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“Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
— George Orwell, 1946
EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24
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FTR#1300 This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: International financial turmoil surrounding the collapse of several major American banks and the absorption of Credit Suisse by UBS has eclipsed a very important story about Credit Suisse’s role in handling monies used by the post-World War II Nazi diaspora.
After highlighting some of the Nazi accounts used at Credit Suisse and the firing of U.S. investigator Neil Barofsky by the bank, we discuss Credit Suisse’s role in the flight capital program of the Third Reich and the unsuccessful attempts by U.S. officials involved with Operation Safehaven to interdict the flight capital.
Credit Suisse figures prominently in this account.
The program concludes with discussion of the interdiction of Operation Safehaven, in part because of the indiscretion of U.S. Vice President Henry Wallace.
Note that, had Safehaven been successful, German industrialists and financiers in the defendants’ dock at Nuremberg would have been asked to name their American co-conspirators.
This would have placed some of the most prominent names in American industry and finance in the defendants’ dock, along with their German associates.
“A report by Neil Barofsky maintained that Credit Suisse had held accounts used for the Nazi Diaspora to—among other places—Argentina in the wake of World War II. Barofsky was dismissed as an investigator into Credit Suisse’s dirty laundry.
Interestingly, when describing some of the Third Reich veterans whose money was held in Credit Suisse accounts, none of the persons were identified by name: “Information about an account controlled by a Nazi SS officer who was the representative of a holding company that held money confiscated from Jews . . . . the bank helped a Nazi-linked businessman . . . . who eventually broke with the Nazis [Fritz Thyssen?] . . . . The investigation also started to scrutinize accounts opened from 1952 to 1990 by a Nazi scientist who had been imprisoned during the Nuremberg trials . . . .”
Why weren’t the individuals named? World War II ended in 1945. If any of the individuals were still alive, they would be very old. Was the reason for the secrecy to protect the elements who profited from the Nazi diaspora in the post-war years?
2. Nazi Gold by Tom Bower; Harper Perennial [SC]; Copyright 1997 and 1998 by Tom Bower; ISBN 0–06-109982–1; pp. 66–71.
Next, the program sets forth the role of Credit Suisse in collaborating with Nazi Germany, and the frustration of the investigators in Project Safehaven attempting to neutralize that support.
3a. Nazi Gold by Tom Bower; Harper Perennial [SC]; Copyright 1997 and 1998 by Tom Bower; ISBN 0–06-109982–1; pp. 66–71.
“In early January of 1945 . . . new intercepts revealed that Swiss banks, especially Credit Suisse, were regularly transferring German loot and Gold to Argentina. . . .” p. 67.
3b. Nazi Gold by Tom Bower; Harper Perennial [SC]; Copyright 1997 and 1998 by Tom Bower; ISBN 0–06-109982–1; pp. 66–71.
“ . . . . The reports from Switzerland described convoys of trucks traveling from Munich and Nuremberg carrying ‘large sums’ of money and securities to Swiss banks and the German sanitoria in Davos. Other reports mentioned widespread looting by the SS and their transfer of stolen property to Switzerland. . . .” p. 70.
4. The Dulles/Bormann deal at the core of Aktion Feuerland–the successful escape of Adolf Hitler–must be evaluated against the background of Operation Safehaven--the attempt at interdicting the Nazi flight capital program.
. . . . Operation Safehaven was implemented on December 6, 1944, with the aim of tracking the movement of Nazi loot and assets around the world and locating those hidden in neutral countries. However, for Roosevelt and Morgenthau this plan had a wider purpose. They needed concrete evidence of illegality to bring against the major American corporations that had traded with Nazi Germany and those members of the political establishment who were sympathetic to the Nazis: men such as the crypto-Nazi Henry Ford: Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., former U.S. ambassador to London; and John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of John D. Rockefeller Sr., the founder of Standard Oil and advocate of eugenics. Some of these corporations and individuals had tried to undermine the New Deal and destabilize Roosevelt’s administration during the 1930s.
