Making a Killing

[Octafish]

Making a Killing

April 5, 2002
By Christian Dewar

Many Americans are probably not aware of the great extent to which U.S. corporations collaborated with the Nazi war machine during WWII. After the first world war, many wealthy American industrialists, bankers and financiers invested in Germany, in part, to avoid onerous U.S. regulations and also to reap the tremendous profits from the rebuilding of the nation.

Worried that there might be another war that would cause them to lose their investments, the directors of many of these companies plotted to protect their interests. Law firms like Sullivan and Cromwell specialized in helping to arrange these deals. When the second world war broke out, the Dulles brothers, Allen (who was a partner in that firm) and John, helped these companies hide their assets. As a result, many Nazi industrialist and their American collaborators maintained their wealth after the hostilites ceased.

Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg once stated that "The Dulles brothers were traitors." Some historians believe that Allen Dulles became head of the newly formed CIA in large part to cover up his treasonous behavior and that of his clients. Not confined to a few isolated companies, some of America's most prominent families and their financial empires worked with the Nazis well after the first bombs were dropped on Pearl Harbor.

On March 4th, 1998, a woman from Belgium brought a suit against the Ford Motor Company and it's German affiliate seeking compensation for the work she performed as a slave laborer for the company. Born in Russian, Elsa Iwanovwa claimed that she was abducted and forced to work at Ford's plant at Cologne. As many as 10,000 men, women and children may have labored there, many of them from the Buchenwald concentration camp.

The Ford plant in Germany played a major role in the Nazi war effort. While their American factories produced weapons for the allies, their German subsidiary manufactured troop transports, tracked vehicles, Panzer tanks, anti-tank guns and other crucial equipment for the Nazis. Providing weapons for both contestants in a world war was extraordinarily lucrative.

It is alleged that high ranking American officials including Edsel Ford oversaw the German plant's operations even during the war. Unlike most American businesses doing business in Germany during the war, Ford enjoyed significant independence and was never seized by the Nazi government.

The reason for this was in large part due to the close friendship that endured between Henry Ford and Adolf Hitler. Ford was known for his virulent anti-semitic views and he made substantial financial contributions to Hitler and the Nazi organization in its early years which may have sustained the party at a point where it might have otherwise collapsed.

Hitler's book, Mein Kampf borrowed heavily from Ford's anti-semitic book, The International Jew, a Worldwide Problem which was published in 1927. Hitler awarded Ford with Germany's highest civilian honor, the Great Cross of the German Order of the Eagle. Hitler's office had a large picture of Ford on the wall and stacks of Ford's books to give away to associates. Jim Mooney, GM's chief executive for overseas operations, was also awarded the Order of the German Eagle.

Ford was only one of many American corporations that eagerly helped the Germans. Some did so for ideological reasons and others for the immense profits which could be realized.

General Motors which was owned by the du Pont family during the 1930's manufactured thousands of bombers for the Luftwaffe and troop transports for the Wermacht at the same time that it's American plants were producing engines for the U.S. Air Force. Their German plant built propulsion systems for Germany's deadliest bomber, the Junker 88 and motors for their new, innovative jet fighters. They also repaired Geman trucks and converted them for alternative fuels at their facilites in Switzerland.

According to Charles Higham who wrote about the collaboration of American corporations with the Nazis in his book, Trading with the Enemy, GM may have even plotted with the Nazis against Roosevelt. Higham claims that high ranking officials in the company met with Baron Manfred von Killinger, head of a Nazi espionage rink and with Gestapo leader Baron von Tippleskirsh to sign an agreement "showing total commitment to the Nazi cause for the indefinite future" and that "in view of Roosevelt's attitude toward Germany, every effort must be made to remove him by defeat at the next election. Jewish influence in the political, cultural and public life in America must be stamped out. Press and radio must be subsidized to smear the administration" and an American fascist put in the White House.

Higham states that "Along with friends of the Morgan Bank and General Motors...certain du Pont backers financed a coup d'etat that would overthrow the president with the aid of a $3 million funded army of terrorists." The weapons were to be provided by Remington arms, a du Pont subsidiary.

Higham writes that Irenee du Pont was obsessed with Hitler and once made a speech to the American Chemical Society in 1926 "advocating a race of supermen to be achieved by injecting special drugs into them in boyhood to make their characters to order. He insisted his men reach physical standards equivalent to that of a marine and have blood as pure as that in the veins of the Vikings." The du Ponts financed anti-semitic, facist groups in the U.S. and along with some of America's most prominent families, promoted sterilization programs to assist in the effort to promote the white race over those deemed to be defective.

Higham also states that the du Ponts used their tremendous wealth "to finance the notorious Black Legions. This terrorist organization had as it's purpose the prevention of automobile workers from unionizing. The members wore hoods and black ropes, with skull and crossbones. They fire-bombed union meetings, murdered union organizers, often by beating them to death, and dedicated their lives to destroying Jews and communists. They were linked to the Ku Klux Klan."

The du Ponts formed an armed gang of men "modeled on the Gestapo to sweep though the plants and beat up anyone who proved rebellious. They hired the Pinkerton Agency to send its swarms of detectives through the whole chemicals, munitions and automobile empire to spy on left-wingers or other malcontents." The du Ponts also formed and financed the American Liberty League, "a Nazi organization whipping up hatred of blacks and Jews, love of Hitler, and loathing of Roosevelts." This group had chapters at 26 colleges and subsidiaries nationwide.

