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.
As the title indicates, this program updates a number of stories covered in past For The Record broadcasts, as well as introducing new material. Beginning with discussion of the powerful Bertelsmann Corporation (the publishing house for the SS during World War II and an apparent major component of the Underground Reich), the program documents a new joint technology venture between the firm and chipmaker Intel. In addition, the show highlights the merger between BMG (Bertelsmann’s music subsidiary) and SONY. This merger created one of the largest music firms in the world. The program also updates the Oklahoma City bombing and proposed and apparent mergers between American neo-Nazi groups and Islamists. Concluding with discussion of a political controversy within the groves of academe, the program sets forth information that Professor Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado at Boulder might not be what he seems. Much of Churchill’s behavior suggests the possibility that he might be an agent provocateur of sorts.
Program Highlights Include: Review of the destruction of FBI agent Mike German’s career by the Bureau when he tried to infiltrate White Supremacist groups that were apparently allying with Islamist terrorists; discovery by the FBI of explosives at convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols’ home; Ward Churchill’s work for Soldier of Fortune magazine in the 1970’s.
1. Beginning with an update on Mr. Emory’s series on German corporate control of the American media, the program notes a deal between Intel and Bertelsmann—the SS publishing house during the war. The deal will see the two companies developing file-sharing technology for downloading and sharing various forms of entertainment online. “Chip Maker Intel Corp. and media conglomerate Bertelsmann plan to cooperate in developing technology for downloading and sharing film clips and games from the Internet. Intel will make chips for PC’s, notebooks and mobile phones that are compatible with a new online media file-sharing platform from Bertelsmann’s services and technology arm, Arvato, capitalizing on growing public appetite for accessing music and other media online....”
(“Intel and Bertelsmann to Develop Technology” [Reuters]; 3/30/2005; p. 1.)
2. Bertelsmann’s music division—BMG—merged with SONY music to form a giant super-corporation. The formation of this music giant further increases Bertelsmann’s influence in the media world. “Impala, the body representing 2,500 indie labels, is appealing to prevent what it calls a ‘market imbalance’. Permission for them to merge meant that 80% of the world’s music is owned by just four record companies. The EU gave its backing to the merger in July, and the US Federal Trade Commission also did not oppose it. But Impala believes the EU was wrong to allow the merger to go unchallenged, saying it went against the principles of a competitive marketplace. . . .”
(“Indies Challenge Sony BMG Merger” [BBC]; BBC News; 11/03/2004)
3. Next, the program notes that the FBI recently discovered additional explosives stored by convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols at his residence. A number of broadcasts highlight the connections between the Oklahoma City bombing, the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, and the 9/11 attacks—FTR#‘s 330, 443, 456, 457.) “Pursuing a tip that they missed evidence a decade ago, F.B.I. agents searched the former home of the Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry L. Nichols and found explosive materials apparently related to the 1995 attack, officials said on Friday. Officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the materials, which included blasting caps, were found buried in a crawl space of the Herington, Kansas, home on Thursday. Agents conducted numerous searches of the house during the original investigation of Mr. Nichols and his co-conspirator, Timothy J. McVeigh....”
(“New Evidence Found in Oklahoma City Bombing” [AP]; The New York Times; 4/2/2005; p. 1.)
4. Recently, the National Alliance (arguably the most important domestic Nazi group) gave voice to a desire to cooperate with Al Qaeda in attacking American targets. Although the people quoted in the article dismiss the prospect as merely a possibility, the evidence suggests that domestic Nazi groups have indeed formed a working relationship with Al Qaeda. (For more about this subject, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 330, 352, 443, 456, 457, 474.) “A couple of hours up the road from where some September 11 hijackers learned to fly, the new head of Aryan Nation is praising them — and trying to create an unholy alliance between his white supremacist group and al Qaeda. ‘You say they’re terrorists, I say they’re freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples’ heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah.’ ”
(“An Unholy Alliance: Aryan Nation Leader Reaches Out to Al Qaeda” by Henry Schuster; CNN.)
