Architects of Deception Part XI
The Expansion of Freemasonry
In 1829 there were 3315 masonic lodges in the world. In 1986 there were 6 155 000 freemasons in 32 370 lodges. According to official sources in 1998 there were 8660 lodges with 358 214 freemasons in England, and in Scotland 1175 lodges. In total there are roughly 600 000 freemasons in Great Britain. In France there are 120 000 freemasons in 700 lodges (Ghislaine Ottenheimer, Renaud Lecadre, "Les Freres Invisible", Paris, 2001, p. 21). In Switzerland there are 3450 masons in 52 lodges, in Holland 162 lodges with 6673 freemasons. Spain has only 2000 freemasons in 96 lodges thanks to Franco and the Catholic Church. Finland has 5500 freemasons. In the year 2001 there were seven million freemasons worldwide (Ghislaine Ottenheimer, Renaud Lecadre, "Les Freres Invisible", Paris, 2001, p. 117).
On 8 March 1775, the first masonic lodge for women opened in Paris. Therefore March 8 was later celebrated as International Women's Day. The initiative was taken by the freemason Clara Zetkin. The international feminism is another part of the masonic destructive ideology.
In 1931, there were under the wings of the Grand Lodge 24 lodges in Yugoslavia. The freemason Josip Broz Tito did not ban freemasonry in communist Yugoslavia, as the freemason Castro also failed to do in Cuba.
During the 1980s, the Serbian freemasons began to be very active again and in June 1990 a new Serbian Grand Lodge was established in Belgrade with support from Vereinigte Grosslogen von Deutschland (The United Grand Lodge of Germany). It became known as 'Yugoslavia' and its purpose is to fight the evil of nationalism.
In the United States there were officially 4.5 million freemasons in 16 000 lodges in the 1960s. Today there are only 2.5 million remaining. According to the defector 32-degree freemason Bill Schnoebelen, it becomes increasingly harder to recruit new members, since aversion towards freemasonry is growing. There are also lodges for children and a possible nursery for future freemasons would be the Boy Scout movement.
Of the 41 presidents of the United States 14 were freemasons, or roughly 30 per cent. In 1929, the year of the stock market crash, about 67 per cent of all members of Congress belonged to the freemasonry (Paul. A. Fisher, "Behind the Lodge Door", Rockford, Illinois, 1994, p. 246).
In Canada there were 641 lodges with 71 799 freemasons in 1998. In Turkey they had 140 lodges with 10 540 freemasons. Brazil had 1745 lodges with 97 754 members. India had 306 lodges with 14 755 members.
Vientiane in Laos had until 1967 a Scottish lodge, but it is no longer active.
In Macao, the Grand Orient of Lusitania was founded in 1911, while the first smaller lodges started as early as 1872.
In the Philippines, the Americans founded the first lodge in 1917, and in 1998 there were 160 lodges with 14 000 members.
In South Korea there were several grand lodges. The first lodge, called Han Yang, was founded in Seoul on 5 November 1908. One grand lodge is called Harry Truman No. 1727. In Taiwan there are only 10 lodges with 754 members active. In Japan only 18 lodges with 3743 freemasons have managed to establish themselves (1980). The first English-speaking lodge opened in 1865, the first Japanese- speaking one not until 1954. In 1867, the Yokohama Masonic Hall was constructed. During the Second World War freemasons were arrested as traitors in Japan (Jasper Ridley, "The Freemasons", London, 2000, p. 239).
In Thailand the lodge St. John No. 1702 was founded as early as 1911. The second Scottish lodge established in Pattaya not until 1993 under the name Lodge Pattaya West Winds No. 1803. The following year a French lodge was founded in Chiangmai and in 1995 an Irish lodge was established in Bangkok, called Morakot Lodge No. 945.
In French Indo-China (present-day Vietnam) there was a very lively masonic activity. The current communist regime has officially banned freemasonry, but as is usual in the communist countries the lodges carry on unofficially.
In Jordan only a few lodges are active. In Palestine an Israeli grand lodge was founded in 1933, prior to the proclamation of the State of Israel. In 1988 there were 60 masonic lodges with 3000 members ("List of Masonic Lodges", 1989, pp. 254-255).
Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered on 4 November 1995, was masonic grand master in Israel. By 1998, there were 78 lodges in that small nation.
All African political leaders are freemasons connected to the Grand Orient of France (Ghislaine Ottenheimer, Renaud Lecadre, "Les Freres Invisible", Paris, 2001).
The Grande Oriente do Brazil was founded in Rio de Janeiro on 17 June 1822 and is today a powerful order in Latin America.
In Estonia there were 250 freemasons in 2003. The first lodge, called Isis, was founded as early as on 12 October 1773. According to the well-known Estonian freemason Gunnar Aarma, the Estonian President Konstantin Pats and commander-in-chief Johann Laidoner in the 1930s belonged to Swedish lodges ("Kuldne kroon Eesti lipul" / "The Golden Crown on the Estonian Flag", Tallinn, 1992, p. 35). After the fall of the Soviet power, the lodge Fooniks (Phoenix) was founded in Tallinn on 12 June 1993. At present there are six lodges, three in Tallinn, and one each in Tartu, Parnu, and Haapsalu. In addition a grand lodge was founded in Estonia in May 1999.
Toomas Hendrik lives is a member of the Trilateral Commission, which is run by the Illuminati, since that is a masonic organ (Vladimir Krasny, "The Children of the Devil", Moscow, 1999, p. 266).
The first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Estonia was Arno Koorna in 1999, having become a freemason in Finland on 1 December 1991). On 19 September 1950, he had been named secretary of the Communist Party at the University of Tartu. Documentary evidence shows his career as a persecutor of nationalists and "the enemies of the people". He has never recanted. The Minister of Finance during the 1990s Siim Kallas was suspected of major embezzlement but was allowed to continue as though nothing had happened and was acquitted of all wrongdoing. During his tenure as head of the Bank of Estonia, he made sure that the famous masonic symbol of the all-seeing eye was put on the 50 crown banknotes. The freemasons are very keen on putting their magic symbols everywhere. In his propaganda pamphlet, Grand Master Koorna stresses the fact that the freemasons are law-abiding and loyal citizens. He maintains that freemasonry lacks an international centre, which is not true. Koorna is trying to trivialize the well-documented crimes of the freemasonry by claiming that there have only been occasional "digressions" from the true freemasonry. In an interview for the daily Aripaev (Business Day) on 13 December 1999 he asserts: "We are good men, who wish to be even better."
P2 - the Most Infamous Masonic Sect
The most infamous masonic lodge in Europe is called P2, which has been interpreted as Propaganda 2, but should rather be read Palladism 2 (Albert Pike was the founder of this very secret Palladian freemasonry), whose centres were in Charleston, Rome, and Berlin.
P2 officially was established in 1966 by Giordano Gamberini, grand master of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia, with a membership of 18 000. In actual fact a Palladian masonic Council in Rome formed by Giuseppe Mazzini and Albert Pike, was developed into a secret Masonic lodge in 1877 called Propaganda Massonica. This was introduced for those freemasons that visited the capital from other parts of Italy, and the king himself was a member. Later its 23 councils became centres for terrorism.
Together with the Illuminati, the Grand Orient of France played a leading role in the Jacobine takeover in France in 1789, the event known as the "Great" French Revolution. The Grand Orient was under the total control of the Illuminati, according to several historians, among those Nesta Webster.
After the Second World War, when freemasonry again was legal in Italy, the Italian freemasonry was reorganized by the Americans. The CIA emissary Gilliotti personally began cleansing the Grande Oriente d'ltalia of less important members. Gianni Rossi and Francesco Lombrassa stated in their book "In the Name of the 'Lodge'" ("In nome della 'loggia': Le prove di come la massoneria segreta la tentato di impadronarsi dello stato italiano. Iretroscena della P2"), published in 1981 that "the Americans, especially those representing the Mafia and the CIA within the freemasonry, held... the future of the Grande Oriente in their hands".
In 1965, P2 had only 14 members. It had become a lodge of the elite. The members were known as piduesti (P2s). When Gamberini during the years 1966-67 re-organized the lodge by order of the grand master of the Grand Lodge, Lino Salvini, he picked Licio Gelli as grand master in 1967. The small businessman Gelli, who came from Arezzo in Tuscany, had been initiated into the Grande Oriente and P2 in Rome in 1965 after a long sojourn abroad. He was also a member of the Order of Malta.
Gelli had fought on the Franco side in the Spanish Civil War and avidly supported Mussolini. During the Second World War he tortured and murdered communist partisans and reported them. At the same time he belonged to the underground communist party. After the war Gelli and the Catholic priest Krujoslav Dragonovic organized a 'rat line' for Nazis wishing to flee to South America. Gelli's fee was 40 per cent of their money (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 172).
In 1954, Gelli himself had to flee to Argentina, where he became the protege of President Juan Peron. He had acquired dual citizenship. Gelli was also close to Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza.
Under Gelli P2 grew quickly. He used ruthless blackmail to recruit new members to his lodge (Stephen Knight, "The Brotherhood", London, 1994, p. 271). All members should be loyal to Gelli and not to the Italian state. P2 members were to obey for fear of horrible punishment. He blackmailed his "brothers"; compromising documents were found in his villa in Tuscany. Membership fees were sky-high. The P2 headquarters were located at Hotel Excelsior in Rome. In actual fact P2 was run by the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.
