http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/holy_smoke_mirrors.htm
HOLY SMOKE AND MIRRORS
By David Guyatt
Albert Vincent Carone is one of those people who spent his life dancing
between raindrops and turning invisible wherever a shadow lingered. He
existed and also didn’t exist. Al Carone - unlike his near namesake, Al
Capone – truly was a paradox wrapped in a mystery concealed behind an
enigma.
Carone was a detective in the New York Police Department, but this didn’t
stop him from becoming a “made” man in the Genovese crime family. He knew
all the leading Mafiosa of his day, including Vito Genovese, Sam Giancana,
Santos Trafficante, Joe Colombo and Pauley Castellano amongst others. To
Carone’s daughter, Dee, they were all known as “Uncle.” When she got
married, her father arranged two different reception rooms to separate the
“mob” guests, from the NYPD guests. But this was more window-dressing than
anything else. One of Carone’s principal functions in the NYPD was to act as
the “bagman” in protecting shipments of CIA drugs to the various Mafia
families.
Carone died in 1990 under mysterious circumstances. This followed a period
of great personal disenchantment with his life following a secretive mission
to Mexico in 1985 when a large number of innocent women and children died
unnecessarily. His death was horrific, reports Mike Ruppert, editor of “From
The Wilderness” newsletter, who has investigated Carone’s life story and
written a special report on it (see acknowledgements).
Meanwhile, another “Uncle” was Bill Casey, the former Director of the CIA
during the Reagan administration. Casey had been with the OSS during WW11.
During the “seventies” he became Chairman of the Securities & Exchange
Commission (SEC) that regulates the US investment industry. During his tenor
in that role, Casey used Carone as a “cut-out” to pass sensitive insider
information to mob Capo, Pauley Castellano, says his daughter, Dee.
Carone was also a full Colonel in the US Army where he had operated in the
Army’s Counter Intelligence Corp (CIC). Unsurprisingly, in view of his close
friendship with Bill Casey, he was also a covert operative for the CIA. But
that wasn’t half of it. Carone was also a Grand Knight of the Sovereign
Military Order of Malta (SMOM) – which historically has been the military arm
of the Vatican and is regarded as separate “state” with full powers of
statehood including issuing its own diplomatic passports.
In more recent decades SMOM has acted as a funding conduit, a black market
gold channel and money-laundry for the CIA, amongst others – and is known to
act as the Vatican’s intelligence arm. It was, for example, alleged to be
involved in the disappearance of Russia’s gold reserves – over 2000 metric
tonnes - that vanished during 1991, around the time that Soviet Premier
Mikhail Gorbachev was ousted from office.
Malta knighthoods are awarded to many leading individuals who are part of the
military and intelligence community. The CIA’s Bill Casey, for example, was
Knight of Malta. Former NATO General (and later US Secretary of State)
Alexander Haig is also a Malta Knight. Another is General Vernon Walters,
the former Deputy Director of the CIA under DCI George Bush and later
appointed a roving Ambassador during the Reagan administration. The
legendary head of the OSS – the WW11 precursor of the CIA – was “Wild” Bill
Donovan, who was made a Knight along with his wartime compatriot and later
CIA chief of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton. And John McCone,
another prominent member of the US “spook” agency was also distinguished
with a Malta knighthood. The list goes on. Most interesting was Reinhard
Gehlen the former Nazi intelligence expert recruited by the US in 1945-46 to
head the “Gehlen Org” – a secret German-based intelligence arm of the United
States that was composed of former SS & Gestapo agents – many of whom,
including Klaus Barbie, were wanted Nazi war criminals. The foregoing names
amount to a listing of some of the most powerful and influential members of
the western intelligence community over the last five decades.
One Vatican group that has extremely close ties to the Knights of Malta is
the ultra right wing Opus Dei. This is an immensely powerful faction in the
Vatican today, whose public “do good” activities eclipse a plethora of the
darkest political and financial machinations known to man. It will not come
as a surprise, perhaps, that Carone was closely associated with Opus Dei and,
in particular, a covert operation that had its origin back in 1944. This
was Operation Amadeus.
THE DULLES FACTORThis highly secretive operation was part of the Operation
Sunrise negotiations conducted between Allen Dulles – the then senior wartime
OSS officer in Switzerland, but later to become the Director of the CIA – and
SS General Karl Wolff. This debonair and well-connected SS officer commanded
the SS and Gestapo contingents in Italy at the time. The result of these
negotiations (at least those parts that are now known about) was an agreement
affording amnesty to an extensive roster of SS-Gestapo forces - in exchange
for their agreement to shift their allegiance to the West in the pre-planned
covert battle aimed at defeating the Soviet communist “menace.” In other
words the “cold war.”
