Record­ed Sep­tem­ber 12, 2004

FTR #475 Pry­or Offens­es Side 1
FTR #475 Pry­or Offens­es Side 2

Polit­i­cal inertia—political momentum—is a major deter­mi­nant in human affairs. In exam­in­ing the polit­i­cal land­scape of which the Bush­es are a part, it is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the extent to which the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of Bush­es have inher­it­ed their stances from their ancestors—who were deeply involved with the forces of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism.

This broad­cast exam­ines actions of peo­ple involved with attempt­ing to dis­pose of Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt in the inter­ests of fur­ther­ing the cause of fas­cism. In par­tic­u­lar, the pro­gram focus­es on Samuel Pry­or Sr. and Samuel Pry­or Jr.—both of whom were key play­ers in the Bush-Har­ri­man busi­ness milieu. (The broad­cast derives its title from these two men.) Samuel Pry­or Sr. was the head of the Rem­ing­ton firm when it shipped weapons to Ger­man right­ists (includ­ing the Nazis) in the ear­ly 1930’s. Pry­or Sr. was also a key direc­tor of both Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and the par­ent com­pa­ny of the Ham­burg-Ameri­ka Line—both Bush/Harriman busi­ness­es con­duct­ed in coop­er­a­tion with the Nazis.

Rem­ing­ton was also the com­pa­ny select­ed by the 1934 coup plot­ters to pro­vide arms to the unsuc­cess­ful attempt to over­throw FDR.

Was Pry­or, Sr.—or his pals the Bush family—involved with the 1934 coup plot­ters?! Samuel Pry­or, Jr. was the point man for the GOP’s plot­ting with Nazi agent William Rhodes Davis in an attempt to defeat Roo­sevelt in 1940. The pro­gram con­cludes by exam­in­ing Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tom Clark’s sup­pres­sion of a Jus­tice Depart­ment report on the pro-Nazi activ­i­ties of pow­er­ful Amer­i­can polit­i­cal and indus­tri­al fig­ures. Tom Clark is the father of Ram­sey Clark—the Attor­ney Gen­er­al who cov­ered up the assas­si­na­tions of both Kennedy broth­ers and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. To what extent were the activ­i­ties of the Bush and Clark fam­i­lies deter­mined by the polit­i­cal iner­tia gen­er­at­ed in the years before, dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after, World War II?

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble use of the Ham­burg-Ameri­ka Line to ship Rem­ing­ton arms to the Nazis in the 1930’s; the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Samuel Pry­or, Sr.’s death in 1934 may have been con­nect­ed to the 1934 coup attempt; review of the 1934 coup attempt; the Third Reich’s chan­nel­ing of mil­lions of dol­lars to aid the GOP’s 1940 elec­tion cam­paign; Pry­or Jr.’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with William Rhodes Davis and the Third Reich in obtain­ing an endorse­ment for GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Wen­dell Wilkie by labor leader John L. Lewis; Tom Clark’s fir­ing of Jus­tice Depart­ment whis­tle blow­er O. John Rogge, who was attempt­ing to expose the pro-Nazi activ­i­ties of pow­er­ful Americans—including those involved with plot­ting with the Nazis to defeat Roo­sevelt in 1940; review of the Bush family’s post­war activ­i­ties on behalf of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion.

1. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the fam­i­ly for which the pro­gram is named, the broad­cast sets forth the Nye-Van­den­berg committee’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Samuel Pry­or (Sr.), the Rem­ing­ton (muni­tions) firm, and the ship­ping of Rem­ing­ton arms to right-wing polit­i­cal fac­tions in Ger­many (includ­ing the Nazis). Author Kevin Phillips spec­u­lates about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Ham­burg-Ameri­ka line (in which the Bush fam­i­ly was invest­ed) may have been involved in get­ting the Rem­ing­ton weapons to Ger­many. “But Bush [Prescott, Sr.] and Walk­er did know some of the reviled merchants—the World War I‑era muni­tions mak­ers, ‘armor trust’ mem­bers and arms man­u­fac­tur­ers being inves­ti­gat­ed dur­ing the ear­ly New Deal years. Both men knew Samuel Fra­zier Pry­or, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Rem­ing­ton Arms, whose firm was queried by the Nye com­mit­tee about the clan­des­tine flow of Amer­i­can-made weapon­ry to Ger­many through Hol­land in the ear­ly 1930’s. Walk­er was not inves­ti­gat­ed by the com­mit­tee, but the Amer­i­can Ship and Com­merce Corporation’s par­tial own­er­ship and influ­ence over the Ger­man Ham­burg-Ameri­ka line may have helped Rem­ing­ton firearms reach right-wing polit­i­cal fac­tions in the ear­ly 1930’s. The guns were prob­a­bly illic­it­ly transferred—without incon­ve­nient police inspection—to Ger­man-bound riv­er barges in Holland’s Schelde estu­ar­ies. . . .”
(Amer­i­can Dynasty: Aris­toc­ra­cy, For­tune, and the Pol­i­tics of Deceit in the House of Bush; Kevin Phillips; Pen­guin Group [HC]; Copy­right 2004 by Kevin Phillips; ISBN 0–670-03264–6; p. 179.)

