Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'OSS' is associated with 82 posts.

“The Wallenberg File”: A Characteristically Important Article from Mr. Emory’s Patreon Platform

The ele­va­tion of Raoul Wal­len­berg to the sta­tus of a saint eclipses very impor­tant infor­ma­tion about his appar­ent col­lab­o­ra­tion with SS-con­trolled busi­ness con­tacts. More impor­tant­ly, Wal­len­berg was a mem­ber of a con­sum­mate­ly pow­er­ful fam­i­ly of Swedish oli­garchs, whose oper­a­tions active­ly aid­ed Nazi Ger­many in a fun­da­men­tal way and whose Amer­i­can sub­sidiary prop­er­ties com­mit­ted trea­son against the U.S. As peo­ple with an oblig­a­tion to our descen­dants, we have the respon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­serve a record of the events lead­ing to the col­lapse of our social and polit­i­cal milieu. There is no bet­ter way of ful­fill­ing that oblig­a­tion than by obtain­ing the lat­est flash dri­ve, con­tain­ing all of Dav­e’s 45+ years on the air and a library of old anti-fas­cist books. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


FTR#‘s 1395, 1396 & 1397: The American Elite and the Origins of The CIA, Parts 1, 2 and 3

This lec­ture delin­eates the pro­found con­nec­tions between Wall Street and U.S. intel­li­gence. Specif­i­cal­ly, the talk high­lights the dis­pro­por­tion­ate influ­ence of key Wall Street law firms upon the for­ma­tion and devel­op­ment of both the OSS (Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices), Amer­i­ca’s World War II civil­ian intel­li­gence ser­vice and its suc­ces­sor, the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. Men such as William Dono­van, Allen Dulles and Frank Wis­ner were both key intel­li­gence offi­cers and pow­er­ful Wall Street lawyers. Along with men like John Fos­ter Dulles (Allen’s broth­er and part­ner in Sul­li­van & Cromwell), Carmel Offie, William Bul­litt, George Ken­nan, Paul Nitze and James For­re­stal, they did much to shape the his­to­ry of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The dis­cus­sion begins with the Ver­sailles Treaty con­clud­ing the First World War. Key fig­ures in the machi­na­tions of the U.S. del­e­ga­tion to the Ver­sailles nego­ti­a­tions fig­ure promi­nent­ly in the devel­op­ment of U.S. intel­li­gence and nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy for decades to fol­low. They also played a pri­ma­ry role in assist­ing the devel­op­ment of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism, before, dur­ing and after World War II. After Ver­sailles, John Fos­ter Dulles (a key mem­ber of the Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion), act­ing as Spe­cial Coun­sel to the Dawes Com­mit­tee, helped arrange the loans that re-cap­i­tal­ized Ger­many under the Dawes Plan. Fos­ter’s promi­nent Wall Street law firm, the above-men­tioned Sul­li­van & Cromwell, prof­it­ed hand­some­ly from those loans, as well. Dulles’ broth­er Allen also prac­ticed for Sul­li­van & Cromwell.

The firms cap­i­tal­ized under the Dawes and Young plans were instru­men­tal in pro­mot­ing the rise of Hitler and cre­at­ing his war machine. Mus­soli­ni, Fran­co and Poland’s Pil­sud­s­ki were among the Euro­pean fas­cists who ben­e­fit­ed from the largesse of the Wall Street Elite.

The lec­ture high­lights the role in Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence service–the Office of Strate­gic Services–of Allen Dulles and anoth­er promi­nent Wall Street lawyer, Frank Wis­ner. Dulles served as head of the Berne (Switzer­land) office of OSS and lat­er in Berlin after the war. In both posi­tions, Dulles inter­faced close­ly with mem­bers of the Ger­man indus­tri­al and finan­cial elite with whom he had worked while serv­ing with Sul­li­van & Cromwell. Through these con­tacts, Dulles was instru­men­tal in help­ing to pre­serve this Ger­man elite after the war.

