FTR #1051 Interview #20 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the twen­ti­eth in a planned 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.

This pro­gram deals with Oswald in Mex­i­co City, one of the most impor­tant ele­ments in con­struct­ing the cov­er-up of the assas­si­na­tion.

The Mex­i­co City gam­bit entails “Oswald” osten­si­bly trav­el­ing to Mex­i­co City to vis­it the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies, the lat­ter involv­ing “Oswald’s” alleged con­tacts with Valery Kostikov, the KGB’s agent in charge of assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. When reports of this were cir­cu­lat­ed in the Amer­i­can media on the week­end of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, it appeared to many that the Sovi­et Union and/or Cuba was behind the assas­si­na­tion.

Ulti­mate­ly, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of World War III and a nuclear holo­caust break­ing out as a result of the assas­si­na­tion were used by Lyn­don Baines John­son to engi­neer a cov­er-up.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 359.

. . . . To say this decep­tion about Oswald in Mex­i­co worked well does not begin to do it jus­tice. For at the first meet­ing of the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the for­mer DA of Alame­da Coun­ty Cal­i­for­nia, Earl War­ren, came out meek as a lamb:

1.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to employ any of their own inves­ti­ga­tors.
2.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to gath­er evi­dence. Instead he wished for them to rely on reports made by oth­er agen­cies like the FBI and Secret Ser­vice.
3.–He did not want their hear­ings to be pub­lic. He did not want to employ the pow­er of sub­poe­na.
4.–Incredibly, he did not even want to call any wit­ness­es. He want­ed to rely on inter­views done by oth­er agen­cies.
5.–He then made a very curi­ous com­ment, “Meet­ings where wit­ness­es would be brought in would retard rather than help our inves­ti­ga­tion.

In oth­er words, as John­son told [then Sen­a­tor Richard] Rus­sell, they were to rat­i­fy the FBI’s inquiry. There was to be no real inves­ti­ga­tion by any­one. The Mex­i­co City cha­rade, with its threat of atom­ic holo­caust, had secured the cov­er up of Kennedy’s mur­der. . . .

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis on this top­ic include:

1.–Warren Com­mis­sion coun­sels David Slaw­son and William Cole­man relied on CIA and FBI liai­son for their infor­ma­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, they relied on coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Jesus Angle­ton and and his aide Ray Roc­ca for their infor­ma­tion. NB: Mr. Emory erred at one point in this inter­view, iden­ti­fy­ing Richard Helms a head of the CIA, he was Deputy Direc­tor of the Agency at this point in time.
2.–Slawson even con­sid­ered join­ing the CIA at this point. We can but won­der if, in fact, he did just that.
3.–Richard Helms appoint­ed Angle­ton to be the main liai­son for the Agency to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Recall that Angle­ton and Ray Roc­ca were in charge of the Oswald pre-assas­si­na­tion files.
4.–Angleton and the FBI’s William Sul­li­van coor­di­nat­ed their response con­cern­ing Oswald hav­ing ties to U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies, deny­ing that that was, in fact, the case.
5.–A hand­ful of CIA offi­cers known as the SAS (not to be con­fused with the British com­man­do orga­ni­za­tion with the same ini­tials) devel­oped an inter­est in Oswald weeks before the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Slawson and Cole­man relied on CIA sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott when in Mex­i­co City.
7.–Sylvia Duran, employed at the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City, report­ed the “Lee Har­vey Oswald” with whom she met as ” . . . being short, about five foot, six inch­es, blond and over thir­ty years old. Oswald was five foot, nine inch­es, dark haired, and twen­ty-four years old. . . .” (p. 349.)
8.–Duran not­ed that the pro­ce­dure used by the Oswald impos­tor to obtain a visa was sus­pi­cious: ” . . . . “They [U.S. com­mu­nists, which “Oswald” alleged­ly was] usu­al­ly fol­lowed a pro­ce­dure, arranged for by the Amer­i­can Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which allowed them to obtain a visa in advance through the Cuban Com­mu­nist Par­ty. . . The fact that Oswald did not do this was reveal­ing. It seemed to sug­gest that either Oswald was not a real com­mu­nist, or that peo­ple inside the com­mu­nist cir­cles in Amer­i­ca thought he was an agent provo­ca­teur. They there­fore did not trust him. . . .” (pp. 349–350.)
9.–The phone calls made to Sylvia Duran at the Cuban embassy con­tain sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­an­cies: ” . . . . Duran stat­ed firm­ly that after the twen­ty-sev­enth, when Oswald had failed to secure his spe­cial visa, he did not call her back. Again, some­one embroi­dered this for the Com­mis­sion. For in the War­ren Report, she is quot­ed as say­ing ” . . . . she does not recall whether or not Oswald lat­er tele­phoned her at the Con­sulate num­ber she gave him.” This was an impor­tant dis­crep­an­cy in tes­ti­mo­ny. Because, as we shall see, there was anoth­er call to the Russ­ian con­sulate on Sat­ur­day the twen­ty-eighth [of Sep­tem­ber, 1963]. The CIA claims this call was by Duran, with Oswald also on the line. But if Duran’s recall is cor­rect, then the CIA evi­dence is spu­ri­ous. . . .” (p. 350.)
10.–When G. Robert Blakey and his asso­ciate Richard Billings assumed con­trol over the HSCA, they made a sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sion: ” . . . . In return for access to clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, mem­bers and employ­ees f the com­mit­tee signed agree­ments pledg­ing not to dis­close any infor­ma­tion they gar­nered while doing their work. The, when Blakey, Gary Corn­well, and Dick billings edit­ed the report and vol­umes, the agen­cies they made agree­ments that [the agen­cies] were allowed to veto what infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the pub­lished vol­umes. . ..” (p. 350.)
11.–While “Oswald” was sup­pos­ed­ly in Mex­i­co City, Sylvia Odio was vis­it­ed by three men, one whom was iden­ti­fied as “Leon Oswald,” an ex-Marine, an excel­lent shot, and some­one who felt that JFK should be assas­si­nat­ed for fail­ing to sup­port the Bay of Pigs inva­sion. ” . . . . After read­ing the War­ren Report, [HSCA’s first Chief Coun­sel Richard] Sprague won­dered why the com­mis­sion chose to dis­count the tes­ti­mo­ny of Sil­via Odio. . . . When she first heard of Oswald’s involve­ment with the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, she imme­di­ate­ly recalled the vis­it of the three men. That after­noon she became very fear­ful, so much so that she faint­ed. She then met with her sis­ter, ans and they had both been watch­ing tele­vi­sion with Oswald’s pho­to on the screen, they both real­ized he was the man who thought the Cubans should have killed Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. . . .” (pp. 350–351.)
12.–The Odio inci­dent cre­at­ed prob­lems for the War­ren Com­mi­sion: ” . . . . The third prob­lem, the one that both­ered Sprague, was that the dates of the vis­it clashed with the dates that Oswald was sup­posed to be going to Mex­i­co. . . .” (p. 352.)
13.–To dis­cred­it Sylvia Odio, War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel Wes­ley Liebler impugned her sex­u­al mores: ” . . . . Odio described what hap­pened next to Fonzi and the Church Com­mit­tee: ‘Not only that, he invit­ed me to his room upstairs to see some pic­tures. I did go, I went to his room. I want­ed to see how far a gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tor would go and what they were try­ing to do to a wit­ness. . . . He showed me pic­tures, he made advances, yes, but I told him he was crazy.’ Liebler was­n’t through. To show her what kind of oper­a­tion the Com­mis­sion real­ly was, he told her that they had seen her pic­ture and joked about it at the War­ren Com­mis­sion. They said things like what a pret­ty girl you are going to see Jim. . . . For HSCA staff lawyer Bill Triplett told this author that the rea­son that chair­man Earl War­ren did not believe Sylvia Odio is that she was some kind of a ‘loose woman.’ . . .” (pp. 352–353.)
14.–The lin­guis­tic capa­bil­i­ties of the “Oswald” who alleged­ly was con­tact­ing the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies in Mex­i­co City are con­tra­dic­to­ry: ” . . . . it has Oswald speak­ing flu­ent Span­ish, which no one has ever said Oswald did. Fur­ther, the HSCA report says that Oswald spoke poor, bro­ken Russ­ian. Yet both Mari­na Oswald and George DeMohren­schildt said Oswald spoke Russ­ian quite well upon his return to the Unit­ed States. Fur­ther, pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tor Peter Gre­go­ry thought Oswald was flu­ent enough to give him a let­ter cer­ti­fy­ing Oswald’s abil­i­ty to serve as a trans­la­tor. . . .” (p. 353.)
15.–The “Oswald” pho­tographed in Mex­i­co City was obvi­ous­ly an impos­tor: ” . . . . The CIA had mul­ti­ple still cam­eras set up out­side the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City to catch every­one com­ing out of and going inside in order to secure a visa to Cuba. When, at the request of the Com­mis­sion, the FBI asked the CIA for a pho­to of Oswald enter­ing the con­sulate, they got Com­missin Exhib­it 237. This is a pic­ture of a husky six foot­er with a crew-cut. Obvi­ous­ly not Oswald. . . . In Owald’s com­bined five vis­its to the Cuban con­sulate and Sovi­et con­sulate, the bat­tery of CIA cam­eras failed to get even one pic­ture of him enter­ing or leav­ing. In oth­er words, they were zero for ten. And the cam­era right out­side the Cuban con­sulate was pulse acti­vat­ed. . . . ” (pp. 353–354.)
16.–Both David Phillips and his assis­tant Anne Good­pas­ture were involved in mul­ti­ple obfus­ca­tions of the facts: ” . . . . Anne Good­pas­ture was in charge of the ‘dai­ly take’ from both tar­get embassies. That is the pho­tographs tak­en from out­side and the clan­des­tine tape record­ings made from inside the com­pounds. This is impor­tant because she then would have been the first per­son to see a pho­to of Oswald. There­fore, she should have sent for a pho­to of Oswald from Lan­g­ley in a time­ly man­ner while Oswald was still in Mex­i­co City. She did not. . . .” (p. 354.)
17.–Next, we high­light more of Phillip­s’s obstruc­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion: ” . . . . Phillips said that they had no audio tapes because they ‘recy­cled their tapes every sev­en or eight days.’ The tapes were actu­al­ly recy­cled every ten days. But they were held for a longer time if so request­ed. Fur­ther, if any Amer­i­can cit­i­zen spoke bro­ken Russ­ian inside the Sovi­et con­sulate, the tape would be sent to Wash­ing­ton. Because he would be con­sid­ered of pos­si­ble oper­a­tional inter­est to the Sovi­ets. . . . Phillips also told [HSCA coun­sel Robert] Tanen­baum that the rea­son the CIA did not have a pho­to of Oswald was because their cam­era was out that day. This appears to be anoth­er lie. First of all, Oswald went to the Sovi­et con­sulate on two dif­fer­ent days, the twen­ty-sev­enth and twen­ty-eighth. So all three of the cam­eras cov­er­ing the site would have had to have been out on both days. . . .” (p. 354.)
18.–Phillips also dis­sem­bled con­cern­ing a cable sent to CIA head­quar­ters: ” . . . . The sur­veil­lance of the Russ­ian con­sulate revealed that by Octo­ber 1, the CIA knew that “Oswald” was in direct con­tact with those who worked there, such as Valery Kostikov of the KGB. But yet, the cable alert­ing head­quar­ters to this fact did not arrive until a week lat­er, Octo­ber 8, Phillips tried to explain this delay by blam­ing the trans­la­tors. He then said he knew that this was the case since he signed off on the cable. Hard­way and Lopez found out that Phillips did not sign off on the cable, since it did not deal in any way with Cuban mat­ters. But even worse, he could not have signed off on it because he was not in Mex­i­co City at the time. The like­ly rea­son the cable was sent out so late was to keep Oswald’s pro­file low while he was alleged­ly in Mex­i­co City. . . .” (pp. 354–355.)
19.–Oswald’s file at CIA began to be bifur­cat­ed: ” . . . . On or about Sep­tem­ber 23, Angle­ton began to bifur­cate Oswald’s file. the FBI reports on Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Com­mit­tee activ­i­ties in New Orleans went into a new oper­a­tional file, sep­a­rate from his 201 file. There­fore, the bizarre things Oswald was doing in New Orleans . . . .were all kept out of his 201 file. So when the late arriv­ing cable final­ly did come into CIA HQ from Mex­i­co City about Oswald in the Sovi­et con­sulate, this was kept sep­a­rate from his New Orleans activ­i­ties. Then two dif­fer­ent cables were sent out on Octo­ber 10. One was sent to the Bureau, the State Depart­ment, and the Navy, describ­ing a man who does­n’t fit Oswald’s descrip­tion: he is thir­ty-five years old, has an ath­let­ic build, and stands six feet tall. This descrip­tion resem­bles the Mys­tery Man pho­to. . . .” (pp. 355–356.)
20.–An alto­geth­er remark­able and reveal­ing aspect of the “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City gam­bit con­cerns the FBI’s “FLASH” notice on Oswald: ” . . . . Oswald was not placed on the FBI’s Secu­ri­ty Index list which was passed on to the Secret Ser­vice in advance of Kennedy’s vis­it to Dal­las. If he had been on that list, the Secret Ser­vice would have made sure he was not on the motor­cade route, since he con­sti­tut­ed a clear risk to Pres­i­dent Kennedy. One rea­son he was not on the list is because the FBI “FLASH” on Oswald, which had been in effect since his defec­tion in 1959 was removed. This warn­ing required any infor­ma­tion or inquiry on the sub­ject to e imme­di­ate­ly for­ward­ed to the Espi­onage Sec­tion of Divi­sion Five, the Domes­tic Intel­li­gence unit. Incred­i­bly, the “FLASH” was can­celed on Octo­ber 9, 1963. In oth­er words, after being attached to Oswald’s file for four years, it was removed just hours after he cable from Mex­i­co City arrived in Wash­ing­ton report­ing Oswald’s vis­it to the Sovi­et com­pound and meet­ing with Kostikov . . . .” (p. 356.)
21.–In light of Valery Kostikov’s iden­ti­ty, the FBI’s behav­ior is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing: ” . . . . Kostikov’s true iden­ti­ty was revealed. His was the KGB unit respon­si­ble for assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. After being method­i­cal­ly lulled to sleep . . . this infor­ma­tion must have felt like a hard punch to the jaw. Oswald had met with the KGB rep­re­sen­ta­tive for assas­si­na­tion sev­en weeks before Kennedy arrived in Dal­las. Yet, he was allowed to be in the build­ing behind where the Pres­i­den­t’s lim­ou­sine would be dri­ving. And no one in the FBI or Secret Ser­vice did any­thing for near­ly two months. The dia­bol­i­cal trap had been sprung. Hoover had no choice. He went into CYA over­drive. . . .” (p. 357.)
22.–In response to a tele­phoned ques­tion from Lyn­don Baines John­son, Hoover revealed that his agents had heard the tapes of “Oswald” speak­ing and seen the pho­tographs of “Oswald” vis­it­ing the Mex­i­co City diplo­mat­ic posts, but that nei­ther the calls, nor the pic­ture was the real Lee Har­vey Oswald. ” . . . . Hoover replied that this was all very con­fus­ing. He said that they had a tape and a pho­to of a man who was at the Sovi­et con­sulate using Oswald’s name. But, ‘That pic­ture and the tape do not cor­re­spond to this man’s voice, nor to his appear­ance. In oth­er words, it appears that there is a sec­ond per­son who was at the Sovi­et Embassy down there.’ On that same day, Hoover wrote a mem­o­ran­dum in which he said that two FBI agents who had been ques­tion­ing Oswald heard this tape and con­clud­ed that the voice on the tape was not Oswald’s. . . .” (p. 357.)
23.–In order to resolve the con­tra­dic­tions that the FBI had high­light­ed about “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City, the lie was gen­er­at­ed that the tapes had been destroyed before the assas­si­na­tion. Yet, Stan­ley Wat­son demon­strat­ed oth­er­wise: ” . . . . CIA offi­cer and Deputy Sta­tion Chief Stan­ley Wat­son tes­ti­fied to the HSCA that at least one record­ing exist­ed after the assas­si­na­tion. Fur­ther, the man who was first in charge of the CIA’s inquiry for the War­ren Com­mis­sion, John Whit­ten, wrote that while some tapes had been erased, some of ‘the actu­al tapes were also reviewed,’ and that anoth­er copy of the Octo­ber 1 ‘inter­cept on Lee Oswald’ had been ‘dis­cov­ered after the assas­si­na­tion. . . .” (p. 358.)
24.–In 1971, after the death of for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott, his wid­ow was threat­ened with removal of her sur­vivor ben­e­fits if she did not per­mit CIA coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Angle­ton access to her late hus­band’s safe: ” . . . . April 28, 1971 was the day after Janet Scott buried her hus­band Win­ston Scott. When she heard of Scot­t’s death, Anne Good­pas­ture told James Angle­ton about the con­tents of the for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief’s safe. On that day, on a mis­sion approved by Richard Helms, James Angle­ton flew to Mex­i­co City. He was in such a hur­ry that he for­got his pass­port. And if the record­ings were of the same false Oswald’s voice on tape, it would endan­ger the cov­er sto­ry about those tapes being destroyed pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion. After enter­ing the house, Angle­ton vague­ly threat­ened Janet’s wid­ow’s ben­e­fits. He then had scot­t’s safe emp­tied. The con­tents were shipped by plane to Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia. The man most respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing first, the Oswald leg­end, then the design of the dooms­day sce­nario to the plot had now dis­posed of a last obstruc­tion to his hand­i­work. . . .” (p. 361.)

