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Watching Harball with Chris Mathews on Thursday gave me a jolt. A big jolt. I was finally able to get to the transcript tonight. Pay particular attention to the name of the "group" below emphasized in red highlight.

Hardball with Chris Mathews - Aug 19, 2004: [snip]

DANA MILBANK: [...] So they‘re [Democrats] trying to be much more on the offensive this time and they‘re taking John McCain as an ally and trying to put pressure on the White House to denounce this Swift Boat group. It‘s very interesting that we all pressed Scott McClellan today in Crawford to take a stand on that ad. He‘s being careful not to do that. He says that John Kerry served honorably there. He‘s very firm about that but they‘re reluctant to criticize the Swift Boat Vets.

MATTHEWS: But you know back in 1988, there was a practice like this. The George Bush campaign, the senior George Bush campaign against Michael Dukakis was careful not to raise any racial flags. They had the revolving door ad that was totally diversified in terms of all the criminals involved and then there was a sideline thing paid for by some group called THE AMERICAN SECURITY COUNCIL that showed this sort of shrouded (UNINTELLIGIBLE) look, a picture of this guy, this guy Willie Horton, which definitely was played in particular blue collar areas to help them get that vote roused up.

Of course being the gentleman that he is, George Bush Sr. can say, I had nothing to do with that ad. When are we going to be able to identify responsibility—let me go to Gergen on this. David, when are candidates going to take responsibility for the ads running on their behalf? ~ Hardball with Chris Mathews, MSNBC, August 19, 2004 - transcript

YIKES!!! The ASC was originally founded in 1955 as the Mid-Western Research Library. One year later (1956) the name was changed to the American Security Council. ASC's original founders included former FBI agent William F. Carroll, Gen. Robert E. Wood (chaiman Sears Roebuck) and William H. Regnery William H. Regnery's son Henry Regnery (Regnery Publishing) would later assume his fathers place at ASC.

The ASC was set up as a kind of shadowy private intelligence gathering operation. A kind of secret bureau of investigation designed to root out document and catalog anyone it considered of "questionable" political leanings. Especially labor union activists or any persons it deemed communist. It's own early promotional materials offered to corporate business community interests boast of it's extensive intelligence gathering abilities and close ties to the military and the executive and legislative branches of government. It's objective was to gather information on US citizens and organizations it considered "subversive". Intel (files that it collected on individuals and organizations) were then shared with corporations, and military industrial complex liasions. At the same time it operated as a propaganda and rumor mill dispensing so-called "educational" information to the public on behalf of various right wing causes and ideologies. (such as the ultra-right wing John Birch Society). More on ASC in a moment.

Backtrack note: both Gen. Robert E. Wood and William H. Regnery were two of the original founders of the America First Committee (1940). AFC was the brainchild of a Yale law student named Robert Douglas Stuart. Chicago investment banker H.L. Stuart was an original underwriter of AFC as was H. Smith Richardson of the Vick Chemical Company (as in Vicks Vaporub). William H. Regnery, in 1940, was president of the Western Shade Cloth Company, a textile manufacturer. Regnery publishing (the Henry Regnery Company) did not yet exist and bloomed from the loins of Human Events magazine. Which, in 1944, was founded by Henry Regnery, Frank C. Hanighen and Felix Morley. Including help from General Robert E. Wood and generous contributions from Sun Oil Company vice president Joseph Pew.

Back to the ASC. From who did ASC aquire some of the information they collected? One affiliated source was a group called the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation which was founded in 1927 by the outspoken anti-semitic fascist wannabe and Mussolini boosteroo Harry Jung.

Jung founded the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation (AVIF) in 1927 as an anti-union spy operation. With the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Jung became the first major distributor in the U.S. of the anti-Semitic forgery, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." [...] His AVIF became involved with German Nazi agents in the U.S. In 1942, Jung's East Coast operative, a Col. Eugene Sanctuary, was indicted by the Justice Department for sedition. One can only wonder at the purpose and content of the files collected by Jung, and purchased by the ASC. The Jung file collection reportedly had one million names indexed when the ASC acquired it some thirty years ago. (Russ Bellant; Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party, South End Press 1991

Another group tucked into the folds of the ASC was John B. Trevor's American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. Trevor died in 1956 and was replaced by his son John B. Trevor Jr., who spent years on ASC's Board of Directors and who also served as Treasurer (1962) for the racialist pro-Nazi Pioneer Fund which was founded by textile baron Wickliffe Draper (drapes anyone?) in 1937.

