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INFORMATION BU]
Number 25
$3.00
Special: Nazis, the Vatican, and CIA
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Editorial
This issue of CAIB focuses on the fascist connection, in par-
ticular the U.S. role in helping hundreds, perhaps thousands,
of prominent Nazis avoid retribution at the end of World War
II. The CIA (originally the OSS) and the U.S. military, along
with the Vatican, were instrumental in exfiltrating war crimi-
nals not just to Latin America, but to the United States as well.
As the Reagan administration attempts to rewrite history, it
is worthwhile to examine carefully the wartime and postwar
machinations of the extreme Right. The President goes to Bit-
burg claiming it is time to forgive and forget, when in reality
he is merely cutting a crude political deal with the reactionary
West German government for its approval of Star Wars by giv-
ing his absolution to the SS.
Harboring War Criminals
As we demonstrate in the pages of this issue, war criminals
like Josef Mengele, Walter Rauff, and Klaus Barbie did not
simply vanish at the end of the war or gracefully retire. Most of
them spent several years in the direct employ of the U.S. intel-
ligence agencies and, when necessary, were set up in business
in Latin America or the U.S. The Kameradenwerk-the Nazi
old boy network-remained active over the years, vigorous
enough to have planned and carried out the 1980 coup in
Bolivia, for example, and to have held high places in
Pinochet's government in Chile. And they are major figures in
the international arms and drug trades as well-traffic which
the U.S. tries to blame on the socialist countries.
Hundreds of Nazis have been set up in scientific institutions
in this country. Ironically, it now appears that Star Wars is
merely an extension of the Nazis' wartime rocket research.
Much of the U.S. space program was designed by them. When
the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations learn-
ed that the scientist responsible for the Apollo-1 I moon trip,
Arthur L.H. Rudolph, was a war criminal who exploited slave
laborers to their deaths in his Nazi rocket factory, he was al-
lowed to depart the U.S. voluntarily with no prosecution and
no public announcement until he was safely hack in West Ger-
many.
Rudolph was only one of thousands of fascist scientists, doc-
tors, technicians, and, above all, intelligence operatives, as-
Table of Contents
Editorial
2
Nazi Doctors in U.S.
26
Allen Dulles and the SS
By Peter Dale Scott
4
Knights of Malta Examined
By Francoise Hervet
27
Klaus Barbie's Bolivian Coup
By Kai Hermann
15
The Greek Civil War
By Eleni Fourtouni
39
A Sophisticated Torture
By Robert Cohen
21
The Real Eleni
By Nikos Raptis
41
The Real Treason
By William Preston, Jr.
23
Supplying the Contras
By Fred Clarkson
56
Interview With Nuremberg Lawyer
24
About the Cover: Left photo: Greek women hanged at Volos, 1943, by Nazi occupiers and their Greek fascist collaborators.
Credit: Spyros Meletzis. These women partisans are only a few of tens of thousands butchered during the German occupation (1941-
1944) and the civil war (1944-1949) which followed the liberation of Greece. The Greek collaborators not only went unpunished,
they commenced a five-year reign of terror-working first with the British and then the Americans-to exterminate the Greek Left.
These were the people Eleni Gatzoyiannis supported and served as an informer, for which she was tried, convicted, and executed.
Right photo: President Reagan and Chancellor Kohl, May 5, 1985, accompanied by General Matthew B. Ridgway (right) and
West German General Johannes Steinhoff (left), at Bitburg military cemetary where SS members are buried. Credit: Associated
Press.
CovertAction Information Bulletin, Number 25, Winter 1986; published by Covert Action Publications, Inc., a District of Columbia Nonprofit Corporation; Post
Office Box 50272, Washington, DC 20004, (202) 737-5317; and c/o Sheridan Square Publications, Inc., 145 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012, (212) 254-
1061. Typography by Your Type, New York, NY; printing by Faculty Press, Brooklyn, NY. Staff: Ellen Ray, William Schaap, Louis Wolf, and B. Lynne Barbee.
Indexed in the Alternative Press Index. ISSN 0275-309X.
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similated after World War II. Only slowly, and with painstak-
ing research, does the information surface.
All of the most ghoulish scientific experimentation by the
Axis medical establishment was eagerly gathered up by the
U.S. What carne of it, and of its practitioners, is a matter of
speculation, though we do know that the CIA's mind control
programs like MKULTRA, torture training through their Of-
fice of Public Safety, and massive research in and use of chem-
ical and biological warfare (begun in Operation NKNAOMI)
were the backbone of CIA and Pentagon covert activities over
the last 40 years. Torture, crude and sophisticated, was ex-
ported to client states in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and else-
where, and CBW was directly employed against Vietnam,
Cuba, and it appears, now, Nicaragua. Recent events indicate
that the doors of the Georgetown car barn (where OPS trained
torturers from foreign police forces until 1974, when the pro-
gram was banned by Congress) are being opened again. In the
1985 foreign aid bill the current Congress lifted the ban on
such training at a time when, for example, death squad mur-
ders in El Salvador have doubled this year.
Torture, the policy of so many American allies, is getting
better press under Reagan. Newsweek magazine of June 7,
1982 kicked off the campaign, carrying a column entitled
The Case for Torture," by CCNY philosophy professor
Michael Levin, who argued that torture is "not merely permis-
sible, but morally mandatory" to save lives threatened by ter-
rorists. And on November 13, 1985, the New York Times re-
ported that "liberal" Senator Patrick J. Leahy (Dem.-Vt.) con-
fessed to an audience that he did not care for lie detectors. "I
personally like thumbscrews. They work far, far better."
The Knights of Malta
For nine hundred years the Knights of Malta have built up a
military and intelligence organization designed to protect the
established order and the privileges of the ruling classes
throughout the world, yet most people arc unaware of their
existence. Little is known of their role in the Third Reich or,
along with the Vatican and the CIA, in the protection of Nazis
after the War, or today in the wars in Central America. The ar-
ticle in this issue begins what must be a long and complicated
analysis of this organization and others like it.
Eleni and the Greek Civil War
There is no better example 01' the power of disinformation
than the hoopla which surrounded Nicholas Gage's hook, / :Irni
(a cover story in the New York Times Maga=inr last spring) and
the recent movie based on it. First the Nazis, then the British,
and then the Americans-each with their fascist Greek col-
laborators-were responsible from the 1940s through the
1970s for the brutal deaths of tens of thousands of Greeks, de-
cimating the ranks of the progressive forces. Yet Gage would
have us believe that it was the communists'Aho were evil and
the fascists who were good. We hope the analyses presented
here help rectify the 40-year-old lie Gagc has resurrected.
The World Anti-Communist Leage
While General John K. Singlaub makes the rounds of televi-
sion talk shows touting the Nicaraguan rontra.% and hoping
WACL's mercenary adventures in Central America, the ori-
gins of his group are pointedly ignored. Many of the WACL's
leaders have deep ties not merely to Rev. Moon's nryrmidons
but also to Nazis and Nazi collaborators, who hobnob with
high administration figures.
The Overt Covert Wars
Friends jokingly advise us to change our name. Covert ac-
tion has become so overt as to make the term an anachronism.
The President, having manipulated Congress into repealing the
Clark Amendment, has now gone over their heads by Execu-
tive Order to fund a covert war against the government of An-
gola. As with Nicaragua, debate over this "secret" war will he
finessed by shifting the focus of discussion from its legality or
morality to its level of financing.
Computer Researchers:
This magazine is typeset by computer, and Al material
is prepared using the WordStarC? word processing pro-
gram. For computer researchers who may find it useful,
we will provide floppy disks with the text of all articles
in this issue, in Wordstar, in either the CT/M? or the
MS-DOS 40 format, for $20.00. We hope that in the fu-
ture CA/B will be available as a data base.
Nazi flag waves in the Andes after 1980 Bolivian coup.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
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How Allen Dulles and the SS
Preserved Each Other
By Peter Dale Scott *
Dr. Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death," the experimenter
and executioner of the German concentration camp at Au-
schwitz, is perhaps the most notorious of all the unconvicted
Nazi war criminals. The exhumation in early 1985 in Brazil of
a body which international forensic experts subsequently
judged to be that of Mengele has momentarily quieted the de-
mands that he be found and brought to trial. The supporting
evidence and testimony was persuasive enough to silence many
initial skeptics. Nevertheless other wanted Nazi criminals have
been erroneously but persuasively reported dead. Adolf
Eichmann, for example, had been declared dead in Austria in
1947, "on the testimony of one Karl Lukas, who swore that he
had been present when Eichmann died in Prague on April 28,
This photograph was used by Josef Mengele in 1956 when
he applied for an identity card in Argentina in his own
name. It is the most recent authenticated photograph of the
"Angel of Death" of Auschwitz.
* Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat with a Ph.D. in political sci-
ence, and Professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley, is
the author of The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina
War (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), The Assassinations, Dallas and
Beyond: A Guide to Cover-Ups and Investigations (New York: Vintage,
1976), and Crime and Cover-Up (Berkeley: Westworks, 1977). This article is
from a larger work in progress.
4 CovertAction
1945."' And when in the same year a doctor wrote that she
wished to testify against Mengele, the response of Telford
Taylor, U.S. Chief of Counsel for War Crimes at Nuremberg,
was "to advise our records show Dr. Mengerle [sic] is dead as
of October 1946."' (At the time of General Taylor's letter,
U.S. Army Counterintelligence knew both of Mengele's survi-
val and even his location, in the small Bavarian village of Au-
tenried.')
Four years before the emergence of the latest Mengele death
report, a biography of Martin Bormann noted how the issuance
of false death reports, substantiated in some cases by the plant-
ing of skeletons, was the standard modus operandi of the post-
war Kameradenwerk in South America to which Mengele, and
allegedly Bormann, belonged.' Indeed the very abundance of
such skeletons was enough, not only to weaken their credibil-
ity, but to confirm that a powerful and ruthless organization
was protecting the wanted criminals. In the case of Bormann
himself,
The [Israeli intelligence organization] Mossad was to point
out that they have been witnesses over the years to the exhu-
mation of six skeletons, two in Berlin and four in South
America, purported to be that of Martin Bormann.`
It is worth recalling that Mengele was reported dead in 1968,
after the search for him had been fueled by revelations in the
Eichmann trial. Then as now the major source for the report
was a respected Brazilian policeman (Erich Erdstein in 1968)
who "specialized in narcotics smugglers."" Erdstein sub-
sequently published a vivid eyewitness account of Mengele's
brief capture, release, subsequent recapture, and death by gun-
fire on a barge at his own hands.
When a respected Brazilian policeman with a record of im-
portant narcotics arrests describes Mengele's death in vivid de-
tail, it is hard to disbelieve him. But after a second respected
Brazilian policeman with a similar record has supplied a differ-
ent, wholly incompatible account of Mengele's death, then the
credibility of such sources has to be reassessed. Even if the
second report proves to be correct, the earlier report remains as
evidence that a well-organized conspiracy existed to protect
Mengele, like Bormann, with disinformation.
1. Ladislas Farago, Aftermath: Martin Bornumn and the Fourth Reich (New
York: Avon, 1975), p. 345.
2. U.S. National Archives, Record Group 165, 250.401, Sect. XIX; letter of
19 January 1948 from Brig. Gen. Telford Taylor, OCCWC, OMGUS.
3. U.S. National Archives, Record Group 319, CIC File No. V-2399, XE
012547 D20D216; Washington Post, March 15, 1985, p. A10.
4. Paul Manning, Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile (Secaucus, NJ: Lyle Stuart,
1981), p. 183.
5. Ibid.
6. Erich Erdstein with Barbara Bean, Inside the Fourth Reich (London: Robert
Hale, 1978), pp. 199-201, 217-218.
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The story of Mengele's death is in this respect a small synec-
doche of the story of Mengele's life. To begin to understand it,
one must be prepared to disbelieve authorities that would nor-
mally be credible, and to explore alternative hypotheses that
would normally be dismissed as sheer paranoid fantasy and de-
lusion.
The Mengele Kameraden and U.S. Intelligence
By July 1945 Josef Mengele had been captured and iden-
tified at an allied prisoner-of-war camp. Forty years later an
eyewitness told a congressional committee how guards knew
Mengele's name, and also the general nature of his crimes as
doctor, experimenter, and executioner at Auschwitz.' Also in
1985 the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles released
documents obtained from the U.S. Army under the Freedom of
Information Act, according to which Mengele "may have been
arrested by U.S. authorities in Austria in 1947 and sub-
sequently released."Yet like so many of his fellow members
of the SS, the bureaucrats of death in the Nazi behemoth,
Mengele was somehow allowed to disappear, to reemerge ten
years later in Latin America.
Twenty years ago only a few would have believed that the
victorious allies in the so-called "good war" could have delib-
erately allowed a sadistic mass murderer like Josef Mengele to
go free. From the revelations since the Eichmann trial, how-
ever, it has become only too obvious that the OSS, the wartime
precursor of today's CIA, arranged for numbers of wanted
criminals to "escape" from camps, and when necessary sup-
plied them with new identities to protect them from justice.
Murderers, far from being exempted from such protection,
seem to have been among those most likely to obtain it.
This is particularly true of those Schur:staf/e'! (SS: elite
guard) veterans whose careers have been most closely linked to
The "Butcher of Lyon" in the plaza of La Paz.
7. Washington Post, Fchruary 15, 1985, p. A4.
8. The Nation, March 2. 1985, p. 231:
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
Walter Rauff, inventor of the portable gas chamber. After
the war, Rauff worked for the Gehlen Org and later in
Chile for Pinochet as torture expert.
Mengele's in Latin America: Klaus Barbie, the butcher of
Lyon, in Bolivia; Walter Rauff, supervisor of the SS mobile
gas chambers, in Chile; and Friederich Schwend, yet another
wanted murderer, in Peru. Like Mengele, all three of these
men developed links with neo-fascist elements in the military
or interior ministries of their new countries, or both. All col-
laborated in repressive operations against the Lcft, particularly
at the time of the CIA-assisted overthrow of the Allende gov-
ernment in Chile. Barbie and Schwend, at least, have acted in
this capacity through arms deals with the German firm Merex
AG, a proprietary firm of the German l3ntlclc.~tuu hrirhtr/ien,ct
(BND: federal intelligence service), itself a descendant of the
Gehlen intelligence network which in 1945 passed from the
leadership of the Nazi SS to that of American intelligence, and
eventually the CIA.
We shall see that after World War 11, while the CIA and the
Gehlen Organization (usually referred to as the "Gehlen Org")
were being slowly organized on the U.S. payroll, both Barbie
and Schwend worked for U.S. Army Counterintelligence
(CIC); and at this time Schwend was working on setting up the
secret SS escape routes to Latin America by which both men
would eventually reestablish themselves. It has been charged
that Rauff played an even more prominent role in setting up the
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The ubiquitous Reinhard Gehlen served Hitler, Dulles, and
Adenauer in succession.
escape route, while also on the U.S. payroll, and that he did so
with an immunity granted to him by Allen Dulles of the OSS,
after the SS-OSS secret (and sometimes unauthorized) negotia-
tions in north Italy in which, unquestionably, both Dulles and
Rauff participated.
The primary purpose of these secret talks was to secure a
separate Nazi and fascist surrender in north Italy, and at least
partly to prevent a de facto seizure of power by Italian com-
munist partisans behind the Nazi lines. But even the intense
fixation which the OSS and the SS shared about reducing the
inevitable communist role in postwar Europe does not appear
to diplomatic historians to explain the zealous intensity with
which Dulles, at times in direct contravention of written or-
ders, pursued negotiations for a surrender which in fact pre-
ceded that of V-E Day by just six days.
We shall study the same excessive zeal with which future
CIA personnel protected the convicted war criminal Barbie and
concealed him from the French authorities who knew very well
that U.S. intelligence was hiding him from them. A recent
U.S. Justice Department report on the U.S. handling of the
Barbie case is clearly an essay in damage limitation, designed
to blame low-level people in U.S. Army Counterintelligence
while suppressing the rather obvious connections to the Gehlen
Org and its then employers, the CIA. The role of Schwend
(and almost certainly Rauft) in exfiltrating whole cadres of
wanted SS criminals, while on the U.S. payroll, only confirms
recent speculations that the SS networks were being preserved
for postwar anticommunist activities, as the result of an ar-
rangement negotiated with Dulles and his OSS superiors.
6 CovertAction
Such an OSS-SS deal does not appear to have been approved
at the time at any higher level. Indeed as late as December
1945 the U.S. War Department refused U.S. intelligence offi-
cers permission to collaborate with even the Gehlen Organiza-
tion, whose prewar origins lay not in the Nazi SS but the even-
tually decapitated Abwehr or German military intelligence."
More importantly, Roosevelt had already tabled, as too contro-
versial, the memo from OSS chief William J. Donovan (which
Dulles had drafted), for converting the wartime OSS into a per-
manent CIA. "'
In dealing with the SS, Dulles and Donovan knew that this
risky operation could easily backfire against the OSS, whose
organizational future had already been challenged by J. Edgar
Hoover and traditionalists in U.S. military intelligence. But
they also knew that, just as the OSS was the best hope for the
survival of the SS cadres, so in a sense these cadres were their
highest trump card in the impending contest for the OSS's own
institutional survival. What ultimately persuaded Truman in
1947 to authorize an operational CIA was in fact partly the
need to find an institutional home for the postwar Gehlen Org.
In 1948 Dulles, by now a civilian, helped write the memo per-
suading Truman to take on the Gehlen Org, on Gehlen's own
terms. One of these was that Gehlen could continue to work
Allen Welsh Dulles, mastermind of Operation Sunshine,
brought Nazis into U.S. spy service.
9. Tom Bower. Klaus Barbie: The Butcher o(Lcons (London: Granada, 1984),
p. 136.
10. R. Harris Smith. OSS: The Secret History ol'Arnerica's First Central Intel-
ligence Agency (Berkeley: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1972), p. 363; F. H. Cook-
ridge, Gehlen: Spy of the Century (New York: Random House, 1971), pp.
132-135.
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with his old OSS liaison Frank Wisner (chosen by Dulles)
rather than Army Intelligence."
Could Mengele-not even a political policeman (like Rauff
and Barbie), but a doctor with a penchant for lethal experi-
ments on human guinea pigs-could even Mengele have been
saved as it result of a secret deal between Dulles and the SS?
Such a hypothesis would once have been almost unthinkable.
But we have since been told that his colleague in the Auschwitz
human experiments, Walter Schreiber, was shielded by the
Americans from a Polish conviction in absentia, so that he
could help guide the postwar researches of the U.S. Air Force
in bacteriological warfare. In 1952, Schreiber was helped by
American officials to reestablish himself, via Argentina, in
Paraguay.' That is the year that Mengele himself appeared in
Argentina, moving to Paraguay two years later.
In 1981 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists revealed that
Mengele's equivalent in Japan, Dr. Shiro Ishii, as well as his
assistants, had been granted immunity by the United States in
exchange for exclusive access to their researches in chemical
and bacteriological warfare. This despite the fact that Ameri-
cans had been among the more than 3,000 prisoners of war and
civilians killed in the course of their treatment as human guinea
pigs. A Soviet war crimes trial in 1949, based on these experi-
ments, was denounced at the time by the United States as a
simple exercise in propaganda."
That Mengele's escape and immunity were arranged by the
United States, like those of Schreiber and so many others, will
seem more probable once we have studied the incredible post-
war careers of Barbie, Schwend, and Rauff. But before doing
so we must glance forward to the ways in which Mengele's
postwar career has overlapped with those of these other SS
murderers, whom we now know to have benefited from U.S.
protection.
Mengele and the Kameradenwerk
Despite the hooks, articles, and TV programs about
Mengele, the "Angel of Death" at Auschwitz, less is known
for certain about his postwar activities than those of any com-
parable war criminal." Apart from his extended residence in
Paraguay, where he gained citizenship in 1957 and was
stripped of it in 1979, little has been documented. But in one of
the best hooks to appear about the postwar network of Rauff,
Schwend, and Mengele, the so-called Kaineradennve rk, the
career of Mengele is closely implicated.
The hook is The Bormann Brotherhood by William Steven-
son, himself a wartime intelligence operative with access to in-
telligence sources, including the records of Donovan and their
mutual friend, Sir William Stephenson of the British SOE. Ac-
cording to Stevenson, Mengele had worked in a restricted mili-
tary zone of Paraguay with the wartime Croatian dictator Ante
Pavelic, whose Croatian Catholic connections undoubtedly (as
we shall see) played central roles in the escapes of Rauff,
I I Cookridge, op. cit., n. 10, p. 135: Thomas Powers, The Matt Who Kept
the Secrets: Ruharel //elms and Ili,, CIA (New York: Knopf, 1479), pp. 24,
3.
