-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Other Altars - Roots and Realities of Cultic and Satanic Ritual Abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder Craig Lockwood�1993 CompCare Publishers 3850 Annapolis Lane, Suite 100 Minneapolis, MN 55441 612.559.4800/800.328.3330 ISBN 0-89638-363-6 255+pps � out-of-print/one edition. ----- A very interesting and excellent book. Om K --[17]-- Chapter 17 Alternative Altars: Conspiracies, Mind Control, And Cultures Of Cruelty "The illuminated movements can be detected in the first great agitation for the reform of society ... [their] ambassadors of the heavenly kingdoms bore credentials from precisely those realms from which help was most expected. -James Webb, 1976 Without exhaustive investigation and analysis, estimating how many groups practicing ritualized abuses categorized as "satanic" or otherwise is impossible. Survivors today are disclosing that abuse occurs in groups that claim to be Christian, Catholic, Moslem, Jewish, Masonic, Celtic, Druidic, Nordic occult, Nazi, African- and Afro-Caribbean-based religions. Since most of these claims are made to health-care professionals, comprehensive documentation about these groups has not been undertaken in any systematic way by the agencies assigned to act against crime. History teaches a valuable lesson with the Chambre Ardente case mentioned earlier. By creating a successful investigative task force, King Louis XIV uncovered a conspiracy involving a cult with a recognized leader and hundreds of followers, a profitmaking criminal enterprise, and a body count that proved they were serious about their endeavors. But Chambre Ardente teaches another lesson: governmental cover-up. Collusion and Cover-up Though tales of collusion and conspiracy permeate the verbal accounts of survivors, documentation has been scanty. Survivor scenarios invariably include accounts of doctors, psychotherapists, lawyers, police, politicians, and members of the business community as cult participants. Incredulity would be a polite way of describing most people's responses. Recently, however, former Nebraska State Senator John W. DeCamp, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, detailed one alleged case at length in his book The Franklin Cover-up. In this case, the Senator was a player�but on the good guys' team. DeCamp's book, which includes trial records, depositions, affidavits, and a complex criminal investigation, is well-documented. Research aside, the dramatic elements of the story are worthy of a Raymond Chandler novel or a Hollywood film noir. DeCamp's interest in the case started in 1988 when federal officers raided the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union of Omaha, Nebraska. Forty million dollars were unaccounted for. Lawrence "Larry" E. King, the credit union's chief financial officer, a former Democrat turned Republican-party faithful, was indicted. DeCamp was skeptical at first. He couldn't believe that King, a well-connected, popular, black community leader, who had powerful friends in Nebraska's business, financial, and political worlds, and in Washington, D.C., could be involved in such a large financial crime. >From the beginning it was obvious that witnesses in the King case were being protected by elements within the Omaha Police Department, as well as by the local FBI. Nebraska's most influential newspaper, the Omaha WorldHerald, consistently underplayed the seriousness of Franklin's financial loss. In the face of this kind of concerted obstruction, and increasingly incriminating allegations, the Nebraska State Legislature launched its own investigation. Special Investigator Gary Caradori soon began uncovering links between King, the Omaha police chief, the Fort Calhoun superintendent of schools, judges, members of the Omaha Establishment, and known homosexuals and pedophiles. Caradori's probe began filling file boxes with damaging information�including subpoenaed telephone records and other corroborative documentation. Caradori's home was broken into. He and his employees were followed. He memoed the Nebraska Secretary of State: "Am I too close to something they do not want to become public?" Perhaps. Caradori phoned Senator Loran Schmit early in July 1990 and said, "We've got them! There's no way they can get out of it now!" On July 11, 1990, Caradori's plane exploded in a mid-air fireball, according to an eyewitness. Both Caradori and his young son were killed. The FBI descended on his office and confiscated all his records. On July 12, Senator Schmit confirmed the following to Nebraska's Lincoln Journal: Gary Caradori had been trying to obtain pictures that some alleged victims said were taken of them during the period when they were being abused. He [Schmit] also confirmed that Caradori had been told that some of those allegedly involved in child sexual abuse "had exposed some of the victims to satanic cultism. He was working on places and times." Six months later the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) still had no explanation for the crash. Investigation into Caradori's death had been stalled at every turn. DeCamp's personal friend, former CIA Director Bill Colby, told DeCamp that "the