http://mindbodypolitic.com/2013/10/31/god-father-of-us-libertarians-was-cia-informant/
God-father of Rothbardian libertarians was CIA informant
I’ll begin with something related.
There was a revelatory post at Lew Rockwell about how Russell Kirk, the godfather of the American conservative movement, was on the payroll of the CIA for a short while.
QUOTE::
“You know, Russell Kirk, his writings both before and after he went on the Buckley payroll are quite wonderful on foreign policy. During the period he was on the payroll, unfortunately, they were just like everybody else.”
This fascinating assertion wasn’t documented in any way, although I think on its face it’s quite credible. The unpalatable fact is that almost all prominent figures in the media or academics then and even now are co-opted in some fashion by the intelligence agencies.
Some wittingly, some unwittingly.
Anyway, in looking for further evidence for the Kirk-was-CIA story, I ran into passages from Murray Rothbard’s “Betrayal of the American Right” on the history of the subversion of the old right:
“In the light of hindsight, we should now ask whether or not a major objective of National Review from its inception was to transform the right wing from an isolationist to global warmongering anti-Communist movement; and, particularly, whether or not the entire effort was in essence a CIA operation. We now know that Bill Buckley, for the two years prior to establishing National Review, was admittedly a CIA agent in Mexico City, and that the sinister E. Howard Hunt was his control. His sister Priscilla, who became managing editor of National Review, was also in the CIA; and other editors James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall had at least been recipients of CIA largesse in the anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom. In addition, Burnham has been identified by two reliable sources as a consultant for the CIA in the years after World War II.[10] Moreover, Garry Wills relates in his memoirs of the conservative movement that Frank Meyer, to whom he was close at the time, was convinced that the magazine was a CIA operation. With his Leninist-trained nose for intrigue, Meyer must be considered an important witness.
At least here, Rothbard doesn’t mention Kirk.
Furthermore, it was a standard practice in the CIA, at least in those early years, that no one ever resigned from the CIA. A friend of mine who joined the agency in the early 1950s told me that if, before the age of retirement, he was mentioned as having left the CIA for another job, that I was to disregard it, since it would only be a cover for continuing agency work. On that testimony, the case for NR being a CIA operation becomes even stronger. Also suggestive is the fact that a character even more sinister than E. Howard Hunt, William J. Casey, appears at key moments of the establishment of the New over the Old Right. It was Casey who, as attorney, presided over the incorporation of National Review and had arranged the details of the ouster of Felix Morley from Human Events.”
Nonetheless, confirmed or merely a suspicion, the story only adds more fuel to the widespread belief that most of the American media is infiltrated by intelligence.
I’ve suspected that and blogged as much, as you can see from this post which compiles a few of the relevant links.
What Rothbard and Rockwell don’t mention though is that it was not just the conservative movement.
There’s a good deal of evidence that the CIA is also behind a large part of the libertarian movement. I’ve blogged about that several times.
What I haven’t blogged until now is that one of the godfathers of American libertarianism is listed as a CIA source or informant.
That is Robert D. Kephart, who died in 2004. He was the publisher of the conservative magazine, Human Events from 1968-1975.
He later became a very influential libertarian. Perhaps one of the most, from the point of view of organizing the movement.
You can find Kephart’s name listed at Cryptome.org in the Crowley files, as one of scores of CIA sources (a source is not an agent but a figure who keeps the intelligence services posted on what’s going on and how to keep it in line with the agenda of the Agency).
More here on Kephart and his ties to the whole Agora Inc. - Lew Rockwell- Mises Institute world of Rothbardians.:
“He [Kephart] was a publisher of Human Events and an early supporter of Laissez Faire Books, the world’s largest publisher of books on libertarian topics. He founded Libertarian Review magazine and Books for Libertarians in the 1970s, influencing thousands of young people who became advocates of a free society. He was dedicated to the cause of liberty.”
Laissex-faire books is now owned by Agora Inc. and it employs former Mises scholar Jeffrey Tucker and Independent Institute scholar Wendy McElroy, both also Rothbardians from a long while back.
Kephart’s father Calvin Ira Kephart was a Southern historian, reportedly of a racist bent.
Calvin Kephart is described as a fierce opponent of the civil rights movement, an opponent of racial integration, a believer in the superiority and inferiority of races and a deep believer in eugenics.
He spent a lot of time tracing his aristocratic lineage.
Son Bob, a US naval commander, was a close friend of Rothbard himself, as well as of Lew Rockwell and of leading figures in the libertarian and hard money community, like John Pugsley of Agora Inc’s, Sovereign Society.
