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FTR #1169 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: To com­pre­hend the polit­i­cal mael­strom engulf­ing the coun­try as 2020 and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are draw­ing to a close, it is essen­tial to under­stand the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate landscape—the foun­da­tion of con­tem­po­rary pow­er polit­i­cal dynam­ics.

Begin­ning with an out­growth of the piv­otal­ly impor­tant car­tel agree­ments reached by Stan­dard Oil and I.G. Far­ben between the World Wars, we note the appar­ent “gentleman’s agree­ment” between U.S. and Ger­man busi­ness­men not to bomb the Third Reich’s syn­thet­ic fuel plants dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

Those syn­thet­ic fuel plants were a direct out­growth of the Standard‑I.G. Agree­ment of 1929, high­light­ed in—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR #’s 511, and 1108.

That appar­ent agree­ment exem­pli­fies and sig­ni­fies the deci­sive posi­tion of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate inter­ests in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al pow­er pol­i­tics.

Next, we set forth the dom­i­nant posi­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work in the glob­al “cor­poro­c­ra­cy.”

In addi­tion to con­trol of the Ger­man cor­po­rate estab­lish­ment and inter­locked Euro­pean inter­ests, the Bor­mann group has been buy­ing share in Blue Chip U.S. stocks for the bet­ter part of the last hun­dred years. This puts the net­work in a con­trol­ling posi­tion in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

With elec­tron­ic, com­put­er-con­trolled buy­ing and sell­ing of equi­ties in the world’s cap­i­tal mar­kets, a rel­a­tive­ly small share of cap­i­tal own­er­ship in one of the giant transna­tion­als is dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly impor­tant. Own­er­ship of 2% or more of the stock in one of the world’s giant cor­po­ra­tions con­sti­tutes a major posi­tion, in that when that num­ber of shares is sold at one time, such an event can kick-in an elec­tron­ic sell-off.

Illus­trat­ing the posi­tion of the Bor­mann net­work in U.S. eco­nom­ic life, we review the fact that Bor­mann drew funds on three demand accounts in New York banks in August of 1967. Noth­ing illus­trates the nature of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate pow­er and the posi­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann group in the cor­po­rate pan­theon.

We note, in pass­ing, that Bormann’s secu­ri­ty director—Gestapo chief Hein­rich Muller—worked with CIA and U.S. intel­li­gence in the post­war peri­od.

The Bor­mann trans­ac­tions took place in August of 1967. In April and June of the fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were killed.

Bor­mann saw Fritz Thyssen as a pipeline to Allen Dulles.

In the con­clud­ing por­tion of the pro­gram, we present sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion from an unpub­lished man­u­script by Peter Dale Scott. The arti­cle “How Allen Dulles and the SS Pre­served Each Oth­er” from “Covert Action Quar­ter­ly #25 (Win­ter 1986)” was going to be part of a book. Due to the pro­fes­sion­al head­winds at the time, it was nev­er pub­lished.

In FTR #’s 1149 and 1150, we set forth por­tions of this man­u­script. In this pro­gram, we reca­pit­u­late those por­tions of the doc­u­ment, and include dis­cus­sion of the con­sum­mate influ­ence of the I.G. Far­ben inter­na­tion­al espi­onage orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. between the World Wars.

In addi­tion to I.G.’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with John Fos­ter and Allen Dulles of Sul­li­van & Cromwell, I.G. has also man­i­fest­ed major influ­ence in Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and JFK’s atten­u­at­ed post­war admin­is­tra­tion as well.

Beyond that, the author main­tains, cor­rect­ly in our opin­ion, that the transna­tion­al influ­ence of the I.G. net­works and the post­war polit­i­cal influ­ence-buy­ing of CIA and BND con­sti­tute a direct exten­sion of the OSS-SS col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the clos­ing stages of World War II.

What was cre­at­ed in US. board­rooms and intel­li­gence head­quar­ters dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after World War II is now mor­ph­ing into a mass move­ment.

This is the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of the cur­rent malaise!

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the role of OSS (and lat­er CIA) offi­cers Allen Dulles, William Casey and Frank Wis­ner in paving the way for the incor­po­ra­tion of Nazi SS cadres into the embry­on­ic CIA; review of the role of 1948 GOP Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Thomas Dewey in advis­ing the Mary Carter Paint Com­pa­ny (lat­er named Resorts Inter­na­tion­al) to pay Allen Dulles’s law part­ner David Peck to advise U.S. High Com­mis­sion­er for Ger­many John J. McCloy on the com­mu­ta­tion of sen­tences met­ed out to Nazi war crim­i­nals; review of the role of the Gehlen Org (as part of the then West Ger­man BND) in financ­ing East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist ele­ments in the U.S.; review of the over­lap between Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and William Casey’s Cap­i­tal Cities Incor­po­rat­ed; review of Casey’s role over­see­ing OSS activ­i­ties in Ger­many dur­ing 1944 and 1945.