In 1958 ASC launched the Institute for American Strategy (IAS) for the purpose of further spreading Cold War political propaganda among the public, indoctrinating public policy "elites" and military personnel in the ideology of right wing think, emphasizing the importance of powerful military industrial complex interests and trying to convince anyone they could buttonhole that commies had infiltrated the master suites of government. ACS sponsored events such as the National Military Conferences which were essentially git-to-know-ya gatherings for Pentagon officials and National Security Council big wigs looking to hoot it up, share shrimp cocktails and exchange boing-eyed scare stories with corporate executives from such board rooms as United Fruit and Standard Oil.

Recall Eisenhower warning of the power of the military industrial complex -- these are the very people of whom he was speaking. The IAS was funded by the right wing Richardson Foundation (H. Smith Richardson) and administered by "political warfare" advocate/expert Frank Barnett and long time ASC member Col. William Kintner. IAS president was John M. Fisher. Barnett was research director for the Richardson Foundation as well.

Barnett advocated "political warfare" abroad that included fomenting "diverse forms of coercion and violence including strikes and riots, economic sanctions, subsidies for guerrilla or proxy warfare and, when necessary, kidnapping or assassination of enemy elites." Riled by those who did not share his militant foreign policy outlook, Barnett told attendees at one Cold War seminar that "it is within the capacity of the people in this room to literally turn the State of Georgia into a civilian war college," in order to overcome their opponents.

William Kintner, a 25-year ASC veteran who left the CIA after 11 years as a planning officer and joined IAS in 1961, attacked the critics of extreme rightism in the , May, 1962. He said the campaign against extreme rightists, including the John Birch Society, began when "dossiers in Moscow's espionage headquarters were combed for the names of unsuspecting persons in the United States who might do the Kremlin's work." In other words, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were dupes of the KGB. . .or worse. In the jargon of today's extreme right, those concerned over the growing military-industrial complex were spreading "Soviet disinformation." (Bellant, Old Nazis..., South End Press, 1991)

In 1962 Barnett co-founds (and becomes president) of the National Strategy Information Center. Others affiliated with or advising the NSIC over the years include Joseph Coors, Frank Shakespeare (Heritage Foundation) and former CIA director William J. Casey. As well as this feller right here ---- Prescott Bush. (Prescott Bush was also a friend of Gen. Robert E. Wood.)

In 1962, as Bush was about to leave the Senate, he helped to launch the new National Strategy Information Center, to be run by Frank Barnett, a Right-tilting expert on political warfare and covert operations who had previously directed research at North Corolina's CIA-linked Smith Richardson Foundation. Bush knew well those involved, because during the early 1950's, at the request of H. Smith Richardson and his son-in-law Eugene Stetson, a Bonesman and former Brown Brothers Harriman colleague of Bush's, he had given the Richardson's advice and supportive counsel on setting up their foundation. (Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty, page 197)

So thats it for now. And thats only a tiny sampling of a much bigger picture with respect to the ASC and its spawn. Many of which played large roles in influencing policy during the Reagan/Bush years. Especially with respect to ASC's role in events that took place in Latin America.

Willie Horton ad leads to ASC --- Swift Boat Liars lead to Regnery. Regnery co-founds the ASC. And up and down the branching tree. Connect the dots. And Larry Thurlow wants us to believe some wacky conspiracy theory about John Kerry masterminding a sneaky master plan of conquest while being shot at on a swift boat in the Mekong Delta over 30 years ago? GZSH-KeeRyst.

Another note here: Alfred Regnery was appointed to the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice by Ronald Reagan in 1986. Alfred Regnery, one time Regnery Publishing president, was/is also, a "close" friend of Ken Starr.

In 1993 Regnery publishing was became the property of right wing publisher Thomas Phillips, (Phillips Publishing). Mothership of Human Events magazine. Phillips is another one to watch. One that doesn't get much attention.

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