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This pro­gram exam­ines the “Peak Oil” con­tro­versy in terms of the car­tel agree­ments sur­round­ing the gen­e­sis of syn­thetic fuel. “Peak Oil” is the term applied to the con­cept that the world is on the edge of a dis­as­ter, because of the diminu­tion of petro­leum reserves. There is rea­son to believe that cyn­i­cal ele­ments asso­ci­ated with the petro­leum indus­try are delib­er­ately gen­er­at­ing this line of think­ing, in order to max­i­mize their profit posi­tion. In fact, alarms about the world run­ning out of oil have been sounded for many years. In the 1920’s, alarms about the immi­nent “Peak Oil” cri­sis spurred the devel­op­ment of a process to syn­the­size oil from coal. Jointly devel­oped by Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey and the I.G. Far­ben firm, this process pro­vided Nazi Ger­many with most of the fuel to run its huge war machine. This pro­gram exam­ines evi­dence that the car­tel agree­ments sur­round­ing syn­thetic oil may be in a posi­tion to be revived in the face of the “Peak Oil Cri­sis.” The Under­ground Reich appears to be at the epi­cen­ter of the effort to revive syn­thetic oil, as well as gen­er­at­ing the notion of an immi­nent oil cri­sis. The ele­ments that stand to ben­e­fit from the dras­tic increase in the price of oil, as well as the pos­si­ble use of syn­thetic oil are cor­po­ra­tions and polit­i­cal ele­ments asso­ci­ated with the Under­ground Reich.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The role of the elder George Bush, the major oil com­pa­nies and Saudi Ara­bia in cre­at­ing the phony oil short­age of the late 1970’s; the role of that oil short­age in desta­bi­liz­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion; the role of that oil short­age in jus­ti­fy­ing the Rea­gan administration’s enor­mous mil­i­tary build-up; the Thyssen firm’s role in the pur­chase of the Leuna syn­thetic oil facil­ity in the for­mer East Ger­many; the Thyssen firm’s piv­otal role in the prop­a­ga­tion of the Peak Oil con­tro­versy; an account of the devel­op­ment of the Bergius/hydrogenation process to syn­the­size oil from coal; exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­ity that the Bergius process may have been greatly improved since World War II; the cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion of both the Rock­e­feller inter­ests and the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment in the Thyssen firm; the Thyssen firm’s his­tor­i­cal links to Mar­tin Bor­mann, his fam­ily and the Under­ground Reich; the Thyssen firm’s piv­otal links to the Bush family.

1. Excerpt­ing FTRs 214, 248, the broad­cast begins by review­ing infor­ma­tion about an arrange­ment among George H.W. Bush’s CIA, the Saudis, and the petro­leum indus­try to cre­ate a delib­er­ate, phony oil short­age. This oil short­age cre­ated dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Carter admin­is­tra­tion (and infla­tion), thereby help­ing to defeat him in 1980. In addi­tion, this phony oil short­age served as a pre­text for dras­ti­cally increas­ing defense spend­ing and arm­ing the Saudis with the lat­est Amer­i­can weaponry. The Saudi/Bush/petroleum indus­try axis manip­u­lated oil prices to defeat Carter in 1980. In 2000, Mr. Emory dis­cussed this con­spir­acy and fore­cast that, based on past evi­dence, we might see some­thing sim­i­lar if Bush was elected. Now, we are being told that the age of “Peak Oil” is upon us and that we must get used to high oil prices. On the basis of past infor­ma­tion, it is rea­son­able to ask if this “oil short­age” is real or is being man­u­fac­tured. Beyond that, it is impor­tant to ask what the results of this “short­age” might be? Who would ben­e­fit? These ques­tions will be dealt with near the end of this descrip­tion. “It is hard to recall why he [Carter] was so despised when he was in office. Much of it has to do with the secret his­tory of oil pol­i­tics. Even dur­ing the 1976 elec­tion cam­paign, the oil com­pa­nies viewed the Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date as Pub­lic Enemy Num­ber One. Carter cer­tainly had some rad­i­cal ideas about energy pol­icy, which made the oil com­pa­nies fear­ful for the future and their profit lev­els. Carter’s first move after the elec­tion didn’t please them. He nom­i­nated for­mer CIA head and defense sec­re­tary James Schlesinger as his sec­re­tary of energy. . . . Worse still, Schlesinger was now a con­vert to ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ism.’ Con­ver­sa­tion and effi­ciency were the new buzz words. In their first few months in office in 1977, Schlesinger and Carter made energy their number-one pol­icy issue. . . .“
(The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 [HC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-11057-X; p. 333.)

2. “Even before Amer­i­cans voted for Carter, the oil indus­try had launched a quiet cru­sade of its own, in antic­i­pa­tion of a Demo­c­ra­tic vic­tory. In the last months of the Ford admin­is­tra­tion, the CIA had devel­oped a series of papers on energy and oil issues. Just after his vic­tory in Novem­ber 1976, Carter was shown a clas­si­fied CIA analy­sis of global oil sup­plies. The ‘old spies’ we asked about this point insist that the report had a pow­er­ful impact on Carter and helped to define his poli­cies on the ‘energy cri­sis.’” (Idem.)

3. “When Carter launched his national energy plan in April 1977, he con­firmed that the CIA had pro­vided him with intel­li­gence assess­ments which made dire pre­dic­tions about future energy sup­plies in the Soviet Union. The CIA warn­ing made front-page news: ‘Rus­sia would be import­ing oil from the Mid­dle East by 1985.’ The Sovi­ets would need to buy three and a half mil­lion bar­rels per day, to be pre­cise, whereas in 1977 they actu­ally exported one and a half mil­lion bar­rels daily. ‘Pre­vi­ously, the assump­tion had been that the Sovi­ets would con­tinue to be self-sufficient in meet­ing their oil and gas needs.’” (Idem.)

4. ” . . . In effect, the CIA was telling Pres­i­dent Carter that the Soviet Union would face a domes­tic oil short­age in 1985, caus­ing the worst energy cri­sis in Amer­i­can his­tory. When the Sovi­ets ran out of domes­tic oil sup­plies, they prob­a­bly would look to the tra­di­tional oil sup­pli­ers of the United States, espe­cially Saudi Ara­bia and Kuwait. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity say that the CIA’s ‘oil short­fall’ prob­a­bly was the great­est intel­li­gence fraud in Amer­i­can his­tory. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

5. Bush’s father appears to have been a prin­ci­pal player in the cre­ation of the phony oil short­age! ” . . . Accord­ing to sev­eral of our sources, the scheme to man­u­fac­ture phony CIA esti­mates and push them on Carter began in the last days of Ger­ald Ford’s term. They claim that a cabal within the CIA real­ized that Carter would be the new pres­i­dent, pro­duced the first phony report, and then promptly gave it to Carter as soon as he won, know­ing how it would affect his view of the energy cri­sis. It should be recalled that George Bush was the direc­tor of the CIA at the time the oil scam was put in place in 1976. There is some evi­dence to sug­gest that it was Bush him­self who passed the fake oil esti­mates to Carter.” (Ibid.; pp. 334–335.)

