666 = Satan’s Song? Part 1: The Book

 

Not just any other Rennes-le-Château book?

In September 2006, Dutch author Karl Hammer-Kaatee published “Satans Lied: De Jacht van de CIA op Jezus. Waargebeurd verhaal”, or “Satan’s Song. The CIA Hunt For Jesus. A true story.”
Though written in the format of a novel, the book claimed to be based on facts. The publication itself does not list an official classification (e.g. fiction) on the book itself, hence leaving one guessing as to which category it fell into.
The book claims to be the account of one “Tom R.”, who told his life’s story to Hammer in the mid 1990s. After Tom’s death, Hammer transformed the notes of a man’s life into the present book.

Upon its publication, the book created a major national controversy, both within the ranks of Rennes researchers, as well as the world of politics – on a national scale. The former were divided between those accepting the story as facts dressed up in reconstructed dialogue and those who felt it was fiction. Nevertheless, the latter did accept that the author had done a very good job in leading the reader down a series of factual historical information, whereby only a small amount of certain information had given “the game” – that this had to be fiction – away. The “believers” countered that these details were often within the bailiwick of reconstructed dialogue, and that it was known and stated by the author that these sections were his “best effort” – as of course no textual accounts remained of dialogue between two individuals that had occurred more than fifty years before.

A political debate

During the run-up to national elections in November 2006, the book’s final chapter caught the attention of the media. This argued that certain senators of a political party – the CDA, the Christian Democrat party, which is the largest party of the Netherlands – were members of neo-Templar organisations and were proponents of religious crusades (against Islam). Hammer argued that such allegiances were detrimental to the social integration of Muslim communities in the Netherlands. A complaint was hence filed with the Electoral Commission.
With the book thus courting the limelight of the national media, one newspaper, The “Noord-Hollands Dagblad”, performed an analysis of the book, stating that 95 percent of the facts in the book had been verified as true, but that “some” of the cross-correspondences that the author made, were not. Shortly afterwards, on October 16, 2006, one such cross-correspondence, detailing secret contacts between the CIA and the Vatican, was nevertheless confirmed by former security advisor to President Ronald Reagan, Richard Allen.

“The Name is Tom. Tom R.”

The central character in the book is one “Tom R.”, the pseudonym of a man who made contact with Karl Hammer in the mid 1990s, and who told him his life’s story. It is this account that became the backbone of the book.
Tom R, of Dutch origin, had lived the last thirty years of his life in Paris, under an assumed name. Everyone from his past thought he had died in ca. 1948 – the victim of a sailing accident on the Mediterranean Sea. When he made contact with Hammer, he argued that he had faked his death (and that of his wife), after having been on a hunt for the “Arma Christi”, the “Weapons of Christ”, i.e. the relics associated with Christ’s crucifixion, across Europe – a quest that began in the aftermath of the Second World War.
This quest eventually led him to Rennes-le-Château and Notre-Dame de Marceille – where the book ends, rather abruptly, without any information what happened to the relics after Tom R. was shown them around Christmas 1947 by an informal group of “keepers” referred to as the Ebionites.

The author

Hammer himself argues he was an unlikely channel for this story to come about. Hammer-Kaatee was born in Amsterdam, on September 19, 1959. In the 1980s, he worked for Dutch television, before setting up his own commercial radio stations and working freelance for various media organisations. In the mid 1990s, a calamity in his personal life occurred, as a result of which he largely abandoned his career and began to study philosophy and religion, as well as focus on various charitable projects, one of which included creating his own foundation, “Stiching Frieda”, named after his late mother Frieda Birchbauer. The author underlined that all profits from Satan’s Song would equally go to charitable causes.

Hammer claims that Tom R. made contact with him during that difficult period of his life. Tom R. was related to his mother – no doubt through his wife, as Tom R. was said to have married one “Elfrie”, who was Austrian. “Elfrie” is a colloquialism of “Frieda” – coincidentally also the name of Hammer’s mother.
In the run-up to the publication of the book, Hammer appeared on some English internet forums, specifically Graham Hancock’s, using the pseudonym “Mark Harlem” (an anagram of Karl Hammer), writing about some of the subjects that are relevant to his book. During that period, he became somewhat close to some of the people on that forum, providing them with some “privileged” information, which they however decided to publish, apparently without his permission – and contrary to what had been agreed. We will return to some of this material later on.

The life of a man

As to Tom R… At the start of World War II, Tom R. was studying art history in London. Though he wanted to return to his home country to fight the German invaders, it was soon apparent that this was not an option. When the Dutch government fled to England, Tom R. became involved with the Dutch ex-pat community, including François van ’t Sant, the controversial private secretary of Queen Wilhelmina – and head of the Secret Service.
Though Tom R. continued his studies, he also helped “the cause”, whereby, at the end of the war, he was assigned a position with the ALIU, the Art Looting Investigation Unit, created to retrieve all works of art that had been looted by the Nazis, and return them to their rightful owners.

