AMERICAN COUNTER-INTELLIGENCE

Time to End the Special Relationship with Britain

by Robert Ingraham

[Print version of this article]

Feb. 8—On January 28 of this year, LaRouche PAC posted a petition on its website, titled: “The January 27, 1989 Jailing of Lyndon LaRouche Defined an Era, Which Now Must End. We Call Upon President Trump to Exonerate LaRouche!” That petition, issued on the 30th anniversary of the jailing of Lyndon LaRouche, states, in part:

The frame-up and jailing of LaRouche, facilitated by years of lying media vilification of LaRouche and his movement, which continues to this day, was carried out by the same British-run political apparatus—in many cases, by the same individual hit-men, including Special Counsel Robert Mueller—that today is out to topple the President of the United States.

And it is because they were able to carry out that injustice against LaRouche 30 years ago, despite massive opposition nationally and internationally from prominent civil rights and human rights leaders, elected officials and legal scholars, that they are at it again today, on a grander scale.

In fact, the five-year jailing of Lyndon LaRouche defined an entire era of modern U.S. history, much as the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy did.

On the one hand, the full legal exoneration of Lyndon LaRouche is simply a matter of historical justice. More critical, as the petition states, is that a full public airing of the vendetta carried out against LaRouche, and a public admission as to LaRouche’s complete innocence, could blow up all of the evil operations now being thrown against President Donald Trump and defeat current efforts to provoke a war confrontation with Russia and China. Yet, an even greater task might be achieved. Were the truth about the “LaRouche Case,” and the “Get LaRouche Task Force,” to be publicly acknowledged, intelligent citizens will finally be able to “make sense” of what has transpired during the last thirty years.

The great weakness among almost all patriotic individuals in the United States—a weakness which sometimes crosses the line into cowardice—has been the failure, the refusal, to confront the truth of what Lyndon LaRouche has been saying for forty years about the British Empire and the oligarchical outlook and intentions of the British establishment. This is a failure, as LaRouche would say, to “know your enemy.” Revelations of the role of British Intelligence in the “Get Trump” witch-hunt, and the violent British opposition to Trump’s peace initiatives with Russia, China and North Korea, have now begun to open some eyes among the reluctant. But a deeper understanding is required.

Many people remain perplexed as to the motives behind the British attacks on Trump. Aren’t the British our “cousins,” our special friends? The confusion and the inability to see the truth are products of a failure to grasp the moral chasm which separates British oligarchical imperial culture from the historical republican mission of the United States. The narrative of shared “democratic values” between Britain and America is false, and as Nicholas of Cusa proved the impossibility of squaring the circle, no amount of fudging or lying can bridge the moral gulf separating the American Republic and the British Empire.

What is missing—what is required—are the skills of a counter-intelligence expert. This requires not simply spying, code-breaking, electronic eaves-dropping, or similar clandestine tools. Rather, the key to counter-intelligence is to be found in understanding how one’s adversary thinks, the cultural axioms which are always determinate. The first necessity is to be clear on one’s own mission—those principles to which one has dedicated one’s existence. Then, one examines the motives and policy axioms of one’s enemy. From there, a proper course of action may be determined.

In this report we shall approach this subject of the abomination of the U.S.-British “Special Relationship” through examining the case study of the American patriot John Jay, the founder of American counter-intelligence. We will look at his foiling of a plot to assassinate George Washington, as well as his “counter-intelligence” work in securing the successful Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution. Most important, however, we will consider the philosophical, moral and cultural foundation that made the success of Jay’s actions possible; for in studying the axiomatic cultural and moral issue, we then arrive at that which is paramount.

Battle of the Mind

It is no coincidence that Benjamin Franklin identified 1688 as the year of birth for his creation Poor Richard, for it was in that year that the British Crown revoked the republican Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and imposed a Royal governor. Franklin identified 1688 as the year when freedom was lost, when the right to develop was extinguished. He went on to publish the sayings and observations of Poor Richard for 26 years, in the process creating precisely the republican citizenry necessary to resist British oligarchical designs.

British operations are not discovered using deductive methods, but in mastering complete knowledge of the cultural axioms which are at the heart of the oligarchical outlook. The problem today is that most of us have lost our sense of smell. When the aromas of Malthusianism, geopolitics, or rabid monetarism begin to waft through the air, our citizens fail to detect the spoor of British Intelligence operations, of oligarchical designs. It is not a matter of spies versus counterspies à la Mad Magazine; it is a difference in values. No successful counter-intelligence work is possible without grasping this essential point.