Standard Oil has also been implicated in providing crucial support for the Nazi war machine. The helped the Germans develop plants and gave them the necessary technology for the manufacture of synthetic fuels and leaded gas. Standard also assisited the Germans in stockpiling $20 million worth or petrolium products in anticipation of the war. This deal was concluded with the assistance of the Wall Street investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman where the senior managing partner was George H.W. Bush's father, Prescott Bush.

It also is alleged that Standard made a deal with the Germans to thwart the development of synthetic rubber in the United States and to withhold a method of producing synthetic ammonia. The U.S. government eventually seized some of Standard's patents. When the oil giant sued to retain the them, their case was denied. A judge who reviewed the appeal stated that "Standard Oil can be considered an enemy national in view of it's relationships with I.G. Farben after the United States and Germany became active enemies."

When threatened with sanctions, Standard essentially blackmailed the U.S. government, threatening to cut off supplies to the American military. Standard executives received a token fine of a few thousand dollars divided among several defendants. Roosevelt is said to have been reluctant to prosecute the heads of the company for fear of sparking another depression.

ITT also collaborated with the Nazis extensively. They owned significant shares of stock in several companies producing weapons for the Nazi including Focke-Wolfe which built fighter planes and bombers. Their subsidiaries, according to Higham, produced vital supplies such as "switchboards, telephones, alarm gongs, buoys, air raid warning devices, radar equipment and 30,000 fuses per month for artillery shells used to kill British and American troops" as well as "ingredients for the rocket bombs that fell on London."

The Curtis-Wright Aviation Corporation was another U.S. company doing business with the Nazis. Their planes were well suited for dive bombing. Although the Nazi pilots used this technique as an integral part of their blitzkrieg strategy of warfare, it was developed by the US. It was so effective that air plane manufacturers were forbidden to teach this to foreigners. Curtis-Wright managed to manuever around this inconvenient policy by not 'teaching' it, but rather demonstrating it at air shows in order to boost sales to Hitler.

Adding insult to injury, several of these American corporations who had collaborated had the audacity to sue the American government for damage that had been inflicted on their German plants by Allied bombers. GM managed to extract $33 million for the destruction of their Folke-Wulf plant. ITT received $27 million and Ford, a mere $1 million.

American banks have also been implicated in assistance to Nazi Germany including J.P. Morgan, Guaranty Trust of New York, Bank of the City of New York, Chase National Bank and American Express which turned over Jewish accounts to the Nazis. Higham reports that "the Nazi government through Chase National Bank offered Nazi in America the opportunity to buy German marks with dollars at a discount. The arrangement was open to those who wished to return to Germany and would use the marks in the interest of the Nazis."

The Chase Bank of Paris was involved in substantial financing of the Nazi embassy's activities throughout the war with the full knowledge of Chase's American headquarters. The Vichy branch of Chase "were strenuous in enforcing restrictions against Jewish property even going so far as to refuse to release funds belonging to Jews because they anticipated a Nazi decree with retroactive provisions prohibiting such a release."

Other Nazi collaborators include William Hearst, the media giant. After meeting with top Nazi officials and the payment of substantial sums of money, Hearst agreed to a policy whereby his newspaper would only report favorably on Nazi affairs.

Many Americans today might be surprised to discover that President Bush's family fortune was in large part compiled as a result of collaborating with the Nazis after the WWII had commenced. Author John Loftus has written about this recently and it is also covered extensively in the online book, The Elkhorn Manifesto.

According to the online book, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, written by Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, accessible only on the internet, George Bush senior's family "played a central role in financing and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany; in financing and managing the buildup of Nazi war industries for the conquest of Europe and war against the U.S.A.; and in the developent of Nazi genocidal theories and racial propaganda".

The authors claim that "The president's family fortune was largely a result of the Hitler project" and that Bush's banking activities were "not just politically neutral money-making ventures which happened to coincide with the aims of of German Nazi" but rather that all of the firm's European business during that time "was organized around anti-democratic political forces." The book states that "Certain actions taken directly by the Harriman-Bush shipping line in 1932 must be ranked among the gravest acts of treason in this century."

One of the most influential players in financing Hitler's war industries was Brown Brothers Harriman. Prescott Bush, the current president's grandfather, was the managing director. Bush was also director of the Union Banking Corporation. The stock shares were owned by Bush, E. R.Harriman and three Nazi Nazi executives including Fritz Thyssen, one of Hitler's primary financiers. The U.S. government eventually confiscated the Nazi banking operations of Union Banking Corporation in which Bush was a director under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Another Bush business associate was Friedrick Flick who gave considerable financial support for the SS. Flicks's steel plants used about 48,000 slave laborers from Dachau, most of whom died.

Bush and his business associates were also involved in the operation of the Hamburg-Amerika Line. It was later shown to be a cover for Nazi espionage, spy infiltration and propaganda activities. The U.S. government also seized the Holland-American Trading Corporation, Seamless Steel and the Silesian-American Corporation in which Bush and his associates were involved.

Ultimately, the international corporations, the lawyers, bankers and financiers who collaborated with the Nazis prevailed. They exerted tremendous influence to thwart investigators delving into their seditious activities after the war. Many of the key players were elevated to senior postions in the U.S. government. Many of them were able to maintain their fortunes intact after the war. Officers from the Nazi intelligence and scientific communities became U.S. allies in the Cold War against the Soviets.

