Record­ed Sep­tem­ber 23, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Iran­ian pres­i­dent Ahmadinejad’s recent appear­ance at Ivy League Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty in New York, the pro­gram high­lights the dis­turb­ing sim­i­lar­i­ty to a past pres­i­dent of that university’s embrace of fas­cism. Just as Nicholas Mur­ray But­ler was dis­mis­sive of con­cerns that fas­cism could lead to war, so, too, many con­tem­po­rary observers fail to note that Ahmadine­jad also rep­re­sents a real threat. After not­ing the grow­ing rela­tion­ship between Ahmadinejad’s inner cir­cle and neo-Nazi ele­ments in Europe, the broad­cast reviews the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between the Iran­ian Islamist gov­ern­ment and Nazi ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with key Nazi spy, banker and ter­ror­ist god­fa­ther Fran­cois Genoud—an indi­vid­ual whose oper­a­tions spanned the World War II, post­war and con­tem­po­rary peri­ods. Turn­ing to a major focal point of Mr. Emory’s work over the decades—the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy—the broad­cast details a recent study call­ing into ques­tion the valid­i­ty of the War­ren Commission’s foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tion. Not­ing that fail­ure to prop­er­ly inves­ti­gate the JFK assas­si­na­tion has left the Unit­ed States with a lega­cy of polit­i­cal mur­der, the pro­gram high­lights the recent killing of sev­er­al Repub­li­can polit­i­cal oper­a­tives in Flori­da, as well as the death of a Tony Blair ally in what was described as an “acci­den­tal” fall. Begin­ning side 2 with an update on the resus­ci­ta­tion of the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch hydro­gena­tion process, the pro­gram notes that the coal indus­try is hop­ing that mil­i­tary demand for the syn­thet­ic fuel devel­oped through that process will prove ben­e­fi­cial to its prof­it pro­file. Mr. Emory has long pre­dict­ed that the I.G. Far­ben-devel­oped hydro­gen process would be revived as the ris­ing price of oil made syn­thet­ic fuel more com­pet­i­tive with petro­le­um pumped out of the ground. Revis­it­ing the sub­ject of the bomb­ing of Pan Am 103 in Decem­ber of 1988, the pro­gram high­lights the fal­si­fi­ca­tion of a key piece of tes­ti­mo­ny that led to the con­vic­tion of a Libyan intel­li­gence agent for the crime. Final­ly, the pro­gram con­cludes by high­light­ing an appear­ance by both Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney and Czech Pres­i­dent Vaclav Klaus at the secre­tive Coun­cil on Nation­al Pol­i­cy, a pow­er­ful far-right think tank and pol­i­cy instru­ment.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the role of FBI direc­tor Robert Mueller in cov­er­ing up the bomb­ing of Pan Am flight 103; review of the links between the Iran/Contra scan­dal and the bomb­ing of Pan Am 103; review of the devel­op­ment of a cat­a­lyst that makes the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch process much more effi­cient; dis­cus­sion of Vaclav Claus’s pri­va­ti­za­tion of the Czech economy—a devel­op­ment that pro­vid­ed a sig­nif­i­cant open­ing to major East­ern Euro­pean and Russ­ian crime fig­ures like Vik­tor Kozeny and Semy­on Mogile­vich, both with links to the world of Islamist ter­ror­ism, as well as to pow­er­ful inter­ests in the Unit­ed States.

