, who, for example, co-founded the Psychological Strategy Board. In 1951 Walters became involved in setting up and running NATO's SHAPE headquarters in Paris. He was an aide and interpreter to Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Nixon, and provided Henry Kissinger's security in secret diplomatic missions. He was deputy director of the CIA from 1972 to 1976 under Richard Helms and George Bush. Walters left the CIA to become a private consultant until 1982 when he joined the Reagan administration as Ambassador at Large. He was sent all over the world. From 1989 to 1991 he was the US Ambassador to the UN. After that, at the time the Berlin wall came down, he was Ambassador to West-Germany. Walters has attended many Pan American conferences.

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Walters, co founder of The 61, and later Cercle participant Richard Nixon, 1958. Noriega would be one of Walter's house guests in the 1970s. Bush Sr. and Cercle member W. Casey would also invite Noriega.

But there is more to General Walters. Like many leading members of Le Cercle, he was close to the 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 (99), giving him instant access to the Vatican at all times. His participation in setting up The 61 seems to substantiate reports about his involvement in countering communist subversion in Europe and other parts of the globe, not the least in Italy (100). It has also been reported that South African intelligence named Walters as a key plotter in the JFK assassination (101). Although not widely published, Walters was a military attaché in Rome in 1963 where he worked with CIA station chief William K. Harvey in countering the massive communist and socialist influences in that country (which brought him into conflict with Kennedy; Harvey had his own, but related grudges against Kennedy, and especially his brother Robert) (102). The Gladio network Walters and Harvey controlled was crucial in this effort. Quite a bit of evidence has surfaced to show that Harvey, his protege Ted Shackley, and their pro-Vietnam, anti-Castro CIA gang, which included David Atlee Philips, together with mafia partners Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, Charles Nicoletti, Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficanto, and Jimmy Hoffa were some of the key plotters and executers in the JFK assassination (103). The problems in Europe with the communists and socialists, and especially in Rome at the time, will probably explain the (alleged) role of Permindex members in the JFK assassination some day. Ironically, if the truth ever came out on the assassination, together with the explanation that Kennedy not only allowed the communists to remain in power in Cuba, but also endorsed the "communosocialist" takeover of Italy and soon other parts of Europe, quite a number of people might actually sympathize with the plotters, at least to a certain degree. That is, until the full interaction between government and the mafia becomes known.

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James Files, former hitman working for the Chicago mafia under Charles Nicolette. Both of these men allegedly were shooters in the JFK assassination (2010 update: Almost 100 percent a bogus claim). Files: "When it comes to government and underhanded work, the mob, they're kindergarten. They're kindergarten. I might upset a lot of people in the family saying that, but they're kindergarten when it comes to working with the government; they are the goldfish in the shark pond."

Besides having been a co-founder of Crozier's 61, Walters also was a good friend of French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches (104), who by 1976 had set up a secret private intelligence network of his own, the Safari Club. The Safari Club's network included the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Ashraf Marwan of Egyptian intelligence, and Kamal Adham of Saudi intelligence (105). Count de Marenches was the biggest rival of Jean Violet within the SDECE, but because he was part of the same hard-right intelligence network he counted many of the same friends and associates, including Franz-Josef Strauss (106), William Casey (107), and Baron de Bonvoisin (108). All of these individuals have been named as members of Opus Dei or the Knights of Malta.
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Re: LE CERCLE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT: P

Postby admin » Sun Jan 31, 2016 3:30 am

More on the American Cercle members

In the late 1980s Iran-Contra whistleblower Gene Wheaton expanded on what General Walters and his associates had been doing since the the 1960s. Wheaton had been a former police officer, military criminal investigator, and security contractor. He also used to be a counter-terrorism consultant for the Rockwell Corporation, the Saudi Royal Family, and the Shah of Iran, among other things. All this was before he was brought into the "inner circle", which turned out to consist of people he didn't want anything to do with. In 2002 Wheaton recalled:

