Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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FTR #506 The Road to Lugano, Part II

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Intro­duc­tion: This pro­gram exam­ines the “Peak Oil” con­tro­ver­sy in terms of the car­tel agree­ments sur­round­ing the gen­e­sis of syn­thet­ic fuel. “Peak Oil” is the term applied to the con­cept that the world is on the edge of a dis­as­ter, because of the diminu­tion of petro­le­um reserves. There is rea­son to believe that cyn­i­cal ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the petro­le­um indus­try are delib­er­ate­ly gen­er­at­ing this line of think­ing, in order to max­i­mize their prof­it posi­tion. In fact, alarms about the world run­ning out of oil have been sound­ed for many years. In the 1920’s, alarms about the immi­nent “Peak Oil” cri­sis spurred the devel­op­ment of a process to syn­the­size oil from coal. Joint­ly devel­oped by Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey and the I.G. Far­ben firm, this process pro­vid­ed Nazi Ger­many with most of the fuel to run its huge war machine. This pro­gram exam­ines evi­dence that the car­tel agree­ments sur­round­ing syn­thet­ic oil may be in a posi­tion to be revived in the face of the “Peak Oil Cri­sis.” The Under­ground Reich appears to be at the epi­cen­ter of the effort to revive syn­thet­ic oil, as well as gen­er­at­ing the notion of an immi­nent oil cri­sis. The ele­ments that stand to ben­e­fit from the dras­tic increase in the price of oil, as well as the pos­si­ble use of syn­thet­ic oil are cor­po­ra­tions and polit­i­cal ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the Under­ground Reich.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The role of the elder George Bush, the major oil com­pa­nies and Sau­di Ara­bia in cre­at­ing the pho­ny oil short­age of the late 1970’s; the role of that oil short­age in desta­bi­liz­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion; the role of that oil short­age in jus­ti­fy­ing the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion’s enor­mous mil­i­tary build-up; the Thyssen fir­m’s role in the pur­chase of the Leu­na syn­thet­ic oil facil­i­ty in the for­mer East Ger­many; the Thyssen fir­m’s piv­otal role in the prop­a­ga­tion of the Peak Oil con­tro­ver­sy; an account of the devel­op­ment of the Bergius/hydrogenation process to syn­the­size oil from coal; exam­i­na­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Bergius process may have been great­ly improved since World War II; the cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pa­tion of both the Rock­e­feller inter­ests and the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment in the Thyssen firm; the Thyssen fir­m’s his­tor­i­cal links to Mar­tin Bor­mann, his fam­i­ly and the Under­ground Reich; the Thyssen fir­m’s piv­otal links to the Bush fam­i­ly.

1. Excerpt­ing FTRs 214, 248, the broad­cast begins by review­ing infor­ma­tion about an arrange­ment among George H.W. Bush’s CIA, the Saud­is, and the petro­le­um indus­try to cre­ate a delib­er­ate, pho­ny oil short­age. This oil short­age cre­at­ed dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the Carter admin­is­tra­tion (and infla­tion), there­by help­ing to defeat him in 1980. In addi­tion, this pho­ny oil short­age served as a pre­text for dras­ti­cal­ly increas­ing defense spend­ing and arm­ing the Saud­is with the lat­est Amer­i­can weapon­ry. The Saudi/Bush/petroleum indus­try axis manip­u­lat­ed oil prices to defeat Carter in 1980. In 2000, Mr. Emory dis­cussed this con­spir­a­cy and fore­cast that, based on past evi­dence, we might see some­thing sim­i­lar if Bush was elect­ed. Now, we are being told that the age of “Peak Oil” is upon us and that we must get used to high oil prices. On the basis of past infor­ma­tion, it is rea­son­able to ask if this “oil short­age” is real or is being man­u­fac­tured. Beyond that, it is impor­tant to ask what the results of this “short­age” might be? Who would ben­e­fit? These ques­tions will be dealt with near the end of this descrip­tion. “It is hard to recall why he [Carter] was so despised when he was in office. Much of it has to do with the secret his­to­ry of oil pol­i­tics. Even dur­ing the 1976 elec­tion cam­paign, the oil com­pa­nies viewed the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date as Pub­lic Ene­my Num­ber One. Carter cer­tain­ly had some rad­i­cal ideas about ener­gy pol­i­cy, which made the oil com­pa­nies fear­ful for the future and their prof­it lev­els. Carter’s first move after the elec­tion did­n’t please them. He nom­i­nat­ed for­mer CIA head and defense sec­re­tary James Schlesinger as his sec­re­tary of ener­gy. . . . Worse still, Schlesinger was now a con­vert to ‘envi­ron­men­tal­ism.’ Con­ver­sa­tion and effi­cien­cy were the new buzz words. In their first few months in office in 1977, Schlesinger and Carter made ener­gy their num­ber-one pol­i­cy issue. . . .”
(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; p. 333.)

2. “Even before Amer­i­cans vot­ed for Carter, the oil indus­try had launched a qui­et cru­sade of its own, in antic­i­pa­tion of a Demo­c­ra­t­ic vic­to­ry. In the last months of the Ford admin­is­tra­tion, the CIA had devel­oped a series of papers on ener­gy and oil issues. Just after his vic­to­ry in Novem­ber 1976, Carter was shown a clas­si­fied CIA analy­sis of glob­al oil sup­plies. The ‘old spies’ we asked about this point insist that the report had a pow­er­ful impact on Carter and helped to define his poli­cies on the ‘ener­gy cri­sis.’ ” (Idem.)

3. “When Carter launched his nation­al ener­gy plan in April 1977, he con­firmed that the CIA had pro­vid­ed him with intel­li­gence assess­ments which made dire pre­dic­tions about future ener­gy sup­plies in the Sovi­et Union. The CIA warn­ing made front-page news: ‘Rus­sia would be import­ing oil from the Mid­dle East by 1985.’ The Sovi­ets would need to buy three and a half mil­lion bar­rels per day, to be pre­cise, where­as in 1977 they actu­al­ly export­ed one and a half mil­lion bar­rels dai­ly. ‘Pre­vi­ous­ly, the assump­tion had been that the Sovi­ets would con­tin­ue to be self-suf­fi­cient in meet­ing their oil and gas needs.’ ” (Idem.)

4. ” . . . In effect, the CIA was telling Pres­i­dent Carter that the Sovi­et Union would face a domes­tic oil short­age in 1985, caus­ing the worst ener­gy cri­sis in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. When the Sovi­ets ran out of domes­tic oil sup­plies, they prob­a­bly would look to the tra­di­tion­al oil sup­pli­ers of the Unit­ed States, espe­cial­ly Sau­di Ara­bia and Kuwait. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty say that the CIA’s ‘oil short­fall’ prob­a­bly was the great­est intel­li­gence fraud in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

5. Bush’s father appears to have been a prin­ci­pal play­er in the cre­ation of the pho­ny oil short­age! ” . . . Accord­ing to sev­er­al of our sources, the scheme to man­u­fac­ture pho­ny CIA esti­mates and push them on Carter began in the last days of Ger­ald Ford’s term. They claim that a cabal with­in the CIA real­ized that Carter would be the new pres­i­dent, pro­duced the first pho­ny report, and then prompt­ly gave it to Carter as soon as he won, know­ing how it would affect his view of the ener­gy cri­sis. It should be recalled that George Bush was the direc­tor of the CIA at the time the oil scam was put in place in 1976. There is some evi­dence to sug­gest that it was Bush him­self who passed the fake oil esti­mates to Carter.” (Ibid.; pp. 334–335.)

