CISPES

CISPES

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<a href="https://antifascistnews.net/tag/fred-trump/">https://antifascistnews.net/tag/fred-trump/</a>

<a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2016/03/01/donald-trumps-kkk-connection-runs-deeper-thank-you-think/" rel="bookmark" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">DONALD TRUMP’S KKK CONNECTION RUNS DEEPER THAN YOU THINK ... As the media pundits expect Donald Trump to clean up on tonight’s Super Tuesday run, Trump’s recent response to the endorsement of David Duke is getting more headlines than his usual racist antics.  Duke recently put forward a formal announcement, stating that if you care about your “race” then you are “required” to vote for Trump.  Duke is one of the best known white nationalists in the world, formerly becoming state representative in Louisiana before running for Governor, and almost winning with 55% of the state’s white vote.  Duke is one of the few open racists to see any electoral success into the 1990s, where he continued to support his past KKK and neo-Nazi affiliations, deny the Holocaust, argue for racial differences in intelligence, and run his organization, the National Association for the Advancement of White People.</a>

Duke is only one on the long list of white nationalist endorsements.  Recent, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance <a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2016/01/21/white-nationalist-american-freedom-party-running-donald-trump-super-pac/" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">voiced a robocall</a> in support of Trump in Iowa, which was funded by the nationalist <a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2016/02/10/the-white-genocide-hustle-the-american-freedom-party-runs-bob-whitaker-for-president/" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">American Freedom Party</a>.  The Radix Journal, <a href="https://antifascistnews.net/2015/08/20/the-white-stuff-an-open-letter-to-the-right-stuff-and-the-daily-shoa/" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Right Stuff,</a>Counter-Currents Publishing, Occidental Dissent, The Daily Stormer, and many more have jumped behind Trump, using his open nativist rhetoric as the mainstreaming of their own racism.  Every one of these organizations have shared membership with various incarnations of the KKK, drawing them straight to Trump, yet Donald’s KKK connections move even beyond that.

After Duke’s endorsement, Trump was cornered on CNN and asked to denounce Duke and the Ku Klux Klan.

I don’t know anything about David Duke. I don’t know what you’re even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacist. I don’t know. I don’t know, did he endorse me, or what’s going on?

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<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/donald-trump-white-supremacists/" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trump later said that he had a “bad earpiece,”</a> but in reality he was refusing to denounce a base that has thrown more resources than expected at him.  While he may play ignorance, he actually knows exactly who David Duke is and where his politics come from.

In a 2000 report by ABC News, Donald Trump was interviewed about the Reform Party and its connections to the paleoconservative and racist right-wing.

As you know, the Reform Party has got some pretty big problems.  Not the least of which is Pat Buchanan, David Duke, Fulani, and it’s a problem.

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He then went on to bring up the same reference with the New York Times discussing the relationship between the Reform Party and the New York Independence Party.

Although I am totally comfortable with the people in the New York Independence Party, I leave the Reform Party to David Duke, Pat Buchanan, and Lenora Fulani.  That is not company I wish to keep.

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It is difficult for Donald to now claim that he knows nothing about David Duke, and therefore will not condemn him as the Anti-Defamation League has requested.  He was endorsed by Duke quite a while ago actually, and when he originally found out he smiled and joked “I even got endorsed by that KKK guy.”

Trump’s connections to the KKK actually go much deeper into his family tree, which is a politic that we have seen played out in his new public persona.  Fred Trump, Donald’s millionaire father, has been well known for his work with the New York KKK.  He was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens in 1927.  The arrest was a part of a 1,000-person racial brawl that came after a rally intended to restore the “Native-born Protestant Americans” to New York City.  This was in line with the deep anti-Catholic views of the New York KKK of the period, which also said the police were mainly made up of Roman Catholics.  The flier that they were handing out for the event read:

Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,” the flier stated, “when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.

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The language of this flier seems awfully familiar given Trump’s recent rhetoric about Latino/a and Muslim Immigrants.

<a href="https://itsgoingdown.org/trumpism-pt-2-american-fascist/" style=" font-weight: inherit; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Fred Trump went on to “jumpstart” the campaign of arch-racist Barry Goldwater, where they also got backing from the John Birch Society</a>.  With influence from Roy Cohn, Goldwater went on to develop what was later called the “Southern Strategy,” which plays on Southern racism using “dog whistle” terms to signal to the base.  Cohn went on to become Trump’s “mentor,” and helped him to countersue a group that was suing him for discrimination against African Americans in his business.   Cohn eventually introduced him to Roger Stone, a man who has walked the line between the right-wing of the GOP and Libertarian Party and openly racialist, nativist, and white nationalist movements.

Since Donald’s recent misstep on CNN, he has been roundly denounced, even by the GOP establishment.  Joe Scarborough has dropped him entirely with disgust, and Paul Ryan decided to speak up publicly in a press statement.

There has been a lot of talk in the last 24 hours about one of our presidential candidates and his seeming ambivalence about David Duke and the KKK, so let me make it perfectly clear.  That is not the view of Republicans who have been elected to the United States Senate, and I condemn his views in the most forceful way….If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people’s prejudices. We appeal to their highest ideals. This is the party of Lincoln…his is fundamental. And if someone wants to be our nominee, they must understand this. I hope this is the last time I need to speak out on this race.

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Neither of these men are the bastion of progressive values, so their disgust is a good sign of how far outside of any conventional discourse Donald Trump has become.  With the recent <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-klan-rally-in-anaheim-erupts-in-violence-one-man-stabbed-20160227-story.html" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">violent stabbing of anti-fascist protesters in Anaheim by California by KKK members</a>, few are willing to accept this tacit support for the KKK that Trump has given.