Americans at the highest levels of finance, industry and government willingly cooperated with the Nazis for political, ideological and financial reasons. They were heavily responsible for the rise of Hitler. They sustained his war effort and helped to shelter the perpetrators after the war. It would have been a bitter death for the brave American soldiers fighting in Europe if they had realized that comfortable American businessmen back in the States were making fortunes financing the same industrial cartels that manufactured the weapons that were being used to kill them.

Now Prescott's son, former George H.W. Bush, is making another fortune as a merchant of death, marketing weapons thorough the secretive Carlyle group. His power and influence is so pervasive that he can sell the Pentagon obsolete equipment such as the 70-ton Crusader cannon which is poorly suited to the realities of combatting terrorism and which the generals don't even want. George Bush Senior helped to arm both sides, Iran and Iraq, during their murderous war. This was a policy promulgated by his friend Ted Shackley, the legendary CIA spook, who advocated selling arms to both sides in a conflict as a way of enhancing the bottom line.

Historians know that Bush Senior arranged for the U.S. to sell millions of dollars of weapons to Hussein almost up to the time that he decided to invade Iraq country during the Gulf War. His administration sold weapons to the Iranians at a time when they were declared a terrorist nation and held American citizens hostage. As Yogi Berra once said, it's "Deja vu all over again."

Now his son, this administration and their corporate cronies who put them in office are poised to make obscene amounts of money from the weapons industries and oil. This war against a faceless foe and with no end game is costing our country over a billion dollars a month and George Bush wants even more money for defense. President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex.

Like grandfather, like father, like son. Some things never change. The Bushes know that there is a killing to be made in killing.

SOURCE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/04/p/05_killing.html

[Trajan]

1. Bookmarked ...

I remember the original thread .... The culpability of US corporate moguls and leadership in the Nazi juggernaut is horrifying in it's breadth and shameless support of fascist, NON-Democratic philosophy ....

Thanks for the repost

[Octafish]

27. You are most welcome, Trajan.

DUers of Old were among the few brave enough to peg the Nazis and their enablers in the highest offices in government and business. Thanks to them, bobthedrummer, and our good friends like Bartcop, the blinders fell off my eyes.

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.

These stories are seldom printed outside DU and other democratic websites. Perhaps we'll reach critical mass when enough people learn the truth about capitalism and fascism and it's relation to this, our present situation where government serves the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. The fascists won. Looking through history, as the Monarchies fell they were replaced

with fascism which has renamed itself Democracy, but its practice has not changed.

[Octafish]

29. Bertram Gross: 'Friendly Fascism'

No concentration camps, just social control through fiscal policy and capitalism, cough, jobs or the lack thereof - war for profit is the same.

Friendly Fascism - The New Face of Power in America

by Bertram Gross

EXCERPT...

Friendly fascism portrays two conflicting trends in the United States and other countries of the so-called "free world."

The first is a slow and powerful drift toward greater concentration of power and wealth in a repressive Big Business-Big Government partnership. This drift leads down the road toward a new and subtly manipulative form of corporatist serfdom. The phrase "friendly fascism" helps distinguish this possible future from the patently vicious corporatism of classic fascism in the past of Germany, Italy and Japan. It also contrasts with the friendly present of the dependent fascisms propped up by the U.S. government in El Salvador, Haiti, Argentina, Chile, South Korea, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The other is a slower and less powerful tendency for individuals and groups to seek greater participation in decisions affecting themselves and others. This trend goes beyond mere reaction to authoritarianism. It transcends the activities of progressive groups or movements and their use of formal democratic machinery. It is nourished by establishment promises-too often rendered false-of more human rights, civil rights and civil liberties. It is embodied in larger values of community, sharing, cooperation, service to others and basic morality as contrasted with crass materialism and dog-eat-dog competition. It affects power relations in the household, workplace, community, school, church, synagogue, and even the labyrinths of private and public bureaucracies. It could lead toward a truer democracy-and for this reason is bitterly fought...

These contradictory trends are woven fine into the fabric of highly industrialized capitalism. The unfolding logic of friendly fascist corporatism is rooted in "capitalist society's transnational growth and the groping responses to mounting crises in a dwindling capitalist world". Mind management and sophisticated repression become more attractive to would-be oligarchs when too many people try to convert democratic promises into reality. On the other hand, the alternative logic of true democracy is rooted in "humankind's long history of resistance to unjustified privilege" and in spontaneous or organized "reaction (other than fright or apathy) to concentrated power...and inequality, injustice or coercion".

A few years ago too many people closed their eyes to the indicators of the first tendency.

But events soon began to change perceptions.

CONTINUED...

Now, policies like 'Austerity' help move things along...Feudalism for the 21st Century.

[Egalitarian Thug]

35. 1980. Why do we never listen until it's too late. Every single problem in America today was

foretold and solutions provided years, sometimes decades, in advance. Yet here we are.

[woo me with science]

3. The history of our country and its political decisions

is to a large extent the history of our banks, our wealthy oligarchy, and their financial interests...

...yet our history books completely ignore this fundamental driving force of American policy. We are taught every motive for our wars except the financial ones. Any awareness of the role of money in policy, and the real power structure in our country, is completely omitted from what we teach our children.

No wonder we remain at the mercy of the one percent.

[Octafish]

30. Michael Parenti says exploitation is the way Humanity.

We're kept in the dark about it by the same types who benefit from the situation.