2. Explor­ing Samuel Pryor’s busi­ness con­nec­tions, the dis­cus­sion high­lights the fact that he was a key direc­tor of two of the Bush family’s Nazi-linked businesses—the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion and the Ham­burg-Ameri­ka line. Again, this con­nec­tion spurs Kevin Phillips to rumi­nate about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Pry­or/Ham­burg-Ameri­ka con­nec­tion under­ly­ing the ship­ment of Rem­ing­ton arms to the Ger­man right, includ­ing the Nazis. “ . . . Remington’s Samuel Pry­or was part of this cabal, and took a role in the first big Har­ri­man-Walk­er inter­na­tion­al gam­bit: the arrange­ment of a major par­tic­i­pa­tion in Germany’s once great Ham­burg-Ameri­ka steamship line. Har­ri­man and Walk­er held their Ham­burg-Ameri­ka shares through anoth­er mutu­al frame­work, the Amer­i­can Ship and Com­merce Cor­po­ra­tion. Pry­or was named one of AS & C’s direc­tors.” (Ibid.; p. 180.)

3. Anoth­er of the key fig­ures in this story—Samuel Pry­or, Jr.—became a key direc­tor of Har­ri­man Secu­ri­ties Cor­po­ra­tion, plac­ing him in the same milieu as his father. We will exam­ine Samuel Pry­or Jr.’s role in Nazi-linked intrigue direct­ed against the admin­is­tra­tion of Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt lat­er in the pro­gram. “In 1924, when Har­ri­man and Walk­er set up the Union Bank­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in New York on behalf of the polit­i­cal­ly active Ger­man steel baron Fritz Thyssen, con­trol of UBC was held by a Dutch enti­ty, the Rot­ter­dam-based Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vart. This Dutch bank, in turn, was owned by Berlin’s August Thyssen Bank. The Rot­ter­dam bank, it has been proven, han­dled some of Thyssen’s 1920’s con­tri­bu­tions to the fledg­ling Nazi Party—for some rea­son, Samuel Pry­or of Rem­ing­ton was named an orig­i­nal direc­tor of UBC. He seems to have been a tight third side of the Har­ri­man-Ger­man tri­an­gle. Indeed, after he died in 1934, his son became a direc­tor of Har­ri­man Secu­ri­ties Cor­po­ra­tion, join­ing the two Har­ri­man broth­ers, Averell and Roland. This does make one won­der about Rem­ing­ton-made arms going to Thyssen—or Thyssen’s friends.” (Idem.)

4. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion about the 1934 coup attempt in the Unit­ed States. (For more about this, see RFA#10—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTR#448.) The dis­cus­sion sets forth the role of the Rem­ing­ton firm as the prospec­tive sup­pli­er of arms to the coup plot­ters. Mr. Emory rumi­nates about the pos­si­ble role of Pry­or [Sr.] in the coup plot. The elder Pry­or died in 1934–is it pos­si­ble that his death had any­thing to do with the dis­cov­ery of the coup plot? Note that Rem­ing­ton (and Pry­or) had pro­vid­ed arms to right-wing fac­tions in Ger­many (includ­ing the Nazis). That they would under­take some­thing sim­i­lar in the U.S. should not come as a sur­prise. (The mate­r­i­al in this excerpt is tak­en from the soft-cov­er edi­tion of

e=“font-style: italic;”>Trading with the Ene­my by Charles High­am.)

