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FTR #372 What’s Going On Here? Part 3

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In a num­ber of the broad­casts about 9/11 and relat­ed events, a com­par­i­son has been advanced between the U.S. at the time of 9/11 and France pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Oth­er, relat­ed pro­grams have high­light­ed the view that ele­ments of the law enforce­ment and nation­al secu­ri­ty insti­tu­tions of this coun­try were active­ly sub­vert­ed by a Fifth Col­umn, loy­al to the Under­ground Reich and its Islam­o­fas­cist allies.

1. This pro­gram ana­lyzes the rela­tion­ship between the Fifth Col­umn that sub­vert­ed France and struc­tur­al Fran­co-Ger­man eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships with­in which the Fifth Col­umn exist­ed and oper­at­ed. In addi­tion, the pro­gram com­pares the Fran­co-Ger­man steel and coal indus­tries and the rela­tion­ship between Amer­i­can petro­le­um inter­ests and the Saudi/Islamofascist forces under­ly­ing the events of 9/11.

2. A cen­tral point of dis­cus­sion is the dis­tinc­tion between struc­tur­al rela­tion­ships bind­ing togeth­er eco­nom­ic forces on oppo­site sides of polit­i­cal issues and the sub­ver­sive process itself. Just as a mos­qui­to that trans­mits malar­ia com­mu­ni­cates the infec­tion by draw­ing blood, so the Saudi/US petro­le­um rela­tion­ship under­lies the process of sub­ver­sion and the attacks of 9/11. As the draw­ing of blood is essen­tial to, though not for the pur­pose of, com­mu­ni­cat­ing dis­ease, so the draw­ing of oil is cen­tral to, though not the rai­son d’e­tre, for ter­ror­ism. Although the eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships dis­cussed in this pro­gram (US/Saudi, Franco/German coal & steel) are cen­tral to the process of sub­ver­sion and the activ­i­ties of the Fifth Col­umn, those rela­tion­ships must be under­stood as dis­tinct from the sub­ver­sion itself.

In addi­tion, one should not lose sight of the fact that the Islam­o­fas­cists of Al Qae­da, the Wah­habis of Sau­di Ara­bia, the Bush fam­i­ly, and the Franco/German heavy indus­tri­al inter­ests all have his­tor­i­cal links to the Third Reich, both in its above ground and post­war under­ground phas­es.

3. A recent report from a Rand Cor­po­ra­tion ana­lyst dis­cussed the stark real­i­ties of Sau­di hos­til­i­ty to the Unit­ed States, as man­i­fest­ed in the events of 9/11 and the Sau­di spon­sor­ship of Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ism. Numer­ous pro­grams doc­u­ment the pro­found role of the Sau­di elite in the fund­ing of Al Qae­da. In con­sid­er­ing how it is that a coun­try can attack the Unit­ed States (as Sau­di Ara­bia did on 9/11) and escape the con­se­quences, one should bear in mind the Islam­o­fas­cist milieu that oper­ates with­in the petro-eco­nom­ic struc­tur­al rela­tion­ship between the two coun­tries. “A brief­ing giv­en last month to a top Pen­ta­gon advi­so­ry board described Sau­di Ara­bia as an ene­my of the Unit­ed States and rec­om­mend­ed that U.S. offi­cials give it an ulti­ma­tum to stop back­ing ter­ror­ists or face seizure of its oil fields and its finan­cial assets invest­ed in the Unit­ed States.” (“Sau­di Ara­bia Cas­ti­gat­ed in Brief­ing” by Thomas E. Ricks [Wash­ing­ton Post]; San Jose Mer­cury News; 8/6/2002; p. 12A.)

4. ” ‘The Saud­is are active at every lev­el of the ter­ror chain, from plan­ners to financiers, from cadre to foot-sol­dier, from ide­ol­o­gist to cheer­leader,’ stat­ed the explo­sive brief­ing, which was pre­sent­ed July 10 to the Defense Pol­i­cy Board, a group of promi­nent intel­lec­tu­als and for­mer senior offi­cials who, advise the Pen­ta­gon on defense pol­i­cy.” (Idem.)

