Lis­ten: Side 1 | Side 2

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram brings up-to-date a num­ber of sto­ries cov­ered in past FTR broad­casts, as well as cov­er­ing new ones.

1. Con­tin­u­ing cov­er­age of a bomb­ing in Venice, Italy, the pro­gram high­lights the pos­si­bil­ity that the Strat­egy of Ten­sion may be in the process of resus­ci­ta­tion. “Italy was threat­ened with a return to the dark days of ter­ror­ism as a pow­er­ful bomb ripped through the Venice cour­t­house in yesterday’s early-morning hours, destroy­ing sev­eral stores and shat­ter­ing win­dows across the city shortly before a visit by Prime Min­is­ter Sil­vio Berlus­coni. Law enforce­ment offi­cials would say only that a sophis­ti­cated bomb was used. But both gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion politi­cians linked the blast, which slightly injured two guards, with the vio­lence between antiglob­al­iza­tion demon­stra­tors and police at last month’s Genoa sum­mit of the Group of Eight lead­ing nations.” (“Bomb Explodes in Venice, Cast­ing a Pall” by Yaroslav Trofi­mov; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 8/10/2001; p. A7.)

2. The mayor of Venice gave voice to the anx­i­ety felt by many Ital­ians over the attack. “ ‘Italy has already expe­ri­enced this strat­egy of ten­sion in the past, when it was used by extrem­ists on both sides,’ Venice Mayor Paolo Costa said in an inter­view.” (Idem.)

3. Fur­ther height­en­ing spec­u­la­tion about a revival of the Strat­egy of Ten­sion, a bomb exploded at the head­quar­ters of the rightwing North­ern League, part of the coali­tion gov­ern­ment of Sil­vio Berlus­coni. “A bomb exploded in an office of the rightwing North­ern League in a small town near Padua early yes­ter­day, less than a month after a cour­t­house was bombed in Venice. The attacks have led some gov­ern­ment mem­bers to claim that the coun­try is fac­ing a cam­paign to desta­bi­lize the new admin­is­tra­tion of Sil­vio Berlus­coni, prime min­is­ter.” (“Par­ties Sus­pect One Another Over Ital­ian Bomb­ing” by Jo John­son; Finan­cial Times; 8/24/2001; p. 2.)

4. The North­ern League, pre­dictably, charged the left with being behind the attack. “The League had pre­dicted these bombs,’ said Roberto Castelli, jus­tice min­is­ter and North­ern League politi­cian. ‘They are ter­ror­ist acts against change.’ The night before the bomb Umberto Bossi, North­ern League leader, was quoted as say­ing the left wanted to ‘profit from ter­ror­ism in order to reverse elec­toral results’. Mr. Berlus­coni has spo­ken of a ‘wor­ry­ing esca­la­tion of vio­lence’ aimed at the Ital­ian gov­ern­ment.” (Idem.)

5. Other observers had a dif­fer­ent analy­sis. “But oth­ers have sug­gested Ital­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices may be reviv­ing a ‘strat­egy of tension’—the term given to sus­pected col­lu­sion between parts of the Ital­ian state, fas­cist ter­ror­ists and prova­ca­teurs in the 1970’s to dis­credit the left. Lawyers for the Genoa Social Forum, an umbrella group for anti-globalization groups, say they have evi­dence of links between hooli­gans and police.” (Idem.)

6. The make-up and his­tory of the Berlus­coni gov­ern­ment is sum­ma­rized in the con­clu­sion of the arti­cle. “The inclu­sion in the gov­ern­ment of the North­ern League, which was once com­mit­ted to the break-up of the Ital­ian state, and of the National Alliance, which has its ori­gins with Italy’s fas­cist past, has also been cited as a pos­si­ble cause of recent bombs. Respon­si­bil­ity for the bomb in Venice and a fake one found last week at Rome’s busy Ter­mini rail­way sta­tion has been claimed by var­i­ous groups, includ­ing at least one that said it was a spin-off from the Red Brigades, the mil­i­tant group noto­ri­ous for kid­nap­ping and mur­der­ing Aldo Moro, a for­mer prime min­is­ter, in 1978. Yesterday’s bomb injured no-one.” (Idem.)

