FTR#‘s 1341, 1342, 1343 and 1344 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 15, 16, 17 and 18

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams set forth dis­cus­sion of the polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal links between “Team Trump” and the fas­cist regimes of Hitler, Fran­cis­co Fran­co and Augus­to Pinochet.

A recent book label­ing oppo­nents of Trump et al as “Unhu­mans.”

The net­works to which Vance, Trump and the GOP belong have evolved direct­ly from the milieu of the JFK Assas­si­na­tion.

“Vance Just Endorsed a Trou­bling Author­i­tar­i­an Book” by Michelle Gold­berg; The New York Times; 8/07/2024, p. A22 (West­ern print edi­tion) .

. . . . “Unhu­mans,” an anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic screed that [Jack] Poso­biec wrote with Joshua Lisec, comes with endorse­ments from some of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple in Repub­li­can pol­i­tics, includ­ing, most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the vice-Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date J.D. Vance.

The word “fas­cist” gets thrown around a lot in pol­i­tics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhu­mans” which came out last month.

. . . . Often, they write, “great men of means” are required to crush this scourge [the “Unhu­mans”]. The con­tempt for democ­ra­cy in “Unhu­mans” is not sub­tle. “Our study of his­to­ry has brought us to this con­clu­sion: Democ­ra­cy has nev­er worked to pro­tect inno­cents from the unhu­mans,” write Poso­biec and Lisec.

One of the book’s heroes is the Span­ish dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co, who over­threw the demo­c­ra­t­ic Sec­ond Span­ish Repub­lic in the country’s 1930’s civ­il war. . . . They quote him on what doesn’t work against the unhu­man threat: “We do not believe in gov­ern­ment through the vot­ing booth. The Span­ish nation­al will was nev­er freely expressed through the bal­lot box.” . . . .

. . . . “Unhu­mans” lauds Augus­to Pinochet, the leader of the Chilean mil­i­tary who led a coup against Sal­vador Allende’s elect­ed gov­ern­ment in 1973, ush­er­ing in a reign of tor­ture and repres­sion that involved toss­ing polit­i­cal ene­mies from heli­copters.

Pinochet-inspired heli­copter memes have been com­mon in the MAGA move­ment for years. And as the his­to­ri­an David Austin Walsh wrote last year, there has long been a cult of Fran­co on the right. . . .

. . . . [The Great Amer­i­can Counter Rev­o­lu­tion] is achiev­able but only with the resolve of Fran­co and the thor­ough­ness of [Sen­a­tor Joseph] McCarthy.” . . . .

. . . . “Much like the Unit­ed States found­ing fathers, Fran­co and his fel­lows saw them­selves as rebels intend­ed to over­throw a cor­rupt, tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment that aid­ed and abet­ted mur­der and rape as well as oth­er repug­nant sins” . . . .

Top­ics of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The evo­lu­tion of the milieu under­ly­ing Fran­co, Pinochet and the con­tem­po­rary GOP from an inter­na­tion­al drug and weapons net­work inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty; The role of Chi­nese fas­cists under the Kuom­intang includ­ing Tai Li and Tu Yueh Sheng in this net­work; The role of Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by in the devel­op­ment of this net­work; Links between this net­work and the assas­si­na­tion of JFK; Links between this net­work and the Bay of Pigs inva­sion; Nazi SS com­man­do Otto Skorzeny’s net­work­ing with the Vat­i­can and Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Mon­ti­ni, the Vat­i­can’s sec­re­tary of state and lat­er Pope Paul VI; The Vatican’s pro­found involve­ment with fas­cism; The role of Fran­cis­co Fran­co in financ­ing an off­shore, anti-Cas­tro  radio net­work oper­at­ed by Texas oil mag­nate Clint Murchi­son; U.S. defense con­trac­tor Ling, Tem­co Vought’s own­er­ship of the anten­nae used by Radio Nord; The sus­pi­cious death of CIA offi­cer Gary Under­hill, who alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide after fin­ger­ing the intelligence/narcotics/weapons traf­fick­ing ring with the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, Underhill’s role edit­ing Pen­ta­gon reports about Willoughby’s com­man­do oper­a­tions in Asia; Underhill’s role as (arguably) the CIA’s top expert on small arms; Fox News founder and king­pin Roger Ailes’ role with the Nixon, Rea­gan and George H.W. Bush admin­is­tra­tions; Ailes’ employ­ment with the Coors media appa­ra­tus; The role of for­mer Span­ish prime min­is­ter Aznar in per­pet­u­at­ing the net­works of Fran­co, Links between the SS/Vatican nexus and the Babi Yar mas­sacres in Ukraine; The work of SS offi­cials of the Vatican/SS nexus and the CIA; Review of Nico­lae Malax­a’s role in financ­ing the Ruman­ian Guard; Malax­a’s role in the emp­ty cor­po­rate front West­ern Tube, whose mail­ing address was Bew­ley, Kroop and Nixon–Nixon’s law firm; Review of Valer­ian Tri­fa’s role with the Iron Guard and the GOP; (both Malaxa and Tri­fa are cov­ered at length in AFA#2); Gen­er­al Motors head Alfred P. Sloan’s finan­cial sup­port for Malax­a’s rail­way in Ruma­nia, that was used to trans­port vic­tims of the Holo­caust; Malax­a’s net­work­ing with Juan Per­on and Otto Sko­rzeny; The Great South­west Cor­po­ra­tion’s absorp­tion of West­ern Tube; The Great South­west Cor­po­ra­tion’s han­dling of Mari­na Oswald; Review of mate­r­i­al in FTR#1222 con­cern­ing the roles of French fas­cists in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK; Numer­ous points of inter­est with the World Com­merce Cor­po­ra­tion; Numer­ous con­nec­tions of this milieu with the nar­co-fas­cist regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek.

Eugene McCarthy Revisited

We have dis­cussed the dubi­ous con­nec­tions of the late Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy of Min­neso­ta, the “Peace Can­di­date” who upend­ed the 1968 Pres­i­den­tial race. We note his remark­able, reveal­ing 1980 endorse­ment of “Peace Can­di­date” Ronald Rea­gan: ” . . . . Mr. McCarthy said he had come to the con­clu­sion that Mr. Rea­gan’s posi­tions on nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment and tax­es were bet­ter than Pres­i­dent Carter’s . . . .” Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Latest Patreon Talks, 6/10 through 6/12: Analysis of “New York Times” Print Edition for 6/10/2022

In the lat­est Patre­on talks, Mr. Emory goes through the West­ern print edi­tion of “The New York Times,” pre­sent­ing the deep polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal con­text under­ly­ing the arti­cles and op-ed pieces. On Sun­day, 6/12, Dave dis­cuss­es the psy­cho­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal aspects of the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic, includ­ing spec­u­la­tion con­cern­ing the “Bio-Psy-Op-Apoc­a­lypse’s effect on the pub­lic reac­tion to the Ukraine War. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

Patreon Update: Latest Talks Plus First Zoom Q & A Scheduled for June 5

The Patre­on site con­tin­ues to devel­op and take form: The first Zoom Q & A Ses­sion is sched­uled for 6/5 in the late afternoon/early evening. In addi­tion, the lat­est talks devel­op both recent polit­i­cal events and his­tor­i­cal trends. Top­ics of dis­cus­sion include: the mass shoot­ings in Uvalde Texas and Buf­fa­lo, NY; Don­ald Trump’s suc­cess­ful use of polit­i­cal mythol­o­gy to devel­op his cam­paign and Pres­i­den­cy; the unsa­vory polit­i­cal con­nec­tions of Bernie Sanders and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez; the late Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy’s so-called “Peace Can­di­da­cy” in 1968; Mr. Emory’s own expe­ri­ence com­ing of age dur­ing the Viet­nam War. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR#1204 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 11

Con­tin­u­ing our series on the regime of Chi­ang Kai-shek–all but beat­i­fied dur­ing the Cold War–we draw still more on a mag­nif­i­cent book–“The Soong Dynasty” by Ster­ling Sea­grave. Although sad­ly out of print, the book is still avail­able through used book ser­vices, and we emphat­i­cal­ly encour­age lis­ten­ers to take advan­tage of those and obtain it.

