Recorded April 3, 2005
MP3 One segment
RealAudio
NB: This stream contains both FTRs 504 and 505 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.
Contrasting sharply with the hagiographies of the late Pope John Paul II that have flooded the media in recent days, this program examines the deep politics surrounding the Vatican’s relationship to fascism and how that determined the character of John Paul II’s reign. Far from being the beneficent creature he has been portrayed as being, John Paul II appears to have assumed the mantle of St. Peter following the murder of his predecessor and namesake. John Paul I’s probable assassination was performed to ensure continuity in the Vatican’s inner sanctum, long dominated by a fascist and criminal cabal dating to the pre-World War II period. Whereas John Paul I was moving to eliminate the P‑2 Lodge criminals (Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi) and their patron Archbishop Paul Marcinkus from power following the death of the fascist collaborator Pope Paul VI, John Paul II nourished these same elements, right up until the exposure of the P‑2 Lodge in the spring of 1981. (The P‑2 Lodge was a crypto-fascist government that ran Italy for much of the postwar period.) This program traces the evolution of the Vatican banking imbroglio, through the genesis of the fascist/Vatican financial accord in the late 1920’s, through the Vatican’s investment in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s, up to Cardinal Montini’s collaboration with the CIA and the P‑2 criminals. Particular emphasis is on the Vatican’s collaboration with Allen Dulles, the fledgling CIA and the Bormann group in spiriting Nazi monies abroad after World War II. The program concludes with a look at the association between John Paul II and a Polish-born doctor named Wolf Szmuness, whose experimental Hepatitis B vaccine appears to have been the vector for spreading AIDS. With both Szmuness and Carol Wojtyla (later John Paul II), one finds the fingerprints of intelligence agencies at every turn in their careers.
Program Highlights: John Paul II’s selection of key Nazi banker Hermann Abs to straighten out the Vatican banking scandals of the early 1980’s; Abs’ role in the Nazi flight capital program; the Vatican’s role in the Nazi flight capital program; the role of the World Commerce Corporation in the Nazi flight capital program; review of information indicating that AIDS was deliberately created.
1. The show begins by chronicling the deep political history of the development of the relationships that spawned the Vatican banking scandals that emerged into public view in the early 1980’s. (For more about these scandals and the P‑2 Lodge that was at the center of the banking scandals and many other imbroglios, see RFA#‘s 17–21—available from Spitfire, as well as FTR#‘s 3, 42, 43, 49, 58, 59, 98, 103, 183, 235, 265, 289, 307, 313, 360, 387, 458.) “Hugh Angleton’s rise to power was, in part, an accident of geography. He lived in Milan for many years and made more than a few friends there before the war. It was Hugh Angleton who allegedly introduced Giovanni Battista Montini to Michele Sindona, a prewar banker in Milan. Sindona was the corrupt financier who later became the adviser to the Vatican Bank. Montini, who was Vatican Undersecretary of State during the war, later became Pope Paul VI.”
(The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People; John Loftus and Mark Aarons; Copyright 1994 [HC]; St. Martin’s Press; ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; pp. 83–84.)
2. At the core of the genesis of the Vatican banking scandals is a fascist nexus that saw Cardinal Giovanni Battista Montini (later Pope Paul VI) develop a relationship with Mafioso Michele Sindona who, along with fellow P‑2 member Roberto Calvi, became a financial adviser to the Vatican. The relationship between Montini and Sindona came after an introduction by Hugh Angleton—an American fascist and father of CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. Both Montini and Sindona were introduced to OSS and CIA chief Allen Dulles by Angleton. (Dulles was the attorney who masked the Bush family’s investments in Nazi Germany.) “There is some circumstantial evidence that Hugh Angleton also introduced both of these friends to Dulles. Both Sindona and Montini allegedly became sources for the CIA after the war, with Hugh’s son, James Jesus Angleton, as their case handler. Several historians agree with our sources on this point, although, as we shall see, the Vatican has gone to considerable lengths to deny the allegations.” (Ibid.; p. 84.)
