Armageddon

A crucial voter demographic in the United States are the Christian Zionists—a movement within Evangelical Christianity, which evolved from the Moravian Church, the crypto-Sabbatean cult of Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf—who follow an ideology that espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land, pitting them in direct opposition to reciprocal expectations in the Muslim world. A 2002 poll indicated that 59 percent of Americans believed the events predicted in the Book of Revelation would come to pass.[i] The Brookings Institute recently released the results of their survey entitled “American Attitudes Toward the Middle East and Israel,” which discovered that 73 percent of America’s 50 million Evangelical Christians believe that world events would turn against Israel the closer we get to the End Times. Additionally, 79 percent of Evangelicals interpret the unfolding violence across the Middle East as a sign that the End Times are near.[ii] As one Evangelical, James Bagg, explained, “You see God has a plan for the world and it all centers around Israel.” Evangelicals control some 60,000 US radio stations. They meet in 25,000-member megachurches and sit on school boards and legislatures across the country. What they all share is the belief that Israel must forever remain a Jewish state. End Times theology declares that the Jewish people must maintain control of Israel and Jerusalem, and retake the Al-Aqsa Mosque (the Dome of the Rock), or Jesus cannot return. The most immediate and obvious obstacle to realization of these goals is the fact that two historic Islamic structures which are thirteen centuries old, namely the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, are built on top of the Temple Mount. Al Aqsa is the third holiest site in Sunni Islam. Muslims believe that Muhammad was transported from the Sacred Mosque in Mecca to al-Aqsa during the Night Journey, known as the Isra and Mi’raj. Thus Evangelicals risk creating what the Rev. Barbara Rossing calls “a self-fulfilling prophesy of death and destruction.”

A crucial voter demographic in the United States are the Christian Zionists—a movement within Evangelical Christianity, which evolved from the Moravian Church, the crypto-Sabbatean cult of Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf—who follow an ideology that espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land, pitting them in direct opposition to reciprocal expectations in the Muslim world. ISIS, for example, are merely a caricature of Western prejudices of Islam, deliberately manipulated by the media to feed Evangelical paranoia about the End Times, which as Graeme Wood observed in “What ISIS Really Wants” for The Atlantic, are diametrically opposite to the End Times expectations that drive ISIS’ military strategy. Being that Islam is derived from the same Judeo-Christian tradition, there are many parallels to the prophecies of the Book of Revelation found in Islamic literature, including the coming of Gog and Magog, and the return of Jesus Christ, who will lead righteous Muslims in vanquishing the anti-Christ (referred to as Dajjal), who in this case will have mislead a coalition Jews and Christians. As noted by Jay Michaelson in “Evangelicals & ISIS Feel Fine About the End of the World,” writing in The Daily Beast:

What if two mortal enemies both wanted a cataclysmic, world-ending battle, at roughly the same time, in roughly the same place?

Can you say “self-fulfilling prophecy”?[1]

For the most fanatical, the countdown to Armageddon began with the return of the Jews to Israel, followed quickly by further signs pointing to the nearness of a final showdown: nuclear weapons, European integration, Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem, and America’s wars in Afghanistan and the Gulf.[2] The Brookings Institute recently released the results of their survey entitled “American Attitudes Toward the Middle East and Israel,” which discovered that 73 percent of America’s 50 million Evangelical Christians believe that world events would turn against Israel the closer we get to End Times. Additionally, 79 percent of Evangelicals interpret the unfolding violence across the Middle East as a sign that the End Times are near.[3]

The same eschatological expectations are defining the confused and barbaric mission of ISIS. ISIS are the necessary antithesis in the Clash of Civilizations. They are a caricature of Western prejudices of Islam, deliberately manipulated by the media to feed Evangelical paranoia about the End Times. According to Jay Michaelson, who wrote a PhD dissertation on Sabbatai Zevi:

Indeed, as a student of millennialism for some time… it was shocking to see the congruence between the Islamic State’s vision of the End Times and that of evangelical Christianity: a large battle somewhere north to northeast of Jerusalem, a final battle in Jerusalem with the near-defeat of the heroic believers by an Antichrist figure, and then Jesus appearing from heaven to win the battle once and for all.[4]

The age-old millenarian aspirations of the occult secret societies, who seek the fulfillment of the Book of Revelation, have been reshaped for modern audiences as the “Clash of Civilizations,” or Armageddon, a final showdown between Muslims and Christians, each with competing expectations of their prophecies of the return of the Messiah Jesus. Ultimately, the clash serves as an Hegelian Dialectic to be manipulated to advance the Zionist ambitions of the State of Israel, by pitting Evangelical Christians against the most obnoxious example of Islamic Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood fanaticism, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS.

Faith-Based Initiatives

The various strains of American conservatism, including the Old and New Right, the Christian Right, Knights of Malta and Iran-Contra conspirators, all converged in the Council for National Policy (CNP), a powerful and highly secretive umbrella organization and networking group for American conservative activists, founded in 1981. The CNP was described by The New York Times as a “little-known group of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” who meet three times yearly behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference, “to strategize about how to turn the country to the right.”[5] Max Blumenthal in the Nation referred to it a secretive organization that “networks wealthy right-wing donors together with top conservative operatives to plan long-term movement strategy.”[6]

According to Chris Hedges and David Neiwert, groups like the Moral Majority and the CNP, carry on the tradition of Christofacism that began with Gerald K. Smith, William Dudley Pelley, the John Birch Society, and the Posse Comitatus movement, while the patriot movement and militia movement represented efforts to mainstream the philosophy in the 1990s.[7] Among the CNPs founding members were: Tim LaHaye, Nelson Bunker Hunt, T. Cullen Davis, William Cies, and Paul Weyrich. By the mid-80s, Weyrich’s Heritage Foundation had emerged as a key organization in the national conservative movement, publishing influential reports on domestic and defense issues, as well as pieces by prominent conservatives, such as Bob Dole and CNP member Pat Robertson. In 1986, Time called Heritage “the foremost of the new breed of advocacy tanks.”[8]

Among the the country’s most militant Christian extremists was Chuck Colson, Watergate conspirator and friend to E. Howard Hunt. Colson converted to Christianity and became a protégé of Douglas Coe, who after Abram Vereide’s death in 1969, assumed control of The Fellowship. Under Vereide’s arrangement, Coe was mentored by Billy Graham. Coe, who has been referred to as the “stealth Billy Graham,”[9] expanded The Fellowship’s branches worldwide, and solicited the financial support of the Lilly Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts.[10] Colson described the Fellowship as a “veritable underground of Christ’s men all through the U.S. government.”[11]

Coe and other leaders of The Fellowship have explained the organization’s desire for secrecy by citing biblical admonitions against public displays of good works, insisting they would not be able to tackle diplomatically sensitive missions if they drew public attention.[12] Coe cited one of his favorite scripture verses, Matthew 18:20, “When two or three are gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them,” and remarked, “Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had… But they bound themselves together in an agreement… Jesus said, ‘You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.’ Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people.”[13]

In 2005, Coe was named one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in the United States by Time magazine.[14] D. Michael Lindsay, a former Rice University sociologist who studies the evangelical movement, interviewed 360 evangelical elites, among whom one in three mentioned Coe or the Fellowship as an important influence.[15] Lindsay said, “there is no other organization like the Fellowship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or clout among the country’s leadership.”[16] Lindsay also reported that lawmakers mentioned the Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith.[17]

Guest speakers at the Breakfast have included, besides the president, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Elizabeth Dole, Tony Blair, even Bono. Coe was a behind-the-scenes player at the Camp David Accords in 1978, working with President Jimmy Carter to issue a worldwide call to prayer with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. In 2000, Coe met with top economic officials of Pakistan as a “special envoy” of US Representative Joe Pitts. Coe met with President George H.W. Bush as he hosted a luncheon with Iraq’s ambassador to the United States in the mid-1980s. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with Coe on many occasions as First Lady of the United States.