12. International Herald Tribune. February 21. 1983; Le Monde Dip-
lomatique, July 1983, p. 23n.
13. Le Monde Diplomatique, July 1983, p. 24: Sciichi Morimura. Akuma no
Hoshaku (Tokyo: 19811. Ishii had embarked on his experiments after a visit to
prewar Nazi Germany.
14. Cl. Miklos Myizli, Medecitt it Ansrhrrit- (Paris: Julliard 1961); "The
Hunt for Dr. Mengele," Granada Television. August 1. 1980: Bulletin d'Itt-
(orntatiott .eo' l'lnhvrention Clandestine, March-April 1983, p. 13.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
Schwend, and Barbie." Pavelic had initially made contact with
the Latin American Nazi Kan eradentrerk through Rauff.
With respect to Mengele's finances, Stevenson mentions the
Ka,neradcntrerk representative in Ecuador,
Alfons Sassen, the representative of the Brotherhood
IKameradenu'erkI business enterprise known as "Estrella."
It is said too that Sassen is financed by Dr. Josef Mengcle,
who controls now such funds as remain liquid front the sale
of European loot."
War Department document discussing Japan's use of
biological warfare-airdropped bubonic plague epidemic.
This is important, since such postwar SS funds had earlier been
administered by Friederich Schwend, who had used them (ap-
parently with U.S. connivance and support) for the exfiltration
of himself and other top SS members. Schwend apparently
ceased to play this role after he, and a hand of Croatians under
his control, were exposed in it 1972 Peruvian murder scandal in
which Mengele was a suspect.'" (Sassen, a Dutch SS officer
and a convicted war criminal, is chiefly remembered for his ex-
tended record of Eichmann's revelations to him in 1957. which
formed a major exhibit in the Eichmann trial.'")
15. William Stevenson, The Bormunn Brotherhood (Nev, York: Harcourt,
Brace. Josanovich, 1973), p. 228.
16. Ibid., p.'27.
17. Ibid., pp 404-405.
18. Farago, op. tit.. n. I , p. 2 20.
19. Ibid., pp. 372-377.
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Stevenson elsewhere names this Estrella company as the
subsidiary of a financial consortium controlled from Bolivia by
Schwend's business partner Klaus Barbie.'? In the early 1960s
Barbie did in fact
set up a company called Estrella, ostensibly dealing in quin-
quina bark. Although no records exist in the public registry
in La Paz, at least one Bolivian arms dealer still remembers
it as a weapons trading company."
It appears that Barbie and Estrella did export quinquina bark as
agents for the German drug firm Boehringer, which grew rich
on quinine contracts to the U.S. Army during the Vietnam
War."
But the primary business of Barbie and Schwend was arms
trafficking,
carried on through two German-based firms, Merex and
Gemetex. The two Nazis acted as agents, negotiating pur-
chases not only on behalf of the Bolivian and Peruvian gov-
ernments but, through their friendship with the Nazi Hans
Rudel, sales to Paraguay and Chile and, through Otto Skor-
zeny in Spain, further deals in Madrid."
Merex AG, itself set up in 1963, was an arms company owned
and controlled by the Gehlen BND, while Skorzeny was one of
the top go-betweens in the postwar deals between Gehlen, the
SS, and the CIA."
Barbie's arms deals, concerted in this way with western in-
telligence, were politically influential as well as economically
lucrative. They involved him, according to French sources, in
the drug trafficking business of Auguste Joseph Ricord, a Cor-
sican Nazi collaborator who like Mengele was established with
high-level connections in Paraguay. It was apparently the
Nixon administration's determination to break the Ricord ring
which first made the CIA begin reporting on Mengele's own
involvement in the drug traffic.
The U.S. Protection of Klaus Barbie
Like his fellow-escapee Klaus Barbie in Bolivia, Mengele
was an old man who began to lose some of his political immun-
ity in Latin America. But the well-placed networks which over
the years enabled him to cross frontiers without detection arc
still in place, still politically influential throughout the conti-
nent. It remains important to understand that network more
clearly in order to neutralize as far as possible its evident sup-
port in Washington itself.
A brief glance at the postwar career of Klaus Barbie shows
how relatively small a role in his prosperity was played by
postwar Nazi cabals such as the well publicized ODESSA or
"Die Spinne." Condemned to death by the French for genoci-
dal murders in Lyon, Barbie was concealed and protected for
20 Stevenson. op. cit., n. 15, p. 276.
21 Magnus Linklatcr, et al.. The Nazi Lego( N.- Klaus Barbie end the Interna-
tional Ea.sei.st Connection (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1984). p.
228.
22. Ibid., p. 237.
23. Ibid., pp. 237-238.
24. Der ,Spiegel, December I I , 1976, p. 20: George Thayer, The War Busi-
ness. The International Trade in Armaments (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1969), p. 116: Anthony Sampson, The Arms Bazaar: From Lebanon to Loc-
kheed (New York: Viking Press, 1977), p. 181 (Merex-Gehlen): Glenn In-
field, S'korzenv: Hitler's Commando (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981)
(Skorzcny).
8 CovertAction
four years in Germany by the U. S. Army's Counter Intelli-
gence Corps (CIC), which was using him as an informant to
spy on-ironically-the French." After the Communists were
dropped from General De Gaulle's cabinet, the Nazi Barbie
was reassigned to spy on the "America Houses" set up by the
U.S. State Department, which were, according to Barbie's
American handler, "stocked with all kinds of leftwing litera-
ture. Barbie's reports may thus have helped fuel the attack
on this program five years later by Joe McCarthy, whose
charges against the State Department were based on documents
leaked to him by a source in Army Intelligence."
As a mere policeman and persecutor of Jews, Barbie was not
a candidate for the headquarters staff of the revamped Gehlen
Organization, which was being transformed with CIA money
and oversight into West Germany's postwar intelligence
agency, the BND. Barbie's future would thus be less comforta-
ble than that of his fellow CIC informant Emil Augsburg, who
had worked directly under Eichmann on the SS "final solution
to the Jewish problem." Despite postwar stories that Augsburg
had been saved from punishment by ODESSA and the Vatican,
we now know that Augsburg went "at once" from Barbie's
CIC unit into the Gehlen Org, to staff the offensive "Special
Forces" against the Soviet Union being promoted by the CIA's
Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner." Augsburg was teamed with
Dr. Franz Alfred Six, whose twenty-six-year sentence for or-
dering the executions of hundreds of Jews at Smolensk was
commuted to time served by John J. McCloy. the U.S. High
Commissioner of Germany (HICOG).'"
Barbie's Escape and the Ryan Cover-Up
But HICOG was eventually unable to stall the more and
more strident French demands for delivery of Barbie as a con-
victed war criminal."' In 1951 the CIC provided Barbie with a
package of false documents, funds, and references for his new
identity, as "Klaus Altmann," and sent him to Genoa down an
underground railway, the infamous "Rat Line," which the
Austrian CIC had been operating for tour years."
Barbie was received in Genoa by the Croatian priest Dr.
Krunoslav Draganovic, an adviser to the wartime Croatian dic-
tatorship of Ante Pavelic. Draganovic was an admitted mem-
ber of the wartime Ustase terrorist organization which Pavelic
had used to carry out a genocidal extermination of the Or-
thodox Serbs in his puppet Catholic dictatorship. Through his
Vatican and Latin American connections, Draganovic had ex-
filtrated a number of wanted Ustase war criminals, including
25. Linklater, op. cit., n. 21, p. 163: "Underlying this move was the obsessive
CIC idea that French security services were not merely a rival but so penetrated
with Communists that they could he treated as a department of Soviet intelli-
gence.
"
26. Ibid., p. 167.
27. Fred J. Cook, The Nightmare Decade: The I,i/e and Times o/ Senatol Jot'
MCCarthv (New York: Random House, 1971), pp. 140, 411-424: see also,
Hank Messick, John Edgar Hoover: A Critical Examination olthe Director
and of the Continuing Alliance Between Crime, Business, and Politics (New
York: David McKay, 1972).
28. Cookridge, op. cit., n. 10, pp. 242-243: Linklatcr, op. I it., n. 21, pp. 166-
167. See also, "From the OSS to the CIA," in Nikolai Yakovlev, C/A Target:
The USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984), pp. 64-118.
29. Cookridge, op. I it., n. 10, p. 242: Farago, op. cit., n. 1, p. 371: John Lof-
tus, The Belarus Secret (New York: Knopf, 1982), p. 1. Wisner had previ-
ously asked McCloy's predecessor, Gen. Lucius D. Clay, to intercede on be-
half of Six at Nuremberg.
30. Linklater, op. cit., n. 21, pp. 179-180.
31. Ibid., pp. 183-192. According to an internal CIC document, the 430th
(Austrian) CIC was about to terminate its interest in the Rat Line, expecting
that "the CIA will assume responsibility for evacuations."
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almost certainly Pavelir himself. CIC knew all this, yet found
Draganovir, whom they considered to he himself if war crin)i-
nal, useful.
A 19213 Justice Department investigation of the Barbie case
by Allan A. Ryan treats the U.S. Army's exfiltration of Bar-
hie, handled at the time as a high-priority intelligence matter,
as the solution to a disposal problem, a means of making a po-
tential embarrassment vanish." Ryan's report is critical of
CIC's decisions and gross lies in this period, but manages,
with a skill that perhaps only lawyers are capable of, to excul-
pate the cover-up in other branches of the U.S. government, as
the innocent transmittal of CIC's misrepresentations. Ryan is
particularly concerned to dispel the impression, which he ad-
mits was shared by several of Barbie's CIC handlers, that the
C'IC ever had any interest in Barbie.
Ryan's documentation, however, shows evidence of a con-
scious, coordinated cover-up of the Barbie case, at a much
higher level of the U.S. government than the benighted CIC.
Ryan himself notes instances when senior officials in HICOG,
in internal memos, contradicted their own assurances of an ac-
tive search for Barbie (p. I 23n): and revealed the existence of
what he calls "unofficial information" or hack channels refut-
ing their assurances (p. 1O1). Even more striking is the wide-
spread bureaucratic hahit, at high levels of EUCOM (the U.S.
military command in Europe), HICOG, and the Paris U.S.
Embassy. of translating statements from the press or internal
memos about "Barbie" into misleading inter-agency com-
munications about a non-existent "Barbier."" Observers of
the FBI and CIA will recognize this behavior, which can be
used to withhold files about "Barbier" when pressed under the
Freedom of Information Act to disclose files on Barbie."
Ryan further notes the disappearance of many documents,
including all those in the Barbie file at the time of his exfiltra-
tion, before the file was microfilmed several weeks later (p.
149). This does not deter him from the lawyerly conclusion (p.
158) that Barbie did not have a relationship with any other
U.S. government agency at this time, on the ground that
There is no evidence in Barbie's CIC dossier that he worked
at any time for any agency other than CIC. This investiga-
32 t'In Icd Stales Department of .lustiee Criminal Division, Maus Barbie and
nc, ( rifles! SI,Iwv me Repnrt to the Aoornee General o/ the United
Shies hr Allan .1_ Rv,m (washinooll: (;ovcrnmcm Printing Office, 1983)
Ulercinaflcr''Rnm"), p 140,(j_ I.inklater, op. cit., n. 2I. pp. 180-181, 192-
191.
33 Rm, op. cir . n. 32. pp. 157-168. In fact the Ryan report exonerates not
just HICOG and the ('LA, hut Barbie himsell After it trip to La Pat, Ryan re-
ported that Barbie ''does not appear to have heen involved in dru: rail eking
I p 168), and that 'Bolivian government officials 'Acre unable to provide
dsscumcrllatisn or lust -hand evidence of Barhic's alleged involvement in
Nrapons sale' iMVOhine the I sited States" (p. 189). Ryan (toe; not mention
Barhie's reported dealings wish Auguste Joseph Ricord of Paraguay whose
'Corsican" drug ring was "linked to networks of former Nazis in Europe and
Latin America" (:Vain Jauhert, /)o.ssicr l) cnnmre drogue (Paris: Alain
Nlorcau. 1973), p 2961 Nor does he deal with reports that Barbie was import-
ing into Bolivia Ingram submachine guns (Bower, op. cit., n. 9, p. 191).
tieapons Manufactured in the U.S. and distributed by influential Cuban exiles
working for the late Stitch WcrBcll III, an American pro-Nazi sympathizer
once indicted for but acquitted of) involvement in it drugs-for-arms deal (Hen-
rik Kruger. The Great Heroin Coup, (Boston: South End, 1980), pp. 8, 164).
34. Examples at Ryan, op. cit.. n. 32, pp. 95. 100, 108, III, 112 (twice).
113, 117, 122.
35. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the CIA told the FBI it had no
CIA-generated material on Lee Harvey Oswald in its files. This was true in the
sense that all such documents had referred to it mythical ''Lee Henry Os-
wald." Cf. Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Corer-Up (Berkeley Westworks,
1977). p. 12.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
SS leader Franz Six worked with Barbie and Gehlen.
Lion has established that, had the situation been other, ise,
the CIC dossier would have reflected it.
The weakness in this logic is also apparent at the words ''any
agency," where he ought to have written ''any U.S. agency."
Ryan's report, here and throughout. significantly fails to ad-
dress the possibility that the U.S. was reestablishing Barbie
Altmann in Latin America as a future asset of thc rapidly grow-
ing Gehlen Org, then still funded entirely by the united States.
Ryan's avoidance of this hypothesis is so disingenuous in it-
self as to corroborate it.
Apart from CIA, there is no other agency, with the possible
exception of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) Ithe
earliest name of the CIA component authorized to carry out
covert activities], that would have had any connection with
Barbie's activities. This investigation has yielded no hint or
suggestion, let alone evidence however fragmentary, that
OPC had any knowledge of or involvement with Klaus Bar-
bie, the Merk net, or other activities described in this report.
In evaluating this statement, we have to remember that
OPC, under its aggressive chief Frank Wisner, was funding
and recruiting for the Gehlen Org. That the CIC's Merk net of
which Barbie was part had established contact with the Gehlen
Org, which had tried to recruit Kurt Merk as its chief of coun-
terintelligence operations. "' That by March 1948 C'IC had es-
tablished liaison with the CIA in Europe, because of the latter's
interest in the Merk net." (This was three months before the
creation of OPC in June 1948, but the interest of Dulles and
Wisner in Gehlen went hack to 1945.)" That Emil Augsburg,
36. Linklater, op. cit., n. 21, p. 145.
37. Ryan, op. cit., n. 32, p. 159.
38. Powers, op. cit., n. 11, pp. 24, 31.
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Allan A. Ryan, author of whitewash report on Barbie-U.S.
ties.
another member of the CIC's Merk net, had been "dropped"
like Barbie, and at once recruited by the Gehlen Org.'9 That
CIC, in securing false documentation in the name of Altmann
for Barbie, told the local CIC office to explain that
subject is of extreme interest to Uncle Sugar intelligence and
is traveling on highly sensitive task. Also that CIC is taking
current action in behalf of another Uncle Sugar agency."'
Ryan's studied avoidance of the possibility that Barbie was
detached to the Gehlen Org is the more eloquent when we re-
call that this charge was made in detailed fashion by William
Stevenson in The Bormann Brotherhood, by far the most au-
thoritative treatment of the Barbie case in any American book
before the Ryan report:
Klaus Barbie . . . was a man adroit enough to get on the
American payroll of the West German intelligence agency
when it was run by General Gehlen. . . . Killers had es-
caped by selling their talents to the intelligence agencies of
East and West. Klaus Barbie had worked for an import-ex-
port agency at Schillestrasse [sic] 38, in Augsburg. Such
fronts are the favored fronts of spy rings. This one had been
operated by the Gehlen Org."
Ryan's documents confirm that in 1947 Barbie was working at
38 Schillerstrasse, Kempten (rather than Augsburg). Ryan
notes that a search for him there two years later "proved fruit-
less." Ryan later translates this predictable fruitlessness of the
belated inquiry into the undocumented statement that "Barbie
had never been 'on Schillerstrasse' " (p. 114n). This is not a
persuasive rebuttal of Stevenson's claim.
Finally one can hardly ignore the fact that the protection and
exfiltration of Barbie were handled, at the top and at the bot-
tom of the U.S. hierarchy, by men with OSS/OPC/CIA con-
39. Linklater, op. cit., n. 21, p. 167.
40. Ryan, op. cit., n. 32, pp. 151-152.
41. Stevenson, op. cit., n. 15, pp. 181, 198. As we shall see, there is no doubt
that Barbie worked with Gehlen's BND and, indirectly, with the CIA, when in
Bolivia.
nections. George Neagoy, the Austrian CIC agent who secured
Barbie's false documentation and would personally deliver him
through Austria to Father Draganovic in Genoa, was himself
about to enter the CIA.'" At HICOG the preparation of mis-
leading reassurances to the French was being handled by John
Bross, a veteran of OSS paramilitary operations who in April
1951 would join the Eastern Europe Division of OPC (working
closely with the Gehlen Org)."
A resolution of what "other agency" picked up Barbie in
1951 would be of great help in understanding the postwar care-
er of Josef Mengele. For there is no doubt at all that in Latin
America, Barbie became part of an international intelligence
network working directly with proprietaries of Gehlen's BND,
and little doubt that Mengele was intimately connected to this
network also.
The Barbie Kameradenwerk in Latin America
The unlikely possibility implied by Ryan, that Barbie with
his store of embarrassing secrets was left to start a new future
on his own, has been refuted by Barbie himself. Though Ryan
asserts that Barbie was the only Nazi to be exfiltrated by CIC
down the Rat Line, Barbie himself recalls that the other occup-
ants of his Genoa hotel "were all Nazi fugitives-among them
Eichmann himself. ""4 According to Barbie, Draganovic told
him his reasons
were purely humanitarian. He helped both Catholics and
Protestants, but mostly they were SS officers, about two
hundred in all. Anti-communists. He said to me, 'We've got
to keep a sort of reserve on which we can draw in the fu-
ture.' I think that was the Vatican's motive as well."
Indeed the Vatican did have a program underway for the ex-
filtration of anti-communists. This was the work of Bishop
Alois Hudal of the Collegium Teutonicum, a priest close both
to Pius XII and the future Paul VI as well as a public admirer of
the Third Reich. After an interview in Rome with former Ges-
tapo Chief Heinrich Muller, Hudal had begun the work of sup-
plying Vatican documentation for such prominent fugitives as
Muller, Eichmann, and perhaps Martin Bormann.?? It was
Hudal who gave Father Draganovic the necessary introductions
to the International Red Cross and other "officials who, for a
bribe, could smooth the fugitive's path.
Between them, Hudal and Draganovic helped hundreds of
Nazis to escape, and perhaps thousands of Croatian Ustase.
Chief of these was the former Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic.
According to William Stevenson,
Pavelic had since withdrawn into an armed camp in
Paraguay shared with German settlers in their restricted mili-
tary zone northeast of Asunci6n. There he worked with Dr.
Josef Mengele, the death camp experimenter, and [Walter]
Rauff . . . who designed and built mass gassing chambers
for Auschwitz.?"
42. Ryan, op. cit., n. 32, p. 145.
43. Ibid., pp. 104, 113; Powers, op. cit., n. I I, pp. 24, 40-41. Bross's draft
letter of May 5, 1950 to the U.S. Paris Embassy was so at odds with what
HICOG knew from "unofficial information" that it was never sent (Ryan, op.
cit., n. 32, pp. 104-105).
44. Bower, op. cit., n. 9, p. 180.
45. Ibid., pp. 180-181.
46. Farago, op. cit., n. 1, pp. 204-213.
47. Bower, op. cit., n. 9, p. 179.
48. Stevenson, op. cit., n. 15, p. 227.
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The most prominent Nazis known to have escaped by this
route established a network in Latin America, often in alliance
with Croatian cohorts, somewhat as follows: Bolivia: Klaus
Barbie (with Croatians): Peru: Friederich Schwend (with Croa-
tians): Chile: Walter Rauff (with Croatians): Ecuador: Alfons
Sasses; Argentina: Otto Skorzeny, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, and
Heinrich Muller. This network, the so-called Kameradenm'erk,
has maintained close political, social, and business ties. By
most accounts Josef Mengele was its leading representative in
Paraguay."
