Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (8 page)

T
HE
P
RIORY OF
S
ION
With Saunière's death the trail once again went cold, only to be revived by a Frenchman named Pierre Plantard who wrote extensively about the mysteries of Rennes-le-Chateau. He claimed that knowledge of the descendants of Jesus had remained in the hands of a mysterious organization called the Priory of Sion, an ancient secret order that lay behind the Knights Templar and guarded their legacy. Notable members included Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton.

Sadly, this exotic theory did not convince many historians, many of whom were amused to discover that Pierre Plantard had registered the Priory of Sion as his own organization. He had also transparently forged genealogical documents, allegedly discovered by Saunière, which appeared to demonstrate that Plantard himself was a direct descendant of the Merovingian Kings – and thus of Jesus Christ himself!

And if all that sounds like the stuff of best-selling fiction rather than history, author Dan Brown can only agree with you. This most entertaining but unlikely of conspiracy theories formed the basis of his global bestseller,
The Da Vinci Code
.

The death of Roberto Calvi, nicknamed "God's banker" because of his close links with the Vatican, shocked the world in 1982, when he was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London. Initially, his death was seen as suicide, but it soon emerged that murder was a much more likely scenario. Disturbing evidence came to light when the case was investigated, for it appeared that Calvi's shady financial dealings not only involved Italy's largest private bank and a secret Italian Masonic organization but the Vatican itself. To this day, the complex plot involving the bank, the Freemasons and the Vatican continues to unravel and it is still unclear exactly what happened. However, there seems to be no doubt that the Vatican was politically and financially implicated in the scandal, whether directly or indirectly.

S
HADY
D
EALINGS
At the time of his death, 62-year-old Calvi was a successful businessman, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiana in Milan. Over his career he had built the bank up from a small concern to a large international organization with a huge financial empire. However, in 1978 Banco Ambrosiana was investigated by the Bank of Italy and found to be guilty of illegally exporting billions of lire. Calvi went on the run, and the bank began to collapse. Three years later, he was arrested, tried and sentenced to four years in prison. After a short period of detention he was released on bail pending an appeal, but he had other charges to answer as well. At the time of his murder he was also being investigated for making fraudulent deals in the United States with a Sicilian banker called Michele Sindona.

As the investigations continued it emerged that the Vatican had a shareholding in Banco Ambrosiana and that Calvi was closely linked to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank. Enormous sums of money had been siphoned off from Banco Ambrosiana into the so-called "Institute for Religious Works", headed by Marcinkus, and there was speculation that this money had gone to fund right-wing regimes in Latin America that were friendly to the United States government and the Vatican. Another player in this complex game was Licio Gelli, a former Nazi, who ran a Masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due, or P2. This secret organization had a membership of over 1,000 prominent politicians, businessmen, and criminals, who were all united in a spirit of anti-communism as well as being dedicated to the enhancement of their own personal wealth and power.

M
URDER NOT SUICIDE
In 1998 Calvi's family caused his body to be exhumed and, four years later, the initial verdict of suicide was overturned. It transpired that Calvi had been found with five bricks in his pocket and his hands tied behind his back. Moreover, his neck showed no signs of damage and there were none of his own fingerprints on the bricks. All of this pointed to the fact that he had not committed suicide as a reaction to financial ruination, but had been cold-bloodedly murdered by his enemies in the world of high finance and organized crime.

The killing had all the hallmarks of a Mafia-style execution. Police in Rome and London began to track down several suspects. Pippo Calo, a prominent member of the Sicilian Mafia; Flavio Carboni, a businessman with many interests all over the world; Carboni's exgirlfriend, Manuela Kleinzig; Ernesto Diotallevi, the leader of a criminal organization in Rome called the "Banda della Magliana"; and a Mafia financier named Francesco Di Carlo. On 18 April 2005, the City of London police force charged Calo, Carboni, Kleinzig and Diotallevi with the murder.

A
N UNHOLY MOB
In recent years, it has been suggested that the real reason that Calvi was murdered was to prevent him from making known the links between the Vatican, the P2 Freemasons and the Mafia. During his time at Banco Ambrosiana, enormous sums of money were transferred into the Vatican's coffers, resulting in the ultimate bankruptcy of Ambrosiana and its shareholders. (The day before Calvi died, his secretary Teresa Corrocher committed suicide by jumping out of a high window at the bank's headquarters. She left a note blaming her boss.)