This ambitious operation sought the prosecution as war criminals of all those who ran the Nazi war machine and the industrial concerns that sustained it. Bankers and industrialists such as Abs, Schacht, Schroder, Krupp, Flick, Schmitz and a legion of others were to stand in the dock of an international tribunal and be judged for their actions. Once they were in open court, [Treasury Secretary Henry] Morgenthau would reveal years of intercepted documentation, wiretap evidence, and decrypts of Swiss bank codes and cables, courtesy of Ultra intelligence via MI6. In order to redeem themselves, the defendants would have to reveal their dealings with American corporations such as Ford Motor Company, General Motors, and Standard Oil. All the companies and banks found to have traded with the enemy would then face the full rigor of the law in the United States. It was an elegant plan for revenge, legitimized by the victory of good over evil on the battlefield. . . .
5. As an attorney for Sullivan & Cromwell, Allen Dulles was deeply involved with the treason by American corporations. As chief of the Berne (Switzerland) station of the OSS (America’s World War II intelligence service), he was in a unique position.
. . . . However, this effort required the cooperation of OSS agents already on the ground, and in Switzerland this was problematical–since one of the suspects of Operation Safehaven was Allen Dulles himself, because of his extensive corporate connections and his links with various Nazi groups. Despite this difficulty, the investigation necessarily focused on the gold dealings undertaken by Swiss banks. This became of major concern to Swiss ambassador Bruggmann once he learned of Operation Safehaven through his indiscreet brother-in-law, Vice President Henry Wallace. The exposure of the explicit links between Swiss banks and Nazi Germany would be a major potential embarrassment to the Swiss government once the war was over; accordingly, the Swiss Secret Service alerted Allen Dulles about the Safehaven investigation into his affairs. . . .
6. In what might be termed “association by guilt,” Dulles and Bormann’s people (the Third Reich) connected.
. . . . Dulles was also targeted by German intelligence, including an elite Luftwaffe code-breaking unit designated Luftfahrtforschungsamt (Luftwaffe radio intercept unit). When Abwehr agents learned of Operation Safehaven through their agent Habakuk, they set about frustrating its efforts, particularly in Switzerland, where it was potentially most dangerous to the ongoing German capital transfers. The Abwehr agents passed the word to Dulles that both the British and the Americans were intercepting his communications–as they themselves had been, but would now no longer be able to, thanks to their revealing their hand in this way. They, too, told Dulles that he was a subject of investigation by the Treasury Department through Operation Safehaven. He immediately changed his encryption methods to the more secure “one-time pad” system and from then on his message traffic remained secure. Transcribing the messages from the Vernam cipher is a laborious handwritten process, hence Dulles’s need for the services of interned USAAF personnel for encryption.
Dulles also exposed Henry Wallace as the source of the revelation of both the Morgenthau Plan and Operation Safehaven to Ambassador Bruggman and ultimately to the Germans. President Roosevelt had no choice but to ditch Wallace and nominate the senator from Missouri, Harry S. Truman, as his candidate for vice president in the upcoming Presidential election. As a committed opponent of communism, Truman was far more acceptable to Dulles. . . .
Five decades is a long time to keep an investigation’s findings under seal. It’s basically an ‘everyone involved will be long-dead’ timeframe. But will it be long enough to contain the cauldron of scandal that is Credit Suisse? That’s one of many disturbing questions raised by the recent decision by Swiss parliamentary investigators into the collapse of Credit Suisse to keep the results of the inquiry secret for 50 years, far longer than standard 30 year embargo.
Investigators insist that the 50 year public information blockade is necessary to ensure confidentiality in its investigation. An investigation that doesn’t have the power to prosecute but could potentially reveal information that could be used in the many lawsuits that have already opened up around the bank’s history collapse and merger with UBS, which is now twice the size of the Swiss economy as a result.
Nor is the investigation looking into wrongdoing by Credit Suisse itself, but rather its focused on the actions of Swiss regulators. How much did the authorities know? What was Credit Suisse telling regulators and how much was it sharing with the government? These are the kinds of questions that are apparently so sensitive that a 50 year public embargo was necessary.