Operation Bernhard, Schwend, and the U.S. Army
Two American books, by authors with wartime intelligence
careers, have conditioned us to accept the debatable hypothesis
that Martin Bormann, Hitler's Deputy and head of the Nazi
Party bureaucracy, was the central organizing figure in this
network."' On surer ground, they point to the role of the exten-
sive postwar assets collected or plundered by the SS and Bor-
mann. This came from three sources: the proceeds from the SS
forgery of British pound notes ("Operation Bernhard"), the
looting of Jews and other Nazi victims, and, most signific-
antly, the corporate contributions to a special fund set up to
guarantee the survival of German multinationals abroad after
the impending collapse of Hitler." Soon after the war, OSS
found the extensive documentation of a meeting in Strasbourg
on August 10, 1944 to establish this fund, between representa-
tives of the SS, Party, and firms like Krupp, I.G. Farben, and
Messerschmidt.
But as the Cold War encouraged the U.S. to see the German
corporate presence in Latin America in a more friendly light,
the role of these firms in providing new careers for war crimi-
nals abroad was ignored. In fact, it was the key to the postwar
status of the Kameraden. Otto Skorzeny (acquitted of his crim-
inal charges by the intervention of western intelligence) be-
came a sales representative of Krupp. Hans Ulrich Rudel
(never charged, but an unrepentant Nazi ideologue in the post-
war era) became a sales representative of Siemens. Walter
Rauff (designer of the gas ovens at Auschwitz) found his first
employment in Latin America with a subsidiary of I.G. Farben
(an employer of slave labor at Auschwitz). Franz Paul Stang],
chief of the Treblinka extermination camp, found postwar em-
ployment in Latin America with Volkswagen, as did Eichmann
with Mercedes-Benz. And so on."
But U.S. intelligence may have played a more direct role in
the exfiltration of Nazis with the proceeds of Operation Bern-
hard, the SS forgery of British pound notes. Here again west-
ern intelligence knew enough about Operation Bernhard to pro-
tect the postwar pound, by the British government's timely
issue of new notes and recall of the old. But by this time much
of the SS profits, an estimated $300 million worth, had been
converted to genuine currency. Most of this money has never
been traced.
The man in charge of laundering the forged banknotes was
Friederich Schwend, who in 1945-1946, in north Italy, became
49. Ibid.. pp. 127-228. 276-279.
50. Farago. op. cit., n. I; Stevenson, op. cit., n. I5: In the Linklater account
of the Kameradenuerk, the story of Bormann's escape to Latin America is
treated as a piece of clever disinformation by Schwend, not as a reality: et.
Linklater, op. cit., n. 21, pp. 137, 241.
51. Stevenson, op. cit., n. 15, pp. 82-85, 188-196: Farago, op. cit., n. I, pp.
225(1-254.
52. Stevenson, op. (it., n. 15. pp. 82-83.
53. Farago. op. cit., n. I. pp. 370 (Skorzcny). 187 (Rudel), 305 (Rauftl. 427
(Stangl(. 289 (F.ichmann).
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
an important link in setting up the SS escape route to the Vati-
can." Farago narrates in detail how Heinrich Muller was dri-
ven in Schwend's chauffeured Mercedes from Mcrano, north
Italy, to Rome, where he was deposited at a Croatian seminary
and made his historic contact with Bishop Hudal." From docu-
ments found in Schwend's possession in 197-, he reports that
the bulk of the money the bishop IHudal I needed was placed
at his disposal by . . . a financier named Friederich
'.Freddy.' Merser, partner of Friederich Schwend in Opera-
tion Bernard. The money came from the hoard Schwend had
amassed in Swiss accounts . . . by the exchange of counter-
feit pounds for hard currency."
What you will not learn from Farago's and Stevenson's ac-
counts is that in 1945-1946, when Schwend was playing this
crucial role in setting up the Rat Line, Schwend was working
for American intelligence:
U.S. documents reveal that after passing into the hands of
the 44th CIC Detachment he was used as an informant by
American intelligence agencies in Ausuia, the Austrian
Tyrol, and Meran, north Italy.'
54. Linklater. op. it., it 21. 236: Stcccnson. op rit . n I5. pp 19' ills
55, Farago. op. cit., n. I, p 22(11
56. Ibid.. p. 2221).
57. Linklater, op. it.. n. 21. p. 230. Needless to sav. R\an i,_nores this tart in
reaching his conclusion that ' 'I Ill, investigation hit, %icldcd no evidence (11,11
the 430th CI(' Il4nnerh the 44th of Austrian ('1('I 11ad used the rat linc as a
means of escape for suspected Naii wareriminats'' (R\an.,gyp cit.. n t', pp
2()9-210).
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Dulles and Wolff: The OSS/SS Secret Deal
These long suppressed details about the postwar U.S. spon-
sorship of the wanted war criminals Barbie and Schwend con-
firm the recent accusations of John Loftus that the SS Kamera-
den were exfiltrated as a result of Operation Sunrise, the secret
agreement, shortly before V-E Day, between Allen Dulles of
OSS Bern and SS General Karl Wolff. As recorded in Dulles's
and other establishment accounts, Operation Sunrise con-
cerned the surrender of German troops to Italy, to prevent the
needless destruction of civilian property and help forestall a
takeover of north Italy by the Communist partisans in the
area." More recently revisionist historians have focused on the
degree to which Dulles and Wolff, the principal negotiators,
exceeded their authorization to negotiate and in so doing
created a major political rift between Stalin and Churchill."
Inasmuch as the armistice in north Italy only preceded that in
the rest of Europe by one week, Operation Sunrise may have
had less impact on the outcome of the war than on the survival
of the cadres of the SS. One of the principal SS participants in
the negotiations was Milan Gestapo Chief Walter Rauff, soon
to be a fugitive through the Kameradenwerk:`''
According to Loftus, a promise by Dulles of amnesty for SS
negotiators led him (Dulles) to exploit his connections at the
Vatican to smuggle war criminals to South America. Rauff
was set up one month after the armistice in Genoa, where,
under cover of a Vatican-run refugee relief organization, he
reportedly sent off some 5000 Gestapo and SS agents over a
four-year period. Among them was Klaus Barbie.?'
Dulles, Rauff, and the Genoa Escape Route
On April 27, 1945, after being visited by Dulles's OSS
agent Emilio Daddario in Milan, Rauff surrendered to Army
CIC. According to recently declassified American intelligence
documents seen by Loftus,
He told Army CIC that he had made "arrangements" for his
surrender in order to avoid further bloodshed in Milan".
. . . The arrangements could be confirmed "by Hussman
[sic-Max Husmann, a Swiss participant in Sunrise] and
Mr. Dulles, allied agents in Switzerland. `2
surrender of the SS armies in Italy. He described [how he]
went to Lugano in March 1945, to arrange the release of al-
lied prisoners in Rauff's custody as a sign of good faith. In
return for the surrender of all SS forces, Dulles promised
that none of the negotiators would ever be prosecuted as war
criminals."'
Loftus then confirms the claim of Beata Klarsfeld that Rauff
began to work for Dulles, and to exfiltrate Nazis through Cath-
olic monasteries, while on the OSS payroll.
Despite the [U.S.] Army interrogators' pleas that Rauff "is
considered a menace if ever set free, and failing actual elimi-
nation, is recommended for life-long internment," Dulles
kept his bargain and Rauff was released. According to usu-
ally reliable intelligence sources, Dulles then employed
Rauff on anti-communist operations in Italy, which was
Rauff's specialty under the Nazis. Dulles asked the Vatican
to continue his wartime arrangement of using Catholic
monasteries and convents to hide OSS agents. After the war,
Dulles explained, these safe houses were still needed to
smuggle out anti-communist refugees. The Vatican's in-
volvement with Dulles's program was minimal. The church
provided food, shelter, and identity cards, as it did to all re-
fugees. It was Dulles's contacts, not the Vatican, who han-
dled the smuggling of Nazis. According to top secret State
Department documents, the Italian police provided the false
passports for allied agents; the visas came from the Argen-
tine consulate in the allied intelligence unit based at Trieste;
and the embarkation paperwork was handled by a U.S. State
Department officer in Genoa. Genoa, incidentally, was
Rauff's area of jurisdiction. All of them worked for Dulles,
who set up the unwitting Vatican to he the scapegoat if it
were ever discovered that Dulles's anti-communist refugees
were really SS intelligence agents. To be sure, there were a
few priests, and even one bishop, who smuggled a few of
their own Nazi countrymen through Italy [this must allude to
the Croatians], but that was at extremely low levels of the
Vatican, and was quietly squelched after the exposure in the
Italian press in 1948. The higher-level connection between
the Vatican and Dulles is still classified by the government."'
58. R. Harris Smith, op. cit., n. 10, pp. 114-121.
59. Bradley F. Smith and Elena Agarossi, Operation Sunrise (New York:
Basic Books, 1979), pp. 101-146; Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War (New
York: Random House, 1968), pp. 375-385.
60. R. Harris Smith, op. cit., n. 10, pp. 117, 119.
tit . Jerry Meldon, The Jewish Advocate, September 20, 1984, citing John Lof-
tus, Boston Globe, May 28, 1984. It should be noted that Rauff himself proba-
bly left Genoa by 1949, more than a year before Barbie arrived in March 1951 .
Loftus's charge of Dulles's amnesty and its consequences is remarkably at
odds with Bradley Smith's contention that "German and Italian Fascist prison-
ers of war . . . received no special benefits from Sunrise'' (p. 185). Rauff was
subsequently allowed to "escape" and reestablish himself with Vatican assist-
ance, which would seem to corroborate Loftus rather than Smith. In his intro-
duction, Smith notes how CIA officials were "more than willing" to release to
him "the only group of OSS field intelligence dispatches which has ever been
declassified by the CIA" (p. 4). This willingness may have been self-serving;
as we shall see, Dulles was actively falsifying the reports of his unauthorized
contacts.
62. Loftus, Boston Globe, May 28, 1984. R. Harris Smith (op. cit., n. 10, p.
119) notes Daddario's visit to Rauff in Gestapo headquarters but does not ex-
plain its purpose.
12 CovertAction
Loftus's remarkable charges against Dulles are corroborated
by scraps of the public record. In his semi-authorized history of
the OSS, R. Harris Smith notes that the leading Italian go-be-
tween in the negotiations, the industrialist, baron, and Papal
Chamberlain Luigi i'arrelli, was in 1948
63. Ibid. The reference is to a meeting of March 3. 1945 which in Allen Dul-
les's memoir was with two SS representatives, Eugen Dollmann and Guido
Zimmer. Loftus concludes "that Dulles lied in his memoirs on one point: The
SS colonel was Walter Rauff, not 'Dollmanlnl.' " Dollmann's own autobiog-
raphy is significantly unhelpful in resolving the issue. The hook ends early on
that same morning at the Italian-Swiss crossing point to Lugano, with the
Swiss go-between waving "on the other side of the frontier." Citing an early
Italian account of the "pretentious" hat he wore on that important day,
Dollmann concludes enigmatically by saying, "I cannot remember, but it is
quite possible . . . Cur non' why not'?" (Eugen Dollmann, The Interpreter:
Memoirs (London: Hutchinson, 1967), pp. 345-346.) Dollmann clearly did
play an important part in the early stages of Operation Sunrise. One year ear-
lier he had helped negotiate the German evacuation of Rome which led to
Wolff's first and only audience with the Pope (Dollmann, pp. 298-303). It
seems possible however that on March 3 Dollmann did not accompany the SS
party beyond the border; alternatively, that both Rauff and Dollmann accom-
panied Zimmer to Lugano.
64. Ibid.
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reportedly involved in a CIA operation to prevent a leftist
victory in the Italian general elections. It was also rumored
that he had concocted a plan to transport ex-Nazis from Ger-
many to Paraguay."5
As a Knight of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta
(SMOM), which issued its own diplomatic passports, Parrelli
was a member of an international Catholic network well
equipped to handle exfiltration. (See article on SMOM in this
issue.) The leading Bavarian Knight of Malta, Baron Erwein
von Aretin, was said to have arranged travel "for no small
number of ex-Nazis" after the war.""
And Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Pope Paul VI),
the OSS contact at the Vatican, did indeed become the patron
of Bishop Hudal's exfiltration efforts:
Montini had under his supervision the Vatican bureau that
issued the refugee travel documents and the Caritas Inter-
nationalise the Church's international welfare organization,
which was at this time (and for some years after the war) one
of the main charitable institutions aiding the fugitive Nazis."'
Like Parrelli, Montini was later deeply involved in the CIA's
first major postwar covert operation, the efforts to block a
communist victory in the 1948 Italian election.
The Common Interests of the OSS and the SS
We cannot in this article review the intricate contacts estab-
lished throughout the war between the Nazis and the Papacy,
the Papacy and the United States, and the U.S. and Ger-
many." However, the common denominator in such infor-
mal contacts became the postwar future of Europe, and possi-
ble joint measures to exclude the Soviet Union from it. This
was especially true after Churchill and Roosevelt had pro-
claimed the policy of unconditional surrender at Casablanca, a
policy which not only dismayed Allen Dulles but threatened
the propriety of his continued contacts with members of the
German opposition."" Yet even after the failure of the July
1944 plot against Hitler, the OSS continued its increasingly
questionable liaisons, now chiefly with representatives of SS
leaders Himmler and Schellenberg.
One motive for these contacts was clearly to limit the post-
war influence in Western Europe of Soviet power, Communist
resistance forces, and the civilian communist parties. Another
however appears to have been to prevent the postwar breakup
of German and U.S. intelligence assets, most particularly the
65. R. Harris Smith, op. cit.. n. 10, p. 114.
66. Guenther Reinhardt, Crinte Without Punishment (New York: New Ameri-
can Library, 1953), p. 280; if. Wisner Lihrarv Bulletin, 1958. In the last
months of the war, Dulles's OSS network in Switzerland was enlarged to in-
clude William J. Casey, today CIA Director and perhaps America's most fa-
mous Knight of Malta, and Russell D'Oench, a cousin of the U.S. SMOM of
ficer J. Peter Grace. D'Oench is said to have helped set up the CIA-Gehlen
Org operation after the war, before retiring in 1949. Two of the highest honors
bestowed by the Italian branch of SMOM were awarded in 1946 to James Ang-
leton, who had not yet taken up his new responsibilities as chief of the Vatican
desk of the CIA, and in 1948 to Reinhard Gehlen (Jonathan Marshall, "Brief
Notes on the Political Importance of Secret Societies." Parapolitics/U.SA 2.1,
March I, 1983, Appendix, p. 18).
67. R. Harris Smith. op. cit., n. 10. p. 84; Farago, op. cit., n. I, p. 211.
68. Wolff had secured a personal audience with Pope Pius XII hack in May
1944 (Smith and Agarossi, op. cit., n. 59, pp. 65-66). For a resume of wartime
peace feelers between Germans and Americans, (J. Jonathan Marshall. "Bank-
ers and the Search for a Separate Peace During World War 11" (unpublished
Master's thesis, Cornell University, 1981).
69. R. Harris Smith, op. cit., n. 10, p. 214.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
Gehlen networks in eastern and central Europe (which by 1945
were under the control of Skorzeny and the SS), and the OSS
itself, which by 1945 was facing increasingly public attack in-
spired by U.S. military intelligence and the FBI.
It is interesting that Gehlen knew of Karl Wolf-i's contacts
with Dulles as early as January 1945, the month in which they
were initiated."' From this same period he began to consolidate
his networks for survival after Hitler's downfall, which is to
say he already expected to reach it modus i-iremli with the
Americans." In April 1945, one month before the war ended,
Dulles asked Frank Wisner to begin talks with Gehlen, who
was not taken into U.S. custody until May 20." On the Gehlen
side, a plan "to gain contact with the Americans'' was ap-
proved on April 4, and continued without interruption even
after Hitler dismissed Gehlen on April 9. ''
Curiously, the Operation Sunrise contacts between Wolff
and Dulles became most intense in the second half of April
1945, even though at that time both Wolff and Dulles knew
they had no authority to negotiate a surrender. On April 17
Wolff visited Berlin (where Gehlen and his headquarters were
still located), to be told by Hitler personally that he should
"temporize in his talks with Dulles because it was still too
early to consider it surrender, or even serious negotiation.
SS officer Otto Skorzeny, at time of arrest, later a key link
in the Kameradenwerk.
70. Cookridgc. up. cit., n. to, p. 102.
71. Ihid., p. 103
72. Powers, op. cit., n. 11, p. 24.
73. Heinz Hiihne and Hermann lolling. 7hc Gcnrral lhas o S/n, Ow /ruth
About General Gehlen and Ili.c ,Spy Ring (Ness York: Bantam, 1972). pp. 6_2
63.
74. Smith and Agarossi. op. cit.. n. 59, p_ 13'_. Gchlcn and his hcadyuartcrs
left separatcll two days later for Bavaria, soon to be part of the I I'S /one of
Occupation (Hiihne, op. cit.. n. 73. p. 63)
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On the same day Dulles returned to his Berne headquarters
from the OSS European Theater headquarters in Paris, to re-
ceive, on April 21, an April 17 order from the Combined
Chiefs of Staff "to liquidate Operation Sunrise by cutting off
all contact with Karl Wolff.""
Undaunted by such restrictions, both men continued to
negotiate. Accompanied for the first time by a German army
representative (Col. von Schweinitz), Wolff came to Switzer-
land counting on
his "personal reputation with the Anglo-Americans" to ex-
tract guarantees from Dulles that the "idealistic" and "de-
cent" men of the army, party, and SS would be able to play
"an active part in the reconstruction. ""
Dulles on his part misrepresented von Schweinitz's explicitly
limited instructions as a "full power" to negotiate. Later, after
Wolff had returned to Italy and found himself facing capture by
Allied partisans, Dulles allowed an OSS team to participate
(together with two SS men!) in the successful rescue and exfilt-
ration of Wolff to Switzerland."
The historian Bradley Smith calls this "frenzied pursuit of
Sunrise" by Dulles "a mere reflex action," and failure to
realize that Allied victory was imminent in any case." In fact,
Dulles and Donovan had to mislead their superiors, if their
plans for the postwar use of the SS were to succeed. As R. Har-
ris Smith, a former CIA officer, reports, dead-pan:
Only Wolff's sudden and unexpected offer to sign an uncon-
ditional surrender on April 22 convinced the State Depart-
ment to reverse its earlier order and to allow SUNRISE to
proceed.'"
But no such offer had been made by Wolff; it was merely an il-
lusion from Dulles's unjustified commentaries, which "ran
roughshod over the minimal rules of caution and good
sense. ""?
The OSS policy of rescuing key fascist leaders appears,
moreover, to have been systematic. The next day, on April 28,
Dulles's aide Daddario risked his life in Milan to save the fas-
cist Marshal Rodolfo Graziani from vengeful Socialist parti-
sans." On April 29, in Rome, OSS officer James Jesus Angle-
ton would similarly rescue Prince Valerio Borghese, by dis-
guising him as a U.S. Army officer." After the war Graziani
and Borghese became leaders of the neo-fascist MSI Party,
while their wartime cadres were apparently helped to new anti-
communist careers with the support of the Vatican, and ulti-
mately, the United States." In the months after the war, Angle-
ton helped other fascists and Nazis to "escape" from prison
camps, supplying them when necessary with new identities."
75. Smith and Agarossi, op. cit., n. 59, p. 132.
76. Ibid., p. 138.
77. Ibid., pp. 141-144.
78. Ibid., p. 145.
79. R. Harris Smith, op. cit., n. 10, p. 233.
80. Smith and Agarossi, op. cit., n. 59, pp. 141-142.
81. R. Harris Smith, op. cit., n. 10, p. 119.
82. Frederic Laurent, L'Orchestre Noir (Paris: Editions Stock, 1978) , p. 43.
83. Ibid., pp. 35, 38, 44. Laurent reproduces a March 1945 document from
Mussolini's Interior Ministry, describing details of postwar Vatican protec-
tion, shelter, false documentation, etc., for its Secret Police. He links this
speculatively to the arrangements made for the postwar ODESSA exfiltration
of Nazis (pp. 34-35).
84. David C. Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Harper & Row,
14 CovertAction
There seems no question that by April 1945 the OSS was re-
cruiting Nazis and fascists to help mobilize against postwar
communism. As a recent historian has observed:
The history of OSS, which is indistinguishable from the se-
cret political history of the war, is marked by a preoccupa-
tion with Communism almost as intense as its commitment
to victory against Germany."
At least some of the SS men who in the last weeks of the war
negotiated with the OSS were treated thereafter as allies.
Wilhelm Hoettl, for example, who had transmitted an offer
from SS Deputy Head Kaltenbrunner, worked after the war,
like his former subordinate Schwend, as an informant for the
CIC in Austria."