5. ” ‘Sau­di Ara­bia Sup­ports our ene­mies and attacks our allies,’ said the brief­ing pre­pared by Lau­rent Muraw­iec, a Rand Cor­po­ra­tion ana­lyst. A talk­ing point attached to the last of 24 brief­ing slides went even fur­ther, describ­ing Sau­di Ara­bia as ‘the ker­nel of evil, the prime mover, the most dan­ger­ous oppo­nent’ in the Mideast. . .” (Idem.)

6. “Muraw­iec said in his brief­ing that the U.S. should demand that Riyadh stop fund­ing fun­da­men­tal­ist Islam­ic out­lets around the world, stop all anti‑U.S. and anti-Israeli state­ments in the coun­try, and ‘pros­e­cute or iso­late those involved in the ter­ror chain, includ­ing in the Sau­di intel­li­gence ser­vices.’ ” (Idem.)

7. “If the Saud­is refused to com­ply, the brief­ing con­tin­ued, Sau­di oil fields and over­seas finan­cial assets should be ‘tar­get­ed,’ although exact­ly how was not spec­i­fied.” (Idem.)

8. The rela­tion­ship between the Under­ground Reich, the GOP, the Bush fam­i­ly, the Saud­is, and the oil indus­try is illus­trat­ed by Talat Oth­man, Abdul­lah Bak­shs, and Harken ener­gy. A pro­tégé of the BCCI milieu, busi­ness asso­ciate of George Bush, an inti­mate of (and inter­locu­tor for) the milieu of Youssef Nada and Al Qae­da, as well as a key play­er in the GOP eth­nic out­reach orga­ni­za­tion, Oth­man embod­ies the over­lap of the oil busi­ness and the 9/11 Fifth Col­umn. “In 1987 an obscure Sau­di financier named Abdul­lah Taha Bakhsh invest­ed in Harken, a Texas oil com­pa­ny of which George W. Bush was a direc­tor from 1986 to 1993.” (For­bid­den Truth; Jean-Charles Bris­ard & Guil­laume Dasquie; Copy­right 2002 [SC]; Thun­der’s Mouth/Nation Books; ISBN 1–56025-414–9; p. 132.)

9. “The deal con­sist­ed of recap­i­tal­iz­ing the com­pa­ny, which was going through dif­fi­cult times. This Sau­di investor was none oth­er than the part­ner of Khalid bin Mah­fouz and Ghaith Pharaon. And so Taha Bak­shs became an 11.5 per­cent share­hold­er in Harken Ener­gy Corp.” (Idem.)

10. “His [Bak­shs] rep­re­sen­ta­tive with­in Harken Ener­gy is not unknown either. Talat Oth­man, is a mem­ber along­side Frank Car­luc­ci of one of Amer­i­ca’s most pres­ti­gious think tanks, the Mid­dle East Pol­i­cy Coun­cil as well as being a lead­ing Arab-Amer­i­can sup­port­er of the Repub­li­can par­ty.” (Ibid.; p. 133.)

11. Oth­man, in turn, is a pro­tégé of Abdul­lah Bak­shs, the U.S. busi­ness rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Laden fam­i­ly between 1976–1982. Salem Bin Laden was rep­re­sent­ed by anoth­er Bush busi­ness asso­ciate, James R. Bath-him­self a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Bin Mah­fouz busi­ness inter­ests (close­ly linked to the sup­port net­work under­ly­ing Al Qae­da. “Between 1976 and 1982, Abdul­lah Taha Bakhshs-an investor in Harken ener­gy, recall-was the rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Bin Laden fam­i­ly in the Unit­ed States. He also rep­re­sents Khalid bin Mah­fouz’s finan­cial inter­ests in the Mid­dle East. What’s more, sev­er­al sources empha­size the fact that he rep­re­sents the inter­ests of Khalid Sal­im bin Mah­fouz on the board of direc­tors of Invest­corp. In fact, Bin Mah­fouz holds a 25 per­cent stake in Invest­corp, thanks to Bakhsh’s ser­vices.” (Ibid.; p. 136.)

