The Hunt for Red Menace: - 12

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J. Michael Waller and the New Kids Network

Modern Paranoid Conspiracy Constituencies

A New Generation of Witch-hunters

All peripheral political movements reach a point in their growth towards mainstream respectability and influence where they face the issues of broadening their base and perpetuating their ideas through some form of institutionalization. Signs of the maturization and mainstreaming of a marginal political movment include its ability to work in coalition with other groups, its ability to network its leaders and its constituency, its ability to recruit new converts, and its ability to train a new generation of leaders. The success of the New Right in institutionalizing itself and broadening its appeal are well-documented, however the more reactionary and nativist elements of counter-subversion within the New Right also appear to have been successful in establishing more permanent structures to further legitimize their worldview, and in reaching out to a broader audience.

One way to demonstrate the networking ability of the counter- subversion movement is to chronicle the career of one young recruit, J. Michael Waller, from the perspective of cooperation with other groups and individuals in the paranoid nativist counter-subversion profession.

J. Michael Waller and the New Kids Network

J. Michael Waller is one example of the successful youth recruitment campaign mounted by the aging ultra-conservative counter- subversion network to train a new generation to carry on the anti-communist witch-hunt. Waller comes out of a group of right- wing former campus journalists whose campus newspapers received funds from conservatives seeking to influence campus politics and recruit new blood into the conservative political movement. The funds often are coordinated through the Institute for Educational Affairs (IEA) (now merged into the Madison Foundation). IEA and the Young America's Foundation helped financed a Waller trip to Central America where he travelled with the Contras.

An early Waller article on CISPES was prepared in 1983 for both the right-wing IEA-funded campus newspaper The Sequent (11/9/83) at George Washington University, and in a differing format for the United Students of America Foundation (11/7/83). At the time, the United Students of America Foundation (USAF) was housed at the Heritage Foundation building. "CISPES: A Guerrilla Support group," was the title of the piece Waller wrote as Editor-in-Chief of The Sequent, while "CISPES: A Guerrilla Propaganda Network," titled the USAF report which listed Waller as Director of Research for USAF.

In February 1984 Waller revised and expanded his CISPES attack for L. Francis Bouchey's Council on Inter-American Security (CIS). The CIS senior researcher, according to CIS fundraising pitches, was Waller.

Waller's report on CISPES for CIS experienced rhetoric escalation and was titled "CISPES: A Terrorist Propaganda Network." The February 1984 Waller report on CISPES for CIS was circulated just prior to a series of anti-Administration demonstrations during "Central America Week" in March of 1984. A few days after the demonstrations were over, CIS issued a press release calling for then Attorney General William French Smith to investigate CISPES, with CIS president Bouchey charging that CISPES was "operating in contravention of the Foreign Agents Registration Act." The press release went on to say that CIS "has offered its assistance and the documentation that it has compiled on CISPES's activities, including a detailed report by J. Michael Waller, to the Attorney General's Office."

Later in 1984 Waller re-wrote his article for the new Students for a Better America (SBA), which supplanted USAF as a conservative youth group and was still located at the Heritage building. The SBA version of the Waller report was titled "CISPES: A Terrorist Propaganda Network." A brochure summarizing the report was also issued by SBA which distributed copies of a newsletter, Freedom Fighter, published by a group called Coalition for Democracy in Central America (CODECA).

In 1985 Waller joined with Allan C. Brownfeld, in authoring The Revolution Lobby<M>, published jointly by the Council for Inter- American Security and the Inter-American Security Education Institute. The 175 paperback provides backround reports on groups such as CISPES, the North American Congress on Latin America, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Washington Office on Latin America, and the Council on Hemispheric Afairs. The book is but one of many examples of a project which showed the interlocking nature of the conservative counter-subversion network.

