MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains FTRs 673 and 674 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute seg­ment.

In this pro­gram we explore the actions and polit­i­cal her­itage of House speaker Nancy Pelosi, viewed against the back­ground of the ide­ol­ogy and career of SS man Otto Von Bolschwing. Von Bolschwing’s pro­tege Helene Von Damm selected the per­son­nel who have staffed the GOP over the years. The junior play­ers in the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tions became some of the senior figures–the so-called neo-cons–in the Bush II years. The program—interrogatory in nature—asks if Pelosi might be an accom­plice of the Under­ground Reich, a “Bor­mann Demo­c­rat.” (The ref­er­ence is, as vet­eran lis­ten­ers know, to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, the deci­sively pow­er­ful eco­nomic com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground, exposed by the late, heroic Paul Man­ning.)

Begin­ning with Pelosi’s state­ment about hav­ing been mis­lead by the CIA about tor­ture, the pro­gram notes that Pelosi has been, in effect, some­thing of an Achilles Heel for the Obama admin­is­tra­tion. Pelosi has served as a light­ning rod to Repub­li­can attacks on Obama’s stim­u­lus pro­posal, with regard to delays in, and water­ing down of, the pack­age. In addi­tion, Pelosi has indi­cated oppo­si­tion to addi­tional bud­getary out­lays to prop up the econ­omy, despite many lead­ing econ­o­mists’ views that con­sid­er­ably more money must be allo­cated, in order to avoid cat­a­stro­phe. Although these devel­op­ments may be hap­pen­stance, Pelosi’s back­ground and polit­i­cal her­itage sug­gest a pos­si­ble sin­is­ter explanation.

The broad­cast fea­tures dis­cus­sion of links between the Von Bolschwing/Getty fam­ily milieu and promi­nent Bay Area Democ­rats, includ­ing San Fran­cisco mayor Gavin New­som and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Von Bolschwing con­spired with Axis sym­pa­thiz­ers to ship oil to Nazi Ger­many. One of Von Bolschwing’s allies in that scheme was Nazi sym­pa­thizer and per­sonal friend of Hitler J. Paul Getty, whose fam­ily remained close to Von Bolschwing dur­ing his post­war, Amer­i­can career, along with inti­mate Getty friend and legal adviser Jus­tice William New­som. Both Jus­tice New­som (Gavin’s father) and mem­bers of the Getty fam­ily were involved with von Bolschwing’s TCI firm.

Pelosi’s sister-in-law, Belinda Bar­bara New­som, was Jus­tice Newsom’s sis­ter and Gavin’s aunt. Nancy Pelosi’s hus­band, Paul, became a bil­lion­aire in the gam­ing indus­try. Again, this pro­gram asks whether the tie-ins between Pelosi and the milieu of Under­ground Reich lynch­pin von Bolschwing might have some­thing to do with her weak­en­ing of the Obama administration.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: A read­ing of the orig­i­nal San Jose Mer­cury News arti­cle about von Bolschwing, includ­ing his busi­ness ties; review of the Nazi ele­ment in the GOP–the Repub­li­can Eth­nic Her­itage wing; review of von Bolschwing’s links to the Gehlen spy organiation.

1. Begin­ning with House Speaker Pelosi’s recent pro­nounce­ments about the CIA hav­ing mis­lead her about water­board­ing, the pro­gram notes that flak from that con­tro­versy may enmesh Pres­i­dent Obama.

“The furor over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accu­sa­tions against the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency serves a pur­pose beyond find­ing out how the United States came to embrace tor­ture. The San Fran­cisco Demo­c­rat, deeply par­ti­san and often ridiculed, offers Repub­li­cans their best shot yet at block­ing a pop­u­lar pres­i­dent whose poll num­bers have so far defied gravity.

The uproar comes just as Pres­i­dent Obama is head­ing into a trans­for­ma­tive fight over health care, with Pelosi as his chief lieu­tenant. It also finds Obama sud­denly play­ing defense on ter­ror issues, revers­ing him­self on releas­ing detainee pho­tos and on end­ing mil­i­tary com­mis­sions, even as his CIA direc­tor, Leon Panetta, sought to calm enraged employ­ees. Iron­i­cally, the con­tro­versy has come down to a cred­i­bil­ity test pit­ting Pelosi, whose modus operandi has never been known to include lying, against the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, an insti­tu­tion deeply dam­aged by the use of flawed intel­li­gence to invade Iraq and now on the defen­sive for its use of torture.Panetta is con­sid­ered a wise man of Cal­i­for­nia and national pol­i­tics who worked for years with Pelosi as a con­gress­man from Mon­terey. On Fri­day, he reit­er­ated his state­ment that agency records show CIA offi­cers briefed law­mak­ers truth­fully in 2002 on the inter­ro­ga­tion meth­ods, but also said it is up to Con­gress to draw its own conclusions.