6. ” ‘You have to under­stand who was screw­ing the Jews,’ one ‘old spy’ told us. ‘The whole phony scheme—the oil short­ages, the pre­dic­tions about Soviet troops in the Mid­dle East, the Saudi arms buildup—all of that crap started com­ing out of the agency back in ’76. The CIA told their boss what he wanted to hear, and in those days, the head of the CIA was an oil man.’” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

7. ” . . . The oil com­pa­nies and the Saudi gov­ern­ment both had access to sim­i­lar
advice from old CIA hands. It almost seemed that Aramco had more of its ex-employees inside the CIA than the CIA had agents in the Mid­dle East. In pub­lic, the Saudis dis­missed the report as ‘ridicu­lous and obvi­ously untrue.’ In pri­vate, they went along with the CIA’s ‘declin­ing pro­duc­tion’ fraud. After some reflec­tion, the House of Saud real­ized that here was an oppor­tu­nity to sell less oil but make more money.” (Ibid.; p. 338.)

8. “In pub­lic, the Saudis con­tin­ued to insist that they had plenty of oil. In prac­tice, they helped cre­ate an oil short­age. The CIA had cre­ated a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Saudis’ reserves mys­te­ri­ously fell by mil­lions of bar­rels a day, and their pump­ing effi­ciency was said to be atro­cious and sure to get worse. In a very short time, Amer­i­can con­sumers would find them­selves run­ning out of gas.” (Idem.)

9. ” . . . In the short run, of course, the motive was more money for Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity say that the oil indus­try used its CIA con­tacts to fab­ri­cate both the Soviets-will-steal-our oil hys­te­ria as well as the dry-wells-in-Saudi Ara­bia pre­dic­tions. The imme­di­ate goal of the phony pre­dic­tions was to scare the White House into doing what the oil com­pa­nies wanted: (1) lift the laws hold­ing the price on domes­tic Amer­i­can oil; (2) pro­vide a panic to excuse rais­ing world oil prices; and (3) appease the Arabs, by arm­ing the Saudis instead of the Israelis.” (Ibid.; p. 339.)

10. “The oil men in the intel­li­gence ser­vices pro­moted the fear that the Sovi­ets would have no other option than to move down into the Mid­dle East, invade Saudi Ara­bia, Kuwait, and Iran, and seize U.S. oil for them­selves. If Carter didn’t move soon, there would be no hope of with­stand­ing a Soviet inva­sion of the Mid­dle East. The most pow­er­ful army in the area was Israel’s. But the Jews could hardly be expected to go to war to save the Arabs’ oil for the West’s often anti-Semitic oil com­pa­nies. The time had come for the pres­i­dent to make a clear-cut deci­sion: either bow to the Jews’ res­olute oppo­si­tion to U.S. arms sales to the Arabs and risk los­ing Mid­dle East­ern oil to the Sovi­ets, or arm the Arabs, thereby end­ing Israel’s mil­i­tary supremacy—a sac­ri­fice that would have to be made in the Amer­i­can national inter­est.” (Idem.)

11. “Our sources say that the oil com­pa­nies, and their friends in the CIA, had a very will­ing ally in the Saudis, who secretly coop­er­ated with the CIA’s fraud by arti­fi­cially decreas­ing pro­duc­tion and simul­ta­ne­ously increas­ing the price per bar­rel of oil. It was all meant to be a very prof­itable game, in which both the Saudis and the com­pa­nies would get huge wind­falls, while their Jew­ish ene­mies were finally put in their place. The Arabs soon would have the weapons they needed to see to that.” (Idem.)

12. ” . . . The fact is that the CIA reports on the Soviet threat were as false as they were fright­en­ing. As one of our sources put it: ‘Look, the Sovi­ets couldn’t even hang on to their pup­pet colony in Afghanistan. They were bleed­ing them­selves white. At one point dur­ing the Afghan war, the mil­i­tary was con­sum­ing nearly 28 per­cent of the gross pro­duc­tiv­ity of the Soviet Union. The last thing the Krem­lin wanted was all out war with the Moslem world. They couldn’t finance their own PLO hit squads, let alone start a sec­ond front in the Mid­dle East. The whole idea of the Russ­ian army march­ing into the Saudi oil fields was a fraud.’ But the fraud worked. Accord­ing to the Red scare scheme, there was only one thing to do: arm the Arabs so they could defend the oil fields them­selves.” (Ibid.; pp. 350–351.)

13. “The car­di­nal sin of states­man­ship is naivete. Carter and Turner never sus­pected that their own peo­ple would lie to them. The phony CIA oil reports com­pletely fooled them. ‘Don’t you get it?’ asked one of our sources. ‘The gas short­age dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion was as phony as the CIA’s pre­dic­tion about the Soviet oil short­age. The god­damn Mid­dle East was swim­ming in oil dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, but less and less of it was shipped to Amer­ica. For chris­sakes, there was so much oil in South Amer­ica that they had to shut down refiner­ies in the Caribbean to keep it away from the U.S.’” (Ibid.; p. 353.)

14. “This source has a point. One of the largest refiner­ies in the West­ern Hemi­sphere is located on St. Croix, in the U.S. Vir­gin Islands. Most of its capac­ity went unused dur­ing the Carter administration’s ‘oil short­age,’ yet it was greatly expanded dur­ing Reagan’s term, despite the world glut of oil and falling prices. Most of the ‘old spies’ are adamant that the oil com­pa­nies cut refin­ery pro­duc­tion to cause as much dam­age to the Carter admin­is­tra­tion as pos­si­ble.” (Ibid.; pp. 353–354.)

15. “By mid-1981, it was embar­rass­ingly clear that all of the CIA’s pre­dic­tions, upon which Carter had relied, were com­pletely false. Not only was there not an oil cri­sis, the whole indus­try had sud­denly gone the other way. There was a world­wide sur­plus of oil, not a short­fall. The CIA fig­ures on Saudi oil were just as false as their Soviet pro­duc­tion esti­mates. By June that year, the Saudi Ara­bian gov­ern­ment had cre­ated an oil glut and was under intense pres­sure in the Arab world to cut its pro­duc­tion. The Mid­dle East was drown­ing in oil. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 354.)

16. Like his father and Ronald Rea­gan, George W. Bush’s com­bi­na­tion of tax cuts and mas­sive defense spend­ing are destroy­ing the Amer­i­can fis­cal land­scape. ” . . . Under the Repub­li­cans, lucra­tive arms fac­to­ries sprouted in what had pre­vi­ously been rural Demo­c­ra­tic states. The votes went where the jobs were. In the course of the Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions, the defense bud­get was increased to a point where more money was spent on arms than in all the wars in U.S. his­tory com­bined. To accom­plish this mas­sive defense buildup, the Reagan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions bor­rowed three times more money than all U.S. pres­i­dents com­bined. The largest debt in Amer­ica his­tory was based on the faulty premise that the Soviet Union was going to attack the Mid­dle East.” (Ibid.; p. 355.)

