Pt. 1: Past Coup Attempts in the U.S. (AFA 10)

Part 1a 42:41 | Part 1b 42:19 | Part 1c 42:50 | Part 1d 44:48
(Recorded July 11, 1985)

First of a four-part series about fas­cism in Amer­ica, this pro­gram doc­u­ments the early growth and pow­er­ful nature of Amer­i­can fas­cism. Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on the actions of Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists and financiers sym­pa­thetic to fas­cism, most of whom were also pro­fes­sion­ally con­nected to cor­po­rate ele­ments in Nazi Germany.

The pro­gram­p­re­sents analy­sis and his­tory of the rela­tion­ship of the Mor­gan and Dupont inter­ests to the MacArthur Group in the mil­i­tary (Gen­eral Dou­glas MacArthur and an impor­tant group of high-ranking offi­cers on his staff.) The machi­na­tions of this eco­nomic, mil­iary and poli­cal milieu are the focus of much of the broadct.

The showt high­lights the 1934 coup attempt by pow­er­ful mem­bers of America’s cor­po­rate elite. Dis­sat­is­fied to the point of trea­son by Pres­i­dent Roosevelt’s New Deal, they sought to over­throw FDR and install a Mussolini-style “cor­po­rate state.” (See Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M42.) The con­spir­a­tors sought to uti­lize an armed force of World War I vet­er­ans, led by Marine Corps Major Gen­eral Smed­ley But­ler, a two-time win­ner of the Con­gres­sional Medal of Honor.

A true patriot, But­ler pre­tended to go along with the con­spir­a­tors, but actu­ally informed the Roo­sevelt admin­is­tra­tion of the plot. Dur­ing the sub­se­quent Con­gres­sional inves­ti­ga­tion, But­ler revealed that among the cen­tral con­spir­a­tors were mem­bers of the Morgan-Dupont eco­nomic axis and that Dou­glas MacArthur had been the plot­ters’ first choice to lead the coup.

The pro­gram also doc­u­ments the involve­ment of ele­ments of the MacArthur/Morgan/Dupont milieu in sub­se­quent attempts to over­throw FDR. Some of those attempts were under­taken in con­junc­tion with Third Reich intel­li­gence offi­cers and with the knowl­edge and bless­ing of the Nazi leadership.

The pro­gram con­cludes with his­tory and analy­sis of the pro­gram of assas­si­na­tion and ter­ror con­ducted by the so-called “Black Reich­swehr” (para-military units func­tion­ing at the behest of the Ger­man mil­i­tary lead­er­ship.) This assas­si­na­tion pro­gram paved the way for Hitler’s rise to power.

Pro­gram high­lights include: the Nazi /fascist back­ground of Major Gen­eral Charles Willoughby (Dou­glas MacArthur’s top intel­li­gence offi­cer from 1939 through the begin­ning of the Korean War); MacArthur’s selec­tion of Andres Sori­ano (a promi­nent Phillip­ine fas­cist) to hold a key post in the islands after “lib­er­a­tion;” the sup­port given by the 1934 coup back­ers to Hitler; MacArthur staffer Gen­eral George Van Horne Moseley’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ger­man intel­li­gence in an attempt to over­throw FDR; Amer­i­can fas­cist William Dud­ley Pelley’s trea­so­nous attempts to help over­throw Roo­sevelt (also under­taken in con­junc­tion with Ger­man intel­li­gence); the post-World War II Amer­i­can right’s adop­tion of the ide­o­log­i­cal line of the pre-war domes­tic fas­cists; the con­nec­tions of the early Nazi party in Ger­many to Reich­swehr intelligence

Pt. 2: The John Birch Soci­ety (AFA 11)

Part 2a 43:32 | Part 2b 43:49 | Part 2c 42:37 | Part 2d 42:40 | Part 2e 21:30
(Recorded Sep­tem­ber 8, 1985)

Most Amer­i­cans have heard of the John Birch Soci­ety, but few know much about its ori­gins and his­tory. Con­tin­u­ing the line of analy­sis from AFA-10, this pro­gram doc­u­ments the real­ity of this orga­ni­za­tion. Con­cen­trat­ing on attempts to over­throw con­sti­tu­tional gov­ern­ment in the United States, the pro­gram empha­sizes the role of the “China Lobby,” ele­ments of the John Birch Soci­ety and their respec­tive roles in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy.