Speaking at the 1990 National Prayer Breakfast, President George H.W. Bush praised Coe for his “quiet diplomacy, I wouldn’t say secret diplomacy.”[18] Bush’s conversion to Christianity came in 1985 when, after a squabble with his parents, his father George Bush Sr. arranged for Billy Graham to spend a few days with him. Bush emerged a changed man, quit drinking and began attending Bible study.[19] During his time as president, Bush read the Bible daily.[20] GQ Magazine reported that Donald Rumsfeld interspersed secret war memos intended for him with quotes from the Bible. As Anton Wessels observes, this was obviously because Bush entertained millenarian ideas about the coming of a thousand-year reign of peace.[21]

Another a protégé of Douglas Coe was George W. Bush’s Special Assistant, David Kuo. According to Kuo, “The Fellowship’s reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp.”[22] Kuo served as second-in-command of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives (OFBCI). The initiative was an extension of ideas developed during the 1980s by CNP members Attorney General and Ed Meese and Gary Bauer, of the Campus Crusade and then Reagan’s domestic policy adviser, who corresponded with Coe about creating a federal, faith-based response to poverty. OFBCI was one of the key domestic policies of Bush’s campaign promise of “compassionate conservatism.” The initiative sought to strengthen faith-based and community organizations and expand their capacity to provide federally-funded social services. According to Sharlet:

But its implementation was in many senses the logical result of the Family’s decades of ministry to Washington’s elite combined with the increasingly established power of populist fundamentalism: a mix of sophisticated policy manoeuvres and the kind of sentimentalism that blinded many supporters to the fact that faith-based initiatives, no matter how well intended, are nothing less than “the privatization of welfare,” as the faith-based theorist Marvin Olasky put it in a 1996 report commissioned by then-Governor Bush. [23]

Through administrative changes made by executive order, Bush transformed Clinton’s 1996 welfare reforms. In the end, there were faith-based offices not just in the Department of Health and Human Services, but also in the Department of Justice, the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce. The Small Business Administration gained a faith-based office, as did USAID. Huge portions of the budgets of the departments and agencies in which they were housed could now be used for faith-based ends. According to Sharlet, “The real achievement of faith- based initiatives was not to launch flashy programs or even to buy votes for Republicans; it was to open the door for religious groups to the whole treasure house of federal social-services funding, tens of billions of dollars.”[24]

In Tempting Faith, Kuo portrays the office as having been used almost exclusively to win political support with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities. According to Kuo, “National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy.’” Kuo alleges that Ken Mehlman, then-White House political affairs director, knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office to launch ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters. The outreach was so extensive and so powerful that Kuo attributes Bush’s 2004 Ohio victory “at least partially… to the conferences we had launched two years before.”[25]

Coe introduced Kuo to Billy Graham and CNP member Bill Bright. Bright, a good and long-time friend of Billy Graham,[26] was also a member of the Fellowship and founded Campus Crusade, one of the biggest evangelical groups in the world. Graham biographer William Martin called Bill Bright “one of the most important of a generation of Evangelical titans.”[27] Bright has been a contributor to the Alliance Defense Fund, along with James Dobson of Focus on the Family and D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries. In the late 1980s, Family Research Council officially became a division of Focus on the Family.

According to Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family, Colson combined “Bright’s populist style with Coe’s political sophistication.”[28] Colson was a principal signer of the 1994 Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) ecumenical document signed by leading Evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholic leaders in the United States. It was part of a larger ecumenical rapprochement in the United States that had begun in the 1970s with Catholic-Evangelical collaboration during the Gerald R. Ford Administration and in later para-church organizations such as Moral Majority.

The co-signers of the document were Chuck Colson, J.I. Packer, CNP member Pat Robertson, and Bill Bright and Richard John Neuhaus. Neuhaus as a prominent Christian cleric (first as an Evangelical Lutheran pastor and later as a Roman Catholic priest) who served as an unofficial adviser to President George W. Bush on bioethical issues. He became a member of the growing neoconservative movement and an outspoken advocate of “democratic capitalism.” He also advocated faith-based policy initiatives by the federal government based upon Judeo-Christian values. Bright was also a co-signatory of the Land letter of 2002 which outlined a just war rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, providing a theological underpinning for the invasion being planned by President George W. Bush.

Council of Conservative Citizens 

The ever-present Jesse Helms, a founder of the Council for National Policy, was also a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the successor organization to the KKK-affiliated White Citizens’ Councils.[29] Its members include 33rd degree Scottish Rite Freemasons, Senator Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. Another CCC member was Republican politician Trent Lott of Mississippi, who is also 33rd degree Scottish Rite Freemason.[30] As majority leader, Lott had a major role in the Senate trial following the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. On December 20, 2002, after significant controversy following comments regarding Strom Thurmond’s anti-desegregation presidential candidacy, Lott resigned as Senate Minority Leader.

The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League claim that many CCC members have ties to the Klan, the National Association for the Advancement of White People and other white supremacist organizations.[31] In 1997, several members of the CCC attended an event hosted by Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front.[32] David Duke also spoke at CCC fund raising event, while Patrick Buchanan’s campaign manager was linked to both Duke and the Council.

Also connected is Don Black, a former Klan member who founded the white supremacist and neo-Nazi website Stormfront.[33] Black created Stormfront.com, which started as an online bulletin board system in the early 1990s, before being established as a website in 1995 which popularizes the ideas of Esoteric Hitlerism. Black was a member of the American Nazi Party in the 1970s, when it was headed by Matt Koehl who, drawing on the teachings of Savitri Devi, began to suggest that National Socialism was more akin to a religious movement than a political one. Black was convicted in 1981 for attempted armed overthrow of the government of the Dominican Republic, in violation of the US Neutrality Act. He was sentenced to three years in prison, during which time he learned computer programming, which led him to establish Stormfront. In a 2001 USA Today article, journalist Tara McKelvey called Stormfront “the most visited white supremacist site on the net.”[34] By June 2008, the site was attracting more than 40,000 unique users each day.[35]

Stormfront featured the writings of William Luther Pierce and David Duke, as well as works by Carto’s Institute for Historical Review (IHR). Duke was once a member of American Nazi Party splinter group, and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the mid-1970s. In the late 1960s, Duke met William Luther Pierce, the former editor of Colin Jordan’s National Socialist World, the official journal of World Union of National Socialists (WUNS). As National Chairman for the National Youth Alliance, Carto was successful in recruiting Dr. William Pierce. After George Lincoln Rockwell’s death, Pierce reorganized it into the American neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance in 1974. Pierce was helped by Revilo P. Oliver, one of the founding members of the John Birch Society, who broke with the group for what he called “the Birch hoax,” claiming according to Eustace Mullins that the JBS was founded by David Rockefeller.[36] Pierce later became infamous for his authorship of The Turner Diaries, which depicts a violent revolution which leads to the overthrow of the United States government, nuclear war and ultimately to a race war. The novel has been associated with a number of violent crimes committed by white separatists, and is believed to have inspired Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.[37]

The “Race Information Library” on Duke’s website is composed substantially of articles by grantees of the Pioneer Fund, many of them from the Mankind Quarterly. Duke later formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which advertised a distributed The Protocols, and Francis Parker Yockey’s Imperium, along with IAAEE publications and the Occidental Quarterly.[38] Duke was also featured in Willis Carto’s Spotlight, the official publication of the Liberty Lobby. According to Martin A. Lee in The Beast Reawakens:

Under [Carto’s] command, the Liberty Lobby grew into the largest and best-organized anti-Semitic group in the United States. Functioning as the white racialist movement’s leading umbrella organization, it developed close ties to the U.S. militia movement and forged extensive links with right-wing extremists around the world.[39]

Carto also helped found the Populist Party that served as an electoral vehicle for neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan members such as Duke in 1988, and Christian Identity supporter Bo Gritz. The 1992 movie character of Rambo was modeled Gritz. Gritz was supporter of the Christian Identity movement, which is closely linked to the Christian Patriot Movement. During that period, Carto recruited and mentored several Klansmen, including Louis Beam and Tom Metzger. Tom Metzger, founder and leader of the White Aryan Resistance, founded in 1983, was also an active leader in the John Birch Society in the Fallbrook, California area.[40] For several years, Duke sold books through a mail-order catalog that offered neo-Nazi classics, such as Imperium by Francis Parker Yockey.