1. Much of the dis­cus­sion on the first side of the pro­gram cen­ters on a col­umn about Iran­ian pres­i­dent Ahmadinejad’s vis­it to Colum­bia in New York. In addi­tion to not­ing that the U.S. mis­ad­ven­ture in Iraq thor­ough­ly dis­cred­it­ed the U.S. at a time when there is a real threat to be addressed, Mr. Emory high­lights the dis­turb­ing par­al­lels with a past pres­i­dent of that university’s embrace of fas­cism. Just as Nicholas Mur­ray But­ler was dis­mis­sive of con­cerns that fas­cism could lead to war, so, too, many con­tem­po­rary observers fail to note that Ahmadine­jad also rep­re­sents a seri­ous threat. In past pro­grams, Mr. Emory has detailed the ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional links between Iran, its cur­rent Islam­o­fas­cist gov­ern­ment and the Third Reich. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the rela­tion­ship between the Islamist gov­ern­ment of Iran, the Bank Al Taqwa, neo-Nazi and neo-fas­cist ele­ments around the world and key Nazi oper­a­tive Fran­cois Genoud. The thought of polit­i­cal forces of this kind in pos­ses­sion of dirty bomb tech­nol­o­gy or worse is ter­ri­fy­ing to con­tem­plate. (For more about the Nazi/Iranian/Islamist con­nec­tion, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 352, 456, 564, 583, 584.) “One of the world’s tru­ly dan­ger­ous men, Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad, left New York a clear win­ner this week, and he can thank the arro­gance of the Amer­i­can acad­e­my and most of the U.S. news medi­a’s stud­ied indif­fer­ence for his vic­to­ry. If the blood-drenched his­to­ry of the cen­tu­ry just past had taught Amer­i­can aca­d­e­mics one thing, it should have been that the total­i­tar­i­an impulse knows no accom­mo­da­tion with rea­son. You can­not change the total­i­tar­i­an mind through dia­logue or con­ver­sa­tion, because total­i­tar­i­an­ism — how­ev­er inge­nious the super­struc­ture of faux ideas with which it sur­rounds itself — is a crea­ture of the will and not the mind. That’s a large les­son, but what should have made Ahmadine­jad’s appear­ance at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty this week a whol­ly avoid­able deba­cle was the school’s knowl­edge of its own, very spe­cif­ic his­to­ry . . . In the 1930s, Colum­bia was run by Nicholas Mur­ray But­ler, to whose name a spe­cial sort of infamy attach­es. But­ler was an out­spo­ken admir­er of Ital­ian fas­cism and of its leader, Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni. The Colum­bia pres­i­dent, who also was in the fore­front of Ivy League efforts to restrict Jew­ish enroll­ment, worked tire­less­ly to build ties between his school and Ital­ian uni­ver­si­ties, as well as with the pow­er­ful fas­cist stu­dent orga­ni­za­tions. At one point, a vis­it­ing del­e­ga­tion of 350 ardent young Black Shirts ser­e­nad­ed But­ler with the fas­cist anthem. But­ler also was keen to estab­lish con­nec­tions with Nazi Ger­many and its uni­ver­si­ties. In 1933, he invit­ed Hans Luther, Adolf Hitler’s ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States, to lec­ture on the Colum­bia cam­pus. Luther stressed Hitler’s ‘peace­ful inten­tions’ toward his Euro­pean neigh­bors, and, after­ward, But­ler gave a recep­tion in his hon­or. As the emis­sary of ‘a friend­ly peo­ple,’ Luther was ‘enti­tled to be received with the great­est cour­tesy and respect,’ the Colum­bia pres­i­dent said at the time. It was such a trans­par­ent­ly appalling per­for­mance all around that one of the anony­mous authors of the New York Times’ ‘Top­ics of the Times’ col­umn put tongue in cheek and looked for­ward to the occa­sion when ‘the Nazi lead­ers will point out that they were all along opposed to any mea­sures capa­ble of being con­strued as unjust to any ele­ment in the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion or as a threat to peace in Europe.’ Arro­gance, though, is invin­ci­ble — even to irony. Three years lat­er, But­ler sent a del­e­ga­tion of Colum­bia dig­ni­taries to par­tic­i­pate in anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hei­del­berg. That was after Hei­del­berg had purged all the Jew­ish pro­fes­sors from its fac­ul­ty, reformed its cur­ricu­lum accord­ing to Nazi edu­ca­tion­al the­o­ries and pub­licly burned the unap­proved books in its libraries. . . .”
(“Ahmadine­jad Walks Away with a Win” by Tim Rut­ten; Los Ange­les Times; 9/29/2007.)

2. One of the sub­jects that has long occu­pied a major por­tion of these broad­casts is the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. An arti­cle from the spring of 2007 fur­ther impugns the offi­cial ver­sion of the killing. Mr. Emory notes that the sto­ry ignores the mas­sive body of infor­ma­tion thor­ough­ly dis­prov­ing the War­ren Com­mis­sion hypoth­e­sis. (For more about the JFK assas­si­na­tion, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 19, 47, 503, 577, 579, as well as the Guns of Novem­ber, and AFA#’s 11, 12, 13, 37, avail­able from Spit­fire.) “Tests on the type of ammu­ni­tion used in the 1963 assas­si­na­tion of US pres­i­dent John F Kennedy raise ques­tions about whether Lee Har­vey Oswald act­ed alone, accord­ing to a new sci­en­tif­ic study. The War­ren Com­mis­sion con­clud­ed in 1964 that Oswald fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry in Dal­las at Kennedy’s motor­cade. A fur­ther gov­ern­ment inquiry agreed in 1979, find­ing that the two bul­lets which hit Kennedy came from Oswald’s rifle. The com­mit­tee’s find­ings were based in part on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the late foren­sic chemist Vin­cent Guinn, who said the recov­ered frag­ments came from only two bul­lets. Mr Guinn tes­ti­fied that the bul­lets Oswald used were indi­vid­u­al­ly unique and that it would be pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish one from anoth­er even if they both came from the same box. But in the new study researchers found that frag­ments were not near­ly so unique and that bul­lets with­in the same box could match one anoth­er. One of the test bul­lets also matched one or more of the assas­si­na­tion frag­ments. . . .”
(“Ques­tions on Killing of JFK” by Juan A. Lozano [AP]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 5/26/2007; p. A2.)

