REALAUDIO

Com­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in FTR#469, the pro­gram details the career of Joseph E. Schmitz—a very for­mi­da­ble indi­vid­ual who is Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Depart­ment of Defense. A mem­ber of the Schmitz fam­i­ly dis­cussed in FTR#469, Joseph E. Schmitz is in a vital­ly impor­tant posi­tion in the Pen­ta­gon and is in a very sen­si­tive posi­tion with regard to a num­ber of the inves­ti­ga­tions relat­ing to 9/11. His brother—John P. Schmitz—is a part­ner with a pow­er­ful Ger­man-based inter­na­tion­al law firm that is also involved with a num­ber of 9/11-relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions. This is very impor­tant, because it places the for­mi­da­ble Schmitz broth­ers in posi­tion to have a pro­found effect on the inves­ti­ga­tion of 9/11. As was the case with his father and as is the case with his broth­er John, Joseph E. Schmitz’s world is char­ac­ter­ized by a pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with “things Ger­man.” The pos­si­bil­i­ty that this obses­sion with “Ger­ma­nia” may her­ald an asso­ci­a­tion between the ultra right-wing Schmitz fam­i­ly and the Under­ground Reich is one to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Joseph E. Schmitz’s cen­tral posi­tion with regard to a num­ber of 9/11-relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions includ­ing: the Sibel Edmonds case, the issue of intel­li­gence col­lec­tion vs. civ­il lib­er­ties and the Abu Ghraib case; Joseph Schmitz’s mem­ber­ship in the ultra right-wing Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety; Schmitz’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many; Schmitz’s mem­ber­ship in the Sov­er­eign Mil­i­tary of Mal­ta; Schmitz’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the World Secu­ri­ty Net­work; Schmitz’s mem­ber­ship in U.S. English—an “Eng­lish-only” orga­ni­za­tion with white- suprema­cist lean­ings; the elder John Schmitz’s “Ger­man pre­oc­cu­pa­tion”; the elder Schmitz’s affin­i­ty for a col­lege found­ed by War­ren Carroll—whose name crops up in con­nec­tion with the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy; Joseph Schmitz’s fas­ci­na­tion with Gen­er­al von Steuben—the Pruss­ian offi­cer who was the first Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Pen­ta­gon; dis­cus­sion of the Steuben Society—a Nazi Fifth Col­umn orga­ni­za­tion in the Unit­ed States dur­ing the World War II peri­od; the Ger­man nation­al secu­ri­ty links to the World Secu­ri­ty Net­work (with which Joseph E. Schmitz is affil­i­at­ed); review of the many pow­er-polit­i­cal con­nec­tions of John P. Schmitz—Joseph’s broth­er.

1. Begin­ning the dis­cus­sion of Joseph E. Schmitz, the pro­gram notes his sig­nif­i­cant role in the case of FBI whis­tle blow­er Sibel Edmonds. Edmonds has charged the FBI with delib­er­ate­ly cov­er­ing up infor­ma­tion dis­clos­ing suc­cess­ful infil­tra­tion of the bureau’s trans­la­tion depart­ment by peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with drug deal­ers and ter­ror­ists. A recent­ly post­ed Inter­net arti­cle rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not the Pen­ta­gon delib­er­ate­ly leaked the name of the orga­ni­za­tion that was the focal point of Ms. Edmonds’ research. Such a leak jeop­ar­dizes Ms. Edmonds’ inves­ti­ga­tion (and health?). Again, it should be not­ed that Joseph E. Schmitz is at the epi­cen­ter of the Sibel Edmonds sit­u­a­tion. “The ongo­ing saga of FBI whistle­blow­er Sibel Edmonds’ small war with the Depart­ment of Jus­tice has gar­nered increas­ing media atten­tion in recent weeks. How­ev­er, this has almost entire­ly cen­tered on free speech and legal issues: John Ashcroft’s gag order, Judge Reg­gie Walton’s dis­missal of her case, and now, her open let­ter to the 9/11 Com­mis­sion. Incred­i­bly, the Commission’s final report failed to include her shock­ing tes­ti­mo­ny con­firm­ing crime, cor­rup­tion and incom­pe­tence in the Fed­er­al Bureau of Investigation—a fail­ing that great­ly dimin­ish­es the cred­i­bil­i­ty and trust­wor­thi­ness of the Com­mit­tee itself. How­ev­er this is just one dimen­sion of a very far-reach­ing sto­ry.”
(“Did Pen­ta­gon Reveal Name of Edmonds’ ‘Semi-Legit’ Group?”; Balkanalysis.com; 8/5/2004; p. 1;.)

2. “For aside from Sibel Edmonds’ legal cru­sade is the issue of per­sons and orga­ni­za­tions she encoun­tered whose part-time activ­i­ties touch on things from arms and drug traf­fick­ing to espi­onage and even ter­ror­ism. Some of these fig­ures (such as Can and Doug Dick­er­son) have been pub­licly named, but the Depart­ment of Jus­tice gag order on Sibel has pre­vent­ed her from doing any­thing more than allud­ing to the oth­er, and pre­sum­ably big­ger fish involved.” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

3. “That said, a pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased doc­u­ment from Sep­tem­ber 2002 may con­tain a key to unrav­el­ing the mys­tery at the heart of the case: who or what are the semi-legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tions that Edmonds has cryp­ti­cal­ly referred to as being the major play­ers behind the major orga­nized crime rings whom Edmonds charges with endan­ger­ing Amer­i­can nation­al secu­ri­ty?” (Ibid.; p. 5.)

