Record­ed Octo­ber 9, 2005

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Intro­duc­tion: This broad­cast details some of the fruits that have been borne by the col­lab­o­ra­tion between ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence and Nazi and fas­cist groups from World War II. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist OUN/B and its affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tion the ABN (Anti-Bol­she­vik League of Nations), the pro­gram high­lights the posi­tion of Ukrain­ian head of state Vic­tor Yuschenko’s wife in that milieu. The for­mer Kather­ine Chu­machenko was a key offi­cial with the UCCA (the key OUN/B front group in the U.S.) and was Deputy Direc­tor for Pub­lic Liai­son in the Reagan/Bush White House. In light of the fact that Yuschenko’s entire cab­i­net has either resigned in protest over the cor­rup­tion of his regime or been fired, one must seri­ous­ly con­sid­er to what extent his asso­ci­a­tion with fas­cist fel­low-trav­el­ers like the for­mer Ms. Chu­machenko may have paved the way for unsa­vory ele­ments to enter the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

The pro­gram also high­lights the links between both the GOP and the John Birch Soci­ety milieu and the Iron Guard, the Roman­ian fas­cist group that fought along­side Hitler and the Nazis. Joseph Schmitz, the son of John Birch Soci­ety lumi­nary Joseph G. Schmitz and the for­mer Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Pen­ta­gon has been named as the head of the Black­wa­ter company—a pri­vate secu­ri­ty out­fit employ­ing for­mer elite spe­cial oper­a­tions troops.

After review­ing the John Birch Society’s recov­ery of Japan­ese war loot from the Philip­pines in order to fund a pri­vate, right-wing nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment, the broad­cast sets forth the links between the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment and var­i­ous “pri­vate” secu­ri­ty orga­ni­za­tions that func­tion as proxy war­riors and spies. Many of the right-wing out­fits that spawn some of these “pri­vate” orga­ni­za­tions also appear to have been the recip­i­ents of Japan­ese war gold.

The broad­cast con­cludes with an exam­i­na­tion of the role of Graz, Aus­tria (the home­town of the fam­i­ly of Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger) in the Vat­i­can “Rat­line” escape net­works that spir­it­ed Nazi war crim­i­nals out of Europe and, in many cas­es, into the ser­vice of ele­ments of West­ern intel­li­gence.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The role of the OUN/B and the close­ly affil­i­at­ed ABN in Nazi liq­ui­da­tions and atroc­i­ties on the East­ern Front dur­ing World War II; the close links between the OUN/B and ABN and the Reagan/Bush White House; the role of the Roman­ian Iron Guard in the ABN/GOP milieu; the post­war sur­vival of much of the Iron Guard infra­struc­ture; review of the links between ele­ments of the MacArthur group with­in the mil­i­tary and the John Birch Soci­ety; the role of the Graz police estab­lish­ment in the Rat­line oper­a­tions in that city, as well as the influ­ence of the Car­di­nal of Graz in shel­ter­ing war crim­i­nals in the town.

1. In late 2004 and ear­ly 2005, much of the world’s atten­tion was focused on the so-called “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion” in the Ukraine, in which a challenger—Victor Yuschenko—ousted a cor­rupt and auto­crat­ic pre­de­ces­sor after the pop­u­lace demand­ed that evi­dent elec­toral fraud be inval­i­dat­ed. The bloom has since gone off the fruit, so to speak, as Yuschenko’s entire cab­i­net has either resigned in protest over cor­rup­tion or been fired. This pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Yuschenko’s wife—a Ukrainian/American with a polit­i­cal­ly taint­ed past. A Wall Street Jour­nal edi­to­r­i­al laud­ed the for­mer Kather­ine Chumahc­neko:

“In the most peace­ful rev­o­lu­tion since South Africa end­ed its apartheid regime by elect­ing Nel­son Man­dela pres­i­dent in 1994, Ukraine has just elect­ed oppo­si­tion leader Vik­tor Yuschenko pres­i­dent of the for­mer Sovi­et satel­lite repub­lic. The vic­to­ry comes for the pro-West­ern leader after a dirty cam­paign that saw him poi­soned and only after hun­dreds of thou­sands of demon­stra­tors filled the streets to protest vot­er-fraud. ‘We peace­ful­ly, beau­ti­ful­ly, ele­gant­ly and with­out any drops of blood changed Ukraine,’ Mr. Yuschenko told cheer­ing sup­port­ers.”

(“From Amer­i­ca With Love” by John Fund; Opin­ion Journal—from The Wall Street Jour­nal Edi­to­r­i­al Page; 12/27/2004; p. 1.)

2. “What many West­ern­ers do not real­ize, how­ev­er, is when Mr. Yuschenko takes the seat of pow­er, at his side will be a tough mind­ed, savvy Amer­i­can-raised busi­ness­woman. His wife, Katery­na Chu­machenko Yuschenko, is the daugh­ter of Ukrain­ian immi­grants who grew up steeped in the tra­di­tions of her ances­tral home­land. . . .”

(Idem.)