Pelosi, who was some­times ruth­less in her drive to the top, elic­its a fear and loathing among Repub­li­cans sim­i­lar to the effect for­mer Speaker Newt Gin­grich had on Democ­rats. Her poll num­bers are also con­sid­er­ably lower than Obama’s. It is no acci­dent that Repub­li­can lead­ers time and again praise Obama’s efforts to reach across the aisle and direct their fire instead at the speaker. Her undis­guised dis­like of for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and pro­found ide­o­log­i­cal dis­putes with Repub­li­cans only fuel the fires. Gin­grich on Fri­day called Pelosi “a triv­ial politi­cian” dri­ven by par­ti­san pol­i­tics. Pelosi rad­i­cally notched up the stakes Thurs­day when she accused the CIA of lying after sev­eral Repub­li­cans, includ­ing for­mer Bush White House polit­i­cal czar Karl Rove, accused her of the same. The fight comes on the heels of inter­nal GOP polling warn­ing Repub­li­cans against sim­ply oppos­ing Obama.“According to the CIA’s record, Speaker Pelosi was briefed on what had been done,” said Sen. Kit Bond of Mis­souri, the top Repub­li­can on the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, who said he has reviewed notes from the Pelosi brief­ing. “It’s out­ra­geous that a mem­ber of Con­gress would call our terror-fighters liars.” The fact is, no one knows what hap­pened in the Sept. 4, 2002, brief­ing at issue other than those who were in it. Their mem­o­ries diverge along party lines. For­mer House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee Chair­man Porter Goss, a Repub­li­can who was briefed with Pelosi and later became CIA direc­tor, has insisted that they were told water­board­ing was used.Sen. Bob Gra­ham, a Florida Demo­c­rat who was the rank­ing mem­ber on the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, received an iden­ti­cal brief­ing, accord­ing to the CIA time­line, three weeks after Pelosi’s. Gra­ham backed Pelosi’s rec­ol­lec­tions. “When I was briefed, the sub­ject of water­board­ing did not come up. Nor did the treat­ment of Abu Zubay­dah or any other spe­cific detainee,” he told MSNBC on Fri­day. Gra­ham said the brief­ings came “the same week, in fact, that the CIA was sub­mit­ting its National Intel­li­gence Esti­mate on weapons of mass destruc­tion in Iraq, which proves so erro­neous that we went to war, have had thou­sands of per­sons killed and injured as a result of mis­in­for­ma­tion.” Pelosi has been con­sis­tent through­out in insist­ing that she was told only that the admin­is­tra­tion had legal grounds to use harsh tech­niques. As it turns out, out­side con­trac­tors had already water­boarded al Qaeda sus­pect Abu Zubay­dah 83 times. Pelosi said the CIA “gave me inac­cu­rate and incom­plete information.”

Both sides are now call­ing for declas­si­fi­ca­tion of the detailed notes from the brief­ing, but these are unlikely to clear up the matter.Panetta said in his memo to CIA employ­ees Fri­day, “Let me be clear: It is not our pol­icy or prac­tice to mis­lead Con­gress. ... Our con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous records from Sep­tem­ber 2002 indi­cate that CIA offi­cers briefed truth­fully on the inter­ro­ga­tion of Abu Zubay­dah, describ­ing ‘the enhanced tech­niques that had been employed.’ Ulti­mately, it is up to Con­gress to eval­u­ate all the evi­dence and reach its own con­clu­sions about what happened.“In his ear­lier let­ter accom­pa­ny­ing the time­line, Panetta said it “presents the most thor­ough infor­ma­tion we have on dates, loca­tions, and names of all mem­bers of Con­gress who were briefed by the CIA on enhanced inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques. This infor­ma­tion, how­ever, is drawn from the past files of the CIA and rep­re­sents MFRs mem­o­ran­dum for the record com­pleted at the time and notes that sum­ma­rized the best rec­ol­lec­tions of those individuals.“Panetta, a for­mer White House chief of staff and a polit­i­cal mod­er­ate, urged employ­ees to “ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission.”“We are an agency of high integrity, pro­fes­sion­al­ism, and ded­i­ca­tion,” he wrote. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what peo­ple always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national secu­rity depends on it.“Pelosi says her remarks are directed at the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, not the CIA. “My crit­i­cism of the man­ner in which the Bush admin­is­tra­tion did not appro­pri­ately inform Con­gress is sep­a­rate from my respect for those in the intel­li­gence com­mu­nity who work to keep our coun­try safe,” she said Friday.Panetta had argued stren­u­ously in a pitched White House debate last month against releas­ing the four clas­si­fied memos by Bush admin­is­tra­tion lawyers that con­structed the legal grounds for harsh inter­ro­ga­tion tech­niques. Obama sided with those who urged their release, touch­ing off the debate that has claimed Pelosi as its chief victim.

