Article: The CIA's Role in the Origin and Maintenance of America's Overclass

A partial list of the Knights of Malta reads like a Who's Who of American Catholicism:

William Casey � ��" CIA Director.
John McCone � ��" CIA Director.
William Colby � ��" CIA Director.
William Donovan � ��" OSS Director. Donovan was given an especially prestigious form of knighthood that has only been given to a hundred other men in history.
Frank Shakespeare � ��" Director of such propaganda organizations as the U.S. Information Agency, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Also executive vice-president of CBS-TV and vice-chairman of RKO General Inc. He is currently chairman of the board of trustees at the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.
William Simon � ��" Treasury Secretary under President Nixon. In the private sector, he has become one of America's 400 richest individuals by working in international finance. Today he is the President of the John M. Olin Foundation, a major funder of right-wing think tanks.
William F. Buckley, Jr. � ��" CIA agent, conservative pundit and mass media personality.
James Buckley � ��" William's brother, head of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
Clare Boothe Luce - The grand dame of the Cold War was also a Dame of Malta. She was a popular playwright and the wife of the publishing tycoon Henry Luce, who cofounded Time magazine.
Francis X Stankard - CEO of the international division of Chase Manhattan Bank, a Rockefeller institution. (Nelson Rockefeller was also a major CIA figure.)
John Farrell � ��" President, U.S. Steel
Lee Iacocca � ��" Chairman, General Motors
William S. Schreyer � ��" Chairman, Merrill Lynch.
Richard R. Shinn � ��" Chairman, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
Joseph Kennedy � ��" Founder of the Kennedy empire.
Baron Hilton � ��" Owner, Hilton Hotel chain.
Patrick J. Frawley Jr. � ��" Heir, Schick razor fortune. Frawley is a famous funder of right-wing Catholic causes, such as the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade.
Ralph Abplanalp - Aerosol magnate.
Martin F. Shea - Executive vice president of Morgan Guaranty Trust.
Joseph Brennan - Chairman of the executive committee of the Emigrant Savings Bank of New York.
J. Peter Grace � ��" President, W.R. Grace Company. He was a key figure in Operation Paperclip, which brought Nazi scientists and spies to the U.S. Many were war criminals whose atrocities were excused in their service to the CIA.
Thomas Bolan � ��" Of Saxe, Bacon and Bolan, the law firm of Senator McCarthy's deceased aide Roy Cohn.
Bowie Kuhn � ��" Baseball Comissioner
Cardinal John O'Connor � ��" Extreme right-wing leader among American Catholics, and fervent abortion opponent.
Cardinal Francis Spellman � ��" The "American Pope" was at one time the most powerful Catholic in America, an arch-conservative and a rabid anti-communist.
Cardinal Bernard Law - One of the highest-ranking conservatives in the American church.
Alexander Haig � ��" Secretary of State under President Reagan.
Admiral James D. Watkins � ��" Hard-line chief of naval operations under President Reagan.
Jeremy Denton � ��" Senator (R� ��"Al).
Pete Domenici � ��" Senator (R-New Mexico).
Walter J. Hickel - Governor of Alaska and secretary of the interior.

When this group gets together, the topics are spying, business and politics.

The CIA has also used other religious and charity organizations as fronts. For example, John F. Kennedy -- another anticommunist Roman Catholic who greatly expanded covert operations -- created the U.S. Peace Corps to serve as cover for CIA operatives. The CIA has also made extensive use of missionaries, with the blessings of many right-wing, anticommunist Christian denominations.

But the World Caught On"

It was only a matter of time before other nations caught on to these front organizations. They learned that when the CIA comes to their countries to commit their crimes and atrocities, they come disguised as American journalists, businessmen, missionaries and charity volunteers. Unfortunately, foreigners are now targeting these professions as hostile. In Lebanon, terrorists held U.S. journalist Terry Anderson hostage for nearly seven years, on the not unreasonable assumption that he was a spy. Whether or not this was true is beside the point. The CIA has, by way of the endeavors just discussed, inadvertently put all Americans abroad at risk, whether they are CIA agents or not. In hearings before the Senate in 1996, many organizations urged Congress to stop using their professions as CIA cover. Don Argue of the National Association of Evangelicals testified, "Such use of missionary agents for covert activities by the CIA would be unethical and immoral."¹³

From the Cold War to the Class War

As noted above, academia was the first major institution to denounce the crimes of the CIA. Why the first? One reason is that scholars conduct their own extensive research into world affairs, so naturally they were the first to learn the truth. This is the main reason why protest against the Vietnam War and the CIA erupted first among students on the nation's campuses. By the end of the Vietnam War, the CIA had suffered a "brain drain" as its academic allies became its most articulate, passionate and eloquent critics.

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