Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #894 Physicians, Heal Thyselves: Hypocrisy and the Trump Campaign

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Much press ink and broad­cast time have been devot­ed to decry­ing the Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of Don­ald Trump. Wring­ing their hands over the sub­stan­tive­ly accu­rate view that Trump is a fas­cist and his can­di­da­cy is a major turn toward the Dark Side, the insti­tu­tions and the indi­vid­u­als decry­ing the Trump phe­nom­e­non are hyp­o­crit­i­cal. Far from being an aber­ra­tion, Trump’s can­di­da­cy is a direct out­growth of pow­er­ful forces that have been at work for the bet­ter part of a cen­tu­ry and that are the embod­i­ment of fun­da­men­tal ele­ments of Amer­i­can and West­ern soci­ety.

The pro­gram begins with two op-ed columns from The New York Times. Tim­o­thy Egan high­lights the aware­ness on the part of Trump sup­port­ers that race hatred, sup­port for slav­ery and the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment, xeno­pho­bia and reac­tion are the sub­stance of what he is about and what they want. Egan notes, cor­rect­ly, that “beast is us.”  Richard Cohen sets forth the appre­hen­sion that Euro­peans feel about the Trump can­di­da­cy, under­scor­ing their expe­ri­ence with the descent of a soci­ety into fas­cism.

Euro­peans are con­sum­mate­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal in their con­dem­na­tion of Trump, although the insights that Cohen has not­ed are accu­rate. They are hard­ly in a posi­tion to look down on Trump–European pol­i­tics are expe­ri­enc­ing the same “Per­fect Sturm.” Not only are fas­cist par­ties rid­ing a crest of pop­u­lar­i­ty in Europe over the “anti-immi­grant” gam­bit, but fas­cism was nev­er expunged from Europe, due to Cold War pol­i­tics which will be high­light­ed below. We note that Slo­va­kia is among the coun­tries wit­ness­ing the ascent of fas­cist par­ties.

The “Troi­ka” (read “Ger­many”) man­dat­ed the instal­la­tion of the fas­cist LAOS Par­ty as part of the pro­vi­sion­al Greek gov­ern­ment in the late fall of 2011. The Greek cit­i­zen­ry had NO say in this, what­so­ev­er.

Per­haps even more hyp­o­crit­i­cal than Europe’s bemoan­ing of the “Trumpfver­bande” is the so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” in the U.S., whose misty-eyed embrace of Snow­den, Green­wald, Assange et al con­sti­tutes an align­ment with PRECISELY the same polit­i­cal forces that are embod­ied in the Trump can­di­da­cy. The so-called “pro­gres­sives” have allied them­selves with the milieu of Wik­iLeaksEddie the Friend­ly Spook and Glenn Green­wald, who are part and par­cel to the pol­i­tics of David Duke, the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment and apol­o­gists for slav­ery. The polit­i­cal forces that Tim Egan cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fies as being “Trumpers” are pre­cise­ly the forces that are behind the Snow­denistas and Assange­holes.

Much of the pro­gram con­sists of excerpts from an impor­tant new book: The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot. Although vir­tu­al­ly none of the mate­r­i­al will be new to vet­er­an listeners–we’ve been cov­er­ing the rel­e­vant sub­ject mate­r­i­al exhaus­tive­ly and for decades–it is impor­tant and refresh­ing to have a cur­rent book of this mag­ni­tude and rel­a­tive­ly high pro­file avail­able.

Some of the points dis­cussed in the book:

  • The Dulles broth­ers, Sul­li­van and Cromwell and their roles in the cap­i­tal­iza­tion of Ger­many and the rise of Hitler’s car­tels: ” . . . Fos­ter Dulles became so deeply enmeshed in the lucra­tive revi­tal­iza­tion of Ger­many that he found it dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate his fir­m’s inter­ests from those of the ris­ing eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary power–even after Hitler con­sol­i­dat­ed con­trol over the coun­try in the 1930s. Fos­ter con­tin­ued to rep­re­sent Ger­man car­tels like IG Far­ben as they were inte­grat­ed into the Nazis’ grow­ing war machine, help­ing the indus­tri­al giants secure access to key war mate­ri­als. . . . . Fos­ter refused to shut down the Berlin office of Sul­li­van and Cromwell . . . .”
  • The Dulles broth­ers active and trea­so­nous role in block­ing Safe­haven, the Roo­sevelt admin­is­tra­tion’s effort at block­ing the Nazi flight cap­i­tal pro­gram that was to coa­lesce into the Bor­mann net­work: ” . . . . Dulles and [Thomas] McKit­trick [of the Bank of Inter­na­tion­al Set­tlem­nts] con­tin­ued to work close­ly togeth­er for the rest of the war. In the final months of the con­flict, the two men col­lab­o­rat­ed against a Roo­sevelt oper­a­tion called Project Safe­haven that sought to track down and con­fis­cate Nazi assets that were stashed in neu­tral coun­tries. . . . . Dulles and McKit­trick were more inclined to pro­tect their clients’ inter­ests. More­over, like many in the upper ech­e­lons of U.S. finance and nation­al secu­ri­ty, Dulles believed that a good num­ber of these pow­er­ful Ger­man fig­ures should be returned to pow­er, to ensure that Ger­many would be a strong bul­wark against the Sovi­et Union. And dur­ing the Cold War, he would be more intent on using Nazi loot to finance covert anti-Sovi­et oper­a­tions than on return­ing it to the fam­i­lies of Hitler’s vic­tims. . . . While Allen Dulles was using his OSS post in Switzer­land to pro­tect the inter­ests of Sul­li­van and Cromwell’s Ger­man clients, his broth­er was doing the same in New York. By play­ing an intri­cate cor­po­rate shell game, Fos­ter was able to hide the U.S. assets of major Ger­man car­tels like IG Far­ben and Mer­ck KGaA, the chem­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant, and pro­tect these sub­sidiaries from being con­fis­cat­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment as alien prop­er­ty. . . . By the end of the war, many of Fos­ter’s clients were under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s antitrust divi­sion. And Fos­ter him­self was under scruti­ny for col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ene­my. . . . But Fos­ter’s broth­er was guard­ing his back. From his front­line posi­tion in Europe, Allen was well-placed to destroy incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence and to block any inves­ti­ga­tions that threat­ened the two broth­ers and their law firm. “Shred­ding of cap­tured Nazi records was the favorite tac­tic of Dulles and his [asso­ciates] who stayed behind to help run the occu­pa­tion of post­war Ger­many,” observed Nazi hunter John Lof­tus . . . .”
  • Dulles col­lab­o­rat­ed close­ly with Nazi gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen, whose work for CIA (and lat­er BND) con­sti­tut­ed a con­tin­u­a­tion of the Third Reich’s war against the Sovi­et Union–a war in which he col­lab­o­rat­ed with Dulles: “. . . . The Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion saw the Cold War as the final act of the Reich’s inter­rupt­ed offen­sive against the Sovi­et Union. . . . The covert Cold War in the West was, to an unset­tling extent, a joint oper­a­tion between the Dulles regime and that of Rein­hard Gehlen. The Ger­man spy chief’s patho­log­i­cal fear and hatred of Rus­sia, which had its roots in Hitler’s Third Reich, meshed smooth­ly with the Dulles broth­ers’ anti-Sovi­et abso­lutism. In fact, the Dulles pol­i­cy of mas­sive nuclear retal­i­a­tion bore a dis­turb­ing resem­blance to the Nazis’ eter­mi­na­tion­ist phi­los­o­phy. . . . We live “in an age in which war is a para­mount activ­i­ty of man,” Gehlen announced in his mem­oir [pref­aced by Holo­caust-denier David Irving–D.E.], “with the total anni­hi­la­tion of the ene­my as its pri­ma­ry aim.” There could be no more suc­cinct a state­ment of the fas­cist ethos. . . .”
  • Dulles and Gehlen’s col­lab­o­ra­tion on the “Stay Behind/Gladio” project:. . . . He [Gehlen] was pre­pared to take dras­tic action to pre­vent such a polit­i­cal sce­nario from unfold­ing in Bonn–going so far as to over­throw democ­ra­cy in West Ger­many if nec­es­sary. . . . It is unlike­ly that Dulles was shocked by Gehlen’s pro­pos­al to rein­sti­tute fas­cism in Ger­many, since CIA offi­cials had long ben dis­cussing such author­i­tar­i­an con­tin­gency plans with the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion oth­er right-wing ele­ments in Ger­many. In 1952, West Ger­man police dis­cov­ered that the CIA was sup­port­ing a two-thou­sand-mem­ber fas­cist youth group led by ex-Nazi offi­cers who had their own alarm­ing plans for ter­mi­nat­ing democ­ra­cy. . . . These author­i­tar­i­an plans were part of a sweep­ing covert strat­e­gy devel­oped in the ear­li­est days of the Cold War by U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials, includ­ing Dulles, to counter a pos­si­ble Sovi­et inva­sion of West­ern Europe by cre­at­ing a “stay-behind net­work” of armed resisters to fight the Red Army. Code-named Oper­a­tion Glad­io, these secret CIA-fund­ed net­works attract­ed fas­cist and crim­i­nal ele­ments, some of which lat­er played sub­ver­sive roles in West Ger­many, France, and Italy, dis­rupt­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic rule in those coun­tries by stag­ing ter­ror­ist acts and plot­ting coups and assas­si­na­tions. . . .”
  • Dulles’s liai­son with the Sen­ate was Prescott Bush, Sr.: “. . . . Dulles’s CIA oper­at­ed with vir­tu­al­ly no con­gres­sion­al over­sight. In the Sen­ate, Dulles relied on Wall Street friends like Prescott Bush of Connecticut–the father and grand­fa­ther of two future presidents–to pro­tect the CIA’s inter­ests. Accord­ing to CIA vet­er­an Robert Crow­ley, who rose to become sec­ond-in-com­mand of the CIA’s action arm, Bush ‘was the day-to-day con­tact man for the CIA.’ . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the role of Allen Dulles in ham­mer­ing togeth­er the Cru­sade For Free­dom, a covert oper­a­tion that had its cul­mi­na­tionwith the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion:

