Formation | 1979 |
---|---|
Founders | Larry McDonald John H. Rees John K. Singlaub |
Dissolved | 1986 |
51-024-1925 | |
Legal status | tax exempt |
Purpose | private intelligence agency |
Headquarters | 309A Cameron St. Alexandria, Virginia 22314 United States |
Western Goals Foundation was a private domestic intelligence agency active in the United States. [1] It was founded in 1979 by Major General John K. Singlaub, the publisher and spy John H. Rees, and Congressman Larry McDonald. [2] It went defunct in 1986 when the Tower Commission revealed it had been part of Oliver North's Iran–Contra funding network. [1]
After the Watergate and COINTELPRO scandals of the early 1970s, several laws were passed to restrict police intelligence gathering within political organizations and tried to make it necessary to demonstrate that a criminal act was likely to be uncovered by any intelligence gathering proposed. Many files on radicals, collected for decades, were ordered destroyed. The unintended effect of the laws was to privatize the files in the hands of 'retired' intelligence officers and their operatives. [1]
As a private foundation, Western Goals collected information about alleged subversives and passed the information to law enforcement officials, akin to a "mini-deep state". [2] According to former employees, agencies receiving information from Western Goals included the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Central Intelligence Agency, and police departments. [2]
John Rees and Larry McDonald joined with Major General Singlaub to form Western Goals in 1979. Each founder was also a member of the World Anti-Communist League, the John Birch Society, and similar organizations. One of its principal sponsors was the Texan billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt. [3]
The organization was based in a townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia. It also said it had offices in West Germany and Austria. [2] A former employee told Politico in 2018 that more of its funding came from West Germany than the United States. [2]
Rees set up a computer database to track suspected radicals, and wrote many of Western Goals' published reports about domestic subversives, terrorism and communist threats. [2] 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 by McDonald, which shielded him from libel. Western Goals would then cite McDonald's statements in its own public reports. [2] Unverified reports by Western Goals accusing American pacifist groups of ties to communism and the Soviet Union were also publicized in Reader's Digest and by the Reagan administration. [2] [4]
Western Goals was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) after a police officer was caught adding information from the disbanded Los Angeles Police Department "Red Squad" to a related computer bulletin board system. [5] [6]
Western Goals raised funds for the Nicaraguan Contras starting in 1983, after Congress banned the Reagan administration from providing U.S. support. [2] A Contra brigade of 2,000 was named the Larry McDonald Task Force to honor the Western Goals co-founder, who had been killed in the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. [2] Singlaub was an intermediary in Oliver North’s illegal weapons network for the Contras. [2] Officials of the foundation were questioned in the Iran-Contra hearings of 1986. [2]
The organization founded an offshoot, Western Goals (UK), later the Western Goals Institute, which was briefly influential in British Conservative politics. [1]
The Contras were the various 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 had come to power in 1979 following the Nicaraguan Revolution. Among the separate contra groups, the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN) emerged as the largest by far. In 1987, virtually all Contra organizations were united, at least nominally, into the Nicaraguan Resistance.
The Boland Amendment is a term describing two U.S. legislative amendments between 1982 and 1984, both aimed at limiting U.S. government assistance to the Contras in Nicaragua. The first Boland Amendment outlawed U.S. assistance to the Contras for the purpose of overthrowing the communist Nicaraguan government, while allowing assistance for other purposes. The Amendment was part of the House Appropriations Bill of 1982, which was attached as a rider to the Defense Appropriations Act of 1983, named for the Massachusetts Democrat, Representative Edward Boland, who authored it. The House of Representatives passed the Defense Appropriations Act 411–0 on December 8, 1982, and it was signed by President Ronald Reagan on December 21, 1982.
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Lawrence Patton McDonald was an American physician, politician and a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Georgia's 7th congressional district as a Democrat from 1975 until he was killed while a passenger on board Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it was shot down by Soviet interceptors.
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John Herbert Rees is a British right-wing journalist and government informant resident in the United States. He was active in the Western Goals Foundation and the John Birch Society.
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Western Goals Institute (WGI) was a far-right pressure group and think-tank in Britain, formed in 1989 from Western Goals UK, which was founded in 1985 as an offshoot of the U.S. Western Goals Foundation. It was anti-communist and opposed non-white immigration.
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