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Excerpt from article: Rick Santorum Exposed: Knights of Malta Member, Warmonger, and Long History of Corruption
The Intel Hub, 2012 [link to theintelhub.com]

[...] Rick Santorum, now a leading GOP candidate for president, has a long history of corruption and is a member of the secret society, the Knights of Malta.

In a recent transmission of Down the Rabbit Hole with Popeye of FederalJack.com, Popeye and special guest Steve Stars spent two hours dissecting Santorums disgusting, warmongering history. [...]
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E​xcerpts from article: Their Will Be Done
Mother Jones magazine, 1983 [link to motherjones.com]

[...] And who are the American Knights? Mother Jones managed to obtain part of the secret membership list. On it we found some familiar names: Lee Lacocca of Chrysler; Spyros Skouras, the shipping magnate; Robert Abplanalp, the aerosol tycoon and Nixon confidant; Barren Hilton of the hotel chain; John Volpe, former U.S. ambassador to Italy; and William Simon, who served as both treasury secretary and energy czar in the 1970s. At least one former envoy to the Vatican, Robert Wagner (the ex-mayor of New York), and the current emissary to the Vatican, William Wilson, are also members of the Knights of Malta. But there is one institution that stands out as the center of the SMOM in the United States—W.R. Grace & Company. J. Peter Grace, the company chairman, is also president of the American section of SMOM. No less than eight knights, including the chancellor of the order, John D.J. Moore (who was ambassador to Ireland under Nixon and Ford), are directors of W.R. Grace.

J. Peter Grace has a long history of involvement with CIA-linked enterprises, such as Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, which was the brainchild of General Reinhard Gehlen. He is also the board chairman of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which has collaborated with multinational corporations and their client dictatorships in Latin America to squelch independent trade unions. Up to $100 million a year of CIA funds were pumped into "trustworthy" labor organizations such as AIFLD, whose graduates, according to AIFLD executive director William Doherty, were active in covert operations that led to the military coup in Brazil in 1964. During the early 1970s, Francis D. Flanagan, the Grace representative in Washington, D.C., was a member of ITT's "Ad Hoc Committee on Chile," which was instrumental in planning the overthrow of Salvador Allende. AIFLD's National Workers' Con-federation subsequently served as the chief labor mouthpiece for the Pinochet junta.

There are many other knights with CIA connections. Clare Boothe Luce, for example, the grande dame of American diplomacy, served as a U.S. ambassador to Italy in the 1950s and is now a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which oversees covert operations. William Buckley, Jr., a former CIA operative and the editor of the National Review, is a member, as is his brother James, a former senator from New York and now undersecretary of state for security assistance. [...]

[...] The CIA was quick to recognize the "subversive" potential of liberation theology and mounted an extensive campaign to undermine the new movement. The agency's strategy, formulated during the late 1960s and early '70s, when Richard Helms was director, was to exploit the polarization between the activist clergy and those who still identified with the established order (the holdovers from the Cold War era, when missionaries were routinely employed as agents and informants). Toward this end, as Penny Lernoux documents in her book Cry of the People, the CIA used right-wing Catholic organizations in Latin America to harass outspoken prelates and political reformers. [...]

[...] Under [CIA Director William] Casey, the CIA has continued its attack on progressive elements within the church. Casey is also a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

Of all the groups that are engaged in the U.S.-sponsored campaign against liberation theology, none has played a more significant role than Opus Dei ("God's Work"). A fast-growing Catholic lay society whose political activities are shrouded in secrecy, Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, a young Spanish priest and lawyer. Escriva espoused complete obedience to church dogma. Today, there are more than 70,000 members of the order in 87 countries. Only a small percentage are priests. The rest are mostly middle and upper-class businessmen, professionals, military personnel and government officials. Some are university students. The members contribute regularly to the group's financial coffers and are encouraged to practice "holy shrewdness" and "holy coercion" in an effort to win converts.

Much of what is known about Opus Dei comes from ex-members such as John Roche, a professor at Oxford University in England, who broke his oath of secrecy after leaving the order. According to Roche, self-flagellation with whips and spiked chains is a normal part of the rigid spiritual discipline that Opus Dei imposes on its full-time members, including college-age recruits of both genders. "Personal identity suffers a severe battering: some are reduced to shadows of their former selves, others become severely disturbed," writes Roche in a paper called "The Inner World of Opus Dei." "Internally, it is totalitarian and imbued with fascist ideas turned to religious purposes, ideas which were surely drawn from the Spain of its early years. It is virtually a sect or cult in spirit, a law unto itself, totally self-centered, grudgingly accepting Roman authority because it still considers Rome orthodox, and because of the vast pool of recruits accessible to it as a respected Catholic organization."

In recent years, Opus Dei has emerged internationally as one of the most powerful and politically committed of the Catholic lay groups. Detractors have likened the organization to a "saintly Mafia," for its members control a large number of banks and financial institutions, including Rumasa, the largest conglomerate in Spain's private sector. In the latter stages of the Franco regime, ten out of 19 cabinet officers belonged to or were closely allied with Opus Dei. Despite the active political role the order plays wherever it exists, Father Malcolm Kennedy, an American spokesperson for Opus Dei, insists it is "inconceivable...that Opus Dei leaders in any country would try to influence political decisions."

The tentacles of "Octopus Dei," as it is sometimes called, stretch all the way to the U.S., where David Kennedy, former chairman of Continental Illinois Bank and treasury secretary under Richard Nixon, is said to be a "conspicuous friend" of the conservative religious order, despite the fact that he is a Mormon. Continental Illinois owns shares of an Opus Dei bank in Barcelona.

Opus Dei also controls a wide range of media assets (600 newspapers, 52 radio and TV stations, 12 film companies and 38 news agencies) and sponsors educational and social programs in various countries. These efforts have been endorsed by members of the American section of the SMOM such as William Simon (Citicorp) and Francis X. Stankard (Chase Manhattan Bank), who have spoken at Opus Dei seminars and other functions of the group.

"One of the problems that Opus Dei runs into," says Sargent Shriver, a cooperating (not full-time) member of the order and a former Democratic candidate for vice president, "is that a lot of Catholics join the organization, and they're doing this, that and the other thing, and Opus Dei becomes tainted because of them."

This is particularly true in Latin America. In Chile, for example, Opus Dei elicited support from Chilean bishops for the overthrow of President Salvador Allende and worked closely with CIA-funded organizations such as the Fatherland and Liberty goon squads, which subsequently merged with DINA, the dreaded Chilean secret police. In 1971, the CIA began financing the Chilean Institute for General Studies (IGS), which has been described as an Opus Dei think tank. [...]
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