As detailed by Russ Bellant in The Coors Connection, Helms’ political operative Tom Ellis formed the Leadership Coalition for Freedom Through Truth in 1987 with funding from the Pioneer Fund. Its board included Richard Schoff, a North Carolina businessman, who was a generous funder of the KKK. In the early 1970s, he was the Grand Kilgrapp of the Indiana KKK. Indianapolis police told a reporter that KKK cross burnings were held on Schoff’s property during Klan rallies hosted by Schoff.[41] Ellis was a member of The Conservative Caucus (TCC), which according to Russ Bellant, “is among the most radical of reactionary groups in the US.” The TCC was funded by Coors and headed by Joseph Phillips. The TCC also received funding from Roger Milliken’s Milliken & Company.[42] The Caucus created the created the Citizens Cabinet Organization Committee, which included Heritage president Frank Walton, Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie and a number of leading members of the John Birch Society, including its president Larry McDonald, a member of the Shickshinny Knights of Malta.[43] The TCC also shared members with the Singlaub’s United Council for World Freedom, the American branch of the WACL, financially supported by Joseph Coors. USCWF and the Nicaraguan Refugee Fund, another Coor’s cause, helped fund the Nicaraguan contras.[44]

Council for National Policy

The idea behind the creation of the CNP was to build a Christian conservative alternative to the Council on Foreign Relations, which LaHaye considered too liberal. As reported in Rolling Stone in an article titled “Reverend Doomsday,” “According to LaHaye, civilization is threatened by a worldwide conspiracy of secret societies and liberal groups intent on destroying “every vestige of Christianity.” The ultimate goal is to “turn America into an amoral, humanist country, ripe for merger into a one-world socialist state.”[45] The founders of the CNP stated that they “were seeking to create a Christian conservative alternative to what they believed was the liberalism of the Council on Foreign Relations.”[46] As Russ Bellant explained, “The view on the Radical Right that an organization such as the CNP was needed stemmed from their perception that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)—closely identified with the Rockefeller family—was selling out American interests in the pursuit of a… left-wing foreign policy agenda.”[47] However, researchers revealed that the early leadership of the CNP was, on the contrary, also represented by the CFR.[48]

The CNP represented a gathering of ASC, Christian Right leaders, Iran-Contra veterans and John Birch Society members. Members of the CNP have also included Western Goals founder J. Peter Grace, and key figures from the Christian Right like Christian Voice founder Robert G. Grant, Terry Dolan, Richard Viguerie, Howard Phillips, Rev. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jesse Helms, Thomas Ellis, Phyllis Schlafly, as well as Senator Trent Lott, former United States Attorneys General Ed Meese and John Ashcroft, Roy Cohn’s law partner Thomas A. Bolan, Pat Boone, Joseph and Jeffrey Coors, John Birch Society chairman Larry McDonald, John Singlaub and Oliver North. During the mid-1980s, Hunt contributed almost half a million US dollars to the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), a conservative fundraising organization later heavily implicated in the Iran-Contra affair.[49] Hunt was past Chairman of the Board of the Bible Society of Texas and the past Chairman of, and significant contributor to Campus Crusade for Christ International’s “Here’s Life” Campaign in the late 1970s, as well as providing a $3.5 million loan guarantee for the 1979 Campus Crusade film Jesus.

Likewise, the CNP also has had membership links to the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), whose core activity involved providing financial and material aid to right-wing organizations and anti-communist militias around the globe like Nicaraguan guerrillas in the Iran-Contra affair.[50] The ever-present Jesse Helms, a founder of the Council for National Policy, became a focal point for US intelligence and Republican connections to CAL, the WCAL’s branch in Latin America, following a visit in 1975 to WACL headquarters in Taiwan. Helms’ aide Ramon Molina, a Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veteran, was the apparent point of contact who in 1976 between Helms and his other employer, Nicaraguan dictator Somoza.[51] Helms, who was often critical of Nixon and Kissinger’s policy of detente towards the China and the Soviet Union, directly blamed Kissinger at the 1975 WACL conference for weakening the US’ defense system with the SALT-1 negotiations.[52]

In 1978, ASC-connected Roger Pearson, whose writing was funded by the Pioneer Fund, became the World Chairman of the WACL. Pearson was criticized for the presence in the organization of neo-Nazis, war criminals, and people linked to death squads and assassinations.[53] According to William H. Tucker, he “used this opportunity to fill the WACL with European Nazis—ex-officials of the Third Reich and Nazi collaborators from other countries during the war as well as new adherents to the cause—in what one journalist called ‘one of the greatest fascist blocs in postwar Europe.’”[54] In that same year, Pearson hosted the 11th annual conference of the WCAL, which included representatives of the MSI, the Liberty Lobby and the Nouvelle Ecole.[55]

The Washington Post published a critical attack on both WACL and Pearson’s extreme right wing politics, after which he was asked to resign from the editorial board of the Policy Review. But his connection with other organizations continued, and in 1986 CovertAction Quarterly uncovered his association with James Jesus Angleton, former chief of CIA Counter-Intelligence, General Daniel O. Graham, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Robert C. Richardson, and other American Security Council members.[56] In a 1982 letter, Reagan personally thanked Pearson, stating, “You are performing a valuable service in bringing to a wide audience the work of leading scholars who are supportive of a free enterprise economy, a firm and consistent foreign policy and a strong national defense.”[57]

After the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Muslim World Congress (WMC), which maintained ties to the WACL, began working closely with US intelligence and Pakistani official in covertly supporting the Mujahideen.[58] The WMC was originally founded by al-Husseini, “Hitler’s Mufti.”[59] At the time the WMC was headed by Pakistani Dr. Inamullah Khan. In 1949 and 1951, Muslim Brotherhood leader Said Ramadan traveled to Pakistan to take part in the meetings of the WMC. In Pakistan, Ramadan worked closely with a young Maududi. Ramadan helped Maududi develop opposition the country’s opposition to the left. Khan also served as an advisor to the Saudi Arabian royal family, who funded the WMC abundantly. Khan explained he participated in WACL conferences because “as a religious person, I am opposed to all atheistic creeds.”[60]

Unification Church 

The CNP also has membership links to the Committee for the neoconservative and Le Cercle-connected Free World (CFW)—a CIA front conceived at the Jerusalem Conference in 1979—which included, among others, some members of the Unification Church of the United States, some Republican Party leaders, and counter-revolutionaries in Latin America, particularly during the 1980s. Those endorsing the work of CFW include a wide spectrum of the right wing and neoconservatives, including Richard V. Allen, Edwin J. Feulner, Ray Cline, Arnaud de Borchgrave, Eugene Wigner, Michael Ledeen, Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams and Lewis Tambs. Tambs was a member of the WACL and served as ambassador to Costa Rica until 1986. Allen went on to become National Security Adviser to President Reagan. Abrams was deeply implicated in all aspects of the Iran-Contra Affair. He first served in the Reagan administration. Wigner, a physicist by profession, who was on the board of the Committee on the Present Danger, received a $200,000 “Founders Award” from the Reverend Moon.[61]

Numerous groups participated, including Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church, who have given millions of dollars to the CNP.[62] Moon has also been criticized for his relationships with political and religious figures, including Presidents of the United States Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, North Korean President Kim Il Sung, and Louis Farrakhan the leader of the Nation of Islam. Moon’s belief in a literal Kingdom of God on earth to be brought about by human effort was a motivation for his establishment of groups that are not strictly religious in their purposes.[63]

In 1977, Moral Majority founder Richard Viguerie—who had been involved in Koreagate with Tong Sun Park, agent of the Korean CIA—worked on a project to raise money for Moon’s Children’s Relief Fund, which reportedly only received 6.3% of the $1,508,256 raised. $920,000 went to Viguerie according to New York State charity auditors.[64] Viguerie also joined the board of the Moon-affiliated American Freedom Coalition (AFC), which had been formed from former members of Christian Voice.[65] The co-chairmen were experienced former congressmen, Democrat Richard Ichord and Republican Robert Wilson, a senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. On 27th January, 1980, when Frank Nugan was found shot dead in his Mercedes Benz, a Bible was found with a piece of paper that included the names “Bob Wilson” and “Bill Colby.”

