Not NP: Re: "the story is fundamentally at odds with reality as we know it"

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Am 23.12.2015 um 17:35 schrieb Joseph Tracy:
> I would like a reference to the story where Hersh says US special
> forces are run by “ancient Illuminati-style orders such as Opus Dei”.
> That sure doesn’t sound like him.

Hersh's speech is here:

https://zulfahmed.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/seymour-hersh-talking-in-qatar-in-january-2011/

(I don't know anything about this site. It was the first transcript of 
the speech my search engine of choice spew up. I can't vouch for the 
accuracy of the transcript.)


This got me interested. As Christmastide is threatening and I do not 
have much time on my hands, let me just forward without much ado a few 
excerpts from various texts that touch upon the topics at hand (this 
time including Pynchon).


Seymour Hersh:

"(...) That’s an attitude that pervades, I’m here to say, a large 
percentage of the Special Operations Command, the Joint Special 
Operations Command and Stanley McChrystal, the one who got in trouble 
because of the article in Rolling Stone, and his follow-on, a Navy 
admiral named McRaven, Bill McRaven — all are members or at least 
supporters of Knights of Malta. McRaven attended, so I understand, the 
recent annual convention of the Knights of Malta they had in Cyprus a 
few months back in November. They’re all believers — many of them are 
members of Opus Dei. They do see what they are doing — and this is not 
an atypical attitude among some military — it’s a crusade, literally. 
They see themselves as the protectors of the Christians. They’re 
protecting them from the Muslims in the 13th century. And this is their 
function. They have little insignias, they have coins they pass among 
each other, which are crusader coins, and they have insignia that 
reflect that, the whole notion that this is a war, it’s culture war."

https://zulfahmed.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/seymour-hersh-talking-in-qatar-in-january-2011/


Greg Grandin in "The Nation" defending Hersh against Fisher's criticism:

'To accuse Hersh of falling under the thrall of “conspiracy theory” is 
to repudiate the whole enterprise of investigative journalism that Hersh 
helped pioneer. What has he written that wasn’t a conspiracy? But 
Fisher, and others, believe Hersh went too far when in a 2011 speech he 
made mention of the Knights of Malta and Opus Dei, tagging him as a Dan 
Brown fantasist. Here’s Fisher, in his debunking of Hersh’s recent 
essay: “The moment when a lot of journalists started to question whether 
Hersh had veered from investigative reporting into something else came 
in January 2011. That month, he spoke at Georgetown University’s branch 
campus in Qatar, where he gave a bizarre and rambling address alleging 
that top military and special forces leaders ‘are all members of, or at 
least supporters of, Knights of Malta.… many of them are members of Opus 
Dei.’”

http://www.thenation.com/article/its-conspiracy-how-discredit-seymour-hersh/


And now it gets interesting for Pynchonites because Grandin ties Hersh's 
allegations to the FEMA and REX 84/CoG activities in the 80s that I also 
felt reminded of and which play an important role in VL. He quotes Steve 
Coll, the author of "Ghost Wars", a book we recently discussed:

'But here’s Steve Coll, a reporter who remains within the acceptable 
margins, writing in Ghost Wars about Reagan’s CIA director, William 
Casey: “He was a Catholic Knight of Malta educated by Jesuits. Statues 
of the Virgin Mary filled his mansion.… He attended Mass daily and urged 
Christian faith upon anyone who asked his advice…. He believed fervently 
that by spreading the Catholic church’s reach and power he could contain 
communism’s advance, or reverse it.” Oliver North, Casey’s Iran/Contra 
co-conspirator, worshiped at a “’charismatic’ Episcopalian church in 
Virginia called Church of the Apostles, which is organized into cell 
groups.”

Not too long ago, Ben Bradlee Jr. (son of no less an establishment 
figure than the editor of The Washington Post), could draw the 
connections between the shadowy national security state and right-wing 
Christianity: Iran/Contra was about many things, among them a right-wing 
Christian reaction against the growing influence of left-wing Liberation 
Theology in Latin America. Likewise, the US’s post-9/11 militarism was 
about many things, among them the reorganization of those right-wing 
Christians against what they identified as a greater existential threat 
than Liberation Theology: political Islam. Fisher should know this, as 
it was reported here, here, and here, among many other places.'

http://www.thenation.com/article/its-conspiracy-how-discredit-seymour-hersh/


In my previous post I referred to David Thoreen's "The President's 
Emergency War Powers and the Erosion of Civil Liberties in Pynchons 
Vineland", an essay I keep coming back to. Here are some relevant quotes 
(like Grandin, Thoreen also quotes Ben Bradlee). The reference is to VL, 
339:

'The "red Christer pins" are another reference to FEMA and Rex-84. 
According to Ben Bradlee:

"There had been considerable anxiety within the agency about the 
legality of the Rex-84 exercise. [One FEMA] official said he had never 
seen such security around any other activity inside FEMA, and that 
agency General Counsel George Jett had ordered the installation of a 
special metal security door into the hallway of the fifth floor of the 
FEMA building in Washington where all planning for Rex-84 was 
conducted.... FEMA officials with the highest security clearances had 
been prevented from going into the restricted area.... only Giuffrida, 
Jett, and FEMA Deputy Director Frank Salcedo--all of whom were 
inexplicably reported to have been wearing red Christian crosses or 
crucifix pins on their lapels--were allowed in."'

https://web.archive.org/web/20101116080155/http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/okla/thoreen24.htm


The subject here is indeed "connections between the shadowy national 
security state and right-wing Christianity", as Grandin puts it. Coll, 
Hersh and Bradlee provide evidence/claims for the existence of these 
links. Pynchon uses Bradlee's account of the "red Christian crosses" for 
his own purposes in VL.

Generally I believe that one would have to critizise Hersh on the basis 
of facts. Just saying that he has suddenly become a "conspiracy 
theorist" because he talks about things nobody else in the mainstream 
media wants to cover won't do.

Also, the Knights of Malta are very interesting indeed.




-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l