The Voice of the White House

 

                  Washington, D.C., November 14, 20-10: “We have all been away from the office for two weeks while on an international trip. This edition does not have it usual collection of stories reflecting on the misgovernance of its officials and the general stupidity of a large number of the Nation’s people but concentrates on what is, to my mind at least, a very serious threat to the principles of freedom and personal liberties since 1776. Here we are presenting a very detailed collection of reports and articles on a secret, very right wing and probably entirely mad Washington-based religious group. It has been eagerly seeking, not only domestic but world power and over the years, has infiltrated its secret members into almost all branches of government and, in recent years, right into the Oval Office. Read this, dear friend, and weep.”

 

The Family: The Octopus of God

October 11, 2010

by Thomas Kimmel

                  In an age when dissatisfaction with systems of governance is becoming a daily norm, the public has become more and more interested in conspiracy theories that purport to expose various misdeeds of governance and its various organs and purported accomplices.

                  We have seen an enormous body of revisionist literature arise, dealing with the assassination of President Kennedy, and as that topic slid down and away from public interest, another issue rose to prominence speculation and fictive writing. This was the September 11, 2001 attack by Saudi terrorists on various targets in the United State.

                   Invented stories about “robot aircraft,”  “’Nano thermite’ controlled explosions,” and other theories, many verging on the lunatic, sprang up and proliferated. While most of these entertainments were the product of inventive minds and eagerly accepted by a public that felt betrayed by their government and the upper levels of the national economic structure, a number of stories were very obviously clever insertions of deliberate disinformation from the very same power elite.

                   One of the recurring themes of the conspiracy claques is that of the existence of a secret society, or organization, that is somehow able to exert powerful but behind-the-scenes control over all aspects of governance. One of the favorites has been the Illuminati. This was originally a German association, formed in 1776 by one Adam Weishaupt, a Freemason and law professor at the University of Ingolstadt in Bavaria.

                  The original Illuminati, then called the Order of Perfectibilists, and later became a secret society dedicated to the overthrow of both established governments and religions, specifically the Catholics. Eventually, Weishaubt made enough noise that the Bavarian Elector, Karl Theodor, outlawed them and forced Weishaupt to move to Gotha where he finished his life by writing books and abstaining from anti-establishment activities.

                   Weishaupt’s disbanded organization has become the inspiration for several generations of conspiracy inventors and because Weishaupt spoke of a single world government, ruled by men of honor and intellect (obviously impossible in any age), the conspiracy people have talked about a New World Order which might be satisfying and even desired but would be impossible of execution. To this mythic entity is ascribed all manner of manipulations and plottings

                  In addition to the Illuminati, fiction theorists have also targeted the Rothschild banking house and the Bilderburger banker’s association as being the controlling forces behind all the governments of the world. In the United States, one can add the Council on Foreign Relations, the fraternal Skull and Bones society, the Federal Reserve and a legion of quite harmless associations to the conspiracy mix.

                  In the background, however, only dimly seen and then only by established intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, exists a very genuine, and very dangerous, secret organization that wields far more actual power than any of the imaginary creations of the Internet..

                   This is a power group, posing as a religious organization, and who, with its various associated sub-groups, pose a very current, and very critical,threat to the American democratic system., It is a Washington-based organization known as both ‘The Fellowship’, and ‘The Family’. This group, and its allies, the Dominionists and the Neo-Templars, basically control the American Congress, the Department of State, and have “very important” connections at the top levels of the Central Intelligence Agency.and the American military. They also have very strong connections with the Office of the President.The Family’s goal, according to one secret internal document, is to create a “hidden structure” of “national and international world leaders bound together relationally by a mutual love for God and the family.” The first hallmark of this theocratic clandestine organisation is their unquestioning reliance on the Bible in all matters, to the complete exclusion of any other authority, secular or otherwise  The second is their insistence on a faith in Christ as one’s personal Lord and Savior, again, to the exclusion of any other entity.

The Fellowship’s known participants include ranking United States government officials, both elected and appointed, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations,  ambassadors and high ranking politicians from across the world. Many United States Senators and Congressmen have publicly acknowledged working with the Fellowship or are documented as having done so and work together to pass or influence legislation.

                  This organization fetishizes power by comparing Jesus to “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden” as examples of leaders who change the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers.”The agenda of the Fellowship becomes much clearer when it is realized that Fellowship leader Douglas Coe preaches a personal commitment to Jesus Christ very and specifically comparable to the blind devotion that Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot demanded from their followers. In one videotaped lecture series in 1989, Coe said:

 “Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had…But they bound themselves together in an agreement…Two years before they moved into Poland, these three men had…systematically a plan drawn out…to annihilate the entire Polish population and destroy by numbers every single house…every single building in Warsaw and then to start on the rest of Poland.” Coe added that it worked; they killed six and a half million “Polish people.”

                   Though he calls Nazis “these enemies of ours,” he compares their commitment to Jesus’ demands: “Jesus said, ‘You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.’ Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people.”

                   Coe also compared Jesus’s teachings to the Red Guard during the Chinese Cultural Revolution

. Fellowship members are taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao and that their genocide allegations  wasn’t an issue for them, it was the strength that they emulated that was of vitasl importance.

 

                  The Fellowship is associated with an organization called ‘C Street’, which has drawn national attention for its connections to the extra-marital affairs of Senator John Ensign and Governor Mark Sanford.

                   Prominent evangelical Christians have described the organization as one of the most, or the most, politically well-connected ministries in the world.

American lawmakers have mentioned The Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith.

                  In 1977, four years after he had converted to Christianity, Fellowship member and convicted Watergate conspirator Charles Colson described the group as a “veritable underground of Christ’s men all through the U.S. government.”

 

                    Senate Prayer Group member, Senator Sam Brownback has described group members’ method of operation: “Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action”—-a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—-“and the others pull in behind.” Indeed, Brownback has often joined with fellow Family members in pursuing legislation. For example, in 1999 he joined together with fellow Family members, Senators Strom Thurmond and Don Nickles to demand a criminal investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in 2005 Brownback joined with Fellowship member Sen. Tom Coburn to promote the Houses of Worship Act.

                  The Reverend Robert Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, described the Family’s influence as “off the charts” in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship. (These last two are associated with the Family: Traditional Values Coalition uses their C Street House and Prison Fellowship was founded by Charles Colson.) “the mystique of The Fellowship” has helped it “gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital.”

            This organization has been described as one of the most politically well-connected ministries in the United States. The Fellowship shuns publicity and its members share a vow of secrecy. The Fellowship’s leader Douglas Coe and others have explained the organization’s desire for secrecy by citing biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting they would not be able to tackle “diplomatically sensitive missions” if they drew public attention.

                   One of Vereide’s most effective organizational and power-seeking tools his so-called ‘Prayer Breakfasts.’ In 1944 Vereide held his first joint Senate-House prayer breakfast meeting. He held another breakfast on June 16, 1946, attended by Senators H. Alexander Smith and Lister Hill, and US News and World Report publisher David Lawrence.And although the organization is secretive, it holds one regular public event each year, the National Prayer Breakfast held in Washington, D.C. Every sitting United States president since President Dwight D. Eisenhower, up to President Barack Obama, has participated in at least one National Prayer Breakfast during his term. Fellowship Foundation is currently best known for the National Prayer Breakfast, held each year on the first Thursday of February in Washington, D.C. First held in 1953, the event is now attended by over 3,400 guests including dignitaries from many nations.

                  The President of the United States typically makes an address at the breakfast, following the main speaker’s keynote address. The event is hosted by a 24-member committee of members of Congress. Democrats and Republicans serve on the organizing committee, and chairmanship alternates each year between the House and the Senate. A primary activity of the Fellowship has been to develop small support groups for politicians, including Senators and members of Congress, Executive Branch officials, military officers, foreign leaders and dignitaries, businesspersons, and other influential individuals. In April 1935, Vereide, and a Major J.F. Douglas invited nineteen business and civic leaders for a breakfast prayer meeting. As of 1937, 209 prayer breakfast groups had been organized throughout Seattle.

                   Prayer groups connected with ICL now are established very firmly in the White House, the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense. By the early 1970s, prayer groups, breakfasts, and luncheons, including those sponsored by ICL, had become commonplace in the Pentagon.

Earlier, in 1940, 300 men from all over the state of Washington attended a prayer breakfast for the new governor, Arthur Langlie. Vereide traveled through the Pacific Northwest, and later around the country, to develop similar groups. The nondenominational groups were meant to bring together civic and business leaders informally to share vision, study the Bible, and develop relationships of trust and support.

                  By 1942, there were 60 breakfast groups in major cities around the country, including Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington and Vancouver. That same year, Vereide began to hold small prayer breakfasts for members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, meetings of informal fellowship, mutual prayer and encouragement.

                  In case after case, The Fellowship has set American foreign policy, especially in the oil-rich Middle East. They have an abiding interest in the oil industry and many of its shadowy members, such as former Vice Pressident Dick Cheney, set policy, not to conform to the actual needs of the American public but the oil (and other) industry.

 

                  The Fellowship was initially founded in April of 1935 in opposition to FDR’s perceived left wing New Deal by Abraham Vereide.  An extremely conservative Methodist clergyman and very aggressive political activist. Vereide was a Norwegian minister’s son who had immigrated to the United States in 1905 and who later founded Goodwill Industries in Seattle in 1916 to assist the city’s unemployed Scandinavian immigrant population. Goodwill Industries soon occupied a city block, where they repaired and processed discarded clothing and furniture and converted “waste to wages”. His work spread down the West coast and eventually to Boston.