"In the late 70s, in fact, after Gerry Ford lost the election in ’76 to Jimmy Carter, and then these guys became exposed by Stansfield Turner and crowd for whatever reason ... there were different factions involved in all this stuff, and power plays ... Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters and Frank Carlucci and Ving West and a group of these guys used to have park-bench meetings in the late 70s in McClean, Virginia so nobody could overhear their conversations. They basically said, "With our expertise at placing dictators in power," I’m almost quoting verbatim one of their comments, "why don’t we treat the United States like the world’s biggest banana republic and take it over?" And the first thing they had to do was to get their man in the White House, and that was George Bush..." (109)


We've already seen that Shackley and especially Walters had become associated with Cercle activities around this same time. Carlucci also, who stands accused of involvement in the 1975 "anti-communosocialist" coup in Portugal of General Antonio de Spinola. He reportedly acted as an intermediary between Henry Kissinger and de Spinola, both members of Le Cercle, and gave the go-ahead for de Spinola's March 1975 coup (which ultimately failed) (110). Although usually very much understated, Spinola was a wealthy aristocratic fascist connected to the most powerful business monopolies in Portugal and its colonies. Through the CIA he worked with the Portuguese Stay Behind units, set up by fascist terrorists, and had begun implementing a regional strategy of tension (111).

When Crozier visited the CIA and the White House he met with some of the people that were part of the rogue group described above by Wheaton. In the Carter administration, of which he obviously was extremely critical, he was received by national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and secretary of defense James Schlesinger. In the Reagan administration he met with General Walters, Robert McFarlane, Richard Pipes, Richard V. Allen, Kenneth deGraffenreid, William Casey, and Oliver North. He regularly met with Sven Kraemer, the son of Fritz Kraemer, and really liked Admiral John Poindexter, who recently became notorious for heading DARPA's Total Information Awareness Office (the organization with the charming logo of a pyramid and eye watching over the world) (112). Furthermore, Crozier has worked with Cercle member Donald Jameson (113), a top CIA specialist on the Soviet Union who set up the neocon Jamestown Foundation that handled Soviet Bloc intelligence defectors. Donald, who in his earlier career had crossed paths with Col. Philip Corso (114) and the remote viewing projects (115), became a business associate of Ted Shackley (116), probably around the time he became involved with one of Crozier's research projects. Crozier also counted Cercle member General Richard Stilwell among his personal friends (117).

Oliver North and Richard Stilwell have been named as insiders to the CIA drug trade to fund covert operations. Crozier's Cercle associates William Colby and William Casey were others (118). During the time Crozier visited these Reagan officials (except Colby), Stilwell was part of the secretive Special Operations Planning and Advisory Group (SOPAG), which included among its 11 members Air Force Generals Richard Secord and Leroy Manor (119), both named as insiders of CIA drug trade (120). Stilwell's group had full access to Top Secret materials and quietly advised secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger (soon a Pilgrims Society executive) and assistant secretary of defense Richard Armitage, who was named as a partner of Ted Shackley in CIA drugs from the Golden Triangle (121). SOPAG was the Pentagon's top group in worldwide counterinsurgency and special operations.

In his biography Crozier was "sorry to say" that North did not take him into his confidence about Casey's Iran Contra scheme (122). Of course, as the mainstream media, Crozier only refers to the hostage and arms aspects of the affair. The many accusations that Contras were paying for their guns with disproportionate amounts of cocaine, which were shipped to the United States, is conveniently left out. But one is left to wonder if Crozier really was that naive, judging by an almost hilarious article he wrote in January of 1990.

"Estevez revealed that Cuba had built up a multi-million-dollar drug trafficking network, with thousands of agents in the United States. He said Fidel Castro was personally involved in drug trafficking, with the aim of promoting violent crime, addiction and corruption in North America, while simultaneously financing terrorism in Latin America: a perfect definition of "narco-terrorism''... Escobar was living in Cuba with the full assistance of Fidel Castro. Another fugitive, the American financier Robert Vesco [1001 Club], was believed to be Escobar's number two... On February 10, 1988, Blandon [Medellin cartel baron] testified before a Senate sub-committee that Castro and Noriega were working together to promote "drug-financed guerrilla movements throughout Latin America''..." (123)


What Crozier did here, right after the Iran Contra investigations, is to take the largely unreported accusations against his US associates and blame them solely on communist Cuba. It is entirely possible that Crozier's accusations are true, but the few million dollars of Castro pales in comparison with the hundreds of billions we're talking about in CIA (and other agencies) drug money. In fact, in the court papers Crozier is using to blame Castro, there also are plenty of testimonies about Noriega being CIA during the 1970s and 1980s, and that he had several meetings with George Bush, Cercle member William Casey, and other CIA directors (124). Noriega, a product of the School of the Americas, actually was the middle-man between Escobar's Medellin Cartel and the CIA. Later affidavits from people involved in these operations tell the same story, and an awful lot of them had to pay with their lives for their courage to come forward. The death and general persecution rate among these whistleblowers has been truly astonishing. So, Crozier's press reports not only seems to be one sided, at times they act as pure disinformation.

