CHAPTER 3
THE VATICAN ALLIANCE
The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), commonly referred to as the Vatican Bank,
is a privately held financial institution located inside Vatican City. Founded in 1942,
the IOR's role is to safeguard and administer property intended for works of religion
or charity. The bank accepts deposits only from top Church officials and entities,
according to Italian legal scholar Settimio Caridi. It is run by a president but
overseen by five cardinals who report directly to the Vatican and the Vatican's
secretary of state. Because so little is known about the bank's daily operations and
transactions, it has often been called “the most secret bank in the world.”
Ari Jorish, Forbes, June 26, 2012
Created by Pope Pius XII and Bernardino Nogara on June 27, 1942, the Istituto per le Opere di
Religione (IOR), commonly known as the Vatican Bank, is located within the Bastion of Nicholas V, a
round tower that had been constructed in 1452 to ward off the threat of a Saracen invasion. The bank
remains a sovereign financial agency within a sovereign state. It is an entity unto itself, without
corporate or ecclesiastical ties to any other agency of the Holy See. As such, it cannot be compelled
to redress wrongs—not even the most egregious violations of international law. Nor can it be forced
to release the source of any deposit. The bank resides under the direct jurisdiction of the pope. He
owns it; he controls it.1
Swiss guards are stationed to guard the entrance to the bank, and the
hermetically sealed bronze doors open only to select members of the Roman Curia—the governing
body of the entire Roman Catholic Church.2
Nogara, who became the first president of the I.O.R, initiated a process of destroying all records of
the bank's transactions, including deposits and investments, on a regular basis, so that its operations
remain free and clear of public and private scrutiny. Anyone seeking information regarding the
dealings of the bank, even its corporate organization, discovers little more than empty file folders
within the Vatican archives. The trails of paper flow among three separate and distinct boards of
directors. One board consists of high-ranking cardinals, the second of international bankers, and the
third of Vatican financial officials. But even these records cannot be subpoenaed for inspection. They
remain confidential documents of the sovereign state that can only be examined only by special
permission from the pope.3
Of course, the Holy See dutifully publishes financial reports on a yearly basis. The reports,
displaying gains and losses, appear to be exhaustive. They contain meticulous records of the incomes
and expenditures of every agency within the Holy See—except the I.O.R. The name of this agency
never appears on any balance sheet. From all published reports, this ecclesiastical entity is
nonexistent and the Roman Catholic Church survives solely as a hand-to-mouth institution.4
Investigators following the paper trail inevitably come to a dead end. All internal documents and
external reports contain statements exempting the Vatican Bank, or I.O.R, from any ruling or standard of
protocol. They are punctuated by such phrases as “always leaving intact the special character of the
I.O.R,” “not including the I.O.R,” or “with full respect for the juridical status of the I.O.R.”5
Because of its clandestine workings, millions can be deposited into the I.O.R on a continuous basis
and channeled into numbered Swiss bank accounts without the possibility of detection. It was the
perfect place for the CIA and the Sicilian Mafia to launder their ill-gotten gains of the narcotics trade
and for the Roman Church to fund its political mission.6
And, according to Moneyval (the anti-money laundering
committee of the Council of Europe), it remains one of the world's leading laundries for
dirty cash under Pope Francis.7 [This is totally messed up,they throw a bone every once in awhile with a HSBC,BCCI,Wachovia,while this criminal enterprise is flaunted in everyone's face,with no recourse to fix it,total horse dung D.C]
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM UNCLE SAM
In 1947, Pope Pius XII was more than willing to allow black money to flow through his bank. The
Truman Administration already had funneled more than $350 million to the Holy See for economic
relief and political payments.8
The pope used these funds to reactivate the Christian Democratic Party
(C.D.P), which had been dismantled under the reign of Mussolini, and to establish twenty thousand
C.D.P cells throughout Italy.9
The Holy Father also obtained an additional $30 million from Truman's
aid package to create Catholic Action, an organization to generate propaganda against the
Communists.10 [Absolutely no fan of communism, but how does a country founded on separation of church and state,find itself backing a church to manipulate the State of another country,does not seem right to me then or now! D.C]
