A tribute: researcher who provided ISGP with 1001 Club membership lists has died; 1001 mentioned in new critical biography on Prince Bernhard; also made the Dutch evening news
Back in late July 2008, right after publishing the La Nebuleuse article, I said to myself:
"It's done! Can't freakin' believe it, but after so many years there's nothing I really need to write about anymore. Maybe I can actually start to have a normal life now."
As happened before, this lasted for a very short period. Within a few weeks I received an email from the Irish journalist Kevin Dowling: if I was still interested in having photocopies of the 1001 Club membership lists and some other 1001 material... Well, of course I was! I was dancing on the tables.
Off and on I had been trying to get hold of these lists for years, as two of them were known to have leaked over the decades. Unfortunately, the few researchers who may have been able to provide one or more copies for some reason all backed down on their initial promises to supply the lists. And although ISGP still became the only site with any meaningful information on the 1001, the article never felt comfortable for the simple reason that it was not based on at least a few original sources. This had now changed overnight and within one weekend - without having really time for it - I had written a whole new version of the 1001 Club article and made all the photocopies provided by Kevin available for download. For the first time ever since the founding of the 1001 in 1973-4, membership lists had become available to the world!
I mailed Kevin about the rewrite. He was very pleased and made a comment that some researchers definitely should remember:
"No need for thanks. You are very welcome. It bewilders me why researchers should choose to hide what they discover rather than share it with anyone else. ...
""I have a pretty full suite of documents concerning Bernhard's membership of the Nazi party. I'll post them to you if you like."
I declined this last offer, as there really was no time to look at the material and also because Bernhard's membership of the Nazi party is well known and actually has a pretty good explanation behind it.
About six months went by without contact. Then on March 31, 2009, - completely by accident - my eye caught a portion of a Netwerk broadcast, which is a Dutch investigative program part of the national evening news. There was a discussion of a new book written by Gerard Aalders, an employee of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. The book, entitled De prins kan mij nog meer vertellen (roughly meaning, the Prince can tell me even more stories), is a very critical review of the life of Prince Bernhard. It was quite clear that the makers of program, while giving both sides a say, did not hold back either. Several of the scandals Bernhard had been embroiled in were discussed, Bilderberg was mentioned, and maybe for the first time ever on the news... the 1001 Club was mentioned! Immediate thoughts that the information had largely come from ISGP were supported when the picture above, part of ISGP's 1001 Club article, was shown on tv. Of course there was no mentioning of ISGP, the site which, among other things, can spell the end of Belgium.
Just today I picked up a copy of De prins kan mij nog meer vertellen. ISGP has indeed been mentioned in the book. Unfortunately, the information provided on the 1001 Club is still rather limited, but enough to grab many people's attention and make them look at the endnotes. Network did make one mistake though: it mentioned the mafia boss Meyer Lansky as a member of the 1001. This is not true, although Lansky did work with or for Mossad agent and 1001 Club member Tibor Rosenbaum, a good friend of both Bernhard and Edmond de Rothschild (another 1001 Club member). In many ways the Lansky-Rosenbaum connection reminds one of the relationship between the sinister Felix Przedborski and the Mossad and Israeli Foreign Office ISGP's Nebuleuse article has been talking about.
Back to Kevin
I contacted Kevin after seeing the Netwerk documentary to inform him that the information he had provided to ISGP had been picked up by the Dutch evening news and had also found its way into a new biography on the 1001 Club's former head, Prince Bernhard. Unfortunately it was not Kevin who replied back to me, but his (very kind) wife: Kevin had died unexpectedly on December 22 last year. Guess that's just another reminder that most of the researchers I interact with are decades older than me.
There's not much I know about Kevin, but I do know that he was one of the most open and jovial of the researchers I've interacted with. A brief summary of what I know about him and his work has been written down in the 1001 Club article.
It's incredible to think that Kevin had these 1001 Club lists and documents in his possession for maybe two or three decades, but that only three months before he died he gave them to someone who was able to spread them - directly and indirectly - to a much greater public than before (ISGP, which also added it to Wikipedia; Aalders' book; and about 500,000 people watched the Netwerk program). If Kevin had not shared these lists, it may have taken God knows how much longer before any really reliable information on the 1001 would have entered the public domain. Remember, when ISGP attempted to write the first article on the 1001 Club in 2005, it took considerable effort to even find out whether the club still existed! (it did)
So, thanks for the work and your generosity, Kevin. Sorry I was not able to read all the material and comment back on it. But as you asked, some of the things you said years back to the Dutch alternative press and have not yet been translated in ISGP's 1001 Club article will be translated and posted up here. This cannot be done immediately though.
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