1. In the con­text of both the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929 and the oth­er busi­ness arrange­ments that I.G. had with major west­ern cor­po­ra­tions, a dis­cus­sion of a “gen­tle­man’s agree­ment” with key busi­ness­men on the “oth­er side” not to bomb I.G’s syn­thet­ic fuel plants is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing.

This agree­ment, exe­cut­ed in the con­text of the car­tel agree­ments worked out between I.G. Far­ben and Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #511, exem­pli­fies the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate cul­ture that is the foun­da­tion of the cur­rent Amer­i­can and inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal land­scape.

It is imper­a­tive to under­stand that, as illus­trat­ed in All Hon­or­able Men, transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions had–by the peri­od between the two World Wars– super­seded nation states, as such, as the dom­i­nant pow­er inter­ests in this world.

The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben by Joseph Borkin and Bar­rie Zwick­er; The Free Press [HC]; Copy­right 1978 by the Free Press; ISBN 0233 97126 2; p. 130.

 . . . .The inten­sive bomb­ing of Leu­na led to a curi­ous con­fronta­tion between Buete­fisch, who was in charge of Leu­na, and Paul Harteck, lead­ing nuclear sci­en­tist work­ing on Ger­many’s atom­ic bomb project. Part of Leu­na was devot­ed to the man­u­fac­ture of heavy water, a nec­es­sary com­po­nent of atom­ic ener­gy. After the first bombs fell on Leu­na, Buete­fisch informed Harteck that the heavy water instal­la­tion must be aban­doned. He claimed that the mas­sive bomb­ing could not have been aimed at fuel pro­duc­tion since there was a ‘gen­tle­men’s agree­ment’ between heavy indus­try in Ger­many and abroad that I.G.‘s syn­thet­ic gaso­line plants would not be bombed. The only expla­na­tion for the raids against Leu­na, there­fore, was the heavy water facil­i­ty. . . .

2.  In order to under­stand the con­tem­po­rary cor­po­rate land­scape, it is vital to grasp that Mar­tin Bor­mann made a point of main­tain­ing invest­ment in blue-chip Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions.

Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 138–139.

. . . . With such funds accu­mu­lat­ing rapid­ly in Spain, Por­tu­gal, Swe­den, Switzer­land, and Argenti­na, Bor­mann and his group, who were han­dling the for­tunes of 750 new cor­po­ra­tions, would use these cor­po­ra­tions in neu­tral coun­tries as cloaks for invest­ing in Amer­i­can com­pa­nies. Bor­mann always had a high regard for U.S. blue chip stocks as a sta­ble invest­ment con­sis­tent­ly pur­chas­ing a vast num­ber of shares from the Euro­pean offices of such New York stock bro­ker­age hous­es as Mer­rill, Lynch on behalf of the Reich chan­cellery and Hitler, until war became offi­cial between the Unit­ed States and Ger­many and the buy­ing stopped, for a time. . . .

. . . . In 1941, invest­ments in U.S. cor­po­ra­tions by Ger­man com­pa­nies and assort­ed Ger­man indi­vid­u­als held vot­ing own­er­ship in 170; minor­i­ty own­er­ship was held in anoth­er 108 Amer­i­can com­pa­nies. These busi­ness­es cov­ered the fol­low­ing fields: man­u­fac­tur­ing, food­stuffs, chem­i­cals, elec­tri­cal and auto­mo­bile equip­ment, machin­ery and machine equip­ment, oth­er met­al prod­ucts); petro­le­um pro­duc­tion, refin­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion; finance; trade; and mis­cel­la­neous.

Amer­i­can indus­try, of course, had a finan­cial stake in Ger­man indus­try. In the same year, 1941, 171 U.S. cor­po­ra­tions had major invest­ments in Ger­man firms amount­ing to $420 mil­lion. A list­ing of these cor­po­ra­tions is iden­ti­cal to the gen­er­al cat­e­gories under Ger­man own­er­ship in the Unit­ed States.

When Bor­mann gave the order for his rep­re­sen­ta­tives to resume pur­chas­es of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate stocks, it was usu­al­ly done through the neu­tral coun­tries of Switzer­land and Argenti­na. From for­eign exchange funds on deposit in Swiss banks and in Deutsche Sudamerikan­ishe Bank, the Buenos Aires branch of Deutsche Bank, large demand deposits were placed in the prin­ci­pal mon­ey-cen­ter banks of New York City; Nation­al City (now Citibank), Chase (now Chase Man­hat­tan N.A.), Man­u­fac­tur­ers and Hanover (now man­u­fac­tur­ers Hanover Trust), Mor­gan Guar­an­ty, and Irv­ing Trust.