12. The rela­tion­ship between the Bush fam­i­ly and the Sau­di elite (close­ly con­nect­ed to the Bin Laden milieu) can be com­pared with the rela­tion­ship between the De Wen­dels and the Rochlings (as well as oth­er Ger­man indus­tri­al­ists). (The Ruhr is a tra­di­tion­al coal-pro­duc­ing region, with strong eco­nom­ic links to the French steel pro­duc­ers of the Lor­raine dis­trict.) This rela­tion­ship tran­scend­ed French nation­al inter­ests, and worked to sub­vert them at times. The De Wen­del fam­i­ly in France had strong con­nec­tions with, among oth­ers, the Rochlings in Ger­many. This result­ed in French pro­tec­tion for Ger­man steel pro­duc­ing ele­ments in the Briey Basin dur­ing World War I, the pro­tec­tion of the Rochlings from French crim­i­nal charges between the wars, and the award­ing of key con­tracts for con­struc­tion of the Mag­inot Line to the Rochlings pri­or to World War II.

All Hon­or­able Men; James Stew­art Mar­tin; Copy­right 1950 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; p. 34.

. . . . . The hor­i­zon­tal sep­a­ra­tion of pri­vate inter­ests from gov­ern­ment poli­cies went even fur­ther. The strug­gle of the inter­war peri­od was not sim­ply a clash between French inter­ests on the one side and Ger­man inter­ests on the oth­er. Dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the Ruhr-Lor­raine indus­tri­al com­plex, like-mind­ed indus­tri­al­ists in France and Ger­many had become direc­tors of joint­ly owned and joint­ly con­trolled finan­cial, indus­tri­al, and dis­trib­ut­ing enter­pris­es. In many cas­es com­mon views on ques­tions of eco­nom­ic orga­ni­za­tion, labor pol­i­cy, social leg­is­la­tion, and atti­tude toward gov­ern­ment had been far more impor­tant to the indus­tri­al­ists than dif­fer­ences of nation­al­i­ty or cit­i­zen­ship. After 1870 the inter­de­pen­dence of the French and Ger­man iron and steel indus­tries led the own­ers to work togeth­er despite nation­al dif­fer­ences, although the pri­vate activ­i­ties of the French own­ers were, in many instances, in direct oppo­si­tion to French pub­lic pol­i­cy. It is curi­ous to note that only the French appeared to have this con­flict between pub­lic pol­i­cy and pri­vate activ­i­ties. On the Ger­man side, com­plete co-ordi­na­tion seems to have been pre­served between nation­al and pri­vate inter­ests; between offi­cials of the Ger­man Repub­lic and the lead­ers of Ger­man indus­try and finance. . . .

13. “Dur­ing World War I the de Wen­dels, the influ­en­tial French-Ger­man bank­ing and indus­tri­al fam­i­ly which head­ed the French wing of the Inter­na­tion­al Steel Car­tel through their Comite des Forges and whose mem­bers had sat in the par­lia­ments of both France and Ger­many, were able to keep the French army from destroy­ing indus­tri­al plants belong­ing to the Ger­man enter­pris­es of the Rochling fam­i­ly. These plants were locat­ed in the Briey Basin, a Lor­raine ore field then in Ger­man con­trol.” (Idem.)

14. “The Rochling fam­i­ly, with their pow­er­ful com­plex of coal, iron, steel and bank­ing enter­pris­es in Ger­many, has for gen­er­a­tions played in close har­mo­ny with the de Wen­del fam­i­ly. For a cen­tu­ry, the descen­dants of Chris­t­ian Rochling have dom­i­nat­ed the indus­try and com­merce of the Saar Basin. It was Her­mann Rochling who arranged the return of the Saar to Ger­many in the plebiscite of Jan­u­ary 1935 by orga­niz­ing the Deutsche Front, which deliv­ered 90 per­cent of the votes to the Nazis. Though sev­en­ty-two mem­bers of the Rochling fam­i­ly have sur­vived two world wars and are still active in the busi­ness of the Saar today, two oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, Her­mann and his broth­er Robert, a major, had been put in charge of pro­duc­tion in the Briey Basin. After the war, when the broth­ers Rochling moved out of the areas which had to be ced­ed to France under the Treaty, the two of them car­ried away bod­i­ly a cou­ple of large steel plants.” (Idem.)