Walter Rauff, who had negotiated in Milan with Dulles's
aide Daddario, was also spared, despite having directed the
mobile gas chambers in Nazi-occupied Russia. By his own ac-
count, which has been reported as fact in the U.S. press, Rauff
"escaped" after his arrest, by U.S. troops, to move with Vati-
can help first to Vatican City and then to Syria." British and
French sources agree however that Rauff, by as early as June
1945, had established himself in Genoa. There, with the aid of
Cardinal Siri, Bishop of Genoa, Rauff organized a transit camp
where as many as 5,000 fleeing Nazis were sheltered before
their departure to Argentina, Syria, or Egypt." The French
Nazi hunter Beata Klarsfeld agreed that, like his Kameraden-
werk ally Schwend, Rauff too was working with U.S. intelli-
gence before escaping to Chile."
This seems probable, inasmuch as Schwend was working for
the Austrian CIC while setting up the Merano station of what
became known as the Rat Line. At some point, moreover, cer-
tainly by the early 1950s, the CIA and the Gehlen Org were
working together to move Gehlen agents (headed by Skorzeny)
to Egypt."" Long before these officially authorized movements,
Donovan and Dulles must have seen that, with a global net-
work of its men already in place, the Gehlen Org would be an
even more impressive asset in their case for a postwar CIA.
Through their connections with the Gehlen Organization,
Skorzeny, Rauff, Barbie, and Schwend all became in effect in-
struments of CIA intelligence and covert action policies. In so
doing, they contributed significantly to the establishment of
fascist style oppression in the new countries to which they had
moved-in Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, and Peru.
One legacy of this oppression is the system of Death Squads
now operative in Central America. Another has been the in-
volvement of men like Barbie and their political clients in the
highly organized Latin American drug traffic. ?
1980), p. 19.
85. Powers, op. cit., n. I I, p. 25.
86. Smith and Agarossi, op. cit., n. 59, p. 62; Linklater, op. cit., n. 21, p.
135. Wolff, to his surprise, was eventually tried twice as a war criminal. In
1949 he was acquitted, thanks largely to affidavits from Dulles and Lemnitzer,
and testimony from Dulles's aide von Schulze-Gaevemitz. Gaevernitz's re-
newed testimony failed to save Wolff in a new trial by a West German court in
1964, in the wake of Eichmann's revelations (Smith and Agarossi, op. cit., n.
59, pp. 189-190; R. Harris Smith, op. cit., n. 10, p. 121n). Since 1973 Wolff
has been free and in touch with other ex-Nazis, including Barbie.
87. Washington Post, May 15, 1984, p. B8; cf. Farago, op. cit., n. I, pp. 224-
225.
88. Laurent, op. cit., n. 82, pp. 30-31; Latin America Weekly Report, Feb-
ruary 11, 1983, p. 3.
89. Latin America Weekly Report, February 11, 1983, p. 3.
90. Stevenson, op. cit., n. 15, pp. 151-154.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
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Klaus Barbie: A Killer's Career
By Kai Hann
Kai Hermann is a free-lance writer who has worked on the
editorial staffs of the German publications Stern, Spiegel, and
Die Zeit. He spent two years investigating Klaus Barbie, in-
cluding a year in Bolivia, from which he made a hurried exit
when his identity as an investigative journalist became known.
A colleague continued the on-the-scene investigation, and the
results of the work appeared in a series in Stern in May and
June, 1984. The following translation is of one of the six arti-
cles, explaining Klaus Barbie's major role in the 1980 Boli-
vian coup.
The first time we only saw Alfredo Mario Mingolla from
afar. It was in front of the presidential palace in La Paz. Vice-
president Jaime Paz, surrounded by his bodyguards, slowly
went across the square and approached the palace. We had got-
ten a hint that "something would happen."
But nothing indicated anything unusual on this morning.
The old men on the benches moved into the shade. It was cool,
but the sun was already beginning to burn the skin. The Boli-
vian capital La Paz is almost 4,000 meters above sea level. The
shoeshine children, the youngest barely older than four, with
large, old eyes, begged in vain to shine the men's shoes. The
pickpockets were still waiting for the tourists. Indian women
begged, steadfastly stretching their felt hats into space, and
were just as motionless as their children cowering on the
ground with dirty faces.
Then some kind of command was shouted. A man ran, at-
tempted to escape into a side street, was overpowered and
dragged into the palace.
The man was the Argentinean intelligence agent, Lieutenant
Alfredo Mario Mingolla. He was arrested for preparing the as-
sassination of the Bolivian Vice-president. An accomplice had
betrayed the murder plan.
That was on November 28, 1982. A good year later we were
sitting across from Alfredo Mingolla in the conference room of
the Bolivian Ministry of the Interior. The Argentinean was
fetched from a basement cell in the ministry.
* Copyright ? 1984 by Kai Hermann. Published with the kind permission of
the author. Translation by Marie Louise Ryback. Translation copyright
1985 by Marie Louise Ryback. A photocopy of her translation of the entire six-
part series (54 pp.) is available from Ms. Ryback, 36 Charles St., Boston, MA
02114, for $15.00, postpaid.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
The fourteen months of imprisonment had taken its toll on
Mingolla. Yes, of course he wanted to talk. He was fed up with
the fascists who had not lifted a finger to help him after his ar-
rest. He was no longer a Nazi; he was now working for the
democrats.
Alfredo Mingolla thought we were contact people from the
Austrian information agency, working for his release, in order
to use him in an international narcotics investigation.
We asked about his education. He said that after he com-
pleted his theology degree, he went to the "agent school" in
Buenos Aires.
The Argentinean intelligence agent, Alfredo Mario Min-
golla, in jail in Bolivia.
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"Were there also American teachers?"
Mingolla: "Not any more. We had Israelis as specialists. I
was later trained by North Americans in Panama at the Escuela
de las Americas."
"In what area did you specialize?"
"Infiltrating the Catholic Church. To seek out subversives in
the church, etc."
"Did you prepare the death list?"
"We should agree that I will not say anything about my per-
sonal work."
"But where have you worked?"
"Different places. Also one time in Spain. But mostly in
Argentina. Then we had to leave Argentina before the world
soccer championship 1978 because of the human rights prop-
aganda. Most of them are in Central America. I went to
Bolivia. In 1982 I was sent to Guatemala. There I worked
primarily with the North Americans. That was the best time."
Alfredo Mingolla belonged to that mercenary unit of interna-
tional assassins and torture experts who were first tested under
the leadership of the Argentinean intelligence agency during
the Pinochet putsch in Chile in 1973. They then helped or-
ganize and execute the political mass murder in Argentina be-
fore being used in other Latin American countries against the
"subversives"- against guerrillas, leftist democrats, or Cath-
olic clergymen.
Mingolla plays the role of the educated priest. He speaks
softly, talks about banalities convincingly, folds his hands,
looks the person across from him intently in the eyes. He was
the fanatical ideologue among his equals; a national socialist
priest.
We asked him who he had worked for in Bolivia.
Mingolla: "What do you mean? For everybody; Argenti-
neans, Bolivians, CIA."
We were able to speak with Alfredo Mingolla two days later
and read the transcript of his interrogation by the police.
Stn
RI,AD8 "IN
The Argentinean lieutenant gave information about the coup
d'etat of 1980 in Bolivia. It confirmed the information about
the fascist scene from investigations by the Bolivian Ministry
of the Interior and statements by the French intelligence or-
ganization.
The 1980 Bolivian Coup
The 1980 putsch was not just one of many coups d'etat by
power-hungry generals in Bolivia. It was two years in the plan-
ning and was supposed to complete a "stable axis" in South
America-from Chile, through Argentina, Uruguay, and
Paraguay, to Bolivia. The coups in Chile in 1973 and in Argen-
tina in 1976 were examples.
That is how it is stated in a plan with the code name Amapole
(poppy flower) which had already been devised in 1978 at the
initiative of the Bolivian intelligence officer Klaus Altmann,
i.e., Klaus Barbie. The political, economic, and military as-
pects of the planned putsch were set forth in 145 pages. Klaus
Barbie himself prepared the military part.
The Bolivian banker, Dr. Enrique Garcia, had the responsi-
bility of planning the economic direction of the "new order"
after the putsch. U.S. institutions paid him for his work. Under
the heading "logical framework" Garcia designed an
economic order for Bolivia using Chile as an example. If one
believes the designer of the plan, there were very definite for-
eign promises of investments-under the stipulation that the
economy in no way be jeopardized by leftist parties or "sub-
versive groups" for at least ten years. U.S. concerns accord-
ingly promised an oil refinery, a truck assembly plant and a
Ford factory. Argentina wanted to secure the exploitation of
the ore deposits in Mutun with long term credits.
In Bolivia in 1978 another transition phase from military
dictatorship to democracy began. Elections were held and an-
nulled by the military. Barbie assumed that within the next two
years it would come to the establishment of a powerless civil-
Klaus Barbie's Bolivian intelligence ID, showing him as Klaus Altmann Hansen.
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ian government. He speculated that in the power vacuum of the
transition period armed leftist extremist groups would again
develop. A leftist guerrilla was supposed to be the alibi for an
''Argentinean solution"-the physical liquidation of the left-
ists in Bolivia.
Early in 1978 Klaus Barbie flew to West Germany, among
other reasons to recruit soldiers. He started with the buildup of
his terror commandos. Barbie also took up contact with the
Argentinean intelligence organization which, at the time, along
with the CIA, insured the maintenance of the old dictatorships
in various Latin American countries. The contact man to the
Argentineans was the Italian, Dr. Emilio Carbone, steady
guest at Barbie's table in the Cafe La Paz.
Carbone was a member of a group supporting the Italian
neofascist terrorist, Stefano delle Chiaie. The group had come
to Chile in 1976 and had taken on special assignments for the
intelligence organization DINA. The address of the group:
Calle de la Asuncion 1173, Santiago.
On the recommendation of an old SS comrade in Chile,
Walter Rauff, the inventor of the portable gas chamber wagon
and DINA employee, Barbie had brought the Italian Carbone
to Bolivia at the end of 1976.
Carbone was more of a theoretician than a practitioner of
political assassinations. In La Paz he became secretary of the
"Black International," a fascist group.
The other Italians from delle Ciliate's group moved on in
November 1977 to Argentina, and there, under Colonel Moli-
nari, the Secretary of State Security, were used in the "Fight
Against Subversion." Early in 1978 Barbie assigned his col-
league Carbone to take up contact with the leader of the Italian
execution commandos, Stefano delle Chiaie, and to recruit him
for a mission in Bolivia.
The Argentinean intelligence organization sent a special
commando group to La Paz. Among the first Argentinean in-
telligence officers who worked on the plans for the overthrow
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
in Bolivia was Lieutenant Alfred Mario Mingolla. The Argen-
tinean had the order to contact Altmann, alias Barbie.
Mingolla: "I had not heard much about Altmann: however,
before our departure we received it dossier on him. There it
stated that he was of great use to Argentina because he played
an important role in all of Latin America in the fight against
communism. From the dossier it was also clear that Altmann
worked for the Americans. They listed his contact people as
well as his various trips to the U.S."
Argentinean intelligence people and German soldiers who
came to La Paz went the same route. They first reported to Dr.
Alfredo Candia, the Bolivian leader of the "World Anti-Com-
munist League," an organization close to the CIA with head-
quarters in Taiwan. Candia then brought them to Schneider's
clock shop. The owner, of German descent, likes to show his
comrades it picture in which Hitler's party secretary Martin
Bormann, who had allegedly vanished in 1945, is to be seen in
a monk's habit in La Paz. Schneider checked out the new re-
cruits and ordered them to meet with Barbie the next day at the
driving school "Indianapolis" on the Avenida Nlariscal, Santa
Cruz. Barbie's secretary, Alvaro de Castro, then provided
them with a two-year visa, Interpol identification, and firearm
licenses from the Ministry of the Interior.
The Argentinean agents moved into the offices of the mili-
tary intelligence agency G2, department V11 for ''psychologi-
cal warfare." In addition, some of the Germans, such as
Joachim Fiebelkorn, became agents for the Bolivian intelli-
gence organization.
Joachim Fiebelkorn, left, giving Nazi salute after
putsch in Bolivia. Fiebelkorn was commander of Bar-
bie's battalion, the Fiances of Death. After Garcia Meza
was deposed in October 1982, Barbie was deported to
France, and Fiebelkorn was delivered to West German
authorities on drug charges.
In Frankfurt, Fiebelkorn's trial, which includes
charges of torturing a girl, has been dragging on for al-
most two years. He is also wanted in Italy, along with
Stefano delle Chiaie, for the terrorist bombing of the
Bologna railway station in 1980, which killed 85 people.
Sources speculate that his trial may never be completed
because of his claims that his work with the cocaine gen-
erals was part of his assignment as a U.S. Drug Enforce-
ment Administration operative. There is also considera-
ble speculation whether Barbie will ever go to trial in
France, because of his CIA ties. ?
1 ~
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Barbie wanted to launch a national socialist government
from the planned coup. The leading rightists of the Bolivian
military became members of the secret lodge "Thule." During
lodge meetings Barbie lectured underneath swastikas and by
candlelight on national socialist principles.
Barbie agreed with the terrorist leader Stefano delle Chiaie
that armed rightist-extremist groups from the whole world
should be brought together. Bolivia was to become the core of
a national socialist revolution in all of South America. The
"Black International" outfitted an ideological and paramilitary
training camp for foreign comrades in buildings belonging to
the "Summer Institute of Linguistics," a CIA-controlled in-
stitution.
Barbie's closest colleagues organized a national socialist
fighter's group, the Bolivia Joven, "Young Bolivia," mo-
deled after the example of the SA. The co-founders were Bar-
bie's confidant Emilio Carbone and Barbie's secretary, Alvaro
de Castro. The official leader of the Young Bolivians was the
thirty-year-old Armando Leyton, intelligence agent and disci-
ple of national socialism.
Leyton proudly shows his membership ID with "Reichs"
eagle and swastika. He would like to meet the German neo-
Nazi Michael Kuhnen. He says that he admires the Germans,
but qualifies this: "Some of the Germans who came to us at
that time-such as Joachim Fiebelkorn, for example-were
not good national socialists. In my eyes they were simply mer-
cenaries who knew nothing about national socialist morale and
discipline. They only wanted part of the cocaine money."
Final Preparations
In the spring of 1980 Klaus Barbie and his accomplices
made the last preparations for the putsch. In the meantime, in
La Paz, a civilian cabinet had been sworn in and the tempered
middle-left coalition under Siles won new elections. The left
guerrillas, on whom Barbie had counted, did not exist. Then
the Bolivia Joven, with the support of Barbie's foreign ter-
rorist groups, stepped into action. Bombs detonated throughout
the entire country.
In May 1980, another commando of the Argentinean intelli-
gence organization, SIE, came to La Paz. The group, working
under orders from Lieutenant Colonel Julio Cesar Duran, was
responsible for carrying out the putsch and for "professional i z-
ing the Bolivian security apparatus." Delegated to the group
were both italian terrorists Stefano delle Chiaie and Pierluigi
Pagliai, who was wanted, among other reasons, for murdering
a functionary of the communist youth in Italy.
The foreign agent team was later completed with two Israeli
specialists. Barbie had nothing against Israelis when they were
"military security experts."
The Bolivian military putsch of July 17, 1980 was almost
exclusively directed and organized by foreigners. The only im-
portant Bolivian players were General Luiz Garcia Meza and
Colonel Luis Arce Gomez who had been earmarked as Junta
leaders. They were considered the toughest in the right ex-
tremist officers' clique.
Nevertheless, Barbie encountered opposition from the mili-
tary when he, together with the Argentineans, prepared an ex-
ecution list: 185 politicians, union members, and intellectuals
were supposed to be liquidated during the putsch. High ranking
officers who learned of the plan discovered friends and rela-
tives among the "subversives" who were supposed to be "liq-
uidated." Barbie and his accomplices could not put through
the "Argentinean solution."
18 CovertAction
The mysterious and elusive Italian terrorist Stefano delle
Chiaie, still at large.
A few days before the scheduled date of the putsch, Joachim
Fiebelkorn, the commander of the paramilitary troupe in Santa
Cruz, received the order from Barbie's secretary, Alvaro de
Castro, to come to La Paz with his armed battalion. Fiebelkorn
called Barbie, who then confirmed the order. Barbie's secre-
tary Castro received the German-Bolivian commando at La Paz
airport and channeled two suitcases filled with weapons
through customs. For two days Fiebelkorn inspected the capi-
tal's strategically important points before returning once again
to Santa Cruz with his comrades.
Barbie and the commanding general of Santa Cruz,
Echeveria, argued about the competency of Fiebelkorn's action
unit, the "Fiances of Death." The general insisted on using the
Fiances in the putsch of Santa Cruz.
Only one of the paramilitary men from Santa Cruz, the in-
famous killer Mosca Monroi, arrived punctually in La Paz.
There, by mistake, Monroi killed, among others, the guard of a
secret U.S. transmitter.
The putsch was more precisely planned and executed than
any other putsch in Bolivia's history. The paramilitary stormed
the union hall and the party headquarters. Almost all potential
leaders of the resistance were arrested within hours. The brut-
ality of the terrorist groups and the military frightened off the
workers and students. Only the Indians from the tin mines des-
perately resisted for another few days. As with any overthrow,
most of the victims were among them.
The coup of July 17, 1980 had many victors. The fascists
celebrated the national socialist takeover of power with swas-
tika flags and the greeting, "Heil Hitler!" Those supporting a
free market system for Latin America believed that socialism
had been averted. Washington, despite reservations about such
officers as Garcia and Arce, could hope for a stable govern-
ment, sympathetic to the U.S. The Argentinean military dic-
tators had extended their sphere of influence.
The Role of the Moonies
The first official well-wisher who visited the newly coro-
nated president Garcia was a surprise, at least for outsiders: He
was the acting leader of the Moonies, Colonel Bo Hi Pak. The
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
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representative of the sect's founder Moon announced after his
return to the U.S.: "I have erected a throne for Father Moon in,
the world's highest city."
According to the legally recognized assessment of four cler-
gymen from Hessen [a West German state], the Moon sect is a
"criminal union that espouses human psychological terror and
proclaims a fascist system." The Moon sect possesses, among
other things, munitions factories in South Korea and television
channels in South America. They regard their founder, Moon,
as "Holy Father," President Reagan as the world's "political
savior. "
A representative of the Moon sect had come to Bolivia at the
end of the 1960s. On the thirteenth floor of the Jazmin building
in La Paz an Asian named Harumiko Iwasawa sat with some
Americans and no one seemed to know what they were actually
doing there.
It was not until 1983 that the Bolivian Ministry of the Inter-
ior and Bolivian journalists determined that the gentlemen
from the Moon sect-as well as others-had invested about $4
million into the preparation of the coup. Membership lists of
the political Moon organization "Cauca" were found. At the
top of the lists were the names of almost all the leading military
personnel who, at the same time, had been honoring the swas-
tika in Barbie's lodge. Even junta leader Garcia had been con-
verted to the "Moonier" for a time.
Barbie was skeptical of the sect's activities but had to accept
the Moon people as allies.
On May 31, 1981, nine months after the cocaine generals'
coup, almost the entire leadership of the Moon sect and their
Latin American political organization Causa flew to La Paz.
Before 200 invited guests in the Sheraton Hotel's "Hall of
Freedom," Moon's representative Colonel Pak and the Boli-
vian junta leader Garcia began by praying for U.S. President
Reagan who had been wounded in an assassination attempt.
Pak then explained, "God had chosen the Bolivian people in
the heart of South America as the ones to conquer com-
munism."
The Moon organization Causa started their political mission-
ary work throughout the entire country. Fifty thousand of the
sect's books-according to a Bolivian intelligence agency re-
port-were brought to La Paz by an American Air Force plane.
Along with ideological "enlightenment," the education of an
anti-communist "people's army" for an "armed church"
began. Around 7,000 Bolivians took part in the pre-military
training. The Israeli Embassy supported the campaign and deliv-
ered, among other things, instructional films about the fight
against the Palestinian resistance.
The leader of the Moon group in Bolivia was Thomas (Tom)
Ward. Barbie and the pale American Ward, who always
seemed to be absorbed in prayer, were often seen together.
Tom Ward was also the man who delivered a payment from
the CIA in early 1981 to the Argentinean intelligence Lieuten-
ant Alfredo Mingolla. The $1,500 monthly salary for Mingolla
was paid in the Causa office belonging to William Selig,
Ward's representative.
Selig put less stock in pious attitudes than his boss. He was
an electronic specialist with experience in Vietnam and advised
the Bolivian intelligence organization on technical matters.
The third man in the CIA cadre of the Moonies was Paul Perry,
who had already tried to organize an "armed church" in
Brazil.
The Argentinean agent Alfredo Mingolla at first knew little
about the connection between the Nazi Barbie and the Moonie
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
Ward. Two days after his recruitment by the CIA, says Min-
golla, he met the "Old German" in the courtyard of the Boli-
vian General Staff. Mingolla cane out of department VII of the
intelligence agency; Barbie came out of department Ill.