cause would probably never be known." How did Colby know? He had been hired in secret to look into the matter at the Washington level a few months before. On August 8, 1991, twenty-one-year-old Alisha Jahn Owen was sentenced on eight counts of felony perjury for telling a grand jury in 1990 that she was "sexually abused as a juvenile by a Nebraska district court judge, by the chief of police of the city of Omaha, by the manager of the Franklin Community Credit Union (King), and others." With a federal and state mandate to consider charges that prominent individuals in the state's political and financial establishment, including the publisher of the Omaha WorldHerald, Nebraska's largest newspaper, had been involved in child sexual abuse, drugs, and homicide, both juries "indicted the victim-witness for perjury instead!" Owen had corroborative testimony from other witnesses, one of whom, Paul Bonacci, admitted to Caradori that he had been homosexually abused from childhood by several of the men in question. Bonacci, like Owen, had refused to recant his allegations against King, and was also serving time for perjury. Bonacci tells an incredible story, saying that in 1984 King had him and another boy flown by private jet to Sacramento, California. Taken to a remote location, they were shown a nude child who had been put in a cage. Both boys were given "Tarzan things" to wear and were then forced to beat up and have sex with the caged child. A camera crew filmed the entire event. During the filming, an adult began sodomizing the child. Bleeding rectally, the child began screaming in pain. One of the men put a pistol to the child's head and killed him. Bonacci and the other boy, covered in the child's gore, were then forced to sodomize the child's corpse. With camera rolling and a pistol to his head, Bonacci said he was made to tear the victim's penis and testicles off with his teeth. Bonacci claims he and the other boy were kept for five days by the men, who used them as "sex toys." Bonacci, in an attempt to escape, opened a vein and was hospitalized. Child-recovery specialist Roy Stephens, named in Forbes magazine in 1991 as the "best in the business," an old associate of DeCamp's, was conducting an independent investigation of a missing boy. Following a lead, he interviewed Bonacci in prison. Bonacci apparently knew, in concise detail, what had happened to the child�he had been present when the boy was kidnaped. Bonacci told Stephens he also knew about the Jordan, Minnesota, child-abuse ring mentioned in Chapter 1. This was the case that former Vice-President Hubert Humphrey's son Hubert Humphrey, Jr., then attorney general of Minnesota, had dismissed citing "insufficient evidence." Bonacci knew the leaders' names and could describe the location. He had been there, as well. Stephens, however, enjoys a non-Forbes-rated reputation with Sergeant Larry Lawson of the Martin County, Florida, District Attorney's Criminal Investigations Division. According to Sgt. Lawson, a noted specialist in crimes against children, Stephens was implicated in a case Lawson was working on, involving an alleged child-abducting father from California. The father claimed his child had been molested by none other than "Uncle Mikey," Michael Aquino, mentioned in Chapter 1, who was a suspect in the Presidio Day Care child molestation case. There were additional young witnesses in the King case, according to DeCamp, but under pressure they recanted their testimonies. Alisha Owen notes with irony that with three consecutive three-year sentences she was given more time than Larry King. Paul Bonacci won parole, but the Omaha World-Herald brought such pressure to bear on the state parole board that they revoked their decision. While working for a psychiatric treatment facility in Omaha, Kirsten Hallberg claims she was told by a member of the Omaha police department that "the way to make sure there would be no prosecutions is to form a legislative committee to identify all the victims and that [by] doing so would expose the names of the minors involved and thus give the perpetrators the tools they need to discredit the children and prevent prosecution." So just who was doing what to whom and why? More questions about this incident have been raised than have been answered, some have even questioned DeCamp's motives. DeCamp himself admits that in 1984 he was accused in a civil petition filed in Lancaster County, Nebraska, Juvenile Court of "inappropriate sexual contact" with his seven-year-old daughter. According to an article by Kevin Collison in the January 21, 1984, Omaha World-Herald, the petition stated that DeCamp "bathed with his daughter, took photographs of her while her private parts were exposed, and kissed her on the mouth in an improper way." DeCamp, according to the Omaha World-Herald, denied sexually molesting the child. DeCamp responded immediately to the allegations in a speech to the entire Nebraska legislature. He maintained that the charges were filed by a neighbor who was associated with his Democratic opposition, and that the neighbor's motivation was an obvious attempt to torpedo his political career. According to the Omaha World-Herald, "DeCamp claimed it was simply a