17. Next, the pro­gram takes up the issue of the devel­op­ment of the hydro­gena­tion process (the “Bergius process”) that was devel­oped to make oil out of coal. This process, devel­oped and patented by the Ger­man I.G. Far­ben com­pany and used to pro­duce much of Germany’s oil dur­ing World War II, was devel­oped dur­ing the 1920’s, when it was fore­cast that the world was about to run out of oil!! This process was brought to fruition as a result of the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929—one of the most impor­tant car­tel arrange­ments ever made. (The Standard/I.G. Agree­ment is dis­cussed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11—available from Spit­fire.) ” . . .Although [Robert] Bosch’s plan was to rely on the finan­cial resources of I.G. to develop domes­tic pro­duc­tion, he planned to bring in an Amer­i­can com­pany like Stan­dard Oil (New Jer­sey) as a part­ner in the world­wide exploita­tion of the process. More­over, Stan­dard had more than enor­mous finan­cial resources: it had a huge and well-staffed research and devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion that had achieved impor­tant break­throughs in petro­leum tech­nol­ogy.“
(; Joseph Borkin; Copyright 1978 [HC] by The Free Press [a division of MacMillan]; ISBN 0-02-904630-0; p. 46.)

18. "Standard, the dominant force in the American oil industry, was also one of its more imaginative members. Since the early 1920's, when depletion of the world's natural oil reserves first became a matter of concern, Standard had searched for alternatives to crude oil. It pioneered in testing shale as a commercial source, and in 1921 it even purchased 22,000 acres in Colorado in the hope that commercially adaptable method of extracting oil from shale could be found. Standard was also exploring the feasibility of the Bergius process since the United States, like Germany, had tremendous coal deposits. In 1922, Frank A. Howard, head of the Standard Oil Development Company, had sent a young assistant to Germany to study the Bergius process but had been advised that it was still far from ready for commercial exploration." (Ibid.; pp. 46-47.)

19. "In the spring of 1925, Bosch dispatched several senior BASF executives to the United States to explore the interest of the Standard Oil Company. When they arrived in the United States, the BASF representatives were given a tour of the refineries in the New York area and then invited to lunch with the Standard directors. Wilhelm Gaus, spokesman for the BASF group, made a speech of thanks in halting English. He said that he had been very impressed by the size and efficiency of the refineries and by Standard's new research and development of the Bergius process—information that Bosch had specifically instructed Gaus to mention. Gaus suggested that Howard visit Ludwigshafen when he was in Europe the next spring to see for himself, and Howard accepted the invitation." (Ibid.; p. 47.)

20. "In March 1926, Howard arrived at Ludwigshafen, as he had promised, and was given a tour of the BASF laboratories, by now officially a part of I.G. Farbenindustrie. He was stunned. Although Howard was the head of research and development of one of the world's largest and most scientifically advanced corporations, he reported that he was 'plunged into a world of research and development on a gigantic scale such as I had never seen.' He was especially overwhelmed by BASF's experiments in synthetic oil. Howard fired off a message immediately to Walter C. Teagle, president of Standard Oil, then on a visit to Paris, to come to Ludwigshafen without delay: . . ." (Idem.)

21. " 'Based upon my observations and discussions today, I think that this matter is the most important which has ever faced the company since the dissolution [the breakup of the Standard Oil Trust by a Supreme Court decision in 1911]. The Badische [BASF] can make high-grade motor fuel from lignite and other low quality coals in amounts up to half the weight of the coal. This means absolutely the independence of Europe in the matter of gasoline supply. Straight price competition is all that is left.'" (Idem.)

22. Standard Oil of New Jersey was afraid of the competition for its naturally produced oil that the I.G. Farben synthetic oil potentially represented. " . . . The urgency of Howard's message brought Teagle to Ludwigshafen within a few days. An examination of BASF's high-pressure installation left him just as impressed as Howard: 'I had not known what research meant until I saw it. We were babies compared to what they were doing.' When Teagle and Howard retired to their quarters, they talked over 'the effect the startling scientific developments . . . would have on the world's oil industry.' For Standard's own protection, it was obviously imperative to find a way for closer cooperation with I.G. The vision of thousands of obsolete oil wells was enough of a spur." (Ibid.; pp. 47-48.)

23. "At first Howard and Teagle considered the possibility of purchasing the world rights to the Bergius synthetic oil patents from I.G. However, millions had already been spent on the process, and it was obvious that only a tremendous price would be acceptable to I.G. At the moment, Standard was not prepared to make a large expenditure on a process that was still in the early stages of development and not yet ready for commercial exploitation. Teagle and Howard decided to proceed cautiously. They concluded that at least for the present the most sensible arrangement was a simple partnership to develop and perfect the process without any large financial commitment. Bosch agreed in principle to the proposal. Although he would have preferred a broader agreement, it nevertheless was a concrete demonstration of Standard's interest." (Ibid.; p. 48.)

24. "Until this meeting Bosch had limited the hydrogenation project to a few experimental high pressure furnaces. After the reaction of the Standard executives, he threw caution to the winds. On June 18, he ordered a huge Bergius plant to be built next to the Haber-Bosch plant at Leuna. He had decided that the process was sufficiently advanced for I.G. to start mass-producing synthetic oil—100,000 tons a year. It was a step that many I.G. officials considered financially imprudent in view of the fact that the process still had some way to go before it was perfected. But Bosch was too powerful to be thwarted." (Idem.)

25. Note that impetus for the I.G. synthetic fuel project was given by a report that the United States would run out of oil in six years. That was in 1926! "On September 1, 1926, at the first stockholders meeting of the incorporated I.G., plans were announced for construction of the big new synthetic oil plant at Leuna. The wisdom of pushing the project seemed to be corroborated a few days later when President Coolidge's Federal Oil Conservation Board submitted its preliminary report on the question of 'national petroleum conditions' in the United States. The board found that 'the total present reserves in pumping and flowing wells... has been estimated at about 4 ½ billion barrels, which is theoretically but six years' supply... future maintenance of even current supplies implies the constant discovery of new fields and the drilling of new wells.' Even the worst pessimists were taken by surprise by the six-year estimate. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)

26. “Shortly after the announce­ment of I.G.‘s new syn­thetic oil plant, Bosch him­self arrived in the United States to begin nego­ti­a­tions with Stan­dard. He was inter­ested mainly in finan­cial sup­port. By now Tea­gle and Howard real­ized that their enthu­si­asm and stunned appre­ci­a­tion of the hydro­gena­tion process had reduced their bar­gain­ing power with Bosch. They decided to put on a coun­ter­demon­stra­tion. Tea­gle invited Bosch to accom­pany him on his annual tour of Standard’s vast prop­er­ties. For three weeks they drove across the United States inspect­ing Stan­dard facil­i­ties. On the trip it became clear to Bosch that the Stan­dard Oil offi­cials were not ready to make the large pay­ment to I.G. he had expected. In mid Decem­ber he returned to Ger­many with­out a def­i­nite agree­ment or finan­cial com­mit­ment. Again he slipped in to the depres­sion that peri­od­i­cally afflicted him.” (Ibid.; pp. 48–49.)