Such deposits are inter­est-free and the banks can invest this mon­ey as they wish, thus turn­ing tidy prof­its for them­selves. In return, they pro­vide rea­son­able ser­vices such as the pur­chase of stocks and trans­fer or pay­ment of mon­ey on demand by cus­tomers of Deutsche bank such as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Bor­mann busi­ness orga­ni­za­tions and Mar­tin Bor­mann him­self, who has demand accounts in three New York City banks. They con­tin­ue to do so. The Ger­man invest­ment in Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions from these sources exceed­ed $5 bil­lion and made the Bor­mann eco­nom­ic struc­ture a web of pow­er and influ­ence. The two Ger­man-owned banks of Spain, Ban­co Ale­man Transat­lanti­co (now named Ban­co Com­er­cial Transat­lanti­co), and Ban­co Ger­man­i­co de la Amer­i­ca del Sur, S.A., a sub­sidiary of Deutsche Bank served to chan­nel Ger­man mon­ey from Spain to South Amer­i­ca, where fur­ther invest­ments were made. . . .

3.   Next, we review the fact that Bor­mann drew funds on three demand accounts in New York banks in August of 1967. Noth­ing illus­trates the nature of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate pow­er and the posi­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann group in the cor­po­rate pan­theon.

We note, in pass­ing, that Bormann’s secu­ri­ty director—Gestapo chief Hein­rich Muller—worked with CIA and U.S. intel­li­gence in the post­war peri­od.

The Bor­mann trans­ac­tions took place in August of 1967. In April and June of the fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were killed.

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. . . .

4.  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. 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. . . .

5.  In the con­clud­ing por­tion of the pro­gram, we present sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion from an unpub­lished man­u­script. Peter Dale Scott intend­ed this man­u­script to be a book, with the “Covert Action Quar­ter­ly” arti­cle we accessed in FTR #‘s 1147 through 1149 pro­ject­ed as part of that book.

In FTR #’s 1149 and 1150, we set forth por­tions of this man­u­script. In this pro­gram, we reca­pit­u­late those por­tions of the doc­u­ment, and include dis­cus­sion of the con­sum­mate influ­ence of the I.G. Far­ben inter­na­tion­al espi­onage orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. between the World Wars.

It is against this back­ground that one should under­stand the cap­i­tal­iza­tion of the BioN­Tech part­ner of Pfiz­er in devel­op­ment of the Covid-19 vac­cine.

Beyond that, the author main­tains, cor­rect­ly in our opin­ion, that the transna­tion­al influ­ence of the I.G. net­works and the post­war polit­i­cal influ­ence-buy­ing of CIA and BND con­sti­tute a direct exten­sion of both the OSS-SS col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the clos­ing stages of World War II.

This is the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of the cur­rent malaise!

“Men­gele and Dulles: The SS-OSS Con­nec­tion: Transna­tion­al­ism and the Cold War” by Peter Dale Scott; pp. 76–85.

. . . . Gehlen Funds to Influ­ence the Unit­ed States

One gath­ers the impres­sion that the “con­nec­tions” estab­lished through the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al con­ceal­ment of the SS reserves last­ed down through the post­war years to the 1980s, not just for intel­li­gence pur­pos­es but for the larg­er pur­pos­es of polit­i­cal influ­ence and cor­rup­tion. A par­tic­u­lar tar­get for such influ­ence was the polit­i­cal scene in the Unit­ed States, orig­i­nal­ly because of the need to secure belat­ed autho­riza­tion for the Gehlen Org and the Cold War, and then lat­er because of the leg­isla­tive pro­hi­bi­tion on using the CIA for domes­tic pur­pos­es.

One rel­a­tive­ly low instance of this, the sub­sidy of revan­chiste eth­nic groups in the Unit­ed States, was appar­ent­ly tak­en over by the Gehlen Org (lat­er the West Ger­man Bun­desnachrich­tungs­di­enst, or BND), from Frank Wisner’s OPC.

