A NEW EDEN IS being built today, or perhaps it is
merely a new face being put on the old Eden. Today's
Eden is characterized by sterile architecture and stylistic
homogeneity. Inhabitants of modern Eden are offered many
ways to cope with the stresses of living in Eden; among
them are drugs that promise to change or control nearly
every negative human attribute (and every positive one, too).
The new Edenites are taught philosophies which promise
a materialist Utopia within a spiritual wasteland. Despite
all of these "advances," Edenites still commit suicide at
a surprisingly high rate. Tragically, a great many suicide
victims are young people. What are some of those victims
telling us? Perhaps it is that today's Eden is still Eden: a
gilded cage, a pampered prison. Many young people sense
it and rebel by changing clothing or hairstyle, but they find
that they are still trapped not really understanding how or
why. Like Adam and Eve, many individuals, no matter how
successful or pampered they have been in life, find that they
want to escape.
Today's Eden continues to be strongly influenced by the
Brotherhood network and its outgrowths. Any discussion
of the Brotherhood in today's world is, however, a delicate
matter. We are no longer talking about people and groups
that reside comfortably in the past, but we must now
confront people and organizations that are very much a
part of today's world. Please allow me to therefore reiterate
two very important points:
1. The vast majority of people who join movements and
organizations do so for the right reasons, including those
who join Brotherhood branches and Custodial religions.
They have heard a bit of truth or they have seen a solution
to a genuine problem. They work in those organizations
to disseminate that truth or to solve that problem. As
has been true throughout all of history, almost none of
them, including most of their top leaders, are knowingly
engaged in Machiavellian activities. They only know that
they have been given a just cause to pursue against some
other human group, unaware that somewhere else, in
similar organizations, other people have been given a
just cause to pursue against them. The corruption within
the Brotherhood network, and the violence emanating from
it, are as upsetting to them as they are to everyone else.
2. My purpose is correction, not condemnation. There
are no saints on Earth, and probably nowhere else, for that
matter. Yes, there are a great many very fine people who
deserve to be helped, but there is probably no being on
Earth who has not at some time, in some way, contributed
to what we have discussed in this book. To engage in
blame, punishment, or recrimination at this stage of the
game can only make affairs worse. I hope to encourage
the idea that no matter what we have done in the past, it
is the present and future that truly count. My purpose in
writing this book is only to ask that we take a moment's
pause to step back and look at what we may all be caught
up in. Perhaps each of us can then carefully determine
what we need to do (or stop doing) to help bring about the
changes required to set things straight, without disrupting
our lives or cherished institutions. What is needed now from
everyone is cooperation, not recrimination.
As we survey the modern organizations and religions
which arose out of the Brotherhood network, we discover
something rather ironic. As the world continues its intellec-
tual flirtation with materialism, Brotherhood organizations
and Custodial religions are among the few sources which
keep alive any idea that man might be a spiritual being.
As a result, many Brotherhood organizations and Custodial
religions attract some very fine people within whom the
spiritual spark has not died. It is difficult to find a
Jesuit father, an American Freemason, a Presbyterian
minister, or a Jewish rabbi who is not a very decent
person. The overwhelming majority of them emphasize
the truly benign and uplifting aspects of their theologies.
It is equally difficult not to feel good at a Catholic mass
on Christmas Eve, or to be stimulated by a conversation
with an articulate Rosicrucian about the meaning of life. It
is equally impossible not to appreciate the smile of a young
child basking in the warmth of a successful family unit held
together by the Hebrew religion, or to savor the aesthetics of
an exceptional Hindu artwork. Children and elderly people
are helped every day through the kind works of Freemasons,
Oddfellows, and Shriners. Fascinating political discussions
can be had with an avowed Marxist and one can learn
some of the most astonishing facts from a dyed-in-the-wool
"right-winger." Nevertheless, most of the institutions that
arose out of the Brotherhood network continue to cause
serious problems today.
In this book, we looked closely at the inflatable paper
money system. In the United States today, over 75% of the
money supply is created by commercial banks. When you
deposit a dollar in a commercial bank, that dollar becomes
the bank's to lend out, and the bank creates an additional
dollar which becomes the dollar in your bank account. That
dollar in your bank account, however, is not a guaranteed
dollar. It is simply a debt owed by the bank to you. That
debt, however, quickly turns into money because you can
spend it right away, and the bank still has your original
dollar. In this way, the bank has created money "out of
nothing." Banks make most of their profit by being allowed
to create money in this fashion. The interest banks charge
on loans merely pays some of the administrative expenses
and, more importantly, it compensates for the inflation that
the banks inevitably cause by creating money in the manner
that they do. There are, of course, legally-mandated limits to
how many dollars a bank may create. A commercial bank
must maintain a minimum base of cash (central bank notes)
for every dollar deposited, but it is only a small percentage.
As long as people use their checking accounts and do not
demand too much actual cash, a bank will be safe. A bank
can go "broke," however, if enough of its loans default or if
too many depositors demand actual cash and thereby wipe
out a bank's small asset base.
The result of this whole system is massive debt at
every level of society today. The banks are in debt to
the depositors, and the depositors' money is loaned out
and creates indebtedness to the banks. Making this system
even more akin to something out of a maniac's delirium is
the fact that banks, like other lenders, often have the right
to seize physical property if its paper money is not repaid.
At the national and international levels, we read today of
Third World nations staggering under huge debts. Most of
those debts are "illusionary" in the sense that the bulk of the
loans come from banks which generate or channel "created-
out-of-nothing" money. Some of those banks, such as some
represented by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), have
the right to dictate economic policies and demand austerity
measures within the indebted nations to get the loans repaid.
In Brazil, for example, the IMF imposed austerity measures
in the early 1980's. The measures included large scale wage
cuts for Brazilian workers, higher prices on all goods,
devaluation of the currency, and increased exports—all to
pay back a debt founded mainly on illusion. The result was
a tremendous drop in the well-being of the Brazilian people,
and riots. The destruction of Brazilian rain forests that we
are witnessing today is being caused in large part by Brazil's
need to repay loans based on illusionary money. Studies
prepared by the World Bank blame population growth for
depletion of the rain forests, but conveniently leave out the
major role that the World Bank itself has played in causing
Brazil's indebtedness.
Another example is the Dominican Republic, which had
a $3 billion debt as of the mid-1980's. The country would
like to spend its scarce income on better housing for its
people. In 1985, however, the nation was faced with having
xpend more money to repay its loans than it could earn
in foreign currency. The IMF nevertheless demanded strict
austerity measures, including large price increases on basic
goods, thereby triggering riots. The IMF also mandated
a devaluation of the Dominican currency; this increased
exports, but made imports much more expensive. Who were
the real losers in all of this? The Dominican people.
In the United States under the recent presidential admini-
stration of Ronald Reagan, the American national debt was
doubled. Most of the loan money, of course, traces back
to the "created-out-of-nothing" money of large banks.
Nevertheless, interest on this money must now be paid. To
pay it, federal social services were cut under Reagan, thereby
hurting the standard of living of many Americans. What was
much of this extra loan money used for? Military needs.
On a smaller scale, the inflatable paper money system
causes farmers to lose farms. Most fanners do not lose their
way of life because they fail to work hard or because they
do not produce something of great value. They lose because
they cannot meet the demands of the paper money system.
This allows large agribusinesses to step in and buy up the
farmland, resulting in the concentration of food production
in an ever-dwindling number of hands.