Graham’s descrip­tion of his brief­ing echoed what Sen. Dianne Fein­stein said is typ­i­cal, say­ing it was “noth­ing very remark­able. They were dis­cussing the fact that they had detainees and that they were inter­ro­gat­ing detainees. But noth­ing such as that they were using these extreme tor­ture tech­niques that would have made it a sur­pris­ing brief­ing.” Fein­stein, a Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­rat who now chairs the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, is con­duct­ing a thor­ough closed-door review of the entire mat­ter and expects to issue a report within eight months. The con­tro­versy plays into argu­ments by for­mer Bush offi­cials, led by for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney, that Obama is under­min­ing Bush admin­is­tra­tion poli­cies that kept the coun­try safe. Sen­ate Repub­li­can leader Mitch McConnell of Ken­tucky urged Democ­rats to stop ‘attack­ing the CIA,’ and to ‘notice one more time that the CIA and our other agen­cies have kept us safe since 9/11. ... I don’t know that any­body is upset that we haven’t been attacked again for 7 1/2 years. The CIA has been a big part of that.’”

“Pelosi’s Woes May Hit Obama” by Car­olyn Lochhead; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 5/16/2009; p. A1.

2. Dur­ing the Con­gres­sional debate over Pres­i­dent Obama’s stim­u­lus pack­age, Pelosi became a tar­get for GOP ire.

“The drama over Pres­i­dent Obama’s pricey stim­u­lus pack­age has put House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at cen­ter stage. And when the cur­tain comes down on the final plan, the reviews may come to this: Did she play the uniter or the divider?

Pelosi, who has con­sis­tently talked about work­ing across the aisle, led the charge last week as the ini­tial $819 bil­lion ver­sion of the Amer­i­can Recov­ery and Rein­vest­ment Act emerged from the House — approved with­out a sin­gle Repub­li­can vote.

Repub­li­cans man­aged what some had thought impos­si­ble: a show of unity and steely resis­tance to the speaker lit­tle more than a week after the pop­u­lar Demo­c­ra­tic pres­i­dent took the oath of office.

Fired up by a Rush Limbaugh-led charge against what they called a ‘Pelosi-Reid’ pork-laden pack­age, GOP lead­ers took to the air­waves and the blogs to lam­baste items such as $335 mil­lion in fund­ing for edu­ca­tion against sex­u­ally trans­mit­ted dis­eases and a makeover of the National Mall. They talked up the need for more tax relief, which they said would bol­ster the econ­omy and howled that they were shut out of the process.

The Repub­li­cans who seemed so lost and so in dis­ar­ray all of a sud­den grasped the upper hand,’ said Hoover Insti­tu­tion research fel­low Bill Whalen. ‘They’ve man­aged to change the focus from what the pack­age will do to what’s in the pack­age — waste and pork.’

With new Gallup polls show­ing that only 38 per­cent of Amer­i­cans sup­port the plan with­out major changes — and nearly 80 per­cent believe the cur­rent plan will not stim­u­late the econ­omy enough — it now appears the pres­i­dent ‘is slowly los­ing the high ground on this,’ he said.

‘Speaker Pelosi lost round one in the mes­sage war,’ agrees GOP strate­gist Patrick Dorin­son. ‘She mis­read the elec­tion results. They were over­whelm­ing for Barack Obama, but Con­gress is still lan­guish­ing with a 27 per­cent approval rat­ing.’ He said that Pelosi appeared to take Obama’s approval as a sig­nal her party could ‘make a grab bag of Demo­c­ra­tic wish lists’ and add them to the pack­age, he said. ‘Repub­li­cans rightly pointed out the hypocrisy.’ . . .”