6. ” ‘You have to under­stand who was screw­ing the Jews,’ one ‘old spy’ told us. ‘The whole pho­ny scheme—the oil short­ages, the pre­dic­tions about Sovi­et troops in the Mid­dle East, the Sau­di arms buildup—all of that crap start­ed com­ing out of the agency back in ’76. The CIA told their boss what he want­ed to hear, and in those days, the head of the CIA was an oil man.’ ” (Ibid.; p. 334.)

7. ” . . . The oil com­pa­nies and the Sau­di gov­ern­ment both had access to sim­i­lar
advice from old CIA hands. It almost seemed that Aram­co had more of its ex-employ­ees inside the CIA than the CIA had agents in the Mid­dle East. In pub­lic, the Saud­is dis­missed the report as ‘ridicu­lous and obvi­ous­ly untrue.’ In pri­vate, they went along with the CIA’s ‘declin­ing pro­duc­tion’ fraud. After some reflec­tion, the House of Saud real­ized that here was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to sell less oil but make more mon­ey.” (Ibid.; p. 338.)

8. “In pub­lic, the Saud­is con­tin­ued to insist that they had plen­ty of oil. In prac­tice, they helped cre­ate an oil short­age. The CIA had cre­at­ed a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. The Saud­is’ reserves mys­te­ri­ous­ly fell by mil­lions of bar­rels a day, and their pump­ing effi­cien­cy was said to be atro­cious and sure to get worse. In a very short time, Amer­i­can con­sumers would find them­selves run­ning out of gas.” (Idem.)

9. ” . . . In the short run, of course, the motive was more mon­ey for Amer­i­can oil com­pa­nies. Our sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty say that the oil indus­try used its CIA con­tacts to fab­ri­cate both the Sovi­ets-will-steal-our oil hys­te­ria as well as the dry-wells-in-Sau­di Ara­bia pre­dic­tions. The imme­di­ate goal of the pho­ny pre­dic­tions was to scare the White House into doing what the oil com­pa­nies want­ed: (1) lift the laws hold­ing the price on domes­tic Amer­i­can oil; (2) pro­vide a pan­ic to excuse rais­ing world oil prices; and (3) appease the Arabs, by arm­ing the Saud­is instead of the Israelis.” (Ibid.; p. 339.)

10. “The oil men in the intel­li­gence ser­vices pro­mot­ed the fear that the Sovi­ets would have no oth­er option than to move down into the Mid­dle East, invade Sau­di Ara­bia, Kuwait, and Iran, and seize U.S. oil for them­selves. If Carter did­n’t move soon, there would be no hope of with­stand­ing a Sovi­et inva­sion of the Mid­dle East. The most pow­er­ful army in the area was Israel’s. But the Jews could hard­ly be expect­ed to go to war to save the Arabs’ oil for the West­’s often anti-Semit­ic oil com­pa­nies. The time had come for the pres­i­dent to make a clear-cut deci­sion: either bow to the Jews’ res­olute oppo­si­tion to U.S. arms sales to the Arabs and risk los­ing Mid­dle East­ern oil to the Sovi­ets, or arm the Arabs, there­by end­ing Israel’s mil­i­tary supremacy—a sac­ri­fice that would have to be made in the Amer­i­can nation­al inter­est.” (Idem.)

11. “Our sources say that the oil com­pa­nies, and their friends in the CIA, had a very will­ing ally in the Saud­is, who secret­ly coop­er­at­ed with the CIA’s fraud by arti­fi­cial­ly decreas­ing pro­duc­tion and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly increas­ing the price per bar­rel of oil. It was all meant to be a very prof­itable game, in which both the Saud­is and the com­pa­nies would get huge wind­falls, while their Jew­ish ene­mies were final­ly put in their place. The Arabs soon would have the weapons they need­ed to see to that.” (Idem.)

12. ” . . . The fact is that the CIA reports on the Sovi­et threat were as false as they were fright­en­ing. As one of our sources put it: ‘Look, the Sovi­ets could­n’t even hang on to their pup­pet colony in Afghanistan. They were bleed­ing them­selves white. At one point dur­ing the Afghan war, the mil­i­tary was con­sum­ing near­ly 28 per­cent of the gross pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the Sovi­et Union. The last thing the Krem­lin want­ed was all out war with the Moslem world. They could­n’t finance their own PLO hit squads, let alone start a sec­ond front in the Mid­dle East. The whole idea of the Russ­ian army march­ing into the Sau­di oil fields was a fraud.’ But the fraud worked. Accord­ing to the Red scare scheme, there was only one thing to do: arm the Arabs so they could defend the oil fields them­selves.” (Ibid.; pp. 350–351.)

13. “The car­di­nal sin of states­man­ship is naivete. Carter and Turn­er nev­er sus­pect­ed that their own peo­ple would lie to them. The pho­ny CIA oil reports com­plete­ly fooled them. ‘Don’t you get it?’ asked one of our sources. ‘The gas short­age dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion was as pho­ny as the CIA’s pre­dic­tion about the Sovi­et oil short­age. The god­damn Mid­dle East was swim­ming in oil dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion, but less and less of it was shipped to Amer­i­ca. For chris­sakes, there was so much oil in South Amer­i­ca that they had to shut down refiner­ies in the Caribbean to keep it away from the U.S.’ ” (Ibid.; p. 353.)

14. “This source has a point. One of the largest refiner­ies in the West­ern Hemi­sphere is locat­ed on St. Croix, in the U.S. Vir­gin Islands. Most of its capac­i­ty went unused dur­ing the Carter admin­is­tra­tion’s ‘oil short­age,’ yet it was great­ly expand­ed dur­ing Rea­gan’s term, despite the world glut of oil and falling prices. Most of the ‘old spies’ are adamant that the oil com­pa­nies cut refin­ery pro­duc­tion to cause as much dam­age to the Carter admin­is­tra­tion as pos­si­ble.” (Ibid.; pp. 353–354.)

15. “By mid-1981, it was embar­rass­ing­ly clear that all of the CIA’s pre­dic­tions, upon which Carter had relied, were com­plete­ly false. Not only was there not an oil cri­sis, the whole indus­try had sud­den­ly gone the oth­er way. There was a world­wide sur­plus of oil, not a short­fall. The CIA fig­ures on Sau­di oil were just as false as their Sovi­et pro­duc­tion esti­mates. By June that year, the Sau­di Ara­bi­an gov­ern­ment had cre­at­ed an oil glut and was under intense pres­sure in the Arab world to cut its pro­duc­tion. The Mid­dle East was drown­ing in oil. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 354.)

16. Like his father and Ronald Rea­gan, George W. Bush’s com­bi­na­tion of tax cuts and mas­sive defense spend­ing are destroy­ing the Amer­i­can fis­cal land­scape. ” . . . Under the Repub­li­cans, lucra­tive arms fac­to­ries sprout­ed in what had pre­vi­ous­ly been rur­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic states. The votes went where the jobs were. In the course of the Rea­gan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions, the defense bud­get was increased to a point where more mon­ey was spent on arms than in all the wars in U.S. his­to­ry com­bined. To accom­plish this mas­sive defense buildup, the Rea­gan-Bush admin­is­tra­tions bor­rowed three times more mon­ey than all U.S. pres­i­dents com­bined. The largest debt in Amer­i­ca his­to­ry was based on the faulty premise that the Sovi­et Union was going to attack the Mid­dle East.” (Ibid.; p. 355.)