As we can see, the modern monetary system has had the
effect of destroying many benefits that mass production and
advances in science and technology would have offered
the human race. By now, the need for all-consuming toil
for physical existence should be largely ended; but the
inflatable paper money system has helped to preserve
that need by creating massive debt, chronic inflation, and
general economic instability. The vast majority of people
in all nations today must still continue to spend the major
portion of their prime waking hours working to meet their
financial needs. The Custodial goal expressed in the Biblical
Adam and Eve story of making people toil from birth until
death is still being fulfilled.
Another significant by-product of the modern money
system is taxation. Most Americans believe that the U.S.
government creates its own money. If that is true, then
why would the government need to tax anyone? Why
does not the government simply allocate to itself the
402 William Bramley
money it needs to operate? That would obviously be
far more sensible than erecting enormous tax-collecting
bureaucracies which can drive people to despair and greatly
diminished productivity.
The answer is that the U.S. government does not create
money—the Federal Reserve and commercial banks do,
and they are not public entities. To obtain some of the
money those banking entities create, the government must
either tax or borrow. It does both, and the citizens pay.
Taxation, especially in nations with graduated income tax
schemes, makes it harder for people to save money and
thereby contributes to the need for most people to spend
the majority of their lives toiling for physical existence.
Despite the welcome political reforms now transforming
Russia and the Eastern bloc, communism remains a power
in other nations where it has inspired fearful oppressions in
recent decades, as the people of Ethiopia and Kampuchea
have learned to their great sorrow:
On September 12, 1974, the monarchy of Ethiopia was
overthrown in a military coup. Six months later, the
monarchy was entirely abolished by the revolutionary
government and Ethiopia was made a Marxist state complete
with collective farms and government-owned industry. The
new Marxist rulers soon found themselves opposed by
an independence movement in the Ethiopian provinces of
Eritrea and Tigre. That independence movement was, and
still is, kept alive to a large extent by another Marxist group:
the Popular Liberation Front. The resulting battles between
the Marxist regime and the Marxist liberation have brought
about a great loss of life. The Ethiopian famines we hear
so much about today have been caused primarily by the
Ethiopian government's attempt to squelch the Eritrean
liberation movement by hindering relief shipments to
drought regions. This amounts to an act of genocide.
People have died horrible deaths as they found themselves
caught between two equally brutal factions. Behind all
of this we find once again evidence of the Brotherhood
network: the emblem of the Marxist regime prominently
features the Brotherhood symbol of the "All-Seeing Eye."
On April 17, 1975, the capital of Kampuchea (formerly
Cambodia) fell to communist revolutionary forces. A
virtual news blackout followed. The stories that leaked
out were horrifying beyond description. After the election
of communist leader Pol Pot as premier in April 1976,
Kampuchea suffered what some experts believe to have been
the worst genocide since World War II. At least one million,
and as many as three million, Kampucheans died. Out of
a population of 7.5 million, that represents a substantial
portion. This genocide was part of a grand economic plan
formulated by highly-educated Kampuchean leaders who
boasted advanced degrees in economics and social science
from universities in France. Those leaders decided that their
nation should have an agrarian economy ... immediately.
The capital of Kampuchea, Phnom Penh, was forcibly
evacuated and its residents were compelled to enter the
countryside where rural "production cooperatives" awaited
them. Private property was abolished. Citizens who were
perceived as standing in the way of the new Kampuchean
Utopia by virtue of their occupations or education, and
those people who objected to being forced into slavery,
were murdered. Children were often recruited to carry
out the murders, thereby helping to breed in the young
generation of Kampuchea a higher than normal incidence
of psychopathology. This grand Kampuchean scheme under
Pol Pot was a virtual carbon copy of the brutal programs
launched earlier in history by the revolutionary council of
18th-century France, by the regime of Joseph Stalin in
Russia, and by the Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse-Tung
in China. The Pol Pot regime collapsed in January 1979
when Kampuchea was invaded by the communist North
Vietnamese, who were hardly models of civility themselves.
By 1990, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge re-emerged. They
were part of a coalition seeking to retake power by military
force. The coalition was supported by the United States and,
according to several eyewitnesses, CIA-provided weapons
continued to reach the still-brutal Khmer Rouge troops.
Prior to the dismantling of the Soviet Union, many
communist movements in the world were supported by the
Soviet KGB and other Eastern bloc secret services as part
of their mission to foment wars of "liberation" around the
world. Interestingly, Western intelligence services had also
assisted in the establishment of communist regimes just as
404 William Bramley
the German military had done in 1917. The United States
initially backed Fidel Castro in Cuba and Ho Chi Minh in
Vietnam, both of whom afterwards established communist
regimes in their respective nations. Both nations still remain
communist as of this writing. The United States had also
initially backed Pol Pot and helped him achieve power in
Kampuchea. The Communist world, both past and present,
was very much a product of Western activity.
Behind today's political factionalism we continue to find
evidence of direct Brotherhood network involvement. The
Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), for example,
was strongly anti-Communist and instilled anti-Communism
in its adherents as a spiritual goal. There is nothing wrong
with that until it becomes another justification to breed
more violence, oppression and. strife. One of SMOM's
Knights in America, the late William Casey, headed the
American CIA from January 28, 1981 until January 29,
1987. During his tenure as CIA chief, Casey did much
to increase CIA covert operations, especially in Central
America. There, CIA-backed "Contra" rebels and right-
wing "death squads" committed horrible atrocities against
civilians in the name of fighting communism. Other SMOM
Knights in national intelligence organizations have included
James Buckley of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, John
McCone (former director of the CIA under President John
Kennedy), and Alexandre de Marenches (chief of French
Intelligence under President Giscard d'Estaing, who was
also an SMOM Knight).
The American CIA is also influenced by Mormonism,
Freemasonry, and other lesser known Brotherhood or-
ganizations. Mormons are often sought by CIA recruiters
due to the overseas experience many Mormons receive in
their missionary work, and a few have reached very high
positions within the American intelligence community.
Some Masonic groups provide special scholarships for
young members to attend the Foreign Service School in
Washington, D.C. That school provides the nation with
many of its State Department personnel, diplomats, and
spies. All of these Brotherhood influences have combined
to create an ideological hotbed in American foreign policy.
The result has been the maintenance of the United States
as an effective political faction for keeping conflict alive
around the world.
"Lone assassins" continue to be significant today. Earlier
in the book, we looked at the origin of the lone assassin
phenomenon as a political tool. The substantial "conspiracy"
evidence surrounding modern-day assassinations indicates
that such killings continue to be crude political weapons.
The primary difference today is that some "lone assassins"
appear to be a cover for a second hidden assassin, and a
pretense is made that the "lone assassin" really did act alone.
In all other important respects, modern "lone assassins" are
nearly identical to those programmed by the Brotherhood's
Ismaili organization centuries ago in the Middle East. To
illustrate, let us review some of the evidence behind recent
assassinations.
A great deal has already been written about the November
22, 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy,
so I will only summarize the events here. President Kennedy
was killed by rifle fire while riding in a motorcade in Dallas,
Texas. Almost immediately after the shooting, suspicions of
a conspiracy arose. The alleged "lone assassin," Lee Harvey
Oswald, publicly proclaimed that he was only a "patsy."
The ballistics and physical evidence strongly suggested that
Kennedy was hit by bullets fired from in front of him, not
from behind where Oswald was positioned. Oswald never
had a chance to elaborate on his claim that he was a patsy
or go to trial because, two days after his arrest, he was
murdered while in police custody by a night club owner,
Jack Ruby—a man with known Mafia connections. Ruby
went to prison and died there less than four years later.
