Knights Hospitaller

Yes—no—yes, I have found it. But not your sort of Heaven, he said, and I wondered how he knew what Heaven was to me. Not even on Rhodes with the Knights Hospitaller, which is the nearest I have come to crusade. Nor the sort of heaven men seek with the nearest wench. He shook his head, as if impatient with himself. I spoke foolishly, for I do not look to find Heaven on earth again. .. I have a wife, and she is well enough. But... Perhaps you heard. There was a woman I loved. ... 

A Poetical Dialogue between a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitallers and a... 

In fact, membership of the Knights of Malta (known as SMOM an abbreviation of its full title of The Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes) and American intelligence pre-date the CIA. William (Bill) Donovan, the head of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) - the precursor to the CIA - was associated with SMOM. As was James Jesus Angleton, the CIA s hard-core counter-... 

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