So we have to ask: why are basic questions about Swiss regulators so incredibly sensitive that they had to basically promise almost everyone will be in the grave by the time the public learns what happened? What does that tell us about not just the scandals still lurking in Credit Suisse’s accounts but the larger Swiss banking system? And even more generally, what does this tell us about the ongoing role dirty money plays in major international financial institutions? And then, of course, there were the revelations from back in April about how Credit Suisse is still actively covering up and hiding from investigators the accounts of the post-war Nazi diaspora on its books. How far back do the coverups go for a back like this? These are the kinds of grim questions raised by the Swiss investigation’s stunning decision:
“The document means the investigating commission would hand over its files to the Swiss Federal Archives after a longer gap than the usual 30 years to ensure high levels of confidentiality apply to the investigation, which has generated huge public interest.”
A 50 year embargo on the findings to ensure high levels of confidentiality. In other words, everyone involved with the current investigation is likely going to be dead by the time this information is publicly released, and that assurance was deemed to be necessary to get the witnesses to cooperate. It’s the kind of extreme step that suggests some wildly scandalous revelations are expected. Swiss authorities know they are dealing with a public relations nightmare. This is damage control. And basically a form of cover up.
And while it’s not hard to imagine that a bank with a reputation as sordid as Credit Suisse’s would have plenty of nasty secrets to hide, it’s important to note that this investigation is not an investigation int Credit Suisse. It’s an investigation into the Swiss authorities overseeing Credit Suisse, which is a big hint regarding why Swiss authorities might be hyper paranoid about the public revelations to come. Because it’s one thing for the public to learn about a corrupt bank. It’s another to learn about a corrupt banking system that coddles and protects its corrupt banks:
“The 14-member commission will focus on the authorities’ actions before and during the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse rather than its management’s role.”
What did Swiss banking authorities know and when did they know it? That’s the meta question of the inquiry. But it’s not a judicial inquiry with the power to dish out punishments. It could, however, dig up materials that could end up in courts. That’s another aspect of the 50 year embargo on the commission’s findings. Those are presumably findings that could be very relevant to the various lawsuits to emerge from this collapse:
But also note the other dark incentive for keeping the commission’s findings under wraps: the approved merger of UBS and Credit Suisse has created a banking behemoth twice the size of the Swiss economy. Which means this banking behemoth has also inherited all of the yet-to-explode financial time bombs that may have been sitting on Credit Suisse’s books:
And that brings us to the following Politico article from back in March, in the immediate wake of the bank’s collapse, about the results of a US Senate investigation opened back in 2021 into Credit Suisse’s role in facilitating US tax evasion. It was an investigation that was simply looking into whether or not Credit Suisse was abiding by its 2014 $2.6 billion plea agreement with the US Justice Department. And, lo and behold, as investigators discovered, it hasn’t abiding by the plea agreement at all, with bank executives still playing direct roles in facilitating US tax evasion. Surprise:
“Based on information requests from the committee, the bank identified 23 undeclared accounts belonging to ultra-wealthy U.S. citizens with more than $20 million at the bank. The Senate report noted that more concealed accounts could be uncovered as the bank’s review continues.”
Ha! Credit Suisse’s ‘review’ done at the request of US Senate investigators just happened to find another 23 accounts of ultra-wealthy US citizens with more than $20 million at the bank. How many more ‘surprise’ accounts of this nature are there hiding in Credit Suisse’s vaults?
But more generally, what internal controls were there at all on this kind of behavior? Because as we can see, when the bank paid a $2.6 billion fine in 2014 over US tax evasion, that plea agreement included extensive promises by the bank executives that they would get the bank out of the business of US tax evasion. And yet, as investigators found, Credit Suisse executives were playing a direct role in the ongoing evasion:
And, of course, that’s just US tax evasion. There’s a whole lot of other potential financial crimes the bank has presumably been involved with too in recent years. And then there’s the still-to-be-discovered crimes from decades past, like the ongoing obfuscation of Nazi-linked accounts. Decades of some of the worst financial crimes imaginable are potentially at risk of exposure here. It’s not hard to imagine that Swiss investigators would simply rather not know. Especially if knowing risks the integrity of the Swiss banking system which is apparently the case now that UBS has assumed all of those nasty dark secrets and grown into a financial colossus.
It all points towards perhaps the most potent selling point of the much vaunted adherence to strict secrecy with the Swiss financial system: You don’t have to worry about an end to Swiss banking secrecy. An end to Swiss banking secrecy would effectively be the end of the Swiss banking system. In other words, don’t be shocked if that 50 year embargo gets a few extensions. We’re well into Too Big To Fail territory here.