The broad­cast delin­eates the evo­lu­tion of the China Lobby, dat­ing from the end of World War II. Soci­ety fig­ure­head John Birch was the intel­li­gence offi­cer for Gen­eral Claire Chenault’s Fly­ing Tigers in World War II, sub­se­quently serv­ing with the OSS China con­tin­gent. Birch was killed recruit­ing Chi­nese col­lab­o­ra­tionst troops to fight the Chi­nese com­mu­nists. (These col­lab­o­ra­tionist forces had served the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II.) Com­ing lit­tle more than a week after the end of the war in the Pacific, his death was her­alded by the Amer­i­can right as “the begin­ning of World War III.”

The dis­cus­sion turns to other instances of Japan­ese and/or Axis forces being recruited by the U.S. and the Kuom­intang to fight against Mao Tse Tung’s forces. (As late as 1947, there were 90,000 fully-armed Japan­ese troops in North­west Manchuria alone help­ing to guard the rail­way sys­tem for Chi­ang Kai Chek’s forces.)

The “China Lobby” evolved from Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence per­son­nel who served in China dur­ing the war. Most impor­tant of these was Gen­eral Albert C. Wede­meyer, who replaced Gen­eral Joseph Still­well as Amer­i­can mil­i­tary lia­son to Chi­ang Kai Chek. (Birch had been under Wedemeyer’s com­mand at the time of his death.) Edu­cated (in part) at the Ger­man mil­i­tary acad­emy in Nazi Ger­many, Wede­meyer rented his apart­ment from Ger­hard Ross­bach. Along with Ernst Rohm, Ross­bach had com­manded the SA and worked for the CIA after the war.

Wede­meyer remains the chief sus­pect in the delib­er­ate betrayal of the U.S. mobi­liza­tion for World War II to The Chicago Tri­bune, bit­terly opposed to both FDR and the prospect of Amer­i­can entry into the war. Its pub­li­ca­tion fun­da­men­tally com­pro­mised U.S. mil­i­tary prepa­ra­tion for war. Wede­meyer became a lynch­pin of the China Lobby and a dar­ling of the far right in the 1940’s and 50’s. In the 1980’s, Rea­gan appointed the reac­ti­vated Wede­meyer to a spe­cial mil­i­tary position.

The pro­gram cen­ters on the work­ing hypoth­e­sis that ele­ments of the John Birch Soci­ety served as a front, enabling reac­tionary ele­ments of the mil­i­tary to project their activ­i­ties into civil­ian soci­ety in order to affect polit­i­cal reac­tion. In this respect, the orga­ni­za­tion func­tioned in a man­ner roughly anal­o­gous to the Ger­man Nazi Party in the 1920’s.

The pro­gram high­lights the over­lap­ping ele­ments between the China Lobby and the JBS. Ele­ments of the John Birch Soci­ety par­tic­i­pated in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, func­tion­ing in con­junc­tion with fas­cist and Nazi ele­ments dat­ing from World War II.

Mr. Emory con­cep­tu­al­izes Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion as the res­o­lu­tion of a con­sti­tu­tional strug­gle between the civil­ian and mil­i­tary sec­tors of Amer­i­can soci­ety, the cul­mi­na­tion of a chain of events begun with the 1934 coup attempt and the com­ing of fas­cism to America.

Pro­gram high­lights include: Gestapo spy Louis Siefken’s stint as Chi­ang Kai Chek’s intel­li­gence chief dur­ing the war; Gen­eral Edwin Walker’s ser­vice as chief U.S. mil­i­tary adviser to Chi­ang in the 1950’s; Walker’s polit­i­cal con­flicts with Kennedy; the alleged “attempt” by Oswald in April of 1963; the stag­ing of the alleged Oswald/Walker inci­dent by Lar­rie Schmidt and Amer­i­can Nazi ele­ments spawned within Amer­i­can Army units in Ger­many; the col­lab­o­ra­tion of the Schmidt/ CUSA milieu with the H.L. Hunt finan­cial empire, ele­ments asso­ci­ated with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc Nations, the Gehlen spy out­fit and World War II era Ger­man Nazis; the Hunt– spon­sored Amer­i­can Vol­un­teer Group (formed to assas­si­nate Amer­i­can polit­i­cal fig­ures); the gen­e­sis of the group’s title with the Fly­ing Tigers (Birch’s unit).