4. “On August 7, 2002, Sibel Edmonds launched a com­plaint with the US Air Force over the sus­pect­ed ille­gal activ­i­ties of USAF Major Dou­glas Dick­er­son and his wife, Turk­ish-born FBI trans­la­tor Melek Can Dick­er­son and his wife, Turk­ish-born FBI trans­la­tor Melek Can Dick­er­son.” (Idem.)

5. “On Sep­tem­ber 10, Colonel James N. Worth, the direc­tor of the Inquiries Direc­torate in the USAF Office of the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al, sent an offi­cial reply. This let­ter assured Edmonds that the Air Force’s Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions (AFSOI) had con­duct­ed a com­plete and thor­ough review of her con­cerns, and there­fore the case was closed. Of course, this did not deter the inde­fati­ga­ble Edmonds, whose lawyers whipped off a let­ter chal­leng­ing the valid­i­ty and depth of the Air Force’s inves­ti­ga­tion, had one even tak­en place on Sep­tem­ber 19.” (Idem.)

6. Ms. Edmonds wrote a let­ter chal­leng­ing the lead­er­ship of the Pen­ta­gon to respond to her charges. Her let­ter was addressed to Joseph E. Schmitz! “This 5‑page chal­lenge was addressed to Depart­ment of Defense Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Joseph E. Schmitz, and copied to Sen­a­tors Patrick Leahy and Charles Grass­ley, pre­vi­ous back­ers of Edmonds’ cause. Ear­li­er today, Sibel Edmonds told that, ‘Nobody has men­tioned the DOD angle [of her case] to this date. There­fore we thought it would be appro­pri­ate to pub­lish this last let­ter in its entire­ty. Accord­ing to Edmonds, the cor­re­spon­dence can be pub­lished because it ‘was nev­er clas­si­fied and their respons­es [were] sent via reg­u­lar mail, thus, not clas­si­fied either.’” (Idem.)

7. “While this let­ter most­ly refers to long-known aspects of the case, there is one very strik­ing ref­er­ence which may shed light on a nag­ging mys­tery: who or what are the ‘semi-legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tions’ that Edmonds has allud­ed to in the past? Accord­ing to the Edmonds team’s reply of Sep­tem­ber 19, the USAF Inspec­tor General’s let­ter had referred specif­i­cal­ly to one Amer­i­can-Turk­ish Coun­cil, based in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., as being relat­ed to the Dick­er­sons. For the Edmonds team, this was a very strange dis­clo­sure: ‘Notably, in his let­ter of Sep­tem­ber 10th, Col. Worth states that OSI’s inves­ti­ga­tion focused on Major Dickerson’s rela­tion­ship with the Amer­i­can-Turk­ish Coun­cil. This state­ment is very trou­bling for a num­ber of rea­sons. First, Ms. Edmonds nev­er even men­tioned the name of this orga­ni­za­tion in any of her com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the DOD, DOD IG, Depart­ment of the Air Force IG, and AFOSI, con­cern­ing this mat­ter.’” (Idem.)

8. “We asked Sibel ear­li­er today if the Amer­i­can-Turk­ish Coun­cil was in fact the name of the key semi-legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tion that had infil­trat­ed the FBI dur­ing her time there. Because of the DOJ gag order she is cur­rent­ly under she could only say, ‘I can­not con­firm that they said it, we did not.’ Yet why would the Pen­ta­gon specif­i­cal­ly name an orga­ni­za­tion, con­nect­ing it with the sus­pect in the case, if there was no rela­tion­ship? And why would they bring it to the atten­tion of exact­ly the peo­ple they would have want­ed to con­ceal it from? Did they assume that the sto­ry would break, and there­fore that it wasn’t worth con­ceal­ing? Or was the whole thing mere­ly a mis­take, a mis­un­der­stand­ing, a typo? In any case, there are clear­ly sus­pi­cious shades of the old para­dox, ‘are you still beat­ing your wife’ at work here.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)

9. “What­ev­er it may or may not be, the Amer­i­can-Turk­ish Coun­cil is a Wash­ing­ton-based busi­ness asso­ci­a­tion ded­i­cat­ed to friend­ship and the pro­mo­tion of U.S.-Turkish com­mer­cial, defense and cul­tur­al rela­tions. Again, accord­ing to the ATC web­site, its ‘ . . . diverse mem­ber­ship includes For­tune 500 and Turk­ish com­pa­nies, multi­na­tion­als, non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, enter­pris­es and indi­vid­u­als with an inter­est in U.S.-Turkish rela­tions.’ It boasts a star-stud­ded board of direc­tors, includ­ing Chair­man and Retired USAF Lt. Gen­er­al Brent Scow­croft; Pres­i­dent and CEO G. Lin­coln McCur­dy; Exec­u­tive Vice-Pres­i­dent George H. Perl­man of Lock­heed Mar­tin; and sev­er­al oth­er rank­ing fig­ures from cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca. Some of these as well as many oth­er Amer­i­can and Turk­ish busi­ness heavy­weights are also well-placed on the ATC Exec­u­tive Com­mit­tee.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

10. “Indeed the ATC is clear­ly quite an impor­tant orga­ni­za­tion with the abil­i­ty to bring togeth­er high­ly influ­en­tial peo­ple. Accord­ing to its web­site, Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Erdo­gan addressed the organization’s ‘Gold­en Horn’ mem­bers (i.e., those com­pa­nies who cough up $9,500 annu­al­ly) at a June event spon­sored by Motoro­la, Ray­mond James, Boe­ing and Raytheon. In April, Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Richard B. Myers addressed the group. Every major com­pa­ny known to man is either a mem­ber or a well-wish­er. And so on and so forth.” (Idem.)