15. “Con­ceiv­ing this grand lar­ce­ny to be some­thing in the nature of a war crime, the French gov­ern­ment tried the broth­ers Rochling in absen­tia and sen­tenced them to forty years in prison. But the Ger­man gov­ern­ment nev­er would give up the Rochlings to the French. For the next twen­ty-two years the broth­ers were under this cloud as far as the French gov­ern­ment was con­cerned. On the oth­er hand, as far as the French steel mak­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, the Comite des Forges, and in par­tic­u­lar the de Wen­dels who head­ed the Comite, were con­cerned, it was busi­ness as usu­al-or in this case, busi­ness as unusu­al-that pre­vailed. In the end even the French gov­ern­ment weak­ened for busi­ness pur­pos­es, though the war-crime sen­tence remained. When it came time for France to build its impreg­nable Mag­inot Line, who should be called in to sup­ply steel and tech­ni­cal assis­tance but the Ger­man firm of the broth­ers Rochling. If the French behaved in this as did the Amer­i­cans dur­ing World War II in the case of insur­ance cov­er­age on war plants, they doubt­less placed plen­ty of guards to pro­tect the secu­ri­ty and secre­cy of the Mag­inot Line con­struc­tion from the pry­ing eyes of the gen­er­al pub­lic while the blue­prints rest­ed safe­ly in the hands of the only peo­ple to whom they mat­tered: to wit, the ene­my.” (Ibid.; p. 35.)

16. “Now comes the out­break of World War II. The French army march­ing into the Saar dur­ing the ‘pho­ny war’ peri­od in 1939, received orders not to fire on or dam­age the plants of the ‘war crim­i­nals,’ the broth­ers Rochling. In 1940 came the blitz and the fall of France. The Vichy gov­ern­ment passed a decree exon­er­at­ing the Rochlings and can­cel­ing their forty-year prison sen­tences.” (Ibid.; p. 36.)

17. The Fran­co-Ger­man steel car­tel, in turn, was part of an inter­na­tion­al steel car­tel fea­tur­ing the Thyssen firm Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke (lat­er Thyssen A.G.). “The mid-twen­ties were remark­able for Ger­man indus­tri­al com­bi­na­tion. They marked the for­ma­tion of the Unit­ed Steel Works in Ger­many, as a com­bi­na­tion of the four biggest steel pro­duc­ers Ernst Poens­gen, Fritz Thyssen, Otto Wolff, and the oth­ers who drew this com­bine togeth­er had man­aged to get over a hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars from pri­vate investors in the Unit­ed States. Dil­lon Read & Com­pa­ny, the New York invest­ment house which brought Clarence Dil­lon, James V. For­re­stal, William H. Drap­er, Jr., and oth­ers into promi­nence, float­ed the Unit­ed Steel Works bonds in the Unit­ed States behind a glow­ing prospec­tus which declared that the Unit­ed Steel Works Cor­po­ra­tion (Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke) ‘will be the largest indus­tri­al unit in Europe and one of the largest man­u­fac­tur­ers of iron and steel in the world, rank­ing in pro­duc­tive capac­i­ty sec­ond only to the Unit­ed States Steel Cor­po­ra­tion.’ The for­ma­tion of Unit­ed Steel gave its man­age­ment tremen­dous pow­er in Ger­many: enough to car­ry through with­out delay the orga­ni­za­tion of the Ger­man domes­tic steel car­tel, and to guar­an­tee the ‘good behav­ior’ of all Ger­man steel com­pa­nies in their agree­ments with for­eign firms.” (Ibid.; pp. 41–42.)

18. Much of the sec­ond side dis­cuss­es the actions of the Fifth Col­umn in France pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. (For more about this Fifth Col­umn, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M61.) It is impor­tant to note in this con­text, that Mr. Emory stress­es that the anal­o­gy between the Fifth Col­umn in France and its coun­ter­part in the Unit­ed States is not an exact one. There are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the sit­u­a­tion in France before World War II and that in the U.S. today. Nonethe­less there are sim­i­lar­i­ties worth exam­in­ing. One should note that France was gov­erned by a demo­c­ra­t­ic coali­tion gov­ern­ment under Leon Blum (the Social Front or Pop­u­lar Front), which includ­ed the French com­mu­nist par­ty. Under the social pres­sures brought about by the Great Depres­sion and the inabil­i­ty of lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments to deal ade­quate­ly with the social fall­out from it, many coun­tries expe­ri­enced pow­er­ful fas­cist move­ments. Such was the case in France. Indus­tri­al­ists, financiers, aris­to­crats and mem­bers of the armed forces were among the fas­cist plot­ters that saw the elim­i­na­tion of the Blum gov­ern­ment as a neces­si­ty. After ini­tial fail­ure in the plot by the fas­cist Cagoulards in 1938, many of the fas­cists acced­ed to pow­er in the Vichy gov­ern­ment after the Ger­man con­quest.