                  In April of 1935,  Vereide later claimed he had received a visitation consisting, he claimed, of  a voice, and a light in the dark, bright and blinding. The next day he met a friend, a wealthy businessman and former Major J.F. Douglas, and the two men agreed upon a spiritual plan. They enlisted nineteen business executives in a weekly breakfast meeting and together they prayed, convinced that Jesus alone could redeem Seattle and crush the radical unions. They wanted to give Jesus a vessel, and so they asked God to raise up a leader. One of their number, a city councilman named Arthur Langlie, stood and said, “I am ready to let God use me.” Langlie was made first mayor and later governor, backed in both campaigns by money and muscle from his prayer-breakfast friends, whose number had rapidly multiplied.

                   Vereide and his new associated spread out across the Northwest in chauffeured vehicles (a $20,000 Dusenburg carried brothers on one mission, he boasted). “Men,” wrote Vereide, “thus quickened.” Prayer breakfast groups were formed in dozens of cities, from San Francisco to Philadelphia. There were already enough men ministering to the down-and-out, Vereide had decided; his mission field would be men with the means to seize the world for God as he interpreted him. Vereide called his potential flock of the rich and powerful, those in need only of the “real” Jesus, the “up-and-out.”

                  Originally, the stated purpose of The Fellowship was to provide a “fellowship forum for decision makers to share in Bible studies, prayer meetings, worship experiences and to experience spiritual affirmation and support.” Its less publicized goal was to counteract what its founders saw was a swinig to the left under Roosevelt, a swing that was oriented more to Moscow  and its Communistic goals than what was seen as more ‘American virture’ and was basically a business-oriented group. Vereide’s basic theme was:

                  “Man craves fellowship. Most of us want an opportunity to make our feelings known, to relate our personal experiences, to compare notes with others, and, in unity of spirit to receive renewal, inspiration, guidance, and strength from God. Such groups as we are thinking of have characterized every spiritual awakening. Jesus began with Peter and James and John. He had the twelve and the Seventy. At Bethany he established a cell…there you have the formula…faith embodied the same close informal fellowship…one common practice – gathering together in the name of Jesus”.

                  The thesis of community and brotherhood expressed by the Family leadership was certainly not a new concept. The Essenes, a Judean cult that flourished around the first century, had almost identical concepts. They were an agricultural community that had a communistic approach to their life style. There was a common purse and shared wealth and much, if not most, of the first expressed Christian dogma came directly from the Essenes. Unfortunately, like the Spartans and Zulus who were essentially a military community cult, the agricultural Essenes were male-oriented and homosexual in nature. The Essenes were outlawed by the Romans, and many members were subsequently crucified in a general crackdown under Titus, not because of their sexual practices but their political opposition to Roman rule The small remnants of the Essenes retreated to the Dead Sea area and eventually died out.

                   From the beginning, Vereide’s goals were to construct a religious power group that had an anti-Communist, anti-union, anti-Socialist, and pro-Nazi German political agenda. Recent investigations have uncovered the fact that Vereide was a cousin of Vidkun Quisling, head of the Norwegian Nazi party and later head of state. After initial successes, Vereide incorporated his group in Chicago in 1942 as Fellowship Foundation, Inc. and also acquired the names International Christian Leadership, (ICL), Fellowship House and International Foundation, many in keeping with the goal of global control.

                  At the present time, The Fellowship Foundation, Inc. does most of its business as the International Foundation, which is its legal DBA name.

                  After the end of the Second World War in 1945, Vereide moved to consolidate as many  right-wing religious-themed groups in Europe as he could. He believed that Communists and Socialists, whom he hated with great intensity, had taken over governments across Eastern Europe and were on the verge of achieving power in Western Europe. Winston Churchill had been ousted from power by a leftist Labor government headed by Clement Atlee.. Vereide traveled to Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, France and Germany. His ICL made an alliance with the like-minded British Victory Fellowship in Great Britain. He also struck up a close relationship with German Lutheran pastor Gustav Adolf Gedat. The German clergyman had been a leading anti-Semite before and during the war. During the same year that Vereide began his prayer breakfasts in Seattle, from the pulpit Gedat preached vehemently that, “God ordered the Germans to hunt down Jews.”

                  The current Fellowship view of Jews and the present state of Israel is that Jews ought to be tolerated, pending their conversion to the Fellowship’s concept of Christianity, and that the Fellowship sub-group, the Neo-Templars, have expressed the view that as Israel and themselves share a common goal, namely the physical expulsions of all Muslims from the so-called ‘Holy Land’ no anti-Semitic stances should be taken in public and the use of the Israeli Mossad encouraged at every turn. The Mossad wants to expand its role in the United States with official sanction and this is a private goal of the Fellowship. Israel already has a strong presence in the Central Intelligence Agency and the Fellowship is considering allowing them access to the IRS and the NSA in greater numbers than at present.

                  By 1957, ICL had established 125 groups in 100 cities, with 16 groups in Washington, DC alone. Around the world, it had set up another 125 groups in Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Northern Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Ethiopia (where Emperor Haile Selassie gave ICL property in Addis Ababa to build its African headquarters), India, South Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Guatemala, Cuba, Costa Rica, Mexico, and Bermuda.

                   After over 35 years of leading the Fellowship Foundation, Vereide died in 1969 and was succeeded by Richard C. Halverson as executive director, Halverson and Douglas Coe worked side by side until Halverson’s death in 1995.

                  ICL’s international activities coincided with activities in countries where the CIA was particularly active – an obvious by-product of the close cooperation between Vereide and the CIA’s Allen Dulles and James Jesus Angleton. Angleton and his close associate, Miles Copeland, always had favored using private businessmen to conduct operations that the CIA was barred from conducting statutorily  In at least one instance, the ICL had knowingly lured a Middle East personality into a situation which permitted the CIA to assassinate him.

                  In January 1947, a conference in Zurich led to the formation of the International Council for Christian Leadership (ICCL), an umbrella group for the national fellowship groups in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Norway, Hungary, Egypt, and China. ICCL was incorporated as a separate organization in 1953. ICL and ICCL were governed by different boards of directors, joined by a coordinating committee: four members of ICCL’s board and four from the ICL’s executive committee.

                   Vereide began publishing a monthly newsletter called The Breakfast Luncheon Fireside and Campus Groups that contained a Bible study that could be used by the groups, as well as information about activities of different groups and international meetings. He also published a newsletter through the years under various names, including The Breakfast Groups Informer (ca. 1945-1946), The Breakfast Groups (ca. 1944-1953), International Christian Leadership Bulletin (ca. 1953-1954), Bulletin of International Christian Leadership (ca. 1954-1956), Christian Leadership (ca. 1957-1961), ICLeadership Letter (1961–1966), International Leadership Letter (ca. 1967), and Leadership Letter (ca. 1963-1970).

                  In 1942, the Fellowship was incorporated in Chicago, Illinois, Vereide’s center of national outreach to businessmen and civic and clergy leadership. Vereide had moved the group’s offices from Seattle to the more centralized location of Chicago, headquarters of the businessmen’s luncheon outreach, “Christian Businessmen’s Committee”, which Vereide led with industrialist C.B. Hedstrom. Also in 1942 the Fellowship Foundation established a delegation ministry on Massachusetts Avenue at Sheridan Circle named: “Fellowship House”. Vereide later described it as the nerve center of the breakfast groups. J. Edwin Orr, an advisor to Billy Graham and friend of Abraham Vereide, helped shape the prayer breakfast movement that grew out of ICL.

                  In 1946, amid the international turmoil from World War II, Vereide wrote and released a book with Reverend John G. Magee, chaplain to President Harry Truman, entitled: Together(Abingdon Cokesbury). In the book, Vereide explained his philosophy of visionary discipleship and gathering together in what he termed spiritual cells:

In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended the Senate Prayer Breakfast Group. He was invited by fellow Kansan, Frank Carlson. By that time, Vereide’s congressional core members also included Senators Frank Carlson, Karl Mundt, Everett Dirkson, and Strom Thurmond.

                  By 1957, ICL had established 125 groups in 100 cities, with 16 groups in Washington, D.C.. It had set up another 125 groups in other countries. During 1958, a new small group mentor, from The Navigators, Douglas Coe, joined Vereide as assistant executive director of ICL in Washington, D.C.

                  In 1972, according to the Fellowship archives, after consultations among leaders in the prayer breakfast movement, including Douglas Coe, Richard Halverson, Dr. Wallace Haines and Senator Mark Hatfield, and others, the organization was reprofiled to be “even more low key”. The Fellowship archives reveal that, “in effect, the group adopted an even lower profile, serving as a channel of communication and a catalyst.” of global outreach in the spirit of Jesus. The goal was to be less institutional in bearing and more relational and relevant to the global cultures, so that each geographic area had its own identity of personal ministry, not strictly metropolitan but relevant to ranchers, miners, people in jungles, deserts, villages and on remote islands. That they might experience fellowship in Christ in their own sphere of human identification

                   G. Philip Hughes, the executive secretary for the National Security Council in the George H.W. Bush administration, said, “Doug Coe or someone who worked with him would call and say, ‘So and so would like to have a word with the president. Do you think you could arrange something?'”

                  At the 2001 Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearings for State Department officials, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), whose wife was on the board of the Fellowship, lamented that the State Department had blocked then-President Bush from meeting with four foreign heads of state (Rwanda, Macedonia, Congo and Slovakia) at the NPB that year.

Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) said of Nelson’s complaint: “I’m not sure a head of state ought to be able to wander over here for the prayer breakfast and, in effect, compel the president of the United States to meet with him as a consequence… Getting these meetings with the president is a process that’s usually very carefully vetted and worked up. Now sort of this back door has sort of evolved.”

                  “It [the NPB] totally circumvents the State Department and the usual vetting within the administration that such a meeting would require,” an anonymous government informant told sociologist D. Michael Lindsay. “If Doug Coe can get you some face time with the President of the United States, then you will take his call and seek his friendship. That’s power.”

