From: “The Messianic Legacy” by Lincoln Leigh Baigent

Chapter 24 “Secret Powers Behind Covert Groups”

page 347 Subtitled “Moves By The CIA”

The man perhaps most responsible for initiating interest in United Europe Movements was Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, who had founded Pan-Europa in 1922 as The Pan European Union. Although it accomplished little on a practical level, Pan-Europa, in the period between the wars, was a prestigious organization. Its membership included a number of esteemed political figures, such as Leon Blum and Aristide Briand in France and Eduard Benes in Czechosolvakia, as well as Winston Churchill. The membership also included Albert Einstein, and such cultural luminaries as Paul Valery, Miguel de Unamuno, George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Mann.
Driven out of Austria by the German Anschluss of 1938, Coudenhove-Kalergi, in 1940, fled to the United States. Here he lobbied tirelessly for his Pan-European ideal, insisting that European unity must be a priority for American Policy after the war. His efforts served to convince a number of important American political figures, such as William Bullitt and Senators Fullbright and Wheeler. When America entered the war, some of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s thinking offered a blueprint for action. It was to be adopted as such by the OSS, precursor of the CIA.
The OSS, or Office of Strategic Services, was created in emulation, and with the aid of, Britains MI6 and SOE. Its first director was General William (Wild Bill) Donovan. Donovans agents were to provide the nucleus for the post war CIA. One of them, Allen Dulles, became director of the CIA from 1953 until the Bay of Pigs debacle forced him to resign in 1961. During the war, Dulles had been based in Switzerland, and he maintained the contacts he had made there with Helmut James von Moltke and the Kreisau Circle.
As director of the OSS, William Donovan was quick to realize the potential significance of the Vatican to intelligence operations. Thousands of Catholic priests were also serving as chaplains in the armed forces of every combatant nation. The network was already engaged in intelligence activity, passing vast qualtities of information back to the Vatican’s own internal intelligences department. One of the four section leaders of Vatican Intelligence was Monsignor Giovanni Montini--later Pope Paul VI. Donovan therefore undertook to establish close links with the Vatican.
Shortly after Americas entry into the war, Donovan forged an alliance with one Father Felix Morlion, founder of a European intelligence service called Pro Deo (For God), based in Lisbon. Under Donovan’s auspices, Pro Deo moved its headquarters to New York, and the OSS undertook to finance its operation. When Rome was liberated in 1944, Donovan and Father Morlion proceeded to install Pro Deo in the Vatican itself. Here, it was particularly well situated to draw on information from Catholic priests who had been, or were still, in Germany or with German Armed Forces. The Jesuits, with their sophisticated training, rigorous discipline and tight knit organization, proved an especially valuable source of intelligence material.
In the period following the war, the United States hastened to capitalize on the apparatus Donovan had established, particularly in Italy. in 1948, with Italian elections scheduled, the newly formed CIA embarked on a complex clandestine operation to preclude any prospects of a communist victory. Under the auspices of James Angleton, Former OSS station chief in Rome, and later CIA head of counter-intelligence, millions of dollars were covertly filtered to the Christian Democrats, while additional funds were pumped into newspapers and other vehicles of propaganda. This procedure was also used to good effect in France.
As stated (Earlier in chapter than is covered here), Dr. Joseph Retingers trip to the United States on behalf of the European Movement led, on March 29 1949, to the creation of the American Committee on a United Europe, or ACUE. Its chairman was William Donovan. Its vice chairman was the former OSS head of Station in Switzerland, Allen Dulles. Its secretary was George S. Franklin, who was also director of the private council on Foreign Relations and subsequently became a co-ordinator of the Trilateral Commission. The executive director of ACUE was a serving CIA operative, Thomas Braden, then chief of the Agency’s International Organizations Department. Under the auspices of these men, ACUE decided to underwrite the European Movement of Joseph Retinger. Funds from American State Department sources were discreetly filtered to the European Movements Brussels headquarters. As the Soviet Union extended its influence across Eastern Europe, the epoch of the ‘Cold War’ began. Conceived originally to foster European Unity, the European Movement was gradually being conscripted to help build a ‘bulwark against communism’--and this bulwark conduced to the atmosphere in which clandestine organizations flourished.
Now partially financed by the CIA, Joseph Retinger and other members of the European Movement forged ties with Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, with the Italian Prime Minister and with Sir Colin Gubbins, former director of Britains SOE. Together with the then director of the CIA, General Walter Bedell Smith, this group proceeded to create a think tank which met for the first time in May 1954 at the Hotel de Bilderberg, in the Dutch town of Oosterbeek. Thus arose the Bilderberg Conferences.
In the meantime, the CIA had been proceeding on its own initiative as well, embarking on a large-scale program of covert action to support any institutions that might help consolidate the ‘bulwark against communism’. Political leaders, political parties and pressure groups, unions, newspapers and publishers were all heavily subsidised, providing their orientation was sufficiently pro-western and anti-communist. During the 1950’s, an average of between twenty and thirty million dollars a year was reportedly spent in Italy to support cultural activities, youth schemes, publishing ventures, and Catholic groups of one kind or another. Enterprises sponsored by the church, including missions and orphanges, were often co-funded by the CIA. CIA money was dispensed to many bishops and monsignors, one of whom was the future Pope Paul VI. And needless to say, The Christian Democratic Party in Italy remained a particuilart focus of attention. In fact the future Popes father, Georgio Montini, was co-founder in 1919 of the party which became the the Christian Democratic Party, and his elder brother was a Christian Democrat Senator.
