Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'IG Farben' is associated with 130 posts.

FTR #1136 Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 2

A recent book about Lyme Dis­ease sets forth cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the dis­ease is an out­growth of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist.
” . . . . if Willy’s claim was true, a crime against human­i­ty had been com­mit­ted by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and then cov­ered up. . . ” “Bit­ten,” p. 103.

Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read this book, as well as shar­ing it with oth­ers.

Author Kris New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.)

 NB: The mate­r­i­al in this broad­cast is delib­er­ate­ly over­lapped with that in the last pro­gram.

In this post, we high­light infor­ma­tion about what Willy termed “the Swiss Agent”–a rick­ettsia that was present in the vast major­i­ty of Lyme suf­fer­ers test­ed ear­ly in research into the dis­ease.

Even­tu­al­ly, dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble role of Swiss Agent dropped out of dis­cus­sion. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent from the sci­en­tif­ic ana­lyt­i­cal lit­er­a­ture coin­cid­ed with Willy’s tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research vet­er­ans.

Key points of dis­cus­sion:

1.–” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
2.–” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
3.–” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
4.–” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”
6.–” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”
7.–” . . . . In March, he wrote to Ander­son and Steere again: ‘Most spec­i­mens, with a few excep­tions, react­ed only against anti­gens pre­pared from the Swiss Agent.’ In short, the dis­ease clus­ters in Con­necti­cut and Long Island seemed to have been caused by Swiss Agent USA. Then, in April, the Swiss Agent USA rick­ettsia van­ished. It was nev­er again men­tioned in talks, let­ters, inter­views, or jour­nal arti­cles. . . .  There is, with­out a doubt, some­thing sus­pi­cious about the sud­den dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from all cor­re­spon­dence. . . .”
8.–The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent USA from the lit­er­a­ture on Lyme Dis­ease cor­re­spond­ed with an impor­tant con­ver­sa­tion that Willy had: ” . . . . It was in the begin­ning of 1980—two years before the first Lyme spiro­chetes were found—that the Swiss Agent USA dis­ap­peared. This about-face coin­cid­ed with a series of dis­cus­sions Willy had with old bioweapons devel­op­ers on the Rick­ettsial Com­mis­sion of the Armed Forces Epi­demi­o­log­i­cal Board, as record­ed in his per­son­al phone log. These sci­en­tists were most cer­tain­ly famil­iar with the secret his­to­ry of inca­pac­i­tat­ing rick­ettsial and viral agent test­ing, and they may have dis­cussed with Willy the pos­si­bil­i­ty of there hav­ing been an undis­closed field test in the Long Island region. . . .”
9.–Roundworms sim­i­lar to organ­isms stud­ied by Willy at the Naval Research Unit in Cairo turned up in some of the ticks: ” . . . . That’s when Willy found par­a­sitic round­worm lar­vae in the main body cav­i­ty of two of the ticks. They were sim­i­lar to the deer worms he’d found in ticks on his 1978 trip to Switzer­land, and sim­i­lar to the round­worms that he, Sonen­shine, and the Naval Research Unit in Cairo had worked with for a project explor­ing the ‘rel­a­tive­ly new field of endo-par­a­sitic trans­mis­sion of dis­ease agents.’ In these exper­i­ments, mul­ti­ple dis­ease agents were put inside mos­qui­to-borne round­worms, accord­ing to an NIH research report from 1961. . . .”
10.–Numerically, it appears that the Swiss Agent rick­ettsias out­num­bered the spiro­chetes that ulti­mate­ly were tabbed as the causative agent for Lyme Dis­ease: ” . . . . When Willy dis­sect­ed 124 more Shel­ter Island deer ticks, 98 per­cent had the new rick­ettsias in them and only 60 per­cent car­ried the new spiro­chetes. Willy thought that either microbe might be caus­ing Lyme dis­ease, but, for unknown rea­sons, this alter­na­tive the­o­ry fell into a black hole. . . .”

Piv­ot­ing to dis­cus­sion of the pol­i­tics of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment, we note that legal and reg­u­la­to­ry rul­ings have enabled the patent­ing of liv­ing organ­isms and that has exac­er­bat­ed the mon­e­tiz­ing of Lyme Dis­ease treat­ment. That mon­e­ti­za­tion, in turn, has adverse­ly affect­ed the qual­i­ty of care for afflict­ed patients. As we will see lat­er, Willy Burgdor­fer was not the only Lyme Dis­ease researcher to become involved with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. ” . . . . All of a sud­den, the insti­tu­tions that were sup­posed to be pro­tec­tors of pub­lic health became busi­ness part­ners with Big Phar­ma. The uni­ver­si­ty researchers who had pre­vi­ous­ly shared infor­ma­tion on dan­ger­ous emerg­ing dis­eases were now delay­ing pub­lish­ing their find­ings so they could become entre­pre­neurs and prof­it from patents through their uni­ver­si­ty tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer groups. We essen­tial­ly lost our sys­tem of sci­en­tif­ic checks and bal­ances. And this, in turn, has under­mined patient trust in the insti­tu­tions that are sup­posed to ‘do no harm.’ . . .”

Ms. New­by went up against the “Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment” in an attempt to find out why the dis­ease was being mis-diag­nosed and inef­fec­tive­ly treat­ed. Strik­ing­ly, a FOIA suit she filed was stonewalled for five years, before final­ly yield­ing the doc­u­ments she had so long sought.

The “experts” and their agen­da was neat­ly, and alarm­ing­ly, summed up by Ms. New­by: ” . . . . The emails revealed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of a nonof­fi­cial group of gov­ern­ment employ­ees and guide­lines authors that had been set­ting the nation­al Lyme dis­ease research agen­da with­out pub­lic over­sight or trans­paren­cy. . . . Bot­tom line, the guide­lines authors reg­u­lar­ly con­vened in gov­ern­ment-fund­ed, closed-door meet­ings with hid­den agen­das that lined the pock­ets of aca­d­e­m­ic researchers with sig­nif­i­cant com­mer­cial inter­ests in Lyme dis­ease tests and vac­cines. A large per­cent­age of gov­ern­ment grants were award­ed to the guide­line authors and/or researchers in their labs. Part of the group’s stat­ed mis­sion, culled from these FOIA emails, was to run a covert ‘dis­in­for­ma­tion war’ and a ‘sociopo­lit­i­cal offen­sive’ to dis­cred­it Lyme patients, physi­cians, and jour­nal­ists who ques­tioned the group’s research and motives. In the FOIA-obtained emails, Lyme patients and their treat­ing physi­cians were called ‘loonies’ and ‘quacks’ by Lyme guide­lines authors and NIH employ­ees. . . .”

Fur­ther devel­op­ing the links between bio­log­i­cal war­fare research and the Lyme Dis­ease estab­lish­ment, we review infor­ma­tion from FTR #585.