17. Next, the pro­gram takes up the issue of the devel­op­ment of the hydro­gena­tion process (the “Bergius process”) that was devel­oped to make oil out of coal. This process, devel­oped and patent­ed by the Ger­man I.G. Far­ben com­pa­ny and used to pro­duce much of Ger­many’s oil dur­ing World War II, was devel­oped dur­ing the 1920’s, when it was fore­cast that the world was about to run out of oil!! This process was brought to fruition as a result of the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929—one of the most impor­tant car­tel arrange­ments ever made. (The Standard/I.G. Agree­ment is dis­cussed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11—available from Spit­fire.) ” . . .Although [Robert] Bosch’s plan was to rely on the finan­cial resources of I.G. to devel­op domes­tic pro­duc­tion, he planned to bring in an Amer­i­can com­pa­ny like Stan­dard Oil (New Jer­sey) as a part­ner in the world­wide exploita­tion of the process. More­over, Stan­dard had more than enor­mous finan­cial resources: it had a huge and well-staffed research and devel­op­ment orga­ni­za­tion that had achieved impor­tant break­throughs in petro­le­um tech­nol­o­gy.”
The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben by Joseph Borkin and Bar­rie Zwick­er; The Free Press [HC]; Copy­right 1978 by the Free Press; ISBN 0233 97126 2; p. 48.

26. “Short­ly after the announce­ment of I.G.‘s new syn­thet­ic oil plant, Bosch him­self arrived in the Unit­ed States to begin nego­ti­a­tions with Stan­dard. He was inter­est­ed main­ly in finan­cial sup­port. By now Tea­gle and Howard real­ized that their enthu­si­asm and stunned appre­ci­a­tion of the hydro­gena­tion process had reduced their bar­gain­ing pow­er with Bosch. They decid­ed to put on a coun­ter­demon­stra­tion. Tea­gle invit­ed Bosch to accom­pa­ny him on his annu­al tour of Stan­dard­’s vast prop­er­ties. For three weeks they drove across the Unit­ed States inspect­ing Stan­dard facil­i­ties. On the trip it became clear to Bosch that the Stan­dard Oil offi­cials were not ready to make the large pay­ment to I.G. he had expect­ed. In mid Decem­ber he returned to Ger­many with­out a def­i­nite agree­ment or finan­cial com­mit­ment. Again he slipped in to the depres­sion that peri­od­i­cal­ly afflict­ed him.” (Ibid.; pp. 48–49.)

27. “It took until August of the next year for Tea­gle and Bosch to reach a rel­a­tive­ly lim­it­ed under­stand­ing. Stan­dard agreed to embark on a coop­er­a­tive pro­gram of research and devel­op­ment of the hydro­gena­tion process to refine crude oil. It also agreed to build a new plant for this pur­pose as soon as pos­si­ble in Louisiana. In return Stan­dard was giv­en the right to exploit the process in the Unit­ed States and to share half of the roy­al­ties with I.G. on licens­es to oth­er par­ties. How­ev­er, Stan­dard was not enti­tled to exploit the process in any of its far-flung plants out­side the Unit­ed States.” (Ibid.; p. 49.)

28. “Mod­est as the arrange­ment was, the New York Times, in its news sto­ry of the agree­ment dis­patched by its Ger­man cor­re­spon­dent, was almost euphor­ic about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of I.G.‘s syn­thet­ic oil process. ‘What experts in chem­i­cal fields admit is that the world is on the thresh­old of a new fuel era, and that the often pre­dict­ed fail­ure of the gaso­line sup­ply is now shoved cen­turies in the future . . . .The dis­cov­er­ies in these fields are more mar­velous than inven­tions which enable rapid strides in the devel­op­ment of radio, oth­er uses of elec­tric­i­ty and in air­planes, a promi­nent indus­tri­al­ist told the cor­re­spon­dent of the New York Times.” (Idem.)

29. “It was esti­mat­ed by ‘con­ser­v­a­tive author­i­ties’ that twen­ty per­cent of the gaso­line used in 1928 would be syn­thet­ic and that with­in a very few years, Ger­many would be com­plete­ly self-suf­fi­cient. So great was the con­fi­dence in mak­ing syn­thet­ic oil, con­clud­ed the New York Times arti­cle, that the price for the syn­thet­ic fuel was expect­ed to be less that that of nat­ur­al oil import­ed from the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union. . . .” (Idem.)

30. Even­tu­al­ly, Stan­dard and I.G. were able to con­clude their agree­ment. “What Bosch real­ly want­ed was a large lump pay­ment from Stan­dard to extri­cate I.G. from its present finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and still enable him to con­tin­ue the hydro­gena­tion project in Ger­many. With the help of Her­mann Schmitz, Bosch devised a coun­ter­pro­pos­al that he did not believe Stan­dard could afford to refuse. He offered to sell the world rights to the Bergius-Bosch hydro­gena­tion process for the pro­duc­tion of gaso­line. The only ter­ri­to­r­i­al excep­tion was that the rights in Ger­many were reserved to I.G. Obvi­ous­ly, the Ger­man author­i­ties would nev­er per­mit I.G. to sur­ren­der to a for­eign com­pa­ny the Ger­man rights to a process so cru­cial to mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic self-suf­fi­cien­cy. Even so, I.G. did not reveal to its gov­ern­ment that it was sell­ing the hydro­gena­tion rights to Stan­dard. As Bosch antic­i­pat­ed, Stan­dard jumped at the offer.” (Ibid.; pp. 50–51.)

31. “The par­ties nego­ti­at­ed their agree­ment in the man­ner of two great pow­ers forg­ing a treaty to divide the world into sep­a­rate spheres of influ­ence. They agreed to observe the sov­er­eign­ty of each in their respec­tive fields. In the words of a Stan­dard offi­cial, ‘The I.G. are going to stay out of the oil business—and we are going to stay out of the chem­i­cal busi­ness.’ To set up a mech­a­nism to car­ry out the terms of the agree­ment the par­ties agreed to cre­ate the Standard‑I.G. Com­pa­ny, incor­po­rat­ed in the Unit­ed States, owned eighty per­cent by Stan­dard Oil and twen­ty per­cent by I.G. This retained for I.G. a minor­i­ty inter­est in any future suc­cess. I.G. then trans­ferred the world patent rights (except for Ger­many) on the hydro­gena­tion process to the new enter­prise. In return, Bosch final­ly secured what he so des­per­ate­ly want­ed. Stan­dard turned over to I.G. two per­cent of its entire com­mon stock: 546,000 shares val­ued on Stan­dard­’s books at $35 mil­lion! As a slight bonus for I.G., Tea­gle agreed to serve on the board of I.G.‘s new­ly formed hold­ing com­pa­ny in the Unit­ed States, the Amer­i­can I.G. Chem­i­cal Com­pa­ny. . .” (Ibid.; p. 51.)

