by Jon E. Lewis
For all the efforts of Knight and Short, they failed to land a knockout blow on the body Freemasonic. That some smalltown burghers, that some coppers, that some bewigged judges give special deals to those who proffer the secret handshake was distinctly underwhelming: much the same charge, if to a lesser degree, could be levelled against golf club members everywhere. Both authors failed conspicuously to punch Freemasonry’s weakest spots: its racism and sexism. Although Lodges do not explicitly bar black and Asian members, Masons from ethnic minorities in Britain are rare, while in the US the Freemasons of the South are still tied into the KKK. No women are allowed to become Freemasons and, according to historian Jasper Ridley, Freemasons “also refuse to have any dealings with any other society that accepts women”.
Anti-Masons might have less to fear from the Masons than they realize. Demographics are not on the Masons’ side. White, male and getting older, the Masons may simply die out.
International society of middle-aged men in sinister plot to take over society: ALERT LEVEL 3
Further Reading
Walton Hannah, Darkness Visible, 1952
Walton Hannah, Christians by Degrees, 1954
Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Christ, 1996
Stephen Knight, Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, 1976
Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood: The Secret World of the Freemasons, 1984
Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, 1999
Martin Short, Inside the Brotherhood: Further Secrets of the Freemasons, 1989
GEMSTONE FILE
The Gemstone File is the granddaddy of the meta-conspiracy, redefining 20th-century history as a vast plot to take over America. Along the way its tentacles pull in everybody from JFK to Howard Hughes to Aristotle Onassis, the villain of the piece. The Gemstone File’s impact on popular culture can be seen in movies and TV shows from Oliver Stone’s JFK to Chris Carter’s The X-Files.
The Gemstone File first surfaced in the Bay Area of San Francisco in 1969, when Bruce Roberts claimed to have had his method of synthesizing rubies (“gemstones”) stolen by the Howard Hughes Corporation. When Roberts investigated the “theft” he stumbled upon a mega-conspiracy – and wrote up his investigation in the form of letters, which he sent to various parties. One recipient was Californian conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell, who had made a minor name for herself for researching the Kennedy assassination. Although Brussell dismissed Roberts as a crank, she let freelance journalist Stephanie Caruana use the “gemstone file” for articles in Playgirl and other publications in 1974. Caruana, much impressed by the “gemstone file” and Roberts himself, determined to summarize Roberts’s investigation. She called the precis A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File (or Files; versions vary) and issued 24 photocopies of it, which were passed around the campuses of California. On the last page the Key implored:
At present the only way to spread this information here in America is hand to hand. Your help is needed. Please make 1, 5, 10, 100 copies or whatever you can, and give them to friends or politicians, groups, media. This game is nearly up. Either the Mafia goes or America goes.
With its urgent tone and its alternative “underground” style of dissemination, the Skeleton Key became a phenomenon, not only in counter-cultural California but across the world. Its content, though, was somewhat less than its form.
According to the Skeleton Key, a “Mafia” (not to be confused with those other gangsters from Sicily or Russia) headed by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis kidnapped rival billionaire Howard Hughes, killed him, and replaced him with a double. The doppelgänger was used to control the Las Vegas gaming industry. While Onassis was not counting his illicit money, he was engineering the coup by which John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were removed from the American political scene. After JFK’s assassination, Onassis took Jackie Kennedy to be his trophy wife.
Intriguingly Roberts/Caruana proposed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “patsy” in the JFK shooting, and that the real killers were Jimmy Fratianno, Johnny Roselli and Eugene Brading, all of whom had links with the Mafia. As for the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Key proposed that Sirhan Sirhan’s shots went wild and the actual executioner was Thane Cesar, who was “loaned” for the occasion by Onassis to act, supposedly, as Robert Kennedy’s guard. Cesar was right behind Kennedy when the latter died.
A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File contains whispers of the truth. Onassis was linked to the Kennedys, and Nixon’s family was in financial debt to Howard Hughes. However, the Key is too riven with inaccuracies to be convincing. Howard Hughes was not buried off Skorpios, Onassis’s private island, and his handwriting could not have been faked in 1957 by a computer. President Hoover could not have been murdered by administration of “sodium morphate”.
The suppressed history of the Gemstone File is fiction. But for sheer chutzpah and cultural impact, only the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion matches A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone Files in the annals of conspiracy theory.