(Mr. Emory gets no mon­ey from said pur­chas­es of the book.)

We begin with fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the influ­ence of Time Inc.–the Hen­ry Luce pub­lish­ing empire–on Amer­i­can per­cep­tions of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s regime. Theodore White, who wrote for Time mag­a­zine had this obser­va­tion on the jour­nal’s edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy: “ . . . . Theodore White post­ed the fol­low­ing sign in the shack that served as the Time office in Chungk­ing: ‘Any resem­blance to what is writ­ten here and what is print­ed in Time Mag­a­zine is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal.’ This reflect­ed his increas­ing­ly pes­simistic atti­tude about his abil­i­ty, if not to change the course of China’s des­tiny, at least to keep the Amer­i­can pub­lic informed of the events as he and observers like [Gen­er­al Joseph] Stil­well, [State Depart­ment Offi­cer Jack] Ser­vice and [State Depart­ment offi­cial John Paton] Davies saw them . . . .”

When White lodged his com­plaints with Hen­ry Luce, the for­eign news edi­tor for Time was Whitak­er Cham­bers, best known as the accuser of Alger Hiss in the pro­ceed­ings which helped ele­vate Richard Nixon’s polit­i­cal career.

(In AFA#1, we not­ed that Cham­bers dis­played a life-size por­trait of Adolf Hitler in his liv­ing room. In AFA#2, we high­light­ed vehe­ment crit­i­cism of Cham­bers from a for­mer writer for Time, who spun sto­ries from reporters in the field to the far right, mak­ing sto­ries of the lib­er­a­tion of Euro­pean coun­tries by Allied sol­diers look like a creep­ing Com­mu­nist man­i­fes­ta­tion. The com­men­tary was in a let­ter protest­ing Ronald Rea­gan’s award­ing of a medal to Cham­bers. Rea­gan also ele­vat­ed Albert C. Wede­mey­er to a posi­tion of spe­cial mil­i­tary advi­sor.)

Dur­ing the last year of the war, Chi­ang Kai-shek retreat­ed into a world of debauch­ery, Green Gang cama­raderie and ide­o­log­i­cal delu­sion. The deba­cle cre­at­ed by Chi­ang is embod­ied in the star­va­tion of his own army con­scripts and his refusal to believe accounts of what was tak­ing place: “ . . . . So total­ly removed from real­i­ty did Chi­ang become that he was struck with dis­be­lief one day by rumors that his own sol­diers were drop­ping dead of star­va­tion in the streets. Cor­rup­tion was keep­ing them from being fed the barest rations. He sent his eldest son, CCK, to inves­ti­gate. When CCK report­ed back that it was true, Chi­ang insist­ed on see­ing for him­self. CCK showed him army con­scripts who had died in their bedrolls because of neglect. . . . The star­va­tion deaths con­tin­ued. In August 1944, the corpses of 138 stared sol­diers were removed from the streets of Chungk­ing. Chi­ang did not come out again to see. . . .”

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include: Cham­bers’ com­plete per­ver­sion of a sto­ry writ­ten by Theodore White about the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the removal of Gen­er­al Stil­well (dis­cussed in FTR#1203); T.V. Soong’s con­tin­ued pres­ence in Chi­na, the only mem­ber of the fam­i­ly to remain in the coun­try after a failed “palace coup” dis­cussed in FTR#1203; T.V.‘s effec­tive con­trol of Chi­ang Kai-shek’s pub­lic per­sona and state­ments; T.V.‘s use of his posi­tion as Pre­mier to manip­u­late the dis­po­si­tion of Amer­i­can aid to his own ben­e­fit.

The scale of the cor­rup­tion char­ac­ter­iz­ing Chiang’s regime and the Soong clan that con­tin­ued to con­trol it was enor­mous. In addi­tion to the pirat­ing of Amer­i­can Lend-Lease mate­r­i­al shipped to Chi­na by the Soong fam­i­ly, as well as Chi­ang and his gen­er­als (who sold much of what they did not keep for them­selves to the Japan­ese invaders), post war Unit­ed Nations Relief suf­fered a sim­i­lar dis­po­si­tion.

“ . . . . After T.V. [Soong] was named Pre­mier, he cre­at­ed a spe­cial agency, the Chi­nese Nation­al Relief and Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (CNRRA) to over­see the dis­tri­b­u­tion of UN relief goods. The deal he struck with the U.S. gov­ern­ment and the Unit­ed Nations was that UNRRA would relin­quish all title to sup­plies the moment the goods touched down on  any Chi­nese wharf. . . . The wharfs where most of these goods land­ed, the ware­hous­es where the goods were stored and the trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies that moved them (includ­ing Chi­na Mer­chants Steam Nav­i­ga­tion Com­pa­ny) were owned by Big-eared Tu [Tu Yueh-sheng]. This was a sit­u­a­tion ready-made for abuse. . . .”

Like many oth­er for­eign regimes, as well as domes­tic ele­ments of the pow­er elite, the Chiang/Soong/Green Gang klep­toc­ra­cy used the fear of Com­mu­nism to bilk the U.S. out of vast sums: “ . . . . Chi­ang was using the fear of a Com­mu­nist takeover to obtain mil­lions from the Unit­ed States. Fear served him well. . . .”

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The mon­u­men­tal rip-off of Chi­nese investors and finan­cial insti­tu­tions engi­neered by T.V. Soong with a scam launch­ing a gold-backed cur­ren­cy; the pan­ic that gripped Shang­hai and much of the rest of Chi­na as a result of the “gold yuan” scam; the gob­bling up of much of that wealth by the Soong and Kung fam­i­lies.

When Chi­ang made a woe­ful­ly belat­ed anti-cor­rup­tion drive—headed up by his son, CCK made the mis­take of arrest­ing David Kung (son of H.H. Kung and Ai-ling [Soong] and the nephew of Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek [nee Mae-ling Soong]) and the M.I.T.-educated stock bro­ker son of Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng: “ . . . . The son of Big-eared Tu, a grad­u­ate of the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, was tried and sen­tenced by CCK so fast that it was all over before any­one was dim­ly aware even that he had been arrest­ed. . . . He did not serve time, for that would have been press­ing his father a bit much. . . .”

Pre­sag­ing Hong Kong’s emer­gence as an aug­ment­ed epi­cen­ter of high-lev­el intrigue, Tu Yueh-sheng moved his assets there after the war: “ . . . . It was hard to con­cen­trate on reor­ga­niz­ing the old Shang­hai oper­a­tions when the reds were steam­rolling across Manchuria and mov­ing ever south­ward. Tu began shift­ing his assets to Hong Kong. . . .”

In the case of David Kung, Mme. Chi­ang inter­vened on his behalf and his Yangtze Devel­op­ment Corporation—a major focal point of corruption–moved to Flori­da: “ . . . . Pru­dent­ly, Mae ling hur­ried David onto a plane for Hong Kong, with con­tin­u­ing con­nec­tions to Flori­da. He was not to come back. Yangtze Devel­op­ment Corporation’s offices in Chi­na were closed down overnight and reopened in Mia­mi Beach. . . .”

