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Assess­ing the Iraqi sit­u­a­tion from the view­point of a geopo­lit­i­cal strug­gle between the Under­ground Reich and its Islam­o­fas­cist allies and the Unit­ed States, this pro­gram details sup­port by neo-Nazi ele­ments for Iraq, as well as Ger­man insti­tu­tion­al sup­port for Sad­dam Hus­sein pro­vid­ed by Hel­mut Kohl’s gov­ern­ment. (At the con­clu­sion of this pro­gram descrip­tion, there will be a short dis­cus­sion of some con­sid­er­a­tions to be eval­u­at­ed in con­nec­tion with the Iraqi sit­u­a­tion.

To grasp the admit­ted­ly com­plex and, for the new­com­er, incred­i­ble-seem­ing nature of the inquiry under­tak­en in the For The Record series, access the infor­ma­tion con­tained in FTR 155 about the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion’s sup­port for the devel­op­ment of the Argentine/Iraqi Con­dor mis­sile pro­gram, as well as an Argentine/Iraqi/Underground Reich nuclear pro­gram. This is the last work bequeathed to us by the hero­ic Paul Man­ning, arguably the great­est broad­cast jour­nal­ist of his gen­er­a­tion.

A mem­ber of the CBS team that cov­ered World War II in Europe, Man­ning trained as a B‑17 gun­ner to cov­er air raids into occu­pied Europe (and shot down an ME-109 while doing so), broad­cast the sur­ren­der of Ger­many on the CBS radio net­work, trained as a B‑29 gun­ner to cov­er the air raids over Japan and then broad­cast the sur­ren­der of Japan on the CBS radio net­work. After the war, he began his hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the Under­ground Reich and the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion, par­tial­ly under­writ­ten by CBS, which refused to go pub­lic with the sto­ry. The work­ing hypoth­e­sis pre­sent­ed in the long FTR series on the events in and around 9/11 is pred­i­cat­ed, in part, on Man­ning’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion. (He paid dear­ly for his endeav­ors-his career was destroyed, his eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion under­mined and, final­ly, his son Ger­ry mur­dered in retal­i­a­tion for his con­tin­ued inves­ti­ga­tion into the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion.) Lis­ten­ers are strong­ly encour­aged to uti­lize the vast body of infor­ma­tion about the Bor­mann Orga­ni­za­tion pre­sent­ed in the For The Record series.

1. The dis­cus­sion begins with a quote from for­mer Goebbels aide Johann von Leers. (Von Leers was in charge of anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da for the Third Reich, served with Nazi émi­gré ele­ments in Argenti­na and the Mid­dle East, and men­tored Achmed Huber, the Swiss-born Islamist and neo-Nazi who serves on the board of direc­tors of Al Taqwa. Al Taqwa was iden­ti­fied by the U.S. gov­ern­ment as an orga­ni­za­tion that has helped Al Qae­da, among oth­er ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions. For more about von Leers, see the numer­ous inter­views with Kevin Coogan, as well as many of the broad­casts about Al Taqwa. In the fol­low­ing quote, von Leers stress­es the effect that U.S. sup­port for Israel has had on Arab pop­u­la­tions-an obvi­ous geopo­lit­i­cal ele­ment exploit­ed by the Under­ground Reich in order to gain ide­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­trol over that key area. “The mon­key-love of USA gov­ern­ment for the Jews iso­lates the Amer­i­cans both in Ger­many and in the Near East.” (Dream­er of the Day: Fran­cis Park­er Yock­ey and the Post­war Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al; by Kevin Coogan; Copy­right 1999 [SC]; Autono­me­dia; ISBN 1/57027–039‑2; pp. 439–440.)

2. One of von Leers’ émi­gré asso­ciates who worked for Nass­er in Egypt was Wal­ter Busse, who lat­er put his exper­tise to work for Sad­dam Hus­sein. “Wal­ter Busse, for exam­ple, designed bal­lis­tic mis­siles and mil­i­tary jet engines for Nass­er in the late 1950’s and 1960’s; he sub­se­quent­ly turned up as an advi­sor to Sad­dam Hus­sein’s mil­i­tary R & D pro­gram pri­or to the 1991 Gulf War.” (The Beast Reawak­ens; by Mar­tin A. Lee; Copy­right 1997 [HC]; Lit­tle, Brown & Co.; ISBN 0–316-51959–6; p.150.)

