Pres. Garfield, killed by Charles Guiteau, a Roman Catholic. Pres. McKinley, ditto by Leon Czolgosz, a Roman Catholic. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt, attempted assassination by John Shrank, a Roman Catholic. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt, attempted assassination by Giuseppe Zangara, a Roman Catholic. Pres. Harry Truman, attempted assassination by Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo, two Roman Catholics. Pres. Woodrow Wilson, somewhat mysterious death while tended by a Roman Catholic nurse. Pres. Warren Harding, another mysterious death (one rumor: it was suicide), also attended by a Catholic nurse. Pres. John Kennedy, assassination inadequately explained. Head of CIA then was John McCone, a Roman Catholic, who helped write the inconclusive and contradictory Warren Report.
(House of Representatives, March 1, 1964-five Congressmen wounded by Lebron-Miranda-Codero-Rod-riguez assassination squad, all Roman Catholics.)
When Saul looked up, Barney said pleasantly, "I found it in a book, like I said. The book was Rome's Responsibility for the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by General Thomas M. Harris. Harris points out that John Wilkes Booth, the Suratt family, and all the other conspirators were Catholics, and argues they are acting under orders from the Jesuits." Barney paused to enjoy Saul's expression and went on, "It occurs to me that, using your principle that most of the memos are full of false leads, we might question the idea that the Illuminati uses the Masons as a front to gather recruits. They would probably need some similar organization, though- one that exists all over the world, has mysterious rites and secrets, inner orders to which a select few are recruited, and a pyramidal authoritarian structure compelling everybody to take commands from above whether they understand them or not. One such organization is the Roman Catholic church."
Saul picked up his pipe from the floor. He didn't seem to remember having dropped it. "My turn to say, 'brilliant,' " he murmured finally. "Are you going to stop going to Mass on Sunday? Do you really believe it?"
Muldoon laughed. "After twenty years," he said, "I finally did it. I got one jump ahead of you. Saul, you were standing face-to-face with the truth, eyeball-to-eyeball, nose-to-nose, mouth-to-mouth- but you were so close that your eyes crossed and you saw it backward. No, it's not the Catholic church. You made a good guess in saying it was anti-Catholic as well as anti-Jewish and anti-Negro. But it's inside the Catholic church and always has been. In fact, the church's efforts to root it out have given Holy Mother Rome a very unfortunate reputation for paranoia and hysteria. Its agents make a special effort to enter the priesthood, in order to obtain holy objects for use in their own bizarre rites. They also try to rise as high in the church as they can, to destroy it from within. Many times they have recruited and corrupted whole parishes, whole orders of clergy, even whole provinces. They probably got to Weishaupt when he was still a Jesuit- they've infiltrated that order several times in history and the Dominicans even more. If caught in criminal acts, they make sure that their cover Catholicism, and not their true faith, is publicized, just like this list of assassins. Their God is called the Light-Bearer and that's probably where the word 'illumination' comes from. And Malik asked about them a long time ago and was told by this W.H., quite correctly, that they still exist. I'm talking about the Satanists, of course."
"Of course," Saul repeated softly, "of course. That pentagon that keeps popping up- it's the middle of the pentacle for summoning the Devil. Fascism is only their political facet. Basically, they're a theology- or an anti-theology, I guess. But what in hell- literally in hell- is their ultimate objective, then?"
"Don't ask me," Barney shrugged. "I can follow my brother when he talks about the history of Satanism, but not when he tries to explain its motivations. He uses technical theological terms about 'immanentizing the Eschaton,' but all I can understand is that it has something to do with bringing on the end of the world."
Saul turned ashen. "Barney," he cried, "my God. Fernando Poo!"
"But that was settled-"
"That's just it. Their usual technique of the false front. The real threat is coming from somewhere else, and they mean to do it this time."
Muldoon shook his head. "But they must be crazy!"
"Everybody is crazy," Saul said patiently, "if you don't understand his motives." He held up his tie. "Imagine you arrive in a flying saucer from Mars- or from Vulcan, like the Illuminati did according to one of our allegedly reliable sources. You see me get up this morning and for no clear reason wrap this cloth around my neck, in spite of the heat. What explanation can you think of? I'm a fetishist- a nut, in other words. Most human behavior is that sort, not oriented to survival but some symbol-system that people believe in. Long hair, short hair, fish on Friday, no pork, rising when the judge enters the room- all symbols, symbols, symbols. Sure the Illuminati are crazy, from our point of view. From their point of view, we're crazy. If we can find out what they believe, what their symbols mean to them, we'll understand why they want to kill most of the rest of us, or all of the rest of us. Barney, call your brother. Get him out of bed. I want to find out more about Satanism."
("The devil!" the President shouted on March 27. "Nuclear war over an insignificant place like Fernando Poo? You must be mental. The American people are tired of our army policing the whole world. Let Equatorial Guinea fish its own nuts out of the troubled waters, or whatever that expression is." "Wait," said the Director of the CIA, "let me show you these aerial photographs…")
Back at the Watergate, G. Gordon Liddy carefully aims his pistol and shoots out the streetlight: in memory, he is in an old castle at Millbrook, New York, eagerly searching for naked women and not finding any. Beside him Professor Timothy Leary is saying with maddening serenity, "But science is the most ecstatic kick of all. The intelligence of the galaxy is revealed in every atom, every gene, every cell." We'll get him back, Liddy thinks savagely, if we have to assassinate the whole Swiss government. That man is not going to remain free. Beside him, Bernard Barker shifts nervously as in right-angular time a future president metamorphoses the plumbers into the cesspool cleaners: but now, inside the Watergate, the Illuminati bug is unnoticed by those planting the CREEP bug, although both were subsequently found by the technicians installing the BUGGER bug. "It's the same Intelligence, making endlessly meaningful patterns," Dr. Leary goes on enthusiastically. ("Here, kitty-kitty," Hagbard repeats for the 109th time.)
"The devil?" Father James Augustine Muldoon repeated. "Well, that's a very complicated story. Do you want me to go all the way back to Gnosticism?"
Saul, listening on the extension phone, nodded a vigorous affirmative.
"Go as far back as you have to," Barney said. "This is a complicated matter we're trying to untangle here."
"OK, I'll try to remember you're not in my theology class at Fordham and keep this as brief as I can." The priest's voice faded, then came back- probably he was shifting the phone as he got out of bed and moved to a chair, Saul guessed.
"There were many approaches to Gnosticism," the voice went on in a moment, "all of them centered on gnosis-direct experience of God- as distinguished from mere knowledge about God. The search for gnosis, or illumination as it was sometimes called, took many odd forms, some of them probably similar to Oriental yogas and some of them using the very same drugs that modern rebels against the slow path of orthodox religion have rediscovered. Naturally, with such a variety of paths to gnosis, different pilots would land at different ports, each insisting he had found the real New Jerusalem. Mystics are all a bit funny in the head anyway," the priest added cynically, "which is why the church locks them all up in mental hospitals and euphemistically calls these institutions monasteries. But I digress.