One spin-off of these Dulles-Wolff arrangements were the Vatican run
“rat-lines” that aided wanted Nazi war criminals to slink to safety. Tens
of thousands of SS and others Nazi’s escaped capture as a result of the
ratlines. These included such figures as Franz Stangl, commandant at
Treblinka extermination camp and his friend, Gustav Wagner, who ran the
Sobibor death camp. Others to escape in this manner included Adolf Eichmann,
the architect of the Holocaust. Eichmann was later captured by Israeli
intelligence agents, smuggled to Tel Aviv where he stood trial and was
eventually executed. In comparison, Dr. Joseph Mengele – known as the
“White Angel” – a war criminal wanted for his cruel and inhuman experiments
on death camp inmates at Auschwitz, escaped to Argentina and lived a long
life.
Operation Amadeus was exclusively concerned with the flight of SS and Nazi
war criminals to the South American continent and their later ferocious
covert actions against the indigenous populations justified under the banner
of “anti-communism.” One individual engaged in Amadeus activities was
former Gestapo officer, Klaus Barbie, known to the world as the “Butcher of
Lyon.”
The principal means of funding Operation Amadeus activities was the hugely
profitable narcotics business. Large stocks of SS Morphia had been smuggled
out of Europe and into “catholic,” South America at the end of the war in
accordance with the “Sunrise” agreement. The Morphia was accompanied by
looted SS gold and large quantities of counterfeit British banknotes forged
in concentration camps by captive but skilled counterfeiters as part of an SS
scheme known as “Operation Bernhardt.”
The escape “lines” used to move wanted men around South America away from
the prying eyes of Israeli agents also proved ideal as smuggling routes for
drugs. Decades later the stocks of Heroin smuggled to the United States for
distribution by the CIA protected Mafia, would be complimented with locally
grown Cocaine. One of the figures to emerge in to the spotlight during the
1980’s who was deeply involved in this narcotics traffic was Colonel Oliver
North – who authorised the exchange of guns for drugs to finance Contra
operations. Oliver North was known to Al Carone under his “work” name,
“John Caffrey.” This was the time when Carone was engaged in CIA controlled
cocaine transactions with Joe “Pickles” Percilia, a member of the Columbo
crime family.
These curious and usually concealed connections between governments – in the
form of the military and intelligence community – organised crime, the
Vatican and Nazi war criminals have some significant history. Not least was
the secret agreement reached between US Naval intelligence officers, and
Mafia don, Charles “Lucky” Luciano, during WW11. This resulted in the
Mafia’s decision to aid and assist the Allies by contacting mob figure, Vito
Genovese, in 1943 to prepare the way for the Allied landing in Sicily. As
earlier outlined, it was primarily those SS-Gestapo units located in Italy
under command of SS General Wolff that were initially concerned in the
Operation Sunrise negotiations.
And while large numbers of former Nazi’s were fleeing south to fight the
communist menace is Latin America – and, more importantly, to personally
profit from their involvement in the lucrative drug and gun business - in
Europe, the spadework was being laid to overthrow, or thwart, democratically
elected governments via a network of fascist-manned “Stay Behind Units,”
organised under the aegis of Operation Gladio. Not surprisingly this would
also lead to certain involved figures making personal fortunes out of other
people’s misery – a circumstance that is so common-place it is barely worth
mentioning.
These neo-fascist activities would come to prominence in the early eighties
following the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano and the death of Italian banker,
Roberto Calvi who was “suicided” and left hanging under London’s Blackfriars
bridge. This would lead to sensational disclosures about the role of the
Vatican bank, the IOR, in Calvi’s financial empire and would quickly grow to
include the activities of Mafia financier, Michele Sindona – who’s
activities, in turn, would implicate leading blue-blood banks in Europe and
America in Mafia activities. Both Sindona and Calvi were close to Opus Dei
who lost around $55 million when Sindona’s empire crashed. According to his
family, Roberto Calvi was deeply engrossed in helping Opus Dei take control
of the IOR when he was killed.
