John Rees (journalist)

Rees was born in Britain.[4][5]

During his speaking career with American Opinion Speaking Bureau (AOSM), a John Birch Society organization, Rees claimed in 1964 to have been born in Lithuania as Vladas Hrikavicias.[1] He toured the United States with the speaking bureau relating his experience living under Soviet communism and denouncing the "communist hordes who forced him to flee Lithuania by Ox-cart."[1]

In the early 1960s, Rees worked in a business position for the London Daily Mirror, but was fired for misusing personal accounts, according to an FBI memo. Agents in the FBI office at the London U.S. Embassy also found that during 1962 Rees, who was married and had five children, was dating an FBI stenographer, who resigned.[4] Rees moved to the United States for a reporting job that fell through.[4][5]

Rees remarried and worked at a job training program in Newark, New Jersey, in 1968. During that time, he marketed his new organization called National Goals, "specializing in areas of education, training and law enforcement", and sought work with the FBI, which rebuffed him.[4][5] Rees went undercover in Chicago, covertly tap­ing political meetings for testimony he gave to the House Un-American Activites Committee (HUAC).[4] He married his third wife, Sheila Louise O'Connor, and they moved to Washington in 1971.[4] He became a police informant.[4] She beame an office manager at the National Lawyers Guild, which was represent­ing activists and antiwar groups; he gave internal Guild documents to the FBI.[4] In 1975, Congressman Larry McDonald hired Rees to his office staff.[4]

Rees allegedly benefited from information collected through a loose network of private informants on college campuses in the United States, that Political Research Associates referred to as often having better placed infiltrators among campus groups than the FBI's agents.[6] The network would pass information along to Rees, who would in turn forward it to the director of intelligence at FBI headquarters, especially when there was a credible risk to students. From there it would be forwarded to field offices. These activities were part of a network of private right wing groups that the FBI used to gather intelligence on cults active on campus, government critics and activists opposed to the Reagan Administration's foreign policy in Central America.[7]

In 1976, an investigation by the New York State Assembly concluded that police had used reports published by Rees in Information Digest to assemble dossiers on many activists who had committed no crimes.[5]

In 1979, Rees worked with McDonald and John K. Singlaub to create the Western Goals Foundation, where Rees's title was editor.[6] Rees set up the foundation's computer database to track suspected radicals, and wrote many of the foundation's published reports about domestic subversives, terrorism and communist threats. People in law enforcement sometimes leaked derogatory intelligence to Western Goals, which Rees then published in newsletters. These in turn were entered into the Congressional Record by McDonald, which shielded him from libel. Western Goals would then cite McDonald’s statements in its own public reports.[8] Rees left Western Goals after McDonald’s death.[8]

Rees founded the Maldon Institute, a nonprofit funded by the Scaife family.[8]

Rees criticized Lyndon LaRouche and the LaRouche movement, saying the organization had "taken on the characteristics more of a political cult than a political party," and a cult-like "blind obedience."[9]

First Lady Nancy Reagan greets Rees and author Grace Metalious

One of Rees' lovers, author Grace Metalious, signed a will just before her death leaving her entire estate to him, with the understanding that he would take care of her children, because she did not trust her estranged husband, George. John Rees did not accept the will, asking that it be turned over to her children. George was able to invalidate the will, but to little result as her estate proved to be insolvent from years of lavish living, overgenerosity towards "friends", and embezzlement by an agent. At the time of her death she had bank accounts totaling $41,174 and debts of more than $200,000.[10]

Rees was associated with Review of the News and American Opinion, published by the John Birch Society, with which Rees was an active collaborator.[11]

Rees published Information Digest, a newsletter that touted reporting on "the operations and real capabilities of social movements and political groups". Annual subscriptions were $500. According to The Village Voice, copies circulated among intelligence officials and conservative politicians including Ronald Reagan.[4] Rees launched and managed another newsletter, International Reports: Early Warning.[12] Rees was also editor of Conservative Digest magazine.

• Stein, Jeff. "Local Police Spy Joins Congress Start."
• Berlet, Chip (Feb. 2, 1993). "How Government Intelligence Agencies and Private Right-wing Counter-subversion Groups Forge Ad Hoc Covert Spy Networks that Target Dissidents as Outlaws." Political Research Associates.
• Berlet, Chip (Sep. 8, 2000). "The Maldon Institute." Political Research Associates.
• Banyan, Will (Jan. 2008). "The Illusion of Elite Unity: Elite Factionalism, the 'War on Terror' and the New World Order (Part 1)." Conspiracy Archive.

• John Rees at IMDb
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. John Rees (1988) at Google Scholar
• Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. John Rees, Sheila Louise Rees and the Information Digest (1986) at Justia
• Federal Bureau of Investigation files (Part 1, Part 2) on John Rees and National Goals, Inc. (obtained via FOIA) at Internet Archive