FTR #1036 Interview #6 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The sixth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

In FTR #1035, we set forth the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union:

• A num­ber of aspects of his tenure the Sovi­et Union sug­gest that, not only was he there as a spook, but the Sovi­ets knew that he was there to spy. Among the note­wor­thy aspects of his Sovi­et sojourn that are set forth in this pro­gram:
• Oswald was giv­en a hard­ship dis­charge with just a few months remain­ing on his enlist­ment tour. He got this in an inor­di­nate­ly short amount of time. He was sup­posed to take care of his moth­er, and yet his broth­er Robert was there to care for her, mak­ing Lee’s pres­ence there unnec­es­sary.
• Oswald booked his steamship pas­sage from the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart in New Orleans, head­ed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s tri­al.
• Oswald osten­si­bly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, an obscure Swiss insti­tu­tion that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
• He defect­ed to the Sovi­et Union from Helsin­ki, Fin­land. His stay there rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions, includ­ing the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, lux­u­ry hotel.
• After leav­ing the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kur­ki, anoth­er high-end insti­tu­tion. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these insti­tu­tions is a mystery–he did not have enough mon­ey in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
• His selec­tion of Helsin­ki is sig­nif­i­cant, also, because the Sovi­et Embassy there was the only one that could issue a trav­el visa to the Sovi­et Union in a lit­tle more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?
After review­ing the curi­ous aspects of the begin­ning Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union, the pro­gram notes many aspects of his stay in the U.S.S.R. that strong­ly sug­gest he was there as an under­cov­er intel­li­gence oper­a­tive.
After leav­ing from the curi­ous­ly con­ve­nient depar­ture point of Helsin­ki, Fin­land, Oswald met an agent from Intourist, the Sovi­et state trav­el agency. Once again, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s stay in the Sovi­et Union are sug­ges­tive of an intel­li­gence cov­er, a “leg­end.”

1. Meet­ing with his Intourist guide, Oswald indi­cat­ed that he had secret infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions that he wished to share with Sovi­et intel­li­gence.
2. After being denied res­i­dence in the U.S.S.R. Oswald was involved in an appar­ent­ly “pho­ny” sui­cide attempt, which was almost cer­tain­ly an attempt to remain in the U.S.S.R. longer than his trav­el visa would have per­mit­ted. Were the Sovi­ets on to him? It seems alto­geth­er prob­a­ble.
3. Oswald was housed at the Metro­pole Hotel, which Sovi­et intel­li­gence out­fit­ted with sophis­ti­cat­ed sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, indi­cat­ing sus­pi­cion on their part.
4. Oswald was inter­viewed by U.S. Embassy offi­cer Richard Sny­der, who had strong links to U.S. intel­li­gence, includ­ing a pro­gram at Har­vard to vet stu­dents for intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed trav­el to the U.S.S.R. One of the stu­dents he over­saw was Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki.
5. Sny­der appears to have “han­dled” Oswald in such a way that he would nev­er cease being a U.S. cit­i­zen. Once again, Oswald repeat­ed his intent to give secret intel­li­gence about U.S. air oper­a­tions to Sovi­et intel­li­gence, most like­ly a ref­er­ence to the U‑2 project.
6. Oswald was sent to Min­sk, where he was put to work in a radio fac­to­ry, after being afford­ed more-than-com­fort­able liv­ing cir­cum­stances by Sovi­et author­i­ties.
7. Oswald sub­mit­ted a detailed, 30-page paper on the radio fac­to­ry that appears to have been an intel­li­gence report on the instal­la­tion.
8. Also while in the U.S.S.R., Oswald gave inter­views to jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Priscil­la John­son MacMil­lan, who was a “will­ing CIA asset.” In that inter­view, Oswald gave a per­for­mance which could only be described as a hack­neyed man­i­fes­ta­tion of a stereo­typed Marxist/Communist.
9. The han­dling of Oswald’s files in the cor­ri­dors of U.S. intel­li­gence are more than a lit­tle strange. Despite hav­ing threat­ened to open a trea­so­nous breach in the secu­ri­ty of U.S. air oper­a­tions, no 201 file was opened on Oswald, and his doc­u­men­ta­tion at Lan­g­ley was rout­ed to James Angle­ton’s files on the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was unthink­able. As we will see in future dis­cus­sion, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the FBI’s FLASH clas­si­fi­ca­tion on Oswald–which would have sound­ed an alert upon this osten­si­ble trai­tor­’s re-entry into the U.S.–is also out of the ordi­nary. Recall the unusu­al treat­ment afford­ed State Depart­ment offi­cer Otto Otep­ka in con­nec­tion with inquiries into Oswald and the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was high­light­ed in FTR #1035.
10. While in the U.S.S.R. he met Mari­na Prusako­va (lat­er Mari­na “Oswald”), who may very well have been a Sovi­et intel­li­gence agent.
11. Mari­na lived with her uncle, who was an offi­cer with the MVD, the Sovi­et equiv­a­lent of the FBI.
12. Mari­na inter­act­ed with Robert Web­ster, anoth­er appar­ent “pho­ny” defec­tor from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. Web­ster had worked for the CIA-linked RAND cor­po­ra­tion. It is high­ly unlike­ly that she would have inter­act­ed with both Oswald and Web­ster as a mat­ter of coin­ci­dence.
13. Mari­na also dis­cussed hav­ing enter­tained Afghanistan’s ambas­sador to the Sovi­et Union, again, indica­tive of a prob­a­ble intel­li­gence link on Mari­na’s part.
14. Fur­ther bur­nish­ing Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tions is the fact that she was pro­fi­cient in the Eng­lish lan­guage, both spo­ken and writ­ten. The notion that she would have need­ed an inter­preter, as she is alleged to have required in post-assas­si­na­tion inquiries.
15. Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tion and the prob­a­bil­i­ty that she was assigned to Oswald dove­tails with the sit­u­a­tion of Richard Case Nag­ell. While in Japan, Oswald came in con­tact with Richard Case Nag­ell, a deep-cov­er intel­li­gence offi­cer assigned to play a dou­ble agent. Even­tu­al­ly, Nag­ell was assigned by his [osten­si­ble] Sovi­et han­dlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pre­text for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Unable to talk Oswald out of engag­ing in the asso­ci­a­tions with which he was con­nect­ed, Nagell–who had infil­trat­ed the New Orleans anti-Cas­tro Cuban milieu in which Oswald was entrenched, shot up a Texas bank in order to get him­self put in prison, say­ing he did not want to become a trai­tor. Nag­ell is the focal point of the remark­able book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Rus­sell, who was inter­viewed in FTR #54.
16. The rapid­i­ty and ease with which Oswald and Mari­na were grant­ed per­mis­sion to leave the Sovi­et Union togeth­er also sug­gests that she may have been per­form­ing an intel­li­gence func­tion. Nor­mal­ly, it might have tak­en some years for a Sovi­et woman who had mar­ried an Amer­i­can to obtain per­mis­sion to emi­grate.

