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Sinister Forces

Started by Cain, June 15, 2013, 01:17:30 PM

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Cain

QuoteMaury Terry has insisted that there is a connection between Charles Manson and David Berkowitz, and he has based this conclusion largely on jailhouse confessions and some controversial interviews with convicted felons.

QuoteKelly argues, and quite rightly, that Terry goes overboard in his analysis of the Son of Sam letters and other details about the Son of Sam killings and related matters including—and most importantly—Terry's understanding of the nature of cults. To Terry, virtually everything that is not a socially accepted organized religion in America is a cult. This is a trap into which many have fallen at one time or another, including Attorney General Janet Reno in her doomed opposition to the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas.

QuoteKelly's problem with Terry's book is probably less with Terry's leaps of logic than with the possible reaction to Terry's thesis by people who would "use books like Maury Terry's to evoke a new form of the Inquisition."  Kelly, as a self-described "serious student of the so-called 'occult' now for at least two decades" can "definitely say that there is nothing whatsoever in the Borrelli letter to indicate any great knowledge of any esoteric or occult subject,"  Yet, the unusual references to "Chubby Behemouth" and the "wemon of Queens" and a subsequent attack at the Elephas Disco in Queens weeks later, implies someone with a somewhat deeper understanding of occultism than the somewhat airy phrases of the Borrelli letter initially suggest, regardless of Kelly's demurral.

QuoteG.M. Kelly firmly defines his identity as a Thelemite and a serious student of the occult for decades; normally, this implies a certain tradition that can be traced through the OTO and the Golden Dawn, back to Freemasonry and the Rosicrucians and the Knights Templar. It is a specific train of esoteric thought and practice, and the various branches share a common language, even as they may be at loggerheads with each other over minutiae of ritual or interpretation.

But there are other organizations that have only the most tenuous of affiliation with the standard occult secret societies, and which determine their own "tradition" without regard to the standard texts. There is certainly nothing in the available literature on the hermetic secret societies of the West to show that human sacrifice was an acceptable part of the ritual, yet to deny that ritual murder ever has taken place in the past is to deny a healthy part of human history.

Recently, in fact, we have the Matamoros cult that was responsible for a number of ritual murders in Mexico and Texas: a group that was supposedly practicing a form of Latin shamanism known as palo mayombe, even as "legitimate" practitioners insisted that the Matamoros group had no legal standing within their religion. The Matamoros cult—which involved trafficking in illegal drugs across the Mexican-Texas border—was only revealed in 1989, two years after the publication of Terry's book insisting there was an occult "culture" surrounding certain elements of the international drug trade.

QuoteIt is for this reason that we are compelled to look closely at a series of murders that took place between 1977 and 1983, and also beyond. These killings involved some of the most powerful, most famous names in the movie business ... and some of the least known, least respected as well. The culture of drugs, cults, and death overtook the culture of the screen, and for a brief moment the veil of the dark temple was lifted by a corner, and a whiff of sulphur and satanism escaped into the disbelieving world. Appropriately enough, the central character in this episode was the producer of Roman Polanski's film, Rosemary's Baby : Robert Evans. Evans would go on to marry Ali MacGraw—the actress whose father was the mystic of Bedford Village—and Phyllis George, a former Miss America who later married a governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a governor involved in the drugs and money scandal surrounding an organization known only as "the Company."

Cain

QuoteMaury Terry, the investigative journalist whose The Ultimate Evil started a landslide of satanic cult hysteria in the United States in the late 1980s, as he delved deeply into the Son of Sam murder mystery, discovered that he had actually gone to high school with John Carr, one of the suspects in the re-opened case who was killed by a shotgun blast to the head at an Air Force base in North Dakota.

QuoteI am a graduate of Christopher Columbus High School, in the Bronx. This institution boasts at least two well-known alumni. One is pioneer transsexual Christine Jorgensen. The other is confessed Son of Sam killer David Berkowitz. I cannot claim to have known Berkowitz in high school, since I graduated in 1968 and he started at Columbus in 1969, but he would have read my article on alchemy and the transmutation of metals in the school's "literary-arts magazine," Horizon, which was published that year. In fact, Berkowitz lived for a while on Barnes Avenue in the Bronx, a few blocks from where I lived on Revere Avenue. And he worked as a security guard at Co-Op City, very close by. And we had friends in common.

QuoteIn those years, 1967-1969, there was a lot of mysticism going on in the United States, and the Bronx was no exception. These individuals were very involved in ritual practices, as they understood them. (Some were even teachers at the high school.) We held séances together in Pelham Bay, near where Co-Op City now stands; some of us even tried summoning demons.

QuoteMany of the people mentioned in Maury Terry's book were either known to us, or known to friends of ours. This web of relationships would increase once Herman Slater opened his famous store on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights in 1972, like a crazy little magnet that attracted only those on the very fringe of society. From that year until 1984 I found myself in the center of many of the incidents recounted in Terry's book, at least those that involved the Warlock Shop, Brooklyn Heights, the OTO, and the various other secret societies and cults with their tenuous connections to the Scientologists, the Process Church of the Final Judgement, the Church of Satan, the Ku Klux Klan, the National Renaissance Party, and all the various witchcraft covens and personalities, from the Gardnerians to the Alexandrians and Welsh Traditionalists, from Raymond Buckland to Leo Martello and Margot Adler, from covens gay and straight and mixed, to covens clothed and "sky clad." What was going on was much more blatant, much more vigorous, than even Terry suspected. There was a lot going on in those days, and much of it was open and covered by a skeptical but eager press, while the rest could be discovered with a little patience and good humor.

QuoteTerry goes further, however, by insisting that the murderous assault on Arlis Perry in a church at Stanford University—a truly hideous killing that incorporated many ritualistic elements—was a killing by the same cult as that responsible for the Son of Sam killings three years later in New York City.

"Many ritualistic elements" is putting it mildly.  All that was missing was a tape recording of "Sympathy for the Devil" and a signed copy of the Satanic Bible.  In my entirely unprofessional opinion, it was so blatantly made to look like a Satanic ritual killing, that I find myself distrusting that conclusion.

QuoteThen we have the attack on Christine Freund on January 30, 1977, a Sunday. This is identified by Terry—for completely different reasons—as a deliberate Son of Sam target rather than a random shooting. This is also a date comfortably close to Candlemas and the pagan festival of Oimelc. Thus, the dates match in this case as well as they do for Arlis Perry and for Donna Lauria. Christine Freund died on her way to a Masonic dance with her boyfriend, John Diel, who was unhurt in the attack. It would be the Freund case that would lead some investigators towards a possible motive for some of the killings that did not fit a "crazed, lone gunman" scenario. According to Berkowitz, an "out of town" shooter was brought in for this one, although there were a total of five cult members present for this attack. The shooter in this case was identified by Berkowitz as "Manson II," who also claimed responsibility for the Arlis Perry attack.

QuoteBut the final confirmed Son of Sam murder was that of Stacy Moskowitz (and the blinding of her date, Robert Violante) in Brooklyn on July 31, 1977—virtually the first anniversary of the Sam killings as well as Lammas in the pagan calendar and a Sunday. And a full moon. This attack had a plethora of eyewitnesses who saw more than one participant in the killing and at least two vehicles: one, a Ford Galaxie, was Berkowitz' car, the one identified by a parking ticket that night. The other was a Volkswagen Beetle.  Although Berkowitz was present at this killing, evidence shows he could not have committed it and, indeed, once he knew his car had just received a parking ticket, tried to call it off, knowing where that clue would lead. However, the killing went ahead as planned, committed—according to Berkowitz—by a friend of John Carr's from North Dakota.

QuoteAs you can see, not all of the killings were timed to the official pagan calendar. In fact, most of them could not be successfully placed near enough to a cult date to be significant. Yet, is there a pattern we could be missing? Or is the lack of a pattern in some killings an indication that they were committed merely to confuse the issue, or conversely that they are evidence of a second killer or killers?

QuoteArlis Perry was killed on or about midnight of October 12-13, 1974. An astrological chart drawn up for that place and time would reveal that there was a conjunction of the Sun and Mars in Libra at the Lower Heaven (the point in space opposite the Midheaven where the Sun is highest at noon). This conjunction is squared by Saturn in Cancer, and "semi-sextiled" (an angle of thirty degrees) by the waning Moon in Virgo. To reinforce the imagery, there were also significant angles between Pluto, Neptune and Jupiter that night. In fact, virtually all the "angles" that night were squares, conjunctions or oppositions: all considered "hard" aspects in astrological circles. In other words, it was a potent night for a ritual murder and may have been selected with that point of view in addition to the fact that all of these aspects were taking place on Crowley's birthday.

Quotecharts drawn up for all the murders indicate that only one—that of Virginia Voskerichian on March 8, 1977—did not take place during a waxing moon. (In fact, the Voskerichian attack was very anomalous in other regards, taking place much earlier in the evening than the others.) The other shootings took place either on New or Full Moons or when the Moon was somewhere between New and Full.