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Some known US Cercle participants. Colby was Opus Dei; Casey and Feulner Knights of Malta. Brzezinski worked closely with the Knights in Americares, and like Kissinger, is close to the Rockefeller interests.

Speaking of disinformation (or cooking information), one of Crozier's best friends since the 1980s is Richard Perle (125), who is largely responsible for selling the public the 2003 invasion of Iraq. To accomplish this he even promoted the alleged meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi agents as a "well-documented" fact, which absolutely wasn't the case. If confirmed, which is probably never going to happen, that would be the only link between the 9/11 hijackers and Saddam Hussein. Ironically, this questionable intelligence report was received (and later disputed) through Czech intelligence, earlier used by the anti-Wilson and pro-Strauss crowd in the 1970s and early 1980s. Neoconservatives as William Safire, James Woolsey and William Kristol also used the Czech intelligence report to promote a war against Iraq (126).

Since about the time that Crozier became a leading member in the mid to late 1970s, Le Cercle seems to have forged closer links with the more hard-right elements in the US government (127). Besides the Reagan and Nixon administrations, Cercle members were involved with institutions as the Jamestown Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the United States Global Strategy Council, the Committee on Present Danger, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Committee on Present Danger, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Americares, and the Israeli-US Jonathan Institute. All these groups were interwoven with the World Anti-Communist League and religious organizations as the Knights of Malta and the Moonies.

Seemingly one of the closest associates of mainly the British Cercle members was CIA officer Ray Cline (OSS 1943-1946 and worked in the Far-East with Paul Helliwell and Gen. Singlaub; good friend of Chiang Kai-shek's son; set up the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL) in Taiwan and South Korea in 1955-1956; CIA station chief in Taiwan 1958-1962; deputy director CIA 1962-1966; CIA station chief in Bonn 1966-1969 where he oversaw the local Gladio forces; confirmed the authenticity of FM 30-31A & B, instruction manuals of the DIA which included false flag terrorist actions that were to be blamed on the USSR; director Department of State's Bureau Intelligence and Research 1969-1973; director world power studies at Georgetown's CSIS 1973-1986; co-founder of the WACL with Gen. Singlaub; representative of CAUSA, founded by Moonie Col. Bo Hi Pak). Cline is never mentioned in Crozier's biography even though both were involved in two very important organizations: the Jonathan Institute and the Foreign Affairs Research Institute (FARI), of which, interestingly, Crozier also forgets to mention his involvement. He also does not discuss the United States Global Strategy Council (USGSC), which was founded in the same period and headed by Ray Cline for most of its existence. The USGSC counted Cercle members General Richard Stilwell (128) and William Colby among the earliest members and there's probably more overlap (129). Let's take a look at these three institutions.

The Washington-based U.S. Global Strategy Council (USGSC) existed from 1981 to about 1995 and was a think tank focused on setting coherent long range strategic goals for the United States. Clearly a bastion of America's permanent government, it mainly focused on worldwide anti-communist subversion. It also pushed for the development of non-lethal weaponry (130) and the costly Stars Wars program. Star Wars was later accused of having served as a bogus front operation through which vast amounts of funds were diverted (131) into a variety of black programs. Interestingly, electromagnetic and psychotronic weapons are the top suspects these black programs allegedly dealt with (132).