5. “With his long beard and potbelly, August Kreis looks more like a washed up member of ZZ Top than an aspiring revolutionary. Don’t let appearances fool you: his resume includes stops at some of America’s nastiest extremist groups – Posse Comitatus, the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation. “I don’t believe that they were the ones that attacked us,” Kreis said. “And even if they did, even if you say they did, I don’t care!” Kreis wants to make common cause with al Qaeda because, he says, they share the same enemies: Jews and the American government. The terms they use may be different: White supremacists call them ZOG, the Zionist Occupation Government, while al Qaeda calls them the Jews and Crusaders. But the hatred is the same. And Kreis wants to exploit that. . . .” (Idem.)
6. Next, the program reviews an expose of the FBI’s suppression of a veteran agent’s revelations about developing cooperation between Islamist terrorists and homegrown white supremacist/militia types. This article was first presented in FTR#474. (For more about Islamist/neo-Nazi cooperation in the execution of terrorist acts, see—among other programs—FTR#‘s 330, 443, 456, 457. For more about the FBI’s suppression of information that could lead to the apprehension of terrorists and/or the interdiction of their operations, see—among other progra
ms—FTR#‘s 349, 424, 454, 462, 464, 467.) Note that, in FTR#‘s 310, 348, 462, 464, Mr. Emory states his opinion that Robert Mueller is a “ringer”—someone put in to deliver the FBI to the Bush administration and its governing entity—the Underground Reich.) Why is the bureau suppressing this type of investigation?! Will the next major terrorist attack feature White Supremacists or neo-Nazis at the operational level? Is Mike German the next John O’Neill? “As a veteran agent chasing home-grown terrorist suspects for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mike German always had a knack for worming his way into places few other agents could go. In the early 1990’s, he infiltrated a group of white supremacist skinheads plotting to blow up a black church in Los Angeles. A few years later, he joined a militia in Washington State that talked of attacking government buildings. Known to his fellow militia members as Rock, he tricked them into handcuffing themselves in a supposed training exercise so the authorities could arrest them.”
(“Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency” by Eric Lichtblau; The New York Times; 8/2/2004; p.1.)
7. “So in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group, he proposed to his bosses what he thought was an obvious plan: go undercover and infiltrate the group. But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a ‘pariah.’ He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the first time—the latest in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks.” (Idem.)
8. ” ‘What’s so frustrating for me,’ Mr. German said in an interview, a copy of the Sept. 11 commission report at his side,’ is that what I hear the F.B.I. saying every day on TV when I get home, about how it’s remaking itself to fight terrorism, is not the reality of what I saw every day in the field.’ Mr. German refused to discuss details of the 2002 terrorism investigation, saying the information was classified.” (Idem.)
9. Among the groups seen by officials as probable collaborators of al-Qaeda or other Islamist groups are white supremacist groups within the correctional system. “But officials with knowledge of the case said the investigation took place in the Tampa, Fla. area, where a domestic militia-type group and a major but unidentified Islamic terrorist organization, were considering joining forces. A tape recording of the meeting appeared to lend credence to the report, one official said. Law enforcement officials have become increasingly concerned that militant domestic groups could seek to collaborate with foreign-based terrorist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the American government. This has become a particular concern in prisons.” (Idem.)
10. “The Tampa case is not known to have produced any arrests. But Mr. German, in an April 29 letter to several members of Congress, warned that ‘the investigations involved in my complaint concern very active terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national security.’ ” (Idem.)
11. “He also wrote ‘Opportunities to initiate proactive investigations involved in my complaint concern very active terrorist groups that currently pose significant threats to national security.’ He also wrote, ‘Opportunities to initiate proactive investigations that might prevent terrorist acts before they occur, which is purported to be the F.B.I.‘s number one priority, continue to be lost, yet no one is held accountable.’ ” (Idem.)
12. ” . . . Mr. German, in his letter to lawmakers, cited ‘a continuing failure in the F.B.I’s counterterrorism program,’ which he said was ‘not the result of a lack of intelligence, but a lack of action.’ Officials said Mr. German also complained internally about a second case in the Portland, Ore., area in 2002 in which he said he was blocked from going undercover to pursue a domestic terrorism lead. That case was also thought to center on a militia group suspected of plotting violence.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)
13. “In the Tampa case, officials said Mr. German complained that F.B.I. officials had mishandled evidence concerning a suspected domestic terrorist group and failed to act for months on his request in early 2002 to conduct an undercover operation. That failure, he said, allowed the investigation to ‘die on the vine.’ While Mr. German would not confirm the location of the investigation, he said in an interview at the office of his Washington lawyer, Lynne Bernabei, that his problems intensified after he complained about the management of the case in September 2002. He said F.B.I. officials whom he would not name backdated documents in the case, falsified evidence and falsely discredited witnesses in an apparent effort to justify their approach to the investigation. [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.] He cited institutional inertia, even after Sept. 11.” (Ibid.; pp. 2–3.)