                  In 1976, the Fellowship began looking for a permanent headquarters in Arlington. It set its sights on the estate of George Mason IV, The Cedars, located at 2301 North Uhle Street.  Mason was one of the drafters of the Bill of Rights. The Fellowship, also known as the International Foundation, bought the property from Charles Piluso. Although not much is known about Piluso, the Los Angeles Times reported that Howard Hughes, the man with whom Fellowship Senator Ralph Owen Brewster once sparred, also lived there. According to a senior Pentagon official, the Cedars had been used as a CIA safe house prior to the Fellowship’s purchase of the estate. The Fellowship paid $1.5 million for the Cedars, the money coming from Tom Phillips, the CEO of Raytheon, and Ken Olsen, the CEO of Digital Equipment Corporation. Sanford McDonnell of Men’s Fellowship International, an activity linked to Fellowship core member Pat Robertson. McDonnell Douglas Corporation was another deep-pocketed supporter of the Fellowship through Full Gospel Business

 

                  The Fellowship was a behind-the-scenes player at the Camp David Middle East accords in 1978, working with President Jimmy Carter to issue a worldwide call to prayer with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

                   President Carter hosted former Senator Harold E. Hughes, the President of the Fellowship Foundation, and Douglas Coe, for a luncheon at the White House on September 26, 1978. Six weeks later, President Carter and the First Lady traveled by Marine helicopter to Cedar Point Farm, Hughes’ home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he placed a telephone call to Menachim Begin.

                   Douglas Coe and the “networking” (or formation of prayer cells) between foreign dictators and US politicians, defense contractors, and industry leaders has facilitated military aid for repressive foreign regimes. the Billy Graham Center, before the Fellowship Foundation archives were closed to those other than divinity scholars. Discovered in these archives is the relationship with General Suharto of Indonesia in the 1970s, and with Siad Barre of Somalia in the 1980s. Also, in the archives, there are at least two nearly full boxes of documents describing the relationship with Brazil‘s long dictatorship of the Generals.

Regarding his relationships with foreign dictators, Coe said in 2007, “I never invite them. They come to me. And I do what Jesus did: I don’t turn my back to any one. You know, the Bible is full of mass murderers.”

 

                  The Fellowship’s reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp The Fellowship Foundation is linked to numerous other organizations:

Wilberforce Foundation’s IRS Form 990 filings confirm that Wilberforce is related to and shares common management with the Fellowship Foundation.

 

                   Traditional Values Coalition. Uses the C Street Center for “faith-based diplomacy” in the fight against the “Marxist/Leftist/Homosexual/Islamic coalition.”

                   Other Fellowship covert fronts include:

 

Three Swallows Foundation

International Center for Religion & Diplomacy

Young Life International

Trees for the Future

National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise

Cornerstone Development

World Concern

Project Mercy

Timothy Trust

Associación Desarrollo en Democracia

World Vision

                 

                  The Los Angeles Times examined the Fellowship Foundation’s ministry records and archives (before they were sealed), as well as documents obtained from several presidential libraries and found that the Fellowship Foundation had extraordinary access and significant influence over U.S. foreign affairs for the last 75 years.

 

                  The Fellowship has funded the travel expenses of members of Congress to various hot spots throughout the globe, including Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Al.) to Darfur, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.) to Lebanon, Rep. Aderholt to The Balkans, and Reps John Carter (R-Tex.) and Joseph Pitts (R.-Pa.) to Belarus

                  In 2002, Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Tony P. Hall (D-Ohio) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan on a fact-finding congressional trip, meeting with the leaders of both Muslim countries. According to Pitts, “The first thing we did when we met with [Afghan] President Karzai and [then Pakistan] President Musharraf was to say, ‘We’re here officially representing the Congress; we’ll report back to the speaker, our leaders, our committees, our government. But we’re here also because we’re best friends…. We’re members of the same prayer group'”.

                   Douglas Coe has been dispatched to foreign governments with the blessing of Congressional representatives and has helped arrange meetings overseas for U.S. officials and members of Congress. In 1979, for instance, Coe messaged the Saudi Arabian minister of commerce and asked him to meet with a Defense Department official who was visiting Riyadh, the capital.

 

                  The Fellowship has brought controversial international figures to Washington to meet with U.S. officials. Among them are former Salvadoran Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, who in 2002 was found liable by a civil jury in Florida for the torture of thousands of civilians in the 1980s. He was invited to the 1984 prayer breakfast, along with Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, then head of the Honduran armed forces who was linked to a death squad and the CIA.

Douglas Coe was quoted in a rare interview regarding the Fellowship’s associations with despots as explaining, “The people that are involved in this association of people around the world are the worst and the best, some are total despots. Some are totally religious. You can find what you want to find.”

                   Coe also has claimed that the Fellowship does not help foreign dignitaries gain access to U.S. officials. “We never make any commitment, ever, to arrange special meetings with the president, vice president or secretary of State”, Coe said. “We would never do it”. Coe misspoke because in January 1991, Fellowship associate and financial supporter Michael Timmis met President Pierre Buyoya of Burundi on behalf of the Fellowship, then flew to Kenya with Arthur (Gene) Dewey, the former second-in-command at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Sam Owen, then living in Nairobi. Timmis wrote that he had obtained permission to fly over Tanzanian air space, even though the U.S. Department of State had ordered American citizens to stay clear of Tanzania.

 

                  The Fellowship has promoted reconciliation between the warring leaders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Rwanda. In 2001, the Fellowship helped arrange a secret meeting at The Cedars between Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame — one of the first discreet meetings between the two African leaders that led to a peace accord in July 2002.

                  In 1994 at the National Prayer Breakfast, the Fellowship helped to persuade South African Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi not to engage in a civil war with Nelson Mandela.

Senator Sam Brownback (R.-Kan.) is a Fellowship member who leads a secret cell of leading U.S. Senators and Representatives to influence U.S. foreign policy. It is noted that the group has stamped much of U.S. foreign policy through a group of Senators and affiliated religious organizations forming the “Values Action Team” or “VAT”.One victory for the group was Brownback’s North Korea Human Rights Act, which establishes a confrontational stance toward North Korea and shifts funds for humanitarian aid from the UN to Christian organizations with the understanding that these funds can be used to force North Korea to adopt poliicies that are agreeable to the Fellowship..

 

                  The Fellowship is behind an international project called Youth Corps, a network of Christian youth groups that attract teenagers, and then later steer them to acceptance of the Fellowship’s concept of Jesus. The Youth Corps web site is careful not mention an affiliation to the Fellowship or religion. A non-public, classified internal Fellowship document, “Regional Reports, January 3, 2002,” lists some of the nations where Youth Corps programs are in operation: Russia; Ukraine; Romania; India; Pakistan; Uganda; Nepal; Bhutan; Ecuador; Honduras and Peru. The actual purpose of this group is to prosetlyse for younger members who can not only be turned for their purposes but also to possibly act as “assistants” or “sources” for the Central Intelligence Angency, an organization that has “very close ties” with Coe’s people.  

Fellowship dollars have gone to an orphanage in India, a program in Uganda that provides schooling, and a development group in Peru.

                  The Fellowship, through Representative Joe Pitts (R.-Pa.), redirected millions in US aid to Uganda from sex education programs to abstinence programs, thereby causing an evangelical revival, which included condom burnings.

                  In a November 2009 Ugandan Fellowship associates David Bahati and Nsaba Buturo were behind the  proposed bill in Uganda that called for the death penalty for gays. Coe’s top administrative personnel are also violently and obsessively anti-gay and they feel, according to intercepted communications, that if this becomes law in Uganda, the Fellowship can try to have their controlled members of Congress introduce a bill that will stigmatize same-sex relationships and prohibit any homosexual to either serve in the American military or any other branch of government. They cite Woodrow Wilson’s similar ban on blacks working for the government when he was president.

                   David Bahati, the Uganda legislator backing the bill, first floated the idea of executing gays during The Family’s Uganda National Prayer Breakfast in 2008. Bahati, according to a Department of Justice investigation, is named as a “rising star” in the Fellowship who has attended the National Prayer Breakfast in the United States and, until the news over the gay execution law broke, was scheduled to attend the 2010 U.S. National Prayer Breakfast.

                  President Obama, in his address to The Fellowship at their National Prayer Breakfast in early 2010, directly criticized the Uganda legislation targeting gay people for execution. In calling for a renewed emphasis on faith and civility, the President stated, “We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary [Clinton] mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.”

.                 US. embassies have held prayer breakfast meetings as a way of buying access to U.S. officials, particularly those involved in important trade and defense issues. Such meetings have taken place in U.S. embassies in Copenhagen; Oslo; Stockholm; Helsinki; Tallinn, Estonia; Vilnius, Lithuania; Bern, Switzerland; Luxembourg; The Hague; Rome; Brussels; Canberra; Port Louis, Mauritius; New Delhi; Mexico City; Belize; Warsaw; Vienna; Berlin; and Prague. 

                  A U.S. State Department bus transports foreign and U.S. diplomats to and from the Cedars for the Tuesday morning 7:30-9:30 a.m. meeting. Yet more limousines arrive at the Cedars for a meeting held at 9:30 p.m. on Sundays. The county placed speed bumps on 24^th Street to answer the many neighborhood concerns about speeding motorcades but they did not deter the speeding. One neighbor estimated that there are some 80 limousine trips per week to the Cedars. Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat visited the Cedars in 1999 complete with his automatic weapon-carrying security guards. Out-of-state license plates abound at the Cedars compound.

                   Adding to the Fellowship’s perception as a powerful and secretive organization is its ownership of a boarding house and conference center around the corner from the U.S. Capitol at 133 C Street, SE, Washington, DC. At any given time, eight members of the Senate and House have resided at the C Street Center where they sleep, pray, and eat for a mere $600 a month. C Street Center resident Representative Bart Stupak (D-MI) claimed on his Federal Election Commission expense report that he paid the C Street Foundation $762 on December 11, 2001. Similar boarding houses have been set up by the Fellowship in London for Members of Parliament and in Moscow for members of the State Duma.