"Much of history is a chronicle of immense atrocities. Whenever surplus wealth accumulates in any society, whenever people emerge from a cooperative subsistence economy, some portion of the population will do everything it can to exploit the labor of the rest of the people in as pitiless a manner as possible. This is true whether it be the slaveholders of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the antebellum American South; or the feudal aristocracy of medieval Europe; or the financial moguls of modern capitalist society. Today, throughout much of the capitalist Third World and increasingly in the United States and other industrialized nations, people are being driven into desperation and want, made to work harder for less, when able to find work." -- Michael Parenti, JFK Assassination and the Gangster Nature of the State

SOURCE: http://www.michaelparenti.org/JFKAssassination.html

Before Parenti, Edward Herman, or Noam Chomsky, an Australian genius named Alex Carey put it down on paper before his untimely death by suicide.

[LongTomH]

4. How many of these companies were complicit in the Holocaust?

I know the roundup of Jews was coordinated using IBM tabulators (predecessors to the modern computer). How many of their factories used slave labor; how many helped in the building of the death camps.

FDR should have sent the lot of these bastards to the gallows! There should be no statute of limitations for some crimes.

[OldDem2012]

7. Here's a good start....

11 Companies That Surprisingly Collaborated With the Nazis

....and a ton of additional links in this Google search:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=les%3B&gs_rn=2&gs_ri=hp&gs_mss=us%20corporations%20h&cp=25&gs_id=2r&xhr=t&q=us+corporations+holocaust&es_nrs=true&pf=p&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&oq=us+corporations+holocaust&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.41867550,d.eWU&fp=ed37b7f9496e4d03&biw=1680&bih=935

Pretty ugly stuff in those links.

[Octafish]

31. IBM and the Holocaust

"Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit." -- Edwin Black

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Black's work includes a study of eugenics, making the socio-economic-political connections between the elite and the masses crystal clear:

"It began on Long Island and ended at Auschwitz...and yet never really stopped." -- Edwin Black

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

Proud to say I shook hands with a guy who shook hands with Edwin Black.

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

[LongTomH]

34. There was an attempt to re-introduce eugenics in the 1990s with The Bell Curve....

.....authored by Richard Herrnstein and Heritage Foundation polemicist Charles Murray. The late Stephen Jay Gould added chapters in his landmark book: The Mismeasure of Man to refuting Murray's psuedo-scientific racism.

[annabanana]

5. A regular reposting of 20th Century American History

is a good thing.

It's always new to someone.

[Ghost Dog]

13. .

A definitive site could be set up...

[Octafish]

37. Beat the BFEE: Poppy’s CIA warned about terror plots and did not stop them

Newly released US Government documents show that in 1976 the CIA was warned that a group of anti-Castro Cubans planned to destroy a Cuban passenger jet. No known warning was given the Cubans. No known effort was made to stop the bombing.

The Director of Central Intelligence at the time was George Herbert Walker Bush. The informant: Luis Posada Carriles.

Documents: CIA warned of plane bomb plot

By ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 10, 6:58 AM ET

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - An anti-Castro militant now in a Texas jail warned the CIA months before the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that fellow exiles were planning such an attack, according to a newly released U.S. government document.

The document shows that Luis Posada Carriles — who had worked for the CIA but was cut off by the agency earlier that year — was secretly telling the CIA that his fellow far-right Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro's communist government were plotting to bring down a commercial jet.

The document does not say what the CIA did with Posada's tip. A CIA spokesman said he had no comment on Monday, a federal holiday.

The CIA had extensive contacts with anti-Castro militants and trained some of them, but has denied involvement in the bombing.

The documents were posted online Thursday by the National Security Archive, an independent research institute at George Washington University that seeks to declassify government files through the Freedom of Information Act.

CONTINUED…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061010/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/c...

DETAILS...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/index.htm

That's not the only terrorist act the CIA was warned about that Bush and Company ignored. There was the Letelier-Moffitt assassinations in Washington, D.C. itself.

The mastermind behind that crime was on the CIA payroll.

LETELIER-MOFFITT ASSASSINATION
30 YEARS LATER

National Security Archive calls for Release of Withheld Documents Relating to Pinochet's Role in Infamous Act of Terrorism in Washington, D.C. on September 21, 1976

Archive releases new document on CIA approach to Manuel Contreras on Operation Condor

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 199

By Peter Kornbluh
Posted - September 20, 2006

Washington, DC, September 20, 2006 - On the thirtieth anniversary of the assassination of former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, the National Security Archive today called on the U.S. government to release all documents relating to the role of General Augusto Pinochet in the car bombing that brought terrorism to the capital city of the United States on September 21, 1976.

Hundreds of documents implicating Pinochet in authorizing and covering up the crime were due to be declassified under the Clinton administration but were withheld in the spring of 2000 as evidence for a Justice Department investigation into the retired dictator's role. After more than six years, according to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Chile Documentation Project, it is time to release them. "If there is not going to be a legal indictment," Kornbluh said, "the documents can and will provide an indictment of history."

The Archive today released a declassified memo to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger reporting on a CIA approach in early October 1976 to the head of the Chilean secret police, [font color="red"]Manuel Contreras[/font color], regarding U.S. concerns about Operation Condor assassination plots. The secret memo, written by Kissinger's deputy for Latin America, Harry Schlaudeman, noted that Contreras had denied that "Operation Condor has any other purpose than the exchange of intelligence." While the car bombing in downtown Washington, D.C. that killed Letelier and Moffitt took place on September 21, 1976, the memo contains no reference to any discussion with Contreras about the assassinations--even though DINA was widely considered to be the most likely perpetrator of the crime. In 1978, Contreras was indicted by a U.S. Grand Jury for directing the terrorist attack.