3. Mrs. Yuschenko’s back­ground is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing, and gives a pos­si­ble hint to a source of cor­rup­tion: the for­mer Ms. Chu­machenko was close­ly affil­i­at­ed with a front group for the OUN/B, a Ukrain­ian fas­cist group that worked with the SS under the Third Reich and has been an inte­gral ele­ment of the post­war Under­ground Reich. The OUN/B worked close­ly with the Gehlen spy out­fit and affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions, such as the ABN (see below.)

“One Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist group was the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) which split into two orga­ni­za­tions: a less mil­i­tant wing, led by Andrew Mel­nyk and known as OUN‑M, and the extrem­ist group of Stepan Ban­dera, known as OUN/B. The Nazis pre­ferred the rad­i­cal nation­al­ist OUN/B. Dur­ing the Ger­man mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion, the Ukraine wit­nessed ter­ri­ble atroc­i­ties against Jews and oth­er groups tar­get­ed by Nazi poli­cies. The OUN/B orga­nized mil­i­tary units that par­tic­i­pat­ed in these atroc­i­ties. With the col­lapse of the Third Reich, many Ukrain­ian col­lab­o­ra­tionists fled their home­land.”

(Old Nazis, The New Right, and the Repub­li­can Par­ty; by Russ Bel­lant; South End Press [HC]; Copy­right 1988, 1989, 1991 by Russ Bel­lant; ISBN 0–89608-419–1; p. 69.)

4. The OUN/B, like the ABN, became a big part of the Repub­li­can eth­nic her­itage branch—a Nazi/fascist wing of the GOP with its roots firm­ly plant­ed in the Third Reich. In the pas­sage that fol­lows, note for the pur­pose of the present dis­cus­sion the UCCA, the main OUN/B front group in the U.S.

“After the war, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists-Ban­dera (OUN/B), a clan­des­tine group financed in part by Ger­man intel­li­gence and led by [Jaroslav] Stet­sko, accel­er­at­ed its work in the West. A secre­tive group, OUN/B’s tracks are dif­fi­cult to fol­low. ‘You have to under­stand. We are an under­ground orga­ni­za­tion. We have spent years qui­et­ly pen­e­trat­ing posi­tions of influ­ence,’ explained an OUN/B mem­ber who insist­ed on anonymi­ty. The posi­tions of influ­ence under dis­cus­sion were Rea­gan Admin­is­tra­tion appoint­ments. All of the OUN/B’s key Admin­is­tra­tion con­tacts were through an orga­ni­za­tion called the Ukrain­ian Con­gress of Amer­i­ca (UCCA), head­quar­tered in New York City. . . .”

(Idem.)

5. The pro­gram presents more infor­ma­tion about the ABN and its rela­tion­ship with the for­mer World Anti Com­mu­nist League.

“ . . . The ABN is the high coun­cil for the expa­tri­ate nation­al­ist groups that formed the police, mil­i­tary and mili­tia units that worked with Hitler dur­ing World War II. Some were orga­nized as mobile killing teams that exter­mi­nat­ed vil­lages and sought to mur­der whole eth­nic, racial, and cul­tur­al groups. These mobile killing teams are the fore­run­ners of the mod­ern death squad. It is con­sis­tent, then, that the Latin Amer­i­can Anti-Com­mu­nist Con­fed­er­a­tion (CAL) (for many years the Latin Amer­i­can branch of WACL) has a great affin­i­ty for the ABN and its mem­bers, accord­ing to sev­er­al ABN mem­bers. CAL his­tor­i­cal­ly has served as an umbrel­la group for the region­al death squads.”

(Ibid.; p. 75.)

6. “A meet­ing of the youth sec­tions of CAL and ABN in 1983 took place in Fedorak’s Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Cen­ter in War­ren, Michi­gan. The result­ing 16-point res­o­lu­tion bore state­ments that might sur­prise some of their con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. sup­port­ers. Not only were the usu­al anti-com­mu­nist sen­ti­ments expressed, but also anti-cap­i­tal­ist posi­tions were tak­en. One point, for instance, called for ‘rejec­tion of all mate­ri­al­ist doc­trines (author’s empha­sis) which defile the human indi­vid­ual by treat­ing peo­ple as ego­tis­ti­cal, cov­etous and self­ish beings. . . .’ The res­o­lu­tion called for a ‘faith in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary, lib­er­a­tion nation­al­ism . . . .’ and ‘unbend­ing oppo­si­tion to col­lec­tivist slav­ery, against com­mu­nist and cap­i­tal­ist alien­ation of human labor. . . .’”

(Ibid.; pp. 75–76.)

7. “These for­mu­la­tions mir­ror the clas­sic out­lines of Nation­al Social­ism, which simul­ta­ne­ous­ly fought the Com­mu­nist and West­ern Cap­i­tal­ist pow­ers ide­o­log­i­cal­ly and mil­i­tar­i­ly. The Third Way, reject­ing East and West, is still a posi­tion tak­en by sig­nif­i­cant ele­ments of the con­tem­po­rary neo-Nazi move­ment.”

