The CIA & the National Student Association

American delegation parades through Lenin Square.

After WWII, the Soviets began throwing world youth festivals and inviting attendance from student delegations from around the globe. These festivals drew interest from the newly formed CIA, created in 1947, the same year the National Student Association (NSA) was founded in Madison, Wisconsin, for the purpose of attending the Communist youth festivals.

Interestingly, both the CIA and the NSA have strong Catholic connections. William Donovan was an Irishman who ran intelligence operations during WWII and helped craft the CIA charter. Ever since, the agency has had a stack of Malta Knights in leadership positions, and you’ll find the same situation over at the Pentagon. Because of their diplomatic immunity and immense global connections, Knights of Malta are powerful people. As WWII was winding down, German Malta Knights and American Malta Knights worked together on hiding hundreds of war criminals in churches and monasteries until they could be spirited away to new identities in new locations. Many of these war criminals ended up working for the CIA on covert operations. Catholics were especially trusted by the Cold War warriors because they represented a major antagonistic force resisting the spread of Communism, and thus were useful in dialectical operations. Of course, the other major component of the CIA were Freemasons and members of masonic-style secret societies like Yale’s Order of Skull & Bones. Most revolutions (especially the Communist ones) were organized through these masonic lodges. These two powerful groups represented opposing sides of the managed dialectic that was driving the growth of the military industrial complex.

The NSA helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, which organized the march on Selma and subsequent Voting Rights Act that followed. They also played a role in the formation of the SDS. In 1964, Michael Wood dropped out of college to work on civil rights in the Watts district of Los Angeles. He soon came to the attention of the NSA and was offered a job at their Washington DC headquarters. By this time, the NSA had a million members in over 400 colleges and universities and had grown into an immense operation. Woods was brought in as a fundraiser, but soon noticed there seemed to be little interest in fundraising, and, in fact, the top executives did their own fundraising through their own channels. Woods went to Philip Sherburne, president of the NSA, and announced he needed to have control over all NSA fundraising, or he’d have to resign. Sherberne invited Wood to lunch at Sirloin and Saddle, and that’s when Sherberne violated his secrecy agreement and explained most of the NSA funding was coming from the CIA. Apparently, the pair decided at that lunch this needed to end, for shortly afterwards, CIA funds began to dry up. Wood was blamed for the budget shortfall and soon fired. And after the firing, he told Marc Stone, the son of I. F. Stone, who happened to be the publicist for Ramparts magazine. The magazine staff was incredulous, but began investigating, and that’s when the CIA use of a complex web of foundations for covert funding began to unravel.

The CIA got wind of the investigation and tried to quickly organize a press conference with past NSA presidents, all of whom were willing to testify to the secret relationship while explaining the CIA never influenced NSA policy only provided millions of dollars with zero strings attached. When Ramparts found out about this planned preemptive strike, they placed ads in major newspapers to promote their impending scoop.

In truth, the CIA links inside NSA were first uncovered in 1964 by NSA president Steve Robbins, who was aghast to discover he was participating in a covert intelligence operation. When Robbins confronted his staff with the bad news, nine of them waltzed outside while fishing around their pockets for a dime in order to check in with their agency handlers on nearby payphones. Most of them were specialists in international affairs with offices on the top floor and all had been secretly trained by Langley for their jobs. Apparently, they all went on to bigger and better jobs in the agency. But in 1964, word of this never leaked, and the world may have never known had Wood not been fired a few years later and had lunch with Stone. After the story broke, Wood and some senior NSA officials fled to Greensboro, North Carolina. The NSA was briefly shattered internally as many departed, but that just left the remaining spooks firmly in control.

In 2015, Karen Paget published the expose of this story titled Patriotic Betrayal. She researched for years and assembled a treasure trove of classified documents through the Freedom of Information Act. Paget begins her book by explaining that in 1965 she’d been invited to dinner by two past leaders of the NSA, and later on, at a private residence, she’d been handed a classified file that explained the NSA was run by the CIA and her husband had recently been recruited into the agency. Although most NSA employees were unaware of this relationship, the ones that did were classified as being “witty.” Paget was introduced to her husband’s case officer, code name Aunt Alice, and asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement stating should she ever reveal these secrets to anyone, she’d be liable for a minimum of 20 years in prison.