One of Dulles’ prin­ci­pal con­tacts was Gero von Gaever­nitz, who played an impor­tant role in intro­duc­ing Ger­man spy­mas­ter Rein­hard Gehlen to the U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tives who proved instru­men­tal in bring­ing the gen­er­al and his orga­ni­za­tion into the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence appa­rat. The lec­ture high­lights the work for both OSS and CIA of Frank Wis­ner, a part­ner with Carter, Led­yard and Mil­burn, anoth­er pow­er­ful Wall Street Law Firm that was the coun­sel for the New York Stock Exchange. (Lat­er, when Wis­ner went to work for the CIA as Deputy Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence, anoth­er Deputy Direc­tor, Hard­ing Jack­son, was also a for­mer part­ner in Carter, Led­yard and Mil­burn.) Both Dulles and Wis­ner worked inti­mate­ly with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion when the ex-OSS duo “grad­u­at­ed” to posts with the CIA.

The lec­ture delin­eates John Fos­ter Dulles’ role as Sec­re­tary of State under Eisen­how­er, when Allen was Direc­tor of the CIA. George Ken­nan was the author of the “con­tain­ment strat­e­gy,” a key ele­ment of Amer­i­can Cold War pol­i­cy. As a diplo­mat serv­ing in Moscow pri­or to World War II, Ken­nan became an inti­mate of Gus­tav Hilger, a key Third Reich diplo­mat who worked for the US after World War II.

Lec­ture High­lights Include: dis­cus­sion of OSS chief William Dono­van’s role as an anti-Bol­she­vik emis­sary of Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ist J.P. Mor­gan in the 1920’s; Dono­van’s work as a key Wall Street lawyer pri­or to the war; Paul Nitze and James For­re­stal’s work for Dil­lon, Read (deeply involved in fund­ing the Third Reich); Nitze’s and For­re­stal’s post-war role as anti-com­mu­nist cru­saders; the role of Sir William Stephen­son in devel­op­ing the OSS (Stephen­son was Britain’s pri­ma­ry spy­mas­ter in the Amer­i­c­as dur­ing World War II); Stephen­son’s alliance with key Mor­gan asso­ciate Edward Stet­tinius; the role of Ian Flem­ing (the author of the James Bond nov­els) in aid­ing Stephen­son’s intel­li­gence work in the U.S.


Latest Patreon Talk: History of French Fascism–Cartels, La Cagoule, Vichy, Postwar Fascist International

In the lat­est Patre­on talk, record­ed on French Elec­tion Day, 4/24/2022, we explore the his­to­ry of French fas­cism from the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate links of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry to the rise of the Front Nation­al. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is on the con­ti­nu­ity from the Pre-WWII Cagoule, through the SS-aligned Vichy fas­cist milieu to the oper­a­tions of the post-WWII fas­cist inter­na­tion­al. The talk high­lights some of the French fas­cists in Dal­las, Texas, 11/22/1963. 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 Talk: US Intelligence Officials Wear Two Hats; Spooks and Wall Street Lawyers

The top intel­li­gence offi­cers whose activ­i­ties shaped the polit­i­cal land­scape of the 20th cen­tu­ry and the foun­da­tions of polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic real­i­ty of the 21st wore the dual hats of promi­nent cor­po­rate lawyers and exec­u­tive-lev­el spooks. Sul­li­van & Cromwell part­ners John Fos­ter and Allen Dulles were Eisen­how­er’s Sec­re­tary of State and CIA Direc­tor, respec­tive­ly. High­lights Include: CIA offi­cer Frank Wisner’s role as direc­tor of the Office of Pol­i­cy Coor­di­na­tion under the Foster/Allen Dulles stew­ard­ship; Wisner’s pre­vi­ous work for Carter, Led­yard and Milburn—another key Wall Street law firm that was the gen­er­al coun­sel for the Dow Jones Cor­po­ra­tion (the par­ent firm of the New York Stock Exchange); OSS chief William Donovan’s work as a lead­ing Wall Street lawyer; Donovan’s 1923 “sym­pa­thet­ic” lunch with Adolf Hitler. 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.


FTR#‘S 1222 and 1223: French Fascists and the JFK Assassination, Parts 1 and 2

An impor­tant book about the JFK assas­si­na­tion has been pub­lished. The late Hank Albarel­li, Jr. has authored a lengthy tome, which draws togeth­er var­i­ous, dis­parate ele­ments involved in the Dal­las coup in an impor­tant, time­ly man­ner.