Viguerie was also a member of the George Town Club, founded by Park and Robert Keith Gray, former CEO of Hill & Knowlton, which was Edwin Wilson’s base for blackmail operations and linked the Franklin coverup. Notable clients of Gray & Company, which Gray established in 1981 after leaving Hill & Knowlton, included Saudi billionaire and Iran-Contra arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, the government of Haiti under Duvalier, American, the Teamsters Union, and Reverend Moon. Gray also joined the board of the board of BCCI after its acquisition of First American Bank. Another client included commodities trader and financier Marc Rich, who in 1983 was indicted for trading with Iran during the hostage crisis and a variety of other charges, fled the country, and was later granted a pardon by President Bill Clinton.[66]

According to an affidavit filed by Daniel Sheehan for the Christic Institute, when Edwin Mcese, Vice President Bush, CIA director Bill Casey, national security adviser Robert McFarlane, and Oliver North were devising a strategy to circumvent Congress to arm the Contras, they turned to Gray & Company. In these meetings, this group also decided to have Robert Owen of the company offer cover to the CIA by setting up a private citizen-operated Contra support group to publicly solicit funds and assistance for the Contras. This public organization was set up by Owen by contacting General John K. Singlaub, who in turn set up the United States Council on World Freedom and began publicly raising funds for the Contras. Robert’s older brother Dwight served in MACV-SOG with Singlaub. Robert claimed to have served as the personal representative to the Contras for North, acting privately as a go-between since North was legally prevented from meeting the Contras himself.[67]

Moon moved to America in 1972 and his right-wing views soon brought entry to Republican circles. Moon was received at huge rallies, met Richard Nixon and, during the Watergate scandal, fasted on the Capitol steps for three days while praying for God not to let Nixon be impeached.[65] However, Moon’s business practices soon aroused suspicions and in 1978, after the Koreagate, the congressional subcommittee on international organisations the described the Moon organization as “a multinational corporation … a paramilitary organisation … and a tightly disciplined international political party.” It added: “Among [its] goals is establishment of a worldwide government in which the separation of church and state would be abolished, and which would be governed by Moon and his followers.” [66]

The committee’s recommendation of further investigation of illegalities was dropped when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980. Under Reagan, Moon’s political influence increased dramatically. Vice President George Bush, former CIA director, invited Moon as his guest to the Reagan inauguration. At this time Moon was backed by two Japanese tycoons that the US occupation had formerly imprisoned as war criminals, Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa, founder of the WACL.[67] During the 1980s, Moon expanded his financial empire to include a car plant in China; a titanium mine, weapons factory, and Tong Il Heavy Industries in South Korea; property in South America; a hotel in New York; a fishery in Alaska; a golf course in California; a computer firm in Japan; a small arms company and a university in New England; newspapers in Korea, Argentina and Japan, and the conservative Washington Times, which he founded in 1982; a symphony orchestra and ballet company; a cable TV network; the UPI press agency; a New York publishing house; Insight magazine; and numerous restaurants and jewellery businesses. His home was a 30-room mansion in New Jersey. [68]

Terry Dolan, who was a member of the Policy Board of Governors of the CNP, was a member of the advisory board for CAUSA International, the educational, anti-communist organization founded by Moon.[69] Gen. Richard G. Stilwell, senior member of Crozier’s 6I and Team B member General Daniel O. Graham—who was on the board of governors of the CNP—provided Le Cercle access to the Moonies’ CAUSA and their American geostrategic propaganda outlet, the US Global Strategy Council (USGSC), the two serving on the board under the chairmanship of Shackley team member Ray S. Cline. USGSC is an independent think tank, incorporated in 1981. It focuses on long-range strategic issues. The founding members were, among others, Henry Luce and his wife Clare Boothe Luce, and Le Cercle’s General Richard Stilwell. USGSC also has ties to the Unification Church (the Moonies) and CAUSA through Woellner and Arnaud de Borchgrave, the editor of the Washington Times, a newspaper owned by the Moonies.[70]

Conservatives Against Liberal Legislation, renamed Conservative Alliance (CALL), organized by Dolan’s NCPAC, was also in the Coalition for Peace Through Strength(CPTS). CALL has received major funding through groups affiliated with Rev. Moon, according to the Wall Street Journal and other reports. CALL started the National Coalition for America's Survival, which includes the newly-created America First Committee, a Chicago-based racist and anti-Semitic organization headed by Art Jones, who functioned as the ideological leader of Chicago-area Nazi groups. Jones participated in a Klan-Nazi unity meeting sponsored by Aryan Nations in October of 1985.[71]

In 1977, Viguerie worked on a project to raise money for Moon’s Children’s Relief Fund, which reportedly only received 6.3% of the $1,508,256 raised. $920,000 went to Viguerie according to New York State charity auditors.[72] Viguerie also joined the board of the Moon-affiliated American Freedom Coalition (AFC), which had been formed from former members of Christian Voice.[73] The co-chairmen were experienced former congressmen, Democrat Richard Ichord and Republican Robert Wilson, a senior member of the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee. On 27th January, 1980, when Frank Nugan was found shot dead in his Mercedes Benz, a Bible was found with a piece of paper that included the names “Bob Wilson” and “Bill Colby.”

The president of AFC is a minister, Christian Voice founder and CNP member Dr. Robert Grant, and the vice president was Dr. Ralph David Abernathy, a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr. and co-founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who served on two Unification Church boards of directors. The AFC quickly developed into one of the larger grass-roots political groups in America, boasting a list of over 300,000 supporters. The AFC also produced an hour-long video documentary, Ollie North: Fight for Freedom, which it broadcast over 600 times on more than 100 TV stations.[74] Grant published the AFC’s journal, American Freedom Journal started in 1988, whose contributors included Pat Buchanan, Ed Meese, Ben Wattenberg and Jeane Kirkpatrick.

In 1982, when Moon was convicted in the United States of filing false federal income tax returns and conspiracy, and sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, Falwell and other leading clergy signed petitions protesting the government’s case.[75] The American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A, the National Council of Churches, the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, filed briefs in support of Moon.[76] The Unification Church later courted the mainstream clergy heavily, spending $30 million, according to Time magazine, on a campaign for religious respectability. [77] In the 1990s, the Unification Church hired Abernathy as a spokesperson to protest the news media's use of the term “Moonies,” which they compared with the word “nigger.” In 1991, Regnery published a defense of the Moonies titled Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

After Moon’s release from prison after serving 13 months, he met or received support from the British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Edward Heath, ex-presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush Sr., Canadian ex-premier Brian Mulroney, US senators Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, William Fulbright and Orrin Hatch, Reagan’s defence secretary Caspar Weinberger, the former NATO chief general Alexander Haig, former US education secretary William Bennett, Boston University president John Silber, Christian Coalition ex-chief Ralph Reed, and Jerry Falwell.[78]

Ralph Reed, the first executive director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, was among other notable speakers for Moon’s organizations and affairs which have included, Tim LaHaye’s wife Beverly, and Robert Schuller, well known for his Crystal Cathedral in Southern California and Hour of Power television ministry. In the 1980s, Tim LaHaye was criticized by the evangelical community for accepting money for his American Coalition for Traditional Values from Bo Hi Pak, a longtime Sun Myung Moon operative.[79] LaHaye was also criticized for his role as Chairman Moon’s Council for Religious Freedom, which was founded to protest Moon’s 1984 imprisonment. Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, James Robison, James Kennedy and Rex Humbard, have all served as executive committee members. Falwell readily admits that he accepted 2.5 million dollars from Moon in 1994 in order to bail out his Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.[80]

Western Goals Foundation 

The Tower Commission revealed that also part of the Iran-Contra funding network was the Western Goals Foundation, founded by J. Peter Grace in 1979 and John Singlaub, and sponsored by Henry Regnery and Nelson Bunker Hunt, son of H.L Hunt and member of the Council of the John Birch Society.[81] Another major funder of Western Goals was Roger Milliken, a member of JBS and of the Board of Directors of W.R. Grace Co. Deering-Milliken and Deering-Milliken Research Corporations also funded Western Goals.[82]

Singlaub was assisted in the founding of Western Goals by JBS members, John Rees and Congressman and fellow ASC founder Larry McDonald. After McDonald’s death in 1983, Roy Cohn temporarily assumed the leadership of the organization.[83] Rees ran a network of private informants on college campuses in the United States, that Political Research Associates referred to as often having better placed infiltrators among campus groups than the FBI’s own agents.[84] The network would pass information along to Rees, who would in turn forward it to the director of intelligence at FBI headquarters. From there it would be forwarded to field offices. These activities were part of a network of private right wing groups that the FBI used to gather intelligence on government critics and people opposed to the Reagan Administration’s foreign policy stance in Central America.[85]

Rees’ lover was Grace Metalious, an American author known for her controversial novel Peyton Place, one of the best-selling works in publishing history. The novel describes how three women are forced to come to terms with their identity, in a small, conservative, gossipy New England town, in a tale that includes incest, abortion, adultery, lust and murder. It sold 60,000 copies within the first ten days of its release and remained on the New York Times best seller list for 59 weeks.