  • . . . . Frus­tra­tion over Truman’s 1948 elec­tion vic­to­ry over Dewey (which they blamed on the “Jew­ish vote”) impelled Dulles and his pro­tégé Richard Nixon to work toward the real­iza­tion of the fas­cist free­dom fight­er pres­ence in the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion. As a young con­gress­man, Nixon had been Allen Dulles’s con­fi­dant. They both blamed Gov­er­nor Dewey’s razor-thin loss to Tru­man in the 1948 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on the Jew­ish vote. When he became Eisenhower’s vice pres­i­dent in 1952, Nixon was deter­mined to build his own eth­nic base. . . .
  • . . . . Vice Pres­i­dent Nixon’s secret polit­i­cal war of Nazis against Jews in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics was nev­er inves­ti­gat­ed at the time. The for­eign lan­guage-speak­ing Croa­t­ians and oth­er Fas­cist émi­gré groups had a ready-made net­work for con­tact­ing and mobi­liz­ing the East­ern Euro­pean eth­nic bloc. There is a very high cor­re­la­tion between CIA domes­tic sub­si­dies to Fas­cist ‘free­dom fight­ers’ dur­ing the 1950’s and the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic cam­paign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financ­ing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to off­set the Jew­ish vote for the Democ­rats. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Eth­nic Divi­sion with­in the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Dis­placed fas­cists, hop­ing to be returned to pow­er by an Eisen­how­er-Nixon ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­i­cy signed on with the com­mit­tee. In 1953, when Repub­li­cans were in office, the immi­gra­tion laws were changed to admit Nazis, even mem­bers of the SS. They flood­ed into the coun­try. Nixon him­self over­saw the new immi­gra­tion pro­gram. As Vice Pres­i­dent, he even received East­ern Euro­pean Fas­cists in the White House. . . . .
  • . . . . As a young movie actor in the ear­ly 1950s, Rea­gan was employed as the pub­lic spokesper­son for an OPC front named the ‘Cru­sade for Free­dom.’ Rea­gan may not have known it, but 99 per­cent for the Crusade’s funds came from clan­des­tine accounts, which were then laun­dered through the Cru­sade to var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions such as Radio Lib­er­ty, which employed Dulles’s Fas­cists. Bill Casey, who lat­er became CIA direc­tor under Ronald Rea­gan, also worked in Ger­many after World War II on Dulles’ Nazi ‘free­dom fight­ers’ pro­gram. When he returned to New York, Casey head­ed up anoth­er OPC front, the Inter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee, which spon­sored the immi­gra­tion of these Fas­cists to the Unit­ed States. Casey’s com­mit­tee replaced the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross as the spon­sor for Dulles’s recruits. . . . .
  • . . .  It was [George H.W.] Bush who ful­filled Nixon’s promise to make the ‘eth­nic emi­gres’ a per­ma­nent part of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. In 1972, Nixon’s State Depart­ment spokesman con­firmed to his Aus­tralian coun­ter­part that the eth­nic groups were very use­ful to get out the vote in sev­er­al key states. Bush’s tenure as head of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee exact­ly coin­cid­ed with Las­z­lo Pasztor’s 1972 dri­ve to trans­form the Her­itage Groups Coun­cil into the party’s offi­cial eth­nic arm. The groups Pasz­tor chose as Bush’s cam­paign allies were the émi­gré Fas­cists whom Dulles had brought to the Unit­ed States. . . .  

Pro­gram High­lights Include: 

  • Review of the Bush fam­i­ly’s links to the Thyssens.
  • Review of the Thyssen par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work.
  • Review of the Bor­mann group’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with the CIA.
  • Col­lab­o­ra­tion of the New York Times with Dulles’s CIA, includ­ing the paper’s own incor­po­ra­tion of Nazis. Like the GOP, they are “shocked, shocked” at the Trump can­di­da­cy.
1. We begin with the first of two New York Times op-ed columns bemoan­ing the Trump ascen­dan­cy, high­light­ing the GOP estab­lish­men­t’s laments over “the Don­ald,” and the vicious aware­ness that Trump’s sup­port­ers man­i­fest.

“The Beast Is Us” by Tim­o­thy Egan; The New York Times; 3/04/2016.

You heard the word “scary” used a lot this week, that and much more. Not from the usu­al scolds. Or Democ­rats. The loud­est alarms came from des­per­ate, pan­icked Repub­li­cans, warn­ing of the man who is destroy­ing the Par­ty of Lin­coln before our eyes.

“The man is evil,” said Stu­art Stevens, a chief strate­gist for Mitt Rom­ney in 2012. Rom­ney him­self called Don­ald Trump a fraud on Thurs­day.

But as much as these “too lit­tle, too late” wake-up calls are appre­ci­at­ed, it’s time to place the blame for the ele­va­tion of a tyrant as the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee where it belongs — with the peo­ple. Yes, you. Don­ald Trump’s sup­port­ers know exact­ly what he stands for: hatred of immi­grants, racial supe­ri­or­i­ty, a sneer­ing dis­re­gard of the basic civil­i­ty that binds a soci­ety. Edu­cat­ed and poor­ly edu­cat­ed alike, men and women — they know what they’re get­ting from him.

This idea that peo­ple are fol­low­ing Trump only for the celebri­ty joy ride, that if they just under­stood the kind of rad­i­cal, anti-Amer­i­can ideas he advo­cates they would drop him, is garbage. If the pope couldn’t dent Trump, Rom­ney sure­ly will not.

For Trump’s vot­ers were not sur­prised at his hes­i­tan­cy to dis­avow the hearty approval of a for­mer grand wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan. They cer­tain­ly weren’t shocked when neo-Nazis hailed Trump a sav­ior months ago, so a lit­tle added back­ing from hood­ed haters was not going to throw them.

They aren’t upset that he’s attacked one of the foun­da­tions of an open soci­ety — free speech — with his recent call to “open up” the libel laws. Nor does it both­er them in the least that he wants to apply a reli­gious test for entry into a coun­try whose founders were against any such thing. A major­i­ty of his Super Tues­day back­ers, in fact, sup­port just that.

