Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck sells himself as a middle-class guy from Boston who was raised by a single mother. As it turns out, he descends from an aristocratic line and has serious connections to the intelligence agencies.

A PBS series called Finding Your Roots looked into Affleck’s genealogy. Affleck forced the producers of this show to edit out a relative of his who owned slaves. When the public found out, a major scandal ensued and PBS was forced to suspend the series.

I don’t really care whether or not Affleck’s distant ancestor owned slaves when doing so was legal. I care about this scandal because it suggests that Affleck is willing to cover up his family’s past. And as we’ll see, he has a lot to hide.

Finding Your Roots barely mentioned Affleck’s grandmother Elizabeth Roberts Shaw. I find this incredibly odd, since Shaw is a compelling figure. Elizabeth Roberts was born in 1921 to prominent parents in New York City. She was one of a just a handful of women who attended college prior to World War II, enrolling at Smith College.

While at Smith, Roberts married a man from Dartmouth named O’Brien Boldt. Boldt’s best man at the wedding was a fellow Dartmouth student named Tom Braden. Tom Braden worked for the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) during World War II, and then headed the CIA’s International Organization’s Division during the 1950s. Braden became one of the most famous and impactful intelligence operatives in American history. I won’t have time to get into every thing he did here, but know that he was a senior agent in charge of the CIA’s cultural warfare project.

Years later, Affleck’s grandmother mentioned in an interview how her good friend Tom Braden got her a job at the Museum of Modern Art. Affleck’s grandmother recalls:

We [Roberts and her fiancée] had a close group of friends, one of whom subsequently hired me for The Museum of Modern Art: Tom Braden, who was best man at our secret wedding and who I think was responsible for telling people and breaking the secret some years later. After he got out of the OSS, he went to work for Nelson [Rockefeller and then Nelson put him in the Museum as secretary. (1)

Wow! So it’s pretty clear the Museum of Modern Art was functioning as a CIA front in the post-World War II years. This fact is actually mentioned in Frances Stonor Saunders’ famous treatise The Cultural Cold War. The book describes how the CIA used hundreds of organizations as fronts for “cultural warfare” against the Soviets and leftists. Wikipedia quotes a reviewer of the book, who says it:

Shows men like CIA employee Tom Braden, who headed the [cultural warfare] program, to have been unsung heroes of the Cold War, as well as masters of art in both cultural warfare and cultural appreciation. (2)

To summarize: the best man at Affleck’s grandmother’s wedding worked in the OSS and went on to run the CIA’s cultural warfare department. This guy – Tom Braden – specialized in using art, film, and so forth to spread propaganda, and he even worked alongside Affleck’s grandmother for a time.

Now let’s move onto Affleck’s mother, who was born to the aforementioned Elizabeth Roberts and William Boldt in New York City. Her name is Chris Ann Boldt, and she is the lady who raised Ben and Casey in Cambridge, MA. Chris was apparently a public school teacher who had to raise the kids alone, since Affleck’s father was an alcoholic who left the family early on.

Let’s do a little more research. Wikipedia mentions that Chris went to Harvard. If you google “Chris Ann Bolt Harvard,” the second hit is from a memoir called A Liberal Education by Abbot Gleason. This book (in part) describes how Ben Affleck’s mother was one of four Harvard undergraduates recruited in 1964 to teach summer courses at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. This was during a time of racial strife, so the Harvard students were supposed to be bridging the gap between black and white, rich and poor and so forth.

I bring this up because Ben’s mother was recruited by the memoir’s author – Abbott Gleason. A little research reveals that Abbott is the son of S. Everett Gleason, another top spook. Here’s Wikipedia’s write up on Gleason:

From 1942 to 1946, he was Intelligence Chief for the Office of Strategic Services. He was Deputy Executive Secretary of the National Security Council, and on the Solarium Committee. He wrote, with William Langer, The Challenge to Isolation, for the Council of Foreign Relations. (3)

Again – wow. These connections go to the very top. And in both instances they have substantial connections to Affleck’s mother and grandmother.

You might say: “But Affleck’s mother was recruited by Abbot Gleason, not his father. Why does this matter?” Note that S. Everett Gleason worked for the OSS at the same exact time as Tom Braden. It’s likely Affleck’s grandmother knew Everett Gleason as well, and that’s why her daughter and his son ended up meeting and working together at Harvard. At any rate, Affleck’s proximity to these major intelligence figures raises red flags in every direction.

Now on to Ben Affleck himself. Prior to the release of Good Will Hunting, we are told that Affleck was a struggling actor. He did have parts in Dazed and Confused (1993), Glory Daze (1995), and Chasing Amy (1997), but he was nowhere near being a star. His buddy Matt Damon had even less acting experience at this point. Prior to Good Will Hunting, Damon’s only real roles were in School Ties (1992), a flop called Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), and The Rainmaker (1997), which released two months before Good Will Hunting and didn’t make much money.