11. “How­ev­er, scru­ti­niz­ing the post­ed sched­ule cov­er­ing the 244-day peri­od of Jan­u­ary through August 2004, one finds only 18 days that actu­al­ly men­tion sched­uled events. And there are no sched­uled events at all for Sep­tem­ber through Decem­ber (though they’re no doubt still being planned). So unless the ATC is hurt­ing for sec­re­taries to put things down in writ­ing, they don’t do too much meet­ing. . .” (Idem.)

12. “ . . . If the Pen­ta­gon did indeed inad­ver­tent­ly blow the cov­er of this ‘semi-legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tion’ by mis­take in the cit­ed let­ter of Sep­tem­ber 10, 2002, it would answer a lot of ques­tions besides help­ing to put the pieces togeth­er in this jig­saw puz­zle of intrigue.” (Idem.)

13. Next, the pro­gram high­lights some aspects of Joseph Schmitz’s pro­fes­sion­al resume. “Pres­i­dent Bush nom­i­nat­ed Joseph E. Schmitz to be the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Depart­ment of Defense (DoD) on June 18, 2001. The Sen­ate con­firmed him on March 21, 2002. . . .”
(“Hon. Joseph E. Schmitz Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Depart­ment of Defense” [from offi­cial post­ing on the web­site of the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the DoD]; p. 1.)

14. Among the for­mi­da­ble Schmitz’s pro­fes­sion­al cred­its is his mem­ber­ship in the Fed­er­al­ist Society—an ultra-reac­tionary judi­cial orga­ni­za­tion that many legal pro­fes­sion­als feel is destroy­ing the foun­da­tions of Amer­i­can jurispru­dence. Like his broth­er John P. Schmitz, Joseph is a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many. (For more about this orga­ni­za­tion, see below.) Joseph is also a mem­ber of the Sov­er­eign Mil­i­tary Order of Mal­ta. Also known as the Knights of Mal­ta, the SMOM is a pow­er­ful order of Vat­i­can knights.  “ . . . He has also served on the Steer­ing Com­mit­tee of the Wash­ing­ton Lawyers Chap­ter of the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety for Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Stud­ies. Mr. Schmitz grad­u­at­ed with dis­tinc­tion from the U.S. Naval Acad­e­my in 1978 and received his J.D. degree from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1986. He is also a Young Leader Alum­nus of the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many and a mem­ber of the Sov­er­eign Mil­i­tary Order of Mal­ta.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

15. Cat­a­loging some of the cas­es with which Joseph Schmitz is involved, the broad­cast notes his piv­otal role in the Abu Ghraib inves­ti­ga­tion. “The Pentagon’s inspec­tor gen­er­al, fol­low­ing an eight-day trip to Iraq, said on Fri­day that abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison appeared to be the fault of a few sol­diers he called ‘bad eggs.’ ‘I’m not aware of any ille­gal orders that came from any lead­ers,’ said Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Joseph Schmitz, mak­ing his first pub­lic com­ments since return­ing June 19. He said dur­ing his vis­it to Abu Ghraib, the new com­man­der there informed him that past lead­ers failed to get out enough and over­see the sol­diers.”
(“Offi­cial Blames Iraq Abuse on Low­er Ranks” by Joe Mili­cia [AP]; Seat­tle Post Intel­li­gencer; 6/26/2004; p. 1.)

16. “Schmitz, the prin­ci­pal advi­sor to Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald Rums­feld on the pre­ven­tion of fraud and abuse in the Depart­ment of Defense, said he is reserv­ing final judg­ment until he sees the results of sev­er­al inves­ti­ga­tions of pris­on­er abuse. . . .” (Idem.)

17. Schmitz is also at the cen­ter of the debate about the need to bal­ance intel­li­gence col­lec­tion in the war on ter­ror with civ­il lib­er­ties: “A senior Repub­li­can sen­a­tor yes­ter­day expressed con­cern that a Pen­ta­gon sur­veil­lance pro­gram could be used on U.S. cit­i­zens and may ‘have a chill­ing effect on civ­il lib­er­ties.’ In a let­ter to Attor­ney Gen­er­al John D. Ashcroft, Sen. Charles Grass­ley (R‑Iowa) alleged that the Jus­tice Depart­ment and FBI are more exten­sive­ly explor­ing the use of the Total Infor­ma­tion Aware­ness pro­gram than they have pre­vi­ous­ly acknowl­edged.”
(“Sur­veil­lance Plan Wor­ries GOP Sen­a­tor” by Dan Eggen and Robert O’Harrow Jr.; Wash­ing­ton Post; 1/22/2003; from SecurityFocus.com.)

18. “The TIA pro­gram aims to devel­op tech­nolo­gies to sift through ‘ultra-large’ data ware­hous­es and net­worked com­put­ers for threat­en­ing pat­terns among every­day trans­ac­tions, such as cred­it card pur­chas­es and trav­el reser­va­tions. The sys­tems would, among oth­er things, help ana­lysts search ran­dom­ly for indi­ca­tions of trav­el to risky areas, sus­pi­cious e‑mails, odd fund trans­fers and improb­a­ble med­ical activ­i­ty.” (Idem.)