At every turn, Lyme dis­ease research is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. Divid­ed into the “Steere” and “ILADS” camps, the Lyme dis­ease research com­mu­ni­ty is split between the view that the dis­ease is “hard-to-catch, easy-to-cure” and the dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed view that the dis­ease is very seri­ous and pro­duces long-term neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der. The Steere camp dimin­ish­es the sig­nif­i­cance of the dis­ease and is close­ly iden­ti­fied with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research. At the epi­cen­ter of Lyme dis­ease research (and the Steere camp) are mem­bers of the Epi­dem­ic Intel­li­gence Ser­vice, or EIS. EIS per­son­nel are to be found at every bend in the road of Lyme dis­ease research.

The Bor­re­lia genus has long been researched as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare vec­tor.

” . . . . The Bor­re­lia genus of bac­te­ria, which encom­pass­es the Bor­re­lia burgdor­feri species-group (to which Lyme dis­ease is attrib­uted), was stud­ied by the infa­mous WW2 Japan­ese biowar Unit 731, who car­ried out hor­rif­ic exper­i­ments on pris­on­ers in Manchuria, includ­ing dis­sec­tion of live human beings. [iii] Unit 731 also worked on a num­ber of oth­er tick-borne pathogens. . . . . bor­re­lia were known for their abil­i­ty to adopt dif­fer­ent forms under con­di­tions of stress (such as expo­sure to antibi­otics). Shed­ding their out­er wall, (which is the tar­get of peni­cillin and relat­ed drugs), they could ward off attack and con­tin­ue to exist in the body. . . .”

Note that Unit 731 per­son­nel and their files were put to work for the Unit­ed States after World War II, much like the Project Paper­clip sci­en­tists from Ger­many.


FTR #‘s 1135, Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare, Part 1

” . . . . if Willy’s claim was true, a crime against human­i­ty had been com­mit­ted by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, and then cov­ered up. . . ” Bit­ten, p. 103.

A recent book about Lyme Dis­ease sets forth cred­i­ble infor­ma­tion that the dis­ease is an out­growth of U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare research.

Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist.

Author Kris New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.)

In past dis­cus­sion of Lyme Dis­ease, we have explored the incor­po­ra­tion of Nazi sci­en­tists via Oper­a­tion Paper­clip into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram and pos­si­ble links between their work and the spread of the dis­ease in Con­necti­cut, across Long Island Sound from Plum Island.

(FTR #‘s 480 and 585 high­light dis­cus­sion about Lyme Dis­ease and bio­log­i­cal war­fare.)

Burgdor­fer­’s entree into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram result­ed from his pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with long time men­tor and patron Rudolf Geigy. Geigy belonged to a fam­i­ly whose busi­ness, J.R. Geigy AG, was a Swiss chem­i­cal firm mar­ket­ing dyes and insec­ti­cides.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, J.R. Geigy, Ciba and San­doz com­prised a Swiss chem­i­cal car­tel formed in the after­math of World War I to com­pete with the I.G. Far­ben car­tel.

(Today, the three com­pa­nies have coa­lesced as the Swiss phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal giant Novar­tis.)

Even­tu­al­ly, the Swiss con­sor­tium was absorbed into, and became a key com­po­nent of, the I.G. Far­ben car­tel. They read­i­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich:

1.–” . . . . The chap­ters on Switzer­land’s chem­i­cal indus­try are the most embar­rass­ing sec­tion of the com­mis­sion’s report. It is now clear that the direc­tors of Swiss com­pa­nies in Basel were very well aware what was going on at the time in Ger­many and had knowl­edge of the coerced employ­ment of forced labor­ers in their branch plants in Ger­many as well as of the fact that forced labor­ers died as a result of the con­di­tions in which they were held. . . .”
2.–” . . . . sev­er­al lead­ing Swiss chem­i­cal firms — includ­ing JR Geigy, Ciba, San­doz and Hoff­mann-La Roche — put their own inter­ests ahead of human­i­tar­i­an con­cerns in their deal­ing with the Nazis. . . .”
3.–” . . . .The ICE [Inde­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of Experts] con­clud­ed that the chem­i­cal firms’ boss­es in Switzer­land ‘pos­sessed a high lev­el of detailed knowl­edge about the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in Nazi Ger­many... [and] incor­po­rat­ed their knowl­edge... into their eco­nom­ic plan­ning and used it as a basis for deci­sion-mak­ing’ . . . .”
4.–” . . . . ‘Geigy main­tained par­tic­u­lar­ly good rela­tions with Claus Unge­wit­ter, the Reich com­mis­sion­er for chem­i­cals.’ . . .”
5.–” . . . . Dur­ing the war, it [Geigy] pro­duced insec­ti­cides and, most notably, the icon­ic ‘polar red’ dye that col­ored the back­ground of Nazi swasti­ka flags. . . .”

All three Swiss firms [Geigy, San­doz and Ciba] were indict­ed in the Unit­ed States in 1942 because of their col­lab­o­ra­tion with I.G. Far­ben and the Third Reich.

1.–” . . . . Those indict­ed includ­ed duPont; Allied Chem­i­cal and Dye; and Amer­i­can Cyanamid; also Far­ben affil­i­ates the Amer­i­can Ciba, San­doz and Geigy. . . .”
2.–” . . . . A long list of oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors includ­ed the Swiss Ciba, San­doz and Geigy com­pa­nies with Cincin­nati Chem­i­cal works, their joint­ly owned Amer­i­can con­cern . . . .”
3.–” . . . . When Sec­re­tary of War Stim­son and Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bid­dle agreed to post­pone the tri­al until it would not inter­fere with war pro­duc­tion, one Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing sourly, ‘First they hurt the war effort by their restric­tive prac­tices, and then if caught they use the war effort as an excuse to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.’ . . .”

Use­ful back­ground research with which to flesh out under­stand­ing of the tit­il­lat­ing infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ms. New­by con­cern­ing Geigy and his activ­i­ties can be obtained by read­ing some of the many books avail­able for down­load on this web­site.

Numer­ous pro­grams present research on the top­ic, includ­ing FTR #511.

A key foun­da­tion­al ele­ment for the dis­cus­sion of Bit­ten is the Pen­tagon’s decades-long research into the genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of micro­bial pathogens.

1.–Nobel Prize win­ner Joshua Leder­berg warned of the con­se­quences for human­i­ty of this work: ” . . . .‘The large-scale deploy­ment of infec­tious agents is a poten­tial threat against the whole species: mutant forms of virus­es could well devel­op that would spread over the earth’s pop­u­la­tion for a new Black Death,’ said Leder­berg in a Wash­ing­ton Post edi­to­r­i­al on Sep­tem­ber 24, 1966. He added, ‘The future of the species is very much bound up with the con­trol of these weapons. Their use must be reg­u­lat­ed by the most thought­ful recon­sid­er­a­tion of U.S. and world pol­i­cy.’ . . .”
2.–The Pen­ta­gon was dis­mis­sive of the warn­ing: ” . . . . A month lat­er, the army’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group thumbed its nose at this ‘nation­al pro­nounce­ment made by promi­nent sci­en­tists.’ . . . The advi­so­ry group then con­tin­ued dis­cussing its plans for genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microbes, new rick­ettsial and viral agents, and the devel­op­ment of a bal­anced pro­gram for both inca­pac­i­tat­ing and lethal agents. . . .”
3.–By 1962, the mil­i­tary’s plans for devel­op­ment of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied microbes were devel­op­ing in earnest. ” . . . . Fort Detrick’s direc­tor of bio­log­i­cal research, Dr. J.R. Good­low, on Feb­ru­ary 16, 1962 . . . added, ‘Stud­ies of bac­te­r­i­al genet­ics are also in progress with the aim of trans­fer­ring genet­ic deter­mi­nants from one type of organ­ism to another.‘The goal of these exper­i­ments was to make bio­log­i­cal agents more vir­u­lent and resis­tant to antibi­otics. . . .”

