Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

1. Begin­ning with infor­ma­tion about the ECHELON sys­tem and the NSA/GCHQ facil­i­ty at Men­with Hill, the pro­gram dis­cuss­es ongo­ing fric­tion between the Unit­ed States / Unit­ed King­dom and the EU over alleged elec­tron­ic eaves­drop­ping. (“EU Warns on E‑Mail Spy Threat from U.S.” by Deb­o­rah Har­g­reaves; Finan­cial Times; 5/30/2001; p. 6.)

2. It has been advanced that ECHELON and Men­with Hill are essen­tial to both U.S. and British nation­al secu­ri­ty and has ana­lyzed the EU/German pres­sure to cur­tail these oper­a­tions against the back­ground of esca­lat­ing intel­li­gence fric­tion between the U.S. and Ger­many.

3. This has led Ger­many to close a long-stand­ing U.S. intel­li­gence facil­i­ty at Bad Aib­ling. (“U.S. to Shut Spy Sta­tion in Ger­many” by Tony Czucz­ka [AP]; 6/1/2001.)

4. A Tory MP has charged the Ger­mans with using the Euro in order to wage eco­nom­ic war in a fash­ion not unlike Hitler’s cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tions. (“MP Likens Schroder’s Vision for Europe to Hitler’s” by Robert Shrim­s­ley; Finan­cial Times; 5/12–13/2001; p. 5.)

5. The pro­gram then con­sid­ers a very impor­tant, but lit­tle-noticed change in EU trade reg­u­la­tion. Ger­many reversed its stand and opposed EU leg­is­la­tion that would have per­mit­ted hos­tile takeovers of EU owned cor­po­ra­tions. (“Berlin ‘Bowed to Pres­sure’ Over New Takeover Code” by Haig Simon­ian; Finan­cial Times; 5/3/2001; p. 2.)

6. Ger­many pres­sured oth­er EU mem­ber states to oppose the leg­is­la­tion. (“Ger­mans Seek to Kill off EU Takeover Direc­tive” by Deb­o­rah Har­g­reaves; Finan­cial Times; 7/3/2001; p. 2.)

7. That pres­sure was suc­cess­ful and the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment vot­ed against the leg­is­la­tion. (“Euro­pean Takeover Plan Reject­ed” by Daniel Dombey; Finan­cial Times; 7/5/2001; p. 1.)

8. It should be not­ed in this con­text that Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions may engage in hos­tile takeovers of Amer­i­can cor­po­ra­tions. It should also be not­ed in that con­text that the state of Low­er Sax­ony has sig­nif­i­cant cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion in, and vot­ing rights in the Volk­swa­gen Cor­po­ra­tion. (“EU Ques­tions Ger­man State’s VW Veto” by Paul Hofheinz and Scott Millen; Wall Street Jour­nal; 5/11/2001; p. A12.)

9. This is pre­cise­ly the type of “Gold­en Shares” that have long fig­ured in EU eco­nom­ic debate, the takeover issue, in par­tic­u­lar. In past dis­cus­sion of Chrysler’s acqui­si­tion by Daim­ler-Benz, Mr. Emory has not­ed that the trans­ac­tion was pre­cise­ly the type of deal that is all but impos­si­ble to swing in Europe. (See also FTR-96.)

10. Next, the broad­cast under­scores sev­er­al inter­est­ing aspects of a recent share­hold­ers meet­ing of Daim­ler­Chrysler. (“Daim­ler­Chrysler CEO Meets Share­hold­er Wrath” by Daniel Rubin; Austin States­man-Amer­i­can; 4/12/2001; pp. C1-C6.)

11. The share­hold­ers dis­cussed the obvi­ous pro-Ger­man swing of the firm, its envi­ron­men­tal encroach­ments and its involve­ment in nuclear weapons devel­op­ment. (Ibid.; p. C6.)