In 1973, the Swiss journalist Mattieu Paol began investigating the role of Alpina in forming the EC (European Community). The principal propagandist was President de Gaulle, who belonged to this lodge. Paol's book "Les Dessous" ("The Undercurrents") caused a feeling of insecurity in Europe. This had to be eliminated. The Israeli intelligence kidnapped him, accused him of espionage and executed him without trial. Mossad had in fact become the terror organization of the Rothschilds.
Through a powerful member of P2, the banker Michele Sindona, Gelli became connected to the Cosa Nostra in the 1970s. P2 soon had close ties to the Mafia and was above all involved in narcotics trafficking.
Dr Agostino Cordova, the public prosecutor for the Calabrian town of Palmi and one of the foremost experts on the Mafia, in 1993 was able to link Gelli to the Calabrian masonic lodge Roccella Ionica, which was involved in criminal activities, as well as to the local Mafia, 'Ndrangheta, whose chief business was to cheat the EU Commission of its agriculture benefits. At least ten per cent of the EU budget is lost due to fraud and corruption. Cordova concluded that P2 Grand Master Gelli, known as II Venerabile (the Venerable) was indeed involved in the fraud and massive arms and drugs conspiracy.
All P2 members were involved in economic crimes. The government was cheated of 2 billion dollars per year in unpaid taxes. Using false documents crude oil was sold instead of petroleum, since diesel oil was heavier taxed. There were also fraudulent stock transactions and illegal currency exports. In April 1997, an international accounting firm claimed that organized fraud were swindling European Union citizens and companies of more than 50 billion dollars yearly. The firm investigated the fraud for the EU Commission. In Italy alone 200 000 people make a living out of fraud.
When prosecutor Cordova in February 1993 exposed Gelli's criminal ties with the Calabrian lodge at Roccella Ionica, in defrauding the Commission, the socialist Minister of Justice, Claudio Martelli, blocked Cordova's nomination as chief prosecutor of the Italian Anti- Mafia Commission and as public prosecutor of Naples, where the local Mafia is called the Camorra (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus", London, 1995, p. 19).
Soon anticorruption Judge Cordova revealed that Martelli had completely stopped his investigations into masonic and Mafia infiltration of the power centre of the European Union {ibid, p. 256). Cordova pointed out that one member of the Parliamentary Anti- Mafia Commission was a P2 freemason. Martelli resigned his office and the Socialist Party. Briefly he went to London to take a course in economics.
P2 was during the 1970s under great influence of the Grande Oriente, but Gelli wanted it to be more independent.
P2 was responsible for the bombing attack at the Bank of Commerce at Piazza Fontana in Milan on 12 December 1969, when 16 people died. They also arranged another bomb explosion in a tunnel against the train Italicus between Rome and Monaco, the night of 4 August 1974, as part of a planned coup d'etat, which failed. Twelve people died and 105 were injured.
In December 1974, Lino Salvini, grand master of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia, suggested that P2 be closed. He wanted publicly to repudiate the lodge. In March 1975, Gelli formed the new P2 and again became grand master. The list of the members was officially no longer secret to the Grande Oriente. Spartaco Mennini, grand secretary of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia, only knew a third of the members, however. The rest of the list Gelli kept to himself as well as the Pentagon, who also had a complete list of members of P2 (Philip Willan, "Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy", London, 1991, p. 69).
In July 1976, P2 was suspected of killing Judge Vittorio Occorsio, who was investigating P2 connections to other criminal organizations among masonic lodges.
When the freemason Francesco Siniscalchi in 1976 informed the chief prosecutor of Rome that Gelli was involved in criminal activity, it was ignored. The bubble burst anyway, however.
Pope John Paul I was a serious threat to freemasonry. He was going to stop the illegal money transactions by the freemasons from the Vatican to various banks all over the world, and the corruption within papacy. In the Vatican there were 100 freemasons at the time. Some time between the 28 and 29 September 1978 the pope died. The cause of death was listed as unknown. He had been in office only 33 days. David Yallop proves in his book "In God's Name" (London, 1985) that P2 and Gelli had arranged the murder of the pope and behind P2 was the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.
In 1979, Licio Gelli was chosen as chairman of the international organization of masonic lodges, Association Maconnique Internationale (Vladimir Krasny, "The Children of the Devil", Moscow, 1999, p. 272).
In 1980, Gelli was interviewed in the press, where he stressed that freemasonry in Italy to him was like a great puppet theatre. He admitted that he always wanted to be the one pulling the strings. That was a terrible breach against the official policy of the freemasonry.
The Italian freemasons were upset. The masonic tribunal convened early in 1981 and Gelli was banned from freemasonry, and P2 was closed. All actions from Gelli would henceforth be considered illegal. The Grande Oriente gave clearance to the police to scrutinize the affairs of Gelli and P2. Before that he was left in peace under the wings of the Grand Lodge.
Italian freemasonry was going to send a clear signal by punishing Gelli on 18 March, the day the last grand master of the Knights Templar was burned at the stake. On 18 March 1981 the police searched Gelli's villa Vanda in Arezzo, and found many compromising documents. In Gelli's safe a list of 962 P2 members was found. Among these were 19 high judges, four ministers (among them the Minister for Industry Antonio Bisaglia), three assistant ministers, various industrial leaders, diplomats, 195 high-ranking military officers (30 generals, among them Giulio Grassini, and eight admirals), chiefs of police, bankers, journalists and TV stars, editors (including Franco LiBella, editor of Corriere della Sera), 58 university professors, heads of various political parties (except for the communists) and directors of three intelligence services. Among Bettino Craxi's socialists 35 were members of P2. At first only these 962 names were disclosed.
The police also found 150 gold bars with a total weight of 165 kilos, in the house in Arezzo. The value of the gold was about 2 million dollars. It was found in the huge flowerpots that stood on the terrace in front of the house, which had been searched 34 times before but nothing of value had been found.
On 5 May 1981, the police searched the headquarters of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia at 8 via di Pancrazio in Rome, where the P2 membership register and correspondence were seized.
Then it turned out that the real number of freemasons in P2 was as many as 2600, 422 of which were employed in the civil service, though their actual positions remained unknown. It was revealed that P2 had close connections to Banca Nazionale di Livomo. Among the lodge members was also Silvio Berlusconi, who was considered to be the Italian media king. In the beginning he denied being a member of P2, but the records show that he became a member on 26 January 1978. His membership number was 1816, issued under the code E.19.78. He was recommended as a member by the socialist leader Bettino Craxi, who was returned to power on 4 August 1983. Craxi's socialist Minister of Finance, Pietro Longo, was also a member of P2 (No. 2223).
On 11 May 1994, Silvio Berlusconi became Italian prime minister, despite a career of scandals and fraud. He acquired his villa in Ancona through the attorney Cesare Previti (later gratified as minister of defence), who administered the estate for an under-age girl whose parents had died in a tragedy. Berlusconi lived there for ten years without even paying the low fee agreed upon or the property tax (Giovanni Ruggeri, "Berlusconi gli affari del Presidente" / "The Business of Chairman Berlusconi", Rome, 1995). Berlusconi was returned as prime minister in May 2001.
In June 2002, Berlusconi had three outspoken newscasters fired. Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro, and Daniele Luttazzi were some of the most popular journalists at Italian National TV (RAI). They had exposed some of his criminal activities. As a typical freemason, Berlusconi denied all involvement in this new scandal.
Now let us return to Gelli. The French intelligence service, which is controlled by the Grand Orient of France, prevented Italian security police from arresting Gelli in March 1982, so that he could escape to Switzerland (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 444). He was arrested in his absence, charged with political, military and industrial espionage. He was considered a threat to the national security. Interpol managed, however, to seize him in Geneva on 13 September 1982, when he tried to withdraw 120 million dollars from a secret bank account using a false passport. The account had been frozen at the request of the Italian Government. He was taken into custody in one of Switzerland's maximum security prisons. Champ Dollon outside of Geneva.
On 10 August 1983, Gelli escaped. It was officially claimed that Gelli had paid 12 000 Swiss francs to a prison guard, Umberto Gerdana. According to Admiral Emilio Massera (P2), Gelli had five false passports at his disposal. He first fled to Argentina and later to Uruguay, a country the Italian freemasonry maintains especially good connections with, but returned to Switzerland in 1987. He was extradited to Italy in 1988 and was released on probation after a month in custody.
On 8 May 1981, an investigation was opened and on 21 May 1981 the government made public the P2 membership list. There were members of the cabinet (Minister of Justice Adolfo Sarti, Giulio Andreotti, prime minister 1972-73 and 1976-1979), and 43 members of parliament among others. Andreotti again became prime minister in 1989 as though nothing had happened. He was also a member of the Prieure de Sion (Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, "The Messianic Legacy". London, 1986. p. 426).
The Italian government under Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani fell, however, on 25 May 1981. The scandal almost led to the dissolution of NATO.