Part 3 (AFA 12)

Part 3a 43:27 | Part 3b 43:21 | Part 3c 43:13 | Part 3d 43:03 | Part 3e 43:15 | Part 3f 11:03
(Recorded Octo­ber 24, 1985)

This pro­gram details the involve­ment of groups and indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed in AFA #‘s 10 & 11 in the assas­si­na­tions of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, his brother Robert and Mar­tin Luther King. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on the role played in the JFK assas­si­na­tion by neo-Nazis and Bay of Pigs vet­er­ans enraged by Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s little-known attempts to nor­mal­ize diplo­matic rela­tions with Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Two piv­otal and over­lap­ping ele­ments in Mr. Emory’s analy­sis are what he termed “the Cuban Freiko­rps” and the historical/functional con­ti­nu­ity between the China, Guatemala and Cuban lob­bies. Many of the peo­ple and insti­tu­tions that com­pro­mised the China Lobby (dis­cussed in AFA-11) directed their ener­gies toward the over­throw of Guatemalan pres­i­dent Jacobo Arbenz. (Arbenz was deposed in a CIA-led coup in 1954.)

Those ele­ments from the China/Guatemala lobby lent their efforts to the CIA-coordinated efforts to depose Cas­tro. Fol­low­ing the unsuc­cess­ful Bay of Pigs inva­sion of 1961, a huge para­mil­i­tary milieu picked up where that inva­sion had left off. Offi­cially “pri­vate,” this milieu was actu­ally a clan­des­tine exten­sion of the national secu­rity estab­lish­ment coor­di­nated by the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity. In this regard, these anti-Castro war­riors were anal­o­gous to the Freiko­rps or “Black Reich­swehr,” whose mur­der­ous activ­i­ties in the 1920’s helped over­throw the Weimar Repub­lic (see AFA-10 and M5.)

Far from acced­ing to the Cuban Freiko­rps’ desire to depose Cas­tro, Pres­i­dent Kennedy was mov­ing to nor­mal­ize rela­tions with Cuba at the time of his death. Uti­liz­ing a back-door diplo­matic chan­nel to Cas­tro, Kennedy had worked out a ten­ta­tive agree­ment with the Cuban strong­man. The accord involved a quid pro quo, with Kennedy tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for the hated Batista dic­ta­tor­ship (over­thrown by Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies) on behalf of the United States and Cas­tro mov­ing away from the inter­na­tional com­mu­nists in his own cir­cle, Che Gue­vara in par­tic­u­lar. (Cas­tro, although Marx­ist, was pri­mar­ily a Cuban nation­al­ist and under­stood that the best long-term prospects for his coun­try lay in a pro­duc­tive rela­tion­ship with its giant neigh­bor to the North. His near brush with nuclear war in the Cuban mis­sile cri­sis freshly in mind, Kennedy was attempt­ing to end the Cold War.)

There are firm indi­ca­tions that the anti-Castro Cuban com­mu­nity had learned of the secret nego­ti­a­tions, which fur­ther enraged them against Kennedy. At the moment that he heard that Kennedy had been killed, Cas­tro was meet­ing with Jean Daniel, a French jour­nal­ist serv­ing as one of JFK’s diplo­matic rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Cas­tro is reported to have said “this is bad news. bad news!” In the years since the assas­si­na­tion, Daniel, mem­bers of the Kennedy state depart­ment and Cas­tro him­self have con­firmed this account.

Pro­gram high­lights include: the role of Loran Eugene Hall (inves­ti­gated by New Orleans D.A. Jim Gar­ri­son in con­nec­tion with the JFK assas­si­na­tion) in the “Cuban Freiko­rps;” Rea­gan aide (and later U.S. Attor­ney Gen­eral) Ed Meese’s efforts at sub­merg­ing the truth con­cern­ing the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­gaion by deep-sixing the extra­di­tion request for Edgar Eugene Bradley; the role of Sol­dier of For­tune edi­tor Robert K. Brown in the Anti-Castro effort; Aryan Nations aide Keith Gilbert’s attempt to kill Dr. Mar­tin Luther King Jr. (he claims to have been pro­tected and financed by pow­er­ful peo­ple while in prison for the attempt); Gilbert’s links to Loran Eugene Hall and both men’s con­nec­tions to the milieu of Colonel William Pot­ter Gale, a for­mer MacArthur aide and a prime-mover in the Aryan Nations milieu.