American cardinal Francis Spellman was now called upon to spearhead the Vatican-sponsored
campaign to encourage Italian Americans to urge their relatives in the old country to vote against
Togliatti and the other Communists. “The fate of Italy depends upon the forthcoming election and the
conflict between Communism and Christianity, between slavery and freedom,” Spellman wrote in a
pamphlet that was distributed in Catholic parishes throughout the United States.”11 The cardinal also
arranged to bombard Italy with radio messages from American celebrities such as Frank Sinatra, Bing
Crosby, and Gary Cooper, urging the people to rise up in support of the Christian Democrats in order
to check the growth of Communism.12
WILD BILL'S KNIGHTHOOD
Pius XII soon realized he would need millions more in cash from Uncle Sam, since 50 percent of the
Italian people were now aligned with the P.C.I. He was no stranger to US intelligence agents. At the
close of the war, the pope, along with Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, his Undersecretary of
State, had worked with Dulles and the O.S.S to create the ratlines used to help Nazis escape Europe,
something he viewed as an essential means to address the threat of Communism.13 Several prominent
Nazis, including Walter Rauff—who had led an extermination unit of the SS across Italy—still
remained sheltered within Vatican City, ready to join in the struggle against the Red Menace.14
In 1945, the pope had held private audiences with Wild Bill Donovan to discuss the
implementation of Gladio and had decorated him as a crusader against Communism with the Grand
Cross of the Order of St. Sylvester, the oldest and most prestigious of papal knighthoods.15 Now, the
Holy Father remained determined to do all in his worldly power to prevent the godless forces of
Communism from taking control of Rome, the holy and eternal city—including the spilling of blood.
CASH AND CANDY
In the months before the 1948 national election, the CIA dumped $65 million of its black money into
the Vatican Bank.16 Much of the cash was hand delivered in large suitcases by members of Luciano's
syndicate, including clerics with affiliations to the Sicilian Mafia. The reception of this money by the
Holy See was held in strictest confidentiality. One reason for the secrecy, as Cardinal Francis
Spellman of New York later revealed, was that “subversive groups in the United States would grasp
this as a very effective pretense for attacking the United States Government for having released money
to the Vatican, even though indirectly conveyed.”17
The heroin, which remained the source for the black money, continued to be supplied to the Sicilian
mob by Schiaparelli, the Italian pharmaceutical giant. The drugs were received by a chain of
businesses that had been set up in Palermo by Luciano and Don Calo. These businesses included a
candy factory, which produced chocolates that were filled with neither cherries nor cream but nuggets
of 100 percent pure smack. Another company was a fruit export enterprise, which was of integral
importance, since the drugs continued to be shipped to Cuba in crates of oranges, half of which were
made of wax and stuffed with pure heroin.18
TRAFFICANTE AND THE TEAMSTERS
Rosario “Saro” Mogavero.
In Cuba, Santo Trafficante and his family continued to cut the heroin with sugar before delivering it to
distributors in New Orleans, Miami, and New York.19 The CIA established protected drug routes into
these ports by developing close ties to the Mafia-tainted International Longshoremen's Association,
which remained under the thumb of Rosario “Saro” Mogavero.20 The movement of the product
throughout the country was facilitated by Jimmy Hoffa and other leaders of the International
Brotherhood of Teamsters working with Mafia-owned trucking companies, including the Long Island
Garment Trucking Company, which was run by John Ormento.21
This activity was not lost on Harry Anslinger, head of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous
Drugs (B.N.D.D), who noted the sharp rise in the supply of heroin in African American neighborhoods
and the subsequent rise in addiction. Hearing from informants that the drugs were coming from
Luciano, he sent Charles Siragusa and other B.N.D.D agents to Sicily, where they were ordered to haunt
the deported gangster's every move. It wasn't long before the agents caught Luciano with a half-ton of
heroin being readied for shipment to Havana.22 Siragusa pressed for an arrest. But no action was
taken by the Italian government or by the US State Department. Lucky's work in Sicily, the B.N.D.D was
informed, remained a matter of national security.23 [So this piece of crap Anslinger,who was the driving force on the federal level of the 'smear campaign' against the evil weed hemp,was powerless against an actual menace that we seen in the second chapter was directed at a certain culture in America,the black culture D.C.]