Greek tycoon Onassis heads Mafia-like gang which assassinated JFK and RFK: ALERT LEVEL 1
Further Reading
Stephanie Caruana, A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File, 1974
Kenn Thomas and David Hatcher Childress, Inside the Gemstone File, 1999
DOCUMENT: A SKELETON KEY TO THE GEMSTONE FILE, BY STEPHANIE CARUANA
The gemstone file was written in many segments over a period of years by an American man named Bruce Roberts. Parts of the file were released to certain Americans beginning in 1969. The number of handwritten pages is well over a thousand, of which I have read about four hundred. I do not have the time or the research facilities to verify the entire story. Perhaps others can help.
Since the scope of the work is so large, and the events described so complex and interlocking, it may be more easily understood with this skeleton outline of the gemstone thesis. Individual papers can then be read with greater comprehension.
1932: Onassis, a Greek drug pusher and ship owner who made his first million selling “Turkish tobacco” (Opium) in Argentina, worked out a profitable deal with Joseph Kennedy, Eugene Meyer, and Meyer Lansky. Onassis was to ship booze directly into Boston for Joseph Kennedy. Also involved was a heroin deal with Franklin and Elliott Roosevelt.
1934: Onassis, Rockefeller and the Seven Sisters (major oil companies) signed an agreement, outlined an oil cartel memo: Beat the Arabs out of their oil, ship it on Onassis’s ships; Rockefeller and the Seven Sisters to get rich. All this was done.
Roberts, studying journalism and physics at the University of Wisconsin, learned these things via personal contacts. His special interest was in crystallography – and the creation of synthetic rubies, the original Gemstone experiment.
1936–40: Eugene Meyer buys the Washington Post, to get our news Media; other Mafia buy other papers, broadcasting, T.V., etc. News censorship of all major news goes into effect.
1941–45: World War II; very profitable for Onassis, Rockefeller, Kennedys, Roosevelts, I.G. Farben, etc. Onassis selling oil, arms and dope to both sides went through the war without losing a single ship or man.
1949: Onassis buys US surplus “Liberty Ships” in questionable (illegal) purchase. Lawyer Burke Marshall helps him.
1956: Howard Hughes, Texas millionaire, is meanwhile buying his way toward his own personal gain. He buys senators, governors, etc. He finally buys his last politician: newly elected V.P. Nixon, via a quarter-million-dollar non-repayable loan to Nixon’s brother Donald.
Early 1957: V.P. Nixon repays the favor by having IRS Treasury grant tax-free status (refused twice before) to “Hughes Medical Foundation”, sole owner of Hughes Aircraft, creating a tax-free, non-accountable money funnel or laundry, for whatever Hughes wanted to do. US Government also shelved anti-trust suits against Hughes’ TWA, etc.
March 1957: Onassis carried out a carefully planned event: he has Hughes kidnapped from his bungalow at the Beverly
Hills Hotel, using Hughes’ own men (Chester Davis, born Cesare in Sicily, et al). Hughes’ men either quit, get fired, or stay on in the new Onassis organization. A few days later, Mayor Cannon of Nevada (now Senator Cannon) arranges a fake “marriage” to Jean Peters, to explain Hughes’ sudden loss of interest in chasing movie stars. Hughes, battered and brain damaged in the scuffle, is taken to the Emerald Isle Hotel in the Bahamas, where the entire top floor has been rented for thirty days, and is later dragged off to a cell on Onassis’ island, Skorpios. Onassis now has a much larger power base in the US (the Hughes empire), as well as control over V.P. Nixon and other Hughes-purchased politicians. L. Wayne Rector, Hughes’ double since 1955, becomes “Hughes”.
September, 1957: Onassis calls the Appalachian meeting to announce to US Mafia head his grab of Hughes and his adoption of Hughes’ game plan for acquiring power: buying US senators, congressmen, governors, judges to take control legally of the US government. Onassis’s radio message to Appalachia from a remote Pennsylvania farmhouse intercepted (reluctantly) by FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, on the basis of a tipoff from some Army Intelligence guys who weren’t in on the plan.
Also in 1957: Joseph Kennedy takes John F. and Jackie to see Onassis on his yacht, introduces John and reminds Onassis of an old Mafia promise: the presidency for a Kennedy. Onassis agrees.