The Pen­tagon’s genet­ic manip­u­la­tion of microor­gan­isms for bio­log­i­cal war­fare pur­pos­es involved the Rocky Moun­tain Lab and Willy Burgdor­fer.

1.–” . . . . Bioweapons researchers such as Willy knew that infect­ing large pop­u­la­tions would require expos­ing peo­ple to agents for which they had no nat­ur­al immu­ni­ty. And to do this, researchers would have to import and/or invent new microbes. They were, in essence, play­ing God, cre­at­ing ‘bac­te­ri­o­log­i­cal freaks or mutants,’ by using chem­i­cals, radi­a­tion, ultra­vi­o­let light, and oth­er agents, wrote mod­ern inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism pio­neer Jack Ander­son in a Wash­ing­ton Post col­umn on August 27, 1965. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Willy had already been con­duct­ing a tri­al-and-error style of genet­ic manip­u­la­tion in the same way that a corn farmer or a hog grow­er selec­tive­ly breeds strains that result in desired out­comes. He was grow­ing microbes inside ticks, hav­ing the ticks feed on ani­mals, and then har­vest­ing the microbes from the ani­mals that exhib­it­ed the lev­el of ill­ness the mil­i­tary had request­ed. . . .”
3.–” . . . . He was also simul­ta­ne­ous­ly mix­ing bac­te­ria and virus­es inside ticks, lever­ag­ing the virus’s innate abil­i­ty to manip­u­late bac­te­r­i­al genes in order to repro­duce, and thus accel­er­at­ing the rate of muta­tions and desir­able new bac­te­r­i­al traits. In 1966, Fort Detrick’s Bio­log­i­cal Sub­com­mit­tee Muni­tions Advi­so­ry Group put this emerg­ing research area at the top of its pri­or­i­ties, describ­ing it as ‘Research in micro­bial genet­ics con­cerned with aspects of trans­for­ma­tion, trans­duc­tion, and recom­bi­na­tion.’ . .”

 Inter­viewed by an indie film­mak­er named Tim Grey, Willy Burgdor­fer dis­cussed the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon. It was Burgdor­fer who “dis­cov­ered” the spiro­chete that caused Lyme Dis­ease in 1982. As we will see lat­er, it appears that more than one organ­ism is involved with Lyme Dis­ease.

1.–” . . . . Willy paused, then replied, ‘Ques­tion: Has [sic] Bor­re­lia Burgdor­feri have the poten­tial for bio­log­i­cal war­fare?’ As tears welled up in Willy’s eyes, he con­tin­ued, ‘Look­ing at the data, it already has. If the organ­ism stays with­in the sys­tem, you won’t even rec­og­nize what it is. In your lifes­pan, it can explode . . . We eval­u­at­ed. You nev­er deal with that [as a sci­en­tist]. You can sleep bet­ter.’ . . .”
2.–” . . . . Lat­er in the video, Grey cir­cled back to this top­ic and asked, ‘If there’s an emer­gence of a brand-new epi­dem­ic that has the tenets of all of those things that you put togeth­er, do you feel respon­si­ble for that?’ ‘Yeah. . . .’ ”
3.–” . . . . Grey asked him the one ques­tion, the only ques­tion, he real­ly cared about: ‘Was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme out­break inves­ti­ga­tor] gave you the same pathogen or sim­i­lar, or a gen­er­a­tional muta­tion, of the one you pub­lished in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?’ ”
4.–” . . . . The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is think­ing, ‘Oh, well.’ Then anger flash­es across his face. ‘Yah,’ he said, more in Ger­man than Eng­lish. . . .”
5.–” . . . . It was a stun­ning admis­sion from one of the world’s fore­most author­i­ties on Lyme dis­ease. If it was true, it meant that Willy had left out essen­tial data from his sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles on the Lyme dis­ease out­break, and that as the dis­ease spread like a wild­fire in the North­east and Great Lakes regions of the Unit­ed States, he was part of the cov­er-up of the truth. . . It had been cre­at­ed in a mil­i­tary bioweapons lab for the spe­cif­ic pur­pose of harm­ing human beings. . . . ”

To con­clude the pro­gram, we high­light infor­ma­tion about what Willy termed “the Swiss Agent”–a rick­ettsia that was present in the vast major­i­ty of Lyme suf­fer­ers test­ed ear­ly in research into the dis­ease. Note that this ele­ment of analy­sis will be con­tin­ued in our next pro­gram.

Even­tu­al­ly, dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble role of Swiss Agent dropped out of dis­cus­sion. The dis­ap­pear­ance of the Swiss Agent from the sci­en­tif­ic ana­lyt­i­cal lit­er­a­ture coin­cid­ed with Willy’s tele­phone con­ver­sa­tions with bio­log­i­cal war­fare research vet­er­ans.

Key points of dis­cus­sion:

1.–” . . . . I would engage the sci­en­tif­ic part of his brain in answer­ing my two ques­tions: why the Lyme dis­cov­ery files were miss­ing from the Nation­al Archives, and why images of the organ­ism labeled ‘Swiss Agent’ were locat­ed in the archive fold­ers in the time-frame where one would expect the Lyme spiro­chete pic­tures to be. . . .”
2.–” . . . . He told me that in late 1979, he had test­ed ‘over one hun­dred ticks’ from Shel­ter Island, locat­ed about twen­ty miles from the Lyme out­break, and all but two had an uniden­ti­fied rick­ettsial species inside. It looked like Rick­ettsia mon­tana (now called Rick­ettsia mon­ta­nen­sis) under a micro­scope, a non-dis­ease-caus­ing cousin of the dead­ly Rick­ettsia rick­et­sii, but it was a dif­fer­ent species. . . .”
3.–” . . . .‘You say they’re not look­ing for it any­more?’ I asked. ‘They prob­a­bly paid peo­ple off,’ he said. ‘There are folks up there who have a way to enable that.’ . . .”
4.–” . . . . Next, I showed Willy an unla­beled image of a microbe and asked him what it was. ‘That is a Swiss Agent,’ said Willy. I asked him a series of ques­tions on this microbe and he recit­ed what seemed like well-rehearsed lines: the Swiss Agent is a Rick­ettsia mon­tana-like organ­ism found in the Euro­pean sheep tick, Ixodes Rici­nus, and it doesn’t cause dis­ease in humans. . . .”
5.–” . . . . Then I asked him why he brought sam­ples of it from Switzer­land back to his lab. He replied with the response that he often used when he seemed to know the answer but wasn’t going to divulge it: ‘Ques­tion mark.’. . .”
6.–” . . . . The real ‘smok­ing gun,’ though, was Willy’s hand­writ­ten lab notes on the patient blood tests from the dis­ease out­break in Con­necti­cut. These tests showed the proof-of-pres­ence of what I named ‘Swiss Agent USA,’ the mys­tery rick­ettsia present in most of the patients from the orig­i­nal Lyme out­break, a fact that was nev­er dis­closed in jour­nal arti­cles. It didn’t take a PhD in micro­bi­ol­o­gy to see that almost all the patient blood had react­ed strong­ly to an anti­gen test for a Euro­pean rick­ettsia that Willy had called the Swiss Agent. . . .”