5. Next, the pro­gram sets forth anoth­er fas­cist intrigue against FDR—this one involv­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion by agents of Nazi Ger­many. In 1940, agents of the Third Reich chan­neled mil­lions of dol­lars to the GOP to help elect Wen­dell Wilkie and defeat Roo­sevelt. The prin­ci­pal Nazi agent involved in this plot was a pow­er­ful Texas oil­man named William Rhodes Davis—who was a reg­is­tered Abwehr oper­a­tive. [The Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence in WWII.] In order to defeat FDR, Rhodes, the Nazis and the Repub­li­cans under­took to per­suade John L. Lewis (a pop­u­lar labor leader and fierce crit­ic of Roo­sevelt) to for­mal­ly endorse Wilkie. This, it was hoped, would per­suade labor to vote for Wilkie. The prin­ci­pal GOP com­mit­tee­man involved with arrang­ing this gam­bit was Samuel Pry­or, Jr.! Cor­rec­tion: Note that Pry­or is incor­rect­ly iden­ti­fied as the Chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee. He was not Chairman—he was the piv­ot man for the RNC in the real­iza­tion of the Lewis endorse­ment of Wilkie. “The Ger­mans decid­ed to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly help Wilkie through secret con­tri­bu­tions to the var­i­ous pro-Wilkie polit­i­cal clubs. To avoid the polit­i­cal ruin of their Amer­i­can friends should the Amer­i­cans seize the Ger­man embassy, Thom­sen had all receipts and state­ments that described who received pay­ments from the Ger­mans destroyed. How much the Ger­mans spent on the 1940 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and who received the mon­ey will nev­er be known for sure.”
(Mys­tery Man: William Rhodes Davis, Amer­i­can Nazi Agent of Influ­ence; Dale Har­ring­ton; Brassey’s [SC]; Copy­right 1999 Brassey’s; ISBN 1–57488-338–0; p. 150.)

6. The sums the Third Reich deliv­ered to the GOP’s 1940 cam­paign were enor­mous. “Whether Davis and Hert­slet spent all $5 mil­lion of their funds on Wilkie’s cam­paign is unclear. Sup­pos­ed­ly, $3 mil­lion of the mon­ey that Podes­ta deliv­ered to the Ger­mans was found in the Ger­man embassy when the FBI seized it in Decem­ber 1941. Whether the oth­er $2 mil­lion was spent on the Repub­li­cans is not known. Some of this mon­ey may have been spent on Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty can­di­dates that the Ger­mans favored. The Ger­mans also had oth­er sources of mon­ey. Where this oth­er mon­ey went and how much there was is also unknown. The entire flow of Ger­man mon­ey to the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paigns is murky. What is known is that total Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial expen­di­tures in 1940 were almost $15 mil­lion. Regard­less of whether the Ger­mans spent only $2 mil­lion or the entire $5 mil­lion or pos­si­bly even more, a large per­cent­age of the Repub­li­can Party’s funds in 1940 came from Adolf Hitler. [Empha­sis added.]” (Ibid.; pp. 150–151.)

7. “Not sur­pris­ing­ly, fol­low­ing the Ger­mans’ lead, Davis aid­ed Wilkie’s cam­paign by con­tribut­ing large amounts of mon­ey. He direct­ly gave at least $48,000. To side­step the fed­er­al lim­it of $5,000 in cam­paign dona­tions, Davis used sev­er­al meth­ods. He gave each of his fam­i­ly mem­bers $3,000 or $4,000 to donate to the Wilkie cam­paign. He made con­tri­bu­tions to indi­vid­ual Repub­li­can Par­ty state com­mit­tees. He also per­suad­ed sev­er­al of his long­time busi­ness asso­ciates, includ­ing Ben Smith, to become finan­cial sup­port­ers of Wilkie.” (Ibid.; p. 151.)

8. “Davis decid­ed that it would be best for Lewis to sup­port the Repub­li­can can­di­date. In return for Lewis’s endorse­ment, Davis want­ed Lewis appoint­ed U.S. labor sec­re­tary if Wilkie were elect­ed. In ear­ly July, Lewis pre­dict­ed that Wilkie would defeat Roo­sevelt in the fall. Despite efforts to rec­on­cile Lewis with the Roo­sevelt admin­is­tra­tion, Lewis remained staunch­ly opposed to the president’s reelec­tion. Know­ing of Lewis’s implaca­ble hos­til­i­ty to Roosevelt’s can­di­da­cy, Davis opened nego­ti­a­tions with the Wilkie camp.” (Idem.)

9. “In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, Davis tele­phoned Sam Pry­or, a Repub­li­can nation­al com­mit­tee­man from Con­necti­cut and an ear­ly Wilkie boost­er. Pry­or had been pre­vi­ous­ly intro­duced to Davis through Arthur Hob­son, a Davis and Com­pa­ny employ­ee who knew Pry­or from Hobson’s con­nec­tions with Bank of Boston. Davis asked Pry­or to secret­ly meet with him at Davis’s first wife’s home in Bronxville, New York, to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Lewis endorse­ment of Wilkie. Read­i­ly agree­ing, Pry­or met with Davis a few days lat­er. At this meet­ing, Davis told Pry­or that he was out to defeat Roo­sevelt and was ready to con­tribute up to $1 mil­lion to that cause. Davis informed Pry­or that he would pay for a nation­wide radio broad­cast in which Lewis would declare for Wilkie. Although no def­i­nite assur­ances had yet come from Lewis, Davis was con­fi­dent that Lewis would do his bid­ding. [Empha­sis added.]” (Idem.)

