Lis­ten: One seg­ment

In late 1999, parts of the for­mer Sovi­et Union were beset with vio­lence and blood­shed. Groups impli­cat­ed in the vio­lence have a his­to­ry of involve­ment with inter­na­tion­al fas­cism. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the assas­si­na­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter and Par­lia­men­tary Speak­er of Arme­nia. Com­ing short­ly after U.S. State Depart­ment offi­cials attempt­ed to nego­ti­ate a set­tle­ment in the long-run­ning con­flict between Arme­nia and Azer­bai­jan, the killings were accom­plished by mem­bers of the Dash­nag par­ty. The Dash­nags are an Armen­ian ultra-nation­al­ist group that active­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich and oth­er fas­cist groups from East­ern Europe and the for­mer Sovi­et Union. After recount­ing some of the details of this col­lab­o­ra­tion, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the Dash­nag assas­si­na­tion of the Pri­mate of the Armen­ian Ortho­dox Church in Amer­i­ca, Arch­bish­op Leon Touri­an, in 1933. (The Dash­nags accused him of being a Sovi­et sym­pa­thiz­er.)

Next, the pro­gram high­lights Dash­nag col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Chris­t­ian Mobi­liz­ers, an Amer­i­can fas­cist group that sym­pa­thized with Hitler. The Mobi­liz­ers and their leader, Ger­ald L.K. Smith, were the direct pre­cur­sors of the con­tem­po­rary Aryan Nations. In the course of set­ting forth the his­to­ry of the Dash­nags, Mr. Emory spec­u­lates that the con­tem­po­rary incar­na­tion of the group may be col­lab­o­rat­ing with either the Under­ground Reich and/or ele­ments of intel­li­gence ser­vices. (The most like­ly sus­pects would be the BND or fas­cist ele­ments with­in the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment.) The blood­shed in Arme­nia was large­ly eclipsed by the war in Chech­nya, pre­cip­i­tat­ed by the inva­sion of neigh­bor­ing Dages­tan by Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ists asso­ci­at­ed with the Wahabi sect. (For more on Wahabism in the for­mer Sovi­et Union, see FTR-103.)

A con­ser­v­a­tive Islam­ic sect based in Sau­di Ara­bia, the Wahabis have been mak­ing their pres­ence felt in many parts of the world in recent years. Pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II, Ibn Saud (the first king of Sau­di Ara­bia) and his men­tor Jack Phil­by were allied with Nazi Ger­many. Their asso­ciate Allen Dulles (who helped to cor­ral Sau­di oil wealth for Amer­i­can petro­le­um com­pa­nies) was a Third Reich col­lab­o­ra­tor, as well. The Wahabi attack on Dages­tan threat­ened a key petro­le­um pro­duc­ing region in Rus­sia, pro­vok­ing the retal­i­a­tion that fol­lowed. In light of the his­to­ry of Wahabism, the pos­si­bil­i­ty that (like the Dash­nags) the Chechen gueril­las are being manip­u­lat­ed by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with fas­cism and/or the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty should not be too read­i­ly cast aside. As dis­cussed in FTR-103, per­haps the best known expo­nent of con­tem­po­rary Wahabism is the Sau­di ter­ror­ist Osama Bin Laden. (Like the Chechen war­lord Khat­tab, Bin Laden got his mil­i­tary train­ing fight­ing with the anti-Sovi­et gueril­las in Afghanistan.)

After dis­cussing ten­sions between the U.S. and Afghanistan over the Tal­iban’s con­tin­ued hos­pi­tal­i­ty to Bin Laden, the pro­gram sets forth busi­ness con­nec­tions between Bin Laden’s fam­i­ly and George W. Bush. Bush’s Arbus­to Ener­gy com­pa­ny was begun, in part, with mon­ey from one James Bath. Bath’s reput­ed asso­ci­a­tions run from the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency to the failed BCCI. The lat­er was a finan­cial insti­tu­tion involved in drug deal­ing, ter­ror­ism and arms traf­fick­ing. (It was used by Oliv­er North for some of his Iran-Con­tra machi­na­tions.) Bath was the Texas busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Bin Laden’s fam­i­ly and the mon­ey he used to help start Arbus­to may very well have come, in part, from Bin Laden’s fam­i­ly. (Like the Dash­nags and the Wahabi sect, the Bush fam­i­ly has an his­tor­i­cal alliance with the Third Reich.) (Record­ed on 11/14/99)