Inte­grat­ing oper­a­tional ele­ments of the domes­tic fas­cist polit­i­cal milieu, active and retired mil­i­tary pro­fes­sion­als, the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty (CIA in par­tic­u­lar), the defense indus­try, the Texas and inter­na­tion­al petro­le­um com­pa­nies, as well as dom­i­nant polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions with the forces of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism, Albarel­li and his assis­tants have opened a win­dow onto what Mr. Emory believes are in the forces destroy­ing our civ­i­liza­tion.

Para­mount, here, is the deci­sive role and posi­tion of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism in the events of 11/22/1963.

Fas­cism is gen­er­al­ly rep­re­sent­ed as some­thing of an antiq­ui­ty and an aberration–an out­lier in the devel­op­ment of our civ­i­liza­tion.

Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth.

Con­tem­po­rary pre­sen­ta­tions of fas­cism are atten­u­at­ed and super­fi­cial, cov­er­ing nei­ther the evo­lu­tion of fas­cist net­works through the decades, nor those net­works’ inex­tri­ca­ble rela­tion­ships with past and present intel­li­gence agen­cies and dom­i­nant cor­po­rate and allied polit­i­cal inter­ests around the world.

In the first of these pro­grams, we explore the account in the book of the role of French fas­cists in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. 

In the sec­ond, we chron­i­cle the deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions of the French steel and iron mak­ers, and their coun­ter­parts in the Ger­man steel and coal com­bines. Unit­ed in their cor­po­ratist strat­e­gy, they saw anti-labor and anti-com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy as sur­mount­ing  any nation­al­ist con­sid­er­a­tions.

For many years, we have set forth the pow­er­ful French fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions that attempt­ed to over­throw the French gov­ern­ment of Leon Blum and, final­ly, act­ed in con­cert with like-mind­ed mil­i­tary offi­cers, aris­to­crats and cor­po­rate indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions to sub­vert resis­tance to the Nazi inva­sion.

With the estab­lish­ment of the Vichy col­lab­o­ra­tionist regime, ele­ments such as La Cagoule con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the gov­ern­ing and enforc­ing appa­ra­tus of the fas­cist admin­is­tra­tion.

We have cov­ered La Cagoule for many years, includ­ing an in-depth explo­ration of the method­ol­o­gy and his­to­ry of La Cagoule and relat­ed groups in Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show 61 (record­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 1994.) Rel­e­vant sides of this lengthy pro­gram are: Side “c”; Side “d”; Side “e”. (These seg­ments, in turn, draw on doc­u­men­ta­tion pre­sent­ed in Armies of Spies by Joseph Gol­lomb and Tri­umph of Trea­son by Pierre Cot. For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of these top­ics and books, use the search func­tion on this web­site.)

Fur­ther­more, fig­ures such as Mon­sieurs Fil­li­ol and Pierre Lafitte also served with the Nazis SS, the most promi­nent French ele­ment of which was the Charle­magne Divi­sion.

(In addi­tion to Lafit­te’s Nazi/SS/fascist col­lab­o­ra­tion, this “Man of a Thou­sand Faces” worked for a myr­i­ad of orga­ni­za­tions: intel­li­gence agen­cies, law enforce­ment agen­cies, and crim­i­nal net­works, often over­lap­ping those activ­i­ties. The authors of Coup in Dal­las posit that Lafitte may very well have been the “man­ag­er” for the JFK assas­si­na­tion oper­a­tion in the U.S.)

Net­work­ing with, among oth­ers, Otto Sko­rzeny dur­ing the war, French fas­cists sought and found refuge and con­tin­ued post­war employ­ment in Spain under the fas­cist gov­ern­ment of dic­ta­tor Fran­cis­co Fran­co. Their rela­tion­ship with Sko­rzeny con­tin­ued after the war, and Sko­rzeny may well have been the “exec­u­tive” plan­ner of the assas­si­na­tion under whom Lafitte oper­at­ed.

