Western Goals Foundation was a private domestic intelligence agency active in the United States.Staff writer (Jan. 2, 1989)
"Western Goals Foundation."
''Interhemispheric Resource Center/International Relations Center''. Archived fro
the original.
/ref> It was founded in 1979 by Major General John K. Singlaub, the publisher and spy John H. Rees, and Congressman

Larry McDonald Lawrence Patton McDonald (April 1, 1935 – September 1, 1983) 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 ...

. It went defunct in 1986 when the

Tower Commission The Tower Commission was a United States presidential commission established on December 1, 1986, by President Ronald Reagan in response to the Iran–Contra affair (in which senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arm ...

revealed it had been part of

Oliver North Oliver Laurence North (born October 7, 1943) is an American political commentator, television host, military historian, author, and retired United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel. A veteran of the Vietnam War, North was a National Sec ...

's Iran–Contra funding network.

History

After the

Watergate The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. The scandal began in 1972 and ultimately led to Nixon's resignation in 1974, in August of that year. It revol ...

and

COINTELPRO COINTELPRO (a syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltr ...

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. 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 Deep state is a term used for (real or imagined) potential, unauthorized and often secret networks of power operating independently of a State (polity), state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agendas and goals. Although the term ori ...

". According to former employees, agencies receiving information from Western Goals included the

Drug Enforcement Administration The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating illicit Illegal drug trade, drug trafficking a ...

, the

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), commonly referred to as ATF, is a domestic law enforcement agency within the United States Department of Justice. Its responsibilities include the investigation and prevention ...

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...

, and police departments. 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 World League for Freedom and Democracy (WLFD) is an international non-governmental organization of anti-communist politicians and groups. It was founded in 1954 as the Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League (APACL) under the initiative of C ...

, the

John Birch Society The John Birch Society (JBS) is an American right-wing political advocacy group. Founded in 1958, it is anti-communist, supports social conservatism, and is associated with ultraconservative, radical right, far-right, right-wing populist, and ...

, and similar organizations. One of its principal sponsors was the Texan billionaire

Nelson Bunker Hunt Nelson Bunker Hunt (February 22, 1926 – October 21, 2014) was an American oil company executive. He was a billionaire whose fortune collapsed after he and his brothers William Herbert and Lamar tried to corner the world market in silve ...

. The organization was based in a townhouse in

Alexandria Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

. It also said it had offices in

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

and

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

. A former employee told ''Politico'' in 2018 that more of its funding came from West Germany than the United States. 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. 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 The ''Congressional Record'' is the official record of the proceedings and debates of the United States Congress, published by the United States Government Publishing Office and issued when Congress is in session. The Congressional Record Ind ...

by McDonald, which shielded him from

libel Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...

. Western Goals would then cite McDonald's statements in its own public reports. Unverified reports by Western Goals accusing American

pacifist Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ''a ...

groups of ties to

communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...

and the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

were also publicized in ''

Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...

'' and by the

Reagan administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over ...

. Western Goals was sued by the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. T ...

(ACLU) after a police officer was caught adding information from the disbanded

Los Angeles Police Department The City of Los Angeles Police Department, commonly referred to as Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), is the primary law enforcement agency of Los Angeles, California, United States. With 8,832 officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the th ...

"Red Squad" to a related computer

bulletin board system A bulletin board system (BBS), also called a computer bulletin board service (CBBS), is a computer server running list of BBS software, software that allows users to connect to the system using a terminal program. Once logged in, the user perfor ...

.Bayse, William A., and Dorothy Denning (Mar. 27, 1991)
"Security Capabilities, Privacy & Integrity."
''IEEE Computer Society Press''. Reprinted from ''The First Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy'', Mar. 26-28, 1991, in Burlingame, California. Archived fro

/ref> Western Goals raised funds for the Nicaraguan

Contras In the history of Nicaragua, the Contras (Spanish: ''La contrarrevolución'', the counter-revolution) were the right-wing militias who waged anti-communist guerilla warfare (1979–1990) against the Marxist governments of the Sandinista Na ...

starting in 1983, after Congress banned the Reagan administration from providing U.S. support. 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 Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KE007/KAL007)In aviation, two types of Airline codes, airline designators are used. The flight number KAL 007, with the ICAO code for Korean Air Lines, was used by air traffic control. In ticketing, however, IAT ...

. Singlaub was an intermediary in

’s illegal weapons network for the Contras. Officials of the foundation were questioned in the Iran-Contra hearings of 1986. The organization founded an offshoot, Western Goals (UK), later the Western Goals Institute, which was briefly influential in British

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

politics.

Advisory board and directors

Bibliography

Books

*''Ally Betrayed: Nicaragua'' (1989). Foreword by U.S. Ambassador Earl E. T. Smith. U.S. ed. postscript by Turner B. Shelton. Nicaragua ed. postscript by Francisco Urcuyo Maliaños. 112 pages. . *''Ally Betrayed: The Republic of China'' (1982), by David Nelson Rowe. Foreword by Anthony Kubek. Afterword by Patricia Hurley. 107 pages. . *''Ally Betrayed: The Republic of Korea'' (1982), by David Nelson Rowe. Foreword by Major General John K. Singlaub. Postscript by

Congressman A member of congress (MOC), also known as a congressman or congresswoman, is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The t ...

Bob Stump Robert Lee Stump (April 4, 1927 – June 20, 2003) was an American politician who served as a U.S. Congressman from Arizona. He served as a member from the Democratic Party from 1977 to 1983 and then later a member of the Republican Party un ...

. 106 pages. . *''Red Tide Rising in the Carolinas'' (1980). 26 pages. .
''Broken Seals: A Western Goals Foundation Report on the Attempts to Destroy the Foreign and Domestic Intelligence Capabilities of the U.S.''
(1980). Introduction by

John M. Ashbrook John Milan Ashbrook (September 21, 1928 – April 24, 1982) was an American politician and newspaper publisher. A member of the Republican Party, he served in the United States House of Representatives from Ohio from 1961 until his death.

. Afterword by Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham. 110 pages..
''Red Locusts: Soviet Support for Terrorism in South Africa''
(1981). Foreword by

U.S. Senator The United States Senate is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and House have the authority under Article One of the ...

Jesse Helms Jesse Alexander Helms Jr. (October 18, 1921 – July 4, 2008) was an American politician. A leader in the Conservatism in the United States, conservative movement, he served as a senator from North Carolina from 1973 to 2003. As chairman of the ...

. Postscript by

Ambassador An ambassador is an official envoy, especially a high-ranking diplomat who represents a state and is usually accredited to another sovereign state or to an international organization as the resident representative of their own government or so ...

Marion Smoak. *''Soviet Active Measures Against the United States'' (1984). 120 pages.

Films

''No Place to Hide: The Strategy and Tactics of Terrorism''
(1982). Written, produced, and hosted by G. Edward Griffin. Directed by Dick Quincer. 58 min. . Transcript .
''The Subversion Factor: A History of Treason in Modern America''
(1983). Written and hosted by G. Edward Griffin. 120 min. . Transcript . Part 1
''Moles in High Places''.
Part 2
''The Open Gates of Troy''.

References

{{reflist

External links

Western Goals
at Powerbase.info
Western Goals
at Militarist Monitor
Works published by Western Goals
at

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...

Political organizations based in the United States Anti-communist organizations in the United States Surveillance scandals 1979 establishments in the United States 1986 disestablishments in the United States Law enforcement scandals Iran–Contra affair Conservative organizations in the United States Organizations established in 1979 Organizations disestablished in 1986