3. Reviewing some of the history of the Vatican’s association with fascism, the show notes the Vatican’s financial investments in Nazi Germany and highlights the financial support that the Church gave to Hitler in the immediate aftermath of World War 1. “One of James Angleton’s enemies, of whom he had many, insists that his father served as a minor point of contact and occasional courier for secret financial transactions between the Vatican and Nazi Germany. That the Vatican encouraged such investments and even donated money to Hitler himself cannot be denied. A German nun, Sister Pascalina, was present at the creation. In the early 1920’s, she was the housekeeper for Archbishop of the Vatican-Nazi connection. Eugenio Pacelli, then the papal nuncio in Munich. Sister Pascalina vividly recalls receiving Adolf Hitler late one night and watching the archbishop give Hitler a large amount of Church money.” (Idem.)
4. Having received Church money after the first World War, Pacelli convinced the Vatican to invest large sums of money in Nazi Germany. (For more about Pacelli and the Vatican/fascist political and economic connections, see RFA#17, available from Spitfire.) “Sister Pascalina had absolutely no motive to discredit Archbishop Pacelli. She was his greatest admirer and remained his faithful servant all her life, even after he became Pope Pius XII. Her story has the ring of truth, all the more powerful because it admits the worst blunder of Pacelli’s career. It was Pacelli who later convinced the Vatican to invest millions of dollars in the rising German economy, money from the Vatican’s land settlement with Mussolini that ended the Pope’s claim of sovereignty over territory outside the walls of Vatican City. It was Pacelli who negotiated the Concordat with Hitler’s Germany and then had to deal with the consequences of his own mistakes when he became Pope on the eve of World War II. . . .” (Idem.)
5. Next, the broadcast reviews the combined efforts of Allen Dulles and the Vatican to move Nazi money (and Nazi war criminals) to Argentina after the war. (Operation Safehaven is the code-name of the Treasury Department operation to interdict the Nazi flight capital program. That program, of course, was the Bormann flight capital program. For more about the neutralization of Safehaven, see—among other programs—FTR#353.) ” . . . Soon after the Safehaven inquiry into his own Nazi money smuggling was buried, Allen Dulles resigned from the OSS and returned to New York to do what he did best: move money illegally for his clients. One of the first names on his client list was a ‘personal matter’ for Thomas McKittrick, the head of the previously Nazi-dominated Bank of International Se
ttlements (BIS) in Switzerland. The BIS had overseen the transfer of Nazi assets to Switzerland. After the war, the Nazis moved the money via the Vatican to Argentina.” (Ibid.; pp. 109–110.)
6. “Dulles represented a staggering array of Argentine corporate and political entities before and after the war. President Juan Peron and his family were ardent Catholics and violently anti-Communist, as were many Argentines. In fact, Peron was decidedly pro-Fascist and Argentina was the only South American country that continued relations with the Third Reich well into the war. The Argentine economy boomed with the massive postwar transfer of Nazi flight capital. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 110.)
7. Dulles was assisted in his money-laundering efforts by William Donovan, who collaborated with British intelligence ace William Stephenson in a Nazi front group called the World Commerce Corporation. This organization helped to cycle Nazi money back into Germany in order to pump up the postwar German economy. ” . . . The ‘old spies’ say that Dulles did not have to try very hard to convince Donovan that Truman was an idiot and that the only hope for the revival of an American intelligence service was to end the Democratic party’s stranglehold on the White House in the 1948 election.” (Idem.)
8. “In the meantime, Dulles and Donovan agreed that every effort must be made to sabotage the Truman liberals and quietly prepare for the Cold War. To this end, Dulles convinced Donovan to serve on the board of a company that would help rebuild the German economy as a bulwark against communism. Dulles assured his old boss that there were a large number of wealthy South American investors, especially in Argentina, who were willing to help rebuild Germany.” (Idem.)
9. It was the recycled Nazi war plunder that fueled the economic “miracle” of postwar Germany. “Although Donovan did not know it, Dulles had conned him into serving as the front man for the Nazi money launderers. He and Sir William Stephenson from British intelligence joined the board of directors of the World Commerce Corporation, with Allen Dulles, naturally, as their lawyer. The Nazi money flowed in a great circle—out of the Third Reich, through the Vatican, to Argentina, and back to ‘democratic’ West Germany. The source of the miraculous West German economic revival in the 1950’s was the same money that had been stolen in the 1940’s.” (Idem.)
10. More about the Nazi money laundering: “One of our sources, Daniel Harkins, stumbled across part of the money laundering in 1945. Harkins had volunteered to work as a double agent for Naval Intelligence before World War II. He posed as a Nazi ring leader in Detroit and even had his picture published in a newspaper giving the Nazi salute. He was promptly invited to Berlin to meet the leading members of Hitler’s cabinet. Hitler did not know it, but Harkins’s work helped close down the Nazi Bund operation in the United States.” (Ibid.; pp. 110–111.)