On December 11, 1977, Lyndon LaRouche authored a Memorandum titled, “How to Evaluate a British Intelligence Network.” It is quite lengthy and ambitious in scope—yet the key theme is straightforward. What LaRouche examines is the issue of a truly human identity versus an oligarchic identity. A sub-theme is the related subject of republican values versus imperial geopolitical values.

Essentially, the subject of the Memorandum is the necessity to understand the mind of the enemy. In earlier times, Americans possessed a great advantage in this regard, because the notion of an “American identity” as opposed to old-world oligarchical axioms was understood by many, if sometimes imperfectly. This began to change in the 20th century, and since the assassination of John Kennedy—as America has increasingly clothed itself in the trappings of empire—the moral flame which previously guided America has begun to go out.

Any nation which accepts a scenario of endless warfare and economic policies that impoverish tens or hundreds of millions, is already firmly within the grasp of British oligarchic intentions. Add to this the decades-long intimate military and intelligence cooperation (or integration) between the United States and the United Kingdom, and the flight forward into aggressive military actions since September 11, 2001—all of this has left the United States wide open to British manipulation. This is precisely what President Donald Trump is fighting to reverse.

I. The Founder of American Counter-Intelligence

John Jay was not of English descent. His paternal grandfather, Augustus Jay, was a French Huguenot, and his paternal grandmother, as well as both of his maternal grandparents, were Dutch. A graduate of King’s College in Manhattan, he early on became very close with Gouverneur Morris. It was Jay who also secured a commission for his young friend Alexander Hamilton as an artillery captain, the role which brought Hamilton to George Washington’s attention. Jay was held in such high esteem by Washington that in 1789 Washington offered to Jay the post of his choosing in the new government, including any among the cabinet positions. Jay chose to become the first Chief Justice, because he correctly perceived that the Supreme Court would be critical in forging national union, in securing national sovereignty for the new republic.

Before proceeding, given that John Jay is a largely forgotten, or at least little studied, individual, we provide here a brief chronology of the service he rendered to his nation.

May 1774—Jay was elected to the “Committee of Fifty,” the first body organized in New York in opposition to the British measures that resulted in the American Revolution.

1774—Elected as delegate from New York to first Continental Congress (29 years old).

1775—Elected as a New York delegate to the second Continental Congress.

November 1775—Congress creates the “Committee of Secret Correspondence,” to oversee foreign intelligence matters. Key members include Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris. Jay is put in charge of overseeing the work of Silas Deane in France.

April 1776—Jay elected a delegate to the New York Provincial Congress.

May 1776—Named by the New York Provincial Congress to the “Committee on Conspiracies.”

June 1776—Named to head a three-person secret committee, with Gouverneur Morris and Philip Livingston, to investigate threats against the life of George Washington.

July 1776—Plays the paramount role in getting the New York Provincial Congress to endorse the Declaration of Independence.

September 1776—Named to head the reorganized “Committee on Defeating and Detecting Conspiracies.” Works on this well into 1777.

1777—Jay and Morris lead effort for a New York State Constitution, with a strong executive branch. A clause, authored by Morris and backed by Jay, to abolish slavery in New York is removed by the other delegates.

1777—Named Chief Justice of
New York State.

1778—Elected President of Con-
tinental Congress in Philadelphia.

1779 to 1782—Ambassador to
Spain.

1782-1784—Together with Ben-
jamin Franklin, in Paris, negotiates Peace Treaty with Britain, ending the Revolutionary War.

1784-1789—Secretary for For-
eign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation, the most powerful post in the new national government.

1785—Founder, with Hamilton,
of the New York Manumission Society.

Late 1787—Authors Federalist Numbers 2, 3, 4 & 5.

1788—Plays leading role in securing New York ratification of Constitution.

1789 to 1795—First Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1793-1794—Negotiates treaty (the “Jay Treaty”) with Great Britain.

1795 to 1801—Governor of New York State.

1799—Governor Jay forces through a gradual emancipation law, which will end slavery in the state.

1801—Retires to his farm in Westchester County, New York.

1812—Comes out of retirement to join with Gouverneur Morris in opposing the War of 1812. Backs DeWitt Clinton’s campaign for the Presidency against James Madison.

1819-1820—In his last political intervention, Jay joins with Rufus King and James Tallmadge to oppose the admission of Missouri as a slave state, as well as the subsequent Missouri Compromise.

II. Knowing Your Enemy

On June 29, 1776, a British fleet of more than one hundred war ships arrived in New York Harbor. By July 2, there were two hundred ships, and by early August, over four hundred British ships patrolled the harbor and all surrounding waterways. The sight was described by one onlooker as a vast “sea of masts.” Both onboard the ships, as well as encamped on Staten Island, were at least 34,000 enemy troops, including 9,000 Hessians.

