Private Eye and Lobster on the Pinay Circle

This fortnight’s Private Eye, for 25th January to 7th February 2019 also published a very interesting article for conspiracy watchers on the Pinay Circle, now simply known as ‘Le Cercle’. This is a secret organization of extreme right-wing politicians, intelligence agents and businessmen. The Eye’s article reports how two Tory MPs, Mark Garnier and Greg Hands, attended one of their meetings in Washington last June. The article, ‘Spooky Circles’ on page 11, runs

DESPITE the convulsions in the Tory party, two former trade ministers still found time before Christmas to attend a secretive conference in the US stuffed with spies and business people.

Wyre Forest MP Mark Garnier, sacked as international trade minister a year ago after calling his secretary “sugar tits” and asking her to buy sex toys, and Chelsea and Fulham MP Greg Hands, a minister in the same department until he resigned over Heathrow expansion last June, both attended a Washington meeting of Le Cercle, a hush-hush foreign affairs group with a strong interest in international security.

According to the latest parliamentary register, the MPs’ four-to-five day trips cost 4,000 pounds per MP. Hands says he spoke on “international trade”. Given their former ministerial posts, it seems likely both men discussed the UK’s prospects post-Brexit.

Le Cercle was founded in the 1950s by a former French prime minister and a former German chancellor as a pro-European body that would cement Franco-German relations and strengthen US-European alliances. Today it has strong links with the intelligence world and to hawkish US politicians. Former Tory minister Alan Clark claimed it was funded by the CIA.

As Wikileaks revealed via a letter from former Tory defence secretary Michael Ancram, who chaired Le Cercle in 2012, its meetings are “attended by about 80 to 100 people” who are “largely European and American – Members of Parliament, diplomats, members of the intelligence community, commentators and businessmen from over 25 countries”. Who they are and what they discuss is never fully disclosed as “there is no Press and everything that is said is off the record”.

Hawkish free marketer US politicians like Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld have been notable Le Cercle attendees. There is widespread suspicion the group receives corporate as well as intelligence funding, but the source is also secret. What better way for Tories to explore possible new trade relations with the US and Europe than a secretive trip to DC to meet un-named spies, Republicans and business people?

Hands is particularly well placed to make sure multinationals influence new trade relations. In November, five months after resigning, he accepted a part-time job as a “political consultant/adviser” to giant French bank BNP Paribas which is reported paying him 108,000 pounds a year on top of his MP’s salary.

The long-running conspiracies/parapolitical magazine Lobster has published several articles on the Pinay Circle, as it used to be called, way back in issues 11, 17, and 18. Issue 17 contained two reports from the German intelligence agencies on the circle, analyzing a piece of correspondence which suggested that it was running plots in Britain, Germany and elsewhere to promote right-wing politicians – Thatcher over here, and the notorious Franz-Josef Strauss in the Bundesrepublik. David Teacher’s article, ‘The Pinay Circle and Destabilisation in Europe’ in Lobster 18, page 22, contains more information on the Circle itself, and its possible involvement in various plots to destabilize left-wing or opposition governments across the world. This contained the following passage briefly describing the organization and its activities.

The Pinacy Circle (also called the Cercle Violet) is an international right-wing propaganda group which brings together serving or retired intelligence officers and politicians with links to right-wing intelligence factions from most of the countries in Europe. The intelligence community has been represented by SIS Chief from 1978-82, Arthur ‘Dicke’ Franks, SIS Department Head Nicholas Elliott, CIA Director William Colby, Swiss Military Intelligence Chief of Provisions, Colonel Botta, SDECE chief from 1970-81 Alexandre de Marenches, and, last but not least, the man who took over the running of the Circle when Pinay got too old, Jean Violet, a Parisian Lawyer who worked for the SDECE from 1957-70. violet became so much an ’eminence grise’ in the SCESE that Alexandre de Marenches had to dispense with his services in order to assert his authority as new SDECE chief in 1970. This episode has however not prevented them from working together within the Circle. At the time the Langemann papers were written, both Franks and Marenches were serving heads of British and French intelligence respectively.