“ . . . . Gehlen even set up a num­ber of ‘cells’ in the Unit­ed States. As ear­ly as 1963, the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions com­mit­tee dis­cussed the activ­i­ties of the Julius Klein pub­lic rela­tions com­pa­ny, which had estab­lished branch­es in Wash­ing­ton, New York and Los Ange­les and also in Cana­da, employ­ing a fair­ly numer­ous staff with­out appar­ent­ly engag­ing on any pub­lic­i­ty busi­ness. From this firm, the trail led to the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens of Ger­man Ori­gin, which was receiv­ing large sub­si­dies from an unspec­i­fied Fed­er­al Ger­man gov­ern­ment department—the Bun­desnachri­ten­di­enst, it was lat­er estab­lished. This for­eign sub­sidy amount­ed to the hand­some sum of 280,000 dol­lars in 1964 and was increased in lat­er years. . . .

Not so sat­is­fac­to­ry at first were the expla­na­tions of Gehlen’s con­nec­tions with the large orga­ni­za­tions of Ukraini­ans, Poles, Lithua­ni­ans, Lat­vians and oth­er East Euro­pean immi­grants in the Unit­ed States, which received finance and advice from three “reg­is­tered” BND agents—Roman Hen­linger, alias “Dr. Grau,” Vic­tor Sale­mann and Alexan­der Wieber. . . .”

Oth­er polit­i­cal groups and lob­by­ists were sub­si­dized by Gehlen and the BND with­out even an excuse of an intel­li­gence pre­text. One was the Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens of Ger­man Descent in the USA, whose Chair­man, Austin App. an asso­ciate of for­mer WACL Chair­man Roger Pear­son, is attempt­ing to debunk the his­toric­i­ty of the SS Holo­caust. (23) Anoth­er was the right-wing pub­lic rela­tions firm of Wash­ing­ton lob­by­ist Julius Klein, who accord­ing to one of Bar­bi­e’s CIC han­dlers, had a “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” with Bar­bie in Ger­many at that time. (24) Klein, rep­re­sent­ing the “Com­mit­tee for Return of Con­fis­cat­ed Ger­man and Japan­ese Prop­er­ty,” lob­bied unsuc­cess­ful­ly for a 1954 bill, intro­duced by Sen­a­tor Dirk­sen, which would have con­tra­vened the 1945 Ger­man repa­ra­tions agree­ment and restored the U.S. prop­er­ties of I.G. Far­ben to their Ger­man own­ers. (A sur­pris­ing sup­port­er of this bill, which was vig­or­ous­ly oposed by the Jus­tice Depart­ment, was Sec­re­tary of State John Fos­ter Dulles.)

Here we see how intel­li­gence funds, result­ing from the OSS-SS con­spir­a­cy, were used to sup­ple­ment the polit­i­cal influ­ence of the transna­tion­al firms like I.G. Far­ben, whose influ­ence helped gen­er­ate the OSS-SS con­spir­a­cy in the first place. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing, since Amer­i­can transna­tion­als, when solicit­ed by Wis­ner, con­tributed “large sums of mon­ey” toward the esti­mat­ed $200 mil­lion which CIA/OPC, accord­ing to Cookridge, con­tributed to the sup­port of the Gehlen Org. (26)

N.W.7, CIA, and the “World Wide Infra­struc­ture”

Anoth­er way to put it is that the Gehlen‑I.G. Far­ben over­lap of the post­war peri­od mere­ly per­pet­u­at­ed the SS‑I.G. Far­ben over­lap of the Nazi 1930s, when I.G. Farben’s own for­eign intel­li­gence net­work, N.W.7, financed the SD’s spy net­work the A.O. (Aus­lan­dor­gan­i­sa­tion, or Orga­ni­za­tion of Ger­mans Abroad), set­ting up “an army of five thou­sand secret agents head­ed by Nazi Con­sul Fritz Wiede­mann [in San Fran­cis­co], which pen­e­trat­ed North and South Amer­i­ca.” (27) 

Two mem­bers of I.G. Farben’s pre-war N.W.7., SS offi­cer Guen­ther Frank-Fahle and Prince Bern­hard of Hol­land, were able to re-estab­lish them­selves in the busi­ness of inter­na­tion­al intel­li­gence and polit­i­cal pay­offs, but now with Amer­i­can back­ers. They became (along with OSS vet­er­an Nicholas Deak of Deak and Co.) part of the huge transna­tion­al net of Lock­heed agents, trans­mit­ting (to their own ample prof­it) large sums of mon­ey to right-wing Ger­man politi­cians such as Franz-Josef Strauss, chief spokesman for a vig­or­ous West Ger­man role in NATO. (28) It has been recent­ly con­firmed in crim­i­nal court pro­ceed­ings that U.S. intel­li­gence funds (offi­cial­ly those of the U.S. Air Force, but by oth­er accounts with CIA involve­ment and approval), used the Lock­heed pay­ments as a cloak for their own polit­i­cal pay­offs. (29)

Speak­ing about CIA pen­e­tra­tion of the Third World, an inves­ti­gat­ing Select Sen­ate Com­mit­tee under Sen­a­tor Frank Church found a world-wide sys­tem of CIA pay­offs, gen­er­at­ing a “world-wide infra­struc­ture” of agents.