10. “Pry­or tele­phoned Wilkie from Davis’s home and told him of the oilman’s will­ing­ness to pay for the Lewis broad­cast. Wilkie want­ed to imme­di­ate­ly meet this mys­te­ri­ous man who would make an offer of such dimen­sions. Pry­or used his pri­vate plane to fly Davis to meet with Wilkie, who was then at his home in Rushville, Indi­ana. After Davis repeat­ed his offer to Wilkie in per­son, the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee point­ed to the con­tri­bu­tion lim­its of the fed­er­al elec­tion law and sug­gest­ed that the mon­ey be giv­en to var­i­ous Wilkie clubs to main­tain the legal­i­ties. Davis con­clud­ed the meet­ing by reit­er­at­ing to Wilkie his offer to car­ry the cost of a nation­wide radio speech by his friend John L. Lewis, who would pub­licly endorse Wilkie. [Empha­sis added.]” (Ibid.; p. 152.)

11. “Wilkie lat­er said that he had nev­er heard of Davis before being informed that Davis would spon­sor the Lewis broad­cast, and that he would have reject­ed the offer if he had known who Davis was. Wilkie’s pro­fes­sion of igno­rance seems implau­si­ble, because by this time Davis’s Nazi con­nec­tions had been wide­ly pub­li­cized in the news­pa­pers. Soon after the Lewis broad­cast, Wilkie wrote Davis a let­ter ask­ing Davis not to pub­licly endorse him because of the alle­ga­tions that Davis had Ger­man con­nec­tions.” (Idem.)

12. “Wilkie’s will­ing­ness to take Davis’s mon­ey puts a tar­nish on Wilkie’s incor­rupt­ible image both because of Davis’s known Nazi con­nec­tions and Wilkie’s ear­ly pub­lic insis­tence that the fed­er­al cam­paign finance laws be adhered to in the spir­it as well as the let­ter of the law. When Wilkie was lat­er asked if he was aware of Davis’s con­tri­bu­tions to the Repub­li­can Par­ty, Wilkie lied and said he nev­er knew about these funds. These ques­tion­able actions show that Wilkie, like many politi­cians, was more inter­est­ed in win­ning than in the moral­i­ty of what he had to do to win.” (Idem.)

13. “At the con­clu­sion of the Davis-Wilkie meet­ing, an arrange­ment was made for Wilkie to meet Lewis in New York on the night of Sep­tem­ber 28. To pre­pare for this meet­ing, Davis and Wehrle met with Pry­or and sev­er­al oth­er Wilkie sup­port­ers, includ­ing Gene Tun­ney, the famous box­er, to dis­cuss his sup­port for Wilkie at New York’s Wal­dorf Asto­ria Hotel. Pry­or want­ed assur­ance that Lewis would endorse Wilkie. Davis said, ‘I’ll call Lewis and I think he is ready to make a pro-Wilkie state­ment.’ Davis tele­phoned Lewis and Lewis agreed to endorse Wilkie. Davis returned to the meet­ing and told Pry­or of Lewis’s answer, and the Wilkie sup­port­ers left the meet­ing excit­ed about the boost that Lewis endorse­ment would give Wilkie’s cam­paign. [Empha­sis added.]” (Idem.)

14. “Soon after, Lewis cal

led Wilkie from Davis’s home in Scars­dale to con­firm their upcom­ing meet­ing. Wilkie met with Lewis at the Man­hat­tan apart­ment of Sam Pry­or. Joe Mar­tin, the nation­al chair­man of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, was also present. Late into the night, Lewis and Wilkie engaged in a brisk con­ver­sa­tion about their pol­i­tics. [Empha­sis added.]” (Ibid.; pp. 152–153.)

15. “Wilkie’s high­ly per­son­al­ized cam­paign need­ed a shot in the arm. He was trail­ing in the polls and a per­son­al endorse­ment by Lewis just might pro­vide the mar­gin of vic­to­ry that Wilkie need­ed. Wilkie wooed Lewis by declar­ing that when he was elect­ed, he would hon­or the gains labor had won through the New Deal. He did not promise Lewis a post in his cab­i­net, but Wilkie did say that his sec­re­tary of labor would come from the ranks of labor. In return, Lewis offered his sup­port if Wilkie agreed to repeat these promis­es pub­licly in Wilkie’s upcom­ing labor speech, which was sched­uled for Pitts­burgh on Octo­ber 3. Wilkie agreed and their meet­ing con­clud­ed.” (Ibid.; p. 153.)