And recent kudos from a pro-slav­ery radio host will cer­tain­ly not damp­en his legions. That sup­port came from James Edwards. “For blacks in Amer­i­ca,” he has said, “slav­ery is the best thing that ever hap­pened to them.”

Yes, Trump can­not choose his allies. But it’s cer­tain­ly no coin­ci­dence that the race haters, immi­grant bash­ers and reli­gious huck­sters who’ve been at the fringe for some time are all in for Don­ald Trump.

With media com­plic­i­ty, Trump has unleashed the beast that has long resided not far from the Amer­i­can hearth, from those who start­ed a Civ­il War to pre­serve the right to enslave a fel­low human to the Know-Noth­ing mobs who burned Irish-Catholic church­es out of fear of immi­grants.

When high school kids waved a pic­ture of Trump while shout­ing “Build a wall” at stu­dents from a heav­i­ly His­pan­ic school dur­ing a bas­ket­ball game in Indi­ana last week, they were exhal­ing Trump’s sul­furous vapors. They know exact­ly what he stands for.

Grant­ed, a huge por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion is woe­ful­ly igno­rant; near­ly a third of Amer­i­cans didn’t know who Supreme Court Jus­tice Antonin Scalia was in a Gallup poll last year. But igno­rance is not the prob­lem with Trump’s peo­ple. They’re sick and tired of tol­er­ance. In Super Tues­day exit polls, Trump dom­i­nat­ed among those who want some­one to “tell it like it is.” And that trans­lates to an explic­it “play to our worst fears,” as Meg Whit­man, the promi­nent Repub­li­can busi­ness leader, said.

“He’s say­ing how the peo­ple real­ly feel,” one Trump sup­port­er from Mass­a­chu­setts, Janet Aguilar, told The Times. “We’re all afraid to say it.”

They’re say­ing it now. So more than a third of Trump sup­port­ers in South Car­oli­na wish the South had won the Civ­il War, and 70 per­cent think the Con­fed­er­ate flag should be fly­ing over the state cap­i­tal. And 32 per­cent believe intern­ment of Japan­ese-Amer­i­can cit­i­zens was a good thing — some­thing that the saint­ed Ronald Rea­gan apol­o­gized for.

Judge him by his fol­low­ers, who’ve thrown away the dog whis­tle. “Vot­ing against Don­ald Trump at this point is real­ly trea­son to your her­itage,” said David Duke, the for­mer Klans­man. And judge him by those who enabled his rise, out of cow­ardice or oppor­tunism, two words that will fol­low Chris Christie to his grave.

“To sup­port Trump is to sup­port a big­ot,” wrote Stevens, the for­mer Rom­ney strate­gist. “It’s real­ly that sim­ple.”

Now that the nom­i­na­tion is near­ly his, Trump will start to tone it down and take it back. Just kid­ding, he’s going to imply. “I hate to say it, but I’m becom­ing main­stream,” he said.

But it’s not main­stream to toss aside long­stand­ing Amer­i­can pol­i­cy against war crimes, advo­cat­ing tor­ture “even if it doesn’t work.” It’s not main­stream to approv­ing­ly pass on quotes from the Fas­cist Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni. It’s not main­stream to be “every­thing we teach our kids not to do in kinder­garten,” as Gov. Nik­ki Haley, the Repub­li­can gov­er­nor of South Car­oli­na, said.

The Ger­man mag­a­zine Der Spiegel called Trump “the world’s most dan­ger­ous man.” The Ger­mans know a thing or two about the top­ic.

I would like to think our bet­ter angels always pre­vail. But there are also dark episodes, when the beast is loose, and what stares back at us from the mir­ror is some­thing ugly and fright­ful. Now is one of those times.

2. The sec­ond Times op-ed piece dis­cuss­es Europe’s fears of a Trump pres­i­den­cy as the com­ing of fas­cism to Amer­i­ca.

“Trump’s Il Duce Rou­tine” by Richard Cohen; The New York Times; 2/29/2016.

Europe, the soil on which Fas­cism took root, is watch­ing the rise of Don­ald Trump with dis­may. Con­tempt for the excess­es of Amer­i­ca is a Euro­pean reflex, but when the Unit­ed States seems tempt­ed by a lat­ter-day Mus­soli­ni, smug­ness in Lon­don, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. Europe knows that democ­ra­cies can col­lapse.

It’s not just that Trump retweets to his six mil­lion fol­low­ers a quote attrib­uted to Mus­soli­ni: “It is bet­ter to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” It’s not just that Trump refus­es to con­demn David Duke, the for­mer grand wiz­ard of the Ku Klux Klan, who has expressed sup­port for him. It’s not just that vio­lence is woven into Trump’s lan­guage as indeli­bly as the snarl woven into his fea­tures — the talk of shoot­ing some­body or punch­ing a pro­test­er in the face, the insult­ing of the dis­abled, the macho mock­ery of women, the anti-Mus­lim and anti-Mex­i­can tirades. It’s not just that he could become Sil­vio Berlus­coni with nukes.

It’s the echoes, now unmis­tak­able, of times when the skies dark­ened. Europe knows how democ­ra­cies col­lapse, after lost wars, in times of fear and anger and eco­nom­ic hard­ship, when the pout­ing dem­a­gogue appears with his pageantry and promis­es. America’s Weimar-lite demo­c­ra­t­ic dys­func­tion is plain to see. A cor­rupt­ed poli­ty tends toward col­lapse.

Trump is telling peo­ple some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Amer­i­ca. The mes­sage res­onates because the rot is there.

He has emerged from a polit­i­cal sys­tem cor­rupt­ed by mon­ey, locked in an echo cham­ber of insults, reduced to the show busi­ness of an end­less cam­paign, blocked by a kind of par­ti­san­ship run amok that leads Repub­li­can mem­bers of Con­gress to declare they will not meet with Pres­i­dent Obama’s even­tu­al nom­i­nee for the Supreme Court, let alone lis­ten to him or her. This is an out­rage! The pub­lic inter­est has become less than an after­thought. Trump is telling peo­ple some­thing is rot­ten in the state of Amer­i­ca. The mes­sage res­onates because the rot is there.

Enter the smart, savvy, scowl­ing show­man. He is self-financed and promis­es restored great­ness. He has a bully’s instinct for the jugu­lar and a sense of how sick an angry Amer­i­ca is of pol­i­tics as usu­al and polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. He hijacks a Repub­li­can Par­ty that has paved the way for him with years of rant­i­ng, big­otry, bel­li­cos­i­ty and what Robert Kagan, in The Wash­ing­ton Post, has right­ly called “racial­ly tinged derange­ment syn­drome” with respect to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. Trump is a man repeat­ed­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed by the very elites who made Trump­ism pos­si­ble. He’s smarter than most of his belit­tlers, and quick­er on his feet, which makes him only more dan­ger­ous.

He’s the anti-Oba­ma, all the­ater where the pres­i­dent is all pru­dence, the mouth-that-spews to the pres­i­den­tial teleprompter, rage against rea­son, the back­slap­per against the mae­stro of aloof­ness, the rab­ble-rouser to the cere­bral law pro­fes­sor, the deal mak­er to the dili­gent observ­er. If Oba­ma in anoth­er life could have been a suc­cess­ful Euro­pean social demo­c­rat, Trump is only and absolute­ly of Amer­i­ca.

Part of the Trump dan­ger is that he’s cap­tured an Amer­i­can irre­den­tism, a desire to reclaim some­thing — pow­er, con­fi­dence, ris­ing incomes — that many peo­ple feel is lost. Trump is a late har­vest of 9/11 and the fears that took hold that day. He’s the focus of vague hopes and dim resent­ments that have turned him into a sav­ior in wait­ing. As with Ronald Rea­gan, it’s not the specifics with Trump, it’s a feel­ing, a vibra­tion — and no mat­ter how much he dis­sem­bles, reveals him­self as a thug, traf­fics in con­tra­dic­tions, the rapt­ness per­sists. Europe is trans­fixed. The Ger­man newsweek­ly “Der Spiegel” has called Trump “the world’s most dan­ger­ous man” and even waxed nos­tal­gic for Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, which for a Euro­pean pub­li­ca­tion is like sud­den­ly dis­cov­er­ing a soft spot for Drac­u­la. The French prime min­is­ter, Manuel Valls, has tweet­ed that Trump “fuels hatred.” In Britain, Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron has attacked Trump’s pro­posed ban on non-Amer­i­can Mus­lims enter­ing the Unit­ed States, and more than half a mil­lion peo­ple have signed a peti­tion urg­ing that he be kept out of Britain. This week­end Britain’s Sun­day Times ran a page-size pho­to of Trump in Lord Kitch­en­er pose with a blar­ing head­line: “Amer­i­ca Wants Me.”