(Ibid.; p. 76.)

8. “The Stet­skos were not only lead­ers of OUN but the mul­ti-eth­nic ABN as well. The July-August, 1983 ABN bul­letin ABN Cor­re­spon­dence car­ries sev­er­al cov­er pho­tos which show the Stet­skos and oth­er ABN lead­ers as White House guests in July 1983, per­son­al­ly meet­ing with Rea­gan, George Bush and Jeanne Kirk­patrick.”

(Idem.)

9. “After the Stet­skos vis­it­ed the White House, Yaroslav Stetsko’s wife Sla­va Stet­sko, who lives in Munich, West Ger­many, called on the ABN to sup­port Reagan’s re-elec­tion. She car­ried that mes­sage to ABN chap­ters dur­ing 1984 as well. The Rea­gan cam­paign coop­er­at­ed with ABN, includ­ing sched­ul­ing an appear­ance by Michel Sotirhos, head of Eth­nic Vot­ers for Rea­gan-Bush Cam­paign of 1984 as well as the Repub­li­can Her­itage Groups Coun­cil, at the 1984 ABN con­fer­ence in New York City.”

(Idem.)

10. “The Goal of the ABN is to pres­sure the U.S. gov­ern­ment toward a ‘lib­er­a­tion’ pol­i­cy aimed against the USSR, with ABN lead­ers as the lib­er­a­tors. Although ABN mem­bers say they only need tech­ni­cal assis­tance from the West, they want the U.S. mil­i­tary to put them in pow­er in East­ern Europe and the USSR. This is the for­mu­la they tried under Ger­man Nazi spon­sor­ship. Their manip­u­la­tions of the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem are toward that end.” (Idem.)

11. “The emi­gres of the ABN still dream of one more chance to cre­ate a new order in Europe. They even got Michi­gan Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Paul Hen­ry to enter a state­ment into the Con­gres­sion­al Record in July, 1986, com­mend­ing the ‘inde­pen­dence’ of the Ukraine under Stet­sko in 1941.”

(Idem.)

12. “Accord­ing to Hen­ry ‘a rep­re­sen­ta­tive assem­bly of the most promi­nent Ukrain­ian lead­ers from all walks of life issued a Procla­ma­tion of the Restora­tion of Ukraine’s Inde­pen­dence. . . . The procla­ma­tion received enthu­si­as­tic sup­port of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple’ Hen­ry referred to the ‘free­dom fight­ers’ of the ‘Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN), led by Stepan Ban­dera.’ When ques­tioned about his praise for a doc­u­ment which includ­ed the line ‘Glo­ry to the Hero­ic Ger­man Army and its Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler,’ a spokesper­son for Hen­ry said he’d ‘not been aware of the fine print. . . .’”

(Idem.)

13. Notice Yuschenko’s wife’s posi­tion in this fascist/Nazi con­cate­na­tion. The for­mer Ms. Chu­machenko had been direc­tor of the UCCA’s Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee and (as of 1988) been Deputy Direc­tor for Pub­lic Liai­son at the White House!

“On July 20, 1988, George Bush reaf­firmed the ties between the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the ABN by mak­ing a cam­paign stop at Fedorak’s Ukrain­ian Cul­tur­al Cen­ter in War­ren, Michi­gan. Bush deliv­ered a hard-line for­eign pol­i­cy speech to those attend­ing the annu­al Cap­tive Nations ban­quet spon­sored joint­ly by the Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee and the ABN. Shar­ing the dais with Fedo­rak and Bush was Kather­ine Chu­machenko, for­mer­ly the direc­tor of the UCCA’s Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee and cur­rent­ly the Deputy Direc­tor for Pub­lic Liai­son at the White House. [Empha­sis added.] Ignatius M. Billinsky, Pres­i­dent of UCCA, had already been named Hon­orary Chair of Ukraini­ans for Bush, and Bohdan Fedo­rak named Nation­al vice-chair of Ukraini­ans for Bush. . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 76–77.)

14. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the role of Roman­ian Iron Guard units in the ABN. Note, in par­tic­u­lar, Horia Sima’s role as head of an Iron Guard gov­ern­ment in exile. We will exam­ine links between the U.S. far right, the Iron Guard and Sima lat­er on in this dis­cus­sion.

“ . . . (Roman­ian Lib­er­a­tion Move­ment). The Roman­ian affil­i­ate of ABN and the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League. Its leader for many years, Horia Sima, was also the head of the Roman­ian Iron Guard fol­low­ing WWII. Sima could hard­ly claim to have fought the Nazis and Sovi­ets simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, since he was released by the Ger­mans from house arrest to head a Roman­ian pup­pet gov­ern­ment-in-exile. It as set up by the Ger­mans in Vien­na in 1944, imme­di­ate­ly the Roman­ian gov­ern­ment aban­doned the Axis and sued for peace with the Allies. As head of the gov­ern­ment, Sima formed Roman­ian mil­i­tary units which fought on Germany’s behalf on the East­ern Front from 1944–45. Sima’s gov­ern­ment-in-exile was dis­band­ed nine days after Hitler’s death.”

