A shot across the bows, United States Council for World freedom/Racist Group McCain Board Member

[maddezmom]

Paul Begala, in a shot on Meet the Press that sounds like something other than an offhand remark, suggests an Obama comeback to an expected McCain ad blitz on the Ayers relationship.

Obama, he was asked about this in a debate in the primaries with Hillary Clinton sitting there, and George Stephanopoulos of ABC asked him about it. He answered it, pointed out that the despicable acts this guy committed were committed when apparently Barack Obama was eight years old.

And I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn’t even put this in the book. But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group. The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League – the parent organization – which ADL said “has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites.”

more:http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/A_shot_across_the_bows.html

United States Council for World freedom. Board of Directors and Advisory Board. 1986. 1 page.
This is an official list of 36 directors and advisors of USCWF, and almost all of the names include a line or two of identifying information. John Singlaub, a retired general with an intelligence background, has been chairman of USCWF since 1981, when he organized it as the new U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League. WACL, which was originally created by the intelligence services of Taiwan and South Korea for purposes of anti- Communist propaganda, has had a U.S. chapter since 1969. But the presence of former Nazis in the European chapters, and neo-Nazis elsewhere, caused splits on the U.S. end.
Singlaub's new chapter struck out in an activist direction by collecting tax-deductible contributions to support the contras. U.S. officials worked closely with USCWF, as well as with other pro-contra groups in the private sector. In 1985 the Miami Herald estimated that USCWF was sending up to $500,000 a month to the contras, in the form of nonlethal supplies that were usually shipped on U.S. military craft

http://www.namebase.org/sources/JN.html


http://rightweb.irc-online.org/gw/2813

[maddezmom]

1. KOS:McCain sat on board of ultra-right wing racist group

McCain sat on board of ultra-right wing racist group
by Tirge Caps
Sun Oct 05, 2008 at 09:00:07 AM PDT
The very low Sarah Palin came out screeching yesterday about Barack Obama's relation to William Ayers. Aside from the fact that Obama was 8 years old during Ayers' radical years, the right wing hate machine will attempt to tie Obama to him.

Well, hang this anchor around their neck:



In 1981 John McCain sat on the board of the US Council for World Freedom, an ultra right wing group founded by Arizona Congressman and Iran Contra figure Maj. General John K. Singlaub...

Begala: It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist league, the parent organization, which ADL said has increasingly become a gathering place, the forum, the point of contact for extremist racists and anti-Semites.

Tirge Caps's diary :: ::
Now Begala says he "knows this isn't John McCain" but I differ with the Paul. I have no doubt McCain's an elite racist little punk. I used to go to school with people like him. I know where his mother lives, because I am from the same part of the country. I know the houses McCain would have frequented in his childhood, the views of the society he was raised in, the servants in the homes.

John McCain was raised in an atmosphere of privilege, of wealth and of power and influence. This ultra-right wing group, IMO, is just the kind of organization his jokes would play over well with.

From The Coors Connection by Russ Bellant

more:http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/5/11241/0293/672/620709

[Lochloosa]

2. Board of Directors and Advisory Board 1986

http://www.namebase.org/sources/JN.html

United States Council for World freedom. Board of Directors and Advisory Board. 1986. 1 page.
This is an official list of 36 directors and advisors of USCWF, and almost all of the names include a line or two of identifying information. John Singlaub, a retired general with an intelligence background, has been chairman of USCWF since 1981, when he organized it as the new U.S. chapter of the World Anti-Communist League. WACL, which was originally created by the intelligence services of Taiwan and South Korea for purposes of anti- Communist propaganda, has had a U.S. chapter since 1969. But the presence of former Nazis in the European chapters, and neo-Nazis elsewhere, caused splits on the U.S. end.
Singlaub's new chapter struck out in an activist direction by collecting tax-deductible contributions to support the contras. U.S. officials worked closely with USCWF, as well as with other pro-contra groups in the private sector. In 1985 the Miami Herald estimated that USCWF was sending up to $500,000 a month to the contras, in the form of nonlethal supplies that were usually shipped on U.S. military craft.



Search the NameBase site: While the best way to search for names is to use NameBase, most can also be found here by using only first and last name, separated by a single space, with no quotation marks.