27. “It took until August of the next year for Tea­gle and Bosch to reach a rel­a­tively lim­ited under­stand­ing. Stan­dard agreed to embark on a coop­er­a­tive pro­gram of research and devel­op­ment of the hydro­gena­tion process to refine crude oil. It also agreed to build a new plant for this pur­pose as soon as pos­si­ble in Louisiana. In return Stan­dard was given the right to exploit the process in the United States and to share half of the roy­al­ties with I.G. on licenses to other par­ties. How­ever, Stan­dard was not enti­tled to exploit the process in any of its far-flung plants out­side the United States.” (Ibid.; p. 49.)

28. “Mod­est as the arrange­ment was, the New York Times, in its news story of the agree­ment dis­patched by its Ger­man cor­re­spon­dent, was almost euphoric about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of I.G.‘s syn­thetic oil process. ‘What experts in chem­i­cal fields admit is that the world is on the thresh­old of a new fuel era, and that the often pre­dicted fail­ure of the gaso­line sup­ply is now shoved cen­turies in the future . . . .The dis­cov­er­ies in these fields are more mar­velous than inven­tions which enable rapid strides in the devel­op­ment of radio, other uses of elec­tric­ity and in air­planes, a promi­nent indus­tri­al­ist told the cor­re­spon­dent of the New York Times.” (Idem.)

29. “It was esti­mated by ‘con­ser­v­a­tive author­i­ties’ that twenty per­cent of the gaso­line used in 1928 would be syn­thetic and that within a very few years, Ger­many would be com­pletely self-sufficient. So great was the con­fi­dence in mak­ing syn­thetic oil, con­cluded the New York Times arti­cle, that the price for the syn­thetic fuel was expected to be less that that of nat­ural oil imported from the United States and the Soviet Union. . . .” (Idem.)

30. Even­tu­ally, Stan­dard and I.G. were able to con­clude their agree­ment. “What Bosch really wanted was a large lump pay­ment from Stan­dard to extri­cate I.G. from its present finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and still enable him to con­tinue the hydro­gena­tion project in Ger­many. With the help of Her­mann Schmitz, Bosch devised a coun­ter­pro­posal that he did not believe Stan­dard could afford to refuse. He offered to sell the world rights to the Bergius-Bosch hydro­gena­tion process for the pro­duc­tion of gaso­line. The only ter­ri­to­r­ial excep­tion was that the rights in Ger­many were reserved to I.G. Obvi­ously, the Ger­man author­i­ties would never per­mit I.G. to sur­ren­der to a for­eign com­pany the Ger­man rights to a process so cru­cial to mil­i­tary and eco­nomic self-sufficiency. Even so, I.G. did not reveal to its gov­ern­ment that it was sell­ing the hydro­gena­tion rights to Stan­dard. As Bosch antic­i­pated, Stan­dard jumped at the offer.” (Ibid.; pp. 50–51.)

31. “The par­ties nego­ti­ated their agree­ment in the man­ner of two great pow­ers forg­ing a treaty to divide the world into sep­a­rate spheres of influ­ence. They agreed to observe the sov­er­eignty of each in their respec­tive fields. In the words of a Stan­dard offi­cial, ‘The I.G. are going to stay out of the oil business—and we are going to stay out of the chem­i­cal busi­ness.’ To set up a mech­a­nism to carry out the terms of the agree­ment the par­ties agreed to cre­ate the Standard-I.G. Com­pany, incor­po­rated in the United States, owned eighty per­cent by Stan­dard Oil and twenty per­cent by I.G. This retained for I.G. a minor­ity inter­est in any future suc­cess. I.G. then trans­ferred the world patent rights (except for Ger­many) on the hydro­gena­tion process to the new enter­prise. In return, Bosch finally secured what he so des­per­ately wanted. Stan­dard turned over to I.G. two per­cent of its entire com­mon stock: 546,000 shares val­ued on Standard’s books at $35 mil­lion! As a slight bonus for I.G., Tea­gle agreed to serve on the board of I.G.‘s newly formed hold­ing com­pany in the United States, the Amer­i­can I.G. Chem­i­cal Com­pany. . .” (Ibid.; p. 51.)

32. A pre­cip­i­tous drop in the price of oil made syn­thetic oil too expen­sive to com­pete in the mar­ket­place with nat­u­rally pro­duced petro­leum. It remains to be seen if the rise if oil prices once again makes syn­thetic oil viable in the mar­ket­place. Note that in FTR#385, Mr. Emory expressed his opin­ion that the theme of the novel The For­mula was prob­a­bly based in real­ity. That novel fea­tured high-level intrigue around a for­mula for a cat­a­lyst that ren­dered syn­thetic oil com­pet­i­tive with nat­ural petro­leum by mak­ing the hydro­gena­tion process dra­mat­i­cally more effi­cient. The pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions of this will be dis­cussed later on in this descrip­tion. ” . . .Hardly had the I.G.-Standard mar­riage been com­pleted that it received a series of stag­ger­ing blows. The Great Depres­sion, com­bined with the dis­cov­ery of enor­mous oil reserves in Texas, dropped the price of oil so dras­ti­cally that Stan­dard aban­doned any imme­di­ate hope for world-wide devel­op­ment of the con­ver­sion of coal into oil. . . .and it took the Arab oil boy­cott in 1974 to rekin­dle Standard’s inter­est in mak­ing gaso­line from coal.” (Ibid.; p. 52.)

33. The broad­cast then reviews “the Bat­tle of Leuna”, one of the key aer­ial engage­ments of World War II. In this bat­tle, the U.S. Eighth Air Force bombed the Ger­man syn­thetic fuel pro­duc­tion out of effec­tive oper­a­tion, thus starv­ing the Ger­man war machine of petro­leum. (As dis­cussed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11, as well as FTR#‘s 194, 276, 278, 341, 385, 411, I.G.‘s syn­thetic fuel oper­a­tion was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929—one of the most impor­tant car­tel agree­ments of the 20th cen­tury.) 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. “May 12, 1944, was a fate­ful day for Ger­many and for I.G. On that day, the United States Eighth Air Force sent 935 bombers over Ger­many to attack its syn­thetic oil indus­try: 200 bombers con­cen­trated on I.G.‘s plant alone. This attack marked the begin­ning of what the U.S. strate­gic bomb­ing sur­vey called ‘the Bat­tle of Leuna,’ clas­si­fy­ing it as ‘one of the major bat­tles of the war.’” (Ibid.; p. 128.)

34. “The next day, Albert Speer, Reich min­is­ter for arma­ments and war pro­duc­tion, toured the wreck­age of Leuna with Buete­fisch. What he saw con­vinced him that ‘the tech­no­log­i­cal war was decided. . . . It meant the end of Ger­man arma­ment pro­duc­tion.’ For Speer it was the turn­ing point in the war. He imme­di­ately flew to Hitler’s head­quar­ters at Ober­salzburg to report on the extent and mean­ing of the dis­as­ter: ‘The enemy has struck us at one of our weak­est points,’ he told the Fuehrer. ‘If they per­sist at this time, we will soon have no fuel pro­duc­tion worth men­tion­ing. Our one hope is that the other side has an air force gen­eral staff as scat­ter­brained as ours!’” (Idem.)