On the political side, Pinay – a former French Prime Minister – forged links with Nixon, Kissinger and Pompidou. The Circle’s present members include Giulio Andreotti, former Italian Prime Minister; Portuguese putschist General Antonio de Spinola; former Franco minister and senior Opus Dei member Silvio Munoz; and Vatican prelate and BND agent Monsignore Brunello. Paul violet, Jean Violet’s son, is one of Chirac’s closest advisors, nicknamed ‘the adjutant’ by Canard Enchaine. Langemann also reports that Sir Arthur Franks and Nicholas Elliott were invited to Chequers for a working meeting with Mrs Thatcher, after her election. But perhaps the key political figure was the late Franz Josef Strauss, Bavarian Premier and Langemann’s boss.

Strauss was a close friend of Alexandre de Marenches and was a frequ8ent visitor to the SDECE’s headquarters during Marenches’ time. The Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, the political trust attached to Strauss’ Christian Social Union party, is an important group in international parapolitical manipulation. Active in Latin America for the Contras, supporting Mobuto in Zaire, involved in the Fiji coup in 1987, it was caught diverting state development aid from Germany into right-wing party coffers in Ecuador in the same year. Strauss and CSU were the main beneficiaries of identified Pinay Circle activities; i.e. the promotion of right-wing European politicians through Brian Crozier, Robert Moss, Fred Luchsinger of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung and Gerhard Luwenthal, anchorman on current affairs programmes for ZDF television, the major German network.

The Pinacy Circle has a wide range of contacts and its members interlock with the whole panoply of right-wing/parallel intelligence and propaganda agencies – WACL, Heritage Foundation, Western Goals, ISC, Freedom Association, Interdoc, the Bilderberg Group, the Jonathan Institute, P2, Opus Dei, the Moonies’ front CAUSA, IGFM ((International Society for Human Rights), and Resistance International. Lowenthal, for instance, is a member of IGFM, Resistance International, WACL, CAUSA, the Jonathan Institute, Konservative Aktion and the European Institute on Security.

The Pinay Circle’s significance lies in the fact that it is a forum which brings together the international linkmen of the Right like Crozier, Moss and Lowenthal, with secret service chiefs like Franks and Marenches. Through such contacts it can intervene by media action or covert funding whenever and wherever a political friend is in need of support. (p. 22).

The minutes of the Pinay Circle’s meeting in Zurich in June 1980s discussed the possibilities of securing the election of Strauss in Germany and Ronald Reagan in the US. It also discussed the Saudis opening a radio transmitter to broadcast into Russia and supporting the Israeli intelligence unit. The evidence linking the Circle to attempts to remove left-wing politicians across the world was so strong that Teacher concluded that

It is becoming more and more apparent that the treatment reserved for Harold Wilson at the hands of the intelligence services was only the UK end of an international phenomenon. Around 1973-5 a surprising number of governments were targeted by their own 9or others’) intelligence agencies because of their radical policies. If the world political scene in the 1960’s was one of the decolonization, then the 1970’s was the decade of destabilization. Among those cases of destabilization we were already aware of are:

– the UK: the concerted effort by elements in the British intelligence and security services, with CIA and BOSS, to bring down Wilson, Thorpe and Heath.

– the USA: the CIA’s Operation Chaos, the FBI’s Cointelpro programme and, of course, Watergate

– Australia: the loans scandal and other destabilization of Gough Whitlam by the CIA and SIS.

– West Germany: the destabilization of Willi Brandt because of his overture to ‘the other Germany’ through Ostpolitik. The CIA and MI5 (5) suspected Brandt of being recruited by Moscow during his wartime service with the resistance in Scandinavia. (p. 23).