7. Sil­vio Berlus­coni was a mem­ber of the P-2 Lodge of Licio Gelli. High­light­ing an inter­est­ing aspect of Gelli’s flight from jus­tice in the mid 1980s (after the dis­clo­sure of the exis­tence of the P-2 and its role in Ital­ian pol­i­tics), in Switzer­land, Gelli ren­dezvoused with a jour­nal­ist with whom he was acquainted. Going to the appointed place of meet­ing, the jour­nal­ist walked right past some­one wear­ing the uni­form of a U.S. Air Force Gen­eral. That per­son turned out to be Gelli! When asked where he got the uni­form, Gelli said he got it from his good friend George Bush, who had aided him in his escape! At the time the inci­dent took place, Bush was Vice Pres­i­dent of the United States. (Panorama [Ital­ian news mag­a­zine]; 10/4/87.)

8. Turn­ing to a mys­te­ri­ous suitor for US Air­ways, the pro­gram exam­ines one Emil Bernard. The dis­cus­sion engages in spec­u­la­tion that the mys­te­ri­ous Mr. Bernard may be asso­ci­ated with the remark­able and deadly Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion. “US Air­ways took a break from wor­ry­ing about its future yes­ter­day to pon­der the iden­tity and motives of the little-known investor who claims to want to buy the car­rier. Emil Bernard, who chairs an unlisted com­pany called Global Air­lines, said on Sun­day he would be pre­pared to offer $1.8bn, or $27 per share in stock and cash, for the air­line. Indus­try exec­u­tives have been able to find out very lit­tle about Global, except that it is an air­line with no air­craft. Until last year Mr. Bernard had made head­lines only for an unsuc­cess­ful pro­posal in 1978 to buy the San Fran­cisco Giants base­ball team and move it to Wash­ing­ton.” (“US Air­ways Attempts to Unmask its Mys­tery Suitor” by Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson; Finan­cial Times; 8/7/2001; p. 1.)

9. The assets of the elu­sive Mr. Bernard are alto­gether enig­matic. “James Sprayre­gen of Kirk­land & Ellis, which acted as TWA’s coun­sel [dur­ing an ear­lier attempt by Bernard to take con­trol of TWA], said: ‘We were unable to con­firm the finan­cial where­withal of Mr. Bernard’s group and as a result elected not to pro­ceed with his pro­posal.’ Other peo­ple close to TWA said Mr. Bernard’s pro­posed offer to buy TWA was sent on a sin­gle sheet of plain paper and stated that if TWA would not accept his terms of $3.75 per share he would make another offer of $4.75.” (Idem.)

10. Bernard’s back­ground in run­ning air­lines appears to be min­i­mal. “Mr. Bernard’s spokesman, John Scott, has described him as a real estate investor. Reg­u­la­tors said yes­ter­day he had not been granted any prior approval to run an air­line. . . .Global said last year it had agreed to buy 450 air­craft from Alliance Air­craft, a start-up with no man­u­fac­tur­ing plant. Noth­ing has come of the agree­ment. Mr. Scott also announced last year that Global would seek an Amer­i­can Stock Exchange list­ing. The exchange said yes­ter­day there was no appli­ca­tion pend­ing. Mr. Bernard has no listed tele­phone num­ber or web­site, and could not be reached yes­ter­day.” (Idem.)

11. Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, the pro­gram turns to one of the many com­pa­nies that appear to have had deal­ings with the Bor­mann group—the giant ConA­gra food com­pany. The firm was involved in a labor dis­pute of almost two years’ dura­tion. (“Team­sters Reach Deal with ConA­gra, End­ing Strike” by Nancy Clee­land; Los Ange­les Times; 8/18/2001; p. C8.)

12. One of the firms absorbed into ConA­gra was the Bremen-based firm Becher GmbH. Founded by SS Colonel Kurt Becher with pro­ceeds gleaned from the Holo­caust, the firm grew into a lead­ing grain-trading firm. (“Nazi Money Trail Heats Up after 50 Years” by Greg Stein­metz; Wall Street Jour­nal; 4/28/97; p. A1.)