Lyme Disease and Biological Warfare

“Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons” chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist. Author Kris
New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. Lis­ten­ers and read­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to pur­chase and read her book. Inter­viewed by an indie film­mak­er named Tim Grey, Willy Burgdor­fer dis­cussed the devel­op­ment of Lyme Dis­ease as a bio­log­i­cal war­fare weapon. It was Burgdor­fer who “dis­cov­ered” the spiro­chete that caused Lyme Dis­ease in 1982. As we will see lat­er, it appears that more than one organ­ism is involved with Lyme Dis­ease. ” . . . . Final­ly, after three hours and four­teen min­utes, Grey asked him the one ques­tion, the only ques­tion, he real­ly cared about: ‘was the pathogen that you found in the tick that Allen Steere [the Lyme out­break inves­ti­ga­tor] gave you the same pathogen or sim­i­lar, or a gen­er­a­tional muta­tion, of the one you pub­lished in the paper . . . the paper from 1952?’ In response, Willy crossed his arms defen­sive­ly, took a deep breath, and stared into the cam­era for forty-three seconds—an eter­ni­ty. Then he looked away, down and to the right; he appeared to be work­ing through an inter­nal debate. The left side of his mouth briefly curled up, as if he is think­ing, ‘Oh, well.’ Then anger flash­es across his face. ‘Yah,’ he said, more in Ger­man than Eng­lish. . . . It was a stun­ning admis­sion from one of the world’s fore­most author­i­ties on Lyme dis­ease. . . . He seemed to be say­ing that Lyme wasn’t a nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring germ. . . .”


The Deep Politics of Lyme Disease

“Bit­ten, The Secret His­to­ry of Lyme Dis­ease and Bio­log­i­cal Weapons” chron­i­cles the career of Willy Burgdor­fer, a Swiss-born expert on tick and flea-borne dis­eases who spent most of his career research­ing those areas as a U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare sci­en­tist. Author Kris
New­by presents sub­stan­tive evi­dence that the dis­ease stems from BW research done by Burgdor­fer and asso­ciates. (Burgdor­fer was the sci­en­tist who “dis­cov­ered” the organ­ism that caus­es Lyme Dis­ease.) Burgdor­fer­’s entree into the Amer­i­can bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram result­ed from his pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with long time men­tor and patron Rudolf Geigy. Geigy belonged to a fam­i­ly whose busi­ness, J.R. Geigy AG, was a Swiss chem­i­cal firm mar­ket­ing dyes and insec­ti­cides. ” . . . . Dur­ing the war, it [Geigy] pro­duced insec­ti­cides and, most notably, the icon­ic ‘polar red’ dye that col­ored the back­ground of Nazi swasti­ka flags. . . .” The pos­si­bil­i­ty that Geigy was an oper­a­tive of the far-flung I.G. Far­ben espi­onage appa­ra­tus is one to be seri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed. His role in plac­ing young sci­en­tists in orga­ni­za­tions that were part of the U.S. BW pro­gram also sug­gests a pos­si­ble role as an agent of Paper­clip. ” . . . . ‘The Swiss are above sus­pi­cion,’ said Geigy, who lat­er in his life wrote a thin­ly fic­tion­al­ized novel­la, ‘Siri, Top Secret’, that describes the spy activ­i­ties he observed dur­ing his trav­els. It’s not known if Geigy par­tic­i­pat­ed in these activ­i­ties, but he did help place young researchers in insti­tu­tions that sup­port­ed the U.S. bioweapons pro­grams. . . .”
In 2001, a Swiss com­mis­sion found deep com­plic­i­ty on the part of Geigy and its car­tel part­ners: ” . . . .The ICE [Inde­pen­dent Com­mis­sion of Experts] con­clud­ed that the chem­i­cal firms’ boss­es in Switzer­land ‘pos­sessed a high lev­el of detailed knowl­edge about the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in Nazi Ger­many... [and] incor­po­rat­ed their knowl­edge... into their eco­nom­ic plan­ning and used it as a basis for deci­sion-mak­ing’ . . . ‘Geigy main­tained par­tic­u­lar­ly good rela­tions with Claus Unge­wit­ter, the Reich com­mis­sion­er for chem­i­cals.’ . . .“All three Swiss firms [Geigy, San­doz and Ciba] were indict­ed in the Unit­ed States in 1942 because of their col­lab­o­ra­tion with I.G. Far­ben and the Third Reich. ” . . . . Those indict­ed includ­ed . . . . Far­ben affil­i­ates the Amer­i­can Ciba, San­doz and Geigy. . . A long list of oth­er co-con­spir­a­tors includ­ed the Swiss Ciba, San­doz and Geigy com­pa­nies with Cincin­nati Chem­i­cal works, their joint­ly owned Amer­i­can con­cern . . . .”


Repost: The REAL Memorial Day

Due to the shel­ter-in-place restric­tions, it is not pos­si­ble for Mr. Emory to do his annu­al Memo­r­i­al Day marathon pro­gram­ming about the deci­sive con­nec­tions between Amer­i­can indus­try and finance and the Axis pow­ers of World War II. How­ev­er, we re-post the descrip­tion and pro­gram links from last year’s spe­cial for view­ing and use of the listening–and reading–audience: “In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­umes pub­lished dur­ing, or in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the Sec­ond World War. . . . . Fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” This rein­vest­ment of the prof­its of the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Japan­ese and Ger­man strate­gic heavy indus­try was the cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing World War II. On Sun­day, we will high­light the Amer­i­can-Ger­man indus­tri­al axis and its var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. On Mon­day, we will explore the Amer­i­can-Japan­ese indus­tri­al axis.”


“Cain, Where Is Thy Brother Abel? (Or Thy Sister Iris?)”