David Duke has gone to Twitter to continue to support Trump openly, decrying the “corporate media” for distorting his views and libeling Trump.  Donald himself has recently given a speech that his presidency would further criminalize libel, a journalistic dishonesty that is already illegal.  He may have trouble understanding that the reporting on him has actually been straight forward, yet he will not accept that he simply does not look good after ranting and raving on stage.

As votes are being cast today, we are about to learn a lot about what American whites are willing to accept to protect their last vestiges of privilege.  Anti-racist author <a href="http://www.timwise.org/2016/01/tim-wise-on-the-david-pakman-show-donald-trump-and-the-politics-of-racial-scapegoating-1716/" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tim Wise</a> started his career with an organization fighting David Duke’s two political runs in Louisiana.  After Duke got more than half of the white vote even though the media coverage clearly revealed his open racial politics, Wise said that he had to reckon with what was happening to whites.  He labeled this turn “Dukism,” the ability for these whites to overlook his Nazism.  Anti-fascist writer Alexander Reid Ross has given the current period <a href="https://itsgoingdown.org/trumpism-pt-1-trump-the-populist/" style=" border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Trumpism</a>, and has a similar pattern to both David Duke and Pat Buchanan, two people that Trump had previously condemned.  In periods of crisis and strife, working class whites are presented with a choice on how they will deal with the country’s future.

Hopefully, this is not the choice they will make.

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<div>https://itsgoingdown.org/trumpism-pt-2-american-fascist/</div>

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On a fast-pace, FOX News talk show discussing the recent beating of a Black Lives Matter protestor at a Trump rally, the presidential hopeful phoned in with an ambivalent tone. First contemplating the host’s term “roughed up,” the Don returned to the notion with more effrontery: “<a href="http://www.vox.com/2015/11/22/9778330/trump-protester-rally-violent" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">maybe he should’a been roughed up</a>.”

Activists around the world signaled despair at the thought that the local violence against a Black Lives Matter protestor would translate to open season against protestors across the US. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it did, in Minneapolis, where white supremacists fired on a peaceful gathering of Black Lives Matter demonstrators, sending five to the hospital. According to reports, before they fired the shots, the culprits yelled, “<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjlo7uD66_JAhVM9GMKHSihBI4QqQIIITAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fheavy.com%2Fnews%2F2015%2F11%2Fminneapolis-jamar-clark-4th-police-precinct-protests-shooting-shots-fired-white-supremacists-victims-suspects-injuries-photos-video-black-lives-matter%2F&usg=AFQjCNHKsjHMvIWcDBdmwSnN-HU4X6vBhA&sig2=3SWWiiN5e0eSEFJwQalCEA" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Race war and Trump 2016!</a>” Trump’s parallel non-response came in the form of a tweet—a meme with false information about “black-on-white crime” <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjlo7uD66_JAhVM9GMKHSihBI4QqQIIHzAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenation.com%2Farticle%2Fblack-lives-matter-activists-shot-while-trump-busy-sharing-neo-nazi-graphic-on-twitter%2F&usg=AFQjCNELgRsLVrsdi1z41-stjj8rZokKuw&sig2=FQRJRqpmIDWHqhAWRjUTjw" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">traceable to a neo-Nazi handle</a>.

Despite the fact that even mainstream media sites and <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/politics/donald-trump-fascism/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">even conservative commentators</a> have begun to note the proximities between Trump’s ideology and fascism, some more academic commentators still seem to be on the fence. <a href="http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2015/10/on-trump-fascism-and-stale-social.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">One article states that</a> describing Trump as a fascist “obscures the fact that Trump’s demagogic hate-mongering is deeply rooted in mainstream U.S. politics.” Some have even gone <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">as far back as the 19</a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"><span style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;">th</a><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/26/the-trump-phenomenon-and-the-european-populist-radical-right/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;"> Century “Know Nothings”</a> to identify Trump’s style.

We have seen Trump’s recent statements to the effect of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/20/opinions/obeidallah-trump-anti-muslim/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">issuing special IDs</a> (perhaps badges?) to Muslims in the US and <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-shut-mosques-u-s-elected-article-1.2405975" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">shutting down “certain” Mosques</a> reflected in the opportunism of Republicans refusing Syrian refugees. Both seemed to land symbolically too close to the anniversary of the US’s rejection of the St. Louis carrying Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany, with the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/holocaust-museum-syrian-refugees_564f10ede4b0d4093a573793" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">US Holocaust Museum pointedly condemning</a> the treatment of Syrian refugees. We could further note that, according to his ex-wife, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Trump used to read from a book of Hitler’s speeches, </a><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">My New Order</a>, kept in a cabinet near his bedside. There are also reports that when he visits, Trump’s cousin <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">“clicks his heels and says, ‘Heil Hitler.”</a>

While it is very useful to observe racist tendencies in the US and Europe before fascism (and even alongside it), I would argue for an alternative viewpoint. Returning to the 19<span style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; height: 0px; line-height: 0; position: relative; bottom: 1ex;">th Century is provocative, but we would do well to identify the important influence fascism has had on the US (and vice-versa) not just as a detail, but as a significant milestone. Trump’s chatter belongs just as much in the fictional Hotel Wessex at the opening of of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 warning of American fascism, It Can’t Happen Here, as it does in his own mega-hotels.

All in the Family

As is well-known, the Don’s father, Fred Trump, <a href="http://www.inquisitr.com/2411565/donald-trumps-fathers-kkk-ties-fred-trump-named-in-1927-klan-members-clash-with-police/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">likely took part in the Klan’s militant street activity during the 1920s</a>, which many would suggest represents a simple, US-American phenomenon. In fact, the Klan had heavy cross over with the American Legion, the leader of which announced in 1923, “<a href="http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n3p6_weber.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Do not forget that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to the United States</a>” (don’t worry, we won’t). Just over a decade later, the Klan would join a united paramilitary organization called the Storm Troops with the corporate-funded Silver Shirts, the German American Bund (the Nazi Party in the US at the time), the Black Legion, and other racist neo-fascist groups. While the Klan is distinctly US-originated, by the end of the 1930s, they were intertwined with the US’s homegrown Nazis, and by the 1970s were inextricably united with David Duke’s brand of neo-fascism.