“. . . . And per­haps equal­ly sig­nif­i­cant is Filliol’s his­to­ry with Nazi SS Sturm­ban­n­fuhrer Otto Sko­rzeny. . . We now know that Sko­rzeny played the cru­cial role of logis­ti­cal mas­ter­mind of the hit in Dealey Plaza. . . .”

(We have detailed Skorzeny’s vital­ly impor­tant role in post­war inter­na­tion­al fas­cism in numer­ous broad­casts, includ­ing AFA#22.)

Albarel­li devel­ops infor­ma­tion about Sko­rzeny and Lafitte as cen­tral to the plan­ning of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, and mas­ter assas­sin Fil­li­ol as being present in Dal­las on 11/22/1963.

Man­i­fest­ing grasp of both the “sweep” of fas­cism and its insti­tu­tion­al con­nec­tions, Albarel­li high­lights the fas­cist gen­e­sis of the French cos­met­ic giant L’O­re­al, employ­er of Jean Fil­li­ol in Spain and his fel­low French fas­cist Jacques Cor­reze in both Spain and the U.S. 

” . . . Once in Spain, Fil­li­ol soon estab­lished con­tact with Nazi Otto Sko­rzeny, who had been ‘reset­tled’ for the ben­e­fit of U.S. intel­li­gence inter­ests in the nation’s capi­tol. . . .

“. . . . There, Fil­li­ol quick­ly land­ed a secure and well-paid exec­u­tive job with the inter­na­tion­al divi­sion of L’Oreal, a cos­met­ic and beau­ty prod­ucts com­pa­ny. Today a very well-known com­pa­ny, L’Oreal was found­ed and oper­at­ed by Eugene Schueller, a pas­sion­ate anti-Semi­te and ultra­right-winger. Schueller, dur­ing the 1930’s and the war years, finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed La Cagoule . . . .”

 “. . . . While in Spain, nat­u­ral­ly, Cor­reze became friends with Otto Sko­rzeny after being intro­duced to his fel­low SS offi­cer by for­mer La Cagoule assas­sin Jean Fil­li­ol, by now the vice pres­i­dent of inter­na­tion­al mar­ket­ing for L’Oreal. . . .”

When the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions began look­ing into Cor­reze’s fas­cist and Nazi his­to­ry, the probe quick­ly unearthed sub­stan­tive alle­ga­tions about Cor­reze’s rela­tion­ship to Fil­li­ol and his fel­low fas­cist Ger­ard Litt and the lat­ter pair’s pres­ence in Dal­las at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

“. . . . Accord­ing to two for­mer employ­ees of the department’s Office of Spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tions, both of whom declined to be iden­ti­fied in this book, the exam­i­na­tion of Correze’s past quick­ly unearthed unex­pect­ed details about his links to Jean Fil­li­ol, Ger­ard Litt, and Otto Sko­rzeny, inclu­sive of detailed sus­pi­cions about Filliol’s and Litt’s pres­ence in Dal­las, Texas, at the time of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. . . .”

(We note in pass­ing that John Lof­tus, the hero­ic author of The Belarus Secret, Amer­i­ca’s Nazi Secret, Unholy Trin­i­ty and The Secret War Against the Jews worked for the Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions.)

The broad­er con­text of the Cagoulard ele­ments in Dal­las con­cerns the OAS attempts on the life of Charles De Gaulle, which over­lap the JFK assas­si­na­tion. (We dis­cussed those areas of over­lap in, among oth­er broad­casts, FTR#1162.)

One of the appar­ent areas of over­lap between the OAS attempts to kill De Gaulle (with assis­tance from ele­ments of CIA) and the Dal­las coup is Jean Sou­e­tre, a skilled OAS assas­sin who, like Fil­li­ol and Lafitte, was net­worked with Otto Sko­rzeny.

” . . . . Skorzeny’s aide explained to Her­bert that his supe­ri­or was absent because he had ‘oth­er things going on.’ The arrange­ments that were made for [Army Ranger offi­cer Antho­ny] Her­bert to meet with Sko­rzeny con­firm Capt. Souetre’s com­man­dos were ful­ly aware of the nature of Skorzeny’s train­ing schools, which they also attend­ed. . . .”

Sou­e­tre was in Dal­las on 11/22/1063 and was expelled from the coun­try.