We are told Good Will Hunting was a surprise hit that took awhile to catch on with audiences. So, isn’t it a little odd that these two no-name actors were invited to watch the premiere of the film with the freaking president! This photo is from January 11, 1998, which is the same day Good Will Hunting released to the general public. It was taken at Camp David, which is the President’s retreat center, but also a military base.

To be clear: at the time of this photo, Good Will Hunting was not a hit yet (since it had just released earlier in the day). Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were not famous yet, and were supposedly struggling to get by in LA. And yet, we’re supposed to believe that Bill Clinton was so excited about this film, that he sought out Matt and Ben and invited them to Camp David so they could all watch it together. That’s just ridiculous.

It’s also interesting to note that Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting is being recruited by the NSA.

Once Affleck’s film career got going, he stopped trying to hide his intelligence connections. In 2002 he starred in The Sum of All Fears and played – of course – a CIA analyst. During production of this film, The Guardian reports:

The agency was happy to bring its makers to Langley for a personal tour of headquarters, and to offer [Affleck] access to agency analysts. When filming began, [CIA liaison] Brandon was on set to advise. (4)

Yes, you read that right. The CIA literally had an agent advising Affleck and others as they filmed The Sum of All Fears. The position is now called the “Entertainment Industry Liaison” and works as a permanent link between Hollywood and the CIA.

But wait – it gets better. The Guardian reports this same CIA liaison was often on the set of the television series Alias. The star of Alias is Jennifer Garner, who at the time was married to Ben Affleck. Garner’s character in the show is “Sydney Bristow, a double-agent for the Central Intelligence Agency posing as an operative for SD-6, a worldwide criminal and espionage organization.” (5) Of course.

In 2004 Garner even filmed a recruitment video for the CIA. In their press release, the CIA also bordered on taking credit for crafting Garner’s Alias character. Here it is from the horse’s mouth:

Ms. Garner was excited to participate in the [recruitment] video after being asked by the Office of Public Affairs. The CIA’s Film Industry Liaison worked with the writers of Alias during the first season…Although the show Alias is fictional, the character Jennifer Garner plays embodies the integrity, patriotism, and intelligence the CIA looks for in its officers. (6)

Question: does Ben Affleck have any women in his family who aren’t directly tied to the CIA? Seriously, his grandmother, mother, and ex-wife seem to hang out exclusively with spooks.

Finally, Affleck recently directed and starred in Argo, which is a fictionalized account of the CIA’s exploits during the Iran Hostage crisis. This film is billed as Affleck’s “breakthrough moment” as a director, but given what we know now, is pretty clearly propaganda.

Matt Damon, the Bourne Identity, and Robert Ludlum

Matt Damon came up bizarrely fast, and there are red flags every where. Damon’s played CIA (or NSA) related characters in Good Willing Hunting, four Jason Bourne films, The Good Shepherd, and Syriana.

Speaking of Jason Bourne, hold onto your seat belts for this one. The Bourne film series is based on novels by Robert Ludlum. Ludlum wrote Tom Clancy-esque novels in the 70s through the early 2000s. Many of them were bestsellers and were eventually turned into films and TV shows. These books and films made a massive amount of money and allowed Ludlum to maintain an extravagant jet-setting life for decades.

According to Wikipedia,

The world in his writings is one where global corporations, shadowy military forces and government organizations all conspired to preserve (if it was evil) or undermine (if it was law-abiding) the status quo. (7)

Ludlum has so many red flags around his bio it’s almost funny. First of all, his output makes no sense. He supposedly didn’t start writing until he was 44 years old, and then proceeded to pound out 27 books.

Ludlum’s father supposedly died when he was eight, yet he was able to attend prestigious private schools. He went to the same boarding school (Cheshire Academy) that J.P. Morgan attended in the early 1900s. To explain how he paid for these schools, one bio I found claimed his mother had family money. Perhaps…

However, according to a biography by Robert Ludlum’s nephew, “Ludlum was adopted, and spent much of his life wondering who he really was much like Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity...” (8)

Why, then, do Wikipedia and other mainstream sites list Ludlum’s parents as Margaret Wadsworth and George Hartford Ludlum? Were these his real parents, or adopted? Wikipedia makes no mention of an adoption or the early death of his father.

To answer these questions, I decided to do some research on George Hartford Ludlum. When I Googled this name, I was surprised to find all the hits were for the similarly named George Ludlum Hartford. I couldn’t find any thing on Ludlum’s supposed father, so I decided to look into this man who had the same name (just with the middle and last names switched).

It turns out George Ludlum Hartford was a billionaire, who made the A&P chain of grocery stores into “The world's largest retailer with annual sales of $4.5 billion in 1957.” (9) The New York Times called him one of the “20th century’s most accomplished and visionary businessmen” (10).

George Ludlum Hartford lived in New Jersey his whole life, spending many years in a town called Montclair. Robert Ludlum (the author) grew up in New Jersey as well, living only about 30 minutes from Montclair for decades.

What are the chances that a guy named George Hartford Ludlum (Robert’s father) lived thirty minutes away from a man named George Ludlum Hartford (the billionaire) in suburban New Jersey?