14. ” ‘Trying to get approval for an operation like this is a bureaucratic nightmare at the F.B.I.,’ he said. Mr. German said that beginning in late 2002, he took his concerns to his supervisors at the F.B.I. and to officials at headquarters in Washington, including Mr. Mueller himself in an e‑mail message that he said went unanswered. He also went to the Justice Department’s inspector general and, frustrated by what he saw as a languishing investigation, brought his concerns this spring to several members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission.” (Ibid.; p. 3.)
15. “In the meantime, Mr. German said, his career at the F.B.I. stalled, despite what he said was an ‘unblemished’ record and an award for his work in the Los Angeles skinhead case. Soon after raising his complaints about the 2002 terrorism investigation, he was removed from the case. And, he said, F.B.I. officials wrongly accused him of conducting unauthorized travel, stopped using him to train agents in ‘proactive techniques’ and shut him out of important domestic terrorism assignments.” (Idem.)
16. ” ‘The phone just stopped ringing, and I became a persona non grata,’ he said. ‘Because I wouldn’t let this go away, I became the problem.’ For now he has no job and is uncertain of his future. ‘My entire career has been ruined, all because I thought I was doing the right thing here,’ he said.” (Idem.)
17. The program closes with a look at the controversy surrounding Ward Churchill, a professor at the University of Colorado who characterized the victims of the 9/11 as “little Eichmanns”—a reference to the Nazi officer in charge of the liquidation of European Jewry. Churchill has a track record that raises questions about the possibility that he might be an agent provocateur. ” . . . Fringe speculations aside, Churchill’s closet does contain a redoubtable collection of verifiable peccadilloes. While employed at CU, Churchill ran a side business in which he reproduced other artists’ images—some of them still under copyright—and then sold them as his own original artwork. Like historian Joseph Ellis, Churchill appears to have exaggerated his military service. Churchill claims to have served in Vietnam as a paratrooper in an elite long-range reconnaissance unit, and walked point on patrol. Yet Churchill’s service record shows that he was trained as a projection
ist and Jeep driver. In an early resume, Churchill reports as his military service the dangerous task of preparing his battalion newsletter. They also, serve, who only stand behind the lines and publish.
(“Is Ward Churchill the New Michael Bellesiles?” by Thomas Brown; History News Network; 3/14/2005; p. 2.)
18. “Churchill carried this tradition of epistolary valor over into his civilian career. He apprenticed at Soldier of Fortune magazine in the 1970’s, before moving into the academy. In 1998, Churchill published Pacifism as Pathology, justifying the use of political violence. Churchill claims to have taught bomb-making to the Weather Underground. Churchill called for breaking the kneecaps of tourists headed for Hawaii, as a political statement in support of Hawaiian nationalism. He repeatedly called for the destruction of the United States. Churchill gave speeches in which he offered justifications and explicit strategies for successful terrorist actions against the U.S. . . .” (Idem.)
19. “Churchill’s personal life echoed this theme of violence. Churchill claims to vandalize or destroy state property as revenge for every traffic ticket he receives. A number of people had accused Churchill of assault or threats of assault. Joanne Arnold, an administrator on Churchill’s home campus, reported that Churchill had threatened in a phone call that she would ‘get hurt’ if she didn’t back off her position in a dispute over naming a dormitory. Carole Standing Elk, an Indian activist, complained that Churchill had spit on her during an argument. David Bradley, a New Mexico artist, complained to his local police that Churchill had threatened to kill him.” (Idem.)
20. “The Colorado media also reported that Churchill’s genealogical claims to Indian ancestry are most likely spectral. This became significant when the media uncovered additional evidence showing that Churchill’s Indian identity claims had been a major factor in CU administrators creating a tenured position for him. Officials of the Keetowah Cherokee tribe—including John Ross, the former chief who had arranged an ‘associate membership’ for Churchill in 1994—also repudiate Churchill’s claim to Cherokee identity and to tribal enrollment with the Keetowahs.” (Idem.)
The Future: Technology, Theocracy and the Thousand Year Reich
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