Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2

This pro­gram sup­ple­ments an ongo­ing series, begin­ning in Decem­ber of 1998.

1. The pro­gram begins with a recap of an arti­cle that was high­lighted in FTR#299. Because the impli­ca­tions of the arti­cle for Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions (and, con­se­quently, this series) would be dif­fi­cult to exag­ger­ate, it is reviewed here. In a sweep­ing rul­ing, the FCC gave the go ahead to Deutsche Telekom (con­trolled by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment) to pur­chase Amer­i­can mobile tele­phone com­pa­nies. (The head of the FCC is Michael Pow­ell, Colin Powell’s son.) More impor­tantly, the rul­ing gives the go-ahead to the future pur­chase of Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies by com­pa­nies that are con­trolled by for­eign gov­ern­ments. The gov­ern­ing pro­to­col to deter­mine whether such pur­chases are accept­able will be the WTO’s stan­dard of being “in the pub­lic inter­est.” “. . . . Although extended reg­u­la­tory debates can fre­quently lead to doc­u­ments full of mealy-mouthed bureau­cratese, the 97-page order issued by the FCC is as sweep­ing and precedent-setting as Mr. Pow­ell had wanted. It goes fur­ther than any pre­vi­ous rul­ing in the agency’s 66-year his­tory to open up the U.S. telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions mar­ket to for­eign com­peti­tors. ‘This is the green light. This is the paved road. This is the auto­bahn,” said Rudy Baca, an ana­lyst of inter­na­tional tele­coms reg­u­la­tion with the Pre­cur­sor Group. ‘It’s more defin­i­tive than most peo­ple expected.’ At the heart of the debate over the deal was a dis­creet sec­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions act that con­tains seem­ingly con­tra­dic­tory guid­ance on how to deal with for­eign tele­coms owned by their gov­ern­ments. One part of the law states flatly that no U.S. phone licenses can be held ‘by any for­eign gov­ern­ment or rep­re­sen­ta­tive thereof.’ But another sec­tion allows a com­pany to buy the license if the FCC rules it in the pub­lic inter­est. The inter­pre­ta­tion of the lan­guage is cru­cial, since out­side the UK, most big over­seas com­pa­nies remain at least par­tially in the hands of gov­ern­ments. After the Voic­eS­tream deal closes, for instance, Telekom will still be 45 per cent-owned by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. The same is the case for impor­tant inter­na­tional play­ers such as France Tele­com and Japan’s NTT. In its Telekom-VoiceStream rul­ing, the FCC found the word­ing call­ing for an out­right ban applies only if a for­eign gov­ern­ment itself tries to acquire a license — a highly unlikely sce­nario that, for all intents and pur­poses, makes the clause moot. Instead, all com­pa­nies where a gov­ern­ment owns a stake will be gov­erned by the pub­lic inter­est waiver. In addi­tion, the FCC went even fur­ther, say­ing that due trade com­mit­ments, any pur­chase by a com­pany from a WTO coun­try will be assumed to be in the pub­lic inter­est, a clear sign that the agency has opened the flood gates. ‘The FCC has con­firmed that it will be apply­ing U.S. law to U.S. WTO com­mit­ments, said Scott Blake Har­ris, for­mer head of the FCC’s inter­na­tional bureau who worked for Voic­eS­tream in the deal. Ana­lysts pre­dict that the order could lead to a new save of for­eign invest­ment, which could tar­get even the largest U.S. car­ri­ers. The FCC’s sweep­ing rul­ing, how­ever, has incensed the deal’s oppo­nents, includ­ing Sen­a­tor Ernest Hollings, who came within a hair’s breadth of block­ing the merger through leg­is­la­tion last year. He has vowed to rein­tro­duce the bill this ses­sion and include a pro­vi­sion that would force the Ger­man gov­ern­ment to sell most of its stake in Telekom if it wanted to retain Voic­eS­tream. ‘They basi­cally rewrote the law,’ said one critic. “They just changed 65 years of jurispru­dence.’” (“US Rul­ing on Telekom Could Lead to Wave of Invest­ment” by Peter Spiegel in Wash­ing­ton; Finan­cial Times; 5/2/2001; p. 8.)