In “The Death of A Sales­man” Arthur Miller (speak­ing through Mrs. Loman, Willy’s wid­ow) said “Atten­tion must be paid to such a per­son! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away!” Before mov­ing on from FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, an aspect of the sus­pi­cious death of author Iris Chang bears empha­sis: The peo­ple around her, friends, hus­band and fam­i­ly, attrib­uted her “sui­cide” to psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tur­bances, despite evi­dence that she was the focal point of hos­tile action by intel­li­gence agents and fas­cists, as well as sub­ject­ed to forms of mind con­trol. Ms. Chang said her prob­lems were “external”–those around her felt they were “inter­nal.” Her friend since col­lege, writer Paula Kamen felt that Iris’ fer­til­i­ty treat­ments may have lay at the core of her prob­lems. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we com­pared Iris’ expe­ri­ences with those of Rita Katz, who helped inves­ti­gate the 9/11 mon­ey trail that led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest SAAR net­work raids. When the Agents of Dark­ness gath­er to vis­it ret­ri­bu­tion on some­one seen as a trans­gres­sor, it is, in effect, col­lab­o­ra­tive to increase the tar­get’s iso­la­tion and con­se­quent vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by see­ing them as “sick.” Rita Katz was­n’t expe­ri­enc­ing what she did because of “fer­til­i­ty treat­ments.”


FTR #1107 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 1 and FTR #1108 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 2

“The Sea­graves have uncov­ered one of the Biggest Secrets of the Twen­ti­eth Century”–Iris Chang, quot­ed on the front cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Late last year (2019), the city of San Jose (Cal­i­for­nia) opened a park ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of the late author Iris Chang.

These broad­casts update and sup­ple­ment dis­cus­sion of Iris Chang’s alleged “sui­cide,” high­light­ed in FTR #509. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the Gold­en Lily loot and the deci­sive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors stem­ming from the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in Gold War­riors, the oth­er books by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave, and Ms. Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” have enor­mous and ongo­ing sig­nif­i­cance.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert oper­a­tions but under­wrote much of the post-war glob­al econ­o­my. Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos recov­ered a tremen­dous amount of the Gold­en Lily loot, some of which was shared with  the Japan­ese, some with  the U.S. and much of it kept by Mar­cos. The Mar­cos “Black Gold” fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the death of Ms. Chang.)

In Novem­ber of 2004, author and inves­ti­ga­tor Iris Chang was found dead of an alleged­ly self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound. This pro­gram exam­ines the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death.

In her land­mark book “The Rape of Nanking,” Ms. Chang doc­u­ment­ed the Japan­ese atroc­i­ties which gave that occu­pa­tion its name. The rape of Nanking saw the begin­ning of the Japan­ese Gold­en Lily pro­gram, which yield­ed the spec­tac­u­lar loot­ed wealth and post­war eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal intrigue doc­u­ment­ed in the Sea­graves’ inci­sive text “Gold War­riors.”

The “Rape of Nanking” drew much hos­tile reac­tion from the Japan­ese right and relat­ed forces:  . . . . At the same time, tor­rents of hate mail came in, Brett [her hus­band] said. ‘Iris is sen­si­tive, but she got charged up,’ he recalled. ‘When any­body ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of what she wrote, she would respond with over­whelm­ing evi­dence to back it up. She’s very much a per­fec­tion­ist. It was hard for her not to react every sin­gle time.’ Most of the attacks came from Japan­ese ultra­na­tion­al­ists. ‘We saw car­toons where she was por­trayed as this woman with a great big mouth,‘Brett said. ‘She got used to the fact that there is a Web site called ‘Iris Chang and Her Lies.’ She would just laugh.’ But friends say Iris began to voice con­cerns for her safe­ty. She believed her phone was tapped. She described find­ing threat­en­ing notes on her car. She said she was con­front­ed by a man who said, ‘You will NOT con­tin­ue writ­ing this.’ She used a post office box, nev­er her home address, for mail. ‘There are a fair num­ber of peo­ple who don’t take kind­ly to what she wrote in The Rape of Nanking.’ Brett said, ‘so she’s always been very, very pri­vate about our fam­i­ly life.’ . . . .”

(As we have seen in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 813, 905, 969, 970, the Japan­ese “ultra­na­tion­al­ists” were put right back in pow­er by the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion forces, as the Sea­graves doc­u­ment in Gold War­riors, as well as The Yam­a­to Dynasty.)

At the time of her death, Ms. Chang was research­ing a book chron­i­cling the expe­ri­ences of sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March—the bru­tal per­se­cu­tion of Amer­i­can POW’s cap­tured in the siege of Bataan in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. Many of the sur­vivors were shipped to Japan to work as slave labor­ers for major Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions.

Many of these cor­po­ra­tions have had pro­found con­nec­tions with their Amer­i­can transna­tion­al coun­ter­parts, and were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Amer­i­can invest­ment cap­i­tal in the run-up to World War II. More impor­tant­ly, many of these cor­po­ra­tions are a prin­ci­pal ele­ment of the US/Japanese com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship today.

Law­suits in Cal­i­for­nia tar­get­ed those Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions for com­pen­sa­tion for the slave labor wrung from the Bat­taan POWs. The State Depart­ment sided with the Japan­ese and Judge Vaughn Walk­er ruled against the Bataan sur­vivors.

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, in-depth cov­er­age of the Bataan Death March would uncov­er the Black Eagle Trust and the fun­da­men­tal role in post-World War II Amer­i­can and Japan­ese pol­i­tics of the vast wealth loot­ed by Japan dur­ing World War II. That pur­loined “black gold” is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with U.S. covert oper­a­tions and is at the epi­cen­ter of post­war Japan­ese pow­er pol­i­tics and econ­o­my.

In addi­tion to the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March sur­vivors, Ms. Chang’s research cut across some deep polit­i­cal dynam­ics con­nect­ed to then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion and his busi­ness deal­ings.

George W. Bush:

1.–Was using U.S. Naval forces to secure Japan­ese war gold from the Philip­pines for his per­son­al blind trust, as well as shoring up Amer­i­can reserves.
2.–Was deeply involved with Harken Ener­gy, which may well have been a cor­po­rate front for the acqui­si­tion and recy­cling of Gold­en Lily loot and Bor­mann mon­ey.
3.–Was heir to a deep polit­i­cal her­itage involv­ing, among oth­ers, the fam­i­ly of William Stamps Far­ish, the head of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey dur­ing the time it man­i­fest­ed its car­tel agree­ments with I.G. Far­ben. Dubya ben­e­fit­ed from his father’s lega­cy of involve­ment with the milieu of Dou­glas MacArthur. George H.W. Bush’s deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions in the Philip­pines include the involve­ment of both Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Paul Man­afort and Trump and GOP trick­ster Roger Stone with Fer­di­nand Mar­cos while the dic­ta­tor was involved with the recov­ery of Gold­en Lily loot.
4. Served as a direc­tor of Harken when the head of the firm was Alan Quasha, son of William Quasha, an attor­ney for the CIA-linked Nugan Hand Bank, a focal point of AFA #25. William had been Alien Prop­er­ty cus­to­di­an in the Philip­pines under Dou­glas MacArthur, which placed him in a posi­tion to great­ly influ­ence the “Alien Prop­er­ty” placed there by the Japan­ese under Gold­en Lily.