32. A pre­cip­i­tous drop in the price of oil made syn­thet­ic oil too expen­sive to com­pete in the mar­ket­place with nat­u­ral­ly pro­duced petro­le­um. It remains to be seen if the rise if oil prices once again makes syn­thet­ic oil viable in the mar­ket­place. Note that in FTR#385, Mr. Emory expressed his opin­ion that the theme of the nov­el The For­mu­la was prob­a­bly based in real­i­ty. That nov­el fea­tured high-lev­el intrigue around a for­mu­la for a cat­a­lyst that ren­dered syn­thet­ic oil com­pet­i­tive with nat­ur­al petro­le­um by mak­ing the hydro­gena­tion process dra­mat­i­cal­ly more effi­cient. The pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions of this will be dis­cussed lat­er on in this descrip­tion. ” . . .Hard­ly had the I.G.-Standard mar­riage been com­plet­ed that it received a series of stag­ger­ing blows. The Great Depres­sion, com­bined with the dis­cov­ery of enor­mous oil reserves in Texas, dropped the price of oil so dras­ti­cal­ly that Stan­dard aban­doned any imme­di­ate hope for world-wide devel­op­ment of the con­ver­sion of coal into oil. . . .and it took the Arab oil boy­cott in 1974 to rekin­dle Stan­dard­’s inter­est in mak­ing gaso­line from coal.” (Ibid.; p. 52.)

33. The broad­cast then reviews “the Bat­tle of Leu­na”, one of the key aer­i­al engage­ments of World War II. In this bat­tle, the U.S. Eighth Air Force bombed the Ger­man syn­thet­ic fuel pro­duc­tion out of effec­tive oper­a­tion, thus starv­ing the Ger­man war machine of petro­le­um. (As dis­cussed in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11, as well as FTR#‘s 194, 276, 278, 341, 385, 411, I.G.‘s syn­thet­ic fuel oper­a­tion was inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929—one of the most impor­tant car­tel agree­ments of the 20th cen­tu­ry.) Dur­ing World War II, I.G. Far­ben’s hydro­gena­tion plants pro­vid­ed Ger­many with the bulk of its fuel, thus real­iz­ing the poten­tial of the Standard‑I.G. Agree­ment. The 1944 aer­i­al cam­paign against the largest of those plants, the giant I.G. facil­i­ty at Leu­na, was one of the piv­otal engage­ments of the air war in West­ern Europe. “The Bat­tle of Leu­na” was instru­men­tal in crip­pling Ger­many’s war machine. Although Ger­many man­aged to keep the plant oper­at­ing by can­ni­bal­iz­ing equip­ment from oth­er hydro­gena­tion facil­i­ties, the result­ing dam­age to the over­all syn­thet­ic oil pro­gram was a deci­sive ele­ment in the destruc­tion of the fuel for Ger­many’s war machine. “May 12, 1944, was a fate­ful day for Ger­many and for I.G. On that day, the Unit­ed States Eighth Air Force sent 935 bombers over Ger­many to attack its syn­thet­ic oil indus­try: 200 bombers con­cen­trat­ed on I.G.‘s plant alone. This attack marked the begin­ning of what the U.S. strate­gic bomb­ing sur­vey called ‘the Bat­tle of Leu­na,’ clas­si­fy­ing it as ‘one of the major bat­tles of the war.’ ” The Crime and Pun­ish­ment of I.G. Far­ben by Joseph Borkin and Bar­rie Zwick­er; The Free Press [HC]; Copy­right 1978 by the Free Press; ISBN 0233 97126 2; p. 48.

34. “The next day, Albert Speer, Reich min­is­ter for arma­ments and war pro­duc­tion, toured the wreck­age of Leu­na with Buete­fisch. What he saw con­vinced him that ‘the tech­no­log­i­cal war was decid­ed. . . . It meant the end of Ger­man arma­ment pro­duc­tion.’ For Speer it was the turn­ing point in the war. He imme­di­ate­ly flew to Hitler’s head­quar­ters at Ober­salzburg to report on the extent and mean­ing of the dis­as­ter: ‘The ene­my has struck us at one of our weak­est points,’ he told the Fuehrer. ‘If they per­sist at this time, we will soon have no fuel pro­duc­tion worth men­tion­ing. Our one hope is that the oth­er side has an air force gen­er­al staff as scat­ter­brained as ours!’ ” (Idem.)

35. “Hitler then sum­moned four of the top fuel experts from I.G., includ­ing Krauch and Buete­fisch, for a dis­cus­sion about the con­se­quences of the May 12 air raid. Goer­ing and Speer accom­pa­nied them to the meet­ing. Before the group went in to see Hitler, Speer advised the four fuel experts to tell ‘the unvar­nished truth.’ How­ev­er, Goer­ing insist­ed that they not be too pes­simistic. ‘He was prob­a­bly afraid that Hitler would place the blame for the deba­cle chiefly on him,’ Speer wrote lat­er. Krauch was deter­mined to fol­low Speer’s advice. He told Hitler that Ger­many’s posi­tion was hope­less if the ene­my air raids on the syn­thet­ic oil plants con­tin­ued. To sup­port his grim fore­cast, he pre­sent­ed Hitler with an impres­sive array of facts and fig­ures. . .” (Ibid.; pp. 128–129.)

36. “The course of the Bat­tle of Leu­na became the gauge for the state of Ger­man oil pro­duc­tion. By ear­ly July the resource­ful I.G. tech­ni­cians were able to restore Leu­na to sev­en­ty-five per­cent oper­at­ing capac­i­ty. How­ev­er, the Eighth Air Force returned on July7, again bomb­ing the plant to a halt. Two days lat­er the plant start­ed oper­at­ing again and by July 19 had reached fifty-three per­cent of capac­i­ty. And so the cycle of bomb­ings and recon­struc­tion con­tin­ued. But the total effect on Ger­man fuel pro­duc­tion was noth­ing less than cat­a­stroph­ic. Krauch con­clud­ed that the only way fuel instal­la­tions could be rebuilt after each raid was to can­ni­bal­ize oth­er instal­la­tions. Under this plan to pre­vent the total ces­sa­tion of oil pro­duc­tion, Ger­many’s pro­duc­tive capac­i­ty dimin­ished with each recu­per­a­tion. By Sep­tem­ber, oil pro­duc­tion had dropped to fif­teen per­cent, a con­di­tion from which Ger­many was nev­er to recov­er.” (Ibid.; p. 130.)

37. In the con­text of both the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929 and the oth­er busi­ness arrange­ments that I.G. had with major west­ern cor­po­ra­tions, a dis­cus­sion of a “gen­tle­man’s agree­ment” with key busi­ness­men on the “oth­er side” not to bomb I.G’s syn­thet­ic fuel plants is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing. It is also sig­nif­i­cant to note that it is the old I.G. firm Degus­sa that was at the core of Hitler’s pro­gram to devel­op an atom­ic bomb. Degus­sa was instru­men­tal in equip­ping Sad­dam Hus­sein with his nuclear capa­bil­i­ty in the 1980’s and 1990’s. “The inten­sive bomb­ing of Leu­na led to a curi­ous con­fronta­tion between Buete­fisch, who was in charge of Leu­na, and Paul Harteck, lead­ing nuclear sci­en­tist work­ing on Ger­many’s atom­ic bomb project. Part of Leu­na was devot­ed to the man­u­fac­ture of heavy water, a nec­es­sary com­po­nent of atom­ic ener­gy. After the first bombs fell on Leu­na, Buete­fisch informed Harteck that the heavy water instal­la­tion must be aban­doned. He claimed that the mas­sive bomb­ing could not have been aimed at fuel pro­duc­tion since there was a ‘gen­tle­men’s agree­ment’ between heavy indus­try in Ger­many and abroad that I.G.‘s syn­thet­ic gaso­line plants would not be bombed. The only expla­na­tion for the raids against Leu­na, there­fore, was the heavy water facil­i­ty.” (Idem.)