Karen Paget.

Although Patriotic Betrayal is the best guide to this saga, I have to wonder if it might not be a limited hangout because nothing devastating is revealed beyond the money trail. And the fact the book was published by Yale University Press should raise suspicions that some elements might be missing. Paget violated her secrecy agreement, yet no repercussions followed in the wake of the book’s release. Operations are more complex than most comprehend, and when you have several billion in black funds to play with, the sky is the limit as far as penetrations go. I’m not saying Paget is a spook, although her husband certainly was, at least for a time, only that the documents released to her would have been carefully vetted. It would be naive to believe the vast CIA spook network has diminished over the years. If you wonder why zero national spokespeople on the left or right support independent investigations of 9/11, consider the left and right are parts of the same bird, and both packed with spooks. Very few of these operations will be revealed in our lifetimes. But if you dig around and keep an open mind, you might find evidence of their dialectical games as they unfold before your eyes in real time, because in politics little happens by accident. As JFK was fond to say, “In politics, things are made to happen.”

Inside the Wilderness of Mirrors

In 1606 some manifestos appeared in Germany opposing the Catholic Church and claiming secret knowledge from the east. Although the Protestant revolution had been ongoing for nearly a hundred years (having been launched in 1516 by an ordained priest at the University of Wittenburg named Martin Luther), these new mystical manifestos drew on Arabic, Judaic and Greek influences, while Luther’s Reformation was based around the Christian Bible.

Christian Rosenkreuz was listed as author of the manifestos, but many years later Johann Valenntin Andreae (above) claimed credit for authoring at least one of them (the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz) and he revealed the treatise had been initially intended as satire, claiming the fictional Rosenkrutz lived to the advanced age of 106, longevity attributed to a study of Indian mysticism. The secret order was intended to usher in the age of enlightenment and inductees were said to possess magical knowledge that would transform arts and sciences, but according to Andreae it was a hoodwink that took on a life of its own.

The oligarchies have long been fascinated by magic, and easily suckered into a fraudulent seance, and Rosicrucianism became big very quickly because Europe was going through a zeitgeist shift. Secret societies were sprouting everywhere, and many were advancing the concepts of liberty, equality and fraternity, ideas that threatened the status quo ruled by the monarchies and their anointed churches. The largest and most successful secret society was Freemasonry, which had taken much from the outlawed Templars, but Rosicrucianism had a big influence on the evolution of masonry, and some of its mystical concepts were incorporated into the emerging masonic rituals. A few Rosicrucians began charging exorbitant fees for arranging ceremonies and sharing secret wisdom.

But in 1776, a new secret society appeared, and it immediately positioned itself as antagonistic to Rosicrucianism. Interestingly, this new secret society was created at a Jesuit university by a Jesuit-trained lawyer who specialized in canon law of the Catholic Church. However, most of the membership never knew his name and a story would be spread on how the Illuminati were actually controlled by a small group of illuminated masters (just like the Rosicrucians supposedly were). This may actually have been the case if Adam Weishaupt was involved with the attempt to remove the recent Papal ban on the Jesuits, who had achieved monopolies of trade on a scale not seen since the Templars.

Both the Rosicrucians and the Illuminati were recruiting members from within masonic lodges, and doing it in great secrecy. Weishaupt’s strategy was to recruit the leader of a lodge because if the leader joined, the entire lodge could be manipulated. Although Weishaupt claimed to be fomenting the downfall of religion and royalty, he was actively recruiting the rich and powerful, while devising techniques that protected the society from exposure. Most members knew only their handler and anyone they personally recruited, while only Weishaupt knew all about everyone. It was such a conspiratorial time that many suspected their lodges had been penetrated by Jesuits, Rosicrucians, Illuminati, or all of the above.

Mt. Vernon, October 24, 1798
Revd Sir: …It was not my intention to doubt that, the Doctrines of the Illuminati, and principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am….