19. The account of the actions of the French Fifth Col­umn relies heav­i­ly on the account pro­vid­ed by Pierre Cot, the French min­is­ter of avi­a­tion under the Leon Blum gov­ern­ment. In his 1944 book Tri­umph of Trea­son, Cot dis­cussed the sub­ver­sion of the French mil­i­tary resis­tance to the Ger­mans by mem­bers of the armed forces sym­pa­thet­ic to the fas­cist cause. The Vichy gov­ern­ment then under­took to pin the stun­ning mil­i­tary defeat on the Blum gov­ern­ment, instead of the con­spir­a­to­r­i­al activ­i­ties of some of its own sym­pa­thiz­ers. “First of all, it was nec­es­sary to ‘pre­serve the hon­or of the Army.’ Gen­er­al Wey­gand thun­dered these words like a com­mand. He used, uncon­scious­ly, the same terms that lead­ers of the French Army had invoked dur­ing the Drey­fus affair to pre­vent pub­lic opin­ion from dis­cov­er­ing their crit­i­cal mis­takes. ‘Pre­serve the hon­or of the Army,’ to French mil­i­tary men, is to secure by every means-includ­ing those out­lawed by moral law and the Penal Code-the defense of the mil­i­tary cor­po­ra­tion.”

20. “The ques­tion of the respon­si­bil­i­ty of mil­i­tary lead­ers in the mil­i­tary defeat of France either had to be evad­ed or posed in dis­tort­ed terms. To ‘pre­serve the hon­or of the Army,’ the scape­goats of the defeat had to be cho­sen from the polit­i­cal per­son­nel of the Third Repub­lic.” (Tri­umph of Trea­son; by Pierre Cot; Copy­right 1944 [HC]; Ziff-Davis; p. 14.)

21. The com­bi­na­tion of inep­ti­tude and delib­er­ate sub­ver­sion by ele­ments of the armed forces was rel­a­tive­ly well known at the time. (One should bear in mind the dis­cus­sion of the intel­li­gence fail­ures in regard to 9/11. A sim­i­lar com­bi­na­tion of inep­ti­tude and sub­ver­sion was respon­si­ble for those fail­ures.) “In truth, at the end of June, 1940, the ques­tion of who was respon­si­ble was in every­one’s mind. In the two weeks pre­ced­ing the armistice, I was in touch with the crowd of refugees that slow­ly and painful­ly fol­lowed the roads south­ward. In the offices of the pre­fects, in the town halls, restau­rants, and relief cen­ters, I lis­tened to many con­ver­sa­tions received many con­fi­dences, heard many opin­ions. Opin­ions dif­fered on gov­ern­men­tal pol­i­cy, but all agreed in denounc­ing the blun­ders of the French Gen­er­al Staff. The coun­try was unan­i­mous, not against Blum, Dal­adier, or me, nor even against Laval, Pierre-Eti­enne Flandin, Georges Bon­net, or Jacques Dori­ot, but against the gen­er­als who had been inca­pable of under­stand­ing the con­di­tions of mod­ern war­fare and who were guilty of not know­ing the rudi­ments of their pro­fes­sion. ‘Just as before 1914 they had pre­pared for the war of 1870,’ the peo­ple said, ‘before 1939 they pre­pared for the war of 1914.’ ” (Ibid.; pp. 14–15.)

22. “The sever­est con­dem­na­tion came from the sol­diers. Lost on the roads in pur­suit of dis­persed divi­sions and phan­tom reg­i­ments, thrown togeth­er with the refugees whose uncer­tain­ties and anx­i­eties they share, the men in uni­form cursed the con­duct of their lead­ers. They repeat­ed that they nev­er had been schooled in the tech­niques of mod­ern war­fare, espe­cial­ly in the com­bined use of tanks and avi­a­tion, and they were amazed at the inept­ness of their com­man­ders in the bat­tles of May and June. They asked why the Meuse and Seine bridges had not been blown up before the arrival of Ger­man motor­ized columns; why Paris had not been defend­ed street by street, as the Span­ish Repub­li­cans had defend­ed Madrid (and as the Rus­sians were to defend Stal­in­grad); and they want­ed to know why more than half of the tanks and air­planes had been left in the rear-in Orleans, Toulouse, Lyon, North Africa-instead of being massed for a coun­ter­at­tack that might have changed every­thing. They knew that the depots were burst­ing with the can­non, air­planes, and equip­ment they had need­ed.” (Idem.)