It wasn’t just the Klan, though. In 1976, correspondence between J Edgar Hoover and his “<a href="http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/F%20Disk/FBI/FBI%20Nazis%20World%20War%20II/Item%2001.pdf" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">pen-pal</a>” Nazis running Interpol during the late-1930s emerged, showing that Hoover’s autographed picture hung on the wall of Interpol’s offices in Nazi Berlin, and he remained on good terms with Nazi high officials until three days before Pearl Harbor. He became Interpol vice president in 1946, and refused to use his power to incarcerate Nazis war criminals on the run. Instead, through the State Department, the OSS, and FBI, the US <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">brought Nazi scientists to the US</a>, and helped coordinate the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratlines_(World_War_II_aftermath)" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">escape</a> of numerous high ranking Nazis. To view neo-fascism as foreign to US groups like the Klan and neo-Confederate organizations is to ignore how it was absorbed in this country and to what utility.

The Klan has never been the sole or even principle point of intersection for US fascism; formal, official Americanism has always been the lynchpin. During the 1920s, the US’s great industrial and finance moguls, from Hearst, Ford, Du Pont, and GM to the house of JP Morgan, Jr., went fascist, and big business groups like the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), a leading purveyor of Americanist propaganda, joined them. In 1923, after Mussolini’s March on Rome, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=sWB9BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=extreme+leader,+not+only+converted+by+the+lightning+stroke+of+intelligence+and+falling+from+his+error+like+Saul+of+Tarsus+from+his+horse,+but+leading+through+the+streets+of+a+reunited+country+a+great+body+of+citizens&source=bl&ots=rTTT5OrUUR&sig=2gHsfQVIaYHUrLoWoKQhMk3InZc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE07Xt2a_JAhVW2mMKHT8kDJAQ6AEIIDAA#v=onepage&q=extreme%20leader%2C%20not%20only%20converted%20by%20the%20lightning%20stroke%20of%20intelligence%20and%20falling%20from%20his%20error%20like%20Saul%20of%20Tarsus%20from%20his%20horse%2C%20but%20leading%20through%20the%20streets%20of%20a%20reunited%20country%20a%20great%20body%20of%20citizens&f=false" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">the counsel of NAM delivered a speech</a> to their convention called il Duce an “extreme leader, not only converted by the lightning stroke of intelligence and falling from his error like Saul of Tarsus from his horse, but leading through the streets of a reunited country a great body of citizens,” liberating Italy from “the blighting hand of radical socialism.”

Along with the NAM, the America First Committee, founded by publishing magnate Henry Regnery, warned that intervention in WWII would be traumatic to the US’s small and medium-sized manufacturers, insisting that the US maintain neutrality. One of NAM’s most well-regarded propagandists was a columnist named George Sokolsky, who famous anti-fascist journalist George Seldes aptly called an “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=N_LbUSH0N1sC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=seldes+%E2%80%9Cagent+%5Bof%5D+fascist+%5Binterests%5D.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=L110zfrL_N&sig=G34HIPefm51e93deKriM7QKSeao&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwibheSJ2q_JAhVH4WMKHcfDCo8Q6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q=seldes%20“agent%20%5Bof%5D%20fascist%20%5Binterests%5D.”&f=false" style=" font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">agent [of] fascist [interests]</a>.” By the time the US entered the War, the NAM had abandoned its pro-fascist position, but it maintained the same spirit and ideology, shifting the focus to anti-communism.

While the American Legion’s Americanist Committee spurred the anti-communist movement toward McCarthy’s show trials, Sokolsky played the part of “<a href="https://archive.org/stream/investigationofs0156unit/investigationofs0156unit_djvu.txt" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">clearance man</a>” for an “American Fascisti” that now enforced the Black List in Hollywood. Senator McCarthy attempted to stay clear of associations with fascism. However, by 1948, McCarthy’s awkward enthusiasm for the liberation of German POWs had become impossible to hide, as he dove into the Malmedy war crimes case along with Regnery and Rudolf Aschenauer, a high ranking official of the Socialist Reich’s Party (the heir of the Nazi Party), which helped to derail denazification in Europe.

McCarthy also developed a relationship with the well-known fascist agent Francis Parker Yockey on his trips to Germany, according to the latter’s friend John Anthony Gannon, and a letter obtained by the FBI, penned in 1952, reveals that McCarthy went so far as to ask Yockey to ghost write a speech for him. The manuscript, “America’s Two Ways of Waging War,” also intercepted by the FBI, concludes in the following fashion: “We shall liberate our land from the domination of traitors and then, by the help of the Almighty God, we shall restore the word America to its old meaning in the world before all nations. By the deluge of our votes, by the irresistible storm of our organized protest, we shall sweep America clear of its inner enemies and onward to its God-given Destiny.”

Yockey’s tailor-made mission to make America great again was likely going to be unfurled at a rally planned later that year for which McCarthy was a keynote, hosted by the fascist successor to the German American Bund and “floor managed” by infamous Nazi H. Keith Thompson. After negative press in The Daily Compass and The New York Post, McCarthy pulled out.

<a id="socialHighlighted2" name="socialHighlighted2" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </a><a id="socialHighlighted2" name="socialHighlighted2" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps partly as a form of PR, McCarthey enlisted a hot, young, Jewish columnist and lawyer named Roy Cohn as his chief prosecutor for the Red Scare. After illegally convincing judge Irving Kaufman to hand down sentences of execution to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg while acting as a prosecutor in the notorious anti-communist espionage case, Cohn found his way to McCarthy through Sokolsky, who he considered his father figure. One of the more well-funded circles that Cohn gained credibility by </a><a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1988-04-10/books/bk-1279_1_roy-cohn/3" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">helping to establish</a> was the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), an anti-communist youth group notorious for singing <a href="http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/51926" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">fascist hymns</a>.