16. “Wilkie kept his part of the bar­gain. In a Pitts­burgh speech before an audi­ence of 30,000, he promised to uphold the gains made by labor and to appoint some­one from the ranks of labor as his sec­re­tary of labor. Now it was Lewis’s turn to keep his part of the bar­gain. . . .” (Idem.)

17. “ . . . Lewis sent a telegram to Wilkie ask­ing him to send his press aide, Paul C. Smith, to Wash­ing­ton to dis­cuss with Lewis the terms on which the labor leader would deliv­er a speech in sup­port of Wilkie. After work­ing out the details with Smith, Lewis agreed to make his endorse­ment on Octo­ber 25 in a nation­wide radio broad­cast.” (Ibid.; p. 154.)

18. “Lewis was keep­ing his actions secret. Until two weeks before the radio broad­cast, Lewis was still assur­ing some of those clos­est to him that he would not endorse the Repub­li­can can­di­date. He told one of his aides after his pri­vate inter­view with Wilkie that he con­sid­ered the Repub­li­can a man of nar­row intel­lec­tu­al out­look, with ‘the mind of a fix­er.’ Dur­ing the week before his speech, Lewis retreat­ed into almost total iso­la­tion and wrote a Wilkie endorse­ment speech with­out con­sult­ing even his close asso­ciates. A few days before the speech, Lewis met with sev­er­al high CIO offi­cials and announced that he was com­ing out for Wilkie and was pre­pared to take full respon­si­bil­i­ty for his deci­sion and to stand or fall by it.” (Ibid.; pp. 154–155.)

19. “On Octo­ber 21 Davis called the three radio net­works to sched­ule the broad­cast and iden­ti­fied him­self as a per­son­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Lewis. He arranged for the pay­ment of $55,000 for a thir­ty-minute radio broad­cast in which John L. Lewis would deliv­er a speech on the nation­al elec­tion to more than 362 sta­tions on all three major radio net­works. Davis also paid for the print­ing of mil­lions of copies of Lewis’s speech to be dis­trib­uted across the coun­try after the broad­cast.” (Ibid.; p. 155.)

20. “Davis financed the Lewis broad­cast by pass­ing the mon­ey to the Democ­rats for Wilkie polit­i­cal com­mit­tee, which includ­ed in its lead­er­ship such promi­nent anti-New Deal Democ­rats as for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Al Smith and John W. Davis. This polit­i­cal com­mit­tee then paid the radio net­works for the broad­cast. This indi­rect arrange­ment was used to get around the fed­er­al cam­paign finance laws and to hide the source of the con­tri­bu­tion. There was a furi­ous exchange of checks to ensure that no one indi­vid­ual would be list­ed as con­tribut­ing more than the $5,000 lim­it of the fed­er­al cam­paign law, and Repub­li­can lawyers scanned all the trans­ac­tions and scru­ti­nized the checks to make sure there were no vio­la­tions.” (Idem.)

21. “The White House was aware of who paid for Lewis’s broad­cast almost imme­di­ate­ly, but chose not to pub­li­cize the infor­ma­tion until after the elec­tion. . . .” (Idem.)

22. “ . . . With an esti­mat­ed 25–30 mil­lion lis­ten­ers, Lewis deliv­ered in his deep bari­tone voice a bit­ter attack on Roo­sevelt and asked trade union­ists to oppose his reelec­tion. He accused the pres­i­dent of not end­ing unem­ploy­ment and of neglect­ing labor, but his most emphat­ic accu­sa­tion was that he was lead­ing the nation into war. What was the president’s objec­tive, asked Lewis? ‘It is war. His every act leads to this inescapable con­clu­sion. The Pres­i­dent has said that he hates war and will work for peace but his acts do not match his words. The Pres­i­dent has been schem­ing for years to involve us in war.’ Vehe­ment­ly denounc­ing Roo­sevelt and assert­ing that his elec­tion could very well mean both war and dic­ta­tor­ship, Lewis declared for Wilkie.” (Ibid.; pp. 155–156.)

