Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 3 Num. 23

("Quid coniuratio est?")


I received the following from a CN reader who wishes to remain anonymous. What I plan to do is post the entire document over a period of time, most likely in weekly installments. Here is part 6.

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CONSPIRACY:
THE INVISIBLE SECOND RUNG OF GOVERNMENT

An Investigation and Discussion of that Part of the United States Government Which We Did Not Elect, Which Is Not Accountable, Which Is Unconstitutional, Which Is Engaged In Unlawful and Unconstitutional Activity, and Then Hides Behind the National Security Act of 1947

PART I :
CITATION AND SUMMARY OF SOURCES

(continued)

29. Simpson, Christopher, Blowback, New York, New York, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988. Simpson is an award-winning investigative reporter in Washington, D.C. Summary: Documents U.S. collaboration with Nazis since WWII and its cover-up; how the Pentagon falsified files in order to bring the Nazi war criminals here; how the "Nazis on the U.S. intelligence payroll seriously misrepresented the nature and extent of the Soviet threat, thereby" unnecessarily heightening the cold war, "and significantly contributed to the hysteria of the cold war and the McCarthy era;" "how the CIA has spent millions to bankroll anti- Semitic emigre political groups inside the United States - and has consistently hidden the part played by leaders of these groups during the Holocaust." The exile groups have "articulate defenders inside the staff of the National Security Council" and "influence on Capitol Hill."

In spy jargon blowback means "unexpected - and negative - effects at home that result from covert operations overseas. Examples include an organization of former Nazis that "provided false information that nearly led to World War III;" and, "McCarthy employed a secret U.S. espionage squad made up in part of Nazi collaborators to gather slanderous information used to smear political opponents."

Documents knowing collaboration by the mass media with the CIA in spreading cold war myths and participation in transforming Nazi collaborators into freedom fighters. (CIA propagandizing its own citizens is illegal.) The mass media also suppressed "critical news concerning the CIA's propaganda projects," as well as falsifying their reports to the public. Reporters who wrote exposes learned that their pieces "were simply not welcome at mainstream publications." Some of these publications included Time-Life, Reader's Digest, and Fortune magazine.

"U.S. interventions abroad have facilitated the entry into America of extremist and even terrorist emigre organizations that have subsequently gained political footholds in ethnic communities in this country, often through the use of violence and intimidation." "Only weeks after Hitler's final collapse," the U.S. began integrating hundreds of Nazi scientists into U.S. military research projects financed by American taxpayers.

There was a two-tier U.S. policy: "It combined a public condemnation and pursuit of fugitive Nazi criminals, on the one hand, with secret protection and utilization of some of the same men, on the other....It became routine for U.S. intelligence agencies to defy the announced policies of the American government concerning Nazi fugitives."

Many examples of this policy are given. "Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's most senior military intelligence officer on the eastern front" and other "senior Nazi security officers" were freed by the U.S., and then installed "in a former Waffen SS training facility near Pullach, Germany, which has remained the group's headquarters to this day." Gehlen was personally responsible for organizing one of the worst "atrocities of the war: the torture, interrogation, and murder by starvation of some 4 million Soviet prisoners of war." Gehlen's spy organization employed former SS men, ones who "had been instrumental in the mass extermination of Jews," and "had led mobile killing squads."

Another Nazi who helped form U.S. foreign policy was German diplomat Gustav Hilger. During the war, he processed SS reports on the mobile killing squads for Hitler. One such report entered into evidence at Nuremberg cites that: three escaped Jews had been recaptured then publicly hanged; of the Jews shot, 3412 "were shot in Minsk, 302 in Vileika and 2007 in Baranovichi," 15000 in Rakov, "and 1224 in Artenovsk, so that these Places are now free of Jews. In the Crimea 1000 Jews and gypsies were executed."

Hilger also had a direct role in the Hungarian murder of 4000 Jews and 6000 Serbs. He also led Germany's attack on several thousand Italian Jews, who were first forced into work camps, then shipped to Auschwitz by train.

Hilger, aided by the U.S., evaded arrest, settled in West Germany (expenses for travel paid for by the U.S.), and served as ambassador to the United States there. He was given a high-level security clearance, given access to highly classified information, and advised President Truman on East-West foreign policy.

In another example of U.S. aid to Nazis, the U.S. government secretly released a large amount of "black currency" in Italy to fund clandestine activities, a large part of which "came from captured Nazi German assets, including money and gold that the Nazis had looted from the Jews." This money was given to Walter Rauff's sponsor. "Rauff was a major war criminal. He had personally developed and administered the notorious gas truck execution program which took the lives of approximately 250,000 people, most of them Jewish women and children who died in unspeakable filth and agony." Rauff's sponsor used the money "to buy Jeeps, bedding, and guns for an underground squadron of some 300 anti-Communist Italian youths for use during the l948 elections. The job of this band was beatings of left-wing candidates and activists, breaking up political meetings, and intimidating voters. [These] troops became the forerunners of a number of other similar paramilitary gangs funded by the CIA in Germany, Greece, Turkey, and several other countries over the next decade."