2. As the story indi­cates, the FCC rul­ing estab­lishes WTO mem­ber­ship and “the pub­lic inter­est” as the pri­mary cri­te­ria for eval­u­at­ing pur­chases of Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firms by com­pa­nies con­trolled by for­eign gov­ern­ments. Much of the first half of the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion about Robert Zoel­lick, one of the prin­ci­pal archi­tects of the WTO. (The arti­cles are excerpted from FTR 273. Zoel­lick was appointed as U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive by George Bush.)

As noted else­where, WTO mid­wife Zoel­lick is a fel­low and board mem­ber of the Ger­man Mar­shall Fund of the United States. (“Robert Bruce Zoel­lick” by Joseph Kahn; New York Times; 1/12/2001; p. A15.) This orga­ni­za­tion, in turn, is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Bor­mann organization.

3. The eco­nomic and polit­i­cal com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­trols cor­po­rate Ger­many and much of the rest of the world. It was cre­ated and run by Mar­tin Bor­mann, the orga­ni­za­tional genius who was the “the power behind the throne” in Nazi Germany.

4. Paul Man­ning describes this orga­ni­za­tion in some detail in his book Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile. “By the 1970s, the West Ger­mans had con­cluded that influ­enc­ing U.S. pub­lic opin­ion is bet­ter accom­plished with a skilled touch than with a meat cleaver, which had char­ac­ter­ized their efforts dur­ing the two world wars. An exam­ple of such skill was the staged news event of June 5, 1972, when Willy Brandt announced at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity that the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many would donate 150 mil­lion marks ($47 mil­lion) to estab­lish a foun­da­tion in honor of the Mar­shall Plan — a states­man­like approach to the recov­ery of for­mer ene­mies, and to the recov­ery gen­er­ally of West­ern Europe. Brandt stated that the money would arrive in equal install­ments for the next fif­teen years, for the estab­lish­ment and oper­a­tion in the United States of an inde­pen­dent American-run edu­ca­tional foun­da­tion spe­cial­iz­ing in solu­tions to Euro­pean prob­lems, to be known as the ‘Ger­man Mar­shall Fund of the United States — A Memo­r­ial to the Mar­shall Plan.’

5. “The over­rid­ing func­tion of this Ger­man George C. Mar­shall Research Foun­da­tion is pub­lic rela­tions, to cos­me­tize the Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists and bankers whose cor­po­ra­tions whose cor­po­ra­tions had worked so suc­cess­fully for the Third Reich. In Octo­ber 1978, the Mar­shall Foun­da­tion was uti­lized as a plat­form for Dr. Her­mann J. Abs, now hon­orary pres­i­dent of Deutsche Bank A.G., as he addressed a meet­ing of busi­ness­men and bankers and mem­bers of the For­eign Pol­icy Asso­ci­a­tion in New York City on the ‘Prob­lems and Prospects of American-German Eco­nomic Coop­er­a­tion.’ This lun­cheon meet­ing was chaired by his old friend, John J. McCloy, Wall Street banker and lawyer, who had worked closely with Dr. Abs when McCloy served as U.S. High Com­mis­sioner for Ger­many dur­ing those post­war recon­struc­tion years. At that time, Her­mann Abs, as chief exec­u­tive of Deutsche Bank, was also direct­ing the spend­ing of America’s Mar­shall Plan money in West Ger­many as the chair­man of the Recon­struc­tion Loan Cor­po­ra­tion of the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many. With them on the dais were Henry H. Fowler, Wall Street invest­ment banker and for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury; Henry Cabot Lodge, for­mer U.S. ambas­sador to the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many; George C. McGhee, another for­mer Amer­i­can ambas­sador to West Ger­many, also a trustee of the Mar­shall Foun­da­tion and a mem­ber of var­i­ous pri­vate and gov­ern­ment advi­sory groups. These, along with the oth­ers on the dais and in the audi­ence, rep­re­sent firms and banks that are among the most pres­ti­gious in the United States and through­out the world; all ben­e­fited from the rebirth and rebound­ing pros­per­ity of the new Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many. Know­ingly or no, these fig­ures and their cor­po­ra­tions are indebted to the man who was not there, the finan­cial and admin­is­tra­tive genius who set the foun­da­tion for the post­war recov­ery of West Ger­many, Mar­tin Bor­mann.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 261–262.)