“ . . . . Finan­cial sup­port was [pro­vid­ed to par­ties, can­di­dates, and incum­bent lead­ers of almost every polit­i­cal per­sua­sion, except the extreme left and right. The imme­di­ate pur­pose of these projects was to encour­age polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, and thus pre­vent Com­mu­nist incur­sions; but anoth­er impor­tant objec­tive of polit­i­cal action was the acqui­si­tion of ‘agents of influ­ence’ who could be used at a future date to pro­vide intel­li­gence or to car­ry out polit­i­cal action. Through such projects, the CIA devel­oped a world-wide infra­struc­ture of indi­vid­ual agents, or net­works of agents, engaged in a vari­ety of covert activ­i­ties. . . .” (30)

You might say that the CIA was extend­ing the sys­tem of inter­na­tion­al Tam­many pol­i­tics which helped secure the west­ern alle­giance of post­war Italy and Ger­many. Or you might say that the CIA was mere­ly con­sol­i­dat­ing, with unvouchered pub­lic funds, the sys­tem of transna­tion­al cor­rup­tion that has char­ac­ter­ized the prac­tice of transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. The paths of cor­po­rate and of CIA pay­off tend to over­lap; for once a politi­cian has been bought, he can be bought by all.

If there is any major west­ern indus­tri­al­ized nation whose post­war pol­i­tics have not been vis­i­bly taint­ed by the Lock­heed-CIA pay­offs, it is prob­a­bly the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. Here, the pat­tern of I.G. Far­ben pay­offs to Amer­i­can offi­cials, a sto­ry which goes back to the forced res­ig­na­tion of War­ren Harding’s Attor­ney-Gen­er­al Har­ry M. Daugh­er­ty, appar­ent­ly con­tin­ues, even if the facts are hard to estab­lish. (31).

In the inter-war years, much of this influ­ence was exer­cised by Ster­ling Drugs, the Amer­i­can com­po­nent of I.G. Farben’s world-wide Bay­er car­tel. Through Ster­ling, IO.G. Far­ben had access to Amer­i­can pres­i­dents, first through Hoover’s sec­re­tary Edward T. Clark (a ster­ling vice-pres­i­dent), and lat­er Roosevelt’s brains-truster “Tom­my the Cork” Cor­co­ran (Sterling’s offi­cial lawyer, and lat­er direc­tor). It also hired a con­vict­ed Ger­man agent and ear­ly Nazi par­ty mem­ber, Edward A. Rume­ly, and used the Dulles broth­ers as one set of lawyers. (32) As Europe moved toward war, Ster­ling moved to pro­tect itself, with the help of Allen Dulles’s J. Hen­ry Schroder Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. Its offi­cers Weiss and McClin­tock: “ . . . . Poured a large sum of mon­ey into the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Committee—and the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee as well—to make sure that who­ev­er won the pres­i­den­cy would proved sup­port­ive. In May, 1938, McClin­tock trav­elled to Basle to con­fer with Her­mann Schmitz and Kurt von Schroed­er dur­ing meet­ings of the Bank for Inter­na­tion­al Set­tle­ments. The Con­fer­ence agreed that the vast funds earned buy Ster­ling from dis­trib­ut­ing Bay­er prod­ucts in Latin Amer­i­ca would be held in the J. Hen­ry Schroed­er Bank of New York until the end of the war. In return for this arrange­ment, Ster­ling [prod­ucts in Ger­many and in the coun­tries Ger­many would occu­py would be held in [Kurt von Schroeder’s] Stein Bank in Cologne for the dura­tion. (33)

As for the Bay­er out­lets in Latin Amer­i­ca, which as we have seen became cov­ers for first Abwehr and then SD spy net­works and infil­tra­tion routes, these were com­min­gled with Sterling’s Latin Amer­i­can oper­a­tion, han­dled after 1934 by David Cor­co­ran, Tommy’s broth­er. A U.S. Assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­er­al report­ed to the Tru­man Defense Com­mit­tee in 1942 that “When the Nazi gov­ern­ment pressed I.G. Far­ben for mon­ey in 1938, it drew on Ster­ling Prod­ucts Inc. or its sub­sidiaries.” Var­i­ous dis­patch­es from embassies through­out 1943 assert that McClin­tock actu­al­ly bribed Chilean gov­ern­ment offi­cials to enable him to con­tin­ue busi­ness con­nec­tions with the Nazis. (34) The Ster­ling-Cor­co­ran con­nec­tion con­tin­ued into the post­war peri­od, when Tom­my Corcoran’s firm became one of the most influ­en­tial for transna­tion­als  seek­ing help from CIA oper­a­tions. (35)

