Recorded April 3, 2005
MP3 One seg­ment
RealAu­dio
NB: This stream con­tains both FTRs 504 and 505 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.

As the title indi­cates, this pro­gram updates a num­ber of sto­ries cov­ered in past For The Record broad­casts, as well as intro­duc­ing new mate­r­ial. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the pow­er­ful Ber­tels­mann Cor­po­ra­tion (the pub­lish­ing house for the SS dur­ing World War II and an appar­ent major com­po­nent of the Under­ground Reich), the pro­gram doc­u­ments a new joint tech­nol­ogy ven­ture between the firm and chip­maker Intel. In addi­tion, the show high­lights the merger between BMG (Bertelsmann’s music sub­sidiary) and SONY. This merger cre­ated one of the largest music firms in the world. The pro­gram also updates the Okla­homa City bomb­ing and pro­posed and appar­ent merg­ers between Amer­i­can neo-Nazi groups and Islamists. Con­clud­ing with dis­cus­sion of a polit­i­cal con­tro­versy within the groves of acad­eme, the pro­gram sets forth infor­ma­tion that Pro­fes­sor Ward Churchill of the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado at Boul­der might not be what he seems. Much of Churchill’s behav­ior sug­gests the pos­si­bil­ity that he might be an agent provo­ca­teur of sorts.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the destruc­tion of FBI agent Mike German’s career by the Bureau when he tried to infil­trate White Suprema­cist groups that were appar­ently ally­ing with Islamist ter­ror­ists; dis­cov­ery by the FBI of explo­sives at con­victed Okla­homa City bomber Terry Nichols’ home; Ward Churchill’s work for Sol­dier of For­tune mag­a­zine in the 1970’s.

1. Begin­ning with an update on Mr. Emory’s series on Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol of the Amer­i­can media, the pro­gram notes a deal between Intel and Bertelsmann—the SS pub­lish­ing house dur­ing the war. The deal will see the two com­pa­nies devel­op­ing file-sharing tech­nol­ogy for down­load­ing and shar­ing var­i­ous forms of enter­tain­ment online. “Chip Maker Intel Corp. and media con­glom­er­ate Ber­tels­mann plan to coop­er­ate in devel­op­ing tech­nol­ogy for down­load­ing and shar­ing film clips and games from the Inter­net. Intel will make chips for PC’s, note­books and mobile phones that are com­pat­i­ble with a new online media file-sharing plat­form from Bertelsmann’s ser­vices and tech­nol­ogy arm, Arvato, cap­i­tal­iz­ing on grow­ing pub­lic appetite for access­ing music and other media online....“
(“Intel and Ber­tels­mann to Develop Tech­nol­ogy” [Reuters]; 3/30/2005; p. 1.)

2. Bertelsmann’s music division—BMG—merged with SONY music to form a giant super-corporation. The for­ma­tion of this music giant fur­ther increases Bertelsmann’s influ­ence in the media world. “Impala, the body rep­re­sent­ing 2,500 indie labels, is appeal­ing to pre­vent what it calls a ‘mar­ket imbal­ance’. Per­mis­sion for them to merge meant that 80% of the world’s music is owned by just four record com­pa­nies. The EU gave its back­ing to the merger in July, and the US Fed­eral Trade Com­mis­sion also did not oppose it. But Impala believes the EU was wrong to allow the merger to go unchal­lenged, say­ing it went against the prin­ci­ples of a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket­place. . . .“
(“Indies Chal­lenge Sony BMG Merger” [BBC]; BBC News; 11/03/2004)

3. Next, the pro­gram notes that the FBI recently dis­cov­ered addi­tional explo­sives stored by con­victed Okla­homa City bomber Terry Nichols at his res­i­dence. A num­ber of broad­casts high­light the con­nec­tions between the Okla­homa City bomb­ing, the first attack on the World Trade Cen­ter in 1993, and the 9/11 attacks—FTR#‘s 330, 443, 456, 457.) “Pur­su­ing a tip that they missed evi­dence a decade ago, F.B.I. agents searched the for­mer home of the Okla­homa City bomb­ing con­spir­a­tor Terry L. Nichols and found explo­sive mate­ri­als appar­ently related to the 1995 attack, offi­cials said on Fri­day. Offi­cials of the Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion said the mate­ri­als, which included blast­ing caps, were found buried in a crawl space of the Her­ing­ton, Kansas, home on Thurs­day. Agents con­ducted numer­ous searches of the house dur­ing the orig­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of Mr. Nichols and his co-conspirator, Tim­o­thy J. McVeigh....“
(“New Evi­dence Found in Okla­homa City Bomb­ing” [AP]; The New York Times; 4/2/2005; p. 1.)