“Heat’s on Pelosi in Stim­u­lus Bat­tle” by Carla Mar­in­ucci; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 2/5/2009; pp. A1-A11.

3. Pelosi also became the focal point of blame for delays in the enact­ment of the stim­u­lus package.

“Sen­ate Repub­li­cans blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Fran­cisco Wednes­day for trip­ping up Pres­i­dent Obama’s $902 bil­lion stim­u­lus bill, as the giant leg­is­la­tion remained in the Sen­ate, hostage to GOP demands for more tax cuts and less spending.

Repub­li­cans won a major vic­tory with unan­i­mous approval of an amend­ment late Wednes­day that would give home buy­ers a tax credit of up to $15,000, or 10 per­cent of the value of new or exist­ing res­i­dences. Spon­sor Sen. Johnny Isak­son of Geor­gia said a sim­i­lar credit in 1974 helped revive the hous­ing mar­ket then. The amend­ment could add $19 bil­lion to the bill’s cost.

Obama, after weeks of mak­ing over­tures to Repub­li­cans, warned that ‘a fail­ure to act, and act now, will turn cri­sis into cat­a­stro­phe.’ He said GOP crit­i­cisms ‘echo the very same failed eco­nomic the­o­ries that lead us into this cri­sis in the first place: the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our prob­lems; that we can ignore fun­da­men­tal chal­lenges like energy inde­pen­dence and the high cost of health care.’

Repub­li­cans have found new unity attack­ing the stim­u­lus as a big-spending bonanza that will do lit­tle to stim­u­late the econ­omy. A House vote last week that failed to draw even one Repub­li­can vote and lost 11 con­ser­v­a­tive Democ­rats gal­va­nized Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, who touted new polls show­ing ris­ing pub­lic skep­ti­cism of the plan.

Obama’s intense woo­ing of the oppos­ing party so far seems to have paid few div­i­dends. His court­ing of his for­mer rival John McCain, R-Ariz., has not stopped McCain from going to the Sen­ate floor to attack whole sec­tions of the stim­u­lus bill as a giant ear­mark and vow­ing to vote against it.

‘No bill is bet­ter than this bill, because it increases the deficit by over $1 tril­lion,’ McCain said.

Repub­li­cans have trained most of their fire, how­ever, on Pelosi, whose poll num­bers are closer to their own than to Obama’s. They say she jammed a Demo­c­ra­tic wish list through the House with­out their consultation. . . .”

“GOP Blames Pelosi for Snag in Stim­u­lus Bill” by Car­olyn Lochhead; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 2/5/2009; p. A7.

4. Whereas many lead­ing econ­o­mists feel that a larger stim­u­lus (and/or sup­ple­men­tal stim­uli) may well be required to avoid eco­nomic cat­a­stro­phe, Pelosi has thrown cold water on aspi­ra­tions for such an event.

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thurs­day that a sec­ond eco­nomic stim­u­lus pack­age is not “in the cards” in the short term, dis­ap­point­ing those seek­ing another quick infu­sion of fed­eral dol­lars into the strug­gling economy.

Pelosi’s state­ment came less than a month after Pres­i­dent Obama signed the $787 bil­lion stim­u­lus mea­sure into law and on the same day the Obama admin­is­tra­tion warned state offi­cials gath­ered in Wash­ing­ton that it would keep a close eye on how they spend the money allot­ted to them from that package.

Pelosi had helped nudge the idea of another stim­u­lus on Tues­day when she said that Con­gress should “keep the door open” to the pos­si­bil­ity. And House Appro­pri­a­tions Chair­man David Obey, D-Wis., said this week he would begin “prepar­ing options” for a sec­ond stimulus.

But Demo­c­ra­tic aides have cau­tioned strongly that another stim­u­lus is not a seri­ous pos­si­bil­ity in the short term, and Pelosi said Thurs­day that she “really would like to see this stim­u­lus pack­age play out” before con­tem­plat­ing another one.

“I don’t think you ever close the door to being pre­pared for what­ever even­tu­al­ity may come,” Pelosi said at her weekly news con­fer­ence, but empha­sized that a sec­ond stim­u­lus pack­age is “just not right now some­thing that’s in the cards.”