23. “He praised Wilkie’s integri­ty and described Wilkie as some­one who was not an aris­to­crat but a com­mon man. ‘He has the com­mon touch. He was born in the bri­ar and not to the pur­ple. He has worked with his hands, and has known pangs of hunger.’ This descrip­tion of Wilkie was pure fan­ta­sy and was intend­ed for Lewis’ labor con­stituents. Lewis then reviewed the candidate’s promis­es and aims, includ­ing the promise that Wilkie would give labor full rep­re­sen­ta­tion in his admin­is­tra­tion.” (Ibid.; p. 156.)

24. “Lewis con­clud­ed his speech with a dra­mat­ic pledge. He placed his per­son­al pres­tige square­ly on the line in sup­port of the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee by vow­ing that if Roo­sevelt received a third pres­i­den­tial term he would con­sid­er it a vote of no con­fi­dence in his own lead­er­ship of the CIO. There­fore, he would resign from his posi­tion as pres­i­dent of the CIO if Roo­sevelt were reelect­ed. He implored his fol­low­ers: ‘Sus­tain me now or repu­di­ate me.’” (Idem.)

25. The Davis/Nazi/GOP/Pryor strat­a­gem was unsuc­cess­ful. “After the speech, Davis and Lewis wait­ed expec­tant­ly for labor to move into the Wilkie camp. If the CIO vote were cap­tured, it would ensure a Wilkie vic­to­ry. How­ev­er, vir­tu­al­ly all of Lewis’s fol­low­ers, whether they said so or not, were dis­mayed by his endorse­ment of Wilkie. The pro-Roo­sevelt fac­tion in the CIO had hoped Lewis would lim­it him­self to vig­or­ous crit­i­cism of the pres­i­dent. What had been expect­ed was a vit­ri­olic attack on Roo­sevelt and a new ‘plague on both your hous­es.’ After his endorse­ment of Wilkie, Lewis pres­sured union offi­cials to sup­port his stand for Wilkie or resign. Sev­er­al union offi­cials resigned, includ­ing the head of labor’s Non-Par­ti­san League, Gard­ner Jack­son.” (Idem.)

26. “Jack­son may have been refer­ring to the Davis deal­ings in his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion: ‘These are crit­i­cal days when, more than ever, men seem to become cap­tives of their per­son­al ambi­tion for wealth, social posi­tion and influ­ence, and when their adven­tures in pow­er pol­i­tics and in finance pol­i­tics, both at home and in the inter­na­tion­al field, also make them cap­tives.’ It is pos­si­ble that Jackson’s res­ig­na­tion was close­ly tied to the Lewis-Davis link. Because the radio net­works sent the bill for the broad­cast to the Non-Par­ti­san League, which then passed it on to the Democ­rats for Wilkie, it is like­ly that Jack­son was aware of the source of fund­ing for the broad­cast and that he could not con­done tak­ing mon­ey from a Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er. . . .” (Idem.)

27. Anoth­er male­fac­tor on the US polit­i­cal scene in the 1940’s was Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tom Clark—the father of Ram­sey Clark, him­self an Attor­ney Gen­er­al. (For more about Ram­sey Clark, see—among oth­er broad­casts—FTR#’s 350, 398, 401, 408, 433.) O. John Rogge—a Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial who was inves­ti­gat­ed Nazi sub­ver­sion in the U.S.—was work­ing to expose the Third Reich’s links to U.S. indus­tri­al­ists, financiers and politi­cians. Among those he was work­ing to expose were the fig­ures who had con­spired to defeat Roo­sevelt in 1940. (See above.) “The Rogge mis­sion painstak­ing­ly scru­ti­nized thou­sands of con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ments from the files of the Ger­man War Min­istry, For­eign Office, Pro­pa­gan­da Min­istry, and Abwehr. Rogge lat­er said, ‘Our

inves­ti­ga­tion showed us that we had com­plete­ly under­es­ti­mat­ed the scope and scale of Nazi activ­i­ties in the Unit­ed States. When I went to Ger­many I felt that the biggest threat to Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy emanat­ed from the machi­na­tions of per­sons like the defen­dants in the sedi­tion tri­al [i.e. Fas­cist crack­pots]. I found that a far more dan­ger­ous threat lay in the inter-con­nec­tions between Ger­man and Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists, and that some of the best known names in Amer­i­ca were involved in Nazi intrigue.’” (Ibid.; p. 206.)

28. Tom Clark blocked the pub­lic release of the report. “When Rogge returned to Wash­ing­ton toward the end of June, he was con­fi­dent that he had uncov­ered suf­fi­cient evi­dence to war­rant fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tion of a num­ber of Amer­i­cans. Work­ing at fever pitch, Rogge began prepar­ing a com­pre­hen­sive report to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Clark on the volu­mi­nous data he had col­lect­ed in Ger­many. In ear­ly July, Rogge sub­mit­ted to Clark a draft of the first sec­tion of his report.” (Idem.)