ITALIAN ELECTION TACTICS
Don Calo
In the closing months of 1947, hundreds of the Mafia's made men began to arrive in Italy from New
York, Chicago, and Miami to aid Luciano and Don Calo in addressing the Communist problem. The
CIA's black money for mob muscle was paid out by the Vatican bank from ecclesiastical
organizations, including Catholic Action.24 In this way, the Holy See forged an alliance with the
Sicilian Mafia, an alliance that would strengthen throughout the next three decades.
The force of the Mafia was now unleashed upon the Italian electorate. Don Calo and an army of
thugs, including Vito Genovese's cousin Giovanni Genovese, burned down eleven Communist branch
offices and made four assassination attempts on Communist leader Girolamo Li Causi. The gang,
under Frank Coppola—who had been imported from Detroit by Angleton to work with Sicilian bandit
Salvatore Giuliano—also opened fire on a crowd of workers celebrating May Day in Portella della
Ginestra, killing eleven and wounding fifty-seven. The funds for the massacre were provided by Wild
Bill Donovan through his World Commerce Corporation.25 One of Italy's leading labor organizers,
Placido Rizzotto, was found dead at the bottom of a cliff—legs and arms chained and a bullet through
his brain. Throughout 1948, in Sicily alone, the CIA-backed terror attacks resulted in the killing of on
average five people a week.26 [I am not sure it can be put more plainly about these corrupt cowboys D.C.]
THE VATICAN DEATH SQUAD
In addition to these undertakings, Monsignor Don Giuseppe Bicchierai, acting upon papal authority,
assembled a terror gang charged with the task of beating up Communist candidates, smashing left wing
political gatherings, and intimidating voters. The money, guns, and jeeps for the Monsignor's
terror attacks were furnished by the CIA from surplus World War II stockpiles.27
On Election Day, Don Calo and his men stuffed ballot boxes and bribed voters with gifts of freshly
laundered drug money, while Pope Pius remained within his chambers “hunched-up, almost
physically overcome by the weight of his present burden, the coming election.”28 The mob's tactics
worked, and the Christian Democrats triumphantly returned to power. In his memoirs, William Colby,
who would later become the director of the CIA , wrote that the Communists would have gained 60
percent of the vote without the Agency's sabotage.29
OTHER CATHOLIC BANKS
Giuseppe Genco Russo
One year after the election, renewed fears of a Communist takeover of Italy arose from Stalin's
creation of the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), the economic union of the Soviet
Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania to enforce the Soviet dominion of
the lesser states of central Europe.30 In the face of this development, the CIA opted to extend support
for the C.D.P in Italy and stay-behind units throughout Western Europe with billions in covert funding
that could only come from the expansion of the drug trade. The CIA funds were deposited by members
of Don Calo's crime family in Catholic banks throughout Italy, including Banco Ambrosiano. These
banks, thanks to the Lateran Treaty (which established Vatican City as a sovereign state), were safe
from scrutiny by the Bank of Italy and Italy's treasury department. A henchman for Giuseppe Genco
Russo, Don Calo's immediate successor as capo, now observed, “He [Russo] is constantly in contact
with priests, priests go to his place, and he goes to the bank—which is always run by priests—the
bank director is a priest, the bank has always been the priests’ affair.”31
THE VATICAN DESK
In 1949, Pope Pius XII issued a solemn decree which excommunicated not only the members of Holy
Mother Church who joined or favored the Communist party, but also all Catholics who read,
published, or disseminated any printed material that upheld Communist ideology.32 In an internal
memo, the CIA provided the following analysis of the pope's action:
By this action, the two most powerful organizations for moving men to act on behalf of a doctrine are brought into open and basic
conflict. The possible long-range ramifications of this conflict cannot be easily or comprehensively defined. The decree will be a
very powerful factor in the East-West struggle. In Eastern Europe, it implies a struggle to the bitter end…. In many other areas of
the world, the decree will exert a powerful and prolonged indirect pressure on both policy and action. Communist governments and
Communists generally will have to accept the issue as now posed. Although the Communist governments would obviously have