38. Next, the broad­cast excerpts FTR#278, with dis­cus­sion of the com­plex CDU fund­ing scan­dal. Speak­ing of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, The Finan­cial Times wrote: “This could yet throw light on kick­backs paid by ELF over a deal between Mr. Mit­terand and Ger­man ex-chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl to invest in the Leu­na refin­ery in East Germany—an affair which helped bring Mr. Kohl down.”
(“French Tri­al Paints a Pic­ture of Graft on a Grandiose Scale” by Robert Gra­ham; Finan­cial Times; 4/22/2003; p. 14.)

39. In the ear­ly 1990’s, the Leu­na refin­ery (which had been rebuilt by the Sovi­ets after the war) became the focal point of a com­plex deal involv­ing the French oil firm ELF-Aquitaine, the Thyssen heavy indus­tri­al firm and the Sau­di Ara­bi­an arma­ments indus­try. This deal, in turn, is at the cen­ter of an ongo­ing scan­dal in Ger­many involv­ing polit­i­cal pay­outs to the CDU par­ty of for­mer Chan­cel­lor Hel­mut Kohl, bribes alleged­ly made by French politi­cians, kick­backs involv­ing pow­er­ful Cana­di­an polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­ests, and the intel­li­gence ser­vices of numer­ous coun­tries. In turn, the CDU fund­ing scan­dal is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Under­ground Reich. (For more about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see FTR#‘s 193, 276, 278.) The intense inter­est on the part of major polit­i­cal and indus­tri­al inter­ests in this ren­o­vat­ed Sec­ond World War facil­i­ty is of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance in this con­text. Most of the indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture of the for­mer East Ger­many was bought out and liq­ui­dat­ed short­ly after reuni­fi­ca­tion (with enor­mous resul­tant hard­ship for the cit­i­zens of that part of Ger­many). In con­trast, the for­mer I.G. facil­i­ty at Leu­na was con­sid­ered a valu­able prize. The maneu­ver­ing around the Leu­na facil­i­ty and the CDU fund­ing scan­dal was instru­men­tal in con­vinc­ing Mr. Emory that The For­mu­la was of more than mere lit­er­ary sig­nif­i­cance. It con­vinced him that that fact-based nov­el would have to be dis­cussed at some future point.

40. The nov­el The For­mu­la revolves around the for­mu­la for a cat­a­lyst (“the Man­gan Cat­a­lyst”) devel­oped by I.G. Far­ben as part of its “Gen­e­sis Project.” The sig­nif­i­cance of the project lies in the fact that it great­ly improved the effi­cien­cy of the hydro­gena­tion process, stream­lin­ing Ger­many’s syn­thet­ic fuel pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty and (poten­tial­ly) mak­ing the hydro­gena­tion process eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive with nat­u­ral­ly-pro­duced petro­le­um. In the nov­el, the post-1973 increase in the price of oil makes the “For­mu­la” a piv­ot-point of clan­des­tine intrigue. Con­sid­er the sig­nif­i­cance of the hypo­thet­i­cal exis­tence of such a for­mu­la. It would: poten­tial­ly con­trol petro­le­um-pro­duc­ing coun­tries (includ­ing the for­mer USSR and the Mid­dle-East oil king­doms) by threat­en­ing their eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion; offer the key to manip­u­lat­ing the economies of non-oil pro­duc­ing indus­tri­al economies by poten­tial­ly free­ing them from the need to import oil; con­trol the “prof­it posi­tion” of the major oil com­pa­nies; and legal­ly free­ing Ger­many from the need to import oil—I.G.‘s suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies would have retained the right to pro­duce hydro­gena­tion-derived oil. Giv­en the improve­ments in organ­ic chem­istry and oth­er tech­nolo­gies in years since World War II, it seems unlike­ly that some­thing like the “Man­gan Cat­a­lyst” (or an anal­o­gous tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment) would not have been devel­oped.

41. The moti­va­tion for the petro­le­um com­pa­nies to with­hold a tech­ni­cal improve­ment in the Bergius hydro­gena­tion process that would make syn­thet­ic fuel eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive with nat­ur­al petro­le­um was expressed by the char­ac­ter Adam Steif­fel in The For­mu­la: ” ‘Why?’ Bar­ney asked. ‘What’s wrong with mak­ing Amer­i­ca self-suf­fi­cient in syn­thet­ic fuel?’ The old man stared at Bar­ney with a look of total won­der. ‘Do you hon­est­ly expect a three-hun­dred-bil­lion-dol­lar indus­try to under­mine its own stake in the lucra­tive scarci­ty of oil by mass-pro­duc­ing syn­thet­ic fuel?’ ”
(The For­mu­la; by Steve Sha­gan; Copy­right 1979 Cirand­in­ha Pro­duc­tions, Inc.; Soft Cov­er edi­tion pub­lished in 1980 by Ban­tam Books; 0–553-13801–4; pp. 326–327.)

42. The pro­gram excerpts FTR-193, detail­ing an impor­tant aspect of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. This excerpt, in turn, comes from a major arti­cle about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal from the New York Times. The broad­cast under­scores the fact that the Leu­na facil­i­ty was being uti­lized joint­ly by Total­Fi­na and the Thyssen heavy indus­tri­al firm. The Thyssen firm, in turn, was involved with a com­plex sale of tanks to Sau­di Ara­bia as part of the com­plex maneu­ver­ing at the heart of the CDU fund­ing scan­dal. (For more about the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#‘s 276, 278.
(“Big Kick­backs Under Kohl Report­ed” by Roger Cohen and John Tagli­abue; New York Times; 2/7/2000.)

43. Next, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from FTR#478. “Psst! Hey there. You believe that we are fac­ing a cri­sis, an Immi­nent Peak of World Oil Pro­duc­tion, right? Well, the insid­ers in the Pres­i­den­t’s Ener­gy Strat­e­gy Team would like you to join with them in solv­ing this new sud­den cri­sis. In fact, you may already have been induct­ed. You pan­ic at the idea of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion col­laps­ing as the engines and machines grind to a halt, uh-huh? You agree with Ron Swen­son of Ecosys­tems that ‘The world is about to expe­ri­ence a real ener­gy cri­sis, like­ly to be a calami­ty unpar­al­leled in human his­to­ry’ (Swen­son, 1996).”
(“The Com­ing Pan­ic over the End of Oil—Coming to a Bal­lot Box Near You” by “Scoop”, Sec­tion News; Post­ed on 12/24/2003 by Walt Con­tr­eras Sheas­by; p. 1 .)

44. In light of the Thyssen-Krupp fir­m’s acqui­si­tion of the Leu­na plant, it is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the fact that the pro­fes­sion­al epi­cen­ter of “Peak Oil” the­o­rists is a firm that is a whol­ly-owned sub­sidiary of Thyssen-Borne­misza Indus­tries!! Are the acqui­si­tion of the Leu­na facil­i­ty and the acqui­si­tion of HIS con­nect­ed? Is the Thyssen nexus gen­er­at­ing the foun­da­tion for pro­duc­ing and mar­ket­ing syn­thet­ic fuel by exag­ger­at­ing the scarci­ty of the world’s petro­le­um resources? Is the petro­le­um car­tel and its asso­ci­at­ed inter­ests going along with the Peak Oil the­o­rists in order to max­i­mize their prof­it posi­tion (as the Adam Steif­fel char­ac­ter stat­ed)? “You think, as oil geol­o­gist Col­in J. Camp­bell says, that ‘the very future of our sub­species ‘Hydro­car­bon Man’ is at stake,’ right? You agree with Vir­ginia Aber­nathy that there are too many immi­grants using up our resources, I’m sure. You prob­a­bly real­ize, as many do not, that the Era of Cheap Oil and Gas is over. As Matthew E. Sim­mons, the CEO of the ener­gy invest­ment bankers of Sim­mons and Co. Inter­na­tion­al, recent­ly said: ‘I think basi­cal­ly that now, that peak­ing of oil will nev­er be accu­rate­ly pre­dict­ed until after the fact. But the event will occur, and my analy­sis is lean­ing me more by the month, [toward] the wor­ry that peak­ing is at hand; not years away. If it turns out I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. But if I’m right, the unfore­seen con­se­quences are dev­as­tat­ing.’ ” (Idem.)