An official government panel was convened to investigate
the JFK assassination. Known as the "Warren Commission"
after its chairman, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl
Warren, the panel concluded that Oswald had acted entirely
alone. Years later, a U.S. House of Representatives panel
spent 26 months re-investigating the murders of John F.
Kennedy and black civil rights leader Martin Luther King,
Jr. (who was slain in 1968 by an alleged "lone assassin"). The
House panel concluded that the "lone assassins" did not act
alone and that conspiracies lay behind the Kennedy and King
killings. The panel felt that further police investigation was
warranted. Despite rumors and evidence of CIA and Mafia
involvements in the Kennedy shooting, no convictions of
any co-conspirators have ever occurred.
John Kennedy's younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy,
was assassinated almost five years later on June 5, 1968
inside the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
RFK was running for president at the time he was shot and
he was almost certain to win the Democratic nomination. He
had just finished delivering a speech to enthused campaign
workers and began to walk through the back pantry area
surrounded by a throng of well-wishers and reporters. It
was in the pantry area that the convicted assassin, Sirhan
Sirhan, opened fire at close range with a .22 caliber pistol.
A number of people were hit and Kennedy fell to the
floor with head and body wounds. Sirhan was immediately
apprehended. Kennedy died the next day and Sirhan went on
to be convicted as the sole assassin. Despite the conviction, a
great deal of controversy remained. In an extraordinary feat of
investigative journalism, researcher Theodore Charach
compiled a large body of evidence indicating that a second
hidden gunman, not Sirhan Sirhan, had fired the shot which
killed Kennedy. Mr. Charach used his evidence to create
an astonishing feature-length documentary film entitled The
Second Gun. The movie enjoyed a short theatrical release in
the 1970's and has recently been made available on home
videotape.* Mr. Charach's research was picked up by others
and it eventually brought about the Los Angeles County
Board of Supervisors hearings into the assassination.
The RFK "second gun" case rests on a great deal of
fascinating ballistics evidence and eyewitness testimony. For
example, the Los Angeles coroner performed an analysis of
the gunpowder burns on Kennedy's head and clothing. The
burns revealed that the muzzle of the gun was not more than
one to three inches from Kennedy's head when it fired the
fatal bullets; i.e., the muzzle was at point blank range. All
eyewitnesses, however, reported that Sirhan's weapon was
*The Second Gun videotape was released by Video Cassette Sales, Inc.
Please see Bibliography for address.
never closer than twelve inches; a significant difference
as far as powder burns are concerned. The Second Gun
suggests that the fatal bullet may have been fired from
the gun of a uniformed security guard who was holding
Kennedy by the right arm when the shooting started. The
guard admitted pulling out his gun during the melee, but
denied firing it. An eyewitness on the scene, however, did
testify to seeing the guard fire. There is no record that the
police ever examined the guard's pistol.
A bizarre diary reportedly written by Sirhan, and dis-
covered in his apartment after the shooting, seems to lend
weight to the conspiracy theory. In that diary, Sirhan wrote
several times of the need for Robert Kennedy to die in
connection with Sirhan receiving large sums of money.
One entry mentioned $100,000. The most interesting diary
entry is that one in which Sirhan, who seemed to relish
the thought of receiving large checks made payable to him,
appears to repeat an instruction that he has never heard a
promise that he would receive money for Kennedy's death,
which needed to happen by June 5, 1968—the date of the
California primary. Sirhan's diary contained the following
words:
Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated Robert F.
Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June '68 Robert
F. Kennedy must be assassinated I have never heard
please pay to the order of of of of of of.1
The LAPD considered the diary entries to be nothing
more than the rantings of a mentally-deranged lone assassin.
If that truly was Sirhan's writing, his references to money
would certainly provide an additional motive for him to take
shots at Kennedy, whom he greatly disliked anyway. The
question is: who offered Sirhan the apparent money and
does Sirhan believe that he will still receive it when he is
finally released from prison? To this day, Sirhan maintains
that he acted entirely alone, and the FBI and Los Angeles
Police Department are content to agree with him.
If a security guard fired the shot which killed RFK, it
is possible that he did it accidentally. The guard may have
drawn his gun from his holster in an effort to defend Kennedy
without even realizing it. The police, however, never even
considered this possibility despite the powerful evidence
that Sirhan's gun did not fire the fatal bullet. The LAPD
was instead very one-minded in its "lone assassin" theory
and, as pointed out by a Los Angeles Times article, badly
mishandled some of the key physical evidence.*
Rumors again abounded of a possible Mafia and/or CIA
involvement in the Robert Kennedy shooting, but no co-
conspirators were ever arrested in the case.
In the early afternoon of March 30, 1981, President
Ronald Reagan finished giving a speech at the Washington
Hilton Hotel. Surrounded by his entourage and Secret
Service agents, Reagan walked out to the driveway where
a limousine awaited him. As in the Robert Kennedy snooting,
an apparently crazed young man emerged from the crowd
firing a pistol. Reagan was pushed into the limousine by a
Secret Service agent, rushed to a hospital and underwent
surgery to remove a single bullet which had struck him in
the left rib cage and pierced his left lung. It is fortunate
that the wound was not fatal. The "lone assassin," John
Hinckley, Jr., went on to be convicted of the crime.
According to a newspaper columnist, the FBI did all it
could to prove that Hinckley had been the sole assassin
*The mishandled evidence included ceiling panels from the pantry area
that may have contained bullet holes indicating the presence of a second
gun. Incredibly, the panels were destroyed by the police. According
to LAPD chief Daryl Gates, the destruction of the panels had been
done routinely. Mr. Gates said that this did not constitute destruction
of evidence because the panels had not been introduced as evidence at
Sirhan's trial. He added, however:
... I just think that it [destroying the panels] was lack of
judgment. It was a lack of common sense and inexcusable
because the case had worldwide magnitude. More importantly, Sirhan
had been convicted and his appeal
was not even in prospect yet. Potential evidence should never
be destroyed until the entire case has run out. What the hell were
these things destroyed for? That borders
on Catch 22 insanity. It was just like they were opening up the
doors to total criticism and doubt. There's no way it can be
explained.2
on the scene. Some people, however, have expressed
doubts about the FBI's conclusion. In a press conference
held a month after his recovery, Mr. Reagan answered
questions indicating that he did not feel the impact of
the bullet that struck him until he was all the way inside
the limousine:
Q: What were your first thoughts when you realized
you had been hit?
A: Actually, I can't recall too clearly. I knew I'd been
hurt, but I thought that I'd been hurt by the Secret
Service man landing on me in the car, and it was,
I must say, it was the most paralyzing pain. I've
described it as if someone had hit you with a hammer.
But that sensation, it seemed to me, came after I
was in the car, and so I thought that maybe his gun
or something, when he [the Secret Service agent] had
come down on me, had broken a rib.
But when I sat up on the seat and the pain wouldn't
go away, and suddenly I found that I was coughing
up blood, we both decided that maybe I'd broken a
rib and punctured a lung.3
In a later, interview, Mr. Reagan's wife, Nancy, con-
firmed the President's impression.
Had Mr. Reagan simply suffered a delayed reaction to a
bullet fired from Hinckley's gun, or had he actually been
shot, perhaps accidentally, inside the car by a Secret Service
agent, as the above testimony would suggest? According to
the FBI, the bullet that wounded Mr. Reagan had ricocheted
off the limousine door just as Mr. Reagan was being pushed
into the vehicle. If the FBI explanation is true, why did
the bullet not explode upon impact with the door since it
was an exploding bullet? Perhaps the bullet was a "dud"?
