(One 30minute segment)

After gar­ner­ing great domes­tic and inter­na­tional pres­tige dur­ing his long tenure in office, for­mer Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl is the focal point of a huge (and grow­ing) group of inter­lock­ing finan­cial scan­dals. These scan­dals have irrev­o­ca­bly tainted Kohl’s polit­i­cal image and that of the party he led, the CDU. This broad­cast high­lights some of the crit­i­cal aspects of the scan­dals, focus­ing on inter­na­tional finan­cial machi­na­tions, con­nec­tions of key play­ers to intel­li­gence agen­cies and (appar­ently) the “Under­ground Reich”. (For a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the term “Under­ground Reich,” see FTR-180.) There are sev­eral indi­ca­tions of a cover-up, includ­ing overt stonewalling by Kohl (who had to resign his posi­tion as head of the CDU because of his unwill­ing­ness to talk), the dis­ap­pear­ance of key doc­u­ments and the appar­ent sui­cide of a key CDU finan­cial offi­cer for the state of Hesse. Much of the inves­ti­ga­tion cen­ters on large sums of money cross­ing inter­na­tional bor­ders and end­ing up in secret bank accounts and/or cor­po­rate fronts in Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, Paraguay and Ger­many. The key play­ers have well doc­u­mented con­nec­tions to French and Ger­man intel­li­gence agen­cies. Cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence sug­gests that the remark­able and deadly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion may well be behind the scandal.

One pos­si­ble result of the polit­i­cal fall­out from the scan­dal may be the dis­cred­it­ing of the post-war con­sti­tu­tional democ­racy and the resul­tant rise of fas­cist polit­i­cal par­ties in Ger­many. Pro­gram high­lights include: the role of the Thyssen heavy indus­trial firm in sev­eral aspects of the scan­dals (Thyssen is a cen­tral ele­ment of the Bor­mann group); the piv­otal influ­ence of Ger­man finan­cial manip­u­la­tor Karl­heinz Schreiber in the var­i­ous machi­na­tions at the heart of the scan­dals; Schreiber’s con­nec­tions to Bavar­ian right­ist Franz Josef Strauss; Strauss’s con­nec­tions to the Bor­mann group and the Under­ground Reich; a com­par­i­son of Schreiber to P-2 lodge head Licio Gelli; the mys­te­ri­ous sale of a for­mer East Ger­man refin­ery to the French Elf-Aquitaine petro­leum company

(Recorded on 2/13/2000.)