One of the impor­tant strengths of the Albarel­li text is the inte­gra­tion of many of the strate­gic and oper­a­tional ele­ments involved with the JFK hit.

Numer­ous writ­ers have set forth the role in the Dal­las coup of ele­ments of what Tex­ans refer to as “The Ahl Bid­ness.”

In addi­tion to despis­ing JFK for his advo­ca­cy of Alger­ian inde­pen­dence from colo­nial mas­ter France, explorato­ry infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ed to Texas-con­nect­ed petro­le­um inter­ests that Alge­ria con­tained sig­nif­i­cant petro­le­um reserves on its ter­ri­to­ry and beneath its ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fas­cist con­nec­tions in the JFK assas­si­na­tion high­light­ed in this book is the fact that Robert Schacht–a blood rel­a­tive of Hjal­mar  Horace Gree­ley Schacht, Hitler’s finance min­is­ter who was deeply involved with Clay Shaw and Permindex–was the admis­sions direc­tor for Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, the first des­ti­na­tion of Lee Har­vey Oswald when he “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union.

We also include a pas­sage from Jim DiEu­ge­nio’s clas­sic work on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Destiny Betrayed.

This pas­sage places the Schacht fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in greater depth.

Per­min­dex was involved with, among oth­er things, attempts on the life of French pres­i­dent Charles De Gaulle in con­junc­tion with ele­ments of CIA and the OAS. (We will dis­cuss more about this in future pro­grams.

Much of the sec­ond pro­gram dis­cuss­es the actions of the Fifth Col­umn in France pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. (For more about this Fifth Col­umn, see Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M61.) It is impor­tant to note in this con­text, that Mr. Emory stress­es that the anal­o­gy between the Fifth Col­umn in France and its coun­ter­part in the Unit­ed States is not an exact one. There are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the sit­u­a­tion in France before World War II and that in the U.S. today. Nonethe­less there are sim­i­lar­i­ties worth exam­in­ing.

One should note that France was gov­erned by a demo­c­ra­t­ic coali­tion gov­ern­ment under Leon Blum (the Social Front or Pop­u­lar Front), which includ­ed the French com­mu­nist par­ty. Under the social pres­sures brought about by the Great Depres­sion and the inabil­i­ty of lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ments to deal ade­quate­ly with the social fall­out from it, many coun­tries expe­ri­enced pow­er­ful fas­cist move­ments. Such was the case in France. Indus­tri­al­ists, financiers, aris­to­crats and mem­bers of the armed forces were among the fas­cist plot­ters that saw the elim­i­na­tion of the Blum gov­ern­ment as a neces­si­ty. After ini­tial fail­ure in the plot by the fas­cist Cagoulards in 1938, many of the fas­cists acced­ed to pow­er in the Vichy gov­ern­ment after the Ger­man con­quest.


Supplement to the Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek Series

As William Faulkn­er not­ed: “The past is nev­er dead and buried. It isn’t even past.” In FTR#1209–part of the recent­ly con­clud­ed series on “The Nar­co-Fas­cism of Chi­ang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang”–we wrapped up the broad­cast with dis­cus­sion of the sem­i­nal influ­ence of Chi­ang’s drug-deal­ing regime on asso­ci­at­ed Amer­i­can nation­al secu­ri­ty ele­ments that con­tin­ued and expand­ed that nar­cotics traf­fick­ing. A char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly inci­sive, infor­ma­tive foot­note in Peter Dale Scot­t’s “Amer­i­can War Machine” fur­ther devel­ops the pro­found oper­a­tional imprint that the KMT had on post World War II U.S. intel­li­gence net­works. Exem­pli­fy­ing the Kuom­intang fas­cist her­itage of this milieu is Gen­er­al George Olm­stead, in charge of covert “ops” for Albert Wede­mey­er, who leaked FDR’s Rain­bow Five mobi­liza­tion plan, as dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#1202. This was a con­sum­mate act of trea­son. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