45. Among the most vis­i­ble and promi­nent of the Peak Oil advo­cates is Matthew E. Sim­mons. He is also one of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion’s most impor­tant ener­gy advi­sors. Sim­mons par­tic­i­pat­ed in Cheney’s ener­gy task force in 2001. Note that both Bush and Cheney are for­mer p‑petroleum com­pa­ny CEO’s from the state of Texas. In light of the elder Bush’s col­lab­o­ra­tion in the pho­ny oil short­age of the late 1970’s, it is not unrea­son­able to ask if the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, the Saud­is, OPEC and the Under­ground Reich are col­lab­o­rat­ing to cre­ate the “Peak Oil” scare and then real­ize the poten­tial of the Standard/I.G. Agree­ment of 1929. “Well, guess what? Sim­mons is not only an oil­ion­aire him­self, but he has been a key advi­sor to the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion and to Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney’s 2001 Ener­gy Task Force, as well as sit­ting on the Coun­cil of For­eign Rela­tions. Sim­mons is a board mem­ber of Kerr-McGee Corp., a major oil and gas pro­duc­er. He insists that the US gov­ern­ment is very wor­ried about oil deple­tion. How­ev­er, Cheney’s secre­tive Nation­al Ener­gy Pol­i­cy Devel­op­ment Group (NEPDG) refused to make its records of closed-door meet­ings with indus­try exec­u­tives pub­lic. The Indus­try has tak­en a beat­ing in pub­lic opin­ion since the Kyoto sum­mit put the spot­light on glob­al warm­ing. And now Sim­mons appar­ent­ly wants to make the pub­lic’s fear of The End of Cheap Oil the drum beat of the 2004 Re-elect Bush and Cheney Cam­paign, although a more enlight­ened ener­gy pol­i­cy, he wor­ries, ‘is going to take a while.’ ” (Idem.)

46. Among the ear­li­est fore­cast­ers of Peak Oil was Mar­i­on King Hub­bert. “In fact, the coali­tion that is push­ing for a rad­i­cal new ener­gy pol­i­cy is large­ly com­posed of those who stand to ben­e­fit from a revival, not a phase out, of oil and gas devel­op­ment. The intel­lec­tu­al and activist core of the coali­tion is made up of those vet­er­an oil geol­o­gists and engi­neers who use the method of mod­el­ing the ratio of reserves to pro­duc­tion devel­oped by the mav­er­ick research geo­physi­cist Mar­i­on King Hub­bert, who died in 1989. He believed that the peak of pro­duc­tion is reached when half of the esti­mat­ed ulti­mate­ly recov­er­able resource, deter­mined by what has been dis­cov­ered and logged cumu­la­tive­ly as actu­al reserves, has been pumped. In1956 at the Shell Oil Lab in Hous­ton, Hub­bert star­tled his col­leagues by pre­dict­ing that the fos­sil fuel era would be over very quick­ly. He cor­rect­ly pre­dict­ed that US oil pro­duc­tion would peak in the ear­ly 1970’s.” (Ibid.; p. 2.)

47. Unlike Hub­bert and Def­feyes, Mon­sieurs Lahar­rere, Camp­bell and Ivan­hoe advo­cate more oil explo­ration, as opposed to alter­na­tive fuel devel­op­ment. As we shall see Petroconsultants—the firm that employed all three—is close­ly con­nect­ed to the Thyssen busi­ness empire. “Sup­port for a reme­di­al pro­gram of oil explo­ration and devel­op­ment ver­sus switch­ing to research and devel­op­ment of alter­na­tive ener­gy sources tends to be found among oil experts who are con­sul­tants to the indus­try. While accept­ing some of the val­ues of the New Age, they large­ly remain loy­al tot heir call­ing as oil geol­o­gists and wild­cat­ters. The lead­ing trio of Jean H. Laher­rere, Col­in J. Camp­bell, and L.F. (Buz) Ivan­hoe have worked for, or with, the lead­ing firm mod­el­ing oil fields, Petro­con­sul­tants of Gene­va. Since the 1950’s they have been fed data on oil explo­ration and pro­duc­tion by just about all the major oil com­pa­nies, as well as by a net­work of about 2000 oil indus­try con­sul­tants around the world. They use this data to pro­duce reports on var­i­ous mat­ters per­ti­nent to the oil indus­try, which they sell back to the indus­try. ‘This much is known,’ Ken­neth Def­feyes writes, ‘the loud­est warn­ings about the pre­dict­ed peak of world oil pro­duc­tion came from Petro­con­sul­tants’ (Def­feyes, 2001: p. 7).” (Ibid.; p. 3.)

48. The epi­cen­ter of the Peak Oil hypoth­e­sis is IHS Ener­gy Group—which evolved out of Petroconsultants—a Thyssen-Borne­misza sub­sidiary.

The pro­gram sets forth the Petroconsultants/Thyssen link at length: “In a late 1998 merg­er, Petro­con­sul­tants became HIS Ener­gy Group, a sub­sidiary of Infor­ma­tion Han­dling Ser­vices Group (IHS Group), a diver­si­fied con­glom­er­ate owned by Hol­land Amer­i­ca Invest­ment Corp., IHS Group’s imme­di­ate par­ent com­pa­ny, for the Thyssen-Borne­misza Group (TBG, Inc.).” [Empha­sis added.] In the 1920’s, George Her­bert Walk­er and his son-in-law, Prescott Bush, had helped the Thyssen dynasty finance its acqui­si­tions through Union Bank­ing Corp. and Hol­land-Amer­i­can trad­ing Corp. (Wikipedia, 2003). Until his death last year, Hans Hein­rich Thyssen-Borne­misza, the nephew of the Nazi steel and coal mag­nate, was one of the world’s rich­est men. Some of the old Hub­ber­tians would prob­a­bly flinch at such an asso­ci­a­tion.” (Idem.)

49. It is essen­tial to note that the raw data upon which IHS (for­mer­ly Petro­con­sul­tants) has drawn its Peak Oil con­clu­sions is pro­vid­ed by the very oil indus­try inter­ests that stand to prof­it from enor­mous price increas­es!! This is tan­ta­mount to assign­ing the fox­es to guard the hen house and then giv­ing cre­dence to their claim that the world is fac­ing a “Peak Poul­try” cri­sis and result­ing short­age of chick­ens!! “In 1995, a report by Camp­bell and Laherre on world oil resources, World Oil Sup­ply 1930–2050 (Petro­con­sul­tants Pty. Ltd., 1995), writ­ten for oil indus­try insid­ers and priced at $32, 000 per copy, con­clud­ed that world oil pro­duc­tion and sup­ply prob­a­bly would peak as soon as the year 2000 and decline to half the peak lev­el by 2025. Large and per­ma­nent increas­es in oil prices were pre­dict­ed after the year 2000. . . .” (Idem.)