On 9 June 1981, there was a new search at the headquarters of Grande Oriente in Rome. Lists of all Italian freemason were seized and the archives were sealed.
Not until 15 July 1981, could Giovanni Spadolini form a new government that took power on 28 July.
P2 was declared illegal and was "dissolved" by an act of parliament on 21 January 1982. In the extensive file about the still active organization, P2 is described as "an invisible power structure connected to economic crime, political and military circles and the intelligence service, formed so as to be a state within the state".
The CIA made sure that P2 started to function again. Armando Corono, who was Spadolini's closest associate, on 27 March 1982, became the new grand master, while in Gelli's absence. The masonic elite was in great need of such subversive lodges.
On 2 July 1990, the former CIA and Mossad agent Richard Brenneke was interviewed by Italian TV. He told the following: "I have known P2 since 1969 and I had deals with P2 in Europe since that time and I had contact with it also recently, till the beginning of the 1980s. The US government sent money to P2. In some periods the sum was about 1 -10 million a month...
The CIA money for P2 had several aims. One of them was terrorism. Another aim was to get P2's help to smuggle dope into the United States from other countries. We used them to create situations favourable to the explosion of terrorism in Italy and in other European countries at the beginning of the 1970s...
P2 since the beginning of the 1970s was used for the dope traffic, for destabilization in a covert way. It was done secretly to keep people from knowing about the involvement of the US government. In many cases it was done directly through the offices of the CIA in Rome and in some other cases through CIA centres in other countries...
P2 collaborated with agencies of the American government in sending weapons to Iran after the meeting of 1980.
I know that Bush was in Paris in the same day for meetings dealing with the freedom of the hostages and the payment of a ransom for their freedom. Gelli took part in these meetings... My accusations are very serious and I would not do it without evidence."
Richard Brenneke claimed a close co-operation with P2 for over 20 years. The real control of P2 was in Switzerland and the United States. The journalist Mino Pecorelli, member of P2, also revealed that the lodge was controlled by the CIA. Brenneke confirmed that the lodge continues as P7 in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.
A further 128 freemasons were involved with Gelli in a massive arms and drugs conspiracy (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus: Europe in the Grip of Organised Crime", London, 1995, p. 19).
In July 1990, the Italian President Francesco Cossiga demanded an investigation of the claims by Brenneke that the CIA had paid Licio Gelli to encourage terrorist activities in Italy at the end of 1960s and 1970s.
Gelli was also one of the main architects behind the communist terror group the Red Brigade's (Brigate Rosse) many operations. Gelli and P2 get them started in 1969. La Repubblica was upset that among the P2 members was also the Judge Guido Barbara, who was to prosecute the Red Brigades (Juan Maler, "Das Jiingste Gericht" / "The Doomsday", Buenos Aires, 1982, p. 25).
P2 together with the Red Brigades organized the kidnapping and murder of the Christian democrat leader Aldo Moro (prime minister 1963-1968 and 1974-1976, and later chairman of the National Council). According to the P2 secret list, he was also a member of the lodge. During the kidnapping on 16 March 1978, Moro's five body-guards were also killed. The authorities refused to negotiate with the terrorists. The Christian democrat's political secretary Flaminio Piccoli stated that Moro was killed on 9 May 1978, because he did not want Italy to be transformed into a masonic arena for various illegal activities.
Half an hour before the assault took place (at 8:30 a.m.), a radio station already broadcast the story that Aldo Moro had been kidnapped. The Red Brigades had their accomplices. An intelligence officer was present as can be seen from press photographs. He explained that he was to have lunch with a friend but a 9 in the morning?
All members of the crisis group that was supposed to find Moro belonged to P2, namely the director of the secret police General Bassini, the chief of intelligence General Santo Vito, General Walter Perusi, General Raffaele Giudice, director of the Finance Police. Anti- terrorist experts resigned in protest against the incompetence and sloppiness. They claimed it was all a play to the gallery.
Corrado Guerzoni, who was a close associate of Moro, testified in Rome on 10 November 1982 at the trial of the alleged killer that Moro was under great threat. During an official visit to the United States, Henry Kissinger showed up at Moro's hotel room and threatened him: "Either you change your policies or you will pay for your opposition with your life."
Aldo Moro was upset and immediately went home to Italy. His wife Eleonora confirmed this in her testimony. Moro stuck to his policy. The American press did not report this, but in Italy it was widely published.
The plan to kill Moro was co-ordinated at the highest level. This is shown by the fact that his police protection was withdrawn, although it was known that many infamous red terrorists were gathered in Rome at the time. The abduction and murder was a co-operation between the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia, the Red Brigades and the freemasons. At the interrogation many Red Brigades members admitted that they knew the CIA was involved.
The Italian writer Lionardo Sciascia and the film director Giuseppe Ferrara were convinced that the police knew exactly where Moro was hidden, but that they had orders not to find him (Bjorn Kumm, "Terrorismens historia" / "The History of Terrorism", Lund, 1998, pp. 172- 173).
The journalist and P2 member Mino Pecorelli was the owner of the weekly L'Osservatore Politico, and had many contacts within the Italian intelligence service. He told his lodge brother Giulio Andreotti of his intention to publish an article about the role of Andreotti in the abduction and murder of Aldo Moro. Soon thereafter Pecorelli was murdered by order of Andreotti. The defected mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta revealed this 15 years later. Not until 17 November 2002 was 83-year old Andreotti sentenced to 24 years in prison for commissioning the murder of Mino Pecorelli in 1979. The Supreme Court acquitted him, however, on 30 October 2003.
Gelli took the opportunity to get rid of other objectionable P2 members: Giorgio Ambrosoli, Antonio Varisco, and Boris Giuliano. They knew far too much and could threaten Gelli's safety and position (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 440).
One of the prosecutors against P2 declared later: "The P2 Lodge was a covert sect, which connected businessmen with politics in order to destroy the constitutional order of Italy."
In early July 1981, Licio Gelli's daughter Maria flew to Italy. At Rome's airport Fiumicino she was arrested and her bag was searched. In a hidden compartment was found secret P2 documents from the State Department in Washington, D.C., among these "The Plan for the Democratic Renaissance".
The authorities disclosed that Gelli also was a KGB agent, who had secret affairs and hidden connections to communist countries, among them Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who according to Pier Carpi (?The Gelli Case?, Bologna, 1982) was a freemason.
It was evident that P2 was indirectly linked to the assault on Pope John Paul II and that the lodge organized the explosion at the railway station in Bologna, the foremost communist central in Italy, on 2 august 1980, where 85 people died and 200 were wounded. Gelli himself financed this bombing.
The Italian weekly Panorama disclosed in September 1984 that Stefano delle Chiaie, the Italian freemason and terrorist leader who in 1982 had been named by the ex-freemason Ciolini as the brain behind the Bologna bombing, later became a consultant to the communist terror group Sendero Luminoso in Peru. At the end of the 1 960s he was the leader of the neo-nazi group Avanguardia Nazionale in Rome. In the mid-1980s he worked with Alianza Argentina Anti- comunista, an organization of 2000 men, financed with drug profits. Later he led a South American private army (an assassination group).
Panorama stated that the decision to place the bomb in Bologna actually was made by the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina together with lodges in Lausanne and Monte Carlo. P2 only served as a middleman in organising the bombing.
In October 1984, General Pietro Musumeci, head of the domestic department within the Italian military intelligence (SISMI), was charged with covering up the Bologna incident. The General was also a member of P2 (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 465).
P2 was from the beginning financed by the KGB as well, which had recruited Gelli early on. The aim of the KGB was to destabilise Italy and to weaken NATO's southern flank. At the same time P2 was, of course, also financed by the CIA.
The British writer Stephen Knight published a secret document, dated 4 June 1981, which he had received from the intelligence service MI6. In the document it shows that KGB was behind P2 and that they used masonic lodges to infiltrate Western nations with their agents. Communist agents that were freemasons in the West received substantial aid in their careers from their lodge brothers. One could mention, Georges Ebon, who was arrested in France in the 1950s (Terry Walton, "KGB in France", Moscow, 1993, pp. 67-68).
This document stressed the fact that within the intelligence services freemasons more easily reach top positions. KGB's greatest success was when their agent Sir Roger Hollis was named director of MI5, where he served from 1955 to 1965. The official investigation did not reach this conclusion, however. Hollis was a freemason, and according to the above-mentioned document, high officials that also were freemasons usually were never exposed when suspected of wrong-doing. Either the case was closed or it was dropped for lack of evidence. Therefore the author of the document demanded that the heads of intelligence services should not belong to a masonic order.
Stephen Knight pointed out that the freemasons in Great Britain have a very great influence. Prince Charles is the first in modern times to break the tradition that male pretenders to the throne be freemasons.
In 1980, the chekist Ilya Dzhirkvelov who was stationed in Italy defected to the West and disclosed that the KGB was using the masonic lodges for their own purposes. Especially successful were the Soviet agents in Great Britain (as well as in Italy), since they managed to infiltrate the most powerful lodges. Dzhirkvelov explained how the KGB gave instructions to its British agents to become freemasons, since society was ruled from these lodges.