<span style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit;"><a id="socialHighlighted1" name="socialHighlighted1" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> </a><a id="socialHighlighted1" name="socialHighlighted1" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> In the aftermath, McCarthy would drink himself into a death spiral, and some of the leadership of the NAM, including leader James O Welch, moved on to spearhead the John Birch Society, which amassed a sizable constituency of fascists, masking their anti-Semitism in cryptic anti-communist conspiracy theories. In the words of Chip Berlet and Matthew Lyons’s impeccable book, </a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Right-Wing-Populism-America-Close-Comfort/dp/1572305622" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Right Wing Populism in America</a>, “it was at the NAM, during the height of the Red Menace hysteria, that Welch honed his Americanist philosophy.” In 1964, the Birchers threw most of their influence behind Barry Goldwater, whose campaign was <a href="http://krpoliticaljunkie.com/episode-89/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">jumpstarted</a> by a German émigré turned New York real estate entrepreneur named Fred Trump.

Although even Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan felt that Goldwater went too far at times, his campaign established “the Southern strategy.” Like Cohn and Sokolsky, the Birchers and Goldwater shared what Cohn’s biographer von Hoffman calls, somewhat tepidly, an “apparent willingness to accommodate himself to European fascism.” As time went on, Cohn would sink into a role as one of the Birchers’ leading intelligence men along with members of La Rouche’s network in what would later become known as the Council for Inter-American Security (CIS), infamous for snooping on the Committee in Solidarity for the People of El Salvador (CISPES). By the onset of the 1970s, Cohn’s public life involved representation of mobsters, Studio 51, and a certain élite. In these circles, at a place for Manhattan high rollers called Le Club, Cohn met Fred Trump’s son, Donald.

With Roy Cohn, Down and Dirty

The two must have gotten along swimmingly, because Cohn became Trump’s mentor, guiding him through lawsuits and counter-lawsuits as his business grew. It was Cohn who told the young Don to <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/23/trump-s-mobbed-up-mccarthyite-mentor.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">countersue</a> after being charged with discriminating against black people in 1973—a policy perhaps incurred from his father’s era. Although he lost the countersuit, Trump would revolutionize his dad’s old business into a lavish, luxurious, and extremely modern enterprise. The posterboy of the highflying modernism of the 1980s, Trump outfitted his hotels and casinos with sumptuous furnishings and the latest in technology. He became a Bloom County cartoon character for some, a symbol of the “new man” of the 1980s for others. Either way, he represented a morally bankrupt class that never stepped foot on a tightrope that didn’t have a golden safety net beneath it.

During his relationship with the ne plus ultra of yuppie playboys, Cohn also insisted on a reputably conservative public profile. By the early 80s, he even claimed to reject the John Birch Society, even as he joined the advisory board of the Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence group organized by leading Birchers that openly worked with Nazis like Hitler’s unreconstructed spy chief, Reinhard Gehlen, who had been rescued from war crimes trials by the CIA’s first chief, Allen Dulles, in order to help coordinate clandestine anti-communist resistance. By the mid-1980s, Western Goals had become embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal due to the workings of the CIS, among others, which Cohn had been a part of since the 1950s. (As reported by <a href="http://www.ainfos.ca/A-Infos96/3/0020.html" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Antifa</a> in 1996, the CIS’s hierarchy included Klan and Aryan Nations collaborator Larry Pratt, who went on to co-chair Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential run, as well as Buchanan, himself, who we’ll come to later in this article.)

While up to his eyeballs in fascism, Cohn attempted to keep his conservative slate clean by fighting legal rights to gay people, although he was gay, himself, and later died of AIDS. Underneath the alleged mob links, drugs, and corruption there remained strong bonds between Trump’s mentor to the fascist-fused Americanism of the War years, brought through McCarthyism by the leadership of NAM into the John Birch Society, and further into the Western Goals Foundation.

Meet Roger Stone

This year, Trump enlisted as his campaign manager another of Cohn’s protégés, Roger Stone, who <a href="http://beforeitsnews.com/gold-and-precious-metals/2015/08/behind-the-scenes-of-the-donald-trump-roger-stone-show-2654434.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Mark Ames</a> profiles on Before It’s News: “Roger Stone is a Libertarian prankster fighting the two-party stranglehold; and Donald Trump is a right-wing populist shaking up the system because by gum, he just doesn’t care and he doesn’t need to care,” Ames writes. “That’s one, very dumb, very gullible way of putting it.” Another way of describing Roger Stone, according to Ames, is “Dick Nixon dirty trickster, fascist fan of Roy Cohn, lobbyist for some of the worst dictators in the world.”

Stone met Trump through Cohn in NYC around the 1979 Reagan campaign, but was brought into the world of politics in the early 1970s, at the age of 19, by Donald Segretti, who initiated the teenage Stone into the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Notably using American Nazi Party members to shift voters from the American Independent Party to the Democratic Party, among other dirty tricks, CREEP’s fellow members included Pat Buchanan, who once described recollections of Holocaust survivors’ as “group fantasies of martyrdom,” and G. Gordon Liddy, a bizarre man obsessed with pain tolerance and willpower who grew up with an avowed admiration for Hitler and later became ghostwriter for J. Edgar Hoover. <a href="http://mediamatters.org/research/2004/11/23/g-gordon-liddy-listening-to-hitler-made-me-feel/132337" style=" font-weight: inherit; box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Liddy would remark</a>, “at assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm.”