                  Sir Vivian Gabriel, a British Air Commission attaché in Washington during World War II, established a branch of the Family (International Christian Leadership Association) in the United Kingdom.^] Ernest Williams, a member of the directing staff of the British Admiralty and a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Evangelism, served as its president in the 1960’s. Williams worked closely with Harald Bredesen, a British intelligence operative who went on to personally mentor Rev. Pat Robertson in the United States.

                  A talk from 1970 for college students encouraging mentoring and discipleship stated: “If you want… there are men in government, there are senators who literally find it their pleasure to give any advice, assistance, or counsel.”

                   Lindsay also interviewed 360 evangelical elites, among whom “One in three mentioned [Doug] Coe or the Fellowship as an important influence.”

                  The Fellowship also has relationships with numerous non-U.S. government leaders. Lindsay reported that it “has relationships with pretty much every world leader—good and bad—and there are not many organizations in the world that can claim that.”

                   Many of the “friends” targeted by these congressional missionaries are strongmen such as Omar al-Bashir, the president of oil-rich Sudan, who has been indicted for genocide in the International Criminal Court; and Yoweri Museveni, president of Uganda. (The Family’s Ugandan friends also include David Bahati, the author of a murderous piece of legislation called the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which mandates the death penalty for some homosexual acts.)

                   What’s in it for the strongmen? Legitimacy, and a champion back in Washington. What’s in it for the US politicians? Jesus—and, sometimes, profits for themselves or the interests they favor. Many of them have had their expeditions underwritten by the Family: Ensign has enjoyed trips to Japan, Jordan, and Israel that cost nearly $17,000. The list of Family-funded travelers also includes Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), who has done the “Lord’s work” in Aruba and the Virgin Islands. On other occasions, Coe’s political missionaries charge their travel to the government—putting not just the weight of their office, but the taxpayers’ money, behind an unabashedly very far-right wing religious agenda.

Beliefs and theology

                  The Fellowship Foundation’s 501(c)(3) mission statement is:

“To develop and maintain an informal association of people banded together, to go out as “ambassadors of reconciliation,” modeling the principles of Jesus, based on loving God and loving others. To work with the leaders of many nations, and as their hearts are touched, the poor, the oppressed, the widows, and the youth of their country will be impacted in a positive manner. Youth groups will be developed under the thoughts of Jesus, including loving others as you want to be loved”

.                  Current Fellowship prayer group member and former U.S. Representative Tony P. Hall (D-OH) said, “If people in this country knew how many Democrats and Republicans pray together and actually like each other behind closed doors, they would be amazed.” The Fellowship is simply, “men and women who are trying to get right with God. Trying to follow God, learn how to love him, and learn how to love each other.” When he lost his teenage son to leukemia, Hall says, “This family helped me. This family was there for me. That’s what they do.”

                  It is not yet clear how the Christian Right’s demand for more social conservatism will be accommodated.

                  The Fellowship is essentiallty a very private operation, their PR department releasing pallative reports on the wonderful, humanitarian and public concerns of the organization but they are still, all in all, a very secretive organization. The Reverend Rob Schenck, who leads a Bible study on the Hill inspired by C Street, wrote that “all ministries in Washington need to protect the confidence of those we minister to, and I’m sure that’s a primary motive for C Street’s low profile.” But he added, “I think The Fellowship has been just a tad bit too clandestine.”

                   Prominent political figures have insisted that confidentiality and privacy are essential to the Fellowship’s operation. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan said about The Fellowship, “I wish I could say more about it, but it’s working precisely because it is private.”

                  At the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, President George H.W. Bush praised Douglas Coe for what he described as “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy.”

                  In 2009, Chris Halverson, son of Fellowship co-founder Richard C. Halverson, said that a culture of pastoral confidentialty is essential to the ministry: “If you talked about it, you would destroy that fellowship.”

                  In 1975, a member of The Fellowship’s inner circle wrote to the group’s chief South African operative, that their political initiatives…have always been misunderstood by ‘outsiders.’ As a result of very bitter experiences, therefore, we have learned never to commit to paper any discussions or negotiations that are taking place. There is no such thing as a ‘confidential’ memorandum, and leakage always seems to occur. Thus, I would urge you not to put on paper anything relating to any of the work that you are doing…[unless] you know the recipient well enough to put at the top of the page ‘PLEASE DESTROY AFTER READING.’

                  In 1974, after several Watergate conspirators had joined the Fellowship, a Los Angeles Times columnist discouraged further inquiries into Washington’s “underground prayer movement”, i.e. the Fellowship: “They genuinely avoid publicity…they shun it.”

                  In 2002, Douglas Coe denied that the Fellowship Foundation owns the National Prayer Breakfast. Jennifer Thornett, a Fellowship employee, said that “there is no such thing as the Fellowship”.

                   Former Republican Senator Willliam Armstrong said the group has “made a fetish of being invisible”.

                  In the 1960s, The Fellowship began distributing to involved members of Congress notes that stated that “the group, as such, never takes any formal action, but individuals who participate in the group through their initiative have made possible the activities mentioned.

                  The Fellowship maintains no public website and conducts no public fundraising activities.

 

                  The Fellowship Foundation, which since 1935 has conducted no public fundraising programs, relies totally on private donation. In 2007, the group received nearly $16.8 million to support the 400 ministries. Among The Fellowship’s key supporters are billionaire investor Paul N. Temple, a former executive of Esso (Exxon) and the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and the Three Swallows Foundation. Between 1998 and 2007, Three Swallows made grants totaling $1,777,650 to the International Foundation, including $171,500 in 2004,$203,500 in 2005, and $145,500 in 2006.

                   Another supporter, Jerome (Jerry) A. Lewis, established Denver-based Downing Street Foundation to provide support to three organizations: the Fellowship Foundation, Denver Leadership Foundation, and Young Life. Between 1999 and 2007, Downing Street donated at least $756,000 to the Family, in addition to allowing the group to use its “retreat center.”

Madelynn Winstead, a Downing Street director, was paid $21,500 by the Fellowship Foundation as managing director of the retreat center. Winstead also sits on the board of directors of ENDOW, a Catholic educational program.

                  The Kingdom Fund (Kingdom Oil Christian Foundation t/a Twin Cities Christian Foundation) also provides support to the Family and World Vision.

 

                  The Fellowship Foundation earns more than $1,000,000 annually through its sponsorship of the National Prayer Breakfast.

 

The Fellowship Property and Business Holdings

 

C Street

 

                  The Fellowship runs a $1.8 million three story brick mansion in Washington D.C. known as “C Street. It is the former convent for nearby St. Peter’s Church. It is located at 133 C Street, SE, behind the Madison Annex of the Library of Congress and a short distance from the United States Capitol, Republican National Committee, Democratic National Committee and House of Representatives Office Buildings. The structure has 12 bedrooms, nine bathrooms, five living rooms, four dining rooms, three offices, a kitchen, and a small “chapel”.

                  The facility houses mostly Republican members of Congress. The house is also the locale for:

                   Wednesday prayer breakfasts for United States Senators, which have been attended by Senators Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe, John Ensign, Susan Collins and Hillary Clinton.

                   Tuesday night dinners for members of Congress and other Fellowship associates.

An annual Ambassador Luncheon. The 2006 event was attended by ambassadors from Turkey, Macedonia, Pakistan, Jordan, Algeria, Armenia, Egypt, Belarus, Mongolia, Latvia, and Moldova.

Receptions for foreign dignitaries, including the Prime Minister of Australia.

                  C Street has been the subject of controversy over its claimed tax status as a church, the ownership of the property and its connection to the Fellowship, and the reportedly subsidized benefits the facility provides to members of Congress.

                   Until 2009, C Street was exempt from real property taxes because it was classified as a “special purpose” use as a church. District of Columbia law exempts from taxation “buildings belonging to religious corporations or societies” which meet certain criteria. In August 2009, the property was reclassified. A DC city official said “it was determined that portions are being rented to private individuals for residential purposes. As a result, the exemption was partially revoked and adjusted so that only 34 percent is now tax-exempt and 66 percent has become taxable.”

                   Property records show that in 1980, C Street was purchased by Youth with a Mission, Washington, D.C., Inc. On July 19, 1983, the organization changed its name to “Youth with a Mission Renewal Ministries, Inc.” On November 28, 1984, the organization changed its name to “FaithAmerica”. On September 3, 1985, the organization changed its name to “Youth with a Mission National Christian Center, Inc.” On February 27, 1992, the organization changed its name to “C Street Center, Inc.” The aforementioned Corrective Deed signed by a Fellowship

Associate changed the name on the title to reflect changes in name of its owner.

                   Also, the Fellowship lists C Street Center on its 2007 Form 990 as a related organization through common members, governing bodies, trustees, officers, etc. In 2002, IRS records show that the Fellowship gave C Street Center $450,000 in grants and loans from 1994 to 2002.

As noted above, many of the present and past residents of C Street, including Senators Tom Coburn and John Ensign and Representatives Zach Wamp and Bart Stupak, have publicly acknowledged working with The Fellowship or are documented as having done so. “The C Street property is a church,” Chip Grange, an attorney for the Fellowship told the LA Times in 2002: “It is zoned as a church. There are prayer meetings, fellowship meetings, evangelical meetings . . . Our mission field is Capitol Hill.” (Note:  In 2009, Senator Ensign was named one of the ‘15 Most Corrupt Members of Congress’ by good government watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.  Ensign moved out of the C Street house in November 2009, after disclosure of an extramartial affair and reports that he used his influence to pressure several parties to keep quiet about it )                          0

                  On February 23, 2010, Clergy Voice, consisting of 13 pastors from mainstream Christian denominations, filed a lawsuit with the United States Internal Revenue Service challenging the remainder of the C Street facility’s tax-favored status as a church, on the grounds that many ordinary church activities did not occur there and due to the secretiveness of the organization.

