There are a lot of conspiracy theories out there, and if you believe some of them you could go crazy. I don’t see, for example, how a small group of rich and powerful bankers could actually be running the world. And what’s up with those stories of black government helicopters getting set to round up American civilians and put them in underground internment camps? Furthermore, I don’t think the U.S. government is importing guillotines from France to cut off our heads so they can subvert America and establish a One World government.
But when a journalistic icon claims that U.S. foreign policy has been hijacked by a cabal of neoconservative crusaders, I pay attention. I know it sounds like a cloak-and-dagger novel but I tend to believe Seymour Hersh (pictured above) when he tells Georgetown University’s students in Doha, Qatar that top ranking military brass “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.”
The Knights of Malta? That’s a secretive Roman Catholic order. And, according to Hersh:
They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.
They have little insignias, these coins they pass among each other, which are crusader coins. They have insignia that reflect the whole notion that this is a culture war. … Right now, there’s a tremendous, tremendous amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the military community.
It’s hard to believe that the top military brass in the world’s most powerful democracy are pushing for a remake of the medieval Crusades, but if Seymour Hersh says that’s going on behind the scenes I’m not going to question his credibility.
After all, he’s been right in the past when his investigative pieces in The New Yorker were greeted with skepticism from critics. You might recall his expose of Dick Cheney’s secret assassination squad, how he was derided and then vindicated. And he also exposed the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam and Abu Ghraib atrocities in Iraq.
So I am prepared to accept the award-winning journalist’s allegation that a secretive religious group has way too much influence on America’s foreign policy.
Far-right groups (especially those with a religious affiliation) seem to be adept at infiltrating U.S. institutions.
While everyday Americans go about their business, believing that their government is controlled by the people and policies they voted for, secret forces are at work behind he scenes, pulling the levers of power.
And unseen influences are not restricted to the military in America.
Among those identified as members of the Knights of Malta are former CIA directors William Casey and John McCone, Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca, and media pundit Pat Buchanan.
A Salon.com article by Matthew Phelan elaborates on Hersh’s lecture:
In addition to Casey and McCone, the Knights of Malta also counted among their members former CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton – a fortuitous alliance as Angleton led the postwar intelligence efforts to subvert Italy’s 1948 elections. His success partnering with organized crime, right-leaning former fascists and the Vatican not only marginalized Italy’s homegrown Communist Party, it also encouraged Congress in the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Conservative luminary and National Review founder William F. Buckley – who spent two years after college as a CIA “political action specialist” in Mexico City – was also a Knight, as was none other than William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the CIA’s precursor organization, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). From 1970 to 1981, France’s intelligence agency was also headed by a member of the Order, Alexandre de Marenches. De Marenches would go on to be a co-founder of the Saudi-funded private intelligence group the Safari Club – one of George H. W. Bush’s many end-runs around congressional oversight of the American intelligence establishment and the locus of many of the worst features of the mammoth BCCI scandal.
So, while crackpot speculations about this particular Catholic order are legion, its ties to intelligence organizations in the U.S. and Western Europe are well-documented. It’s also perfectly understandable: with their unusual status as a recognized sovereign state without territory, the Knights of Malta enjoy full diplomatic rights in many countries – including the ability to bypass customs inspectors by secreting items across borders via “diplomatic pouch.” Sharing far right sympathies, the Roman Catholic Church and Cold War-era Western intelligence officials became natural allies, and the Knights of Malta became a natural conduit for their collaboration. With a lengthy, strategic partnership already forged in the name of anti-communism, a strengthening of this network in the name of the “War on Terror” ought to sound more predictable than paranoid to a student of U.S. foreign policy – particularly given the current pope’s record on Islam.
I am sure the Knights of Malta are not the only ones who have infiltrated America’s corridors of power. I have read several reports of hidden Zionist influence, for example – not to mention the legion of special interest groups and their lobbyists.
With all these Spy-Meets-Spy shenanigans going on in Washington, are you surprised that everything’s so messed up?