QuoteIf one believes in astrology, then one can say that the murders happened on those dates and times because the "stars were aright." And if one does not believe in astrology, then one can still say that someone else, someone who did believe in astrology, chose those dates and times deliberately. It is not a conclusive piece of evidence, but the astrological character of the murder calendar is suggestive. Berkowitz told Terry that he was not aware of the reasons for the murders, or why some victims were chosen for death; he was simply told what to do and he did it.

QuoteThen, however, we have the collateral damage, the deaths of people who were close to the suspects or the investigation. These include:

September 20, 1977: Andrew Dupay—a mailman who worked the Yonkers route where Berkowitz and the Carrs lived—goes downstairs to the basement of his home while his wife is bathing their two daughters, writes a hasty suicide note, and kills himself with a shotgun. It is the autumnal equinox. No one knows the motive for the suicide, except that in the days immediately before and after Berkowitz' arrest, co-workers say Dupay began acting fearful, gradually becoming consumed with panic through the month of August and into September. One informant wrote Terry that Dupay had met someone in Pelham Bay Park the day before his suicide. Pelham Bay Park, of course, is the same area of the Bronx where Berkowitz had lived a few years earlier. The man he met was not identified.

9 October 31, 1981: the murders of Ronald Sisman and Elizabeth Plotzman on Halloween. Sisman was a photographer who claimed to have possession of videotapes made by the Son of Sam killer(s), notably of the murder of Stacy Moskowitz. Sisman was planning on giving this evidence to the authorities, but he and his girlfriend were executed. It was Sisman who introduced actress (Welcome Back, Kotter) and model (Playboy) Melonie Haller to producer Roy Radin, who was himself murdered by the Son of Sam cult according to Terry. Melonie Haller was savagely beaten at Radin's Long Island estate and claimed that the beatings and possible rape were videotaped by Radin and/or his accomplices.

Craig Glassman, on October 31, 1991: again, Halloween. Glassman, an important witness to the goings-on in and around the Yonkers apartment of David Berkowitz, who had received threatening letters and was the target of an arson attack by Berkowitz, died on the Taconic State Parkway in a bizarre auto accident.

Cain

QuoteWhat is important for our investigation, however, is the fact that the Zodiac killings stopped from October 16, 1975 until starting up again on February 24, 1979, a quiescent period of about three and half years. This period of Zodiac inactivity dovetails with the Son of Sam murders, which took place from July 1976 to August 1977, and the murders of alleged Sam accomplices John Carr in February 1978 and Michael Carr in October 1978.

QuoteThere are many similarities between the Zodiac case and the Son of Sam case. The definitive study of the Zodiac killings—Zodiac by Robert Graysmith—tells us that the killings took place "on weekends when the moon was new or full."  In addition, Graysmith has linked the killings to the Quarter Days: the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoces.  Further, Zodiac sent taunting letters to the press, as did the Son of Sam killer(s) as well as probably the most famous serial killer of all time, Jack the Ripper. Like the Ripper, the Zodiac's identity is unknown. There was a Zodiac murder in 1974, only a few weeks before Arlis Perry's. This took place "six days after the Autumnal Equinox in 1974," when a fourteen-year-old girl was killed. The Zodiac used a wide variety of murder weapons, making his identification and apprehension even more difficult. Then, after October 1975 there seems to be little or no more activity from the Zodiac until February 1979: virtually the same time frame in which the Son of Sam murders took place, including the violent deaths of John and Michael Carr.

QuoteAlthough Berkowitz is Jewish—his adoptive parents are Jewish, his natural parents are Jewish—David suddenly becomes a Christian upon his return from Korea. While stationed at Fort Knox—the site of the nation's heavily-guarded gold repository—he begins attending the Beth Haven Baptist Church in Louisville and becomes a fanatic Christian. He tries to convert both civilian and military personnel, even preaching (à la Jim Jones in Indiana) on street corners. Again, there is insufficient data to make any kind of assumption here about what motivated Berkowitz to become religious, much less Christian. Did it have something to do with his discovery that he was adopted? Did the LSD he took in Korea have anything to do with this sudden spiritual awakening?

QuoteIn February of 1976, Berkowitz moves to New Rochelle from the Bronx, to an apartment that is much farther away from both his college and his job and which is more expensive. No one knows why he does this. It makes no sense. The apartment was only advertised in a local Westchester newspaper, not something Berkowitz would have normally seen in the course of his days in the Bronx and Manhattan. It is in a private home owned by one Jack Cassara. At that time, Cassara is working at the Neptune Moving Company in New Rochelle. One of his co-workers is Fred Cowan, a neo-Nazi who would go amok and, during a siege at the moving company, kill six people before killing himself on Valentine's Day 1977. Later, clippings would be found in Berkowitz' Yonkers apartment covering the Cowan case in detail. Berkowitz would refer to Cowan as "one of the Sons."

QuoteThen, the following month, he applies for an apartment in Yonkers, on the other side of New York from New Rochelle, at 35 Pine Street, even though he has a one-year lease with the Cassaras that is only a month old. Again, why?

QuoteIn April 1976, he moves to 35 Pine Street. Again, this move makes no sense for someone working and studying in the Bronx. Not only is the time it takes to commute a factor, but also the additional cost of commuting; plus, the rent is one hundred dollars more a month than the original place he had in the Bronx. One hundred "1976" dollars.

QuoteA key element in Terry's thesis is that the Process Church of the Final Judgement is alive and well, and involved in nefarious activity stretching from drug-running to child prostitution to murder. This was also asserted in Ed Sanders' study of the Manson Family, The Family.

QuoteWhat initially bothered Terry about the Process was the appearance in one of their issues (the "Death" issue) of an article written by Charles Manson. Critics of the Terry thesis have scoffed at this, saying that such persons as Marianne Faithfull and Salvador Dali also appeared in the Process magazine; my reaction is simply this, however: what was Charles Manson doing in such august company? Further, Marianne Faithfull (as we have seen) had a long association with occultists of the Crowley dispensation through her relationship with Kenneth Anger. Dali himself was very involved in occultism, was well-known in several occult milieus, and his paintings—true to his reputation as a surrealist—reveal many occult and alchemical themes. There is a certain cultural or spiritual consistency to those who graced the pages of the Process magazine, and to dismiss Manson's appearance there as of little import is to be quite naïve. Further, as we have already learned, Manson told prosecutor Bugliosi that he and Robert Moore (the founder of the Process) were "the same." In addition, members of the Process on a mysterious mission visited Manson in prison after his arrest for the Tate/La Bianca killings, after which he no longer referred to the Process in any way.

QuoteIn addition, we also have the visits by Manson Family member Bruce Davis to England on at least two occasions; as discussed in Book I, the British police agencies identified Davis as visiting the Scientologists and/or the Process on each visit. In fact, we also have the murders of former Scientologists in England at this time, members connected with the Manson Family and, as we will see, yet another Scientologist was killed, this time in connection with the Son of Sam case.

QuoteThe next step is to find any relation at all between David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam murders, and the Process. If this can be done, then we have left the realm of pure speculation and have entered the world of logical possibility. Let's begin with the dogs. For some reason, there have been reports of sacrifices of large numbers of dogs, mostly German shepherds, throughout the United States in the past thirty-odd years, but notably in areas where we discover confirmed cult activity. This was as true in Berkowitz' Yonkers neighborhood as it was in Walden, New York, where a "total of eighty-five skinned German shepherds and Dobermans were found" in a single year "between October 1976 and October 1977."  The day after Berkowitz' arrest in Yonkers, the bodies of three slain German shepherds were found in an aqueduct behind his apartment. Two had been strangled with chains; the third had been shot in the head.

QuoteTwo days before his arrest, someone phoned an animal shelter using his name and address, inquiring about adopting a German shepherd that had been advertised in a local paper. A few hours later, someone else called from the same street in Yonkers, also inquiring about the dog.

Quotearound the time of the Sam killings, the author heard convincing rumors of the abuse and slaughter of dogs in a warehouse near Brooklyn Heights, within walking distance of the Warlock Shop, before Berkowitz was arrested and the connection with dogs was made.

QuoteIt doesn't automatically follow, however, that the Process would sacrifice the animals. Another symbolic association that should be mentioned is the fact that Hitler favored German shepherds above all other animals. That there might be a Nazi or neo-Nazi element to the Son of Sam cult should not be ignored, especially as mass murderer Fred Cowan—one of the "Sons" according to Berkowitz—was a neo-Nazi. Further, the Process symbol was a stylized swastika: what some members referred to as "four P's"; these "four P's" later contributed to the name of a Process splinter group called "Four P" after the same symbol. It was this group that remained behind in California after most of the regular Process decamped and went to New York City following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Four P—and its reputed leader, the Grand Chingon—has been implicated in a number of vile acts, including animal and human sacrifice, in northern and southern California. Convicted serial killer and cannibal Stanley Baker claimed to belong to this cult, and Manson Family members were known to refer to Charles Manson as the Grand Chingon, even though the organization was supposedly so secret that its very existence was unknown to all but a few.