                  In late March, 2010, Clergy Voice sent another letter to the Internal Revenue Service asserting that residents at C Street failed to pay taxes on the allegedly discounted portions of their allegedly below market rents. Clergy Voice stated that a one-bedroom apartment on Capitol Hill would cost at least $1,700, while rent at the C Street house for members has been $950 a month including housekeeping services, and thus the renters should pay income tax on the difference. The group also surveyed the Capitol Hill rental market and found that nearby hotels charge a minimum of $2,400 per month and corporate housing costs a minimum of $4,000 per month. In 2002, the Los Angeles Times reported that C Street charged Senators and Congressional representatives $600 per month for rent. In 2009, WORLD Magazine report that C Street charged about $950 per month for rent.

                  On April 1, 2010, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a liberal watchdog group, filed a complaint with the Senate and House ethics committees alleging that Senators and Representatives lodging in C Street received below market rents constituting “improper gifts from C Street Center, Inc., the entity that runs the house and is affiliated with the Fellowship, a shadowy religious organization.” The complaint names Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan.; Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; and John Ensign, R-Nev., as well as Reps. Mike Doyle, D-Pa.; Heath Shuler, D-N.C.; Bart Stupak, D-Mich.; and Zach Wamp, R-Tenn. CREW states that the House and Senate gift rules specifically include “lodging” as a prohibited gift.

                  The Reverend Louis P. Sheldon stated in 2002 that The Fellowship opened the C Street house to members of Congress because “it helps them out. A lot of men don’t have an extra $1,500 to rent an apartment. So The Fellowship house does that for those who are part of The Fellowship.” In 2002, rent was $600 per month for each resident and meals cost extra, but cleaning is provided by eight college-age volunteers from the Fellowship and a “house mother” who washes the congressmen’s sheets and towels.

                   Douglas Coe, leader of the Fellowship, said “I give or loan money to hundreds of people, or have my friends do so,” including to members of Congress but he did not recall the details.

 

Arlington

 

                   Fellowship Foundation purchased a large old house in 1978, named the Doubleday Mansion. The home which also has a detached two story garage and a gardener’s cottage, is zoned as a worship and teaching center. The home is used as a center for Bible studies, counseling, hymn sings, life mentoring, prayer groups, prayer breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, and hospitality receptions for international reconciliation and conflict resolution iniatives. The home was once surrounded by cedar trees and so was renamed Cedars. Its location is near Georgetown University in the Arlington Woodmont community. It is a historic landmark house and is situated adjacent to a commemorative recreational county park, once the homestead of writer C. F. Henry.

Coe has described Cedars as a place “committed to the care of the underprivileged, even though it looks very wealthy.” He noted that people might say, “Why don’t you sell a chandelier and help poor people?” Answering his own question, Coe said, “The people who come here have tremendous influence over kids.” Private documents indicate that Cedars was purchased so that “people throughout the world who carry heavy responsibilities could meet in Washington to think together, plan together and pray together about personal and public problems and opportunities.”^] Cedars is host to dozens of prayer breakfasts, luncheons and dinners for ambassadors, congressional representatives, foreign religious leaders and many others.

                  In March 1990, YWAM (which also previously owned the C Street Center) purchased a nearby property located at 2200 24th Street North for $580,000. The property, was used as another gathering place for bible study. Ownership of 2200 24th Street was transferred to the C Street Center on May 6, 1992, and again to the Fellowship Foundation on October 25, 2002. This house had been owned by Timothy Coe, who sold the property to his father, Douglas Coe on November 30, 1989, for $580,000.

                  A second property, located at 2224 24th Street North and assessed at $916,000, is used as a men’s mentoring ministry, known as a Navigator house. This property was purchased by Jerome A. Lewis and Co. in 1986, and sold to the Wilberforce Foundation in 1987. In 2007, the Wilberforce Foundation transferred it to the Fellowship Foundation for $1 million. Jerome A. Lewis is a trustee emeritus of the Trinity Forum and the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Petro-Lewis Corporation.

                   Douglas Coe once owned a lot at 2560 North 23rd Road, which he sold to Ohio Congressman Tony P. Hall (D-OH) and his wife on September 22, 1987, for $100,000. Upon leaving Congress in 2002, Hall donated some of his excess campaign funds including $20,000 to the Fellowship Foundation on September 4, 2002, $1,500 to the Wilberforce Foundation, and $1,000 to the Jonathan Coe Memorial of Annapolis, Maryland during the 2001 campaign cycle.

The residence located at 2244 24th Street North, assessed at $1,458,800, is owned by Merle Morgan, whose wife, Edita, is on the board of the Cedars. It also is identified as the offices of the greeting card firm of Morgan Bros. Corp. (dba Capitol Publishing). Missionary Fred Heyn and his wife owned 2206 24th Street North.

                   LeRoy Rooker, the one-time treasurer of Cedars and former Director of the Family Policy Compliance Office at the U.S. Department of Education, and his wife own 2222 24th Street North.

                   Arthur W. Lindsley, a Senior Fellow at the C.S. Lewis Institute owns 2226 24th Street North.

 

Cedar Point Farm

                   According to White House records dating from 1978, President Jimmy Carter traveled to Cedar Point Farm by Marine helicopter on November 12, 1978, to attend a Fellowship prayer and discussion group. President Carter placed a call to Menachim Begin while at Cedar Point Farm. The White House records reflect that Cedar Point Farm was owned by Harold Hughes, a former Senator from Iowa and the President of the Fellowship Foundation. Cedar Point Farm was later used by the Wilberforce Foundation.

Other Fellowship properties

 

                   “Southeast White House”, located at 2909 Pennsylvania Avenue, Southeast, which is a center of urban reconciliation, youth mentoring, community prayer breakfasts, Bible studies, life principle teaching and racial relational healing initiatives. University students come for internships in urban reconciliation and in community service for the bereft. This property is assessed at $736,310 for 2009 tax year.

 

                   “19th Street House,” a two-story, brick apartment building located at 859 19th Street NE, in the Trinidad neighborhood of northeast Washington, D.C., which is assessed at $358,250 for the 2009 tax year. The 19th Street Center is used for afterschool activities.

 

                   Mount Oak Estates, Annapolis, Maryland. One residential property, formerly owned by Timothy Coe, was sold to Wilberforce Foundation, Inc. for $1.1 million. A second residence is owned by David and Alden Coe and a third is owned by Fellowship associate Marty Sherman. Another nearby property, 1701 Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard, was owned by the Fellowship Foundation.

                   Until 1994, the Fellowship Foundation owned the aged French revival historic “Fellowship House”, the former base of Vereide’s ministry located at 2817 Woodland Drive in Washington, D.C., which was sold to the Ourisman Chevrolet family for $2.5 million and which was then fully architecturally and historically restored and preserved

Membership

                  The men of The Fellowship—and across much of American fundamentalism’s elite—are fond of paraphrasing Luke 12:48: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.” A fine sentiment at first blush, but stripped of its Gospel context and presented as a maxim, it can also be disingenuous. The idea that the powerful are powerful because they have been anointed, “given” their rank and position—that they did not grasp for it—is as deceptive as the notion that God prefers to work through “key men,” to dispense blessings to senators and strongmen so that a small cut might trickle down to the poor.

                   Past and current residents of the C Street Center have included

former Representatives Steve Largent (R-OK) and Ed Bryant (R-TN),

former Representative and current Democratic Governor of Maine John E. Baldacci,

Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) (Brownback is also a member of the right-wing

 Opus Dei sect within the Catholic Church),

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC),

John Ensign (R-NV), and Tom Coburn (R-OK),

Representatives Mike Doyle (R-PA),

Bart Stupak (D-MI),

Zach Wamp (R-TN),

and former Senator Don Nickles (R-OK).

                   Other past members included:

Senators Sam Nunn (D-GA),

Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI),

Roger Jepsen (R-IA),

Charles Percy (R-IL),

Strom Thurmond (R-SC),

David Durenberger (R-MN),

Jennings Randolph (D-WV),

Paul Trible (R-VA),

Phil Gramm (R-TX),

William Armstrong (R-CO),

Lawton Chiles (D-FL),

Dan Coats (R-IN),

Jeremiah Denton (R-AL),

John Stennis (D-MS), Al Gore, Jr. (D-TN),

Larry Pressler (R-SD

former Representatives J. C. Watts (R-OK),

Robert Dornan (R-CA), and Tony Hall (D-OH).

                   George W. Bush named Hall, who purported to be a strong defender of human rights, to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for World Hunger. In typical Fellowship fashion, Hall immediately began to lobby the UN on behalf of Monsanto to accept genetically-modified foods.

                   Other significant members of The Fellowship are now, or have been:

 Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Conrad Burns (R-MT), Richard Lugar (R-IN), James Inhofe (R-OK), Bill Nelson (D-FL) (Nelson’s wife Grace serves on the Fellowship Foundation’s Board of Directors), and Rick Santorum (R-PA),

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), and George Allen (R-VA),

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL),

Representatives Frank Wolf (R-VA), Tom DeLay (R-TX),

Tom Feeney (R-FL), Curt Weldon (R-PA), Jerry Weller (R-IL), and Joseph Pitts (R-PA).

                   Friends of The Fellowship, if not outright members, include Senators Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Rick Santorum (R-PA), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), and former Senator Zell Miller (D-GA).