After get­ting back to the Unit­ed States, the con­nec­tions and activ­i­ties of the Oswalds con­tin­ue to be “pass­ing strange,” IF one takes the leg­end of the so-called assas­sin at face val­ue.

Hav­ing threat­ened to com­mit trea­son by dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions, (the U‑2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. Orig­i­nal­ly called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an inte­gral part of the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit, a key ele­ment of the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, and an impor­tant part of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. It is unthink­able that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intel­li­gence and the FBI. In fact, Jim men­tions that a for­mer CIA offi­cer Don­ald Dene­selya told the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions that the CIA did, in all like­li­hood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, how­ev­er, sought to dis­tance itself from the JFK assas­si­na­tion fall guy.

When the sup­posed Marx­ist trai­tor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Com­mu­nist White Russ­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the Dallas/Fort Worth are, them­selves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.
Among the peo­ple with which the Oswalds net­worked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his Wife, the for­mer Princess Sherba­tov, a mem­ber of the Romanov Roy­al fam­i­ly!
2. Peter Gre­go­ry.
3. George Bouhe, who will fig­ure promi­nent­ly in our next pro­gram.
4. George de Mohren­schildt, who we will exam­ine at length in our next inter­view. De Mohren­schildt was part of the fam­i­ly that manged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; a long­time CIA asset; a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.

FTR #1035 Interview #5 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The fifth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram begins analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

This week’s dis­cus­sion begins with a syn­op­sis of the career of James Jesus Angle­ton, the long-time CIA chief of coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence. Long pre-occu­pied with the mat­ter of defec­tors from the Sovi­et Union, Angle­ton under­took a pro­gram of run­ning false defec­tors to the U.S.S.R. in order to gain bet­ter intel­li­gence about that nation.

The num­ber of “defec­tors” to the Sovi­et Union expand­ed expo­nen­tial­ly, lead­ing State Depart­ment offi­cer Otto Otep­ka to query the CIA as to which of them were gen­uine defec­tors, and which were actu­al­ly left-cov­er spooks. One of the defec­tors about which he inquired was Lee Har­vey Oswald, and a CIA reply about Oswald was marked “SECRET.”

Otep­ka’s career nose­dived after this.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 164–165.
. . . . He was first tak­en off of sen­si­tive cas­es. Sto­ries began to appear in the press that his job could be elim­i­nat­ed. He was asked to take anoth­er posi­tion in State but he declined. He was then called before a Sen­ate Com­mit­tee to explain his meth­ods for issu­ing secu­ri­ty clear­ances. This hap­pened four times in less than three years. He still would not resign or sus­pend his defec­tor inves­ti­ga­tion. Spies, phone taps, and lis­ten­ing devices were then plant­ed in his office. His office start­ed to be searched after hours and his trash was scoured for any of his notes. Even his house was being sur­veilled. Otep­ka could not under­stand what was hap­pen­ing to him. He could only con­clude that the sen­si­tive study of Amer­i­can defec­tors hid­den in his safe was behind it all. That safe was lat­er drilled into after he was thrown out of his orig­i­nal office and reas­signed. Who­ev­er drilled it then used a tiny mir­ror to deter­mine the com­bi­na­tion. The safe­crack­er then removed its con­tents. On Novem­ber 5, 1963 Otep­ka was for­mal­ly removed from his job at State. Lat­er on, author Jim Hougan asked him if he had been able to fig­ure out if Oswald was a real or false defec­tor. Otep­ka replied, “We had not made up our minds when my safe was drilled and we were thrown out of the office.” Just two and a half weeks after his forcible depar­ture from State, Oswald, the man he had stud­ied for months on end, was accused of killing Pres­i­dent Kennedy. . . .

Against the back­ground of the false defec­tor pro­gram, we begin analy­sis of Oswald, the Marx­ist Marine.

As we have dis­cussed in oth­er pro­grams and posts, in his teens, Oswald was part of a Civ­il Air Patrol unit com­mand­ed by David Fer­rie, the long-time intel­li­gence offi­cer and the first focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. (As chron­i­cled by Daniel Hop­sick­er, that same unit also con­tained Bar­ry Seal, the long­time CIA pilot and a key play­er in the Iran-Con­tra relat­ed drug traf­fick­ing.)

Inter­est­ing­ly and sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as Oswald and his fel­low CAP cadets were gain­ing oper­a­tional access to mil­i­tary bases–suggesting some sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions to mil­i­tary and CIA by leader Ferrie–Oswald began to express and pur­sue alleged Communist/Marxist/Soviet incli­na­tions to some high school peers. At the same time, he was also giv­ing voice to a desire to join the mil­i­tary.

Even­tu­al­ly, Oswald joined the Marines. Dur­ing his tenure in the Marine Corps, his pro-Marx­ist/pro-Sovi­et lean­ings and his secu­ri­ty sta­tus both esca­lat­ed:

1. Train­ing at Keesler Air Force Base in Mis­sis­sip­pi, Oswald got a Secu­ri­ty Clear­ance.
2. He even­tu­al­ly was sta­tioned at Atsu­gi Air Force Base in Japan, from which the CIA-con­nect­ed U‑2 spy plane flew. Bear in mind that Oswald’s Marxist/Communist pro­fes­sions con­tin­ued apace dur­ing this time.
3. Oswald was actu­al­ly in charge of phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty for the U‑2 at one point in his tour of duty at Atsugi–remarkable for a self-pro­fessed Marx­ist.
4. While in Japan, he came in con­tact with Richard Case Nag­ell, a deep-cov­er intel­li­gence offi­cer assigned to play a dou­ble agent. Even­tu­al­ly, Nag­ell was assigned by his [osten­si­ble] Sovi­et han­dlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pre­text for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Nag­ell is the focal point of the remark­able book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Rus­sell, who was inter­viewed in FTR #54.
5. CIA offi­cer, anti-Cas­tro lynch­pin and future Water­gate bur­glar E. Howard Hunt also turned up in Japan at the same time as Oswald, oper­at­ing in close prox­im­i­ty to the U‑2 oper­a­tions.
6. Dur­ing his Marine Corps tenure, Oswald stat­ed to asso­ciate David Buck­nell that he would go to the Sovi­et Union on an under­cov­er intel­li­gence oper­a­tion and return a hero. Buck­nell stat­ed that Oswald was no Com­mu­nist.
7. Anoth­er Marine asso­ciate of Oswald’s–Jim Botelho–also said Oswald was no Com­mu­nist and that, if he had been, Botel­ho would have tak­en vio­lent action against him.
8. Oswald had access to sen­si­tive radar infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the U‑2 project and also knew the radio codes for his base. After his “defec­tion” to the U.S.S.R., he was the talk of the base. Nonethe­less, the radio codes were not changed.
9. The lone asso­ciate of Oswald who cor­rob­o­rat­ed his dubi­ous Marx­ist credentials–Kerry Thornley–turned up lat­er in New Orleans, net­work­ing with Oswald and the oth­er play­ers in Oswald’s appar­ent pro-Cas­tro activ­i­ties. We will cov­er this in future broad­casts.
10. While in the Marines, Oswald devel­oped a pro­fi­cient com­mand of the Russ­ian language–a dif­fi­cult tongue to mas­ter. He appears to have attend­ed the Defense Lan­guage Insti­tute in Mon­terey, Cal­i­for­nia.
11. Oswald was a lousy shot in a branch of the service–the Marines–that placed a pre­mi­um on marks­man­ship. Labeled a “shit­bird” by his fel­low Marines for his lack of pro­fi­cien­cy with a rifle, Oswald lacked the extra­or­di­nary marks­man­ship required to do what he alleged­ly did in Dal­las.

The cir­cum­stances of Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union are sus­pi­cious as well:

1. Oswald was giv­en a hard­ship dis­charge with just a few months remain­ing on his enlist­ment tour. He got this in an inor­di­nate­ly short amount of time. He was sup­posed to take care of his moth­er, and yet his broth­er Robert was there to care for her, mak­ing Lee’s pres­ence there unnec­es­sary.
2. Oswald booked his steamship pas­sage from the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart in New Orleans, head­ed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s tri­al.
3. Oswald osten­si­bly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, an obscure Swiss insti­tu­tion that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
4. He defect­ed to the Sovi­et Union from Helsin­ki, Fin­land. His stay there rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions, includ­ing the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, lux­u­ry hotel.
5. After leav­ing the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kur­ki, anoth­er high-end insti­tu­tion. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these insti­tu­tions is a mystery–he did not have enough mon­ey in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
6. His selec­tion of Helsin­ki is sig­nif­i­cant, also, because the Sovi­et Embassy there was the only one that could issue a trav­el visa to the Sovi­et Union in a lit­tle more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?