Cain

QuoteThe most important from an investigative point of view was the name of "John Wheaties," identified in the letter to Jimmy Breslin as a "Rapist and Suffocater of Young Girls."  It was the investigative work of Terry and his associate (and former police detective) Jim Mitteager that uncovered the identity of this person as John Wheat Carr, a son of Sam Carr of the infamous demonic dog. John Carr led to his brother Michael Carr, a high-level Scientologist, and to Wheat Carr, their sister who worked for the Yonkers Police Department and who was married to a police officer.

QuoteJohn Wheat Carr, a career member of the Air Force who was discharged for drug related offences, died violently on February 16, 1978 at the airbase in Minot, North Dakota, the victim of a shotgun wound to the head. OSI—the Air Force's internal police agency—initially determined that the death was a probable homicide, changing that determination to suicide when the investigation took on national proportions with inquiries from Westchester County and New York City police departments and prosecutors' offices. He had been in Yonkers, at Sam Carr's home, only a few days before and unexpectedly flew back to Minot on Valentine's Day, after phoning his girlfriend at the base and telling her that the police were after him and things were too hot in New York.

QuoteCarr had been the subject of a manhunt by police all over New York City and Westchester once it had been realized that he was the "John Wheaties" of the Son of Sam letters. If someone killed John Carr—while David Berkowitz was sitting in prison—then the implication is that there was at least one more conspirator out there: the one doing the mopping up. To make matters more interesting, John Carr's description fit perfectly with eyewitness reports of the Son of Sam killer seen at more than one crime scene, down to the color of his hair, his build, and his left-handedness. Evidence gathered since then shows that Carr was in New York City for at least four of the shootings, even though he lived in Minot, North Dakota at the time. He was also present in Houston, Texas on June 12, 1976: the day Billy Dan Parker bought the .44 Charter Arms Bulldog for Berkowitz in that city.

QuoteWhile John Carr's familiarity with the occult is documented in Terry's book (everything from keeping a list of demons with him to burying dog excrement in the yards of people he was trying to curse), it receives further confirmation from Berkowitz himself, who characterized him as a "devil worshipper" during his interrogation

QuoteLater, police in the Minot, North Dakota area acknowledged that John Carr was a member of a satanic cult that operated there, that John Carr himself was not only using drugs but dealing (not an uncommon combination), and that he told police detectives that members of the cult had to drink their leader's urine from a chalice, among other unsavory details.

QuoteEven more importantly, the Minot police agencies knew that Carr and Berkowitz were acquainted and that both belonged to the same cult, based on voluminous testimony from friends, including a fellow airman and roommate, Jeffrey Sloat, who eventually had John Carr committed to a mental institution for a while due to the latter's strange behavior, which included chanting in an unknown tongue and talking to a picture of Abraham Lincoln.

QuoteIn the months leading up to his capture, Berkowitz was engaged in a campaign of terrorism in his neighborhood designed to get him arrested on lesser charges before he was apprehended for the Son of Sam murders, and before he would be expected to commit more. He was firebombing houses, shooting dogs, and sending hate mail to all and sundry ... with return addresses that would only point back to him. The inability of the Westchester Sheriff 's Department and the Yonkers police to put all of this together—even when Sam Carr himself walked into a police station with the evidence long before the last two Son of Sam attacks—drove Berkowitz crazy.

QuoteAfter his arrest, he would eventually be interviewed by Dr. David Abrahamson, to determine if he was mentally fit to stand trial. Abrahamson wrote a book about the experience, entitled Confessions of Son of Sam and published in 1985. In this book, we learn that Berkowitz recognized Abrahamson when they were first introduced, as he had read Abrahamson's The Murdering Mind prior to his arrest! He also read a number of books about murderers such as Richard Speck and Nathan Leopold that he took out of the Yonkers Public Library, telling the doctor, "Murder is a recent interest of mine."

QuoteOn July 10, 1979, David Berkowitz was attacked by a fellow inmate, his throat slashed, but he survived. A few weeks later, a friend of his was shot to death in his apartment in Flushing, Queens. Howard Weiss was a fellow member of the police auxiliary unit in Co-Op City to which Berkowitz and another colleague, a former Yonkers police officer who is not identified in Terry's book except for a pseudonym, belonged. These three men had attended a wedding of a friend in Maryland in 1976, before the Son of Sam killings began: a wedding that was captured on videotape, showing all three men present. Another link between them was the fact that the Yonkers police officer knew the Carrs, and that all three men were known to have owned .44 Charter Arms Bulldog revolvers.

QuoteWhen they spoke by phone to Minot, North Dakota law enforcement they were shocked to learn that Minot knew all along about John Carr's occult involvements as well as the existence of a cult in Minot that, among other things, sacrificed German shepherds.

Cain

QuoteRumors of a cult calling itself the Four P surfaced in California shortly after the Process disappeared from that state. "Four P" was a name taken from the Process symbol, which resembles four "P's" in a circle forming a kind of swastika figure. Then there was the Grand Chingon, said to be the leader of the Four P. Manson Family members used to claim that Charlie was the Grand Chingon, but that was empty boasting. No one seems to know who the Grand Chingon was, or even what "Chingon" means, except that it may not be a real title but a kind of epithet. In Mexican Spanish, the verb chingar means "to fuck" and is used as an expletive, such as in the word chingada for "fucking" or chinga su madre, a common curse. Thus, the word chingon could mean "the fucker." As the Luciferian element of the Process was the one involved most directly in the lascivious aspects of the cult—the purely sexual component, rather than the more intense power component of the Satan element—it is possible that the Grand Chingon was leading a group of dissident Luciferians, except for the fact that the Four P group and the Grand Chingon were implicated in several vicious murders in the California area in the late 1960s and early 1970s, including the one involving Stanley Baker, the aforementioned cannibal.

QuoteOverweight, with a pudgy face framed by a short beard, and always well- dressed in public (while preferring a bathrobe at home in his huge Southampton mansion, Ocean Castle), Radin was a show business entrepreneur who managed talent that others wouldn't touch or know what to do with.

QuoteMagicians, ventriloquists, dancing poodles and has-been actors and comedians from the 1950s were his stock-in-trade and, incredibly, Middle America loved it and made him a wealthy man. And with the wealth came the drugs, lots of drugs.

QuoteIn the Roy Radin case, sex and drugs combined in the usual ways, but with the addition of cult practices on the one hand, and videotape technology on the other.

QuoteThe tabloid press was gleeful, of course, and Haller rewarded their joy by insisting to the police that she had been drugged, raped and beaten by Radin and his associates and that everything had been captured on videotape. No such tape was found, but then Radin had ample advance warning from the local cops and would have been able to erase any incriminating evidence.

QuoteWhether Radin blamed his predicament on photographer Ron Sisman is not known; what is known is that Sisman was murdered shortly thereafter. The talk on the street, however, was that Sisman was killed for another, even more sinister, reason: he claimed to have possession of a videotape showing the murder of Stacey Moskowitz, the last Son of Sam victim.

QuoteKaren DeLayne Jacobs [...] A brittle-looking brunette and at times peroxide blonde with a tight smile and a ferret's features, she was nonetheless as popular around the Cuban and Colombian narcotraficante circuit as she was in her Georgia high school Pep Club. Known as La Rubia ("the Blonde"), she began cutting deals behind the backs of her drug-dealing boyfriends and was soon running coke in quantity from Miami to Los Angeles.

Quoteher most recent liaison was with a powerful trafficker, one Milan Bellechasses. Bellechasses, a native of Santiago de Cuba, worked for the Medellin drug cartel and specifically for Carlos Lehder Rivas, one of the most colorful of the three men who made up the cartel. Lehder was not only a drug trafficker (who had spent time in the Bronx as a teenager, dealing marijuana and boosting cars), but he also considered himself a political activist dedicated to the overthrow of North American hegemony in Colombia and the rest of Latin America through the exportation of illegal drugs to the States: weapons of mass addiction, perhaps. He was also a worshipper (there is no other word) of former Beatle John Lennon, and erected a statue of him outside a hotel he owned in Colombia. The statue shows Lennon completely nude, except for a Nazi helmet, a guitar, and a hole where his heart would be.

QuoteWhat they did not know was that his godfather—his literal godfather—was Johnny Stoppelli, a soldier in the Genovese crime family who maintained an upscale lifestyle in Manhattan's Murray Hill section. Radin referred to Stoppelli as his "muscle,"

QuoteOn May 5, 1983, and in the midst of the accusations and recriminations that were flying around the New York City townhouse of Robert Evans that week, Radin managed to bring his "godfather," Johnny Stoppelli, to one of the meetings, hoping that they could work something out between Radin and Evans. However, they had just begun to talk when Laney walked in with her Miami attorney, Frank Diaz, and the fighting began again. Radin was adamant about not letting Jacobs have any percentage of the deal. He did not want to have to deal with her at all. Even more compelling, however, was Johnny Stoppelli's reaction: he recognized Jacobs for what she was, and told Radin that he would not do business with drug dealers and warned Radin to forget the whole thing.

