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

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

.Staff writer (Jan. 2, 1989)
"Western Goals Foundation."
''Interhemispheric Resource Center/International Relations Center''. Archived fro
the original.
/ref> It was founded in 1979 by

Major General Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of a ...

John K. Singlaub Major General John Kirk Singlaub (July 10, 1921 – January 29, 2022) was a major general in the United States Army, founding member of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and a highly decorated officer in the former Office of Strategic Servi ...

, the publisher and spy John H. Rees, and Congressman Larry McDonald. It went defunct in 1986 when the

Tower Commission The Tower Commission was a United States presidential commission established on December 1, 1986, by President Ronald Reagan in response to the Iran–Contra affair (in which senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arm ...

revealed it had been part of Oliver North's Iran–Contra funding network.

History

After the

Watergate The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...

and

COINTELPRO COINTELPRO ( syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrati ...

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. 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". According to former employees, agencies receiving information from Western Goals included the

Drug Enforcement Agency The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is an agency within the Liberian government charged with fighting drug-related crimes.Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as the ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and prevent ...

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

, and police departments. 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 World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD) is an international non-governmental organization of anti-communist politicians and groups. It was founded in 1952 as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) under the initiative of Chiang Kai-sh ...

, the

John Birch Society The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, or libertarian ideas. T ...

, and similar organizations. One of its principal sponsors was the Texan billionaire

Nelson Bunker Hunt Nelson Bunker Hunt (February 22, 1926 – October 21, 2014) was an American oil company executive. He was a billionaire whose fortune collapsed after he and his brothers William Herbert and Lamar tried to corner the world market in silver ...

. The organization was based in a townhouse in

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

. It also said it had offices in

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

and

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

. A former employee told ''Politico'' in 2018 that more of its funding came from West Germany than the United States. 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. People in law enforcement sometimes leaked derogatory intelligence to Western Goals, which Rees then published in newsletters, which in turn were entered into the

Congressional Record The ''Congressional Record'' is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Publishing Office and issued when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record Inde ...

by McDonald, which shielded him from

libel Defamation is the act of communicating to a third party false statements about a person, place or thing that results in damage to its reputation. It can be spoken (slander) or written (libel). It constitutes a tort or a crime. The legal defini ...

. Western Goals would then cite McDonald’s statements in its own public reports. Unverified reports by Western Goals accusing American

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...

groups of ties to

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

were also publicized in '' Reader's Digest'' and by the Reagan administration. Western Goals was sued by the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...

(ACLU) after a police officer was caught adding information from the disbanded

Los Angeles Police Department The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the third-large ...

"Red Squad" to a related computer

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user can perform functions such as ...

.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 fro

/ref> Western Goals raised funds for the Nicaraguan

Contras The Contras were the various U.S.-backed and funded right-wing rebel groups that were active from 1979 to 1990 in opposition to the Marxist Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction Government in Nicaragua, which came to power in 1979 fol ...

starting in 1983, after Congress banned the Reagan administration from providing U.S. support. 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. Singlaub was an intermediary in Oliver North’s illegal weapons network for the Contras. Officials of the foundation were questioned in the Iran-Contra hearings of 1986. The organization founded an offshoot,

Western Goals (UK) Western Goals may refer to: *The Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence dissemination network active on the right-wing in the United States *The Western Goals Institute Western Goals Institute (WGI) was a far-right pressure group and ...

, later the Western Goals Institute, which was briefly influential in British Conservative politics.

Advisory board and directors

Bibliography

Books

*''Ally Betrayed: Nicaragua'' (1989). Foreword by

U.S. Ambassador Ambassadors of the United States are persons nominated by the President of the United States, president to serve as the country's diplomat, diplomatic representatives to foreign nations, international organizations, and as Ambassador-at-large, ...

Earl E. T. Smith Earl Edward Tailer Smith (July 8, 1903 – February 15, 1991) was an American financier and diplomat, who served as ambassador to Cuba from 1957 to 1959 and mayor of Palm Beach 1971 to 1977. Early life Smith was born in Newport, Rhode Island o ...

. U.S. ed. postscript by Turner B. Shelton. Nicaragua ed. postscript by Francisco Urcuyo Maliaños. 112 pages. . *''Ally Betrayed: The Republic of China'' (1982), by David Nelson Rowe. Foreword by Anthony Kubek. Afterword by Patricia Hurley. 107 pages. . *''Ally Betrayed: The Republic of Korea'' (1982), by David Nelson Rowe. Foreword by

. Postscript by

Congressman A Member of Congress (MOC) is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The term member of parliament (MP) is an equivalen ...

Bob Stump. 106 pages. . *''Red Tide Rising in the Carolinas'' (1980). 26 pages. .
''Broken Seals: A Western Goals Foundation Report on the Attempts to Destroy the Foreign and Domestic Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S.''
(1980). Introduction by

John M. Ashbrook John Milan Ashbrook (September 21, 1928 – April 24, 1982) was an American politician and newspaper publisher. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States House of Representatives from Ohio from 1961 until his death.

. Afterword by

Lt. Gen. Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star rank, three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in ...

Daniel O. Graham Daniel Orrin Graham (April 13, 1925 – December 31, 1995) was a United States Army officer who ultimately rose to the rank of lieutenant general (United States), lieutenant general. Graham served in Germany, Korea, and Vietnam and received sever ...

. 110 pages..
''Red Locusts: Soviet Support for Terrorism in South Africa''
(1981). Foreword by

U.S. Senator The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and powe ...

Jesse Helms Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) was an American politician. A leader in the conservative movement, he served as a senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ...

. Postscript by

Ambassador An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or sov ...

Marion Smoak. *''Soviet Active Measures Against the United States'' (1984). 120 pages.

Films

''No Place to Hide: The Strategy and Tactics of Terrorism''
(1982). Written, produced, and hosted by

G. Edward Griffin George Edward Griffin (born November 7, 1931) is an American author, filmmaker, and Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theorist. Griffin's writings promote a number of right-wing views and conspiracy theories regarding political, defense and health ...

. Directed by Dick Quincer. 58 min. . Transcript .
''The Subversion Factor: A History of Treason in Modern America''
(1983). Written and hosted by

. 120 min. . Transcript . Part 1
''Moles in High Places''.
Part 2
''The Open Gates of Troy''.

References

{{reflist

External links

Western Goals
at Powerbase.info
Western Goals
at Militarist Monitor
Works published by Western Goals
at

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

Political organizations based in the United States Anti-communist organizations in the United States Surveillance scandals 1979 establishments in the United States 1986 disestablishments in the United States Law enforcement scandals Iran–Contra affair Conservative organizations in the United States Organizations established in 1979 Organizations disestablished in 1986