29. “To Rogge’s sur­prise, the report’s ref­er­ences to links between the Ger­mans and Amer­i­can busi­ness and polit­i­cal lead­ers clear­ly dis­turbed Clark. . . After read­ing the report, Clark declared that it could not pos­si­bly be pub­lished and would have to remain a secret doc­u­ment. Rogge was not hap­py with Clark’s pro­pos­al and asked that Clark hold off on a final deci­sion until the report was com­plet­ed. Rogge con­tin­ued to work on the report through August. As he neared the end, one of Clark’s aides pro­posed that Rogge omit all names of Amer­i­can politi­cians and busi­ness­men. Rogge refused.” (Idem.)

30. “By the time Rogge fin­ished writ­ing the report, he knew that the Depart­ment of Jus­tice would nev­er agree to pub­lish his find­ings. Accord­ing­ly, he decid­ed that he might as well put every­thing in the report regard­less of whether it was polit­i­cal­ly expe­di­ent. The incen­di­ary final rec­om­men­da­tion of the report was for the Jus­tice Depart­ment to begin an inves­ti­ga­tion of the col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ger­man and Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ists before the war. On Sep­tem­ber 17, 1946, Rogge deliv­ered his 396-page report to Attor­ney Gen­er­al Clark. As Rogge expect­ed, Clark told him ‘the report would not be made pub­lic.’” (Idem.)

31. Rogge took a leave of absence to make a col­lege speak­ing tour, on which he was able to suc­cess­ful­ly pub­li­cize some of the con­tents of the sup­pressed report. “ . . . Short­ly after­ward, Rogge obtained per­mis­sion to take a two-week leave of absence to make a lec­ture tour on the fas­cist men­ace in the Unit­ed States. Rogge told Attor­ney Gen­er­al Clark that he was going to make a speech on Nazi pen­e­tra­tion of the Unit­ed States. Rogge said Clark ‘asked me whether I would say that the depart­ment had not attempt­ed to restrain me in any way. He again stat­ed that my report was not going to be made pub­lic. I told him that I would not men­tion the report.’” (Ibid.; p. 207.)

32. Rogge dis­closed the 1940 plot to defeat Roo­sevelt: “But in a Swarth­more Col­lege speech, Rogge revealed to his col­lege audi­ence some of his report’s dis­cov­er­ies. He stat­ed that Goer­ing and Ribben­trop had told him that John L. Lewis, William Rhodes Davis, Sen­a­tor Bur­ton Wheel­er, for­mer vice pres­i­dent John Gar­ner, for­mer post­mas­ter gen­er­al James Far­ley, and for­mer pres­i­dent Her­bert Hoover had all con­spired with the Ger­mans in an attempt to defeat Roo­sevelt in 1940 and keep the Unit­ed States out of the war. He also men­tioned that Hert­slet played a key role in the Ger­man scheme to pre­vent Roosevelt’s reelec­tion in 1940.” (Idem.)

33. Tom Clark fired Rogge!! Cov­er­ing up fas­cist intrigue appar­ent­ly runs in the family—Ramsey Clark (his son and also an Attor­ney Gen­er­al of the U.S.) helped to cov­er-up the assas­si­na­tions of John and Robert Kennedy and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. He has rep­re­sent­ed Nazi war crim­i­nals, the fas­cist Lyn­don Larouche, and Sheik Rah­man among oth­ers. (Sheik Rah­man is linked to al-Qae­da and the first plot against the World Trade Cen­ter.) Clark also lob­bied against the estab­lish­ment of the Office of Spe­cial Investigations—the Jus­tice Depart­ment unit encharged with fer­ret­ing out Nazi war crim­i­nals liv­ing in the U.S. (This unit was head­ed by John Lof­tus.) “On the morn­ing of Octo­ber 25, Rogge left New York by plane for a speak­ing engage­ment in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton. Due to bad weath­er, the plane made an unsched­uled stop in Spokane. At the air­port Rogge was informed that there was no room for him on the next leg of the flight. Stuck in Spokane, he was told that a Mr. Sav­age was on his way to the air­port to see him. Soon after­ward, a man approached Rogge at the air­port and said, ‘My name’s Sav­age, I’m from the Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion.’ He hand­ed Rogge an enve­lope. The enve­lope con­tained a let­ter to Rogge from Attor­ney Gen­er­al Clark. The let­ter curt­ly noti­fied Rogge that he was dis­missed from the Jus­tice Depart­ment imme­di­ate­ly. Clear­ly, the FBI had been fol­low­ing Rogge and had arranged to keep him in Spokane so that he could be hand­ed his ter­mi­na­tion let­ter. Attor­ney Gen­er­al Clark want­ed Rogge’s author­i­ty as a fed­er­al offi­cial stripped away before he could speak at anoth­er col­lege.” (Ibid.; pp. 207–208.)