50. ” . . . Col­in J. Camp­bell, the leader of the Neo-Hub­ber­tians, is a petro­le­um geol­o­gist from Bal­ly­de­hob, Ire­land, and author of The Com­ing Oil Cri­sis (1997). He worked for Tex­a­co as an explo­ration geol­o­gist and then at Amo­co as chief geol­o­gist for Ecuador. He is a Trustee of the Oil Deple­tion Analy­sis Cen­ter (ODAC) and the founder of the Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO), orig­i­nal­ly a net­work of 24 oil sci­en­tists. ASPO has Asso­ciate mem­bers like Hal­libur­ton and finan­cial spon­sors like Schlum­berg­er, but Camp­bell is crit­i­cal of the Bush-Cheney Admin­is­tra­tion for ‘col­lec­tive­ly hav­ing per­son­al invest­ments of as much as $150 mil­lion in oil com­pa­nies’ (ASPO, 2002).” (Idem.)

51. Tak­en in the con­text of Peak Oil, the Thyssen fir­m’s inter­est in the Leu­na facil­i­ty in the for­mer East Ger­many takes on added sig­nif­i­cance. Col­in Camp­bell notes the pos­si­ble use by Ger­many of its coal resources to sup­ple­ment its ener­gy diet. It was Ger­man coal—utilized in the hydro­gena­tion process—that pro­vid­ed the Third Reich with the foun­da­tion for its syn­thet­ic fuel project in World War II. The Leu­na facil­i­ty was the largest of those instal­la­tions. Is Thyssen (and Total­fi­na Elf) gear­ing up for pos­si­ble use of the Leu­na facil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture syn­thet­ic oil? Again, for more about the com­plex maneu­ver­ing around Leu­na in the CDU fund­ing scan­dal, see FTR#‘s 193, 276, 278, 385, 407, 478. “Camp­bell has laid out his pre­scrip­tion for var­i­ous con­sumer gov­ern­ments, for exam­ple: ‘Ger­many should resist Green pres­sure to give up nuclear pow­er at pre­cise­ly the moment it needs more ener­gy, as oil peaks and declines. Ger­many has coal and pos­si­bil­i­ties for coalbed methane. This indus­try needs to be redis­cov­ered. It may become eco­nom­ic again. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.] Ger­many should encour­age its motor man­u­fac­tur­ers to move to more effi­cient engines and hydro­gen fuels, espe­cial­ly those made by solar means. It should pro­vide what­ev­er fis­cal incen­tives are need­ed.’ (Camp­bell, 2000).” (Ibid.; pp. 3–4.)

52. Note that the gen­e­sis of the Asso­ci­a­tion for the Study of Peak Oil was in Ger­many on Decem­ber 7, 2000. This was at the same time as the Supreme Court was appoint­ing George W. Bush Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States! “It was here in Ger­many that ASPO had its ori­gin. On Decem­ber 7th in the year 2000, I was priv­i­leged to give a talk on oil deple­tion at the ancient uni­ver­si­ty of Clausthal in the Harz Moun­tains. The idea of form­ing an insti­tu­tion, or net­work of sci­en­tists con­cerned about the sub­ject, devel­oped. Next day, I took the idea to Pro­fes­sor Wellmer, the head of the BGR in Han­nover, who gave it his sup­port. The Nor­we­gians were the next to join, fol­lowed by the Swedes. Today, ASPO is rep­re­sent­ed in almost all Euro­pean countries—at least before its recent enlarge­ment.” (“ASPO Third Inter­na­tion­al Work­shop on Oil and Gas Deple­tion” by C.J. Camp­bell; 5/25–26/2004; p. 1; accessed at: http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2004/ProgramBerlin.doc.)

53. The pro­gram reviews the pro­found rela­tion­ship between the branch­es of the Thyssen indus­tri­al empire and the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion: “Thyssen-Borne­misza runs his pri­vate Dutch-based invest­ment group from Lugano, Switzer­land, and his cousin, Count Fed­eri­co Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, exer­cis­es con­trol over Thyssen A.G. from his base in Buenos Aires.” (Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile; by Paul Man­ning; copy­right 1981; Lyle Stu­art [hard­cov­er]; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 237.)

54. “Dur­ing the final year of his life, in Argenti­na, divid­ing his time between the vil­la in Buenos Aires and the ranch­es, one in Argenti­na, the oth­er in Paraguay, Fritz Thyssen com­plet­ed estab­lish­ing the con­trol that would assure ever­last­ing fam­i­ly pros­per­i­ty through Thyssen A.G. Elder grand­son Count Fed­eri­co Zichy-Thyssen of Buenos Aires was placed on the board of this Ger­man steel trust. When the count votes at board meet­ings in Dus­sel­dorf three or four times a year, he votes for the entire Thyssen fam­i­ly of South Amer­i­ca and Europe.” (Ibid.; p. 257.)

55. “Count Fed­eri­co Zichy-Thyssen, who has a younger broth­er Count Clau­dio Zichy-Thyssen, rep­re­sents the largest sin­gle share­hold­ing group, with 25 per­cent of the stock of Thyssen A.G. The remain­der of the stock is dif­fused into Deutsche Bank in Frank­furt and Buenos Aires, which holds shares for many indi­vid­u­als on both con­ti­nents, includ­ing those rep­re­sent­ing the Bor­mann group. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s.]” (Idem.)

56. Mar­tin Bor­mann him­self was very close to the Argen­tine branch of the Thyssen fam­i­ly. “Count Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, is looked upon with affec­tion by Mar­tin Bor­mann, who vis­its the Zichy-Thyssens upon occa­sion. Bor­man­n’s eldest daugh­ter is said to be almost a per­ma­nent guest at the Thyssen ranch­es. As with the eldest broth­er, Adolf Mar­tin, the for­mer Jesuit priest, Mar­tin Bor­mann strong­ly want­ed at least these first of his chil­dren with him in South Amer­i­ca. Adolf, accom­pa­nied by his wife, vis­its his father from time to time. Daugh­ter ‘Neu­mi’ nev­er mar­ried and devotes her­self to her father in his declin­ing years.” (Ibid.; p. 290.)

57. “Along with the good life, there is no less­en­ing of safe­guards. They have been on the run for so many years that it is part of their intrin­sic sur­vival pat­tern to ques­tion all strangers and any over­tures. Even the Zichy-Thyssens, who in no way par­tic­i­pat­ed in the rise and fall of the Third Reich as did grand­fa­ther Fritz, evi­dence anx­i­ety when approached by me with cour­te­ous ques­tions regard­ing the his­to­ry of their fam­i­ly and fur­ther details about the life and career of Fritz Thyssen.” (Idem.)

58. “Count Fed­eri­co Zichy-Thyssen, grand­son of old Fritz Thyssen, Clau­dio Zichy-Thyssen, and their fam­i­lies are inti­mate friends of Bor­mann. Because of this friend­ship, Mar­tin Bor­mann has three sanc­tu­ar­ies: his own pam­pas spread in Argenti­na and the Thyssen ranch­es in Argenti­na and Paraguay.” (Ibid.; p. 292.)

59. It is worth not­ing that the Bor­mann group is heav­i­ly involved with the inter­ests grow­ing out of I.G. Far­ben. (For more about this, see FTR#411.) “The Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion con­tin­ues to wield enor­mous eco­nom­ic influ­ence. Wealth con­tin­ues to flow into the trea­suries of its cor­po­rate enti­ties in South Amer­i­ca, the Unit­ed States and Europe. Vast­ly diver­si­fied, it is said to be the largest land-own­er in South Amer­i­ca, and through stock­hold­ings, con­trols Ger­man heavy indus­try and the trust estab­lished by the late Her­mann Schmitz, for­mer pres­i­dent of I.G. Far­ben, who held as much stock in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey as did the Rock­e­fellers.” (Idem.)