1958: Hordes of Mafia-selected, purchased and supported “grass roots” candidates sweep into office.
1959: Castro takes over Cuba from dictator Battista, thereby destroying cozy and lucrative Mafia gambling empire run for Onassis by Meyer Lansky. Castro scoops up $6 million in Mafia casino receipts. Onassis is furious, V.P. Nixon becomes operations chief for CIA-planned Bay of Pigs invasion, using CIA Hunt, McCord, etc., and Cuban ex-Battista strong-arm cops (Cuban freedom-fighters) Martinez, Consalez, etc., as well as winners like Frank Sturgis (Fiorini).
1959: Stirring election battle between Kennedy and Nixon. Either way Onassis wins, since he has control over both candidates.
1960: JFK elected. American people happy. Rose Kennedy happy. Onassis happy. Mafia ecstatic.
Roberts brings his synthetic rubies – the original gemstones – to Hughes’ aircraft in Los Angeles. They steal his rubies – the basis for laser beam research, laser bombs, etc., because of the optical quality of the rubies. One of the eleven possible sources for one of the ingredients involved in the Gemstone experiment was the Golden Triangle area. Roberts was married to the daughter of the former French consul in Indochina. In that area, Onassis’s involvements in the Golden Triangle dope trade was no secret. Roberts investigation revealed the Onassis–Hughes connection, kidnap and switch. “Gemstones” – synthetic rubies and sapphires with accomplished “histories” – gemstone papers – were sold or given away to consular offices – in return for information. A world-wide information network was gradually developed – a trade of the intelligence activities of many countries. This intelligence network is the source for much of the information in the Gemstone File.
January 1961: Joseph Kennedy has a stroke, ending his control over John and Bobby. The boys decide to rebel against Onassis’s control. Why? Inter-Mafia struggle? Perhaps a dim hope of restoring this country to its mythical integrity? They began committing Mafia no-nos: arrested Wally Bird, owner of Air Thailand, who had been shipping Onassis’s heroin out of the Golden Triangle (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam), under contract with the CIA (Air Opium); arrested teamster Mafia Jimmy Hoffa, and put him in jail. Declared the 73$ million in forged “Hughes” land liens, deposited with San Francisco Bank of America, as “security” for the TWA judgment against Hughes, to be what they are: forgeries.
April 1961: CIA Bay of Pigs fiasco. Hunt, McCord, CIA, Battista’s Cubans and Mafia angry about JFK’s lack of enthusiasm. Mafia Onassis has his right-hand man “Hughes’ Top aide” former FBI and CIA Robert Maheu (nicknamed “IBM” for Iron Bob Maheu), hire and train a Mafia assassination team to get Castro. The team of a dozen or so includes John Roselli and Jimmy (The Weasel) Prattiano, expert Mafia hitmen, assisted by CIA Hunt and McCord and others. This was reported recently by Jack Anderson, who gets a lot of his “tips” from his friend, Frank (Fiorini) Sturgis – also on the Castro assassination team. The team tries five times to kill Castro with everything from long-range rifles to apple pie with sodium morphate in it.
Castro survives.
1963: Members of the Castro assassination team arrested at Lake Pontchartrain, La. by Bobby Kennedy’s justice boys. Angered, Onassis stops trying to kill Castro. He changes target and goes for the head: JFK, who, according to Onassis, “welched” on a Mafia deal. JFK sets up “Group of 40” to fight Onassis.
August 1963: Two murders had to occur before the murder of JFK, of people who would understand the situation and might squawk:
Senator Estes Kefauver, whose crimes commission investigations had uncovered the 1932 deal between Onassis, Kennedy, Eugene Meyer, Lansky, Roosevelt, et al. Kefauver planned a speech on the Senate floor denouncing Mafia operations; instead, he ate a piece of apple pie laced with sodium morphate (used in rat poison), and had a sodium-morphate-induced “heart attack” on the Senate floor.
Phillip Graham: Editor of The Washington Post, Phillip had married Katherine Meyer, Eugene Meyer’s daughter, who had inherited the Washington Post and allied media empire. Graham put together the Kennedy–Johnson ticket and was Kennedy’s friend in the struggle with Onassis. According to Gemstone, Katherine Meyer Graham bribed some psychiatrists to certify that Phil was insane. He was allowed out of the nuthouse for the weekend and died of a shotgun wound in the head in the Graham home in Washington; death ruled “suicide”.