An attack was expected at any moment. On July 2, Washington issued a message to his troops:

The time is now near at hand, which must probably determine whether Americans are to be consigned to a state of wretchedness, from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us no choice, but a brave resistance or the most abject submission. This is all that we can expect. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

On August 22, more than 22,000 British troops landed in Brooklyn, leading to the defeat of Washington’s army at the Battle of Brooklyn and the death or capture of 1,000 American soldiers. Two weeks later, 12,000 British troops landed in Manhattan. The British intention was to crush the Rebellion in one stroke. Only Washington’s stunning evacuation of his army from Brooklyn to Manhattan, followed by the tactical brilliance of his retreat across Westchester and New Jersey, saved the army to fight another day.

Putting to one side the overwhelming superiority of the British military forces, an existential difficulty facing Washington in the weeks leading up to the British invasion, as well as in the critical months following it, was that it was not at all clear who the enemy was—who was friend, and who was foe? At that time, New York was perhaps the American colony with the greatest percentage of its population who remained loyal to the British Crown. Although this problem persisted throughout the war, in the early phases, when the day-to-day survival of Washington’s army was in doubt, the question of “who can be trusted” was an issue of extraordinary importance.

The problem was not simply one of invading soldiers. Among native New Yorkers who lived together for years, even decades, many individuals who had earlier participated in the protests and petitions to Parliament, including friends of Morris and Jay, such as Peter Van Schaack, refused to support the Declaration of Independence. In Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, and Westchester, as well as in northern New Jersey, it is likely that a majority—or close to it—of the population were loyalists. Next door neighbors, brethren of the same Church, and members of the same family were divided by the Revolution, including the families of Benjamin Franklin, John Jay and Gouverneur Morris.

The loyalties of everyone were suspect. Spies, and potential spies, were everywhere. The challenge was to sort all of this out.

A Committee on Conspiracies

In May of 1776, less than one month after it had come into existence, the New York Provincial Congress established a “Committee on Conspiracies,” with John Jay as its chairman. The founding charge states that it shall be “a Committee for inquiring into, detecting and defeating all conspiracies which may be formed in this State, against the liberties of America.” On June 18, 1776, the Provincial Congress appointed a second three-person Committee, this one strictly secret and also chaired by Jay, with Gouverneur Morris and Philip Livingston as the other two members. The second Committee was created after testimony was taken at the Provincial Congress from a man named Isaac Ketcham of a plot against George Washington’s life. The directive which established this secret committee states:

Ordered, That Mr. Ph. Livingston, Mr. Jay and Mr. Morris, be a secret committee to confer with Genl. Washington, relative to certain secret intelligence communicated to this Congress, and take such examinations relative thereto as they shall think proper.

The larger Conspiracies Committee, which met daily, exercised sweeping powers. It had the authority to summon any resident of New York State to testify before it. It could subpoena personal and business papers, call out detachments of the militia “to apprehend, secure, or remove persons whom they might judge dangerous to the safety of the State,” make drafts on the treasury, and raise and officer 220 men, employing them as they saw fit. It interrogated individuals on a daily basis, eventually numbering in the thousands. Property was seized, imprisonments and banishments became common-place. The jails, and even the churches, were crowded with prisoners. Moles and spies were employed to discover and counteract the plans of the loyalists.[fn_1]

In the midst of these laborious efforts, John Jay authored and published a resolution on the nature and role of the Conspiracies Committee. It states, in part:

Resolved, that the committee appointed by the Convention of this State for the purpose of inquiring into, detecting, and defeating all conspiracies, &c. have full power and authority to disfranchise and punish all such unworthy subjects of this State, as shall profess to owe allegiance to the king of Great Britain, and refuse to join with their countrymen in opposing his tyranny and invasion (other than such of the people called Quakers, who behave as good subjects, except in not bearing arms), by transporting them with their families, at their own expense, to the city of New-York, or other places in possession of the enemy . . . that they who ignominiously prefer servitude to freedom, may, by becoming vassals and slaves to the king and parliament, deter others from the like shameful and dishonourable conduct.

III. Jay’s Call to Arms

While Jay and his colleagues were questioning suspected spies in late 1776, the American army was suffering defeat at almost every turn. In November, the British captured Fort Washington, and with it complete control of Manhattan. Following another American defeat at White Plains and Washington’s flight across the Hudson River, the British chased the Continental Army across New Jersey. In early December, the Americans crossed the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, destroying all the boats on the New Jersey side and leaving both New York and New Jersey in British hands.

