Recorded Octo­ber 27, 2002
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This pro­gram is inter­roga­tory in nature—the mate­r­ial is emphat­i­cally des­ig­nated as spec­u­la­tive. This is, if you will, a con­spir­acy the­ory! It is what Mr. Emory calls “Food for Thought, Grounds for Fur­ther Research.” Nonethe­less, this is a line of inquiry that he has been con­sid­er­ing for more than twenty years–recent events have moti­vated him to put this par­tic­u­lar ball in play, so to speak. Uti­liz­ing an his­tor­i­cal novel strongly grounded in fact, this pro­gram accesses The For­mula by Steve Sha­gan. Although it is a novel—and Mr. Emory empha­sizes again and again dur­ing the broad­cast that his pre­sen­ta­tion is not meant to be con­sid­ered as a lit­eral pre­sen­ta­tion of fact—the mate­r­ial in The For­mula can be cor­rob­o­rated to a great extent by cred­i­ble, well-documented infor­ma­tion on the pub­lic record.

The For­mula trailer.

1. Made into a major motion pic­ture star­ring (among oth­ers) George C. Scott as Bar­ney Caine (a Los Ange­les Police Detec­tive and ex-CIA agent) and Mar­lon Brando (as Adam Steif­fel, CEO of the fic­tional “Tidal Oil”), the book is pred­i­cated upon the I.G. Far­ben company’s syn­thetic fuel pro­gram. I.G. Far­ben (the Nazi chem­i­cal car­tel that was cen­tral to the Third Reich’s war econ­omy) uti­lized the hydro­gena­tion process in order to turn coal into oil. This process, in turn, was at the epi­cen­ter of (arguably) the most impor­tant car­tel deal of the 20th cen­tury, neto­ti­ated between what were (again, arguably) the two most impor­tant indus­trial con­cerns of that century—the Stan­dard Oil com­pa­nies and the I.G. Far­ben firm. This agree­ment, the Standard-I.G. Agree­ment of 1929, is cov­ered at con­sid­er­able length in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11.

2. The Standard-I.G. Agree­ment of 1929 was sim­i­lar, in cer­tain respects, to what has become known as a “debt-equity swap.” I.G. had invested a great deal of cap­i­tal into “R&D” (research and devel­op­ment) of the hydro­gena­tion process in order to uti­lize Germany’s large coal reserves to syn­the­size oil—Germany has no domes­tic petro­leum reserves. As a result of its enor­mous expen­di­tures in this regard, I.G. Farben’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion was pre­car­i­ous. Stan­dard Oil of New Jersey–the most impor­tant of the Stan­dard firms (later Exxon, now Exxon-Mobil)–recognized that the suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment of the hydro­gena­tion process had the poten­tial to threaten its profit posi­tion by free­ing indus­trial economies from depen­dence on naturally-produced oil. The two com­pa­nies nego­ti­ated the Standard-I.G. Agree­ment of 1929—satisfying the needs of both com­pa­nies. Through this agree­ment, I.G. Far­ben received: a sig­nif­i­cant block of Stan­dard of New Jersey’s stock (mak­ing it the sec­ond largest stock holder in the firm behind the Rock­e­feller fam­ily), as well as the right to pro­duce and mar­ket syn­thetic fuel devel­oped by hydro­gena­tion in Ger­many only. This gave I.G. Far­ben badly needed cap­i­tal and guar­an­teed Germany’s access to hydrogenation-produced syn­thetic oil. Through this agree­ment, Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey received: the exclu­sive right to pro­duce and mar­ket syn­thetic oil devel­oped through the hydro­gena­tion process every­where but in Ger­many. This assured Standard’s profit posi­tion by pro­tect­ing against the poten­tial threat posed by syn­thetic oil.

