-Caveat Lector-
CIRCLE OF POWER
Perhaps more sinister, and certainly more shadowy than the Bilderbergers, the
"Pinay Cercle" is an "Atlanticist" right-wing organisation of serving and
retired intelligence operatives, military officers and politicians that
conspired to "affect" changes in government. Amongst other things they claim
credit for engineering the election of Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and may
have been behind the ousting of Australias Gough Whitlam.
By David Guyatt
Now almost forgotten, the decade of the "Seventies" was a time of immense
political upheaval, dirty tricks and incessant rumours of right-wing military
Coup detats in leading western democracies. Amongst the long list of
resulting casualties of this "decade of tension" were Britains Prime
Ministers: Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, Australias Gough Whitlam, Swedens
Olaf Palme, Americas Jimmy Carter and Frances Francois Mitterand. The more
southern flanks of Natos European axis: Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Greece
converted rumour into chilling fact via the steel-blue glaze of gun-barrels.
Italy, home of Pizza, the Pope, and Propaganda Due (P2) came in for its own
brand of political fixit, courtesy of Uncle Sams very own CIA.
As the decade of the "eighties" slowly slipped above the now less than pink
eastern horizon, right-wing beneficiaries of a co-ordinated international
destabilisation programme gave their heart-felt thanks. Among them were
Britains Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher - Madonna of the Armaments industry -
and Americas less brittle, and considerably less acute, Ronald Reagan -
humble originator of the mega-tax-buck-swallowing SDI "Star Wars" programme
and also, thus, a valued friend of the boys at Guns R Us International.
These two decades saw a proliferation of right-wing, quasi official and
secretive groups that co-ordinated intelligence, propaganda and undertook
covert black-operations around the globe. One of the most shadowy of all is
the "Pinay Cercle", named after its founder Antoine Pinay, Premier of France
in 1951. Known more simply as "Le Cercle" it is recognised as a more
clandestine sister organisation to the already very secretive Bilderberg
Group1 - a "behind-the-scenes invisible influence" network.
Both groups share a familiar membership which includes Henry Kissinger,
Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockerfeller. Each of these three luminaries of
the international power network are, in addition to the foregoing,
influential members of The Trilateral Commission and the Council for Foreign
Relations as well as being regular attendees at Britains "Chatham House" -
The Royal Institute of International Studies - shadowy twin to Americas CFR.
Antoine Pinay was extremely influential in Europe and the United States,
where he had forged links with President Nixon. Pinay attended the Bilderberg
inaugural meeting in Oosterbeek, Holland during May 1952. By 1969, Pinay
together with Jean Violet, a Lawyer working for the French Intelligence
Service SDECE, and Archduke Otto von Habsburg, heir to the Austrian throne,
formed Le Cercle, and secretly began recruiting men of influence as members.
The intention was to shift the political climate of Europe to the far right
via a secretly financed campaign of propaganda, and to establish a private
intelligence service that would work, unofficially, with the existing
security apparatus of the west. Author Stephen Dorrill also believes there
are serpentine inter-connections between Le Cercle and the Gladio network, a
"stay-behind anti communist" military guerrilla force set up by Natos
Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) during the "fifties", that
was largely composed of ex Nazis.
Le Cercle has a different flavour to Bilderberg, however. The latter is an
important link to the overt "influence" organisations cited above and almost
certainly focuses its efforts on the broader political issues, being careful
to keep well-away from "direct actions". Le Cercle has a much more "hands on"
role. Interestingly, its membership is more heavily composed of serving or
former members of various Intelligence Services, senior military officers as
well as politicians, bankers and VIPs with right wing connections. The
"Cercle" was unknown until 1500 internal documents of the rightist (and Le
Cercle funded) Institute for the Study of Conflict, were leaked to Time Out
Magazine in 1975. Subsequently the documents have gone missing. At the time
ISC was headed by CIA agent and "Cercle" Chairman, Brian Crozier who was
heavily involved in another covert action group known simply as "The 61."
Unknown to Crozier, Hans von Machtenburg (a pseudonym) a senior intelligence
official of Germanys Intelligence service, BND, (and a member of Croziers
"61") had been exchanging full reports on Croziers secret get-togethers
with Hans Langemann, formerly a senior ranking officer of Germanys
Intelligence Service, the BND and latterly Head of Bavarian State Security.
In a