19. “The effort, a project of the Defense Department’s Infor­ma­tion Aware­ness Office run by for­mer nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er John Poindex­ter, has become the focus of heat­ed crit­i­cism from civ­il lib­er­ties groups and some law­mak­ers, who fear a poten­tial intru­sion on pri­va­cy rights.” (Idem.)

20. “Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have said that the crit­i­cism is overblown and that the project is designed only to thwart ter­ror­ist activ­i­ty over­seas. But in response to ques­tions from Grass­ley, Defense Depart­ment Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Joseph E. Schmitz acknowl­edged that sev­er­al domes­tic agen­cies, includ­ing the Jus­tice Depart­ment, FBI and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, have talked with the Pen­ta­gon about the project. Schmitz also con­firmed that the FBI is nego­ti­at­ing a for­mal agree­ment ‘for pos­si­ble exper­i­men­ta­tion with TIA tech­nol­o­gy in the future,’ accord­ing to a copy of his response.” (Idem.)

21. Schmitz is also involved with a con­tro­ver­sy about the elec­tron­ic bug­ging of the IG’s office, as well as the issue of a secu­ri­ty clear­ance grant­ed to a Mus­lim main­tain­ing mul­ti­ple alias­es: “The Wash­ing­ton Times quot­ed a Pen­ta­gon ‘info memo’ from Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Joseph E. Schmitz’s as say­ing: ‘On Jan­u­ary 19, 2002, dur­ing a rou­tine meet­ing with the Direc­tor of Secu­ri­ty for the Depart­ment of Defense, it was report­ed to my staff and me that a poten­tial ‘lis­ten­ing device’ was pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cov­ered in the infra­struc­ture of the Depart­ment of Defense Inspec­tor Gen­er­al.’”
(“Bug­ging Found in Pen­ta­gon Inspec­tor General’s Office” [PTI]; Hin­duon­net; 7/26/2004.)

22. It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how the lis­ten­ing device could have been installed in the Pen­ta­gon with­out the knowl­edge of some peo­ple in the mil­i­tary. “ ‘The DoD Direc­torate of Secu­ri­ty con­duct­ed a rou­tine sweep for elec­tron­ic lis­ten­ing devices in cer­tain areas of the ninth and tenth floors of the DoD IG on August 7, 2000. The sweep revealed that a wire had been installed inside the wall struc­ture lead­ing to and from the ninth and tenth floors of the Dod IG areas which com­prise the Defense Crim­i­nal Inves­tiga­tive Ser­vice and the per­son­nel office space of the Inspec­tor Gen­er­al,’ the memo says.” (Idem.)

23. “Anoth­er touchy issue for Schmitz was that a series of inter­nal mem­os from his staff showed that a Mus­lim who was employed as an audi­tor grant­ed a ‘top secret’ secu­ri­ty clear­ance was not an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. ‘He pos­sess­es a Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber tied to mul­ti­ple con­firmed alias­es,’ a May 2002 memo said.” (Idem.)

24. Sup­ple­ment­ing dis­cus­sion of the elder John Schmitz (the father of John P. and Joseph E. Schmitz) the pro­gram notes his writ­ing of the intro­duc­tion to the John Birch Soci­ety tract None Dare Call It Con­spir­a­cy. “ . . . He also wrote the Intro­duc­tion to Gary Allen’s best­seller, None Dare Call It Con­spir­a­cy (1971). . . .”
(“The Hon­or­able John G. Schmitz” [obit­u­ary]; MaryKayLetourneau.com; 1/12/2001; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.MaryKayLetourneau.com.)

25. Fur­ther devel­op­ing a theme intro­duced in FTR#469, the broad­cast notes the pre­pon­der­ance of “Ger­ma­nia” in con­nec­tion with the Schmitz family—a phe­nom­e­non that may beto­ken involve­ment with the Under­ground Reich. “ . . . Fed­er­a­tion of Cit­i­zens of Ger­man Descent ‘Out­stand­ing Cit­i­zen Award for Integri­ty and Hon­or’ . . . .” (Idem.)

26. “ . . . He trav­eled to Ger­many as a par­tic­i­pant in the offi­cial Inter­na­tiones pro­gram and was hon­ored in 1973 by the Cologne dai­ly news­pa­per Rund­schau with the ‘Der Herr Schmitz Ordens’ rec­og­niz­ing his Rhineland ances­try . . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

27. At the con­clu­sion to her obit­u­ary for her father, Mary Kay LeTourneau requests that peo­ple memo­ri­al­ize her father by con­tribut­ing to Chris­ten­dom Col­lege, found­ed by War­ren Car­roll. War­ren Car­roll is a very inter­est­ing fel­low. “ . . . In lieu of flow­ers, the fam­i­ly sug­gests char­i­ta­ble con­tri­bu­tions to Chris­ten­dom Col­lege, 134 Chris­ten­dom Dri­ve, Front Roy­al, Vir­ginia 22630. . .” (Idem.)