13. Revis­it­ing a sub­ject that has occu­pied a great deal of dis­cus­sion in past pro­grams, the broad­cast cites one of the rel­a­tively few arti­cles touch­ing on Haj Amin al-Husseini—the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The first leader of the Pales­tin­ian National Move­ment and an offi­cer in the SS, the Grand Mufti was one of the most impor­tant Axis oper­a­tives in the Mus­lim world.

The pro­gram high­lights Grand Mufti’s role in sup­press­ing Pales­tin­ian dis­sent against his anti-Semitic poli­cies. “. . .When West­ern­ers puz­zle over why it’s so hard for Israel to find mod­er­ate inter­locu­tors among the Palestinians—historically among the best edu­cated, most entre­pre­neur­ial, and lib­eral of Arab societies—a sad but sim­ple part of the answer is that a great num­ber of he Pales­tin­ian elites who might have filled that role were either killed or per­suaded to leave long ago. Those now liv­ing pros­per­ously in Europe, Amer­ica or the Gulf states have lit­tle inter­est in return­ing to fight both Israel and Yasser Arafat for this lit­tle patch of dry land. The cre­ation of such a sit­u­a­tion was exactly the intent of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and fore­most Arab polit­i­cal and reli­gious leader in Pales­tine under the British man­date. Dur­ing the late 1930’s, his forces killed hun­dreds of Jews. But even more impor­tant to him was get­ting rid of any Arabs who might tol­er­ate a Jew­ish pres­ence. Many were killed, often in mass exe­cu­tions. Oth­ers fled.” (“Where Have All the Mod­er­ate Pales­tini­ans Gone?”; Wall Street Jour­nal; 8/14/2001; p. A14.)

14. Turn­ing to the con­tin­u­ing war­fare in the for­mer Yugoslavia, the broad­cast sets forth alle­ga­tions from the Ger­man press that US advi­sors to Mace­don­ian rebels were among the fight­ers evac­u­ated under UN aus­pices. “Among the rebels that were with­draw­ing, there were 17 ‘instructors’—former US offi­cers that pro­vided mil­i­tary train­ing for the rebels. Not only that: the Mace­don­ian secu­rity forces claim that 70% of the equip­ment that the guerilla fight­ers took with them are of US pro­duc­tion, among which are some of the most sophis­ti­cated third gen­er­a­tion night vision devices.” (“US Advi­sors Were Help­ing the Alban­ian Rebels;” Ham­burger Abend­blat; 6/28/2001.)

15. It has also been alleged that British mer­ce­nar­ies were among the eth­nic Alba­ni­ans fight­ing in Mace­do­nia. “For­mer British sol­diers are fight­ing the Mace­do­nia secu­rity ser­vices as part of the eth­nic Alban­ian National Lib­er­a­tion Army, Scot­land on Sun­day has learned. Sources with in the NLA con­firmed that 12 British nation­als were fight­ing with them in the Kumanovo region, along with at least two Dutch men and a Ger­man.” (“British Fight­ers Seek Thrill of Bat­tle in Macedonia’s Strug­gle” by Conal Urquhart; Scot­land on Sun­day; 7/15/2001.)

16. Next, the pro­gram sets forth an eerie item of dis­cus­sion (repeated in FTR#326 and in FTR#349.) The broad­cast high­lights the theft of a brief­case con­tain­ing top-secret doc­u­ments about coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence and coun­tert­er­ror­ist oper­a­tions in New York. (“FBI Ter­ror Expert Lost Track of Top-Secret Plans” by David John­ston [New York Times]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 8/19/2001; p. A8.) The FBI expert in ques­tion, the [late] John O’Neill, was in charge of the Bin Laden inves­ti­ga­tion for the FBI. The broad­cast delin­eates a dis­turb­ing aspect of the doc­u­ments stolen from O’Neill in the sum­mer of 2000. “Offi­cials iden­ti­fied one doc­u­ment in the brief­case as a draft of the annual field office report for national secu­rity oper­a­tions in New York. The closely guarded report con­tained a descrip­tion of every coun­teres­pi­onage and coun­tert­er­ror­ism pro­gram in New York and detailed the man­power for each oper­a­tion.” (Idem.) In August, O’Neill left the bureau to become direc­tor of secu­rity for the World Trade Cen­ter. He was killed on 9/11, approx­i­mately two weeks after this pro­gram was broadcast!