The document was obtained by Kornbluh under the Freedom of Information Act.

The memorandum to Kissinger adds to a series of documents that have been obtained by the National Security Archive that shed light on what the U.S. government knew about Operation Condor--a collaboration of Southern Cone secret police services to track down, abduct, torture, and assassinate opponents in the mid and late 1970s--and what actions it took or failed to take prior to the Letelier-Moffitt assassination. On August 23, 1976, Kissinger's office sent a carefully-worded demarche for U.S. ambassadors in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay to deliver to their host governments to halt assassination missions. But the next day, U.S. Ambassador to Chile David Popper balked at approaching Pinochet because "he might take as an insult any inference that he was connected with such assassination plots." Instead Popper requested permission to send the CIA station chief to talk to Contreras. For reasons that remain hidden in still-classified documents, Schlaudeman did not authorize that approach until October 4, two weeks after the car bombing in Washington.

Indeed, on September 20, 1976, the day before the Letelier-Moffitt assassination, Schlaudeman ordered his own deputy to tell the Southern Cone ambassadors "to take no further action" on pressuring the Condor nations to halt assassination plotting, because "there have been no reports in some weeks indicating an intention to activate the Condor scheme." In his October 8 memo to Kissinger transmitting the CIA memorandum of conversation with Col. Contreras, Schlaudeman argued that "the approach to Contreras seems to me to be sufficient action for the time being" because "the Chileans are the prime movers in Operation Condor."

CONTINUED...

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB199/index.htm

These are the actions of men who are not afraid of murder, mass-murder or warmongering.



The historical record shows they are even worse than what I can paint.

For those interested in how this all connects to current events:

Kissinger Secretly Advises Bush

Pages 406-09 of Woodward’s new book:

Not only did the former Nixon secretary of state advise Bush and Cheney, he also offered Bush speechwriter Mike Gerson his famous "salted peanut memo," written during the first year of the Nixon administration. It claimed that withdrawal of troops from Vietnam would be like "salted peanuts to the American public; the more U.S. troops come home, the more will be demanded."

SOURCE:

http://www.slate.com/id/2150955 /

Please remember: Kissinger’s the BFEE meisterturd who advised Nixon to keep Vietnam going for an extra four years. In the end, the peace accord was basically what LBJ and the North had agreed to in 1968 -- an accord sabotaged by...Nixon's new friend, Henry Kissinger.

[font color="red"]Kissinger[/font color] is why Cheney yelled at Bob Woodward. Cheney didn’t want us to make the connection between Operation CONDOR and today’s USA PATRIOT Torture and Disappearances Enabling Act.

Woodward: Cheney Cursed At Me About ‘State of Denial,’ Then Hung Up The Phone

Today on Meet the Press, Bob Woodward described how Vice President Dick Cheney called him 10 days ago about Woodward’s new book State of Denial. Woodward says Cheney cursed at him (”he said what I was saying was bull-something”) and then hung up the phone.

Woodward called Cheney’s behavior a “metaphor for what’s going on. Hang up when somebody has a different point of view or information you don’t want to deal with.” Watch it:

Digg It!

Full transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: Have you spoken to the president or the vice president since this book came out?

MR. WOODWARD: The vice president called me I guess as it was coming out 10 days ago.

MR. RUSSERT: And?

MR. WOODWARD: Well, he called to complain that I was quoting him about the meetings with Henry Kissinger that he and the president had. I had interviewed Vice President Cheney last year a couple of times at length about material I’m gathering on the Ford administration, on-the-record interviews, but he volunteered, he said, “Oh, by the way, Henry Kissinger comes in” and he, Dick Cheney, sits down with him once a month and the president every two or three months. And Cheney was upset I was quoting him. And I said, “Look, this–on-the-record doesn’t have anything to do with Ford, you volunteered that.” He then used a word which I can’t repeat on the air. And I said, “Look, on the record is on the record,” and he hung up on me.

MR. RUSSERT: What, what do you mean, he swore at you?

MR. WOODWARD: He, he said what I was saying was bull-something. No, but he, but he hung up. Now, look, I can, I can see, I went back and looked at the transcript that he can–ever had a disagreement about ground rules with someone. Have you?

CONTINUED…

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/08/woodward-cheney /

Buzzflash tells us about Operation CONDOR Kissinger what may await America, if more people don't wake up and smell the tyranny.

More on "Operation Condor," What Horrors May Await America, Kissinger, and the Disappeared

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 10/10/2006 - 4:21pm. Analysis
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

In our editorial that caromed around the Internet, "Torture, Murder, Bush, Kissinger and The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina: America on the Brink of Horror," we warned that the legacy of U.S. governments – particularly under the Rumsfeld/Cheney/Kissinger/Bush leadership through various GOP administrations – supporting torture and murder to suppress dissent in other countries may be coming to America.

This is no idle conspiracy theory. As we pointed out in our editorial, the U.S. Congress has now given Bush enough legal maneuvering room to declare U.S. citizens supporters of terrorists. Since Bush has openly accused any American who disagrees with his disastrous "war on terror" a "tool of the terrorists," he is legally now able to "disappear" us. This is not idle theory. We no longer have the protection of habeas corpus, if Bush invokes his powers to fight "terror."