Chi­ang then decamped to Tai­wan, where he sub­dued the island’s inhab­i­tants with char­ac­ter­is­tic bru­tal­i­ty: “ . . . . The island did not wel­come the KMT. It was dri­ven into sub­mis­sion by ter­ror. . . . Chi­ang forced Tai­wan to heel. There were mas­sacres; in the first, ten thou­sand Tai­wanese were slain by KMT troops in riots in down­town Taipei. Twen­ty thou­sand more were put to death before Chi­ang was firm­ly estab­lished. . . .”

Exit Stage Right: Eugenio Martinez Dies (What Was Richard Nixon Doing In Dallas, Texas, on 11/22/1963?)

In FTR #‘s 961, 962 and 963, we exam­ined the pro­found con­nec­tions between the Water­gate Break-in and the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. The obit­u­ary of recent­ly deceased Water­gate bur­glar Euge­nio Mar­tinez con­tained a detail that opens up a vista onto the real Water­gate “op.” “. . . . In 1983, after his requests for clemen­cy had been reject­ed by Pres­i­dents Ger­ald R. Ford and Jim­my Carter, Mr. Martínez — who, it turned out, had still been on retain­er to the C.I.A. at the time of the Water­gate break-in — was par­doned by Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan. . . .”

FTR #1169 The Corporate Foundation of the Current Malaise

To com­pre­hend the polit­i­cal mael­strom engulf­ing the coun­try as 2020 and the Trump admin­is­tra­tion are draw­ing to a close, it is essen­tial to under­stand the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate landscape—the foun­da­tion of con­tem­po­rary pow­er polit­i­cal dynam­ics.

Begin­ning with an out­growth of the piv­otal­ly impor­tant car­tel agree­ments reached by Stan­dard Oil and I.G. Far­ben between the World Wars, we note the appar­ent “gentleman’s agree­ment” between U.S. and Ger­man busi­ness­men not to bomb the Third Reich’s syn­thet­ic fuel plants dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

Those syn­thet­ic fuel plants were a direct out­growth of the Standard‑I.G. Agree­ment of 1929, high­light­ed in—among oth­er programs—FTR #’s 511, and 1108.

That appar­ent agree­ment exem­pli­fies and sig­ni­fies the deci­sive posi­tion of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate inter­ests in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al pow­er pol­i­tics.

Next, we set forth the dom­i­nant posi­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work in the glob­al “cor­poro­c­ra­cy.”

In addi­tion to con­trol of the Ger­man cor­po­rate estab­lish­ment and inter­locked Euro­pean inter­ests, the Bor­mann group has been buy­ing share in Blue Chip U.S. stocks for the bet­ter part of the last hun­dred years. This puts the net­work in a con­trol­ling posi­tion in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.

With elec­tron­ic, com­put­er-con­trolled buy­ing and sell­ing of equi­ties in the world’s cap­i­tal mar­kets, a rel­a­tive­ly small share of cap­i­tal own­er­ship in one of the giant transna­tion­als is dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly impor­tant. Own­er­ship of 2% or more of the stock in one of the world’s giant cor­po­ra­tions con­sti­tutes a major posi­tion, in that when that num­ber of shares is sold at one time, such an event can kick-in an elec­tron­ic sell-off.

Illus­trat­ing the posi­tion of the Bor­mann net­work in U.S. eco­nom­ic life, we review the fact that Bor­mann drew funds on three demand accounts in New York banks in August of 1967. Noth­ing illus­trates the nature of transna­tion­al cor­po­rate pow­er and the posi­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann group in the cor­po­rate pan­theon.

We note, in pass­ing, that Bormann’s secu­ri­ty director—Gestapo chief Hein­rich Muller—worked with CIA and U.S. intel­li­gence in the post­war peri­od.
The Bor­mann trans­ac­tions took place in August of 1967. In April and June of the fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy were killed.

Bor­mann saw Fritz Thyssen as a pipeline to Allen Dulles.

In the con­clud­ing por­tion of the pro­gram, we present sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion from an unpub­lished man­u­script. The author is well-known to vet­er­an researchers, but will remain anony­mous, since the work was nev­er for­mal­ly pub­lished.

In FTR #’s 1149 and 1150, we set forth por­tions of this man­u­script. In this pro­gram, we reca­pit­u­late those por­tions of the doc­u­ment, and include dis­cus­sion of the con­sum­mate influ­ence of the I.G. Far­ben inter­na­tion­al espi­onage orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. between the World Wars.

In addi­tion to I.G.’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with John Fos­ter and Allen Dulles of Sul­li­van & Cromwell, I.G. has also man­i­fest­ed major influ­ence in Demo­c­ra­t­ic admin­is­tra­tions: Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal and JFK’s atten­u­at­ed post­war admin­is­tra­tion as well.

Beyond that, the author main­tains, cor­rect­ly in our opin­ion, that the transna­tion­al influ­ence of the I.G. net­works and the post­war polit­i­cal influ­ence-buy­ing of CIA and BND con­sti­tute a direct exten­sion of the OSS-SS col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the clos­ing stages of World War II.

What was cre­at­ed in US. board­rooms and intel­li­gence head­quar­ters dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after World War II is now mor­ph­ing into a mass move­ment.
This is the cor­po­rate foun­da­tion of the cur­rent malaise!

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the role of OSS (and lat­er CIA) offi­cers Allen Dulles, William Casey and Frank Wis­ner in paving the way for the incor­po­ra­tion of Nazi SS cadres into the embry­on­ic CIA; review of the role of 1948 GOP Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Thomas Dewey in advis­ing the Mary Carter Paint Com­pa­ny (lat­er named Resorts Inter­na­tion­al) to pay Allen Dulles’s law part­ner David Peck to advise U.S. High Com­mis­sion­er for Ger­many John J. McCloy on the com­mu­ta­tion of sen­tences met­ed out to Nazi war crim­i­nals; review of the role of the Gehlen Org (as part of the then West Ger­man BND) in financ­ing East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist ele­ments in the U.S.; review of the over­lap between Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and William Casey’s Cap­i­tal Cities Incor­po­rat­ed; review of Casey’s role over­see­ing OSS activ­i­ties in Ger­many dur­ing 1944 and 1945.

FTR #1098, FTR #1099, FTR #1100 and FTR #1101– Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 8 (The Intermarium Concept), Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 9 (Intermarium Redux: “Will the National Socialist Revolution Begin in Ukraine?”), Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 10–The Intermarium Continuity, Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 11–The Intermarium Continuity, Part 2 (Reflections on The Pivot Point)

In these pro­grams, we con­tin­ue dis­cus­sion of the Azov milieu and its “Inter­mar­i­um” out­reach, in the con­text of Ukraine as a “piv­ot point” cen­tral to con­trol of the World Island or Earth Island. The evo­lu­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um con­cept is fun­da­men­tal to analy­sis of this phe­nom­e­non.

