Was a secret society connected to the JFK assassination? Indeed there was. It still exists today, believing itself to be the authentic and original Knights of Malta. It is the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem (SOSJ), colloquially known for a time as the Shickshinny Knights.
How this order harbored the conspirators against the president is the subject of this article, but first it is important to state how often historians, journalists, and authors have mistaken the SOSJ with the more famous Sovereign Order of Malta (SMOM) of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta. The SMOM, the Catholic lay religious order, is headquartered in Rome, with permanent observer status at the United Nations and whose non-territorial power is recognized by states including the Holy See and many nations.
In reaching out to the Rome office for clarification, I was told of four additional Orders of St. John “recognized as orders of knighthood.” They are:
- Die Balley Brandenburg des Ritterlichen Ordens Sankt Johannis vom Spital zu Jerusalem
- The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem
- Johanniter Order in Nederland
- Johanniterorden i Sverige
Officially, then, the SOSJ, alias the Shickshinny Knights, are not formally recognized as a legitimate order of knighthood.
At the time of President Kennedy’s death, the SOSJ membership was laden with right-wing individuals, including an Armed Services Committee that consisted of a startling number of generals who once served under General Douglas MacArthur. This is integral to our investigation, which we will examine further momentarily.
Much of the contrived aura around the Shickshinny Knights stems from the imagination of its grand chancellor and grand prior, Charles L.T. Pichel, who utilized his own “information service” (Maltese Cross Press) to foster a largely invented history of the SOSJ, ostensibly tracing its origins in Jerusalem during the Crusades, to the remnant of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in Cyprus and Rhodes, then Malta, before it relocated to Russia, and was purportedly founded in the U.S. in 1890 with the imprimatur of Czar Paul I and re-emerged in the anti-Bolshevik diaspora of the early 20th century — although Pichel only incorporated the organization in 1956.
Central to this Russian faction of the order was the restoration of the House of Romanov; hence an influx of White Russians and rabid anti-communists to its ranks. Pichel is also of interest given his fascist tendencies; he reputedly sought to become Adolf Hitler’s personal representative in the U.S. Furthermore, according to this official site, “Paul Winter, OSJ, long time associate of Grand Chancellor Pichel and former KKK leader from New York and Philadelphia, was involved with the American Nationalists.”
The far-right, anti-communist sympathies of the Shickshinny Knights become apparent with the inclusion of military figures as members, namely MacArthur’s right-leaning generals such as Gen. Charles Willoughby, dubbed by MacArthur as “my little fascist,” Gen. Pedro del Valle, Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd, Gen. George Stratemeyer, and Gen. Bonner Fellers. Col. William Potter Gale and Col. Phillip Corso were also part of its Armed Services Committee.
Such names are not entirely unusual for a modern chivalric, fraternal order — the more renowned SMOM, for instance, counts internationally-known figures as members. However, in this world of the confidence man, who specializes in deceiving the public under the guise of phony diplomas, dubious religious groups, and in this case, fake chivalric orders, securing recognizable names as these generals and colonels can go a long way in making the group appear legitimate. And in many instances, such celebrities might not even be aware of their honorary inclusion in these kinds of orders.
With this in mind, I asked the current SOSJ grand master, Barry Garland, OSJ, if these generals were in fact active SOSJ members. His reply:
MacArthur’s staff had active Knights of St John. MacArthur always hired these types of active intelligence specialists. Potter [Gale] and Willoughby were a couple that I remember offhand. The OSJ never fielded teams from the USA. Those Knights were mostly killed in combat during the Russian Civil War. The few who survived are named in our online history. Major General Del Valle was active at the same time as Willoughby and both did anti-Communist work out of Florida. Since the Bolshevik War the OSJ has been mainly engaged in a traditional military/intelligence mission unlike the many Order “offshoots” which since 1798 have embraced solely charitable endeavors.
What is Garland saying here? While referencing the other St. John orders that function primarily as quasi-NGOs focusing on charity work and social services, the grand master seems to be suggesting that the SOSJ was carrying on the traditions of its crusader-era forebears: entrusting itself with a military/intelligence mission, not unlike the Templars of old.