Licio Gelli plundered Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, of a billion dollars in 1982. He used 200 million dollars to buy arms for Argentina to use in the coming war for the Falklands. The Argentine General Carlos Suirez and Admiral Emilio Massara, who participated in planning the invasion, were also P2 members. The swindle put the bank in liquidation soon thereafter. The Vatican-owned Banco Ambrosiano left a deficit of nearly a billion dollars. It was the greatest banking scandal in Italy in modern times.
The manager and chief owner of Banco Ambrosiano Roberto Calvi, his masonic bodyguards Florio Carboni and Sylvano Vittot, went from his home in Rome first to Switzerland on 10 June and arrived in London on 15 June 1982. He told the press: "Sono massone, ma della loggia di Londra." ("I am a freemason, but belong to the lodge in London.", La Nazione, Rome, 11 December 1981) He was, however, also a member of P2. On 18 June, he was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge on the Thames in London, four miles from Chelsea Cloister, where he was staying not far from London Freemasons' Hall. The official verdict, published by Scotland Yard, was suicide. He suffered badly from vertigo, however, and would never have arranged to climb down under the bridge to hang himself. In addition, it was concluded that he had first been strangled.
The freemason Calvi, called God's banker, had just prior threatened to expose the P2 role in the bank crash. He was accused of 65 different crimes, including money laundering, fraud, falsifying of documents, and perjury. It is interesting to note that P2 members used to dress up as blackfriar monks (Dominicans) for their magic rites. Later on the ordinary police took over the investigation and concluded that it was murder.
The day before Calvi's "suicide", his secretary Graziella Corrocher threw herself out the window on the fourth floor of the bank's main office in Milan. She had also kept the books for P2. And on 2 October 1982, another bank employee, Giuseppe Dellacha, jumped out the window of the bank and committed "suicide" (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 436).
Supposedly Mafia black money (from robberies and kidnappings) were laundered at a financial centre in London with the aid of Calvi. This financial centre was also in close connection with the Grand Lodge in London, which was led by the Duke of Kent. In 1981, Calvi confessed before Judge Guido Viola in Milan: "I became a member of the Grand Lodge in London because Gelli and Umberto Ortolani talked me into it. If I had not done so, it would have been impossible for me to do business in London."
The banker, mafioso and freemason (P2) Michele Sindona, who was a financial adviser to the Vatican and the Mafia, was arrested in 1980 in the United States, charged with ordering the gangster William Arico to murder the accountant Giorgio Ambrosoli in Italy.
Sindona was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the United States. He was originally from Sicily. In 1986, he was extradited to Italy, to stand trial for commissioning murder, and sentenced to life in prison. In September 1986, he agreed to talk to investigators of the role of others in the Banco Ambrosiano case. Before he could do that, cyanide was slipped into his coffee in his TV-monitored cell in the Voghera prison. His killer was never found (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus: Europe in the Grip of Organized Crime", London, 1995, p. 18). Sindona's last words were: "They have poisoned me."
When Stephen Knight's book "The Brotherhood" was published in London in 1985, the British Parliament demanded an investigation of P2 connections to the British freemasonry.
Gelli returned to Italy in early 1988, but he preferred to still live in Switzerland and France. Eventually he was rearrested in Switzerland and extradited to Italy. He was sentenced to 12 years for fraud, but was soon released on probation. His fourteen masonic "brothers" were sentenced to long prison terms for complicity in the terror attack at Bologna, but were released in summer of 1990 for "lack of evidence".
In May 1998, Gelli escape to the French Riviera, even though he was not allowed to leave Italy, but in September 1998 he was arrested in France. At a new trial Gelli's criminal role within P2 was also investigated. P2 continued undauntedly to conspire against the Republic of Italy.
In addition P2 was suspected of having taken part in the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Licio Gelli sent a telegram on 25 February 1986 - three days before the murder - to one of George Bush's associates called Philip Guarino: "Tell our friend Bush that the Swedish palm will be felled!" Guarino admitted that he knew Gelli but could not remember such a telegram. This information was leaked from the CIA to President Ronald Reagan's associate Barbara Honegger, who used it in her book "October Surprise". It was confirmed by the CIA agent Ibrahim Razin in an interview for Italian TV in May 1990.
Razin said: "During the summer of 1986 I interrogated a very important leader of the American Mafia, whose name I cannot mention, who told me that such a telegram was sent from Gelli to Philip Guarino, at that time one of the most outstanding members of the Republican circle around Bush."
RAI journalist Ennio Remondino: "Do you have any precise indication about the existence of the telegram?"
Razin: "At present the FBI has opened an inquiry on this story. The existence of the telegram is also indicated by the archives of the National Security Agency."
Remondino: "From where was this telegram sent precisely and who got it?"
Razin: "It was received with the signature of Licio Gelli and was addressed to Philip Guarino. It was sent from South America, from one of the southernmost regions of Brazil. According to the most reliable information, it was sent by a man called Ortolani on behalf of Licio Gelli or in any case on Gelli's instructions."
This mafia boss had close contact with Licio Gelli.
The most bewildering thing was that a Soviet diplomat and KGB agent knew of this plan a few days in advance, when he mentioned it to his wife in their bedroom.. His home was bugged by the Swedish secret police (SAPO).
How could a Soviet diplomat know in advance that Olof Palme was to be murdered? The translator, who translated the tapes, realized that Moscow had initiated the murder (Expressen, 24 August 1989). The chief prosecutor Anders Helin of the case on the other hand thought: "It meant nothing." The information was considered nonsense. The chief prosecutor Jan Danielsson discovered the bugging tapes, but the Swedish government did not let him use them because of the sensitive relations to the Soviet Union (Svenska Dagbladet, 17 September 1990).
In 1987, not far from the site of the murder a total of five obelisks were erected to "ornament" the area. One obelisk is just a few metres from where Palme was shot.
In 1994, P2 was again declared illegal. It had thoroughly infiltrated the Grand Lodge and the Grande Oriente d'ltalia. Giuliano di Bernardo, grand master of the Grande Oriente, failed to weed out the worst criminals. In 1993, he went through the secret documents of the lodge and left the order with the statement: "I have seen a monster." (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus", London, 1995, p. 14) The present grand master is Gustavo Raffi.
Giuliano di Bernardo moved from Rome to Milan. There he founded a new lodge independent of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia. He began cooperating with the police in the investigation of the ties between the freemasonry and mafia.
On 16 April 1994, Licio Gelli was sentenced to 17 years in prison. During the trial of P2 he was only accused of exercising undue influence, and the spreading of state secrets. Eleven of the other freemasons charged were acquitted.
Leoluca Orlando, the mayor of Palermo and member of the European Parliament, founded the Anti-Mafia Party La Rete (The Network). Orlando realized that organized crime gets its strength from its ties to freemasonry. To the writer Brian Freemantle he pointed out that "never think of Mafia without freemasonry, the two are connected". 15 armed bodyguards constantly guarded Orlando's family.
P2 has been involved in enormous financial rackets, arms trading, illegal art dealings, drug trafficking, terrorism and political assassinations. Despite all that was revealed, the lodge members still kept their key positions in Italian society.
In his memoirs, "My truth", Gelli claimed that P2 merely was "a club for friends with good intentions".
The French freemason Jean-Christophe Mitterrand (Grand Orient), son of former president Franceois Mitterrand, was involved in illegal arms trading to Angola. A French court of enquiry in January 2001 demanded that the Swiss authorities freeze his bank accounts there.
Tina Anselmi, chairman of the P2 commission, complained that: "P2 is by no means dead. It still has power. It is working in the institutions. It is moving in the society. It has money, means and instruments still at its disposal. It still has fully operative power centres in South America. It is also still able to condition, at least in part, Italian political life." (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 446)
Leoluca Orlando was of the opinion that through freemasonry the Mafia is going all over Europe. He considered that this is a serious international problem (Brian Freemantle, op. cit., p. 15).
Much less has been written about the sister lodge of P2, Iside 2 or A2, which was founded by Licio Gelli's associates. A2 became a sophisticated centre for various criminal activities. The lodge was in the early 1 980s involved in the murder of Judge Carlo Palermo, who was the first to verify the ties between the Mafia, freemasonry and the Bulgarian and Syrian spy organizations.
Several investigations by Judge Ciaccio Montaldo have carefully verified the connections the Mafia in Trapani, Sicily, had to A2. Among the members of the secret lodge A2 were also employees of the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome (Antonio Caspari, "Freemasonry, Mafia, and Communism", Stoppa Knarket, No. 4, 1988, pp. 8-9).
In June 1993, Iside 2 Grand Master Giuseppe Mandalari in a Trapani court was sentenced for founding a secret society (Claire Sterling, "Crime without Frontiers: The Worldwide Expansion of Organized Crime and the Pax Mafiosa", London, 1994, p. 230).
Freemasons all over the world are morally responsible for the crimes lodges such as the Grand Orient of France, P2, A2, P1, P3, and Albert Pike in Calabria have committed.
The Parliamentary Investigative Commission in Rome concluded that Italian freemasonry became the principal victim of Gelli's activities, not the Italian society. What was to be expected? Freemasonry in Italy is very powerful. There are more than 500 lodges.