 Ukraine’s sig­nif­i­cance as a glob­al epi­cen­ter of bur­geon­ing fas­cism extends to the region’s online, ide­o­log­i­cal and icon­ic man­i­fes­ta­tion. Two recent Cana­di­an teens–Kam McLeod and Bry­er Schmegelsky–who appar­ent­ly killed three peo­ple in cold blood were influ­enced by Nazi cul­ture and Azov Bat­tal­ion man­i­fes­ta­tion in par­tic­u­lar. ” . . . . A Steam user con­firmed to The Globe and Mail that he talked to Mr. Schmegel­sky reg­u­lar­ly online. He recalled Mr. McLeod join­ing their chats as well. The user, whom The Globe is not iden­ti­fy­ing, pro­vid­ed pho­tos sent by an account believed to be owned by Mr. Schmegel­sky, show­ing him in mil­i­tary fatigues, bran­dish­ing what appears to be an air­soft rifle – which fires plas­tic pel­lets. Anoth­er pho­to shows a swasti­ka arm­band, and yet anoth­er fea­tures Mr. Schmegel­sky in a gas mask. The pho­tos were report­ed­ly sent in the fall of 2018, but the user said he stopped play­ing online games with Mr. Schmegel­sky ear­li­er this year after he con­tin­ued to praise Hitler’s Ger­many. One account con­nect­ed to the teens uses the logo of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, a far-right Ukrain­ian mili­tia that has been accused of har­bour­ing sym­pa­thies to neo-Nazis. . . .”

Dis­cussing Zbig­niew Brzezin­ski’s doc­trine of con­trol­ling Eura­sia by con­trol­ling the “piv­ot point” of Ukraine. Fun­da­men­tal to this analy­sis is the con­cept of the Earth Island or World Island as it is some­times known.

Brzezin­s­ki, in turn, draws on the geopo­lit­i­cal the­o­ries of Sir Hal­ford Mackinder, and, lat­er con­tem­po­rary Inter­mar­i­um adov­cates such as Alexan­dros Petersen.

Stretch­ing from the Straits of Gibral­tar, all across Europe, most of the Mid­dle East, Eura­sia, Rus­sia, Chi­na and India, that stretch of land: com­pris­es most of the world’s land mass; con­tains most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion and most of the world’s nat­ur­al resources (includ­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas.) Geopoliti­cians have long seen con­trol­ling that land mass as the key to world dom­i­na­tion.

Most of the three pro­grams high­light­ing the evo­lu­tion and appli­ca­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um con­cept con­sist of read­ing and analy­sis of a long aca­d­e­m­ic paper by Mar­lene Laru­elle and Ellen Rivera. Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in this dis­cus­sion is the piv­otal role of Ukrain­ian fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions in the Inter­mar­i­um and close­ly con­nect­ed Promethean net­works, from the post World War I peri­od, through the time between the World Wars, through the Cold War and up to and includ­ing the Maid­an coup.

Mil­i­tary, eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal net­work­ing has employed the Inter­mar­i­um idea, with what the paper terms the “ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings” stem­ming from the evo­lu­tion of the Ukrain­ian fas­cist milieu in the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies. Some of the most impor­tant U.S. think tanks and asso­ci­at­ed mil­i­tary indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions embody this con­ti­nu­ity: ” . . . . The con­ti­nu­ity of insti­tu­tion­al and indi­vid­ual tra­jec­to­ries from Sec­ond World War col­lab­o­ra­tionists to Cold War-era anti-com­mu­nist orga­ni­za­tions to con­tem­po­rary con­ser­v­a­tive U.S. think tanks is sig­nif­i­cant for the ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of today’s Inter­mar­i­um revival. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the incor­po­ra­tion of the Gehlen “Org” into the U.S. and West­ern intel­li­gence appa­ra­tus; the key pres­ence of the OUN/B and oth­er East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups into the Gehlen out­fit; approval giv­en to Gehlen for his deal with the Amer­i­cans by Admi­ral Doenitz (who suc­ceed­ed Hitler) and Gen­er­al Franz Halder (Gehlen’s “for­mer” chief of staff); the incor­po­ra­tion of the OUN/B/Gehlen/ABN milieu into the Repub­li­can Par­ty via the Cru­sade For Free­dom; the key roles in the CFF played by Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea­gan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush; Allen Dulles and William Dono­van’s wartime col­lu­sion with Nazi Ger­many to craft the Chris­t­ian West enti­ty; the for­ma­tion of the Black Eagle Trust by John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett and Robert B. Ander­son (this assured the con­ti­nu­ity of both Japan­ese fas­cism and Ger­man Nazism in the post­war peri­od).

Nuremberg Redux: The Deep Political Context of the Texas Court of Inquiry

In Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M31, we exam­ined the mil­i­tary inquiry into the killing of Wehrma­cht Cor­po­ral Johannes Kun­ze, whose anti-Nazi sen­ti­ments were pun­ished by his fel­low pris­on­ers with mur­der. In the inquest, it became clear that Amer­i­can offi­cers had per­mit­ted their Ger­man POW coun­ter­parts to screen the mail of their fel­low pris­on­ers, which pro­vid­ed them the means to iden­ti­fy and kill cor­po­ral Kun­ze. The mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor in the case–future Water­gate and Kore­a­gate “Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor” Leon Jaworski–exercised what was polite­ly termed judi­cial restraint, and did not inves­ti­gate the U.S. offi­cers whose con­duct led direct­ly to the mur­der of Kun­ze. Jawors­ki lat­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in tri­als of Third Reich alum­ni accused of war crimes, includ­ing the tri­al of Dachau med­ical per­son­nel. “. . . . Col. Leon Jawors­ki, who will be in charge of the tri­al, esti­mates that at least 5,000 Jews died at Dachau from ordi­nary mis­treat­ment and tor­ture, while any­where between 1,000 and 3,000 died as a result of med­ical exper­i­ments per­formed upon them. . . .” The grue­some Dachau med­ical exper­i­ments: 1) Were per­formed by five doc­tors who were on the Project Paper­clip pay­roll by the time Jawors­ki again man­i­fest­ed judi­cial restraint: ” . . . . Five doc­tors work­ing at the cen­ter start­ing in the fall of 1945 were on the list: Theodor Ben­zinger, Siegried Ruff, Kon­rad Schafer, Her­mann Beck­er-Frey­seng, and Oskar Schroder. Instead of fir­ing these physi­cians sus­pect­ed of heinous war crimes, the cen­ter kept the doc­tors in its employ and the list was clas­si­fied. . . .” 2) Involved tri­als by four of the Paper­clip recruits of two process­es aimed at puri­fy­ing sea­wa­ter for drink­ing, with grue­some results for the Dachau “Unter­men­schen”: “. . . . Dr. Oskar Schroder, head of the Luft­waffe Med­ical Corps, was thrilled. Kon­rad Schafer had ‘devel­oped a process which actu­al­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed the salts from the sea water,’ Schroder lat­er tes­ti­fied. . . . The effec­tive­ness of both the Schafer process and the Berka method would be test­ed on the Unter­men­schen at Dachau. A Luft­waffe physi­cian named Her­mann Beck­er-Frey­seng was assigned to assist Dr. Schafer, and to coau­thor with him a paper doc­u­ment­ing the results of the con­test. The senior doc­tor advis­ing Beck­er-Frey­seng and Schafer in their work was Dr. Siegfried Ruff. . . .” 3) Were filmed and screened for SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler by the fifth Paper­clip recruit, Dr. Theodor Ben­zinger: ” . . . .This was the same Dr. Ben­zinger who had over­seen for Himm­ler the film screen­ing at the Reich Air Min­istry, in Berlin, of Dachau pris­on­ers being mur­dered in med­ical exper­i­ments. . . .” 4) Became part of an exper­i­men­tal con­tin­u­um, in which the Nazi research on Aeromed­ical Med­i­cine per­formed at the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute pro­ceed­ed unin­ter­rupt­ed under U.S. Army Air Force com­mand: ” . . . . The Army Air Forces Aero Med­ical Cen­ter in Hei­del­berg  . . . only a few months pri­or . . .  had been the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute for Med­ical Research, a bas­tion of Nazi sci­ence where chemists and physi­cists worked on projects for the Reich’s war machine. At its front entrance, the Reich’s flag came down and the U.S. Flag went up. Pho­tographs of Hitler were pulled from the walls and replaced by framed pho­tographs of Army Air Forces gen­er­als in mil­i­tary pose. Most of the fur­ni­ture stayed the same. In the din­ing room, Ger­man wait­ers in white servers’ coats pro­vid­ed table ser­vice at meal­times. A sin­gle 5” X 8” req­ui­si­tion receipt, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 14, 1945, made the tran­si­tion offi­cial: ‘This prop­er­ty is need­ed by U.S. Forces, and the req­ui­si­tion is in pro­por­tion to the resources of the coun­try.’ Again, then Colonel Jawors­ki appar­ent­ly exer­cised “judi­cial restraint.” Fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, Jawors­ki became both a War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel and, with Judge Robert Storey, head­ed the Texas Court of Inquiry, the Texas judi­cial body charged with inves­ti­gat­ing JFK’s mur­der. As dis­cussed in the linked Guns of Novem­ber, Part 3, Jawors­ki sat on the board of direc­tors of the M.D. Ander­son Fund, a doc­u­ment­ed CIA domes­tic fund­ing con­duit. In an ear­li­er pro­fes­sion­al incar­na­tion, Storey–as Colonel Robert Storey (above, right)–passed along the word that the de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion edict was to be “relaxed” dur­ing the Nurem­berg tri­als. ” . . . . Colonel Robert Storey, the U.S. exec­u­tive tri­al coun­sel at the Inter­na­tion­al Mil­i­tary Tri­bunal and a senior aide to Robert Jack­son, has ‘passed the word down that the denaz­i­fi­ca­tion direc­tive was to be relaxed,’ . . . .” It seems prob­a­ble that the selec­tion of the com­po­si­tion of both the War­ren Com­mis­sion and the Texas Court of Inquiry was shaped, in part, by the per­ceived neces­si­ty of con­ceal­ing the many Nazis under the Amer­i­can bed.