The article also pointed out that Nicholas Elliott was a member of the Wilkinson/McWhirter/Ivens group, the Research Foundation for the Study of Terrorism, and speculate whether the Pinay Circle was involved in attempts to destabilise Mitterand’s government in France in 1974, the murder of Olof Palme in Sweden, and a possible attempted Fascist coup in Belgium in 1973. Of this latter, Teacher writes

Issue 17 of Celsius devotes six pages to the study of a coup d’état planned by gendarmerie officers and extreme right-wing groups in 1973. The article – ‘The big bad look of the 1970’s: the destabilization of the State’ – is based on the confessions of Martial Lekeu, a former gendarme who fled to the USA when sought for questioning in the ‘Killers of the Brabant Wallon’ enquiry. The killers, who specialized in holding-up supermarkets with maximum violence and minimum loot, killed 28 people between 1982 and 1985, always attacking the same chain of supermarkets on the same day of th week with the same kind of car, needlessly gunning people down and then escaping with cash rarely more than a few thousand pounds. Leukeu stated what many suspected: the killers were part of a political psy ops campaign aimed at reinforcing the State structures. Whether there is a link between the 1973 coup plans and the 1980’s destabilization remains to be seen: various parliamentary enquiries and comm9issions have so far failed to get to the bottom of the affair. (p. 24.) Teacher regrets, however, that information on the group and its activities are very limited, consisting of the 1972 ISC memo and the minutes released by Langemann in the Bavarian parliament in 1979-80.

It’s clear from this that the Circle is a very sinister organization with connections to other extreme right-wing groups, like WACL, whose name stands for World Anti-Communist League, and whose members include real Fascists and Nazis. I’m not surprised that the Tories sent two of their MPs to its meeting last year. The Tories’ right wing has always overlapped with some deeply unpleasant groups and organisations. Western Goals, an American Republican organization, according to Lobster, had a British subsidiary, Western Goals UK, which was also linked to them.

What is also interesting is that Private Eye published its piece on the Pinay Circle at all, considering how it called Nisar Malik a conspiracy theorist for believing in the Zionist control of the media. It seems the Eye is open to discussing real conspiracies, so long as they don’t involve the real, documented subterfuge and plotting of the Israeli state.

Western Goals, the Tories and Links to Fascism

Daniel Hannan, Eurosceptic Tory MP and opponent of the NHS

Earlier this week I reblogged an article from Guy Debord’s Cat critiquing the assertion by Daniel Hanna the idea of the BNP are ‘Left-wing’. Hannan is the Conservative MEP for Dorset, who wishes Britain to leave the EU and supports the privatisation of the NHS. His claim that the BNP is Left-wing follows the line of the American and Canadian Conservatives that Fascism is a form of Socialism. It is true that both Italian Fascism and the Nazi party contained socialist elements. Mussolini was originally a radical Socialist, who broke with the Italian socialist party because of his support for Italian intervention in the First World War. Both the Nazis and the Fascists allied with traditional right-wing Conservative groups to gain and hold on to power. Mussolini declared that the Fascists were the party of pure, ‘Manchester school’ laissez-faire economics. Hitler attempted to win over German industrialists by stating that ‘private property cannot survive an age of democracy’, and so private industry needed his personal dictatorship to survive. He made it clear that he would not nationalise any industry or enterprise, unless it was extremely badly run, and declared his support for the upper classes and the industrialists, as they had proven their social and physical superiority to everyone else by achieving their social position by their own efforts. It’s a statement that very clearly demonstrates the influence of social Darwinism on Hitler.

In Britain it is true that some left-wingers joined the BUF because of its apparently anti-capitalist programme. Many of the British Fascist groups, however, consisted of extreme Right-wing, Die-Hard Conservatives, worried about the threat of organised labour and subversions by foreign industrialists, such as the Anglo-German Jewish industrialist, Mond. The British Fascisti in the 1920s consisted of middle class ladies and senior military officers, and supplied blackleg labour to break up strikes. They strenuously rejected Oswald Mosely’s advocacy of a corporative state on the model of Mussolini’s Italy as ‘socialism’. All of the British Fascist groups were extremely nationalistic and anti-Semitic.