FTR #1009 The Deep Politics of Habsburg Redux and The Russia-Gate Psy-Op

In recent pro­grams, we exam­ined com­plex inter­ac­tions between a group of Euro­pean politi­cians dubbed “The Haps­burg Group,” for­mer Trump cam­paign manager/ for­mer advis­er to for­mer Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovuyuch and prob­a­ble U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cer Paul Man­afort, and the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. In turn, mem­bers of the Hab­s­burg family–the Roy­al House of the for­mer Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an Empire–have been active through­out Europe and in their for­mer prin­ci­pal­i­ty of Ukraine.

In this pro­gram, we exam­ine the deep pol­i­tics man­i­fest­ing in the Ukraine/Habsburg redux/Liechtenstein dynam­ic.

Before delv­ing into the devel­op­ment of this pow­er polit­i­cal rela­tion­ship, we review the involve­ment of the Hab­s­burgs in Euro­pean inte­gra­tion and the incor­po­ra­tion of Ukraine into the West­ern orbit:

1.– Mem­bers of the Hab­s­burg dynasty have been involved in the con­text in which Lee Har­vey Man­afort and the Hab­s­burg Group were operating–European inte­gra­tion in order to ease Ukraine into the West­ern, rather than the Russ­ian orbit. ” . . . . Georg von Hab­s­burg, the 32-year-old-grand­son of Emper­or Karl I, to the posi­tion of Hungary’s ambas­sador for Euro­pean Inte­gra­tion. In neigh­bour­ing Aus­tria, the tra­di­tional heart of Hab­s­burg pow­er, Georg’s broth­er, Karl, 35, was recent­ly elect­ed to rep­re­sent the coun­try in the Euro­pean par­lia­ment. In addi­tion to this, he serves as the pres­i­dent of the Aus­trian branch of the Pan-Euro­pean move­ment. . . . .”
2.– Jump­ing for­ward some 14 years from our pre­vi­ous arti­cle, we see that a Hab­s­burg princess was anoint­ed as Geor­gia’s ambas­sador to Ger­many. Note that [now for­mer] Geor­gian pres­i­dent Mikheil Saakashvili endorsed her. Saakashvili became, for a time, the gov­er­nor of the Ukrain­ian province of Odessa! Note, also, the role of the Hab­s­burgs in the final phase of the Cold War: “. . . . The heirs to the Hab­s­burg emper­ors helped speed the down­fall of the Sovi­et empire, par­tic­u­larly by arrang­ing the cross-bor­der exo­dus from Hun­gary to Aus­tria in the sum­mer of 1989 that punched the first big hole in the iron cur­tain. . . .”
3.– Karl von Hab­s­burg has been active in Ukraine for some years before estab­lish­ing a radio sta­tion. Karl von Hab­s­burg is the head of the UNPO. Note the Ukrain­ian ori­en­ta­tion and influ­ence of Wil­helm von Hab­s­burg, in World War I through the World War II eras, as well as his anti-Sovi­et activism: ” . . . . A mil­i­tary offi­cer by train­ing, Wil­helm sup­ported Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence strug­gle dur­ing World War I. He fought with Ukrain­ian troops against the Rus­sians, and had schemed and cajoled a myr­iad of politi­cians to sup­port his monar­chial aspi­ra­tions. Almost until his death at the hands of the Sovi­ets in 1948 – he was snatched off the streets of Vien­na and trans­ported to a prison in Kyiv for work­ing as an agent against the Sovi­et Union – Wil­helm believed this slice of the family’s empire could be his. . . .”
4.– Fast-for­ward­ing again some five years from our pre­vi­ous two arti­cles and one year after the Euro­Maid­an coup we see that actions speak loud­er than words, and Karl’s new Ukrain­ian radio sta­tion says a lot: “Since 20 Jan­u­ary, a tru­ly Euro­pean radio sta­tion [Note this–D.E.] is broad­cast­ing in Ukraine, its main spon­sor, Karl-Hab­s­burg Lothrin­gen, told EurAc­tiv in an exclu­sive inter­view . . . . Karl Hab­s­burg-Lothrin­gen is an Aus­trian politi­cian and head of the House of Hab­s­burg. Since 1986, he has served as Pres­i­dent of the Aus­trian branch of the Paneu­ro­pean Union. . . .”
5.– As we not­ed, “Plan B” for Ukraine might be termed “Plan OUN/B.” Otto von Hab­s­burg formed the Euro­pean Free­dom Coun­cil with Jaroslav Stet­zko, the wartime head of the Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment that imple­ment­ed Third Reich eth­nic cleans­ing pro­grams in Ukraine. The EFC was close­ly aligned with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, head­ed by Stet­zko. The ABN, as we have seen in the past, is a re-nam­ing of the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations, a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups formed by Hitler in 1943.”. . . . The Haps­burg monar­chy helped guide the lead­er­ship in their for­mer pos­ses­sions. The Free­dom Coun­cil was formed by Otto von Haps­burg and Jaroslav Stet­zko at a con­fer­ence in Munich on June 30-July 2 1967, as a coor­di­nat­ing body for orga­ni­za­tions fight­ing com­mu­nism in Europe. EMP H.R.H. Otto von Haps­burg was hon­orary chair­man of the Euro­pean Free­dom Coun­cil, based in Munich, dur­ing the 1980s and allied to the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations (ABN). . . .”

The foun­da­tion of the U.S. intelligence/Hapsburg/Underground Reich con­cate­na­tion dates to the peri­od imme­di­ate­ly after World War I: ” . . . . . . . . The Haps­burgs would desert Ger­many in return for an Amer­i­can com­mit­ment. Sub­si­dized by the Unit­ed States—which brought over to Europe the Pres­i­den­t’s close advis­er Pro­fes­sor George D. Her­ron to impart Wilson’s vital imprimatur—this updat­ed Haps­burg sov­er­eign­ty must com­mit in advance to erad­i­cat­ing the Bol­she­viks. A revi­tal­ized Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an buffer zone to fend off Sovi­et pen­e­tra­tion of the Balka­ns turned into a life­long chimera for Dulles, and spurred his devo­tion over the many years to some man­ner of ‘Danu­bian Fed­er­a­tion.’ . . . .”

This rela­tion­ship gained momen­tum dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, with approach­es by the Third Reich to Allied as a Nazi defeat began to take shape.

One of the con­cepts cen­tral to under­stand­ing an exten­sion of the U.S. intelligence/Hapsburg anti-Com­mu­nist alliance is the con­cept of “The Chris­t­ian West”–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. . . .”

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pos­es is a “Chris­t­ian West­er” accom­mo­da­tion appar­ent­ly involv­ing Prince Egon Max von Hohen­loe, who mar­ried into the Hab­s­burg fam­i­ly. Oper­at­ing out of Licht­en­stein and trav­el­ing on a Licht­en­stein pass­port, von Hohen­loe served as an inter­me­di­ary between U.S. intel­li­gence and Wal­ter Schel­len­berg, in charge of over­seas intel­li­gence for the SS. (Schel­len­berg was also on the board of direc­tors of Inter­na­tion­al Tele­phone and Tele­graph and became a key oper­a­tive for the post­war Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion.)

Allen Dulles’s strate­gic out­look embraced and shaped much of what appears to under­lie the Habsburg/OUN/Western intel­li­gence activ­i­ty with regard to Ukraine: ” . . .Pro­nounce­ments alter­nat­ed with rich meals in a Liecht­en­stein chateau; Hohen­lo­he bit by bit exposed his qua­si-offi­cial sta­tus as a spokesman for SS ele­ments with in the Ger­man gov­ern­ment who now looked beyond the ‘wild men’ in con­trol. What casts a longer shad­ow is the out­line of Allen’s geopo­lit­i­cal ideas. The peace he has in mind, Dulles indi­cates, must avoid the excess­es of Ver­sailles and per­mit the expand­ed Ger­man poli­ty to sur­vive, Aus­tria includ­ed and pos­si­bly at least a sec­tion of Czecho­slo­va­kia, while exclud­ing all thought of ‘vic­tors and van­quished . . . . as a fac­tor of order and progress.’ . . . . The resul­tant ‘Greater Ger­many’ would back­stop the ‘for­ma­tion of a cor­don san­i­taire against Bol­she­vism and pan-Slav­ism through the east­ward enlarge­ment of Poland and the preser­va­tion of a strong Hun­gary.’ This ‘Fed­er­al Greater Ger­many (sim­i­lar to the Unit­ed States), with an asso­ci­at­ed Danube Con­fed­er­a­tion, would be the best guar­an­tee of order and progress in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe.’ . . . . ”

A for­mer Abwehr offi­cer alleges that he attend­ed a meet­ing in Spain between Abwehr head Wil­helm Canaris, Dono­van and Stew­art Men­zies, chief of MI6–British Intel­li­gence. ” . . . . . . . . An Abwehr offi­cer, F. Jus­tus von Einem, lat­er claimed to have sat in on a care­ful­ly pre­pared meet­ing at San­tander in Spain in the sum­mer of 1943 dur­ing which both Men­zies and Dono­van agreed to Chris­t­ian West­er terms as reca­pit­u­lat­ed by Canaris per­son­al­ly. If this exchange occurred, Dono­van kept it qui­et. . . .”

Inter­est­ing per­spec­tive on why Dono­van would have “kept it qui­et can be gleaned from the account of the fre­quent­ly lethal attempts by four dif­fer­ent authors to write the account of the OSS from the orga­ni­za­tion’s micro­filmed files. We remind lis­ten­ers, in this con­text, that major intel­li­gence ser­vices have pos­sessed tox­ins that will kill with­out leav­ing a trace for a very long time. ” . . . . Pro­fes­sor Cony­ers Read, the Har­vard his­to­ri­an, pro­duced many draft chap­ters before Dono­van him­self asked him to stop work, because he felt the direc­tor’s papers were still too sen­si­tive. Read did not resume his work, for death inter­vened. [#1–D.E.] One of Dono­van’s wartime majors, Corey Ford, then began work on the project in the mid-1950’s, pro­duc­ing a draft man­u­script of what was real­ly a bio­graph­i­cal his­to­ry of Dono­van and the OSS, but again death inter­vened before Ford could com­plete his vol­ume. [#2–D.E.]