cultural difference." His wife was Vietnamese, and such behavior was common in her country. "We aren't completely American," DeCamp explained, "and we do have very different customs." Charlotte Blaiser, a private investigator from Sacramento, California, who specializes in missing persons and sensitive criminal investigations, advises caution. Blaiser, who has interacted with many of the people DeCamp writes about, notes somewhat philosophically that incidents such as these serve as warnings to those who would attempt to seek justice in a world controlled by wealth and power. Power, according to Blaiser, buys its own justice. Those holding great power will conspire to keep it. Nor do they need to conceal as much as an average person would. "If you want to be inconspicuous, be obvious," says Blaiser. Acting in self-interest to maintain control, to see that their needs are fulfilled, the powerful use whatever means they can. "One fact becomes clear in all of this," says Dale McCulley, who interviewed DeCamp, "how helpless people are when the media is against them." Considering the "Cult" of Conspiracy Disbelievers argue that the relative rarity of these kinds of cases proves the rule. This formulation, the outrageous conspiracy theory goes something like this: Murderous conspiracies based on heretical religious belief systems are so outrageous, so difficult to conceal and maintain in secret, that they soon come to light. This potent argument can be documented with many examples: Hicks's theory of the Matamoros killings is one. Chambre Ardente could be cited as another. Countering the outrageous conspiracy theory, however, is the tip of the iceberg theory, which basically says that what we see is only the tip of the iceberg-the rest lies beneath the surface. Only unsuccessful conspiracies and cults are caught. Ample evidence exists of effective major conspiracies lasting for years. Take for example the thousands of Nazi SS men and their families who evaded advancing Allied Forces in 1945 and slipped out of Germany. An international criminal conspiracy codenamed ODESSA operated sophisticated prearranged networks in which plastic surgeons altered appearances, sympathetic bankers transferred funds, and black-market financiers made arrangements for transportation-from camels to submarines. For more than ten years, secret contacts in dozens of countries were kept in place. Many SS arrived in South America with substantive assets. Support networks provided those less fortunate with jobs and papers. Most of the SS avoided recognition and prosecution. ODESSA went undetected for years. Even more successful, however, was the former Soviet Union's international communist-cell network. Their seventy-year existence provides a very compelling argument illustrating how ideological fervor can serve the successful conspirator. During that period, cells often functioned as a support system for Soviet State Security (KGB) and Red Army Intelligence (GRU) operations. Over many decades, Soviet intelligence was able to infiltrate every agency in the West, including British MI5 and Ml6, the OSS, and later the CIA, and possibly even the Israeli Mossad. Soviet surrogates in Romania, Bulgaria, Cuba, the Middle East, and Africa extended the GRU/KGB's lethal reach. GRU/KGB operatives were able to penetrate nearly every level of American society and government, craftily eluding the FBI. Their considerable success in committing unsolved murders and promoting and funding elaborate terrorist networks both in Europe and the United States was a matter of professional pride. Arab terrorist organizations like Hezbollah (Party of God) and Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) have filled the Middle East power vacuum left by the demise of the Soviet empire and the resultant weakening of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization). Intelligence reports confirm that Iran has set up training camps in conjunction with Libya and several other sub-Saharan countries. These organizations are testimony to the reality that international political/religious conspiracies are alive and doing well. Friends of Freud Conspiracy Not all conspiracies are dramatic, and some appear silly when viewed through the lens of history. One classic example of this was a quasi-secret-society cum psychoanalytic conspiracy formulated by Sandor Ferenczi and the esteemed Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, which was sometimes called a cult in its stormy beginnings, was marked with all the stretch marks created by oversized egos and swollen heads. Martin Stanton's book Sandor Ferenczi describes how this little-known cult-of-the-elite conspiracy started, flourished, and died. During a meeting of the Second Psychoanalytical Congress at Nuremberg, Dr. Sandor Ferenczi, a Hungarian psychoanalyst who trained under Freud, "proposes the foundation of the International Psycho-Analytical Association, the IPA." This meeting breaks up with shouting and fist-waving. Freud then "gate-crashes" an impromptu protest meeting, only to resign as president of the Vienna society "to make way for Adler." Freud, however, writes Ferenczi that the "tactlessness and unpleasant behavior of Adler and Stekel make it difficult to get along together." Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Stekel were prominent and respected Viennese psychiatrists. Professional acrimony continues, and in 1911 everybody resigns from the society. More problems over the editorship of the society's journal create even greater divisions. Ferenczi proposes that a "secret committee" be formed within the society to "monitor psychoanalytic developments and prevent future division." Freud agrees. Composed of Ernest Jones, Otto Rank, Karl Abraham, Hanns Sachs, Anton von Freund, and Sandor Ferenczi, the international group of prestigious doctors turns itself into a corny cabal complete with secret names and rings. "Ferenczi's ring," Stanton writes, "depicts Dionysus, with highly erect penis, and two goddesses looking on admiringly." Only the outbreak of war in 1914, and the death of various members, thereafter dooms the "secret committee." Murphy's Law and Miller's Addendum In a taped interview, Jeffrey Miller, a former U.S. Special Forces Green Beret with extensive covert-operations training and experience, says that secret groups, organizations, and cults�because of secrecy�are subject to Murphy's Law. "If anything can possibly go wrong in these groups, believe me, it does, says Miller, who has worked as both a clandestine operative and an "international retrieval specialist" getting adults and children away from miscreants who take them outside the continental United States. Miller tacks on an addendum to Mr. Murphy's unrepealable law. "Conspiracies only remain hidden if no one is looking for them. Once sufficient resources are brought to bear, they are almost always revealed." According to Miller, "All human actions are detectable to anyone who is looking hard enough." Miller ought to know, he's detected and retrieved from some decidedly murderous types, people whom he refers to as "worshiping unwholesome deities." Miller cites the earlier mentioned insistence of J. Edgar Hoover that there was no such thing as "organized crime." "Hoover refused to allot any of the assets of the FBI to investigating the Mafia," Miller says. "He targeted all his resources toward uncovering Communist cells. But once the McClellan Committee began an independent investigation at the Congressional level, the entire structure and operation of the mob was eventually uncovered in great detail." When revelations surfaced, Cosa Nostra maintained its ranks to some degree, possibly because it rewarded defaulting members with death. Regrouping, it continued to function. ODESSA is another example Miller feels is a case of "see no evil." "Western intelligence agencies," Miller says, "always suspected the existence of a network of this kind, but considered it old news. All attention had quickly shifted to the Soviets at the end of World War Two. Once the state of Israel reached the point in its organization where it could devote serious intelligence resources to the investigation of Nazi war criminals, this conspiracy was also uncovered." Miller contends that only a group that "takes no action" can exist undetected indefinitely. "So-called 'sleeper agents,"' says Miller, "are an excellent example. They remain undetected, awaiting orders, but once action is involved, their detection is almost inevitable." Well-formed cellular structures, Miller points out, are an exception, but only up to the point where his addendum kicks in. "Revolutionary or terrorist cells are very hard to penetrate," Miller explains. "Presumably this is the model the purported cults have adopted. Their existence will only be noticed when law enforcement focuses on them. Cover-ups are very hard to maintain. Only one individual within the circle has to break silence." In conventional sequences, according to Miller, a conspiracy can be broken by offering a wavering member "inducements which are attractive lures-money, protection, the ability to 'get revenge."' "My take on the cult phenomenon," says Miller, "is that like all conspiracies, their very nature has to be political. Somewhere in the hierarchy it's likely you'd find power struggles, disenchanted middle management, even unexpected episodes of conscience. "This is one hypothesis that would account for the coming forward of some apostate cult survivors," he adds. Miller is quick to point out that he is not familiar with contemporary clinical research relating to dissociation, though he says that the phenomenon has been common knowledge in the intelligence community for years. Program, Program! Using programmed dissociation to create the perfect covert operative has apparently been the focus of a number of highly secret government-sponsored research projects. Though variously attributed to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), little is actually known about their results. Since the CIA is blamed for everything, such allegations must be weighed accordingly. Other agencies, including the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency), and NSA (National Security Agency), have also conducted psychological research programs. With increasing regularity in recent years, conspiracy theory authors are maintaining that intelligence agencies have connections to Christian