4. Recently, the National Alliance (arguably the most impor­tant domes­tic Nazi group) gave voice to a desire to coop­er­ate with Al Qaeda in attack­ing Amer­i­can tar­gets. Although the peo­ple quoted in the arti­cle dis­miss the prospect as merely a pos­si­bil­ity, the evi­dence sug­gests that domes­tic Nazi groups have indeed formed a work­ing rela­tion­ship with Al Qaeda. (For more about this sub­ject, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#‘s 330, 352, 443, 456, 457, 474.) “A cou­ple of hours up the road from where some Sep­tem­ber 11 hijack­ers learned to fly, the new head of Aryan Nation is prais­ing them — and try­ing to cre­ate an unholy alliance between his white suprema­cist group and al Qaeda. ‘You say they’re ter­ror­ists, I say they’re free­dom fight­ers. And I want to instill the same jihadic feel­ing in our peo­ples’ heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah.’”
(“An Unholy Alliance: Aryan Nation Leader Reaches Out to Al Qaeda” by Henry Schus­ter; CNN.)

5. “With his long beard and pot­belly, August Kreis looks more like a washed up mem­ber of ZZ Top than an aspir­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary. Don’t let appear­ances fool you: his resume includes stops at some of America’s nas­ti­est extrem­ist groups – Posse Comi­ta­tus, the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation. “I don’t believe that they were the ones that attacked us,” Kreis said. “And even if they did, even if you say they did, I don’t care!” Kreis wants to make com­mon cause with al Qaeda because, he says, they share the same ene­mies: Jews and the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. The terms they use may be dif­fer­ent: White suprema­cists call them ZOG, the Zion­ist Occu­pa­tion Gov­ern­ment, while al Qaeda calls them the Jews and Cru­saders. But the hatred is the same. And Kreis wants to exploit that. . . .” (Idem.)

6. Next, the pro­gram reviews an expose of the FBI’s sup­pres­sion of a vet­eran agent’s rev­e­la­tions about devel­op­ing coop­er­a­tion between Islamist ter­ror­ists and home­grown white supremacist/militia types. This arti­cle was first pre­sented in FTR#474. (For more about Islamist/neo-Nazi coop­er­a­tion in the exe­cu­tion of ter­ror­ist acts, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#‘s 330, 443, 456, 457. For more about the FBI’s sup­pres­sion of infor­ma­tion that could lead to the appre­hen­sion of ter­ror­ists and/or the inter­dic­tion of their oper­a­tions, see—among other progra

ms—FTR#‘s 349, 424, 454, 462, 464, 467.) Note that, in FTR#‘s 310, 348, 462, 464, Mr. Emory states his opin­ion that Robert Mueller is a “ringer”—someone put in to deliver the FBI to the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and its gov­ern­ing entity—the Under­ground Reich.) Why is the bureau sup­press­ing this type of inves­ti­ga­tion?! Will the next major ter­ror­ist attack fea­ture White Suprema­cists or neo-Nazis at the oper­a­tional level? Is Mike Ger­man the next John O’Neill? “As a vet­eran agent chas­ing home-grown ter­ror­ist sus­pects for the Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, Mike Ger­man always had a knack for worm­ing his way into places few other agents could go. In the early 1990’s, he infil­trated a group of white suprema­cist skin­heads plot­ting to blow up a black church in Los Ange­les. A few years later, he joined a mili­tia in Wash­ing­ton State that talked of attack­ing gov­ern­ment build­ings. Known to his fel­low mili­tia mem­bers as Rock, he tricked them into hand­cuff­ing them­selves in a sup­posed train­ing exer­cise so the author­i­ties could arrest them.“
(“Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whis­tle on Agency” by Eric Licht­blau; The New York Times; 8/2/2004; p.1.)

7. “So in early 2002, when Mr. Ger­man got word that a group of Amer­i­cans might be plot­ting sup­port for an over­seas Islamic ter­ror­ist group, he pro­posed to his bosses what he thought was an obvi­ous plan: go under­cover and infil­trate the group. But Mr. Ger­man says F.B.I. offi­cials sat on his request, botched the inves­ti­ga­tion, fal­si­fied doc­u­ments to dis­credit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a ‘pariah.’ He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going pub­lic for the first time—the lat­est in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retal­i­ated against after voic­ing con­cerns about how man­age­ment prob­lems had impeded ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tions since the Sept. 11 attacks.” (Idem.)