This was the background for Jay’s most passionate paper of the war, the Address of the Convention of the Representatives of the State of New York to Their Constituents, printed in New York in December 1776. Reprinted here are short excerpts from that lengthy piece:

From Jay’s Address, December 1776

At this most important period, when the freedom and happiness, or the slavery and misery, of the present and future generations of Americans, is to be determined on a solemn appeal to the Supreme Ruler of all events, to whom every individual must one day answer for the part he now acts, it becomes the duty of the Representatives of a free people to call their attention to this most serious subject, and the more so at a time when their enemies are industriously endeavoring to delude, intimidate, and seduce them by false suggestions, artful misrepresentations, and insidious promises of protection.

You and all men were created free, and authorized to establish civil government, for the preservation of your rights against oppression, and the security of that freedom which God hath given you, against the rapacious hand of tyranny and lawless power. It is, therefore, not only necessary to the well-being of Society, but the duty of every man, to oppose and repel all those, by whatever name or title distinguished, who prostitute the powers of Government to destroy the happiness and freedom of the people over whom they may be appointed to rule.

Under the auspices and direction of Divine Providence, your forefathers removed to the wilds and wilderness of America. By their industry they made it a fruitful, and by their virtue a happy country. And we should still have enjoyed the blessings of peace and plenty, if we had not forgotten the source from which these blessings flowed; and permitted our country to be contaminated by the many shameful vices which have prevailed among us.

In a word, if peace was the desire of your enemies, and humanity their object, why do they thus trample under foot every right and every duty, human and divine? Why, like the demons of old, is their wrath to be expiated only by human sacrifices? Why do they excite the savages of the wilderness to murder our inhabitants and exercise cruelties unheard of among civilized nations? No regard for religion or virtue remains among them. Your very churches bear witness of their impiety; your churches are used without hesitation as jails, as stables, and as houses of sport and theatrical exhibitions. What faith, what trust, what confidence, can you repose in these men, who are deaf to the call of humanity, dead to every sentiment of religion, and void of all regard for the temples of the Lord of Hosts?

And why all this desolation, bloodshed, and unparalleled cruelty? In obedience to what? To their will and pleasure! And then what? Why, then you shall be pardoned, because you consent to be slaves. And why should you be slaves now, having been freemen ever since this country was settled? Because, forsooth, the king and parliament of an island three thousand miles off, choose that you should be hewers of wood and drawers of water for them. And is this the people whose proud domination you are taught to solicit? Is this the peace which some of you so ardently desire? For shame! for shame!

Blush, then, ye degenerate spirits, who give all over for lost, because your enemies have marched over three or four counties in this and a neighbouring State—ye who basely fly to have the yoke of slavery fixed upon your necks and to swear that you and your children after you shall be slaves forever! Such men deserve to be slaves, and are fit only for beasts of burden to the rest of mankind. Happy would it be for America if they were removed away, instead of continuing in this Country to people it with a race of animals who, from their form, must be classed among human species, but possess none of those qualities which render man more respectable than the brutes.

If then, God hath given us freedom, are we responsible to him for that, as well as other talents? If it be our birthright, let us not sell it for a mess of pottage, nor suffer it to be torn from us by the hand of violence! If the means of defence are in our power and we do not make use of them, what excuse shall we make to our children and our Creator? These are questions of the deepest concern to us all. These are questions which materially affect our happiness, not only in this world but in the world to come. And surely, “if ever a test for the trial of spirits can be necessary, it is now. If ever those of liberty and faction ought to be distinguished from each other, it is now. If ever it is incumbent on the people to know truth and to follow it, it is now.”

Rouse, therefore, brave Citizens! Do your duty like men! and be persuaded that Divine Providence will not permit this Western World to be involved in the horrours of slavery.

But if there be any among us, dead to all sense of honour, and love of their country; if deaf to all the calls of liberty, virtue, and religion; if forgetful of the magnanimity of their ancestors, and the happiness of their children; if neither the examples nor the success of other nations, the dictates of reason and of nature, or the great duties they owe to their God, themselves, and their posterity, have any effect upon them; if neither the injuries they have received, the prize they are contending for, the future blessings or curses of their children, the applause or the reproach of all mankind, the approbation or displeasure of the Great Judge, or the happiness or misery consequent upon their conduct, in this and a future state, can move them;—then let them be assured, that they deserve to be slaves, and are entitled to nothing but anguish and tribulation. Let them banish from their remembrance the reputation, the freedom, and the happiness they have inherited from their forefathers. Let them forget every duty, human and divine; remember not that they have children: and beware how they call to mind the justice of the Supreme Being: let them go into captivity, like the idolatrous and disobedient Jews, and be a reproach and a by-word among the nations.

But we think better things of you. We believe, and are persuaded, that you will do your duty like men, and cheerfully refer your cause to the great and righteous Judge. If success crown your efforts, all the blessings of Freedom will be your reward.