So do a few Euro­peans, among them the French right­ist Jean-Marie Le Pen. Vladimir Putin, the Russ­ian pres­i­dent, is a fan, as are some Russ­ian oli­garchs. Judge a man by the com­pa­ny he keeps.

This dis­ori­ent­ed Amer­i­ca just might want Trump — and that pos­si­bil­i­ty should be tak­en very seri­ous­ly, before it is too late, by every believ­er in Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment of the peo­ple, by the peo­ple, for the peo­ple. The pow­er of the Oval Office and the tem­pera­ment of a bul­ly make for an explo­sive com­bi­na­tion, espe­cial­ly when he has shown con­tempt for the press, a taste for vio­lence, a con­sis­tent inhu­man­i­ty, a devour­ing ego and an above-the-law swag­ger.

As Europe knows, democ­ra­cies do die. Often, they are the mid­wives of their own demise. Once lost, the cost of recov­ery is high.

3. Euro­peans are hard­ly in a posi­tion to look down on Trump–European pol­i­tics are expe­ri­enc­ing the same “Per­fect Sturm.” Not only are fas­cist par­ties rid­ing a crest of pop­u­lar­i­ty in Europe over the “anti-immi­grant” gam­bit, but fas­cism was nev­er expunged from Europe, due to Cold War pol­i­tics which will be high­light­ed below. We note that Slo­va­kia is among the coun­tries wit­ness­ing the ascent of fas­cist par­ties.

The “Troi­ka” (read “Ger­many”) man­dat­ed the instal­la­tion of the fas­cist LAOS Par­ty as part of the pro­vi­sion­al Greek gov­ern­ment in the late fall of 2011. The Greek cit­i­zen­ry had NO say in this, what­so­ev­er.

“In Slo­va­kia, A ‘Fascist’-Led Par­ty Gains Seats” by Ben Thomp­son; The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor; 3/6/2016.

. . . . The extreme-right People’s Par­ty took in 8 per­cent of the votes and 14 seats in par­lia­ment. Despite the elec­toral split, Fico said he would work to rebuild a coali­tion that could take con­trol going for­ward, pos­si­bly with the Slo­vak Nation­al Par­ty, which took in 8.6 per­cent of the votes cast.

“As the par­ty that won the elec­tion we have the oblig­a­tion to try build a mean­ing­ful and sta­ble gov­ern­ment,” Fico said, per The Guardian. “It will not be easy, I am say­ing that very clear­ly.”

In order to win back the major­i­ty gov­ern­ment, Fico’s par­ty could need to form an alliance with mul­ti­ple groups, which the prime min­is­ter had hoped to avoid. Fico’s par­ty entered the elec­tion with a plat­form that includ­ed strong anti-migrant and anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments, despite Slovakia’s absence from the main migrant routes through Europe and rel­a­tive dis­con­nect from the ongo­ing cri­sis relat­ed to that issue.

As oth­er coun­tries in the Balkan region and Cen­tral Europe are caught in the midst of a migra­tion surge, Fico’s oppo­si­tion to allow­ing refugee quo­tas backed by the EU and his resis­tance to the “fic­tion” of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism makes Slo­va­kia one of the Euro­pean nations not open to the migrant flow.

Despite that Smer-Social Democ­ra­cy posi­tion, issues in Slo­va­kia includ­ing teacher strikes, unem­ploy­ment, and cor­rup­tion in the health­care sys­tem may have divert­ed votes from Fico’s migrant-heavy plat­form to the oth­er par­ties’ greater focus on domes­tic issues, includ­ing the People’s Par­ty, chaired by Mar­i­an Kotle­ba.

Mr. Kotle­ba, a for­mer leader of a now-banned neo-Nazi par­ty, gained noto­ri­ety in 2013 dur­ing a suc­cess­ful cam­paign for region­al gov­er­nor in which he praised the Slo­vak Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment dur­ing World War II. The Econ­o­mist describes him as “once fond of wear­ing uni­forms in the 1930s and 40s fas­cist style.” . . . .

4. The so-called “pro­gres­sive sec­tor” is in no posi­tion to intel­li­gent­ly crit­i­cize Trump, because they have allied them­selves with the milieu of Wik­iLeaks, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook and Glenn Green­wald, who are part and par­cel to the pol­i­tics of David Duke, the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment and apol­o­gists for slav­ery. The polit­i­cal forces that Tim Egan cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fies as being “Trumpers” are pre­cise­ly the forces that are behind the Snow­denistas and Assange­holes.

5.The Dulles broth­ers, as we have seen so often, were part and par­cel to the estab­lish­ment of the Ger­man cor­po­rate and car­tel struc­ture that spawned Hitler. For back­ground on this, we recommend–among oth­er sources–the old anti-fas­cist books avail­able for down­load on this web­site. We have done numer­ous shows on the sub­ject, begin­ning with Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 18–19.

. . . . Sul­li­van and Cromwell, the Dulles broth­ers’ Wall Street law firm, was at the cen­ter of an intri­cate inter­na­tion­al net­work of banks, invest­ment firms, and indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ates that rebuilt Ger­many after World War 1. Fos­ter, the law fir­m’s top exec­u­tive, grew skilled at struc­tur­ing the com­plex mer­ry-go-round of trans­ac­tions that fun­neled mas­sive U.S. invest­ments into Ger­man indus­tri­al giants like the IG Far­ben chem­i­cal con­glom­er­ate and Krupp Steel. The prof­its gen­er­at­ed by these invest­ments then flowed to France and Britain in the form of war repa­ra­tions, and then back to the Unit­ed States to pay off war loans.

Fos­ter Dulles became so deeply enmeshed in the lucra­tive revi­tal­iza­tion of Ger­many that he found it dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate his fir­m’s inter­ests from those of the ris­ing eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary power–even after Hitler con­sol­i­dat­ed con­trol over the coun­try in the 1930s. Fos­ter con­tin­ued to rep­re­sent Ger­man car­tels like IG Far­ben as they were inte­grat­ed into the Nazis’ grow­ing war machine, help­ing the indus­tri­al giants secure access to key war mate­ri­als. He donat­ed mon­ey to Amer­i­ca First, the cam­paign to keep the Unit­ed States out of the gath­er­ing tem­pest in Europe, and helped spon­sor a ral­ly hon­or­ing Charles Lind­bergh, the fair-haired avi­a­tion hero who had become enchant­ed by Hitler’s mirac­u­lous revival of Ger­many. Fos­ter refused to shut down the Berlin office of Sul­li­van and Cromwell–whose attor­neys were [alleged­ly] forced to sign their cor­re­spon­dence “Heil Hitler”–until his part­ners (includ­ing Allen), fear­ful of a pub­lic rela­tions dis­as­ter, insist­ed he do so. When Fos­ter final­ly gave in–at an extreme­ly tense 1935 part­ners’ meet­ing in the fir­m’s lav­ish offices at 48 Wall Street–he broke down in tears. . . .

6. Both Dulles broth­ers con­spired to shut down Oper­a­tion Safe­haven, safe­guard­ing their cor­po­rate rela­tion­ships with Third Reich indus­try and paving the way for the rise of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work. “. . . . More­over, like many in the upper ech­e­lons of U.S. finance and nation­al secu­ri­ty, Dulles believed that a good num­ber of these pow­er­ful Ger­man fig­ures should be returned to pow­er, to ensure that Ger­many would be a strong bul­wark against the Sovi­et Union. And dur­ing the Cold War, he would be more intent on using Nazi loot to finance covert anti-Sovi­et oper­a­tions than on return­ing it to the fam­i­lies of Hitler’s vic­tims. .  . .”