Some promi­nent econ­o­mists have sug­gested that a sec­ond stim­u­lus, cost­ing sev­eral hun­dred bil­lion dol­lars, might well be needed. Mark Zandi, the chief econ­o­mist at Moody’s Economy.com who has become a key adviser to House Democ­rats, said this week that “pol­i­cy­mak­ers need to do more. I don’t think we’re done. ... I think another stim­u­lus pack­age is a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­ity, given the way things are going.”

The Wall Street Journal’s most recent fore­cast­ing sur­vey, a poll of 49 econ­o­mists, found that more than 40 per­cent of respon­dents thought a sec­ond large stim­u­lus pack­age remains nec­es­sary to boost the economy. . . .”

“Pelosi Dashes Hopes for More Aid Soon” by Ben Per­sh­ing [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 3/13/2009; p. A6.

5. The con­clud­ing part of the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion about the links between SS offi­cer Otto von Bolschwing, his pro­tege Helene Van Damme, his close friend and busi­ness asso­ciate Jus­tice William New­som and the Pelosi family.

“For the past 10 years, Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing’s care­fully con­structed life in Amer­ica has been com­ing apart a piece at a time.

He was pres­i­dent of a high-technology invest­ment firm with head­quar­ters in Sacra­mento and sub­sidiaries in Sil­i­con Val­ley. It went bank­rupt in a 1971 scandal.

He was a dot­ing hus­band until his ail­ing wife killed her­self in 1978.

He num­bered among his busi­ness asso­ciates mil­lion­aires, bankers and sci­en­tists. Then his brain stem was hit with a rare dis­ease two years ago, send­ing him into iso­la­tion at a Carmichael rest home.

He told his friends he had worked for the Amer­i­cans dur­ing and after the World War II. But in May, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment began pro­ceed­ings to deport him for lying about his Nazi past.

In a widely pub­li­cized attempt to revoke von Bolschwing’s cit­i­zen­ship, the Jus­tice Depart­ment accused him of help­ing Hitler’s per­se­cu­tion of Euro­pean Jews, and of being an asso­ciate of Adolf Eich­mann, the archi­tect of Germany’s mass killing program.

The dis­clo­sures come at the end of a long, improb­a­ble career that took von Bolschwing through the Nazi hier­ar­chy, into the CIA and finally to the high­est lev­els of Amer­i­can business.

The list of peo­ple he knew, some of whom met him through a Cal­i­for­nia high tech­nol­ogy busi­ness ven­ture in 1970 reads like a Who’s Who. They include jus­tice William A. New­som of the 1st Dis­trict Court of Appeals in San Fran­cisco. Helene von Damm, Pres­i­dent Reagan’s per­sonal sec­re­tary. Thomas A. Franzi­oli, banker to the Boston Cabot fam­ily, Emanuel Fthenakis, Fairchild Corp. senior vice pres­i­dent. Elmer Bobst, pres­i­dent of Warner Lam­bert Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Co.; and Albert Driscoll, for­mer New Jer­sey gov­er­nor and Warner Lambert’s chairman.

‘I’m non­plused.’ Jus­tice New­som said. ‘I thought, if any­thing, Otto had been pro-American dur­ing the war.’

As a busi­ness­man, von Bolschwing was vague about the war years. He said he had been a Gestapo pris­oner and had worked for the CIA in post­war Germany.

In 1969 he was asked about his Ger­man past dur­ing a job inter­view with Trans-international Com­puter Invest­ment Corp. a high fly­ing invest­ment firm that had founded sev­eral com­pa­nies in the Sil­i­con Val­ley. Von Bolschwing told his inter­viewer he had been a lawyer.

‘Dur­ing what years was that?’ he was asked, accord­ing to a tran­script of the interview.

‘Until I was thrown in the Gestapo prison … in 1942.’ Von Bolschwing responded ‘That was not a good expe­ri­ence … One should for­get it because (1 or 2 illeg­i­ble words) it only is a neg­a­tive approach to life to think about bad things.’

After a moment’s reflec­tion, he added ‘I think it would be bet­ter to speak about recent times than … God knows how many years ago.’

INTERVIEW PROHIBITED

Who was this ex-Nazi, and how did he pros­per in Amer­ica? Von Bolschwing’s attor­ney would not allow an inter­view. This account was devel­oped from peo­ple who knew him, accounts of Nazi Ger­many, court records and busi­ness files.