IV. ‘Kill Washington’

On March 11, 1776, George Washington ordered the creation of a personal bodyguard from among the Colonial Regiments, about fifty men. This elite unit became commonly known as the “Life Guards.”

In June of that year, one of the guards, William Green, was approached by the loyalist spy, Gilbert Forbes. In reality, Forbes was operating under the direction of David Matthews, the Mayor of New York City. The subject of the discussion was a proposal to assassinate General Washington and to carry out simultaneous acts of sabotage. With the British fleet arriving in New York Harbor, and a British invasion imminent, such actions would decapitate the Continental Army, leave New York defenseless, and likely result in a crushing of the rebellion.

Green is recruited to the plot, and he subsequently recruits four more individuals, all members of the “Life Guards”—James Johnson, Michael Lynch, John Barnes, and Thomas Hickey. These soldiers all have intimate access to Washington’s person and are well situated to act.

The timeline is as follows:

May 18, 1776—The New York Provincial Congress, at George Washington’s request, establishes a “Committee on Conspiracies,” for the purpose of uncovering loyalist plots. John Jay is the Chairman. Numerous individuals are brought before the Committee for questioning.

June 17—Isaac Ketcham, who is being held in the city jail for counterfeiting American currency, testifies to the Committee that he has learned, in his jail cell, of a plot to assassinate Washington. Ketcham agrees to become an informant for the Committee, returns to jail, and there learns of the involvement of Thomas Hickey and Michael Lynch, two of the members of Washington’s bodyguard.

June 18—In response to Ketchum’s testimony, the Provincial Congress appoints a three-person secret committee—John Jay, Gouverneur Morris and Philip Livingston—to investigate the plot and communicate directly with Washington.

June 20—John Jay and Gouverneur Morris secretly interview William Leary and James Mason. Leary, a patriot, had discovered the involvement of Mason in the plot and physically dragged him before the Committee. Mason admits his guilt and names Gilbert Forbes, a gunsmith in the City, Thomas Hickey, and two additional members of the Life Guards—William Green and James Johnson—as members of the conspiracy. Green, Johnson, Barnes and several others are arrested and interrogated. Jay and Morris learn that the plan is to assassinate Washington and other General Officers, blow up the magazine, spike the cannon, and destroy Kingsbridge, the only land-route out of Manhattan—as soon as the British fleet appears in New York Harbor. They also learn that funds for the assassins and saboteurs are coming from New York Mayor David Matthews.[fn_2]

June 21—Jay, Livingston and Morris write and send a message to George Washington, which reads:

Sir: Whereas David Mathews, Esq. stands charged with dangerous designs and treasonable conspiracies against the rights & liberties of the United States of America—we do . . . authorize and request you to cause the said David Mathews to be with all his papers forthwith apprehended & secured & that return be made to us of the manner in which this warrant shall be executed.

Given under our hand this
21st day of June, 1776.

Philip Livingston

John Jay

Gouverneur Morris

June 23, 1:00 a.m.—Bearing both a warrant signed by Jay, Morris & Livingston, and a separate order signed by Washington, Continental troops arrest Matthews, at home in bed.

June 22—Jay, Morris and Livingston draw up dozens of additional arrest warrants. They create a “List of Tories in New York and Orange County.”

June 22—City guards bring Gilbert Forbes into custody in the same prison underneath City Hall where Thomas Hickey, Michael Lynch, Isaac Ketcham (now the Committee’s informant), Mayor David Matthews and many others are also detained.

June 23—The Committee interrogates Matthews.

June 23—Washington and the Committee agree on a procedure that will facilitate a swift resolution to the case. The suspects who are soldiers, “most critically, the five Life Guards,” will be handed over to the military for court-martial, rather than be handled by the civilian judicial system.

June 26—The general court-martial of Thomas Hickey is convened at the headquarters of the Continental army, at One Broadway in New York City. Hickey is convicted.

June 28—Hickey is hanged in lower Manhattan before 20,000 people, including every member of Washington’s Army, the largest public execution ever to take place in North America. One eyewitness to Hickey’s hanging is the young artillery captain from New York, Alexander Hamilton.

Following the British invasion of New York, the Provincial Congress left the city, eventually establishing its new base in the upstate city of Fishkill. There, on September 26, the Conspiracies Committee was reorganized, under the name “A Committee for Inquiring into, Detecting, and Defeating Conspiracies against the Liberties of America,” with Jay again as the Chairman. The Committee continues to operate for well over a year.