preferred to carry on their anti-church campaign at their own pace, the power of decision has now been taken from them. The
conflict can be pressed on them with a speed and comprehensiveness that may well affect the satisfactory development of other
Communist policies….33
Fearful that the decree might be insufficient to crush the “forces of godlessness,” Pius XII
continued to tighten his ties with the CIA into a Gordian knot that no one could unravel. The C.D.P
continued to receive more than $20 million in annual aid from the CIA and, in return, the CIA
established a “Vatican desk” under Angleton.34
The Vatican desk reviewed all of the intelligence reports that were sent to the Holy See from papal
nuncios (diplomats) who were stationed behind the Iron Curtain. During the early years of the Cold
War, this became one of the only means for the Agency to penetrate the Eastern Bloc.35 Strategies
between the CIA and the Church were drafted to undermine left-wing movements throughout Europe
and South America. The affairs of politically suspect members of the Curia were monitored by moles.
The actions of progressive priests, particularly in Latin America, were thwarted by strong arm
techniques.36
THE KNIGHTS OF MALTA
Angleton swore his allegiance to Holy Mother Church and became a knight of the Sovereign Military
Order of Malta (S.M.O.M), the legendary ecclesiastical society dating back to the Crusades. Other
spooks were also knighted, including William Casey, William Colby, and John McCone, who were
all future CIA directors; General Vernon Walters, who would become the deputy director of the CIA
under George H. W. Bush; Albert Carone (mentioned in the previous chapter); CIA special agent
William F. Buckley, who would become the owner and publisher of National Review; Frank
Shakespeare, the director of CIA media outlets Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty; NATO general
and future secretary of state Alexander Haig; and Wild Bill Donovan.37 An S.M.O.M knight of
particular interest was General Reinhard Gehlen, who had served as Hitler's intelligence chief for the
eastern front during World War II. In 1945, Gehlen had been asked by the O.S.S to set up stay-behind
units made up of fellow Nazis to spy on the Soviet Union. The units, known as the Gehlen
Organization, eventually transformed into the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND under Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer in 1956.38
Much of the business between the CIA and the Vatican began to be conducted at the annual
gatherings of the S.M.O.M in Rome and New York. Cardinal Francis Spellman presided over the
proceedings and sanctioned future strategies against the Communist forces in Europe in the name of
the pope.39 Since the Vatican played such an essential part in Gladio, William Colby, the CIA station
chief in Rome, had microphones planted throughout the papal apartments so the Agency could monitor
the pope's conversations and those of his staff. This snooping would persist until 1984.40
The Vatican now became a principal depository not only for black funds but also top secret
documents, including CIA files relating to the development of nuclear weapons. One of these
documents, never declassified, surfaced in 2006 during the process of discovery in Alperin v. Vatican
Bank, a class action suit by Holocaust survivors who claimed the I.O.R was the repository of gold that
had been stolen from them by the Nazi Croatian government.41
THE STUMBLING BLOCK
The Helliwell plan had been implemented. The Mafia connection had been made. The alliance with
the Vatican had been forged. But there was a problem. Schiaparelli could no longer meet the Agency's
increased demand for heroin. The pharmaceutical giant was extended to the limit by providing annual
shipments of two hundred kilos to the makeshift laboratories of Luciano and Don Calo.42 The Sicilian
syndicate and the CIA would have to establish their own drug route in order to meet the current needs
and also to develop new markets throughout Europe and the United States. The Sicilians would also
have to secure proper facilities and trained scientists to refine the raw product. The heroin that came
from the Schiaparelli laboratories was 100% pure and only requiring cutting and packaging. Sources
for opium had to be found; the raw product had to be refined into purified No. four heroin; and new
markets in the United States had to be developed. Otherwise, the cold war could be lost.[So in other words,unless the CIA became drug dealers of heroin the cold war was lost,so what is the excuse for them dabbling in cocaine to this very day here in 2017 D.C.]