The justification for using covert operations such as this was that it enabled the President to bypass the normal controls of a democracy, namely Congress and the Department of State, in setting foreign policy. It also "permitted the president secretly to carry out actions that would discredit the United States if they were undertaken openly."

Another covert operation approved in 1948 by the U.S. was contained in National Security Council decision NSC 10/2, which authorized "covert warfare, sabotage, and assassination," black psychological warfare, clandestine warfare, subversion, economic warfare, propaganda, and demolition. It was planned in such a way that "any U.S. government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if [they are] uncovered the U.S. government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them."

This decision was kept so secret that "had it not been for the congressional investigations into U.S. intelligence practices that followed the Watergate affair almost thirty years later, the very existence of this decision would still be secret."

Immigration was ordered to keep detailed reports on all Nazis brought to the U.S., but the agency claims it can't locate those records.

In 1950, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) and the CIA trained "at least 100 members of the far-right-wing League of Young Germans" in guerrilla warfare, supplying free arms, ammunition, and explosives with about $500,000 per year (1950 dollars). Most of the League of Young Germans were "Waffen SS and Wehrmacht veterans." Most of the leadership "had been enthusiastic 'Jew baiters' in the Goebbels ministry during the Nazis' rule." In the event of a Soviet attack, the group planned to assassinate more than forty top German leaders. They had a hit list, had infiltrated these German political groups, and were regularly tailing these German leaders. Accidentally, their plans were foiled by a chance arrest which led to their discovery. "According to the later German parliament report on the affair, the American agencies were actually paying the plotters an additional 12,000 deutsche marks per month for these espionage services." Once caught, the U.S. claimed it did not know what its own contract agents had been up to. Even if true, this ignorance "is a clear indication of just how little real control U.S. intelligence had over many of its far-flung paramilitary operations and how carelessly it was willing to spend money."

"The concepts of maintaining 'plausible deniability' for the actual murder and of the expendability of the killers themselves are a key to understanding U.S. assassination techniques." Covert "warfare specialists believed that the most 'productive' - and least compromising - method of killing foreign officials was to underwrite the discontent of indigenous groups and let them take the risks." Exactly how U.S. assassinations "worked during the cold war and who was responsible for them" is contained in scattered and fragmentary evidence. "All that can be said with certainty is that such murders did take place" and some carried out by Nazi collaborators.

"Before the decade of the 1950s was out, the CIA is known to have established mechanisms for using "deniable" assets and emigres for the execution of heads of state and other international leaders. These later killings, which are arguably the most serious blunders ever made by the CIA, have created blowback problems on an international scale and have had a significant and generally negative effect on the lives of millions of people."

A 1949 law allows up to 100 persons (and their families) per year to enter the U.S. even if they are inadmissible under immigration or other law, if the CIA Director, the Attorney General, and the Commissioner of Immigration decide that it is in the interests of national security to do so. The AG and C of I claim they have no records about any such aliens for the last 35 years. The CIA "defied a congressional committee's request for an accounting - even a secret accounting...."

The problem is that apparently the CIA uses the authority of this law to legalize an alien only if the alien is accidentally caught by INS.

Buried in the text of this same 1949 law, "and mentioned almost in passing, was legal authorization for the CIA to ignore public accountability for its budget, its personnel policy, or its procurement practices.

Within the Ukraine in 1949, the CIA and the Office for Policy Coordination sought out Ukrainian SS and militia veterans to have ready troops in case of a nuclear conflict with the USSR. These Nazi collaborators tried to halt "efforts to establish collective farms in the Ukraine by identifying peasant farmers who agreed to join the state-sponsored farms. 'That same night,' the U.S. military attache cabled to Washington, OUN guerrillas 'appeared in the homes of these individuals and chopped off the arms which the peasants had raised at the [collective farm] meeting to signify assent.' Similarly, according to a second American report, 'prosperous Jews' were 'singled out' for attack along with Communists during the insurgency in much the same way they had been during the Nazi occupation."

As a result, Ukrainian people "gave increased credence to the Soviet government's message that the United States, too, was really Nazi at heart and capable of using any sort of deceit and violence to achieve its ends." This is an example of blowback affecting every U.S. citizen.

Another example of blowback was that the U.S. was vulnerable to blackmail by these former Nazis on U.S. payroll if they were also fugitives from war crimes charges. They promised continuing silence about U.S. covert operations on the condition that they receive help in escaping.

So, the U.S. became a major player in the underground Nazi escape networks, or ratlines, the most important of which was operated through the Vatican in Rome, due to Nazi and Vatican's shared struggle against "atheistic communism." During the course of the war, some Catholic Church leaders lost their lives in their struggle against Nazi crimes. But, there were certain church- based political parties (Christian Democratic and clerical- Fascist) which "used the mantle and the moral authority of the church to help carry out the preparation for, and in some cases the actual execution of, the Nazi genocide of the Jews."