In 1829 there were 3315 masonic lodges in the world. In 1986 there were 6 155 000 freemasons in 32 370 lodges. According to official sources in 1998 there were 8660 lodges with 358 214 freemasons in England, and in Scotland 1175 lodges. In total there are roughly 600 000 freemasons in Great Britain. In France there are 120 000 freemasons in 700 lodges (Ghislaine Ottenheimer, Renaud Lecadre, "Les Freres Invisible", Paris, 2001, p. 21). In Switzerland there are 3450 masons in 52 lodges, in Holland 162 lodges with 6673 freemasons. Spain has only 2000 freemasons in 96 lodges thanks to Franco and the Catholic Church. Finland has 5500 freemasons. In the year 2001 there were seven million freemasons worldwide (Ghislaine Ottenheimer, Renaud Lecadre, "Les Freres Invisible", Paris, 2001, p. 117).
On 8 March 1775, the first masonic lodge for women opened in Paris. Therefore March 8 was later celebrated as International Women's Day. The initiative was taken by the freemason Clara Zetkin. The international feminism is another part of the masonic destructive ideology.
In 1931, there were under the wings of the Grand Lodge 24 lodges in Yugoslavia. The freemason Josip Broz Tito did not ban freemasonry in communist Yugoslavia, as the freemason Castro also failed to do in Cuba.
During the 1980s, the Serbian freemasons began to be very active again and in June 1990 a new Serbian Grand Lodge was established in Belgrade with support from Vereinigte Grosslogen von Deutschland (The United Grand Lodge of Germany). It became known as 'Yugoslavia' and its purpose is to fight the evil of nationalism.
In the United States there were officially 4.5 million freemasons in 16 000 lodges in the 1960s. Today there are only 2.5 million remaining. According to the defector 32-degree freemason Bill Schnoebelen, it becomes increasingly harder to recruit new members, since aversion towards freemasonry is growing. There are also lodges for children and a possible nursery for future freemasons would be the Boy Scout movement.
Of the 41 presidents of the United States 14 were freemasons, or roughly 30 per cent. In 1929, the year of the stock market crash, about 67 per cent of all members of Congress belonged to the freemasonry (Paul. A. Fisher, "Behind the Lodge Door", Rockford, Illinois, 1994, p. 246).
In Canada there were 641 lodges with 71 799 freemasons in 1998. In Turkey they had 140 lodges with 10 540 freemasons. Brazil had 1745 lodges with 97 754 members. India had 306 lodges with 14 755 members.
Vientiane in Laos had until 1967 a Scottish lodge, but it is no longer active.
In Macao, the Grand Orient of Lusitania was founded in 1911, while the first smaller lodges started as early as 1872.
In the Philippines, the Americans founded the first lodge in 1917, and in 1998 there were 160 lodges with 14 000 members.
In South Korea there were several grand lodges. The first lodge, called Han Yang, was founded in Seoul on 5 November 1908. One grand lodge is called Harry Truman No. 1727. In Taiwan there are only 10 lodges with 754 members active. In Japan only 18 lodges with 3743 freemasons have managed to establish themselves (1980). The first English-speaking lodge opened in 1865, the first Japanese- speaking one not until 1954. In 1867, the Yokohama Masonic Hall was constructed. During the Second World War freemasons were arrested as traitors in Japan (Jasper Ridley, "The Freemasons", London, 2000, p. 239).
In Thailand the lodge St. John No. 1702 was founded as early as 1911. The second Scottish lodge established in Pattaya not until 1993 under the name Lodge Pattaya West Winds No. 1803. The following year a French lodge was founded in Chiangmai and in 1995 an Irish lodge was established in Bangkok, called Morakot Lodge No. 945.
In French Indo-China (present-day Vietnam) there was a very lively masonic activity. The current communist regime has officially banned freemasonry, but as is usual in the communist countries the lodges carry on unofficially.
In Jordan only a few lodges are active. In Palestine an Israeli grand lodge was founded in 1933, prior to the proclamation of the State of Israel. In 1988 there were 60 masonic lodges with 3000 members ("List of Masonic Lodges", 1989, pp. 254-255).
Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered on 4 November 1995, was masonic grand master in Israel. By 1998, there were 78 lodges in that small nation.
All African political leaders are freemasons connected to the Grand Orient of France (Ghislaine Ottenheimer, Renaud Lecadre, "Les Freres Invisible", Paris, 2001).
The Grande Oriente do Brazil was founded in Rio de Janeiro on 17 June 1822 and is today a powerful order in Latin America.
In Estonia there were 250 freemasons in 2003. The first lodge, called Isis, was founded as early as on 12 October 1773. According to the well-known Estonian freemason Gunnar Aarma, the Estonian President Konstantin Pats and commander-in-chief Johann Laidoner in the 1930s belonged to Swedish lodges ("Kuldne kroon Eesti lipul" / "The Golden Crown on the Estonian Flag", Tallinn, 1992, p. 35). After the fall of the Soviet power, the lodge Fooniks (Phoenix) was founded in Tallinn on 12 June 1993. At present there are six lodges, three in Tallinn, and one each in Tartu, Parnu, and Haapsalu. In addition a grand lodge was founded in Estonia in May 1999.
Toomas Hendrik lives is a member of the Trilateral Commission, which is run by the Illuminati, since that is a masonic organ (Vladimir Krasny, "The Children of the Devil", Moscow, 1999, p. 266).
The first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Estonia was Arno Koorna in 1999, having become a freemason in Finland on 1 December 1991). On 19 September 1950, he had been named secretary of the Communist Party at the University of Tartu. Documentary evidence shows his career as a persecutor of nationalists and "the enemies of the people". He has never recanted. The Minister of Finance during the 1990s Siim Kallas was suspected of major embezzlement but was allowed to continue as though nothing had happened and was acquitted of all wrongdoing. During his tenure as head of the Bank of Estonia, he made sure that the famous masonic symbol of the all-seeing eye was put on the 50 crown banknotes. The freemasons are very keen on putting their magic symbols everywhere. In his propaganda pamphlet, Grand Master Koorna stresses the fact that the freemasons are law-abiding and loyal citizens. He maintains that freemasonry lacks an international centre, which is not true. Koorna is trying to trivialize the well-documented crimes of the freemasonry by claiming that there have only been occasional "digressions" from the true freemasonry. In an interview for the daily Aripaev (Business Day) on 13 December 1999 he asserts: "We are good men, who wish to be even better."
P2 - the Most Infamous Masonic Sect
The most infamous masonic lodge in Europe is called P2, which has been interpreted as Propaganda 2, but should rather be read Palladism 2 (Albert Pike was the founder of this very secret Palladian freemasonry), whose centres were in Charleston, Rome, and Berlin.
P2 officially was established in 1966 by Giordano Gamberini, grand master of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia, with a membership of 18 000. In actual fact a Palladian masonic Council in Rome formed by Giuseppe Mazzini and Albert Pike, was developed into a secret Masonic lodge in 1877 called Propaganda Massonica. This was introduced for those freemasons that visited the capital from other parts of Italy, and the king himself was a member. Later its 23 councils became centres for terrorism.
Together with the Illuminati, the Grand Orient of France played a leading role in the Jacobine takeover in France in 1789, the event known as the "Great" French Revolution. The Grand Orient was under the total control of the Illuminati, according to several historians, among those Nesta Webster.
After the Second World War, when freemasonry again was legal in Italy, the Italian freemasonry was reorganized by the Americans. The CIA emissary Gilliotti personally began cleansing the Grande Oriente d'ltalia of less important members. Gianni Rossi and Francesco Lombrassa stated in their book "In the Name of the 'Lodge'" ("In nome della 'loggia': Le prove di come la massoneria segreta la tentato di impadronarsi dello stato italiano. Iretroscena della P2"), published in 1981 that "the Americans, especially those representing the Mafia and the CIA within the freemasonry, held... the future of the Grande Oriente in their hands".
In 1965, P2 had only 14 members. It had become a lodge of the elite. The members were known as piduesti (P2s). When Gamberini during the years 1966-67 re-organized the lodge by order of the grand master of the Grand Lodge, Lino Salvini, he picked Licio Gelli as grand master in 1967. The small businessman Gelli, who came from Arezzo in Tuscany, had been initiated into the Grande Oriente and P2 in Rome in 1965 after a long sojourn abroad. He was also a member of the Order of Malta.
Gelli had fought on the Franco side in the Spanish Civil War and avidly supported Mussolini. During the Second World War he tortured and murdered communist partisans and reported them. At the same time he belonged to the underground communist party. After the war Gelli and the Catholic priest Krujoslav Dragonovic organized a 'rat line' for Nazis wishing to flee to South America. Gelli's fee was 40 per cent of their money (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 172).
In 1954, Gelli himself had to flee to Argentina, where he became the protege of President Juan Peron. He had acquired dual citizenship. Gelli was also close to Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza.
Under Gelli P2 grew quickly. He used ruthless blackmail to recruit new members to his lodge (Stephen Knight, "The Brotherhood", London, 1994, p. 271). All members should be loyal to Gelli and not to the Italian state. P2 members were to obey for fear of horrible punishment. He blackmailed his "brothers"; compromising documents were found in his villa in Tuscany. Membership fees were sky-high. The P2 headquarters were located at Hotel Excelsior in Rome. In actual fact P2 was run by the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.