3. Dur­ing World War II, I.G. Farben’s hydro­gena­tion plants pro­vided Ger­many with the bulk of its fuel, thus real­iz­ing the poten­tial of the Standard-I.G. Agree­ment. The 1944 aer­ial cam­paign against the largest of those plants, the giant I.G. facil­ity at Leuna, was one of the piv­otal engage­ments of the air war in West­ern Europe. “The Bat­tle of Leuna” was instru­men­tal in crip­pling Germany’s war machine. Although Ger­many man­aged to keep the plant oper­at­ing by can­ni­bal­iz­ing equip­ment from other hydro­gena­tion facil­i­ties, the result­ing dam­age to the over­all syn­thetic oil pro­gram was a deci­sive ele­ment in the destruc­tion of the fuel for Germany’s war machine.
(“The Bat­tle of Leuna” is dis­cussed in FTR#278. See also: The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben; by Joseph Borkin; The Free Press [Macmil­lan]; Copy­right 1978 [HC]; ISBN 0–02-904630–0; pp. 128–30.)

4. In the early 1990’s, the Leuna refin­ery (which had been rebuilt by the Sovi­ets after the war) became the focal point of a com­plex deal involv­ing the French oil firm ELF-Aquitaine, the Thyssen heavy indus­trial firm and the Saudi Ara­bian arma­ments indus­try. This deal, in turn, is at the cen­ter of an ongo­ing scan­dal in Ger­many involv­ing polit­i­cal pay­outs to the CDU party of for­mer Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl, bribes allegedly made by French politi­cians, kick­backs involv­ing pow­er­ful Cana­dian polit­i­cal and eco­nomic inter­ests, and the intel­li­gence ser­vices of numer­ous coun­tries. In turn, the CDU fund­ing scan­dal is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Under­ground Reich. (For more about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see FTR#‘s 193, 276, 278.) The intense inter­est on the part of major polit­i­cal and indus­trial inter­ests in this ren­o­vated Sec­ond World War facil­ity is of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text. Most of the indus­trial infra­struc­ture of the for­mer East Ger­many was bought out and liq­ui­dated (with enor­mous resul­tant hard­ship for the cit­i­zens of that part of Ger­many) shortly after reuni­fi­ca­tion. In con­trast, the for­mer I.G. facil­ity at Leuna was con­sid­ered a valu­able prize. The maneu­ver­ing around the Leuna facil­ity and the CDU fund­ing scan­dal was instru­men­tal in con­vinc­ing Mr. Emory that The For­mula was of more than mere lit­er­ary sig­nif­i­cance. It con­vinced him that that fact-based novel would have to be dis­cussed at some future point.

5. The novel The For­mula revolves around the for­mula for a cat­a­lyst (“the Man­gan Cat­a­lyst”) devel­oped by I.G. Far­ben as part of its “Gen­e­sis Project.” The sig­nif­i­cance of the project lies in the fact that it greatly improved the effi­ciency of the hydro­gena­tion process, stream­lin­ing Germany’s syn­thetic fuel pro­duc­tion capac­ity and (poten­tially) mak­ing the hydro­gena­tion process eco­nom­i­cally com­pet­i­tive with naturally-produced petro­leum. In the novel, the post-1973 increase in the price of oil makes the “For­mula” a pivot-point of clan­des­tine intrigue. Con­sider the sig­nif­i­cance of the hypo­thet­i­cal exis­tence of such a for­mula. It would: poten­tially con­trol petroleum-producing coun­tries (includ­ing the for­mer USSR and the Middle-East oil king­doms) by threat­en­ing their eco­nomic foun­da­tion; offer the key to manip­u­lat­ing the econ

omies of non-oil pro­duc­ing indus­trial economies by poten­tially free­ing them from the need to import oil; con­trol the “profit posi­tion” of the major oil com­pa­nies; and legally free­ing Ger­many from the need to import oil—I.G.‘s suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies would have retained the right to pro­duce hydrogenation-derived oil. Given the improve­ments in organic chem­istry and other tech­nolo­gies in years since World War II, it seems unlikely that some­thing like the “Man­gan Cat­a­lyst” (or an anal­o­gous tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment) would not have been developed.

6. In the con­text of the emphat­i­cally hypo­thet­i­cal, inter­roga­tory nature of this pro­gram, one should not lose sight of the fact that the world’s nat­ural petro­leum reserves are lim­ited, and will be exhausted within a few decades. The moti­va­tion of the petroleum-producing coun­tries and the oil com­pa­nies them­selves to extract the remain­ing oil from the ground at “top dol­lar” before bow­ing to the inevitable would, there­fore, be con­sid­er­able under the cir­cum­stances. This should be eval­u­ated as one delves into the text and sub­stance of this fact-based work of fiction.