QuoteWhen he was out one afternoon, he received a call at his Los Angeles hotel on his private line. It was a New York mobster, warning him to keep his mouth shut and to get out of town. The call was taken by Radin's assistant, Jonathan Lawson, who was appropriately alarmed and urged Radin to heed the advice. It had been a warning—the last one.

QuoteWilson wound up driving directly to La Scala to wait for Radin and Jacobs to appear. The plan was that Wilson would take another table and watch the proceedings from a safe distance. They never showed up. After a few hours, Lawson called La Scala to see what was going on and was informed that Radin and Jacobs never arrived.

QuoteThe full story would not come out until much later, after several years of investigation, but on June 10, 1983—less than a month after Radin's disappearance—a bee-keeper by the name of Glen Fischer wandering in the rough country near Gorman, California came across a body that was partially buried in a ravine, the fingers of one hand clawing upward from the ground, its skull almost completely destroyed, its jawbone several feet away from its head, pumped with twenty-eight shots at point blank range, and dressed in an expensive three-piece suit and a Pierre Cardin tie. Glen Fischer had found Roy Radin.

QuoteMaury Terry, acting on the basis of information obtained from an informer—"Vinny"—who had known David Berkowitz in prison, was looking at Roy Radin as the possible East Coast connection for the Son of Sam cult. Why? There was more to Ocean Castle than the Melonie Haller incident. It seems that police had been called out to the Castle several times in the past, acting on complaints of sexual assault. There was a strong rumor that many of the parties and other activities there had been videotaped; and that photographer Ronald Sisman was more deeply involved with Radin and with cult activity than others had suspected. Vinny had actually named Radin—knowing him only as "Rodan" and "Rodan the Flying Monster"—as well as Sisman and others involved in the case. Radin was said to be involved with "Dale Evans," another code name, and in this case Roy Radin was referred to as "Roy Rogers."

QuoteTo be sure, "Roy Rogers" could also have been a reference to Tally Rogers who, as Laney Jacobs' drug courier, was driving between Miami and Los Angeles twice a month and could conceivably have been more than simply a drug courier, and used to transport information between the Los Angeles branch of the Sam Cult and the East Coast.

QuoteVinny insisted that Radin had close connections to Los Angeles and the Son of Sam cult supposed to be headquartered there. Terry's information included reports of satanic activity at Ocean Castle along with all the drugs and polymorphous sexuality. David Berkowitz himself was known to have visited Ocean Castle at least once, which was explosive information as it was ... but then Berkowitz also had been seen in Minot, North Dakota, the other Sam cult site.

QuoteOnce Radin's body had been found, Terry was notified and prepared to fly to Los Angeles to examine the crime scene himself, certain he was that Radin had been part of the Sam cult he was investigating. That is when he received another note from "Vinny," who told him to look at the scene carefully, for the killers would have left a cultic clue behind.

QuoteAnd that is when he found the Bible, buried underneath a bush next to where Radin's body had been found, opened to the twenty-second chapter of Isaiah.

For those not up on their Bible knowledge http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+22&version=NIV

QuoteWick also mentions that the name "Rodan" was given to Roy Radin by his neo-Nazi killer, Alex Marti, who also called Radin "a big, fat Jew." Terry's informant on the East Coast knew the nickname Rodan before Radin was killed. Since Radin was known as "Rodan" to the Son of Sam cult (via Vinny's information), the only possible conclusion to draw is that Marti and his partner Mentzer were either members of that same cabal or had been hired guns of the cabal.

QuoteBill Mentzer—Terry's pick as "Manson II," a much-rumored hitman with cult credentials—has the necessary pedigree. According to Terry's in- formants within the Los Angeles police, federal agencies, and the criminal subculture (very few of whom are named, making independent corroboration or confirmation difficult if not at times impossible), Mentzer had been a friend of both Charles Manson and, most importantly, Abigail Folger in the late 1960s.

QuoteWhile Mentzer had a criminal record and had been involved in questionable and illegal activity for a while, what does not ring true about Mentzer being the much-vaunted "Manson II" is that, for a hitman, he evidently has a rather weak stomach. On each occasion where we know Mentzer was present at or committed a murder he had to drink himself into the role. That is, he had to be pretty drunk before he could carry out the killings, whereas his associates—men like Argentine assassin Alex Marti—carried out these missions with glee, and needed no "Dutch courage" to get them in the mood.

QuoteIf we understand that the Son of Sam killings also included some specific hits, possibly ordered by an organized crime lord (as intimated by David Berkowitz himself, who has never avoided responsibility for his participation in these murders), and if we understand that Manson, Mentzer and Berkowitz are linked quite specifically via their respective cults, we have to come to the inescapable conclusion that a cult exists whose members are available for contract killings, and that this cult has existed since at least the late 1960s through the late 1970s, and likely beyond. We have also to understand that some of the Son of Sam killings were cult sacrifices, chosen to take place on days selected in advance according to an occult calendar or to some other, more esoteric, method. These killings were probably arranged to "blood" the new recruits: to acquaint them with the act of murder and to win their loyalty through fear of exposure to the authorities. This implies a well-organized and disciplined operation with, indeed, national coverage, as murders connected to this cult have taken place all over the United States. As we mentioned, however, murder is only one aspect of this cult's activities. Drug-running is another, and probably provides much of the operating income for the group. Prostitution—both male and female, adult and child—is also a function of the group, as well as pornography and particularly child pornography.

EK WAFFLR

Shit. Not even halfway through your new posts yet, but shit. Thanks, Cain!
"At first I lifted weights.  But then I asked myself, 'why not people?'  Now everyone runs for the fjord when they see me."


Horribly Oscillating Assbasket of Deliciousness
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Cain

QuoteWhile we have looked at both the Manson-Mentzer-Berkowitz connections and the Robert Evans-Laney Jacobs-Mentzer connections, what the reader may find startling are connections to still yet another group of organized killers and drug runners, the infamous "Company." When Laney Jacobs was asked about her sources of income, she would usually tell people that she had made investments in the Suzy Creamcheese line of women's fashions and was a part-owner of the franchise which was famous in Las Vegas and among Hollywood celebrities.

We don't know if Jacobs did indeed own a piece of the Suzy Creamcheese action, but she is known to have taken friends to visit Las Vegas and stay at Suzy Creamcheese owner Leslie DeKeyser's house, and to buy them clothes at the boutique. Jacobs spent a lot of time traveling to Vegas from both Florida and California, and we remember that Bob Evans was trying to raise money from casino owners there, the Doumani brothers. Suzy Creamcheese had another illustrious client, and this will lead us back to Ashland, Kentucky and—strangely enough—back to Bob Evans, drugs, and murder.

This time the main character is a bizarre figure who was part-commando, part-mystic, and total criminal, a man who leaped to his death on September 11, 1985, when his parachute didn't open because the $75-million worth of cocaine he had strapped to his body proved too heavy: Andrew Carter "Drew" Thornton II.

QuoteAlthough he boasted such ... luminaries as Charo and Cher among his satisfied customers, his most devoted client was one Anita Madden, nee Myers, a woman who was raised in Ashland, Kentucky on the wrong side of the tracks, but who clawed her way to the top by marrying the heir to the Madden horse-raising fortune. Sharing a great deal in common with Laney Jacobs, another poor white Southern girl who made it a habit to marry wealthy men, Anita Madden's parties became scandalous affairs in the late 1960s (and through to 1998, the year of the last Madden Kentucky Derby-Eve bash), with Ms. Madden decked out in the latest Suzy Creamcheese outrage, all leathers and feathers, and surrounding herself with show business and sports personalities, in a determined effort to invade and hold hostage the society columns of the Kentucky newspapers,

QuoteThe complex mystery begins with a bizarre paramilitary operation known as the "Company" a nickname not to be confused with that of the CIA ... maybe. As it turns out, the Company was involved in more than what was originally suspected by Kentucky law enforcement, which was drug-running, pure and simple.

QuoteThe police investigation of the Company revealed a state whose politics— from the Governor's Mansion on down through the various local and state police departments—was corrupt to the extent that its reputation is only surpassed by that of Louisiana and Rhode Island. There were so many former and current law enforcement officers as part of the Company that for a while many investigators were under the assumption that it was a covert federal operation, perhaps something linked to arms deals with the Contras. Indeed, Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi makes an appearance in this story, too, as a frequent visitor to Kentucky whose own company's name—the Triad Corporation—was echoed in the name of the farm that served as the Company's headquarters: Triad.

QuoteThe logo of the Triad Farm was a pitchfork, and locals insisted to police and federal investigators that it was used not only for paramilitary training but was also the headquarters of a satanic cult.

