The Brotherhood (34 page)

The minister's duties called for him to preach thirty-six Sundays of the year at his own church and twelve Sundays in other churches witho
ut a regular minister. In August
1979 Davies wrote to the Church's rota secretary stating that he did not wish to be seen to be helping in the teachings of tenets of Freemasonry, which he believed to be 'a challenge to the discipleship of Jesus Christ'. He enclosed a cheque for £108.00 to cover his absence from certain churches where he felt his presence had been both unexpected and unwanted because of his views on Freemasonry. When I spoke to him about his case in May 1982, Davies said that the Presbyterian Church of Wales was particularly strongly influenced by members of the Brotherhood among its own members and administration. He explained, 'I became a minister in 1974 and Cardiff was my first pastorate. I had two churches. In one of them I encountered some Freemasons. I did not know then what I know now. I researched into Masonry and found it entirely incompatible with faith in Jesus Christ. I spoke privately to some men in the church, and without making it a bee in my bonnet I did some comparisons between Freemasonry and Christianity during the course of some sermons. I compared, for example, the meaning of faith in Christianity and the masonic meaning of faith.

'In February 1980 I discovered a booklet called
Christ, the Christian and Freemasonry
which I circulated among the members of the church.

'By this time I had been reported to the local church governing body - the presbytery - and a committee of seven men came to see me. I know now that some of them were Freemasons. They accused me of being an evangelical Christian, which I am, 'intolerant of un-Biblical teaching and in particular Freemasonry'. They accused me of being un-compassionate, which presumably meant I had upset Masons' and their relatives' feelings. It was said that membership of my church was going down, but I had had about fifty of the elderly members die and had introduced twenty-six new members. They said I was not ecumenically minded enough in that I didn't join in local services of other churches, which was not true. It is true that I have reservations about the present moves towards church unity but we did have ecumenical meetings with local churches roundabout. And I was accused of allowing the children's work to decline when it is actually expanding. I knew then that the rest of the charges had been trumped up by Masons determined to end my opposition to Masonry. I was not allowed to answer the charges. And then when I next met them a month later on 20 June 1980 they presented a report before the governing body without any warning - and I was dismissed.

'I received information several days later from a member of my other church who made some enquiries of some masonic friends that a Lodge meeting had taken place in March at which it was decided that pressure had to be brought to bear to have me removed. I have made this charge in public and it has never been rebutted.

'I was dismissed from the pastorate, not from my ministry. These are technically different, in practice the same. I then appealed to the highest body in the church, the Association, which appointed a panel of men to look into it. They said that a period of twelve months should be allowed to see if a reconciliation could be achieved between me and the local people who wanted me sacked. I agreed to this but they made no attempt at reconciliation.

'I won my appeal but it was not implemented because my local church would not accept it. I was sacked and told to leave my house within six weeks.'

The elders of the church claimed before the industrial tribunal that Davies had not been an employee of the Church but self-employed, and as such ineligible to claim unfair dismissal. They cited the case of a minister dismissed from Scunthorpe Congregational Church in 1978 as a precedent. But the non-masonic tribunal decided that Davies had been an employee and therefore had the right to seek a ruling.

Meanwhile, after six months on the dole, he works (at the time of writing) as minister for an independent church he has formed at Whitchurch along with members of both his former churches.

PART SIX

The KGB Connection

26

The Italian Crisis

A masonic conspiracy of gigantic proportions rocked Italy to its foundations in the spring and summer of 1981. Known as the 'P2' case, this imbroglio of corruption, blackmail and murder brought down the coalition government of premier Arnaldo Forlani and decimated the upper echelons of Italian power.

P2 is the popular abbreviation of Masonic Lodge
Propaganda Due,
which had become, in the words of the leader of Italy's Republican Party, 'the centre of pollution of national life - secret, perverse and corrupting'.

The moment this 'scandal of scandals' hit the headlines, individual members of the United Grand Lodge hastened to point out that English Freemasonry was fundamentally different from that practised in Italy. But in spite of the perfectly sincere disclaimers emanating from Great Queen Street, the mysterious P2 case has a direct bearing on events in Britain today.

If the solution to the mystery of P2 is as I suspect, Britain stands in danger of a social calamity at least as great as that which struck Italy. Data and clues garnered from many sources, including the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and the Security Service (MI5), suggest that without yet knowing it the British government faces an impossible dilemma. Evidence published here for the first time indicates that British Freemasonry, without realizing it, has become a time-bomb which could explode at any moment.

But first P2: how it began, what it seemed, and what it really was.

Freemasonry was introduced to Italy in about 1733 by an Englishman, Lord Sackville, but because of its open involvement in politics and religion Italian Freemasonry was not recognized by the United Grand Lodge of England until 1973.

A 'Propaganda' Lodge was constituted in Turin a century ago under the Grand Orient of Italy. This elite Lodge, which counted among its members the King himself, was in some ways similar to the English Quatuor Coronati Lodge No 2076 in that its purpose was to further research into Masonry. Despite several reports to the contrary, there was no connection save the name between this Lodge and the sinister masonic group of the present day. In fact, Lodge Propaganda Due was not even a Lodge in the true sense. It was a secret grouping of Masons but it was never officially constituted and never held regular meetings of all members.