Like the Safari Club, Western Goals was set up to side-step restrictions imposed after the Watergate and COINTELPRO revelations. In Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States, sociologist Sara Diamond noted that to reduce the cost of producing and distributing anti-Communist materials, corporations turned to non-profit organizations such as the JBS.[86] Western Goals acquired a reputation of acting as a “clearinghouse” for some police departments whose intelligence-collecting functions were restricted by laws such as the Freedom of Information Act.[87] According to The Spokesman-Review, it was intended to “blunt subversion, terrorism, and communism” by filling the gap “created by the disbanding of the House Un-American Activities Committee and what [McDonald] considered to be the crippling of the FBI during the 1970s.”[88] According to reporters Jon Lee Anderson and Scott Anderson, groups like Western Goals allow “the ultra-right [to keep] tabs on its ‘subversive’ domestic opposition…”[89]

McDonald was killed while a passenger on board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it was shot down by Soviet interceptors. It was mistaken for the Soviets as a U.S. spy plane after it flew off course and through Soviet prohibited airspace around the time of a U.S. aerial reconnaissance mission. The incident was one of the tensest moments of the Cold War and resulted in an escalation of anti-Soviet sentiment, particularly in the United States. The Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union said it was a deliberate provocation by the United States to test the Soviet Union’s military preparedness, or even to provoke a war. The White House accused the Soviet Union of obstructing search and rescue operations.[90] The Soviets contended former U.S. president Richard Nixon was to have been seated next to McDonald but that the CIA warned him not to go, according to the New York Post and Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS). It was denied by Nixon.[91]

The WACL also had ties to the Western Goals Institute (WGI), a conservative pressure group in Britain, which was founded in 1985 as an offshoot of the US Western Goals Foundation. Its stated intent was anti-communism, although the group was also known for its opposition to non-white immigration into Europe and Britain. In line with the ‘Reagan doctrine’ policies of its American patrons, Western Goals UK had established links with militant, and often violent, anti-Communist groups internationally. These include the Angolan UNITA movement (in October 1988 Western Goals facilitated the visit to London of UNITA’s leader, Jonas Savimbi) and the Salvadoran Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party, whose leader, Roberto D’Aubuisson, became one of the group’s international patrons.[92] It was also claimed that WGI may have been used by its US partners as a conduit for funds to the Nicaraguan.[93]

Following the end of the Cold War, WGI lost its original anti-Communist focus, but continued to forge links with other far-right and nationalist political parties. WGI supported the continuance of European-dominated government in South Africa, and formed close links with the Conservative Party of South Africa which some years previously broke away from the National Party of South Africa after P.W. Botha instituted limited reforms to apartheid and which the institute saw as fighting communism in the form of the African National Congress.

Le Pen’s Front National also maintained ties with the Western Goals Institute (WGI), who gave the party their open support. On 12 October 1989, the WGI hosted a controversial fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool, at which Pierre Ceyrac, a Front National Member of the European Parliament, was the Guest Speaker. The invitation to 31-year-old Italian parliamentary deputy, Alessandra Mussolini, Benito Mussolini’s grand-daughter and niece of actress Sophia Loren, was said to have “caused outrage,” and led to calls for a ban on her entering the country.[94]

Jewish Defense League 

Singlaub and Rees also had ties to Joseph Churba who founded the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in 1968, with Meir Kahane, an ordained Orthodox rabbi, and later a member of the Israeli Knesset, to “protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary.” In The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane: From FBI Informant to Knesset Member, Robert Friedman exposed links between Kahane, ultra-rightist founder of the Jewish Defense League, to the CIA, the FBI, the Mossad and the Mafia. According to Friedman, “high-ranking members of Mossad” were directing Kahane, and that the “central player” was former Mossad operations chief, Yitzhak Shamir.[95]

At some time in the late 1950s, Kahane took on the pseudonym Michael King to impersonate a Gentile. His strong anti-communist views landed him a position as a consultant with the FBI. In 1963, the FBI asked Kahane and Churba to infiltrate the John Birch Society.[96] He and Joseph Churba created the July Fourth Movement, which was formed to counteract widespread opposition towards U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Subsequently, they co-authored the text, The Jewish Stake in Vietnam, which was an attempt to convince American Jews of the “evil of Communism.” The book’s introduction states that, “all Americans have a stake in this grim war against Communism… it is vital that Jews realize the threat to their very survival [should Communism succeed].”

By 1976, Churba was the Air Force’s top Middle East intelligence expert when he publicly criticized comments by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. George S. Brown, about Israel’s being a military burden for the United States.[97] In 1980 Churba worked as a campaign advisor for presidential candidate Ronald Reagan. Kahane and Churba was also friends with neoconservative Douglas Feith, served as the under secretary of Defense for Policy for United States president George W. Bush.[98]

Churba became head of the International Security Council (ISC), established in 1985 by CAUSA International of Moon. ISC was a think-tank of former statesmen and senior military officers who dealt with international security issues.[99] The predecessor organization to ISC, the Center for International Security (CIS), was organized by Churba in 1979. Its board included Major General George Keegan, Jr., William Kintner, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the ASC’s General Daniel O. Graham, and Bernard Yoh, cofounder of Accuracy in Media and former counterinsurgency consultant to South Vietnam president Ngo Dinh Diem and other terrorist governments in the sphere of American influence. [100]

A major conference on state terrorism and the international system was held by the ISC and CAUSA International in January 1986 in Tel Aviv, with speeches by Dr. Bo Hi Pak, Arnaud de Borchgrave, Charles Lichenstein, Gordon Sumner, Jr., and Yehuda Blum, former Israeli ambassador to the UN. In a brochure issued by ISC in October 1987, Churba acknowledges the “generous and unwavering support of CAUSA International and that of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, whose understanding of the threat to Judaeo-Christian civilization is unique, as is his selfless commitment to freedom, security and peace.”[101] These organizations and others coalesced under the Federation for World Peace (FWP), founded by Rev. Moon in 1991 after the passing of the cold war.[102]

As reported by Edward S. Herman, in The “Terrorism” Industry, Churba was connected to other elements of the far-right through his service as advisor to GeoMilitech Consultants Corporation, along with John Singlaub and Edward Luttwak of CSIS. GeoMilitech was founded in 1984 by Barbara Studley, a friend of Singlaub's, apparently as an conduit arms. The firm supplied arms to the Salvadoran government as well as the Nicaraguan Contras. Singlaub used GeoMilitech to procure $5.3 million in weapons, which were transferred to Adolfo Calero in June 1985.[103]

In 2011, the FBI released files on the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, which state that the star had received death threats from the JDL. The report described how the JDL would make the death threats, and then call the rap star and offer protection for a fee. According to the documents, Shakur was a victim of this scheme, as was another late rapper, Eazy-E of N.W.A. and founder of Ruthless Records with Jerry Heller.[104] Heller claimed the death threats came from Neo-Nazi-Skinheads because of the “Fuck Tha Police” song. When Ruthless recording artist and former N.W.A member Dr. Dre sought to work instead with Death Row Records, Ruthless executives Mike Klein and Jerry Heller were fearful of possible physical intimidation from Death Row Entertainment executives including chief executive officer Suge Knight and requested security assistance from the violent JDL. Eazy-E apparently admired the JDL for their slogan “Never Again,” and had plans to do a movie about the group.[105] JDL spokesperson Irv Rubin issued a press release stating, “There was nothing but a close, tight relationship” between Eazy-E and the League.[106]

Christian Broadcasting Network

Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster and political commentator, has been on the Board of Governors of the CNP, and was its president in 1987. In 1988, following a well-funded but failed bid for the U.S. presidency, Robertson used the remainder of his campaign resources to jump-start the creation of a voter mobilization effort dubbed the Christian Coalition. The Coalition faced an ongoing IRS investigation of its provisional non-profit tax status and a lawsuit by the Federal Election Commission alleging illegal campaign contributions to Republicans George Bush, Jesse Helms, Oliver North and Newt Gingrich, among others.[107]

Robertson is a best-selling author and the host of The 700 Club, a Christian News and TV program broadcast live weekdays on Freeform (formerly ABC Family) via satellite from CBN studios, as well as on channels throughout the United States, and on Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) affiliates worldwide. The Coors Foundation was an early supporter of CBN. Robertson was on the board of directors of the National Religious Broadcasters along with Bill Bright of the Campus Crusade for Christ, Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Jim Bakker, Tim LaHaye, and Jimmy Swaggart. Texas millionaire Bunker Hunt, LaHaye’s wife Beverly, Oral Roberts, and Jimmy Swaggart supported Robertson’s failed run for the presidency in 1988.