(Ibid.; p. 75.)

15. The Iron Guard is part and par­cel to a milieu that has coa­lesced at the fore­front of the trend toward pri­va­ti­za­tion of nation­al secu­ri­ty mat­ters. Iron Guard offi­cials had sig­nif­i­cant inter­face with ele­ments of the John Birch soci­ety. A book exco­ri­at­ing Sen­a­tor Edward Kennedy was authored by one “Zad Rust”—a pen-name for Prince Michael Stur­dza, the for­eign min­is­ter for the Iron Guard gov­ern­ment dur­ing World War II. This book was active­ly pro­mot­ed by the John Birch Soci­ety and Robert Welch, and—as will see—Representative John G. Schmitz. Schmit’s lega­cy has been per­pet­u­at­ed by his sons John P. Schmitz and Joseph Schmitz.

“ . . . On the ques­tions of killing in ‘defense’ of one’s own ‘group,’ Robert Welch’s ideas are remark­ably par­al­lel with those expressed in deed by one of Europe’s most noto­ri­ous gangs of polit­i­cal assas­sins. In a book titled, Ted­dy Bare: The Last of the Kennedy Clan and described by Welch as one of a bat­tery of heav­ier guns’ against ‘the ene­my,’ we find its author Zad Rust aghast that the ‘founder’ of ‘the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union’ gave his full approval to the right of all, cit­i­zens and aliens alike, to advo­cate polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion . . . [Ted­dy Bare; West­ern Islands, p. 147.]”

(“Assas­si­na­tion and the Strange Friends of John Schmitz” by Wal­ter A. Car­rithers, Jr.; paper authored in 1972; pp. 40–41. [PDF down­load])

16. “Rust”/Sturdza also wrote a book extolling the Iron Guard and pro­mot­ing the canard of the “Jew­ish Con­spir­a­cy.” The book was endorsed by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive John G. Schmitz, whose sons (as dis­cussed in the ref­er­ences in para­graph 15) have car­ried on his lega­cy. His sons are involved in inves­ti­ga­tions into var­i­ous aspects of the 9/11 sit­u­a­tion. “As since revealed in JBS lit­er­a­ture, ‘Zad Rust’ is a pen-name for Prince Michal Stur­dza, author of The Sui­cide of Europe, greet­ed by John G. Schmitz as a ‘pow­er­ful book’ (Review of the News, Feb. 23, 1972, p. 48.) It is described in adver­tis­ing as ‘bril­liant mem­oirs’ and ‘a per­son­al, first-hand wit­ness to inter­na­tion­al intrigue, to a people’s coura­geous response to . . . trea­son by their high­est lead­ers . . . . a vital con­tri­bu­tion with­out which no accu­rate his­to­ry of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry can be writ­ten.’”

(Ibid.; p. 41.)

17. “How indeed does author Stur­dza por­tray this ‘coura­geous response to . . . trea­son by their high­est lead­ers. . . .’? Despite ‘Zad Rust’s’ mock shock at any idea that the advo­ca­cy of polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion should be con­sid­ered a civ­il right, the ‘response’ Stur­dza admits and defends was that of the Iron Guard of Roma­nia, one of the most noto­ri­ous, blood­i­est ter­ror­ist-assas­si­na­tion gangs in all of Nazi Europe—and Prince Stur­dza was the For­eign Min­is­ter in its Cab­i­net after it final­ly gained pow­er (and at once allied with Hitler and with Mus­soli­ni)!”

(Idem.)

18. “To show a bit of what that means, we quote from Assas­si­na­tion and Polit­i­cal Vio­lence (A report to the Nation­al Com­mis­sion on the Caus­es and Pre­ven­tion of Vio­lence), p. 572: ‘Extreme nation­al­ism and anti-semi­tism pro­duced in Roma­nia a native form of fas­cism, the Iron Guard. The Iron Guard . . . uti­lized . . . ten­sions for direct action in the form of mass and indi­vid­ual vio­lence . . . Nation­al­is­tic and rabid­ly anti-semit­ic, the Iron Guardists . . . ruth­less­ly . . . prac­ticed a vari­ety of vio­lent tac­tics, incit­ing the pop­u­la­tion to pogroms and out­rages against Jews, democ­rats and mod­er­ates who opposed them. Fas­cist stu­dents and Iron Guardists, in open dis­re­gard of the law and of the ele­men­tary rights of oth­ers, shot down pub­lic offi­cials, and even fel­low stu­dents. Codreanu {founder of the Iron Guard move­ment} shot down the pre­fect of police Man­ciu in court (1924) {in the birth­place of the move­ment}, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Ion Duca (1933) . . . Again, in 1937 ter­ror­ists attempt­ed to assas­si­nate a coura­geous rec­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Yas­si because of his oppo­si­tion to anti­se­mit­ic ter­ror­ism.”

(Ibid.; pp. 41–42.)

