The evil eye: the occult symbol chosen for the Orwellian Information Awareness Office has links to ancient paganism and modern revolutionary Communism. (Cover Story: On the Home Front).

The all-seeing eye chosen for the logo of the federal Information Awareness Office (IAO) is an ancient symbol steeped in mystery and foreboding. Some commentators assert that the insignia, which first appeared on U.S. dollar bills in 1935, symbolizes the "eye of God" watching over all things. They cite passages such as Proverbs 15:3 to show the biblical basis for the sign: "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good."

God, indeed, sees and knows all things. The eye-in-the-triangle symbol, however, has more often throughout history been associated with the occult, mystery religions, secret societies, and revolution. It is especially associated with the Egyptian deity Osiris, whose cult of followers has re-blossomed in the New Age movement and the current occult explosion. The symbol is most infamously associated with the Order of the Illuminati, the revolutionary conspiracy started by Professor Adam Weishaupt of Ingolstadt University in Bavaria on May 1, 1776. It was Weishaupt's hope, belief, and all-consuming ambition that one day his secret society, the Illuminati ("The Illuminated Ones"), would rule the world.

Foreshadowing Karl Marx in the next century, Weishaupt told his adepts: "We must begin by destroying all Religion, all civil society, and finish by the destruction of all [private] property." But he intended that the Illuminati would operate as the unseen hands directing the revolutionary action from behind the scenes. "When the object is an universal Revolution," Weishaupt said, "all the members of these societies aiming at the same point, and aiding each other, must find means of governing invisibly." (Emphasis in original.) This exercise of "invisible power" - and the necessity of "concealment," conspiracy, penetration, and infiltration--are constant themes in his writings. By placing Illuminists in governments, institutions, and positions of influence, Weishaupt said, "we may, in secret, influence all political transactions." "By this plan," he boasted, "we shall direct all mankind. In this manner, and by the simplest means, we shall set all in motion and in flames."

Before long, the Illuminati made good on Weishaupt's plan to "set all in motion and in flames," playing the key role in directing and coordinating the carnage and terror of the French Revolution. By that time, the organization had spread its malevolent network throughout Europe and had even planted cells within the fledgling United States of America. George Washington was aware of the Illuminati's subversive schemes, having read with approval Proofs of a Conspiracy, (1798), a scholarly expose of the cult by Professor John Robison of Edinburgh University. The great British statesman Edmund Burke, likewise, was greatly impressed and influenced by the four-volume expose of the Illuminati by Abbe Augustin Barruel, Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism, also published in 1798. The secret organization Weishaupt founded, however, continued its relentless drive for revolution, world government and a New World Order. Always, the group sought to remain hidden, following the dictum of its founder, Weishaupt, who stated: "The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment." No member of the Illuminati was ever to speak the organization's name publicly. They adopted the symbol of a circle with a dot in the center to refer to their Order in secret correspondence, a shorthand way of symbolizing the all-seeing eye.

The Dollar Bill

The Illuminati symbol found its way onto our currency by way of a very odd and subversive man, Henry Agard Wallace, who served in two of our nation's top political offices. An original New Ager, Mr. Wallace was a pro-Communist, screwball mystic. President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him secretary of agriculture. After proving he could destroy America's farms through heavy-handed federal interventionism, Wallace joined FDR in the White House, serving as vice president from 1941-45. Wallace was an ardent disciple of Nicholas Roerich, described by Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger as a "Russian emigre, painter, theosophist and con man." Roerich posed as a great guru and diplomat, and Wallace used Agriculture Department funds to pay for Roerich's travels to Tibet and throughout Asia, supposedly as an agricultural consultant. Apparently, due to Roerich's strong influence, Wallace became obsessed with the idea of placing the pyramid with the all-seeing eye on U.S. currency.

Henry Wallace's fascination with the occult is mentioned in Arthur Schlesinger's 1958 book, The Coming of the New Deal. Schlesinger writes:

Though he remained non-committal about the extent of his own belief [in the power of the occult], Wallace did induce the Secretary of the Treasury to put the Great Pyramid on the new dollar bill in 1935. He sold this to Secretary [of the Treasury Henry] Morgenthau on the prosaic ground that Novus ordo [new order] was Latin for New Deal, and for many years afterward Morgenthau was beset by people who assumed that the appearance of the Great Pyramid on the currency signified his own attachment to some esoteric fellowship.

The Wallace-Roerich connection to the Great Pyramid seal did not come out until a dozen years later, when Wallace was running for president in 1948 on the Progressive Party ticket. Conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler broke the story after having obtained copies of imbecilic "Dear Guru" letters written by Wallace to Roerich. The letters, outpourings of occultic gibberish, became a cause celebre after Pegler dubbed them "the Guru Letters," and hammered away at Wallace's unfitness for office in one column after another.

Subversion and the Occult

But Mr. Wallace was doubly unfit for office. Besides his dabbling in the occult, he was also, as previously mentioned, notoriously pro-Communist. The Agriculture Department under his domain was loaded with Soviet agents. The Progressive Party was recognized by knowledgeable people on both the Right and the Left as completely a Communist operation. No less an authority than radical Marxist I.F. Stone noted: "The Communists have been the dominant influence in the Progressive Party.... If it had not been for the Communists, there would have been no Progressive Party."

Wallace was so pro-Soviet that he advocated that the United States give its atomic bomb secrets to Stalin. Some of the Communist agents in the Roosevelt administration and the Manhattan Project did precisely that. So, the occult symbol chosen for Admiral Poindexter's Orwellian IAO (see page 8) has a patrimony linking it to ancient paganism and modern revolutionary Communism. The man who popularized it on American currency was a Stalinist occultist. It is a fitting symbol for the Gestapo or the KGB -- or an un-American agency that aspires to emulate their deadly legacy. The choice of this symbol is as much a tip-off to the tyrannical bent of the new agency as what has already been made public about its Total Information Awareness project. Due to concern about the obvious dangers to liberty posed by the IAO's announced agenda, the IAO has removed the symbol from its website. That is hardly sufficient. The agency itself should be abolished.