35. “Hitler then sum­moned four of the top fuel experts from I.G., includ­ing Krauch and Buete­fisch, for a dis­cus­sion about the con­se­quences of the May 12 air raid. Goer­ing and Speer accom­pa­nied them to the meet­ing. Before the group went in to see Hitler, Speer advised the four fuel experts to tell ‘the unvar­nished truth.’ How­ever, Goer­ing insisted that they not be too pes­simistic. ‘He was prob­a­bly afraid that Hitler would place the blame for the deba­cle chiefly on him,’ Speer wrote later. Krauch was deter­mined to fol­low Speer’s advice. He told Hitler that Germany’s posi­tion was hope­less if the enemy air raids on the syn­thetic oil plants con­tin­ued. To sup­port his grim fore­cast, he pre­sented Hitler with an impres­sive array of facts and fig­ures. . .” (Ibid.; pp. 128–129.)

36. “The course of the Bat­tle of Leuna became the gauge for the state of Ger­man oil pro­duc­tion. By early July the resource­ful I.G. tech­ni­cians were able to restore Leuna to seventy-five per­cent oper­at­ing capac­ity. How­ever, the Eighth Air Force returned on July7, again bomb­ing the plant to a halt. Two days later the plant started oper­at­ing again and by July 19 had reached fifty-three per­cent of capac­ity. And so the cycle of bomb­ings and recon­struc­tion con­tin­ued. But the total effect on Ger­man fuel pro­duc­tion was noth­ing less than cat­a­strophic. Krauch con­cluded that the only way fuel instal­la­tions could be rebuilt after each raid was to can­ni­bal­ize other instal­la­tions. Under this plan to pre­vent the total ces­sa­tion of oil pro­duc­tion, Germany’s pro­duc­tive capac­ity dimin­ished with each recu­per­a­tion. By Sep­tem­ber, oil pro­duc­tion had dropped to fif­teen per­cent, a con­di­tion from which Ger­many was never to recover.” (Ibid.; p. 130.)

37. In the con­text of both the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929 and the other busi­ness arrange­ments that I.G. had with major west­ern cor­po­ra­tions, a dis­cus­sion of a “gentleman’s agree­ment” with key busi­ness­men on the “other side” not to bomb I.G’s syn­thetic fuel plants is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing. It is also sig­nif­i­cant to note that it is the old I.G. firm Degussa that was at the core of Hitler’s pro­gram to develop an atomic bomb. Degussa was instru­men­tal in equip­ping Sad­dam Hus­sein with his nuclear capa­bil­ity in the 1980’s and 1990’s. “The inten­sive bomb­ing of Leuna led to a curi­ous con­fronta­tion between Buete­fisch, who was in charge of Leuna, and Paul Harteck, lead­ing nuclear sci­en­tist work­ing on Germany’s atomic bomb project. Part of Leuna was devoted to the man­u­fac­ture of heavy water, a nec­es­sary com­po­nent of atomic energy. After the first bombs fell on Leuna, Buete­fisch informed Harteck that the heavy water instal­la­tion must be aban­doned. He claimed that the mas­sive bomb­ing could not have been aimed at fuel pro­duc­tion since there was a ‘gentlemen’s agree­ment’ between heavy indus­try in Ger­many and abroad that I.G.‘s syn­thetic gaso­line plants would not be bombed. The only expla­na­tion for the raids against Leuna, there­fore, was the heavy water facil­ity.” (Idem.)

38. Next, the broad­cast excerpts FTR#278, with dis­cus­sion of the com­plex CDU fund­ing scan­dal. Speak­ing of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, The Finan­cial Times wrote: “This could yet throw light on kick­backs paid by ELF over a deal between Mr. Mit­terand and Ger­man ex-chancellor Hel­mut Kohl to invest in the Leuna refin­ery in East Germany—an affair which helped bring Mr. Kohl down.“
(“French Trial Paints a Pic­ture of Graft on a Grandiose Scale” by Robert Gra­ham; Finan­cial Times; 4/22/2003; p. 14.)

39. 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 shortly after reuni­fi­ca­tion (with enor­mous resul­tant hard­ship for the cit­i­zens of that part of Ger­many). 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.

40. 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 economies 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.

41. The moti­va­tion for the petro­leum com­pa­nies to with­hold a tech­ni­cal improve­ment in the Bergius hydro­gena­tion process that would make syn­thetic fuel eco­nom­i­cally com­pet­i­tive with nat­ural petro­leum was expressed by the char­ac­ter Adam Steif­fel in The For­mula: ” ‘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?’”
(The For­mula; by Steve Sha­gan; Copy­right 1979 Cirand­inha Pro­duc­tions, Inc.; Soft Cover edi­tion pub­lished in 1980 by Ban­tam Books; 0–553-13801–4; pp. 326–327.)

42. The pro­gram excerpts FTR-193, detail­ing an impor­tant aspect of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. This excerpt, in turn, comes from a major arti­cle about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal from the New York Times. The broad­cast under­scores the fact that the Leuna facil­ity was being uti­lized jointly by Total­Fina and the Thyssen heavy indus­trial firm. The Thyssen firm, in turn, was involved with a com­plex sale of tanks to Saudi Ara­bia as part of the com­plex maneu­ver­ing at the heart of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. (For more about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#‘s 276, 278.
(“Big Kick­backs Under Kohl Reported” by Roger Cohen and John Tagli­abue; New York Times; 2/7/2000.)

43. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#478. “Psst! Hey there. You believe that we are fac­ing a cri­sis, an Immi­nent Peak of World Oil Pro­duc­tion, right? Well, the insid­ers in the President’s Energy Strat­egy Team would like you to join with them in solv­ing this new sud­den cri­sis. In fact, you may already have been inducted. You panic at the idea of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion col­laps­ing as the engines and machines grind to a halt, uh-huh? You agree with Ron Swen­son of Ecosys­tems that ‘The world is about to expe­ri­ence a real energy cri­sis, likely to be a calamity unpar­al­leled in human his­tory’ (Swen­son, 1996).“
(“The Com­ing Panic over the End of Oil—Coming to a Bal­lot Box Near You” by “Scoop”, Sec­tion News; Posted on 12/24/2003 by Walt Con­tr­eras Sheasby; p. 1 .)