19. “ ‘In 1936, a stu­dent, Mikhail Stiles­cu, who had resigned from the orga­ni­za­tion, was killed in a hos­pi­tal in Bucharest by 10 Iron Guardists [a typ­i­cal ‘coura­geous’ response] . . . When Gen­er­al Antones­cu took over the gov­ern­ment of Roma­nia in 1940, the Iron Guardists mur­dered more than 60 pris­on­ers and kid­napped and mur­dered the lead­ing Roman­ian his­to­ri­an, Pro­fes­sor Nico­la Ior­ga, who was a for­mer Roman­ian Prime Min­is­ter and him­self a nation­al­ist. A lead­ing peas­ant par­ty econ­o­mist, Vir­gil Madgearu, met the same fate. Out­rages against Jews fol­lowed after­wards. This is only a ran­dom sam­ple of the numer­ous killings and out­rages per­pe­trat­ed by the Iron Guard.’”

(Ibid.; p. 42.)

20. “In his defense of the Iron Guard whose agents assas­si­nat­ed two act­ing Prime Min­is­ters of their coun­try, ‘Zad Rust,’ the hatch­et-man Founder Welch set upon Sen­a­tor Edward Kennedy, pleads that it all was nec­es­sary to try and save the nation from ‘the Anony­mous and Omnipo­tent Pow­ers who decid­ed that the ham­mer and sick­le should replace the Cross where it has reigned for about two thou­sand years.’ (The Sui­cide of Europe; p. lxv.) Who were these ‘pow­ers’ so ‘malev­o­lent’ that they could only be com­bat­ed by the assassin’s gun? Stur­dza does not open­ly iden­ti­fy them; but it is no great task to read his intent, espe­cial­ly since one of his fel­low-Iron Guardists, one at the right hand of its Leader, was Ion Mota, first to trans­late into Roman­ian The Pro­to­cols of the Learned Elders of Zion. . . .”

(Idem.)

21. Note that the afore­men­tioned Horia Sima and the Iron Guardists are an active part of the milieu of the John Birch Soci­ety, as well as the GOP.

“ . . . (As a foot­note, the Iron Guard move­ment in exile is nei­ther defunct nor inac­tive. One can find indi­ca­tions of its activ­i­ty in Amer­i­ca even today. For $.35 we pur­chased one of the copies of A Dec­la­ra­tion of the Roman­ian Legionary Move­ment on sale at the Amer­i­can­ist book­store at Knotts Berry Farm, Orange Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia. Print­ed in South Amer­i­ca, its author is Horia Sima who, with Stur­dza, was a mem­ber in the Iron Guard cab­i­net of Prime Min­is­ter Antones­cu. After its down­fall, Sima fled to take refuge in Nazi Berlin.)”

(Ibid.; p. 43.)

22. In the wake of Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na and the dev­as­ta­tion of New Orleans, there has been renewed focus on the pri­va­ti­za­tion of nation­al secu­ri­ty mat­ters, with the Black­wa­ter secu­ri­ty firm and oth­er pri­vate secu­ri­ty orga­ni­za­tions assum­ing a lead­ing role in the polic­ing of that city. In the mid­dle of Katrina’s strike on New Orleans, Joseph Schmitz—son of John G. Schmitz and broth­er of John P. Schmitz—was appoint­ed as the head of Blackwater’s par­ent com­pa­ny.

“ . . . Just as the hur­ri­cane was hit­ting, Blackwater’s par­ent com­pa­ny, the Prince Group, named Joseph Schmitz, who had just resigned as the Pentagon’s Inspec­tor Gen­er­al, as the group’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer and gen­er­al coun­sel. . . .”

(“Black­wa­ter Down” by Jere­my Scahill; The Nation; 10/10/2005; p. 4 of 4.)

23. Next, the pro­gram reca­pit­u­lates infor­ma­tion from FTR 451 about the recov­ery of Japan­ese war loot from World War II and its use by the John Birch Soci­ety and oth­er ele­ments to finance their goal of a pri­vate nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. The broad­cast high­lights the role of the John Birch Soci­ety in recov­er­ing Gold­en Lily trea­sure from the Philip­pines in tan­dem with min­ing engi­neer Robert Cur­tis. Note that the funds were going to be used to finance a pri­vate, right-wing vig­i­lante force. Notice the ref­er­ence to the Hunt Broth­ers’ attempts to cor­ner the world’s sil­ver mar­ket. The late Ali bin Muss­sal­im (who main­tained a Bank Al Taqwa account for Al Qae­da with an unlim­it­ed line of cred­it) was a par­tic­i­pant in that scheme.

“When the Hunt Broth­ers ere try­ing to cor­ner the world’s sil­ver pro­duc­tion in the ear­ly 1970s,’ Cur­tis told us, ‘they sent Colonel Her­bert F. Buc­choltz to me . . . lat­er came Jer­ry Adams . . . Robert Welch, founder of the Birch Soci­ety; Con­gress­man Lar­ry McDon­ald, and Jay and Dan Agnew, and Floyd Pax­ton.’”

(Gold Warriors—America’s Secret Recov­ery of Yamashita’s Gold; by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [HC]; Copy­right 2003 by Ster­ling Sea­grave and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–85984-542–8; p. 174.)