It seems that Calvi and Gelli were in league. Calvi had been passing money from Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank to Gelli and others, who in turn were busy negotiating political deals such as the sale of the Exocet missile from France to Argentina. In the view of many critics, the Vatican acted as a country with right-wing political interests, bankrolling whatever initiatives seemed beneficial to the Pope and the Catholic church, whether in Latin America or Europe. This was done secretly, with no regard whatsoever to democratic or sovereign rights in those countries. Obviously, if any of this information came out, it would be highly damaging to the Pope and the Vatican, who liked to preserve an image of being above politics.

T
HE
D
EATH OF
J
OHN
P
AUL
I
When John Paul I took office as Pope in 1978, it looked as though some of the activities of Archbishop Marcinkus and the "Institute for Religious Works" would have to come to an end. However, John Paul I died only thirty-three days after his election, apparently of a heart attack. Some suspected foul play and indeed there were a number of anomalies surrounding the death, which was not well handled by the Vatican health carers. The Vatican press office also made many errors in reporting the death. In keeping with Vatican law, no post-mortem was performed on the Pope, which also caused some commentators to question what had happened. A controversy ensued, with some claiming that the Pope had been murdered and others holding the opposite view. For example, in his book,
In God's Name
, David Yallop suggested that the Pope had been in danger the moment he took office. John Cornwell rejected this theory in his own book,
A Thief in the Night
, claiming that the Pope died as the result of a pulmonary embolism. He further suggested that the Vatican had acted in an incompetent, rather than a criminal, manner both during and after the tragedy. Whatever the truth of the matter, it seems that in terms of its political and financial dealings in the 1970s and 1980s, the Vatican had a great deal to hide. To this day, we still do not know the full extent of its involvement in the Calvi affair. Perhaps the ongoing trial will finally reveal the truth.

How is this for a coincidence? During the 2004 United States presidential elections both candidates – the incumbent, George W. Bush, and the Democratic challenger, John Kerry – were members of the same tiny secret society. The society in question is called Skull and Bones. It is based at Yale University and members are forbidden to speak about it at all. This was clearly evinced when both Bush and Kerry were quizzed about their membership by NBC's Meet the Press. NBC's interviewer, Tim Russert, asked both candidates about their membership and their answers were strikingly similar. "It's so secret we can't talk about it," said President Bush. "Not much, because it's a secret," said Kerry.

So what is known about this mysterious and evidently very powerful society? Skull and Bones was founded in 1832 by a Yale student named William H. Russell. Russell was the scion of a wealthy family who had made their fortune from the opium trade. Before attending Yale, Russell had spent time in Germany where he is believed to have been introduced to a secret society – one that may have been modelled on the Illuminati society that flourished briefly in Germany some fifty years earlier.

It was this experience that inspired Russell, along with his friend Alphonso Taft, to start Skull and Bones. Some believe that the society was intended to be an American branch of the Illuminati. Others, more prosaically, suspect that it was just a reaction to Russell and Taft being denied membership of the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa fraternity.

Secret societies were much disapproved of in the United States at the time. President John Quincy Adams in particular had warned against the evils of Freemasonry. However, these clandestine organizations have always held a strong attraction and Skull and Bones proved to be no exception.

T
HE SECRETS OF THE TOMB
By 1856 the society was flourishing to the extent that it was able to build its own headquarters – an extraordinary, windowless, mausoleum-like building, known to society members as the Tomb. By then the society even had its own holding company, the Russell Trust Association, to look after its investments. It had also established the membership structure that remains to this day. Each year fifteen of the most brilliant (or well connected) are selected or "tapped" by senior Bonesmen, as they are called. Before long, this came to be seen as a great honour.

And it is not hard to see why. A list of the past members of Skull and Bones came to light in the 1980s, which revealed that its members included members of America's wealthiest and most powerful dynasties – Whitney, Adams, Rockefeller, etc. – alongside such renowned names as US President William Taft, political commentator William F. Buckley, Time-Life founder Henry Luce, poet Archibald MacLeish and Morgan Stanley founder Harold Stanley.

Three generations of Bushes are also on the list. Not just the current president's father, former president George H.W. Bush, but also his grandfather, Senator Prescott Bush. It was Prescott Bush who is alleged to have stolen one of the most prized of the many grisly treasures that are kept in the Tomb – the skull of Geronimo, personally grave-robbed for the society. It is alleged that the tomb also contains Hitler's silverware and that this is used for ceremonial dinners.