There is evi­dence to sug­gest that Ms. Chang’s death may have result­ed from mind con­trol, admin­is­tered to neu­tral­ize her as a threat to those clan­des­tine eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty rela­tion­ships that have gov­erned US/Japanese affairs in the post­war peri­od. Ms. Chang had received threats ever since the pub­li­ca­tion of her land­mark text The Rape of Nanking.

(For more about the gov­ern­men­t’s mind con­trol pro­grams, see, among oth­er broad­casts, AFA #‘s 5–7.)

She appears to have been under sur­veil­lance, and her “sui­cide” note alleged that a sus­pi­cious intern­ment in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal may have been ini­ti­at­ed at the insti­ga­tion of the ele­ments opposed to a ruf­fling of the Japanese/US feath­ers. In addi­tion to threat­en­ing to expose a dom­i­nant fac­tor in U.S. covert oper­a­tions, a key ele­ment in the post­war Amer­i­can and glob­al econ­o­my, Ms. Chang’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Japan­ese war crimes was an irri­tant to the Japan­ese estab­lish­ment that had thrived on the gold and oth­er wealth loot­ed from occu­pied coun­tries since World War II.

Ms. Chang’s “sui­cide” note read, in part: “. . . .There are aspects of my expe­ri­ence in Louisville that I will nev­er under­stand. . . . . I can nev­er shake my belief that I was being recruit­ed, and lat­er per­se­cut­ed, by forces more pow­er­ful than I could have imag­ined. Whether it was the CIA or some oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I will nev­er know. As long as I am alive, these forces will nev­er stop hound­ing me. Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep fore­bod­ing about my safe­ty. I sensed sud­den­ly threats to my own life: an eerie feel­ing that I was being fol­lowed in the streets, the white van parked out­side my house, dam­aged mail arriv­ing at my P.O. Box. I believe my deten­tion at Nor­ton Hos­pi­tal was the gov­ern­men­t’s attempt to dis­cred­it me. . . .”

At the con­clu­sion of the pro­gram, we review Rita Katz’s expe­ri­ences after she helped break the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR net­work that became known  as Oper­a­tion Green Quest. That inves­ti­ga­tion over­lapped George W. Bush’s firm Harken Ener­gy. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty between Iris Chang’s expe­ri­ences and those  of Rita  Katz. ” . . . . White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a ter­ri­ble sen­sa­tion to know that you have no pri­va­cy. . . . and no secu­ri­ty. That strange click­ing of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crude­ly opened mail at home in the office. . . and the same man I spied in my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket, who was also on the train I took to Wash­ing­ton a week ago. . . Life can be mis­er­able when you know that someone’s always breath­ing down your neck. . . .”

In con­ver­sa­tions with friends, Ms. Chang not­ed that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” not in her head. She also felt she was being “recruit­ed” to become a “Manchuri­an Can­di­date” for the CIA–i.e. being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol. ” . . . . in her last year she became para­noid about every­thing from virus­es attack­ing her com­put­er to attempts by the gov­ern­ment to “recruit” her, a la The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The alleged role of Japan­ese war crim­i­nal Tsu­ji Masanobu in aid­ing the Mar­cos gold recov­er­ies in the Philip­pines; the role of Tsu­ji Masanobu in imple­ment­ing the Bataan Death March; William Stamps Far­ish III’s stew­ard­ship of Dubya’s blind trust, for which Philip­pines war gold was appar­ent­ly being sought; William Stamps Far­ish (II) and his stew­ard­ship of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey, when it col­lab­o­rat­ed with I.G. Far­ben; George H.W. Bush’s asso­ci­a­tion with the descen­dants of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate fig­ures who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich.


Memorial Day Weekend Broadcast: Sunday, May 26th and Monday, May 27th

On Sun­day 5/26/2019 from 11 a.m. (Pacif­ic Time) until 7pm, and on Mon­day, 5/27/2019 from 10am until 7pm, KFJC-FM will fea­ture hours of pro­gram­ming doc­u­ment­ing the pro­found con­nec­tions of U.S. indus­try and finance to the fas­cist pow­ers of World War II. In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­umes pub­lished dur­ing, or in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the Sec­ond World War. . . . . Fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” This rein­vest­ment of the prof­its of the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Japan­ese and Ger­man strate­gic heavy indus­try was the cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing World War II. On Sun­day, we will high­light the Amer­i­can-Ger­man indus­tri­al axis and its var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. On Mon­day, we will explore the Amer­i­can-Japan­ese indus­tri­al axis.


FTR #1058, FTR #1059 and FTR #1060 The Christian West, Parts 1, 2 and 3: Contextual Foundation of the Jim DiEugenio Interviews

Review­ing past mate­r­i­al in order to refresh and rein­force under­stand­ing of the his­tor­i­cal con­text and foun­da­tion of the recent Jim DiEu­ge­nio inter­views, this pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to the con­cept of the Chris­t­ian West. “The Chris­t­ian West” is explained in the descrip­tion for AFA #37: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeat­ed, it opened secret nego­ti­a­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the West­ern Allies. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on both sides belonged to the transat­lantic finan­cial and indus­tri­al fra­ter­ni­ty that had active­ly sup­port­ed fas­cism. The thrust of these nego­ti­a­tions was the estab­lish­ment of The Chris­t­ian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehi­cle for sur­viv­ing mil­i­tary defeat, ‘The Chris­t­ian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich join­ing with the U.S., Britain, France and oth­er Euro­pean nations in a transat­lantic, pan-Euro­pean anti-Sovi­et alliance. In fact, The Chris­t­ian West became a real­i­ty only after the ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties. The de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many was abort­ed. Although a few of the more obvi­ous and obnox­ious ele­ments of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to pow­er at vir­tu­al­ly every lev­el and in almost every capac­i­ty in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. . . .”

