Western Goals Foundation
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The Western Goals Foundation was a private intelligence dissemination network active on the right wing in 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 Singlaub to form the Western Goals Foundation in 1981.
It also founded an offshoot, Western Goals (UK) which was briefly influential in British Conservative politics.