CHAPTER 4
THE DRUG NETWORK
It [the CIA's involvement in the trafficking of heroin] goes all the way back to the
predecessor organization OSS and its involvement with the Italian mafia, the Cosa
Nostra in Sicily and Southern Italy. Later on when they were fighting communists in
France and—that they got in tight with the Corsican brotherhood. The Corsican
brotherhood, of course, were big dope dealers. As things changed in the world the CIA
got involved with the Kuomintang types in Burma who were drug runners because they
were resisting the drift towards communism there. The same thing happened in
Southeast Asia, later in Latin America. Some of the very people who are the best
sources of information, who are capable of accomplishing things and the like happen
to be the criminal element.
Victor Marchetti, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence
The process of producing heroin begins when the petals fall from the poppies, exposing egg-shaped
seed pods. The pods are sliced vertically to extract the opaque, milky sap that is opium in its crudest
form. After it darkens and thickens, the extracted sap is compacted into bricks of opium gum and
transported to laboratories, where it is mixed with lime in huge vats of boiling water. The waste
precipitate sinks to the bottom, while the white morphine rises to the top. The morphine is skimmed
from the water, reheated with ammonia, filtered, and boiled again until it becomes reduced to a
brown paste. The paste is poured into molds and dried in the sun. The finished product is reheated in
vats and processed with acetic anhydride in glass containers for six hours to form diacetylmorphine.
The solution is drained and sodium carbonate is added to make the heroin solidify and sink. The
heroin becomes further refined by filtering it from the sodium carbonate solution through activated
charcoal and purifying it with alcohol. The product is then reheated to evaporate the alcohol.
Next comes the tricky part—the part that the Sicilians in their makeshift facilities were unable to
master. The heroin is mixed with ether or hydrochloric acid, a process that can produce a violent
explosion if not conducted with scientific precision. The end product is No. 4 heroin—a fluffy white
powder usually shipped in one hundred kilo packages.
CORSICAN CHEMISTRY
Unlike the Sicilian branch of the Mafia, the Corsican Mafia had gained mastery of this process
through years of working among Cambodian, Laotian, and Vietnamese technicians in French
Indochina. In 1949, the CIA and the Luciano syndicate sorely needed the talents of the Corsicans for
the creation of a new narcotics network. But the labor unions in Marseilles, where the heroin
laboratories were located, remained controlled by Communists, who refused to load and unload ships
coming from French Indochina, where the rebel army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (a force
that would morph into the Viet Cong) was fighting for independence from the French Union. Ho Chi
Minh, the leader of the rebels, had helped found the French Communist Party and was a popular hero
in France among leftist workers, especially in Marseilles with its high number of Indochinese
residents.1
On February 3, 1947, the Communist-Socialist labor coalition (Confederation Generale du
Travail) convened a meeting of the Marseilles dock workers that resulted in the publication of a
manifesto demanding all unions launch “the most effective means possible against the war in
Vietnam”—a strike. The plans to transform the French port city of Marseilles into the center of the
heroin industry came to a screeching halt.2
THE STRIKE BREAKERS
To break the strike, Lucky Luciano made contact with Antoine and Barthelemy Guerini, the leaders of
the Corsican Mafia, who initiated a series of attacks against the strikers and labor leaders. The
attacks, funded by the CIA, continued until 1950, when the Guerinis finally gained complete control of
the waterfront. CIA operative Thomas Braden later recalled how he had dealt with the Marseilles
situation:
On the desk in front of me as I write these lines is a creased and faded yellow paper. It bears the inscription in pencil: ‘Received
from Warren G. Haskins, $15,000 (signed) Norris A Grambo.’