Wilberforce Foundation                  705 Melvin Ave Ste 105Annapolis, MD 2140

Fellowship Foundation                  2244 N 24th St. Arlington, VA 22207 (Ivanwald)

C Street Center                  133 C Street SE Washington, DC 20003

Prison Fellowship Ministries P.O. Box 17500, Washington, DC 20041

Officers Christian Fellowship 3784 S. Inca St. Englewood , CO 80110

Campus Crusade for Christ, Inc.  100 Lake Hart Dr. MC 3900 Orlando , FL 32832

 

Coe Background

                   Douglas Evans Coe  b.October 20, 1928, is a descendant of early American colonist Robert Coe (1596–1689). Coe, the son of Milton Evans and Loda Helene (Davis) Coe, was born October 20, 1928, in Medford, Oregon. His father, a public schoolteacher, and mother were married December 26, 1923, at Yamhill, Oregon. His paternal grandfather, Rev. Curtis Pearre Coe, was a Baptist minister and missionary. Coe is associate director of the Christian organization the Fellowship (also known as a family of friends in Christ, the prayer breakfast groups.). He has also been referred to as the “stealth Billy Graham.” In 2005, Coe was named one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in the United States by Time magazine. Although Coe is an ordained Presbyterian elder and serves as a lay minister, D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University, surveyed more than 300 top evangelical politicians in Washington and one in three said the Fellowship was one of the most influential Christian groups in the nation’s capital. According to Lindsay, “there is no other organization like the Fellowship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or clout among the country’s leadership.

                  Coe’s ministry in mentoring and discipling is widely known, his enjoyment of athletics and his devoted family life, having raised three boys and three girls. Somewhat diffident about attention and reluctant to do public speaking he routinely denies requests for interviews and speeches to large audiences.He was born and raised in Oregon. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Willamette University. While enrolled as a college student, Coe met Dean of Men and future Fellowship associate and Senator Mark O. Hatfield. Coe became involved with Young Life, a campus youth ministry, in Salem, Oregon, and went on to start a chapter of “InterVarsity Christian Fellowship” with Roy Cook while enrolled at Willamette University. Coe and Cook became involved in laymen’s groups of various kinds and helped establish a “navigator house” in Salem. They met Dr. Abraham Vereide when he visited Salem, the capital of Oregon for a Governor’s Prayer Breakfast and were fascinated by his visionary communication of a “leadership led by God, empowered by His Spirit.”

                  After working with Young Life and the Navigators, Coe, in 1958, at the age of 30, was employed by Dr. Vereide at the International Christian Leadership on Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C. and after initially doing clerical jobs in the office he served as aide de camp to Dr. Vereide and by 1963 had become an assistant director of ICL. He worked alongside of Dr. Vereide, Dr. Wallace Haines, Dr. Clifton Robinson and Dr. Richard C. Halverson, the clergy executives of the global ministry. Coe was trained by Lorne Sanny and Jim Rayburn in the methods of Bible memorization, study and teaching and Vereide also had him mentored by young Billy Graham, an effective youth minister and former president of Northwestern College, a frequent house guest of Dr. Vereide’s and a former disciple from ICL’s Chicago days. As Rev. Christian Halverson put it, in the eighties, Coe “became the godfather . . . but for good, not for bad.”

                   Coe is a member of the Planning Committee for the National Student Leadership Forum on Faith and Values. Douglas Coe’s ministry in mentoring and discipling is widely known, his enjoyment of athletics and his devoted family life, having raised three boys and three girls. Somewhat diffident about attention and reluctant to do public speaking he routinely denies requests for interviews and speeches to large audiences. He was born and raised in Oregon. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Willamette University. While enrolled as a college student, Coe met Dean of Men and future Fellowship associate and Senator Mark O. Hatfield. Coe became involved with Young Life, a campus youth ministry, in Salem, Oregon, and went on to start a chapter of “InterVarsity Christian Fellowship” with Roy Cook while enrolled at Willamette UniversityCoe and Cook became involved in laymen’s groups of various kinds and helped establish a “navigator house” in Salem. They met Dr. Abraham Vereide when he visited Salem, the capital of Oregon for a Governor’s Prayer Breakfast and were fascinated by his visionary communication of a “leadership led by God, empowered by His Spirit.”

An example in mendacity: George W. Bush

                  On April 18, 1972, the Houston Police (Report: WE 298-3221-72) arrested First Lieutenant George W. Bush of the Texas Air National Guard for possession of cocaine. Bush and a friend were then booked into the Harris County jail, finger-prnted and photographed, on criminal possession of drugs charges.  Bush’s father, who was then serving as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, hurriedly flew to Houston from New York and began to make the required phone calls to keep his son from receiving a court martial, dishonorable discharge, and a prison sentence. As one senior Bush business partner recalled, then-Ambassador Bush knew that junior was in “deep shit.” Senior Bush arranged for his son to serve at a religious drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in San Diego between May and November 1972. Conservative San Diego was a major center for Fellowship activities.

                  The time Bush spent in religious rehab in San Diego represents part of the famous “gap” in Bush’s National Guard service record. According to a fitness report on Bush issued by the White House in 2004, Bush was “Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 Apr 73. Report for this period not available for administrative reasons.” This represents the time Junior Bush was being shown the way from drugs to Jesus in San Diego and afterwards, his court-ordered community service penance in Houston. The senior Bush arranged to have the arrest record on Junior expunged and even his name removed from the police blotter. Later, a ruse that Junior Bush went to Alabama to work on the Republican Senate campaign of Winton Blount was concocted to throw off nosy opposition research investigators and journalists. The deception worked.

                   After drug rehab, Bush returned to Houston to perform prior court-arranged community service with Project P.U.L.L. (Professional United Leadership League), a Houston inner-city program to help troubled and mostly minority teens. It was run by John White, a former tight end for the Houston Oilers, who died in 1988. White’s assistants told Knight-Ridder in late October 2004, that because the senior Bush was honorary co-chairman of Project P.U.L.L., he asked White to do him a favor by placing Junior Bush into a volunteer slot. One of White’s administrative assistants told the news service that White recalled that Junior Bush had “gotten into some kind of trouble” but was not more specific. Willie Frazier, another former Houston Oiler and a P.U.L.L. volunteer in 1973, recalled to Knight-Ridder that the senior Bush impressed on White that an “arrangement” had to be made for the Junior Bush. P.U.L.L. closed its doors in 1989, a year after White’s death but several P.U.L.L. associates remembered that unlike other volunteers, Junior Bush’s hours as a volunteer had to be accounted for because he was in some kind of “trouble.”

 

The Sword of the Lord and Gideon: The Neo-Templars and the American military

                   This organization is called by many, often deceptive, names but in the main, it is known to investigators as the ‘Neo-Templars’ (or new Templars) The purpose of this organization, and its various permutations, is quite straightforward: It seeks to oust, by military force, the current Muslim occupants of the so-called Holy Land, and, if the situation should call for it, attack any other Muslim entity, be it an established state or a group.

                  The Neo-Templars were initially formed in 2002 by U.S. military officers, and officials, in response to what they saw as a dangerous fanatical religious organization that posed an imminent danger to the United States. Two of the initial members had strong connections to both the Fellowship and also to the Dominionists and were able to connect this movement to both entities. Connected also to the so-called ‘End Times’ movements, the basic purpose of the Neo-Templars was two-fold:

                    Force all Muslims out of the so-called Holy Land, spedivically Jerusalem and to take over the current Muslim mosque, the Dome of the Rock which would then become the headquarters of the Neo-Templars. A military force would be used, in conjunction with the IDF to forcefully expel all Muslims from Jerusalsm and, if that could be accomplished, from the so-called Holy Land as a whole.

                   Force all Muslims resident in the United States to forsake their religion and, instead, convert to Christianity. The states purpose is to . “bridge the Muslim-Christian divide”—by escorting Muslims over to the Christian side. Also, a far less public goal of the Neo-Templars is a similar conversion of the Jews of Jerusalim to Christianity and this in fulfillment of old Christian dogma.

                   Muslims, can keep their religious affiliation so long as they bow before Jesus. “They make every effort to be as normal as possible and not stand out,” the idea being that these “Messianic Muslims,” not unlike Jews for Jesus, will be able to pass as Muslim Muslims and thus win the support of their countrymen.

                  Eventually, The Fellowship would count some of the military’s top leaders among its members. They include: former Joint Chiefs Chairman General David Jones, current Joint Chiefs chairman General Richard Myers, former Marine Corps Commandant and current NATO commander General James L. Jones, Iran-contra figure Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, and, perhaps even more controversial than North, Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, the military head of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s intelligence branch One of the larger OCF chapters is at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the home of the U.S. military’s disciplinary barracks and a prime recruiting and mentoring center for Fellowship members. All sorts of military members who have been sentenced by courts martial around the world have served their prison terms at Leavenworth.

                  In 1982, a key member of the OCF began his four-year sentence at hard labor at Leavenworth after he was convicted of over 19 counts of lewd and lascivious acts with minors, including the dependents of naval personnel under his command. He was Lieutenant Commander Larry W. (Bill) Frawley, Jr., U.S. Naval Academy graduate, P-3 Orion pilot, and the one-time Commanding Officer of the Coos Head, Oregon Naval Facility, a classified Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) station that mainly monitored Soviet submarines on missile patrol and maneuvers in the Pacific. Frawley was heavily involved in a child pornography ring before FBI agents discovered his name after a major bust of a kiddie porn kingpin in Chicago. The Operations Officer assigned to Coos Head was requested by the Naval Investigative Service and the FBI to set up a “sting” against Frawley. Duly sworn in as a temporary special agent of the FBI, the Operations Officer gained Frawley’s trust, gathered incriminating evidence against him, handed it to federal and local law enforcement agents from Coos Bay, Oregon; Portland, and Seattle, and testified as the government’s star witness at Frawley’s court martial at the Navy’s Sand Point Base in Seattle. It was later discovered by NIS and the FBI that Frawley and other members of the OCF used the Christian organization as a cover for their child pornography business. And one other tidbit had been discovered by the FBI. Frawley had traveled secretly to the Soviet Union while he held a Top Secret nuclear weapons and cryptographic security clearance.

                    That discovery led to the reassignment of the Operations Officer, the Portland-based and Seattle-based NIS agents, and the Coos Bay-based FBI agent to relatively insignificant desk jobs in Washington, DC. While he held his confidence and trust, Frawley revealed to the Operations Officer that those involved with his ring included other top-ranking military officers, lawyers, and members of the clergy. Later, the two NIS agents revealed that the Coos Bay scandal “went to the very top” of the Reagan administration. Frawley’s prison term at Leavenworth was anything but “hard labor.” Navy insiders reported that he attended therapy sessions.