7. The dis­cus­sion begins with the detec­tive Bar­ney Caine (played by George C. Scott in the film ver­sion of the novel) dis­cussing with “Tidal Oil” CEO Adam Steif­fel (played by Mar­lon Brando) the man­ner in which he had been set up to track down the remain­ing I.G. Far­ben sci­en­tists aware of the Gen­e­sis project, and its suc­cess­ful real­iza­tion. After Caine located them, they were assas­si­nated. One of the threat­en­ing ele­ments that pre­cip­i­tates the events in the novel is the poten­tial of a Swiss-based con­sor­tium to put the “for­mula” into pro­duc­tion. In that con­text, one should not lose sight of the fact that I.G. Far­ben had the most pro­found con­nec­tions in Switzer­land. (For more about the Swiss-I.G. con­nec­tion, see FTR#‘s 292, 335, among other broad­casts.) ” ‘The Swiss con­sor­tium had the means to make the for­mula viable, to go into mass pro­duc­tion of syn­thetic fuel. We couldn’t tol­er­ate that. But we couldn’t be overt. We needed a cover.’”

“Bar­ney nod­ded. ‘And what could be a bet­ter cover for killing Ger­man cit­i­zens than their involve­ment with an Amer­i­can cop pur­su­ing an Amer­i­can crime?’”

“The old man smiled. ‘Yes. We used you right from the start.’”

“The impact of Steiffel’s words struck Bar­ney with a dead­en­ing force. He fell silent for a moment, his mind rac­ing back over past events. The old man sucked and chewed on the wet end of the cigar. He seemed to be enjoy­ing Barney’s dissolution.”

” ‘Ah, don’t take it per­son­ally, boy,’ Steif­fel said. ‘After all, you were out of your milieu. You were a pawn. A sol­dier being moved by a master.’”

“Bar­ney felt a ball of heat col­lect­ing in his throat. ‘I halfway sus­pected it after I met with Dies­tel. He was too open. He cloaked it behind his Nazi phi­los­o­phy, but he over­played his hand. I was sure after Siebold led me to Reimeck. I just didn’t want to believe some­one was maneu­ver­ing all those peo­ple.’ Bar­ney sighed. ‘I should have known you were call­ing the shots once Clements was hit.’”
(The For­mula; by Steve Sha­gan; Copy­right 1979 Cirand­inha Pro­duc­tions, Inc.; Soft Cover edi­tion pub­lished in 1980 by Ban­tam Books; 0–553-13801–4; p. 328.)

8. The broad­cast fur­ther devel­ops the rela­tion­ship between a Ger­man woman who works with the post-war SS under­ground (headed by “Dies­tel”), the oil car­tel and PLO-connected ter­ror­ists. “Lehmans” is a Ger­man police detec­tive who assisted “Caine” in his inves­ti­ga­tion. ” ‘Your blond Ger­man girl friend and the mys­te­ri­ous Los Ange­les brunette are one in the same. But she’s a ter­ror­ist, recruited by some­one who wants to keep the Gen­e­sis For­mula off the mar­ket. The Arabs would obvi­ously have sim­i­lar interests.’”

“Barney’s response was calm and shaded by utter des­o­la­tion. ‘I guess that’s the ball game.’”

” ‘Not quite. We found Diestel’s pri­vate phone num­ber in Lisa Spangler’s apart­ment. Which means she was planted by Diestel.’”

” What the hell for?’ Bar­ney asked.”

” ‘To have minute-by minute knowl­edge of your progress. Remem­ber Dies­tel still con­trols the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of the Gen­e­sis team. It’s the strong arm of the Kameradschaft.’”

” ‘The what?’ Bar­ney asked.”

” ‘The Fra­ter­nal Order of SS.’ Lehmans replied.”

” ‘Which means Dies­tel ordered Ober­mann and Siebold to see me’ Bar­ney offered.”

” ‘And to direct you to Esau,’ Lehmans added. ‘It also proves that Dies­tel knew you were com­ing to Berlin and that you had Obermann’s name in your pos­ses­sion.’” (Ibid.; p. 267.)