6. Man­ning goes on to describe the func­tion of the Ger­man Mar­shall Fund, an inter­est­ing fac­tor to con­tem­plate in con­nec­tion with Zoel­lick, his piv­otal role in the cre­ation of the WTO and, in turn, the WTO’s impor­tant role as the yard­stick by which pur­chases of Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firms will be mea­sured by the FCC. “The Stroking of Amer­i­can pub­lic opin­ion by Ger­man inter­ests, as by those of Japan, is cal­cu­lated to open fur­ther the Amer­i­can mar­ket. The United States remains the rich­est and the most prof­itable mar­ket on the face of the earth, and these busi­ness­men and bankers know that they either buy their way in or nego­ti­ate their way in. They know that if they are going to suc­ceed as world com­pa­nies they must have a gen­er­ous slice of the U.S. mar­ket, and today this can be accom­plished only through ties, treaties, and agree­ments, no longer entirely through retained earn­ings and bank lines of credit.” (Ibid.; p. 262.)

7. Zoellick’s even­tual ascent to a posi­tion of power in this insti­tu­tion is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing to note in the con­text of some of his other actions, pro­fes­sional asso­ci­a­tions and beliefs. A mem­ber of the Bush State Depart­ment, Zoel­lick was a strong, effec­tive advo­cate within James Baker’s for­eign pol­icy estab­lish­ment for speedy Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion, and he played a piv­otal role in bring­ing it about. “Mr. Zoel­lick, the other lead­ing can­di­date for the trade job, was a for­eign pol­icy wun­derkind under Mr. Baker. He helped design and carry out United States pol­icy on Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion a decade ago. He also helped start NAFTA nego­ti­a­tions from his post in the State Depart­ment.” (“Bush Seek­ing to Over­haul Pol­icy Mak­ing” by Joseph Kahn and Frank Bruni; New York Times; 1/6/2001; p. B14.)

8. Sig­nif­i­cantly, Zoel­lick mid­wifed a diplo­matic com­pro­mise to cre­ate the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion. (“Robert Bruce Zoel­lick” by Joseph Kahn; New York Times; 1/12/2001; p. A15.)

9. With regard to Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion, Zoel­lick con­vinced the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to embrace Ger­man unity. “A con­fi­dant of for­mer Sec­re­tary of State James A. Baker III, he ral­lied west­ern allies to back a speedy Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion and fina­gled a com­pro­mise that led to the cre­ation of the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion. . . .But he is most widely remem­bered in for­eign pol­icy cir­cles for being the Unites States’ rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the mul­ti­party nego­ti­a­tion of the future of divided Ger­many. He per­suaded the Bush admin­is­tra­tion to embrace Ger­man unity despite the qualms of allies and alarm in the for­mer Soviet Union.” (Ibid.; p. A15.)

10. Another credit on Zoellick’s cur­ricu­lum vitae, is his par­tic­i­pa­tion with James Baker, his appar­ent men­tor, in the “Florida Recount,” that gave Bush his “vic­tory.” “Zoel­lick also served as coun­selor to the Trea­sury sec­re­tary dur­ing the Ronald Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion, in addi­tion to other posts. He is a pro­tégé of James A. Baker III, the long­time Repub­li­can offi­cial. Both trav­eled to Florida to help George W. Bush dur­ing the recent bal­lot recount con­tro­versy.” (“Bush’s Trade Chief Rated as Smart, Smooth Nego­tia­tor” by Jonathan Peter­son; Los Ange­les Times; 1/12/2001; p. A15.)