Richard Mellon Scaife promoted Clinton Chronicles, a 1994 film that helped perpetuate a conspiracy theory known as the “Clinton Body Count” about a list of associates Clinton was purported to have had killed, was distributed with help from Falwell, who also appears in the film, and also promoted by Robertson through his Christian Coalition. The film was produced by Citizens for Honest Government, and partially funded by Larry Nichols, a long-time Clinton opponent, who has boasted of being an operative of the CIA. In 1990, Nichols filed a lawsuit against Clinton alleging that he’d been wrongly fired from his state job, when it was discovered that in 1988, as marketing director for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), reported he placed 642 long-distance calls at state expense on behalf of the Contras in Nicaragua, either to Nicaragua or to U.S. politicians backing them.[108] Nichols, along with “Justice Jim” Johnson, a racist Arkansas politician whose 1966 candidacy for governor was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan, is the narrator of the film, as well as the another, The Mena Connection. Throughout Clinton's presidency, Nichols was a frequent guest on conservative talk radio and promulgated various conspiracy theories about Clinton, including tales about Iran-Contra drug-trafficking at the Mena Airport. The New York Times characterized Nichols as one of the “Clinton crazies.”[109]

Patriot conspiracy theories were successfully introduced to a wide audience in Pat Robertson’s 1991 book The New World Order, which interpreted an Illuminati conspiracy in light of End Times prophecy. Robertson, who links Freemasonry to a “mystery religion designed to replace the old Christian world order of Europe and America,” describes a scenario where Wall Street, the Federal Reserve System, the CFR, the Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission control world events from behind the scenes, manipulating people in the direction of world government ruled by the Antichrist. In 1995, in The New York Review of Books, Michael Lind and Jacob Heilbrunn traced the sources of Robertson’s allegations to right-wing author Nesta Webster’s World Revolution and Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, and Eustace Mullins’s Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Robertson also cited William T. Still’s New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies, which attacked the Freemasons as part of a conspiracy “to bring all nations under one-world government” was actually “the biblical rule of the Antichrist.”[110]

Greg Grandin noted in The Nation, that Falwell’s Moral Majority and Robertson’s Freedom Council were part of the funding apparatus of the Iran-Contra operation. According to Grandin, “In order to bypass public and congressional opposition, the White House outsourced the ‘hearts and minds’ component of its Central American wars to evangelicals.”[111] Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum sent down “Freedom Fighter Friendship Kits” to the Contras, which included toothpaste, insect repellent and Bibles. Gospel Crusades Inc., Friends of the Americas, Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing, World Vision, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and World Medical Relief likewise shipped hundreds of tons of humanitarian aid to the Contras and refugee camps in Honduras.

Christian Zionism

According to Allan C. Brownfield, “It is because of their yearning for the end of the world that many American fundamentalist leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have embraced the most extreme Israeli positions regarding the Holy Land and have opposed efforts at achieving a compromise peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians.”[112] In 1980, Falwell was presented the Jabotinsky medal by Israeli Prime-Minister Menachem Begin, named after Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism. Falwell is the only Gentile ever to receive the medal. Dr. William Gordon, a Presbyterian minister and professor and co-author of Jerry Falwell: An Unauthorized Profile, states that, “The only difference between his and Jabotinsky’s philosophy is that Falwell talks of Christ… After pinning the Jabotinsky medal on him, the Israelis utilized Falwell for their purposes to an even greater degree.”[113]

The government of Israel has given official encouragement to Christian Zionism, allowing the establishment in 1980 of the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, based in Jerusalem, whose main function is to enlist worldwide Protestant support for Israel and its government. The embassy has raised funds to help finance Jewish immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union, and has assisted Zionist groups in establishing Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Popular interest in Christian Zionism was given a boost around the year 2000 in the form of the Left Behind series of novels by Tim LaHaye, and Jerry B. Jenkins. LaHaye played a significant role in getting the Religious Right to support George W. Bush for the presidency in 2000.[114] The novels are built around the prophetic role of Israel in the apocalyptic End Times.[115] Falwell said about the first book in the series: “In terms of its impact on Christianity, it’s probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible.”[116] The Left Behind series sold 80 million copies, topping the best-selling lists of The New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Christian Booksellers Association. The series has been adapted into four films to date. The original series of three films are Left Behind: The Movie (2000), Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002), and Left Behind: World at War (2005) starring Kirk Cameron, best known for his role as Mike Seaver on the popular 1980s ABC sitcom Growing Pains. A reboot starring Nicolas Cage, entitled simply Left Behind, was released in 2014.

Based on dispensationalist interpretation of prophecies in the Biblical books of Revelation, Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel, Left Behind tells the story of the end times set in the current era. True believers in Christ have been “raptured” (taken instantly to heaven), leaving the world in a state of chaos. As people struggle for solutions, a relatively unknown Romanian politician named Nicolae Jetty Carpathia rises to become secretary-general of the United Nations, promising to restore peace and stability in the world. However, Carpathia is actually the Antichrist. Coming to grips with the truth and becoming born-again Christians, airline pilot Rayford Steele, his daughter Chloe, their pastor Bruce Barnes, and young journalist Cameron “Buck” Williams (played by Kirk Cameron) begin their quest as the Tribulation Force to help save the lost and prepare for the coming Tribulation, in which God will rain down judgment on the world for seven years.

As one Evangelical, James Bagg, explains, “You see God has a plan for the world and it all centers around Israel.” Evangelicals control some 60,000 US radio stations. They meet in 25,000-member megachurches and sit on school boards and legislatures across the country. What they all share is the belief that Israel must forever remain a Jewish state. End Times theology declares that the Jewish people must maintain control of Israel and Jerusalem, and retake the Al-Aqsa Mosque (the Dome of the Rock), or Jesus cannot return. Thus Evangelicals risk creating what the Rev. Barbara Rossing calls “a self-fulfilling prophesy of death and destruction.”[117]

Robertson’s CBN has been active in Israel, frequently promoting the program of the fundamentalist International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. Robertson operates the most powerful television transmitter in the Middle East, MET, located in Southern Lebanon, and has had close contact with government leaders in Israel.[118]

When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited Washington in January 1998 to meet with President Clinton, he first met in Washington with Falwell and other evangelical Christian leaders. The Washington Post reported that Netanyahu received “a rapturous reception” by Voices United for Israel, a group of conservative Jews and Christians opposed for now to any further territorial concessions by Israel to the Palestinians, Operating under the leadership of John Hagee. Chanting “Not One Inch!” the crowd of more than 500 gave Netanyahu a standing ovation, as he was greeted by Falwell.[119]

Hagee believes the Bible commands Christians to support the State of Israel and the Jewish people. In a late 1990s sermon that God sent Hitler to help the Jews get to the promised land.[120] He wrote Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World, based on the 1970’s bestseller The Late, Great Planet Earth, based on dispensationalist eschatology. Hagee interprets the Bible to predict that Russia and the Islamic states will invade Israel and will be destroyed by God. This will cause the antichrist, the head of the European Union, to create a confrontation over Israel between China and the West. AIPAC has repeatedly hosted speeches by Hagee. The San Antonio B’nai B’rith Council awarded him with its “Humanitarian of the Year” award, the first time the award was given to a non-Jew.[121] He was presented with the Zionist Organization of America’s Israel Award by neoconservative and UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, given by the Jewish Community of Dallas, Texas.[122]

Blackwater 

Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker’s celebrated journalist, alleged in a speech in Qatar in 2011 at the Doha campus of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, that key branches of the US military are being led by Christian fundamentalist “crusaders.”[123] “What I’m really talking about is how eight or nine neoconservative, radicals if you will, overthrew the American government. Took it over,” Hersh said. He explained that the attitude that “pervades” a large portion of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which is part of the military’s special forces branch and which has carried out secret missions, is one that supports “[changing] mosques into cathedrals.”[124] Hersh also said that Stanley McChrystal, who headed JSOC before his tenure as the top general in Afghanistan, as well as his successor and many other JSOC members, “are all members of, or at least supporters of, Knights of Malta.” “Many of them are members of Opus Dei,” Hersh said. “They do see what they’re doing… it’s a crusade, literally. They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re protecting them from the Muslims [as in] the 13th century. And this is their function.” [125]

According to journalist Jeremy Scahill’s book Blackwater, Joseph Schmitz, a former executive at the founded the notorious private security firm, boasted of his membership in the Knights of Malta in his official biography. In 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Schmitz to oversee and police the Pentagon’s military contracts as the Defense Department’s inspector general. Schmitz presided over the largest increase of military-contracting spending in history.[126] 1997, Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL officer and CNP member, founded Blackwater USA, which was contracted by the CIA for covert operations. As a young man, Prince was an intern in the White House under George H.W. Bush, also a member of the Knights of Malta.[127] Prince’s late father, auto-parts magnate Edgar Prince, was instrumental in the creation of the Family Research Council, one of the right-wing Christian groups most influential in George W. Bush’s administration. Erik’s sister is Betsy DeVos, who married Dick DeVos, the former CEO of the multi-level marketing company Amway, co-founded by his father Richard DeVos, a past president of the CNP.[128]

Blackwater started out as a private security firm providing training support to law enforcement, the justice department, and military organizations and received their first contract from the United States government in 2000 after the bombing of the USS Cole. Scahill has claimed that Blackwater Security Company (BSC) was the brainchild of Jamie Smith, a former CIA officer who became Vice President of Blackwater USA.[129] BSC’s first assignment was to provide top secret clearance to protect the CIA headquarters and another base that was responsible for hunting Osama bin Laden. In July 2004, Blackwater was hired by the US State Department, along with DynCorp International and Triple Canopy, Inc. for protective services in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Israel.