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 27–29.

. . . . Dulles and [Thomas] McKit­trick [of the Bank of Inter­na­tion­al Set­tlem­nts] con­tin­ued to work close­ly togeth­er for the rest of the war. In the final months of the con­flict, the two men col­lab­o­rat­ed against a Roo­sevelt oper­a­tion called Project Safe­haven that sought to track down and con­fis­cate Nazi assets that were stashed in neu­tral coun­tries. Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials feared that, by hid­ing their ill-got­ten wealth, mem­bers of the Ger­man elite planned to bide their time after the war and would then try to regain pow­er. Mor­gen­thau’s Trea­sury Depart­ment team, which spear­head­ed Project Safe­haven, reached out to the OSS and BIS for assis­tance. But Dulles and McKit­trick were more inclined to pro­tect their clients’ inter­ests. More­over, like many in the upper ech­e­lons of U.S. finance and nation­al secu­ri­ty, Dulles believed that a good num­ber of these pow­er­ful Ger­man fig­ures should be returned to pow­er, to ensure that Ger­many would be a strong bul­wark against the Sovi­et Union. And dur­ing the Cold War, he would be more intent on using Nazi loot to finance covert anti-Sovi­et oper­a­tions than on return­ing it to the fam­i­lies of Hitler’s vic­tims.

Dulles real­ized that none of his argu­ments against Project Safe­haven would be well received by Mor­gen­thau. So he resort­ed to time-hon­ored meth­ods of bureau­crat­ic stalling and sab­o­tage to help sink the oper­a­tion, explain­ing in a Decem­ber 1944 memo to his OSS supe­ri­ors that his Bern office lacked “ade­quate per­son­nel to do [an] effec­tive job in this field and meet oth­er demands.” . . . .

. . . . While Allen Dulles was using his OSS post in Switzer­land to pro­tect the inter­ests of Sul­li­van and Cromwell’s Ger­man clients, his broth­er was doing the same in New York. By play­ing an intri­cate cor­po­rate shell game, Fos­ter was able to hide the U.S. assets of major Ger­man car­tels like IG Far­ben and Mer­ck KGaA, the chem­i­cal and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant, and pro­tect these sub­sidiaries from being con­fis­cat­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment as alien prop­er­ty. Some of Fos­ter’s legal origa­mi allowed the Nazi regime to cre­ate bot­tle­necks in the pro­duc­tion of essen­tial war materials–such as diesel-fuel injec­tion motors that the U.S. mil­i­tary need­ed for trucks, sub­marines, and air­planes. By the end of the war, many of Fos­ter’s clients were under inves­ti­ga­tion by the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s antitrust divi­sion. And Fos­ter him­self was under scruti­ny for col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ene­my.

But Fos­ter’s broth­er was guard­ing his back. From his front­line posi­tion in Europe, Allen was well-placed to destroy incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence and to block any inves­ti­ga­tions that threat­ened the two broth­ers and their law firm. “Shred­ding of cap­tured Nazi records was the favorite tac­tic of Dulles and his [asso­ciates] who stayed behind to help run the occu­pa­tion of post­war Ger­many,” observed Nazi hunter John Lof­tus, who pored through numer­ous war doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Dulles broth­ers when he served as a U.S. pros­e­cu­tor in the Jus­tice Depart­ment under Pres­i­dent Jim­my Carter.

If their pow­er­ful ene­my in the White House had sur­vived the war, the Dulles broth­ers would like­ly have faced seri­ous crim­i­nal charges for their wartime activ­i­ties. Supreme Court Jus­tice Arthur Gold­berg, who as a young man served with Allen in the OSS, lat­er declared that both Dulle­ses were guilty of trea­son. . . .

7a. In FTR #‘s 278, 370, 435 and 475, we dis­cussed the Bush fam­i­ly, their links to Nazi indus­try and Mr. Emory’s belief that the Bush fam­i­ly is the point ele­ment of the Bor­mann net­work in the U.S. FTR #370, in par­tic­u­lar, high­lights the vio­lent cov­er-up of the Bush family/Thyssen link. Note that Bor­mann saw Fritz Thyssen as a pipeline to Allen Dulles.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 254.

. . . . Also, Bor­mann felt [Fritz] Thyssen was his ace in the hole if he ever need­ed a pipeline to Allen W. Dulles. . . .

7b. Much of the dis­cus­sion that fol­lows con­cerns Dulles’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Rein­hard Gehlen. Note that Gehlen cleared his actions with Admi­ral Doenitz (Hitler’s suc­ces­sor) and Gen­er­al Franz Halder, indi­cat­ing that the Ger­man chain of com­mand was still in effect even after Gehlen began work­ing with the U.S.

“The Secret Treaty of Fort Hunt” by Carl Ogles­by; Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin;  #35 (Fall of 1990.)

Gehlen met with Admi­ral Karl Doenitz, who had been appoint­ed by Hitler as his suc­ces­sor dur­ing the last days of the Third Reich. Gehlen and the Admi­ral were now in a U.S. Army VIP prison camp in Wies­baden; Gehlen sought and received approval from Doenitz too! . . .44 

. . . . As Gehlen was about to leave for the Unit­ed States, he left a mes­sage for Baun with anoth­er of his top aides, Ger­hard Wes­sel: “I am to tell you from Gehlen that he has dis­cussed with [Hitler’s suc­ces­sor Admi­ral Karl] Doenitz and [Gehlen’s supe­rior and chief of staff Gen­eral Franz] Halder the ques­tion of con­tin­u­ing his work with the Amer­i­cans. Both were in agree­ment.”

In oth­er words, the Ger­man chain of com­mand was still in effect, and it approved of what Gehlen was doing with the Amer­i­cans.

7c. Bor­man­n’s FBI file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name in New York for some time. As we have seen in FTR #305, the CIA active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Bor­mann net­work. Note that, in the pas­sage below, Bor­mann wrote three checks drawn from demand accounts in three U.S. com­mer­cial banks in August of 1967. In April and June of the fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assas­si­nat­ed.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 205.

. . . . The file revealed that he had been bank­ing under his own name from his office in Ger­many in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argen­tin­ian dic­ta­tor Juan Per­on, and on August 4, 5 and 14, 1967, had writ­ten checks on demand accounts in first Nation­al City Bank (Over­seas Divi­sion) of New York, The Chase Man­hat­tan Bank, and Man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires. . . .

8. Prescott Bush, Sr. was the Sen­ate’s liai­son with Dulles’s CIA.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 249–250.

 . . . . Dulles’s CIA oper­at­ed with vir­tu­al­ly no con­gres­sion­al over­sight. In the Sen­ate, Dulles relied on Wall Street friends like Prescott Bush of Connecticut–the father and grand­fa­ther of two future presidents–to pro­tect the CIA’s inter­ests. Accord­ing to CIA vet­er­an Robert Crow­ley, who rose to become sec­ond-in-com­mand of the CIA’s action arm, Bush “was the day-to-day con­tact man for the CIA. It was very bipar­ti­san and friend­ly. Dulles felt that he had the Sen­ate just where he want­ed them.” . . . .

9a. With the con­nivance of Dules’s CIA, Gehlen pur­sued the Cold War as an exten­sion of the Third Reich’s war against the Sovi­et Union.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 277–278.

. . . . The Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion saw the Cold War as the final act of the Reich’s inter­rupt­ed offen­sive against the Sovi­et Union. . . .

The covert Cold War in the West was, to an unset­tling extent, a joint oper­a­tion between the Dulles regime and that of Rein­hard Gehlen. The Ger­man spy chief’s patho­log­i­cal fear and hatred of Rus­sia, which had its roots in Hitler’s Third Reich, meshed smooth­ly with the Dulles broth­ers’ anti-Sovi­et abso­lutism. In fact, the Dulles pol­i­cy of mas­sive nuclear retal­i­a­tion bore a dis­turb­ing resem­blance to the Nazis’ eter­mi­na­tion­ist phi­los­o­phy. . . . We live “in an age in which war is a para­mount activ­i­ty of man,” Gehlen announced in his mem­oir [pref­aced by Holo­caust-denier David Irving–D.E.], “with the total anni­hi­la­tion of the ene­my as its pri­ma­ry aim.” There could be no more suc­cinct a state­ment of the fas­cist ethos. . . .