44. In light of the Thyssen-Krupp firm’s acqui­si­tion of the Leuna plant, it is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the fact that the pro­fes­sional epi­cen­ter of “Peak Oil” the­o­rists is a firm that is a wholly-owned sub­sidiary of Thyssen-Bornemisza Indus­tries!! Are the acqui­si­tion of the Leuna facil­ity and the acqui­si­tion of HIS con­nected? Is the Thyssen nexus gen­er­at­ing the foun­da­tion for pro­duc­ing and mar­ket­ing syn­thetic fuel by exag­ger­at­ing the scarcity of the world’s petro­leum resources? Is the petro­leum car­tel and its asso­ci­ated inter­ests going along with the Peak Oil the­o­rists in order to max­i­mize their profit posi­tion (as the Adam Steif­fel char­ac­ter stated)? “You think, as oil geol­o­gist Colin J. Camp­bell says, that ‘the very future of our sub­species ‘Hydro­car­bon Man’ is at stake,’ right? You agree with Vir­ginia Aber­nathy that there are too many immi­grants using up our resources, I’m sure. You prob­a­bly real­ize, as many do not, that the Era of Cheap Oil and Gas is over. As Matthew E. Sim­mons, the CEO of the energy invest­ment bankers of Sim­mons and Co. Inter­na­tional, recently said: ‘I think basi­cally that now, that peak­ing of oil will never be accu­rately pre­dicted until after the fact. But the event will occur, and my analy­sis is lean­ing me more by the month, [toward] the worry that peak­ing is at hand; not years away. If it turns out I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. But if I’m right, the unfore­seen con­se­quences are dev­as­tat­ing.’” (Idem.)

45. Among the most vis­i­ble and promi­nent of the Peak Oil advo­cates is Matthew E. Sim­mons. He is also one of the Bush administration’s most impor­tant energy advi­sors. Sim­mons par­tic­i­pated in Cheney’s energy task force in 2001. Note that both Bush and Cheney are for­mer p-petroleum com­pany CEO’s from the state of Texas. In light of the elder Bush’s col­lab­o­ra­tion in the phony oil short­age of the late 1970’s, it is not unrea­son­able to ask if the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the Saudis, OPEC and the Under­ground Reich are col­lab­o­rat­ing to cre­ate the “Peak Oil” scare and then real­ize the poten­tial of the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929. “Well, guess what? Sim­mons is not only an oil­ion­aire him­self, but he has been a key advi­sor to the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion and to Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney’s 2001 Energy Task Force, as well as sit­ting on the Coun­cil of For­eign Rela­tions. Sim­mons is a board mem­ber of Kerr-McGee Corp., a major oil and gas pro­ducer. He insists that the US gov­ern­ment is very wor­ried about oil deple­tion. How­ever, Cheney’s secre­tive National Energy Pol­icy Devel­op­ment Group (NEPDG) refused to make its records of closed-door meet­ings with indus­try exec­u­tives pub­lic. The Indus­try has taken a beat­ing in pub­lic opin­ion since the Kyoto sum­mit put the spot­light on global warm­ing. And now Sim­mons appar­ently wants to make the public’s fear of The End of Cheap Oil the drum beat of the 2004 Re-elect Bush and Cheney Cam­paign, although a more enlight­ened energy pol­icy, he wor­ries, ‘is going to take a while.’” (Idem.)

46. Among the ear­li­est fore­cast­ers of Peak Oil was Mar­ion King Hub­bert. “In fact, the coali­tion that is push­ing for a rad­i­cal new energy pol­icy is largely com­posed of those who stand to ben­e­fit from a revival, not a phase out, of oil and gas devel­op­ment. The intel­lec­tual and activist core of the coali­tion is made up of those vet­eran oil geol­o­gists and engi­neers who use the method of mod­el­ing the ratio of reserves to pro­duc­tion devel­oped by the mav­er­ick research geo­physi­cist Mar­ion King Hub­bert, who died in 1989. He believed that the peak of pro­duc­tion is reached when half of the esti­mated ulti­mately recov­er­able resource, deter­mined by what has been dis­cov­ered and logged cumu­la­tively as actual reserves, has been pumped. In1956 at the Shell Oil Lab in Hous­ton, Hub­bert star­tled his col­leagues by pre­dict­ing that the fos­sil fuel era would be over very quickly. He cor­rectly pre­dicted that US oil pro­duc­tion would peak in the early 1970’s.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

47. Unlike Hub­bert and Def­feyes, Mon­sieurs Lahar­rere, Camp­bell and Ivan­hoe advo­cate more oil explo­ration, as opposed to alter­na­tive fuel devel­op­ment. As we shall see Petroconsultants—the firm that employed all three—is closely con­nected to the Thyssen busi­ness empire. “Sup­port for a reme­dial pro­gram of oil explo­ration and devel­op­ment ver­sus switch­ing to research and devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive energy sources tends to be found among oil experts who are con­sul­tants to the indus­try. While accept­ing some of the val­ues of the New Age, they largely remain loyal tot heir call­ing as oil geol­o­gists and wild­cat­ters. The lead­ing trio of Jean H. Laher­rere, Colin J. Camp­bell, and L.F. (Buz) Ivan­hoe have worked for, or with, the lead­ing firm mod­el­ing oil fields, Petro­con­sul­tants of Geneva. Since the 1950’s they have been fed data on oil explo­ration and pro­duc­tion by just about all the major oil com­pa­nies, as well as by a net­work of about 2000 oil indus­try con­sul­tants around the world. They use this data to pro­duce reports on var­i­ous mat­ters per­ti­nent to the oil indus­try, which they sell back to the indus­try. ‘This much is known,’ Ken­neth Def­feyes writes, ‘the loud­est warn­ings about the pre­dicted peak of world oil pro­duc­tion came from Petro­con­sul­tants’ (Def­feyes, 2001: p. 7).” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

48. The epi­cen­ter of the Peak Oil hypoth­e­sis is HIS Energy Group—which evolved out of Petroconsultants—a Thyssen-Bornemisza subsidiary.

The pro­gram sets forth the Petroconsultants/Thyssen link at length: “In a late 1998 merger, Petro­con­sul­tants became HIS Energy Group, a sub­sidiary of Infor­ma­tion Han­dling Ser­vices Group (HIS Group), a diver­si­fied con­glom­er­ate owned by Hol­land Amer­ica Invest­ment Corp., HIS Group’s imme­di­ate par­ent com­pany, for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Group (TBG, Inc.).” [Empha­sis added.] In the 1920’s, George Her­bert Walker and his son-in-law, Prescott Bush, had helped the Thyssen dynasty finance its acqui­si­tions through Union Bank­ing Corp. and Holland-American trad­ing Corp. (Wikipedia, 2003). Until his death last year, Hans Hein­rich Thyssen-Bornemisza, the nephew of the Nazi steel and coal mag­nate, was one of the world’s rich­est men. Some of the old Hub­ber­tians would prob­a­bly flinch at such an asso­ci­a­tion.” (Idem.)

49. It is essen­tial to note that the raw data upon which HIS (for­merly Petro­con­sul­tants) has drawn its Peak Oil con­clu­sions is pro­vided by the very oil indus­try inter­ests that stand to profit from enor­mous price increases!! This is tan­ta­mount to assign­ing the foxes to guard the hen house and then giv­ing cre­dence to their claim that the world is fac­ing a “Peak Poul­try” cri­sis and result­ing short­age of chick­ens!! “In 1995, a report by Camp­bell and Laherre on world oil resources, World Oil Sup­ply 1930–2050 (Petro­con­sul­tants Pty. Ltd., 1995), writ­ten for oil indus­try insid­ers and priced at $32, 000 per copy, con­cluded that world oil pro­duc­tion and sup­ply prob­a­bly would peak as soon as the year 2000 and decline to half the peak level by 2025. Large and per­ma­nent increases in oil prices were pre­dicted after the year 2000. . . .” (Idem.)