Against the back­ground of Allen and John Fos­ter Dulles’ long, over­lap­ping careers as lawyers for Sul­li­van & Cromwell, as well as gov­ern­ment oper­a­tives, we note the deci­sive role of car­tels in pre­cip­i­tat­ing fas­cism and the posi­tion in the polit­i­cal and macro-eco­nom­ic land­scape of the events stem­ming from that.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Amer­i­can recruit­ment of Nazi East­ern Front intel­li­gence offi­cers in August of 1944 (far ear­li­er than gen­er­al­ly sup­posed); The Gehlen “Org“ ‘s incor­po­ra­tion into the CIA with the con­sent of a Nazi chain of com­mand that was still in exis­tence; the role in the Gehlen Org of East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the OUN/B, the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Croa­t­ian Ustachi, the Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Front and the SS Baltic Legion; the incor­po­ra­tion of those same Gehlen-con­trolled East­ern Euro­pean fas­cists into the GOP via the Cru­sade For Free­dom (CFF); the piv­otal role of Gehlen/Nazi/CFF per­son­nel in the post­war GOP (Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea­gan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush); the re-insti­tu­tion of Nazis in the “New” Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many; the con­trol of the “New” Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many by an under­ground Nazi fuehringsring and a com­mand cen­ter in Madrid; the role of Cana­di­an nick­el inter­ests in John Fos­ter Dulles’ cob­bling togeth­er of I.G. Far­ben; Gar­ri­son inves­tiga­tive tar­get Clay Shaw’s net­work­ing with Cana­di­an nick­el inter­ests; the role of both Dulles broth­ers in frus­trat­ing the inter­dic­tion of the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal pro­gram; the [appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful] nego­ti­a­tions between OSS chief William Dono­van, his aide Allen Dulles and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the SS to real­ize the Chris­t­ian West con­cept; the role of Cru­sade For Free­dom per­son­nel in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy; Gar­ri­son inves­tiga­tive tar­get Clay Shaw’s friend­ship with Nazi Finance Min­is­ter Hjal­mar Schacht; Fos­ter Dulles’ pro­fes­sion­al inti­ma­cy with Schacht; Shaw’s links to Per­min­dex and the SS-linked Schroed­er bank­ing empire; the deci­sive role of Allen Dulles, George Her­bert Walk­er (W’s great grand­fa­ther and the grand­fa­ther of George H.W. Bush), Prescott Bush, Sr. (the father of George H.W. Bush and the grand­fa­ther of W) in laun­der­ing U.S. cap­i­tal invest­ment in Nazi Ger­many and the return of those Nazi monies to the U.S.; Nazi steel mag­nate Fritz Thyssen’s close rela­tion­ship to: Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush, Mar­tin Bor­mann and the Schroed­er bank­ing inter­ests; Allen Dulles’ “go-to” rela­tion­ship with Sen­a­tor Prescott Bush (senior) while serv­ing as head of the CIA.


FTR #1017 Supreme Court Trump Card: Family Trump, Family [Anthony] Kennedy and Peter Thiel

 Much has been said about Don­ald Trump’s nom­i­na­tion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to become a Supreme Court jus­tice, replac­ing Antho­ny Kennnedy.

In this pro­gram, we high­light exten­sive net­work­ing between the Trump and Kennedy fam­i­lies and, in turn, some appar­ent “deep net­work­ing” between some of the indi­vid­u­als in the Trump/Kennedy nexus and insti­tu­tions linked to key ele­ments of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work.

Deutsche Bank and the shad­ow of the I.G. Far­ben chem­i­cal com­plex fig­ure into the lat­ter part of this equa­tion.

The con­nec­tions between the fam­i­ly of Antho­ny Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank. In FTR #919, we ana­lyzed a New York Times arti­cle high­light­ing Don­ald Trump’s alto­geth­er opaque real estate devel­op­ments and evi­dence that those projects had sig­nif­i­cant links to ele­ments of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

In that pro­gram we set forth the pri­ma­ry role of Deutsche Bank in financ­ing Trump’s real estate projects.

” . . . While many big banks have shunned him, Deutsche Bank AG has been a stead­fast finan­cial backer of the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial candidate’s busi­ness inter­ests. Since 1998, the bank has led or par­tic­i­pat­ed in loans of at least $2.5 bil­lion to com­pa­nies affil­i­at­ed with Mr. Trump, accord­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal analy­sis of pub­lic records and peo­ple famil­iar with the mat­ter. That doesn’t include at least anoth­er $1 bil­lion in loan com­mit­ments that Deutsche Bank made to Trump-affil­i­at­ed enti­ties. The long-stand­ing con­nec­tion makes Frank­furt-based Deutsche Bank, which has a large U.S. oper­a­tion and has been grap­pling with rep­u­ta­tion­al prob­lems and an almost 50% stock-price decline, the finan­cial insti­tu­tion with prob­a­bly the strongest ties to the con­tro­ver­sial New York busi­ness­man. . . .”

The fact that Deutsche Bank is the pri­ma­ry finan­cial backer of “Trump Incor­po­rat­ed” is of pri­ma­ry impor­tance. The bank is cen­tral to the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work.

The con­nec­tions between the fam­i­ly of Antho­ny Kennedy and the Trump milieu run deep. Antho­ny Kennedy’s son Justin was  Trump’s  banker at Deutsche Bank.

Fur­ther­more, jurists who clerked for Antho­ny Kennedy fig­ure promi­nent­ly in Trump’s judi­cial appoint­ments:

1.–” . . . . He [Trump] picked Jus­tice Neil M. Gor­such, who had served as a law clerk to Jus­tice Kennedy, to fill Jus­tice Scalia’s seat. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Then, after Jus­tice Gorsuch’s nom­i­na­tion was announced, a White House offi­cial sin­gled out two can­di­dates for the next Supreme Court vacan­cy: Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Dis­trict of Colum­bia Cir­cuit and Judge Ray­mond M. Keth­ledge of the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Cir­cuit, in Cincin­nati. The two judges had some­thing in com­mon: They had both clerked for Jus­tice Kennedy. . . .”
3.–” . . . . In the mean­time, as the White House turned to stock­ing the low­er courts, it did not over­look Jus­tice Kennedy’s clerks. Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed three of them to fed­er­al appeals courts: Judges Stephanos Bibas and Michael Scud­der, both of whom have been con­firmed, and Eric Mur­phy, the Ohio solic­i­tor gen­er­al, whom Mr. Trump nom­i­nat­ed to the Sixth Cir­cuit this month. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Jus­tice Kennedy’s son, Justin . . . . spent more than a decade at Deutsche Bank, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to become the bank’s glob­al head of real estate cap­i­tal mar­kets, and he worked close­ly with Mr. Trump when he was a real estate devel­op­er, accord­ing to two peo­ple with knowl­edge of his role. Dur­ing Mr. Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became Mr. Trump’s most impor­tant lender, dis­pens­ing well over $1 bil­lion in loans to him for the ren­o­va­tion and con­struc­tion of sky­scrap­ers in New York and Chica­go at a time oth­er main­stream banks were wary of doing busi­ness with him because of his trou­bled busi­ness his­to­ry. . . .”

After Kennedy left Deutsche Bank in 2009 he went on to become co-CEO LNR Prop­er­ty LLC. LNR Prop­er­ty saved Jared Kushner’s mid­town Man­hat­tan prop­er­ty in 2011:

1.–” . . . . from 2010–2013 Justin Kennedy was the co-CEO of LNR Prop­er­ty LLC with Tobin Cobb. . . .”
2.–” . . . . Accord­ing the New York Times, in 2007 Kush­n­er Com­pa­nies pur­chased ‘an alu­minum-clad office tow­er in Mid­town Man­hat­tan, for a record price of $1.8 bil­lion.’ At the time the NYT wrote that this deal was ‘con­sid­ered a clas­sic exam­ple of reck­less under­writ­ing. The trans­ac­tion was so high­ly lever­aged that the cash flow from rents amount­ed to only 65 per­cent of the debt ser­vice.’ . . .”
3.– ” . . . Who came to the res­cue? None oth­er than LNR Prop­er­ty, the com­pa­ny whose CEO at the time was Justin Kennedy. Accord­ing to the NYT and the Real Deal, Mr. Kush­n­er and LNR ‘reached a pos­si­ble agree­ment with LNR Prop­er­ty, a firm spe­cial­iz­ing in restruc­tur­ing trou­bled debt and which over­sees the mort­gage, that would allow him to retain con­trol of the tow­er by mod­i­fy­ing the terms of the $1.2 bil­lion mort­gage tied to the office por­tion of the build­ing.’ . . .”