12. The pro­gram then details the piv­otal involve­ment of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion in the growth of the Ger­man auto­mo­bile indus­try, VW and Daimler/Benz, in par­tic­u­lar. “But it is just as true that the riv­er of wealth back into West Ger­many from assets sequestered by Mar­tin Bor­mann and the cor­po­ra­tions that par­tic­i­pat­ed in his bril­liant­ly con­ceived pro­gram of flight cap­i­tal was a major fac­tor in the recov­ery of the nation—and the best-kept secret in all Ger­man his­to­ry. The return of cap­i­tal began slow­ly. As fac­to­ries were rebuilt and revved up for pro­duc­tion, mon­ey from Swiss banks rep­re­sent­ing their secret accounts flowed into the Rhineland It was termed invest­ment mon­ey, and the first cor­po­ra­tions to enjoy its impact were those with demand prod­ucts: auto­mo­biles, steel, and chem­i­cals. Fer­di­nand Porsche, who designed the famed ‘Tiger’ tank, redesigned Hitler’s ‘people’s car,’ the Volk­swa­gen, and a new fac­to­ry was erect­ed to turn it out. Daim­ler-Benz short­ly had its Mer­cedes cars and trucks rolling from the assem­bly lines, and as the giant indus­tri­al com­plex­es geared once again for full pro­duc­tion and busi­ness, the smoke­stacks of Essen told a sto­ry of full employ­ment and the eager­ness and man­age­r­i­al staffs to get on with the job of climb­ing up from zero to total out­put. The Swiss bankers them­selves, watch­ing the funds they were direct­ed to invest in these Ger­man indus­tries, also invest­ed their own funds and those of their Ger­man, British, French, Bel­gian, Swiss, and Amer­i­can clients. One Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion offi­cer was advised by his Swiss banker to invest his mod­est army salary in West Ger­man auto­mo­tive firms. ‘I gave him carte blanche with my account,’ said the offi­cer, ‘and months lat­er on a vis­it to Zurich, I dis­cov­ered my few thou­sand dol­lars had esca­lat­ed to $250,000, and was still appre­ci­at­ing.’ Regret­tably, a prob­lem soon arose: fol­low­ing his dis­charge from the army and his return to the Unit­ed States he couldn’t declare his secret account, because he had con­sis­tent­ly failed to include it on his U.S. tax returns. A pil­lar of his com­mu­ni­ty, he had to go abroad to spend these gains.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; P. 281.)

13. The eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal com­po­nent of a Third Reich gone under­ground, the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­trols cor­po­rate Ger­many and much of the rest of the world. One promi­nent banker described it as, “the most impor­tant con­cen­tra­tion of mon­ey pow­er under a sin­gle con­trol in his­to­ry.” Cre­at­ed and run by Mar­tin Bor­mann, the orga­ni­za­tion­al genius who was the “the pow­er behind the throne” in Nazi Ger­many, the Bor­mann group is a pri­ma­ry ele­ment of the analy­sis pre­sent­ed in the For the Record pro­grams.

14. The broad­cast con­cludes with a brief look at the Bor­mann organization’s vast eco­nom­ic influ­ence in the Unit­ed States. “Schmitz’s wealth—largely I.G. Far­ben bear­er bonds con­vert­ed to the Big three suc­ces­sor firms, shares in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey (equal to those held by the Rock­e­fellers), Gen­er­al Motors, and oth­er U.S. blue chip indus­tri­al stocks, and the 700 secret com­pa­nies con­trolled in his time by I.G., as well as shares in the 750 cor­po­ra­tions he helped Bor­mann estab­lish dur­ing the last year of World War II—has increased in all seg­ments of the mod­ern indus­tri­al world. The Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion in South Amer­i­ca uti­lizes the vot­ing pow­er of the Schmitz trust along with their own assets to guide the multi­na­tion­als they con­trol, as they keep steady the eco­nom­ic course of the Father­land.” (Ibid.; p. 280.)

15. Cen­tral to that wealth and influ­ence is the Her­mann Schmitz Trust and the vast wealth bequeathed from the I.G. Far­ben exec­u­tive. (Idem.)