It is possible that two coincidences did occur at the Reagan
shooting: a dud bullet followed by a delayed pain reaction.
Another explanation which does not require a coincidence
is that Reagan was shot, perhaps accidentally, by the Secret
Service agent inside the car: this would explain both the
failure of the exploding bullet to explode (it did not hit an
intervening metal door) and Mr. Reagan's own recollection.
The FBI did not pursue the "second gun" angle in the
Reagan shooting. This is troubling because the convicted
assassin, John Hinckley, Jr., claimed that there was a
conspiracy involved in the shooting. In its October 21,
1981 issue, the New York Times reported:
A Justice Department source late tonight confirmed a
report that John W. Hinckley, Jr. had written in papers
confiscated from his cell in July that he was part of a
conspiracy when he shot President Reagan and three
other men March 30.4
Hinckley's allegation should have set in motion an inten-
sive conspiracy investigation. After all, John Hinckley, Jr.,
was not just a random individual out of the American
melting pot. He was the son of a wealthy personal friend
and political supporter of the then-Vice President who, of
course, would have become President if Reagan had died.
This is not to say that a conspiracy necessarily existed,
only that such circumstances typically trigger a much more
intensive investigation. The New York Times states that the
FBI seized Hinckley's papers, followed up on the leads, and
concluded that Hinckley's conspiracy claim was untrue. The
judge hearing the case ordered attorneys and witnesses not
to divulge the contents of Hinckley's papers to the public.
The prison guards who had seized and read the papers gave
their testimony in secret to the judge. At Hinckley's trial,
neither defense nor prosecuting attorneys ever raised the
issue of a "conspiracy," nor the second gun possibility.
Instead, the entire trial centered around Mr. Hinckley's
very visible mental problems.
Perhaps the three shootings just discussed really were
committed by lone assassins, with two of the shootings
involving the accidental discharge of a firearm by a security
agent. An assassination in the Philippines proved, however,
that such scenarios may sometimes be the cover for a murder
committed by an intelligence organization.
The year was 1983. Benigno Aquino was a popular
opposition leader in the Philippine Islands. The Philippines
were then under the dictatorial rule of President Ferdinand
Marcos. Marcos had declared martial law in the 1960's and
never saw fit to lift it. After three years of voluntary exile
from his homeland, Aquino made a decision to return to his
country even though six years earlier he had been sentenced
to death by firing squad for his political activities.
Aquino's airplane landed at Manila Airport on August
21, 1983. Surrounded by Filipino security officers, Aquino
had just descended the stairs from the airplane when shots
rang out. A bullet hit him in the back of the head and killed
him. The "lone assassin," Rolando Galman y Dawang, was on
the tarmac (runway area) and was instantly shot dead by a
security man near him. The government immediately de-
clared Galman the "lone assassin" and tried to close the case.
Suspicions arose immediately.
President Marcos had a motive for killing Aquino and
Aquino had already been sentenced to death. To quash these
suspicions, Marcos convened an official panel to investigate
the killing, similar to the Warren Commission impanelled
twenty years earlier in the United States to investigate the
John Kennedy assassination. Critics charged that the Marcos
panel was one-sided and pro-Marcos. Many doubted that the
panel would come to any conclusion other than the official
one. Something unexpected occurred, however. The panel
pursued the investigation objectively. It heard evidence
about the powder burn on Aquino's head indicating that
the fatal bullet was fired from 12 to 18 inches away.
The government claimed Galman had come that close,
but eyewitnesses did not confirm this. A journalist on the
plane testified that two security men standing right next to
Aquino had pulled out their revolvers and had pointed them
at the back of Aquino's head just before the shots rang out.
Overwhelming forensic evidence and eyewitness testimony
indicated that Aquino was shot by one of the security men
assigned to "protect" him. The "lone assassin" was nothing
more than a crude cover. The Marcos commission issued a
finding to that effect.
The panel findings resulted in .the criminal indictments
of several high-ranking military officers. At trial, however,
all were acquitted. The vagaries of the Filipino justice
system did not permit a great deal of crucial testimony
acquired by the commission to be introduced at trial.
A number of important witnesses for the prosecution
412 William Bramley
did not appear. Several witnesses had reported being
intimidated. After Marcos was ousted from office and
sent into a plush Hawaiian exile by Benigno Aquino's
wife, Corazon Aquino, witnesses came forward testifying
that the trial had been rigged by Marcos. Other eyewitnesses
to the shooting also came forward with further evidence
corroborating that Benigno Aquino had been shot by a
security man.
The significance of the Aquino killing is that the scenario
of the shooting is virtually identical to other "lone assassin"
episodes. If, for example, there existed a conspiracy behind
either the RFK or Ronald Reagan shooting, then the modus
operand! would appear to be identical to the modus operandi
in the Aquino shooting: a mentally-disturbed or politically-
fanatical "lone assassin" is used as a cover for the true
assassin who is on the scene as a security escort for the
victim. This is important because the Filipino officers
indicted for masterminding the Aquino shooting included
General Fabian Ver and men under his command. Ver not
only led the nation's military forces, but also its intelligence
network. In other words, the "lone assassin" shooting of
Benigno Aquino was a military /intelligence operation. This
is significant because the Philippine Republic was a major
U.S. ally at the time of the shooting, and the U.S. still has
large naval and air bases there. The Philippines receive a
great deal of aid from the United States, along with U.S.
military and intelligence advisors. The Filipino intelligence
apparatus therefore owes much to the American CIA and
U.S. military intelligence. This is not to say that American
sources were necessarily involved in the Aquino shooting. It
simply shows how an important Western intelligence service
recently utilized the "lone assassin" technique, but used it
so crudely that people saw through it immediately. Even
U.S. newspapers which have been quick to accept "lone
assassin" verdicts in American assassinations ran editorials
condemning the acquittal of the Filipino military men. Our
hats should go off to those brave panel members who had
the courage to look behind the "lone assassin" myth, and
to those eyewitnesses who were brave enough to testify.
Such integrity is a precious commodity.
Modern "lone assassins" are not just American-related
rhenomena; they remain international in scope. On May
13, 1981 during his public appearance in St. Peter's Square,
Pope John Paul II was shot. He survived and still holds the
Papacy today. The convicted "lone assassin," Mehmet Ali
Acga, had fired from a crowd that surrounded the Papal
automobile. Interestingly, the Italian police also arrested
a second gunman in connection with the shooting and
accused Bulgarian intelligence agents of being involved
in a plot to kill the Pope. Bulgaria was still a communist
nation at the time. Russia accused the American CIA
of manufacturing this so-called "Bulgarian Connection"
for propaganda purposes; however, Western newspapers
reported that the CIA had actually stepped in and put pressure
on the Italian police to drop the "Bulgarian Connection"
and the "second gun" case. The Italians succumbed to
CIA demands after the accused assassin, Mehmet Acga,
destroyed his own credibility by flip-flopping on his story
and by engaging in bizarre behavior.
In Sweden, a significant "lone assassin" episode involved
the killing of the very popular Swedish Prime Minister, Olaf
Palme, on February 28, 1986. Mr. Palme was strolling
home with his wife from a movie when a gunman ran
up to the Prime Minister, fired twice, and fled into the
night. Suspicions of a conspiracy arose immediately, but
the word was quickly put out that the killing was the
work of a "lunatic." A suspect was eventually arrested,
but he denied responsibility and was acquitted. In 1990,
the Swedish government even paid him restitution for the
time he spent in jail. As of this writing, no other suspect
is due to go to trial.