3. A Third Posi­tion fas­cist exem­pli­fy­ing the fusion of “left fas­cist” views with Islam­o­fas­cism and sec­u­lar Arabo-fas­cism was Jean Thiri­art. (For more about the fas­cist Third Posi­tion, see, among oth­er pro­grams, Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Shows M19 and M21.) The lis­ten­ers are asked to eval­u­ate Thiri­art’s views against the back­ground of the events of 9/11, the grow­ing anti-Amer­i­can sen­ti­ment in Europe, and the prob­a­ble effect of a U.S. inva­sion of Iraq on Arab opin­ion in the Mid­dle East. Do not fail to take notice of Thiri­art’s liai­son with a younger Sad­dam Hus­sein. “In 1968, Thiri­art vis­it­ed sev­er­al Arab coun­tries in an effort to win sup­port for his idea of a ‘Euro­pean brigade,’ which he envi­sioned as the embryo of a future guer­ril­la army that would engage in armed strug­gle against the Amer­i­can ‘occu­pa­tion forces’ on the Con­ti­nent. He sought to con­vince his Arab hosts that it would be to their advan­tage if the Unit­ed States became embroiled in a ‘blind war’ in Europe against ‘a ter­ror­ist ene­my both invis­i­ble and ever-present.’ ” (Ibid.; p. 180.)

“With this in mind, Thiri­art trav­eled to Iraq, where offi­cials of the rul­ing Ba’ath Par­ty received him warm­ly. After denounc­ing ‘Zion­ist-Amer­i­can col­lu­sion in the Mid­dle East’ at a Bagh­dad press con­fer­ence, he con­ferred with an up-and-com­ing Iraqi colonel named Sad­dam Hus­sein. Iraqi lead­ers were all ears when Thiri­art spelled out his plan for a Euro­pean mil­i­tary force to assist the Arabs in their fight against Israel. In addi­tion to help­ing the Arab cause, Thiri­art’s young recruits would gain valu­able com­bat expe­ri­ence that would pre­sum­ably serve them well when they returned to Europe to take on the Amer­i­cans. Accord­ing to Thiri­art, the Iraqis were enthu­si­as­tic, but the Sovi­et Union nixed the pro­pos­al. Iraq had no choice but to com­ply, giv­en that it was large­ly depen­dent on the USSR for mil­i­tary aid.” (Idem.)

4. Thiri­art also became close to George Hab­bash, an asso­ciate of Fran­cois Genoud, a name that fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the broad­er inquiry into 9/11. “After Israel’s vic­to­ry in the 1967 Six-Day War, a mood of des­per­ate mil­i­tan­cy engulfed the mis­er­able Pales­tin­ian refugee camps. Deprived of a home­land and faced with an implaca­ble ene­my, Pales­tin­ian lead­ers appar­ent­ly felt they could­n’t afford to turn down offers of help, no mat­ter how unsa­vory the donors. Arab rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies were con­tin­u­al­ly approached by neo-Nazi suit­ors. Dis­miss­ing the dis­tinc­tion between Jews and Zion­ists as ‘a sub­tle­ty for intel­lec­tu­als,’ Thiri­art forged a close rela­tion­ship with George Hab­bash, head of the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine, which hijacked sev­er­al com­mer­cial jets and engaged in oth­er inter­na­tion­al acts of ter­ror and sab­o­tage. Accord­ing to Luc Michel, Thiri­art’s sec­re­tary: ‘Hab­bash gave mon­ey to La Nation Europeenne, and Thiri­art sup­port­ed Hab­bash in this mag­a­zine.’ ” (Ibid.; pp. 180–181.)

“In addi­tion to his ties with Thiri­art, Dr. Hab­bash col­lab­o­rat­ed with Fran­cois Genoud, a shad­owy Swiss banker with exten­sive neo-Nazi con­nec­tions. Described by Otto Ernst Remer as ‘a very impor­tant per­son,’ Genoud became an ear­ly mem­ber of the Swiss Nazi Par­ty and worked for Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence dur­ing World War II. Some­how Genoud was able to secure the posthu­mous rights to all the writ­ings of Hitler, Goebbels, and Mar­tin Bor­mann.” (Idem)

5. Anoth­er of the SS vet­er­ans who worked with Arab ele­ments in the post­war peri­od was Otto Ernst Remer. “While based in Dam­as­cus, Otto Ernst Remer was in con­tact with Yass­er Arafat, chief of the Pales­tine Lib­er­a­tion Orga­ni­za­tion. ‘I know Mr. Arafat quite well, naturlich,’ he assert­ed. ‘I saw him many times. He invit­ed me to eat at his head­quar­ters. I knew all his peo­ple. They want­ed many things from us.’ For Remer, any­one who was an ene­my of Israel was his friend, par­tic­u­lar­ly when a prof­it could be turned. He claimed to have bro­kered sev­er­al busi­ness deals between West Ger­man com­pa­nies and the PLO.” (Ibid.; p. 182.)