Barbie greeted his colleague-as Mingolla remembers it,
"Hello, comrade, what do I hear'? Are you working for a new
employer'?'' Mingolla answered with surprise, "For what, for
who, then'?" Barbie: "Na, for Mr. Ward, for example.'' Min-
golla feared reproach. "Yes. Doesn't the organization allow
that'?" Barbie laughed. "It's okay. There has to be coopera-
tion."
Mingolla says that it was first clear to him on that day that
Barbie had become a top man for the CIA. Because only top
people knew the names of the other agency employees.
The Moon man Tom Ward was Klaus Barbie's CIA contact
man only preceding and directly after the putsch of 1980. Bar-
bie's steady CIA contact person was the munitions dealer Fer-
nando Inchauste. He boasted that he had direct contact with
President Reagan, whom he allegedly knew during the latter's
California governor days.
Another one of Barbie's steady CIA contact people was
George Portugal, also a munitions dealer. He was Inchauste's
close co-worker and Barbie's business friend.
The third man from the "secret intelligence area" with
whom Barbie worked was Ludwig Alvez Pacheco. The first
name, "Ludwig," represents his German ancestry, something
which Alvez Pacheco boasts about. The Bolivian is also proud
of his real German passport. He received the passport, he says,
for special services rendered to West Germany.
The Intelligence Connections
With regard to the quality of Barbie's activities as an agent
for the American and West German information agencies, even
those Bolivian government members who ought to know it
best, speak about it only hesitantly.
The defense minister of the pro-western government in
Bolivia at the time, Manuel Cardenas Mallo, in an official in-
terview, cautiously answered our questions regarding informa-
tion about Barbie's work for foreign agencies.
Cardenas: "We have no documentation about it. They let
those 'disappear' before President Siles took over the govern-
ment. But that Barbie worked for foreign intelligence agencies
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Thomas J. Ward has been with the Moonies since the
early 1970s. After the Bolivian coup he became Director
of CAUSA and rose to Vice-President in 1984. He was
active in CAUSA's indoctrination seminars for political
and military leaders in the Southern Cone in the early
1980s.
Ward successfully sued his parents for an attempted
"deprogramming" several years ago. Moon theology
calls for rejecting one's biological parents in favor of the
True Parents, Rev. and Mrs. Moon.
William Selig is Director of Publications for the
CAUSA Institute in New York, which produces such
publications as the CAUSA Lecture Manual, the basic
teaching book used for Moon's ideological indoctrina-
tion around the world. Current indoctrination and con-
version targets are American clergy and retired military
officers. ?
is believable. Many people knew that and there are many
people who can confirm that."
Was Barbie merely an informant, or did he, working for for-
eign agencies, influence the political development?
Cardenas: "Many people who worked with Barbie are still
in service here. You must understand-it is dangerous if they
find out that foreigners had so much influence here, that they
did not just play an advisory role, but that they actually made
decisions."
Do you mean to say that the U.S.A. staged the 1980 coup'?
Cardenas hesitates, then answers, "Let me say it like this
and then you can quote me: If there isn't a coup happening
today, it is only because of one reason: Because it is the first
time that the Americans are not interested in a coup."
Washitgton was quick to note that Garcia's and Arce's mili-
tary junta, which had come to power through the 1980 putsch,
did not really serve the interests of the U.S. The complicated
and seemingly perfect system of oppression that Barbie and his
colleagues had instigated, sank in the swamp of the cocaine
trade. The paramilitary units-conceived by Barbie as a new
type of SS-sold themselves to the cocaine barons. The attrac-
tion of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the
idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America.
The reigning military set the example. They wanted the
monopoly on the cocaine trade. It is reported in the files of the
Argentinean intelligence agency that the sum of a hundred mil-
lion dollars went to the foreign private bank accounts of gener-
als and colonels. To top things off, Garcia and Arce also plun-
dered the national bank. The Bolivian nation and the Bolivian
economy faced total bankruptcy.
Following statements from Washington indicating a cooling
in relations, sanctions against the military junta were imposed
in 1981. The Moon sect disappeared overnight from Bolivia as
clandestinely as they had arrived. Only the CIA trio of the
Moonies-Ward, Selig, and Perry-stayed on for a while as
advisers to the Bolivian information agency in order to assist in
an orderly transition to a democratic form of government.
In the beginning of March 1982, the Argentinean agent Min-
golla met with the Moon-CIA agent Ward in the cafeteria
"Fontana" of La Paz's Hotel Plaza.
The seminary priest Mingolla remembered that it was St.
Thomas Aquinas's name day. Mingolla's CIA involvement
had silently expired. The Argentinean asked the American
what was still going on.
Tom Ward seemed resigned. He said the government in
Argentina was finished. And the Argentineans had made a lot
of mistakes in Bolivia: "Your entire position is simply too
reactionary. The whole affair with Altmann (Barbie), with the
whole Fascism and Nazism bit, that was a dead end street."
Ward ordered a drink after his first coffee. Mingolla was sur-
prised that the bigoted ascetic had suddenly started to drink.
But even the fanatical Nazi Mingolla seemed to have turned
over a new leaf. "You can't create a new order with the old
Germans, with Hitler and all that. You have to find something
modern. "
Tom Ward, under the influence of alcohol, started criticiz-
ing himself severely. "It was also stupid having Moon and
Causa here."
Mingolla was perplexed. "You're saying that? You're the
boss of the whole thing, the head missionary."
Tom Ward suggested that it is better to enjoy life a hit. Both
of them went into the disco-brothel "Jetset." When they left
the brothel, the curfew had started. There were no more taxis
on the street. Both agents went to the Sheraton and shared a
suite.
A few days later, Ward flew to the U.S.; Mingolla to
Guatemala.
Swarms of starving Indians came to La Paz. The democrats
took over the responsibility for billions in foreign debts, three
digit inflation rates, and a rigid savings policy dictated by the
World Bank. Salaries dipped below the subsistence level. A
famine had broken out in Bolivia. ?
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
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"In Brazil the Women Boast
About Their Plastic Surgery?
By Robert Cohen *
RIO DE JANEIRO, March 5-"If someone wants to buy
fine glassware he goes to Czechoslovakia," Altamiro da
Rocha Oliveira, a leading surgeon here recently noted. If
he wants the best wine, he goes to France. But everybody
knows that for plastic surgery you come to a Brazilian. . .-
Rio de Janeiro has emerged as the plastic surgery capital of
the world. . . . The leading aesthetic surgeons on Rio de
Janeiro's social circuit are accorded superstar status and
sometimes tend to see themselves more as artists than as
doctors.
It must have been sometime in 1973. I was living in Cuba,
working as a journalist. One evening a good friend, Luis, came
to my house, as he did often after a long day at the hospital.
Luis is a plastic surgeon and burn specialist. Instead of crack-
ing jokes and playing with the kids, this time he flopped down
in a chair with a long, pale face and asked for a drink-a dou-
ble. He sat for a long time without speaking, nursing his drink.
All kinds of terrible things passed through my mind as I waited
for him to share what was on his.
The story he told me far surpassed in horror anything that
had occurred to me during his prolonged silence. It is a story I
have told few people over the years and never written down,
perhaps to spare others, perhaps to spare myself the pain and
rage it provokes. And yet, Luis's story haunts me, and some-
how is part of the person I have become, a man at war amidst
the peace and safety of this corner of the world.
Luis was visited by a government official who told him that
two young women, one Brazilian and the other Uruguayan,
would soon be brought to his office for evaluation and treat-
ment. He was urged to provide them with extra-special atten-
tion, for their problems were of an unusual nature and required
utmost sensitivity.
It turned out that the two were participants in the urban guer-
rilla movement in Brazil, whose then military regime had
gained a world-wide reputation for brutal and "inventive" tor-
ture of political prisoners. The two women, whose names my
friend never learned, visited him in his office, separately, that
day.
Barbarism
Plastic surgeons, especially burn specialists, have to have
iron stomachs and steely nerves to deal with the disfigurement
and suffering that are routine in their line of work. On occa-
sion, Luis would comment on especially difficult cases and his
struggle to keep the patient's pain from affecting him and his
work.
It was not physical pain that Luis's two new patients dis-
played, for their wounds or afflictions were not very recent. As
*Robert Cohen is United Nations Bureau Chief of the Nicaraguan News
Agency. He lived and worked as a journalist in Cuba from 1969 to 1976.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
soon as they walked into his office, Luis understood the natg-
nitude of barbarism that had been visited upon these two other-
wise normal and attractive women.
Their story, what little of it Luis learned, is very instructive
with respect to the mentality underlying the military dictator-
ships that plague Latin America with U.S. hacking. It tells,
also, about the sinister uses to which "modern science'' and
medicine can he put in the service of unjust systems. Finally, it
tells something about heroism.
They had been captured in Brazil and taken to the infamous
DOPS, an acronym for the regime's special counterinsurgency
police. There, they expected, they would he tortured and inter-
rogated for days on end, as so many of their L'01111-ades had
been many dying in the process, others surviving as half-veg-
etables, and it handful freed as it result of successful guerrilla
actions. The women knew that "special treatnunt" was re-
served for members of their sex the sexual depravity of
Brazil's torturers, especially one named Fleury (who led the
Death Squad in his spare time), had become well known. So
terrible and sophisticated had torture hcconte, as documented
by Amnesty International, the Bertrand Russell Tribunal, and
other human rights agencies, that the opposition nuwentent had
instructed its members to resist or try to resist for at least 45
hours-to give the organizational structures and comrades with
whom the captured members had contact time to change ad-
dresses, codes, meeting places, etc. It was assumed that the
prisoner would be made to talk. It was only the rarest of cases
that could totally resist, maintaining absolute silence in the
face of such devastating methods.
Their expectations and fears turned out to be wrung,
strangely enough. After several hours of hcing made to wait in
a locked, hare room, they were taken, blindfolded, for it ride to
what turned out to be a modern, well-appointed hospital or pri-
vate clinic some distance from Sao Paulo. They were locked
into rooms without windows, given hospital gowns, and told
they would be given the "best of treatment" and would "get
better soon." Doctors and nurses, courteous but closed-
mouthed when asked what was going to happen, took the
women's vital signs and medical histories- the normal routine
before surgery. Fresh flowers were brought into the rooms
daily. A maddening sort of terror began to set in amidst all this
antiseptic civility and preparations for treatment for it malady
the women knew they did not have.
The "Treatment"
As it turned out, the women themselves were the ''malady.''
In their very flesh they would have to pay for having dared to
resist. The "treatment" was different in the two cases, al-
though identical in purpose. One of the women had her mouth
taken away from her. The other lost half her nose. And they
were released after several days with the gentle suggestion that
they be sure to visit their comrades to show off their "cures."
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They had been turned into walking advertisements of terror,
agents of demoralization and intimidation.
My Cuban friend's story went somewhat further. It seems
that, in the case of the woman whose mouth had been shut, the
most sophisticated techniques of plastic surgery had been em-
ployed. Great care had been taken by her medical torturers to
obliterate her lips forever, using cuts and stitches and folds that
would frustrate even the best reconstructive techniques. He
even thought he could detect a "U.S. hand" in this macabre
handiwork, or that of a Brazilian schooled in the United States.
A small hole had been left in the face to allow the woman to
take liquids through a straw and survive.
During her initial interview with Luis, she had written on a
piece of paper that "they also did something to my teeth. " But
when Luis and the medical team reopened the hole where her
mouth had been, the sight was far more sickening than they
had expected: All of the teeth had been removed and two dog
fangs-incisors-had been inserted in their place. A little sur-
prise from the fascist madmen.
"We did the best we could and gave her a hole resembling a
mouth," Luis said a few weeks later, "and dentists will give
her a set of teeth. But `ugly' is too kind a word to describe the
way her mouth still looks." Luis's face was tight, the color of
a tightly clenched fist. Suddenly, he softened: "But you know,
that woman is extraordinarily beautiful. Do you know what she
said after coming out of the anesthesia, her first words since
undergoing her loss of speech? `I will return. No one will ever
silence me.' "
The other woman had had half her nose removed, skin, car-
tilage, and all. A draining, raw, and frightening wound was her
"treatment," the sign she was to carry around with her to warn
people that rebellion was a "disease" and torture the "cure."
Luis spoke little about her case, other than to say that a combi-
nation of skin grafts and silicone implants would restore a
modicum of normalcy to her appearance. She too spoke de-
fiantly and optimistically about the future.
I have relatives who bear the scars of Nazi "medical experi-
ments" and tortures from World War II concentration camps. I
know from their experience that long after the healing of phys-
ical wounds, the psychic wounds stay open. Surgery cannot
reach those wounds, so natural healing and scarring must take
place. Scars sometimes limit movement, sometimes cause loss
of sensation, sometimes burn or tingle, sometimes disfigure,
sometimes darken. I have no reason to believe that the psyches
of these more contemporary victims are any less vulnerable
and fragile than those of the holocaust survivors, or that their
invisible scars will be any less enduring or troublesome. When
I imagine what such psychic wounds might look like-if they
had physical form-the horrible physical ones these women
bore seem less devastating by comparison.
Survivors
I never met them, but I have known many others-Brazi-
lians, Uruguayans, Chileans, Nicaraguans-who have sur-
vived torture and imprisonment, and I can say that some re-
cover completely, some recover partially, and some recover
not at all. Most continue to fight-some from exile, others
back in their own countries. They live, laugh, work, assume
risks, make mistakes, have families, write poems, go into busi-
ness, win and lose. All of them, though, still feel the electric
shocks, the octagonal beating sticks, the barrels of shit-filled
water into which they were dunked, the psychedelic hoods to
make them crazy, the lit cigarettes, the rats shoved up into their
bodies, the humiliation and isolation. They still feel.
Luis's speculation about the "U.S. hand" may or may not
be accurate but the role of the United States in installing the
military dictatorships and keeping them in power-complete
with U.S. torture advisers like Dan Mitrione-is well
documented. It is a role the Reagan administration has con-
tinued and deepened. I write this-not much more than an
anecdote-simply to record some wounds from a war that
raged close to home, in Latin America, in the late 1960s and
early 1970s. In El Salvador, Guatemala, Chile, Haiti, and else-
where in Latin America, the process continues. ?
1L 1, rnn',.,tcC t , C,U,,,tn: t,ma, of In fnrcntl~p to rnllnc tee
n In tormg,tl~n (~~ tntc rtv.) tectint,Uu.. a icy , colic, o
gonleatlone, noll ce A.nartmnt,, c,,t m eano intn111 NCnc, , r. .,
tnmu~haut tn. ? ,1.1, .1t1, emph .le on .cy &,t,t l ,,t.. actt,tty, n~
e.telllt..otl,tty,
T cclv~l cal + 's to rt-m:atl gin,
yy,,t ul:t~a rlou, ma L, n.' pn]e~cal n r:a. elon util_.. 'n el!ctt
Snto,se~.m .hc vncocnn ratf,o euc)ect.
Interrogation 111, 1981, Leon Golub, artist. Courtesy Barbara Gladstone Gal-
lery, New York, NY.
22 CovertAction
A CIA form detailing the Agency's strong interest in
primary source data from around the world on methods
of interrogation, "physical persuasion utilized to elicit
information from the uncooperative subject," "soften-
ing-up procedures," and assorted "technical aids."
Though undated, the requisition is appended to October
11, 1949 memoranda from the Agency's Interrogation
Research Section. While the form suggests mere intel-
lectual curiosity, the accompanying memoranda stress
the need to "be prepared to operationally use methods
which, in effectiveness, are equal or superior to methods
used by unfriendly countries," and contemplate "the
11
improvement of techniques already in existence. ?
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The Real Treason
By W' 'am Preston, Jr.
For some fifteen years a secret, conspiratorial alliance be-
tween various American corporations and their Nazi col-
laborators betrayed and subverted U.S. national interests in the
campaign to win World War II. This link between a "frater-
nity" of top business executives and the country's deadliest
wartime enemy, the Third Reich, this collaboration between
capitalism and fascism, has been suppressed by the politically
powerful, for their own political purposes. Yet the magnitude
of the crime and the damage it did, harm that included injuring
and killing allied and American fighting men and women, were
not approximated in any other case of disloyalty for which the
government has exacted retribution. Quite the reverse. The
political system preferred staging trials, for example, for con-
spiracy to advocate speech (behavior twice removed even from
the overt act of speaking) rather than settling scores with the
treasonous powerful who served the cause of money and cor-
porate self-interest.
Even more strangely, this country cannot face up to the cor-
porate betrayal today, continuing to deny the realities of its
Nazi connection while indulging in orgies of hysteria over any-
thing remotely related to communism. During the past year,
two comparable historical studies have, in fact, suggested once
* William Preston, Jr., is a Professor of History at John Jay College of Crimi-
nal Justice of the City University of New York and President of the Fund for
Open Information and Accountability, Inc. (F.O.I.A., Inc.). This is an excerpt
from his article, "The Real Candidates for 'The Crime of the Century,' " in
the journal of F.O.I.A., Inc., Our Right to Know (Spring 1984), pp. 3-4.
Project Paperclip
Subject: Civilian Personnel Spaces to
Accommodate, the PAP5SCLIP and
PROJECT 63 Pro a.
1. The Department of Defense has two classified projects,
deemed of utmost importance, that result in the employment
and exploitation of foreign scientists by the Department:
s. The first, PAPF-'iCLI?, provides a means of obtain-
ing services of foreign specialists for specific assign-
ments within the technical services of the Departments
of Army, Navy, and Air Force. The primary function of
this program is the utilization of the individual, the
denial aspect being a highly desirable, although second-
ary feature. Such specialists sign a year's contract
for a soecifle assignment prior to leaving their place
of -"!donee.- -
P.. PROJECT 63 is primarily a dental program with
utilization as a desirable feature. The aim of this
program 1s to secure employment in the United States
of certain preeminent German and Austrian specialists,
thus denying their services to potential enemies. Such
specialists sign a six-month Department of Defense son-
treat which guarantees thus an income until permanent
employment 1s arranged with Department of Defense
agencies or industry within the United States.
Project Overcast, later renamed Project Paperclip, was
the top-secret program set up in 1945 by the War Depart-
ment to locate, recruit, and exfiltrate to the United States
hundreds of Nazi scientists, specialists in rocketry, biologi-
cal warfare, aviation medicine, wind tunnels, and the like.
This declassified document is dated June 2, 1953 and
signed by Air Force Chief of Staff (and former Director of
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
again how unequal the "alternate malignity" of factions can
be, especially when it involves people in "embarrassingly high
places." Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton's book on Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg, The Rosenberg Files: A Search./hr Truth
(New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1983), became an in-
stant ideological best seller, arousing critical acclaim and im-
passioned controversy along the entire political spectrum. At
the same time, Charles Higham's Trading With the Eneniv: An
Exposure of the Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949 (New
York: Delacorte, 1983) sank from view almost without leaving
an oil slick, so swift was its dispatch from public notice. Yet
the evidence Higham discovered through the Freedom of Infor-
mation Act was fuller and more exact than the treacherous and
still incomplete materials assembled by Radosh and Milton.
Higham had obviously published the wrong book about the
wrong people at the wrong time. The political imperatives of
anti-communism and the Cold War still demanded radical
rather than corporate scapegoats.
According to Higham, the subversive business elite, the
group he calls "the Fraternity," had long-standing ideological
and economic reasons for their wartime collaboration with the
Nazi enemy. Anti-Semitism, sympathy for Hitler, distastes for
the Roosevelt New Deal and its supposed Jewish-communist
components blended with major financial, industrial, and tech-
nological alliances between German and American enterprises.
During the 1930s members of the Fraternity supported the
Black Legion, a Klan type fascist organization based in Michi-
gan; financed the American Liberty League's hate campaign
Central Intelligence) Hoyt S. Vandenberg. It indicates that
at least 820 Nazis were brought to the U.S. under Paperclip,
seen as "a means of obtaining the services of foreign
specialists" for the U.S. military. (Reliable accounts indi-
cate they numbered in excess of 900.) Another parallel pro-
gram was "Project 63," to bring "certain preeminent Ger-
man and Austrian specialists" to the U.S., with the primary
intent of denying their services to potential enemies. Van-
denberg acknowledged however that their "utilization
[was] a desirable feature."
Many of these hundreds of Nazis, including SS and SA
officers, were provably guilty of war crimes and prosecuta-
ble before the Nuremberg Tribunal. To get them out of Ger-
many and into the United States the Joint Intelligence Ob-
jectives Agency, responsible to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for
the administration of Paperclip, shamelessly set about alter-
ing, hiding, and destroying the evidence of their recruits' a-
trocities. Security reports researched and written by U.S.
military intelligence were located and changed. When some
State Department officials discovered the changes, further
changes were made and lies were told.