9. The rela­tion­ship between “Dies­tel,” the fic­tional “Tidal Oil” and the Under­ground Reich reflects the real-life rela­tion­ships between the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion, the suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies to the I.G., and the oil indus­try. (See, among other pro­grams, FTR#305.) ” ‘What about Dies­tel?’ Bar­ney asked.”

” ‘He was our man in Berlin. He was a high cor­po­rate offi­cer of a West Ger­man firm we do busi­ness with. He held the Fra­ter­nal Order in his hand. He was most use­ful.’” (Ibid.; p. 329.)

10. One of the major points in the book is a con­fronta­tion between “Caine” and “Esau,” the top I.G. Far­ben sci­en­tist, in charge of the Gen­e­sis project and based at Leuna. “Esau” is dis­cussing the cir­cum­stances fol­low­ing his cap­ture by the Sovi­ets. “Reimeck” was one of the vet­er­ans of the I.G. “Gen­e­sis project.” ” ‘You never revealed the final formula?’”

” ‘Never. They knew we made oil from coal through hydro­gena­tion. They knew it was costly and required slave labor. But they did not know we had per­fected the ulti­mate catalyst.’”

“Esau’s lips drew back in a self-satisfied grin, and Bar­ney per­mit­ted the old man a moment of vic­to­ri­ous rem­i­nis­cence before he asked, ‘What hap­pened to the formula?’”

” ‘Reimeck prob­a­bly informed you of the clan­des­tine meet­ing in the old Adlon Hotel. Did he not?’”

” ‘Yes.’ Bar­ney nodded.”

” ‘The con­voy con­tain­ing the for­mula was cap­tured by the Amer­i­cans. They in turn sent it to the British in Hamburg.’”

“Bar­ney craved a cig­a­rette but did not dare smoke in the pres­ence of Esau, who seemed to have trou­ble draw­ing enough oxy­gen to speak. ‘I know about that con­voy,’ Bar­ney said. ‘What I’m ask­ing you, Doc­tor, is what hap­pened to the for­mula after the war.’” (Ibid.; pp. 278–279.)

11. “Esau” then dis­closes to “Caine” the nature of the maneu­ver­ing around the Gen­e­sis for­mula. ” ‘The answer to your ques­tion is obvi­ous, it is not?’ He sucked the stale air. ‘After the oil embargo of ’73 all the oil reserves of the seven major Amer­i­can com­pa­nies increased in value by four hun­dred per­cent. OPEC is their cre­ation. They have joined with large bank­ing inter­ests and arma­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers to pre­vent the man­u­fac­ture of syn­thetic fuel. Of course, there is a con­spir­acy.’ His voice trem­bled and rose. ‘They will con­tinue to with­hold syn­thetic fuel until their profit posi­tion is assured.’” (Ibid.; p. 279.)

12. “Bar­ney asked, ‘You keep refer­ring to ‘they.’ Who are ‘they’?”

” ‘The car­tel,’ Esau rasped. ‘They have main­tained my life because I pos­sess the for­mula.’ He leaned back. ‘They per­mit­ted me to stay alive because I agreed to with­hold its pub­li­ca­tion. And should I die under abnor­mal cir­cum­stances, that for­mula would be deliv­ered to cer­tain Swiss indus­trial inter­ests.’” (Ibid.; pp. 279–280.)

13. Next, “Esau” dis­closes to “Caine” the catalyst’s util­ity in produci

ng methanol. (In con­sid­er­a­tion of same, it is inter­est­ing to note the Bush administration’s involve­ment in pro­mot­ing timber-cutting cor­po­ra­tions’ access to forests on fed­eral lands.) Mr. Emory can­not endorse this hypo­thet­i­cal appli­ca­tion. ” ‘And that cat­a­lyst not only pro­duced motor fuel from coal at an eco­nomic price but also pro­duced methanol. Yes. Methanol, the magic sub­stance that will fuel the energy require­ments of future mankind.’”

” ‘Why do you call methanol magic?’ Bar­ney asked.”