Garland’s nonchalant revelation has enormous implications. For the period in question, late 1950s-mid 1960s, did the SOSJ see itself in those terms, that of having a military/intelligence objective? If so, this secret society attracting some of the most zealous stars of the radical right hid in plain sight under the auspices of a men’s organization as seemingly harmless as the local Kiwanis or Elks Lodge, its “convent” located in bucolic eastern Pennsylvania. Rather, within the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem, battle plans could be drawn. Because like General Walker, certain members believed the country to be at war — with itself, how its future was to be shaped, and how to ferret out the Communists plotting to position the U.S. as a mere minion to the United Nations.
And how exactly does General Edwin A. Walker relate to these Shickshinny Knights? Not only was Walker made a member of the order’s Military Affairs Committee by Pichel in 1965 — “qualified by blood and career” as Pichel put it — but he also worked closely with those mentioned above in advancing the far-right agenda they believed would save the country from the leftist direction the Kennedy Brothers were taking it.
In other words, Walker and friends used the SOSJ hidden network and its military/intelligence mission to foster not just an attack on the president, but a series of political executions that would force another civil war. This would be accomplished on a number of fronts relying on far-right fellow travelers in not just the military, but local and federal law enforcement, media communications, and education — particularly as school integration was tantamount to an act of treason, in their minds.
How was this accomplished?
Gen. Willoughby was affiliated with a plethora of conservative groups: the International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture, a board member of Young Americans for Freedom, and executive editor of Foreign Intelligence Digest. Like others on the radical right, Willoughby was frequently in touch with Texas magnate H.L. Hunt, who financially supported Foreign Intelligence Digest. And like General Walker, both Willoughby and Hunt were sympathetic to, and great proponents of, the John Birch Society (JBS).
One of Willoughby’s proteges was Reverend Billy James Hargis of Tulsa, fundraiser, ardent follower of JBS, and chaplain of the Constitution Party. In September 1961, Hargis “announced that a secret fraternity to coordinate right-wing activities would soon be formed,” as Dick Russell wrote in The Man Who Knew Too Much. It became known as the Anti-Communist Liaison, and met for the first time in March 1962. SOSJ knight and Army Lieutenant Colonel William Potter Gale took the goals of the Anti-Communist Liaison to heart by organizing a paramilitary unit. He wrote a tactical guide, urging that “patriotic underground armies should be established, named the ‘Rangers’ who should train to assassinate, sabotage, and overthrow the ‘People’s Democracy,” Peter Dale Scott wrote.
Is it not out of the realm of possibility to equate the military/intelligence mission of the SOSJ as a stay-behind, Gladio-like army? After all, Walker came under fire from top brass including President Kennedy for his “Pro-Blue” indoctrination program with his troops stationed under his command in Germany, in which he distributed JBS literature and material by Billy James Hargis.
Of those in attendance at the March 1962 Anti-Communist Liaison meeting was Willoughby, Gale, and John Rousselot, future congressman from California. Potter Gale’s home was in remote Mariposa, California, west of the Yosemite Valley. There he fomented white supremacist ideologies such as Christian Identity, even becoming ordained a minister by Wesley Swift in the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. Potter Gale was deeply immersed in quasi-religious, crypto-fascist militia groups until the end of his life (he died in 1988). Of course, Gale would see himself as an advocate for white Christians, hence his formation of his Christian Defense League.
Thus, the Shickshinny Knights are generally a collection of radical-right wing “patriots” who promote white supremacist ideology and theology, certain of an imminent communist plot to create a one world government. But it’s also important to note that these same individuals overlap and crisscross among various different, like-minded groups, such as JBS and the Minutemen. A good example is Pedro del Valle, as Scott noted in Dallas ’63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House: “Del Valle’s main network, operating within the Constitution Party, was the Defenders of the American Constitution (DAC). This was an organization of retired high ranking American military officers, many of them like himself veterans of General MacArthur’s army apparatus in the Far East.”