An extremely valuable account of the exfiltration pro-
gram by freelance journalist Linda Hunt, who spent 18
months using the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the
relevant files, appears in the April 1985 Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists.
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against FDR; plotted a "bizarre conspiracy" to replace
Roosevelt with General Smedley D. Butler; and initiated red-
baiting propaganda that anticipated the House Un-American
Activities Committee's worst excesses.
Had this been all, no criminal sanctions would have been
forthcoming, however odious and vile the practices. But a
much more dangerous set of activities developed during the
late years of the decade and continued throughout the war.
These included: sharing patents; the secret shipment of oil and
aircraft production data, photographs, and blueprints of mili-
tary and naval bases, and enough material on weapons to give
the Germans a "clear picture of American armaments" as well
as of the Alaskan and Northwest defense system; sending oil to
Spain and Vichy France that was reshipped to the Nazis; re-
fueling German tankers and U-boats; supplying tetraethyl lead
(an essential for aviation gasoline) to Germany and Japan;
manufacturing in subsidiary companies abroad an array of
communications and electronic equipment that aided the Ger-
man development of artillery fuses, rocket bombs, and radio
technology; maintaining crucial radio links to enemy nations in
Latin America for intelligence transmissions; supplying funds
to the Axis via southern hemisphere sales to proclaimed list
(i.e., banned) firms; making and repairing trucks for the Ger-
man occupation army in France; supplying ball bearings by
transshipment from South America; and cooperating closely in
financial matters through the Chase Bank in Paris and The
Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland.
All this and more took place in a business-as-usual atmos-
phere that sought to conserve and strengthen the corporations'
own world-wide marketing preeminence and postwar position
in the defeated nations. It reflected not only the prewar
economic arrangements, but the continued intimacy among
elites now temporarily estranged by the vagaries of interna-
tional politics but still seeing eye-to-eye on matters of corpo-
rate profit and survival.
Imagine for a moment (and without in any way assessing the
"guilt" of the Rosenbergs) a different scenario for the sharing
of technical knowledge with the nation's wartime ally. Sup-
pose the Rosenbergs had all the influence and power of I.T.T.,
General Motors, or General Aniline and Film and were en-
gaged in some facet of atomic production. They would have
had their representatives on various war related boards and al-
lies in at least the State, War, and Treasury Departments. The
government would not have had to issue them a license to trade
with the enemy since Russia did not fall into that category.
Sharing certain technological developments with another na-
tion could have been covered by the same informal approval
that Higham discovered had been granted by the State Depart-
ment to I.T.T.'s Axis oriented business. As a State Department
wartime memorandum observed, "it seems that the Interna-
Interview With a Nuremberg Prosecutor
Mary M. Kaufman, a New York attorney and well known
progressive activist for half a century, was a prosecutor at
Nuremberg. CAIB asked her about U.S. reluctance to pur-
sue some of the war crimes cases vigorously:
CAIB:Tell us first what your official position was in con-
nection with the Nuremberg trials.
M.K.: I was one of the prosecution team of the United
States government in the case against the Board of Directors
of I.G. Farben, a huge cartel. The case was one of the
twelve major war crimes trials that the United States held
following the first one, conducted by the International Mili-
tary Tribunal at Nuremberg. By the time that first trial was
over, the Allies, who had committed themselves to pro-
secuting all of the major war criminals, had already begun
to feel the effects of the Cold War. They decided it was not
feasible to try the rest of the major war criminals jointly
with the other Allies, so they agreed that each of the Allies
would pursue the cases of those major war criminals who
were in the jurisdictions of their respective zones of occupa-
tion. The United States had twelve such trials and that
against I.G. Farben was one of them.
I.G. Farben was charged with the crime against peace,
that is, the planning and the waging of a war of aggression;
with war crimes, using slave labor and the theft of proper-
ties as the army marched into the occupied countries; with
crimes against humanity-they built the Auschwitz concen-
tration camp where they used slave labor very badly, result-
ing in the death of countless thousands of people-they en-
gaged in medical experiments; they did a whole lot of very
bad things.
1
24 CovertAction
CAIB: Now in connection with your experiences, we
would like to ask you about the allegations that, after the in-
itial trial of the Nazi leadership, the joint trial, the United
States did not, in many cases, fight too hard to prosecute
certain people or certain organizations. Did you run into any
examples of this pattern of less than full willingness to pur-
sue the prosecutions?
M.K.: Oh yes. As a matter of fact, one of the very famil-
iar stories that percolated whenever anyone talked about the
war crimes trials at Nuremberg, and appeared in the film
"Justice at Nuremberg," was about the attitudes of the
judges. There is a scene in the film when some Senators
were pressuring the judges and the prosecutors to go easy,
and when they were asked why, a Senator said, "Well, we
need these people in our war against the Soviet Union."
Now that was not just something that was in the movie; that
was something that I knew was true. Working on the pro-
secution of the I.G. Farben case, I knew of innumerable
similar instances. We were hampered by the State Depart-
ment throughout. We did not have the kind of materials that
we needed. We did not get the support of the State Depart-
ment in our prosecutions. I will give you a few examples.
Sometime toward the end of the prosecution's case
against I.G. Farben, I learned that a group of Germans who
had been picked up during the war by the FBI, some place
off the shore of New Jersey, I think, and had been tried,
convicted, and jailed for conspiracy to commit sabotage in
the United States, had been trained by I.G. Farben. We had
an affidavit to that effect, but then I learned that the group
of saboteurs, who had been in jail in the U.S., were being
shipped back to the German prison at Landsberg. I thought
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tional Telephone and Telegraph Corporation . . . desires some
assurance that it will not be prosecuted for such activities. It
has been suggested that the matter be discussed informally with
the Attorney General and if he agrees the Corporation can he
advised that no prosecution is contemplated. . . . . But let us
imagine further that the Rosenberg corporation did in fact be-
tray the national interest and disloyally aid and abet the enemy
as did Chase, Ford, Texaco, Standard Oil of New Jersey,
I.T.T., SKF (Ball Bearings), General Aniline and Film, Sterl-
ing Products, and General Motors. Would an indictment and
prosecution have followed? Undoubtedly not. As Higham
suggests, the government itself felt neutralized by the potential
for "public scandal" that might have developed in a wartime
exposure of Nazi connections. Fear for "public morale,"
"widespread strikes," or even "mutinies in the armed ser-
vices," restrained a resort to political justice. Besides, impris-
oning the corporate leadership would have had an adverse ef-
fect on the war effort itself.
An aftermath as ironic as the failure to prosecute concluded
this tale of disloyal deception. The same people who had col-
laborated with the enemy trooped into Germany at war's end,
often as top occupation advisers. There they protected their
property, saw to it that they obtained recompensation for des-
troyed assets, helped their Nazi friends return to industrial
power and political office, and supported the revival of West-
that that would be something wonderful for the trial, so I is-
sued an order to have them transferred to the prison at
Nuremberg and was going to put them on as witnesses to
show I.G. Farben's direct involvement in sabotage.
But the chief of our trial team came to me and said,
"Mary, what the hell do you think you're doing? Who or-
dered those people brought here?" I said, "I did. Why?"
And he said. "You issue an order to send them right back.
The State Department is burning up the wires in protest." i
never did find out just what the State Department wanted,
but I had no alternative.
Another problem involved the authenticating of docu-
ments to be submitted in evidence. Many of those docu-
ments had been discovered by the U.S. consul in Frankfurt,
and I sent my assistant to him to have some of those docu-
ments authenticated for use in the trial. He refused. But
when my assistant asked him why, since he had been re-
sponsible for gathering all these documents in the first
place, he was now refusing to authenticate them, he said,
"Well, that was different. That was during the war, during
wartime. Now we need these people on our side. And I'll
tell you something else. If you subpoena me to try to au-
thenticate these documents, I'm going to tell the court what
wonderful people these Board of Directors really are!"
There was another incident I knew of personally. It was
described by the chief of our trial team, Josiah P. Duhois, in
the hook he wrote about I.G. Farhen, The Devil'. Chemist.
I.G. Farben was very, very deeply involved in the mistreat-
ment of people at the Auschwitz concentration camp, where
they had their factory for the production of poison gas. They
did terrible things there. I.G. Farhen had a policy about
their labor, people who had been kidnapped and shipped
from the occupied countries. They tried to keep the workers
alive long enough for their replacements to arrive, so if they
knew that a certain number of replacements would be arriv-
ing in a week, they would let that number of workers starve
ern Europe along lines conducive to the burgeoning ('old War
antagonisms. The failure to dismantle the industrial base of the
Nazi regime, the limply enforced denazification program, and
the covert assistance to escaping war criminals seemed to con-
firm the persistence of the "dark purpose'' the Fraternity had
initiated years before.
On the postwar home front, meanwhile, those who had la
bored to disrupt those sordid subversive dealings found them-
selves under attack as subversive. Lauchlin Currie and Hari-ti
Dexter White, two top Treasury Department officials who had
fought to expose and condemn the Nazi henefactors, became
primary targets of the congressional investigators. I ,nemies of
fascism turned into agents of communism. McCarthyism com-
pleted the rout, while classification interred the dark secrets of
earlier betrayals.
Even more important, the Rosenberg case defined the new
model for treason upon which all Americans would thereafter
focus. No longer concerned with inflicting mortal injury to
public morale, quite the opposite, the government's malignity
imagined that the crime of the century had been engineered by
two inexpert technicians far from the seats of power. No one
would thereafter remember that the real crimes of this century
had been committed by those in ''embarrassingly high
places," where punishment, as always, was to he ''avoided at
all costs." ?
to death, so long as it took them a week to die.
Now those activities were carried on quite openly and
there was a lot of documentation about it: I.G. Farhen kept
very detailed accounts of everything. In fact. almost every-
thing in the case against I.G. Farhen came from their ovtn
files. In any event, the real question at the trial was not the
occurrence of these practices, which were very well knovkn
and documented, but the degree of knowledge on the paint of
the Board of Directors of I.G. Fat-hen. This was not easily
provable without the files themselves. We discovered that
the files had been shipped to the French zone, c' en though
it was known that some of the French occupation officials
were very cozy with I.G. Farhen directors. Some members
of the trial team had to go to the French zone to collect the
files, and when they got there they found many folders sv ith
nothing in them. The contents had been shredded.
The team came hack to Nuremherg very despondent, and
Jo Dubois was on his way to the court, nett to the Nurem-
berg jail, when somebody said to hint. "Oh, Herr Duhois,
please help nee. I need some help.'' He turned around and
saw one of the major defendants in the case, the director
who was in charge of the Auschwitz operations. And Jo
said, "What are you doing out of prison?'' lie said, "The
judge let the out so I could go over some evidence." What
he had done, in fact, was to go with an assistant to the place
where the I.G. Farhen files were kept and to indicate which
files should he destroyed. Which was promptly done:
That is what the judges were like. They s+ crc not quite
like the judges in the movie. They were notivated, for one
thing, by a tremendous anti-Semitisni. They were known to
be distressed by the fact that there were "too many Jews-
on the prosecution team, and they were always insisting on
very, very direct and detailed evidence when it came to alle-
gations of activities at Auschwitz. For another, they were
busy getting their hands on German real estate and things
like that. 'T'here was a lot of honey in the pot. ?
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Nazi Doctors in Demand
In September 1951, after 28 months with the Project
Paperclip medical staff in Frankfurt, Germany, Major Gen-
eral Walter Emil Schreiber was brought to the United States
for a six-month stint at the Air Force School of Aviation
Medicine in Texas.
As Nazi chief of medical science, "Doctor" Schreiber
was directly responsible for some of the most ghoulish med-
ical experiments the Nazis conducted on concentration
camp inmates. According to massive evidence revealed dur-
ing the Nuremberg Trials, some of the experiments cleared
or reviewed by Schreiber included:
? Supervising Dr. Karl Gebhardt, later hanged for his
crimes, who had operated on young Polish girls using gas
gangrene.
? Injecting humans and mice interchangeably with
transfers from each other of deadly typhus virus, to produce
a live vaccine. Others were injected with infectious
epidemic jaundice.
? Sterilizing male prisoners by surgery, X-ray, and
drugs.
? Submerging victims in tanks of ice water to measure
shock levels.
? Locking prisoners in low-pressure chambers to simu-
late flight at altitudes of up to 68,000 feet, which invariably
resulted in the collapse of their lungs.
? Exposing subjects to heavy doses of incendiary phos-
phorus material.
With grotesque irony, Schreiber's role in Texas was con-
sultant to the "global preventive medicine" division.
In March 1952, after Schreiber's presence in the U.S.
had been discovered by columnist Drew Pearson, his con-
tinuing work for the American military was defended by Air
Force General Robert Eaton: "Doctor Schreiber was hired
by the Air Force because of his extensive experience in the
fields of epidemiology and military preventive medicine,
coupled with his peculiar knowledge of public health and
sanitation problems in certain geographical areas. He has
collaborated in the preparation of a treatise on the
epidemiology of air travel and has been able to furnish the
Air Force with valuable information."
Apparently, due to the embarrassment and controversy
resulting from public exposure of their collaboration with
Schreiber, Project Paperclip officers generously found simi-
lar work for him in Argentina and flew him there on May
22, 1952.
Another of the hundreds of Nazi war criminals with
whom the U.S. joined forces was Major General Kurt
Blome. Some of the Nuremberg charges against him in-
cluded:
? Wholesale practice of euthanasia by injecting intra-
venous undiluted lethal phenol.
? Executions of tubercular Polish prisoners.
? Various uses of biological warfare, his specialty. He
admitted to U.S. Army interrogators in July 1945 that he
had conducted experiments on his victims with plague vac-
cine, on orders of the notorious mass murderer, Heinrich
Himmler.
Incredibly, Blome was acquitted by the Nuremberg tri-
bunal, though the prosecutors had gathered a great deal of
evidence about his activities. Just two months after his ac-
quittal, he was contacted by four employees of the Army
Chemical Corps at Camp Detrick for a discussion about
biological warfare. Blome cooperated and also volunteered
the names of other German biological warfare specialists.
In August 1951 he signed a "Project 63" contract as the
camp doctor at the U.S. Army occupation force European
Command Intelligence Center at Oberusal. A subsequent
Defense Department contractual document shows the fol-
lowing'entry under the heading of Qualifications: "Pro-
fessor of medicin [sic] with emphasis'on research of tuber-
culosis and cancer and biological warfare."
One of the lesser known Nazi doctors, Hubertus
Strughold, a Luftwaffe member, was reportedly know-
ledgeable about the deadly low-pressure chamber experi-
ments on concentration camp inmates. Though it is not
known whether he came to the U.S. as part of Paperclip or
63, he worked for the U.S. Air Force for many years and is
still living. Today at Brooks Air Force Base near San An-
tonio, Texas is the Hubertus Strughold Aeromedical Li-
brary, named after the man they fondly call "the father of
aerospace medicine." ?
Nazi doctors before Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal;
standing at right is Kurt Blome; to his right is Karl
Gebhardt.
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Knights of Darkness:
The Sovereign
Military Order of Malta
By Francoise Hervet *
Introduction
The Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of St. John of
Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, known also as the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta. or SMOM, is juridically,
politically, and historically unique in the world today.
Representing initially the most powerful and reactionary
segments of the European aristocracy, for nearly a thousand
)cars beginning with the early crusades of the Twelfth Cen-
tury, it has organized, funded, and led military operations
against states and ideas deemed threatening to its power. It is
probably sate to say that the several thousand Knights of
SMOM, principally in Europe, North, Central, and South
America. comprise the largest most consistently powerful and
reactionary membership of any organization in the world
today.
Although an exclusively Catholic organization, in this cen-
tury it has collaborated with, and given high awards to non-
Catholic extremists in its current crusade against progressive
forces in the West. the national liberation movements, and the
socialist countries.
To he a Knight, one must not only he from wealthy, aristo-
cratic lineage, one must also have if psychological worldview
which is attracted to the "crusader mentality" of these ''war-
rior Honks." Participating in SMOM-including its initiation
ceremonies and feudal ritual dress-members embrace a cer-
tain caste/class mentality; they are sociologically and psycholo-
gically predisposed to function as the ''shock troops" of Cath-
olic reaction. And this is precisely the historical role the
Knights have played in the wars against Islam, against the Pro-
testant ''heresy,'' and against the Soviet "Evil Empire."
The Catholic Right and the Knights of Malta, in particular
Baron Franz von Papen (see sidebar). played a critical role in
Hitler's assumption of power and the launching of the Third
Reich's Twentieth Century Crusade.
SMOM's influence in Germany survived World War II in-
tact. On November 17, 1948 SMOM awarded one of its high-
est honors, the Grand Cross of Merit, to Reinhard Gehlen, the
Nazi chief of intelligence on the Soviet front. He was sub-
sequently installed by the Americans as the first chief of West
Germany's equivalent of the CIA, the Bundesnachtrichtdienst
(BND: federal secret service), under West German Chancellor
Adenauer, a devout Catholic who had received the Magistral
Grand Cross personally from SMOM Grand Master Prince
Chigi.
* Francoise Hervet is the pseudonym of a researcher who has spent many years
investigating the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
After the appointment of Knight of Malta William Casey as
head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and another Knight,
James Buckley, as head of U.S. propaganda against Eastern
Europe at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, several historians
noted with interest President Reagan's call during the sumiter
of 1982 for a "crusade" against the ''Evil Empire" in Eastern
Europe.
In addition to Casey, and James Buckley, its current HteHr-
bers, or Knights. after the feudal fashion, include Lee Iacocca,
John McCune, William Buckley, Alexander Haig, Alexandre
de Marenches (the chief of French Intelligence under Discard
d'Estaing, himself a Knight of SMOM), Otto von Hapsburg,
and various leaders of the fascist P-2 Masonic lodge in Italy.
While its organizational funding is relatively modest, its lever-
age is maximized by the presence of its Knights in key posi-
tions in other private and governmental structures throughout
the world.
Franz von Papen
A leading figure in Hitler's coming to power was
SMOM Franz von Papen, known as "the dcvif in a top
hat." A devout Catholic aristocrat from an old family of
Westphalian nobility, a former military attache and spy
against the United States in 1915, von Papen became
Chancellor in May 1932, with the support of the Nazis.
In June he ordered the dissolution of the Reichstag, call-
ing for new elections in July, in which the Nazis
emerged as the largest party in the new Reichstag. After
a meeting with Hitler, von Papen persuaded President
von Hindenberg to otter Hitler the Chancellorship,
which he assumed on January 30, 1933. Von Papen be-
came his Vice-Chancellor.
In April 1933 von Papen was elevated to Knight
Magistral Grand Cross of SMOM. After the murder of
Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss in Vienna in July 1934,
von Papen became Hitler's Ambassador to Austria,
and, in March 1938 stood by the Fiihrer's side at his
triumphal entry into Vienna. From 109 until August
1944 he was the Nazi Ambassador to Turkey, and at the
Nuremberg trials he was charged with conspiracy to
wage aggressive war. He was one of several Nazi leaders
acquitted, and subsequently received a generous pension
from the first postwar Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. ?
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The President of the American Eastern Association of
SMOM is J. Peter Grace, President of W.R. Grace Company.
who was a key figure in Operation Paperclip, which brought
Nazi scientists to the U.S.'
The Vatican and the order of the Knights of Malta, believed
to be the smallest sovereign state in the world, have agreed
to establish full diplomatic relations, a joint statement said
today."
SMOM's Sovereign Diplomacy
As its name suggests, SMOM is both a "sovereign" and,
historically, a "military" organization. Its headquarters, oc-
cupying a square block in Rome at 68 Via Condotti, enjoys the
extra-territorial legal status granted to an embassy of a
sovereign state. The Italian police are not welcome on its terri-
tory, it issues its own stamps, and has formal diplomatic rela-
tions and exchanges ambassadors with a number of countries.
On November 13, 1951 Italian President Alcide de Gasperi
recognized the diplomatic sovereignty of SMOM, although he
held off formal exchange of diplomatic envoys.' On January
1 1 , 1983 the New York Daily News announced that,
I. See generally, Clarence G. Lasby, Project Paperclip (New York:
Atheneum, 1975). Grace had also served as the Chairman of the Radio Free
Europe Radio Liberty Fund, a CIA front infested with Nazi collaborators, and
of the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD ), another CIA-
funded organization. The Chairman of the W. R. Grace Executive Committee,
Felix Larkin, is also a SMOM. The Chancellor of the Order, John D. J.