11. “After wartime service as a naval officer, Harkins was posted to the Allied occupation government in Germany. Although he was genuinely anti-Nazi, Harkins loved and the respected the German people who had to survive in the ashes of the bombed-out Third Reich. To Harkins’s horror, his German sources revealed that the big Nazis had gotten their money out before the war was over.” (Ibid.; p. 111.)
12. “Through Switzerland, the SS had purchased stock in American corporations and laundered their money through the unknowing Chase and Corn Exchange Bank. Even worse, the W.R. Grace Corporation was using its Pan Am clippers to fly Nazi gems, currency, and bonds to South America. Harkins had discovered a small part of the Dulles money-laundering machine. Before he could find out any more, however, he was suddenly transferred to the State Department, where the Dulles clique could keep an eye on him. To his surprise, he was then reassigned to the outposts of Southeast Asia.” (Idem.)
13. Next, the program highlights the Vatican role in the Bormann money-go-round. “State Department records for South America confirm that the Ustashi Minister for Finance and the French Under Secretary of State of the Vichy Government, went to Argentina via the Vatican Ratline. According to Paul Manning, there were rumors of others. He cites the FBI’s copy of a surveillance file forwarded by the Central de Intelligencia of Argentina’s Ministry of the Interior: ‘In 1948, Martin Bormann received the bulk of the treasure that had made up the financial reserve of the Deutsche Bank. . . Like other fugitives, he entered Argentina in 1948, coming from Genoa on a second-class ticket, with forged Vatican documentation.’ ”
(Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and the Swiss Banks; by John Loftus and Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Press [SC]; Copyright 1991, 1998 by Mark Aarons and John Loftus; ISBN 0–312-18199; p. 277.)
14. One of Dulles’s collaborators in his Nazi money-laundering efforts was Hans Bernd Gisevius, a former Gestapo agent and an early Dulles intelligence contact. In FTR#445, we looked at Gisevius’ close association with Prescott Bush, Jr. (the current President’s grandfather.) ” . . . In 1945, the US Treasury Department accused Allen Dulles of laundering funds from the Nazi bank of Hungary into Switzerland. Similar charges were made against Dulles’s agent, Hans Bernd Gisevius, who had worked for Dulles as an OSS agent while serving at the Reichsbank. The State Department quickly took over the Treasury Department’s money laundering allegations, and the Dulles-Gisevius investigation was quietly dropped.” (Idem.)
15. Gisevius worked for the front group for the American portal of the Vatican escape networks that operated on behalf of Nazi war criminals. Many of those war criminals wound up working for U.S. intelligence. (For more about this, see—among other programs—RFA#17, available from Spitfire.) “Gisevius may have had some involvement with the Ratlines. He was a senior member of the Black Orchestra during World War II and was considered to be ‘Allen Dulles’s pipeline to Admiral Canaris.’ After the war, Gisevius personally briefed the Australian government on American efforts to resettle the surplus population of Europe in other countries, citing the support of the ‘Committee for a Free Europe’, later acknowledged as a clandestine front for Dulles’s Cold War programs. This was also the organization which served as the American end of the Vatican Ratlines.” (Ibid.; pp. 277–278.)
16. More about the World Commerce Corporation: “The most important front group was an entity called the World Commerce Corporation established after World War II to rebuild German—South American trade networks. The directors of this corporation were Sir William Stephenson, formerly of British intelligence and General William Donovan, formerly of the OSS. One of the attorneys for World Commerce was Allen Dulles, whose assistant, Frank Wisner, was the State Department’s deputy for currency and economic reform in the American zone of West Germany. Many of the staff members for the economic reconstruction of occupied Germany came from the same international financial firms which had invested heavily in the pre-war German economy.” (Ibid.; p. 278.)
