Western Goals Foundation

The Western Goals Foundation was a private intelligence dissemination network active on the right-wing in the United States. It was wound up in 1986 when the Tower Commission revealed it had been part of Oliver North's Iran-Contra funding network.

In Broken Seals, the group's first book, Western Goals contended that such groups as the Campaign for Political Rights, National Lawyers Guild, American Friends Service Committee, and the Center for National Security Studies were part of a Moscow-backed effort 'to destroy the foreign and domestic intelligence capabilities of the United States.'

After the Watergate and COINTELPRO scandals of the early 1970s, several laws were passed to restrict police intelligence gathering within political organizations. The laws 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 most trusted, dedicated operatives.

Many of these people, like John Rees and Congressman Larry McDonald, were members of the World Anti-Communist League, the John Birch Society, and similar organizations. These two men joined forces with Major General John K. Singlaub to form the Western Goals Foundation in 1979. One of its principal sponsors was the Texan billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt.

It also founded an offshoot, Western Goals (UK), (later the Western Goals Institute), which was briefly influential in British Conservative politics.

External links

• Rightweb, Profile: Western Goals Foundation, 2 January 1989.
• Western Goals Trademark details http://www.trademarkia.com/western-goals-73467982.html Trademark serial number of 73467982
• Western Goals Trademark details http://www.trademarkia.com/western-goals-73467979.html Trademark serial number of 73467979