Dr. Joseph Retingers CIA-sponsored European Movement was also active in Italy, further consolidating the bonds between the American Intelligence agency and the Vatican. Retinger enlisted the support of Dr. Luigi Gedda, an old personal friend, who was medical advisor to Pope Pius XII and also head of Azione Cattolica, or Catholic Action, the power behind the Christian Democratic Party. Through Gedda, Retinger was also able to conscript the services of the future Pope Paul VI, and Catholic Action became another primary recipient of CIA funds.
The rapport between the CIA and the Vatican became closer in 1963, when Pope John XXIII died and was succeeded by Paul VI, formerly Giovanni Montini, Archbishop of Milan. As we have noted, Montini was already associated with the agency and had already received funds from it. Even during the war, he had worked with the American intelligence services, passing information to and fro between the Vatican and the OSS. After the war, as Archbishop of Milan, he turned over to the CIA comprehensive dossiers on politically active priests. These were to be used to influence the Italian elections of 1960.
The relationship between the Vatican and the CIA has continued to the present. According to Gordon Thomas and Max Gordon-Witts, there occurred, in November 1978, a private meeting between Pope John Paul II and the CIA’s station chief for Rome. As a result of this meeting, an accord was reached whereby the Pope was to receive regular weekly intelligence briefings from the CIA. What the CIA received in return was not specified, but one can make an educated guess.
Another of the CIA’s most influential allies within the church was Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York. In 1954, he acted directly for the CIA in Guatemala, helping to stage a coup there which was orchestrated by the agency. But Spellman was also deeply involved in affairs in Italy. He played a crucial role in obtaining large sums of US Government ‘Black Money’ for the use of the Catholic Church. He was intimately associated with Bernardino Nogara, the mastermind behind the Vatican Bank, and with Count Enrico Galeazzi, who with Michele Sindona watched over Vatican investments and banking in the early 1960’s. And it was Cardinal Spellman who, in 1963, first brought to the Pope’s attention Father Paul Marcinkus of Chicago. By 1971, Marcinkus, now Archbishop, was head of the Vatican bank, a close friend of P2 members such as Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi, and an alleged member of P2 himself.
The origins of the Masonic Lodge P2 are obscure, but it is believed to have been formed in the early 1960’s (Probably much earlier--ours). Whatever its original priorities and objectives may have been, its ultra right wing grand master, Licio Gelli, had soon brought it into the phalanx of groups and organizations which constituted the ‘bulwark against communism’. Certain of its members received generous CIA subsidies. And through individuals such as Calvi and Sindona, P2 provided a means of furnishing anti-communist institutions in Europe and Latin America with both Vatican and CIA funds. Calvi also claimed that he personally had arranged the transfer of 20,000,000.00$ of Vatican money to Solidarity in Poland, although the overall total sent to Solidarity is believed to be in excess of 100,000,000.00$. Prior to his indictment for murder, Michele Sindona was not only P2’s financier, but the Vaticans investment counsellor as well, helping the Church to sell its Italian assetts and re-invest in the United States. His services for the CIA including passing funds to ‘friends’ in Yugoslavia, as well as to the Greek Colonels prior to their seizure of power in 1967. He also channelled millions of dollars into the funds of the Christian Democrats in Italy.
When the existence of P2 first made international headlines in 1981, the scandal surrounding its stranglehold on the upper echelons of government, police, and finance was focused primarily on Italy. According to David Yallop, however:
...there are still branches functioning in Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, France, Portugal, and Nicaragua. Members are also active in Switzerland and the USA. P2 interlocks with the Mafia in Italy, Cuba, and the USA. It interlocks with a number of military regimes of Latin America, and with a variety of groups of neo-fascists. It also interlocks very closely with the CIA. It reaches right into the heart of the Vatican. The central common interest of all these elements is apparently the hatred and fear of communism...

It is now generally acknowledged that P2, however influential and powerful it may have been (!) Was, (And probably still is)controlled by some even higher, more shadowy authority, which transmitted its instructions through Licio Gelli, The Lodges Grand Master. According to an Italian parliamentary commission, the organization behind P2 lay ‘beyond the frontiers of italy’. There has been much speculation, both plausible and otherwise, about this organization. Some have identified it as the American Mafia. Some have suggested the KGB, or some other intelligence agency from Eastern Europe. Some have even suggested the Prieure de Sion. In 1979, however, a defector from P2 -- a journalist named Mino Pecorelli -- accused the CIA. Two months after this accusation, Pecorelli was murdered.
In March 1981 Italian Police raided Licio Gelli’s villa. they discovered comprehensive lists of the Lodge’s membership. They also discovered an index to Licio Gelli’s files -- although the files themselves had vanished, apparently being of greater importance than the membership lists. Some of the headings in the index were published in Italian newspapers. They included Opus Dei. They included Giulio Andreotti, currently Italian Foreign Minister and alleged, in a document we received, to be a member of Prieure de Sion. And they included the organization known officially as the soverign and Military Order Of The Temple Of Jerusalem -- the organization, that is, which today claims a direct lineal descent from the Knights Templar.