8. ” ‘What’s so frus­trat­ing for me,’ Mr. Ger­man said in an inter­view, a copy of the Sept. 11 com­mis­sion report at his side,’ is that what I hear the F.B.I. say­ing every day on TV when I get home, about how it’s remak­ing itself to fight ter­ror­ism, is not the real­ity of what I saw every day in the field.’ Mr. Ger­man refused to dis­cuss details of the 2002 ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion, say­ing the infor­ma­tion was clas­si­fied.” (Idem.)

9. Among the groups seen by offi­cials as prob­a­ble col­lab­o­ra­tors of al-Qaeda or other Islamist groups are white suprema­cist groups within the cor­rec­tional sys­tem. “But offi­cials with knowl­edge of the case said the inves­ti­ga­tion took place in the Tampa, Fla. area, where a domes­tic militia-type group and a major but uniden­ti­fied Islamic ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, were con­sid­er­ing join­ing forces. A tape record­ing of the meet­ing appeared to lend cre­dence to the report, one offi­cial said. Law enforce­ment offi­cials have become increas­ingly con­cerned that mil­i­tant domes­tic groups could seek to col­lab­o­rate with foreign-based ter­ror­ist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment. This has become a par­tic­u­lar con­cern in pris­ons.” (Idem.)

10. “The Tampa case is not known to have pro­duced any arrests. But Mr. Ger­man, in an April 29 let­ter to sev­eral mem­bers of Con­gress, warned that ‘the inves­ti­ga­tions involved in my com­plaint con­cern very active ter­ror­ist groups that cur­rently pose sig­nif­i­cant threats to national secu­rity.’” (Idem.)

11. “He also wrote ‘Oppor­tu­ni­ties to ini­ti­ate proac­tive inves­ti­ga­tions involved in my com­plaint con­cern very active ter­ror­ist groups that cur­rently pose sig­nif­i­cant threats to national secu­rity.’ He also wrote, ‘Oppor­tu­ni­ties to ini­ti­ate proac­tive inves­ti­ga­tions that might pre­vent ter­ror­ist acts before they occur, which is pur­ported to be the F.B.I.‘s num­ber one pri­or­ity, con­tinue to be lost, yet no one is held account­able.’” (Idem.)

12. ” . . . Mr. Ger­man, in his let­ter to law­mak­ers, cited ‘a con­tin­u­ing fail­ure in the F.B.I’s coun­tert­er­ror­ism pro­gram,’ which he said was ‘not the result of a lack of intel­li­gence, but a lack of action.’ Offi­cials said Mr. Ger­man also com­plained inter­nally about a sec­ond case in the Port­land, Ore., area in 2002 in which he said he was blocked from going under­cover to pur­sue a domes­tic ter­ror­ism lead. That case was also thought to cen­ter on a mili­tia group sus­pected of plot­ting vio­lence.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

13. “In the Tampa case, offi­cials said Mr. Ger­man com­plained that F.B.I. offi­cials had mis­han­dled evi­dence con­cern­ing a sus­pected domes­tic ter­ror­ist group and failed to act for months on his request in early 2002 to con­duct an under­cover oper­a­tion. That fail­ure, he said, allowed the inves­ti­ga­tion to ‘die on the vine.’ While Mr. Ger­man would not con­firm the loca­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion, he said in an inter­view at the office of his Wash­ing­ton lawyer, Lynne Bern­abei, that his prob­lems inten­si­fied after he com­plained about the man­age­ment of the case in Sep­tem­ber 2002. He said F.B.I. offi­cials whom he would not name back­dated doc­u­ments in the case, fal­si­fied evi­dence and falsely dis­cred­ited wit­nesses in an appar­ent effort to jus­tify their approach to the inves­ti­ga­tion. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] He cited insti­tu­tional iner­tia, even after Sept. 11.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

14. ” ‘Try­ing to get approval for an oper­a­tion like this is a bureau­cratic night­mare at the F.B.I.,’ he said. Mr. Ger­man said that begin­ning in late 2002, he took his con­cerns to his super­vi­sors at the F.B.I. and to offi­cials at head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing Mr. Mueller him­self in an e-mail mes­sage that he said went unan­swered. He also went to the Jus­tice Department’s inspec­tor gen­eral and, frus­trated by what he saw as a lan­guish­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, brought his con­cerns this spring to sev­eral mem­bers of Con­gress and the Sept. 11 com­mis­sion.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

15. “In the mean­time, Mr. Ger­man said, his career at the F.B.I. stalled, despite what he said was an ‘unblem­ished’ record and an award for his work in the Los Ange­les skin­head case. Soon after rais­ing his com­plaints about the 2002 ter­ror­ism inves­ti­ga­tion, he was removed from the case. And, he said, F.B.I. offi­cials wrongly accused him of con­duct­ing unau­tho­rized travel, stopped using him to train agents in ‘proac­tive tech­niques’ and shut him out of impor­tant domes­tic ter­ror­ism assign­ments.” (Idem.)