QuoteIn the 1970s, Kentucky became infamous for activity of the Company, a network of illegal trade in drugs, arms and prostitution. The Company was largely composed of former law enforcement officers, and had intelligence resources high up in several federal agencies, notably the Drug Enforcement Agency, or DEA. It was widely rumored that the Company had CIA connections, and that they were part of the infrastructure that eventually began supplying the Contras in the 1980s. With planeloads of weapons and high-technology gear such as night-vision scopes and other James Bond paraphernalia (either stolen from US military bases such as China Lake, or actually supplied by the government, the truth is a little hard to find), the materiel wound up supporting Latin American military regimes, and the planes would fly back into the United States with shipments of marijuana and, later, cocaine. Shipments worth millions of dollars a flight.

QuoteWe have David Berkowitz in Kentucky preaching on street corners at the same time Drew Thornton is busting radicals and dope dealers there, in an eerie replay of the Jim Jones and Dan Mitrione "relationship" in Indiana; we have Laney Jacobs staying with Suzy Creamcheese founder Leslie DeKeyser at the latter's home in Las Vegas, at the same time that she is plotting the Roy Radin murder and is involved with Robert Evans; Leslie DeKeyser is also an intimate of Anita Madden and a regular at her parties; Laney will later marry Larry Greenberger, a famous South Florida cocaine dealer and lieutenant of Medellin cartel narcotraficante Carlos Lehder Rivas; Greenberger himself is later murdered either by his wife, Laney, or by one of her lovers, before she herself is arrested and convicted for her role in the Radin homicide. We have Larry Flynt, the man who employed Radin assassins Bill Mentzer and Alex Marti, attending Anita Madden's pre-Derby parties at Hamburg Place ... and we have the assassination of federal judge John Wood at the orders of drug kingpin Jimmy Chagra, an assassination carried out by hitman Charles Harrelson, father of actor Woody Harrelson ("Woody" on the television sit-com Cheers, who later portrayed a serial killer in Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and ... Larry Flynt, in The People vs. Larry Flynt). When arrested, Charles Harrelson will confess to having been the man on the grassy knoll in Dallas on November 22, 1963; he will confess to having assassinated President John F. Kennedy. He will quickly retract that confession on the advice of his attorney, and he has never spoken about it again.

QuoteAs Denton and Morris reveal, among Eugene Hasenfus' personal effects when his plane crashed in the Nicaraguan jungle, thus initiating the Iran- Contra investigation, was documentation showing his involvement with the controversial and top-secret Area 51 in Nevada ...

QuoteWhy a member of the Contra supply network would have connections of any kind to Area 51 is a question that has not yet been answered. Hasenfus was a pilot and a mercenary; he was not an aerospace scientist with a top-secret classification. We are in the uncomfortable position of having two mysteries wrapped around each other, and neither giving us much room for deduction

Cain

QuoteWhile Strieber's story in Communion refers to events that took place while he was an adult and spending holidays at his cabin in the woods of upstate New York with his family and friends, it becomes clear through his writings that he links that experience with older, more unsettling ones from his childhood. Whitley Strieber has never insisted that he was abducted by what the popular imagination terms "space aliens." He is not convinced that the UFO phenomenon is, strictly speaking, the visitation of the earth by beings from another planet, or that he (and others like him) have been periodically kid- napped by these beings and used in gruesome medical experiments. He keeps an open mind, and as far as I can discern is sincerely seeking to understand what his experience really was, what it represents.

QuoteHarvard professor and psychiatrist John E. Mack, M.D. concludes that those who have experienced "alien abduction" are genuinely suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  That is, they have had an experience which has caused all the psychological and organic reactions typical of soldiers who have been in battle, or people who have witnessed a particularly upsetting event, such as violent death

QuoteAt this point, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I have to say for the record that Mr. Strieber contacted me via email a few years ago, after reading my first book, Unholy Alliance. His question to me was quite specific: an inquiry concerning Operation Paperclip and the identity of some German officers who had been stationed at Randolph AFB in the 1950s. Since I had spent years researching Nazi Germany and particularly those who escaped justice and wound up in the Americas, it was natural enough that he would contact me for this information. But as we communicated further, and at length, concerning this period of American history, it became clear that Strieber believed that he may have been a victim of some sort of medical treatment or experiment at the hands of these men. He further believed that some sort of connection existed between the Randolph AFB group and a school in Mexico, and this is where the story came unnervingly close to actual events which are only now coming to light.

Did you remember to remember about schools for gifted children in Mexico?

QuoteWhile the hideous example of Dr. Cameron's psychic driving and other programs in Canada is by now well-known to those who study this field, there is virtually no information about similar programs undertaken south of the border, in Mexico. But there is the Finders case.

QuoteAs Maury Terry continued his investigation of the Son of Sam cult, an investigation that became more linked with the Process or one of its offshoots— through statements made by former Process members—he kept hearing the cult called by a peculiar name, "The Children." David Berkowitz knew the cult by this name, and it was stated by Terry that a wealthy émigré from Postwar Germany who lived in the Yonkers area was an important leader. This man has since died. Terry, who knows the man's name, did not divulge it in his book, but he did attend the wake and saw the proliferation of black flowers around the man's coffin.

QuoteA noted psychotherapist and expert on hypnosis, D. Corydon Hammond, has also insisted that a satanic cult exists in America that was begun by Nazi émigrés after the war, and that this cult abuses and even sacrifices children as part of its ritual.  If we put this together with Terry's discovery, we begin to see a pattern emerging ... particularly as the Nazis could not have come to America and begun developing their network without at least preliminary support by American intelligence officials. It is possible that the tales of a nationwide Nazi–Satanic cult that sacrifices children is only the smoke from a much smaller, but potentially more dangerous, fire.

QuoteKnowing all of this, is it so far-fetched an idea that some of these Nazis were allowed—or encouraged—to continue their medical and psychological programs in America? Or, where it was considerably safer, in Canada or Mexico under CIA or military intelligence auspices?

Going by Aaron and Loftus, the Nazi position in America was tenuous because they were, in effect, allowed in by a faction within the CIA - a core of OSS officers who served in a secretive State Department unit in the interim between WWII's end and the creation of the CIA, which was later rolled into the CIA operations department.  Said unit was closely linked to the "aristocratic families" which had close links to the Nazis before and during the war, and likely had a hand in the destruction of CIA files relating to Nazi-era war criminals (a fact discovered by Loftus during his own time as a "Nazi hunter" in the State Department) and the feeding of subsequent disinformation to the broader CIA about the identities of the people they were working with.  Many of these covers were as anti-Nazi, anti-Communist partisans, whereas in fact most had been enthusiastic Nazi collaborators.

History!

QuoteThe memories recorded by Whitley Strieber of his childhood encounters with the "visitors" at the secret school hidden within San Antonio's Olmos Basin may be, he admits, screen memories of actual psychological testing that was done on behalf of American intelligence and conducted by the Nazi doctors of Randolph AFB, tests that could have included hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin. We know that such testing was done on children, for instance at Creedmore in the 1960s.

QuoteNuclear physicist Jack Sarfatti (intimate of Saul Paul Sirag, Andrija Puharich, Uri Geller, Ira Einhorn, Philip K. Dick, Carlos Castaneda, Barbara Honegger, and many others) has written about a similar experience he had as a primary school student around the same time, in 1952, an experience in which he places a lot of stock and which was obviously a seminal event in his life. He had been identified as boy with a genius IQ, and preparations would soon be made to send him to Cornell University on a full scholarship at the age of 17. In the meantime, however, he received a strange phone call at his home in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn.

According to Sarfatti's own account in The Destiny Matrix (1995), and also available on the Internet, "The telephone rings. I pick it up. I hear curious clanking mechanical sounds like relays clicking. A distant cold metallic voice speaking numbers gets louder. "Who are you?" I ask. "I am a conscious computer on board a spacecraft ... We have identified you as one of four hundred young bright receptive minds ... You must give us your decision now. If you say yes, you will begin to link up with the others in twenty years." After a few seconds, young Sarfatti agrees, and the voice replies,"Good, go to your firescape [sic]. We will send a ship to pick you up in ten minutes. Nothing happened."

Sarfatti then goes on to explain how he later became a member of a group of gifted children, an after-school coterie led by one Walter Breen (1928-1993), "a graduate student at Columbia and well known Numismatist associated with psychologist William Shelden."

QuoteBreen is a fascinating person in his own right. His Complete Encyclopedia of US and Colonial Coins is the definitive volume on this subject, and retails today for $135. But he was also very familiar to the science fiction circles of the 1960s, and was a co-founder of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). He also wrote, under the pseudonym J.Z. Eglinton, Greek Love, a text that has been referenced by the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) as supportive of their philosophy concerning sexual relationships between men and boys. Breen had been arrested before for child molestation, and would be again at the end of his life.

QuoteBut the gifted children group to which Sarfatti belonged was somehow linked with the Sandia Corporation, now part of Lockheed Martin, a charter member of the Defense–Energy establishment.

In an email posted on a Web site (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ItalianPhysicsCenter/message/79) and dated July 16, 2001, Sarfatti writes, "Breen was talking about extra dimensions, telepathy, remote viewing, UFOs, mutant humans, contact with aliens ... Sandia was trying to develop us as super-kids to have paranormal powers and to deal with extra-dimensional intelligence."