34. Review­ing mate­r­i­al pre­sent­ed in a num­ber of pre­vi­ous broad­casts, the pro­gram under­scores infor­ma­tion about Prescott Bush, Sr.’s role in assist­ing with the post-World War II Nazi flight-cap­i­tal pro­gram direct­ed by Mar­tin Bor­mann. At the meet­ing of 8/10/1944 dur­ing which the plans for the flight-cap­i­tal pro­gram were devel­oped, SS Gen­er­al Dr. Scheid (who presided over the meet­ing as a sur­ro­gate for Mar­tin Bor­mann) men­tioned the Bush-Har­ri­man con­trolled Ham­burg-Ameri­ka Line as one of the com­pa­nies that would prove use­ful in the post­war res­ur­rec­tion of the Third Reich. “ . . . Dr. Scheid also affirmed, ‘The ground must now be laid on the finan­cial lev­el for bor­row­ing con­sid­er­able sums from for­eign coun­tries after the war.’ As an exam­ple of the kind of sup­port that had been most use­ful to Ger­many in the past, Dr. Scheid cit­ed the fact that ‘patents for stain­less steel belonged to the Chem­i­cal Foun­da­tion, Inc. New York, and the Krupp Com­pa­ny of Ger­many, joint­ly, and that of the Unit­ed States Steel Cor­po­ra­tion, Carnegie, Illi­nois, Amer­i­can Steel & Wire, Nation­al Tube, etc., were there­by under an oblig­a­tion to work with the Krupp con­cern.’ He also cit­ed the Zeiss Com­pa­ny, the Leica Com­pa­ny, and the Ham­burg-Ameri­ka line as typ­i­cal firms that had been espe­cial­ly effec­tive in pro­tect­ing Ger­man inter­ests abroad. He gave New York address­es to the twelve men. [Empha­sis added.]”
(Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Man­ning; Copy­right 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stu­art Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 25.)

35. Review­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTR#370, the broad­cast notes the sus­pi­cious death of the for­mer Dutch man­ag­er of the Bank voor Han­del en Scheepvart—part of the finan­cial tri­umvi­rate set up by Fritz Thyssen to mask own­er­ship of his steel enter­prise. “ . . . In 1945, the for­mer Dutch man­ag­er of the Rot­ter­dam bank resumed con­trol only to dis­cov­er that he was sit­ting on a huge pile of hid­den Nazi assets. In 1947, the man­ag­er threat­ened to inform Dutch author­i­ties, and was imme­di­ate­ly fired by the Thyssens. The some­what naïve bank man­ag­er then fled to New York City where he intend­ed to talk to Union Bank direc­tor Prescott Bush. As Gowen’s Dutch source recalled, the man­ag­er intend­ed ‘to reveal [to Prescott Bush] the truth about Baron Hein­rich and the Rot­ter­dam Bank, [in order that] some or all of the Thyssen inter­ests in the Thyssen Group might be seized and con­fis­cat­ed as Ger­man ene­my prop­er­ty. ‘The manager’s body was found in New York two weeks lat­er.”
(“How the Bush Fam­i­ly made its For­tune from the Nazis” by John Lof­tus; p. 4.)

36. Review­ing anoth­er item

from FTR#370, the broad­cast reviews the equal­ly sus­pi­cious death of a Dutch jour­nal­ist who was inves­ti­gat­ing the Bush/Nazi mon­ey con­nec­tion in 1996. For more infor­ma­tion about the Bush family’s involve­ment with Nazi indus­try (includ­ing their post­war efforts on behalf of the flight cap­i­tal pro­gram), vis­it http://www.debatecomics.org/BushFamilyFortune.“Sim­i­lar­ly, in 1996, a Dutch jour­nal­ist Eddy Roev­er went to Lon­don to inter­view the Baron [Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza], who was neigh­bors with Mar­garet Thatch­er. Roever’s body was dis­cov­ered two days lat­er. Per­haps, Gowen remarked dry­ly, it was only a coin­ci­dence that both healthy men had died of heart attacks imme­di­ate­ly after try­ing to uncov­er the truth about the Thyssens.” (Idem.)