1 November 1963: The hit on JFK was supposed to take place in true Mafia style: a triple execution, together with Diem and Nhu in Vietnam. Diem and Nhu got theirs, as scheduled. Onassis had invited Jackie for a cruise on the Christina, where she was when JFK got tipped off that big “O” planned to wipe him out. JFK called Jackie on the yacht, from the White House, hysterical: “Get off that yacht if you have to swim” and cancelled his appearance at a football stadium in Chicago, where this CIA–Mafia assassination team was poised for the kill. Jackie stayed on board, descended the gangplank a few days later on Onassis’s arm, in Turkey, to impress the Bey, Mustapha. Madame Nhu in the US bitterly remarked, “Whatever has happened in Vietnam?”
One of the assassination teams was picked up in Chicago with a rifle and quickly released by the police. Three weeks later the Mafia’s alternate and carefully arranged execution plan went into effect: JFK was assassinated in Dallas. A witness who recognized pictures of some of the people arrested in Dealey Plaza as having been in Chicago three weeks earlier told Black Panthers Hampton and Clark.
The JFK murder: Onassis–Hughes’ man Robert Maheu reassigned the Mafia–CIA Castro assassination team to the murder of JFK, adding Eugene Brading, a third Mafia hitman from the Denver Mafia Amaldones “family”. Two months earlier Brading, on parole after a series of crimes, applied for a new driver’s license, explaining to the California DMV that he had decided to change his name to Jim Brading. Brading got his California parole the first time to look things over and the second time when JFK was scheduled for his Dallas trip.
Lee Harvey Oswald, CIA, with carefully planned links to both the ultra right and to the Communists, was designated as the patsy. He was supposed to shoot Governor Connally and he did.
Each of the four shooters – Oswald, Brading, Frattiano and Roselli – had a timer and a back-up man. Back-up men were supposed to pick up the spent shells and get rid of the guns. Timers would give the signal to shoot. Hunt and McCord were there to help. Sturgis was in Miami.
Frattiano shot from a second story window in the Dal-Tex building across the street from the Texas School Book Depository. He apparently used a handgun – he is an excellent shot with a pistol. Frattiano and his back-up man were “arrested”, driven away from the Dal-Tex building in a police car and released (without being booked). The Dallas police office is i
n the Dal-Tex building.
Roselli shot Kennedy once, hitting the right side of his head and blowing his brains out with a rifle from behind a fence in the grassy knoll area. Roselli and his timer went down a manhole behind the fence and followed the sewer line away from Dealey Plaza.
The third point of the triangulated ambush was supplied by Eugene Brading shooting from a small pagoda at Dealey Plaza across the street from the grassy knoll. (Brading missed because Roselli’s and Frattiano’s shots had just hit Kennedy in the head from the right and the rear nearly simultaneously). Brading’s shot hit the curb and ricocheted off. Brading was photographed on the scene stuffing his gun under his coat. He wore a big leather hat, its hatband marked with large conspicuous X’s. (Police had been instructed to let anyone with an X-marked hatband through the police lines. Some may have been told they were Secret Service.) After his shot, Brading ditched his gun with his back-up man and walked up the street toward the Dal-Tex building. Sheriff rushed up to Brading, assuming he was “Secret Service”, and told him he had just seen a man come out of the Book Depository and jump into a station wagon. Brading was uninterested. Brading walked into the Dal-Tex building to “make a phone call”. There he was arrested by another deputy sheriff, showed his “Jim Braden” driver’s license and was released without being booked.
Oswald shot Connally twice from the Texas School Book Depository. He split from the front door. His back-up man was supposed to take the rifle out of the building (or so Oswald thought); instead he “hid” it behind some boxes, where it would be found later.
Three men dressed as tramps picked up the spent shells from Dealey Plaza. One was Howard Hunt. Then they drifted over to an empty boxcar sitting on the railway spur behind the grassy knoll area, and waited. A Dallas police officer ordered two Dallas cops to “go over to the boxcar and pick up the tramps”. The three “tramps” paraded around Dealey Plaza to the Police Department in the Dal-Tex Building. They were held there until the alarm went out to pick up Oswald; then they were released, without being booked. In all, ten men were arrested immediately after the shooting; all were released soon after; none were booked; not a word about their existence is mentioned in the Warren Report.