The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

Originally known as the Knights Hospitaller, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta was founded in the 11th century in Jerusalem, where it protected Christian pilgrims visiting the Holy Sepulchre. When the Holy Land was lost to the Saracens in 1291, the Hospitallers moved to Cyprus and then Rhodes. Much of the property of the banned Knights Templar seems to have accrued to the Hospitallers in the meantime. In 1523 the Turkish siege of Cyprus put the Knights Hospitaller on the move again, and they found refuge in Malta, given to them by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, where they became known as the Knights of Malta or the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Napoleon’s invasion of Malta in 1798 forced the Sovereign Military Order into a diaspora, and today it exists as scattered branches throughout the world. There is a headquarters in Rome. In line with its founding principle, the Order continues its charitable work of defending the sick and the poor.

But is that all it does? For a charity, the Sovereign Military Order wields unusual power. It has Permanent Observer Status at the UN General Assembly and diplomatic relations with 40 countries. The authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail spotlight the Catholic anti-Communist Knights of Malta as «one of the primary channels of communication between the Vatican and the CIA». Evidence of the connection comes primarily from the alleged membership in the Order of CIA chiefs William «Wild Bill» Donovan, Allen Dulles, John McCone and William Casey. James Angleton was awarded the Croci Al Merito Seconda Classe from the Knights, while George H. W. Bush was reputed to be an honorary initiate. Equally, the Order is closely connected to the Vatican; one of its leading members in the 20th century was the American Cardinal Francis Spellman. Among those awarded the Order’s Grand Cross of Merit has been Reinhard Gehlen, the former Nazi chief of intelligence on the Soviet front. Gehlen was subsequently installed by the CIA as the first chief of West Germany’s equivalent of the CIA, the BND.

Gehlen is not the only fascist to have been welcomed into the arms of the Order. So was Franco. According to conspiracy reporter Francoise Hervet, Count Umberto Ortolani, the Order’s Ambassador to Uruguay, was the «brains behind» the crypto-fascist P2 Masonic Lodge.

Somehow, the Sovereign Order finds the time, according to some paranoid conspiracy theorists, to also hold Satanic rituals and help run the New World Order.

The Sovereign Military Order of Malta moonlights as an intelligence broker: ALERT LEVEL 8

Further Reading

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, 1982

Francoise Hervet, «The Sovereign Military Order of Malta», Covert Action, Winter 1986

Star Gate

Star Gate was one of a number of psi-ops «remote viewing programs» conducted by the CIA from 1972 onwards. Developed in response to reported Soviet investigations of psychic phenomena (funded, the CIA estimated, to the tune of 60 million roubles a year), Star Gate was based at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA. Many of the first remote viewers, among them New York artist Ingo Swann, were from the Church of Scientology. By 1983 Swann and Star Gate’s director Harold Puthoff were developing instructions which theoretically allowed anyone to be trained to produce accurate visualizations of targets. Allegedly. A 1995 analysis of the Star Gate project by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) found that even «gifted» subjects only scored 5–15 per cent above chance and advised that Star Gate be closed down. In not one single case, the CIA concluded, had ESP remote viewing provided data able to guide intelligence operations. For decades whispers of a CIA psychic viewing programme had bounced around conspiracy circles. The AIR report confirmed its existence, even if it was at the very end of the project’s life.

Over $20 million was spent on Star Gate — ill-advisedly, according to the Agency. However, according to Star Gate psychic Joe McMoneagle (who left Star Gate in 1984, reportedly with a Legion of Merit Award for his services) the project had a string of «eight martini» results, so-called because the remote viewing data was so accurate that programme workers needed eight martinis to recover. These included:

Locating kidnapped Brigadier General James L. Dozier, who had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades in Italy in 1981

Disclosing that chemicals (for a weapons programme) would be transported from Tripoli to a port in the east of Libya aboard a ship named either Patua or Potua (in fact, a ship named Batato made such a journey)