Moore, was a Director of the Grace company until at least 1982 having been
with the company since 1946 managing its Peruvian operations from 1947-
1950. From 1969-1975 Moore was the U.S. Ambassador to Ireland. See
sidebar on J. Peter Grace.
2. Roger Peyrefitte, Knights q/'Malta (New York: Criterion Books, 1959), at
p. 137.
President Reagan's Ambassador to the Vatican, William Wil-
son, is, coincidentally, a Knight of Malta.'
On September 5, 1984 French Foreign Minister Claude
Cheysson signed a formal protocol with SMOM for various
cooperative projects including "aid to victims of conflicts."'
(See below on Americares. )
Historical Antecedents
Already in existence at the time of the first Crusade in 1099,
in I 1 13 the Order of St. John was given its independence by
Pope Pascal II, permitted to elect its own Grand Master, and
soon the Order began military participation in the Crusades
along with with the Knights Templar and 'T'eutonic Knights.
The Order of St. John recruited successfully among the Euro-
pean aristocracy and soon controlled extensive estates through-
out the continent, assimilating those previously belonging to
the Knights Templar which it had helped crush during the first
two decades of the 14th Century, with the Templar leadership
burned alive as heretics.
3. See the illustrated feature story on SMOM in Town and Country, April
1984, pp. 194, ff.
4. Point de Vue, September 23, 1983.
J. Peter Grace and Project Paperclip
On January 16, 1980 ABC-TV broadcast a special
"News Closeup," "Escape from Justice: Nazi War Crimi-
nals in America" which discussed Grace's Role in Project
Paperclip. The transcript of the program, available from
ABC on request, states, "Project Paperclip . . . from the
end of WW 11 to the mid-1950's brought more than 900
German scientists to the United States. . . . Otto Ambros
. . . was a chemist and a Director of the notorious I.G. Far-
ben Company which supplied gasoline and rubber for Hi-
tler's war effort. Ambros . . . played a supervisory role in
the construction of Farben's plant in the Polish village of
Auschwitz. For I.G. Farben, Auschwitz concentration in-
mates provided a plentiful source of cheap labor. . . . The
Nuremberg prosecution charged that each day at Farben's
plant one hundred people died from sheer exhaustion.. . .
Otto Ambros was convicted of slavery and mass murder and
sentenced to eight years in prison. But even while on trial at
Nuremberg, Ambros was a target for U.S. recruiters from
'Project Paperclip.' His prison sentence was commuted
after only three years by American officials and he was
helped in a bid to enter the United States by . . . J. Peter
Grace, President of W. R. Grace, a major American chemi-
cal company. . . . An internal State Department document
describes how J. Peter Grace helped Otto Ambros in his ef-
forts to enter the U.S. In a memorandum to the U.S. Am-
bassador to Germany, Grace acknowledges that Ambros
was a war criminal. But he adds that in the years he's
known Ambros, . . . 'we have developed it very deep admi-
ration, not only for his ability, but more important, for his
character in terms of truthfulness and integrity.' Today Otto
Ambros does consulting work for W. R. Grace and Com-
pany and lives here in Mannheim, Germany. In a recent
telephone interview Ambros Isaidl 'I'm happy to still be
working as a chemist . . . but it's funny. Now I'm helping
the Americans.' "
In June 1981, largely in response to the efforts of well
known war crimes researcher Charles Allen, Yeshiva Uni-
versity cancelled it $150-a-plate dinner it had organized to
honor Grace. (See also, Joe Conason and Martin A.
Rosenblatt, "The Corporate State of Grace," Villa,i'e
Voice, April 12, 1983.)
When the scandal broke in West Germany over the Flick
company paying huge sums of money to various politicians
and parties, it was learned that additionally Flick had taken
improper tax waivers and used the money to pump millions
of dollars into W. R. Grace Co., becoming it major
shareholder. Friedrich Karl Flick himself sits on the Grace
Board. As the Moscow New Times reminded its readers
(No. 8, 1983, citing Der Spiegel), Friedrich Karl's father,
Flick Sr., had poured money into the coffers of the Nazi
party in January 1933, and, "after Goering had promised
the Ruhr magnates that "the March 5 elections will he the
last elections in this decade and perhaps in this century," he
contributed another 200,000 marks: this sum was handed to
SS Reichfiihrer Himmler. Flick Sr. was subsequently sen-
tenced at Nuremberg to seven years for using slave labor,
spoliation and being an accessory to the crimes of the SS.
To ensure a good beginning for his son, the war criminal
sent him after the war for early training with W. R. Grace.
?
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Plaque on SMOM headquarters' door proclaims sovereign
status of the building; SMOM has been called "the smallest
country in the world," but it has diplomatic relations with
more than 40 countries.
In 1 187 the Order "as driven militarily iron) Jerusalem by
Saladin. The Knie'hts were forced to flee successisely to Acre,
Cyprus ( 1291 ), and finally Rhodes ( 13 10) where they subdued
the local population and established a military dictatorship en-
joving territorial sovereignty for the first time. In 1522 they
were defeated by Sultan Suleiman's forces of 200,000 troops
and 25ll ships after a six-month sieve. By 1530 under Grand
Master Villiers de I'Isle-Adam, the Knights established their
headquarters on the island of Malta which had been given to
them by ('harles y'.
Martin Luther ryas horn in 1483, the sane year that Tor-
quen)ada unleashed the turv of the Inquisition, and while the
Knights wa~get1 "au- against firreion heresies, they were soon
confronted by the liheraliiinwg Reformation challen,_,e to Catho-
lic Orthodoxy
In England Henn VIII'. assertion of an independent na-
tional policy was complicated by his marriage to Katherine
who seas the aunt of Emperor Charles V, patron of the Knights
of Malta vho in England were a militant bastion of Papal toy-
altv. 13y 1534 Pope Clement VII had excommunicated the
King and two veaus later pope Paul III published a Bull depos-
inw, the King and charging the Emperor vv ith its execution. Ac-
cording to King and Luke's authoritative history" of the Order
in England.
The staunchest supporters of Papal supremacy were natur-
ally to he found anumg the religious Orders, and . . . the
Knights "ere the loyal servants of the Pope, whose claims to
universal dominion Ithe Kingl had repudiated. . . . it was
thus a sheer impossibility for the King to permit the exis-
tence in England of an Order so powerful and so highly or-
ganiicd unless it was prepared to renounce its loyalty to his
most determined enemy. Inevitably the Knights would he-
conic a renter of disaffection and a rallying point for all the
forces of reaction. . . .
In July 1539, after two of the Knights had already chosen the
martyr's crown, the King "rote letters to the Grand Master
which practically constituted an ultimatum, demanding that
the Papal supremacy should cease to he recognized by the
Order in England. . . . But it was impossible to accept the
King's conditions. In April 1540 . . . Parliament passed an
5. Sir Edwin King and Sir Harry Luke, The Knights of St. John in the British
Realm, 2d ed. (London: St. John's (late, 1967).
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
Act dissolving the Order in England and conferring its es-
tates upon the Crown. . . . "
Meanwhile on the continent and in the Mediterranean the
wars against the infidels of the East continued. Since the n)i1i-
tary defense of Christendom required naval support, the Order
created a p sverful fleet and patrolled the seas of the Eastern
Mediterranean fighting many naval actions.
Military operations ranged as tar as Egypt and Syria, and by
1565 under Grand Master Valette, they resisted the Turkish
siege of Malta. In 1571 SMOM's fleet participated in the de-
feat of the 'lurks at the naval battle of Lepanto, and remained it
major military presence in the Mediterranean until 1789 when
Napoleon defeated the Knights and occupied the island. I'hc
Order finally sought temporary protection under the Russian
Emperor Paul I in 1797; in 1834 Pope Lco XIII established its
headquarters in Rome.
State room of the Grand Magistry; Grand Master Fra Pr-
ince Angelo de Mojana di Cologna, seated, flanked by
Grand Chancellor, left, and Hospitaller, right.
6. Ibid., pp 103-105. Subsequently in England in the 19th ('mosey, since each
monarch has (tie authority to create any Order it wishes, Queen Victoria char
tered, alongside the Roane-based British Association of SMOM, it puedonnn-
antly Anglican Order called The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Si
John of Jerusalem" under the aegis of the British croscn
On November 26, 1963 the Venerable Order and the British Association of
SMOM signed a treaty of mutual recognition and respect which can he seen in
the Library of the Venerable Order in London. SMOM continues to regard the
Venerable Order with somewhat amused scorn: while SMOMs are numbers of
the highest levels of the Venerable Order, there do not appear to he any Angli-
can members of the Venerable Order in the British Association of SMOM.
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The American Association of SMOM
In Europe SMOM's membership had been traditionally lim-
ited to those who could prove a requisite purity of noble blood
for several generations. Nevertheless, as a concession to the
rising political, economic, and military power of the United
States, in 1927 SMOM agreed to incorporate an American Na-
tional Association whose members were not obliged to prove
their genealogical pedigree.
When the American Association of SMOM was created in
1927 the founding members included Patrick Cardinal Hayes,
Edward L. Hearn, Nicholas F. Brady, Howard F. Carry, Pat-
rick E. Crowley, James A. Farrell, James A. Fayne, Edward
N. Hurley, James J. Phelan, Morgan J. O'Brien, John J. Ras-
kob, and John D. Ryan.
By 1941 Francis Cardinal Spellman was listed as the
"Grand Protector" and "Spiritual Advisor" of the Order, with
John J. Raskob as Treasurer. Members included John Farrell,
then President of U.S.Steel, Joseph P. Grace, and John D.
Ryan. In 1934 Raskob, inspired by the French fascist Croix de
Feu, and working closely with Morgan Bank's John Davis, had
been a principal financier in the plot to organize a fascist coup
in the U.S. The plan failed when General Smedley Butler, who
had been set up to lead the project, denounced it.
The 1941 list also included Joseph J. Larkin. According to
Charles Higham's Trading With the Enemy (see review in this
issue),
II.. . . [He] had received the Order of the Grand Cross of
the Knights of Malta from Pope Pius XI in 1928. He was an
ardent supporter of General Franco and, by extension, Hi-
tler. Morgenthau first suspected him as a fascist sympathizer
in October 1936. . . . [W]ith the encouragement of Schacht,
Larkin took on the Franco account and the Reichsbank ac-
count, though the Reichsbank was under the personal con-
trol of Hitler. . . . 7
The American-Italian Connection
From 1932 until 1938 Myron Charles Taylor was the Chair-
man of U. S. Steel. In 1939 he became the U.S. envoy to Pope
Pius XII, a post he would maintain until 1950. Meanwhile, ac-
cording to Anthony Cave Brown, OSS chief William Donovan
secretly had established an intelligence connection with the
Vatican as early as 1941, when he evacuated from Lisbon to
New York the Dominican Father Felix A. Morlion, who had
founded "a European Catholic anti-Comintern" called Pro
Deo.(See sidebar.) Throughout the war Donovan financed
Morlion's Pro Deo service and in June 1944 he "went to con-
siderable expense, time, and trouble to transport Morlion from
New York and establish him at the Holy See."'
Subsequently Morlion became a key figure in Vatican intel-
ligence, working closely with Giovanni Battista Montini, the
future Paul Vl.
According to Frederic Laurent,
Joseph J. Larkin . . . [vice-president of Chase Manhattan
Bank in charge of European affairs] kept the Chase Bank
open . . . in Nazi-occupied Paris throughout World War
7. Charles Higham, Trading With the Enemv: An Exploration oI the Na-i-
Americcni Money Plot, 1933-1949 (New York: Delacorte, 1983). pp. 20-31.
8. Anthony Cave Brown, Wild Bill Donovan, The Last Hero (New York:
Times Books, 1982), pp. 683, 684.
The Role of Felix A. Morlion
In the latter part of April 1948 the Romanian Timpul pub-
lished an article, "The Vatican Espionage Service," cited
in the Soviet journal New Times, No.31, 1948, at pp. 5, 6.
As reported, the article indicated that, "In 1946 the Pope
entrusted the Dominican friar [Felix A.] Morlion, a Bel-
gian, with the reorganization of the Vatican intelligence ser-
vice and its merger with the Jesuit espionage network. The
central intelligence department of the Vatican is headed by
Janssens, a general of the Jesuit Order. His deputy is Mon-
tini, the acting Vatican Secretary of State, and his assistants
are Schmider, the administrative director of the central
jesuit espionage bureau, and Morlion, director of Centro
d'informazione pro Deo. The central intelligence depart-
ment is subdivided into branches and sections dealing with
the various countries. One of the main branches is the so-
called 'special division' which operates under the signboard
of the Centro d'informazione pro Deo press agency. Similar
divisions have been set up in the Centro d'informazione pro
Deo units in all parts of the world. In New York. the 'special
division' is directed by Cardinal Spellman, in Innsbruck
(Austria) by Regent, the rector of a jesuit college, in Cob-
lenz (Germany) by the Catholic priest Poelaert who is also
director of the Catholic press agency. The branch in charge
of espionage in Eastern and Southeastern Europe is super-
vised by Schmider and Preseren, the jesuits' chief expert on
the Slav countries and adviser to the Vatican Secretary of
State. "
In August 1966, Morlion approached H.L. Hunt for
funding Vatican anti-Communist operations in Latin Ameri-
ca. Hunt gave an interview to the British Guardian Weekly,
February 27, 1969: " 'I was approached by Paolo Cardinal
Marella, who said he spoke for the Pope and asked if I
would supply members of my [20,000 member] Youth
Freedom Speakers' movement who spoke Spanish to be
sent south [to Latin America] to engage in speechmaking
and activities. I was told the Pope was thinking in terms of
11 million dollars a year support for the entire movement
against communism in Spanish-speaking countries.' .. .
The project was now centered in New York, at the Asian
Speakers Bureau, with the Free Pacific Association, Inc.,
on Riverside Drive [another front for the Rev. Moon's Un-
ification Church]. A key figure in this papal concern over
Leftist threats to the Vatican's greatest stronghold was the
Rev. Felix A. Morlion, who was present at the original dis-
cussions."
Subsequently, Morlion emerged as a key figure in the
"Bulgarian Connection" hoax when the fascist Grey Wolf
Agca attempted to assassinate the Pope: It appears that
Morlion lived in Rome directly below the apartment of the
Bulgarian Antonov, and was a possible source of Agca's
description of Antonov's apartment. (See, 11 Mondo, April
8, 1985; L'Espresso, May 19, 1985.) ?
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All studies ]of the post-WWII Nazi networks] have shown
the determining role played by the Catholic Church in the
flight of war criminals. Since April 1943, following negotia-
tions between Pius XII and the ultra-reactionary American
archbishop Francis Spellman, the Holy See became the clan-
destine center of Anglo-American espionage in Italy. This
collaboration in fact had begun the previous year . . . be-
tween Earl Brennan, a veteran of the American State Depart-
ment and Gian Battista Montini, at the time a bishop and
Under-Secretary of State at the Vatican. This close collab-
oration between the future Paul VI and the American secret
services continued after the war through the intermediary
James Angleton. . . . '
James Jesus Angleton.
With the American Grand Protector of SMOM already in
contact with the Vatican, and Allen Dulles busy negotiating
with Nazis in Switzerland, the Americans entered Rome June
4, 1944. On July 7 General Mark Clark was made a Knight
Grand Cross of SMOM.
According to British journalist Stuart Christie,
Prince Valerio Borghese with SS officer, Italy, 1944.
Borghese was to be heard from again on the twenty-ninth an-
niversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (See below.)
? Truman's Vatican envoy Myron C. Taylor received
SMOM's Gran Croci Al Merito Con Placca May 23, 1945.
? On June 12, 1945 Admiral Ellery W. Stone was awarded
the Croci Al Merito Di Prima Classe Con Corona from the
SMOM.
? On December 27, 1946 James Angleton received the
Croci Al Merito Seconda Classe from the Order, the same day
as George Raymond Rocca. Rocca went on to become Angle-
ton's deputy chief of Counterintelligence Division of the CIA
and was the liaison between the Warren Commission and the
CIA following the Kennedy Assassination. (See sidebar.)
25 April 1945 [three days before the German forces capitu-
late in Italy] Admiral Ellery Stone, U.S. Proconsul in oc-
cupied Italy, instructs James Angleton to rescue Prince Val-
crio Borghese from the possibility of arrest by the Resistance
Committees which had sentenced him to death for war
crimes . . . Stone is a close friend of the Borghese family.`
9. Frederic Laurent, L'Orchestre Noir (Paris: Fditions Stock, 1978), at p. 29;
see also Charles Allen, ''The Vatican and the Nazis" in Reform Judaism,
Spring/Summer and Fall 1983; and Saul Friedlander, Pius X11 and the Third
Reich (New York: Knopf, I966).
10. Stuart Christie, Stefano delle Chiaie, Portrait q1 'a Black Terrorist (Lon-
don: Anarchy Magazine, 1984), at p.6. One member of the family, S.E. Don
Giangiacomo, Principe Borghese, had been a Bailiff Grand Cross of Honor
and Devotion of SMOM since June 4, 1932. Christie's book includes a photo
of Borghese driven by an unidentified SS officer in 1944, with the caption,
"Borghese was then 11944] head of 'XMAS' (Decima MAS), a special forces
corps of 4,000 men founded in 1941. Borghese assumed command after the
Italian armistice and XMAS was officially recognized by the Nazi High Com-
mand on September 14, 1943. Under his direction, XMAS was responsible for
the torture and mass murder of Italian partisans. Ibid., p. 7; see also Laurent,
op. cit.. n. 9.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
According to declassified documents front the American De-
partment of State, in February 1948, in anticipation of the up-
coming elections scheduled for April 18, the Vatican created
organizations called Civic Committees under the leadership of
Luigi Gedda, a 45-year-old doctor from Turin who was also
the leader of the rightist Catholic Action. By March 17. 1948
Gedda became a Knight of the Grand Priory of Lombardy and
Venice. The liaison to Gedda was through an Ecclesiastical
Assistant, Mgr. Fiorenzo Angelini, a member of the National
Executive of the Civic Committees, who had become a ranking
member of the Rome Priory of SMOM also on March 17,
1948." At that time the Grand Priory was headed by Fer-
dinando Thun Hohenstein, Director of Ceremonies of SMOM,
11. Declassified documents of May 17, 1948 and October 11, 1948. Gcdda
was listed as a member of the "Comite de Patronage" of the French nco-Nazi
Nouvelle Ecole in April 1982 along with Robert Gayre. Gedda also served on
the Advisory Board of Gayre and Pearson's Mankind Quarter/v from at least
the mid 1960s until 1979.
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a member of the all-powerful five-member Sovereign Council
of the Order, and nephew of a former SMOM Grand Master.
On March 22, 1948 the New York Times reported that Gedda
had appealed to American Catholics to provide financial assist-
ance to Italian Catholics in their fight against communism. On
April 5, it was reported that "Myron C. Taylor arrived from
Madrid for what Catholic circles described as an 'important
mission' closely related to the Italian general elections." By
April 13 the paper reported that Taylor would meet with Pius
once a week, and that based on the information recently re-
ceived, the Pope was "considerably more optimistic" about
the outcome of the elections. Two days later with the Italian
The Checkered Careers
of James Angleton and Roger Pearson
Both James Jesus Angleton and George Raymond Rocca
were forced into retirement in December 1974 following
Seymour Hersh's revelations that Angleton's Division had
been involved in illegal domestic operations, known as "the
family jewels."'
By the Winter of 1977-78 Angleton became one of two
Associate Editors of the Journal of'International Relations
under General Editor Roger Pearson. The other Associate
Editor was Gen. Robert C. Richardson III; the Publisher
was John Fisher, President of the American Security Coun-
cil.
Pearson is perhaps the most important neo-Nazi contact
and racist propagandist in the U.S. today and had been a
former Editor of Willis Carto's Western Destiny.
According to Replica of January 1978, when the Execu-
tive Committee of the World Anti-Communist League
(WACL) met December 10 and 11, 1977 to plan for their
upcoming conference in Washington D. C., "The main
speaker was . . . General Robert C. Richardson III who de-
livered a brilliant speech on the theme of USA-USSR nucle-
ar balance . . . land] . . . Dr. Roger Pearson [President of
North American Regional WACL and later President and
host of WACL in 19781 also made a brilliant exposition."
Replica is the journal of the Latin American Anti-Com-
munist Confederation (CAL) which Jack Anderson revealed
to be a CIA created anti-Semitic controller of neo-Nazi
death squads.'
1 . See, Seymour Hersh's stories in the New York Times, December 22 and
30, 1974; and Fensterwald and Ewing, Coincidence or Consphnc,v? (New
York: Zebra Books, 1977), at pp. 182, 183, 186.