Scott’s description of the DAC fits the Shickshinny Knights perfectly.
Indeed, a 1964 Maltese Cross pamphlet (the information service of the SOSJ), reveals a number of pertinent associations. Just below the Maltese Cross masthead, Willoughby’s Foreign Intelligence Digest is named as an associate, along with Willoughby’s International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture, called a “far-right-wing, Fascist intelligence network” by Jeffrey Caufield, and bankrolled by both the sons of H.L. Hunt and Billy James Hargis.
Further below is a list of associate editors for Foreign Intelligence Digest. At the top of the list is one Dr. Emilio Nunez Portuondo, its Latin American Affairs editor. On November 24, 1963, an astute Mexico City long-distance telephone operator heard a voice on an international call say, “The Castro plan is being carried out. Bobby is next. Soon the atomic bombs will begin to rain and they won’t know from where.” One of those telephone numbers was traced to Portuondo.
Under “Associated National and International Publications” is a periodical edited by John Bircher Hilaire du Berrier, who occupied General Walker’s Dallas home the day of JFK’s assassination — Walker was on an airplane from New Orleans to Shreveport at the time. Other associated publications include Hargis’s The Weekly Crusader, Bonner Fellers’s Citizens Foreign Aid Committee, Jaroslav Stetzko’s ABN Correspondence, as in the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, which Stetzko oversaw. When Marina and Lee Oswald arrived in the United States from Russia in 1962, they were met at port by Spas T. Raikin, secretary-general of the ABN.
Lastly of note is Frank A. Capell’s The Herald of Freedom. Not only was Capell a contributing editor for Review of the News, published by JBS, but he took over for an ailing Pichel as grand chancellor of SOSJ in the late 1970s. Moreover, Capell wrote The Strange Case of Marilyn Monroe, wherein he advocated that Bobby Kennedy was linked to Monroe’s August 1962 death. In New Orleans, Guy Banister kept Capell’s Herald of Freedom in his files, according to Caufield. Capell was also frequently in communication with Pedro del Valle on the general’s ceaseless plotting for a military coup d’etat.
And it is to Banister and New Orleans to which we now turn, where it becomes evident the SOSJ was the network utilized by Walker and his co-conspirators to manage the assassination fall guy, Lee Oswald.
In the days leading up to the assassination in Dallas, General Walker met with a number of individuals in Guy Banister’s circle in New Orleans: Kent Courtney, Leander Perez — whom FBI informant Willie Somersett deemed a financial backer of the assassination — and two “detectives” from Guy Banister’s private eye agency: Joe Newborough and Jack Martin. We know this meeting took place from an informant for the Louisiana State Police.
The Martin angle is interesting — this is the notorious Jack Martin (Jack Lemmon from Oliver Stone’s JFK), born Edward Stuart Suggs in Arizona c. 1919, wanted for a 1950s murder in Texas, who lived in Los Angeles as well as Dayton, Ohio in the shadow of Wright Air Force Base and its Civil Air Patrol offices at the same time David Ferrie was nearby attending St. Charles Seminary. Martin and Ferrie’s relationship was contentious to say the least. Both were deeply entrenched in the diploma mill and bishop ordination business. Both were stars in Guy Banister’s constellation. Indeed, one Archbishop Christopher Maria Carl Jerome Stanley of the American Orthodox Catholic Church accused both Ferrie and Martin as co-conspirators in the JFK assassination.
Stanley was a Shickshinny Knight, who broke from the SOSJ about 1960 to form his own Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem in Louisville, Kentucky. It was here in November 1961 — the same month Stanley consecrated Ferrie to his church’s bishopric with Martin assisting — when Martin, Ferrie and Stanley were out hitting Louisville bars that it they revealed to Stanley the two were linked in an assassination plot against the president. When the assassination finally occurred, Jack Martin called the local New Orleans media telling them Ferrie was a homosexual, very friendly with Oswald, and taught him how to use a telescopic sight. Was Martin’s job to sully David Ferrie per orders of Walker? Why else would Walker possible want to meet with such a miscreant as Martin days before JFK was killed?