After Watergate, Stone linked up with notorious lobbyists Charlie Black and Terry Dolan—another publicly anti-gay but closeted gay man who died of AIDS—to found the <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=8haLsgCsae8C&lpg=PA51&pg=PA51&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">National Conservative </a><a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=8haLsgCsae8C&lpg=PA51&pg=PA51&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Political Action Committee</a> (NCPAC) as a revision of the old Barry Goldwater campaign. Both Black and Dolan were former YAFers of the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121495512615821247" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">fascist songbook</a> era.

Other than helping <a href="http://www.vice.com/read/yeah-ron-paul-is-racist-after-all-sorry" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Ron “Stormfront” Paul</a> to his first election victory in Texas, the NCPAC formed Conservatives Against Liberal Legislation (CALL, later renamed Conservatives Alliance), connected to Carto’s neo-Nazi outfit Liberty Lobby. In turn, CALL created the National Coalition for America’s Survival, which included the reincarnation of the grandaddy of them all, the America First Committee, headed up by <a href="http://www.adl.org/combating-hate/domestic-extremism-terrorism/c/backgrounder-arthur-jones-1.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/#.VjQI_hitqRs" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Art Jones, an infamous neo-Nazi</a>.

However, Stone came into his own by fixing votes. His methods were honed in New Jersey during the 1980s, where he employed a “National Ballot Security Task Force” to patrol majority-black and latino precincts while wearing what the local NAACP president described as “<a href="https://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-four/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Gestapo armbands</a>.”

Holocaust Denial and Nativism

Throughout the 1990s, Trump was Stone’s most well-known client, and his casino industry hijinks, including manipulation and sabotage of Native tribes, are infamous. In 2000, Stone <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/278vjcro.asp" style=" background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">pitted the Don against Pat Buchanan</a> for the Reform Party ticket, but the Trumpster backed out after having pointed out, ironically, that fascists were supporting Buchanan’s campaign. Later that year, Stone would become infamous for orchestrating the “Brooks Brothers Riot,” which shut down the presidential election recount in Miami-Dade, prompting New York Rep Jerald Nadler to call out “a whiff of fascism in the air.”

After riding high with Bush, Stone’s went in for a change, and he turned to the libertarians, eventually <a href="https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/gary-johnson-swindle/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">sparking a relationship with libertarian candidate Gary Johnson</a> that would involve Roy Cohn, the mafia, and the white nationalist Tanton network. Continuing forward, Stone went on a neo-fascist media hub called Red Ice Radio hosted by Hitler fan, Henrik Palmgren, to chat about Cohn and the “legitimate threat of domestic communism” during the McCarthy era. Stone’s visit came at the tale end of <a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/red-ice-radios-summer-of-anti-semitic-white-pride" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">an intense season of </a><a href="http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/red-ice-radios-summer-of-anti-semitic-white-pride" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">guests</a> such as “white man march” activist Kyle Hunt, Norse reconstructionist Stephen McNallen, and Holocaust denier Dennis Wise.

Some of Stone’s libertarian intrigues surrounded <a href="https://italkyoubored.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/roger-stone-pretty-reckless-is-going-straight-to-hell-part-nine/#ftnote303" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Scott Israel’s campaign</a> for the Sheriff’s office of Broward County. Last year, the Sheriff’s office told the South Florida Gay News it would cost nearly $400,000 to release the office’s internal homophobic emails. This year, the department faced a major scandal when four Ft. Lauderdale cops were caught regularly sending racist texts including sexualized murder fantasies and creating a promotional Klan video.

Since leaving the Trump campaign, Stone has pitched a possible run for Senator under his home ticket, the Libertarian Party of Florida. The only other party candidate is a surreal character who calls himself Augustus Sol Invictus—a goat sacrificing, eugenics spewing, fascist-symbol-using Thelemite.

Due to his connections to the extensive “immigration reform” network of John Tanton, there is speculation that, before leaving, Stone left the Don with the numbers of 11 million “illegals” to deport before departing. As the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20151027/trump-stump" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Southern Poverty Law Center</a> (SPLC) explains, Trump’s immigrant policy is “almost indistinguishable from the policy proposals made by John Tanton, a white nationalist who founded the Federation for American Immigration Reform and essentially created the modern nativist movement.” This is the same platform admired by the neo-fascist National Policy Institute’s Richard Bertrand Spencer, Tanton’s close friend, who sees it as a major step toward “<a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/richard-bertrand-spencer-0" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">peaceful ethnic cleansing</a>.”

Beyond simply co-opting the platforms of white nationalists, the Trumpster’s own “<a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/07/14/1402264/-Trump-outsources-stock-photo-of-American-soldiers-to-1941-Germany" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">whiff of fascism</a>” moment might have been that time when his campaign circulated an add with an American flag just transparent enough to view an image of a Nazi war re-enactment. His campaign apologized and retracted the image, but have remained defensive about most other innuendos and outright threats. For example, at a rally in Rochester, New Hampshire, the Don fielded a question asking, “<a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/09/17/3702969/man-asks-trump-when-can-we-get-rid-of-all-the-muslims-in-america-his-answer-was-horrifying/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">When can we get rid of</a> [Muslims]?,” infamously responding, “We are going to be looking at a lot of things.” Like a schoolboy, Trump later <a href="http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1509/19/cnr.09.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">whined</a> that “it was the first time in my life I got in trouble for not saying anything.”

Or perhaps one could detect a whiff when Trump suppressed journalists like <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-telemundo-reporter-video-border-2015-7" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Jose Diaz-Balart</a> in Texas and <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-tells-jorge-ramos-go-back-to-univision/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">Jorge Ramos</a> in Iowa, telling the former, “You’re finished” and the latter to “go back to Univision.” When <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/24/politics/donald-trump-protestor-agitator-deserved-it-cohen/" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">the brutal beating of a Black Lives Matter protestor</a> at a Trump event was met with the statement, “<a href="http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2015/11/trump_advisor_maybe_black_lives_matter_protester_deserved_to_be_roughed.html" style=" box-sizing: border-box; outline: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none;">maybe he deserved it</a>,” it seemed as though Trump’s campaign had more clearly presented itself in relation to fascism, defined by journalist Arun Gupta as “a cross-class project of national renewal based on psycho-sexual appeals of racial purity and militarism, aimed against sections of the working class and bourgeoisie alike.”