Maggie’s Militant Tendency and the Union of Conservative Students

Although the Tory Die-Hards and their support for Fascism did not survive World War II, there were nevertheless individuals and groups with the Conservative party that were extremely sympathetic to the Far Right. In the 1980s Margaret Thatcher had a Panorama documentary, ‘Maggies’ Militant Tendency’, pulled from the airwaves as the programme argued that the Conservative party had been infiltrated by Fascists, just as Labour had been by the Far Left group, Militant Tendency. There was also a scandal when one of the leaders of the Union of Conservative Students in Northern Ireland, Tinnies, declared their support for Far Right policies. Tinnies stated that they were ‘all Thatcherite achievers, but if Mrs Thatcher doesn’t want us, we will go to the Far Right’. The British parapolitical magazine, Lobster, in issue 21 carried an article on another group with links to Fascism within the Tory party, Western Goals (UK).

Western Goals

Western Goals (UK) was the British branch of the American Conservative organisation, the Western Goals Foundation. During its career, Western Goals had links to and supported the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, acting as a conduit for Oliver North’s funding of them according to a report of the Tower Commission. Its British subsidiary had links with the World Anti-Communist League, the British Anti-Communist League, the American Conservative groups the Conservative Action Foundation (CAF), the Committee to Defend the Constitution (CDC) as well as CAUSA, a front organisation for the Moonies, which supplied funds to the CAF. It also had links to the pro-Apartheid South African Conservative party, and also supported the Neo-Nazi German Republican Party and the French Front National, as well as El Salvador’s ruling Arena Party. There was also contact with the BNP, the League of St. George and David Irving’s Focus Group.

Western Goals (UK) parent organisation, the Western Goals Foundation, was set up in America in 1979 by Larry McDonald, an extreme Right-wing Georgia congressman with support from General John Singlaub. It was chaired by Linda Guell with Carl ‘Spitz’ Channell as its president. Western Goals (UK) was launched six years later May 1985, when Linda Guell visited Britain. By this time Western Goals also had a branch in Germany, and had run a series of TV adverts supporting the Contras. Both McDonald and Singlaub were linked to the Conservative Action Group, and Singlaub also had ties to the World Anti-Communist League.

Western Goals (UK) first director was the Young Conservative, Paul Masson. It also had a parliamentary advisor board, whose membership included the Rev. Martin Smyth, Patrick Wall, Nicholas Winterton, Neil Hamilton, Bill Walker and Stefan Terlezki, a former MP. Patrick Wall was also president of the British Anti-Communist Council, which was at the time a branch of the World Anti-Communist League. Peter Dally, another leading figure of BACC, was also president at the launch of Western Goals (UK). Terlezki was also a leading member in the British section of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). In March 1986 the anti-Fascist magazine, Searchlight, reported that Paul Masson had become a member of the ABN’s International Youth Committee, and that a delegation had been sent to them by the Young Monday Club consisting of Masson, David Neil-Smith, A.V.R. Smith and Adrian Lee.

‘Spitz’ Channell and Tax Fraud

In late 1986 Western Goals (UK) split with its American parent. This was partly due to the scandal over the Tower Reports finding of its funding of the Contras. More importantly, ‘Spitz’ Channell had admitted tax fraud. Western Goals (UK) therefore separated from the Western Goals Foundation, which was effectively wound up and absorbed into the Larry McDonald Trust. The split was, however, a difference without distinction, as the supposedly independent Western Goals (UK) still retained links to the Larry McDonald Trust.

Attacks on ‘Left-wing’ Charities

In 1986 and 1987 Western Goals played a leading role, with other Right-wing organisations such as the anti-trade union Economic League, in attacking the charities Oxfam, Cafod and War on Want. They also produced a report attacking Christian Aid. In October the same year Western Goals (UK) also held a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference attacking the charities under the title ‘Alms for the Poor or Arms for Communism?’. In 1989 they sent a report on the above charities involved in Central America Week to the Charities’ Commission. The report was produced by Michael McCrone and Gideon Sherman, the childhood friend of the Right-wing blogger, ‘Guido Fawkes’.