cults, pedophile rings, and satanic cults. Most of these claims center around the top-secret project-MKULTRA, pronounced M. K. ULTRA-that was supposedly terminated in the 1970s. Project MKULTRA was originally conceived as a research program aimed at identifying a drug that would alter human behavior. Fueled by Korean War POWs' revelations of Communist China's "brainwashing" techniques, agents saw science and pharmacology as a potential shortcut to the traditional techniques of pain/humiliation/deprivation/indoctrination used by the Communists. The objective was to create the ultimate covert operative, a person incapable of feeling pain under battlefield conditions. Allen Dulles, director of the CIA during the 1950s, approved the program at Richard Helms's urging. Helms would himself later become CIA director. Both the U.S. Army and the CIA participated in the program. LSD was used during the 1950s on unsuspecting servicemen and civilians in what is best described as a "mad scientist" approach. So negative were the results that they ended in a series of lawsuits against the Department of Defense. Unthinkable as these cases seem, they were real. In his 1976 book The Control of Candy Jones, Donald Bain cites how hypnosis was used to transform a USO performer into a CIA courier. Costs to the American taxpayers to settle lawsuits out of court proved very high. Under President Gerald Ford, CIA director George Bush was ordered to disband MKULTRA. But did he? There has been speculation that instead of dumping MKULTRA, the program was simply camouflaged and continues to exist. The rumor is unconfirmable, but claims keep arising about government-sponsored mind-control projects. One journalist who investigated these claims met with a mysterious death. Mark Phillips, for example, a shadowy figure who says he was a former CIA contract employee, alleges that high government officials, including U.S. congressmen, senators, whitehouse staffers, and even presidents and vice-presidents of both parties, have participated in shocking behavior. Calls to CIA headquarters in Virginia failed to produce any confirmation of Phillips' claimed status, but in fairness to Phillips, it must also be noted that the CIA doesn't give out this information on request. Phillips claims he is a "certified hypnotherapist," and his card reads Mark E. Phillips, Ct. H. In his printed material, however, his certification is never mentioned. Calls to his telephone number to confirm the nature of his certification have gone unanswered. In his photocopied writings, Phillips says: "My knowledge is based in large on a significant degree of personal experience in the field of MPD research combined with my previous exposure to massive private and military experimentation." What that "exposure" is, Phillips refuses to say, claiming in his lectures that he signed a pledge never to reveal any specifics about his top-secret functions. In another section he writes: "Because I am considered only an unlicensed therapist/deprogrammer the survivors would most likely not be declared incompetent." Addressing an additional inconsistency in Phillips' background, Jeff Miller points to a document in which Phillips says: Hence the reason I, for one, a former advert ising/marketing executive (aviation and tourism), chose to abandon my career to give something back to humanity, a learned knowledge that it seems few people in the private professional sector posess. "Why wouldn't MPD-treating professionals like Bennett Braun and Colin Ross be hiring him if he has all the answers?" says Miller. Just who is Phillips and where did he get his information? Civia Tamarkin, a former special correspondent for People magazine who is now writing her own book on ritual abuse, says sources have led her to think he may have an "entertainment background, like a stage hypnotist." Tamarkin says she was suspicious of his authenticity because "When I first spoke with them [Phillips and Cathy O'Brien, his companion], they claimed they were flat broke ... At that point he kept telling me that he'd integrated her [Cathy O'Brien]." According to Dr. Pamela A. Reagor, Phillips' claim to having "totally integrated" Cathy O'Brien through techniques he learned during his association with secret government projects, and without the use of licensed physicians, or psychologists, smacks of exaggeration. His contention that he "purposely" kept her out of professional treatment in order to avoid the "non compos mentis" provisions of the law, which, were she diagnosed as dissociatively disordered, would make her "legally insane, is not based on fact. Non compos mentis laws-literally "not mentally competent"�serve a different legal function. Nor is multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder (DID), the newer term, generally considered "insanity" by psychiatrists or psychologists. Tamarkin says "Phillips' role has evolved over the years," gaining importance. His narrative inconsistencies would tend to confirm her observation, especially as the couple now makes their living from hit-and-run lecturing and "deprogramming." Phillips maintains that Nazis adopted and modified ancient occult mind-control techniques. After the war both the Soviets