The links between Trump­World and Antho­ny Kennedy’s sons is deep­er still. Kennedy’s oth­er son Gre­go­ry, has long-stand­ing ties to Trump Sil­i­con Val­ley advis­er Peter Thiel, whom we first ana­lyzed in FTR #718.

” . . . . . . . . Kennedy’s seat, mean­time, seemed des­tined to go to Kavanaugh, thanks in part to the glow­ing review of Kennedy, whose son, Justin, knows Don­ald Trump Jr. through New York real estate cir­cles, and whose oth­er adult child has con­nec­tions to Trump World via the president’s 2016 Sil­i­con Val­ley advis­er Peter Thiel, most recent­ly when the Kennedy firm Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­ers worked with Thiel’s Palan­tir Tech­nolo­gies. . . .”

Gre­go­ry Kennedy’s DTA has an unusu­al­ly close rela­tion­ship with Palan­tir, a com­pa­ny that has helped the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.

Kennedy’s DTA has oth­er per­son­al con­nec­tions to Palan­tir. Alex Fish­man and Alex Davis, two oth­er DTA founders, “enjoyed a very close rela­tion­ship” with Palan­tir co-founder Alex Karp, accord­ing to the law­suit.

It should be not­ed that the alleged secre­cy with which Palan­tir treats its oper­at­ing and invest­ing infor­ma­tion is char­ac­ter­is­tic of Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tions. A clos­et­ed, insid­ers-only oper­at­ing eth­ic serves the need for this con­sum­mate­ly pow­er­ful orga­ni­za­tion to main­tain a rel­a­tive­ly low pro­file, even as it gains pow­er, influ­ence and wealth.

” . . . . Yet Palan­tir — whose stock changes hands only through pri­vate trades — goes to great lengths to keep any detailed infor­ma­tion about its busi­ness pri­vate. . . .”

A law­suit by Palan­tir investor KT4 Part­ners alleges that Palan­tir is ille­gal­ly block­ing investors from sell­ing shares in the com­pa­ny and that Kennedy’s Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advi­sors (DTA) is a key part­ner and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of this strat­e­gy.

KT4 claims that when it tried to sell its shares of Palan­tir to a third-par­ty, Palan­tir would have DTA con­tact the third-par­ty and con­vince them to have Palan­tir sells them the shares direct­ly instead. DTA would then col­lect a com­mis­sion.

The cen­tral dynam­ic in the alle­ga­tions of plain­tiff (and Palan­tir investor) KT4 is set forth as fol­lows: ” . . . . But remark­ably, KT4 claims that when Palan­tir receives infor­ma­tion from an investor about a planned sale, it uses that infor­ma­tion to con­tact the buy­er and per­suade them instead to buy shares direct­ly from the com­pa­ny or from cer­tain Palan­tir insid­ers. One par­tic­u­lar bro­ker, Dis­rup­tive Tech­nol­o­gy Advis­ers, or DTA, repeat­ed­ly gets com­mis­sions from these sales, even when it ‘per­formed no legit­i­mate work,’ KT4 claims. KT4 says it expe­ri­enced inter­fer­ence by Palan­tir when it tried to sell shares to High­bridge Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, a hedge fund that was owned by JPMor­gan Chase, in May 2015. After KT4 noti­fied Palan­tir of the planned sale, Palan­tir turned around and instruct­ed DTA to ‘take the oppor­tu­ni­ty, on Palantir’s behalf,‘and arrange a sale from Palan­tir to High­bridge instead, accord­ing to the law­suit. . . .”

In FTR #946, we exam­ined Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca, its Trump and Steve Ban­non-linked tech firm that har­vest­ed Face­book data on behalf of the Trump cam­paign.

Peter Thiel’s Palan­tir was appar­ent­ly deeply involved with Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca’s gam­ing of per­son­al data har­vest­ed from Face­book in order to engi­neer an elec­toral vic­to­ry for Trump, set­ting the GOP cam­paign to con­trol the Supreme Court in a deep­er, broad­er con­text.

Thiel was an ear­ly investor in Face­book, at one point was its largest share­hold­er and is still one of its largest share­hold­ers. ” . . . . It was a Palan­tir employ­ee in Lon­don, work­ing close­ly with the data sci­en­tists build­ing Cambridge’s psy­cho­log­i­cal pro­fil­ing tech­nol­o­gy, who sug­gest­ed the sci­en­tists cre­ate their own app — a mobile-phone-based per­son­al­i­ty quiz — to gain access to Face­book users’ friend net­works, accord­ing to doc­u­ments obtained by The New York Times. The rev­e­la­tions pulled Palan­tir — co-found­ed by the wealthy lib­er­tar­i­an Peter Thiel — into the furor sur­round­ing Cam­bridge, which improp­er­ly obtained Face­book data to build ana­lyt­i­cal tools it deployed on behalf of Don­ald J. Trump and oth­er Repub­li­can can­di­dates in 2016. Mr. Thiel, a sup­port­er of Pres­i­dent Trump, serves on the board at Face­book. ‘There were senior Palan­tir employ­ees that were also work­ing on the Face­book data,’ said Christo­pher Wylie, a data expert and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca co-founder, in tes­ti­mo­ny before British law­mak­ers on Tues­day. . . . The con­nec­tions between Palan­tir and Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca were thrust into the spot­light by Mr. Wylie’s tes­ti­mo­ny on Tues­day. Both com­pa­nies are linked to tech-dri­ven bil­lion­aires who backed Mr. Trump’s cam­paign: Cam­bridge is chiefly owned by Robert Mer­cer, the com­put­er sci­en­tist and hedge fund mag­nate, while Palan­tir was co-found­ed in 2003 by Mr. Thiel, who was an ini­tial investor in Face­book. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of Peter Thiel’s high regard for Carl Schmitt: “. . . . a Nazi and the Third Reich’s pre­em­i­nent legal the­o­rist. For Thiel, Schmitt is an inspir­ing throw­back to a pre-Enlight­en­ment age, who exalts strug­gle and insists that the dis­cov­ery of ene­mies is the foun­da­tion of pol­i­tics. . .” 
2.–Review of Peter Thiel’s ear­ly legal expe­ri­ence with Sul­li­van & Cromwell, the Dulles law firm.
3.–A recount­ing of the role of John Fos­ter Dulles and Sul­li­van & Cromwell’s roles in the for­ma­tion of I.G. Far­ben.
4.–Review of Thiel’s Ger­man her­itage and his father’s prob­a­ble role with one of the I.G. suc­ces­sor com­pa­nies.