FTR #1054, FTR #1055 and FTR #1056 Interviews #23, #24 and #25 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

These are the twen­ty-third, twen­ty-fourth and twen­ty-fifth (and con­clud­ing pro­gram) in a long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

The first inter­view begins with a telling edi­to­r­i­al writ­ten for “The Wash­ing­ton Post” by for­mer Pres­i­dent Har­ry Tru­man.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 378–379.

. . . . On Decem­ber 22, 1963, Har­ry Tru­man wrote an edi­to­r­i­al that was pub­lished in the Wash­ing­ton Post. The for­mer Pres­i­dent wrote that he had become “dis­turbed by the way the CIA had become divert­ed from its orig­i­nal assign­ment. It has become an oper­a­tional and at times a pol­i­cy-mak­ing arm of gov­ern­ment.” He wrote that he nev­er dreamed that this would hap­pen when he signed the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Act. he thought it would be used for intel­li­gence analy­sis, not “peace­time cloak and dag­ger oper­a­tions.” He com­plained that the CIA had now become “so removed from its intend­ed role that it is being inter­pret­ed as a sym­bol of sin­is­ter and mys­te­ri­ous for­eign intrigue–and a sub­ject for Cold War ene­my pro­pa­gan­da.” Tru­man went as far as sug­gest­ing its oper­a­tional arm be elim­i­nat­ed. He con­clud­ed with the warn­ing that Amer­i­cans have grown up learn­ing respect for “our free insti­tu­tions and for our abil­i­ty to main­tain a free and open soci­ety. There is some­thing about the way the CIA has been func­tion­ing that is cast­ing a shad­ow over out his­toric posi­tion and I feel hat we need to cor­rect it.” . . . .

For­mer CIA Direc­tor (and then War­ren Com­mis­sion mem­ber) Allen Dulles vis­it­ed Tru­man and attempt­ed to get him to retract the state­ment. He dis­sem­bled about then CIA chief John McCone’s view of the edi­to­r­i­al.

The focal point of the first two pro­grams is the dra­mat­ic changes in U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy that occurred because of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. Analy­sis in FTR #1056 con­tin­ues the analy­sis of Kennedy’s for­eign pol­i­cy and con­cludes with riv­et­ing dis­cus­sion of the strik­ing pol­i­cy under­tak­ings of the Kennedy admin­is­tra­tion in the area of civ­il rights. Jim has writ­ten a mar­velous, 4‑part analy­sis of JFK’s civ­il rights pol­i­cy.

Dis­cus­sion of JFK’s for­eign pol­i­cy and how his mur­der changed that builds on, and sup­ple­ments analy­sis of this in FTR #1031, FTR #1032 and FTR #1033.

Lyn­don Baines John­son reversed JFK’s for­eign pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives in a num­ber of impor­tant ways.

When the Unit­ed States reneged on its com­mit­ment to pur­sue inde­pen­dence for the colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries of its Euro­pean allies at the end of the Sec­ond World War, the stage was set for those nations’ desire for free­dom to be cast as incip­i­ent Marxists/Communists. This devel­op­ment was the foun­da­tion for epic blood­shed and calami­ty.

Jim details then Con­gress­man John F. Kennedy’s 1951 fact-find­ing trip to Saigon to gain an under­stand­ing of the French war to retain their colony of Indochi­na. (Viet­nam was part of that colony.)

In speak­ing with career diplo­mat Edmund Gul­lion, Kennedy came to the real­iza­tion that not only would the French lose the war, but that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh guer­ril­las enjoyed great pop­u­lar sup­port among the Viet­namese peo­ple.

This aware­ness guid­ed JFK’s Viet­nam pol­i­cy, in which he not only resist­ed tremen­dous pres­sure to com­mit U.S. com­bat troops to Viet­nam, but planned a with­draw­al of U.S. forces from Viet­nam.

Per­haps the most impor­tant change made after JFK’s assas­si­na­tion was John­son’s nega­tion of Kennedy’s plans to with­draw from Viet­nam.

LBJ can­celled Kennedy’s sched­uled troop with­draw­al, sched­uled per­son­nel increas­es and imple­ment­ed the 34A pro­gram of covert oper­a­tions against North Viet­nam. Exe­cut­ed by South Viet­namese naval com­man­dos using small, Amer­i­can-made patrol boats, these raids were sup­port­ed by U.S. destroy­ers in the Gulf of Tonkin, which were elec­tron­i­cal­ly “fin­ger­print­ing” North Viet­namese radar instal­la­tions.

The elec­tron­ic fin­ger­print­ing of North Viet­namese radar was in antic­i­pa­tion of a pre-planned air war, a fun­da­men­tal part of a plan by LBJ to involve the Unit­ed States in a full-scale war in South­east Asia.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 368–371.

. . . . Clear­ly now that the with­draw­al was immi­nent, Kennedy was going to try and get the rest of his admin­is­tra­tion on board to his way of think­ing. Not only did this not hap­pen once Kennedy was dead, but the first meet­ing on Viet­nam after­wards was a strong indi­ca­tion that things were now going to be cast in a sharply dif­fer­ent tone. This meet­ing took place at 3:00 p.m. on Novem­ber 24. . . . John­son’s intent was clear to McNa­ma­ra. He was break­ing with the pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy. The goal now was to win the war. LBJ then issued a strong warn­ing: He want­ed no more dis­sen­sion or divi­sion over pol­i­cy. Any per­son who did not con­form would be removed. (This would lat­er be demon­strat­ed by his ban­ning of Hubert Humphrey from Viet­nam meet­ings when Humphrey advised John­son to rethink his pol­i­cy of mil­i­tary com­mit­ment to Viet­nam.) . . . . The read­er should recall, this meet­ing took place just forty-eight hours after Kennedy was killed. . . .