I went in search of this paper on the day the newspapers disclosed the ‘scandal’ of the Central Intelligence Agency's
connections with American students and labor leaders. It was a wistful search, and when it ended, I found myself feeling sad.
For I was Warren G. Haskins. Norris A. Grambo was Irving Brown of the American Federation of Labor. The $15,000 was
from the vaults of the CIA, and the yellow paper is the last memento I possess of a vast and secret operation….
It was my idea to give $15,000 to Irving Brown. He needed it to pay off his strong-arm squads in the Mediterranean ports, so
that American supplies could be unloaded against the opposition of Communist dock workers.3
Thanks to the CIA's assistance, Marseilles now became the new center of the heroin industry. By
1951, only months after the Corsican and Sicilian Mafias took control of the waterfront, the Guerinis
recruited a host of French chemists and opened their first opium refineries.4
The French connection to
the Sicilian clan of Don Calo and the American crime family of Lucky Luciano had been established.
THE TURKISH ROUTE
Sami ElKhoury,{L}
Production was one problem; supply was another. The new heroin network needed the services of a
narcotics broker. The leading opium broker within the Anatolian plains of Turkey was Sami ElKhoury,
a slick Syrian opium merchant, who had become the leading supplier of opium paste to the
Middle East. Lucky Luciano met with El-Khoury as soon as the strike was settled and forged a
business relationship that would immediately beginning flowing millions of kilos of raw opium from
Turkey into Beirut, where it was manufactured into morphine base. El-Khoury secured the route by
paying off Lebanese police and customs agents with Luciano's cash. From Lebanon, the base was
transported to the new laboratories in Marseilles. From the French port, the heroin was shipped on
freighters to Cuba under CIA protection.5
Throughout his career, El-Khoury remained under the care and protection of the CIA. He was
collared several times during major drug busts—some involving more than six hundred pounds of
heroin—but served less than four months in prison.6
In 1998, Dennis Dayle, former chief of an elite
DEA unit, confided that El-Khoury had been an employee of the Agency. “In my 30-year career in the
Drug Enforcement Administration and related agencies,” Dayle said, “the major targets of my
investigations almost invariably turned out to be working for the CIA.”7
THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN ROUTE
As the opium began to flow from Turkey, the CIA worked with General Chaing Kai-shek and his
Kuomintang (K.M.T) army to create a supplemental drug route that would lead from Burma to
Marseilles. By 1950, thousands of General Chaing's troops had been driven into the Shan States of
Burma by the Communist forces of Mao Zedong.8
The troops were mostly members of a Muslim
minority, known as the Haw, who were born and bred in southwestern Yunnan, an area dominated by
the opium trade.9
With the hope that the reconstituted K.M.T, now known as the Ninety-Third Division,
still might mount an invasion of China to aid in the Korean conflict by creating a new front, the CIA
provided for all the immediate needs of the exiled army. It was an expensive undertaking that could
only be offset by cultivation of poppy fields within the mountainous regions of northern Burma and
northeastern Laos.
By 1951, the CIA began supplying arms and material to the K.M.T troops engaged in opium
cultivation. This venture—known as Operation Paper—became the second example of the CIA
conducting off-the-books foreign policy with assets of which the American people and most elected
officials remained completely unaware. The decisions concerning this policy were made within the
Office of Policy Coordination by a very small group of elite intelligence officials, whose parameters
remained undefined. The Office of Policy Coordination would grow into the so-called “military industrial
complex,” which would rely on privatized military and intelligence contractors,
international bankers, and even Washington's most highly organized lobbyists.