“Thiri­art con­tin­ued to view the Pales­tin­ian strug­gle as a spring­board to pur­sue his dream of a pan-Euro­pean rev­o­lu­tion. . . . Through­out the 1970’s he stayed out of the lime­light, giv­ing only a few inter­views in which he pound­ed home his anti-Amer­i­can mes­sage. ‘The whole of Europe, from Stock­holm to Naples, must know about each Amer­i­can who is killed with­in 48 hours of the event,’ Thiri­art told a French reporter. ‘Euro­pean uni­ty will only come about when 200 or 300 Amer­i­can occu­piers are killed in every cor­ner of Europe just to prove our point. Then there will be no going back.’ ” (Idem.) Again, Thiri­art’s views should be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of what has tak­en place in and around 9/11.

6. Next, the broad­cast focus­es on the sup­port of neo-Nazi ele­ments (par­tic­u­lar­ly in Ger­many) for Sad­dam Hus­sein dur­ing the Gulf War. Of par­tic­u­lar note is Michael Kuh­nen, one of the more promi­nent Ger­man neo-Nazis of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Note, in this con­text, the anti-Amer­i­can and anti-Semit­ic moti­va­tion for the stance tak­en by Kuh­nen and com­pa­ny. “As the Unit­ed States rat­tled its saber and threat­ened Bagh­dad, Michael Kuh­nen con­tact­ed the Iraqi embassy in Bonn. His over­tures cul­mi­nat­ed in a mem­o­ran­dum of agree­ment with Iraqi offi­cials, which stip­u­lat­ed that Bagh­dad would finance and equip an anti-Zion­ist legion com­posed of neo-Nazi mer­ce­nar­ies from Ger­many and oth­er coun­tries. This so-called inter­na­tion­al Free­dom Corps was sup­posed to assist Iraq if it came under attack by the Unit­ed States. Kuh­nen, the des­ig­nat­ed com­man­der of the vol­un­teer brigade, praised Sad­dam Hus­sein as a free­dom fight­er: ‘We have com­mon ideals-the cre­ation of liv­ing spaces for dif­fer­ent peo­ple and races in accor­dance with their own cul­ture and tra­di­tion.’ Refer­ring to Kuwait as ‘the Sile­sia of Iraq,’ Kuh­nen claimed that Arabs were not Marx­ists but nation­al­ists ‘just like we are.’ More­over, they had the same enemy-‘the Unit­ed States and its back­ers, the Zion­ist forces.’ But the mar­tial prowess of the neo-Nazis, who pre­ten­tious­ly strut­ted around Bagh­dad in SS uni­forms, left much to be desired. As soon as the bombs start­ed to fall on the Iraqi cap­i­tal, Kuh­nen’s mot­ley del­e­ga­tion scur­ried back to Europe.” (Ibid.; p. 249.)

“Kuh­nen and his clique were not the only fas­cists who sup­port­ed Sad­dam dur­ing the 1991 Gulf War. The Repub­likan­er Par­ty dis­patched a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Bagh­dad, where he was warm­ly received by Iraqi lead­ers. Jean-Marie le Pen of the French Front Nation­al also got the red-car­pet treat­ment when he met Sad­dam. And sev­er­al British neo-Nazis ven­tured to Iraq short­ly before the onset of the Amer­i­can-led blitzkrieg. South African white suprema­cists sent mes­sages of sup­port to Sad­dam as well. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Kuh­nen was quick to applaud when Iraqi Scuds began hit­ting Israel. Even if Sad­dam Hus­sein used bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, the Ger­man neo-Nazi chief main­tained, he deserved respect for stand­ing up to the Unit­ed States.” (Idem.)