28. War­ren Car­roll was a mem­ber of CUSA, part of an ultra right-wing milieu in Dal­las that appears to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. (For more about CUSA, see FTR#120, as well as RFA#11—avail­able from Spit­fire.) “June 13, 1963, Lar­ry Schmidt to B. Weiss­man in Munich, Ger­many: ‘War­ren Car­roll, our only oth­er recruit to CUSA, is already a PhD and two MS’s. War­ren is a scriptwriter for Life­line, the H.L. Hunt tele­vi­sion and radio series. Hunt is the mil­lion­aire oil­man’ . . . ‘War­ren is 32, for­mer CIA man. Don’t wor­ry, he has been checked out’ . . . . ‘Hunt checked him out’ . . . After Jack Ruby was arrest­ed for killing Oswald inside the Dal­las jail, there were copies of War­ren Carroll’s Life­line on the seat of his car. The sec­tion was on ‘Hero­ism,’ on how to become a ‘hero.’ This is inter­est­ing because one of the first rea­sons Ruby gave for killing Oswald was, ‘I want­ed to show them a Jew had guts.’”
(“The Nazi Link to the John F. Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion” by Mae Brus­sell; The Rebel [now defunct pub­li­ca­tion launched by Lar­ry Fly­nt]; 11/22/1983.)

29. More about the promi­nence of “Ger­ma­nia” in con­nec­tion with the Schmitz fam­i­ly: “ . . . Dur­ing his active naval career, he served as . . . the Nav­i­ga­tor of a Ger­man destroy­er (through the Per­son­nel Exchange Pro­gram) . . .”
(“Hon. Joseph E. Schmitz Inspec­tor Gen­er­al Depart­ment of Defense”)

30. In eval­u­at­ing the Schmitz broth­ers, it is impor­tant to note their impor­tant posi­tions in var­i­ous aspects of the 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tions. The pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#469 about John P. Schmitz. The younger John Schmitz has—as Mr. Emory says—more con­nec­tions than a switch­board. Among the younger Schmitz’s cred­its is his rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the elder George Bush dur­ing the Iran-Con­tra and Iraq­gate affairs. Note that he joined with Janet Rehn­quist (the daugh­ter of the Chief Jus­tice of the Supreme Court) in pro­tect­ing Bush. “ . . . There’s still anoth­er chap­ter to the sto­ry. John G. Schmitz’s son John P. Schmitz did not share his father’s dis­dain for George Bush, whom he served as Deputy Coun­sel from 1984 to 1993. He was involved in Iran-Con­tra as a deputy to C. Boy­den Gray (and as an asso­ciate of Janet Rehn­quist.) Schmitz was one of the few Iran-Con­tra play­ers to refuse to be inter­viewed by the inde­pen­dent coun­sel, and was high­ly instru­men­tal, as was Rehn­quist, in pro­tect­ing Bush. Bush was nev­er ques­tioned, and a diary he kept was nev­er exam­ined; Walsh’s final report read ‘The crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion of Bush was regret­tably incom­plete.’ (Chap­ter 28, sec­ond para­graph.).” (Ibid.; pp. 1–2.)

31. Schmitz’s oth­er clients place him in the “mix” of the var­i­ous 9/11 inves­ti­ga­tions and law­suits. In addi­tion, the younger Schmitz (a part­ner in a Ger­man inter­na­tion­al law firm) rep­re­sents many Ger­man corporations—more about that below. Among his cred­its is his pres­ence on the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many, an orga­ni­za­tion whose her­itage is at one with the Amer­i­cans who reha­bil­i­tat­ed Third Reich alum­ni to serve in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many (as well as for U.S. intel­li­gence.) “Since then, John P. Schmitz has popped up every once in awhile. He seems to have had deal­ings with Iraq before the Gulf War, and with his present law firm has worked for Enron, Bay­er (pro­duc­er of Cipro), and Unit­ed Air­lines (9/11 law­suit); his firm also has a Cen­tral Asian office in Tashkent. Schmitz, along with many men of high repute, is a mem­ber of the boards of direc­tors of the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many and the Atlantic Coun­cil of the US. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

32. The Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many was found­ed by John J. McCloy and Eric M. War­burg. McCloy was one of the prime movers of the Amer­i­can pow­er elite in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and War­burg a part of the promi­nent War­burg inter­na­tion­al bank­ing fam­i­ly. (For more about McCloy, see—among oth­er programs—The Guns of Novem­ber and RFA#2—avail­able from Spitfire—as well as FTR#’s 428, 446. For more about the War­burgs, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11—avail­able from Spit­fire.) Note that among the offi­cers are Hen­ry Kissinger and a pro­tégé of Kissinger’s—Richard Burt. Kissinger al

so was deeply involved in the machi­na­tions involved in bring­ing Third Reich alum­ni into the U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. (For more about Kissinger, see—among oth­er pro­grams FTR#29.) “The Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many (ACG) is a pri­vate, non­prof­it, nation­al orga­ni­za­tion that was incor­po­rat­ed in New York City in 1952. Its found­ing lead­ers were: John J. McCloy; Eric M. War­burg . . . [Offi­cers include] Richard Burt . . . Among the board of direc­tors are: Hen­ry A. Kissinger; Brent Scow­croft.”
(“Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many”; SourceWatch.org.)

33. As a part­ner in May­er, Brown, Rowe and Maw, the younger John Schmitz is in a very sen­si­tive posi­tion with regard to a num­ber of 9/11 relat­ed inves­ti­ga­tions: “We were shocked to observe how tough and some­what per­sis­tent Richard Ben Veniste was dur­ing his oppor­tu­ni­ties for ques­tion­ing. This is the same Richard Ben Veniste, a for­mer Water­gate pros­e­cu­tor, who is a part­ner in the Ger­man inter­na­tion­al law firm, May­er, Brown, Rowe and Maw which hap­pens to be the lead firm rep­re­sent­ing Unit­ed Air­lines against 9/11 vic­tim fam­i­lies in the New York City lit­i­ga­tion in Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein’s Dis­trict Court in Man­hat­tan. [Empha­sis added.] This famous lawyer even rep­re­sent­ed the most rec­og­nized Amer­i­can drug deal­er in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States: Bar­ry Seal of Mena, Arkansas fame. But inter­est­ing­ly, Ben Veniste won our award as the most tena­cious inter­roga­tor on both days, even though the lines of ques­tion­ing were not con­sis­tent­ly intense or press­ing on a con­tin­u­al basis.”
(“Con­flict of Inter­est?” by Tom Floc­co; p. 1; ParaPolitics.info.)