The final episode worth looking at occurred in West
Germany on April 25, 1990 against Oskar Lafontaine. Mr.
Lafontaine was premier of the Saarland state and running as
the Social Democratic candidate for the office of Chancellor
of Germany. He was on stage with another leading Social
Democrat, Johannes Rau, during a political rally. A person
who appeared to be a security guard led a woman up on stage;
the woman was carrying a bouquet of flowers. When she
reached Mr. Lafontaine, she calmly whipped out a butcher
knife and slashed his throat. Fortunately, Mr. Lafontaine
survived despite a significant loss of blood and he went on
to finish his unsuccessful campaign. The assailant, Adelheid
Streidel, was immediately apprehended and labeled a
mentally-deranged "lone assassin." The attack, however,
has the hallmarks of several previous "lone assassin"
episodes we just looked at: involvement of apparent security
personnel, the so-called "lone assassin" showing signs of
severe mental tampering, and the act committed openly. The
use of the butcher knife instead of a gun makes Ms. Streidel
even more like the Assassins of medieval Persia, who used
bladed weapons. This assassination attempt occurred at a
politically crucial time: Mr. Lafontaine was running against
Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Mr. Kohl was a prime advocate
for rapid German reunification and European unity, which
would involve major shifts in world economics, politics, and
military matters. Mr. Lafontaine and the Social Democrats
were running on a platform of slowing down the German
reunification process.
As in the case of Adelheid Streidel, a significant element
of nearly all recent "lone assassin" cases is the mental state
of the "lone assassins" at the time of the assassinations. The
apparent "mental illness" exhibited by so many of them may
very well be evidence of mental tampering. Sirhan Sirhan
was known to have been repeatedly hypnotized by "friends"
whom the police inadequately investigated. Eyewitnesses
reported that Sirhan seemed to be almost in a trance on
the night he fired at Robert Kennedy. John Hinckley, Jr.,
had had a great deal of psychiatric intervention during his
pre-assassination days, and we still do not know what all of
it consisted of. Did Hinckley receive any visionary implants
similar to the ones that Adolf Hitler had received as a
psychiatric patient at Pasewalk? Like the ancient assassins
of Persia, Hinckley was motivated by a crazed notion that
he would attain to heaven by killing Reagan, except that
Hinckley's heaven was the unattainable love of a certain
female movie star. Hinckley thought that he would win that
love by killing the President. The peculiar mental states of
Mehmet Ali Acga and other modem assassins (such as
"Squeaky" Fromme who tried to murder President Gerald
Ford in 1975) are further indications that mental tampering
may be a significant factor in most modern "lone assassin"
episodes, just as it had been in medieval Persia.
In light of the above, it is perhaps not surprising to discover
evidence of the Brotherhood network directly or indirectly
linked to some modern assassinations. John Hinckley, Jr.,
for example, belonged for a while to an American Nazi
organization. Modern American Naziism, through such
organizations as the Aryan Nations, is as deeply influenced
by Brotherhood-style mysticism as was original German
Naziism. "Squeaky" Fromme was a follower of Charles
Manson, who preached a bizarre apocalyptic mysticism in a
small California commune. Manson and his "Family" were
the ones who committed the horrific Tate-LaBianca murders
in Los Angeles in 1969. Interestingly, Manson was once a
police informer.
As long as the "lone assassin" technique continues to go
unopposed, those nations victimized by it will never rise
above the level of a banana republic. That includes the United
States and nations in Europe. One need only look at the way
in which such assassinations have influenced the succession
of American Presidents to appreciate just how damaging the
technique is to a democracy. The problem with American
leadership today is not so much a difficulty caused by the
electoral process or by shortcomings in the Constitution. The
problem is that the electoral process and Constitution have
been severely undermined by the assassination of leaders
and candidates. When police organizations contribute to this
by ignoring and suppressing evidence, and by otherwise
hindering proper investigations, those police organizations
become accessories to the crimes in a very real and legal
sense. That is when democracy dies.
Throughout this book, we have noted the role of the
Brotherhood network in perpetuating revolution. Revolu-
tions and armed resistance movements are expensive to
run, and so we find that most of them are financed today
by intelligence organizations. One unfortunate by-product
of this activity is terrorism.
Terrorist groups are an effective way to keep conflict
alive. An interesting book entitled, The Terror Network
by Claire Sterling, reveals the strong interconnections
that have existed between seemingly unrelated terrorist
groups. Terrorist organizations from around the world and
of conflicting ideologies have been supported by mutual
"safe houses" and suppliers. The Terror Network reveals
that many of those mutual supply sources had connections
to the Russian KGB, although the book fails to mention the
role of Western intelligence services in supporting various
forms of terrorism.
The goal of some terrorist groups is to maintain a so-called
"Permanent Revolution," i.e., a violent revolution that never
ends. This goal is rooted in the Marxist concept that class
struggle is inevitable and must continuously occur for a
Utopia to emerge. As we recall, this idea has its ultimate roots
in the Calvinist teaching that a world at war is a world closer
to God. The "Permanent Revolution" is therefore designed to
keep people fighting constantly so that we will all be able to
enjoy a future Utopia. This sounds crazy, you say? Of course
it is. The "Permanent Revolution," which has been financed
by various intelligence services and is inspired by concepts
that came out of the Brotherhood network, is yet one more
way to keep mankind in a constant state of war and disunity.
Efforts to generate nonstop strife on Earth have apparently
been so successful that they threatened to wipe out most
of humanity. Powerful atomic weapons were built in
preparation for yet another "Final Battle" between the
forces of "good" and "evil." To those who believe that
nuclear war is unthinkable: think again. In the climate
of endless confrontation we share on Earth, rarely have
weapons gone unused. Two atomic bombs were already
dropped during World War II and, if we are to believe
some evidence, they may have been used to wipe out human
civilizations in the ancient past. There is a great irony in this.
If manipulations by a Custodial society do indeed ultimately
lie behind human turmoil, the Custodial society could soon
find itself owning a very damaged piece of real estate. It is
true that nuclear weapons are notoriously unstable so that
many atomic warheads will not explode if launched, but
there has been enough of an "overkill" built to ensure that
considerable damage would result from a nuclear exchange.
Happily, the end of the Cold War brought about pledges for
significant reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals.
There is irony in this, too, in light of the factions and
hostilities that have replaced those of the Cold War. Once
nuclear arsenals are reduced far enough, large-scale warfare
will be possible again without the threat that such warfare
would render Earth useless to apparent Custodial owners.
The lingering danger from remaining nuclear weaponry
and proliferation would not come from unstable flying
missiles, but from stationary bombs hidden at their target
locations. The Pentagon expressed concern about such a
possibility in a top secret military report produced in 1945.
This concern was expressed again in more recent years when
efforts were under way to develop a so-called "Star Wars"
anti-missile defense system which utilizes laser beams to
shoot down enemy missiles.* Some strategists were afraid
that a successful "Star Wars" system would encourage a
hostile foreign power to smuggle and plant atomic bombs
in the United States if it felt that its missiles would be
ineffective. Such bombs can be easily stored and kept mobile
in trucks or vans. The media-publicized "nuclear terrorism"
scare of the 1970's indicates that some stationary bombs may
already be in place in the United States. It is also important to
keep in mind that the source of such bombs may not always
be an enemy government or hostile terrorist group. There
always exists the danger that a nation's own government may
secretly plant nuclear bombs within its own cities as part of
a "scorched earth" contingency war plan, in the same way
that Switzerland has placed mines on all of its own bridges
in the event an enemy invades and tries to use the bridges.