After Dono­van’s death in 1959, the project was tak­en over by Whit­ney Shep­ard­son, Dono­van’s chief of secret intel­li­gence dur­ing World War II. For the third time, the author died before com­plet­ing the work. [#3–D.E.] Then came the fourth attempt, this time by Cor­nelius Ryan, the author of The Longest Day. . . . the work was stopped before it real­ly began; a mid­dle-rank offi­cial at the CIA man­aged to stop the project because he believed the book con­tem­plat­ed by Ryan would be too con­tro­ver­sial. When he found him­self denied access to the direc­tor’s files, Ryan was com­pelled to aban­don the project tem­porar­i­ly. Then he, too died before it was pos­si­ble to resume work. [#4–D.E.]. . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.– A 1923 busi­ness lun­cheon meet­ing between William Dono­van and Adolf Hitler: ” . . . . As ear­ly as 1923, he [Dono­van] mate­ri­al­ized in Bercht­es­gaden to share a beer in the Gastz­im­mer of a mod­est pen­sion with Adolf Hitler. The clam­my young rab­ble-rouser rant­ed to the sym­pa­thet­ic attor­ney that he, unlike the fam­i­ly dog, could not be beat­en by his mis­er­able father until he wet the car­pet. . . . .”
2.– Dono­van’s role pro­vid­ing polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic intel­li­gence to J.P. Mor­gan to facil­i­tate Amer­i­can invest­ment bankers’ $2 bil­lion invest­ment in Euro­pean infra­struc­ture. ” . . . . He was qui­et­ly approached by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pre­em­i­nent firm of J.P. Mor­gan and Sons. The coun­try’s most influ­en­tial invest­ment bankers were recon­noi­ter­ing the mar­ket for a $2 bil­lion pack­age of secu­ri­ties around Cen­tral and East­ern Europe. . . .”
3.– Com­par­i­son between the func­tion­al role of key Wall Street lawyers who “grad­u­at­ed” to assum­ing deci­sive posts in U.S. intel­li­gence and their sub­se­quent espi­onage activ­i­ties. ” . . . . Dono­van’s pro­fes­sion was rel­e­vant, and it is equal­ly no acci­dent that all three load-bear­ing pro­tag­o­nists through­out this work—Bill Dono­van, Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner—achieved sta­tus in Amer­i­ca by way of impor­tant Wall Street part­ner­ships. In many ways, a trust­ed cor­po­rate attor­ney accom­plish­es sub­stan­tial­ly for his clients what today’s one-stop nation­al intel­li­gence fac­to­ry goes after for its patron: he puts the deals togeth­er, he damps down crises and flaps, he keeps the process as con­fi­den­tial as pos­si­ble. He finds out every­thing he an and resorts to every means imag­in­able to shape the out­come. He pro­ceeds by the case sys­tem, and prefer­ably one emer­gency at a time. Fur­ther­more, an intel­li­gence ser­vice con­coct­ed by lawyers—men accus­tomed not mere­ly to spot­ting the prob­lems but also to defin­ing them to their clients and rec­om­mend­ing appro­pri­ate action—is far more like­ly than a tra­di­tion­al mil­i­tary intel­li­gence staff to reach in and con­di­tion pol­i­cy. Attor­neys have a seduc­tive way of sub­or­di­nat­ing their clients, of insin­u­at­ing their leg­erde­main until they become the strate­gic entan­gle­ments. And thus it devel­ops that in many strate­gic entan­gle­ments the lawyers have at least as much con­trol over the out­come as elect­ed offi­cials. . . .”

FTR #994 What Was Old Is New Again

This broad­cast recaps mate­r­i­al from pre­vi­ous pro­grams, under­scor­ing key points of infor­ma­tion from cur­rent devel­op­ments.

Last week, we opened our pro­gram with an arti­cle from Con­sor­tium News about some alarm­ing devel­op­ments in Ukraine–a piece of leg­is­la­tion approved by the Rada (the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment) that might augur World War III.

One of the few media out­lets that has cov­ered the return to pow­er of the OUN/B’s suc­ces­sor fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine, Con­sor­tium News was found­ed and head­ed by Robert Par­ry.

Par­ry passed away last week­end.

Mr. Emory post­ed the fol­low­ing com­ment on the Con­sor­tium News arti­cle about Robert’s pass­ing:

A very, very sad occa­sion. It was my priv­i­lege to have inter­viewed Robert a num­ber of times over the years, includ­ing an interview–scheduled days before–that took place on the day he learned of Gary Webb’s death.

It was also my priv­i­lege to have used many arti­cles from Con­sor­tium News in my week­ly broad­casts, includ­ing, and espe­cial­ly, his reportage about the return to pow­er of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine.

Very few have man­i­fest­ed the courage and integri­ty to report hon­est­ly on those events.

Now, there will be few­er.

Rest in peace, Robert.

Next, we return to the sub­ject of Peter Thiel, of “Team Trump,” Face­book and Palan­tir.

We have cov­ered Peter Thiel in numer­ous pro­grams, begin­ning with our warn­ing about him in FTR #718.

Some of the points we have made about him include:

1.-His fam­i­ly back­ground in the Frank­furt (Ger­many) chem­i­cal busi­ness. Prob­a­bly I.G. Farben/Bormann, in that con­text.
2.-His pri­ma­ry role in Palan­tir, appar­ent­ly the mak­er of the PRISM soft­ware at the epi­cen­ter of L’Af­faire Snow­den.
3.-His role as the pri­ma­ry financier of Ron Paul’s super PAC. (Paul is an unabashed white suprema­cist, joined at the hip with David Duke and the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. He was the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice for Eddie “The Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den and Julian Assange.)
4.-Thiel’s net­work­ing with movers and shak­ers from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s high-tech ven­ture cap­i­tal firm.
5.-Thiel’s active anti-immi­grant stance.
6.-Thiel’s sem­i­nal net­work­ing with oth­er tech titans and ven­ture cap­i­tal firms, includ­ing some with polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal trib­u­taries lead­ing back to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

With Thiel among the can­di­dates to head Trump’s Pres­i­den­t’s Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board, we note that his apoc­a­lyp­tic, anti-Enlight­en­ment ide­ol­o­gy draws on, among oth­er influ­ences, Carl Schmitt. Arguably the prime mover behind the Ger­man Con­ser­v­a­tive Rev­o­lu­tion, Schmitt was also: “. . . . 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. . .”

There has been a fair amount of buzz about the release of addi­tion­al, pre­vi­ous­ly clas­si­fied, doc­u­ments about the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy.

An inter­est­ing doc­u­ment came to light in the recent release of files relat­ing to the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. Jack Ruby told an FBI infor­mant to “watch the fire­works” in Dealey Plaza that day.

“Jack Ruby, the man who even­tu­al­ly shot Lee Har­vey Oswald, told an FBI infor­mant to ‘watch the fire­works’ on the day Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy was killed, accord­ing to new records the Nation­al Archives released Fri­day. . . . ‘The infor­mant stat­ed that on the morn­ing of the assas­si­na­tion, Ruby con­tact­ed him and asked if he would ‘like to watch the fire­works,” an FBI record dat­ed April 6, 1977, says. ‘He was with Jack Ruby and stand­ing at the cor­ner of the Postal Annex Build­ing fac­ing the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry Build­ing at the time of the shoot­ing. . . .”

This might be eval­u­at­ed against the back­ground of FTR #963, relating–among oth­er things–a read­ing of Jack Ruby’s War­ren Com­mis­sion tes­ti­mo­ny. (A read­ing of Ruby’s tes­ti­mo­ny is re-broad­cast in this pro­gram.)

When inter­viewed by the War­ren Com­mis­sion, Jack Ruby indi­cat­ed that he had been part of a con­spir­a­cy to kill Kennedy and that he feared for his life. The War­ren Com­mis­sion turned a deaf ear to his desire to go to Wash­ing­ton and “spill the beans.”

Ger­ald Ford (who suc­ceed­ed Nixon as Pres­i­dent and par­doned him of all crimes com­mit­ted), Leon Jawors­ki (a War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel who was a direc­tor of a CIA domes­tic fund­ing con­duit and who was select­ed by Nixon to be Water­gate Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor) and Arlen Specter (anoth­er War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel who was Nixon’s first choice as his per­son­al defense attor­ney in the Water­gate affair) were present at Ruby’s de fac­to con­fes­sion.

War­ren Com­mis­sion Coun­sel J. Lee Rankin is also present at this inter­view. Nixon first select­ed J. Lee Rankin to serve as Water­gate Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor. Rankin was sub­se­quent­ly tabbed to review the Water­gate tapes and deter­mine which would be released. Rankin was the War­ren Com­mis­sion’s liai­son between the com­mis­sion and both the CIA and the FBI. Rankin was a key pro­po­nent of the so-called “Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.”

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion of anoth­er aspect of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Jane May­er’s Dark Mon­ey has received con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion and media play over the last cou­ple of years. In past dis­cus­sion of the Koch fam­i­ly, we not­ed that patri­arch Fred Koch worked with Hitler build­ing one of Nazi Ger­many’s most impor­tant refineries–one capa­ble of refin­ing the high-octane fuel need­ed by fight­er planes.

In addi­tion, we not­ed that Fred Koch was one of the first mem­bers of the John Birch Soci­ety.

May­er notes that Fred Koch helped finance ads in the wake of the JFK assas­si­na­tion that pinned respon­si­bil­i­ty for the crime on the Sovi­et Union–one of the pri­ma­ry lev­els of dis­in­for­ma­tion.

” . . . . In a hasty turn­about, soon after the assas­si­na­tion, Fred Koch took out full-page ads in The New York Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post, mourn­ing JFK. The ads advanced the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry that JFK’s assas­sin, Lee Har­vey Oswald, had act­ed as part of a Com­mu­nist plot. The Com­mu­nists would­n’t “rest on this suc­cess,” the ads warned. In the cor­ner was a tear-out order form, direct­ing the pub­lic to sign up for John Birch Soci­ety mail­ings. . . .”

We have cov­ered the “paint­ing of Oswald Red” in numer­ous pro­grams, includ­ing FTR #‘s 925 and 926.

FTR #943 The Gehlen Gang, the High-Profile Hacks and the New Cold War

With a new Cold War gain­ing momen­tum and charges of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the U.S. elec­tion, this pro­gram takes stock of infor­ma­tion point­ing in the oth­er direc­tion. After review­ing pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of why the DNC, John Podes­ta and NSA “hacks” do not with­stand scruti­ny, the broad­cast sets forth infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Ukrain­ian fas­cists and relat­ed ele­ments may well be the authors of a “cyber false-flag” oper­a­tion.

Not only is the so-called “evi­dence” char­ac­ter­is­tic of a rel­a­tive­ly clum­sy false-flag operation–albeit one con­duct­ed on the internet–but the so-called “experts,” link to the milieu of the Rein­hard Gehlen “Org.”

The joint CIA/FBI/NSA declas­si­fied ver­sion of the Intel­li­gence Report on Russ­ian hack­ing came out. There is no sub­stan­tive detail in the report:“ . . . . To sum­ma­rize, the report says that the CIA, FBI, and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency believe that Russ­ian hackers—directed ulti­mate­ly by Vladimir Putin—hacked email accounts belong­ing to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee and to Clin­ton cam­paign chair­man John Podes­ta and then passed the mate­r­i­al they obtained on to Wik­iLeaks through a third par­ty. This was done, the report asserts, because the Rus­sians believed that Don­ald Trump would be friend­lier to their country’s inter­ests, as pres­i­dent, than Hillary Clin­ton. And … that’s about it. Not count­ing intro pages or appen­dices, the report is five pages long and does not include any descrip­tion of the actu­al evi­dence that Russ­ian actors were respon­si­ble for the DNC/Podesta hacks (an asser­tion that’s sup­port­ed by pub­licly avail­able evi­dence ana­lyzed by third par­ties) or the asser­tion that Putin ulti­mate­ly direct­ed the release of hacked mate­r­i­al in order to help elect Don­ald Trump (an asser­tion that’s hard­er to ver­i­fy inde­pen­dent­ly). . . . .”