Sandia is still involved with gifted children to this day, in cooperation with a "super kids" program that selects very bright students to work with its supercomputer.

QuoteSarfatti mentions in another email exchange, from June 2002, that he had been "studied" by the US Army in the late 1940s, and goes on to describe the after-school group led by Walter Breen as the "McDermott-Sheldon-Breen 'Columbia-Sandia eugenics' connection of 1953-56."

Again, this is a very suggestive timeframe in which to be placing events so similar as those related by Sarfatti and Strieber. In yet another place Sarfatti goes into more detail about this observation by the Army.  He claims it occurred at "US Army Quarter Masters in Lower Manhattan in the late 1940s soon after the alleged Roswell incident," and mentions that his mentor Walter Breen told him that he (i.e., Breen) had been in a plane crash in 1947 and had complete amnesia of the event, only coming to later in an Army hospital.

1947, of course, was the year of the Roswell incident. Sarfatti wonders if there was a connection between Breen and Roswell. (Breen would later go on to become a charter member of the American MENSA organization.) It is not only Sarfatti who has a single degree of separation between himself and the UFOs, however.

One of Whitley Strieber's neighbors was the Colonel in charge of the air base from which Captain Mantell went on his fateful chase of a UFO, and became the first ever military casualty of a UFO in American history. (More about this in a bit.) Young Whitley used to play in the Colonel's swimming pool with the Colonel's own son.

QuoteWhitley Strieber, who for a long time inexplicably believed (erroneously) that he had been at the University of Texas on the day that Charles Whitman began shooting people at random, was in London when James Earl Ray was there after the Martin Luther King assassination; he was in London, visiting the Process, the same year that Manson Family member Bruce Davis was in London visiting the Process; he was in London when Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski were married there.

We would not consider all of this as evidence of anything at all, except that Whitley's behavior during 1968 was bizarre by his own admission, and that he had also visited the Process—for whatever reason—that same year. The author believes that Whitley's odyssey probably had nothing at all to do with the Process per se; that his visiting their headquarters in London might have been motivated more by simple curiosity than anything else.

Yet, placing the young—by now, twenty-three-year-old—Whitley Strieber at the Process headquarters in London at the same time that they were forging some kind of link with the Manson Family is suggestive of some deeper influence, for the Process would later leave California for New York City, which is where Whitley wound up after leaving London and at the same time. They also had operations in Texas, principally Houston, where Maury Terry opines they were working with the Son of Sam cult—if, indeed, the two groups could safely be considered separate by that time, the 1970s.

Cain

Quote from: Waffleman on August 11, 2013, 09:03:09 PM
Shit. Not even halfway through your new posts yet, but shit. Thanks, Cain!

No problem.  I may dump all the quotes from the book tonight, depending on exactly how long it takes, and whether or not my exhaustion catches up with me before then.

Anna Mae Bollocks

I never could entirely dismiss the Chapman thing, due to Lennon being on Nixon's enemies list - which was LOLZ until he came up dead and there was all this weird shit around Chapman.
Scantily-Clad Inspector of Gigantic and Unnecessary Cashews, Texas Division

Cain

QuoteThen, in the summer of 1955, a copy of Morris Jessup's book, The Case for the UFO, was sent to the Navy's Office of Naval Research. It was heavily annotated by the anonymous correspondent, and the nature of the remarks startled the naval officers who received it; so much so, that they contacted Jessup and asked to see him.

When Jessup arrived in Washington, he was shown the copy of his book with the plentiful notations and remarks, and the experience seems to have been unsettling. He recognized the handwriting as that of his crazed correspondent, Allende, and told the officers that he had two letters from the same man in his files. The officers insisted that they needed to see them as soon as possible. In return, they would give Jessup a copy of the annotated book in order to get his input.

What were the annotations like? They discussed everything from the UFOs, their propulsion systems, "magnetic fields, gravity fields, sheets of diamond, cosmic rays, force cutters, inlay work ..." etc., etc. The annotator knew of a great many details that were known only to Jessup or to a handful of specialists in the field of UFOs, and "many other matters usually of concern mainly to psychics, cultists and mystics. That these were true or not was not the point. The fact that they should be so precisely known to an unknown was." This bothered the scientist more than anything else, this and the fact that the Navy was actually taking the ravings of this mysterious individual seriously. And, of course, the Philadelphia Experiment was also mentioned in the notes.

Demonstrating the extent to which the Navy took this matter to heart is the method by which they made copies of the book. There was no photocopy machine in 1955, so the book had to be retyped by hand on mimeograph stencils! This edition is referred to as the Varo edition, because the work of typing and mimeographing the entire work (in two colors, black for the original text and red for the annotations) was evidently undertaken by a temporary secretary hired by that company for that purpose.

QuoteOne of the strangest—and, at the same time, most documented and revealing of military and government appreciation of the paranormal—was the series of "remote viewing" experiments that were variously part of the Pentagon's own programs as well as sub-contracted by the military and the intelligence community to private contractors. As mentioned briefly in Book I, this program was known under a variety of rubrics, but the most dramatic and best known of these was STAR GATE, but it also included GRILL FLAME, CENTER LANE and SUN STREAK. Oddly enough, the most celebrated participants of the remote viewing endeavor were Scientologists.

QuoteThe discussion of the modern technique of "remote viewing"—which was a scientific-sounding name invented by the SRI team to distance their practices from those of spiritualist mediums and Gypsy fortune-tellers—begins, according to Schnabel, in February of 1960 with the publication (in a French periodical, Science et Vie) of an article claiming that the US Navy had been able to communicate with the nuclear submarine Nautilus while it was submerged under the Arctic ice, using only telepathy. The article named names, but a volcano of controversy erupted, and everyone mentioned by name in the article condemned it as nonsense. But the damage had been done. The Soviets were worried that the US had found a way to harness psychic powers for military purposes, and the US was convinced that the Soviets were doing the same.

Quoteon the French side, the consulting editor of Science et Vie who had planted the Nautilus story with a hapless staff writer was none other than Jacques Bergier, one of the co-authors of Morning of the Magicians, and a former intelligence officer himself with strong connections in the French intelligence community.

QuoteOn June 6, 1972, the artist and sometime astrologer Ingo Swann used his mental powers to disturb the operation of a magnetometer buried in a concrete well at the Stanford Research Institute. Four months later, the CIA would fund SRI to the tune of fifty thousand dollars to continue that research, after intermediate testing had demonstrated the uncanny abilities of Swann and other psychics to penetrate top-secret military installations using only their minds.

QuoteThis method was successful beyond expectations, and in worrisome ways. The CIA began to collaborate on the testing, giving the geographic coordinates of various locations to SRI, and Swann—and eventually a newcomer to the project, Pat Price—would mentally "go" to those coordinates and write down what they saw. This testing was done mostly through the CIA's Technical Services division, and involved CIA officers Ken Kress and the pseudonymous "Richard Kennett" and many others. In one case, in June of 1973, a CIA officer with a skeptical attitude towards the project gave a set of coordinates to his mountain cabin in West Virginia. Both Swann and Price came back with detailed information concerning what appeared to be a military base, replete with file drawers marked with operational code names. The CIA official scoffed, telling his associates that there was nothing to this SRI program after all. A while later, one of the other CIA officials involved with the SRI program decided to take a look himself. After all, how could both of the psychics be wrong in exactly the same way, with the same details? Driving around near the mountain cabin, he stumbled upon a top-secret Pentagon installation.

QuoteAs more and more testing took place, Puthoff and Targ used different methods to shield their targets so thoroughly that even they did not know in advance what they would be. For instance, they used random number generators to come up with geographic coordinates to ensure that they were not somehow inadvertently and unconsciously signaling the coordinates to the psychics. They would try an "outbound" scanning experiment, in which a subject would drive to a location and sit there at a specific time while the psychic would try to "see" where the subject was located, essentially looking at the surroundings through the subject's eyes.

QuotePrice had been a heavy drinker and smoker, and was fond of food as well. Therefore it came as no surprise when he developed symptoms of angina. Although his friends did what they could to try to convince him to cut down, he generally ignored this advice and continued his energetic lifestyle. Then, one evening in Washington in mid-July of 1975, he had dinner with friends. The next day in Las Vegas, not feeling very well at dinner, Price men- tioned to his friends that someone had slipped something into his coffee the night before. This did not sound like paranoia on his part; he seemed certain of it. Later that night he went to his room. His friends found him afterward in a state of cardiac arrest. He was pronounced dead in the hospital. Perhaps no one would have thought much of Price's insistence that he had been poisoned or drugged the previous evening, but when CIA official "Richard Kennett" tried to find out more, he was told that no autopsy had been performed. This was indeed unusual, as the death had occurred to a non-resident outside the hospital and would have ordinarily required an autopsy. Further, the hospital staff reported that a man had arrived at the hospital within hours of his death with a briefcase full of Price's medical records and managed to convince the staff not to perform an autopsy based on this evidence of Price's poor physical condition. This gentleman has never been identified, not even by the CIA.

