Clinton-Madonna-Pellicano-Kabbalah: Africa Connection

Fox News/October 18, 2006
By Roger Friedman

Can you connect these dots? Madonna-Bill Clinton-Kabbalah-Anthony Pellicano and ... Africa?

Madonna’s disastrous public-relations effort in the small African country of Malawi only gets worse. I can tell you that she has started a new charitable foundation, Raising Malawi, to help orphans in that country, but that the whole thing is a front for the Kabbalah Centre in Hollywood.

To compound matters, Clinton's own foundation is right there on Madge's new Web site as her No. 1 supporter. The Clinton Foundation is the only one of Raising Malawi’s listed partners to have a usable link on the Web site. But the chief individual benefactress is the second wife of a Hollywood billionaire who hired jailed private detective Pellicano to spy on his first wife.

Don’t the people of Malawi have enough trouble?

The charity, Raising Malawi, is designed to spread the word of Philip Berg’s Kabbalah Centre, his own version of Kabbalah beliefs and mysticism, through Malawi’s orphaned children.

Indeed, the Web site for Raising Malawi, the new charity, tells the whole story. The entire organization is run by the Bergs as a kind of missionary program for Africa, with Madonna as the leading proselytizer.

Unlike U2’s Bono, who’s merely trying to send money to Africa by pushing the sales of red phones and T-shirts, Madonna is preaching as she disseminates her funds and largesse.

Madonna is already suffering worldwide criticism this week for taking a child away from its father and “adopting” it against Malawi law. Some say she’s “bought” a 1-year-old boy named David, and Tuesday there was news that she whisked the child out of Malawi under the cloak of secrecy. There is fresh news Wednesday that now Madonna may even want a Malawian girl to add to her collection.

But now it seems that the charity she’s set up in Malawi is just the infamous Kabbalah Centre of Hollywood under a different name. The listed founders of Raising Malawi are Michael and Monica Berg. He is described as the son of Philip Berg, founder of the Kabbalah Centre.

“In addition to physical support,” his bio reads, “Michael is committed to providing psychosocial relief through the Spirituality for Kids curriculum.” The latter organization is essentially Kabbalah for children, a group that Madonna endorses. The proceeds from her children’s books went to that branch of Berg’s organization.

Raising Malawi is run entirely by Spirituality for Kids, or Kabbalah, according to the site. Other leaders including SK’s Director of Development Philippe van den Bossche, SK’s Director of Research and Global Training Dr. Heath Grant,and “philanthropist” Hedi Gores, wife of Beverly Hills “barely a billionaire” leveraged-buyout king Alec Gores, who runs Gores Technology Group.

Hedi, however, is not Gores’ first wife. That would be Lisa Gores, whose name turned up on a list of people federal prosecutors in Los Angeles say were spied on by none other than jailed private-eye Pellicano. Prosecutors says she was spied on during her divorce from Gores.

Gores, according to the New York Times, is said to have hired Pellicano because he wanted to catch Lisa cheating with his brother, Tom, a business competitor (a third brother, Sam, runs the Paradigm Talent Agency in Hollywood and is married to a former soap-opera star). Alec Gores paid Pellicano $50,000, loaned him the same amount (which was not repaid) and treated the private investigator’s family to a Hawaiian vacation in exchange for services rendered.

Gores was represented in his divorce by Pellicano client Dennis Wasser, and is also represented by the Hollywood firm once known as Christensen, Miller, Fink. Lead partner Terry Christensen is the only lawyer under indictment in the Pellicano case so far. Louis "Skip" Miller is leaving the firm that he made famous.

Gores, prosecutors wrote in their Pellicano indictment, wiretapped his soon to be ex, Lisa, right before their divorce proceedings began. "On or about Jan. 8, 2001," the Pellicano indictment alleges, the detective and two co-defendants "intercepted, endeavored to intercept, and procured another person to intercept and endeavor to intercept, wire communications of Lisa Gores."

The connection between the Goreses and Kabbalah: They’re described as “primary donors” on the group’s Web site.

Alec Gores also carries another Hollywood connection. In 2004 Gores commissioned actor Tom Arnold to write and direct a $5-million feature film called "The Kid & I" starring Gores’ 18-year-old son, Eric, whose mother Gores allegedly wiretapped just three years earlier.

Eric Gores, like the character he plays in the movie, suffers from cerebral palsy. He co-starred in the vanity production with Joe Mantegna, Linda Hamilton, Jamie Lee Curtis and Shaquille O'Neal.

“The Kid & I” is notable for being the only film in which Arnold Schwarzenegger has appeared since becoming governor of California. Gores, by coincidence, donated $7,000 to the Republican Party, George W. Bush and failed California U.S. Senate candidate Bill Jones during that period.

The Goreses are not the only famous people supporting Raising Malawi, by the way. The Web site also lists Bryan Spears, brother of Britney; teen pop singer Aaron Carter and Guy Oseary, the head of Madonna’s record company and her business partner.