In xenophobic nations, an internal nuclear threat of this kind
can become very real. It is something that the people of every
country with atomic weapons should remain wary of.
The Cold War between the United States and former
Soviet Union affected us in many ways still felt today. Higher
taxes, intrusive military and intelligence agencies, and a
host of other ills were imposed upon human populations
in the name of protecting against the enemy. We have
Star Wars can also be converted to an offensive weapon for rapidly
destroying enemy cities with laser beams. Such laser weapons would be
far deadlier than a nuclear arsenal and could, if developed, replace our
atomic stockpiles. In 1992, the president of the new Russian Republic
suggested a joint venture with the United States to create such a weap-
ons system.
been affected in other ways which are less well-known,
but equally significant.
During the second half of the 1970's, revelations of
American military and CIA germ warfare experiments
emerged in the public press. Surprisingly, many of those
experiments were conducted in U.S. cities and were directed
against U.S. citizens. In the 1950's, for example, a "germ
fog" had been sprayed by a Navy ship at San Francisco.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
In an experiment designed to determine both attack
and defense capabilities of biological weapons, a Navy -
ship blanketed San Francisco and its neighboring
communities with a bacteria-laden fog for six days in
1950, according to U.S. military records.
The records contain the conclusion that nearly every
one of San Francisco's 800,000 residents was exposed
to the cloud released by a Navy ship steaming up and
down just outside the Golden Gate.
The aerosol substance released by the ship contained
a bacteria known as serratia, which was believed
harmless by the military at the time but which has
been found since to cause a type of pneumonia that
can be fatal.5
The LA. Times added that at least twelve people were hos-
pitalized around that time for serratia pneumonia. One of
them died. That was just the beginning. The army disclosed
that it had conducted 239 open-air tests between 1949 and
1969! Of those, 80 were admitted to have contained actual
germs. The tests were directed against Washington, D.C.,
New York City, Key West, Panama City (Florida), and
San Francisco. If we accept the army's figure of 80 live-
disease experiments, we discover an average of four "germ
attacks" against U.S. cities every year for twenty years!
Other government documents have revealed additional CIA
germ warfare experiments carried out in the same manner.
This means that several major U.S. population areas were
under fairly intensive germ bombardment for an admitted
twenty-year period, all by the nation's own military and
intelligence organizations!
These germ "experiments" reportedly ended in 1969.
However, justified suspicions have arisen about sudden
outbreaks of more recent diseases, especially those which do
not seem to conform to our understanding of epidemiology.
The most recent of such diseases is AIDS (Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome). After the AIDS epidemic broke, the
Soviet Union published charges in its official newspapers
that AIDS was a biological weapon developed by the United
States military. The charges have been generally dismissed
as false propaganda and the Soviet Union later publicly
retracted the statements after pressure from the United
States. Despite the retraction, a number of researchers in
the United States contend that there is evidence to support
the original claim.
U.S. citizens have not only been hit by germs, but also by
another type of bombardment. An intriguing segment of the
television program, NBC Magazine with David Brinkley,
aired July 16, 1981, revealed that the northwestern United
States was continuously bombarded by the Soviet Union
with low frequency radio waves. The radio waves are set at
the approximate level of biological electronic frequencies.
Mr. Brinkley stated:
As I say I find it hard to believe, it is crazy and none
of us here knows what to make of it: the Russian
Government is known to be trying to change human
behavior by external electronic influences. We do
know that much. And we know that some kind of
Russian transmitter is bombarding this country with
extreme low frequency radiowaves.6
A U.S. government spokesperson stated that the radio
beams were a kind of low-frequency radar system, but
he was at a loss to explain how such a "radar system"
worked. The fact is, low-frequency waves of that type will
affect neurological and physiological functioning, usually
by reducing mental functioning and by making people more
suggestive. That is apparently the intent. A May 20, 1983
newspaper article from the Associated Press reported that
a machine known as the Lida has been used by the Soviet
Union since at least 1960 to influence human behavior
with a 40 Megahertz radio wave. The Lida is used in
Russia as a tranquilizer and it produces a trancelike state.
The Russian "owner's manual" calls the Lida a "distant
pulse treatment apparatus" for dealing with psychological
problems, hypertension, and neurosis. The machine has
been offered as a possible substitute for psychotropic
drugs. When the AP article appeared, a Lida machine
was on loan to the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans
Hospital in the United States through a medical exchange
program. According to the chief of research at the hospital,
the machine may eventually be used in American classrooms
to control the behavior of disturbed or retarded children. The
Lida is apparently a small-scale version of the very same
type of machine described in the David Brinkley show, as
the AP article reveals:
[The chief of research] said some people theorize that
the Soviets may be using an advanced version of the
machine clandestinely to seek a change in behavior
in the United States through signals beamed from the
U.S.S.R.7
It appears that Americans were receiving electronic
tranquilizing treatments courtesy of the Soviet government.
It is incredible that the United States did not loudly demand
an immediate stop to the intervention. Ironically, but not
surprisingly, America appeared to have become more
militant during the "treatments." Anti-Soviet sentiment
increased and so did the military build-up. Certainly the
increased militancy of the United States cannot all be
attributed to the Russian machines, but, at best, the Soviet
treatments were ineffective in making America calmer. In
actual fact, electronic tranquilizers appear to be deep irritants
which will ultimately contribute to heightened aggression.
The Russians, and anyone else still operating such devices,
would do well to shut them off and keep them off.
As the evidence has shown, major military and intel-
ligence organizations have taken over doing to human
populations precisely what UFOs and some "Ascended
Masters" reportedly did earlier: they have spread dangerous
germs and have bombarded human populations with
behavior-altering electronic radiation. When we consider
these facts, it might be significant that military and
intelligence organizations, at least in the United States,
were foremost in debunking UFOs for many years.
The first known official American government investiga-
tion into the UFO phenomenon was begun on January 22,
1948 by the U.S. Air Force. The investigation was known
as "Project Sign." The startling conclusion of Project Sign,
as announced in its "Estimate of the Situation," was that
UFOs were craft from "another world." This conclusion was
immediately rejected by the Chief of Staff, General Hoy S.
Vandenberg, who dismissed the evidence as "insufficient."
A new study group called Project Grudge was subsequently
launched on February 11, 1949. The purpose of "Grudge"
was to investigate the UFO phenomenon from the basic
premise that extraterrestrial aircraft could not exist. Project
Grudge pursued its work for several years and was eventually
upgraded to the famous "Project Bluebook" in 1952—a year
in which there was a dramatic increase in UFO reports.
Project Bluebook concluded (not surprisingly, considering
the basic premise upon which its predecessor, Project
Grudge, was founded) that UFOs were all explainable
natural phenomena.
In the year after "Project Bluebook" was established, the
CIA entered the UFO controversy with an investigation of
its own. In 1953, the CIA established a panel of eminent
scientists known as the "Robertson Panel." The CIA Panel
quickly rubber-stamped the official view that UFOs did
not represent an extraterrestrial race. The Panel added that
UFOs were not a direct physical threat to national security,
and were therefore of no interest. The Panel did state,
however, that reporting UFOs could be a threat to national
security! The Panel wrote the following words to suggest
that suppressing UFO reports was desirable in the national
interest:
... continued emphasis on the reporting of these phe-
nomena, in these parlous [dangerous] times, result in
a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective
organs of the body politic.8
As a result, the CIA and FBI investigated many people who
reported UFOs. The U.S. Air Force cooperated by issuing
regulations in 1958 instructing Air Force investigators to
give the FBI the names of people who claimed to have
contacted UFOs in some way, on the grounds that such
people were "illegally or deceptively bringing the subject
to public attention."9 Although these regulations have been
eased and the FBI reportedly no longer investigates UFO
cases, there existed back in the 1950's and early '60's a
definite intention within the American government to inhibit
public reporting and discussion of the UFO phenomenon.