QuoteAt the time that SRI was experimenting with psychic abilities in a relatively benign fashion, the Soviet Union was engaged in its own psychic research. There were theoretical problems with psychic research in the Communist state, however; as long as ESP and other paranormal abilities were linked with superstition, magic and religion, no one in the Communist Party could become involved. Marx and Engels were quite clear about the position of religion in a Communist society. Religion, after all, was "the opiate of the people," and psychic phenomena were relegated to the fringe of religion.

QuoteAccording to Schnabel, who bases his information on intelligence documents and sources, the Soviets "scoured the mystical eastern vastnesses of the Soviet Union in order to find the toughest Siberian shamans, the best-trained Tibetan priests, the most powerful Mongolian chi gong masters." This effort yielded some fruit, for "a group of Tibetans succeeded in breaking a human skull a few yards away, just by concentrating on it." All of this was undertaken by the Institute for the Problems of Information Transmission (known by its Russian acronym IPPI) in Moscow. This same Institute was responsible for a state-sponsored experiment in the blackest of black arts: the cursing of souvenirs by shamans so that the (foreign) recipients of these gifts would "suffer neuralgia, depression, and even nervous breakdown."

Cain

QuoteUri Geller had been invited to SRI for some informal tests of his abilities in 1972. By 1974, word of his prowess had leaked out around the world, and the nuclear weapons specialists at Lawrence Livermore were concerned that someone with psychic abilities—particularly psychokinesis, an ability Geller demonstrated by bending metal spoons, rings, and other objects with his mind—could detonate a nuclear weapon using only mental energy or could scramble the nation's military computer systems, thus disabling the country's missile defences. Therefore, in late 1974 and 1975 a select group of scientists and security officers began testing Geller at an off-site location. The tests showed that Geller could only affect metal objects, computer systems, and computer disks if he was in physical contact with them. There- fore, it was a reasonable assumption that PK was not a threat to the nation's missile systems. However, other developments took place that caused not only concern but hysteria among the Lawrence Livermore staff While technicians were listening to the audiotapes routinely made during the Geller PK sessions, they noticed a voice on the tape that had not been there during the tests. It was a "metallic voice" and was largely unintelligible, although the few words that were understood turned out to be top-secret codenames for intelligence operations, names that were unknown to the scientists at Lawrence Livermore. In addition, an infrared camera that had been used during the sessions showed patches of radiation on the laboratory walls where no such radiation should have been present. These were more than merely scientific anomalies. They were captured on tape and film under controlled circumstances. However, this would have been worth a few paragraphs in a report and not much more, were it not for the fact that personnel involved in the Geller experiments began to experi- ence exceedingly strange phenomena. One of the recurring motifs was the appearance of a flying saucer in the laboratory: a hovering, hologram-like image that would float around and then disappear. And this "saucer" appear- ance was not restricted to the laboratory. Some of the scientists witnessed the phenomenon when they were at home with their families. There was no conceivable explanation for this, no way such a hologram could have been projected inside the secure laboratory environment without a lot of equip- ment and expensive electronics that could have easily been discovered. Since Geller was known to put out the story that he was in communication with extraterrestrial agencies aboard a spacecraft that hovered over the earth, the connection was obvious, but the reason or motivation behind the appari- tions was not. In addition to the saucer, there were reports of appearances of strange and fantastic animals to the Lawrence Livermore personnel and their families, including very large black birds, ravens, that would appear from nowhere and wander across their lawns ... or suddenly appear in the morning standing over their beds. This association of birds with Geller was something that the laboratory staff may have not recognized, for Geller's supernatural experiences included that of a bird of prey, usually a hawk (symbol for the Egyptian god, Horus). The appearance of fantastic animals is common in the literature of shamanism, and their purpose is usually totemic in nature; but what was happening to the scientists? As the personnel began to break down and exhibit signs of intense mental distress, the security officer in charge of the group broke down and contacted "Richard Kennett" of the CIA. As Kennett not only had security clearances but was also aware of the psychic research programs and had a doctorate in neurophysiology, he was the logical choice. Kennett listened to the men—some of whom broke down and wept in his presence—describe their symptoms. He was not convinced that this was simply a textbook case of hysteria. These men were scientists with no occult leanings; furthermore, they had all been psychologically vetted, as they were involved with classified government and military projects. It didn't make sense. And then he listened to the audiotapes, and heard the secret codewords mentioned that none of the Lawrence Livermore staff could have known. This was not the end of the story, however. One of the scientists received a phone call and heard the "metallic voice" that so often pursues researchers in this field, man and boy, and this time the voice told him to drop the Geller experimentation completely. The team was only too happy to do so, and the "hauntings" gradually stopped.

QuoteAlthough Gates and Carlucci did their best to destroy the remote viewing program, the psychics had champions in the persons of Senator Robert Byrd (D) of West Virginia, Senator Daniel Inouye (D) of Hawaii, Senator and former astronaut John Glenn (D) of Ohio, and two Republican senators, William Cohen of Maine and Ted Stevens of Alaska.

QuoteMany of the remote viewers and support personnel became UFO "believers"—if that is the correct term—including Ingo Swann, who eventually returned to New York City after dealing with numerous internal political squabbles himself, most notably with Russell Targ.

Cain

This is probably one of the key points of the series:

QuoteThe historical model I am proposing in these volumes should be obvious by now. By tracing the darker elements of the American experience from the earliest days of the Adena and Hopewell cultures through the discovery by Columbus, the English settlers in Massachusetts and the Salem witchcraft episode, the rise of Joseph Smith, Jr. and the Mormons via ceremonial magic and Freemasonry, up to the twentieth century and the support of Nazism by American financiers and politicians before, during, and after World War II, and the UFO phenomenon coming on the heels of that war, we can see the outlines of a kind of political ectoplasm taking shape in this historical séance: politics as a continuation of religion by other means.

The ancillary events of the Charles Manson murders, the serial killer phenomenon, Jonestown, and the assassinations of Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Marilyn Monroe are all the result of the demonic possession of the American psyche, like the obscenities spat out by little Regan, tied to her bed and shrieking at the exorcists. It is said that demonic possession is both a way of testing us, and of making us aware of the real conflict taking place within us every day.

The fact that so many American men and women in positions of power and authority have been specifically involved with occult practices is something that not even I had anticipated before I began the research for this work. Initially, I treated the one or two politicians who "dabbled" as a kind of anomaly; my original focus had been the unhealthy, almost incestuous relationship between Church and State, in America specifically and in the world in general: religious beliefs as the motivation for dangerous policy decisions and strategic maneuvers (such as Ronald Reagan's apocalyptic Christianity, and Nancy Reagan's devotion to agenda by astrology, and George W. Bush's devotion to evangelical Christianity). The more I looked, however, the more I found men with bizarre beliefs and involved in questionable, occult practices at the highest levels of the American government, and buried deep within government agencies.

I also discovered that occultism was embraced by the American military and intelligence establishments as a weapon to be used in the Cold War; and as they did so, they unleashed forces upon the American populace that cannot be called back. Those that were not involved in occultism per se were involved with Nazism in one form or another, and thus were aiding and abetting not only an enemy of America and an enemy of humanity in general, but what was most certainly and by any definition a cult: the most powerful and most dangerous cult the modern world has seen so far. The moral imbecility of those engaging these men as scientists, spies, and agents of American foreign policy—and then defending them against those who begged for justice, hiding them on American soil—is beyond comprehension. The guilty include the Dulles brothers, Walkers and Bushes, Henry Ford, Richard Nixon, and so many other household names in American politics. We can try to make excuses for them, try to rationalize away their actions in the light of realpolitik, but then we become as bad as the Germans who claimed they were only following orders.

Watergate revealed the existence of "sinister forces" to me in many ways. The scandal opened the floodgates of conspiracy theories going back to the Kennedy assassination and beyond. It tied together so many loose ends, yet posited more questions than it offered answers, revealing a secret political struggle that had been going on for decades, ripping apart the very fabric of America with a populace oblivious to it all. One inevitably was forced back to the CIA and the mind-control experiments that began in the late 1940s and extended nearly to the present day.

Coincidence piled on coincidence, indicating the existence of a powerful, subliminal force working at the level of chaos—at the quantum level—and struggling to manifest itself in our reality, our consciousness, our political agenda. This dynamic was uncovered by a Swiss psychologist and an Austrian physicist, but it capably describes a force working within the context of American history and American politics that is suppurating below the consciousness of the people but able to erupt without notice. A sinister force. Fascism.

Cain

QuoteThe shaman in primitive cultures is a person who has managed to integrate the irrational into his own personality and, by extension, into the life of his society. His act of personal self-transcendence—to use Koestler's terminology—is an act of social integration which also successfully integrates the irrational into the life of society through his social role as healer, therapist, and seer. The serial killer is a shaman who has not managed to integrate the irrational with the life of his society, as society no longer has a place for it or a context within which to understand what is happening to him. The irrational in modern society is consigned to the dustheap of psychoanalysis, if not of history itself.