23. “One began to hear quot­ed the dis­turb­ing remarks with which Gen­er­al Wey­gand had tried to per­suade the cab­i­net to ask for an armistice: that he need­ed his tanks to mas­ter the rev­o­lu­tion­ary ele­ments, if it should become nec­es­sary. That is to say, the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the French Army pre­ferred fight­ing French work­ers to throw­ing all his forces against the Ger­man troops. The sol­diers praised the brav­ery of cer­tain lead­ers-Giraud, Lestien, De Gaulle, Lucien, Delat­tre de Tas­signy, and many oth­ers-but they declared that most of the offi­cers had been the first to flee. ‘They left in auto­mo­biles and we left on foot,’ they said, talk­ing about those offi­cers, faith­ful fol­low­ers of l’Ac­tion Fran­caise, Je Suis Partout, Gringoire, and oth­er Fas­cist news­pa­pers which had said in var­i­ous forms, dur­ing the win­ter, that this was a demo­c­ra­t­ic war and con­se­quent­ly did not inter­est them.” (Ibid.; p. 15.)

24. “Their anger was legit­i­mate. It was inex­plic­a­ble, after all, that the Gen­er­al Staff, after decid­ing to aban­don Paris and thus open­ing the east to the Ger­mans, had not ordered the troops which occu­pied the Mag­inot Line to fall back toward the south. More than a mil­lion men, the best of the French Army, were caught in the Ger­man trap, a dis­as­ter which could have been pre­vent­ed by an order from Gen­er­al Wey­gand.” (Ibid.; pp. 15–16.)

25. “By its com­po­si­tion, the gov­ern­ment of Vichy was rep­re­sen­ta­tive not of the French peo­ple but of the Gen­er­al Staff. Its first cab­i­nets were head­ed by Petain, the spir­i­tu­al leader of the French Army, the man who had played the most impor­tant part in the prepa­ra­tion of the war and in the for­ma­tion of the Gen­er­al Staff. And these cab­i­nets were com­posed large­ly of mem­bers of the Gen­er­al Staff-Gen­er­al Wey­gand, Gen­er­al Pujo, Admi­ral Dar­lan, Gen­er­al Huntzinger, Gen­er­al Berg­eret, and Admi­ral Pla­ton. As the French proverb says, ‘the wolves do not each oth­er!” (Ibid.; p. 16.)

26. Cot dis­cuss­es in detail the appoint­ment of Cagoulard fas­cists to posi­tions of influ­ence with­in the Vichy gov­ern­ment. “To their aston­ish­ment the French peo­ple saw Petain slow­ly fill the most impor­tant posts of author­i­ty in local, depart­men­tal, and cen­tral admin­is­tra­tions with men who had tak­en part in the Cagoulard plot, with those who had repeat­ed the infa­mous refrain ‘rather Hitler than Leon Blum,’ and even with some of those who before or dur­ing the war had been arrest­ed for trea­son­able domes­tic and for­eign activ­i­ties. The peo­ple were apply­ing to the gov­ern­ment the old proverb, ‘tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.’ They were alarmed to see Vichy employ for its most del­i­cate mis­sions Fer­di­nand de Brinon, Jean Mon­tigny, Jean Goy, Jean Luchaire, and Gas­ton Hen­ry-Haye-mem­bers of the Comite France-Alle­magne, an orga­ni­za­tion which, before the war, had been inspired and financed by Otto Abetz, after 1940 Hitler’s Ambas­sador in Paris. They learned with fury that on the night of the armistice, when France was in mourn­ing, French­men and French­women of the aris­toc­ra­cy, high finance, and indus­try had drunk at Bor­deaux to the defeat which had rid them of the night­mare of democ­ra­cy and the Pop­u­lar Front. The peo­ple under­stood that the Fifth Col­umn in France, as in Spain, had opened the door to Hitler’s agents. And they watched with awe the agents of the Fifth Col­umn become mas­ters of France, the France of Petain, Wey­gand, and Laval.” (Ibid.; pp. 17–18.)