Cartels Uber Alles

One of the con­cepts cen­tral to the analy­sis pre­sent­ed by Mr. Emory on his pro­grams and on this web­site over the decades is the pre­em­i­nence of car­tels in inter­na­tion­al pow­er politics–the man­i­fes­ta­tions of fas­cism in par­tic­u­lar. Fos­ter Dulles–Secretary of State under Eisen­how­er at the same time as his broth­er and fel­low Sul­li­van & Cromwell attor­ney Allen Dulles was the head of the CIA–delineated his world view and those of his fel­low “car­tel enablers” in a let­ter to a con­tem­po­rary: “The word ‘car­tel’ has here assumed the stig­ma of a bogey­man which the politi­cians are con­stant­ly attack­ing. The fact of the mat­ter is that most of these politi­cians are high­ly insu­lar and nation­al­is­tic and because the polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion of the world has under such influ­ence been so back­ward, busi­ness peo­ple who have had to cope with inter­na­tion­al prob­lems have had to find ways for get­ting through and around stu­pid polit­i­cal bar­ri­ers.”


Narco-Bipartisanship

In FTR#1175, we high­light­ed the career of William “Wild Bill” Dono­van, the pow­er­ful Wall Street lawyer described in that pro­gram as “Amer­i­ca’s First ‘Man in Black.’ ” Insight into how what Peter Dale Scott calls “The Amer­i­can Deep State” oper­ates can be gleaned from one of the polit­i­cal deriv­a­tives of CIA-sup­port­ed drug traf­fic in South­east Asia. U.S. Ambas­sador to Thai­land William “Wild Bill” Dono­van worked with OSS and CIA oper­a­tive Paul Hel­li­well to dis­trib­ute the laun­dered prof­its of Agency-backed drug oper­a­tions to mem­bers of Con­gress, with Dono­van gift­ing Repub­li­cans and Hel­li­well sup­port­ing Democ­rats.


Lunch with Bill

In FTR#1175, we high­light­ed the career of William “Wild Bill” Dono­van, the pow­er­ful Wall Street lawyer described in that pro­gram as “Amer­i­ca’s First ‘Man in Black.’ ” Per­spec­tive on the fun­da­men­tals of Amer­i­can pow­er struc­ture can be gleaned by one of Dono­van’s escapades in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War I, dis­cussed in FTR#1009. A “sym­pa­thet­ic” Dono­van met with Adolf Hitler in 1923. This must have been ear­li­er than Novem­ber 9th of 1923, the date of the Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler would have been in Lands­berg Prison after that.


FTR#1175 Donovan’s Brain

In the 1950’s, a Hol­ly­wood “B” hor­ror film titled “Dono­van’s Brain” made the rounds. The title referred to the dis­em­bod­ied and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly res­ur­rect­ed brain of a busi­ness­man named Dono­van. His brain takes over and dom­i­nates peo­ple in the liv­ing world, bend­ing them to his crim­i­nal will.

This pro­gram focus­es pri­mar­i­ly on William “Wild Bill” Dono­van, a Wall Street attor­ney who ran the OSS, Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence agency.

Dubbed “Amer­i­ca’s orig­i­nal man in black,” Dono­van did not cre­ate the oper­a­tional rela­tion­ship between the crim­i­nal “Under­world” and the cor­po­rate “Over­world,” how­ev­er he deep­ened and insti­tu­tion­al­ized that rela­tion­ship through nation­al secu­ri­ty under­tak­ings, so much so that the cur­rent, benight­ed polit­i­cal land­scape might be said to have derived from “Dono­van’s Brain.”

The results are a real-life hor­ror movie.

Before dis­cussing William Dono­van, the pro­gram sets forth a dis­turb­ing his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ist per­spec­tive on the Com­fort Women of World War II–women enslaved by the Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese Army to be used as pros­ti­tutes.

J. Mark Ram­sey­er, a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School, has authored a paper rein­forc­ing the dis­cred­it­ed Japan­ese pro­pa­gan­da line on the Com­fort Women–the alle­ga­tion that the vic­tims “vol­un­teered” for ser­vice!

Of sig­nif­i­cance, in that con­text, is the fact that Ram­sey­er enjoys the title of Mit­subishi Pro­fes­sor of Legal Stud­ies at Har­vard. One of the zaibat­su, Mit­subishi was a major employ­er of slave labor dur­ing World War II, includ­ing U.S. POW’s.