I think it’s pretty clear that Robert Ludlum’s father (or grandfather, more likely) was George Ludlum Hartford, and they switched the middle and last names in his bio to disguise this fact. After all, Wikipedia admits George Ludlum Hartford was an extremely secretive man:

Despite his position as the company's chairman, he was largely unknown to the public and even in the company except among a small group of senior executives. (11)

Even people in this guy’s own company had never heard of him. Furthermore, he supposedly didn’t get married until his 40s and never had any children. Yeah, right. If you’re sitting on a massive family fortune (A&P was founded by this guy’s father), would you just stop the family line? I don’t think so.

Another clue: according to the mainstream genealogy sites, Robert Ludlum’s mother was 43 years old when she gave birth to him. That’s hard to believe, especially since he was born in the 1920s, when women were having babies a lot younger.

I have given you a mountain of evidence that suggests the author of the Bourne Identity novels was in fact the hidden grandson of a billionaire. Considering Robert Ludlum’s extravagant lifestyle (he flew in private jets, lived on a 200 year-old estate, visited exotic locales constantly), this isn’t totally surprising. There’s no way writing fiction in the 1970s could bring in that much dough.

However, there’s even more here. A lot more. First off, Robert Ludlum’s nephew recently published an article where he mentions:

Three of [Robert’s] college room-mates went on to become intelligence officers, several of his best friends worked for MI6 and the CIA, and his wife Mary had ties to the Pentagon. Some suspected that Robert himself might have been a spy. (12)

Wow. That might be a record for most red flags in one paragraph.

Ludlum died in 2011, supposedly from a house fire. However, the death was highly suspicious and is now being investigated as a murder. Listen to this:

Robert’s younger son Jonathan, who was in the process of investigating his father’s death as well as beginning a challenge to the Ludlum Estate, disappeared two years ago and was ultimately found dead in his home. No one had heard from him for over a month. Karen Ludlum, Robert’s second wife and the only witness to the event that took his life, died last year. The cause of death was listed as “suicide.” (13)

Do these sound like the type of events that happen to a novelist? I don’t think so.

Ludlum was an obvious spook, who was probably an heir of the A&P fortune. I bet most of his books were written by the Intelligence agencies, in order to make “conspiracy theories” and “fiction” tightly intertwined in people’s minds.

That would also explain the prolific output. Even after this guy died, the publishing company supposedly had another 5 of his books left to publish, which raised some eye brows at the time.

Matt Damon

Nothing about Matt Damon makes any sense.

Like, Affleck he is marketed as an “everyman.” Seriously, Google “Matt Damon everyman” and you will find article after article using that word to describe Damon. The reason I find the “everyman” marketing angle so amusing is that Matt Damon has always been Elite.

America’s favorite “every man” went to Harvard. Kind of ironic, right? And he wasn’t some lonely scholarship kid, either. Damon was chosen for The Delphic, one of Harvard’s uber exclusive Finals Clubs.

On the surface, Damon doesn’t seem to fit the profile of a typical Harvard Finals Club member. For one, he was barely on campus during his college years. Damon skipped half of his Sophomore year to work on a made-for-TV film called Rising Son. He returned for one semester as a Junior, only to leave for a full year to work on the film School Ties. He came back for a single semester in 1992, but and then dropped out for good after landing a role in a film called Geronimo: An American Legend.

So The Delphic Club, despite being filled with jocks from “ice hockey, baseball, and captains of several major sports teams” (19) apparently decided to extend membership to a theatre kid who was rarely seen on campus. That seems odd – it’s not a natural fit at all. Sure, Damon probably had some charisma and good looks as an undergrad, but that’s not enough to get into an elite club you otherwise have no business joining. Damon must have had connections prior to enrolling at Harvard.

Six years after leaving school, Damon received the Academy Award for Best Screenplay for writing Good Will Hunting. Wikipedia tells us the award “was handed to [Damon] by Harvard alumnus Jack Lemmon, who had also been a member of the Delphic Club.” (20) Interesting…

Additionally, Damon’s Freshman year roommate was the son of a New York real estate tycoon, named Jason Furham. Furham went on to become Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in the Obama Administration. I’m not suggesting any thing nefarious here, but it’s interesting that Damon roomed with a guy who became so prominent in the Obama administration.

Finally, here’s an excerpt from an interview Damon gave to the Harvard newspaper years after graduation. Referencing the class time he missed due to pursuing film roles, he said:

What was happening is that I would keep coming back, and I would almost get done with the semester and then I would be yanked out. But I thought it was serving me well… (21)

Why does Damon act like he has so little agency in regards to his film roles? He was “yanked out” of class, but it was OK because it “was serving him well?” Who talks like that about something they are pursuing? Damon makes it sound like he had serious connections in LA, who were telling him what to do.

Conclusion

Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Bourne Identity author Robert Ludlim are spooks related to the top families.

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SOURCES

[Not letting me publish them here for some reason. Look for this post in my post history, and you'll see the 21 sources I cited.