7. Of greater sig­nif­i­cance is the pro­found sup­port giv­en by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment of Hel­mut Kohl for Sad­dam Hus­sein’s weapons pro­gram. One should note, in this con­text, that Ger­man insti­tu­tions evolved from those of the Third Reich and that the Under­ground Reich main­tained effec­tive con­trol of Ger­man indus­try and finance, the Ger­man intel­li­gence ser­vice and mil­i­tary in the post­war peri­od. “Kuh­nen’s blus­ter on behalf of Iraq was curi­ous­ly in synch with the covert pol­i­cy that Bonn had been pur­su­ing for near­ly a decade. With the full knowl­edge and coop­er­a­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and its BND spy appa­ra­tus, dozens of Ger­man com­pa­nies were instru­men­tal in help­ing Sad­dam Hus­sein devel­op one of the world’s most diver­si­fied uncon­ven­tion­al-war­fare arse­nals. Sev­er­al of West Ger­many’s biggest firms sup­plied equip­ment and exper­tise to set up entire plants for the pro­duc­tion of nuclear, chem­i­cal, and bio­log­i­cal weapon­ry. Oth­er coun­tries, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, cashed in on the macabre bonan­za that cre­at­ed Iraq’s high-tech death machine dur­ing the 1980’s, but Bon­n’s role far out­stripped the inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tion. In addi­tion to con­struct­ing Sad­dam’s under­ground bunker and extend­ing the range of the Scud mis­siles to be able to hit Israel, Ger­man engi­neers con­coct­ed new deliv­ery sys­tems for poi­son gas and dis­pensed advice on the most effi­cient way to enrich ura­ni­um into weapons-grade fuel for a nuclear bomb.” (Ibid.; pp. 249–250.)

It is also sig­nif­i­cant that the BND (itself descend­ed from the Nazi East­ern-Front spy appa­ra­tus of Rein­hard Gehlen) helped train Iraqi intel­li­gence agents. “More ten­sions between Wash­ing­ton and Bonn arose dur­ing the 1991 Gulf War. Dis­re­gard­ing the Unit­ed Nations trade embar­go, more than fifty Ger­man com­pa­nies con­tin­ued to pro­vide Iraq with mis­sile parts, chem­i­cal agents, and state-of-the-art engi­neer­ing equip­ment right up until the Unit­ed States attacked Bagh­dad. Once again, Chan­cel­lor Kohl ignored repeat­ed requests by the U.S. gov­ern­ment to probe these illic­it busi­ness trans­ac­tions. Lat­er it would be dis­closed that the BND had trained Iraqi and Libyan secret police units. Ger­many’s will­ing­ness to go its own way in the inter­na­tion­al are­na would result in sharp argu­ments with its West­ern allies in the months ahead.” (Ibid.; p. 251.)

8. Anoth­er Ger­man sup­port­er of Sad­dam was Ger­hard Frey, a pub­lish­er and backer of the DVU, a top neo-Nazi par­ty. “Even before he formed the DVU in 1971 with the pro­fessed objec­tive to ‘save Ger­many from Com­mu­nism,’ Frey received behind-the-scenes sup­port from Gen­er­al Rein­hard Gehlen, Bon­n’s pow­er­ful spy chief. But after the super­pow­er face-off end­ed, the DVU fuehrer quick­ly shift­ed gears and demand­ed that Ger­many leave NATO. His news­pa­pers began to run inflam­ma­to­ry arti­cles that denounced the Unit­ed States and praised Rus­sia as a more suit­able part­ner for post-Cold War Ger­many. Frey also joined the cho­rus of neo-Nazi agi­ta­tors who expressed sol­i­dar­i­ty with Sad­dam Hus­sein and con­demned the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 1991.” (Ibid.; pp. 326–327.)