—George Washington

(The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799. John C Fitzpatrick, Editor)

I realize there’s a popular movement afoot led by Madonna and others to resurrect the Illuminati as a force for good, something spearheaded by Robert Anton Wilson many decades ago, but I don’t subscribe to that belief, and view the organization much the same as Washington did in 1798. He considered it a diabolical plot to separate people from their government.

There’s little doubt the Bonesmen of Yale are the closest thing we have today to an Illuminati op, and Boners have penetrated the upper strata of business, banking and intelligence, not to mention the media and the energy corporations. Their objective seems to be self-enrichment and acquisition of power, and apparently has little to do with enlightenment or helping the common people unlock the chains of exploitation.

It’s funny how communists organized in secret cells just like the Illuminati. And they also obeyed an unknown central authority at all cost, just like the Illuminati. I’m fascinated by the history of communism in America because it appears the movement was penetrated and manipulated by spooks from its inception. In April 1958, a leader of the American communist movement named Morris Childs was sent to the Soviet Union and China to meet with top officials and after three months he returned to secretly report to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and members of his national security staff. Enormous penetration ops were embedding secret agents into both sides of this carefully-managed dialectic from day one.

Simultaneously, in 1947, the CIA created the National Student Association (NSA) during a meeting of student activists in Madison, Wisconsin. Interestingly, there was a strong Catholic block inside the NSA that voted as a group. The NSA was one of the few organizations that openly opposed McCarthy’s anti-communist movement, quickly leading to allegations they were a communist front, when, in fact, they were a CIA front pretending to be a communist front.

It’s funny how so many devout communists from this era would emerge later in life as neo-cons, or how leaders of the terrorist Weather Underground got professorships, leaving me to wonder if they weren’t spooks all along. John Foster “Chip” Berlet wrote a series of books on student activism for the NSA, and took thousands of photos of student activists during this period. He also became an active shop steward for the National Lawyers’ Guild, which opposed McCarthism and was similarly accused of being a communist front, leaving me to wonder about its possible CIA-connections.

For many years, Berlet ran a think tank funded by the CIA-connected Ford Foundation, and attempted to install himself as the leading authority debunking conspiracy theories involving 9/11 and the CIA. Strangely, he momentarily became the Washington DC editor for High Times, and wrote an attack on Lyndon LaRouche that was published in that magazine. LaRouche appears to be an intelligence operation as there is migration from his staff to the Pentagon, as in the case of Laurent Murawiec, who became an analyst for the CIA-connected RAND corporation while writing articles for the highly conspiratorial Executive Intelligence Review.

LaRouche first surfaced at Colombia University in the late sixties as a Marxist, and attempted a coup on the local SDS chapter run by Mark Rudd. Rudd would eventually join the Weather Underground, who were trying to spark a holocaust on millions of straight people, part of their insane plan to create the Communist States of America. Obviously, this was a spook operation that never had any prayer of success, but merely deployed to scare the bejesus out of straight America, while undermining and outflanking the once non-violent student movement. Only stupid or naive minds (or spooks) can be led into supporting mass murder. LaRouche, meanwhile, trolled for brighter minds using nets of complex Marxist ideologies, while deploying the latest mind control techniques for holding the poor souls thus entrapped. Strangely, many of his recruits were Jewish, and would soon be embracing the Holocaust denial movement.

Willis Carto and LaRouche formed an alliance, as both were constructing global operations on the far right, building connections into various secret societies and government intelligence agencies by sharing explosive information with choice targets. The mysterious Mitch Werbell became LaRouche’s chief security advisor.

Was communism created as an op from day one or was it was merely penetrated and taken over after taking root? There’s likely a reason why nearly every modern revolution and progressive movement against colonialism has been subverted by communists and that reason may be because communism looks a lot like fascism in disguise.

Did the Jesuits create the Illuminati to manage the enlightenment? Did MI6 and the CIA promote communism for a similar purpose?

When dealing with the wonderful world of spooks, difficult questions like these should be considered because intelligence operations are designed as a wilderness of mirrors where up is down, left is right, and although people have the power whenever they want to take it, and could vote away the wealth of the oligarchy if they were better organized with more effective, focused leadership, and there’s plenty enough resources to take care of everyone if only they could be better distributed, in truth, any successful movement that supports an agenda like that will instantly be penetrated by spooks.