In 1973, the Swiss journalist Mattieu Paol began investigating the role of Alpina in forming the EC (European Community). The principal propagandist was President de Gaulle, who belonged to this lodge. Paol's book "Les Dessous" ("The Undercurrents") caused a feeling of insecurity in Europe. This had to be eliminated. The Israeli intelligence kidnapped him, accused him of espionage and executed him without trial. Mossad had in fact become the terror organization of the Rothschilds.
Through a powerful member of P2, the banker Michele Sindona, Gelli became connected to the Cosa Nostra in the 1970s. P2 soon had close ties to the Mafia and was above all involved in narcotics trafficking.
Dr Agostino Cordova, the public prosecutor for the Calabrian town of Palmi and one of the foremost experts on the Mafia, in 1993 was able to link Gelli to the Calabrian masonic lodge Roccella Ionica, which was involved in criminal activities, as well as to the local Mafia, 'Ndrangheta, whose chief business was to cheat the EU Commission of its agriculture benefits. At least ten per cent of the EU budget is lost due to fraud and corruption. Cordova concluded that P2 Grand Master Gelli, known as II Venerabile (the Venerable) was indeed involved in the fraud and massive arms and drugs conspiracy.
All P2 members were involved in economic crimes. The government was cheated of 2 billion dollars per year in unpaid taxes. Using false documents crude oil was sold instead of petroleum, since diesel oil was heavier taxed. There were also fraudulent stock transactions and illegal currency exports. In April 1997, an international accounting firm claimed that organized fraud were swindling European Union citizens and companies of more than 50 billion dollars yearly. The firm investigated the fraud for the EU Commission. In Italy alone 200 000 people make a living out of fraud.
When prosecutor Cordova in February 1993 exposed Gelli's criminal ties with the Calabrian lodge at Roccella Ionica, in defrauding the Commission, the socialist Minister of Justice, Claudio Martelli, blocked Cordova's nomination as chief prosecutor of the Italian Anti- Mafia Commission and as public prosecutor of Naples, where the local Mafia is called the Camorra (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus", London, 1995, p. 19).
Soon anticorruption Judge Cordova revealed that Martelli had completely stopped his investigations into masonic and Mafia infiltration of the power centre of the European Union {ibid, p. 256). Cordova pointed out that one member of the Parliamentary Anti- Mafia Commission was a P2 freemason. Martelli resigned his office and the Socialist Party. Briefly he went to London to take a course in economics.
P2 was during the 1970s under great influence of the Grande Oriente, but Gelli wanted it to be more independent.
P2 was responsible for the bombing attack at the Bank of Commerce at Piazza Fontana in Milan on 12 December 1969, when 16 people died. They also arranged another bomb explosion in a tunnel against the train Italicus between Rome and Monaco, the night of 4 August 1974, as part of a planned coup d'etat, which failed. Twelve people died and 105 were injured.
In December 1974, Lino Salvini, grand master of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia, suggested that P2 be closed. He wanted publicly to repudiate the lodge. In March 1975, Gelli formed the new P2 and again became grand master. The list of the members was officially no longer secret to the Grande Oriente. Spartaco Mennini, grand secretary of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia, only knew a third of the members, however. The rest of the list Gelli kept to himself as well as the Pentagon, who also had a complete list of members of P2 (Philip Willan, "Puppet Masters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy", London, 1991, p. 69).
In July 1976, P2 was suspected of killing Judge Vittorio Occorsio, who was investigating P2 connections to other criminal organizations among masonic lodges.
When the freemason Francesco Siniscalchi in 1976 informed the chief prosecutor of Rome that Gelli was involved in criminal activity, it was ignored. The bubble burst anyway, however.
Pope John Paul I was a serious threat to freemasonry. He was going to stop the illegal money transactions by the freemasons from the Vatican to various banks all over the world, and the corruption within papacy. In the Vatican there were 100 freemasons at the time. Some time between the 28 and 29 September 1978 the pope died. The cause of death was listed as unknown. He had been in office only 33 days. David Yallop proves in his book "In God's Name" (London, 1985) that P2 and Gelli had arranged the murder of the pope and behind P2 was the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.
In 1979, Licio Gelli was chosen as chairman of the international organization of masonic lodges, Association Maconnique Internationale (Vladimir Krasny, "The Children of the Devil", Moscow, 1999, p. 272).
In 1980, Gelli was interviewed in the press, where he stressed that freemasonry in Italy to him was like a great puppet theatre. He admitted that he always wanted to be the one pulling the strings. That was a terrible breach against the official policy of the freemasonry.
The Italian freemasons were upset. The masonic tribunal convened early in 1981 and Gelli was banned from freemasonry, and P2 was closed. All actions from Gelli would henceforth be considered illegal. The Grande Oriente gave clearance to the police to scrutinize the affairs of Gelli and P2. Before that he was left in peace under the wings of the Grand Lodge.
Italian freemasonry was going to send a clear signal by punishing Gelli on 18 March, the day the last grand master of the Knights Templar was burned at the stake. On 18 March 1981 the police searched Gelli's villa Vanda in Arezzo, and found many compromising documents. In Gelli's safe a list of 962 P2 members was found. Among these were 19 high judges, four ministers (among them the Minister for Industry Antonio Bisaglia), three assistant ministers, various industrial leaders, diplomats, 195 high-ranking military officers (30 generals, among them Giulio Grassini, and eight admirals), chiefs of police, bankers, journalists and TV stars, editors (including Franco LiBella, editor of Corriere della Sera), 58 university professors, heads of various political parties (except for the communists) and directors of three intelligence services. Among Bettino Craxi's socialists 35 were members of P2. At first only these 962 names were disclosed.
The police also found 150 gold bars with a total weight of 165 kilos, in the house in Arezzo. The value of the gold was about 2 million dollars. It was found in the huge flowerpots that stood on the terrace in front of the house, which had been searched 34 times before but nothing of value had been found.
On 5 May 1981, the police searched the headquarters of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia at 8 via di Pancrazio in Rome, where the P2 membership register and correspondence were seized.
Then it turned out that the real number of freemasons in P2 was as many as 2600, 422 of which were employed in the civil service, though their actual positions remained unknown. It was revealed that P2 had close connections to Banca Nazionale di Livomo. Among the lodge members was also Silvio Berlusconi, who was considered to be the Italian media king. In the beginning he denied being a member of P2, but the records show that he became a member on 26 January 1978. His membership number was 1816, issued under the code E.19.78. He was recommended as a member by the socialist leader Bettino Craxi, who was returned to power on 4 August 1983. Craxi's socialist Minister of Finance, Pietro Longo, was also a member of P2 (No. 2223).
On 11 May 1994, Silvio Berlusconi became Italian prime minister, despite a career of scandals and fraud. He acquired his villa in Ancona through the attorney Cesare Previti (later gratified as minister of defence), who administered the estate for an under-age girl whose parents had died in a tragedy. Berlusconi lived there for ten years without even paying the low fee agreed upon or the property tax (Giovanni Ruggeri, "Berlusconi gli affari del Presidente" / "The Business of Chairman Berlusconi", Rome, 1995). Berlusconi was returned as prime minister in May 2001.
In June 2002, Berlusconi had three outspoken newscasters fired. Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro, and Daniele Luttazzi were some of the most popular journalists at Italian National TV (RAI). They had exposed some of his criminal activities. As a typical freemason, Berlusconi denied all involvement in this new scandal.
Now let us return to Gelli. The French intelligence service, which is controlled by the Grand Orient of France, prevented Italian security police from arresting Gelli in March 1982, so that he could escape to Switzerland (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 444). He was arrested in his absence, charged with political, military and industrial espionage. He was considered a threat to the national security. Interpol managed, however, to seize him in Geneva on 13 September 1982, when he tried to withdraw 120 million dollars from a secret bank account using a false passport. The account had been frozen at the request of the Italian Government. He was taken into custody in one of Switzerland's maximum security prisons. Champ Dollon outside of Geneva.
On 10 August 1983, Gelli escaped. It was officially claimed that Gelli had paid 12 000 Swiss francs to a prison guard, Umberto Gerdana. According to Admiral Emilio Massera (P2), Gelli had five false passports at his disposal. He first fled to Argentina and later to Uruguay, a country the Italian freemasonry maintains especially good connections with, but returned to Switzerland in 1987. He was extradited to Italy in 1988 and was released on probation after a month in custody.
On 8 May 1981, an investigation was opened and on 21 May 1981 the government made public the P2 membership list. There were members of the cabinet (Minister of Justice Adolfo Sarti, Giulio Andreotti, prime minister 1972-73 and 1976-1979), and 43 members of parliament among others. Andreotti again became prime minister in 1989 as though nothing had happened. He was also a member of the Prieure de Sion (Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln, "The Messianic Legacy". London, 1986. p. 426).
The Italian government under Prime Minister Arnaldo Forlani fell, however, on 25 May 1981. The scandal almost led to the dissolution of NATO.
On 9 June 1981, there was a new search at the headquarters of Grande Oriente in Rome. Lists of all Italian freemason were seized and the archives were sealed.