11. With the types of con­nec­tions exem­pli­fied above, Zoel­lick is viewed with favor in Europe. “The appoint­ment will be greeted favor­ably in Europe, where Mr. Zoel­lick has strong con­tacts in both gov­ern­ment and busi­ness. He was one of a hand­full of Bush advis­ers that a senior EU del­e­ga­tion sought out last month when they vis­ited Wash­ing­ton.” By Edward Alden, Richard Wolffe and Stephen Fidler; Finan­cial Times; 1/12/2001; p. 4.)

12. Zoellick’s par­ti­san role on behalf of Ger­many dur­ing the clos­ing phase of the Cold War, his piv­otal role in the cre­ation of the WTO, and his sig­nif­i­cance in the Bush/Baker milieu would seem to augur well for con­di­tions in Amer­ica for Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions. Given FCC Chair­man Michael Powell’s recent actions on acqui­si­tions of Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­nies, Zoellick’s actions have helped to open up the Amer­i­can telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions land­scape to Ger­man cor­po­rate preda­tors. (“US Rul­ing on Telekom Could Lead to Wave of Invest­ment” by Peter Spiegel; Finan­cial Times; 5/2/2001.)

13. This, in turn, is to be eval­u­ated in terms of the sce­nario pre­sented in the Nazi tract Serpent’s Walk. Mr. Emory believes that, like The Turner Diaries (also pub­lished by National Van­guard Books), the book is actu­ally a blue­print for what is going to take place. It is a novel about a Nazi takeover of the United States in the mid­dle of the 21st cen­tury. The book describes the Third Reich going under­ground, buy­ing into the Amer­i­can media, and tak­ing over the coun­try. “It assumes that Hitler’s war­rior elite — the SS — didn’t give up their strug­gle for a White world when they lost the Sec­ond World War. Instead their sur­vivors went under­ground and adopted some of their tac­tics of their ene­mies: they began build­ing their eco­nomic mus­cle and buy­ing into the opinion-forming media. A cen­tury after the war they are ready to chal­lenge the democ­rats and Jews for the hearts and minds of White Amer­i­cans, who have begun to have their fill of government-enforced multi-culturalism and ‘equal­ity.’” (From the back cover of Serpent’s Walk by “Ran­dolph D. Calver­hall;” Copy­right 1991 [SC]; National Van­guard Books; 0–937944-05-X.)

14. This process is described in more detail in a pas­sage of text, con­sist­ing of a dis­cus­sion between Wrench (a mem­ber of this Under­ground Reich) and a mer­ce­nary named Less­ing. “The SS . . . what was left of it . . . had busi­ness objec­tives before and dur­ing World War II. When the war was lost they just kept on, but from other places: Bogota, Asun­cion, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Mex­ico City, Colombo, Dam­as­cus, Dacca . . . you name it. They real­ized that the world is head­ing towards a ‘cor­po­racracy;’ five or ten inter­na­tional super-companies that will run every­thing worth run­ning by the year 2100. Those super-corporations exist now, and they’re already divid­ing up the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of food, trans­port, steel and heavy indus­try, oil, the media, and other com­modi­ties. They’re already divid­ing up the pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing of food, trans­port, steel and heavy indus­try, oil, the media, and other com­modi­ties. They’re mostly con­glom­er­ates, with fin­gers in more than one pie . . . . We, the SS, have the say in four or five. We’ve been com­pet­ing for the past sixty years or so, and we’re slowly gain­ing . . . . About ten years ago, we swung a merge, a takeover, and got vot­ing con­trol of a super­corp that runs a small but sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the Amer­i­can media. Not openly, not with bands and trum­pets or swastikas fly­ing, but qui­etly: one huge cor­po­ra­tion cud­dling up to another one and gen­tly munch­ing it up, like a great, gub­bing amoeba. Since then we’ve been replac­ing exec­u­tives, push­ing some­body out here, bring­ing some­body else in there. We’ve swing pro­gram con­tent around, too. Not much, but a lit­tle, so it won’t show. We’ve cut down on ‘nasty-Nazi’ movies . . . good guys in white hats and bad guys in black SS hats . . . lov­able Jews ver­sus fiendish Ger­mans . . . and we have media psy­chol­o­gists, ad agen­cies, and behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion spe­cial­ists work­ing on image changes.” (Ibid.; pp. 42–43.)