Claims of Communists in Labour, Liberals and Attacks on Livingstone for Pro-Gay Stance

During the 1987 election, they also produced as briefing paper containing the details of ‘Communist aligned’ Labour and Liberal candidates, which was circulated to Tory MPs and their friends in the media. It became the basis for a four page report in the Daily Mail. In August the same year the Kilburn Times reported that they had launched an attack on Ken Livingstone for his support of gay issues. They stated

Livingstone and his friends in London’s Labour councils want to encourage more homosexuals to come out of the closet and spread their perverted filth. The gay rights policy which he is preparing to put before Parliament in the Autumn is typical of someone who is working to destroy the family and traditional family values. It will mean more danger of AIDS and that is just what Britain’s enemies want.

The following year, in 1988, members of CAUSA, CAF and CDC addressed one Western Goals’ meetings. *In January 1989 there was a report that Stuart Northolt and A.V.R. Smith of Western Goals (UK) were collaborating with David Finzer, the general secretary of the World Youth Freedom League, WACL’s youth wing, and who was also linked to CAF and the CDC, to raise money for an international conference on ‘self defence for Eastern Europe’.

Jonas Savimbi and UNITA

It was also in 1988 that Western Goals (UK) claimed to have an ‘African desk’, although this was probably just a grandiose way of referring to Northolt and Smith. Western Goals (UK) also participated in organising a visit that July to Britain of Jonas Savimbi of UNITA in Angola. They held a briefing with him at the House of Commons, claiming it was attended by 20 MPs belonging to their organisation. There is some question over this, as Western Goals (UK)’s parliamentary advisory body had ceased to function by this time, and there is no evidence that the Tory MPs Winterton, Hamilton or Walker were still involved with them. Another Tory MP, Stefan Terlezki, had left the House of Commons.

Opposition to War Crimes Trials in Britain

In February 1989 Western Goals issued a press release criticising the proposal to allow war crimes’ trials in Britain. They condemned such trials as a ‘Communist disinformation ploy’. The statement was issued on notepaper listing the names of their vice-presidents, one of whom was the Unionist MP, the Rev. Martin Smyth. Smyth then resigned, as he had actively campaigned for the trial of Nazi war criminals.

UNITA and the South African Conservative Party

Later that year in June they issued a ‘discussion paper’, Namibia – What Kind of Independence?, which strongly favoured South Africa and Angola’s UNITA. They also issued the pamphlet, ANC/IRA Partners in Terror, which was timed to coincide with the visit to Britain of the leader and foreign affairs spokesman of the South African Conservative Party, Andries Treunicht and Clive Derby-Lewis. This was presented as having been organised by the Anglo-South African Fellowship. In reality it was organised by Western Goals, with A.V.R. Smith dealing with PR. The meeting’s press release also contained the contact details of Gregory Lauder-Frost and Christopher Forster. In addition to being members of Western Goals, Lauder-Frost was also chair of the Monday Club’s Foreign Affairs’ Committee, while Forster was also chair of the Anglo-South African Fellowship.

European Dawn and the Leader of El Salvador’s Death Squads

By the time of the 1989 Conservative Party conference, they had adopted an explicitly pro-Fascist stance. It was then that Western Goals (UK) launched their magazine, European Dawn. The magazine announced that it was ‘published by Western Goals (UK) on behalf of YEWF’ – the latter organisation was the Young Europeans for World Freedom, WACL’s youth organisation. So far, only two issues of European Dawn are known to have been published. The logo featured the kind of Celtic cross adopted by the British National Party. It was edited by Northolt and produced by Smith, publishing articles supporting the Front National in France and the Neo-Nazi Republican Party in Germany. The first issue was also accompanied by a covering letter by Northolt, which mentioned that the organisation’s executive committee had held a private dinner, at which the guest of honour was Major Roberto D’Aubuisson. D’Aubuisson was a member of El Salvador’s governing Arena Party, and one of the organisers of its death squads. According to Northolt, D’Aubuisson had agreed to become an honorary patron of Western Goals (UK).