THE WORLD
COMMERCE CORPORATION
To expedite the arms-for-drugs venture in the Far East, Wild Bill Donovan resigned from the military
to form the World Commerce Corporation (W.C.C) with a small group of very wealthy friends,
including Nelson Rockefeller, Joseph C. Grew (nephew of J. P. Morgan), Alfred DuPont, and Charles
Jocelyn Hambro of the Hambros Bank. The firm, which was registered in Panama, employed mob
figure Sonny Fassoulis, an international arms dealer, to provide “services” to General Chaing's
National Army.10 The primary function of the W.C.C was to buy and sell surplus US weapons and
munitions to foreign underworld groups, including the K.M.T and the Italian Mafias. In exchange for
the arms, the K.M.T provided the opium required to create the CIA as the US postwar intelligence
agency.11
General Phao Sriyanonda
The opium was flown from the mountains of Burma and Laos by Civil Air Transport to Bangkok,
where the planes were emptied and loaded with weapons for the return flight to the poppy fields. In
Bangkok, General Phao Sriyanonda, director general of Thailand's national police, employed his
officers to load the product on the freighters of a mysterious shipping company called Sea Supply,
Inc., a CIA front run by Paul Helliwell, who now served at the Burmese consulate in Miami.12 In
1954, British customs in Singapore stated that Bangkok had become the major center for opium
trafficking in Southeast Asia.13 The drug trade became so lucrative that Thailand abandoned the anti-opium
campaign it had launched in 1948.14
INTELLIGENCE SUBCULTURE
General Phao developed a close friendship with Donovan, who had been appointed US ambassador
to Thailand. Indeed, Wild Bill became so enthralled with Phao that he nominated the Thai general for
a Legion of Merit award.15 Although he did not win the award, Phao, by 1953, had received $35
million in aid from the CIA, including gifts of several naval vessels and cargo planes used to
transport drugs to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Marseilles.16 These were given with the expectation
that the K.M.T would launch guerrilla raids into China.
The W.C.C and Sea Supply, like Civil Air Transport (CAT), emerged from a subculture within the
intelligence community of extremely wealthy and well-connected lawyers and businessmen who, at
the time, were not part of any official government agency.17 This subculture would eventually give
rise to a network of banks (including the Bank of Credit and Commerce International) and proprietary
businesses (including the American International Group of C. V. Starr), which were created to support
and conceal the flow of money from the heroin trade.18
CARDINAL SPELLMAN'S ENDORSEMENT
By 1958, the opium trade in Southeast Asia became so brisk that a second drug supply line was
established by the CIA. This route ran from dirt airstrips within the Annamite Mountains of Laos to
Saigon's international airport for transshipment to Europe and the United States. In addition to CAT,
the CIA contracted the services of small Corsican airplanes for this transport.19 The Saigon drop
would have been impossible without the cooperation of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South
Vietnam, and Diem's brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, who served as his chief adviser. Diem, a devout Roman
Catholic, had been instructed by the pope to cooperate with the strategies of the U S government to
thwart the gains of Ho Chi Minh and the North Vietnamese.20 The cooperation was deemed so
important by the Vatican that Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York formed a pro-Diem lobby in
Washington. Through speeches and pamphlets, Spellman presented the people of Vietnam as a
terrified throng cowering before the cruel and bloodthirsty Viet Minh—the Vietnamese independence
coalition led by Ho Chi Minh—to the God-fearing Diem for salvation. Such tactics raised the ire of
British writer Graham Greene, himself a devout Catholic, who dispatched the following from Saigon
to London's Sunday Times:
It is Catholicism which has helped ruin the government of Mr. Diem, for his genuine piety has been exploited by his American
advisers until the Church is in danger of sharing the unpopularity of the United States. An unfortunate visit by Cardinal Spellman
has been followed by those of Cardinal Gillroy and the Archbishop of Canberra. Great sums are spent on organizing
demonstrations for the visitors, and an impression is given that the Catholic Church is occidental and an ally of the United States in
the cold war. On rare occasions, when Mr. Diem has visited areas formerly held by the Viet Minh, there has been a priest at his
side, and usually an American one.21
The CIA provided millions in covert funding for Diem and his brother to expand the scope of their
intelligence work and the extent of their political repression of the Vietnamese people.22 The support
continued even after the corrupt Diem, whose government descended into chaos, was driven from
office by a CIA-supported military junta in 1963. Saigon was now a city of strategic importance.