9b. Next, the pro­gram details the Gehlen/Dulles author­ship of the “Stay Behind/Gladio” net­works. “. . . . He [Gehlen] was pre­pared to take dras­tic action to pre­vent such a polit­i­cal sce­nario from unfold­ing in Bonn–going so far as to over­throw democ­ra­cy in West Ger­many if nec­es­sary. . . . It is unlike­ly that Dulles was shocked by Gehlen’s pro­pos­al to rein­sti­tute fas­cism in Ger­many, since CIA offi­cials had long ben dis­cussing such author­i­tar­i­an con­tin­gency plans with the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion oth­er right-wing ele­ments in Ger­many. . . .”

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 281–283.

. . . . He [Gehlen] was pre­pared to take dras­tic action to pre­vent such a polit­i­cal sce­nario from unfold­ing in Bonn–going so far as to over­throw democ­ra­cy in West Ger­many if nec­es­sary. . . . It is unlike­ly that Dulles was shocked by Gehlen’s pro­pos­al to rein­sti­tute fas­cism in Ger­many, since CIA offi­cials had long ben dis­cussing such author­i­tar­i­an con­tin­gency plans with the Gehlen Orga­ni­za­tion oth­er right-wing ele­ments in Ger­many. In 1952, West Ger­man police dis­cov­ered that the CIA was sup­port­ing a two-thou­sand-mem­ber fas­cist youth group led by ex-Nazi offi­cers who had their own alarm­ing plans for ter­mi­nat­ing democ­ra­cy. Police inves­ti­ga­tors revealed that the CIA-backed group had com­piled a black­list of peo­ple to be “liq­ui­dat­ed” as “unre­li­able” in case of a con­flict with the Sovi­et Union. Includ­ed on the list were not just West Ger­man Com­mu­nists but lead­ers of the Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty serv­ing in the Bun­destag, as well as oth­er left-lean­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials. There were cries of out­rage in the Ger­man par­lia­ment over the rev­e­la­tions, but the State Depart­ment worked stren­u­ous­ly behind the scenes to sup­press the sto­ry, and sim­i­lar alarm­ing mea­sures con­tin­ued to be qui­et­ly con­tem­plat­ed through­out the Cold War.

These author­i­tar­i­an plans were part of a sweep­ing covert strat­e­gy devel­oped in the ear­li­est days of the Cold War by U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials, includ­ing Dulles, to counter a pos­si­ble Sovi­et inva­sion of West­ern Europe by cre­at­ing a “stay-behind net­work” of armed resisters to fight the Red Army. Code-named Oper­a­tion Glad­io, these secret CIA-fund­ed net­works attract­ed fas­cist and crim­i­nal ele­ments, some of which lat­er played sub­ver­sive roles in West Ger­many, France, and Italy, dis­rupt­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic rule in those coun­tries by stag­ing ter­ror­ist acts and plot­ting coups and assas­si­na­tions.

In the end, Gehlen did­n’t feel the need to over­throw democ­ra­cy in Bonn, but his orga­ni­za­tion did under­take a vari­ety of secret activ­i­ties over the years that seri­ous­ly under­mined demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions in Ger­many. Backed by U.S. intel­li­gence, Hitler’s for­mer spy­mas­ter imple­ment­ed wide-rang­ing sur­veil­lance of West Ger­man offi­cials and cit­i­zens, includ­ing open­ing pri­vate mail and tap­ping phones. Gehlen defend­ed the snoop­ing as an inter­nal secu­ri­ty mea­sure aimed at fer­ret­ing out Sovi­et and East Ger­man spies, but his net grew wider and wider until it was cast across an increas­ing­ly broad spec­trum of pop­u­la­tion, includ­ing oppo­si­tion par­ty lead­ers, labor union offi­cials, jour­nal­ists and school­teach­ers. Gehlen even used his spy appa­ra­tus to inves­ti­gate sur­vivors of the Valkyrie plot against Hitler . . . .

. . . . Gehlen was act­ing not just on behalf of his U.S. patrons, but his clients in Bonn. Even some CIA offi­cials wor­ried that Gehlen was being improp­er­ly used by Hans Globke to gath­er infor­ma­tion on polit­i­cal oppo­nents and for­ti­fy the Ade­nauer admin­is­tra­tion’s pow­er. . . . On one occa­sion in the 1950s, the savvy Globke paid a vis­it to Gehlen’s Pul­lach head­quar­ters, por­ing over the dossiers of var­i­ous Ger­man polit­i­cal figures–and tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to remove his own file. . . .

9c. As we have seen, Hans Globke was Ade­nauer’s emi­nence grise and the archi­tect of the Nurem­burg laws.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; p. 279.

. . . . High among those [for­mer Third Reich] offi­cials was Chan­cel­lor Ade­nauer’s right-hand man Hans Globke, who had helped draft the noto­ri­ous Nurem­berg Laws, the racial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem that served as the basis for the exter­mi­na­tion of Ger­man Jews. . . .

10a. We review analy­sis of the Cru­sade For Freedom–the covert oper­a­tion that brought Third Reich alum­ni into the coun­try and also sup­port­ed their gueril­la war­fare in East­ern Europe, con­duct­ed up until the ear­ly 1950’s. Con­ceived by Allen Dulles, over­seen by Richard Nixon, pub­licly rep­re­sent­ed by Ronald Rea­gan and real­ized in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by William Casey, the CFF ulti­mate­ly evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP.

The Secret War Against the Jews; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; [HC] ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; pp. 122–123.

. . . . Frus­tra­tion over Truman’s 1948 elec­tion vic­to­ry over Dewey (which they blamed on the “Jew­ish vote”) impelled Dulles and his pro­tégé Richard Nixon to work toward the real­iza­tion of the fas­cist free­dom fight­er pres­ence in the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion. As a young con­gress­man, Nixon had been Allen Dulles’s con­fi­dant. They both blamed Gov­er­nor Dewey’s razor-thin loss to Tru­man in the 1948 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion on the Jew­ish vote. When he became Eisenhower’s vice pres­i­dent in 1952, Nixon was deter­mined to build his own eth­nic base. . . .

. . . . Vice Pres­i­dent Nixon’s secret polit­i­cal war of Nazis against Jews in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics was nev­er inves­ti­gat­ed at the time. The for­eign lan­guage-speak­ing Croa­t­ians and oth­er Fas­cist émi­gré groups had a ready-made net­work for con­tact­ing and mobi­liz­ing the East­ern Euro­pean eth­nic bloc. There is a very high cor­re­la­tion between CIA domes­tic sub­si­dies to Fas­cist ‘free­dom fight­ers’ dur­ing the 1950’s and the lead­er­ship of the Repub­li­can Party’s eth­nic cam­paign groups. The motive for the under-the-table financ­ing was clear: Nixon used Nazis to off­set the Jew­ish vote for the Democ­rats. . . .

. . . . In 1952, Nixon had formed an Eth­nic Divi­sion with­in the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Dis­placed fas­cists, hop­ing to be returned to pow­er by an Eisen­how­er-Nixon ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­i­cy signed on with the com­mit­tee. In 1953, when Repub­li­cans were in office, the immi­gra­tion laws were changed to admit Nazis, even mem­bers of the SS. They flood­ed into the coun­try. Nixon him­self over­saw the new immi­gra­tion pro­gram. As Vice Pres­i­dent, he even received East­ern Euro­pean Fas­cists in the White House. . .

10b. More about the com­po­si­tion of the cast of the CFF: Note that the ascen­sion of the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion was essen­tial­ly the ascen­sion of the Naz­i­fied GOP, embod­ied in the CFF milieu. Rea­gan (spokesman for CFF) was Pres­i­dent; George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA head­quar­ters is named) was the Vice Pres­i­dent; William Casey (who han­dled the State Depart­ment machi­na­tions to bring these peo­ple into the Unit­ed States) was Rea­gan’s cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er his CIA direc­tor.

The Secret War Against the Jews; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 by Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press; [HC] ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; p. 605.