60. Next, the pro­gram excerpts FTR-273. For­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial John Lof­tus dis­closed that the Bush fam­i­ly for­tune came from the 1951 liq­ui­da­tion of the Union Bank­ing Corporation—a joint Thyssen/Bush/Harriman busi­ness ven­ture. For more about the Bush fam­i­ly’s involve­ment with the Thyssen milieu and oth­er ele­ments of Nazi indus­try, see—among oth­er pro­grams—FTR#‘s 361, 370, 435, 475, 481.) (“Author Links Bush Fam­i­ly to Nazis;” Sara­so­ta Her­ald-Tri­bune; 11/11/2000; accessed at www.newscoast.com.)

61. It is worth not­ing that the Rock­e­feller fam­i­ly was (as of 1972) a major stock­hold­er in the Thyssen firm, giv­ing that fam­i­ly a stake in Thyssen con­trol of the Leu­na facil­i­ty and any prod­ucts com­ing from it. “A few decades lat­er things had qui­et­ed down and all the Nazi mon­ey final­ly came home to Wall Street. By 1972, one of Rock­e­feller’s assets, the Chase Man­hat­tan bank in New York, secret­ly owned 38% of the Thyssen com­pa­ny, accord­ing to inter­nal Thyssen records in my cus­tody. Not a bad pay­off for the Rob­ber Barons. The Auschwitz invest­ment paid off hand­some­ly. The Thyssen-Krupp cor­po­ra­tion is now the wealth­i­est con­glom­er­ate in Europe. WWII is over. The Ger­mans won.” (“For­mer Fed­er­al Pros­e­cu­tor John Lof­tus Con­firms the Bush-Nazi Scan­dal” by John Lof­tus; 10/31/2003; p. 2; accessed at: http://www.john-loftus.com/bush_nazi_scandal.asp.)

62. Anoth­er major cap­i­tal par­tic­i­pant in the Thyssen-Krupp firm was the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment. Iran—like Sau­di Arabia—would be among the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Peak Oil gam­bit. Note that the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment has had a tra­di­tion­al­ly close rela­tion­ship with the Al Taqwa milieu. (For more about this, see—among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#‘s 343, 352, 354, 381.) “…Fri­day, Thyssen-Krupp, a steel mak­ing con­glom­er­ate, said a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Iran-Thyssen’s No. 3 shareholder—no longer would hold a seat on its super­vi­so­ry board, which is sim­i­lar to a U.S. board of direc­tors. Iran has held a major stake in the com­pa­ny since before the nation’s 1979 Islam­ic rev­o­lu­tion, and helped res­cue it from near-bank­rupt­cy with a cap­i­tal injec­tion 30 years ago. . . .” (“Euro­pean Firms React to U.S. Hard Line on Iran” by Matthew Kar­nitschnig; The Wall Street Jour­nal; 1/28/2005; p. A7.)

63. ” . . .Under U.S. law, the gov­ern­ment isn’t allowed to grant con­tracts to com­pa­nies in which Iran holds a stake of more than 5%. To avoid sanc­tion, Thyssen-Krupp spent 406 mil­lion Euros ($531 mil­lion) to repur­chase more than 3% of its stock from Iran in 2003. While that reduced the coun­try’s share to 4.8%, the U.S. also leaned on Thyssen-Krupp to remove the Iran­ian rep­re­sen­ta­tive from its board, peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter say. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Mohamad-Meh­di Navab-Mot­lagh, a deputy min­is­ter in Iran’s Min­istry of Indus­try and Min­ing, had served on the board for more than 20 years.” (Idem.)

64. Author Kevin Coogan rumi­nates on the sig­nif­i­cance of the Genoud milieu’s pres­ence in the events of 9/11: “My own belief is that it is less the appar­ent­ly fan­tas­tic and ‘James Bond’-like qual­i­ty of this analy­sis that is most dif­fi­cult to under­stand. The real dif­fi­cul­ty is the utter igno­rance of most West­ern­ers (Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar) about the very exis­tence of such peo­ple as Fran­cois Genoud. Thus when Ernst Back­es, one of Europe’s lead­ing experts in mon­ey laun­der­ing, told the Lux­e­mourg-based eco­nom­ic jour­nal Plus Minus last year that he believed the finan­cial source of funds for the 9/11 ter­ror­ists would ulti­mate­ly be traced back to Swiss bank accounts estab­lished by Genoud, few Amer­i­cans had any idea what Back­es could pos­si­bly be talk­ing about. For this same rea­son there has been vir­tu­al­ly no inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into SICO’s Bau­doin Dunand’s rela­tion­ship to Genoud or (for that mat­ter) the role Syr­i­an-born Muham­mad Mar­dam Bay (believed to be relat­ed to a for­mer Syr­i­an for­eign min­is­ter) has played both as a mem­ber of Magnin, Dunand & Asso­ciates as well as Bay’s pos­si­ble links with Genoud. And what does it mean when we are told that [Al Taqwa founder] Youssef Nada, for exam­ple, is believed by Egypt­ian author­i­ties to have worked for Ger­man intel­li­gence in World War II?” (Ibid.; p. 15)

65. It should be not­ed that the mar­ket­ing of the Peak Oil con­cept would great­ly enrich some of the most fascis­tic ele­ments on earth, from the major oil com­pa­nies to the vul­tures of OPEC, to the Mus­lim Brotherhood—a tra­di­tion­al ben­e­fi­cia­ry of Arab wealth. The increase in the price of oil will great­ly enhance the pow­er of the fascis­tic net­works exam­ined in this broad­cast. Whether they will, in time, shift their wealth away from the dol­lar to the euro remains to be seen. Kevin Coogan’s rumi­na­tion is pre­sent­ed here for exam­i­na­tion by the read­er. “It is not at all impos­si­ble that net­works first devel­oped in the 1930’s and who saw their eco­nom­ic pow­er fan­tas­ti­cal­ly mul­ti­plied in the wake of the enor­mous hike in oil prices in 1973 are now engaged in try­ing to enact a major finan­cial shift away from the dol­lar and Anglo-Amer­i­can finan­cial net­works and to shift the vast wealth of the Mus­lim oil states into a new Euro-based finan­cial net­work that would vast­ly increase the pow­er of those banks and finan­cial inter­ests in Europe asso­ci­at­ed with ele­ments of far right elites that sur­vived World War II rel­a­tive­ly intact.” (Idem.)

66. “If this were at all the case, it would not be a new devel­op­ment. The very same attempt to devel­op an inde­pen­dent Sau­di-Ger­man hookup to sub­vert the U.S. and British dom­i­na­tion of the Sau­di oil mar­kets was actu­al­ly attempt­ed in the mid-1950’s. At that time, the Sau­di roy­al family—using the advise of the famous Ger­man banker Hjal­mar Schacht—attempted to employ Aris­to­tle Onas­sis to trans­port Sau­di oil on new oil tankers that would be con­struct­ed in the ship­yards of Ger­many. This attempt to break the West­ern oil con­trol over Sau­di Ara­bia was final­ly blocked by the Unit­ed States, a sto­ry well doc­u­ment­ed in Jim Hougan’s book Spooks (New York: William Mor­row, 1978.)” (Ibid.; pp. 15–16.)

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