Western Goals Foundation

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Western Goals Foundation
Formation1979
Founders
tax exempt
Purposeprivate intelligence agency
Headquarters309A Cameron St.
Alexandria, Virginia 22314
United States

Western Goals Foundation was a private domestic intelligence agency active in the United States.

Major General John K. Singlaub, the publisher and spy John H. Rees, and Congressman Larry McDonald.[2] It went defunct in 1986 when the Tower Commission revealed it had been part of Oliver North's Iran–Contra funding network.[1]

History

After the

Watergate and COINTELPRO scandals of the early 1970s, several laws were passed to restrict police intelligence gathering within political organizations and tried to make it necessary to demonstrate that a criminal act was likely to be uncovered by any intelligence gathering proposed. Many files on radicals, collected for decades, were ordered destroyed. The unintended effect of the laws was to privatize the files in the hands of 'retired' intelligence officers and their operatives.[1]

As a private foundation, Western Goals collected information about alleged subversives and passed the information to law enforcement officials, akin to a "mini-deep state".[2] According to former employees, agencies receiving information from Western Goals included the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, and police departments.[2]

John Rees and Larry McDonald joined with Major General Singlaub to form Western Goals in 1979. Each founder was also a member of the

World Anti-Communist League, the John Birch Society, and similar organizations. One of its principal sponsors was the Texan billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt.[3]

The organization was based in a townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia. It also said it had offices in West Germany and Austria.[2] A former employee told Politico in 2018 that more of its funding came from West Germany than the United States.[2]

Rees set up a computer database to track suspected radicals, and wrote many of Western Goals' published reports about domestic subversives, terrorism and communist threats.

libel. Western Goals would then cite McDonald’s statements in its own public reports.[2] Unverified reports by Western Goals accusing American pacifist groups of ties to communism and the Soviet Union were also publicized in Reader's Digest and by the Reagan administration.[2][4]

Western Goals was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) after a police officer was caught adding information from the disbanded Los Angeles Police Department "Red Squad" to a related computer bulletin board system.[5][6]

Western Goals raised funds for the Nicaraguan Contras starting in 1983, after Congress banned the Reagan administration from providing U.S. support.[2] A Contra brigade of 2,000 was named the Larry McDonald Task Force to honor the Western Goals co-founder, who had been killed in the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.[2] Singlaub was an intermediary in Oliver North’s illegal weapons network for the Contras.[2] Officials of the foundation were questioned in the Iran-Contra hearings of 1986.[2]

The organization founded an offshoot,

Western Goals (UK), later the Western Goals Institute, which was briefly influential in British Conservative politics.[1]

Advisory board and directors

Bibliography

Books

Films

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ^ a b c d Staff writer (Jan. 2, 1989). "Western Goals Foundation." Interhemispheric Resource Center/International Relations Center. Archived from the original.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Dorfman, Zach (December 2, 2018). "The Congressman Who Created His Own Deep State. Really". POLITICO Magazine. Retrieved April 3, 2022.
  3. ^ Jasper, William F. (Dec. 1, 2014). "Nelson Bunker Hunt and the Scheme 'to Corner The Silver Market'." The New American, vol. 30, no. 23.
  4. ^ Rosenfeld, Seth (August 16, 1983). "Rees, Reagan, and the Digest Smear: The Spy Who Came Down on the Freeze". The Village Voice. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
  5. ^ Berlet, Chip (Sep. 8, 2000). "The Maldon Institute." Political Research Associates. Archived from the original.
  6. ^ Bayse, William A., and Dorothy Denning (Mar. 27, 1991). "Security Capabilities, Privacy & Integrity." IEEE Computer Society Press. Reprinted from The First Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy, Mar. 26-28, 1991, in Burlingame, California. Archived from the original.
  7. ^
    OCLC 34702813. Part 1: Moles in High Places. Part 2: The Open Gates of Troy.

External links
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