34. “Curi­ous­ly, no one has ques­tioned whether Mayer-Brown’s part­ners would have ‘water-cool­er and whis­per-access’ to all the sub­poe­naed dis­cov­ery requests and infor­ma­tion flow regard­ing both the Kean Com­mis­sion hear­ings and depositions—public and pri­vate, but also Judge Hellerstein’s New York City lit­i­ga­tion. But that’s not the half of it. For the May­er-Brown law firm has anoth­er part­ner named John P. Schmitz, who was the twelve-year deputy coun­sel to George H.W. Bush dur­ing his vice-pres­i­den­cy and presidency—thus afford­ing the White House a behind-the-scenes source for infor­ma­tion flow, dis­cov­ery, sub­poe­nas, and evi­dence-access regard­ing both the Com­mis­sion and the New York lit­i­ga­tion. [Empha­sis added.]” (Idem.)

35. As dis­cussed in FTR#305 and in the book Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile, the Ger­man core cor­po­ra­tions are admin­is­tered by the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. (There is more dis­cus­sion of this in FTR#155). “Addi­tion­al­ly, May­er-Brown also has clients that include Bay­er AG (Ger­man mak­er of the antibi­ot­ic Cipro which fights Anthrax, about which Lar­ry Klay­man and Judi­cial Watch (JW) will have keen inter­est. [Empha­sis added.] JW has filed suit seek­ing the Administration’s anthrax doc­u­ments to ascer­tain why the White House start­ing tak­ing heavy dos­es of Cipro on the day of the attacks—nearly a month before anthrax was even dis­cov­ered on Capi­tol Hill, and while postal work­ers con­tin­ued to sort mail in con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed offices—some dying in the process.” (Idem.)

36. “John Schmitz’s May­er-Brown pro­file also reveals Enron, adding that ‘we were active in Ger­many [with Enron] until the end. . . . It [bank­rupt­cy] sur­prised me as well as any­one else,’ accord­ing to Reuters (1–4‑2002). [Empha­sis added.] More­over, May­er-Brown also rep­re­sents Deutsche Bank on a reg­u­lar basis regard­ing its elec­tron­ic com­merce activ­i­ties; and curi­ous­ly, Schmitz’s law firm main­tains an office Tashkent, Uzbek­istan, along with Enron—if only to make sure oil is well in the Caspi­an Sea basin. And Deutsche Bank is knee-deep in pre‑9/11 insid­er trad­ing stock prof­its. Enough said. . . .” (Idem.)

37. Return­ing to the sub­ject of Joseph E. Schmitz, the show notes his involve­ment with an orga­ni­za­tion called U.S. Eng­lish. Osten­si­bly formed to pro­mote Eng­lish as the offi­cial lan­guage of the U.S., the orga­ni­za­tion appears to have some white suprema­cist lean­ings: “A U.S. Supreme Court rul­ing Tues­day now makes it hard­er to pros­e­cute alleged gov­ern­ment discrimination—and could raise hopes for Eng­lish only laws through­out the coun­try. In the Alexan­der vs. San­doval case, lawyers rep­re­sent­ing a Mex­i­can immi­grant named Martha San­doval argued that the state of Alabama’s Eng­lish only law dis­crim­i­nat­ed against Sandoval’s abil­i­ty to take a driver’s license exam, which the state pro­vides only in Eng­lish. In a razor-thin 5–4 deci­sion, the Court ruled that Alaba­ma did not vio­late the Civ­il Rights Act on the notion that, in this case, not pro­vid­ing Span­ish driver’s license exams has a ‘dis­parate impact’ on minori­ties. Chief Jus­tice William H. Rehn­quist and Jus­tices Antonin Scalia, Antho­ny M. Kennedy, San­dra Day O’Connor and Clarence Thomas com­prised of the major­i­ty vote. . . .”
(“A Blow to Civ­il Rights” by Michael O. Col­la­zo [LATi­no News Net­work]; p. 1)

38. “ . . . Though this case did not rule whether or not Alaba­ma was allowed to main­tain an Eng­lish-only law, the Court’s rul­ing can be con­sid­ered as a vic­to­ry for pro­po­nents of Eng­lish as this country’s offi­cial lan­guage. ‘We are delight­ed the Supreme Court has reject­ed the ACLU’s attempt to kill offi­cial Eng­lish in Alaba­ma,’ said Joseph E. Schmitz, a board mem­ber of U.S. Eng­lish, an orga­ni­za­tion push­ing for estab­lish­ing Eng­lish as this country’s offi­cial lan­guage. The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union helped bring on this case-action suit. ‘Although the major­i­ty opin­ion is lim­it­ed to a nar­row issue of con­gres­sion­al intent, this is a tremen­dous sym­bol­ic vic­to­ry for offi­cial Eng­lish.’” (Idem.)