There are more substantial underpinnings, however, which require a more thorough investigation of the content of fascism, itself, as well as Trump’s own flare for revolutionary rhetoric and violence. That much will be forthcoming in the next column.

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http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/FBI/COINTELPRO_Untold_Story.html

<h4 style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;">According to Varelli, "Can you imagine if gay rights groups, abortion rights groups, the Equal Rights Amendment groups were known to support a group that had killed more than 20 police and soldiers in a year?" The informant added, "Once the FBI had this data in their files, they could proceed to investigate all these other groups. What is even worse, the FBI knew that this material from the National Guard was strictly disinformation. But they passed the same material along to the Secret Service, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other agencies in the intelligence community without alerting them to the fact that it was completely fabricated." 154</h4>

<h4 style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 1; word-spacing: 0px;">Alerted by Varelli's disclosures, the Center for Constitutional Rights obtained a small portion of the Bureau's CISPES files and released them to the press. The files show the U.S. government targeting a very broad range of religious, labor and community groups opposed to its Central America policies. They confirm that the FBI's objective was to attack and "neutralize" these groups. 157 Mainstream media coverage of these revelations elicited a flurry of congressional investigations and hearings. Publicly exposed, the FBI tried to scapegoat the whistle blower. Its in-house investigation found Varelli "unreliable" and held that his reports of CISPES terrorism were false. The Bureau denied any violation of the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens or involvement in the hundreds of break-ins reported by Central America activists. A grand total of six agents received "formal censure" and three were suspended for 14 days. FBI Director William Sessions declared the case closed, a mere "aberration" due to "failure in FBI management." 158</h4>

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Michael Boos, a longstanding hard right ideologue, is the Legal Director of the National Citizens Legal Network, which is a project of Citizens United Foundation.<a href="http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/clinton/Clintonculwar8-12.html#P271_75478" style=" text-decoration: none;">105</a> In the Winter 1982-83 edition of the Young Americans for Freedom magazine, New Guard, he wrote an article headlined "The Nuclear Freeze Fairy Tale: Communist Front Groups Behind the Peace Movement." Boos warned that the "peace movement" is in fact not spontaneous but "Rather, it is a well conceived and thus far successfully implemented sinister scheme being directed by the Soviet Union through its front groups in the U.S. and abroad." In 1984 Boos spied on the anti-intervention group CISPES, then wrote a report titled: "Group in Nation's Capitol to Aid Left-Wing Terrorists." Boos also filed a story with the right-wing newsletter from Phillips Publishing, American Sentinel, and sent an unsolicited copy to the FBI, which promptly distributed it to 32 of its field offices. The FBI launched an official probe of CISPES based in part on the Boos report.<a href="http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/clinton/Clintonculwar8-12.html#P272_76397" style=" text-decoration: none;">106</a>

Citizens United is an example of how the players and themes in conspiracist anticommunism shifted seamlessly to conspiracist antiliberalism and joined the campaign against a demonized Clinton, pulling their conspiracy theories into the mainstream media and Congress.

<a href="http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/clinton/Clintonculwar8-11.html" style=" text-decoration: none;">Previous</a> | <a href="http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/clinton/Clinton2_TOC.html" target="_top" style=" text-decoration: none;">TOC</a> | Print | <a href="http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/clinton/Clintonculwar8-13.html" style=" text-decoration: none;">Next</a>

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<h3 style=" letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 15px;">The Hunt for Red Menace: - 13</h3>

<a href="http://www.publiceye.org/huntred/Hunt_For_Red_Menace-11.html" style=" text-decoration: none;">Previous</a> | <a href="http://www.publiceye.org/huntred/Huntred_TOC.html" target="_top" style=" text-decoration: none;">TOC</a> | <a href="http://www.publiceye.org/huntred/Hunt_For_Red_Menace-13.html" style=" text-decoration: none;">Next</a>

<a id="LOC_P1074_254925" href="http://www.publiceye.org/huntred/Hunt_For_Red_Menace-12.html#P1074_254925" name="LOC_P1074_254925" style=" text-decoration: none;">The Terrorist-Baiting of CISPES</a>

<a id="LOC_P1082_257703" href="http://www.publiceye.org/huntred/Hunt_For_Red_Menace-12.html#P1082_257703" name="LOC_P1082_257703" style=" text-decoration: none;">Paranoid Theories and the FBI Probe of CISPES</a>

<h3 style=" letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 15px;"><a id="P1060_250816" name="P1060_250816">The FBI Probe of CISPES</a></h3>

The genesis of the FBI probe of CISPES was a complex network of groups and indviduals with a common counter-subversive worldview: · The underlying theories which prompted the FBI investigation of CISPES were developed at the start of the Cold War, and reflect the same discredited view of subversion that the American public finally rejected to end the McCarthy period. · Individual and groups who hold this discredited view of subversion played influential roles in shaping the policies of the Reagan Administration in this area, and then in some cases moved on to become consultants and staff members in Adminstration and Congressional posts. · These same groups and individuals then set out to rebuild a private counter-subversion network among conservative and rightist groups with the goal of assisting the government, and specifically the FBI, in investigating subversion. The results of their investigations were published in a range of newsletters and journals in articles which frequently cross-cited each other and often traced back to unsubstantiated charges of communist subversion made by persons testifying before congressional witch-hunting committees. · Young conservatives from colleges and universities were recruited and trained to participate in monitoring and analyzing the activities of alleged subversive groups through a network of interlocking conservative institutions based in Washington, D.C. · Information and documents collected by private right-wing groups were provided to government law-enforcement agencies that would otherwise be prevented from obtaining the information by constitutional and legislative restrictions. This biased and unverified information was then used to justify criminal investigations of dissidents in general and the anti-interventionist CISPES in particular.