and the allies scrambled to pick up Hitler's psychological warfare and mind-control specialists. Elements supporting this Nazi-occultic theory can be found in Peter McAlpine's The Occult Technology of Power and Trevor Ravenscroft's Spear of Destiny. But how much of Phillips' story is true has yet to be confirmed. According to Phillips, certain intelligence agencies were able to enroll these doctors and technicians. He claimed, during a May 29, 1992, seminar in California, that, as a former executive of Capitol International Airways, he was aware that a number were brought into the country through Niagara. "Nobody," says Phillips, "kept the mind-control stuff secret. They went home and tried it out on their kids." Phillips' mind-control information did not originate with him. Mind control as a concept has been in the popular press since the novel The Manchurian Candidate was published in 1958�and later made into a film. In Search for the Manchurian Candidate, the author, John Marks, elaborates on the techniques of mind control. At least six other books deal with the subject of MKULTRA and government mind control. Accompanied by Cathy O'Brien, Phillips has been giving ad hoc seminars and distributing photocopied self-published manuscripts. O'Brien claims in writing that Michael Aquino, mentioned in Part 1, was responsible in part for her dissociative programming. In a six-page document dated June 1992, O'Brien asserts that she had witnessed Aquino, who was wearing magical robes, perform a human sacrifice on a Cuban. According to her written statement, she was in the company of a U.S. Senator whom she names. O'Brien links her activities as a "Project Monarch mindcontrol -programmed MPD" who ran drugs and couriered information. She says that the occult trappings and satanic overtones other survivors speak of are simply ruses. They have nothing to do with the objectives of those who are using mind control. In their defense, Phillips and O'Brien do mention littleknown types of sophisticated programming, including medical programming that Phillips designates as "military" programming, hang-programming, spin-programming, and programming built around popular films. O'Brien says she "endured three years of conditioning by [a] 'lower level' occult serial killer/musician." "After six ritual abortions, cannibalized by [him], I gave birth to my daughter," notes O'Brien. Phillips and O'Brien make plaintive requests for financial support to treat her teenaged daughter. O'Brien says her child was diagnosed as dissociatively disordered and can only be treated by Dr. Bennett Braun, and is enmeshed in "a bureaucratic quagmire funding dilemma that has locked her into an ignorant/corrupt state mental health system." Dr. Braun, however, dismisses the idea that only he can treat her daughter. Other documents detail abuses at the hands of lesser-known public figures associated with the country music industry. At this time there is no way to assess the validity of these allegations. Proving or disproving O'Brien's assertions about high-level political figures is probably impossible. White House logs might confirm her contention that she had been inside the presidential mansion, but only if it was under her own name. Certainly none of the well-known politicians she claims abused her would confirm such allegations. In the event her stories are false, they are libelous. If they are true, however, without substantive proof it becomes her word against those of some of the most powerful people in the world. Nevertheless, the concept of mind control is not a new one. Dissociation in the service of conspiracy would obviously be a powerful tool. "Illuminated" Conspiracies Most conspiracies that start out secretly end up being revealed. These would include modern organized crime networks with ancient roots such as the Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, and the even older Chinese Triads operating out of Hong Kong. Military coups are conspiracies. Typically there are several each year in Africa and South and Central America. In a curious aside, even long-dead conspiracies, or conspiracies that never existed in a functional sense, are kept alive in the active literature of the occult underground. Case in point: the illuminati, a short-lived secret Masonic-mystery lodge, one of the most glamorous of all supposedly ongoing conspiracies. Founded by Adam Weishaupt, first a student, then a young law professor at the University of Ingolstadt, Bavaria, in 1776, Illuminati influence is one of those debated points of history. The group had as an ideal the establishment of an "illuminated" group of leaders steeped in the humanistic traditions of the Enlightenment. Freemasonry was the backbone of an emerging bourgeois intellectual culture on the continent. Illuminist doctrine was supposed to start first by the attainment of high Masonic degrees. Jonathan Vankin describes the Illuminati in his book Conspiracies, Cover-ups, and Crimes as "not a breakaway from the Freemasons, but a secret order above the Masons." In The Secret Societies, Charles William Heckethorn notes that various sects have adopted this name. Some came before the Ingolstadt group, such as the Alombrados of Spain in