Day after day, local county Committees of Safety send to Fishkill batches of prisoners under guard, upon charges of receiving protection from the enemy, corresponding with the enemy, or simply with disaffection to the cause. Those who take an oath of allegiance to the Congress are dismissed, but all who refuse are subjected to punishment, confinement in jail, or banishment to another town or colony.

V. Republicans versus Oligarchs

In 1779, Jay is appointed Minister to Spain, a nation tied to France through their related Bourbon monarchies and one which the Continental Congress hoped to recruit into active support for the Revolution. Jay would remain in Europe for five years, the first three in Madrid, and then from 1782 to 1784, with Benjamin Franklin in Paris.

It is precisely with Franklin and Jay’s activities and insights in Europe that the issue of American “counter-intelligence” comes most clearly into focus. Yes, there were British and other spies to contend with—including in Franklin’s household!—but the far greater difficulty for Jay and Franklin was in dealing with the oligarchical rulers and policy-makers among America’s alleged “friends” and allies.

In November 1775 the Continental Congress had appointed a “Committee of Secret Correspondence” for the purpose of initiating and conducting communications with foreign powers. Franklin was chair of the Committee, with Jay overseeing the deployment of Silas Deane to France. Deane had been sent to France by Jay as an undercover agent, to try to convince the French that the Americans were prepared to fight for independence and persuade them to provide military aid. Deane was remarkably successful in securing significant military support, in the form of arms and ammunition, although almost entirely these were obtained through “unofficial” channels. Then, Benjamin Franklin, who arrived in France in December 1776, was able to make the alliance official with the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1778.[fn_3]

Franklin, of course, had dealt with European aristocrats for years, but for Jay and other members of the Continental Congress, their first direct exposure to the machinations of the European nobility came with the clandestine deployment of the French agent Achard de Bonvouloir to Philadelphia in 1775. In December of 1775, Jay and the other Committee members had several secret meetings with de Bonvouloir, but the Frenchman proved to be very evasive as to the purpose of his visit, or the instructions he had been given. In reality, he had been sent there to gather intelligence on the Continental Congress.

Beginning with 1782, in Madrid, Jay experienced the Venetian methods of the European oligarchy in full force. It became very clear, very early on, that the Spanish monarchy had no sympathy for the American cause, but its sole intention was to recover Gibraltar, Florida and other possessions it had lost to Britain earlier in the 18th century. Despite his best efforts, as well as repeated instructions from Philadelphia to remain in Madrid and continue the negotiations, Jay achieved almost nothing in Spain—other than a growing insight into the predatory amorality of the Spanish ruling class. Spanish financial assistance was paltry, and the Spanish adamantly refused to either recognize the independence of the American colonies or to provide any military assistance. Jay was not even able to gain an audience with the king.

In Philadelphia there was a powerful faction in the Continental Congress that was of the view that the French, Spanish, Dutch and other members of the League of Armed Neutrality were “pro-American.” As Jay learned in Madrid, and as both he and Franklin were to discover in Paris, this was a chimera. There were individual members of the elites, such as Lafayette and others recruited by Deane and Franklin, who became passionate partisans to the American cause. This was not true of the ruling elites at large.

Oligarchical Conspiracies

France, much like Spain, entered the war solely for oligarchic geopolitical gain. Most of the military and other aid obtained by Deane from 1775 to 1777 was achieved secretly through Pierre Beaumarchais and other private channels and clandestine operations. After 1778, when the French government began openly financing and supplying the Congress in Philadelphia, this was all done within the context of a “war of revenge” against Britain. France and Spain supported none of the American war aims.

From 1776 through 1784, Franklin had to contend with French officials who universally lied to him and tried to control all aspects of American policy. After the signing of the 1778 French-American alliance, France deployed Conrad Alexandre Gérard, as Minister Plenipotentiary, to Philadelphia. Gérard was extraordinarily duplicitous in his relations with members of the Continental Congress, as he was operating under strict instructions to shackle American policy to suit French interests. In Paris, the Comte de Vergennes, French minister for foreign affairs, was intensely hostile to the American Revolution.

Earlier, in 1776, the physiocrat Turgot, at the time the head of the French Navy, had written a lengthy paper arguing that the best scenario for France would be to provide just enough aid to America to result in a long protracted “no-win” war which would drain British resources and enfeebled them as a military power.

The problem facing Jay and Franklin was that the 1778 Treaty of Amity and Commerce placed America in a subservient position. The Treaty explicitly stated that America would defer to the French on all terms of peace with the British. The French and Spanish were agreed that any independent American nation must be so limited in size, so hemmed in and so economically weak, that it would remain a permanent dependency of France. The French insisted that the new nation be limited to the boundaries of the original thirteen colonies, with the Appalachian Mountains as the western border, that England would retain Canada, the Spanish would obtain Florida, access to the Mississippi River would be denied, and that America would lose all fishing rights in the north Atlantic.