” . . . .  . . . . Mit­subishi’s mar­ket posi­tion at the war’s end in 1945 was described by a West­ern econ­o­mist as being equiv­a­lent to the merg­er of U.S. Steel, Gen­er­al Motors, Stan­dard Oil, Alcoa, Dou­glas Air­craft, Dupont, West­ing­house, AT & T Nation­al City Bank, Wool­worth Stores and Hilton Hotels. . . .”

Ram­sey­er also enjoys the Order of the Ris­ing Sun, bestowed on him by the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment.

In addi­tion to his revi­sion­ist per­spec­tive on the Com­fort Women, he has endorsed the canard that the Japan­ese pogrom against eth­nic Kore­ans fol­low­ing the Great Kan­to Earth­quake of 1923 was sparked by Kore­an hooli­gan­ism.

Much of the pro­gram deals with Dono­van’s pivotal–though large­ly opaque–career.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Dono­van’s rela­tion­ship with Albert Lasker, whose tank cars facil­i­tat­ed the move­ment of Rock­e­feller oil on Har­ri­man railways–a sem­i­nal ele­ment in “Wild Bil­l’s” ascent; Dono­van’s cozy rela­tion­ship with Har­ry Anslinger, head of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Narcotics–a rela­tion­ship that was instru­men­tal in actu­al­iz­ing Dono­van’s strate­gic use of nar­cotics traf­fick­ing; Anslinger’s mar­riage to the daugh­ter of Andrew Mel­lon, one of the “Rob­ber Barons” who dom­i­nat­ed the U.S. polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic land­scape; The deci­sive role of key Wall Street lawyers and bankers in Dono­van’s OSS; the role of the Mel­lon fam­i­ly in select­ing the key mem­bers of the OSS (Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence ser­vice); Dono­van’s posi­tion in the hier­ar­chy of the Vat­i­can’s order of Knights–another fac­tor in Dono­van’s pow­er port­fo­lio; Dono­van’s use of Mafiosi on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean through World War II and after­ward; Dono­van’s long-stand­ing, inti­mate rela­tion­ship with the CIA, long after he sup­pos­ed­ly retired from intel­li­gence mat­ters; Dono­van’s decades-long involve­ment with the Kuom­intang and Chi­ang-Kai Shek’s nar­cotics trafficking–the foun­da­tion of his fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship in Chi­na and Tai­wan; Dono­van’s rela­tion­ship with oth­er lumi­nar­ies of the Chi­na Lob­by; Dono­van’s role in admin­is­ter­ing the Black Eagle Trust–the repos­i­to­ry of loot­ed Axis wealth from World War II; Dono­van’s long pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion with the CIA’s finan­cial enti­ties, air­lines and ship­ping firms; Dono­van’s stew­ard­ship of the World Com­merce Cor­po­ra­tion (WCC)–described by one observ­er as an under­world ver­sion of the Mar­shall Plan; Dono­van’s groom­ing of the heads of Citibank and their con­se­quent roles in glob­al “dark mon­ey” oper­a­tions.

We con­clude the pro­gram with analy­sis of anoth­er pow­er bro­ker who helped insti­tu­tion­al­ize the Underworld/Overworld syn­the­sis exem­pli­fied by “Dono­van’s Brain”–Kodama Yoshio.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Kodama’s accu­mu­lat­ed for­tune of 13 bil­lion dol­lars in World War II dol­lars; Kodama’s close rela­tion­ship with Japan­ese Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Impe­r­i­al Palace; Kodama’s dom­i­nant posi­tion in the nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing and after World War II; Kodama’s dona­tion of 100 mil­lion dol­lars to the CIA (equiv­a­lent to 1 bil­lion dol­lars in today’s cur­ren­cy; Kodama’s con­tin­ued dom­i­nance in the glob­al nar­cotics traf­fic, dur­ing the time he was on the CIA’s pay­roll; Kodama’s cozy rela­tion­ship with Prince Higashiku­ni, a mem­ber of the Japan­ese Roy­al Fam­i­ly, who facil­i­tat­ed Kodama’s oper­a­tions, includ­ing his close rela­tion­ship with the U.S.