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45 years ago today, delegates arrived at the Capital Hilton hotel in Washington DC for Day One of the 7th annual World Anti-Communist League (WACL) conference, the first to be hosted in the United States. #thread 
A few months before Richard Nixon resigned, the President's Deputy Special Assistant, Burce Herschensohn, delivered the keynote address at WACL-7. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) co-chaired the conference with Congressmen Phil Crane (R-IL) and Clement Zablocki (D-WI).
The event was officially hosted by the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF), which had just elected Phyllis Schlafly's husband its new president. As an important member of the ACWF, Lev Dobriansky had a substantial role in organizing the conference.
WACL-7's opening plenary included a speech by its outgoing president Raimundo Guerrero (alleged member of a Mexican neo-Nazi cult, Los Tecos) and a prayer by Jamaica-born Rev Henry Mitchell, who once told MLK to "get the hell out" of Chicago and campaigned for George Wallace.
The second plenary session on Day One of WACL-7 contained an address, not seven months after Augusto Pinochet's fascist coup d'etat in Santiago, called "Saving Freedom in Chile," by Sergio Onofre Jarpa, a Chilean Senator who soon if not already represented Pinochet at the UN.
Also on Day One, the WACL-7 Resolutions Committee met. Jose Ma. Hernandez of the Philippines urged the dissolution of the UN, which was approved. ACWF passed motions in favor of the right to bear arms, and against "extremism" (watered down as if not to offend neo-Nazis too much).
The next morning, WACL-7 participants were bussed to the White House at 8am for a short tour (again: just months before Nixon's resignation), and then to the Lincoln Memorial at 9am, where Nathan C Ross, a WACL chief in Africa and member of Liberia's Supreme Court, laid a wreath.
The 3rd plenary session at WACL-7 featured speeches by John McCain Jr. and Yaroslav Stetsko, a Ukrainian war criminal who declared loyalty to Hitler in WW2 & helped organize the OUN-B militia ("police") that led the 7-1-1941 pogrom in Lviv, which almost killed Simon Wiesenthal.
US House Rep Richard Ichord (D-MO), the last chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, was the guest speaker at a luncheon on Day 2 of WACL-7. The subject of his talk was, "Is Detente Worth the Price?" (Some in WACL, such as Yaroslav Stetsko, advocated for WW3.)
The 4th plenary session at WACL-7 featured a panel discussion ("The Human Cost of Communism") moderated by Lev Dobriansky b/w a former adviser to Chiang Kai-shek, a Cuban exile alleged to have had close ties to the CIA, and two Jewish former political prisoners from the USSR.
Day 3 of WACL-7 entailed another panel discussion & another luncheon guest speaker: the Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza DeBayle. In the years to come WACL helped bring the Condor network to Central America & was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.
To close out Day 3, the WACL held a "rally" at the Shoreham Hotel ballroom, which culminated in an address by William F. Buckley, editor of the National Review. Afterwards a Moonie chorus sang the "WACL Theme Song."
It's been said the Latin American AntiCommunist Confederation — a Central American-dominated "Death Squad International" created after WACL-6 in Mexico City — introduced a resolution at WACL-7 in favor of a military junta taking power in the United States.
Just realized: a delegate for the WACL+ABN youth groups at WACL-7 (@AskoldCrucial) is today the @KyivPost's Washington DC correspondent & even wrote a couple articles for @theintercept in 2015. Yaroslav Stetsko was the ABN's leader for life. Safe to say he knew Mr. Krushelnycky?