Prince has used his wealth acquired through Blackwater to fund numerous Christian and right-wing organizations, including the Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) and the CNP.[130] Prince is a close friend and benefactor to Chuck Colson and Gary Bauer, who Prince worked alongside since his youth, as Bauer was a close friend of Prince’s father.[131] Prince has worked alongside Bauer since his youth, as Bauer was a close friend of Prince’s father. In the late 1980s, Family Research Council officially became a division of James Dobson’s main organization, Focus on the Family.

The ECT document, explains Jeremy Scahill in Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, “articulated the vision that would animate Blackwater’s corporate strategy and the politics practiced by Erik Prince—a marriage of the historical authority of the Catholic Church with the grassroots appeal of the modern conservative U.S. evangelical movement, bolstered by the cooperation of largely secular and Jewish neoconservatives.”[132] Damon Linker, who once edited Neuhaus’s journal First Things, referred to the phenomenon as the rise of the “Theocons.”[133]

“Everybody carries guns, just like Jeremiah rebuilding the Temple in Israel, a sword in one hand, a trowel in the other,” Prince said.[134] Blackwater, now called XE, described by a former executive referring to himself as John Doe #2 as guilty of criminality, arms dealing, fraud, tax evasion, child prostitution and murder. According to John Doe #2:

Mr. Prince is motivated to engage in misconduct by two factors: First, he views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” John Doe #2 stated. “To that end, Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.[135]

Blackwater received widespread notoriety in 2007, when a group of its employees were convicted of killing 14 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad for which four guards were convicted in a U.S. court. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi lives. Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Prince’s executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to “lay Hajiis out on cardboard,” and employees consistently used racist terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as “ragheads” or “hajiis.”[136]

[1] Jay Michaelson. “Evangelicals & ISIS Feel Fine About the End of the World.” The Daily Beast (March 8, 2015).

[2] Richard G. Kyle. Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America. (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012), p. 4.

[3] Shirley Telhami. “American Attitudes Toward the Middle East and Israel.” Centre for Middle East Policy at Brookings (November, 2015).

[4] Jay Michaelson. “Evangelicals & ISIS Feel Fine About the End of the World” The Daily Beast (August 3, 2015).

[5] David D. Kirkpatrick, “The 2004 Campaign: The Conservatives: Club of the Most Powerful Gathers in Strictest Privacy,” New York Times (August 28, 2004).

[6] Max Blumenthal, “Secretive Right-Wing Group Vetted Palin,” The Nation (January 9, 2008)

[7] Chris Hedges. American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (Simon & Schuster, 2008). p. 140; David A. Neiwert. The eliminationists: how hate talk radicalized the American right (Routledge, 2009).

[8] “Joining the think ranks,” Time (September 1, 1986).

[9] Brian Cook. “Unholy Allies.” In These Times (December 8, 2008).

[10] Allan J. Lichtman. White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Grove Press, 2008). p. 342.

[11] Charles Colson. Born Again (Spire, 1977).

[12] Lisa Getter. “Showing Faith in Discretion.” The Los Angeles Times (September 27, 2002).

[13] Sharlet. The Family, p. 254.

[14] David Van Biema, etc. Douglas Coe in “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” Time (February 7, 2005).

[15] D. Michael Lindsay. Faith in the Halls of Power (Oxford University Press, 2007). p. 35; cited in Sharlet 2008, p. 25.]

[16] Ibid.

[17] Emily Belz & Edward Lee Pitts. “All in the Family.” World Magazine (August 29, 2009).

[18] Sharlet. The Family, p. 25.

[19] Ron Suskind. “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush.” New York Times (October 17, 2004).

[20] Michael Gryboski. “George W. Bush Says He Read the Bible Every Day of His Presidency, at Museum of the Bible Event.” The Christian Post (November 5, 2014).

[21] Wessels. The Torah, the Gospel, and the Qur’an. p. 193.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid., p. 381.

[24] Ibid., p. 384.

[25] Jonathan Larsen. “Book says Bush just using Christians.” Keith Olberman Countdown: NBC News (October 13, 2006).

[26] John M. Jones. “Remembering Billy Graham: A College Interview, A Night In Knoxville.” The Greenville Sun (February 26, 2018).

[27] David Van Biema. “Bill Bright: Twilight of the Evangelist.” Time (August 29, 2001).

[28] Sharlet. The Family, p. 227.

[29] “Ex-Ontario teacher is international director of American ‘white nationalist’ group that influenced Dylann Roof.” National Post (June 23, 2015).

[30] Citizens’ Council Collection (MUM00072). Archives & Special Collections, J.D. Williams Library, (The University of Mississippi); Joseph Crespino. Strom Thurmond’s America: A History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012); “Bio: Trent Lott.” CBS News (February 11, 2009).

[31] Michael Janovsky. “David Duke Heads North to Raise Money for House Race.” New York Times (January 3, 1999).

[32] Jared Taylor. “A Festival for France: The Front National’s gigantic celebration of French Nationalism.” American Renaissance (September 1998).

[33] Michael Wines and Lizette Alvarez. “Council of Conservative Citizens Promotes White Primacy, and G.O.P. Ties.” New York Times (June 22, 2015).

[34] Tara McKelvey, “Father and Son Team on Hate Site.” USA Today (July 16, 2006).

[35] Eli Saslow, “Hate Groups’ Newest Target,” Washington Post (June 22, 2008).

[36] Eustace Mullins. Murder by Injection.

[37] Ward Harkavy, “The Nazi on the Bestseller List.” The Village Voice (Novemver 15, 2000).

[38] Tucker. The Funding of Scientific Racism, p. 196.

[39] Lee. The Beast Reawakens, p. 160.

[40] Johnny Lee Clary. “Questions & Answers.” www.johnnyleeclary.com (Accessed January 3, 2010).

[41] Bellant. The Coors Connection, p. 54.

[42] “Conservative Caucus.” Right Web (January 4, 1990).

[43] Nicholas Ashford (August 6, 1981). “Reagan backs extension to black voting Act,” The Times. p. 4.

[44] Betty Clermont. The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America (Clarity Press, 2009); “Christian Broadcasting Network.” Southern Poverty Law Center (December 31, 1990).

[45] Robert Dreyfuss. “According to Tim LaHaye, the Apocalypse is now.” Rolling Stone (Jan 28, 2004).

[46] Susanne Postel. “Is the Council for National Policy the ‘Right’ Hand of the CFR?” Investigative Headline News (May 27, 2014).

[47] Bellant. The Coors Connection, p. 43.

[48] K.E. Barr, Unholy Alliances (2000), p. 25.

[49] Richard L. Berke. “Investigators Say Group Raised $2 Million for Contra Arms Aid.” New York Times (April 9, 1987).

[50] USA. “Committee for the Free World - Political Research Associates - Right Web.” Rightweb.irc-online.org. [accessed March 13, 2007]

[51] Marshall, Dale Scott & Hunter. The Iran-Contra Connection, p. 77.

[52] Fernando López. The Feathers of Condor: Transnational State Terrorism, Exiles and Civilian Anticommunism in South America (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016) p. 256.

[53] “Anti-Semitism Charges Lead To Delay on Religion Prize.” New York Times (April 19, 1988).

[54] William H. Tucker. The Science and Politics of Racial Research (University of Illinois Press, 1996). p. 257.

[55] Coogan. Dreamer of the Day, p. 534.

[56] “The Checkered Careers of James Angleton and Roger Pearson.” Covert Action, No. 25 (Winter 1986).

[57] Bellant. Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party, p. 62.

[58] Lee. The Beast Reawakens, p. 225.

[59] “History.” World Muslim Congress (http://www.motamaralalamalislami.org/history.html). Accessed May 30, 2018.

