Week 52, Illuminatus! online reading group

World War II spy Henri Déricourt, a famous double agent. It is apparently still unclear whether the former French Air Force pilot was working for the British or the Nazis in France during the German occupation, or working for both.

(This week, end of The Golden Apple: , the monologue of Tobias Knight (mostly),  "I got into the Illuminati in 1951," page 545, to page 562 "IT'S ALIVE").

The autobiography of Tobias Knight, quintuple agent for the the FBI, the CIA, the A:.A:.,  the Illuminati and Hagbard Celine's Legion of Dynamic Discord (he explains that his work for God's Lightning, being overt rather than covert, doesn't really count.)

Quintuple agents may exist only in fiction; it is difficult enough to find examples of triple agents. For the definition of "triple agent," Wikipedia says, "A triple agent pretends to be a double agent for one side, while he or she is truly a double agent for the other side. Famous triple agents include Kim Philby and Alexander Litvinenko.

"A lesser used definition of triple agent is an agent who works for three intelligence services, but is usually truly loyal to only one of them."

I can't find many examples of the "lesser used" definition of someone working for three agencies, but I can offer one: There was a book released a few  years ago, The Triple Agent by Joby Warrick, about an al Qaida triple agent who also had worked for Jordanian intelligence and the CIA. As a suicide bomber, he killed seven CIA operatives in 2009. Another possible example: Nikolai Skobline, who is "is alleged to have played the role of a triple-agent, working for the Russian white counterrevolutinaries (ROVS), Stalin's secret police (NKVD), and the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD)."

Did you remember that Tobias Knight was the truck driver when four heavy crates of statues from Atlantis obtained from Robert Putney Drake were transferred to an airplane at Kennedy International Airport? Knight also shows up in Fernando Poo, in Las Vegas during attempts to contain the Anthrax-Leprosy-Mu outbreak, and helps Joe Malik plan the bombing of Malik's apartment.

The Bogus Magus Illuminatus! studies site has a page of information about some of the characters. For Tobias Knight, it says, "Tobias Knight  walrus mustache, pentuple agent: FBI, CIA, A A, Illuminati, LDD (also GL, Naval Intelligence, Pinkertons) Ringo Erigena, Prince of Wands E; prejudiced against Italians

 "Notes:

The so-called “Tobias nights” were the first three after a wedding, and in the 18th century you could have sex then ONLY if you paid your bishop a fee.

Joseph's Night (Tobias Nights) Custom that required a bride and bridegroom to refrain from having sexual intercourse for one or several nights after their marriage in order not to incur the wrath of the gods."

A few notes:

Page 545, "Ringo Erigena," Knight's Illuminati name, and "Scotus Pythagoras," Winifred's Illuminati name. If you combine two of the names you get Scotus Erigena, whose saying, "All things that are, are lights" provided the title for the Robert Shea novel. "All things are lights" was Ezra Pound's translation in Cantos of a saying of Scotus Erigena. This may help provide the Robert Shea connection to Ezra Pound that I previously was looking for. 

Page 547, Militarism: The Unknown Ideal for the New Herecleitean, the title of Atlanta Hope's nonfiction book echoes Ayn Rand's nonfiction books For the New Intellectual and Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. 

Page 548-549, "War is the Health of the State!" Atlanta Hope thinks this is a positive statement. Her slogan, however, is the title of a famous antiwar essay by Randolph Bourne, who opposed American participation in World War I. The slogan "war is the health of the state" is a favorite saying of antiwar libertarians. Antiwar.com, a website run by antiwar libertarians such as Justin Raimondo, Angela Keaton and Eric Garris, is published by the Randolph Bourne Institute.

"Privilege implies," page 553. See Chad Nelson's discussion the comments for this recent post. 

(Next week: Beginning of Leviathan, page 565, "The mutation from terrestrial to interstellar life must be made," to page 575, "Joe gasped, 'It's alive!' ")