First, Kephart was also influential in the survivalist community, a fringe but important part of modern American anti-state thinking.
Survivalists have had their share of intelligence infiltration. A prominent survivalist, Joel Skousen, is the older brother of Mark Skousen, who is closely associated with Agora Inc. and was himself once on the CIA payroll.
Joel Skousen was formerly in the US air-force and has been an editor of various Conservative magazines. One can only speculate how free of Agency influence he could be, especially since the Skousens are nephews of Cleon Skousen, a conservative commentator and a racist/racialist historian who was for several years a senior FBI agent.
Interestingly, Joel Skousen was originally a Romney supporter but later switched his support to Ron Paul.
Second. Another nexus of the libertarian movement with intelligence is through Ron Paul, also a Kephart associate.
Paul has a long-standing association with Agora Inc., which published and promoted his newsletters for decades. This, rather than the over-blown “racist” news-letter business is the real untold story, since Agora Inc. has multiple ties to intelligence and intelligence-related stock operations.
Third. Kephart was also the editor of The Libertarian Review and played a prominent role in the development of American libertarianism as a movement, though he kept in the background (maybe because of his role as an informant).
A short list of the outfits to which he “provided guidance” (as a CIA informant) include:
“For many years he has generously provided guidance and funding for a long list of organizations, including Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Forfeiture Endangers American Rights, Human Rights Watch, Institute for Justice, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Post-Conviction Relief, and the American Civil Liberties Union. He has also been a benefactor to organizations working for economic liberty and general restrictions on government power. These include the Foundation for Economic Education, Cato Institute, Future of Freedom Foundation, R.A. Childs Fund for Independent Scholars, and Separation of School and State Alliance.”
Many of these outfits have played a large role in promoting both Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, to the consternation of independent bloggers and activists, who have long since concluded that the two are intelligence-related operatives.
Let’s just say the CIA continues to “give guidance.”
A fourth point tying Kephart to the New World Order, with its British Israelite and masonic underpinnings is his father.
Calvin Ira Kephart, was, as I said earlier in this blog post, a scientific racist, a Southern historian and anthropologist of race who was a passionate advocate of eugenics to create a master race and euthanasia for the mentally handicapped or otherwise “defective.”
He opposed the civil rights movement and wanted blacks shipped backed to Africa. He was also, fascinatingly, a masonic historian.
That’s the toxic environment from which the god-father of the libertarian movement developed:
“By 1932 Kephart had begun this research, which culminated in his lengthy book,Races of Mankind: Their Origin and Migration , published in 1960 by the Philosophical Library in New York.In this work Kephart claimed to have written the definitive “ethnographic” book on the development of “advanced and retarded races.” The collection also includes advertisements for this book as well as his Concise History of Freemasonry (1964); his short pamphlets TrueChristianity andOrigin of the Name “Russia”; an article in support of eugenics, entitled “World Population Explosion”; a few reviews of his books and articles; and nine letters to the editor from 1961 to 1968, seven published in the Evening Capital of Annapolis Maryland. In most of these letters and other writings Kephart expressed his extreme right-wing views—his fierce opposition to racial integration and the civil rights movement; support for the repatriation of African-Americans to Africa; and advocacy of the forced sterilization of the insane, the mentally retarded, prisoners, prostitutes, and women who had one or more illegitimate children.”
This doesn’t mean, of course, that Bob Kephart himself believed any of his father’s theories.
But it should make anyone who finds some echoes of this kind of thing in Rothbard’s writing or his promotion of the theories of Charles Murray look very closely at the assumptions and consequences of this “anarchist” way of thinking.
To what does it really tend?
What might be the underlying agenda of anti-state capitalism which has the benediction of a CIA informant?
What might it mean that that informant was the son of a genuine scientific racist and eugenicist, not just someone exercising his first amendment right to mouth rude epithets on the fringes, but someone whose thinking was no different from that of any Nazi theorist.
Final point.
Bob Kephart also came together in the 1970s with Murray Rothbard and two individuals who have been separately linked to intelligence themselves:
1. Noam Chomsky (alleged by John Coleman and other journalists to be deep-cover CIA)
2. James Dale Davidson, founder of Agora Inc., and founder of the anti-tax National Tax-payer’s Union, who is credibly alleged to have been involved in CIA-related stock-pumping, from several accounts. He is linked to Rothschild journalist Rees-Mogg, also of Agora Inc.
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