Basement #011: Peter Levenda | Nazis, UFOs, and the Hidden History Nobody Tells

TL;DR

Peter Levenda recounts 50 years investigating Nazis, CIA fronts, UFO connections, and hidden history that began when he crashed Bobby Kennedy's funeral as a fake priest at 17.

Key Points

• 1.Peter Levenda has authored over 20 books on dark historical intersections. His works include Unholy Alliance, the Sinister Forces Trilogy, and the Secret Machine series co-authored with Tom DeLonge, covering occultism, intelligence operations, and hidden history.
• 2.Levenda's research philosophy deliberately avoids drawing conclusions. He presents raw data and synchronicities — especially around the Kennedy assassination — and challenges readers to interpret the evidence themselves rather than pushing a single narrative.
• 3.A reader discovered a major Nazi gold connection Levenda had missed in his own books. The same account numbers and address appeared across two separate books, revealing a Nazi war criminal had funneled Nazi gold through Jakarta to support Sukarno's rival IMF-style revolutionary fund.
• 4.20 tons of Nazi gold moved through Macau to Indonesia at the end of WWII. The other 20 tons may have gone to support Chiang Kai-shek's forces in China; West German embassies in Indonesia were staffed by former SS officers who helped depose Sukarno by falsely labeling him a communist.
• 5.Levenda's path began at 17 when he tried to avoid the Vietnam draft. Inspired by a $5 Universal Life Church ordination certificate, he researched clergy deferments and decided to create a legally incorporated Orthodox church in New York State.
• 6.He and his high school friend William Andrew Prosky incorporated a fake Slavic Orthodox church. They chose a Czech/Slovak Orthodox denomination still behind the Iron Curtain so there was no way to verify their legitimacy, and recruited a Borat-accented Eastern European exile as their bishop.
• 7.The teenagers built an elaborate paper trail by visiting real Orthodox churches across New York. They handmade robes and stovepipe hats, attended services at both the anti-communist Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia (92nd St) and the Moscow-aligned KGB-infiltrated church (97th St), introducing themselves as clergy.
• 8.They funded their operation by blessing graves at St. Michael Cemetery in Queens. Dressed in full black Orthodox robes, they would bless random graves and accept $5 donations from families, earning up to $20 per weekend — enough to cover their expenses.
• 9.Bobby Kennedy's assassination in June 1968 directly triggered the stunt that changed Levenda's life. Three months after MLK's killing, Kennedy's death felt like the end of hope; Prosky immediately declared they would attend the funeral at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
• 10.The night before the funeral they gained access to St. Patrick's while the coffin was already present. With only Rose Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy kneeling in prayer in the empty cathedral, Levenda touched Bobby Kennedy's coffin — a surreal, pivotal moment he describes as potentially splitting a timeline.
• 11.They entered Bobby Kennedy's funeral in a rented $18 limo and were waved through Secret Service. Dressed as Orthodox bishops, they were escorted directly into the sanctuary alongside actual heads of state, senators, and high clergy — with no weapons check despite Levenda noting he could have hidden a machine gun under his robes.
• 12.Andy Williams tapped Levenda on the shoulder mid-ceremony to ask if he was on yet. Levenda, standing in the sanctuary as a fake priest, simply shook his head no; Williams later sang The Battle Hymn of the Republic as Leonard Bernstein conducted the Hallelujah Chorus during the recessional.
• 13.After the funeral they met a strange bishop outside who handed them a pamphlet for the American Orthodox Catholic Church in the Bronx. When they visited, the church was a beautiful mansion with a full Orthodox interior but zero parishioners — it was a total front operation.
• 14.The American Orthodox Catholic Church turned out to have David Ferrie and Jack Martin as bishops. These figures are connected to CIA operations and the Kennedy assassination investigation; Levenda had stumbled into a genuine intelligence front church without knowing it.
• 15.The UFO-Nazi-assassination connection is a central thread across Levenda's work. Jacques Vallee noted as early as 1963 that the Kennedy assassination and UFO phenomena seemed to reflect the same violent eruption beneath society's surface — a synchronicity Levenda sees as pointing to something deeper than conventional conspiracy theory.