One of the key proponents, over the years, of torturing and murdering dissenters in nations that experience strong challenges to their oligarchies or ruling class elite is Henry Kissinger.

SNIP…

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

BuzzFlash Afternote: In an aside, it's worth remembering that after being dragged kicking and screaming into appointing an "Independent" 9/11 Commission -- Cheney and Bush both called then Senate Leader Tom Daschle to warn him not to "push" an "Independent" investigation of 9/11 -- Bush appointed Kissinger to head "the inquiry." Of course, Kissinger was appointed because he's the master of the whitewash -- and on the grandest of scales. Heck, this guy whitewashed both the Vietnam War and Operation Condor, among other horrors.

Kissinger, in short order, accepted and then resigned from running the "independent" 9/11 whitewash for Bush.

Why?

Well, the documentary "9/11: Press for Truth" offered one possible reason. The intrepid widows of 9/11, "The Jersey Girls," met with Kissinger after he was appointed by Bush to lead the 9/11 "inquiry." According to one of the spunky widows, they asked Kissinger if having Saudi Arabia as a client was a conflict of interest, considering that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, as is bin Laden. Then one of the widows asked if the bin Laden family itself was a client of Kissinger’s consulting firm (this is all in the film "Press for Truth&quot . At that point, according to one of the "Jersey Girls," Kissinger "nearly fell out of his chair."

Shortly thereafter, Kissinger informed Bush that he would not be serving as head of the 9/11 Commission after all.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/121

If those in the CIA – an agency headed by George Herbert Walker Bush at the time – turned their heads and ignored terrorists’ plans to blow up a civilian jetliner in 1976, who’s to say they wouldn’t do the same thing in 2001? The facts show these people have a lot of explaining to do.



They think they can change the law and get away with torture, murder, illegal Iraq invasion and who knows what treasons we don’t know about. Got news for you BushCo. It ain’t gonna happen. People know. Thanks to DU and the rest of the global research community, we’re on to your treasonous asses. The jig is up for the BFEE. (At least, I thought so at the time.)

Great DUers reply on the OP way back when: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=2418621

[raouldukelives]

6. The song remains the same.

Suffering & misery are our main exports. With eager millions willing to lend a hand to Wall St to pull it off and receive some proceeds for their complicity.

[Octafish]

39. ''War is a Racket.'' -- Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC (ret.)

Absolute spot-on example. The good general, who received two Medals of Honor and singlehandedly stopped the fascist coup against FDR, also observed what you did, raouldukelives. Our main export was death. Imports varied by nation looted.:

"War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." -- Smedley D. Butler

Butler said he felt like a gangster collecting for racketeers.

For DUers and all who enjoy reading about the nation's true state of affairs: "War Is a Racket" in PDF form.

[pasto76]

8. it is reality, and it also highlights how powerless a President like Obama can be

how does anyone who isnt part of that club fight such influence and wealth? I submit that it is almost impossible. Consider also that along with the war profiteering and all, Bush 43 also stole two American elections. And literally half the country doesnt care. Thats power.

read it. Digest it. Consider how far into our government these tendrils reach. I personally dont believe President Obama is part of this, which is why his detractors and opponents go to such lengths and insanity to discredit and stop every effort he makes.

which means that any progress he can make, is quite a victory.

[Cleita]

10. I'm really forming an opinion that President Obama

would be assassinated if he forcibly fought them. What he does now, reaching out to them and bending over in compromise, makes them show their true colors with their obstructionism. Since it stops any meaningful reform and change except in small hops, they don't need to kill him yet. They are content in doing what they think is killing any legacy he might have as President. Otherwise they would kill him. I am becoming more and more certain of it every day. Now they are just biding their time to take over the Presidency and Congress in 2016 to reverse what he has accomplished like the ACA and ending the wars. As long as he doesn't move ahead on reform like an FDR, they won't kill him. I think they got to Harry Reid the same way too.

[Cleita]

9. k/r

[RC]

11. And yet, to suggest that 9/11 involved anything more than a bunch of cave dwellers,

that the most qualified 'pilot' among them, who could barely fly a piper cub, but could and did execute expert maneuvers with loaded passenger planes, two of which, brought down three buildings, into their own footprint, is over the top conspiracy theory.

We squabble among ourselves about what words are OK to use here or not, while the fascist takeover continues.

[zappaman]

12. 'to suggest that 9/11 involved anything more than a bunch of cave dwellers,...

...is over the top conspiracy theory."

Yes it certainly is.

Unless you have evidence that it isn't.

[truedelphi]