Many activists involved in Central America issues became aware of ham-handed snooping by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in the early 1980's. In 1986 the Center for Investigative Reporting in California used the federal Freedom of Information Act to obtain FBI files which suggested a large-scale probe into CISPES. In 1987 testimony by a former FBI informant Frank Varelli also suggested a broad attack on CISPES by the FBI. Varelli later told reporters of the involvement of other governmental and private right-wing groups in targetting CISPES.

Some 1300 pages of additional FBI files released in 1988 by New York's Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), on behalf of CISPES, reveal in sharp detail the extent and nature of the FBI probe into CISPES. More importantly, the files show that the FBI, to justify its actions, accepted as fact a right-wing conspiratorial world-view which sees dissent as treason and resistance to oppression as terrorism.

The first FBI investigation of CISPES was launched in September of 1981 to determine if CISPES should be forced to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Among the documents used by the FBI to justify this CISPES probe, according to Congressional testimony by FBI official Oliver "Buck" Revell, was a 1981 article by a former FBI informant and ongoing right-wing private spy-John Rees. The Rees article appeared in Review of the News a magazine published by the paranoid ultra-right John Birch Society. This FBI investigation was terminated without indictments in December of 1981.

A second FBI investigation of CISPES began in March of 1983. It was premised on the right-wing conspiracy theory that CISPES was a cover for "terrorist" activity. To justify this view, the FBI relied not only on reports from its informant Varelli, but also in part on a conspiratorial analysis contained in a report written by Michael Boos, a staffer at the right-wing Young Americas Foundation. This FBI "counter-terrorism" investigation was terminated without indictments in 1985.

The FBI relying on the malicious musings of paranoid right-wing ideologues to justify probes of the anti-Administration CISPES is rather like the IRS assigning Jerry Falwell to audit the financial records of the American Civil Liberties Union.

<a id="P1074_254925" name="P1074_254925">The Terrorist-Baiting of CISPES</a>

The June 1984 report on CISPES by Michael Boos, the staff member at the Young Americas Foundation, was titled: "Group in Nation's Capitol to Aid Left-Wing Terrorists." In the report Boos wrote that the D.C. Chapter of CISPES would "soon launch a fundraising campaign to provide direct military assistance to the Soviet supported Marxist terrorists seeking to overthrow the recently elected government in El Salvador." This conclusion was reached when Boos made the Kierkegaardian assumption that the shoe factory CISPES planned to help build in El Salvador would not really benefit civilians, but would secretly make and repair boots for rebel soldiers-and thus constituted military aid for "Soviet supported Marxist terrorists."

Boos wrote his report after attending a public CISPES meeting in Washington, D.C. According to a spokesperson at the Young Americas Foundation, Boos was apparently engaging in a freelance information-gathering activity not directly connected with his staff position. Boos filed his report with the right-wing newsletter American Sentinel, and sent an unsolicited copy to the FBI. The FBI promptly distributed it to 32 of its field offices and apparently sent it to other federal agencies as well.

It is ironic that the Boos report on CISPES for American Sentinel was revealed in the FBI documents on CISPES since the Young Americas Foundation is only a minor player in the right-wing information network. The Foundation primarily is involved in recruiting college students into the conservative anti-communist movement. Boos, while at Young Americas Foundation, circulated a newsletter reporting on campus activists, but it too is not influential in right-wing circles.

The Young Americas Foundation is a haven for aging former members of the right-wing campus-based Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). While it was started by a former YAF staffer, the Foundation is not formally tied to that group. They are certainly right-wing ideological soul-mates, however, and they cooperate closely. The Foundation once sent out a fundraising mailing calling former Senator George McGovern "anti-American," and claimed "our classrooms are full of teachers and textbooks that tear down our system of republican government and free enterprise while glorifying communism and socialism."

The American Sentinel, the newsletter which published the Boos report on CISPES (without attribution) is, however, one of the core right-wing outlets for red menace diatribes. The Sentinel frequently touts its relationship to law enforcement. The Sentinel raised funds to send its blacklist-style report to "723 FBI offices and local police departments," pledging to keep track of "the liberals, the left-wingers, the radicals and the Communists."

<a id="P1082_257703" name="P1082_257703">Paranoid Theories and the FBI Probe of CISPES</a>

That the views of the paranoid right wing find safe harbor at the FBI is supported by the documents they released under the FOIA concerning the probe of CISPES. As Alicia Fernandez of the Center for Constitutional Rights explained in an article appearing in the Movement Support Network News:

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"In order to justify its investigation, the FBI utilized two rationales: it posited the existence of a covert program and it resurrected a 1950's favorite, the concept of a front group.' These two notions were extremely useful. By positing a covert program, FBI headquarters was able to reason away the lack of findings in investigations conducted by the field offices. === "When a field office reported that assiduous investigation had revealed that a local CISPES chapter pursued only such projects as teach-ins, slide shows, and pickets, headquarters would remind the field office of the covert program' This, headquarters explained, was known to only a few CISPES members, but represented CISPES' true intentions and activities. Thus headquarters would caution the field office not to be deceived and urge it to dig deeper. The deeper the field office dug, with no results, then clearly, reasoned the FBI, the deeper they needed to dig. === "When field offices cabled headquarters to inform it that they had located no CISPES chapter but had found a Central American solidarity committee, or a Latin American human rights group, or a sanctuary church, headquarters would recommend aggressive investigation and explain that CISPES operated through fronts,' in which respectable people were duped for its terrorist purposes.'