3. Part of the out­come of America’s fail­ure to deal ade­quate­ly with the truth about the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and this country’s oth­er polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions is a lega­cy of polit­i­cal mur­der. The pro­gram high­lights the mur­ders of Repub­li­can oper­a­tives in Flori­da. What might have occa­sioned this? Were any of these indi­vid­u­als involved in the elec­toral shenani­gans that gave the 2000 elec­tion to George Bush? Were they involved with some of the oth­er dirty tricks and elec­toral irreg­u­lar­i­ties in oth­er states? Might they have been con­nect­ed to some of the oper­a­tions cov­ered by Daniel Hop­sick­er? “A Repub­li­can polit­i­cal con­sul­tant and two oth­er men were found dead in a home in an appar­ent dou­ble-mur­der and sui­cide, author­i­ties and rel­a­tives said. Author­i­ties have not deter­mined a motive for the deaths of Ralph Gon­za­lez, 39, his room­mate, David Abra­mi, 36, and a friend, Robert Drake, 30. Inves­ti­ga­tors found weapons and signs of a strug­gle in the house, but they did not say what the weapons were or which man they believe was the killer. The men are believed to have died sev­er­al days before the bod­ies were dis­cov­ered Thurs­day. Gon­za­lez was exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Geor­gia Repub­li­can Par­ty from 2001–2002. He man­aged U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney’s 2002 cam­paign and was pres­i­dent of Strategum Group, an Orlan­do-based polit­i­cal con­sult­ing firm that rep­re­sents Repub­li­can can­di­dates. . . .”
(“GOP Con­sul­tant, 2 Men Found Dead in Fla.” [AP]; 8/24/07.)

4. The first side of the pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of the death of a polit­i­cal ally of for­mer British Prime Min­is­ter Tony Blair. Offi­cial­ly cat­e­go­rized as an acci­den­tal death, “Nico” Leth­bridge died in an appar­ent fall after part­ing ways with Blair over the Iraq war. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the death might have been some­thing oth­er than acci­den­tal is one to be seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered. “A wealthy bank­ing friend of Tony Blair has died fol­low­ing a freak acci­dent at his fab­u­lous French chateau where he enter­tained the for­mer prime min­is­ter and his wife Cherie. Mul­ti-mil­lion­aire Nicholas Leth­bridge — known as Nico — fell two weeks ago from a land­ing at the house in south­ern France he had lov­ing­ly restored. He died eight days lat­er in hos­pi­tal. . . .”
(“Trag­ic End for Blairs’ Chum Nico”; Dai­ly Mail; 8/20/2007.)

5. Revis­it­ing the sub­ject of the revi­tal­iza­tion of the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch process used to make oil from coal, the pro­gram notes that the coal indus­try is count­ing on the mil­i­tary to cre­ate demand for liq­uid fuel pro­duced by this tech­nol­o­gy. (The revi­tal­iza­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy was pre­dict­ed by Mr. Emory in—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 385, 544, 552.) “The coal indus­try wants the U.S. mil­i­tary to jump-start a major new mar­ket for its prod­uct: liq­uid trans­porta­tion fuels derived from coal. The effort, how­ev­er, faces skep­tics who say the Pen­ta­gon should­n’t be sub­si­diz­ing the high cost and poten­tial envi­ron­men­tal harm of what is known as coal-to-liq­uids tech­nol­o­gy. The debate, unfold­ing in Wash­ing­ton, under­scores the dif­fi­cul­ty of find­ing alter­na­tives to oil in a time of glob­al sup­ply con­cerns. Uncon­ven­tion­al sources — from Canada’s vast tar sands, to nat­ur­al-gas liq­uids, to ethanol — promise to sup­ple­ment sup­plies of crude from dif­fi­cult-to-reach or polit­i­cal­ly unsta­ble regions. Yet these sources face their own chal­lenges, with cost often a major stum­bling block. . . . The coal-to-liq­uids process, known as Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch, is a proven tech­nol­o­gy, pro­po­nents say. Nazi Ger­many derived about half the mil­i­tary fuel it used in World War II from the Fis­ch­er-Trop­sch process. . . .”
(“Coal Indus­try Hopes Pen­ta­gon Will Kin­dle a Mar­ket” by Matthew Dal­ton; Wall Street Jour­nal; 9/11/2007; p. A15.)