16. ” ‘The phone just stopped ring­ing, and I became a per­sona non grata,’ he said. ‘Because I wouldn’t let this go away, I became the prob­lem.’ For now he has no job and is uncer­tain of his future. ‘My entire career has been ruined, all because I thought I was doing the right thing here,’ he said.” (Idem.)

17. The pro­gram closes with a look at the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing Ward Churchill, a pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Col­orado who char­ac­ter­ized the vic­tims of the 9/11 as “lit­tle Eichmanns”—a ref­er­ence to the Nazi offi­cer in charge of the liq­ui­da­tion of Euro­pean Jewry. Churchill has a track record that raises ques­tions about the pos­si­bil­ity that he might be an agent provo­ca­teur. ” . . . Fringe spec­u­la­tions aside, Churchill’s closet does con­tain a redoubtable col­lec­tion of ver­i­fi­able pec­ca­dil­loes. While employed at CU, Churchill ran a side busi­ness in which he repro­duced other artists’ images—some of them still under copyright—and then sold them as his own orig­i­nal art­work. Like his­to­rian Joseph Ellis, Churchill appears to have exag­ger­ated his mil­i­tary ser­vice. Churchill claims to have served in Viet­nam as a para­trooper in an elite long-range recon­nais­sance unit, and walked point on patrol. Yet Churchill’s ser­vice record shows that he was trained as a projection

ist and Jeep dri­ver. In an early resume, Churchill reports as his mil­i­tary ser­vice the dan­ger­ous task of prepar­ing his bat­tal­ion newslet­ter. They also, serve, who only stand behind the lines and pub­lish.
(“Is Ward Churchill the New Michael Belle­siles?” by Thomas Brown; His­tory News Net­work; 3/14/2005; p. 2.)

18. “Churchill car­ried this tra­di­tion of epis­to­lary valor over into his civil­ian career. He appren­ticed at Sol­dier of For­tune mag­a­zine in the 1970’s, before mov­ing into the acad­emy. In 1998, Churchill pub­lished Paci­fism as Pathol­ogy, jus­ti­fy­ing the use of polit­i­cal vio­lence. Churchill claims to have taught bomb-making to the Weather Under­ground. Churchill called for break­ing the kneecaps of tourists headed for Hawaii, as a polit­i­cal state­ment in sup­port of Hawai­ian nation­al­ism. He repeat­edly called for the destruc­tion of the United States. Churchill gave speeches in which he offered jus­ti­fi­ca­tions and explicit strate­gies for suc­cess­ful ter­ror­ist actions against the U.S. . . .” (Idem.)

19. “Churchill’s per­sonal life echoed this theme of vio­lence. Churchill claims to van­dal­ize or destroy state prop­erty as revenge for every traf­fic ticket he receives. A num­ber of peo­ple had accused Churchill of assault or threats of assault. Joanne Arnold, an admin­is­tra­tor on Churchill’s home cam­pus, reported that Churchill had threat­ened in a phone call that she would ‘get hurt’ if she didn’t back off her posi­tion in a dis­pute over nam­ing a dor­mi­tory. Car­ole Stand­ing Elk, an Indian activist, com­plained that Churchill had spit on her dur­ing an argu­ment. David Bradley, a New Mex­ico artist, com­plained to his local police that Churchill had threat­ened to kill him.” (Idem.)

20. “The Col­orado media also reported that Churchill’s genealog­i­cal claims to Indian ances­try are most likely spec­tral. This became sig­nif­i­cant when the media uncov­ered addi­tional evi­dence show­ing that Churchill’s Indian iden­tity claims had been a major fac­tor in CU admin­is­tra­tors cre­at­ing a tenured posi­tion for him. Offi­cials of the Kee­towah Chero­kee tribe—including John Ross, the for­mer chief who had arranged an ‘asso­ciate mem­ber­ship’ for Churchill in 1994—also repu­di­ate Churchill’s claim to Chero­kee iden­tity and to tribal enroll­ment with the Kee­towahs.” (Idem.)