Born Oct. 15, 1909 to East Pruss­ian nobil­ity (the fam­ily estate was founded in 1302), von Bolschwing attended school in Bres­lau, and became a Nazi party mem­ber at the age of 24, the only mem­ber of his fam­ily to do so.

He joined the SS, the elite secret police of the Nazis, six years later. Accord­ing to the Jus­tice Depart­ment, as an SS cap­tain he helped plan the expul­sion of Jews from the Ger­man Econ­omy and devel­oped anti-Jewish pro­pa­ganda to force their emi­gra­tion from Germany.

In a his­tory of the SS by Heinz Hohne, von Bolschwing is described as “a party mem­ber, an SD (for­eign intel­li­gence) informer and expe­ri­enced sales­man in the motor trade.

In 1938, ‘he was in con­tact with a group of Pales­tin­ian Ger­mans who lined their pock­ets by cer­tain extra­mural activ­i­ties,’ accord­ing to Hohne, who wrote that von Bolschwing spied on the Zion­ist Hagana army.

EJECTED BY BRITISH

Ejected from Pales­tine by the British for espi­onage, he sur­faced in Roma­nia as a gov­ern­ment ‘oil expert.’ By his own account, in 1941 he helped the lead­er­ship of the Iron Guard, a right wing move­ment, escape to Berlin after it had gone on a three-day ram­page in which many Jews – the esti­mates vary con­sid­er­ably – were killed.

The same year he became part­ner in the Ams­ter­dam bank, the Bankvoor Oen­roerende Zachen. Inves­ti­ga­tors said they sus­pect the bank mat have played a role in the ‘Aryaniza­tion’ – the forced sale of Dutch Jew­ish farms, busi­nesses, homes and securities.

In August 1941, von Bolschwing was tossed into a Gestapo prison with no for­mal charges and in April 1942 he was just as mys­te­ri­ously released. In 1945 he helped Amer­i­can troops enter­ing Aus­tria catch Nazi offi­cials and SS offi­cers, accord­ing to a let­ter writ­ten for von Bolschwing by a colonel in the 71st U.S. Infantry.

The war over, von Bolschwing made a move cru­cial to his future suc­cess. He became an Amer­i­can spy.

‘He knocked on the door of U.S. Army intel­li­gence,’ a source explained. ‘and said. I’m expe­ri­enced, I have a ring oper­at­ing, If you give me a pay­check I’ll make you very happy.’ He was a sort of a minia­ture Rein­hard Gehlen,

FROM SS TO CIA

Gehlen was the Nazi gen­eral who helped the CIA build a spy net­work in post war east­ern Europe, then became head of post­war Ger­man intel­li­gence activ­i­ties. Accord­ing to one uncon­firmed report, von Bolschwing became the con­troller of Gehlen’s CIA oper­a­tion after Gehlen returned to the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]

‘He must have done some­thing right’ the source said.

In Decem­ber 1953, von Bolschwing applied to immi­grate to the United States, and on Feb­ru­ary 2, 1954, he arrived in this coun­try. After obtain­ing sev­eral menial jobs, he became a cit­i­zen in 1959 and his career took a sud­den upward turn.

He became an assis­tant to the direc­tor of inter­na­tional mar­ket­ing at Warner Lam­bert Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals Co., devel­op­ing close ties to the company’s pres­i­dent, the late Elmer Bobst, and its hon­orary board chair­man, for­mer New Jer­sey Gov. Alfred Driscolll, accord­ing to a close associate.

‘His con­tacts at Warner Lam­bert were way out of pro­por­tion with his job.’ The asso­ciate said. ‘Driscoll con­tin­ued to write him rec­om­men­da­tions for many years’.

DEVELOPED FACTORY

By the mid 1960’s, von Bolschwing had become an exec­u­tive with Cabot Man­u­fac­tur­ing. As chief finan­cial offi­cer for its Ger­man sub­sidiary, he devel­oped a $50 mil­lion car­bon black for Cabot in Germany.

The deal was financed through through Thomas Franzi­oli, senior vice pres­i­dent for the First National Bank of Boston, Franzi­oli recalls that von Bolschwing then branched out on his own.

‘He was start­ing a busi­ness import­ing wine from Argentina’ Franzi­oli recalled. ‘I don’t know if it ever got off the ground.’