Today, the U.S. government is publicly out of the UFO
business. Most of the debunking torch has been passed
to a private group called the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal ("CSICOP").
CSICOP boasts an impressive roster of scientific and
technical consultants, many of whom hold professorships
at prestigious universities. CSICOP has inspired the creation
of local branches usually known as "skeptical societies."
CSICOP publishes a quarterly journal called The Skeptical
Inquirer.
A basic premise upon which CSICOP operates is that
UFOs are not proven to be extraterrestrial craft. CSICOP
also debunks all other phenomena that it considers phony
or "pseudoscientific," such as clairvoyance, spiritualism,
Bigfoot, the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness monster,
and all spiritual phenomena. It brands any effort to seriously
study UFOs or spiritual phenomena as "pseudoscience"—a
term it bandies about freely. CSICOP naturally practices only
"real" science. Many CSICOP and local skeptic members are
quite energetic and some of them appear regularly on radio
and television shows.
The influence of CSICOP today is quite strong. In
addition to its presence in universities through CSICOP-
affiliated faculty, CSICOP has exerted influence in the
media. Celebrity astronomer Carl Sagan, for example, is
listed as a Fellow of CSICOP. Other Fellows have included
Bernard Dixon, European editor of Omni magazine; Paul
Edwards, editor of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Leon
Jaroff, managing editor of Discover magazine; Phillip
Klass, senior avionics editor for Aviation Week & Space
THE GODS OF EDEN 423
Technology magazine; and the late B. F. Skinner, author
and famous behaviorist who did so much to promote the
stimulus-response model of human behavior in our own
generation.
CSICOP has gained a following primarily because the
organization successfully promotes an image of objectivity.
In CSICOP's statement of purpose, for example, we read
the following words:
The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal attempts to encourage the
critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science
claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and
to disseminate factual information about the results of
such inquiries to the scientific community and the
public.
The Committee is a nonprofit scientific and educational
organization.10
The Committee sounds like a wonderful organization.
The world can greatly benefit from objective research into
UFOs and paranormal claims. It is especially important
for serious researchers to sort out the legitimate from the
fraud, and that is not always easy to do. Sadly, CSICOP
does not provide the objectivity needed to accomplish that
task. The result of a CSICOP investigation has always been,
to my knowledge, an utter debunking. This has puzzled
those people who cannot understand how some evidence
can possibly be rejected if it is looked at objectively. The
solution to this puzzle comes by discovering who started
CSICOP and why.
CSICOP was founded in 1976 under the sponsorship of the
American Humanist Association. The American Humanist
Association is, of course, dedicated to advancing the
philosophy of "humanism." "Humanism" itself is difficult
to define because it often means different things to different
people. Essentially, humanism is a school of thought
concerned with human interests and human values as
opposed to religious interests and values. It deals with
questions of ethics and existence from the perspective of
424 William Bramley
human beings as physical entities on Earth. "Religious
humanists" will have spiritual and theological concerns,
but will approach them from a human-centered focus as
opposed to the God-centered or spirit-centered orientation
of most religions.
The best-known form of organized humanism in the
United States today is called "secular [non-religious] human-
ism." Secular humanism admits only the reality of physical
existence and rejects spiritual and theological reality. It is
a philosophy of strict materialism. Many secular humanists
adhere to the stimulus-response model of human behavior.
The founding and current chairman of CSICOP is Paul
Kurtz, professor of philosophy at the State University of
New York at Buffalo. For many years, Mr. Kurtz had served
as the editor of The Humanist magazine. He was one of
the drafters of the Humanist Manifesto II and authored a
book entitled In Defense of Secular Humanism. His book
is interesting because it expresses some of the doctrines and
goals of the organized secular humanist movement. Those
doctrines and goals are significant in light of the role that
Professor Kurtz and other secular humanists have played
in founding CSICOP. On the subject of spiritual existence,
Professor Kurtz wrote:
Humanists reject the thesis that the soul is separable
from the body or that life persists in some form after
the death of the body.''
According to the Humanist Manifesto II:
Rather, science affirms that the human species is an
emergence from natural evolutionary forces. As far
as we know, the total personality is a function of the
biological organism transacting in a social and cultural
context.12
Such ideas are fine for those people who choose to
believe them. The point I am making is this: individuals and
organizations which actively promote such ideas will find
it difficult to be genuinely objective when they investigate
evidence which flatly contradicts their established view.
They have already declared what they believe and what
they reject.
Objectivity is even more difficult when those same people
actively seek to spread their way of thinking as a social goal.
According to the Humanist Manifesto II:
We affirm a set of common principles that can serve as
a basis for united action—positive principles relevant
to the present human condition. They are a design for
a secular society on a planetary scale.13
We see in this quote that there exists a united intention
among many secular humanists to create a worldwide secular
society. The founding chairman of CSICOP, Professor
Kurtz, helped draft the document which announces that
intention. There is nothing wrong per se with having such
a goal. It is common for activist religions and philosophies
to try to shape the world in their own images. There is,
however, a price to be paid for such activism: CSICOP
and its affiliated skeptic groups lose their credibility. They
have to be viewed as advocates for a certain point of view,
not as disinterested investigators. They are prosecutors in
the courts of inquiry, not the judges or juries.
We see in groups like CSICOP a problem that has
existed for centuries. Most ideological battles are fought
by extremists. Secular humanists, for example, represent
a materialist extreme and they often do battle with modern
"Christian fundamentalists" who represent the "religious"
extreme. Both sides are extremist in that they hold views
which can only be kept alive by ignoring large bodies of
evidence. They make easy targets for one another because
they both have so many flaws; yet people are encouraged to
side with one or the other on the basis that because one side
is so wrong, the other side pointing out those wrongs must
be right. This can be dangerous logic to follow. It happens
frequently that two people will passionately debate a fact,
each certain that he or she is correct, but when they finally
learn the truth, they discover that they were both wrong.
Two lunatics can argue endlessly over which of them is
the real Napoleon Bonaparte, but woe to the outsider who
takes sides and swears allegiance to either one of them! As
xtremists fight, the truth often lies ignored in a completely
different direction.
Despite the efforts of secular humanists and others
of similar ideological inclination to negate religion and
theology, religion continues to be a powerful force in
human society. If all of the surviving truths from all of
the long-established religions and mystical systems were to
be brought together today, they would be insufficient to get
a person over the formidable barriers which stand in the way
of full spiritual recovery. At best, those accumulated truths
would only offer clues to assist in wholly new research.
This is not to disparage the genuine rewards that a great
many individuals still receive as a result of following various
religious paths. Most theologies do have something of value
to enrich a person's life.
It is as true today as it has been throughout all of history
that new religions come and go in great numbers. Very few
of them survive very long, let alone become major religions.
Despite this, new religions are attacked as frequently today
as they were in the past. Modern attacks take the same
form as they have for centuries: new religions are labeled
mysterious evils that undermine everything good. The word
"cult" is tossed around quite a bit today to label new
religions, even though a great many of those religions are
not "cults" in the true sense of the word. Properly used,
"cult" refers to a subgroup of a larger religion, such as a
Christian cult or a Moslem cult. Any completely new or
autonomous religion is properly called a "sect," or better
yet, simply a new religion. The word "cult" has apparently
become popular because of its phonetic qualities. It also fits
well into newspaper headlines.