The USGSC was part of the whole hawkish (or "total war") neoconservative movement that came to the forefront with Reagan and remained prominent with Bush, Sr. It temporarily left the White House with the election of Clinton and then came back in full force with the Bush, Jr. administration in 2000. The whole idea of a global war on terror, including the use of pre-emptive strikes, goes back to ideas that were proposed by this neocon group in the late 1970s and early 1980s. George Shultz is the most crucial player from the American side, which obviously is the most important. However, he had allies in other parts of the world, including leading Israeli politicians from both Likud and Labour, fascist terrorists from France, and also Cercle president Brian Crozier and his clique in Britain. They came together at two conferences about international terrorism sponsored by the Jonathan Institute, an Israeli think tank named after the brother of Netanyahu. It was a Mossad front, according to former SAS/MI5 agent Colin Wallace (133).

The first meeting was in June 1979. Crozier and his Cercle sidekick Robert Moss were two of the speakers at this conference of which the purpose was to blame all international terrorism on the USSR. Richard Pipes, the later associate of Crozier at the White House, also spoke at the conference. Ray Cline and George H.W. Bush of the CIA were there, just as retired General George J. Keegan who had recently stepped down as head of Air Force Intelligence. OAS terrorist Jacques Soustelle attended, together with Benjamin Netanyahu, Jack Kemp, and a whole range of international journalists who promoted the view that the USSR was behind worldwide terrorism (134).

The second Jonathan Institute's conference on terrorism, held in 1984, was even more influential as Reagan was now in power. Netanyahu, George Shultz, and Douglas Feith were said to have organized this second conference (135). Feith worked under Crozier's friend Richard Perle at the time. The policies set then, re-emerged stronger than ever almost 20 years later, after 9/11. George Shultz (Bechtel executive; secretary of state at the time; Bohemian Grove camp Mandalay; National Security Planning Group; chair advisory council J.P. Morgan Chase; ran Reagan's election campaign; largely put together the George Bush Jr. administration), one of the biggest movers and shakers in the neoconservative movement, gave the opening speech in which he claimed that "pre- emptive actions by Western democracies may be necessary to counter the Soviet Union and other nations that... have banded together in an international "league of terror."" (136) Caspar Weinberger (also from Bechtel; Defense Secretary at that time; National Security Planning Group; later Pilgrims Executive; member Bohemian Grove camp Mandalay), Jeane Kirkpatrick (co-chair USGSC), and Yitzhak Rabin (Labour prime minister) also spoke at the conference backing the claim that terrorism had spun out of control and that the Soviet Union was the cause of that. The only thing that was disagreed upon was if this movement supporting a global war on both terror and the USSR should be incorporated within the United Nations or not (137). Jacques Soustelle had become a board member of the Jonathan Institute by then (138), together with Shimon Peres (Labour prime minister) and Menachem Begin (Likud prime minister) (139). Crozier's close associate Lord Alun Chalfont (minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1964-1970; Privy Council since 1964; Pilgrims Society executive since 1979; Conservative Monday Club; pro-apartheid; director pro-junta British-Chilean Council; council member of FARI with Cercle members/presidents Brian Crozier, Julian Amery, and Robert Moss, just as the aristocrat Sir Frederic M. Bennett; chair Institute for the Study of Terrorism, a clone of Crozier's anti-communist Institute for the Study of Conflict; member Committee for a Free Britain, which spent more than Pounds 200,000 on press advertisements attacking Labour during the 1987 election; member Committee for a Free World, an American neo-conservative group; member Media Monitoring Unit, which attempted to "expose" left-wing bias in television news and current affairs programmes; consultant to private security firm Zeus Security Consultants (did high level government contract work), owned by Major Peter Hamilton, a close friend of Stephan Kock, the MI5, MI6, SAS agent who allegedly once headed a government assassination team, Group 13; director at the security firm Securipol; close friend of the extremely influential neoconservative John Lehman, apparently a top player in the military-industrial complex; chairman second neoconservative Jonathan conference; deputy chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority), together with intelligence connected religious extremists as Michael Ledeen and Arnaud de Borchgrave, were among the contributors to papers read at the conference (140).

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One Circle to link them all. Bit cheesy? Oh well, don't forget the Jonathan Institute or the Foreign Affairs Research Institute.