” ‘Because it can be made from wood, trees, pulp, grain. It only requires that a car have no car­bu­re­tor, rather a fuel injec­tor. It pro­duces no pol­lu­tants. It burns cleanly, pro­duc­ing no car­bon buildup on the engine. It requires only the plant­ing and replant­ing of trees and wheat.’ He paused. ‘And along with reg­u­lar fuel, my for­mula permits’—he gasped and wheezed for breath—‘permits syn­the­sized petro­chem­i­cal prod­ucts com­pletely uncon­t­a­m­i­nated by sul­fur. Of course, imme­di­ate pro­duc­tion would be made from coal. But then wood and grain will take over.’” (Ibid.; pp. 280–281.)

14. In another of the novel’s cli­mac­tic moments, “Steif­fel” reveals to “Caine” the future of the “Man­gan cat­a­lyst,” and the hydro­gena­tion process. In this con­text, as well, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the Bush administration’s renewed empha­sis on coal pro­duc­tion. (See, among other pro­grams, FTR#289.) “Steif­fel walked up to the big glass win­dow, and Bar­ney sat down in a chair fac­ing the cir­cu­lar desk. ‘Don’t feel too dis­heart­ened, son,’ Steif­fel said, turn­ing to Bar­ney. ‘We will man­u­fac­ture syn­thetic fuel. And in great quan­tity. We already own most of the coal in the coun­try. We know what’s com­ing. We have the for­mula. We have the Man­gan cat­a­lyst, and we have the tech­nol­ogy. But we must be cer­tain of profit. By 1990, the coun­try will be on its knees to OPEC. The gov­ern­ment will then turn to us. And in their des­per­a­tion they will insure our profit posi­tion in the man­u­fac­ture of syn­thetic fuel.’”

” ‘Nice,’ Bar­ney said.”

” ‘Busi­ness,’ Steif­fel replied, ‘just busi­ness.’ He crossed from the win­dow and walked toward Bar­ney. ‘We are a team of giants nurs­ing the lul­laby of the masses.’”

“Steif­fel sat down on the sofa oppo­site Bar­ney and peered across at him in the dim light. ‘You mustn’t think of us as evil, rapa­cious men, cling­ing to the keys of our num­bered Swiss accounts. On the con­trary, we are a small fam­ily of sim­ple busi­ness­men seek­ing only the tran­quil pur­suit of profit. And we take great care to bestow suf­fi­cient largess on the citizens.’”

” ‘Is this where you play ‘The Star-Spangled Ban­ner’?’ Bar­ney asked?”

“Steif­fel smiled. ‘I under­stand your anger and there­fore excuse it. You’re an old-fashioned man. In a way the epit­ome of the Amer­i­can myth of the rugged indi­vid­ual. And I respect that. I come from a long line of strong-willed men. But like it or not, the world has changed. You’re a police­man. You can­not pos­si­bly under­stand the com­plex­i­ties of global eco­nom­ics.’” (Ibid.; pp. 330–331.)

15. Begin­ning the sec­ond half of the broad­cast, the focus turns to a fic­tional dis­cus­sion between the VERY real-life SS Gen­eral Wal­ter Schel­len­berg (in charge of the for­eign intel­li­gence branch of the SD—the SS intel­li­gence ser­vice), a Ger­man gen­eral “Kladen” and “Esau.” It is impor­tant to note that Schel­len­berg, Allen Dulles and SS Gen­eral Wolff were indeed involved in real-life nego­ti­a­tions dur­ing the clos­ing phase of the war. These nego­ti­a­tions areac­cu­rately reflected in the fic­tional pre­sen­ta­tion in the book. (For more about these nego­ti­a­tions, see, among other broad­casts, FTR#‘s 121, 233, RFA#37.) ” ‘The Reich is defeated. We must there­fore save as much of the Ger­man nation as possible.’”

” ‘I am pre­pared to carry out the mis­sion,’ Kladen replied.”

“Schel­len­berg paced for a moment, then placed him­self in the cen­ter of the suite. ‘SS Gen­eral Wolff is at the moment in Zurich con­duct­ing secret nego­ti­a­tions with the chief of Amer­i­can Intel­li­gence [sic], Allen Dulles. Wolff has made the propo­si­tion to turn over to the Amer­i­cans our most crit­i­cal mil­i­tary doc­u­ments con­cern­ing research and devel­op­ment of secret weapons. We offer the infor­ma­tion in return for amnesty for those of us who have served the Reich in cer­tain areas that may be con­strued as war crimes. In addi­tion, we are seek­ing Amer­i­can guar­an­tees that they will enter Berlin before the city falls to the Sovi­ets.’ Schel­len­berg sipped some more cham­pagne and turned to Dr. Esau. ‘Please describe to the gen­eral the mate­ri­als we will be surrendering.’”