Name index for U.S. Council World Freedom. Directors and Advisors. 1986

BISHOP JIM (HEARST CORP)
BOUSCAREN ANTHONY T
CAMARDESE N M
CARROLL J.A.
CHENNAULT ANNA CHAN
CHOPIWSKYJ WALTER
CONDON MARY HOPE
DOBRIANSKY LEV E
FISHER JOHN M
FORD LUCILLE G
GRAHAM DANIEL ORRIN
HURLBUT BERT
HUTCHINSON JOHN
JOHNSON W.A. (JOHN)
JUNG SAMMY Y
KNIGHT ALBION W
KUBEK ANTHONY
LEBOUTILLIER JOHN
MCCAIN JOHN S III (R-AZ)
MESSING ANDREW
MORRIS ROBERT (B.1915-09-30)
MORTENSEN RALPH
PARKER JAY A
PHILLIPS HOWARD
POSSONY STEFAN THOMAS
ROBERTS J.MILNOR
ROCHE GEORGE C III
ROTHSCHILD KATHLEEN TEAGUE
RUDD ELDON
SCHLAFLY J FRED
SINGLAUB JOHN K
SLEEPER RAYMOND S (COL)
SOLOMON GERALD B.H. (R-NY)
TSUAN VICTOR T.H.
TYSON JAMES L
UNITED STATES COUNCIL WORLD FREEDOM
WALT LEWIS W (GEN)

[starroute]

3. Not so much racist as fascist

The World Anti-Communist League was founded in 1966 on the basis of the earlier Asian People's Anti-Communist League. It was originally part of the powerful China Lobby and was strongly backed by both the CIA and US right-wingers. It also had close ties to the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, which was full of old-line European fascists.

The first US affiliate of the WACL, the American Council for World Freedom, was formed in 1970 by Lee Edwards, a former director of Young Americans for Freedom. Members of ACWF included both old-line anti-communists and younger movement conservatives like Edwards and Richard Viguerie. Edwards also had (and still has) close ties to Reverend Moon. Moon's Unification Church had the same roots as the original Asian People's Anti-Communist Leage, and he was a major backer of WACL at this time.

By the middle 1970's, it was becoming impossible to ignore the strong presence of neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in WACL, particularly in its overtly fascist Mexican affiliate, to the point where even Reverend Moon had to make a public appearance of distancing himself from the group. This led to the collapse of ACWF in 1975 and its replacement by a new US affiliate, the Council on American Affairs, founded by outright neo-Nazi Roger Pearson.

Pearson's neo-Nazi connections eventually led to his ousting in 1978 and the collapse of his group, but by then the fascist strain in WACL had become even stronger, in part as a result of the rise of neo-fascist dictatorships in Latin America. WACL is said to have been involved in the 1980 "Cocaine Coup" in Bolivia, where drug lords and Nazis took over that country.

In 1981, Major General John K. Singlaub was asked to form a new WACL affiliate in the US that would theoretically be free of the fascist taint. Singlaub had served with the OSS in China during World War II and then was CIA deputy chief in Seoul during the Korean War. In the late 60's, he was commander of the Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force in Vietnam -- though he denies having had anything to do with the assassinations carried out by that task force under Operation Phoenix. Singlaub was fired by President Carter in 1978 for condemning Carter's attempts to reduce US troop levels in Korea and immediately became active in the anti-communist right.

By 1980, Singlaub was busy assuring Latin American fascists that a Reagan administration would look on them far more favorably than Carter had, as proved to be the case. After Reagan took office, Singlaub founded the United States Council for World Freedom, with financial support from Taiwan and Korea, as well as from US right-wingers like Joseph Coors and Nelson Bunker Hunt. Membership included many of the same dedicated anti-communists as ACWF -- but because the group was now more respectable, at least on the surface, it was also able to draw in mainstream political figures, like Jesse Helms or John McCain.

In 1984, columnist Jack Anderson wrote an expose of WACL, linking it to Latin American fascists and death squads. In fact, many of the death squad leaders were receiving training in counter-insurgency in Taiwan under WACL sponsorship. As before, WACL made a show of expelling its overtly fascist Latin American affiliate and creating a new one, but the same people essentially continued running things.

By then, Singlaub was the head of WACL as well as of USCWF, and WACL became a major source of funding for the Contras after Congress shut down all public funding in 1984, with Oliver North serving as Singlaub's liaison at the White House. WACL was also actively supporting the Afghan mujiheddin and the UNITA forces in Africa at this time and had connections or overlapping memberships with most of the other extreme right-wing, anti-communist organizations of the period.

I haven't been able to find anything on McCain's connections with the group aside from him being listed as a member. Most of the people who were involved with USCWF had a pretty good idea of the darker side of its operations -- Jesse Helms, for example, had his own back-channel links with Latin American fascists going back to the 1970's -- so it's hard to imagine that McCain was simply a naive young Congressman looking for anti-communist causes to support. But unless something more detailed than a membership list comes out, it's hard to tell just how deeply he was involved and what he knew or should have known about what was going on.