Chalfont had already been working with Cercle presidents Brian Crozier and Julian Amery (advisor to the BCCI in the 1980s) in their Foreign Affairs Research Institute (FARI), together with Sir Frederic M. Bennett (owned a Rolls-Royce and four homes, one of them in the Cayman Islands; director Kleinwort Benson Europe (his mother was a Kleinwort); long time Lloyds underwriter; influential member of Parliament from the 1950s to the 1980s; member Monday Club; always warning people about the KGB threat and supported every regime that opposed the USSR; chair FARI in 1978; vice-president of the European-Atlantic Group; leading official in the private group Council of Europe in the late 1970s and 1980s; honorary director of the BCCI in Hong Kong until 1986; Member of the Privy Council since 1985; ridiculed his party (Conservatives) for their Euroscepticism after his retirement in 1987; supported Pinochet; Freeman of the City of London; visited Bilderberg) and Cercle member Robert Moss (141). Like Chalfont, Crozier and Moss were involved with the Jonathan Institute. FARI was set up in 1976 with funds coming from the pro-apartheid government in South-Africa (142) and reportedly also from Lockheed (143). Reports that it was linked to the CIA are rather obvious today (144). FARI gathered several anti-communist authors which spread their stories in the international press. Members spoke about terrorism being out of control while implying this was all organized from Moscow in an effort to destabilize the West. Many of the examples they mention in reality were the result of CIA, MI6, and Gladio special operations, most notably those in Italy. Some other acts of terrorism seem to have had little to do with the Soviet Union and instead were probably the result of extremist nationalism or freedom fighters. These alternative possibilities were however carefully ignored.

Conferences of FARI were attended by Crozier's money man Richard Mellon Scaife and Cercle members William Casey and Edwin Feulner (roommate of neocon warhawk and military-industrial complex insider John F. Lehman; president Heritage Foundation; Knight of Malta; trustee Mont Pelerin Society; IMF & World Bank insider; chairman Institute for European Defense and Strategic Studies in London; Bohemian Grove). Ray Cline of the CIA and the Jonathan Institute has been in attendance, just as General Daniel O. Graham of the CIA and DIA (145). Like Stilwell, both Graham and Cline were involved with the US Global Strategy Council. Cline was among the founders of the USGSC and chairman of the institute from 1986 to 1994.

The members of the USGSC (initially 70 or so) had close ties to the Military Industrial complex, including highest level (often retired) representatives of the Navy, the Air Force, the Army, the intelligence agencies, shady defense corporations as SAIC, private business groups, and unusual religious interests as the Moonies and Knights of Malta. Over the years, known members have included Cercle member William Colby (CIA director 1973-1976; deep insider of many black programs, including CIA drug trafficking; Opus Dei), Henry Luce III (of Time Magazine; president of the Pilgrims of the United States since 1997; grandfather bought and held on to the JFK Zapruder film), Clare Booth Luce (Dame of Malta), Ray Cline, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman (director ONI; director DIA; director NSA; deputy director CIA; director Wackenhut; director SAIC; Trilateral Commission; chairman of the "JPL Oversight Committee", which is not supposed to exist), Michael Alan Daniels (Special assistant for political science research at the Office of Naval Research 1969-1971; president USGSC 1986-1994; section vice president SAIC since 1986; chairman of SAIC's Network Solutions since 1995), General Brent Scowcroft (chair Presidential Commission on the MX Peacekeeper ICBM; co-founder and vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates from 1982 to 1989; American Ditchley Foundation; Atlantic Institute; CFR; Trilateral Commission; visited Bilderberg), General Daniel O. Graham (deputy director CIA under Colby 1973-1974; director DIA 1974-1976; one of the most important pushers of the Star Wars program; founding chair of High Frontier, Inc.; member advisory board CAUSA and member of the Moon-linked American Freedom Coalition), Edward Teller (seen as the father of the Hydrogen Bomb; hardliner and suspected of involvement in many black projects; major pusher of Star Wars; member Council for National Policy and the Committee on the Present Danger), Arnaud De Borchgrave (intelligence-connected hard-right journalist; good friend of Sun Myung Moon), Lynn Francis Bouchey (organizer of CAUSA operations in Central and South America), General E. David Woellner (chairman of the Sixth CAUSA-USA Foundation Conference and a defender of the Moon Cult), Lev Eugene Dobriansky (president of the Moonie-sponsored Global Economic Action Institute from 1987 to 1992. Head of the British branch of Global Economic was Cercle president Julian Amery; chair Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation 1994-2003, in which Cercle participants Edwin Feulner and Zbigniew Brzezinski were involved, just as Cercle president Brian Crozier), Jeane Kirkpatrick (co-chair USGSC; member President's Foreign Intelligence and Advisory Board and Defense Policy Review Board; member Council for National Policy and the Committee on the Present Danger; chair of Moon's Nicaraguan Freedom Fund; member National Advisory Council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which has close leadership links to the Moonies and Le Cercle), General Maxwell Taylor (former chair Joint Chiefs; IDA), General Albert Wedemeyer (chief of staff to Lord Mountbatten in South-East Asia in 1944; chief of staff to Chiang Kai-shek, head of the KMT and later founder of Taiwan who was in bed with one of the major Chinese Triads), General Robert Schweitzer (served under Alexander Haig at NATO; served under Haig, Kissinger and Richard Allen at the NSC; chair Inter-American Defense Board 1982-1987; national strategy program director USGSC since 1987; friend of General Singlaub; publicly supported Oliver North after Iran Contra), Christopher Morris (chair and vice-president of M2 Technologies, which focuses on non-lethal weapons; research director at the USGSC, working directly under Cline, and later heading the council's Non-Lethality Policy Review Group; member of the 1995 CFR's Task Force on Non-Lethal Technologies, of which Dov Zakheim and Jason scholar Richard Garwin also were members), and Janet Morris (president & CEO of of M2 Technologies; also member of the 1995 CFR's Task Force on Non-Lethal Technologies; research director on non-lethal technologies at the USGSC 1993-1994; consultant at Los Alamos and close associate of Col. John Alexander).