. . . . As a young movie actor in the ear­ly 1950s, Rea­gan was employed as the pub­lic spokesper­son for an OPC front named the ‘Cru­sade for Free­dom.’ Rea­gan may not have known it, but 99 per­cent for the Crusade’s funds came from clan­des­tine accounts, which were then laun­dered through the Cru­sade to var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions such as Radio Lib­er­ty, which employed Dulles’s Fas­cists. Bill Casey, who lat­er became CIA direc­tor under Ronald Rea­gan, also worked in Ger­many after World War II on Dulles’ Nazi ‘free­dom fight­ers’ pro­gram. When he returned to New York, Casey head­ed up anoth­er OPC front, the Inter­na­tion­al Res­cue Com­mit­tee, which spon­sored the immi­gra­tion of these Fas­cists to the Unit­ed States. Casey’s com­mit­tee replaced the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross as the spon­sor for Dulles’s recruits. Con­fi­den­tial inter­views, for­mer mem­bers, OPC; for­mer mem­bers, British for­eign and Com­mon­wealth Office. . . .

10c. While serv­ing as chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, the elder George Bush shep­herd­ed the Nazi émi­gré com­mu­ni­ty into posi­tion as a per­ma­nent branch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty.
. . . . .It was Bush who ful­filled Nixon’s promise to make the ‘eth­nic emi­gres’ a per­ma­nent part of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. In 1972, Nixon’s State Depart­ment spokesman con­firmed to his Aus­tralian coun­ter­part that the eth­nic groups were very use­ful to get out the vote in sev­er­al key states. Bush’s tenure as head of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee exact­ly coin­cid­ed with Las­z­lo Pasztor’s 1972 dri­ve to trans­form the Her­itage Groups Coun­cil into the party’s offi­cial eth­nic arm. The groups Pasz­tor chose as Bush’s cam­paign allies were the émi­gré Fas­cists whom Dulles had brought to the Unit­ed States. . . . 

12. We con­clude with a look at The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, begin­ning with the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

The Dev­il’s Chess­board: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Amer­i­ca’s Secret Gov­ern­ment by David Tal­bot; Harp­er [HC]; 2015; Copy­right 2015 by The Tal­bot Play­ers LLC; ISBN 978–0‑06–227616‑2; pp. 383–384.

 . . . . As the Con­go cri­sis reached its cli­max, a new cor­re­spon­dent for The New York Times showed up in Leopoldville with a dis­tinct­ly anti-Lumum­ba bias. Paul Hof­mann was a diminu­tive, sophis­ti­cat­ed Aus­tri­an with a col­or­ful past. Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. The Angle­ton fam­i­ly helped place Hof­mann in the Rome bureau of The New York Times, where he con­tin­ued to be of use to his friends in U.S. intel­li­gence, trans­lat­ing reports from con­fi­den­tial sources inside the Vat­i­can and pass­ing them along to Angle­ton. Hof­mann became one of the Times’s lead­ing for­eign cor­re­spon­dents, even­tu­al­ly tak­ing over the news­pa­per’s Rome bureau and para­chut­ing from time to time into inter­na­tion­al hot spots like the Con­go. . . .

Discussion

53 comments for “FTR #894 Physicians, Heal Thyselves: Hypocrisy and the Trump Campaign”

  1. House­keep­ing Note: Com­ments 1–50 avail­able here.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 4, 2017, 4:15 pm
  2. Check out the next head of the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion: a Wall Street defense lawyer from Sul­li­van & Cromwell:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Trump to tap Wall Street lawyer, Jay Clay­ton, to head SEC

    By Renae Mer­le
    Jan­u­ary 4, 2017 at 11:45 AM

    NEW YORK — Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump announced on Wednes­day that he will nom­i­nate Wall Street lawyer, Jay Clay­ton, to head the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion.

    As chair of the SEC, which polices Wall Street and the finan­cial mar­kets, Clay­ton would play a key role in Trump’s efforts to ush­er in a peri­od of dereg­u­la­tion, includ­ing undo­ing parts of 2010’s finan­cial reform leg­is­la­tion, known as the Dodd-Frank Act.

    “Jay Clay­ton is a high­ly tal­ent­ed expert on many aspects of finan­cial and reg­u­la­to­ry law, and he will ensure our finan­cial insti­tu­tions can thrive and cre­ate jobs while play­ing by the rules at the same time,” Trump said in a state­ment.

    If con­firmed by the Sen­ate, Clay­ton would replace Mary Jo White, who announced short­ly after the elec­tion that she would step down.

    White, a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor, is known for a no-non­sense style and beefed up the agency’s enforce­ment efforts over the last three years, push­ing for more com­pa­nies to admit guilt and tak­ing more cas­es to tri­al. And dur­ing her term, the SEC has been a cen­tral play­er part of the Oba­ma administration’s effort to rein in big banks fol­low­ing the 2008 finan­cial cri­sis and pre­vent future tax­pay­er bailouts of the indus­try. The agency has pushed for more over­sight of hedge funds and oth­er asset man­agers and has estab­lished rules that make it more dif­fi­cult for big banks to make risky bets on the mar­kets.

    But Trump is wide­ly expect­ed to roll back some of the bank­ing indus­try reg­u­la­tions the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion put in place.

    “We need to undo many reg­u­la­tions which have sti­fled invest­ment in Amer­i­can busi­ness­es, and restore over­sight of the finan­cial indus­try in a way that does not harm Amer­i­can work­ers,” Trump said.

    ...

    Clay­ton is a part­ner at Sul­li­van & Cromwell, a well-known law firm, and has rep­re­sent­ed some of the biggest names on Wall Street, includ­ing Gold­man Sachs and Bar­clays, and helped them weath­er reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny. He has also helped large com­pa­nies raise mon­ey through an ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing, includ­ing Aliba­ba, the Chi­nese retail giant. But, accord­ing to the biog­ra­phy on the Sul­li­van & Cromwell web­site has not held any gov­ern­ment posi­tions and has nev­er served as a pros­e­cu­tor.

    “Mr. Clay­ton’s back­ground is as a Wall Street defense lawyer — and while that’s hard­ly unprece­dent­ed in these kind of nom­i­na­tions, we believe it’s not the appro­pri­ate back­ground for a top posi­tion polic­ing Wall Street,” said Mar­cus Stan­ley, pol­i­cy direc­tor for Amer­i­cans for Finan­cial Reform. “We look for­ward to tough ques­tion­ing from the Sen­ate regard­ing his posi­tions on spe­cif­ic issues”

    His nom­i­na­tion drew a quick Twit­ter response from Hillary Clin­ton’s for­mer cam­paign deputy press sec­re­tary.

    I’m sure Trump cam­paigned on appoint­ing a Wall Street attor­ney who rep­re­sent­ed Gold­man Sachs to over­see Wall Street at SEC, right? https://t.co/0Gki9nxqg5— Jesse Fer­gu­son (@JesseFFerguson) Jan­u­ary 4, 2017

    In addi­tion to replac­ing White, Trump will be able to fill two open­ings on the five-mem­ber SEC com­mis­sion. Also, Thomas Cur­ry, the head of the Office of the Comp­trol­ler of the Cur­ren­cy, anoth­er impor­tant Wall Street reg­u­la­tor, has less than six months on his term and Tim­o­thy Mas­sad, chair­man of the Com­mod­i­ty Futures Trad­ing Com­mis­sion, announced ear­li­er this week that he would step down. Togeth­er, the open­ings should give the Trump admin­is­tra­tion wide lat­i­tude to change the way Wall Street is reg­u­lat­ed.

    Clay­ton is a part­ner at Sul­li­van & Cromwell, a well-known law firm, and has rep­re­sent­ed some of the biggest names on Wall Street, includ­ing Gold­man Sachs and Bar­clays, and helped them weath­er reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny. He has also helped large com­pa­nies raise mon­ey through an ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing, includ­ing Aliba­ba, the Chi­nese retail giant. But, accord­ing to the biog­ra­phy on the Sul­li­van & Cromwell web­site has not held any gov­ern­ment posi­tions and has nev­er served as a pros­e­cu­tor.”

    A Wall Street defense lawyer with no pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al or gov­ern­ment expe­ri­ence. Sounds super qual­i­fied.