Not until 15 July 1981, could Giovanni Spadolini form a new government that took power on 28 July.
P2 was declared illegal and was "dissolved" by an act of parliament on 21 January 1982. In the extensive file about the still active organization, P2 is described as "an invisible power structure connected to economic crime, political and military circles and the intelligence service, formed so as to be a state within the state".
The CIA made sure that P2 started to function again. Armando Corono, who was Spadolini's closest associate, on 27 March 1982, became the new grand master, while in Gelli's absence. The masonic elite was in great need of such subversive lodges.
On 2 July 1990, the former CIA and Mossad agent Richard Brenneke was interviewed by Italian TV. He told the following: "I have known P2 since 1969 and I had deals with P2 in Europe since that time and I had contact with it also recently, till the beginning of the 1980s. The US government sent money to P2. In some periods the sum was about 1 -10 million a month...
The CIA money for P2 had several aims. One of them was terrorism. Another aim was to get P2's help to smuggle dope into the United States from other countries. We used them to create situations favourable to the explosion of terrorism in Italy and in other European countries at the beginning of the 1970s...
P2 since the beginning of the 1970s was used for the dope traffic, for destabilization in a covert way. It was done secretly to keep people from knowing about the involvement of the US government. In many cases it was done directly through the offices of the CIA in Rome and in some other cases through CIA centres in other countries...
P2 collaborated with agencies of the American government in sending weapons to Iran after the meeting of 1980.
I know that Bush was in Paris in the same day for meetings dealing with the freedom of the hostages and the payment of a ransom for their freedom. Gelli took part in these meetings... My accusations are very serious and I would not do it without evidence."
Richard Brenneke claimed a close co-operation with P2 for over 20 years. The real control of P2 was in Switzerland and the United States. The journalist Mino Pecorelli, member of P2, also revealed that the lodge was controlled by the CIA. Brenneke confirmed that the lodge continues as P7 in Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany.
A further 128 freemasons were involved with Gelli in a massive arms and drugs conspiracy (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus: Europe in the Grip of Organised Crime", London, 1995, p. 19).
In July 1990, the Italian President Francesco Cossiga demanded an investigation of the claims by Brenneke that the CIA had paid Licio Gelli to encourage terrorist activities in Italy at the end of 1960s and 1970s.
Gelli was also one of the main architects behind the communist terror group the Red Brigade's (Brigate Rosse) many operations. Gelli and P2 get them started in 1969. La Repubblica was upset that among the P2 members was also the Judge Guido Barbara, who was to prosecute the Red Brigades (Juan Maler, "Das Jiingste Gericht" / "The Doomsday", Buenos Aires, 1982, p. 25).
P2 together with the Red Brigades organized the kidnapping and murder of the Christian democrat leader Aldo Moro (prime minister 1963-1968 and 1974-1976, and later chairman of the National Council). According to the P2 secret list, he was also a member of the lodge. During the kidnapping on 16 March 1978, Moro's five body-guards were also killed. The authorities refused to negotiate with the terrorists. The Christian democrat's political secretary Flaminio Piccoli stated that Moro was killed on 9 May 1978, because he did not want Italy to be transformed into a masonic arena for various illegal activities.
Half an hour before the assault took place (at 8:30 a.m.), a radio station already broadcast the story that Aldo Moro had been kidnapped. The Red Brigades had their accomplices. An intelligence officer was present as can be seen from press photographs. He explained that he was to have lunch with a friend but a 9 in the morning?
All members of the crisis group that was supposed to find Moro belonged to P2, namely the director of the secret police General Bassini, the chief of intelligence General Santo Vito, General Walter Perusi, General Raffaele Giudice, director of the Finance Police. Anti- terrorist experts resigned in protest against the incompetence and sloppiness. They claimed it was all a play to the gallery.
Corrado Guerzoni, who was a close associate of Moro, testified in Rome on 10 November 1982 at the trial of the alleged killer that Moro was under great threat. During an official visit to the United States, Henry Kissinger showed up at Moro's hotel room and threatened him: "Either you change your policies or you will pay for your opposition with your life."
Aldo Moro was upset and immediately went home to Italy. His wife Eleonora confirmed this in her testimony. Moro stuck to his policy. The American press did not report this, but in Italy it was widely published.
The plan to kill Moro was co-ordinated at the highest level. This is shown by the fact that his police protection was withdrawn, although it was known that many infamous red terrorists were gathered in Rome at the time. The abduction and murder was a co-operation between the CIA, the KGB, the Mafia, the Red Brigades and the freemasons. At the interrogation many Red Brigades members admitted that they knew the CIA was involved.
The Italian writer Lionardo Sciascia and the film director Giuseppe Ferrara were convinced that the police knew exactly where Moro was hidden, but that they had orders not to find him (Bjorn Kumm, "Terrorismens historia" / "The History of Terrorism", Lund, 1998, pp. 172- 173).
The journalist and P2 member Mino Pecorelli was the owner of the weekly L'Osservatore Politico, and had many contacts within the Italian intelligence service. He told his lodge brother Giulio Andreotti of his intention to publish an article about the role of Andreotti in the abduction and murder of Aldo Moro. Soon thereafter Pecorelli was murdered by order of Andreotti. The defected mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta revealed this 15 years later. Not until 17 November 2002 was 83-year old Andreotti sentenced to 24 years in prison for commissioning the murder of Mino Pecorelli in 1979. The Supreme Court acquitted him, however, on 30 October 2003.
Gelli took the opportunity to get rid of other objectionable P2 members: Giorgio Ambrosoli, Antonio Varisco, and Boris Giuliano. They knew far too much and could threaten Gelli's safety and position (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 440).
One of the prosecutors against P2 declared later: "The P2 Lodge was a covert sect, which connected businessmen with politics in order to destroy the constitutional order of Italy."
In early July 1981, Licio Gelli's daughter Maria flew to Italy. At Rome's airport Fiumicino she was arrested and her bag was searched. In a hidden compartment was found secret P2 documents from the State Department in Washington, D.C., among these "The Plan for the Democratic Renaissance".
The authorities disclosed that Gelli also was a KGB agent, who had secret affairs and hidden connections to communist countries, among them Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who according to Pier Carpi (?The Gelli Case?, Bologna, 1982) was a freemason.
It was evident that P2 was indirectly linked to the assault on Pope John Paul II and that the lodge organized the explosion at the railway station in Bologna, the foremost communist central in Italy, on 2 august 1980, where 85 people died and 200 were wounded. Gelli himself financed this bombing.
The Italian weekly Panorama disclosed in September 1984 that Stefano delle Chiaie, the Italian freemason and terrorist leader who in 1982 had been named by the ex-freemason Ciolini as the brain behind the Bologna bombing, later became a consultant to the communist terror group Sendero Luminoso in Peru. At the end of the 1 960s he was the leader of the neo-nazi group Avanguardia Nazionale in Rome. In the mid-1980s he worked with Alianza Argentina Anti- comunista, an organization of 2000 men, financed with drug profits. Later he led a South American private army (an assassination group).
Panorama stated that the decision to place the bomb in Bologna actually was made by the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina together with lodges in Lausanne and Monte Carlo. P2 only served as a middleman in organising the bombing.
In October 1984, General Pietro Musumeci, head of the domestic department within the Italian military intelligence (SISMI), was charged with covering up the Bologna incident. The General was also a member of P2 (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 465).
P2 was from the beginning financed by the KGB as well, which had recruited Gelli early on. The aim of the KGB was to destabilise Italy and to weaken NATO's southern flank. At the same time P2 was, of course, also financed by the CIA.
The British writer Stephen Knight published a secret document, dated 4 June 1981, which he had received from the intelligence service MI6. In the document it shows that KGB was behind P2 and that they used masonic lodges to infiltrate Western nations with their agents. Communist agents that were freemasons in the West received substantial aid in their careers from their lodge brothers. One could mention, Georges Ebon, who was arrested in France in the 1950s (Terry Walton, "KGB in France", Moscow, 1993, pp. 67-68).
This document stressed the fact that within the intelligence services freemasons more easily reach top positions. KGB's greatest success was when their agent Sir Roger Hollis was named director of MI5, where he served from 1955 to 1965. The official investigation did not reach this conclusion, however. Hollis was a freemason, and according to the above-mentioned document, high officials that also were freemasons usually were never exposed when suspected of wrong-doing. Either the case was closed or it was dropped for lack of evidence. Therefore the author of the document demanded that the heads of intelligence services should not belong to a masonic order.
Stephen Knight pointed out that the freemasons in Great Britain have a very great influence. Prince Charles is the first in modern times to break the tradition that male pretenders to the throne be freemasons.
In 1980, the chekist Ilya Dzhirkvelov who was stationed in Italy defected to the West and disclosed that the KGB was using the masonic lodges for their own purposes. Especially successful were the Soviet agents in Great Britain (as well as in Italy), since they managed to infiltrate the most powerful lodges. Dzhirkvelov explained how the KGB gave instructions to its British agents to become freemasons, since society was ruled from these lodges.