[60] “Anti-Semitism Charges Lead To Delay on Religion Prize.” New York Times, (19 April 1988).

[61] “Committee for the Free World - Political Research Associates - Right Web.” Rightweb.irc-online.org. Retrieved February 2, 2010.

[62] “Council for National Policy.” Rightweb.irc-online.org.

[63] D. Tingle & R. Fordyce. Phases and Faces of the Moon: A Critical Examination of the Unification Church and its Principles (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1979), p. 86-87; J. Biermans. The Odyssey of New Religious Movements, Persecution, Struggle, Legitimation: A Case Study of the Unification Church Lewiston (New York and Queenston, Ontario: The Edwin Melton Press, 1986), p. 173.

[64] “Moon’s Church Founded by Korean CIA Chief as Political Tool, Panel Says.” Washington Star (March 16, 1978).

[65] Christopher Reed. “The Rev Sun Myung Moon obituary.” The Guardian (September 2, 2012).

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Ibid.

[69] Michael Isikoff. “Church Spends Millions on its Image.” The Washington Post, (September 17, 1984), p. A1.

[70] Daniel Brandt. “A Brief History Of The United States Global Strategy Council.” Public Information Resource Web Site (April 2, 1999).

[71] Bellant. Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party, p. 45.

[72] Sara Diamond. Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (South End Press, Boston, 1989).

[73] “Council for National Policy.” Rightweb.irc-online.org.

[74] Andrew Leigh. “Inside Moon’s Washington.” Washington Post (October 15, 1989).

[75] “The Unification Church Aims a Major Public Relations Effort at Christian Leaders.” Christianity Today (April 19, 1985).

[76] William Raspberry. “Did Unpopular Moonie Get a Fair Trial?” The Washington Post, (April 19, 1984).

[77] Andrew Leigh. “Inside Moon’s Washington.” Washington Post (October 15, 1989).

[78] Christopher Reed. “The Rev Sun Myung Moon obituary.” The Guardian (September 2, 2012).

[79] Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross. Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design (2004), p. 272.

[80] Marc Fisher and Jeff Leen. “A Church in Flux Is Flush With Cash.” Washington Post (November 23, 1997), p. A01.

[81] Yeadon & Hawkins. Nazi Hydra in America, p. 161.

[82] Elton Manzione. “The Private Spy Agency.” The National Reporter (Summer 1985).

[83] Elton Manzione. “The Private Spy Agency.” The National Reporter (Summer 1985).

[84] Chip Berlet. “The Hunt for Red Menace.” Political Research Associates (February 2, 1993).

[85] Ross Gelbspan. “Groups Give FBI Data on foes of US Latin Policies,” Boston Globe (March 15, 1988).

[86] Sara Diamond. Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing Movements and Political Power in the United States (Guilford Press, 1995), p. 52.

[87] “Western Goals Foundation,” Interhemispheric Resource Center: GroupWatch Profiles (January 02, 1989)

[88] “McDonald’s peers note tragic irony.” The Spokesman-Review (November 2, 1983).

[89] Scott Anderson & Jon Lee Anderson. Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1986).

[90] Congressional Record, September 20, 1983, pp. S12462-S12464

[91] “Soviets Say Nixon Had Been Booked on Flight 007.” Washington Post (September 25, 1983).

[92] An Introduction to the Western Goals Institute (1988).

[93] “Tories linked to Contra-rebel fundraisers.” The Scotsman, (10 June 1987).

[94] Daily Mail (September 3, 1992)

[95] Robert I. Friedman. The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane : From FBI Informant to Knesset Member (Lawrence Hill & Co, 1992), p. 106.

[96] Ibid., p. 61.

[97] “Joseph Churba, Intelligence Aide Who Criticized General, Is Dead.” New York Times (April 28, 1996).

[98] James Bamford. A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (Doubleday, 2004), pp. 278-82.

[99] Lawrence C. Soley. The News Shapers: The Sources who Explain the News (Praeger, 1992), p. 102.

[100] Inside The Shadow Government, Declaration of Plaintiff's Counsel Filed by the Christic Institute, U.S. District Court, Miami, March 31, 1988, pp. 123-24; cited in Edward S. Herman & Gerry O’Sullivan. The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

[101] Edward S. Herman & Gerry O’Sullivan. The “Terrorism” Industry: The Experts and Institutions That Shape Our View of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

[102] Michael Mickler. “Toward an ‘Abel’ UN? The Unification Movement and the United Nations.” Journal of Unification Studies Vol. 9, (2008).

[103] Inside The Shadow Government.

[104] “FBI Files on Tupac Shakur Murder Show He Received Death Threats From Jewish Gang.” Haaretz (April 4, 2011).

[105] “Breakdown FM: Still Ruthless-Interview w/ Jerry Heller.” Part 1. Odeo (Archived January 9, 2007, at the Wayback Machine).

[106] Ben Westhoff. Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap (Hachette Books, 2016).

[107] “Paying Tribute To Pat.” Americans United for Separation of Church and State (March 1999).

[108] Gene Lyons. “The roots of the Clinton smear.” Salon (February 5, 1998).

[109] Philip Weiss. “Clinton Crazy.” The New York Times (February 23, 1997).

[110] Chip Berlet. “The Spread of Conspiracist Scapegoating and Anti-Masonry.” Freemasonry in Context: History, Ritual, Controversy. ed. Art DeHoyos, S. Brent Morris (Lexington Books, 2004), p. 288.

[111] Greg Grandin. “Iran/Contra Was the Prototype for Post-Vietnam Imperial Adventure.” The Nation (October 25, 2016).

[112] Allan C. Brownfield. “Fundamentalists and the Millennium: A Potential Threat to Middle Eastern Peace.” Washington Report (June 25, 2009).

[113] Allan C. Brownfield. “Fundamentalists and the Millennium: A Potential Threat to Middle Eastern Peace.” Washington Report (June 25, 2009).

[114] Robert Dreyfuss. “Reverend Doomsday: According to Tim LaHaye, the Apocalypse is now.” Rolling Stone (January 28, 2004).

[115] Rammy Haija. “The Armageddon Lobby: Dispensationalist Christian Zionism and the Shaping of US Policy Towards Israel-Palestine.” Holy Land Studies 5(1): 75–95. 2006.

[116] “Tim and Beverly LaHaye.” Time (February 3, 2005).

[117] David Heilbroner. “Evangelicals, Israel, and the End of the World.” Huffington Post (April 18, 2010).

[118] “Christian Broadcasting Network.” Southern Poverty Law Center (December 31, 1990).

[119] Brownfield. “Fundamentalists and the Millennium.”

[120] Jon Wiener. “McCain’s Pastor Hagee on Hitler and the Jews.” The Nation (May 22, 2008).

[121] “John Hagee”. The Who’s Who of Prophecy, raptureready.com [accessed May 15, 2016].

[122] Jon Wiener. “McCain’s Pastor Hagee on Hitler and the Jews.” The Nation (May 22, 2008).

[123] “Seymour Hersh: Military Branch Being Run By ‘Crusaders’.” The Huffington Post (May 25, 2011).

[124] Ibid.

[125] Ibid.

[126] Ben Van Heuvelen. “The Bush administration’s ties to Blackwater.” Salon (October 2, 2007)

[127] Evgeny Lebedev. “Caped crusaders: What really goes on at the Knights of Malta’s secretive headquarters?” Independent (March 28, 2014).

[128] “The Council for National Policy: Behind the Curtain.” Southern Poverty Law Center (May 17, 2016).

[129] Jeremy Scahill. Blackwater (New York: Nation Books, 2007), p. 410.

[130] Ibid., p. 80-81.

[131] Ibid., pp. 17.

[132] Jeremy Scahill. Blackwater (New York: Nation Books, 2007), p. 29.

[133] Ibid., p. 29.

[134] Ibid., p. 31.

[135] Former XE Executive John Doe #2. Sworn Declaration, (July 29, 2009)

[136] “Erik Prince and the last crusade.” Economist (August 6, 2009).

Volume Five

1. Team B

2. Secret Team

3. The Reagan Doctrine

4. Reaganomics

5. Second New Right

6. Project Monarch

7. Down Under

8. Sex, Lies and Wiretaps

9. Noosphere

10. Project Stargate

11. New Age

12. Psychic Warriors

13. Disclosure

14. Christofascism

15. The Clash of Civilizations

16. Black Order

17. Sacred Geopolitics

18. Third Secret of Fatima

19. Order of Eurasia