50. ” . . . Colin J. Camp­bell, the leader of the Neo-Hubbertians, is a petro­leum geol­o­gist from Bal­ly­de­hob, Ire­land, and author of The Com­ing Oil Cri­sis (1997). He worked for Tex­aco as an explo­ration geol­o­gist and then at Amoco as chief geol­o­gist for Ecuador. He is a Trustee of the Oil Deple­tion Analy­sis Cen­ter (ODAC) and the founder of the Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), orig­i­nally a net­work of 24 oil sci­en­tists. ASPO has Asso­ciate mem­bers like Hal­libur­ton and finan­cial spon

sors like Schlum­berger, but Camp­bell is crit­i­cal of the Bush-Cheney Admin­is­tra­tion for ‘col­lec­tively hav­ing per­sonal invest­ments of as much as $150 mil­lion in oil com­pa­nies’ (ASPO, 2002).” (Idem.)

51. Taken in the con­text of Peak Oil, the Thyssen firm’s inter­est in the Leuna facil­ity in the for­mer East Ger­many takes on added sig­nif­i­cance. Colin Camp­bell notes the pos­si­ble use by Ger­many of its coal resources to sup­ple­ment its energy diet. It was Ger­man coal—utilized in the hydro­gena­tion process—that pro­vided the Third Reich with the foun­da­tion for its syn­thetic fuel project in World War II. The Leuna facil­ity was the largest of those instal­la­tions. Is Thyssen (and Total­fina Elf) gear­ing up for pos­si­ble use of the Leuna facil­ity to man­u­fac­ture syn­thetic oil? Again, for more about the com­plex maneu­ver­ing around Leuna in the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see FTR#‘s 193, 276, 278, 385, 407, 478. “Camp­bell has laid out his pre­scrip­tion for var­i­ous con­sumer gov­ern­ments, for exam­ple: ‘Ger­many should resist Green pres­sure to give up nuclear power at pre­cisely the moment it needs more energy, as oil peaks and declines. Ger­many has coal and pos­si­bil­i­ties for coalbed methane. This indus­try needs to be redis­cov­ered. It may become eco­nomic again. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Ger­many should encour­age its motor man­u­fac­tur­ers to move to more effi­cient engines and hydro­gen fuels, espe­cially those made by solar means. It should pro­vide what­ever fis­cal incen­tives are needed.’ (Camp­bell, 2000).” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

52. Note that the gen­e­sis of the Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Peak Oil was in Ger­many on Decem­ber 7, 2000. This was at the same time as the Supreme Court was appoint­ing George W. Bush Pres­i­dent of the United States! “It was here in Ger­many that ASPO had its ori­gin. On Decem­ber 7th in the year 2000, I was priv­i­leged to give a talk on oil deple­tion at the ancient uni­ver­sity of Clausthal in the Harz Moun­tains. The idea of form­ing an insti­tu­tion, or net­work of sci­en­tists con­cerned about the sub­ject, devel­oped. Next day, I took the idea to Pro­fes­sor Wellmer, the head of the BGR in Han­nover, who gave it his sup­port. The Nor­we­gians were the next to join, fol­lowed by the Swedes. Today, ASPO is rep­re­sented in almost all Euro­pean countries—at least before its recent enlarge­ment.” (“ASPO Third Inter­na­tional Work­shop on Oil and Gas Deple­tion” by C.J. Camp­bell; 5/25–26/2004; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2004/ProgramBerlin.doc.)

53. The pro­gram reviews the pro­found rela­tion­ship between the branches of the Thyssen indus­trial empire and the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion: “Thyssen-Bornemisza runs his pri­vate Dutch-based invest­ment group from Lugano, Switzer­land, and his cousin, Count Fed­erico Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, exer­cises con­trol over Thyssen A.G. from his base in Buenos Aires.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; by Paul Man­ning; copy­right 1981; Lyle Stu­art [hard­cover]; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 237.)

54. “Dur­ing the final year of his life, in Argentina, divid­ing his time between the villa in Buenos Aires and the ranches, one in Argentina, the other in Paraguay, Fritz Thyssen com­pleted estab­lish­ing the con­trol that would assure ever­last­ing fam­ily pros­per­ity through Thyssen A.G. Elder grand­son Count Fed­erico Zichy-Thyssen of Buenos Aires was placed on the board of this Ger­man steel trust. When the count votes at board meet­ings in Dus­sel­dorf three or four times a year, he votes for the entire Thyssen fam­ily of South Amer­ica and Europe.” (Ibid.; p. 257.)

55. “Count Fed­erico Zichy-Thyssen, who has a younger brother Count Clau­dio Zichy-Thyssen, rep­re­sents the largest sin­gle share­hold­ing group, with 25 per­cent of the stock of Thyssen A.G. The remain­der of the stock is dif­fused into Deutsche Bank in Frank­furt and Buenos Aires, which holds shares for many indi­vid­u­als on both con­ti­nents, includ­ing those rep­re­sent­ing the Bor­mann group. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)

56. Mar­tin Bor­mann him­self was very close to the Argen­tine branch of the Thyssen fam­ily. “Count Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, is looked upon with affec­tion by Mar­tin Bor­mann, who vis­its the Zichy-Thyssens upon occa­sion. Bormann’s eldest daugh­ter is said to be almost a per­ma­nent guest at the Thyssen ranches. As with the eldest brother, Adolf Mar­tin, the for­mer Jesuit priest, Mar­tin Bor­mann strongly wanted at least these first of his chil­dren with him in South Amer­ica. Adolf, accom­pa­nied by his wife, vis­its his father from time to time. Daugh­ter ‘Neumi’ never mar­ried and devotes her­self to her father in his declin­ing years.” (Ibid.; p. 290.)

57. “Along with the good life, there is no less­en­ing of safe­guards. They have been on the run for so many years that it is part of their intrin­sic sur­vival pat­tern to ques­tion all strangers and any over­tures. Even the Zichy-Thyssens, who in no way par­tic­i­pated in the rise and fall of the Third Reich as did grand­fa­ther Fritz, evi­dence anx­i­ety when approached by me with cour­te­ous ques­tions regard­ing the his­tory of their fam­ily and fur­ther details about the life and career of Fritz Thyssen.” (Idem.)

58. “Count Fed­erico Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, Clau­dio Zichy-Thyssen, and their fam­i­lies are inti­mate friends of Bor­mann. Because of this friend­ship, Mar­tin Bor­mann has three sanc­tu­ar­ies: his own pam­pas spread in Argentina and the Thyssen ranches in Argentina and Paraguay.” (Ibid.; p. 292.)