Not only did Stanley bring Ferrie and Martin into the Order of St. John by way of ecclesiastical means, he made many in Banister’s office bishops as well, as revealed in the excommunication papers Stanley eventually filed against the entire operation, seen here:
Why exactly would Banister’s agency — itself a de facto intelligence network — want or need to be part of the SOSJ umbrella?
Apart from linking up in a clandestine manner with the individuals I discussed above, I submit the reason is because membership in this order, which we have already established reflects the ideological and political sentiments of this New Orleans cabal under Banister as well as the radical right, provided the following benefits: honorary diplomas and certificates, an SOSJ passport, and laminated identification cards. These coveted documents provide the confidence man or private eye or courier with enormous benefits, especially with those wearing the extra layer of the clerical vestments, such as unobstructed travel to places otherwise suspect — like Cuba.
In fact, Archbishop Stanley told Louisville Police homicide detective Herman Mitchell that Martin wanted Stanley to consecrate someone a bishop in order they could enter Cuba. In the world of the Old Holy Catholic Church, one Fernandez Jane was its representative in Cuba. This is another link to the Shickshinny operation with the Old Catholic Church — Archbishop Gerard George Shelley of the Old Holy Catholic Church was chairman of the SOSJ ecclesiastical committee. Was Ferrie to fly Oswald to Cuba posing as archbishops utilizing SOSJ-issued passports and identification cards? This would certainly fit in line with the Foreign Intelligence Digest conversation about “the Castro plan.”
After all, the entire assassination plot as advanced by associates like Revilo P. Oliver (“Marxsmanship in Dallas”) was to position the murder as a Communist scheme in order to stir up enough hatred towards Cuba and other USSR satellite states that an all-out war would follow. Lawrence Howard warned to a friend certain people “were going to do something very bad that would make the US invade Cuba.”
Stanley further mentioned to the FBI he received a call from a “colonel” whose name he could not recall who headed an anti-Castro group in New Orleans. It’s possible it was Colonel Bluford Balter, owner of the Balter Building in New Orleans which housed such offices as the segregationist Citizens’ Council, Guy Banister and Associates, and Friends of Democratic Cuba. Balter co-published the short-lived West Bank Herald with Banister and was a leader in the New Orleans American Nazi Party.
Stanley was subsequently threatened for speaking up in early 1967 as the Garrison investigation was reaching fever pitch: “[I]f you open your mouth about us, I will shoot you.” Stanley recognized the voice as a Martin and Ferrie associate, Jerry de Pugh. Stanley died two months later.
The red herring to all of this is, of course, that a German newspaper somehow identified Lee Oswald as the purported assassin who shot at General Walker at his Dallas home on April 10, 1963. The official account of the incident — that Walker was hunched over working on his taxes at the moment a shot was fired, that slivers of debris landed in his hair, that he grabbed his own pistol and dashed around the house — sound incredibly scripted. As Jeffrey Caufield wrote, “[The shooting incident] was part of the New Orleans operation to demonstrate that Oswald — who later in 1963 infiltrated several groups tied to the integration effort — was not only a Communist, but also a dangerous one.”
Was the Oswald-Walker scheme of April 10, 1963 a crude rehearsal for the Big Event in Dealey Plaza, with Oswald thinking November 22 was yet another shoot-and-miss gambit, as Caufield argues? Besides, Walker himself knew Oswald was questioned about the event mere days later, but the attempt on Walker’s life was not made public until the week after the assassination of JFK:
One can reasonably conclude, therefore, that Lee Oswald was recruited and managed by operatives within the Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem to be the fall guy or patsy, the same operatives who plotted and carried out the stunning daytime coup of November 22, 1963. Like their patron saint, John the Baptist, martyred by decapitation, John Kennedy’s blow to the head was necessary bloodshed — in this case, to return America safely back to its white, Christian, isolated and segregated roots — now, tomorrow and forever.