On the latter point, Vergennes wrote, “The fishery along the coast belongs . . . exclusively to England, France participating by special treaties. The Americans have forfeited their share in British fisheries by declaring their independence of England.” In 1782, Vergennes secretly communicated with the British cabinet, proposing a peace agreement precisely along these lines. Vergennes proposed that Britain keep all the territory north of the Ohio River, and that the area south of the Ohio—between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River—be turned into an independent Indian state under Spanish control, a buffer state to prevent American westward expansion.

Turning Oligarchic Passions Against Themselves

The genius of Franklin and Jay in 1782-1783 was their recognition that with Britain, as well as with Spain and France, they were dealing with an oligarchic culture, a Hobbesian geopolitical intention, absent all morality. Britain desired to weaken France and Spain, and those nations wanted nothing more than to take the British down a peg. All of these nations—as well as the Dutch—were simultaneously involved in hideous colonial practices throughout the globe, carving up the world for riches and power. For all involved, the fate of America was secondary, except with the proviso that a potentially independent America must be kept weak, geographically small, and economically dependent on the European powers.

In February 1782, Jay received a communication from Franklin, which stated that Franklin had learned that the British Cabinet was “mad” for a separate peace with America, so that “they may more effectually take revenge on France and Spain.” With Jay’s arrival in Paris, the stage was set for the American representatives to begin to exploit the competing bestial appetites of the European powers, to turn the oligarchs’ own competing frenzies to American advantage.

The 1778 French-American alliance had prohibited the Americans from negotiating directly with the British, and the Continental Congress was explicit in its instructions that neither Jay and Franklin, nor John Adams in the Netherlands, would be allowed to pursue a separate peace.

The first thing that Jay and Franklin agreed to, was to ignore these instructions and to violate the 1778 Treaty. Jay communicated secretly with the British Cabinet, proposing direct negotiations, cutting out the French and Spanish. Subsequently, in both 1782 and 1783, the British sent a series of representatives to Paris to meet with Jay and Franklin. When Vergennes learned of this, his vehement protests were silenced by Franklin, who presented Vergennes with written proof that the French were preparing to sell out American interests at the negotiating table.

Jay and Franklin manipulated both sides. The French, fearful that they might lose their influence in America, had no choice but to continue their military and financial aid. The British, fearful that the American states would form an even deeper military and economic alliance with France, were convinced to make deep concessions. The end result was an extraordinarily generous peace offer by the British, albeit one which Lord Shelburne hoped would pull the independent American nation into the British economic sphere.

Under the provisions of the earlier Quebec Act of 1774, Britain had annexed all territory north of the Ohio River to Canada. In the final peace agreement of 1783, the British agreed to reset the Canadian boundary to its 1763 limit, and all of the land north of the Ohio—what became the Northwest Territory—was ceded to the newly independent America, as was the land west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of the Ohio. America was also granted fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland, and Jay and Franklin prevailed on the British negotiators to force the Spanish to grant navigation rights on the Mississippi River. Essentially, except for Franklin’s initial demand that the British surrender all of Canada! America succeeded in winning all of her war aims.

VI. Why the British So Often Succeed

The oligarchic view, as is still hegemonic in London and among their Anglophile sycophants in the United States today, is that human beings are animals, governed by bestial passions, with no higher moral identity. This is the Hobbesian outlook, as expressed, for example, by Adam Smith, and it is the foundation for geopolitics. The world is an arena governed by the maxim of “each against all.” The clever, the powerful and the sadistic shall triumph.

It is precisely in arriving at a deep appreciation of this oligarchic intention, internalizing the anti-human character of oligarchic culture that true counter-intelligence begins. One must start by learning the Principles involved.

A Timely Intervention

On Martin Luther King’s birthday, of this year, sixty prominent citizens, in the name of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, issued a call for reopening investigations into the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

Members of the Kennedy family, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, as well as Martin Luther King’s nephew Isaac Newton Farris Jr., are among the participants in this effort. Among the other sixty protagonists are G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which determined in 1979 that President Kennedy was the victim of a probable conspiracy; Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the surgeons at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas who tried to save President Kennedy’s life and saw clear evidence he had been struck by bullets from the front and the rear; and Daniel Ellsberg, Mort Sahl and Oliver Stone.

In the statement released by the Committee, they state:

Four major political murders traumatized American life in the 1960s and cast a shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each in his own unique way attempting to turn the United States away from war toward disarmament and peace, away from domestic violence and division toward civil amity and justice. Their killings were together a savage, concerted assault on American democracy and the tragic consequences of these assassinations still haunt our nation.