59. It is worth not­ing that the Bor­mann group is heav­ily involved with the inter­ests grow­ing out of I.G. Far­ben. (For more about this, see FTR#411.) “The Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ues to wield enor­mous eco­nomic influ­ence. Wealth con­tin­ues to flow into the trea­suries of its cor­po­rate enti­ties in South Amer­ica, the United States and Europe. Vastly diver­si­fied, it is said to be the largest land-owner in South Amer­ica, and through stock­hold­ings, con­trols Ger­man heavy indus­try and the trust estab­lished by the late Her­mann Schmitz, for­mer pres­i­dent of I.G. Far­ben, who held as much stock in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey as did the Rock­e­fellers.” (Idem.)

60. Next, the pro­gram excerpts FTR-273. For­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial John Lof­tus dis­closed that the Bush fam­ily for­tune came from the 1951 liq­ui­da­tion of the Union Bank­ing Corporation—a joint Thyssen/Bush/Harriman busi­ness ven­ture. For more about the Bush family’s involve­ment with the Thyssen milieu and other ele­ments of Nazi indus­try, see—among other pro­grams—FTR#‘s 361, 370, 435, 475, 481.) (“Author Links Bush Fam­ily to Nazis;” Sara­sota Herald-Tribune; 11/11/2000; accessed at www.newscoast.com.)

61. It is worth not­ing that the Rock­e­feller fam­ily was (as of 1972) a major stock­holder in the Thyssen firm, giv­ing that fam­ily a stake in Thyssen con­trol of the Leuna facil­ity and any prod­ucts com­ing from it. “A few decades later things had qui­eted down and all the Nazi money finally came home to Wall Street. By 1972, one of Rockefeller’s assets, the Chase Man­hat­tan bank in New York, secretly owned 38% of the Thyssen com­pany, accord­ing to inter­nal Thyssen records in my cus­tody. Not a bad pay­off for the Rob­ber Barons. The Auschwitz invest­ment paid off hand­somely. The Thyssen-Krupp cor­po­ra­tion is now the wealth­i­est con­glom­er­ate in Europe. WWII is over. The Ger­mans won.” (“For­mer Fed­eral Pros­e­cu­tor John Lof­tus Con­firms the Bush-Nazi Scan­dal” by John Lof­tus; 10/31/2003; p. 2; accessed at: http://www.john-loftus.com/bush_nazi_scandal.asp.)

62. Another major cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pant in the Thyssen-Krupp firm was the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. Iran—like Saudi Arabia—would be among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Peak Oil gam­bit. Note that the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment has had a tra­di­tion­ally close rela­tion­ship with the Al Taqwa milieu. (For more about this, see—among other pro­grams, FTR#‘s 343, 352, 354, 381.) “…Fri­day, Thyssen-Krupp, a steel mak­ing con­glom­er­ate, said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Iran-Thyssen’s No. 3 shareholder—no longer would hold a seat on its super­vi­sory board, which is sim­i­lar to a U.S. board of direc­tors. Iran has held a major stake in the com­pany since before the nation’s 1979 Islamic rev­o­lu­tion, and helped res­cue it from near-bankruptcy with a cap­i­tal injec­tion 30 years ago. . . .” (“Euro­pean Firms React to U.S. Hard Line on Iran” by Matthew Kar­nitschnig; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 1/28/2005; p. A7.)

63. ” . . .Under U.S. law, the gov­ern­ment isn’t allowed to grant con­tracts to com­pa­nies in which Iran holds a stake of more than 5%. To avoid sanc­tion, Thyssen-Krupp spent 406 mil­lion Euros ($531 mil­lion) to repur­chase more than 3% of its stock from Iran in 2003. While that reduced the country’s share to 4.8%, the U.S. also leaned on Thyssen-Krupp to remove the Iran­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tive from its board, peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter say. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Mohamad-Mehdi Navab-Motlagh, a deputy min­is­ter in Iran’s Min­istry of Indus­try and Min­ing, had served on the board for more than 20 years.” (Idem.)

64. Author Kevin Coogan rumi­nates on the sig­nif­i­cance of the Genoud milieu’s pres­ence in the events of 9/11: “My own belief is that it is less the appar­ently fan­tas­tic and ‘James Bond’-like qual­ity of this analy­sis that is most dif­fi­cult to under­stand. The real dif­fi­culty is the utter igno­rance of most West­ern­ers (Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar) about the very exis­tence of such peo­ple as Fran­cois Genoud. Thus when Ernst Backes, one of Europe’s lead­ing experts in money laun­der­ing, told the Luxemourg-based eco­nomic jour­nal Plus Minus last year that he believed the finan­cial source of funds for the 9/11 ter­ror­ists would ulti­mately be traced back to Swiss bank accounts estab­lished by Genoud, few Amer­i­cans had any idea what Backes could pos­si­bly be talk­ing about. For this same rea­son there has been vir­tu­ally no inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into SICO’s Bau­doin Dunand’s rela­tion­ship to Genoud or (for that mat­ter) the role Syrian-born Muham­mad Mar­dam Bay (believed to be related to a for­mer Syr­ian for­eign min­is­ter) has played both as a mem­ber of Magnin, Dunand & Asso­ciates as well as Bay’s pos­si­ble links with Genoud. And what does it mean when we are told that [Al Taqwa founder] Youssef Nada, for exam­ple, is believed by Egypt­ian author­i­ties to have worked for Ger­man intel­li­gence in World War II?” (Ibid.; p. 15)

65. It should be noted that the mar­ket­ing of the Peak Oil con­cept would greatly enrich some of the most fascis­tic ele­ments on earth, from the major oil com­pa­nies to the vul­tures of OPEC, to the Mus­lim Brotherhood—a tra­di­tional ben­e­fi­ciary of Arab wealth. The increase in the price of oil will greatly enhance the power of the fascis­tic net­works exam­ined in this broad­cast. Whether they will, in time, shift their wealth away from the dol­lar to the euro remains to be seen. Kevin Coogan’s rumi­na­tion is pre­sented here for exam­i­na­tion by the reader. “It is not at all impos­si­ble that net­works first devel­oped in the 1930’s and who saw their eco­nomic power fan­tas­ti­cally mul­ti­plied in the wake of the enor­mous hike in oil prices in 1973 are now engaged in try­ing to enact a major finan­cial shift away from the dol­lar and Anglo-American finan­cial net­works and to shift the vast wealth of the Mus­lim oil states into a new Euro-based finan­cial net­work that would vastly increase the power of those banks and finan­cial inter­ests in Europe asso­ci­ated with ele­ments of far right elites that sur­vived World War II rel­a­tively intact.” (Idem.)

66. “If this were at all the case, it would not be a new devel­op­ment. The very same attempt to develop an inde­pen­dent Saudi-German hookup to sub­vert the U.S. and British dom­i­na­tion of the Saudi oil mar­kets was actu­ally attempted in the mid-1950’s. At that time, the Saudi royal family—using the advise of the famous Ger­man banker Hjal­mar Schacht—attempted to employ Aris­to­tle Onas­sis to trans­port Saudi oil on new oil tankers that would be con­structed in the ship­yards of Ger­many. This attempt to break the West­ern oil con­trol over Saudi Ara­bia was finally blocked by the United States, a story well doc­u­mented in Jim Hougan’s book Spooks (New York: William Mor­row, 1978.)” (Ibid.; pp. 15–16.)