16. We do have evidence, some of which came from the CIA Offical Website,

That indicates that our top officials wanted an Afghan pipeline. People thinking about the issue of Nine Eleven are right to do so. But like the Kennedy assassination so many years earlier, there is not much of a chance of absolute proof. Unless someone came forward and said, "Look. I know about what happened, I was behind it."
Here are the events that indicate the thinking about obtaining an Afghan pipeline:
Examine our government's interactions with the Central Asian area of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the months prior to the Sept. 11th attacks. Our focus there is this Administration's desire on the part of Corporate America to secure an oil pipeline through the heart of Afghanistan. Let's review the timeline:
February 3rd, 2000. George Tenet, Director of the CIA, addresses the Senate Committee on Armed Services. He discusses openly the importance of the following: "Western companies are trying to construct a gas pipeline under the Caspian Sea from Turkmenistan through Azerbijan and Georgia en route to Turkey." Scenarios elaborated upon over the next few months recognize the importance of a Central Asian pipeline requiring permission to extend such pipeline into Afghanistan. The goal: to have one continuous pipeline running from the waters of the Caspian Sea to the Arabian Sea.
February to April 2001. Government officials from both the United States and Afghanistan meet to discuss the possibility of building this pipeline. Corporations most interested in this development are Unocal * and Amoco. Participating officials include Laila Helms, a relative of Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, and Sayed Ramatulla, aide to Taliban Mullah Mohammed Omar. Also around this point in time, over 40 million dollars were released to Taliban government of Afghanistan in the name of the American War on Drugs. In accepting these monies, the Taliban agreed to see that the opium in local drug lords' warehouses would stay there. This policy of course, did very little to influence the local drug lords, who simply raised the price of their product to cover for the curtailment of supply.
May 2001. During this time period, at least one significant meeting between CIA Director George Tenet and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraff takes place. Mushareff possibly repeats his earlier-in-the-year statement that Pakistan would be willing to hand Bin Laden over to a Muslim tribunal for his part in the Embassy bombings that took four lives.
July 2001, Thomas Simons, former US Ambassador to Pakistan; Karl Inderfurth, former assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs; and Lee Coldren, former State Department expert on South Asia, meet in Berlin with negotiators from the Taliban, Russia and six oil-rich nations that neighbor Afghanistan (BBC news, Sept. 18; the Guardian, Sept. 22, 2001).**
According to Jean-Charles Brisard, co-author of "Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth": "At one point during the negotiations, the US reps told the Taliban, 'Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." Naif Naik, former Pakistani minister for foreign affairs, was also present. He recalled that the discussions turned on "the formation of a government of national unity. If the Taliban had accepted this coalition, they would have immediately received international economic aid ... And the pipe lines from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan would have come.'' Naik also recalled that Tom Simons, the US representative at these meetings, openly threatened the Taliban and Pakistan. "Simons said, 'Either the Taliban behave as they ought to, or Pakistan convinces them to do so, or we will use another option.' The words Simons used were 'a military operation','' Naik claimed (Inter Press Service, Nov. 15, 2001).
July 2001: Pakistan's ISI (Pakistan Intelligence Agency) Chief Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmad has an aide wire-transfer $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the pilot who later achieved infamy as the presumed leader of the Sept. 11 hijackings and atrocities. In October 2001, Mahmud Ahmad resigned from the ISI after the FBI confirmed this crucial wire-transfer (The Times of India, Oct. 11, 2001.)**
September 11th, 2001. Hijacked planes, supposedly seized and totally under the control of Muslim extremists, plow into the Two Towers of the World Trade Center, while another crashes into the Pentagon. Additionally, a fourth hijacked plane slams into a field in the country- side of Pennsylvania. (Approximately thirty-five hundred Americans are killed in these actions.) Although the plane hitting the Pentagon does not reach its target until a full hour after the initial crash in NY, not one Air Force fighter jet stationed at Andrews Air Force base outside Washington DC is scrambled to thwart this part of the attack.
Later, officials will state that since this type of event was previously unknown in American history, and that they simply were all caught unprepared. Critics scoff. After all, every other day of the week, some Bozo with the keys to a Cessna is found attempting to photograph family members while the small aircraft invades airspace over the White House, the Capital Building etc. Those Bozos are never allowed to get close, but are escorted out and away from sacrosanct building fly space. So just what was going on during the terrorist raids of September 11th?

[Octafish]

18. George W Bush ignored CIA warnings: 'bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S.'

Remember the President's Daily Brief? Does that count as evidence?

How about Zaccarias Moussaoui? Bush's FBI PROTECTED a suspected hijacker before 9/11. Does that count as evidence?

[zappaman]

23. Ignoring doesn't mean he was involved in making it happen. n/t

Last edited Sun Feb 3, 2013, 09:08 PM - Edit history (1)

[Octafish]

36. No duh. 'Ignoring' means criminal dereliction of duty.

The other possibility is even worse:

"All right. You've covered your ass, now." -- George W Bush to CIA briefer, August 6, 2001.

[RZM]

32. Are you saying that Moussaoui's pre 9/11 detention was a form of protection?

Why would the administration do this? And why would they then charge him in open court? I'm not understanding what the point of that would be.

[Octafish]

33. What do you think? I'd guess one important point would be to keep the plot secret.

Ask Coleen Rowley. The then-FBI agent was frustrated in the foot dragging from FBI HQ.

Here's what I know:

Know your BFEE: Moussaoui Must Die for Bush and 'His' Government

[rhett o rick]

28. How can anyone disagree? A handful of "cave dwellers" managed to defeat the

complete USofA intelligence services. And apparently some cant handle any ideas to the contrary. They try to shut down discussion by claiming "over the top conspiracy". Well, I say, good for you. Rationalization is the key to happiness.

[truedelphi]

15. A reichstag fire event was needed.

PNAC papers show it was not simply needed, but discussed.

And even if it wasn't MIHOP, it doesn't take a high IQ to think maybe LIHOP:

BurtWorm (1000+ posts) Send PM Fri Sep-29-06 03:43 PM
Original message
Woodward: Rice Brushed Off Tenet's Warning About bin Laden in July 2001

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...