In March 1969 von Bolschwing got a job in high tech­nol­ogy. He was retained as an inter­na­tional busi­ness con­sul­tant by TCI, the Sacra­mento firm.

The com­pany planned to com­mer­cial­ize on tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment in the Sil­i­con Val­ley and used a few years ear­lier to mon­i­tor troop move­ments in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war accord­ing to the firm’s founder, Oswlad S. Williams.

TCI’s sub­sidiaries in Palo Alto and Moun­tain View, Advanced Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems and Inter­na­tional Imag­ing Sys­tems, were devel­op­ing a high vol­ume com­puter net­work for busi­ness and a nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem for oil tankers using satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Williams said.

HELPED DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

The com­pany also did clas­si­fied work for the Depart­ment of Defense. ‘Ours was going to be a sen­si­tive thing.’ Williams explained. ‘We all had to have secu­rity clearances.’

Von Bolschwing was brought in because ‘we wanted con­tracts in Europe and he had them.’ Williams said.

A TCI memo writ­ten in 1969 reported that its new con­sul­tant ‘has extremely valu­able con­nec­tions and infor­ma­tion in Ger­many, Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, the Nether­lands, Antilles and South Amer­ica. Mr. von Bolschwing’s con­nec­tions in these coun­tries are current.’

His con­tacts include offi­cials of the Ger­man branch of Chase Man­hat­tan Bank and an owner of the Berliner Han­dels Gesellschaft in Frank­furt, one of Europe’s largest banks, the memo said.

TCI’s high pow­ered direc­tors – one was J. Paul Getty Jr. son of the oil bil­lion­aire – thought enough of von Bolschwing to make him the firm’s pres­i­dent in 1970.

‘He seems like a very polite and cul­tured per­son,’ said Wal­ter F. Lev­er­ton, for­mer vice pres­i­dent for satel­lite sys­tems of the Aero-space Corp. Lev­er­ton sat on the board of TCI.

TOLD OF WORK FOR THE U.S.

Jus­tice New­som, who trav­eled as a TCI attor­ney with von Bolschwing in Europe in 1969–70, and said von Bolschwing alluded to wartime work for the Americans.

‘He was suave and plau­si­ble’ New­som said. ‘He seemed to have all the cre­den­tials… He looked kind of world weary,’ recalled New­som. ‘He had the long cig­a­rette holder, his hair was slicked back.’

Emanuel Fthenakis, who had resigned an Inter­na­tional Tele­phone and Tele­graph vice-presidency to sign with TCI, also trav­eled with von Bolschwing in Europe, meet­ing his bank­ing and indus­try contacts.

‘Otto was very pleas­ant and soft spo­ken,’ Fthenakis said. ‘He talked about his past of work­ing for intel­li­gence. I don’t know if it was the CIA or what. But after the war, he helped the United States and the allies to find Nazis.’

Records and inter­views with TCI offi­cials indi­cate that Helene von Damm, Pres­i­dent Regan’s Aus­trian born, deputy assis­tant, trans­lated some Ger­man con­tracts for TCI and invested $1,000 in it while she was than Gov. Regan’s sec­re­tary in Sacramento.

Von Damm was ‘too busy’ to talk about von Bolschwing, but through her White House sec­re­tary said she knew him ‘socially’ in Sacra­mento ‘many years ago.’

SYNDICATE TROUBLE

In 1970 TCI ran into trou­ble with the Depart­ment of Cor­po­ra­tions, Sev­eral major stock­hold­ers were syn­di­cat­ing its stock, sell­ing it to small investors in Sacramento.

‘It was the hottest thing in town.’ Recalled Brian Van Camp now a pri­vate attor­ney but then the com­mis­sioner of corporations.

The trad­ing was found to be ille­gal under a 1968 law requir­ing secu­rity sales to be registered.

The Depart­ment of Cor­po­ra­tions sus­pended trad­ing in TCI stock, and in 1972 the Sacra­mento Dis­trict Attorney’s office pros­e­cuted sev­eral stock­hold­ers, call­ing it ‘pos­si­bly the biggest stock fraud in Cal­i­for­nia history.’

Von Bolschwing had not syn­di­cated any stock and his name was not men­tioned in the news accounts of the prosce­cu­tion. He asked for time to bail out TCI with ‘a cer­tain finan­cial deal involv­ing coal min­ing in Ten­nessee’, accord­ing to a Depart­ment of Cor­po­ra­tions mem­o­ran­dum. Bud he couldn’t do it and TCI went under.