27. The pro­gram high­lights Cot’s account of the use of Fifth Col­umn activ­i­ty by fas­cists in the 1930s and 1940s. (AFA 10 [4] con­tains an account of the 1934 coup attempt in the Unit­ed States by pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic inter­ests who hat­ed Franklin Roo­sevelt’s New Deal.) “The activ­i­ty of the Fifth Col­umn will not be con­sid­ered by his­to­ri­ans a spe­cial phe­nom­e­non of French pub­lic life, but as an inte­gral part of Fas­cism. The Fifth Col­umn has appeared wher­ev­er Fas­cism has tried to gain a foothold. It was at work in Spain, Aus­tria, and Czecho­slo­va­kia before it turned up in France, and there are Fifth Columns in the Unit­ed States, India, and Latin Amer­i­ca. By the Fifth Col­umn I do not mean only spies and licensed trai­tors. The Fifth Col­umn includes all who, by accept­ing fas­cist doc­trines or meth­ods, become the con­scious or uncon­scious accom­plices of a for­eign pow­er. Trea­son and com­plic­i­ty have their degrees and nuances. The Gen­er­al Staff of the Fifth col­umn con­sists prin­ci­pal­ly of ambi­tious men who try to seize pow­er by destroy­ing or par­a­lyz­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. The body of the Fifth Col­umn is com­posed of peo­ple who think they are sav­ing their coun­try from the ‘com­mu­nist men­ace’ or from ‘British impe­ri­al­ism,’ and who do not even know in whose favor their actions are oper­at­ing. Through hate of the Poplar Front, good French­men, or men who con­sid­ered them­selves such, served Hitler gra­tu­itous­ly by doing work to which they would nev­er have con­sent­ed, had they had been offered pay­ment. Why? Because they detest­ed the Repub­lic and democ­ra­cy more than they loved France. They accept­ed the idea of the defeat as a nec­es­sary evil which per­mit­ted them to rid France of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem and to keep in pow­er, in the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, the Fas­cist dic­ta­tors whom they con­sid­ered sole­ly capa­ble of main­tain­ing order in Europe. They then became uncon­scious col­lab­o­ra­tors of these dic­ta­tors. They thought they were doing their duty in let­ting Hitler free France from the ‘Judeo-Mason­ic’ influ­ence, and Europe from the Com­mu­nist per­il. These peo­ple who had nev­er read Marx, con­sid­ered the ‘Marx­ist dan­ger’ more imme­di­ate than the Hit­ler­ian. They pre­ferred the risks of an entente with a vic­to­ri­ous Hitler to the risks of a demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry that would cause the col­lapse of the Fas­cist dic­ta­tors in Europe. Con­sid­er­ing Hitler in Ger­many, Mus­soli­ni in Italy, and Fran­co in Spain as knights of an anti-Bol­she­vist cru­sade, they became pre­cur­sors and lat­er par­ti­sans of ‘col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hitler’s New Order.’ ” (Idem.)

28. “Enough evi­dence has been pub­lished already to prove that France was stabbed in the back by those who saw in Hitler the new St. George who would slay the Com­mu­nist drag­on. When Pierre Lazareff, for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of Paris Soir (the French news­pa­per with the widest cir­cu­la­tion), reports roy­al­ists as say­ing: ‘We need the defeat to wipe out the Repub­lic;’ when Elie Bois, for­mer edi­tor of the Petit Parisien (the most influ­en­tial polit­i­cal news­pa­per), reports great indus­tri­al­ists ad admit­ting to him, dur­ing the win­ter of 1939–1940, that a plot had been orga­nized to replace the demo­c­ra­t­ic regime by a ‘gov­ern­ment of author­i­ty’ and that this plot pre­sup­posed a Nazi vic­to­ry. . .We have every rea­son to accept their affir­ma­tions, which tal­ly so per­fect­ly with the events.” (Ibid.; pp. 62–63.)