 The Dominonists

Dominion Theology is a grouping of theological systems with the common belief that society should be governed exclusively by the law of God as codified in the Bible, to the exclusion of secular law, a view also known as theonomy. The most prominent modern formulation of Dominion Theology is Christian Reconstructionism, founded by R. J. Rushdoony in the 1970s. Reconstructionists themselves use the word dominionism to refer to their belief that civil government should be controlled by Christians alone and conducted according to Biblical law. Social scientists have used the word “dominionism” to refer to adherence to Dominion Theology as well as to the influence in the broader Christian Right of ideas inspired by Dominion Theology. Although such influence (particularly of Reconstructionism) has been described by many authors, full adherents to Reconstructionism are few and marginalized among conservative Christians.

 

                    Republican political figure, Sarah Palin is a “Dominionist” with an apocalyptic ‘End Times’ theological viewpoint that sees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a contemplated war with Iran as part of God’s plan. This highly politicized concept of dominionism is based on the Bible’s text in Genesis 1:26:

                   “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (King James Version).

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'” (New International Version).

The vast majority of Christians read this text and conclude that God has appointed them stewards and caretakers of Earth, but some Christian read the text and believe, “that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.” That, in a nutshell, is the idea of “dominionism.”

                  The defining concept of dominionism is “that Christians alone are Biblically mandated to occupy all secular institutions until Christ returns.

                  The following concepts are shared by all forms of dominionism:

                   Dominionists celebrate Christian nationalism, in that they believe that the United States once was, and should once again be, a Christian nation. In this way, they deny the Enlightenment roots of American democracy.

                   Dominionists promote religious supremacy, insofar as they generally do not respect the equality of other religions, or even other versions of Christianity

Dominionists endorse theocratic visions, insofar as they believe that the Ten Commandments, or “biblical law,” should be the foundation of American law, and that the U.S. Constitution should be seen as a vehicle for implementing Biblical principles.

                  The theocratic right seeks to establish dominion, or control over society in the name of God. The late D. James Kennedy, former pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries, called on his followers to exercise “godly dominion … over every aspect … of human society.” At a “Reclaiming America for Christ” conference in February, 2005, Kennedy said:

                   “Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors — in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”

                   Twenty-five years ago, dominionists targeted the Republican Party as the vehicle through which they could advance their agenda. At the same time, a small group of Republican strategists targeted fundamentalist, Pentecostal and charismatic churches to expand the base of the Republican Party. This web site is not about traditional Republicans or conservative Christians. It is about the manipulation of people of a certain faith for political power. It is about the rise of dominionists in the U.S. federal government.

 

                   Today’s hard right seeks total dominion. It’s packing the courts and rigging the rules. The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself.

                    Before the midterm elections of 2006, dominionists controlled both houses of the U.S. Congress, the White House and four out of nine seats on the U.S. Supreme Court. They were one seat away from holding a solid majority on the Supreme Court. As of January 1, 2007, dominionists will not control the leadership of either house of Congress, and the President will no longer be able to so easily appoint dominionists to the federal courts.

                  Christian Reconstructionism is a form of theocratic dominion theology. Its leaders challenged evangelicals across a wide swath of theological beliefs to engage in a more muscular and activist form of political participation. The core theme of dominion theology is that the Bible mandates Christians to take over and “occupy” secular institutions.

                  Dominionists were very close to controlling all three branches of the federal government from which they could impose their narrow interpretation of scripture on the rest of society. People so close to full political power are not going to go away.

                  In conclusion: The American people need to maintain vigilance and understand the history of how dominionists came to political power. And we need to embrace democracy with a passion — for it was voter apathy that allowed leaders like Pat Robertson to get so many dominionists elected to Congress in the first place

                   

                  Thomas K. Kimmel is a former FBI agent, and the eldest grandson of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel,

 

A 1966 graduate of the US Naval Academy, and a Lt. Commander in the U. S. Naval Reserve, Tom went on to serve his country as an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation for more than 25 years.

 

Thomas Kimmel served on the USS Taussig (DD 746), the USS Bordelon (DD 881), and the USS Manitowoc (LST 1180) from 1966-1971 during the Vietnam War and he attended John Marshall Law School in Chicago prior to joining the FBI in 1973.  While in the FBI, Mr. Kimmel worked against organized crime, La Cosa Nostra, in Cleveland, served on the House Appropriations Committee Surveys and Investigations Staff at CIA Headquarters, headed the FBI in East Texas, headed the Organized Crime/LCN and Labor Racketeering Unit at FBI Headquarters and the National Drug Intelligence Center in Johnstown, PA, and served on the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency.  Tom was also the Assistant Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia FBI Division where he headed the Foreign Counterintelligence and Terrorism Programs in the Philadelphia Division during the 1^st attack on the World Trade Center in 1993

 

Upon retiring from the FBI, Tom served as a consultant to the Bureau addressing major spy scandals in the FBI and CIA and has testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Department of Justice Inspector General, the Blue Ribbon Commission of William Webster, and many other investigating entities.

thomaskkimmeljr@gmail.com, TKimmel@cfl.rr.com

 

Conversations with the Crow

 

                   When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert  T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.

                   Crowley did not listen to them (no one else ever does, either) and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.

                   Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:

http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm🙂

Here is the forty-second chapter

Conversation No. 42

 

Date: Monday, October 14, 1996

Commenced: 9:45 AM CST

Concluded: 10:21 AM CST

GD: Robert.

RTC: Good morning, Gregory.

GD: Have you heard anything more from Critchfield?

RTC: Yes, I have. He’s calmed down some and is now blaming me for blindsiding him.

GD: Well, actually you did. Telling him I was one of his boys.

RTC: I implied, Gregory. Only implied. And Jim is trying to dig up more information for his stupid book and he went for it. It worked out fine, but he cursed at me and said I got him in over his head.

GD: Pompous asshole. One of these days, I’ll get out the story about him and Atwood selling Russian atomic shells to the Pakis. You know Jim was the arms dealer and Critchfield was building a retirement nest egg so they went ahead with this. Jim’s people had been supplying the Afghan rebels with weapons to use against the Russians and the connections are there. Just think, Robert. They sold thirty shells to potential lunatic enemies. Oh, they might be thankful we helped them but in the end, they are religious fanatics and they will prove to be a real crown of thorns to us. Just an opinion, of course.

RTC: Well, Jim would like to find some way to shut you up, short of killing you. He’s not in power anymore so maybe he’ll bribe you.

GD: In my experience, Robert, those people never bribe anyone. They threaten them and yell at them, but never resort to an actual bribe. Unless, of course, they are bribing a Russian military person to get them some atomic shells. Then, they bribe.

RTC: Not to offend you, Gregory, but would you take a bribe?

GD: Depends on how much and what the issue is. Generally, people don’t try to bribe me. Threaten me, of course, or insult me, certainly, but no bribes. I wonder what would happen to Critchfield’s precious image if it ever came out? Atwood is known as a piece of worthless shit and he has no reputation to lose.

RTC: Jim is very incensed about Atwood at this point.

GD: Remember, we have a bet.

RTC: Not a real bet.

GD: I have been reading over some of this ZIPPER business, Robert. Very interesting to say the least.

RTC: Now, Gregory, we are not specific on the phone.

GD: No, no, I’m aware of that. You know, what with all the strange stories about that incident, I might have an uphill fight to get the book accepted.

RTC: Ah yes, the nut fringe. Highly entertaining material.

GD: Yes, but rather misleading.

RTC: Oh that’s why we support them, Gregory. Muddy the waters. Keep the public eye elsewhere. Away from dangerous subjects. The public loves conspiracies so we supply them. A real conspiracy is difficult to conceal, Gregory. Too many people, too many chances for leaks. Joe gets drunk and tells his brother and so on. Sometimes, we’ve had to remove people like that, but not very often. Johnson was in the know but I doubt if he’d tell Lady Bird, let alone a reporter. And officially, don’t forget that Hoover was also on board. His people can shut you down very quickly. They’ll find a machine gun under the front seat of your car and off you go, screaming innocence all the way to the big house.

GD: But what happens if an FBI man says something?

RTC: Well, they aren’t bulletproof. Bill Sullivan found that out.

GD: Oh yes, I saw the name in the ZIPPER papers.

RTC: He was Hoover’s man in that. And other projects as well. Bill and Hoover had a falling out and Hoover sacked him. Not only did he sack him, Hoover began to threaten him. I guess Bill got terminated finally because he had begun to grumble too much and to the wrong people.

GD: What happened? A car accident?

RTC: No, he went out for a walk one morning and some young hunter thought he was a deer and shot him in the head.

GD: Oh my, what a tragedy.

RTC: Bill thought that because J. Edgar was dead, he could mouth off. He was a bitter man, Gregory, and then he was a dead one. With all his baggage, Bill should have stayed in New Hampshire and enjoyed his retirement.

GD: Baggage?

RTC: You don’t know any of this, of course, but Sullivan was up to his neck in business that would have put him away for life if it ever came out. He was top man in the Bureau and Hoover’s hatchet man. Besides being involved up to his neck in the ZIPPER business, Bill also took out King and Bobby Kennedy.

GD: Jesus H. Christ, Robert.

RTC: Well, we get the blame for all kinds of shit and it’s comforting to spread it around. Certainly. Old Hoover hated both King and Bobby. Why? Hoover has been suspected of being a high yellow…

GD: What?

RTC: Part black. True or not, it’d gotten around and he knew about it. Hoover also was probably a queer but again, not proven. He had his areas of great sensitivity, let’s say. No, he hated King because J. Edgar hated blacks. I mean really hated them. Wouldn’t let them in the Bureau and persecuted any black leaders he could. Like Marcus Garvey.