The Bit­ly tech­nol­o­gy used in the hacks enabled the entire world to see what was going on! This strong­ly indi­cates a cyber-false flag oper­a­tion: ” . . . . Using Bit­ly allowed ‘third par­ties to see their entire cam­paign includ­ing all their tar­gets— some­thing you’d want to keep secret,’ Tom Finney, a researcher at Secure­Works, told Moth­er­board. It was one of Fan­cy Bear’s ‘gravest mis­takes,’ as Thomas Rid, a pro­fes­sor at King’s Col­lege who has close­ly stud­ied the case, put it in a new piece pub­lished on Thurs­day in Esquire, as it gave researchers unprece­dent­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into the activ­i­ties of Fan­cy Bear, link­ing dif­fer­ent parts of its larg­er cam­paign togeth­er. . . .”

It should be not­ed that while this report is signed off on by the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the FBI nev­er exam­ined the DNC’s hacked serv­er. Instead, accord­ing to the DNC, the job was out­sourced to Crowd­Strike! Nei­ther the FBI, nor any oth­er U.S. gov­ern­ment enti­ty has run an inde­pen­dent foren­sic analy­sis on the sys­tem! ” . . . Six months after the FBI first said it was inves­ti­gat­ing the hack of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Committee’s com­put­er net­work, the bureau has still not request­ed access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US gov­ern­ment enti­ty has run an inde­pen­dent foren­sic analy­sis on the sys­tem, one US intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News. . . .The FBI has instead relied on com­put­er foren­sics from a third-par­ty tech secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, Crowd­Strike, which first deter­mined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infil­trat­ed by Rus­sia-linked hack­ers, the U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News. . .‘Crowd­Strike is pret­ty good. There’s no rea­son to believe that any­thing that they have con­clud­ed is not accu­rate,’ the intel­li­gence offi­cial said, adding they were con­fi­dent Rus­sia was behind the wide­spread hacks. . . It’s unclear why the FBI didn’t request access to the DNC servers, and whether it’s com­mon prac­tice when the bureau inves­ti­gates the cyber­at­tacks against pri­vate enti­ties by state actors, like when the Sony Cor­po­ra­tion was hacked by North Korea in 2014. Buz­zFeed News spoke to three cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies who have worked on major breach­es in the last 15 months, who said that it was “par for the course” for the FBI to do their own foren­sic research into the hacks. None want­ed to com­ment on the record on anoth­er cyber­se­cu­ri­ty company’s work, or the work being done by a nation­al secu­ri­ty agency. . . .”

The FBI claims that the DNC denied them access to the servers! Right! Note the promi­nence of Crowd­Strike in this imbroglio. More about them below. ” . . . . The FBI struck back at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee on Thurs­day, accus­ing it of deny­ing fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors access to its com­put­er sys­tems and ham­string­ing its inves­ti­ga­tion into the infil­tra­tion of DNC servers by Rus­sia-backed hack­ers. ‘The FBI repeat­ed­ly stressed to DNC offi­cials the neces­si­ty of obtain­ing direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the ini­tial com­pro­mise had been mit­i­gat­ed. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third par­ty for infor­ma­tion,’ a senior law enforce­ment offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News in a state­ment. ‘These actions caused sig­nif­i­cant delays and inhib­it­ed the FBI from address­ing the intru­sion ear­li­er.’ . . . The war­ring state­ments are the lat­est twists in an extra­or­di­nary stand­off between the Democ­rats and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors that reached a fever pitch over the bureau’s probe into Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hillary Clinton’s pri­vate email serv­er. . . . The FBI announced it was inves­ti­gat­ing the hack of the DNC’s servers in July, after a third-par­ty com­put­er secu­ri­ty firm, Crowd­strike, said it had evi­dence of Krem­lin-backed hack­ers infil­trat­ing its sys­tem. . . .”

The DNC respond­ed to the FBI’s counter-asser­tion by reassert­ing that it’s giv­ing the FBI full access to what­ev­er it request­ed. If there’s a prob­lem with the FBI get­ting access to that serv­er, it’s a prob­lem between the FBI and Crowd­strike: ” . . . The FBI had pre­vi­ous­ly told law­mak­ers on the Hill that the DNC had not allowed fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors to access their servers. After Buz­zFeed News report­ed on Wednes­day that the DNC claimed FBI agents had nev­er asked for the servers, con­gres­sion­al offi­cials pres­sured the FBI for answers. A senior law enforce­ment offi­cial issued a pub­lic state­ment on the mat­ter Thurs­day night. ‘Some­one is lying their ass off,’ a US intel­li­gence offi­cial said of the war­ring state­ments. But offi­cials with the DNC still assert they’ve ‘coop­er­at­ed with the FBI 150%.They’ve had access to any­thing they want. Any­thing that they desire. Any­thing they’ve asked, we’ve coop­er­at­ed,’ the DNC offi­cial said. ‘If any­body con­tra­dicts that it’s between Crowd­strike and the FBI.’ . . .With­out direct access to the com­put­er net­work, anoth­er US intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed, fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors had been forced to rely on the find­ings of the pri­vate cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm Crowd­strike for com­put­er foren­sics. From May through August of 2016, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee paid Crowd­strike $267,807 dol­lars for main­te­nance, data ser­vices and con­sult­ing, among oth­er things, accord­ing to fed­er­al records. . . .”

An impor­tant arti­cle under­scores that many tech experts dis­agree with the gov­ern­men­t’s so-called analy­sis: ” . . . . Yet despite the scores of breath­less media pieces that assert that Russia’s inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion is ‘case closed,‘might some skep­ti­cism be in order? Some cyber experts say ‘yes.’ . . . Cyber-secu­ri­ty experts have also weighed in. The secu­ri­ty edi­tor at Ars Tech­ni­ca observed that ‘Instead of pro­vid­ing smok­ing guns that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was behind spe­cif­ic hacks,’ the gov­ern­ment report ‘large­ly restates pre­vi­ous pri­vate sec­tor claims with­out pro­vid­ing any sup­port for their valid­i­ty.’ Robert M. Lee of the cyber-secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny Dra­gos not­ed that the report ‘reads like a poor­ly done ven­dor intel­li­gence report string­ing togeth­er var­i­ous aspects of attri­bu­tion with­out evi­dence.’ Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Jef­frey Carr not­ed that the report ‘mere­ly list­ed every threat group ever report­ed on by a com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny that is sus­pect­ed of being Russ­ian-made and lumped them under the head­ing of Russ­ian Intel­li­gence Ser­vices (RIS) with­out pro­vid­ing any sup­port­ing evi­dence that such a con­nec­tion exists.’ . . .”

CrowdStrike–at the epi­cen­ter of the sup­posed Russ­ian hack­ing con­tro­ver­sy is note­wor­thy. Its co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, Dmit­ry Alper­ovitch is a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil, financed by ele­ments that are at the foun­da­tion of fan­ning the flames of the New Cold War: “In this respect, it is worth not­ing that one of the com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies the gov­ern­ment has relied on is Crowd­strike, which was one of the com­pa­nies ini­tial­ly brought in by the DNC to inves­ti­gate the alleged hacks. . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. . . . The con­nec­tion between [Crowd­strike co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Dmitri] Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . . ”

There was an update back in Decem­ber from the Ger­man gov­ern­ment regard­ing its assess­ment of the 2015 Bundgestag hacks (attrib­uted to “Fan­cy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” as men­tioned in the San­dro Gay­ck­en post above) that it attrib­uted to APT28 and Rus­sia: while it asserts the hacks did indeed take place, the leaked doc­u­ments were lat­er deter­mined to be an insid­er leak (via Google trans­late). “ . . . . Accord­ing to the report, fed­er­al secu­ri­ty author­i­ties are con­vinced that not hack­ers had stolen the 2420 doc­u­ments pub­lished by the Inter­net plat­form Wik­ileaks in ear­ly Decem­ber. There was cer­tain­ly no evi­dence that the mate­r­i­al had been stolen in the cyber attack on the Bun­destag in 2015, it was called into secu­ri­ty crises. . . . ”

Anoth­er arti­cle details at length the skep­ti­cism and out­right scorn many cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts feel con­cern­ing the report. ” . . . . Did the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hack the DNC and feed doc­u­ments to Wik­iLeaks? There are real­ly two ques­tions here: who hacked the DNC, and who released the DNC doc­u­ments? These are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same. An ear­li­er intru­sion into Ger­man par­lia­ment servers was blamed on the Rus­sians, yet the release of doc­u­ments to Wik­iLeaks is thought to have orig­i­nat­ed from an insid­er. [35] Had the Rus­sians hacked into the DNC, it may have been to gath­er intel­li­gence, while anoth­er actor released the doc­u­ments. But it is far from cer­tain that Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices had any­thing to do with the intru­sions. Julian Assange says that he did not receive the DNC doc­u­ments from a nation-state. It has been point­ed out that Rus­sia could have used a third par­ty to pass along the mate­r­i­al. Fair enough, but for­mer UK diplo­mat Craig Mur­ray asserts: ‘I know who the source is… It’s from a Wash­ing­ton insid­er. It’s not from Rus­sia.’ [We won­der if it might have been Tul­si Gabbard–D.E.] [36] . . . .”

Exem­pli­fy­ing some of the points of dis­sen­sion in the above-linked sto­ry: ” . . . . Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ana­lyst Robert Gra­ham was par­tic­u­lar­ly blis­ter­ing in his assess­ment of the government’s report, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “full of garbage.” The report fails to tie the indi­ca­tors of com­pro­mise to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. ‘It con­tains sig­na­tures of virus­es that are pub­licly avail­able, used by hack­ers around the world, not just Rus­sia. It con­tains a long list of IP address­es from per­fect­ly nor­mal ser­vices, like Tor, Google, Drop­box, Yahoo, and so forth. Yes, hack­ers use Yahoo for phish­ing and mal­ad­ver­tis­ing. It doesn’t mean every access of Yahoo is an ‘indi­ca­tor of com­pro­mise’.’ Gra­ham com­pared the list of IP address­es against those accessed by his web brows­er, and found two match­es. ‘No,’ he con­tin­ues. ‘This doesn’t mean I’ve been hacked. It means I just had a nor­mal inter­ac­tion with Yahoo. It means the Griz­zly Steppe IoCs are garbage. . . .”