9. In eval­u­at­ing the debate about Iraq, it is worth remem­ber­ing the hints that there may have been an Iraqi con­nec­tion to the Okla­homa City bomb­ing. There are also evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing the first World Trade Cen­ter attack in 1973, Okla­homa City and the attacks of 9/11. Of pos­si­ble addi­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance in this regard are the neo-Naz­i/Sad­dam con­nec­tion dis­cussed above, and the par­al­lel sup­port giv­en to Sad­dam by Kohl’s gov­ern­ment. Pre­vi­ous pro­grams on the Okla­homa City bomb­ing have under­scored the tes­ti­mo­ny of an ATF infor­mant that the Okla­homa City bomb­ing was mas­ter­mind­ed by Andreas Strass­meier, the son of Gun­ther Strass­meier-Hel­mut Kohl’s for­mer chief of staff and the archi­tect of Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion. Gun­ther’s father, in turn, was one of the ear­ly mem­bers of the Nazi par­ty under Hitler. “One rea­son for the FBI’s appar­ent lack of inter­est might be this motel’s alleged con­nec­tion to Tim­o­thy McVeigh and a group of Iraqis who worked in Okla­homa City. Accord­ing to the motel own­er and oth­er wit­ness­es and inves­ti­ga­tors inter­viewed by the Week­ly, McVeigh and sev­er­al of these Iraqis were motel guests in the months pre­ced­ing the 1995 bomb­ing. Wit­ness­es also claimed they saw sev­er­al of the Iraqis mov­ing bar­rels of mate­r­i­al around on the bed of a truck. The motel own­er said the mate­r­i­al smelled of diesel fuel and he had to clean up a spill. Diesel fuel was a key com­po­nent of the truck bomb that blew up the Fed­er­al Build­ing.” (“The Ter­ror­ist Motel” by Jim Cro­gan; L.A. Week­ly; 7/26–8/1/2002.)

“The motel own­er said he and his staff report­ed this infor­ma­tion to the FBI in 1995. ‘We did have an ATF agent come out and col­lect the orig­i­nals of the room reg­is­tra­tions for that peri­od, but we nev­er heard back from them. And I nev­er could get the reg­is­tra­tions returned.’ He added that his pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with the FBI made him reluc­tant to con­tact them about Mous­saoui. ‘But I made him reluc­tant to con­tact them about Mous­saoui. ‘But I decid­ed it was my duty to tell them what had hap­pened. So I did.’ ” (Idem.)

“For­mer Okla­homa City TV reporter Jay­na Davis also inter­viewed motel staff and for­mer guests. In the process, she col­lect­ed signed affi­davits about their con­tacts with McVeigh and the Iraqis. She tried twice to give the Bureau this infor­ma­tion, but the FBI refused to accept her mate­ri­als. (The Week­ly first report­ed on her inves­ti­ga­tion in an arti­cle pub­lished in Sep­tem­ber 2001.)” (Idem.)

“The Week­ly’s law-enforce­ment source said he has reviewed Davis’ mate­r­i­al and con­sid­ers it cred­i­ble. ‘Last Decem­ber I per­son­al­ly took the doc­u­ments to the Joint Ter­ror­ism Task force,’ he said. ‘I told them they should do their own inves­ti­ga­tion.’ The response was not encour­ag­ing. He said he was lat­er informed that the Bureau brought in an ana­lyst, ‘but I was told it would prob­a­bly go nowhere. They were afraid the whole Okla­homa City bomb­ing can of worms would be opened up and the FBI would have to explain why they did­n’t inves­ti­gate this mate­r­i­al before.’ ” (Idem.) As dis­cussed in FTR #88, there is also evi­dence of a pos­si­ble con­nec­tion between the AMIA bomb­ing in Argenti­na and the Okla­homa City bomb­ing.

10. In eval­u­at­ing the issue of Iraq’s weapons of destruc­tion, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the elder George Bush was one of the piv­ot points in equip­ping the Iraqis with their bio­log­i­cal war­fare capa­bil­i­ty (along with the Ger­mans and the Under­ground Reich.) Because of that, a bioter­ror attack by Iraq might not be some­thing that could be dis­cussed pub­licly by this admin­is­tra­tion. In FTR#‘s 374 and 379, we exam­ined the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the out­break of foot and mouth dis­ease in the Unit­ed King­dom may have been an Iraqi BW (bio­log­i­cal war­fare) inci­dent. Sim­i­lar ques­tions were asked in FTR#379 con­cern­ing the West Nile Fever out­break in the Unit­ed States. Answer­ing these ques­tions in con­junc­tion with the issue of pos­si­ble Under­ground Reich spon­sor­ship with Iraq of ter­ror­ist inci­dents such as Okla­homa City may yield an under­stand­ing of the true nature of the con­flict. It is Mr. Emory’s view that the Unit­ed States is being lured into a trap, per­haps lead­ing to mas­sive ter­ror attacks against Amer­i­ca, per­haps lead­ing to the destruc­tion of the U.S. econ­o­my, per­haps lead­ing to the irre­versible alien­ation of the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion of the world and resul­tant eco­nom­ic impact. These ques­tions will be explored at greater length in FTR 381.