17. One of the major players in the Dulles/Bormann money-go-round was Hermann Abs of the Deutschebank—one of the most important Nazi bankers before, during and after World War II. “According to sworn testimony before the US Senate by a representative of the German banking industry, an organization did exist in 1950 which was ‘formed by Lord Shawcross of England and Mr. Hermann Abs of Germany to bring about a Magna Carta for the protection of foreign inv
estments of World War II.’ This is the same Lord Shawcross who led the recent campaign in the British House of Lords to prevent the re-opening of war crimes investigations in Britain. Despite allegations by Manning, it is difficult to believe that Shawcross would have lent his good name to Abs’s organization if he had known its real purpose. In a 1966 hearing before the Select Committee on Standards and Conduct of the US Senate, Abs was identified as the common denominator of a group seeking return of vested enemy properties of World War II.” (Idem.)
18. “When the United States entered the war in 1941, all of the branches of American banks in France under German control were closed, except two which had ties to Abs: Morgan et Cie and Chase of New York: ‘both received this special treatment through the intercession of Dr. Hermann Josef Abs of Deutsche Bank, financial adviser to the German government. According to US Treasury agent reports, the favorable treatment was due to . . . an ‘old school tie,’ an unspoken understanding among international bankers that wars may come and may go but the flux of wealth goes on forever.’ ” (Ibid.; pp. 278–279.)
19. Abs was very close to Martin Bormann, with whom he worked. Abs became a financial adviser to the Vatican. In RFA#‘s 17, 21, we examined Abs’ close collaboration with the late John Paul II after the breaking of the Vatican banking scanedals. “According to Nuremberg records, Abs’s Deutsche Bank was the principal conduit for laundering Nazi money into Argentina during the war under the supervision of Martin Bormann. The American war crimes investigation of Abs, former head of the Deutsche Bank, was quietly dropped and Abs was appointed economic adviser for the British zone of Germany. It should also be noted that Abs became a financial adviser to the Vatican.” (Ibid.; p. 279.)
20. The passages that follow set forth the Dulles/Abs/Bormann financial network’s connections to the principals in the Vatican banking scandals. Again, these scandals broke in the early 1980’s, and the Pope (John Paul II) brought in Herman Abs to straighten things out. In RFA#18, we examined the untimely death of Pope John Paul I, who appears to have been murdered for moving to neutralize the Montini/Sindona/Calvi networks inside of the Vatican. That show is available from Spitfire. “According to Penny Lernoux, the financial collapse of Vatican-supported banks during the 1970’s involved the same group of people connected to Dulles’s and Angleton’s network of money launderers. Prior to World War II, Angleton’s father had financial interests in Milan, and may have met both Montini and a Sicilian banker named Michele Sindona at this earlier time.” (Idem.)
21. “According to Lernoux, Sindona ‘wangled an introduction to the powerful Giovanni Montini in Milan, who would later become Pope Paul VI.’ Montini introduced Sindona to the leader of the Christian Democrats. Sindona served the younger Angleton for many years as a CIA ‘funnel for supporting funds’ to friendly Italian politicians. In 1969, Sindona became the financial adviser to the Vatican while Montini was the Pope. Sindona and his cohort, Roberto Calvi, created a financial scandal that cost the Vatican Bank hundreds of millions of dollars.” (Idem.)
22. Next, the show examines the Pope’s relationship to Dr. Wolf Szmuness, the developer of the experimental Hepatitis B vaccine that appears to have been a major vector for the deliberate spreading of the AIDS virus. (For more about the subject of AIDS as a bio-warfare weapon, see—among other programs—RFA#16, available from Spitfire, as well as FTR#‘s 16, 19, 24, 25, 35, 56, 73, 102, 132, 140, 148, 156, 212, 220, 225, 228, 269, 282, 317, 324, 411, 472.) “Szmuness, a Jew born in Poland in 1919, was a young medical student in Lublin in eastern Poland when the Nazis attacked that country in the summer of 1939. When Poland was quickly partitioned by Germany and Russia, Szmuness was sent to Siberia as a prisoner. His family in western Poland were all murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. Szmuness’ years in exile in Siberia were ‘a long, dark period that he was most reluctant to talk about.’ ”
(AIDS and the Doctors of Death; by Dr. Alan Cantwell; Aries Rising Press [HC]; Copyright by Alan Cantwell; ISBN 0–917211-00–6; p. 102.)
23. A careful examination of Szmuness’ curriculum vitae suggests very strongly that he was a creature of the intelligence agencies. Such is the case with the Pope as well. “After release from detention in 1946, he was somehow allowed to finish his medical education in Tomsk in central Russia. While a student, he married a Russian woman. He specialized in epidemiology, and when his wife contracted a nearly fatal case of hepatitis, Szmuness decided that the study of that disease would be his life’s work. In 1959, the Soviets allowed him and his family to return to Poland ‘where he held a series of minor positions as an epidemiologist in municipal and regional health departments.’ ” (Idem.)