The Just Judges

It is a matter of historical record that one of the most important pieces of art that had been looted by the Nazi regime was Jan Van Eyck’s “The Adoration of the Lamb”, also known as “The Ghent Altarpiece”. One of its panels, the Just Judges, had been lost (stolen) since 1934. At the time, a Belgian police enquiry had been able to identify the thief (Arsène Goedertier), but had been unable to recover the missing panel, if only because several pieces of the puzzle fell into place after Goedertier’s death. During World War II, the Nazi regime held its own search for the missing panel, but this was unsuccessful too.
It is therefore likely that members of the ALIU would have been confronted with this investigative dossier, as well as being assigned the task to return the polyptych to Belgium. According to Hammer, the person who saw the Nazi dossier on the search for the panel was none other than Tom R.
Tom R. is said to have received a large wooden box at his office desk in Munich, which contained detailed information about the panel and the painting. He claims that it was the OSS (the predecessor to the CIA) that tasked him with trying to learn whether the Nazis had been successful in recovering the missing panel – the answer being negative. But even though they and he failed to find the missing part, Tom R. did learn that the interest of the Germans went beyond the painting’s artistic values, and was linked with the infamous occult ideology, though, in this case, certain obscure aspects of Christianity.

Arma Christi

Alfred Rosenberg

Apart from the Nazi file on the theft, it was Tom R’s questioning of Alfred Rosenberg, the “Party Ideologist”, that was an important event in Tom’s life. Tom R. added that Rosenberg was convinced that he would not live long, and had begun to write some personal memoirs and queried whether Tom would be interested in talking more.
Rosenberg thus turned an interrogation into a conversation and turned it towards whether Tom R. was Christian, which opened a discussion about Jesus. Rosenberg said that there was a story that the Arma Christi, the relics of the crucifixion (i.e. the nails, the crown of thorns, the spear of destiny, etc.) had been hidden by a group that was referred to as the “Allahists”. Nobody knew who precisely they were, but one of the Van Eyck brothers belonged to this group and had left clues in his painting. Rosenberg said that the missing panel was a vital clue in that puzzle, one that would lead to the hiding place of these precious relics.

From such conversations, Tom R. noted that Van Eyck’s painting did indeed seem to be a code – very much like The Da Vinci Code – that contained information about the geographical location of the Arma Christi. At the time, however, Tom R. did not have any major interest in pursuing this quest, and hence decided to forego the task. This, however, was contrary to the desires of the intelligence agencies, who charged Tom R. to continue with his research and recover the Arma Christi, if possible – complete what the Nazis had fail to do.

Publications

When he made progress in his research, he nevertheless also realised that whatever the motives of the SS had been to recover these artefacts, the OSS/CIA had equally sinister and occult desires. Specifically, it seems, noteworthy were stories that if the Arma Christi were to fall in the wrong hands, these would be used not as evidence of the historical nature of Christ, but specifically as a sign of power – very much like the popular stories of how those who possessed the Spear of Destiny were in control of the destiny of the world.
Hence, Tom wanted to guarantee that even if his quest was successful, the CIA would never become the recipient of this information. Hence, he decided to first create a smokescreen and then to disappear, fake his own death, as well as create a trail of disinformation, which, Tom R. told Hammer, would eventually be spoon-fed to Gérard de Sède, which Tom R. seems to have personally known and with whom, he claimed, he “worked together” to mask “the truth”, but which was, in essence, an exercise in creating false information – disinformation: a lot of misinformation, containing a kernel of truth.

Coming clean?

Tom R. claimed that eventually, the entire story mushroomed beyond anyone’s control and now, late in life and nearing death, he felt that it was his task to put the story right.
Though it would be easy to dismiss the entire book as a novel, the product of Hammer’s imagination, it is clear – for example during personal contacts with Hammer – that Tom was definitely a real person, and that he told Hammer this story. This does not, of course, mean that the story he told was – or is – the truth, or nothing but the truth. It merely means that Hammer did not invent it, but was instead told this story.
Throughout the book, Tom R. underlines that throughout his life, he used disinformation and propaganda and even the title of the book Satan’s Song, is a reference to such practices. We have only Tom’s word for it that with his “confession” to Hammer, he was trying to set the record straight, though men of his ilk, such as E. Howard Hunt and Philip Corso, spun tall tales until the end of their life. Furthermore, even if Tom R. did work for the CIA, there is no guarantee that what he uncovered was indeed the truth, or resulted in a conclusion that was not the proper one – or which he himself may have been led to, becoming the victim of someone else’s manipulation.
Successful disinformation uses genuine information but puts this together in an “imaginative” manner – thus largely echoing what the Dutch newspaper found, namely that most of the information in the book could be validated, but that the cross-correspondences could not be substantiated. Still, we note that the cross-correspondences were not invalidated by the newspaper’s investigation either, which might mean that this is not disinformation, but indeed “the truth”.

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Filip Coppens