24. “The Birch Soci­ety was start­ed in 1958 by a group of wealthy busi­ness­men and far right politi­cians con­vinced that every clos­et in Amer­i­ca con­tained com­mu­nists, Jews, wet­backs, Afro-Amer­i­cans, lib­er­als and homo­sex­u­als. The Birchers also were ded­i­cat­ed gold and sil­ver bugs. They had a long­stand­ing grudge against U.S. pres­i­dents, start­ing with FDR, who had inter­vened to make pri­vate own­er­ship of gold in Amer­i­ca a crime, with penal­ties of heavy fines, con­fis­ca­tion and impris­on­ment. They also believed that Nixon had sold the Unit­ed States down the riv­er twice—first by tak­ing Amer­i­ca off the gold stan­dard, sec­ond by his recog­ni­tion of Red Chi­na. On the oth­er hand, Nixon’s actions made it pos­si­ble for the first time since 1933 for Amer­i­cans to pur­chase and own gold legal­ly. So Nixon opened up avenues for the Birch lead­er­ship to acquire gold over­seas, and sneak it into Amer­i­ca through the back door of Cana­da, where it added to the Society’s fund for anti-com­mu­nist activ­i­ties. Like oth­er ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive groups in Amer­i­ca and indi­vid­u­als like Gen­er­al Lansdale—one of their own—who had been forced out of the CIA and Pen­ta­gon by lib­er­als, the Birchers had a long-term strat­e­gy to cre­ate their own right-wing vig­i­lante force. Not some­thing crude like Hitler’s Brown Shirts or Gestapo. More like a pri­vate FBI, assist­ed by elite pri­vate mil­i­tary forces. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s]. This would cost mon­ey, hence the need for large amounts of pri­vate­ly held gold.”

(Ibid.; pp. 174–175.)

25. “Although he was a con­ser­v­a­tive, and a patri­ot, Cur­tis was not a Bircher. But he shared their fas­ci­na­tion with pre­cious met­als. Once he joined the Mar­cos gold hunt, Cur­tis told the Birch Soci­ety board con­fi­den­tial­ly about the hid­den Japan­ese loot. He described his role in the Leber Group, and his par­tic­i­pa­tion with Mar­cos in sanc­ti­fy­ing the gold, and in find­ing dis­creet chan­nels to mar­ket it.”

(Ibid.; p. 175.)

26. “Cur­tis did not real­ize that the inner cir­cle of the Birch lead­er­ship already knew about the San­ta Romana recov­er­ies, and the role of Robert B. Ander­son and John J. McCloy in set­ting up the Black Eagle Trust. They also knew about the roles of Gen­er­als MacArthur, Whit­ney and Willough­by in the M‑Fund, and all the finan­cial manip­u­la­tions in post­war Tokyo. They knew this because one of the found­ing mem­bers of the Birch Soci­ety was Colonel Lau­rence Bunker, a humor­less fel­low who had suc­ceed­ed Gen­er­al Bon­ner Fellers on MacArthur’s per­son­al staff in Tokyo. Bunker became MacArthur’s chief aide and spokesman in Tokyo from 1946–1951—the years of witch-hunt­ing in Japan that made the McCarthy witch-hunts in Amer­i­ca look bland.”

(Idem.)

27. “The Birch Soci­ety mon­ey men who arranged the loan for Cur­tis were Wash­ing­ton State sen­a­tor Floyd Pax­ton and his son Jer­ry, who ran Kwik Lok cor­po­ra­tion, mak­ers of the ubiq­ui­tous plas­tic clips used to close plas­tic bags in super­mar­kets. Anoth­er par­tic­i­pant, Cur­tis said, was Jer­ry Adams of Atlanta, head of the Great Amer­i­can Sil­ver Cor­po­ra­tion, a pre­cious met­als com­pa­ny asso­ci­at­ed with the Hunt broth­ers. Cur­tis said he was informed by Con­gress­man McDon­ald and Robert Welch that the loan for Cur­tis to work with Mar­cos had been ‘cleared’ by them per­son­al­ly. They told Cur­tis he was to deal direct­ly with mul­ti-mil­lion­aire Samuel Jay Agnew, who sat on the nation­al coun­cil of the Birch Soci­ety.”

(Idem.)

28. In addi­tion to the Birch Soci­ety, it appears that oth­er pri­vate right-wing inter­ests also recov­ered large amounts of Gold­en Lily loot from the Philip­pines. “Pri­vate” is a ques­tion­able term, how­ev­er, because the inter­ests described below are inex­tri­ca­bly linked with ele­ments of the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Estab­lish­ment. It is of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance that peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the Enter­prise were involved with this appar­ent recov­ery. (The Enter­prise was at the epi­cen­ter of Reagan/Bush covert oper­a­tions of the 1980s includ­ing the Iran-Con­tra and Iraq­gate affairs.) Many peo­ple from this milieu are in promi­nent posi­tions in the admin­is­tra­tion of the sec­ond George Bush. It is worth not­ing that the Gold­en Lily trea­sure may well have been a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the growth of pri­vate mil­i­tary firms and pri­vate intel­li­gence organizations—one of the major con­stel­la­tions in the con­tem­po­rary nation­al secu­ri­ty fir­ma­ment.