Meanwhile, both Calvi and Sindona were members of the secretive Propaganda
Due (P2) Masonic lodge, that is said to have been a “parallel government” in
waiting and which planned to effect a coup d’etat in Italy following a
communist party victory at the polls.
P2 was run by former Italian fascist and member of the Nazi SS, Licio Gelli –
dubbed the “Puppet Master” by the Italian press. Gelli’s connections to the
ultra hard right and fascists in Europe and Latin America were extensive. In
fact, he had been deeply involved in establishing the Vatican run Ratlines
that aided the worst Nazi war criminals to escape Allied justice at the end
of WW11. All told an estimated 50,000 Nazi’s were helped to freedom.
Gelli had numerous powerful friends including former Italian dictator,
Benito Mussolini. He was also a personal friend of Argentina’s General Juan
Peron and his close associations with Argentina would later lead him to be a
key figure in shipping a supply of French made Exocet missiles to sink
British Task Force ships during the Falklands war. In this endeavour he
worked closely with Ronald R Rewald, founder of the Hawaiian based financial
institution Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham & Wong – a CIA proprietary
company and forerunner of the CIA owned Nugan Hand bank.
The involvement of a CIA front company engaged in financing and providing
weapons to be used against a key American ally (Britain) that had the
whole-hearted public support of the US government, may seem somewhat
duplicitous. However, in the world of “black ops” “friends” and “enemies”
are interchangeable words and working both sides of the fence is accepted
practice.
In terms of hierarchy, Gelli reported to Umberto Ortolani, described by one
writer as “the great Vatican door opener” and a “secret chamberlain of the
Papal Household.” In addition to his P2 connections, Ortolani is also a
member of the inner council of the Knights of Malta and has military
intelligence connections that date back to WW11.
THE OCTOPUS AND THE SPIDER
There are numerous other Masonic groups and secret societies in Europe that
move in and out of focus at various times. Almost all of them are catholic
in nature. One of these is the Priory of Sion – a secretive order that first
came to public attention in the best selling book “Holy Blood – Holy Grail,”
published in 1982. The Priory is closely connected with the alleged treasure
of Solomon that is said to have found its way to the small village of Rennes
Le Chateau in south western France where it is said to have been buried by
the Knights Templars; forerunners of the Knights of Malta.
The Priory, whose headquarters were located at Annemasse, near Geneva on the
Swiss border, are styled as the “Guardians” of Solomon’s treasure but most
interestingly, they have numerous subterranean connections to fascists and
those on the far right that date back to WW11. Meanwhile, it has to be noted
in passing, that Annemasse is said to have been the centre for the
anti-communist “Stay Behind” units of Operation Gladio.
If this is not intriguing enough, another fact stretches co-incidence to the
point of bursting. In recent years the Priory of Sion has moved its
headquarters to Barcelona and now boasts a Spanish Grand Master. This, one
could conclude, is to enable it to be physically closer to the historical
heartland of Opus Dei, which was founded in Spain in 1928.
If Otto Skorzeny was a leading force in running the SS Brotherhood escape
routes (Der Spinne – the Spider) after the war, and SS General Karl Wolff was
the lead negotiator with OSS Swiss Chief, Allen Dulles, then another Nazi,
Walter Rauff - head of the Milan SD - was one of two liaisons with the
Vatican involved in the establishment of the Nazi smuggling system. Earlier
in his career, Rauff had overseen the development of the Nazi mobile gas
vans, known as “Black Ravens” that gassed to death around 100,000 Jews –
mostly women and children - by pumping exhaust fumes into the back of a
hermetically sealed van.
Another important link between the Vatican and SS escape routes was
Friedrich Schwendt, who was also the man in charge of laundering forged SS
banknotes. Before the war, Schwendt was an international arms dealer
shipping weapons to China and Russia. He was also the investment manager of
the family fortune of his first wife’s aunt, Baroness Gemmingen-Guttenberg,
of the vastly wealthy Argentine based Bunge family of the massive
transnational firm Bunge Corporation that is also known as the “Octopus.”
This title is interesting for it may connect to the so called “Octopus”
that ties-in to murdered Freelance journalist, Danny Casolaro who at the time
of his death was investigating a number of high level illegalities including
the theft by the Department of Justice, of a “tracking” computer programme
known as PROMIS. Casolaro was writing a book about what he had discovered.
He originally titled it “Behold
- Re: [CTRL] HOLY SMOKE AND MIRRORS William Shannon
- Re: [CTRL] HOLY SMOKE AND MIRRORS John Cone