Pt. 4: The Ku Klux Klan (AFA 13)

Part 4a 42:57 | Part 4b 43:00 | Part 4c 42:33 | Part 4d 43:18 | Part 4e 44:07
(Recorded Decem­ber 5, 1985)

The con­clud­ing install­ment of this episodic exam­i­na­tion of Amer­i­can fas­cism, this broad­cast high­lights the involve­ment of Ku Klux Klan ele­ments with ele­ments of the national secu­rity estab­lish­ment. Empha­siz­ing the involv­ment of some of these ele­ments with the assas­si­na­tions of the Kennedy broth­ers and Mar­tin Luther King, the pro­gram demon­strates that the Klan is far more than an amal­gam of night-riding red­necks. In addi­tion, involve­ment of Klan ele­ments with instances of ter­ror­ism have helped to expose the ambigu­ous roles of some participants.

After ana­lyz­ing con­nec­tions between a Sirhan dou­ble and Aryan Nations fig­ure Keith Gilbert (men­tioned in AFA-12 in con­nec­tion with an attempt on the life of Mar­tin Luther King), the dis­cus­sion turns to the links between the 16th Street Bap­tist Church bomb­ing and the assas­si­na­tions of John Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King (see G-4, AFA-8). One of the most noto­ri­ous inci­dents of vio­lence dur­ing the civil rights strug­gles of the 1960’s, the church bomb­ing was per­pe­trated by Klan ele­ments, led by Robert Chambliss.

Chambliss’s defense was con­ducted by for­mer Birm­ing­ham mayor Arthur Hanes Sr. In addi­tion to rep­re­sent­ing Jame Earl Ray (see AFA-8), Hanes had worked for the FBI, CIA and was the mayor of Birm­ing­ham when that the city was at the cen­ter of the civil rights strug­gle. A record­ing made in early Novem­ber of 1963 by a Miami police infor­mant con­nects the 16th St. Bap­tist Church bomb­ing with the assas­si­na­tions of Mar­tin Luther King and JFK.

Dis­cussed at some length in AFA-12, the “Cuban Freiko­rps” milieu involved numer­ous Klan ele­ments, as well as Amer­i­can Nazi Party mem­bers and mem­bers of var­i­ous para­mil­i­tary right-wing orga­ni­za­tions. The dis­cus­sion high­lights the 3-bullet sui­cide of Amer­i­can Nazi Party mem­ber Daniel Bur­ros at the home of Penn­syl­va­nia Klan mem­ber Roy Frankhouser. (Bur­ros’ name and phone num­ber were in Oswald’s address book at the time of his arrest.) Frankhouser has worked for the Fed­eral Gov­ern­ment, his role being var­i­ously described as work­ing for CIA or National Secu­rity Council.

Much of the pro­gram focuses on David Duke, the Louisiana fas­cist who has been a Nazi, a Klans­man and a Repub­li­can can­di­date for office. Orig­i­nally a mem­ber of George Lin­coln Rockwell’s Amer­i­can Nazi Party (Rockwell’s address and phone num­ber were also in Oswald’s address book), Duke has main­tained that he worked for the CIA in South­east Asia. Although the Agency has denied Duke’s asser­tion, pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tors who have inves­ti­gated the Klan have con­curred with Duke’s claim of gov­ern­ment service.

The broad­cast also details the involve­ment of numer­ous gov­ern­ment agents (dou­bling as Klan & Nazi mem­bers) with a mixed Klan and Nazi con­tin­gent that mas­sa­cred some com­mu­nist demon­stra­tors in Greens­boro, North Car­olina in 1979. The con­clud­ing sec­tion of the pro­gram looks at the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tions as the cul­mi­na­tion of the devel­op­ment of Amer­i­can fas­cism and the ulti­mate expo­nent of “Freiko­rps methodology”.

Pro­gram high­lights include: David Duke’s role as an unin­dicted co-conspirator in an abortive Klan and Nazi takeover of the Caribbean island of Domenica (all of the invasion’s other plan­ners were indicted.); the role of ATF agent Bernard Butkovich with the Klan and Nazi group that per­pe­trated the Greens­boro mas­sacre; the role of Ed Daw­son (who led the Nazi & Klan car­a­van in Greens­boro) as an FBI infor­mant; the CIA back­ground of the fore­man of the jury that acquit­ted the Nazis & Klans­men of the Greens­boro mas­sacre; the influ­ence of the abortive Klan-Nazi Domeni­can coup attempt in set­ting the stage for Domenica’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the U.S.-led inva­sion of Grenada; FBI infor­mant Gary Thomas Rowe’s role in the slay­ing of civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo; Louis Farrakhan’s asso­ci­a­tion with Nazi and white suprema­cist elements.