“Once it was proved in U.S. courts that mas­sive gold ship­ments did come out of the Philip­pines dur­ing the twen­ty years Mar­cos was president—gold that did not orig­i­nate in the Cen­tral Bank, or in mines like Benguet—the remain­ing mys­tery is where did it go?”

(Ibid.; p. 186.)

29. “To be sure, the gold was shipped covert­ly, usu­al­ly after re-smelt­ing in mani­la by John­son-Math­ey Chem­i­cals, using equip­ment Mar­cos stole from Robert Cur­tis. Before it left Mani­la, some was re-papered by John­son-Math­ey Bank, then made its way to buy­ers through­out the gold pools in New York, Zurich and Lon­don. Oth­er black bul­lion was sold pri­vate­ly to Sau­di princes, and Mid­dle East­ern syn­di­cates, or to dis­creet groups of Euro­peans through Lux­em­bourg and Liecht­en­stein.”

(Idem.)

30. “Doc­u­ments includ­ing way­bills show that some ship­ments went to Amer­i­ca aboard com­mer­cial ships and planes, while oth­ers went out on CIA air­craft to Hong Kong or to an Amer­i­can mil­i­tary base in Aus­tralia. So far as any­one can tell, the gold that went to Amer­i­ca did not end up in Fort Knox. If it did, the U.S. Gov­ern­ment is not admit­ting it. So where did it go? Who was shield­ing and help­ing Mar­cos, oth­er than the CIA and Pen­ta­gon? Who else ben­e­fit­ed from all this recov­ered plun­der? Was the lever­age of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment used to get some of this gold bul­lion into pri­vate hands?”

(Idem.)

31. “The answer is that Mar­cos had con­nec­tions beyond the CIA, to a shad­owy net­work called The Enter­prise, a clus­ter of pri­vate intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tions (PIOs) and pri­vate mil­i­tary firms (PMFs). These were staffed by for­mer CIA and Pen­ta­gon offi­cers who saw them­selves as Pal­adins of the Cold War. Many PIOs and PMFs got their start in the 1970’s dur­ing shake­ups at the CIA. They mush­roomed in the 1980s after Jim­my Carter stirred up the anthill, and strong­ly moti­vat­ed men had to con­tin­ue their careers else­where.”

(Idem.)

32. “At the end of 1972, when he replaced Richard Helms as CIA direc­tor, James Schlesinger made it clear that he intend­ed to forcibly retire hun­dreds of agents who were dead wood, or part of a Dirty Tricks clique under Helms long engaged in oper­a­tions that vio­lat­ed Amer­i­can laws, includ­ing assas­si­na­tions. When it then became known that the CIA was involved in the Water­gate break-in and oth­er domes­tic break-ins, Schlesinger ordered an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion and prepa­ra­tion of a com­plete list of all Agency projects that might embar­rass the gov­ern­ment. The result­ing 693-page report, called ‘the Fam­i­ly Jew­els’, led to leaks about assas­si­na­tion pro­grams like Mon­goose, death squads like Phoenix, and oth­er wet-work hid­den by nation­al secu­ri­ty. Over a thou­sand CIA agents were sacked or oblig­ed to take ear­ly retire­ment.”

(Ibid.; pp. 186–187.)

33. “When Nixon resigned, Pres­i­dent Ford set up the Rock­e­feller Com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate CIA wrong­do­ing, but staffed it with hard­line con­ser­v­a­tives who would avoid reveal­ing things that would ‘black­en the name of the Unit­ed States and every pres­i­dent since Tru­man.’”

(Ibid.; p. 187.)

34. “Con­gres­sion­al hear­ings into Phoenix, the Lock­heed bribery scan­dal, and lat­er Iran-Con­tra, result­ed in addi­tion­al house­clean­ing at CIA and the Pen­ta­gon. Added to these purges were dis­putes between CIA offi­cials like Ray Cline and Pres­i­dent Nixon over rap­proche­ment with Chi­na, and between Jim­my Car­er and top mil­i­tary offi­cers like major Gen­er­al John Singlaub, and Air Force Gen­er­al George Kee­gan. When Carter got rid of so many pro­fes­sion­al sol­diers and spooks, he does not appear to have giv­en much thought to what they might do to keep busy in pri­vate life. No Roman emper­or would have been so care­less in dis­band­ing a legion.”

(Idem.)