One does not think of Pres­i­dent Kennedy as a politi­cian on the take; if he was eas­i­ly cor­rupt­ible, it was not with mon­ey. Yet ques­tions were raised when the John F. Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion had arranged for $124 mil­lion to be paid to I.G. Farben’s Swiss front, Inter­han­del, for its Amer­i­can sub­sidiary Gen­er­al Aline and Film which had been seized as ene­my prop­er­ty in World War II. (Fif­teen years ear­li­er, Inter­han­del had been will­ing to set­tle for a mere $14 mil­lion, a fig­ure which Truman’s Jus­tice Depart­ment reject­ed as too high.) These ques­tions were increased when  one of the prin­ci­pals, demand­ing a pay­ment of $11 mil­lion for his own efforts in the case, charged that a siz­able pay­ment had been made to a Kennedy in-law, Prince Radzi­will, “for a sim­ple intro­duc­tion to Robert Kennedy.” (36)

One of the most-researched and ill-under­stood sto­ries about such pay­ments con­cerns a Bahamas casi­no, Par­adise Island, which fig­ured in inves­tiga­tive sto­ries about Richard Nixon and Water­gate. The casi­no was owned by an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny, Mary Carter Paint Com­pa­ny, lat­er known as Resorts Inter­na­tion­al; and there is no ques­tion but that, in 1968, the chair­man of the com­pa­ny, James Cros­by; “. . . . made a $100,000 con­tri­bu­tion to the Nixon cam­paign. It took the unusu­al form of thir­ty-four checks, thir­ty-three of them for $3,000 apiece, the last for $1,000” (37) In 1972, Howard Hunt, in his dou­ble capac­i­ty as an employ­ee of the Nixon White House and of a CIA-linked pub­lic­i­ty rela­tions firm, the Robert Mullen Agency, did cer­tain work for Inter­tel, an inves­tiga­tive and intel­li­gence sub­sidiary of Resorts; Inter­tel was try­ing to hush up alle­ga­tions, based on a con­tro­ver­sial inter­nal mem­o­ran­dum from a woman named Dita Beard, about a $400,000 pay­off to the Repub­li­can par­ty in exchange for set­tle­ment of a Jus­tice Depart­ment suit against ITT” (38)

In 1972, Cros­by made no acknowl­edged con­tri­bu­tion to Nixon, even though he was report­ed­ly asked to by Nixon’s per­son­al lawyer, Her­bert Kalm­bach. But in 1973, the New York Times ran a sto­ry about; ” . . . . pecu­liar move­ments . . . between the Par­adise Island casi­no and the Key Bis­cayne Bank, which belonged to then-pres­i­dent Richard Nixon’s friend Bebe Rebo­zo. There was spec­u­la­tion that the bank and the casi­no were laun­der­ing funds for the Pres­i­dent.” (39)

The sto­ry focused on the move­ments of a close friend of Rebo­zo called Sey­mour Alter, “whom a lot of peo­ple called Resorts’ ‘bag­man.’ ” (40) Tes­ti­mo­ny by an IRS infor­mant to a House Sub­com­mit­tee, two years lat­er, sug­gest­ed that the mon­ey was, in fact, skim from anoth­er of James Cros­by’s com­pa­nies, the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny, and that Alter had on at least one occa­sion car­ried $200.000 of such mon­ey and been met on a Key Bis­cayne dock by Bebe Rebo­zo him­self (“they head­ed for either Bebe’s or Nixon’s house.”) (41)

Through­out the Water­gate scan­dal, there were rumors among inves­tiga­tive reporters that Nixon and Rebo­zo were silent part­ners with Cros­by in the lucra­tive bridge com­pa­ny. I myself was sent a list of the share­hold­ers at this time: the­list, lat­er con­firmed by Cros­by in pub­lic tes­ti­mo­ny, did not show Nixon or Rebo­zo. It did, how­ev­er, name a num­ber of Ger­man and Swiss investors, One of these, for exam­ple, was Dr. Heinz Ros­terg of Lau­sanne, a for­mer “prin­ci­pal stock­hold­er” and direc­tor of the Win­ter­shall potash con­cern; Win­ter­shall was one of the major sub­sidiaries of BASF, the largest sin­gle suc­ces­sor firm to I.G. Far­ben. (42)