P2 was formed in 1966 at the behest of the then Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy, Giordano Gamberini. The Grand Master's plan was to establish a group of eminent men who would be sympathetic and useful to Freemasonry. The man chosen to create this elite band was a rich textile manufacturer from the town of Arezzo in Tuscany. He had entered Masonry two years before and had risen to the Italian equivalent of Master Mason. His name was Licio Gelli.

Gelli, the first Italian to have been accredited with dual Italian-Argentin
ian nationality, had fought for the
Fascists in the Spanish Civil War and later been a passionate supporter of Mussolini. Later, having been involved in the torture of Italian partisans, he was forced to flee the country, winding up in Argentina. There he met President Juan Peron and a long and close friendship began. Peron eventually appointed Gelli to the position of Argentina's economic adviser to Italy. Years passed, and Gelli returned to his native country, settled at Arezzo and became a Freemason.

The group of men Gelli was ostensibly getting together on behalf of Grand Master Gamberini was called Raggruppamento Gelli Propaganda Due - P2 for short. The members came to be known as
Piduisti
- 'P2-ists'. Gelli had ambitions for P2 which the Grand Master had never so much as imagined.

By 1969 P2 was being spoken of as a Lodge, and Gelli as its Venerable Master. He had a genius for convincing people he had immense influence in public affairs, and many men joined P2 because they believed the Venerable Master's patronage was indispensable to the furtherance of their careers. By this self-perpetuating process, Gelli's purported power became real. Others joined the Lodge because Gelli used ruthless blackmail. The 'masonic dues' Gelli extracted from the brethren of Lodge P2 were not primarily financial. What the Venerable Master demanded - and got - were secrets: official secrets which he could use to consolidate and extend his power, and personal secrets he could use to blackmail others into joining his Lodge. This most sensitive information from all areas of government was passed to him by his members, who seem to have obeyed him with unquestioning devotion. In 1976 a legitimate Freemason, Francesco Siniscalchi, made a statement at the office of the Rome Public Prosecutor, alleging that Gelli was involved in criminal activities. He was ignored, partly because of Gelli's already formidable reputation, which intimidated two officers responsible for processing the complaint.

Soon after this, Gelli came to the notice of the police after his friend and P2 member Michele Sindona, Italy's most influential private banker, had fled to the United States leaving financial chaos behind him. Wanted on charges of fraud in Italy, Sindona was arrested in New York. Gelli flew to America and testified that Sindona was an innocent victim of Communist intrigue. It was Sindona, widely believed to have links with the Mafia, who introduced Gelli in Washington, DC, to Philip Guarino, a director of the US Republican Party's National Committee and Ronald Reagan's campaign manager in the 1980 Presidential Election. It was thanks to Guarino that Gelli was able to attend the inauguration of Reagan as President in January 1981, two months before the P2 bomb exploded.

In 1980, facing fraud charges in New York following the collapse of his Franklin National Bank - reputedly America's worst banking disaster - Sindona appealed to his Venerable Master for help. Meanwhile in Italy magistrates were still investigating Sindona's fraudulent activities and also the events behind the murder of the liquidator of his financial empire. After the appeal to Gelli, a fake kidnapping was staged in New York and Sindona disappeared. Evidence came to light that implicated Gelli in the escape and on 18 March 1981 two Milan magistrates ordered a police raid on his villa outside Arezzo.

Gelli, as always, had been one step ahead. By the time the police reached the Villa Wanda, named after his wife, they had both disappeared. A warrant was later issued for Gelli's arrest on charges of political, military and industrial espionage, and endangering the security of the state.

Among the documents left behind at the abandoned villa were the membership files of P2. A list of members drawn up by Gelli contained the names of nearly a thousand of Italy's most powerful men. One prosecutor's report later stated: 'Lodge Propaganda Due is a secret sect that has combined business and politics with the intention of destroying the country's constitutional order.'

Among the names were three members of the Cabinet including Justice Minister Adolfo Sarti; several former Prime Ministers including Giulio Andreotti who had held office between 1972 and 1973 and again between 1976 and 1979; forty-three Members of Parliament; fifty-four top Civil Servants; 183 army, navy and air force officers including thirty generals and eight admirals (among them the Commander of the Armed Forces, Admiral Giovanni Torrisi); nineteen judges; lawyers; magistrates;
carabiniere;
police chiefs; leading bankers; newspaper proprietors, editors and journalists (including the editor of th
e country's leading newspaper
Il
Corriere Dell
a Sera);
fifty-eight university professors; the leaders of several political parties; and even the directors of the three main intelligence services.

All these men, according to the files, had sworn allegiance to Gelli, and held themselves ready to respond to his call. The 953 names were divided into seventeen groupings, or cells, each having its own leader. P2 was so secret and so expertly run by Gelli that even its own members did not know who belonged to it. Those who knew most were the seventeen cell leaders and they knew only their own grouping. Not even Spartaco Mennini, the then Grand Secretary of the Grand Orient of Italy, knew the entire membership of the Lodge. Only Licio Gelli knew that.

P2 was the very embodiment of the fear that had haunted Italy's Under Secretary of State in 1913 when he had called for a law that 'declared the unsuitability of members of the Masonic Lodge to hold certain offices (such as those in the Judiciary, in the Army, in the Education Department, etc.), the high moral and social value of which is compromised by any hidden and therefore uncontrollable tie, and by any motive of suspicion, and lack of trust on the part of the public'.