General Stilwell, the Cercle member involved with the USGSC, deserves some more attention. It has already been discussed that he was a member of The 61 and the Special Operations Planning and Advisory Group (SOPAG), and seemingly an insider to the CIA drug trade in the 1980s. His involvement with CIA drugs might well go back to WWII and the early 1950s when he was involved in South-East Asia, including Burma, as a commander of Army forces and later regional CIA/OPC chief (146). More about Stilwell's history before he turned 65 can be read in his biography in the Cercle membership list. We'll focus on the last six years of his life, some time after he had been introduced to Le Cercle and The 61.

After Stilwell left the Defense Department in 1985, he set up Stilwell Associates, a private consulting firm that specialized in national security affairs. It had the CIA and the Defense Department among its clients (147). Because of this outside independent role Stilwell was able to claim in September 1987 he "was traveling at the request of no one" when Philippine authorities were worried about his presence in their country (148). Several months earlier his friend and SOPAG colleague General Jack Singlaub had also been peeking around on his own, allegedly searching for "sunken treasure" (149). In November 1986, Ray Cline and General Robert Schweitzer, like Stilwell both of the US Global Strategy Council, had also paid a visit to the Philippines. When the visit of Cline and Schweitzer was reported in the press, Cline stated that they were not official U.S. representatives and that they did not discuss the trip with the White House. But for some reason they did talk to former Marcos' defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, allegedly to persuade him not to mount a coup against the new sitting president Cory Aquino (150). However, in August 1987 Enrile was arrested (and later released) with alleged CIA agent Colonel Gringo Honasan for attempting to overthrow Aquino. Accusations of CIA involvement were widespread and were the result of decades long US support for Marcos.

Presidents like LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush (vice-president at the time) have strongly supported Marcos' severe dictatorship. The main reason was his strong anti-communist stance while allowing the US to operate Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base on the island. In the early 1980s, as Marcos became older and his grip on the nation waned something typical happened. Reagan withdrew US support for his friend Marcos and key officials in Marcos' regime, mainly defense minister Enrile and police force head General Fidel Ramos, switched sides to the growing opposition. Marcos was driven out and evacuated by the United States to Hawaii. Cory Aquino came to power, but immediately it were individuals like Ramos and Enrile who were forcing, even threatening, Aquino to embrace the (partially new) ruling business and political oligarchy (151). A month after the failed August 1987 coup, Stilwell added that "unless Aquino acted decisively on military and political fronts - and embraced the right-of-center leaders in the private and public sector - there could be "a political breakdown" resulting in a coalition government with the communists within the next two years." (152) Philippine government officials were openly speculating that the "CIA guys in town" were part of a rogue group, "maneuvering outside the normal channels of operations", which played a role in the August 28 coup by the military. It was also openly alleged that the U.S. valued its Navy and Air Force bases in the country more than the freedom of the Philippine people (153).