"State of Denial" adds new information about Rice's role in the Bush administration's efforts to combat terrorism in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks. That subject became a source of controversy this week after former President Bill Clinton accused "President Bush's neocons" and other Republicans of ignoring Osama bin Laden until the attacks, and Rice responded angrily to the charge.

Woodward writes that on July 10, 2001, then-CIA director George Tenet became so concerned about the communication intelligence agencies were receiving indicating that a terrorist attack was imminent that he went to the White House with counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black -- without an appointment -- to meet with Rice, then the national security adviser. He and Black hoped the meeting would alert Rice to the urgency they felt.

But Tenet and Black felt that Rice gave them "the brush-off," according to Woodward, telling them that a plan for coherent action against bin Laden was already in the works. Woodward writes that both Tenet and Black felt the meeting was the starkest warning the White House was given about bin Laden.

#### ON CNN< Condi Rice told the reporter that she had advised Willie Brown, former SF Mayor, and Calif. state legislator, not to travel on Sept 11th 2001.
(I forget if she appeared on CNN in May of 2002, or May 2003.)

[Berlum]

17. k and r

[ReRe]

14. Thanks Octafish for posting this...

K&R

... History tells a story. That's why Republicans don't like it.

[johnnyreb]

19. Criminals love freedom!

Thanks so much Octafish-- whether this or that was an inside job or not, clearly we have criminals capable of worse.

[felix_numinous]

20. Holy shit I had no idea

the connections were this deep. Sociopaths in power are the bane of life on Earth.

[Octafish]

22. Law Professor wonders if the Bushes are a continuing criminal enterprise.

What a smart guy said:

The Bush Family: A Continuing Criminal Enterprise?

Gary W. Potter, PhD.
Professor, Criminal Justice
Eastern Kentucky University

The S&Ls, the Mob and the Bushs

During the 1980's hundred of Savings and Loan Banks failed. Those bank failures cost U.S. taxpayers over $500 billion to cover federally insured losses, and much more to investigate the bank failures (Pizzo, Fricker, and Muolo, 1989; Brewton, 1992; Johnston, 1990). More than 75% of the Savings and Loan insolvencies where directly linked to serious and often criminal misconduct by senior financial insiders (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 305). In fact, less than 10 percent of bank failures are related to economic conditions, the rest are caused by mismanagement or criminal conduct (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 305).

A good example of the Savings and Loan failures can be found in the activities of Mario Renda, a Savings and Loan insider who often worked in close collaboration with organized crime (Pizzo, Fricker and Muolo, 1989: 123-126;302). Renda served as a middle man in arranging about $5 billion a year in deposits into 130 Savings and Loans, all of which failed (Kwitny, 1992: 27). Many of these deposits were made contingent on an agreement that the Savings and Loan involved would lend money to borrowers recommended by Renda, many of whom were organized crime figures or people entirely unknown to the banking institution involved (Kwitny, 1992: 27).

SNIP...

Prescott Bush: The Yakuza’s Frontman

Finally, and perhaps most seriously, the Bush family pioneered the practice which has now become commonplace of collaboration between corporate and organized criminals. Prescott Bush, uncle of the current President and brother of the former President, played a key role in helping the Japanese Yakuza extend their financial and real estate holdings to the United States. In 1989, Prescott Bush made arrangements for a front company for Japanese organized crime groups to buy into two U.S. corporations and to make a sizeable real investment in the U.S. (Helm, 1991a: 1; Isikoff, 1992: A1). West Tsusho, a Japanese corporation, was identified by Japanese police officials as a front company for one of that country’s largest organized crime syndicates. Prescott Bush was paid a fee of $500,000 for his help in negotiating West Tsusho’s purchase of controlling interest in Assets Management, a U.S. corporation (Helm, 1991a: 1; Isikoff, 1992: A1). Bush also assisted the Japanese mob in investing in Quantam Access, a U.S. software company, which was ultimately taken over by the Japanese (Helm, 1991b: 10; Isikoff, 1992: A1). Both companies ultimately went into bankruptcy (Isikoff, 1992: A1; Moses, 1992).

George Bush Sr.: Shutting Down the Organize Crime Strike Forces

Despite assessments from senior law enforcement officers and experts on organized crime that efforts to control organized crime would be crippled, in December 1989, the administration of George Bush, Sr. abolished all 14 regional organized crime strike forces (McAlister, 1989: A 21; Struck out, 1990). The organized crime strike had been created as independent entities so they would not be subject to political influences or bureaucratic wrangling within federal law enforcement. In the two decades of their operation the strike forces had secured convictions of major organized crime figures in several U.S. cities (Struck out, 1990). It is at the very least curious to note that the federal strike force in Miami had been responsible for indicting Miguel Recarey, the man for whom Jeb Bush had intervened with regulators. Organized crime strike forces had similarly indicted Mario Renda, the organized crime liaison to the S& L’s, as well as several other key figures in the Savings and Loan Fiasco (Pizzo, Fricker, and Mulolo, 1989: 112, 120-123, 303, 337).

CONTINUED...

http://critcrim.org/critpapers/potter.htm

That's the way a professor of criminal justice puts it. Me, to get a better handle on War Inc's first family, I call them the "BFEE" for short.

[think]

21. K&R

[malaise]

24. Great work from way back when

Thanks

[burrowowl]

25. K&R

[Initech]

26. No wonder all the Fox News people make 1,000,000,000,000 references to the Nazis...

Perhaps that's what they secretly want.

[KG]

38. capitalists care not one wit about politics, only the bottom line...