6. Turn­ing to the sub­ject of the bomb­ing of Pan Am 103 in Decem­ber of 1988, the pro­gram high­lights a devel­op­ment in the case that under­mines the con­vic­tion of a Libyan intel­li­gence agent in the case. In past dis­cus­sion of Pan Am 103, Mr. Emory has not­ed the involve­ment in the bomb­ing of ele­ments and indi­vid­u­als embroiled in the Iran/Contra scan­dal, includ­ing the elder George Bush and Monz­er al-Kas­sar. (For more about this sub­ject, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 248, 310, as well as AFA#’s 35, 38, avail­able from Spit­fire.) “The key piece of mate­r­i­al evi­dence used by pros­e­cu­tors to impli­cate Libya in the Locker­bie bomb­ing has emerged as a prob­a­ble fake. Near­ly two decades after Pan Am flight 103 explod­ed over Scot­land on 21 Decem­ber, 1988, alle­ga­tions of inter­na­tion­al polit­i­cal intrigue and shod­dy inves­tiga­tive work are being lev­eled at the British gov­ern­ment, the FBI and the Scot­tish police as one of the cru­cial wit­ness­es, Swiss engi­neer Ulrich Lumpert, has appar­ent­ly con­fessed that he lied about the ori­gins of a cru­cial ‘timer’ — evi­dence that helped tie the man con­vict­ed of the bomb­ing to the crime. The dis­as­ter killed 270 peo­ple when the Lon­don to New York Boe­ing 747 explod­ed in mid-air. Britain and the US blamed Libya, say­ing that its leader, Colonel Muam­mar Gadaf­fi, want­ed revenge for the US bomb­ing of Tripoli in 1986. At a tri­al in the Nether­lands in 2001, for­mer Libyan agent Abdul­baset al-Megrahi was jailed for life. He is cur­rent­ly serv­ing his sen­tence in Greenock prison, but lat­er this month the Scot­tish Court of Appeal is expect­ed to hear Megrahi’s case, after the Scot­tish Crim­i­nal Cas­es Review Com­mis­sion ruled in June that there was enough evi­dence to sug­gest a mis­car­riage of jus­tice. Lumpert’s con­fes­sion, which was giv­en to police in his home city of Zurich last week, will strength­en Megrahi’s appeal. . . .”
(“Vital Locker­bie Evi­dence ‘Was Tam­pered With’” by Alex Duval Smith [The Observ­er]; Guardian; 9/2/2007.)

7. Con­clud­ing with dis­cus­sion of the secre­tive Coun­cil on Nation­al Pol­i­cy, the pro­gram high­lights the fact that among the invi­tees is Vaclav Klaus, the Pres­i­dent of the Czech Repub­lic. It was Klaus who pri­va­tized the Czech econ­o­my, there­by enabling the activ­i­ties of Vik­tor Kozeny, the crim­i­nal asso­ciate for whom Wolf­gang Bohringer worked. Recall that Bohringer was one of the Ger­man asso­ciates of 9/11 hijack­er Mohamed Atta in Flori­da. The remark­able and sin­is­ter Semy­on Mogile­vich also availed him­self of the Czech assets freed up by Klaus’ pri­va­ti­za­tion pro­gram. (For more about Mogile­vich, see FTR#611. For more about Kozeny and Bohringer, see FTR#’s 573, 574, 593, 594.)“Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney will speak to a super-secret, con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy group in Utah on Fri­day dur­ing his sec­ond trip to the state this year. Cheney will address the fall meet­ing of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy, a group whose self-described mis­sion is to pro­mote “a free-enter­prise sys­tem, a strong nation­al defense and sup­port for tra­di­tion­al West­ern val­ues.” The orga­ni­za­tion — made up of few hun­dred pow­er­ful con­ser­v­a­tive activists — holds con­fi­den­tial meet­ings and mem­bers are advised not to use the name of the group in com­mu­ni­ca­tions, accord­ing to a New York Times pro­file of the group. ‘The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our pro­grams, before [or] after a meet­ing,’ a list of rules obtained by The Times showed. The group did not respond to an e‑mail seek­ing com­ment. Czech Repub­lic Pres­i­dent Václav Klaus is also expect­ed to address the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy’s meet­ing in down­town Salt Lake City. After his speech, Cheney will meet with Klaus, the vice pres­i­den­t’s office said Tues­day. . . .”
(“Cheney to Address Secret Group” by Thomas Burr; Salt Lake Tri­bune; 9/26/2007.)