. . . . There­fore, on March 2, 1964, the Joint Chiefs passed a new war pro­pos­al to the White House. This was even more ambi­tious than the Jan­u­ary ver­sion. It includ­ed bomb­ing, the min­ing of North Viet­namese har­bors, a naval block­ade, and pos­si­ble use of tac­ti­cal atom­ic weapons in case Chi­na inter­vened. John­son was now draw­ing up a full scale bat­tle plan for Viet­nam. In oth­er words, what Kennedy did not do in three years, LBJ had done in three months.

John­son said he was not ready for this pro­pos­al since he did not have con­gress yet as a part­ner and trustee. But he did order the prepa­ra­tion of NSAM 288, which was based on this pro­pos­al. It was essen­tial­ly a tar­get list of bomb­ing sites that even­tu­al­ly reached 94 pos­si­bil­i­ties. By May 25, with Richard Nixon and Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter clam­or­ing for bomb­ing of the north, LBJ had made the deci­sion that the U.S. would direct­ly attack North Viet­nam at an unspec­i­fied point in the future. But it is impor­tant to note that even before the Tonkin Gulf inci­dent, John­son had ordered the draw­ing up of a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion. This had been final­ized by William Bundy, McGe­orge Bundy’s broth­er. There­fore in June of 1964, John­son began lob­by­ing cer­tain peo­ple for its pas­sage in con­gress. . . .

Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Mem­o­ran­dum 263

. . . . John­son seized upon the hazy and con­tro­ver­sial events in the Gulf of Tonkin dur­ing the first week of August to begin he air war planned in NSAM 288. Yet the Tonkin Gulf inci­dent had been pre­pared by John­son him­self. After Kennedy’s death, Pres­i­dent John­son made a few alter­ations in the draft of NSAM 273. An order which Kennedy had nev­er seen but was draft­ed by McGe­orge Bundy after a meet­ing in Hon­olu­lu, a meet­ing which took place while Kennedy was vis­it­ing Texas. . . .

. . . . On August 2, the destroy­er Mad­dox was attacked by three North Viet­namese tor­pe­do boats. Although tor­pe­does were launched, none hit. The total dam­age to the Mad­dox
was one bul­let through the hull. Both John­son and the Defense Depart­ment mis­rep­re­sent­ed this inci­dent to con­gress and the press. They said the North Viet­namese fired first, that the USA had no role in the patrol boat raids, that the ships were in inter­na­tion­al waters, and there was no hot pur­suit by the Mad­dox. These were all wrong. Yet John­son used this overblown report­ing, plus a non-exis­tent attack two nights lat­er on the destroy­er Turn­er Joy to begin to push his war res­o­lu­tion through Con­gress. He then took out the tar­get list assem­bled for NSAM 288 [from March of 1964–D.E] and ordered air strikes that very day. . . .

. . . . For on August 7, John­son sent a mes­sage to Gen­er­al Maxwell Tay­lor. He want­ed a whole gamut of pos­si­ble oper­a­tions pre­sent­ed to him for direct Amer­i­can attacks against the North. The tar­get date for the sys­tem­at­ic air war was set for Jan­u­ary 1965. This was called oper­a­tion Rolling Thun­der and it end­ed up being the largest bomb­ing cam­paign in mil­i­tary his­to­ry. The read­er should note: the Jan­u­ary tar­get date was the month John­son would be inau­gu­rat­ed after his re-elec­tion. As John New­man not­ed in his mas­ter­ful book JFK and Viet­nam, Kennedy was dis­guis­ing his with­draw­al plan around his re-elec­tion; John­son was dis­guis­ing his esca­la­tion plan around his re-elec­tion. . . .

In addi­tion to not­ing that Hubert Humphrey, con­trary to pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tion, was an oppo­nent of John­son’s war strat­e­gy, we note that Robert McNa­ma­ra was also opposed to it, although he went along with the Com­man­der in Chief’s poli­cies.

After detailed dis­cus­sion of the human and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age inflict­ed on Viet­nam and the strat­e­gy imple­ment­ed by LBJ after Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, the dis­cus­sion turns to John­son’s rever­sal of Kennedy’s pol­i­cy with regard to Laos.

The fledg­ling nation of Laos was also part of French Indochi­na, and Jim notes how out­go­ing Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er coached Pres­i­dent-Elect Kennedy on the neces­si­ty of com­mit­ting U.S. com­bat forces to Laos.

Again, Kennedy refused to com­mit U.S. ground forces and engi­neered a pol­i­cy of neu­tral­i­ty for Laos.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 54.

. . . . At his first press con­fer­ence, Kennedy said that he hoped to estab­lish Laos as a “peace­ful country–an inde­pen­dent coun­try not dom­i­nat­ed by either side.” He appoint­ed a task force to study the prob­lem, was in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with it and the Laot­ian ambas­sador, and decid­ed by Feb­ru­ary that Laos must have a coali­tion gov­ern­ment, the likes of which Eisen­how­er had reject­ed out of hand. Kennedy also had lit­tle inter­est in a mil­i­tary solu­tion. He could not under­stand send­ing Amer­i­can troops to fight for a coun­try whose peo­ple did not care to fight for them­selves. . . . He there­fore worked to get the Rus­sians to push the Pathet Lao into a cease-fire agree­ment. This includ­ed a maneu­ver on Kennedy’s part to indi­cate mil­i­tary pres­sure if the Rus­sians did not inter­vene strong­ly enough with the Pathet Lao. The maneu­ver worked, and in May of 1961, a truce was called. A few days lat­er, a con­fer­ence con­vened in Gene­va to ham­mer out con­di­tions for a neu­tral Laos. By July of 1962, a new gov­ern­ment, which includ­ed the Pathet Lao, had been ham­mered out. . . .

Where­as JFK had imple­ment­ed a pol­i­cy afford­ing neu­tral­i­ty to Laos–against the wish­es of the Joint Chiefs, CIA and many of his own cab­i­net, LBJ scrapped the neu­tral­ist pol­i­cy in favor of a CIA-imple­ment­ed strat­e­gy of employ­ing “nar­co-mili­tias” such as the Hmong tribes­men as com­bat­ants against the Pathet Lao. This counter-insur­gency war­fare was com­ple­ment­ed by a mas­sive aer­i­al bomb­ing cam­paign.

One of the many out­growths of LBJ’s rever­sal of JFK’s South­east pol­i­cy was a wave of CIA-assist­ed hero­in addict­ing both GI’s in Viet­nam and Amer­i­can civil­ians at home.

LBJ also reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy toward Indone­sia.

In 1955, Sukarno host­ed a con­fer­ence of non-aligned nations that for­mal­ized and con­cretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nation­al­ism of some Dutch indus­tri­al prop­er­ties, led the U.S. to try and over­throw Sukharno, which was attempt­ed in 1958.

Kennedy under­stood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indone­sia in 1964 to forge a more con­struc­tive rela­tion­ship with Sukharno. Obvi­ous­ly, his mur­der in 1963 pre­clud­ed the trip.

In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aid­ed coup in which as many as a mil­lion peo­ple were killed.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est in con­nec­tion with Indone­sia, is the dis­po­si­tion of Freeport Sul­phur, a com­pa­ny that had enlist­ed the ser­vices of both Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie in an effort to cir­cum­vent lim­i­ta­tions on its oper­a­tions imposed by Cas­tro’s Cuba:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.