By itself, this would be a ten­u­ous link between the CIA-Gehlen‑I.G. Far­ben con­nec­tion and the alleged pay­ments to Richard Nixon. But the same IRS infor­mant tes­ti­fied to links (lat­er cor­rob­o­rat­ed by inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists) between Resorts and a Bahamas Bank, Cas­tle Bank, which the Wall Street Jour­nal lat­er revealed to have had among its deposits “a $5 mil­lion CIA fund.” (43) Cas­tle Bank had been found­ed by an OSS and CIA vet­er­an, Paul Hel­li­well, whose role in help­ing to con­sol­i­date the post-war CIA-mafia-nar­cotics con­nec­tion I have described else­where. (44) CIA’s oper­a­tional inter­est in the mob-con­nect­ed Cas­tle Bank was so great that, accord­ing to the Wall Street jour­nal, the Jus­tice Depart­ment dropped its pur­suit of Cas­tle Bank under pres­sure from the CIA. (45)The Wall Street Jour­nal’s rev­e­la­tion revived inter­est in a con­tro­ver­sial claim, print­ed four years ear­li­er in the Rolling Stone mag­a­zine, that Resorts Inter­na­tion­al “in its ear­li­er incar­na­tion as Mary Carter Paint, was a CIA front set up by for­mer New York dis­trict attor­ney and gov­er­nor Thomas Dewey and Allen Dulles, first chief of the CIA, to laun­der funds to sup­port coun­terin­sur­gency groups in Latin Amer­i­ca.” (46)

After a suit for libel brought by Resorts, Rolling Stone retract­ed the claim. (47)

Still unan­swered is the ques­tion of whether the sto­ry of the Dewey-Allen Dulles inter­est in Resorts should have referred to funds, not from the CIA itself, but from its Ger­man-Swiss part­ners in the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny. Such a hypoth­e­sis might explain some of the many strange coin­ci­dences which sur­round the com­pa­ny’s con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry. It might, for exam­ple, explain the “for­tune in legal fees” that Mary Carter Paint, on the advice of Thomas Dewey, paid to Allen Dulles’ long­time law part­ner David Peck. (48) The SS-OSs con­nec­tion cer­tain­ly had rea­son to be grate­ful to David Peck. It was on the basis of Peck­’s rec­om­men­da­tion, as chair­man of a three-man advi­so­ry board to review all the Nurem­berg sen­tences, that John J. McCloy com­mut­ed to time served the sen­tence of Sko­rzeny’s post-war employ­er, Baron Alfried Krupp, and eight of his col­leagues, and also ordered Krup­p’s prop­er­ty to be restored. (49) The release of Krupp and oth­er indus­tri­al­ists ful­filled an ear­li­er demand to McCloy from Her­mann Abs, who him­self nar­row­ly escaped pros­e­cu­tion at Nurem­berg. Abs was the first post-war chair­man of BASF, the I.G. Far­ben suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny rep­re­sent­ed among the stock­hold­ers of the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny. (50)

Might not the OSS-SS con­nec­tion also throw light on the unex­plained inter­lock between James Cros­by’s com­pa­ny Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, tight­ly con­trolled by the relat­ed and dou­bly inter­mar­ried Cros­by-Mur­phy fam­i­lies, and Cap­i­tal Cities Broad­cast­ing, the major invest­ment of the CIA’s present direc­tor William Casey. (51) Casey would be the log­i­cal per­son to have estab­lished the orig­i­nal con­nec­tion between the Cros­by-Mur­phy fam­i­lies and their mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man-Swiss part­ners. For it was Casey in 1944–45 “was giv­en over­all oper­a­tional con­trol of [OSS] Ger­man projects,” and “co-ordi­nat­ed . . . the over 150 men” whom OSS sent into Ger­many. (52) With Dulles, Wis­ner, and For­gan, Casey was also one of the OSS vet­er­ans who lob­bied suc­cess­ful­ly for a CIA which could legit­i­mate­ly uti­lize the resources of the Gehlen Org. (53)

Notes:

(21) Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry by E.H. Cookridge; Ran­dom House [HC]; Copy­right 1971 by Euro­pean Copy­right Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; ISBN 0–394-47313–2; pp. 362–363363.

(22) Scott, The Dal­las Con­spir­a­cy, c. ii. It is not known if one of the groups receiv­ing BND funds was the Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Front, Inc. in New York. Spas T. Raikin, a founder of this group and also a some­time Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Amer­i­can Friends of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Group of Nations (a WACL con­stituent group) was the “rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Traveler’s Aid Soci­ety” who met Lee Har­vey Oswald and his fam­i­ly in New York on their return from the Sovi­et Union (War­ren Report, p. 713). WACL groups  also had con­tacts with the 544 Camp St. New Orleans address used by Oswald on his pro-Cas­tro lit­er­a­ture, and oth­er links to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion case; cf. Scott et al., The Assas­si­na­tions pp. 366–367; Dal­las Con­spir­a­cy, I‑4–5, ‑22–32.