In dis­cussing the tech­nolo­gies to be turned over the Amer­i­cans (some­thing sim­i­lar to this actu­ally took place under Project Paper­clip), “Esau” lists the Ger­man “syn­thet­ics” patents as among the most impor­tant. That this may have been the case should not be too read­ily dis­missed. “Dr. Esau spoke in a cold, clipped monot­one. ‘The prin­ci­pal doc­u­ments per­tain to: the ME-262 jet fighter; the new Zeiss sights; the V-one and V-two rock­ets; the design engi­neer­ing of the jet wind tun­nel; the remote con­trol ground-to-air heat-seeking mis­sile; the long-range rock­ets known as A-four and A-nine; the designs for the uranium-powered sub­ma­rine; and finally all our files on syn­thet­ics.’” (Ibid.; p. 11.)

16. The con­fronta­tion between “Caine” and “Steif­fel” con­tains more dis­cus­sion of the hypo­thet­i­cal car­tel maneu­ver­ing around the Gen­e­sis for­mula. “He rose, paced for a moment and reflec­tively said, ‘Over the years, we have been con­cerned with the con­tin­ued exis­tence of the sur­viv­ing Ger­man sci­en­tists who worked on the Gen­e­sis pro­gram. But our con­cern was benign. After all, we con­trolled the oil from the sands to the pumps. And the man­u­fac­ture of syn­thetic fuel was an eco­nomic impos­si­bil­ity. There­fore, we were con­tent to let sleep­ing dogs lie. But when the Swiss indus­tri­al­ist con­tacted Ober­mann, every­thing changed.’”

“Bar­ney inter­rupted. ‘How did you know about the Swiss contact?’”

” ‘Ober­mann duti­fully reported that con­tact to Dies­tel. And we became actively concerned.’”

” ‘Why?’ Bar­ney asked. ‘What’s wrong with mak­ing Amer­ica self-sufficient in syn­thetic fuel?’”

“The old man stared at Bar­ney with a look of total won­der. ‘Do you hon­estly expect a three-hundred-billion-dollar indus­try to under­mine its own stake in the lucra­tive scarcity of oil by mass-producing syn­thetic fuel?’”

“Steif­fel walked back to his desk and sat down. ‘We’ve had that for­mula in our pos­ses­sion since the con­clu­sion of the war. British Intel­li­gence turned it over to our chemists in early ’46. We even imported a few Ger­man sci­en­tists to build pilot hydro­gena­tion plants, to be cer­tain the process was eco­nom­i­cally unsound. We ter­mi­nated those plants in ’56. But’—he paused—‘that was twenty-two years ago. Things change. The price of crude oil has risen dra­mat­i­cally since ’73, mak­ing the pro­duc­tion of syn­thetic fuel an eco­nomic pos­si­bil­ity. The Gen­e­sis For­mula makes it an eco­nomic real­ity. There­fore, we could not risk the for­mula falling into the wrong hands.’” (Ibid.; pp. 326–327.)

17. After he has suc­cess­fully obtained the “for­mula” from “Esau, “Caine” dis­cusses its sig­nif­i­cance with “Lisa Spangler”—the SS pro­tégé and PLO fellow-traveler who is manip­u­lated by the car­tel. In FTR#370, the con­nec­tions of the Bush fam­ily to the Con­sol­i­dated Sile­sian Steel Cor­po­ra­tion, the coal deposits near Auschwitz, and the Third Reich’s syn­thetic fuel pro­gram are set forth at some length. It is inter­est­ing to con­sider the Bush family’s posi­tion in light of this con­nec­tion, as well as the hypo­thet­i­cal “black­mail” strat­a­gem cen­tral to this novel and, pos­si­bly, real-life as well. ” ‘It’s ironic to think so many died for eight pages of sci­en­tific equa­tions,’ she said tho

ught­fully.”