. . . . In Chap­ter 1, the author intro­duced Freeport Sul­phur and its sub­sidiaries Moa Bay Min­ing and Nicaro Nick­el. These com­pa­nies all had large invest­ments in Cuba pri­or to Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion. And this end­ed up being one of the ways that Gar­ri­son con­nect­ed Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie. This came about for two rea­sons. First, with Cas­tro tak­ing over their oper­a­tions in Cuba, Freeport was attempt­ing to inves­ti­gate bring­ing in nick­el ore from Cuba, through Cana­da, which still had trade rela­tions with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at anoth­er plant in Braith­waite. Shaw, an impres­sario of inter­na­tion­al trade, was on this explorato­ry team for Freeport. And he and two oth­er men had been flown to Cana­da by Fer­rie as part of this effort. More evi­dence of this con­nec­tion through Freeport was found dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion of Guy Ban­is­ter. Ban­is­ter appar­ent­ly knew about anoth­er flight tak­en by Shaw with an offi­cial of Freeport, like­ly Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Fer­rie. Anoth­er rea­son this Freeport con­nec­tion was impor­tant to Gar­ri­son is that he found a wit­ness named James Plaine in Hous­ton who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sul­phur had con­tact­ed him in regards to an assas­si­na­tion plot against Cas­tro. Con­sid­er­ing the amount of mon­ey Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the num­ber of East­ern Estab­lish­ment lumi­nar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with the company–such as Jock Whit­ney, Jean Mauze and God­frey Rockefeller–it is not sur­pris­ing that such a thing was con­tem­plat­ed with­in their ranks. . . .

LBJ reversed Kennedy’s pol­i­cy vis a vis Sukarno. It should be not­ed that Freeport had set its cor­po­rate sights on a very lucra­tive pair of moun­tains in Indone­sia, both of which had enor­mous deposits of min­er­als, iron, cop­per, sil­ver and gold in par­tic­u­lar.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 374–375.

. . . . Short­ly after, his aid bill land­ed on John­son’s desk. The new pres­i­dent refused to sign it. . . .

. . . . In return for not sign­ing the aid bill, in 1964, LBJ received sup­port from Both Augus­tus Long and Jock Whit­ney of Freeport Sul­phur in his race against Bar­ry Gold­wa­ter. In fact, Long estab­lished a group called the Nation­al Inde­pen­dent Com­mit­tee for John­son. This group of wealthy busi­ness­men includ­ed Robert Lehman of Lehman Broth­ers and Thomas Cabot, Michael Paine’s cousin. . . . Then, in ear­ly 1965, Augus­tus Long was reward­ed for help­ing John­son get elect­ed. LBJ app[ointed him to the For­eign Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board. This is a small group of wealthy pri­vate cit­i­zens who advis­es the pres­i­dent on intel­li­gence mat­ters. The mem­bers of this group can approve and sug­gest covert activ­i­ties abroad. This appoint­ment is notable for what was about to occur. For with Sukarno now unpro­tect­ed by Pres­i­dent Kennedy, the writ­ing was on the wall. The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency now bean to send into Indone­sia its so called “first team.” . . . .

. . . . Suhar­to now began to sell off Indone­si­a’s rich­es to the high­est bid­der. Includ­ing Freeport Sul­phur, which opened what were per­haps the largest cop­per and gold mines in the world there. . . . Freeport, along with sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies, now har­vest­ed bil­lions from the Suhar­to regime. . . .

Yet anoth­er area in which JFK’s pol­i­cy out­look ran afoul of the pre­vail­ing wis­dom of the Cold War was with regard to the Con­go. A Bel­gian colony which was the vic­tim of geno­ci­dal poli­cies of King Leopold (esti­mates of the dead run as high as 8 mil­lion), the dia­mond and min­er­al-rich Con­go gained a frag­ile inde­pen­dence.

In Africa, as well, Kennedy under­stood the strug­gle of emerg­ing nations seek­ing free­dom from colo­nial dom­i­na­tion as falling out­side of and tran­scend­ing stereo­typed Cold War dynam­ics.

In the Con­go, the bru­tal­ly admin­is­tered Bel­gian rule had spawned a vig­or­ous inde­pen­dence move­ment crys­tal­lized around the charis­mat­ic Patrice Lumum­ba. Under­stand­ing of, and sym­pa­thet­ic to Lumum­ba and the ide­ol­o­gy and polit­i­cal forces embod­ied in him, Kennedy opposed the reac­tionary sta­tus quo favored by both Euro­pean allies like the Unit­ed King­dom and Bel­gium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the Unit­ed States.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 28–29.

. . . . By 1960, a native rev­o­lu­tion­ary leader named Patrice Lumum­ba had gal­va­nized the nation­al­ist feel­ing of the coun­try. Bel­gium decid­ed to pull out. But they did so rapid­ly, know­ing that tumult would ensue and they could return to col­o­nize the coun­try again. After Lumum­ba was appoint­ed prime min­is­ter, tumult did ensue. The Bel­gians and the British backed a rival who had Lumum­ba dis­missed. They then urged the break­ing away of the Katan­ga province because of its enor­mous min­er­al wealth. Lumum­ba looked to the Unit­ed Nations for help, and also the USA. The for­mer decid­ed to help, . The Unit­ed States did not. In fact, when Lumum­ba vis­it­ed Wash­ing­ton July of 1960, Eisen­how­er delib­er­ate­ly fled to Rhode Island. Rebuffed by Eisen­how­er, Lumum­ba now turned to the Rus­sians for help in expelling the Bel­gians from Katan­ga. This sealed his fate in the eyes of Eisen­how­er and Allen Dulles. The pres­i­dent now autho­rized a series of assas­si­na­tion plots by the CIA to kill Lumum­ba. These plots final­ly suc­ceed­ed on Jan­u­ary 17, 1961, three days before Kennedy was inau­gu­rat­ed.

His first week in office, Kennedy request­ed a full review of the Eisenhower/Dulles pol­i­cy in Con­go. The Amer­i­can ambas­sador to that impor­tant African nation heard of this review and phoned Allen Dulles to alert him that Pres­i­dent Kennedy was about to over­turn pre­vi­ous pol­i­cy there. Kennedy did over­turn this pol­i­cy on Feb­ru­ary 2, 1961. Unlike Eisen­how­er and Allen Dulles, Kennedy announced he would begin full coop­er­a­tion with Sec­re­tary Dag Ham­marskjold at the Unit­ed Nations on this thorny issue in order to bring all the armies in that war-torn nation under con­trol. He would also attempt top neu­tral­ize the coun­try so there would be no East/West Cold War com­pe­ti­tion. Third, all polit­i­cal pris­on­ers being held should be freed. Not know­ing he was dead, this part was aimed at for­mer prime min­is­ter Lumum­ba, who had been cap­tured by his ene­mies. (There is evi­dence that, know­ing Kennedy would favor Lumum­ba, Dulles had him killed before JFK was inau­gu­rat­ed.) Final­ly, Kennedy opposed the seces­sion of min­er­al-rich Katan­ga province. . . . Thus began Kennedy’s near­ly three year long strug­gle to see Con­go not fall back under the claw of Euro­pean impe­ri­al­ism. . . . ”

In the Con­go, as in Indone­sia, LBJ reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy stance, and the cor­po­rate loot­ing of the Con­go result­ed under Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, him­self a ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the pira­cy.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 372–373.