39. “ . . . And the plot thick­ens. Neal fur­ther reports that the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter has list­ed Lubin­skas as a con­tribut­ing edi­tor to the racist pub­li­ca­tion the Amer­i­can Renais­sance mag­a­zine. The magazine’s edi­tor Jared Tay­lor, also leader of the white-suprema­cist group, Coun­cil of Con­ser­v­a­tive Cit­i­zens. . . . In fact, Neal reports that Lubin­skas has even shared s stage with for­mer Louisiana Klans­man, David Duke. . . .”
(“Arnold’s Lan­guage Bar­ri­er”; Moth­er Jones; 9/8/2003.)

40. Inter­est­ing­ly (and per­haps sig­nif­i­cant­ly) the founder of U.S. Eng­lish emi­grat­ed to the U.S. from Chile in 1965. At that time, many of the Nazis (and their off­spring) who had fled to Chile and oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries began mov­ing to the U.S. (For more about this, see FTR#465.) “Mau­ro E. Mujica—who was born in Chile and immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States in 1965—has been chair­man of the Board and CEO of U.S. Eng­lish since Jan­u­ary of 1993.”
(“Mau­ro E. Muji­ca: Chair­man of the Board and CEO of U.S. Eng­lish”; thumb­nail biog­ra­phy from The Glob­al­ist web­site.)

41. The next point is inde­ter­mi­nate in nature. Explor­ing fur­ther the pre­pon­der­ance of “Ger­ma­nia” in the lives of the Schmitz fam­i­ly, the pro­gram notes Joseph Schmitz’s fas­ci­na­tion with Gen­er­al von Steuben, the first Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Army and a gen­uine rev­o­lu­tion­ary war hero. This may well be per­fect­ly inno­cent. How­ev­er the Steuben Soci­ety was a major ele­ment in the Nazi Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States dur­ing the World War II peri­od. Is it pos­si­ble that Joseph E. Schmitz’s fas­ci­na­tion with Steuben has some­thing to do with this? “ . . . While today’s Army Inspec­tor Gen­er­al is the mod­ern day per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of the endur­ing lega­cy of Gen­er­al von Steuben, it is also clear that Gen­er­al von Steuben is much more than the found­ing father of the Army Inspec­tor Gen­er­al sys­tem. He is, of course, that. Not only is the first les­son plan of the Army Inspec­tor Gen­er­al School devot­ed to Gen­er­al von Steuben, the entire 3‑week course is per­me­at­ed with the ‘Von Steuben Mod­el.’ He is the endur­ing prime role mod­el for every one of the 239 prin­ci­pal Army Inspec­tors Gen­er­al, a ver­i­ta­ble ‘IOG-Net­work’ of senior offi­cers serv­ing full time in assis­tance, inspec­tion, non-crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, and ‘teach and train’ func­tions at every major com­mand around the world. . . .”
(“The Endur­ing Lega­cy of Inspec­tor Gen­er­al von Steuben” by Joseph E. Schmitz; 5/7/2003; p. 1 [PDF down­load].)

42. About the Steuben Soci­ety and its World War II-era Nazi con­nec­tions. “One such Con­gress­man and Steuben Soci­ety mem­ber was Repub­li­can House mem­ber John Schafer from Wis­con­sin. His con­gres­sion­al record was one of com­plete oppo­si­tion to any defense mea­sure. In speak­ing with [John Roy] Carl­son, inves­tiga­tive reporter pos­ing as a pro-fas­cist, Schafer was quot­ed as fol­lows talk­ing about a rev­o­lu­tion against democ­ra­cy: ‘The Bloody kind. There will be purges and Roo­sevelt will be cleaned right off the earth along with the Jews. We’ll have a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship to save the coun­try.’”
(The Nazi Hydra in Amer­i­ca; “The 1930’s: Nazis Parad­ing on Main Street—Part 5: Con­gress­men and Sedi­tion­ist”.)

43. “Schafer leaves lit­tle doubt as to his feel­ings about democ­ra­cy in the quote. Anoth­er Sen­a­tor, Repub­li­can Rufus Hol­man from Ore­gon, open­ly praised Hitler on the floor of the Sen­ate. The small excerpt below from the speech leaves no real doubt as to his pro-Nazi views: ‘I doubt if the right is all on one side among the present bel­liger­ents. At least Hitler has bro­ken the con­trol of the inter­na­tion­al bankers and traders over the rewards for the labor of the com­mon peo­ple of Ger­many. In my opin­ion it would be advan­ta­geous if the con­trol of the inter­na­tion­al bankers and traders over the wages and sav­ings and the man­ner of liv­ing on the peo­ple of Eng­land could be bro­ken by the Eng­lish peo­ple, and if the con­trol of the inter­na­tion­al bankers and traders over the wages and sav­ings and the man­ner of liv­ing of the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States could be bro­ken by the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States.’” (Idem.)

44. “The code words of inter­na­tion­al bankers and traders meant Jews. Hol­man insert­ed sev­er­al pro-Nazi pro­pa­gan­da pieces into the con­gres­sion­al record as well. Nor was this the only time Hol­man had praised Hitler. As Oregon’s State Trea­sur­er, he had praised Hitler’s ster­il­iza­tion pro­gram result­ing in the amend­ment of Oregon’s sodomy law in 1935 to include all moral degen­er­ates and sex­u­al per­verts whether, they had com­mit­ted a crime or not. Ore­gon at the time used cas­tra­tion rather than vasec­to­my.” (Idem.)