35. “Many of these clever and aggres­sive men regrouped pri­vate­ly, with fund­ing from hard-right orga­ni­za­tions like the Birch Soci­ety, Moonies, World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, and wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive tycoons. Like Santy’s Umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion, The Enter­prise grew into a pow­er­ful and influ­en­tial net­work dur­ing the late 1980s. Although they were now pri­vate cit­i­zens, these men con­tin­ued to have close ties to serv­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers, to top men in the CIA and the armed ser­vices. This over­lap made it near­ly impos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish between offi­cial U.S. Gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions and those that had pri­vate objec­tives. This was espe­cial­ly true because so many of these indi­vid­u­als had long expe­ri­ence in covert oper­a­tions, decep­tion, and the clan­des­tine use of gov­ern­ment resources and secret funds. They were accus­tomed to work­ing with CIA pro­pri­etaries that had every appear­ance of being legit­i­mate com­pa­nies in pri­vate indus­try but were actu­al­ly Tro­jan Hors­es for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and, by exten­sion, for the armed forces. In fact, some of the PMF’s were lit­tle more than fronts set up so that gen­er­als, admi­rals, and for­mer spooks could con­tin­ue to draw salaries and pen­sions as if they had nev­er left gov­ern­ment ser­vice. Many CIA agents spent years or even decades under var­i­ous cov­ers, so it was hard to estab­lish beyond any doubt whether they ever left the Agency, or mere­ly went under­ground.”

(Idem.)

36. The pro­gram con­cludes with a point of spec­u­la­tive inquiry. In FTR#’s 504, 508 (among oth­er pro­grams), we exam­ined the Vatican’s long­stand­ing rela­tion­ship with fas­cism and Nazism. In FTR#504, we took a look at the Vatican’s “ratlines”—the Vat­i­can-spon­sored escape net­works used to spir­it Nazi war crim­i­nals out of Europe and (in many cas­es) into the ser­vice of West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies, includ­ing Amer­i­can. RFA#17—avail­able from Spitfire—has a detailed dis­cus­sion of the rat­lines. Gus­tav Schwarzeneg­ger (Arnold’s father and a man cat­e­go­rized as a “Class Three” war crim­i­nal by the Aus­tri­an gov­ern­ment) was a key police offi­cial in Graz in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War II. Graz was also a key way sta­tion on the rat­line, used to shel­ter Croa­t­ian Ustachi war crim­i­nals among oth­ers. This shel­ter­ing was done with the coop­er­a­tion of the police chief of Graz. Was Gus­tav Schwarzeneg­ger part of this Graz/Ratline oper­a­tion? Was that why he quar­reled with the British com­mis­sion­er in the area? Was the tiny Graz sub­urb of Thal (where the senior Schwarzeneg­ger became chief of police) also involved with the Graz/Ratline oper­a­tion? It is worth not­ing that right-wing Catholic con­nec­tions appear to have played a role in the rise of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s polit­i­cal star. In FTR 422, we looked at his wife’s fam­i­ly con­nec­tions to the fas­cist Opus Dei orga­ni­za­tion. For­mer Los Ange­les may­or Richard Rior­dan is a mem­ber of the Knights of Mal­ta. Might Arnold’s right-wing Catholic and Under­ground Reich con­nec­tions be trace­able to his father’s con­nec­tions to the same ele­ments? The mate­r­i­al in FTR 421 con­cern­ing the Nazis’ pro­ject­ed use of the police and oth­er ser­vices essen­tial for the main­te­nance of the post­war Ger­man infrastructure—material against which Gus­tav Schwarzenegger’s career must be measured—is from The Nazis Go Under­ground by Curt Reiss.

“ . . . When asked about his post-war activ­i­ties, Mon­sign­or Petra­novic cheer­ful­ly admit­ted that he helped ‘a cou­ple of thou­sand peo­ple’ leave Italy via Genoa. When the war end­ed, he says he wit­nessed the Com­mu­nist mas­sacres of cap­tured Ustashi. After a brief stay in Zagreb, he was dis­patched to the Yugoslav-Aus­tri­an bor­der, where he moved freely among the flee­ing Ustashi. He set­tled for a time in Graz where many noto­ri­ous war crim­i­nals were hid­ing. His work there was aid­ed by Bish­op Fer­di­nand Paw­likows­ki, who obtained clear­ance from the local police chief to allow Petra­novic to stay in Graz. [empha­sis added] . . .”

(Unholy Trin­i­ty: The Vat­i­can, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; St. Martin’s Grif­fin [SC]; ISBN 0–312-18199‑X; p. 106.)

37. The Car­di­nal of Graz also facil­i­tat­ed the Graz/Ratline con­nec­tion.

“ . . . Per­haps the ‘trea­sure’ had been in a monastery, but Gowen was cer­tain that the British were now using it to finance ‘the Croat move­ment in Yugoslavia. The resis­tance forces go by the name of Krizari (Cru­saders) . . . Radio con­tact is main­tained by means of a field radio oper­at­ed by Vran­cic, a for­mer Pavel­ic min­is­ter, locat­ed in the British zone of Aus­tria. The Ustachia couri­er ser­vice with­in the Aus­tri­an Zones is believed aid­ed by the Roman Catholic Church in Aus­tria. The Car­di­nal of Graz is known to be on close terms with . . . Pro­fes­sor Draganovic, Krunoslav, known Pavel­ic con­tact in Rome. . . [Empha­sis added.]”

(Ibid.; p. 123.)