. . . . But in Octo­ber and Novem­ber [of 1963], things began to fall apart. Kennedy want­ed Colonel Michael Greene, an African expert, to train the Con­golese army in order

to sub­due a left­ist rebel­lion. But Gen­er­al Joseph Mobu­tu, with the back­ing of the Pen­ta­gon, man­aged to resist this train­ing, which the Unit­ed Nations backed. In 1964, the com­mu­nist rebel­lion picked up steam and began tak­ing whole provinces. The White House did some­thing Kennedy nev­er seri­ous­ly con­tem­plat­ed: uni­lat­er­al action by the USA. John­son and McGe­orge Bundy had the CIA fly sor­ties with Cuban pilots to halt the com­mu­nist advance. With­out Kennedy, the UN now with­drew. Amer­i­ca now became an ally of Bel­gium and inter­vened with arms, air­planes and advis­ers. Mobu­tu now invit­ed Tshombe back into the gov­ern­ment. Tshombe, per­haps at the request of the CIA, now said that the rebel­lion was part of a Chi­nese plot to take over Con­go. Kennedy had called in Edmund Gul­lion to super­vise the attempt to make the Con­go gov­ern­ment into a mod­er­ate coali­tion, avoid­ing the extremes of left and right. But with the Tshombe/Mobutu alliance, that was now dashed. Rightwing South Africans and Rhode­sians were now allowed to join the Con­golese army in a war on the “Chi­nese-inspired left.” And with the Unit­ed Nations gone, this was all done under the aus­pices of the Unit­ed States. The right­ward tilt now con­tin­ued unabat­ed. By 1965, Mobu­tu had gained com­plete pow­er. And in 1966, he installed him­self as mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor. . . . Mobu­tu now allowed his coun­try to be opened up to loads of out­side invest­ment. The rich­es of the Con­go were mined by huge West­ern cor­po­ra­tions. Their own­ers and offi­cers grew wealthy while Mobu­tu’s sub­jects were mired in pover­ty. Mobu­tu also sti­fled polit­i­cal dis­sent. And he now became one of the rich­est men in Africa, per­haps the world. . . .

In FTR #1033, we exam­ined JFK’s attempts at nor­mal­iz­ing rela­tions with Cuba. That, of course, van­ished with his assas­si­na­tion and the deep­en­ing of Cold War hos­til­i­ty between the U.S. and the Island nation, with a thaw of sorts com­ing under Barack Oba­ma a few years ago.

There is no more strik­ing area in which JFK’s mur­der reversed what would have been his­toric changes in Amer­i­ca’s for­eign pol­i­cy than U.S.-Soviet rela­tions.

JFK had imple­ment­ed a ban on atmos­pher­ic test­ing of nuclear weapons, bit­ter­ly opposed by the Pen­ta­gon, In a June, 1963 speech at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, JFK called for re-eval­u­at­ing Amer­i­ca’s rela­tion­ship to the Sovi­et Union, and cit­ed the U.S.S.R’s deci­sive role in defeat­ing Nazi Ger­many dur­ing World War II.

JFK was also propos­ing joint space explo­ration with the Sovi­et Union, which would have appeared to be noth­ing less than trea­so­nous to the Pen­ta­gon and NASA at the time. After JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, the Kennedy fam­i­ly used a backchan­nel diplo­mat­ic con­duit to the Sovi­et lead­er­ship to com­mu­ni­cate their view that the Sovi­et Union, and its Cuban ally, had been blame­less in the assas­si­na­tion and that pow­er­ful right-wing forces in the Unit­ed States had been behind the assas­si­na­tion.

Per­haps JFK’s great­est con­tri­bu­tion was one that has received scant notice. In 1961, the Joint Chiefs were push­ing for a first strike on the Sovi­et Union–a deci­sion to ini­ti­ate nuclear war. JFK refused, walk­ing out of the dis­cus­sion with the dis­gust­ed obser­va­tion that “We call our­selves the human race.”

In FTR #‘s 876, 926 and 1051, we exam­ined the cre­ation of the meme that Oswald had been net­work­ing with the Cubans and Sovi­ets in the run-up to the assas­si­na­tion. In par­tic­u­lar, Oswald was sup­pos­ed­ly meet­ing with Valery Kostikov, a KGB offi­cial in charge of assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

This cre­at­ed the pre­text for blam­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion on the Sovi­et Union and/or Cuba. There are indi­ca­tions that JFK’s assas­si­na­tion may well have been intend­ed as a pre­text for a nuclear first strike on the Sovi­et Union.

JFK and the Unspeak­able: Why He Died and Why It Mat­ters by James W. Dou­glass; Touch­stone Books [SC]; Copy­right 2008 by James W. Dou­glas; ISBN 978–1‑4391–9388‑4; pp. 242–243.

. . . . As JFK may have recalled from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing he walked out of in July 1961, the first Net Eval­u­a­tion Sub­com­mit­tee report had focused pre­cise­ly on “a sur­prise attack in late 1963, pre­ced­ed by a peri­od of height­ened ten­sions.” Kennedy was a keen read­er and lis­ten­er. In the sec­ond pre­emp­tive-war report, he may also have noticed the slight but sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­an­cy between its over­all time frame, 1963–1968, and the extent of its rel­a­tive­ly reas­sur­ing con­clu­sion, which cov­ered only 1964 through 1968. . . .

. . . . In his cat-and-mouse ques­tion­ing of his mil­i­tary chiefs, Pres­i­dent Kennedy had built upon the report’s appar­ent­ly reas­sur­ing con­clu­sion in such a way as to dis­cour­age pre­emp­tive-war ambi­tions. How­ev­er, giv­en the “late 1963” focus in the first Net Report that that was the most threat­en­ing time for a pre­emp­tive strike, Kennedy had lit­tle rea­son to be reas­sured by a sec­ond report that implic­it­ly con­firmed that time as the one of max­i­mum dan­ger. The per­son­al­ly fatal fall JFK was about to enter, in late 1963, was the same time his mil­i­tary com­man­ders may have con­sid­ered their last chance to “win” (in their terms) a pre­emp­tive war against the Sovi­et Union. In terms of their sec­ond Net Report to the Pres­i­dent, which passed over the per­ilous mean­ing of late 1963, the cat-and-mouse game had been reversed. It was the gen­er­als who were the cats, and JFK the mouse in their midst.

The explic­it assump­tion of the first Net Report was “a sur­prise attack in late 1963, pre­ced­ed by a peri­od of height­ened ten­sions.” The focus of that first-strike sce­nario cor­re­spond­ed to the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion sce­nario. When Pres­i­dent Kennedy was mur­dered in late 1963, the Sovi­et Union had been set up as the major scape­goat in the plot. If the tac­tic had been suc­cess­ful in scape­goat­ing the Rus­sians for the crime of the cen­tu­ry, there is lit­tle doubt that it would have result­ed in “a peri­od of height­ened ten­sions” between the Unit­ed States and the Sovi­et Union.

Those who designed the plot to kill Kennedy were famil­iar with the inner sanc­tum of our nation­al secu­ri­ty state. Their attempt to scape­goat the Sovi­ets for the Pres­i­den­t’s mur­der reflect­ed one side of the secret strug­gle between JFK and his mil­i­tary lead­ers over a pre­emp­tive strike against the Sovi­et Union. The assas­sins’ pur­pose seems to have encom­passed not only killing a Pres­i­dent deter­mined to make peace with the ene­my, but also using his mur­der as the impe­tus for a pos­si­ble nuclear first strike against that same ene­my. . . .

With the GOP and Trump admin­is­tra­tion open­ly sup­press­ing vot­ing rights of minori­ties, African-Amer­i­cans in par­tic­u­lar, the stel­lar efforts of JFK and the Jus­tice Depart­ment in the area of civ­il rights is strik­ing. JFK’s civ­il rights pol­i­cy was expo­nen­tial­ly greater than what had pre­ced­ed him, and much of what fol­lowed.

The con­clu­sion of the dis­cus­sion in FTR #1056 con­sists of Jim’s dis­cus­sion of his mar­velous, 4‑part analy­sis of JFK’s civ­il rights pol­i­cy.