Whatever role the US exactly played during the 1980s in the Philippines, what was going on here were private intelligence and likely direct intervention operations. Like The 61 charter said: "a Private Sector Operational Intelligence agency, beholden to no government, but at the disposal of allied or friendly governments." (154) The same group that was involved in creating and running The 61 was involved here in the Philippines, not to mention in all other parts of the world. The British had been doing these things since at least 1963 when a group consisting of Julian Amery (Cercle), David Stirling, George Kennedy Young, unknown Mossad agents, Billy McLean (Cercle), the House of Al-Faisal (Cercle) and Hussein bin Talal of Jordan (Cercle) were running a largely private war in the Yemens. (155) As for the US, these private operations exploded in the 1970s and got another boost right after 9/11. In both cases, the same anti-communist, radical Zionist, neoconservative group was involved in expanding these operations.

Around the time Stilwell left government service and set up Stilwell Associates he joined the Advisory Board of Americares, a large relief organization with heavy duty links to the pharmaceutical industry, the intelligence community, right wing politicians, and the religious fringe. Americares used the Knights of Malta to distribute supplies and to more easily move across international borders. In 1991, the year Stilwell would pass away, J. Peter Grace (Knights of Malta leader; CNP; 1001 Club; Pilgrims Society; AIFLD; W.R. Grace & Co.; Citibank), a long time colleague of Stilwell, was chairman of the advisory board while Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Cercle participant like Stilwell, was its honorary chair. The Moonie-connected Knight of Malta William E. Simon was another member of the advisory board. Robert C. Macauley is the founder and head of Americares, not to mention a childhood friend of George H.W. Bush, the son of a Knight of Malta. Although Macauley is not a Catholic, he did have pictures of President Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa on his office walls (156).

In the early 1970s, Macauley had joined hands with Bruce Ritter, a Catholic priest who took care of runaway children in New York. Both were invited for an audience with the Pope in 1982, who gave the newly-established Americares the opportunity to give aid to Poland (157). This was purely a geopolitical move as the Vatican, for several years, had been funding a Catholic underground in Poland, and now that an economic crisis had broken out, Americares was chosen to bolster the image of both the Vatican and Reagan's Catholic Conservatives even more. At the same time, the Vatican began supporting Solidarnosc (Solidarity), a large group of dissident workers, with funds and a printing press. Roberto Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano was among the banks that had bankrolled these operations and the Vatican was coordinating their actions with officials from the Reagan administration, including General Alexander Haig, General Walters, and William Casey, all three members of the Knights of Malta (158). Reagan's representative to the Vatican, Le Cercle and The 61, William Wilson, who also was a Knight of Malta, was another one (159). Georges Albertini of the Cercle, a major French fascist with a series of Synarchist links, provided crucial intelligence gathered by The 61 on Poland to the Pope during this time (160).

Unfortunately for Macauley, in 1990, he was forced to break his association with the Catholic priest after this person was accused of sexual misconduct with some of the male runaways he was sheltering (161); a very common accusation in the Catholic Republican Paneuropa circles that is being dealt with in this article.

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Some more Cercle members. King Hussein of Jordan used to receive millions from the CIA. Sultan Qaboos from Oman overthrew his father in 1970 (which was a good thing) with help from "British advisors" and privatized the oil economy. He is rumored to be gay by almost his entire population, which is quite a sin in an Islamic country. Both Hussein and Qaboos were advised by Cercle member Air Marshal Sir Erik Bennett. Turki from Saudi-Arabia is reported to have met his old protege Osama Bin Laden as late as July 2001, together with the CIA, and resigned 10 days before 9/11 as head of Saudi intelligence. Auchi was part of Saddam Hussein's inner circle and is standing here next to Prince Andrew at the Anglo-Arab Organization. Actually, it isn't known if former Nazi spy chief General Reinhard Gehlen attended Cercle meetings, only that he was very interested in the Cercle and that he recruited its founder, Jean Violet, as an intelligence agent. Details can be found in the membership list, which features very detailed biographies often with a number of newspaper excerpts.
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