24. “During this time, he told Kellner ‘an interesting story.’ Due to exhaustion and stress from work, he applied to the authorities for a vacation at a rest home. Szmuness was allowed to share a room with a Catholic priest. A remarkable friendship developed and the two men corresponded ‘for a long time thereafter.’ The Polish priest eventually became the first Polish Pope in Catholic history: the current, anti-communist and anti-gay Pope John Paul II.” (Ibid.; pp. 102–103.)
25. “In 1969, in another strange twist of fate, the communists allowed Szmuness and his wife and daughter to attend a scientific meeting in Italy. While there, he and his family defected to the West. . . . He arrived in Manhattan with $15 in his pocket. Through the intervention of Walsh McDermott, Professor of Public Health at New York Hospital—Cornell Medical Center, Szmuness miraculously secured a position as a ‘lab tech’ at the New York City Blood Center.” (Ibid.; p. 103.)
26. “Within a few years, Szmuness was given his own lab, and a separate department of epidemiology at the Center was created for him. ‘In what must be record time, he was leap-frogged to full Professorship at the Columbia School of Public Health.’ ” (Idem.)
27. “By the mid-70’s, he was a world authority on hepatitis and ‘transfusion medicine.’ In another unbelievable occurrence, he was invited back to Moscow in 1975 to give a scientific presentation. As a defector he was terrified to set foot in the Soviet Union, but his colleagues assured him he would have the full protection of the State Department. He finally agreed to go, and his return to Russian was a scientific triumph.” (Idem.)
28. Szmuness’ hepatitis B vaccine was administered in South Africa, one of the areas most severely ravaged by AIDS. “By the late 1970’s, he had been awarded millions of dollars in grant money and was ‘phenomenally successful’ in his hepatitis work which had tremendous ‘global implications.’ Szmuness’ meteoric and unprecedented rise to world prominence was halted by his death from cancer in 1982. (A 1983 paper published after his death detailed a new experimental hepatitis B vaccine program in Kangwane that would use Black South African infants as experimental subjects.)” (Ibid.; pp. 103–104.)
29. “As a defector, could Szmuness have been a Russian agent? Or could he have been playing both sides of the field by working as a ‘double-agent’ for American and the Soviet Union? His life story was proof that he was honored by both countries. Although the scientific world would undoubtedly laugh at these questions, Szmu
ness’ professional life in the communist and the free-world was filled with the oddest of circumstances and coincidences.” (Ibid.; p. 104.)
30. “As a precaution against escape, it is my understanding that potential defectors from communist countries are never allowed the opportunity to travel outside the country with their entire family. Yet, Szmuness defected with his family in tow. After defecting, how was it possible to arrange his safe return to Russia ‘to present a scientific paper.’ Undoubtedly, cooperation at the highest levels of both governments was necessary to accomplish this feat.” (Idem.)
31. The program concludes with a look at an excerpt from testimony before a House appropriations subcommittee that was drawing up the defense budget for the following year. (The hearings were in 1969.) The testimony discusses the possibility of using genetic engineering to produce a disease that would be “refractory” to the immune system. This is virtually the clinical definition of AIDS. It is worth noting that the project was funded, and just such a disease—AIDS—appeared in just the time frame posited. It is also worth noting that, in the 2002 edition of A Higher Form of Killing, this passage is omitted!! “As long ago as 1962, forty scientists were employed at the U.S. Army biological warfare laboratories on full-time genetics research. ‘Many others,’ it was said, ‘appreciate the implications of genetics for their own work.’ The implications were made more specific that genetic engineering could solve one of the major disadvantages of biological warfare, that it is limited to diseases which occur naturally somewhere in the world.”
(A Higher Form of Killing; Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman; Hill and Wang [SC]; ISBN 0–8090-5471‑X; p. 241.)
32. ” ‘Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective micro-organism which could differ in certain important respects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.’ ” (Idem.)
33. “The possibility that such a ‘super germ’ may have been successfully produced in a laboratory somewhere in the world in the years since that assessment was made is one which should not be too readily cast aside. . .” (Idem.)
Discussion
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