The busi­ness fail­ure rocked von Bolschwing. On its heels, his wife, suf­fer­ing from a painful ill­ness, took her own life. ‘He was never the same after that’ an asso­ciate said.

A year later, he had a new worry.

Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tors had stum­bled across the name of Otto von Bolschwing in 1979 while work­ing on the case of Valer­ian Trifa, a leader of the Iron Guard’s anti-Jewish ram­page in Romania.

Inves­ti­ga­tors had found Trifa in Detroit and in inves­ti­gat­ing him, the inter­viewed von Bolschwing. He admit­ted help­ing Trifa and other Iron Guard mem­bers escape Roma­nia after the 1941 pogrom. But in a sworn state­ment he denied ever hav­ing been a mem­ber of the SS the SD or the Nazi Party.

The Inves­ti­ga­tors came back again in Feb­ru­ary. This time it was a dif­fer­ent story, as the tran­script shows.

Ques­tion: Were you a mem­ber of the Nazi Party?

Von Bolschwing: Yes … 1932 I think, through 1945.

Q: Were you ever a mem­ber of the SS?

Von Bolschwing: Yes … from 1941 or 1942, I don’t know.

With those words, the last frag­ment of von Bolschwing’s illu­sory life in Amer­ica crumbled.”

“Ex-Nazi’s Bril­liant U.S. Career Stran­gled in a Web of Lies” by Pete Carey; San Jose Mer­cury; 11/20/1981; pp. 1A-24A.

6. The Getty inter­ests were  very close to Otto Von Bolschwing, with J. Paul Getty, Jr. being a direc­tor of Von Bolschwing’s TCI firm, as seen above.

Idem.

7. Not­ing another part of the Von Bolschwing legacy, the pro­gram notes pro­found Getty fam­ily influ­ence on Bay Area Democ­rats. Judge William New­som was one of Von Bolschwing’s close per­sonal friends and a direc­tor of TCI, Von Bolschwing’s elec­tron­ics firm. His son Gavin New­som is mayor of San Fran­cisco. (In 2004, New­som ini­ti­ated the gay mar­riage pro­gram in San Fran­cisco, in direct con­tra­ven­tion of Cal­i­for­nia law (under which gay mar­riage was ille­gal). Many key Democ­rats feel that Newsom’s actions had much to do with get­ting the Chris­t­ian right to turn out in force for the 2004 elec­tion, thereby mak­ing it close enough for the Repub­li­cans to steal. When inter­viewed about his motives, New­som replied with a George W. Bushian smirk. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is also very close to the Newsom/Getty axis, being a sister-in-law of Gavin New­som. Her hus­band Paul Pelosi became a bil­lion­aire in the gam­ing machine indus­try. Doesn’t every­body? Again, the Get­tys are VERY close to this bunch, and some mem­bers of the fam­ily have per­pet­u­ated the reac­tionary fam­ily polit­i­cal her­itage. What we may well be see­ing here are “Bor­mann Democrats.”

“Belinda Bar­bara New­som, who was born into one polit­i­cally promi­nent Bay Area fam­ily and mar­ried into another, died Sat­ur­day at their home in San Fran­cisco at age 73. . . . Ms. New­som, who went by Bar­bara and whose mar­ried name was Pelosi, was the sister-in-law of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the aunt of San Fran­cisco Mayor Gavin New­som. . . ‘We were bap­tized Catholic and Demo­c­rat,’ chuck­led [Von Bolschwing friend and busi­ness part­ner] Bill New­som, the retired state appel­late court jus­tice and father of Mayor Newsom. . . .”

“Belinda Bar­bara Newsom–Politics Filled Her Life” by Julian Guthrie; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 11/24/2008; p. B3.

8. Flesh­ing out the “Getty Axis,” we review the fact that Karl Rove’s father Louis was the head geol­o­gist for Getty Oil!

” . . . His [Karl Rove’s] response was: Well, my senior year in high school, my Dad was com­ing home on Christ­mas Eve. He had got­ten a new job, a huge job as the chief geol­o­gist at Getty Oil Com­pany in Los Ange­les. We were going to cel­e­brate my birth­day the next day. . . .”

“James Moore Explains Karl Rove, the Archi­tect of Bush’s Mas­ter Plan” [Buz­zflash Inter­view]; Buzzflash.com;9/19/2006.