29. “No, France received no excep­tion­al treat­ment from Hitler and Fas­cism. A gen­er­al plan coor­di­nat­ed the activ­i­ty of the Fifth Columns all over the world. All were recruit­ed from the same cir­cles and had the same social and polit­i­cal com­po­si­tion. The object was the same every­where: to divide and unnerve pub­lic opin­ion, weak­en the resis­tance of the regime, and pre­pare a gov­ern­men­tal group ready to exe­cute a Fas­cist coup d’e­tat at a moment of trou­ble or con­fu­sion. The meth­ods were the same every­where: cul­ti­va­tion of the seeds of dis­uni­ty which nor­mal­ly exist among free men and in free coun­tries, exag­ger­a­tion and inflam­ma­tion of all racial and reli­gious con­flicts, all class rival­ries, all polit­i­cal antag­o­nisms, grad­ual con­ver­sion of oppo­si­tion and dis­sent into hate, cre­ation of an atmos­phere of civ­il war. The means used were the same every­where: cam­paigns of calum­ny against the demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers capa­ble of oppos­ing Fas­cism (Blum in France, Roo­sevelt in the Unit­ed States), the devel­op­ment of anti-Semi­tism, because anti-Semi­tism is the first man­i­fes­ta­tion of racism and con­tains in pet­to the whole doc­trine of Hitler, use of the fear of Com­mu­nism among the mid­dle class­es, because anti-Com­mu­nism is the best way to pre­vent the union of all anti-Fas­cist forces. This last device has been the most effi­ca­cious; the fear of Com­mu­nism has become, in Euro­pean and Amer­i­can pol­i­tics of recent years, a much more impor­tant fac­tor than Com­mu­nism itself.” (Ibid.; p. 64.)

30. After the war, the “busi­ness as usu­al” pat­tern between the French Fifth Colum­nists of the Ruhr-Lor­raine com­plex and their Ger­man coun­ter­parts resumed. Once again, the De Wen­dels were at the fore­front of events. “Along with the unease, the fact that France has lin­ger­ing and seri­ous social and polit­i­cal ail­ments is a residue of World War II and of an eco­nom­ic occu­pa­tion that was nev­er real­ly ter­mi­nat­ed with the with­draw­al of Ger­man troops beyond the Rhine. It was this spe­cial eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ship between Ger­man and French indus­tri­al­ists that made it pos­si­ble for Friedrich Flick to arrange with the De Wen­del steel firm in France for pur­chase of his shares in his Ruhr coal com­bine for $45 mil­lion, which was to start him once more on the road back to wealth and pow­er, after years in prison fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion at Nurem­berg.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; pp. 271–272.)

31. As of the time of this writ­ing, it remains to be seen what the out­come of events in the Unit­ed States will be. It is pre­ma­ture to say that Bush & Co. will be able to use 9/11 to real­ize a far-right agen­da in the U.S. Despite Bush’s cozy rela­tion­ship to the Sau­di per­pe­tra­tors of 9/11, there has been some pub­lic dis­sent con­cern­ing U.S. pol­i­cy toward the descen­dants of Ibn Saud. There has also been some dis­sent con­cern­ing Bush’s anti-ter­ror­ist pro­pos­als and the way in which they will affect tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can civ­il lib­er­ties. Nev­er­the­less, Bush has (with the aid of a pli­ant media estab­lish­ment) been able to use the events of 9/11 to push (with some suc­cess) for an extreme agen­da, while evad­ing crit­i­cism. Con­sti­tu­tion­al judi­cial pro­tec­tions and the fun­da­men­tal bal­ance of pow­er with regard to the wag­ing of war are seri­ous­ly threat­ened. Should the U.S. be attacked again, par­tic­u­lar­ly if the attack involve weapons of mass destruc­tion, Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy will be severe­ly test­ed. In this con­text, one should not lose sight of the pres­ence of Islam­o­fas­cists asso­ci­at­ed with the Al Taqwa milieu on the GOP eth­nic orga­ni­za­tion-itself a repos­i­to­ry for Third Reich alum­ni in the past. Nor should one lose sight of the Bush fam­i­ly’s Nazi her­itage, the Saudi/Bin Laden/Bush links to the milieu of Allen Dulles, and the Bush fam­i­ly links to the Bin Ladens and the Islam­o­fas­cists of the Youssef Nada milieu.