the late sixteenth century. Others, including the Guerinets, founded in France in 1654, came later. A Belgian group operated in the nineteenth century. Under Weishaupt, the Illuminati were reputed to have plotted the infiltration of every major European government. France's revolution came and went, with only the suggestion that the Comte de Mirabeau may have been an Illuminist. Weishaupt's Illuminati were primarily from the aristocracy. Their lodges were reputed to be sequestered on grand estates. Here they performed their elaborate rites, reportedly involving baths in "human" blood and the calling forth of "specters." All, of course, in the most luxurious surroundings, and attended by the select of European society. With Victorian rectitude Heckethorn notes: No doubt all this sounds very horrible, and is very incredible. But as to the horrors, they were simply theatrical; and as to the credibility, writers near the time when these horrors were said to have been practiced seriously believed in them! ... The Marquis de Jouffroi, in his Dictionary of Social Errors, positively asserts that the meetings at Ermenonville were scenes of the grossest debauchery. Why should we doubt that they also were occasions for all sorts of ridiculous absurdities? Books written on the Illuminati would overflow a six-by-eight-foot bookcase, but their actual impact is uncertain. This may account for the fact that even though conventional histories don't document the sacrifice of a single chicken, or attribute to the Illuminists the toppling of a single government, the eternal suspicion persists. If they did it in secret, who'd ever know? Defaulting to Death Asserting, as some scholars and historians do, that conspiracies don't exist negates the obvious. While the hidden hands of conspiracy may not direct the course of history, on occasion they've given governments a precipitous shove. History is replete with both successful and unsuccessful conspiracies. Successful conspiracies, however, are usually renamed, and become political parties. Conspiracy theories of history�the concept that small groups of highly motivated individuals, acting in secret concert for economic, religious, or political gain, have directed and continue to direct the course of history�are given little scholarly credence. But on occasion, and for varied lengths of time, such conspiracies have occurred�and continue to occur. To deny or dismiss this is to take an ostrich's view of human nature and history. Contemporary organized terrorist groups certainly fit almost anyone's definition as essentially evil in their disregard for human life�no matter what the rationale for their religious or political aims. Who traffics in conspiracies that consort with evil and deal in human lives? They have been found at every social and economic level of every human society. That they offer a threat to individuals would seem obvious, and now and then they have succeeded in threatening society at large. Terrorists claim they act out of powerlessness. The societies from which they spring offer no access to their calcified political systems, no entre to participate in the political process. Religion, mixed with political terror, has proven to be a very explosive force. George Eaton Simpson notes that "taking part in the activities of a cult or sect provides emotional support for members who are forced to live in a world that they often perceive as hostile. At the same time, they compete for position within their religious group." Experienced observers, such as Jeffrey Miller, caution that we would do well to be aware of those who can't be seen, whose wealth makes them invisible, who hold and wield great economic power, and exist in a realm often beyond the ethical, moral, and legal reach of the societies they live in. "Rarely," says Miller, "do the police, or anybody else, come knocking on their doors." Miller knows from recent first-hand experience. Leading a team, he assessed the possibility of "liberating" the child of an American woman who had been married to a reputed Central American drug lord. Her former husband, using his private jet, had kidnapped the child in violation of a U.S. judge's custody order. Once home, he surrounded her with a team of bodyguards armed with automatic weapons. After weeks of surveillance, Miller had to admit defeat. The rescue attempt could prove fatal to the child. "He's a law unto himself," Miller says, "and feared at the highest levels of government in [his country]. He has all the right connections, and makes all the right payoffs." Commanding their own aircraft, ships, communications and security, people like this are insulated�capable of doing as they please. Temptations attendant to this kind of power are occasionally linked to insatiable and terrifying appetites, and bizarre activities can be carried on at a level difficult for the ordinary person to comprehend. For those who wield this kind of power, conspiracy is part and parcel of the normal course of business, and of life. They make and break their own rules. But sometimes they also make fatal mistakes. Only then do we see them. They are, indeed, the abberations. pps.201-221 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