“The tragic consequences of these assassinations still haunt our nation”—Think about these words. Many among us sense the loss, the downward spiral that has infected America during these past five decades, but how many of us have thought through the strategic and historic implications of those murders?

From 1956 through 1963, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy battled to free America from the hegemony of British policy which had been imposed on the trans-Atlantic world following the death of Franklin Roosevelt. This involved economic, foreign policy and science initiatives, all intended to free the world from the paradigm of the nuclear terror of the “cold war” and the Malthusian economic policies of London. The American University speech by President Kennedy, on June 10, 1963, personifies the potential of that effort.

Rather than merely sifting through the evidence—Sherlock Holmes-style—any serious investigation of the John F. Kennedy assassination must begin by returning to the thread which New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was unraveling between 1963 and 1967. In his investigation into Clay Shaw, Garrison had shown that Shaw was not only a stringer for the CIA, but that through his firm, the International Trade Mart, he was a deployable asset of the very shady and dirty Canadian/Swiss company, Permindex, and its majority shareholder Major Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). As documented in numerous investigations, Permindex has also been directly implicated in the 1962 assassination of Italian leader Enrico Mattei, as well as in the 1962 assassination attempt against President Charles DeGaulle.

Cui bono? Who benefits? The last fifty years have seen the United States embrace geopolitics, Malthusianism and monetarism—Britain’s agenda. Since 2001, our nation has done Britain’s dirty work in regime change wars, threats to China and Russia, and the aggressive expansion of NATO, while all the while destroying our own productive economy, along with the hopes and aspirations of our citizenry.

As in the case of Justice for Lyndon LaRouche, justice for John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X will liberate minds, transform morale, and provide the means whereby the true United States might be reawakened.

The Remedy

Today, the aggressive pursuit of British imperial interest is apparent everywhere in the U.S., from the Atlantic Council, to the Integrity Initiative, to many and varied strategic and cultural interventions. As has been conclusively proven, all of the “get Trump” operations originated in London.

Shall we continue to be the British lapdog? Shall we confine American foreign relations within the Hobbesian straitjacket of geopolitics? If China, Russia, or other nations—such as Mexico—offer their hand in friendship, should we not grasp it? Is this not the intention of President Trump today, as he moves to end the “regime change” warfare so beloved of the Anglophiles in Washington, D.C.?

Ours should and must be a republican policy, one which seeks to engender both the betterment of our own people, as well as the “benefit of the other,” in regard to our relations with other sovereign nation states.

To return to the hero of our story, on July 28, 1777, John Jay authored an “Address to the People of Ireland.” It reads, in part:

Congress agreed to suspend all trade with Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies. And here permit us to assure you, that it was with the utmost reluctance we could prevail upon ourselves to cease our commercial connection with your island. Your parliament had done us no wrong. You had ever been friendly to the rights of mankind; and we acknowledge with pleasure and gratitude that your nation has produced patriots who have nobly distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and America. On the other hand, we were not ignorant that the labour and manufactures of Ireland, like those of the silk-worm, were of little moment to herself, but served only to give luxury to those who neither toil nor spin. We perceived that if we continued our commerce with you, our agreement not to import from Britain must be fruitless. Compelled to behold thousands of our countrymen imprisoned, and men, women, and children in promiscuous and unmerited misery, when we find all faith at an end, and sacred treaties turned into tricks of state, when we perceive our friends and kinsmen massacred, our habitations plundered, our houses in flames, and their once happy inhabitants fed only by the hand of charity, who can blame us for endeavouring to restrain the progress of the desolation? Who can censure us for repelling the attacks of such a barb’rous band?

Could the issue not be clearer? Jay is offering dear friendship to the people of Ireland, within the context of the principles for which America is fighting for its freedom. The actual enemy is the oligarchic outlook of Britain’s rulers, who sneeringly, treat their subjects like dogs, to be kicked or rewarded based on the level of submissive obedience.

A moral American outlook pervades the proposal by John Quincy Adams for the creation of a “Community of Principle” among sovereign nations. This was the paradigm of the Adams-authored Monroe Doctrine, a document which aimed not at creating an imperial “sphere of influence” for the United States, but rather intended to protect the emerging republics of Central and South America from geopolitical rape by the European empires.

As the adage goes, the British Empire has no allies, only interests. America has a moral mission, one which has been much abused since 1963, but one to which we still may return. Isn’t it past time to rediscover that mission? True, effective counter-intelligence works begins with rooting out the corruption within one’s own house, with eradicating those vestiges of oligarchic geopolitical thinking which have misled the nation. Then, the real productive work may begin.

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