17. One of the more revolt­ing media posi­tions taken in recent years was assumed by writer and social critic Gore Vidal. Vidal began a cor­re­spon­dence with con­victed Okla­homa City bomber Tim­o­thy McVeigh and (ulti­mately) ended up lion­iz­ing this fas­cist mur­derer. (The evi­dence is over­whelm­ing that McVeigh and Nichols did not act alone. Nonethe­less, Vidal’s embrace of McVeigh is pre­pos­ter­ous. Since this pro­gram was broad­cast, Vidal has topped it off by blam­ing World War II on Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt!) (“Vidal Casts McVeigh as a Hero” by James Bone; The Lon­don Times; 8/8/2001.)

18. As if Vidal’s take on the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and World War II wasn’t star­tling enough, the pro­gram cov­ers the pro­posed role of a proto-fascistic UFO cult in the drive to clone human beings. The Raelians are a group founded by a French ex-race car dri­ver, after his alleged con­tact with a space alien. (“Cloning Clash” by Edward Epstein; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 8/8/2001; pp. A1, A10.)

19. The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of the state of Amer­ica in the late sum­mer of 2001. Jour­nal­ist Robert Parry noted the con­trast between the World War II gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans (as epit­o­mized in the movie Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan) and the cur­rent crop. “Near the end of Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, Cap­tain John Miller—played by Tom Hanks—lies dying, wounded after a des­per­ate bat­tle to defend a bridge in Nor­mandy. He sig­nals to Pri­vate James Ryan to come close and whis­pers a final mes­sage. ‘Earn this,’ Miller tells the young sol­dier. ‘Earn it.’ The admo­ni­tion seems harsh. In the movie, Ryan—played by Matt Damon—had lost his broth­ers in the Nor­mandy inva­sion and fought bravely him­self. He chose to say with his unit to defend the bridge rather than leave his post for safety when Miller’s patrol arrived to ‘save’ him.” (“A Time to ‘Earn This’ by Robert Parry; ConsortiumNews.com; 8/9/2001; p. 1.)

20. “Like many real sol­diers who served in World War II, the fic­tional Ryan would seem to have done more than his fair share in the defense of his coun­try and in the bat­tle against tyranny. Yet, the mes­sage from a dying Capt. Miller to the young Pri­vate Ryan was ‘earn this.’ What a dif­fer­ence a gen­er­a­tion or two can make!” (Idem.)

21. After Parry notes the many areas of dis­in­te­gra­tion of the coun­try, he goes on to re-emphasize the con­trast between Miller, Ryan and the Bush gen­er­a­tion. “In recent years, it has become increas­ingly clear that the Wash­ing­ton news media is more con­cerned about demo­graph­ics than democ­racy. It’s a dif­fer­ent time and ethos from the one depicted in Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan. Fifty-seven years ago, Amer­i­can sol­diers were bat­tling their way across Europe, con­tribut­ing to the end of one of history’s most tyran­ni­cal regimes. That vic­tory gave rise to demo­c­ra­tic aspi­ra­tions around the would, fuel­ing the hope that all nations might finally accept the found­ing Amer­i­can prin­ci­ple, that gov­ern­ments must derive their just pow­ers from the con­sent of the gov­erned. At the end of Sav­ing Pri­vate Ryan, the scene of Ryan on the bridge in France merges into the face of Ryan as an old man. He has returned to Nor­mandy and searched out the grave­stone of Capt. Miller. Fight­ing back tears, Ryan says he has tried to live a good life and has thought every day about Miller’s admo­ni­tion to ‘earn this.’ He says it is his great­est hope that ‘I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.’” (Ibid.; p. 6.)