45. “[Ernest] Lun­deen was secret­ly pro-Nazi and received mon­ey not only direct­ly from [Nazi spy George Sylvester] Viereck but also from the Ger­man Board of Trade and the Steuben Soci­ety. Mal­oney had deter­mined that oth­er con­gress­men had accept­ed Nazi mon­ey in deals to pub­lish books through the noto­ri­ous Flan­ders Hall, a fas­cist pub­lish­er close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Viereck. Among those that had made deals with Flan­ders Hall were Bur­ton Wheel­er of Mon­tana, Ger­ald Nye of North Dako­ta, Jen­nings Ran­dolph and Rush Holt of West Vir­ginia and William Strat­ton of Illi­nois. On June 13, 1940, Thom­sen report­ed to Ger­many that it was nec­es­sary to take lit­er­ary coun­ter­mea­sures against Roo­sevelt. In this plan Thom­sen made con­tact with New York lit­er­ary agent William Lengel and pro­posed a series of five books.” (Idem.)

46. Joseph Schmitz is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the World Secu­ri­ty Net­work. An exam­i­na­tion of that organization’s exec­u­tives again rais­es the ques­tion of pos­si­ble affil­i­a­tion with the Under­ground Reich. The pro­gram con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of the pro­fes­sion­al biogra­phies of some of the World Secu­ri­ty Network’s exec­u­tive per­son­nel. “Dr. Huber­tus Hoff­mann: Pres­i­dent and Founder—Dr. Hoff­mann has worked as advi­sor in the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (Office of Prof. Hans-Gert Poet­ter­ing), the Ger­man Bun­destag (Parl. State Sec­re­tary of Defense Peter Kurt Wuerzbach MP) and the U.S. Sen­ate (Sam Nunn, Gary Hart) in defense affairs for many years. He was Research Fel­low at CSIS, George­town Uni­ver­si­ty. He worked as a jour­nal­ist in the White House Press Corps, as Edi­tor in ZDF, the largest TV sta­tion in Europe, and man­ag­ing direc­tor of large Ger­man media com­pa­nies . . . Dr. Hoff­mann is reserve offi­cer in the Ger­man Army (Field Artillery.) Dr. Hoff­mann has from 1979 to 1983 sup­port­ed NATO’s Two Track Deci­sion to deploy medi­um range nuclear weapons in Europe com­bined with mutu­al arms reduc­tions (SS-20) on the Russ­ian side which put him on the tar­get list of RAF, the Ger­man ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion. He sup­port­ed the Muja­hadin from 1985–1990 against the Russ­ian inva­sion of Afghanistan, vis­it­ing them in the moun­tains in 1985 and writ­ing the Afghanistan report for the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment. In 1992, he was Chair­man of the Eesti Com­mit­tee Report (asked by its Pres­i­dent Tunne Kelam) about the Future of the ‘Baltic Hanseat­ic Region’ (Oblast Kalin­ingrad; Lithua­nia; Latvia, Esto­nia) which helped to cre­ate sta­ble demo­c­ra­t­ic states in the Baltics. . . .”
(Pro­fes­sion­al Biog­ra­phy of Dr. Huber­tus Hoff­mann; WorldSecurityNetwork.com.)

47. “Dieter Far­wick: Glob­al Editor-in-Chief—Former Direc­tor of German’s ‘Fed­er­al Armed Forces Intel­li­gence Office’. Mr. Far­wick is retired Brig. Gen­er­al of the Ger­man Army. He was a close aid to for­mer Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Man­fred Woern­er, the lat­er NATO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al and is author of five books about defense pol­i­cy. . . .”
(Pro­fes­sion­al Biog­ra­phy of Dieter Far­wick; WorldSecurityNetwork.com.)

48. “Hans Wal­ter Jan­itschek: Vice President—Mr. Jan­itschek was born in Vien­na (Aus­tria), joined Unit­ed Press and Reuters, and worked as For­eign Edi­tor of Vienna’s largest news­pa­per ‘Kuri­er’ and Eco­nom­ic Edi­tor of ‘Express’. He served as Direc­tor of the Aus­tri­an Infor­ma­tion Ser­vice in New York in the 60’s and the 70’s as Spe­cial Assis­tant to Under-Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al for Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion and Sec­re­tary of the UN Infor­ma­tion Com­mit­tee. . . .”
(Pro­fes­sion­al Biog­ra­phy of Hans Wal­ter Jan­itschek; WorldSecurityNetwork.com.)

49. “Klaus Bech­er is an ana­lyst of inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty, defense and tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­cy based in Bonn and Lon­don. . . .Dur­ing the same peri­od, he also served as sec­re­tary-trea­sur­er of the Ger­man group of the Tri­lat­er­al Com­mis­sion. From 1988 to 1997, he was a research fel­low at the Ger­man Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions. . . .” (Pro­fes­sion­al Biog­ra­phy of Klaus Beck­er; WorldSecurityNetwork.com.)

50. Inter­est­ing­ly, Baron von Steuben (the descen­dant of the Army’s first IG, with whom Joseph E. Schmitz is so tak­en) is a mem­ber of the World Secu­ri­ty Net­work. “Hen­ning von Steuben: Hen­ning-Huber­tus von Steuben—Member of the Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Board of World Secu­ri­ty Net­work; Pres­i­dent of the Steuben Fam­i­ly Asso­ci­a­tion . . .”
(Pro­fes­sion­al Biog­ra­phy of Hen­ning-Huber­tus von Steuben; WorldSecurityNetwork.com.)