In his biographical note for The Revolution Lobby<M>, Brownfeld is listed as a former "member of the staff of the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee" and "author of that committee's 250-page study of the `New Left'. . . .A former lecturer at the U.S. Air Force Special Operations School in Elgin, Florida" and "a consultant to members of the U.S. Congress and the Vice President of the United States. At the time of publication Brownfeld was associate editor of the right-wing Accuracy in Media's AIM Report<M> and associate editor of the The Lincoln Review,<M> published by the conservative Lincoln Institute for Education & Research. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas served on the editorial advisory board of the The Lincoln Review.<M>

Waller is listed in The Revolution Lobby<M>, as having been elected National Secretary of Young Americans for Freedom in August 1985 as well as being editor of the CIS newsletter West Watch<M>. The previous year Waller was listed as being on the CODECA board of directors as research director of SBA. He served on the CODECA board along with Mike Boos, Young America's Foundation, William Pascoe, III, Research Fellow, Council for Inter- American Security, and Gustavo Marin, Chairman, Abdala Cuban Youth Movement. CODECA was a member of the Reagan Administration's United States International Youth Year Commission which represented the U.S. at the U.N. International Youth Year Commission for 1985. <$!expand section on government ties re: Waller, YAF, etc.><M>

Waller and Boos have long-standing ties to Young Americans for Freedom, which is the major route for youth recruitment by ultra- conservatives. They both contributed articles to the "Winter 1982-83" edition of YAF's magazine, New Guard<M>."

Boos, listed as YAF Projects Director, penned an article which was headlined "The Nuclear Freeze Fairy Tale: Communist Front Groups Behind the Peace Movement," and warned that the "peace movement" is in fact not spontaneous but "Rather, it is a well conceived and thus far successfully implemented sinister scheme being directed by the Soviet Union through its front groups in the U.S. and abroad." Boos noted that: "a good source of this information. . .is The War Called Peace<M>, published by Western Goals."

Waller, listed as "Chairman, District of Columbia YAF," wrote a piece called "Bare-fisted Journalism: How and Why a YAF Activist Started an Alternative Campus Newspaper" which praises the new wave of conservative campus publications and warns that:

=== "Today, a new generation of anti-family, anti- religion, anti-capitalist, anti-defense, anti-American activists dominates nearly every university. they are the little brothers, sisters, and cousins of the long-haired, flea-ridden Tom Hayden groupies who, like their bellwethers of the 1960's, want to destroy America, again, in the name of `peace, jobs, and justice.'

Young Americans for Freedom, American Conservative Union, Human Events<M>, and National Review<M> co-sponsored the Tenth Annual Conservative Political Action Conference in 1983 where YAF members could rub shoulders with "Ronald Reagan, members of his Cabinet, Jesse Helms, Orrin Hatch, Jack Kemp and a host of other conservative leaders. . . ."

Other nativist recruitment avenues includes those aimed at the college intern. One such group is the National Journalism Center of the Education & Research Institute. The Center brings college students to Washington, D.C. for seminars lead by conservative luminaries and then places them with a wide range of journalistic enterprises such as National Geographic<M>, Voice of America and UPI, and more conservative outlets such as Human Events<M>, Reader's Digest, The World and I, American Spectator<M>, and Campus Report <M>(Accuracy in Academia). Alumni of the Center have gone on to positions at the Council for Inter-American Security, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Accuracy in Media, Reader's Digest, Mid-American Institute for Public Policy, Hoover Institution, Washington Times, The World and I, and Human Events<M>.

One former Washington Journalism Center intern, Scott Powell (Summer 1981), wrote Covert Cadre,<M> a purported expose of the Institute for Policy Studies which alleged the progressive think tank is the nexus for KGB operatives and Soviet disinformation campaigns in the U.S.

Modern Paranoid Conspiracy Constituencies

General John "Jack" Singlaub gained national attention when he testified before the joint Congressional committee investigating Iran-Contragate on his role in Contra fundraising. That Committee never pursued Singlaub's ties to the World Anti-Communist League, which networks not only anti-communists but racists, anti-Semites, fascists and even a handful of aging Nazi collaborators.