European Dawn, the Tories and the Front National

European Dawn was also one of the joint sponsors of Western Goals (UK) fringe meeting on October 12 1989 of that year’s Tory party conference. In their press, Western Goals (UK) described themselves as ‘a London-based right-wing organisation devoted to the preservation of traditional Western values and European culture, and it opposes communism, liberalism, internationalism and the “multi-cultural society”.’ The meetings main speaker was Derby-Lewis of the South African Conservative Party. One of the other speakers was Yvan Blot, of the French Front National.

Derby-Lewis and British Conservatives

When Derby-Lewis again visited Britain the following year, 1990, A.V.R. Smith arranged for him to attend WACL’s 22nd conference in Brussels as a Western Goals Institute delegate. Western Goals (UK) also claimed that he had met leading members of the Conservative party such as Lord Hailsham, the tennis player and Buster Motram, who had formerly supported the NF. They also claimed that he had addressed a meeting of the House of Lords Monday Club under Lord Sudely and a banquet of the South West Essex Monday Club, attended by Teresa Gorman, Teddy Taylor and Tim Janman. His speech at the banquet was praised for its ‘robust defence of European values and civilisation in Southern Africa’. He was also a guest at a ‘select’ dinner in Whitehall for Conservative MPs, Conservative candidates, councillors and party officials. European Dawn also became more overtly anti-Semitic. It has been alleged that there was at least one meeting between Northolt and Smith and the Fascist League of St. George. However, both A.V.R. Smith and Keith Thompson of the League of St. George have denied them.

Western Goals and the BNP

The BNP certainly appear to have had links to Western Goals, discussing them in an issue of their magazine, Spearhead. The article described how a group of BNP members had arrived at a meeting between the South African Conservatives’ Andries Treunicht and Western Goals (UK) at the Royal Commonwealth Society, where they attempted to sell copies of Spearhead. Prevented from doing so, the BNP criticised Western Goals’ members for their squeamishness in not owning up to their Nationalist convictions:

Their line was the familiar one: “Oh yes, I agree with all you say, but keep it quiet”… Their greatest fear is that of being embarrassed by their nationalist acquaintances turning to their gatherings and compromising their “respectable” credentials’. Just how many Western Goals members were sympathetic to the BNP is open to question. However, one of early members of Western Goals (UK), and an associated of Smith and Northolt, Stuart Millson, left the organisation to join the BNP. Millson had been a member of the Young Monday Club and Conservative Student while at Exeter University in 1985. By 1991, however, he claimed to have left the BNP and was once more a member of the Tories. Another BNP activist, Sean Pearson, was also a member of the Yorkshire branch of the Monday Club run by Anthony Murphy, who was also Western Goal’s main contact in the region. He was thrown out of his local branch of the Conservative party after Leeds Other Paper, Searchlight and City Limits revealed that he had been distributing racist leaflets in Bradford. However, he joined Thurrock Conservative Association, thus remaining a member of the party. In April 1991 he was one of the Party’s election agents in Bradford.

Conclusion: Western Goals example of Fascism in Conservative Party, not Socialism

Hughe’s article predicts that the organisation and the Monday Club would find themselves under increasing pressure from the party’s leadership under John Major, who was an opponent of White supremacism. Certainly Western Goals and its links to the BNP and German and French extreme Right would now be acutely embarrassing for David Cameron. Cameron has, after all, attempted to present the party as pro-gay and anti-racist. One of the first things he did as leader was sever links to the Monday Club. Nevertheless, Western Goals and its extreme Right-wing stance, which can certainly be considered Fascist, does refute the claim of Daniel Hannan and other Conservatives, on both sides of the Atlantic, that somehow Fascism is a form of Socialism and the BNP are ‘left-wing’.