GD: And King.

RTC: Hoover was outraged that King had a white girlfriend and did everything he and his Bureau did to slam him. Finally, as he got older, Hoover got nuttier and decided to have him killed. Sullivan ran that operation. First they tried to tap his phones and plant stories about him and when that didn’t work, they offed him.

GD: What about James Earl Ray?

RTC: Another Oswald. You see, the Bureau has a very small group of miscreants who do jobs on people. Sullivan ran them for Hoover. Ray was a very minor and very low class crook. A smash and grab type. Bust a window in an appliance store and run off with an iron or a toaster. Break into a laundromat, jimmy open the coin boxes on the machines, steal the coins and then cut his bare feet on the broken glass he left breaking the window. Hardly sophisticated enough to shoot King, escape to Canada, get a fake Canadian passport in the name of a Montreal police officer and flee to England. Not likely, Gregory. If Ray knew who put him up to being a front, they would have killed him just like they shot Oswald. Ray didn’t know, although he probably guessed at one point, and off he went for the rest of his life. He can scream innocent until he dies and no one will listen.

GD: And Bobby?

RTC: Bobby was a nasty piece of shit who made enemies whenever he went for a walk. He was his brother’s hit man, in a figurative sense, his pimp. He was the AG, put in there by Joe so Joe could get back his confiscated Farben stock and also go after the mob. Back in Prohibition, I can tell you, Joe was a partner of Capone’s and Joe was stupid enough to rip Al off. Al put out a contract on Joe and Joe had to pay Al to cancel it. And from then on, Joe was out to get anyone in the Mob. Pathological shit, Joe was.

GD: My grandfather told me all about him.

RTC: Well, when Bobby got to be AG, he harassed old Hoover, trying to make him quit. Not a very good idea, but then Bobby thought he was safe. His father was very rich, his brother was President and he thought he couldn’t be touched. For example, Hoover used to take a nap on his office couch every day and Bobby would bang into his office and wake him up. And worse, Bobby would tell his friends, at parties where there were many ears, that Hoover was an old faggot.

GD: Some people seem to have a death wish. This reminds me of the street freak who climbed over the wall at the San Francisco zoo once, climbed right into the outdoor tiger rest area, walked up to a sleeping male tiger and kicked him in the balls. Tiger was very angry, got up in a rage, smacked the intruder, killed him and was eating him, right in front of the horrified zoo visitors. That kind of a thing, right?

RTC: A good analogy. You grasp the situation, Hoover stayed in power because he had files on all the men in power, to include JFK and his father. Not a man to antagonize is it?

GD: I would think not.

RTC: Johnson was terrified of Hoover and kissed his ass on every occasion, but Bobby was running for president and it looked like he might make it. That’s when Hoover talked to Sullivan and we know the rest. Just some background here. This Arab….

GD: Sirhan.

RTC: Yes. Note that Kennedy had come down from his suite in the Ambassador Hotel to give a victory speech. Came into the hall from the front door with all his happy staff. Big crowd. One of his aides, Lowenstein, I believe, told him they should go out through the kitchen exit. And there was what’s-his-name waiting. But he shot at Kennedy without question, with a dinky .22 but never got to within five feet of him. The official autopsy report said Kennedy was shot behind the ear at a distance of two inches. Now that sounded to me like a very inside job. They steered him into an area where an assassin was known to be waiting and made sure he bought the farm. In all the screaming and confusion, just a little bit of work by a trusted aide or bodyguard and Bobby was fatally shot. That was the second one of Hoover’s pet hates. The first one reminded him of the nigger relationship and the other had called him a faggot. Hoover had his moments but if you stepped on his toes, off came your head. But Hoover was afraid of Sullivan so he left him alone.

GD: Then…

RTC: We decided that Sullivan, freed of the spirit of Hoover, who had died some years before, Sullivan began to talk just a little. We didn’t care about the King or the Bobby business but if he talked about ZIPPER, we would be in the soup, so Sullivan had to go.

GD: Someone persuaded him to put on a deer suit?

RTC: No, he was walking in the woods and some kid, armed with a rifle and a telescopic sight, blew him away. Terribly remorseful. Severe punishment for him. Lost his hunting license for a year. Think of that, Gregory. For a whole year. A terrible tragedy and that was the end of that.

GD: Can I use that?

RTC: If you want. It’s partially public record. If you can dig it out on your own…

GD: I’ll try. Thanks for the road map.

RTC: Why, think nothing of it.

GD: But back to the ZIPPER thesis. I was saying about the proliferation of conspiracy books that I would have trouble.

RTC: Of course, Gregory. We paid most of those people to put out nut stuff. Why the Farrell woman, one of the conspiracy theme people, is one of ours. We have others. We have a stable of well-paid writers whose sole orders are to produce pieces that excite the public and keep them away from uncomfortable truths. I imagine if and when you publish, an army of these finks will roar like your angry tiger and we won’t have to pay them a dime. They’ve carved out a territory and if you don’t agree with them, they will shit all over you. I wish you luck, Gregory. And I can guarantee that the press will either keep very, very quiet about you or will make a fool out of you. We still do control the press and if we say to trash an enemy, they will do it. And if the editor won’t, we always talk to the publishers. Or, more effective, one of my business friends threatens to pull advertising from the rag. That’s their Achilles heel, Gregory. No paper can survive on subscription income alone. The ads keep it going. In the old days, a word from me about ad-pulling made even the most righteous editor back down in a heartbeat. We bribe the reporters and terrify their bosses. They talk about the free press who know nothing about the realities.

GD: Nicely put, Robert.

RTC: We should have you come back here one of these days for a sit-down. Bill wants to do this. Are you game?

GD: Will men in black suits meet me at the airport?

RTC: I don’t think so, Gregory.

GD: Maybe one of them will hit me with their purse.

RTC: Now, Gregory, that isn’t kind.

GD: I’m sure Hoover wouldn’t have thought so.

(Concluded at 10:21 AM CST)

 

Dramatis personae:

 

James Jesus Angleton: Once head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, later fired because of his obsessive and illegal behavior, tapping the phones of many important government officials in search of elusive Soviet spies. A good friend of Robert Crowley and a co-conspirator with him in the assassination of President Kennedy

James P. Atwood: (April 16, 1930-April 20, 1997) A CIA employee, located in Berlin, Atwood had a most interesting career. He worked for any other intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that would pay him, was involved in selling surplus Russian atomic artillery shells to the Pakistan government and was also most successful in the manufacturing of counterfeit German dress daggers. Too talkative, Atwood eventually had a sudden, and fatal, “seizure” while lunching with CIA associates.

William Corson: A Marine Corps Colonel and President Carter’s representative to the CIA. A friend of Crowley and Kimmel, Corson was an intelligent man whose main failing was a frantic desire to be seen as an important person. This led to his making fictional or highly exaggerated claims.

 

John Costello: A British historian who was popular with revisionist circles. Died of AIDS on a trans-Atlantic flight to the United States.

James Critchfield: Former U.S. Army Colonel who worked for the CIA and organizaed the Cehlen Org. at Pullach, Germany. This organization was filled to the Plimsoll line with former Gestapo and SD personnel, many of whom were wanted for various purported crimes. He hired Heinrich Müller in 1948 and went on to represent the CIA in the Persian Gulf.

Robert T. Crowley: Once the deputy director of Clandestine Operations and head of the group that interacted with corporate America. A former West Point football player who was one of the founders of the original CIA. Crowley was involved at a very high level with many of the machinations of the CIA.

Gregory Douglas: A retired newspaperman, onetime friend of Heinrich Müller and latterly, of Robert Crowley. Inherited stacks of files from the former (along with many interesting works of art acquired during the war and even more papers from Robert Crowley.) Lives comfortably in a nice house overlooking the Mediterranean.

Reinhard Gehlen: A retired German general who had once been in charge of the intelligence for the German high command on Russian military activities. Fired by Hitler for incompetence, he was therefore naturally hired by first, the U.S. Army and then, as his level of incompetence rose, with the CIA. His Nazi-stuffed organizaion eventually became the current German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst.

Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr: A grandson of Admiral Husband Kimmel, Naval commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated after the Japanese attack. Kimmel was a senior FBI official who knew both Gregory Douglas and Robert Crowley and made a number of attempts to discourage Crowley from talking with Douglas. He was singularly unsuccessful. Kimmel subsequently retired and lives in retirement in Florida

Willi Krichbaum: A Senior Colonel (Oberführer) in the SS, head of the wartime Secret Field Police of the German Army and Heinrich Müller’s standing deputy in the Gestapo. After the war, Krichbaum went to work for the Critchfield organization and was their chief recruiter and hired many of his former SS friends. Krichbaum put Critchfield in touch with Müller in 1948.

Heinrich Müller: A former military pilot in the Bavarian Army in WWI, Müller  became a political police officer in Munich and was later made the head of the Secret State Police or Gestapo. After the war, Müller escaped to Switzerland where he worked for Swiss intelligence as a specialist on Communist espionage and was hired by James Critchfield, head of the Gehlen Organization, in 1948. Müller subsequently was moved to Washington where he worked for the CIA until he retired.

Joseph Trento: A writer on intelligence subjects, Trento and his wife “assisted” both Crowley and Corson in writing a book on the Russian KGB. Trento believed that he would inherit all of Crowley’s extensive files but after Crowley’s death, he discovered that the files had been gutted and the most important, and sensitive, ones given to Gregory Douglas. Trento was not happy about this. Neither were his employers.

Frank Wisner: A Founding Father of the CIA who promised much to the Hungarian and then failed them. First, a raging lunatic who was removed from Langley, screaming, in a strait jacket and later, blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun.

Robert Wolfe: A retired librarian from the National Archives who worked closely with the CIA on covering up embarrassing historical material in the files of the Archives. A strong supporter of holocaust writers