The same is true of the fascist. The fascist embraces the irrational because it is transcendental, and the fascist yearns to transcend his natural state, to become more than human, to become—as Hitler said—a "new man." Since the fascist becomes the only political person who tolerates the irrational, he becomes the figurehead of the people who have encountered the irrational in their own lives. The fascist is a shaman who has not managed to integrate the irrational in his own life, but who still needs the approval and support—and, if possible, the adulation—of society in order to act out his fantasies. The serial killer differs only in that he has no need of society's approval: he gave that up a long time ago, and regards society with hatred and suspicion. The fascist and the serial killer share this in common: they both feel a tremendous need for self-transcendence but fail to integrate the irrational needs and experiences of their psyches with either themselves (the fascist) or with society (the serial killer).

The successful shaman has done both: he has interiorized the essential conflicts of the irrational experience in the "rational" world, and has also integrated both the elements of his own personality as well as his own personality (with all of its irrational experiences) with society in general. However, had society in general not welcomed his achievements, there is every possibility that he would have become a social pariah and, from there, a dangerous individual, fueled by the dangerous component of shamanism: sexuality.

QuoteWendy Doniger O'Flaherty—a colleague of the slain Ioan Culianu at the University of Chicago—has studied the problem of evil as it appears in Hinduism, one of humanity's oldest religions, based on one of its oldest languages: Sanskrit, a language so ancient and so complex that even today it is extremely difficult to give satisfactory translations of Sanskrit texts (as the ongoing and still uncompleted project to create a comprehensive Sanskrit dictionary has shown). What she has to say about Hindu concepts of evil is universal in application, and has resonance with early Christian and gnostic belief systems, as well as with mythologies as remote from each other as the Aztec and the Daoist. She writes,

"The belief that the gods create evil for man in order that man should depend on the gods—and the priests—recurs in Sanskrit texts. The gods find evil necessary for their very existence; they allow the demons to thrive in order that they themselves may thrive as gods, to force men to worship them."

This is, of course, an exceedingly cynical appraisal of the problem, but one that is familiar to students of Hinduism. It depicts the gods as venal entities who desire worship and sacrifice, and use men—and their fear of demons—the way governments use their populations. If it is true that "the organizing principle of nations is war" then it is equally true of the cosmos, according to this view. The one invariable characteristic of the gods is that they are the enemies of the demons, and the one invariable characteristic of the demons is that they are opposed to the gods. For this reason, when the later myths began to apply new moral codes to the characters of individual gods and demons in myths, a number of inconsistencies arise, for the two groups, as groups, are not fundamentally morally opposed. (emphasis in original). 

This important point speaks to the problem we face in dealing with spiritual evil. Although gods and demons are at war with each other and—as Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty says elsewhere—"mankind is caught in the crossfire," there is no moral difference between the two. Each is equally good or equally bad, depending on whose propaganda you believe. It also posits an ongoing struggle for supremacy between the two groups, something that would be familiar to anyone who has studied Manichaeism and Gnostic dualism, which considers humanity the battleground between the opposing forces of light and darkness. Yet, even this concept is "reductionist": ... in most Hindu texts, even when life is clearly desired and death feared, death is not the key to the struggle between gods and demons. For although they fight for the elixir of immortality, and the gods are said to win it ultimately, gods and demons are equally mortal and equally murderous to mankind. Finally, though the gods and demons are sometimes identified with light and darkness, these are merely symbolic expressions of contrast rather than true opposition.

"Equally murderous to mankind." A sobering thought, and one which the monotheists reject, even as their texts are replete with instances of an angry God destroying entire cities in his wrath. The monotheists struggle to explain why God would take vengeance on living beings in one instant, but threaten eternal punishment for evildoers in hell after death in the next. Which is it? Punishment here and now, or punishment later? Or both? If we understand the existence of evil in the context of a war between opposing "gods" then evil becomes, in a sense, more palatable. The innocent always suffer in a war; civilian targets and "collateral damage" are inevitable.

QuoteBut if the gods and demons—merely opponents in a cosmic war, after all—are in combat with each other, and if humanity has become a kind of spiritual battlefield, then where did the gods and demons come from in the first place, and why is humanity "caught in the crossfire"? The belief is often expressed that the demons were not only the equals of the gods but their superiors—the older brothers, the original gods from whom the gods stole the throne of heaven. This, of course, is pure Lovecraft. It is also purely Sumerian, which is probably the most ancient of all recorded religious cultures. The idea that there once existed an ancient race of gods that was overthrown by another group of deities goes back to the Sumerian creation epics. It is even reflected in the Talmudic idea of the nephilim. It is resurgent in the gothic horror of H.P. Lovecraft, and it makes an appearance in some of the theories of alien abduction and the Erich von Danniken "chariots of the gods" books. It is such a common and universal theme, that it is amazing the monotheistic religions have not managed to incorporate it into their theologies in such a way that this is no longer a controversial issue; instead it is a persistent "rumor" in literary circles as well as in alternative spiritual beliefs. The identity of a class of Hindu gods known as the asuras has been the subject of a great deal of controversy in this regard. They are among the oldest of spiritual forces recognized in the Sanskrit literature, and even the name asura is quite controversial itself.

QuoteThis idea of the asuras as ocean-dwellers as well as dwellers in a city, and their association with sea monsters is, of course, pure Lovecraft.

Cain

QuoteAfter leaving his position at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, Gof took up a post at the Esalen Institute—stomping ground of Jack Sarfatti, Saul-Paul Sirag, Alan Watts, John Lilly, Timothy Leary, and so many others who figure in our story, including a side-trip by Charles Manson—where he stayed for many years.

The Esalen Institute was founded in 1962 by Richard Price and Michael Murphy, and takes its name from a Native American tribe who once lived in the region. It was the first of the "human potential movement" centers, and attracted a diverse group of spiritual leaders, psychotherapists, physicists, philosophers, martial-arts experts, painters, writers, filmmakers, etc. For many Americans, the Esalen Institute would probably typify everything they hate about California, but the influence of Esalen on the fields of medicine, psychotherapy, and international relations cannot be denied. Their establishment of a group designed to reduce conflict through peaceful resolution brought them to the attention of American political and intelligence careerists, as well as the Soviets. (It was the Esalen Institute that brought Boris Yeltsin to the United States for the first time, to visit President George H.W. Bush as well as former President Ronald Reagan.)

QuoteBefore Grof arrived at Esalen, however, Esalen members would play a pivotal role in the founding of Arica, the mystical school established in Chile by Oscar Ichazo. (One of the Esalen members who traveled to Chile to work with Ichazo included John Lilly, he of the dolphin studies.) Ichazo, the son of a Bolivian military officer, joined a mysterious occult group in Buenos Aires in the 1950s when he was a young man. Based largely on this experience, he wound up in Chile training people in his system of mysticism and psychotherapy formed around the Enneagram, a nine-pointed symbol that is familiar to students of Gurdjieff. In the arid, northern Chilean city of Arica he attracted the attention of a Chilean psychiatrist, Claudio Naranjo, who then spoke about him and his technique to the Esalen crowd back in California. A group of about fifty Esalen participants flew to Arica in 1970 to undergo a rigorous training program under Ichazo, including one Jan Brewer. Brewer would tell Jack Sarfatti that Arica had "been started in Chile by high-ranking fugitives from the Third Reich who were masters of the occult." This may seem an outlandish claim at first, except that it was made by one of the first Esalen trainees to study in Arica, and my own direct experience in Chile with occultists who had Third Reich connections tends to make me less incredulous than I otherwise would be.42 Ichazo's background as the son of a Bolivian army officer—at a time when Bolivia was riddled with Nazi fugitives, one of whom (Klaus Barbie) would become head of Bolivian Intelligence—is also suggestive of a deeper military and fascist connection to the Arica movement in Chile.

QuoteThe Nine actually lectured at Esalen! Twenty years after the first appearance of The Nine to the circle around Andrija Puharich, they again manifested in the person of one Jenny O'Connor. Ms. O'Connor was "channeling" The Nine and came to the attention of Werner Erhard, the neo-fascist creator of a school of self-development known as "est," for "Erhard Seminar Training," and always printed in lower-case letters. (Erhard had famously changed his name from Jack Rosenberg to "give up Jewish weakness for German strength.") Sarfatti himself had been a visitor to Arthur Young in the company of Puharich and Ira Einhorn, and had worked sporadically with Arthur Young's Institute in Berkeley, California. Oddly enough, he seems not to have been aware of Young's involvement with The Nine in its earliest incarnation. In the late 1970s, Jenny O'Connor was referred to Sarfatti by one of the est people, and Sarfatti was not impressed. Nonetheless, O'Connor became ensconced at Esalen, channeling messages from The Nine and having influence over some management decisions and organizational structuring at the Institute, at the same time that Esalen was being visited by Soviet officials as well as by Einhorn, various physicists, Stanislav Grof (who was "Scholar-in-Residence" from 1973 to 1987), and many, many others.