The source code used in the attacks traces back to Ukraine! ” . . . . In con­junc­tion with the report, the FBI and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed a list of IP address­es it iden­ti­fied with Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices. [22] Word­fence ana­lyzed the IP address­es as well as a PHP mal­ware script pro­vid­ed by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. In ana­lyz­ing the source code, Word­fence dis­cov­ered that the soft­ware used was P.A.S., ver­sion 3.1.0. It then found that the web­site that man­u­fac­tures the mal­ware had a site coun­try code indi­cat­ing that it is Ukrain­ian. [Note this!–D.E.] The cur­rent ver­sion of the P.A.S. soft­ware is 4.1.1, which is much new­er than that used in the DNC hack, and the lat­est ver­sion has changed ‘quite sub­stan­tial­ly.’ Word­fence notes that not only is the soft­ware ‘com­mon­ly avail­able,’ but also that it would be rea­son­able to expect ‘Russ­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tives to devel­op their own tools or at least use cur­rent mali­cious tools from out­side sources.’ To put it plain­ly, Word­fence con­cludes that the mal­ware sam­ple ‘has no appar­ent rela­tion­ship with Russ­ian intel­li­gence.’ . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with a fright­en­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion signed into law by Barack Oba­ma in Decem­ber. It is an omi­nous por­tent of the use of gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary pow­er to sup­press dis­sent­ing views as being “Russ­ian” pro­pa­gan­da tools! “. . . . The new law is remark­able for a num­ber of rea­sons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthy­ism about pur­port­ed dis­sem­i­na­tion of Russ­ian ‘pro­pa­gan­da’ on the Inter­net with a new Orwellian­ism by cre­at­ing a kind of Min­istry of Truth – or Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter – to pro­tect the Amer­i­can peo­ple from ‘for­eign pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion.’ . . . As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwant­ed nar­ra­tives, the law autho­rizes the Cen­ter to: ‘Facil­i­tate the use of a wide range of tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques by shar­ing exper­tise among Fed­er­al depart­ments and agen­cies, seek­ing exper­tise from exter­nal sources, and imple­ment­ing best prac­tices.’ (This sec­tion is an appar­ent ref­er­ence to pro­pos­als that Google, Face­book and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies find ways to block or brand cer­tain Inter­net sites as pur­vey­ors of ‘Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da’ or ‘fake news.’) . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of infor­ma­tion from pre­vi­ous pro­grams link­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion about the high-pro­file hacks to the milieu of Ukrain­ian fas­cism; review of Alexan­dra Chalu­pa’s role in dis­sem­i­nat­ing the “Rus­sia did it” meme; review of “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den’s role in the dis­in­for­ma­tion about the high-pro­file hacks; the imple­men­ta­tion of a fright­en­ing new law autho­riz­ing the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies to act to counter any infor­ma­tion seen as “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.”

FTR #938 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 12: Settling In, Part 2 (The Underground Reich Comes Into Plain View, Part 5)

In FTR #‘s 891 and 895, we high­light­ed the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, a Con­gres­sion­al fig leaf insti­tut­ed to dilute CIA con­trol over Amer­i­can for­eign broad­cast out­lets such as Radio Free Europe, Voice of Amer­i­ca and Radio Free Asia. In addi­tion to the broad­cast out­lets dis­cussed in the sto­ry that fol­lows, we note that the change from a “board of gov­er­nors” to a “CEO” to be appoint­ed by Trump also gives the nom­i­nee pow­er over Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, devel­op­er of numer­ous apps and oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal method­olo­gies favored by the so-called “pri­va­cy advo­cates.”

The replace­ment of the gov­er­nors is seen as a poten­tial boon to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. “ . . . . ‘There’s some fear among the folks here, that the fire­wall will get dimin­ished and attacked and this could fall vic­tim to pro­pa­gan­da,’ the Repub­li­can offi­cial said. ‘They will hire the per­son they want, the cur­rent CEO does not stand a chance. This will pop up on Steve Bannon’s radar quick­ly. They are going to put a friend­ly per­son in that job.’ . . . . ”

The change will affect domes­tic broad­cast media as well. ” . . . . Because of the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Smith-Mundt Act in 2013, the BBG can now broad­cast in the U.S., too. But the influ­ence on the domes­tic mar­ket could be even more sub­tle, the Repub­li­can offi­cial warned. A BBG CEO influ­enced by the admin­is­tra­tion could pen­e­trate estab­lished media out­lets with pack­ages, series or oth­er news prod­ucts pro­duced by the BBG’s net­works but picked up and aired by tra­di­tion­al media like Fox News or Bre­it­bart. Many U.S. out­lets cur­rent­ly use con­tent from VOA. ‘No mon­ey would even change hands, you’ve had no effect on the bud­get,’ the offi­cial said. ‘But it will den­i­grate the prod­uct. . . . ’ ”

In the con­text of the changes made to the BBG, we review the polit­i­cal incli­na­tions of Ban­non: ” . . . The late Andrew Bre­it­bart, founder of the web­site Ban­non went on to lead, called Ban­non the “Leni Riefen­stahl of the Tea Par­ty movement”—a ref­er­ence to the infa­mous cre­ator of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da films. While insist­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t pro­pa­gan­da, Ban­non went on to cite Riefen­stahl among his main influ­ences . . . ”

Next, we turn to the sub­ject of free trade, on which Trump has had much to say, bash­ing Chi­na and Mex­i­co as coun­tries the U.S. should “put right” in their trade rela­tions with the U.S. It’s worth not­ing we haven’t heard Trump men­tion a trade war with Ger­many despite all his tirades against Chi­na and Mex­i­co. It rais­es the ques­tion of why, since Germany’s unprece­dent­ed and dam­ag­ing sur­plus­es make it such an obvi­ous trade war tar­get.

” . . . . There is one poten­tial trade war, how­ev­er, that few peo­ple have so far noticed — but which could soon be his eas­i­est tar­get. Ger­many. Giv­en the size of its pop­u­la­tion, it runs a far larg­er trade sur­plus than Chi­na — and a mas­sive sur­plus with the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar. Even bet­ter, the indus­tries to pick off are rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to iden­ti­fy, and would actu­al­ly have a chance of cre­at­ing well-paid Amer­i­can jobs. . . .

“. . . . Germany’s trade sur­plus is absolute­ly mas­sive, and unprece­dent­ed in mod­ern indus­tri­al his­to­ry. Last year it hit 8.9% of gross domes­tic prod­uct, and it is like­ly to break through 9% before the end of 2016. Glob­al­ly, it is sec­ond in size only to China’s, but giv­en that Ger­many is a far small­er coun­try, it is only fair to mea­sure it on a per capi­ta basis — and when you look at it that way, Germany’s sur­plus is sev­en times big­ger than China’s. . . . Much of Germany’s trade sur­plus is clear­ly the result of cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion. The euro has depressed the real val­ue of the country’s exports, allow­ing it rack up those huge exports. You can argue about whether China’s cur­ren­cy is real­ly at its fair val­ue or not — but no one can real­ly dis­pute that Germany’s cur­ren­cy is way, way below what it would be if it still had the deutschemark. . . .”

Obvi­ous­ly, part of the answer lies in the fact that Deutsche Bank–a key ele­ment of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and the Under­ground Reich–is owed hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars by Trump. Trump’s oth­er con­nec­tions run in the direc­tion of the Under­ground Reich as well. (The Trump/Deutsche Bank con­nec­tion is dis­cussed, in among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 920, 921, 922 and 927.)

We note in pass­ing that Ger­many is prepar­ing for a trade war with the U.S.–we don’t think one will real­ly take place, but we may be treat­ed to Trumpian “fake news” and/or pro­pa­gan­da. Ger­many is assert­ing that the fac­tors behind its enor­mous trade sur­plus can not be altered, because it is due to nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring cir­cum­stances like a rapid­ly aging pop­u­la­tion.

” . . . There are plen­ty of rea­sons for that. Germany’s cur­rent account sur­plus has nev­er been as high as it is this year and nev­er before has that sur­plus rep­re­sent­ed such a sig­nif­i­cant share of the country’s gross domes­tic prod­uct. Mak­ing mat­ters worse is the fact that the US is the largest con­sumer of Ger­man exports. . . .

“. . . . As high as it is, though, the cur­rent sur­plus is like­ly to con­tin­ue grow­ing. The recent fall in the euro’s val­ue rel­a­tive to the dol­lar fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion makes Ger­man prod­ucts and ser­vices even more com­pet­i­tive. And many econ­o­mists believe that the val­ue of the dol­lar will con­tin­ue to climb, which means that the val­ue of the euro against the dol­lar will shrink cor­re­spond­ing­ly. Their pre­dic­tions are based on recent indi­ca­tions that Trump’s announced eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus poli­cies will push up both America’s sov­er­eign debt load and its inter­est rates. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of how Trump’s con­tin­ued involve­ment in his busi­ness empire (through his chil­dren) leaves him open to manip­u­la­tion. The Philip­pines is a good exam­ple: “ . . . . So, under the deal, Trump’s chil­dren will be paid mil­lions of dol­lars through­out their father’s pres­i­den­cy by Jose E.B. Anto­nio, the head of Cen­tu­ry Prop­er­ties.

“Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings in India, where mem­bers of the BJP par­ty fig­ure in the dis­po­si­tion of the oper­a­tions in that coun­try; Trump’s con­sid­er­a­tion of Bernie Sanders sup­port­er Tul­si Gab­bard for a cab­i­net posi­tion; “Alt-Right” king­pin Steve Ban­non’s high regard for Gab­bard; Gab­bard’s strong sup­port for Modi and net­work­ing with the BJP; Gab­bard’s net­work­ing with the RSS, the Indi­an fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion for which the BJP serves as a front.

FTR #921 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 4: Trump on the Stump (The Underground Reich Emerges Into Plain View, Part 2)

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis of Don­ald Trump’s can­di­da­cy, this pro­gram high­lights Trump’s suc­cess­ful use of Hitler’s rhetor­i­cal style and prin­ci­ples. Blog­ger Josh Mar­shall not­ed: ” . . . This was as wild and as unbri­dled a speech as I’ve seen from Trump. Even if you couldn’t under­stand Eng­lish, it would be stun­ning to watch the slash­ing hand ges­tures, the red face, the yelling. . . . Watch­ing this speech, com­pared to the press con­fer­ence today in Mex­i­co City, what kept com­ing to my mind was the con­trast between Hitler’s uni­formed ral­ly speech­es from the hus­tings and the suit­ed, states­man Hitler we see in the old news reels in Munich and at oth­er icon­ic moments in the late 1930s. . . . the dem­a­gog­ic style, the fren­zied invo­ca­tion of famil­ial blood sac­ri­ficed to bar­bar­ic out­siders – these are not unique to him [Hitler]. When we see this lurid, stab-in-the-back incite­ment, the wild hyper­bole, the febrile rail­ing against out­siders who will make us no longer a coun­try – the sim­i­lar­i­ties are real. More than any­thing, per­haps the most chill­ing part of this day is the con­trast between the two men – a mea­sured, calm states­man fig­ure we saw this after­noon and this rail­ing, angry dem­a­gogue fig­ure who cap­tured the emo­tion­al tenor of a Klan ral­ly. . . .” The sim­i­lar­i­ty does not appear to be coin­ci­den­tal: “. . . . Don­ald Trump appears to take aspects of his Ger­man back­ground seri­ous­ly. John Wal­ter works for the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion, and when he vis­its Don­ald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, ‘Heil Hitler,’ pos­si­bly as a fam­i­ly joke. . . . Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her hus­band reads a book of Hitler’s col­lect­ed speech­es, ‘My New Order,’ which he keeps in a cab­i­net by his bed. . . .” The prin­ci­ples of the book have been put into action: “. . . . But it appears that one way or anoth­er, much of the con­tent in ‘My New Order’ about how Hitler says pro­pa­gan­da works, and how he struc­tures his speak­ing style, and how Hitler tar­gets the low­est-com­mon denom­i­na­tor as his intend­ed audi­ence, has seeped into Trump: the way he speaks, argues, rages and responds in pub­lic. . . .” Trump’s rhetor­i­cal rein­car­na­tion of Hitler cor­re­sponds to polit­i­cal sup­port from a bevy of fas­cists and white suprema­cists, old and new, as dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 882 and 920. Fur­ther­more, the financ­ing for his com­plex, mys­te­ri­ous­ly opaque real estate oper­a­tions comes from insti­tu­tions and indi­vid­u­als linked to the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, as high­light­ed in FTR #920. Con­tin­u­ing to man­i­fest “dog whis­tles” direct­ed at the Nazi faith­ful, Trump’s cam­paign pre­sent­ed the unlike­ly num­ber of 88 high-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers who sup­port his can­di­da­cy, chan­nel­ing the “88” device used by post­war Nazis to code “Heil Hitler.” (“H” is the 8th let­ter of the alpha­bet.) One of the few observers to cor­rect­ly ana­lyze the scan­dalous role of the media in their cov­er­age of Trump’s cam­paign is for­mer CNN host Soledad O’Brien: ” . . . ‘If you look at Hillary Clinton’s speech where she basi­cal­ly point­ed out that what Don­ald Trump has done — actu­al­ly quite well — has nor­mal­ized white suprema­cy,’ O’Brien explained to CNN host Bri­an Stel­ter on Sun­day. ‘I think she made a very good argu­ment, almost like a lawyer. . . . The for­mer CNN host argued that the ques­tion that jour­nal­ists should be ask­ing is if Trump is ‘soft­en­ing the ground for peo­ple — who are white suprema­cists, who are white nation­al­ists, who would self-iden­ti­fy that way — to feel com­fort­able with their views being brought into the nation­al dis­course to the point where they can do a five minute inter­view hap­pi­ly on nation­al tele­vi­sion? And the answer is yes, clear­ly,’ she said. ‘And there is lots of evi­dence of that.’ . . .” The pro­gram con­cludes with a read­ing from “They Thought They Were Free: The Ger­mans 1933–1945”–listeners should com­pare their sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of the present with that of a pro­fes­sor who lived through Hitler’s ascen­sion. Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of Deutsche Bank’s pri­ma­ry role in back­ing Trump’s busi­ness oper­a­tions; review of George Soros’ back­ing of Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings; review of Soros’s role in “Aryaniz­ing” Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust; review of the links of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work’s piv­otal role in Deutsche Bank and the Union Bank of Switzer­land, anoth­er financier of Trump prop­er­ties; an ear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik,” in which the SS intel­li­gence ser­vice float­ed the idea to Allen Dulles that Ger­many would ally with Rus­sia.