“Bar­ney did not respond, but he thought about the truth of her words. He thought about those who had per­ished. The slaves. The inmate work­ers at I.G. Farben—Auschwitz. And all the oth­ers, at the fif­teen hydro­gena­tion plants. Those huge fac­to­ries and refiner­ies that had mys­te­ri­ously escaped Allied bomb­ing.” (Ibid.; p. 283.)

18. One of the alto­gether hypo­thet­i­cal ele­ments in the novel con­cerns “Caine’s” revenge against “Steiffel”—the com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the for­mula to the Israelis. Whether this, too, is reflec­tive of actual clan­des­tine polit­i­cal real­ity is anyone’s guess. “Steiffel’s eyes widened, his lips quiv­ered, and his voice trem­bled. He breathed the word as if he’d heard it for the first time, ‘Israel—why Israel?’”

“Bar­ney said, ‘The for­mula went to Israel because they have no con­nec­tions with big oil. It was cir­cum­stance, pure chance. It was Heisen­berg. Those ran­dom particles—they’ll kill you every time.’”

“The old man turned, and moved to his desk. ‘You’re out of my hands. You have cre­ated a sit­u­a­tion that has removed you from my care. You are a damn fool, Mr. Caine. A sui­ci­dal maniac. You dis­ap­point me. I gave you credit for more intelligence!’”

” ‘You made a mis­take,’ Bar­ney said. ‘You may be in a lit­tle bit of trou­ble, Mr. Steif­fel.’ He turned and started for the door.”

” ‘Caine!’ the old man shouted.”

“Bar­ney looked back at the old man. The color had gone out of his cheeks, and his lips were blue. His voice was tense but com­posed. ‘Send­ing the for­mula to Israel is spe­cious and futile. They have no coal. No min­er­als. No funds. All they have are oranges.’”

” ‘But they have sci­ence,’ Bar­ney said. ‘And they have con­nec­tions. And you know how it is.’ Bar­ney paused. ‘When money talks, peo­ple lis­ten.’” (Ibid.; pp. 332–333.)

19. Still later, “Lehmans” urges “Caine” to make the for­mula pub­lic. The hypo­thet­i­cal real­i­ties that impel “Lehmans” are worth think­ing about. “Lehmans touched Barney’s arm. ‘For God’s sake, man make that for­mula pub­lic. Get it out in the open. The god­damn Arabs, the banks, the inter­lock­ing car­tel of oil com­pa­nies are chok­ing the life out of the West­ern democ­ra­cies. And if they fall, you have another Ger­many of the thir­ties. [Empha­sis added.] Make it pub­lic, Bar­ney.’” (Ibid.; p. 315.)

20. Bear­ing in mind the fact that this book was writ­ten dur­ing the late 1970’s, it is unset­tling to read some of the dis­cus­sion between “Esau” (dying of can­cer) and “Caine” against the back­ground of polit­i­cal real­i­ties that became evi­dent in the years fol­low­ing the novel’s pub­li­ca­tion. The Osirak reac­tor bombed by the Israelis in 1981 was, indeed, being built by the French. FTR#‘s 278, 300, and 372, among other pro­grams, high­light the French cor­po­rate col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Third Reich, before, dur­ing and after the Sec­ond World War—a major ele­ment of “Esau’s” con­ver­sa­tion. “Accom­mo­da­tion” and the equip­ping of Iraq with tech­nol­ogy that can be used for weapons of mass destruc­tion is not exclu­sive to the French. “The slack mouth gath­ered itself, and his lips moved slowly.”

“‘The French are build­ing an atomic reac­tor in north­ern Iraq.’”

“Bar­ney was speech­less. It was one of those non sequitur that defied answer.”

” ‘Did you know that?’ Esau rasped.

“Bar­ney shook his head. ‘No. I didn’t.’”

” ‘The French will do any­thing for a profit. Dur­ing the occu­pa­tion, their sci­en­tists worked hand and glove with me. The resis­tance was a myth. All through the war the Parisian night­clubs were open. The race­tracks ran; the restau­rants were full. The French are a peo­ple whose prin­ci­pal char­ac­ter trait is ‘accom­mo­da­tion.’ And now they sell the Iraqis an atomic reac­tor.’ He coughed twice and wiped some spit­tle from his lips. ‘The world will end within two cen­turies; of that there can be no ques­tion.’” (Ibid.; pp. 277–278.)