Licio Gelli plundered Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, of a billion dollars in 1982. He used 200 million dollars to buy arms for Argentina to use in the coming war for the Falklands. The Argentine General Carlos Suirez and Admiral Emilio Massara, who participated in planning the invasion, were also P2 members. The swindle put the bank in liquidation soon thereafter. The Vatican-owned Banco Ambrosiano left a deficit of nearly a billion dollars. It was the greatest banking scandal in Italy in modern times.
The manager and chief owner of Banco Ambrosiano Roberto Calvi, his masonic bodyguards Florio Carboni and Sylvano Vittot, went from his home in Rome first to Switzerland on 10 June and arrived in London on 15 June 1982. He told the press: "Sono massone, ma della loggia di Londra." ("I am a freemason, but belong to the lodge in London.", La Nazione, Rome, 11 December 1981) He was, however, also a member of P2. On 18 June, he was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge on the Thames in London, four miles from Chelsea Cloister, where he was staying not far from London Freemasons' Hall. The official verdict, published by Scotland Yard, was suicide. He suffered badly from vertigo, however, and would never have arranged to climb down under the bridge to hang himself. In addition, it was concluded that he had first been strangled.
The freemason Calvi, called God's banker, had just prior threatened to expose the P2 role in the bank crash. He was accused of 65 different crimes, including money laundering, fraud, falsifying of documents, and perjury. It is interesting to note that P2 members used to dress up as blackfriar monks (Dominicans) for their magic rites. Later on the ordinary police took over the investigation and concluded that it was murder.
The day before Calvi's "suicide", his secretary Graziella Corrocher threw herself out the window on the fourth floor of the bank's main office in Milan. She had also kept the books for P2. And on 2 October 1982, another bank employee, Giuseppe Dellacha, jumped out the window of the bank and committed "suicide" (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 436).
Supposedly Mafia black money (from robberies and kidnappings) were laundered at a financial centre in London with the aid of Calvi. This financial centre was also in close connection with the Grand Lodge in London, which was led by the Duke of Kent. In 1981, Calvi confessed before Judge Guido Viola in Milan: "I became a member of the Grand Lodge in London because Gelli and Umberto Ortolani talked me into it. If I had not done so, it would have been impossible for me to do business in London."
The banker, mafioso and freemason (P2) Michele Sindona, who was a financial adviser to the Vatican and the Mafia, was arrested in 1980 in the United States, charged with ordering the gangster William Arico to murder the accountant Giorgio Ambrosoli in Italy.
Sindona was sentenced to 25 years in prison in the United States. He was originally from Sicily. In 1986, he was extradited to Italy, to stand trial for commissioning murder, and sentenced to life in prison. In September 1986, he agreed to talk to investigators of the role of others in the Banco Ambrosiano case. Before he could do that, cyanide was slipped into his coffee in his TV-monitored cell in the Voghera prison. His killer was never found (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus: Europe in the Grip of Organized Crime", London, 1995, p. 18). Sindona's last words were: "They have poisoned me."
When Stephen Knight's book "The Brotherhood" was published in London in 1985, the British Parliament demanded an investigation of P2 connections to the British freemasonry.
Gelli returned to Italy in early 1988, but he preferred to still live in Switzerland and France. Eventually he was rearrested in Switzerland and extradited to Italy. He was sentenced to 12 years for fraud, but was soon released on probation. His fourteen masonic "brothers" were sentenced to long prison terms for complicity in the terror attack at Bologna, but were released in summer of 1990 for "lack of evidence".
In May 1998, Gelli escape to the French Riviera, even though he was not allowed to leave Italy, but in September 1998 he was arrested in France. At a new trial Gelli's criminal role within P2 was also investigated. P2 continued undauntedly to conspire against the Republic of Italy.
In addition P2 was suspected of having taken part in the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme. Licio Gelli sent a telegram on 25 February 1986 - three days before the murder - to one of George Bush's associates called Philip Guarino: "Tell our friend Bush that the Swedish palm will be felled!" Guarino admitted that he knew Gelli but could not remember such a telegram. This information was leaked from the CIA to President Ronald Reagan's associate Barbara Honegger, who used it in her book "October Surprise". It was confirmed by the CIA agent Ibrahim Razin in an interview for Italian TV in May 1990.
Razin said: "During the summer of 1986 I interrogated a very important leader of the American Mafia, whose name I cannot mention, who told me that such a telegram was sent from Gelli to Philip Guarino, at that time one of the most outstanding members of the Republican circle around Bush."
RAI journalist Ennio Remondino: "Do you have any precise indication about the existence of the telegram?"
Razin: "At present the FBI has opened an inquiry on this story. The existence of the telegram is also indicated by the archives of the National Security Agency."
Remondino: "From where was this telegram sent precisely and who got it?"
Razin: "It was received with the signature of Licio Gelli and was addressed to Philip Guarino. It was sent from South America, from one of the southernmost regions of Brazil. According to the most reliable information, it was sent by a man called Ortolani on behalf of Licio Gelli or in any case on Gelli's instructions."
This mafia boss had close contact with Licio Gelli.
The most bewildering thing was that a Soviet diplomat and KGB agent knew of this plan a few days in advance, when he mentioned it to his wife in their bedroom.. His home was bugged by the Swedish secret police (SAPO).
How could a Soviet diplomat know in advance that Olof Palme was to be murdered? The translator, who translated the tapes, realized that Moscow had initiated the murder (Expressen, 24 August 1989). The chief prosecutor Anders Helin of the case on the other hand thought: "It meant nothing." The information was considered nonsense. The chief prosecutor Jan Danielsson discovered the bugging tapes, but the Swedish government did not let him use them because of the sensitive relations to the Soviet Union (Svenska Dagbladet, 17 September 1990).
In 1987, not far from the site of the murder a total of five obelisks were erected to "ornament" the area. One obelisk is just a few metres from where Palme was shot.
In 1994, P2 was again declared illegal. It had thoroughly infiltrated the Grand Lodge and the Grande Oriente d'ltalia. Giuliano di Bernardo, grand master of the Grande Oriente, failed to weed out the worst criminals. In 1993, he went through the secret documents of the lodge and left the order with the statement: "I have seen a monster." (Brian Freemantle, "The Octopus", London, 1995, p. 14) The present grand master is Gustavo Raffi.
Giuliano di Bernardo moved from Rome to Milan. There he founded a new lodge independent of the Grande Oriente d'ltalia. He began cooperating with the police in the investigation of the ties between the freemasonry and mafia.
On 16 April 1994, Licio Gelli was sentenced to 17 years in prison. During the trial of P2 he was only accused of exercising undue influence, and the spreading of state secrets. Eleven of the other freemasons charged were acquitted.
Leoluca Orlando, the mayor of Palermo and member of the European Parliament, founded the Anti-Mafia Party La Rete (The Network). Orlando realized that organized crime gets its strength from its ties to freemasonry. To the writer Brian Freemantle he pointed out that "never think of Mafia without freemasonry, the two are connected". 15 armed bodyguards constantly guarded Orlando's family.
P2 has been involved in enormous financial rackets, arms trading, illegal art dealings, drug trafficking, terrorism and political assassinations. Despite all that was revealed, the lodge members still kept their key positions in Italian society.
In his memoirs, "My truth", Gelli claimed that P2 merely was "a club for friends with good intentions".
The French freemason Jean-Christophe Mitterrand (Grand Orient), son of former president Franceois Mitterrand, was involved in illegal arms trading to Angola. A French court of enquiry in January 2001 demanded that the Swiss authorities freeze his bank accounts there.
Tina Anselmi, chairman of the P2 commission, complained that: "P2 is by no means dead. It still has power. It is working in the institutions. It is moving in the society. It has money, means and instruments still at its disposal. It still has fully operative power centres in South America. It is also still able to condition, at least in part, Italian political life." (David Yallop, "In God's Name", London, 1985, p. 446)
Leoluca Orlando was of the opinion that through freemasonry the Mafia is going all over Europe. He considered that this is a serious international problem (Brian Freemantle, op. cit., p. 15).
Much less has been written about the sister lodge of P2, Iside 2 or A2, which was founded by Licio Gelli's associates. A2 became a sophisticated centre for various criminal activities. The lodge was in the early 1 980s involved in the murder of Judge Carlo Palermo, who was the first to verify the ties between the Mafia, freemasonry and the Bulgarian and Syrian spy organizations.
Several investigations by Judge Ciaccio Montaldo have carefully verified the connections the Mafia in Trapani, Sicily, had to A2. Among the members of the secret lodge A2 were also employees of the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome (Antonio Caspari, "Freemasonry, Mafia, and Communism", Stoppa Knarket, No. 4, 1988, pp. 8-9).
In June 1993, Iside 2 Grand Master Giuseppe Mandalari in a Trapani court was sentenced for founding a secret society (Claire Sterling, "Crime without Frontiers: The Worldwide Expansion of Organized Crime and the Pax Mafiosa", London, 1994, p. 230).
Freemasons all over the world are morally responsible for the crimes lodges such as the Grand Orient of France, P2, A2, P1, P3, and Albert Pike in Calabria have committed.
The Parliamentary Investigative Commission in Rome concluded that Italian freemasonry became the principal victim of Gelli's activities, not the Italian society. What was to be expected? Freemasonry in Italy is very powerful. There are more than 500 lodges.
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