FTR #919 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 2: German Ostpolitik, Part 2

Con­tin­u­ing our analy­sis of Don­ald Trump as a polit­i­cal ani­mal, the pro­gram returns to the sub­ject of tra­di­tion­al Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik.” As set forth in FTR #918, Ger­many has–for centuries–sought to sta­bi­lize its rela­tion­ship with Rus­sia in order to fur­ther its geopo­lit­i­cal hege­mon­ic goals. Begin­ning with the sub­ject of for­mer Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Paul Manafort’s work for the Rus­sia-allied Yanukovich gov­ern­ment in Ukraine, we note that avail­able evi­dence points to Man­afort as a cat’s paw for covert action and regime change. His clients in the past include for­mer Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, who did not share the Gold­en Lily wealth to the sat­is­fac­tion of the Unit­ed States and was sub­se­quent­ly over­thrown in a U.S.-backed coup. After review­ing Ger­man Ost­poli­tik as artic­u­lat­ed in the ear­ly 1950s by the Ade­nauer gov­ern­ment in Ger­many and Under­ground Reich Fifth Col­umn ele­ments in the U.S., the pro­gram notes that the basic goals of that ear­ly 1950s man­i­fes­ta­tion of the pol­i­cy have either been reached or are under devel­op­ment: a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed uni­fied Europe, a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed Euro­pean mil­i­tary struc­ture; a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed EU/Russian/Eurasian eco­nom­ic union stretch­ing from “Lis­bon to Vladi­vos­tok,” and the grad­ual piv­ot from the U.S. to Rus­sia as a crit­i­cal Ger­man ally (as reflect­ed in an impor­tant recent Ger­man poll.) The pro­gram notes that the com­plex, alto­geth­er opaque Trump real estate empire appar­ent­ly fronts for, among oth­er inter­ests, pow­er­ful Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als. Those inter­ests, as we have seen in FTR #305, are under the con­trol of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work. Key Trump for­eign pol­i­cy advis­er Joseph E. Schmitz is obsessed “with all things Steuben” and “all things Ger­man” accord­ing to a for­mer col­league at the Pen­ta­gon. Schmitz’s broth­er John P. Schmitz is works with dom­i­nant Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, plac­ing him in the same cor­po­rate land­scape as Trump and his real estate empire. It is our view that Trump’s pro­nounce­ments about Rus­sia, Ukraine and NATO are sim­i­lar in func­tion­al intent to the “Open Let­ter to Stal­in” pub­lished in the “Buerg­er Zeitung.” His stances in this regard are meant to pre­cip­i­tate what pro-Ade­nauer media sources termed “a bid­ding war” between the U.S. and Rus­sia, with Ger­many as the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a ” . . . heat­ed atmos­phere of an auc­tion room where two eager oppo­nents out­bid each oth­er. . . .” Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of John P. Schmitz’s rela­tion­ship to the Robert Bosch Foun­da­tion; review of the Bosch Foundation’s links to the Carl Duis­berg Gesellschaft, which spon­sored Mohamed Atta’s entry into the Unit­ed States; John P. Schmitz’s links to Matthias Wiss­man, and Wissman’s links to Holo­caust-relat­ed law­suits; Joseph E. Schmitz’s report­ed anti-Semi­tism and Holo­caust revi­sion­ism: “ . . . .‘His sum­ma­ry of his tenure’s achieve­ment report­ed as ‘…I fired the Jews,’ . . . . ‘In his final days, he alleged­ly lec­tured [for­mer Pen­ta­gon Inspec­tor Gen­er­al] Mr. [John] Crane on the details of con­cen­tra­tion camps and how the ovens were too small to kill 6 mil­lion Jews,’ . . . .”; review of Joseph E. Schmitz’s post-Pen­ta­gon work as head of the par­ent com­pa­ny of Black­wa­ter.

FTR #918 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 1: German Ostpolitik, Part 1

Don­ald Trump’s pro­nounce­ments about Rus­si­a’s pol­i­cy vis a vis Ukraine and Crimea, his rel­a­tive­ly benign state­ments about Putin, Putin’s rel­a­tive­ly benign state­ments about Trump, Trump’s com­ments that are crit­i­cal of NATO and the rela­tion­ship between for­mer Trump cam­paign aide Paul Man­afort and Vic­tor Yanukovich (the pro-Russ­ian for­mer pres­i­dent of Ukraine) have led many to view Trump as a “Putin/Kremlin/Russian” “dupe/agent.” In the first of two broad­casts, we ana­lyze Trump’s views and asso­ci­a­tions in this regard in the con­text of tra­di­tion­al Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik,” as man­i­fest­ed by the post­war Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and the Under­ground Reich in par­tic­u­lar. It is our con­sid­ered opin­ion that Trump, far from being a “Putin/Kremlin/Russian” “dupe/pawn/agent” is an asso­ciate and oper­a­tive of the Under­ground Reich and his atti­tudes toward Rus­sia, Putin, Crimea and NATO reflect Ger­man “Ost­poli­tik.” For cen­turies, Ger­man and Pruss­ian lead­ers and strate­gists have sought prac­ti­cal alliances and non-aggres­sion pacts with Rus­sia as a vehi­cle for secur­ing their East­ern fron­tier, enhanc­ing their com­mer­cial trade infra­struc­ture and fur­ther­ing their Euro­pean and glob­al hege­mon­ic goals. In the Cold War and “New Cold War” eras, this Ost­poli­tik serves as a “good cop/bad cop” dynam­ic, giv­ing Ger­many lever­age with the U.S. and Russia/U.S.S.R. by cre­at­ing ” . . . the heat­ed atmos­phere of an auc­tion room where two eager oppo­nents out­bid each oth­er. . . .” After pre­sent­ing a syn­op­sis of Ger­man Ost­poli­tik as prac­ticed by Ger­man lead­ers over the cen­turies, the pro­gram high­lights the man­i­fes­ta­tion of ost­poli­tik in the ear­ly Cold War peri­od. In a 1949 let­ter in the “Buerg­er Zeitung,” the jour­nal­is­tic out­let for the Steuben Soci­ety, an open court­ing of Stal­in and the U.S.S.R. is pre­sent­ed by Nazi and SA vet­er­ans Bruno Fricke and Dr. Otto Strass­er. Despite its far-right and McCarthyite ori­en­ta­tion, the paper open­ly advo­cates an alliance between a re-armed Ger­many and the Sovi­et Union, man­aged on the Ger­man side by Third Reich vet­er­ans. This sig­naled a “bid­ding war,” and was fol­lowed three years lat­er by the Sovi­et Note of 3/10/1952, which echoed the call for the goals of the Fricke let­ter and which, in turn, her­ald­ed Ger­many’s dri­ve for a uni­fied Europe under Ger­man con­trol and a re-armed Ger­many, which, ulti­mate­ly, would leave NATO, along with the rest of Europe. ” . . . . The reac­tion of the Ger­man strate­gists to the Sovi­et Note of March 10, 1952, how­ev­er, expos­es their true designs. Ger­man geo-polit­i­cal jour­nals speak of it as “the high­est trump card in the hands of the Chan­cel­lor” which will enable him to mow down the resis­tance of France against Germany’s con­cept of a unit­ed Europe. The pro-Ade­nauer press inter­pret­ed the Russ­ian Note as a tremen­dous asset in speed­ing up the timetable for the cre­ation of a Euro­pean army under Ger­man dom­i­na­tion. . . .” Ana­lyz­ing the nature of the Steuben Soci­ety, whose “Open Let­ter to Stal­in” sig­naled the dri­ve for the real­iza­tion of the cre­ation of a Ger­man-Dom­i­nat­ed Third Pow­er Bloc, the broad­cast sets forth the Steuben Soci­ety’s posi­tion as part of the Nazi Fifth Col­umn in pre-war Amer­i­ca, and its con­tin­ued activ­i­ties as part of the post­war Under­ground Reich. Joseph E. Schmitz, of the far-right and Ger­manophile Schmitz fam­i­ly of Cal­i­for­nia, is a key advis­er to Don­ald Trump. For­mer Inspec­tor Gen­er­al of the Pen­ta­gon under George W. Bush, Schmitz was, in the words of a for­mer Pen­ta­gon col­league, “con­sumed with all things Ger­man and all things Von Steuben.” Is Schmitz a gen­er­a­tive source for Trump’s res­o­nance with Ger­man Ost­poli­tik? With the EU and the devel­op­ment of an EU mil­i­tary appa­ra­tus, con­tem­po­rary Ger­many is man­i­fest­ing the geopo­lit­i­cal goals of Ade­nauer’s and the “Buerg­er Zeitung’s” ost­poli­tik. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Joseph E. Schmitz’s involve­ment with a Von Steuben-linked Ger­man secu­ri­ty net­work; Schmitz’s son’s involve­ment with the Von Steuben milieu; the “Buerg­er Zeitung’s” posi­tion as a key jour­nal­is­tic out­let for Ger­man-Amer­i­cans; the “Buerg­er Zeitung’s” far-right, pro-McCarthy posi­tion.