21. It has been said that “art imi­tates life.” Indeed. Per­haps the reverse is true as well. As we peer into the dark­ness of the future, con­sider “Caine’s” con­fronta­tion with “the old man”—“Barney Steif­fel.” ” ‘What hap­pens when there’s no more profit left to squeeze from the cit­i­zens? When the whole god­damn world is on its knees?’ Bar­ney asked angrily.”

“The old man looked up at the ceil­ing for a moment, then stared at Bar­ney. ‘In that case, the car­tel per­forms its his­toric duty. We unleash the dogs of war. There are those times when war is both eco­nom­i­cally and eco­log­i­cally nec­es­sary for the ulti­mate sur­vival of the species.’” [Empha­sis added.] (Ibid.; p. 331.)

22. Again, one can not stress too heav­ily that this book is a novel. Nonethe­less, the extent to which it reflects real­ity is eerie, and makes it well ahead of its time when weighed against the gen­eral level of polit­i­cal knowl­edge and infor­ma­tion avail­able in that period (the 1970’s). Con­sider the her­itage of the “Lisa Span­gler” char­ac­ter. She dis­cusses her back­ground and her father. “He was the com­man­der of the Ravens­bruck con­cen­tra­tion camp. Three hun­dred thou­sand women were gassed and burned at that place. I was born there in my father’s villa, at that killing cen­ter. Toward the end my mother hid me in a room full of teeth. Jars of gold teeth.’ She leaned against the bureau. ‘My mother escaped with me two days before the Soviet troops came. My father was hanged but we sur­vived. My mother was quite beau­ti­ful. We were taken care of by the Fra­ter­nal Order [of the SS] . . .’” (Ibid.; p. 301.)

23. Not­ing the Under­ground Reich’s links to ter­ror­ist groups such as Baader-Meinhof, “Lisa Spangler’s” char­ac­ter por­trayal is insight­ful. (See, among other broad­casts, FTR#‘s 333, 354, 371, 383.) Note that Fran­cois Genoud was an asso­ciate of ele­ments of Baader-Meinhof, as well as the PFLP of George Hab­bash. (See FTR#‘s 350, as well as the pro­grams noted above.) ” ‘I felt I had to do some­thing. Some­thing that would save human­ity. I had to take a stand. I had to atone for what my father was. I met the peo­ple in Baader-Meinhof. And I found a way to act. And a goal to achieve.’”

” ‘What goal?’ Bar­ney asked gently.”

” ‘The uni­ver­sal broth­er­hood of mankind.’ She walked over to him, and her lips trem­bled. ‘I was sent to Dam­as­cus. I was trained by Habash [sic] . . .’” (Ibid.; p. 302.)

24. “Lisa Span­gler” also reflects the real­i­ties of the Saudi/Middle East­ern ter­ror­ist con­nec­tion. Car­los the Jackal (asso­ci­ated with Genoud and Hab­bash, as well as the milieu of Baader-Meinhof) was among her inspi­ra­tional sources. (For more about Car­los and the Under­ground Reich, see, among other pro­grams, FTR#‘s 341, 344.) “She crushed her cig­a­rette and said, ‘My mind was free of all past con­cep­tions, of all con­science. I was trans­formed. And for the first time in my life, I had some­thing to believe in. I knew that ter­ror and vio­lence were the only means.’”

” ‘The means to what?’ he asked.”

“She stared into his eyes. ‘Chaos.’”

” ‘Then what?’”

” ‘With chaos comes a void. That void will be filled by our move­ment.’ She paused. ‘We are funded by the Saudis. The syn­thetic fuel for­mula is a dire threat to them. And to other inter­ests that I have no feel­ing for but are nev­er­the­less allied . . .’”

“Car­los said that. It’s his favorite quo­ta­tion. ‘Shit is thicker than blood.’ Make shit out of them.’” (Ibid.; pp. 302–303.)

It remains to be seen if life will imi­tate art in this case.