(23) Vil­lage Voice, May 7, 1985, p. 20. App, who chaired the Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee in Philadel­phia for many years, was also on the board of the Ukrain­ian Quar­ter­ly, pub­lished by fol­low­ers of Ste­fan Ban­dera (cf. Vil­lage Voice, May 14, 1985, p. 23.

(24) Cookridge, p. 363; Amer­i­can Swasti­ka by Charles High­am, p. 288.

(25) Con­gres­sion­al Quar­ter­ly Almanac, X (1954), p. 288, Borkin, I.G. Far­ben, pp. 208–209. 

(26) Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry by E.H. Cookridge p. 158; cf. Sen­ate Select Com­mit­tee, IV, 34: “Wis­ner . . . drew on the web of New York law firm con­nec­tions that exist­ed in post­war Wash­ing­ton as well as on the State Depart­ment ties to gain sup­port for OPC’s activ­i­ties.”

(27) Trad­ing With The Ene­my: An Expose of the Nazi-Amer­i­can Mon­ey Plot by Charles High­am, p. 133, 189ss; cf. Hitler’s Spies: Ger­man Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence in World War II  by David Kahn. pp. 87–91. The transna­tion­al I.G. Farben’s sub­sidy of the fierce­ly nation­al­ist A.O. did not mean that the for­mer sim­ply con­trolled the lat­ter. In 1938 I.G. Farben’s pro­tec­tive efforts to con­ceal its links to the Swiss front I.G. Chemie or Inter­han­del were opposed by the A.O.: “The A.O. had always opposed the cloak­ing of Ger­man for­eign inter­ests. It con­tend­ed that cloak­ing was a pre­text employed by big busi­ness, par­tic­u­lar­ly I.G., to deprive Ger­man com­pa­nies abroad of their Ger­man char­ac­ter. Such actions smacked of ‘inter­na­tion­al­ism,’ a very nasty word in the Nazi lex­i­con and a reminder of I.G.’s ear­ly trou­bles with the Nazis” (The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben by Joseph Borkin, p. 190.)

(28) The Arms Bazaar by Antho­ny Samp­son, pp. 126–127, 238. Prince Bernhard’s mar­riage to Princess Juliana of the Nether­lands was alleged­ly arranged by I.G. Far­ben direc­tor Ger­hard Fritze, a rel­a­tive of N.W. 7 chief Max Ilgn­er, who was him­self a nephew of I.G. Far­ben direc­tor Her­mann Schmitz (Mar­shall, p. 14; cf. Borkin, I.G. Far­ben, p. 58.)

(29) San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle, Octo­ber 24, 1983, p. 22; Samp­son, pp. 134, 227–228, 238; Scott, “Sukarno,” at fn. 85.

(30) Sen­ate Select Com­mit­tee, Report, I, 146–147.

(31) Borkin, I.G. Far­ben, pp. 170–172.

(32) High­am, Trad­ing, pp. 133–46.

(33) High­am, Trad­ing, p. 145.

(34)  High­am, Trad­ing, p. 146, 150. Both Jus­tice and Trea­sury reg­u­la­tors in this peri­od were watch­ing Ster­ling close­ly; but their influ­ence with Roo­sevelt count­ed for less than Corcoran’s. High­am charges that Sterling’s prof­its helped “to finance an army of secret agents north and south of Pana­ma who sup­ple­ment­ed the Max Ilgn­er N.W. 7 spy net­work in sup­ply­ing infor­ma­tion on every aspect of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary pos­si­bil­i­ties.” (p. 141).

(37) The Com­pa­ny That Bought The Board­walkby Gigi Mahon, p. 117; Night­mare: The Under­side of the Nixon Years by J. Antho­ny Lukas, p. 182.

(38) Lukas, pp. 182–183.

(39) Mahon, p. 32; New York Times, 12/6/1973.

(40) Mahon, p. 33.

(41) Mahon, pp. 39–40; U.S. Cong., House, Comm. on Gov­ern­ment Oper­a­tions, Over­sight Hear­ings, 94th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 191.

(42) Cf. Mahon, pp. 44, 216.

(43)  In Banks We Trust by Pen­ny Lernoux, p. 83; Wall Street Jour­nal, April 18, 1980, p. 1. The infor­mant also tes­ti­fied he had seen “a name that said Richard Nixon” on a print­out of trust accounts at the Cas­tle Bank. (p. 179, cf. p. 187.)