Singlaub has been a representative of, and works closely with, the American Security Council, the major pro-military lobbying group in the U.S. and one of the chief lobby groups for Contra aid. ASC started life as a blacklist-style agency retained by manufacturers to screen potential industrial employees for communist or subversive pasts-such as a preference for labor unions.

Singlaub is also on the Advisory Board of the Council for Inter- American Security, the group that brags about how it infiltrates meetings of "leftists" to spy on activists. Another CIS Board member is columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, who played the role of the pit bull terrier for the Reagan Administration. Other CIS Board members include Congressmen and Senators such as Sen. Jack Kemp, Rep. Bill Chappell, Sen. Malcolm Wallop, and Rep. Vin Weber.

Singlaub, who served on the board of the now-defunct Western Goals Foundation, is a classic example of how counter-subversion nativists with close government ties work to influence government policy with paranoid conspiracy theories and authoritarian solutions. That Singlaub is the quitessential counter-subversion nativist can be shown through his own words. For instance Singlaub signed one CIS fundraising letter where he warned:

=== "Ultraliberals want you to believe that Communist Russia wants peace. . . .Ultraliberals want you to believe that the big bosses of the Kremlin are people `just like you and me'. . . .ultraliberals support permanent nuclear superiority by Soviet Communists.

Those, like Singlaub, who filter their anti-communism through a paranoid world view firmly believe in the existence of the global red menace; an immense and secret international communist conspiracy the dimensions of which are so horrific that the United States of America is on the verge of collapse because its very foundations are riddled with the rot of communist subversion while the country itself is geographically surrounded by hordes of mindless commie zombies brainwashed through endless Leninist lectures to have no regard for human life. If you don't think anyone seriously believes this wolrdview, you didn't see the movie "Red Dawn".

That this paranoid anti-communist premise is actually believed by a small but significant segment of American society is illustrated by reviewing the invitational brochure for an ultra-conservative investment planning seminar scheduled for September 25-28, 1985 at the Los Angeles Airport Hyatt. The slick multi-color flyer announced: "Gary North Presents: Racing to the Year 2000-Planning for personal stability in the midst of change." Sounds normal enough until you scan the following lecture topics as printed in the brochure: · General John Singlaub, Chairman of the United States Council for World Freedom (the General Jimmy Carter axed): "How and Where World War III Will Be Fought." The ignored military reality that will shape America's future-information that will affect your future plans, profits, and personal safety. · Antony Sutton, Editor of The Phoenix Letter: "Soviet Technology: Made in the USA." How by reducing government expenditures, we can cripple the Soviet Union without firing a shot-and who is seeing to it that we don't do it. · Jack Wheeler, Foreign Policy Consultant: "The Soft Underbelly of the Soviet Empire and Who's Punching It." An insider's view of the eight anti-Soviet guerrilla wars going on right now and whether or not you can bet on the Soviet Union crumbling.

Other workshops included presentations by:

Selected representatives from various anti-communist guerilla movements;

Joel Skoussen, Chairman of the Conservative National Committee, talking on the secret "puppeteers" behind various Latin American governments;

Dr. Frank Aker, newsletter publisher, on "Where the Soviets are concentrating their attention, and when your new refugee "neighbors" will be arriving;

Science Fiction author and computer technology consultant Dr. Jerry Pournelle on Reagan's "Star Shields" program, "The good news about American technology-and why the Soviets are panicked."

These lecturers were joined by the standard right-wing luminaries such as Howard Phillips, National Director of the Conservative Caucus; former Congressman Ron Paul, the 1988 Libertarian candidate for President; right-wing Illinois Congressman Phil Crane; conspiracy-mongering author Larry Abraham; and apocalyptic newsletter editor Howard Ruff.

Not your average investment seminar. . .the underlying paranoia is palpable.

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