One of the Nazi war criminals sponsored by the U.S. on this ratline was Klaus Barbie. He "had deported Jews to death camps, [and] tortured and murdered the resistance fighters who fell into his hands...." The CIC was after Barbie. Barbie volunteered for service in the CIC through a friend, Merk, who was also a war crimes fugitive running a spy network for the CIC. Merk convinced his CIC controlling agent that Barbie could be useful. The CIC controlling agent "then hired Barbie and kept him hidden from the rest of the CIC." Later another CIC agent learned through an informer that Barbie had tortured French resistance fighters, that he "used to hang them by their thumbs until they were dead...[and that] if the French ever found out how many mass graves Barbie was responsible for, even Eisenhower would not be able to protect him."

The French government began requesting Barbie's extradition. Barbie's CIC handlers decided to help him escape in the ratline because, if arrested, would have too many "compromising things to say about the CIC...." Thirty years later, due to changes in government and public opinion, Barbie was apprehended. A resulting U.S. Justice Department investigation concluded that the U.S. had protected Barbie and planned his escape, "but that Barbie was the only such Nazi who had been assisted in this fashion."

The U.S. sponsorship of other war criminals, in particular, Ustachis or Croatian fascists, as passengers in the ratline led to their establishing new Ustachi cells in communities overseas, "in some cases headed by the same men who had once led murder squads inside wartime Croatia. This violent, "extremist sect remains active to this day in the U.S., Australia and several other countries." FBI investigative reports conclude they "have been responsible for an airplane hijacking, bombings, extortion, numerous murders, and the assassination of several Yugoslavian diplomats over the course of the last two decades."

The CIC's support of this ratline contributed to the presence within the U.S. of terrorist groups.

In 1949 and 1950 the National Security Council made two decisions that affected the way the U.S. handled Nazi collaborators both overseas (NSC Intelligence Directive 13) and here in the U.S. (NSC Intelligence Directive 14). NSCID 14 expanded the CIA's authority to function inside the U.S. - "in an apparent violation of the CIA's charter" - as long as those functions were performed "through emigre political organizations that supposedly still had some connection with the old country." As a result, a large amount of the CIA's money has been "spent on lobbying the U.S. congress and on other propaganda efforts inside this country - a clear violation of the law."

The CIA "has repeatedly chosen to" use NSCID 14 "as authorization for substantial political involvement in immigrant communities in America. One of their programs began underwriting bringing "favored European exiles into this country." Another was "a multimillion-dollar publicity campaign in the" U.S. to win "approval for cold war measures sponsored by the CIA."

The intense anti-communist atmosphere of the cold war, partly created by the Nazi war criminals, was used as a place to hide, socially, politically, and psychologically. War crime accusations were called Communist propaganda. Anti-communism was how the war criminals rationalized their atrocities. "Respectable conservatives in this country who had never been Nazi collaborators often turned a blind eye to this process and were sometimes the most articulate advocates for SS veterans and other collaborators." "The anti-Communist paranoia of the McCarthy period gave these war criminals' fascision over German scientists and spies led to suspicion, hostility, and fear between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.

Second, further use of the Nazis escalated the cold war, resulting in U.S. loss of friends in Eastern Europe, more repression, and fewer civil liberties in that region. The hypocrisy in our two-tier program has discredited America.

Third, former Nazis reported misinformation to the U.S. intelligence agencies and that reinforced the predominant preconceptions within Washington, D.C.

Fourth, by hiring the likes of Klaus Barbie, there has been a corrupting influence on U.S. intelligence agencies. Recruiting criminals, mercenaries, and torturers has produced "compromising personnel problems that last for years, even for decades." Protecting the retired CIA agent is necessary. But protection of the agent keeps the American public from being able to expel known Nazi criminals hiding in the U.S. Rather than using information about a Nazi's crimes to blackmail him into service for the CIA, the CIA should turn the information over to bring the Nazi to trial.

Fifth, the CIA's misuse of Nazi emigre programs as a loophole to intervene domestically in American politics. They manipulated the media, broadcast propaganda, surveilled and harassed opponents, manipulated academic research programs, lobbied Capitol Hill, and penetrated senior leadership of trade unions, corporations, religious groups, and student organizations.

Sixth, these clandestine activities using Nazis played a major role in the obstruction of justice. These criminals who have been brought to trial have developed the "CIA defense," in which they claim that by divulging their past to the CIA, they satisfied any and all legal requirements. Those criminals brought in under the 100 Persons act will probably never be brought to trial because their immigration was legal. Another maneuver used by the war criminals is the "KGB defense," in which it is claimed that the KGB is working in collaboration with the U.S. to frame the former Nazi by manufacturing evidence. Former White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan called a recent prosecution of a Nazi death camp guard as "an official lynching, choreographed by the KGB." The cold war became a way for tens of thousands of Nazis to sidestep responsibility for the murders they committed.

[...to be continued...]


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Brian Francis Redman bigxc@prairienet.org "The Big C"

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