The greatest danger from new religions is not that they
represent anything especially new or different, it is that they
can be effective tools for breaking people into factions, just
as religions did in the past. This can be accomplished even
through no fault of the religion itself. Just by existing
and being attacked, a modern religion may become an
embattled faction when it finds itself operating in a social
climate of "cult hysteria." This type of social climate is
easily generated today because most educated people fancy
themselves knowledgeable about human psychology. By
appealing to that vanity, it is easy to breed animosity against
new religions in otherwise-tolerant people by couching
religious intolerance in psychological terms. Ironically,
most of the anti-cult activism today comes from the so-
called Christian "right-wing" in its effort to stamp out the
"works of Satan," which includes all religions not adhering
to fundamentalist Christian beliefs. Christian bookstores are
the primary outlets for anti-cult books in the United States
today. These Christians have found strange allies in groups
like CSICOP and in those other strict materialists (e.g., some
psychiatrists) who view all religion as unhealthy and find
easy targets in the newer religions.
The key to analyzing new religions, therefore, is not to
lump them all into an ill-defined category called "cults" and
then spout out generalities about them. The proper approach
is to look at each new religion individually, to recognize the
unique features of each, and to analyze the good and the
bad within them according to the specific characteristics of
each. Some will be found to be but an unhappy continuation
of all that we have looked at in this book, others will be
sincere attempts at spiritual enlightenment. The reason it is
important to try to remain objective about new religions is
that genuine spiritual knowledge will probably only come
about through a newer religion. The older theologies will
not stray far from their established doctrines and most mod-
ern sciences will not even consider evidence of a spiritual
reality.
There is one recent religious movement worth mentioning.
It is the loosely-knit "New Age" movement. The New Age
movement is called that because it seeks the dawn of a New
Age on Earth in which spiritual freedom, physical health,
and world peace will prevail. Some of the unique music
associated with the New Age movement is quite nice and
the New Age emphasis on eating natural, healthy foods is
a very positive element of the movement. Some New Age
doctrines contain maverick ideas about the nature of the
spiritual being, but like Hinduisim, most New Age systems
destroy the full benefits of those maverick ideas by mixing
in large doses of mysticism, Custodial doctrine (e.g. some
holistic doctrines that preach the desirability of a union of
mind, body, and spirit instead of a separateness), and self-help
methods that include hypnosis and subliminal programming
(neither of which should be recommended).
Of primary interest to us are some New Age ideas about
UFOs. A great many people throughout the world have
been exposed to the "ancient astonauts" theory with its
postulate that some ancient religious events were the doings
of a space age extraterrestrial society. This has caused the
veil of myth that once surrounded UFOs to partially fall.
Perhaps as a result, an effort has been made through the
New Age movement to re-establish the old religious beliefs
that the extraterrestrial race seen flying about in our skies is
composed of enlightened almost-godlike beings who should
be accorded reverential awe and looked to as a source of sal-
vation. This worshipful attitude has certainly been promoted
through some New Age literature and in recent American
motion pictures like Close Encounters of the Third Kind
and Cocoon. Many other Custodial doctrines, including
End-of-the-World messages, are now being promulgated
with a modern twist in the New Age movement by people
who claim to be getting messages from UFOs (and perhaps
a few of them are). Instead of "angels," however, the New
Age offers us "Space Brothers." If history is any indication,
our nearby "Space Brothers" appear to have little to offer us
but oppression and genocide unless they can be convinced
to change their ways. It seems that it is the human race that
must teach the extraterrestrial race compassion, and not vice
versa. The reported Custodial humanitarians who may occa-
sionally visit Earth and do nice things for human witnesses
and abductees would seem to be a distinct minority which
is powerless to do anything truly meaningful for the human
race. Like the doctors, social workers, and priests who enter
prisons to give comfort to inmates, Custodial humanitar-
ians have never broken down the prison walls. It would
appear that the only "angels" and "Space Brothers" available
to you are you and your very down-to-Earth neighbors.
As this edition of the book goes to press, the world is
witnessing many changes. Some are extremely welcome,
such as the dismantling of communism in many nations,
the current efforts of the South African government to
ease apartheid, and the increase of democratic elections
around the world. These events show that conditions can
be improved, perhaps even enough to eventually bring an
end to the human plight suggested by this book.
Unfortunately, ethnic strife and the continuation of the
inflatable paper money system in changing Europe are signs
that something is still amiss. As the world passes through
the 1990's, we appear to be in an era much like the one
that existed two hundred years ago (see pages 294 and
295) when republican-style governments were established
around the world. As back then, factions with Brotherhood
roots are still active in breeding war and social ills today:
Ballistic weapons are proliferating rapidly in Islamic and
Third World nations, aided by China and Western countries;
meanwhile, Islamic radicalism continues to cause upheav-
al in the Middle East and elsewhere. In 1990, a radical
Islamic sect called the Muslim Brotherhood swept to vic-
tory in municipal elections in the Jordanian cities of Zarqa and
Aqaba.
As of this writing, Marxist revolutionaries are still killing
people in Peru and the Philippines. In Peru, the most feared
Maoist guerrillas are members of a secret society called
the Sendero Luminoso which, roughly translated, means,
"Luminous (Shining) Path," or "Way of Illumination."
Drug cartels have become political powers unto them-
selves; as in Colombia where a cocaine cartel waged a
violent war against the Colombian government. Evidence
of Brotherhood involvement in the shadow of the world of
drugs may be seen in the Sendero Luminoso of Peru, which
has been involved in coca growing, and in the heroin trade
where powerful Asian heroin-dealing triads are presently
formed by secret societies with roots in the 17th century.
Rightist nationalist organizations, although generally
unpopular in the world, still receive support from gov-
ernment entities, such as a current Russian alliance called
the People's Russian Orthodox Movement which uses a
cross symbol against a yellow background reminiscent of
a swastika. In 1990, people affiliated with the movement
were sponsored by the United States Information Agency
to give talks in the United States, despite protests that the
speakers were anti-Semitic.
In May 1990, the widely-publicized desecration of Jewish
graves in Haifa, Israel was discovered to have been carried
out by a secretive Jewish millennarian sect. A member of the
sect admitted that his group perpetrated the desecration with
the Machiavellian intent of heightening conflict between
Jews and anti-Semitic forces.
New AIDS-like immune-destroying viral diseases are
being predicted by the World Bank, and a group of doctors
from the United States was sent on a five-year mission to
Africa in March 1990 to find new viral diseases and con-
duct other activities. The grant money for this mission was
provided by the U.S. government's principle AIDS research
agency: the Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
One of the doctors, Nicholas Lerche from the University
of California at Davis, is quoted on page A8 of the March
15, 1990 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle: "This is the
problem of what we're beginning to recognize as emerging
viral diseases, and there may well be other animal viruses
waiting in the wings to move into humans and ultimately
to cause new diseases." In light of allegations and evidence
that AIDS may have been induced deliberately into human
populations, there are some legitimate concerns about how
the new diseases discovered by the doctors may be used by
some of those people sponsoring the research.
By the time you read this, many new events will have
occurred. Leaders, political personalities, and institutions
will come and go from the world scene; warring factions
will continue to arise and disappear. I hope that the long-
term historical patterns described in this book will provide
an interesting, and perhaps useful, tool for investigating the
causes of future conflicts as they occur. Better yet, we can
hope that this book will one day become nothing more than
a reminder of a bad dream from which we have all managed
to awaken ourselves.
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