    And if you’re won­der­ing how the Trump team decid­ed upon some­one like Clay­ton, just take a look at the Trump tran­si­tion team’s point man on finan­cial reg­u­la­tion: Paul Atkins, board mem­ber of George W. Bush’s SEC from 2002–2008:

    The Wall Street Jour­nal

    Don­ald Trump’s Point Man on Finan­cial Reg­u­la­tion: A For­mer Reg­u­la­tor Who Favors a Light Touch
    As an SEC com­mis­sion­er, Paul Atkins protest­ed large fines against com­pa­nies and sweep­ing stock-trad­ing require­ments

    By Andrew Ack­er­man and Dave Michaels
    Updat­ed Nov. 11, 2016 1:16 p.m. ET

    WASHINGTON—Donald Trump has tapped a long­time crit­ic of heavy reg­u­la­tion to flesh out his new administration’s plans for remak­ing the finan­cial rule book, includ­ing the poten­tial dis­man­tling of much of the Dodd-Frank finan­cial over­haul.

    Paul Atkins served as a Repub­li­can mem­ber of the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion from 2002 to 2008, where he spoke out against big fines for com­pa­nies, argu­ing they pun­ish share­hold­ers. Now Mr. Atkins, 58 years old, is the mem­ber of the president-elect’s tran­si­tion team charged with rec­om­mend­ing poli­cies on finan­cial reg­u­la­tion, accord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer reg­u­la­tors briefed on the mat­ter.

    Mr. Trump has detailed lit­tle about his views on finan­cial reg­u­la­tion beyond his vow to dis­man­tle the 2010 Dodd-Frank law—a cam­paign promise on which his tran­si­tion team pri­vate­ly has sought to tem­per expec­ta­tions, say­ing the focus was on rescind­ing or scal­ing back indi­vid­ual pro­vi­sions of the law that Repub­li­cans find most objec­tion­able.

    The fact that Mr. Trump has turned to Mr. Atkins for rec­om­men­da­tions pro­vides an addi­tion­al win­dow into how the pres­i­dent-elect is like­ly to gov­ern. Mr. Atkins, too, has repeat­ed­ly assailed Dodd-Frank, tar­get­ing pro­vi­sions such as the cre­ation of a sys­temic-risk coun­cil that has the pow­er to des­ig­nate large finan­cial firms for bank­like reg­u­la­tion from the Fed­er­al Reserve. Mr. Atkins has said the coun­cil will “sub­sti­tute gov­ern­ment judg­ments for investor judg­ments, decid­ing for investors whether a prod­uct mer­its invest­ment.”

    An aide to Mr. Atkins referred requests for com­ment to the Trump tran­si­tion team, which didn’t imme­di­ate­ly com­ment.

    Mr. Atkins, who grew up in Tam­pa, Fla. and attend­ed Van­der­bilt Law School, is a staunch lib­er­tar­i­an. He first worked at the SEC in 1990 as an aide to Richard Bree­den, then the Repub­li­can chair­man. His work impressed Arthur Levitt, a Demo­c­rat who took over the agency in 1993 and who asked Mr. Atkins to stay as part of a small group of advis­ers to the new chair­man. “I said, ‘I don’t care what par­ty you came from,’ ” Mr. Levitt said in an inter­view.

    A decade lat­er, dur­ing his time as an SEC com­mis­sion­er, Mr. Atkins became an out­spo­ken crit­ic of the agency’s approach to crack­ing down on cor­po­rate mis­deeds through large penal­ties against firms that agreed to set­tle fraud charges. For instance, he dis­sent­ed when the agency levied a $250 mil­lion fine against Qwest Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in 2004 for what it described as per­va­sive account­ing fraud through­out the now-defunct telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firm.

    Pro­po­nents argue that large finan­cial penal­ties deter com­pa­nies from engag­ing in ille­gal behav­ior. But Mr. Atkins main­tains they pun­ish share­hold­ers who already have been vic­tim­ized by a company’s fraud, fur­ther dam­ag­ing the val­ue of cor­po­rate shares.

    “Are we just sort of head­line-grab­bing?” he asked in a 2005 inter­view with Busi­ness Week. “Is that real­ly the best way to deter bad con­duct, by hurt­ing the peo­ple that we’re sup­pos­ed­ly help­ing? No. The best solu­tion is to hold indi­vid­u­als account­able because some­one in the com­pa­ny cooked the books.”

    Richard Ketchum, a for­mer head of the Finan­cial Indus­try Reg­u­la­to­ry Author­i­ty, said in an inter­view that Mr. Atkins’s “basic judg­ments are ques­tion­ing reg­u­la­tion and being very pro” dereg­u­la­tion.

    At the SEC, Mr. Atkins repeat­ed­ly crit­i­cized the scope of finan­cial reg­u­la­tion, which he warned often came at the expense of mar­ket com­pe­ti­tion and could lead to unfore­seen con­se­quences.

    ...

    “Paul Atkins served as a Repub­li­can mem­ber of the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion from 2002 to 2008, where he spoke out against big fines for com­pa­nies, argu­ing they pun­ish share­hold­ers. Now Mr. Atkins, 58 years old, is the mem­ber of the president-elect’s tran­si­tion team charged with rec­om­mend­ing poli­cies on finan­cial reg­u­la­tion, accord­ing to cur­rent and for­mer reg­u­la­tors briefed on the mat­ter.”

    Well, at least it looks like the Trump admin­is­tra­tion will cre­ate an abun­dance of new jobs in the field of bank­rupt­cy law. But note what Mr. Atkins said he would pre­fer to see instead of large fines back in 2005: hold­ing indi­vid­u­als account­able at the com­pa­nies:

    ...
    “Are we just sort of head­line-grab­bing?” he asked in a 2005 inter­view with Busi­ness Week. “Is that real­ly the best way to deter bad con­duct, by hurt­ing the peo­ple that we’re sup­pos­ed­ly help­ing? No. The best solu­tion is to hold indi­vid­u­als account­able because some­one in the com­pa­ny cooked the books.
    ...

    “The best solu­tion is to hold indi­vid­u­als account­able because some­one in the com­pa­ny cooked the books.”

    Well, while it would be nice to think that Atkins was refer­ring to jail­ing the CEOs of banks caught in a mega-scan­dal or some­thing, the CEOs prob­a­bly aren’t the “indi­vid­u­als” he and his bankster ilk would pre­fer to see held account­able. And cer­tain­ly not with a jail sen­tence. But it does remind us of some­thing that should become a pub­lic demand as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion basi­cal­ly does what it can to repeat the mis­takes that led up to the finan­cial cri­sis: If the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is going to dereg­u­late Wall Street and things pre­dictably go bad due to pre­dictable bankster malfea­sance, bankers need to actu­al­ly go to jail this time around. Top bankers. Not some low-lev­el fall guy.

    Sure, it’s a fruit­less dream that Trump would ever do any­thing to harm his bil­lion­aire bud­dies but it’s still impor­tant to raise the issue. Per­haps even urgent.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 4, 2017, 4:17 pm
  3. Haven’t seen it post­ed on Spit­firelist yet, so it’s worth men­tion­ing that “Dev­il’s Chess­board” and Salon.com founder David Tal­bot had a stroke in Novem­ber 2017.

    https://www.salon.com/2017/11/28/salons-founder-david-talbot-recovering-from-stroke‑2/

    Tal­bot has been one of the few main­stream jour­nal­ists to risk his “respectabil­i­ty” in writ­ing (and pub­lish­ing, on Salon) dread­ed “con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry” mate­r­i­al, sup­port­ed by metic­u­lous orig­i­nal research.

    Among his invalu­able books cit­ed by Dave Emory are “Dev­il’s Chess­board” and “Broth­ers”. Also worth look­ing into is Tal­bot’s his­to­ry of San Fran­cis­co, “Sea­son of the Witch”, a chron­i­cle of polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al events with para­po­lit­i­cal under­tones and between-the-lines intrigue of such events as Team Zodi­ac, SLA & Jon­estown, but also less­er-known “ser­i­al killings” and polit­i­cal fig­ures.

    Posted by Port of Denver | May 23, 2018, 6:09 pm

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