15. Before turn­ing directly to the sub­ject of music, the broad­cast addresses the grad­ual remak­ing of the image of the Third Reich that is rep­re­sented in Serpent’s Walk. In the dis­cus­sion excerpted above, this process is fur­ther described. “Hell, if you can con granny into buy­ing Sugar Turds instead of Bran Farts, then why can’t you swing pub­lic opin­ion over to a cause as vital and impor­tant as ours?’ . . . In any case, we’re slowly replac­ing those neg­a­tive images with oth­ers: the ‘Good Bad Guy’ rou­tine’ . . . ‘What do you think of Jesse James? John Dillinger? Julius Cae­sar? Genghis Khan?’ . . . The real­ity may have been rough, but there’s a sort of glit­ter about most of those dudes: mean hon­chos but respectable. It’s all how you pack­age it. Opin­ion is a godamned com­mod­ity!’ . . . It works with any­body . . . Give it time. Aside from the media, we’ve been buy­ing up pri­vate schools . . . and help­ing some pub­lic ones through phil­an­thropic foun­da­tions . . . and work­ing on the churches and the Born Agains.” (Ibid.; pp. 42–44.)

16. Next, the pro­gram con­sid­ers an odd law­suit, which embraces evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning in the direc­tion of the remark­able and deadly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, as well as the issue of cul­ture and his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. The heirs to Hitler’s per­sonal pho­tog­ra­pher are suing to obtain paint­ings done by Hitler. (“Court Con­sid­ers Own­er­ship of Seized Hitler Paint­ings” by William H. Honan; New York Times; 5/8/2001; pp. B1-B6.)

17. Some experts view the return of the paint­ings by the United States gov­ern­ment to be con­ducive to a restora­tion of Hitler’s image and a reha­bil­i­ta­tion of his pol­i­tics. (Idem.)

18. The rights to pho­tog­ra­pher Hein­rich Hoffman’s pic­tures of Hitler were held exclu­sively by Mar­tin Bor­mann, sug­gest­ing at least the pos­si­bil­ity that the con­sid­er­able sum from the law­suit would be des­tined for the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; by Paul Man­ning; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; 1991; p. 44.)

19. Just as the Hitler water­col­ors were seen by some as pre­sent­ing the threat of mar­ket­ing “a kinder, gen­tler Hitler,” so too were a series of forged sketches attrib­uted to Hitler while he was serv­ing in the Ger­man army dur­ing World War I. Those draw­ings received the enthu­si­as­tic endorse­ment of Dirk Baven­damm, the offi­cial house his­to­rian for the Ber­tels­mann firm. (“Bertelsmann’s Revi­sion­ist” The Nation; 11/8/99.) This “cul­tural revi­sion­ism” would fit in well with the sce­nario pre­sented in Serpent’s Walk.

20. The broad­cast con­cludes with sup­ple­men­tal dis­cus­sion of per­son­al­i­ties in the Hitler water­col­ors case whose Nazi careers over­lapped Bormann’s sphere of influ­ence. (Quest by Frank Bran­den­burg and Ib Mel­chior; Copy­right 1990 [SC]; Pre­sidio Press; p. 109.)