FALSE FLAGS AND MEDIA CONTROL
As the Western world became increasingly inundated with heroin, the CIA, through spokesmen such
as George White of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (F.B.N.), placed the blame on Chairman Mao and
the People's Republic of China, who were accused of orchestrating the movement of between two
hundred and four hundred tons of opium per year from Yunnan to Bangkok.23 The Agency also
presented General Phao, the linchpin in the Asian drug connection, as America's best hope in
combating this drug menace. Such reports represented the first unfurling of a CIA false flag.
Knowing the importance of issuing such false reports, the CIA, under Allen Dulles, initiated
Operation Mockingbird in 1953. This operation involved recruiting leading journalists and editors to
fabricate stories and create smoke screens in order to cast the Agency's agenda in a positive light.
Among the news executives taking part were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System
(CBS), Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr.
of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of Copley Press. Entire news organizations
eventually became part of Mockingbird, including the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the
National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters,
Hearst Newspapers, Scripps Howard, Newsweek, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami
Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Herald Tribune. With over four hundred
journalists now involved, along with mainstream news outlets, the Agency could operate without fear
of exposure.24
THE CATHOLIC CONNECTION
To aid in the process of washing the billions from the heroin trade, the CIA worked in tandem with
Henry Manfredi, who established the F.B.N's first overseas operation in Rome in 1951. Manfredi had
established close ties to Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, then the Vatican undersecretary of
state and later Pope Paul VI.25 Through Montini, the F.B.N arranged to divert the flow of cash, at first
through the Merrill Lynch Brokerage House and, eventually, through a host of parochial banks in Italy,
before it finally arrived at the I.O.R.26
The transactions were supervised by Massimo Spada, a senior official at the Vatican Bank. Spada,
a Knight of Malta, chaired or served on the boards of the astonishing array of companies owned by
the Holy See, including Società Italiana per il Gas (Italy's central source of natural gas), Riunione
Adriatica di Sicurta insurance company, Istituto Bancario Italiano, Credito Commerciale di Cremona,
Banca Privata Finanziaria, Banca Cattolica del Veneto, and Finsider (a conglomerate that owned the
Italia shipping line, Alitalia airlines, Alfa Romeo, and Italy's telephone system), along with producing
90 percent of Italy's steel. 27 For assistance in managing the billions, Spada turned to tax attorney
Michele Sindona, a leading figure in the Sicilian Mafia.28
PRESENTING SINDONA
A peasant from Patti, Sicily, Sindona earned his degree in tax law from the University of Messina in
1942. Following the Allied invasion, he abandoned his practice to become a leading figure in the
black market, delivering lemons to the rural areas of central Sicily and trading them for wheat and
other commodities that were in short supply in Palermo and Messina. This venture required the
protection of the Mafia, which controlled the produce industry and the border guards. Through the
intervention of the bishop of Patti, who had close ties to Vito Genovese, Sindona was able to gain this
protection. The bishop used his influence with the Sicilian dons and US military officials to provide
Sindona with fresh produce, forged papers, and safe passage through the country.29 Sindona used a
portion of his profits to purchase arms from the Allied Military Government, which he then provided
to Salvatore Giuliano and other members of the Movement for the Independence of Sicily.30
By the end of the war, Sindona had become a respected member of the Luciano/Don Calo crime
family and one of the Sicilian Mafia's leading financial advisors. Between 1952 and 1955, he spent a
considerable amount of time in New York, acting as Luciano's emissary to Vito Genovese.31 By 1955,
he had also become a CIA operative, providing a steady flow of black funds to leading Catholic
dignitaries, including Giovanni Montini, who had by now been appointed Archbishop of Milan.32
Montini, in turn, introduced the ambitious young lawyer to Massimo Spada. Sindona now formed an
integral part of the nexus between the CIA, the mob, and the Vatican, and he would come to play a
crucial part in a chain of events that would result in the toppling of governments, wholesale slaughter,
and widespread financial devastation.
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The Secret Society
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