</blockquote>

In this way, any group which ever worked with CISPES or shared members became a potential `front.' "The very logic of these rationales increased the pressure to expand the hunt for fronts and intensify the search for covert activities," Fernandez points out.

The FBI probe of CISPES involved 52 of the 59 Field Offices of the FBI. Dossiers were compiled on hundreds of other organizations which intersected in some vague way with CISPES during the course of the investigation.

Margaret Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights called the FBI probe of CISPES a "sweeping and intrusive investigation. . .the FBI utilized wiretaps, undercover agents, and informants in addition to the type of intensive physical surveillance that is normally reserved for investigation of serious crimes." According to Ratner:

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"The investigation, which was begun in 1981 to determine if a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act existed, was quickly turned into a Foreign Intelligence/Terrorism' inquiry, even though no basis for such existed. The new category, however, allowed the FBI to utilize special techniques,' that are considered illegal when applied to domestic investigations. It allowed the FBI to avoid strictures developed to remedy the abuses that came to light in the post-Vietnam protest era."

</blockquote>

Ratner charges that "the investigation was used as one of the pretexts for the harassment and surveillance" being reported by those who oppose the Reagan administration's foreign policy.

FBI director William Sessions, however, defended the CISPES investigation as a legitimate probe into criminal activity. But one FBI agent assumed a more sinister motive for the CISPES investigation in a memo which warned:

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"It is imperative at this time to formulate some plan of action against CISPES and, specifically, against individuals [deletion] who defiantly display their contempt for the US government by making speeches and propagandizing their cause while asking for political asylum. === "New Orleans is of the opinion that the Departments of Justice and State should be consulted to explore the possibility of deporting these individuals or at best denying them re-entry after they leave.

</blockquote>

Among the many groups named in the CISPES FBI files were: Central American Solidarity Committee, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Church of the Brothers, Chicago Interreligious Task Force, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Friends Religious Society, Maryknoll Sisters, National Education Association, Southern Christian Leaderhip Conference, United Steel Workers Union, and the United Auto Workers union. Also named in the files were a number of individual churches, colleges, religious orders, community organizations, women's groups and political groups.

The following excerpt from the Pittsburgh FBI field office file on the local CISPES affiliate, the Central American Mobilization Committee (CAMC), showed the ideological framework which forms the basis of the FBI investigation:

=== "The membership of the CAMC and its affiliated groups appears generally to be of two type groups: the core' membership and the affiliate' membership. The core' membership consists of individuals with strong Communist or Socialist beliefs who have a history of being active in Communist or Socialist political organizations, some since the Vietnam War era. The affiliate' membership, on the other hand, consists in large part of local college students relatively new to the political scene. It has at least one female high school student member. Some of these younger `affiliate' members appear to be politically unsophisticated in that they know little of current international events save what they read or hear at their political meetings. Pittsburgh has noted at least two of these members or affiliates both were young females."

</blockquote>

The CISPES FOIA revelations came on the heels of charges by former FBI informant Frank Varelli that he was pressured into inventing information to show that CISPES was tied to terrorists. Varelli told a Congressional subcommittee in 1987 that his reports were designed to provide an excuse for the FBI to intimidate critics of Reagan's Central America policies.

According to Varelli:

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"The FBI led me to believe that CISPES was a radical `terrorist' organization. . . .Ironically, never once during the next three years of my association with CISPES did I encounter anything even close to the picture painted by the FBI. The CISPES organization was peaceful, nonviolent, and devoted to changing the policies of the United States towards Central America by persuasion and education.

</blockquote>

Varelli sued the FBI, alleging they refused to pay him $65,000 in back pay. Varelli was terminated as an informant when the FBI agent controlling him carelessly lost in a car burglary files containing secret information that might have blown Varelli's cover.

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parry 3 bill$

Domestic Spying

An early concern of the Reagan administration was the possibility that a popular movement – similar to the anti-Vietnam War protests – would undermine the hard-line policies that the new U.S. government considered indispensable for stopping the spread of Soviet influence in Central America.

Staunch anticommunists in the administration also suspected that some groups opposed to U.S. intervention in the region could be discredited for holding suspect political loyalties. Though Moon’s organization itself had been exposed by the “Koreagate” investigation as a foreign intelligence operation, the administration still turned to it to help probe the loyalty of Americans.

Starting in 1981, the FBI cooperated with one of Moon’s front groups during a five-year nationwide investigation of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), a domestic organization critical of Reagan’s policies in Central America.

According to FBI documents obtained by Boston Globe reporter Ross Gelbspan, the FBI collected reports from Moon’s Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles (CARP), which was spying on CISPES supporters. The reports came from CARP members at 10 university campuses around the United States and included commentaries on the purported political beliefs of Reagan’s critics. [Boston Globe, April 20, 1988]

One CARP report called a CISPES supporter “well-educated in Marxism” while other CARP reports attached “clippings culled from communist-inspired front groups.” The Globe investigation reported that Frank Varelli, who worked for the FBI from 1981 to 1984 coordinating the CISPES probe, said an FBI agent paid members of the Moon organization at Southern Methodist University while the Moon activists were raiding and disrupting CISPES rallies.

“Every week, an agent I worked with used to go to SMU to pay the Moonies,” Varelli said in an interview. Because of the CARP harassment, CISPES closed its SMU chapter.

While Moon’s organization was helping to spy on American citizens, the case against Moon as a suspected intelligence agent for South Korea was petering out. It’s still not clear why.

“I don’t think there was any doubt that the Moon newspaper took a virulently pro-South Korea position,” Oliver “Buck” Revell, then a senior FBI official in the national security area, told me. “But whether there was something illegal about it...” His voice trailed off. As for the internal security investigation of Moon, Revell added only: “It led its full life.”

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