2. See, Jack Anderson stories of January 12, 13, 23, 26, 30 and February
9. See also, Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup (Boston:South End
Press, 1980), and the series in the New York Village Voice by Joe Con-
ason, May I and 14, 1985.
Pearson was removed as head of the U.S. branch of the
World Anti-Communist League after its 1978 conference in
Washington, D.C. because his ties to the neo-Nazi interna-
tional were too extreme even for WACL which then in-
cluded death squads, former Nazis, and Nazi collaborators.'
In the July 1978 issue of the racist Mankind Quarterly,
the Editor-in-Chief, and Pearson's mentor, Robert Gayre,
announced that Pearson would take over publication of the
magazine. Robert Gayre had received the Grand Cross of
Merit from SMOM in 1963, having already been editor of
the Mankind Quarterly for three years. In June 1979 Pear-
son was listed as a member of the Comite de Patronage (the
Advisory Board) of the French neo-Nazi journal Nouvelle
Ecole.
Today Pearson continues to publish in Washington, D.C.
several journals including Mankind Quarterly; The Journal
of' Social, Political and Economic Studies; and The,lournal
of indo-European Studies; he remains on the Board of Trus-
tees of the American Foreign Policy Institute.'
According to Joseph C. Goulden, "Brigadier General
Robert C. Richardson . . . had served as deputy chief of
staff for science and technology for the U.S. Air Force Sys-
tems command; he later was a field commander of the De-
fense Atomic Support Agency at the supersecret Sandia
Base, New Mexico. When Richardson retired in 1967 he
became a consultant in defense affairs; one of his positions,
which he was to take in 1973, was a vice-president of Ed
Wilson's Consultant's International.'''
Gen. Richardson is today one of the key members of the
American Security Council (ASC) and the Coalition for
Peace Through Strength (CPTS) and is Executive Director
of the American Foreign Policy Institute of which Pearson,
John Fisher, Gen. Lyman Lcmnitzer, and Gen. Daniel 0.
Graham are members of the seven member Board of Trus-
tees.
Angleton today is the Chairman of the Security and Intel-
ligence Fund whose President is former Ambassador El-
bridge Durbrow (the Chairman of the American Foreign
Policy Institute) and whose Secretary-Treasurer is Robert
C. Richardson 111. Until its move in late 1984 to 1010 Ver-
mont Avenue, N.W. in Washington, D.C., it shared offices
with the ASC and the CPTS. The letter heads of the three
organizations show extensive membership overlaps.
3. See, Paul Valentine "Fascist Specter behind the World Anti-Red
League" in the Washington Post, May 28, 1978.
4. See generally, Michael Billig, Psychology, Racism & Fascism, London:
1979; and Searchlight magazine, September 1984, no. III' both available
from Searchlight publications, 37B New Cavendish Street, London W I M
8JR. See also, Robert Gayre's entry in the British Who's Who.
5. Joseph C. Goulden, The Death Merchant: The Rise and Fall o/ Edwin
P. Wilson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 47.
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nillitarvr staging massive parades and as fascist gangs attacked
leftists in the streets. C. L. Sulzberger reported from Rome that
Catholic Action "is armed, active, and tough."
The State Department documents cite Angleton as
"feellingl quite strongly that Gedda can he effectively used to
further our interests in Italy in the political, labor and social
fields," and that the Civic Committees were to receive CIA
funds. The Pope had allegedly met with Gedda three tines dur-
ing the nionth after the elections.
One of those reported to have been involved in interference
in the April 18 election was Baron Luigi Parrilli. Parrilli, son
of an Italian admiral, and who had reportedly worked for the
American firm Kelvinator before the war, was a fascist and had
extensive industrial interests in Italy. He was made a Knight of'
Malta on December 7, 1942 and by early 1945 had excellent
contacts with the top .Schut_.cta/JeI (SS: elite guard) and
Sic?hcrheitschensi (SD: secret service) German officers in
Northern Italy. By April 1945 he became a representative of
SS General Karl Wolff to Allen Dulles and U.S. Gen. Len-
nitzer during the period that the latter two were involved in pri-
vate negotiations to recruit top Nazis before the end of the war.
It has been rumored that Parrilli also had "concocted a plan to
transport ex-Nazis from Germany to Paraguay.(See article
by Peter Dale Scott in this issue.)
In 1949 SMOM published an Official General Roll of the
Grand Magistery with a preface by Pius XII which referred to
"The ancient laurels collected on the battle-fronts" of earlier
wars. As noted above, among only tour recipients of the
Order's Gran Croci al Merito con Placca at the time was
Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's Chief of Intelligence on the Eastern
Front, who received the award November 17, 1948.
A view through the well-fortified courtyard of the Knights
of Malta building on Rome's Via Condotti.
12, R. Harris Smith, OSS, 17u' .Secret IIrttorc n(Ameru'a's First Central Intel-
/i,~rne r A,4a me (Berkeley: tInisersitc of California Pres. 1972). at p. 1 14: and
Bradley F Smith & FIena Agarossi. Operatuni .Sunrise (Nev York: Basic
Books. 1979). And we Peter Dale Scott's article in this issue.
CROCI AL MERITO
23
5
1945
S. E. HAROLD ALEXANDER, Visconte dl Tunlsl
23
5
1945
S. E. MYRON C. TAYLOR
11
11
1948
Brig. Gen. Barone JEAN do MARGUERITTES
17
11
1948
REINHARD GEHLEN
Document shows SMOM's honor bestowed on Hitler's in-
telligence chief Reinhard Gehlen and on U.S. Admiral El-
lery W. Stone.
By this time Reinhard Gehlen's brother had already been in
Route serving as the Secretary to Thun Rubenstein. Conve-
niently for Reinhard, who was negotiating with the U.S.forthe
preservation of his Nazi colleagues, Thun Rubenstein was
Chairman of one of SMOM's grand magistral charities, the In-
stitute for Associated Emigrations, and had arranged fur two
thousand SMOM passports to he printed for political refugees.
Thun Hohenstein was also related to the leading German
Knights of' SMOM, and at it crucial time in an internal SMOM
controversy after the war had received the active support of
Prince Frederic von Hohenzollerii-Signtaringen, Honorary
Chairman of the Silesian Association of the Order, the head
of the Catholic Hohenutllerns, of which several ntcnthers were
Knights of SMOM. The Silesian Knights, led by their Chair-
man Prince von Hartzteld and Graf Henckel von Donnersntark,
maintained it refugee camp at Ulm which in 1951 alone had re-
ceived 134,000 refugees from the Fast.'' Meanwhile, both the
Polish and Hungarian Associations of SMOM had also relo-
cated safely to the West.
In 1950, the American Connuittee for Liberation from Bol-
shevism was created. The trustees included .1. Peter Grace.
Charles Edison, William Henry Chamberlain. If. .1. Heinz II,
Isaac Don Levine, and Eugene Lyons. The Committee (now
known as Radio Liberty), under the guiding hand of the ('IA's
Frank Wisner. funded numerous emigre "research institutes..
which, according to John Loftus, were "little more than front
groups for ex-Nazi intelligence officers."''
13. Sec', Perclitte, up. rit_ n. 2, pp. 172. 173, 1_14
14. John Loftus. 1he Belnrus Semi'!, ed. by Nathan Miller (Nets York. Knopf.
1982), pp. 106-107. 178.
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The February 11, 1985 issue of Spotlight, the weekly of
Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby, featured this photograph of
J. Peter Grace in the Washington, D.C. offices of Liberty
Lobby giving a cordial interview to Spotlight Managing
Editor Vincent J. Ryan.
In 1953 Catholic fanatic Clare Boothe Luce became U.S.
Ambassador to Rome, and was made a Dame of Malta in 1956.
In 1954, with the backing of Cardinal Spellman and the
machinations of General Edward G. Lansdale, the Catholic
Ngo Dinh Diem became Prime Minister of South Vietnam.
Commenting on the events in Hungary in 1956, two Soviet
journalists wrote,
... we spoke with Count Karoly Khuen Hedervary [who]
bears a great responsibility for the crimes the fascists had
committed in Europe [but he] was not tried as a war criminal
after 1945. . . . After Mindzenty's return to Budapest dur-
ing the counter-revolutionary events, Karoly Khuen Heder-
vary took advantage of his being an old friend of the cardinal
to meet Mindzenty several times, during which he received
instructions for the organization [set up by the former fascist
minister of industry Geza Bornemisza]. Hedervary served
also as the liaison man of the organization and the Duke of
Lichtenstein, who came officially to Budapest during the
October events in the capacity of the representative of the In-
ternational Red Cross, but actually as the representative of
the Sovereign Military Order of Malta which had helped ac-
tively in promoting the counter-revolution in Hungary."
By November 1961, President Kennedy' appointed John
McCone as Director of the CIA. In 1963, when it became clear
Diem could no longer stay in power in South Vietnam,
McCone oversaw his regrettably necessary assassination.
McCone is listed as a member of SMOM in the 1980 list."
With McCone heading the CIA and Angleton as his Chief of
15. A. Belokon and V. Tolstikov, The Truth About Hungary (Moscow: For-
eign Languages Publishing House, 1957), pp. 58-61; Mary Bancroft in Auto-
biography of a Spy (New York: Wm. Morrow, 1983), p.260, reports that to-
wards the end of WWII, "A contingent of White Russians, who had been
fighting in the German Army, had recently crossed the Liechtenstein frontier
and had been given asylum."
16. The President's father, Joseph Kennedy, who became a Knight of SMOM
March 13, 1945, had been withdrawn as U.S. Ambassador to London when
his sympathies for the Third Reich became known. See, e.g., Higham, op.
cit., n. 7., at p.181.
Counterintelligence, another Knight of Malta of fascist fame,
Italian General Giovani De Lorenzo, who had been the chief of
the secret service (then known as Sifar) and in 1962 head of the
carabinieri, organized an attempted fascist coup on July 14,
1964 (the Plan Solo) and later became a deputy from the fascist
MSI party."
Six and a half years later, on the night of December 7, 1970
Angleton's Prince Borghese gave the order for Stefano delle
Chiaie to proceed with seizure of the Interior Ministry in Rome
along with 50 fellow neo-Nazis. (See "A Killer's Career," in
this issue; and see "The Fascist Network," in CAIB, Number
22.) This plot to trigger a fascist coup was called off at the last
minute, and Borghese and his neo-Nazi protege delle Chiaie
fled to Spain where former SS Commando Skorzeny among
others was waiting.'
SMOM and P-2
Freemasonry generally purports to be hostile to Catholicism,
and conversely, the Vatican has at various times forbidden
Catholics to join Masonic organizations. Nevertheless, in De-
cember of 1969 an exclusive meeting was held in the Rome of-
fice of Count Umberto Ortolani, the Ambassador of the Order
of Malta to Uruguay, who has been called "the brains" behind
the fascist P-2 Masonic Lodge, which had been established in
the mid-1960s.2? In addition to Ortolani, the meeting included
only Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi, and Michele Sindona."
Gelli had fought for Franco (who was himself a Bailiff
Grand Cross of SMOM) with Mussolini's troops during the
Spanish Civil War. He was a committed fascist during WW II
and at the end of the war was wanted by the partisans for col-
laborating with the Nazis. After the war he developed exten-
sive interests in Latin America where he became close friends
with the Argentinean dictator Juan Peron; he was also the
Grand Master of P-2.22
Calvi had fought on the Eastern front during the war and was
decorated by the Nazis. At the time of the 1969 meeting he was
a senior officer at Banco Ambrosiano.
Sindona had set up business in 1943 with the help of Vito
Genovese, whose Mafia contacts facilitated the American
landing on Sicily. By 1948 Sindona had received a letter of in-
17. McCone, from a senior post at ITT, was later to play a key role in the over-
throw of the Allende government in 1973. At the time of the coup J. Peter
Grace was Chairman of the AIFLD, and a director of First National City Bank
and Kennecott Copper Co., all of which played a role in the fascist coup. (See,
Fred Hirsch and Richard Fletcher, CIA and the Labor Movement (London:
Spokesman Books, 1977), pp. 16, ff.; and NACLA Report "Amazing Grace:
The W. R. Grace Corporation" vol.X, no.3, March 1976.) W. R. Grace Com-
pany senior vice-president Anthony Navarro, who had earlier been involved in
armed fighting against the Castro government in Cuba, was recently nomi-
nated to the Advisory Committee of Radio Marti; the Chairman of the Presi-
dential Advisory Board on Radio Broadcasting to Cuba, Jorge Mas Canosa,
according to the New York Times of Aug.5, 1984, is a Cuban businessman in
Miami, who took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and was a
commentator on Radio Swan, an anti-Castro station that was operated by the
CIA.
18. See, Laurent, op. cit., n. 9; and Christie, op. cit., n. 10.
19. See, Christie, op. cit., n. 10; and Laurent, op. cit., n. 9.
20. Journal de Geneve, November 1 I , 1981.
21 . Larry Gurwin, The Calve Affair (London: Pan Books, 1984), p.15.
22. Celli had chartered the plane which brought Peron hack to Argentina in
1972 and was an honored guest at his inauguration; shortly thereafter Lopez
Rega, Peron's Minister of Social Welfare who ran the Argentine death squads
and who was an astrologer and mystic, joined P-2.
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troduction to Vatican intelligence operative Montini. Accord-
ing to Larry Gurwin's The Calvi Affair,
One of Sindona's first steps in cultivating the Vatican's
money men occurred in the late 1950s when through a
priest, he met Prince Massimo Spada, a Vatican nobleman
and the senior layman at [OR. [Massimo Spada had become
a Knight of Malta on September 21, 1944. IOR. the Istituto
per le Opere di Religione (Institute for Religious Works),
known generally as the Vatican Bank, was created in 1942
by Pius XII. J At the same time he nurtured his friendship
with Giovanni Montini, who had become cardinal-arch-
bishop of Milan in 1954.
In 1959 Montini needed to raise a large sum of money for an
old people's home, and he turned to Sindona for help. Sin-
dona reportedly raised $2 million in a single day. In 1960
Sindona purchased a small Milanese bank called Banca
Privata and, thanks to his Vatican friendships, it soon began
receiving deposits from IOR. Three years later Montini was
elected Pope Paul VI and Sindona's Vatican connections
were unbeatable.""
The Italian journal L'Espresso of June 28, 1981 indicates
that numbers of high ranking members of the Italian military
intelligence organizations were both SMOMs and members of
P-2. The list of dual members included General Santovito, the
former head of SISMI; Admiral Giovanni Torrisi, the head of
the general staff of the Army; and General Giovanni Allavena,
head of the intelligence service (then Sifar, which was later
split into SISDE and SISMI).
The conclusion of the affair is generally known. When, in
1983, the Vatican was finally forced to establish an "indepen-
dent" commission to study the relationship between its IOR
(since 1970-and still-headed by Chicago-born Bishop Paul
Marcinkus) and the P-2/Banco Ambrosiano criminal fascists,
two of the three members selected were Hermann Abs and
Joseph Brennan.
Abs, who features in nearly every book on the Third Reich
and the Nuremberg trials, was Hitler's paymaster, as chairman
23. Gurwin, op. (it., n. 21, pp. H, 12. See also, David A. Yallup, In God's
Name. An Inre.ctigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I (New York: Ban-
tam, 1984).
of the Deutsche Bank from 1940 to 1945, and was a member of
the board of I.G. Farben. He regained the board chairmanships
of both firms after the war, even though in Yugoslavia he had
been convicted of war crimes in absentia. In 1953 he received
the Great Federal Service Cross for his services in restoring
West Germany's financial power; and in 1960 he was deco-
rated by Franco for his "services" to fascist Spain."
The choice of Abs for the Vatican commission of inquiry
was so outrageous that at the urging of Charles Highani, the
Wiesenthal Center issued a special packet of documents clearly
showing Abs's involvement in war crimes and publicly pro-
tested to the Vatican, all to no avail.
Joseph Brennan is the Chairman of the executive committee
of the Emigrant Savings Bank of New York and it Knight of'
Malta.
SMOM, Americares, and Central America
Just as World Medical Relief and Refugec Relief Interna-
tional are fronts for Waffen-SS worshipping editors of Soldier
of Fortune magazine, so too the SMOM advertises itself to
those who believe in the Tooth Fairs as a "charitable" or-
ganization greatly concerned for the suffering of the poor and
sick around the world.
The New York Tint's of August 13, 1985 reported that the
Nicaraguan Freedom Fund (NFF), one of mane front groups
for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, channel-
led $350,000 to the Americares Foundation in Connccticut.
Clare Boothe Luce, a Dame of SMOM, is on the Board of'
Moon's Washington Times, and is a director of the NFF with
fellow SMOM, William Simon. .1. Peter Grace is the Chairman
of the six member Advisory Board of Anicricares, which in-
cludes fellow Knight William Simon along vvith former ('IA
Director George Bush's brother, Prescott Bush, It.
Americares' published "Fact Sheet'' recites as specific pro-
jects:
Medical Shipments to 1,./ Salvador. Since November 1983
AMERICARES has shipped almost 700,000 pounds of
medicines and supplies valued at over $8,000,000 in I5 sea
shipments with local distribution heing handled through the
Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta (SMOM ).
Guatemala: In response to a request for aid from the Order
of the Knights of Malta, IO sea shipments of medical
supplies worth over $4,000,000 have been sent to the people
of Guatemala since January 1984.
Honduras: Since August 1984, three sea shipments of high
priority medical supplies worth over $1,000,000 were sent
to the people of Honduras in response to a request fir aid
from the Order of the Knights of Malta. . . .
Brazil, October 198-1: A shipment of lain ins worth
$156,075 were sent to Brazil, again in response to a request
from the Order of the Knights of Malta (SMOM) vyho sent
as our consignees in Central and South America.
The "Fact Sheet'' also discusses an "offshoot" of' Ameri-
cares called "Doctors To All Peoples" said to he ''dedicated
to the eradication of leprosy in the Americas." Leprosy is the
most publicized international "charity project" of SMOM.
24. Yallup, op. tit., n. 23, p. 323: National Council of the National front of
Democratic Germany, Brown Book: War and Nu=i Criniinsd,c in it'est (iennarn
(Berlin: Documentation Center of the State Archives Administration of the
German Democratic Republic, n.d. Ic. 1966). p 39.
25. See also, Washington Post. May 9, 1955, p. 34.
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The Washington Post of December 27, 1984 reported as fol-
lows:
A private humanitarian organization called the Americares
Foundation, working with the Order of the Knights of
Malta, has channeled more than $14 million in donated med-
ical aid to El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala over the
last two years. . . .
[P]art of $680,000 in aid to Honduras went to Miskito In-
dians linked to U.S. backed rebels fighting the leftist gov-
ernment in Nicaragua, according to a Knights of Malta offi-
cial in Honduras.
Much of the $3.4 million in Americares' medical aid to
Guatemala has been distributed through the armed forces as
part of its resettlement program of "model villages" aimed
at defeating leftist insurgents, said the official, Guatemalan
businessman Roberto Alejos.
Alejos, co-chairman of the Knights of Malta in Honduras
[said], . . . the Guatemalan army delivers Americares
medicine to people in model villages, which are along the
Mexican border.
Alejos, a major sugar and coffee grower, lent his Guatema-
Ian estates to the Central Intelligence Agency in 1960 to
train Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The "Other" Orders of the Knights of Malta
Not only are there many existing orders of chivalry
today, generally under the aegis of a reigning monarch or
ruling house, but there are also rival organizations each
claiming to be the rightful heirs to the same order. Nowhere
is this more true than with the Knights of Malta.
According to the Catholic Herald of August 23, 1985,
there are more than twenty organizations claiming to be the
"real" Knights of Malta. On September 9, 1985, evidently
in response to growing interest in the question, the Wall
Street Journal ran a cover story, "Looking for a Title or
Hot Controversy? See Knights of Malta. The Problem Is
Which Ones; Catholic Order Maintains Rival Groups are
Bogus." (The New York Sunday News had described the
rivalry as early as June 15, 1975.)
The legitimacy battle is often intense and steeped in the
presentation of increasingly obscure documentation. Ar-
naud Chaffanjon and Bertrand Galimard Flavigny's Ordres
et Contre-Ordres de Chevalerie (Paris: Mercure de France,
1982), is one of the more useful references.
Some of the rival "Orders of Malta," all with slightly
different names, in fact claim important and extremely
rightwing members. We believe that the Catholic, Rome-
based Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) remains
the most important, with the endorsement of the Vatican
and most of the Catholic ruling houses of Europe, and mem-
bers like those discussed in the text of this article. The
British (and generally, though not exclusively Protestant)
Venerable Order, discussed in the text, is affiliated with a
number of European, Protestant Orders, such as the Johan-
niterorden, sometimes known as the Bailiwick of Branden-
berg.
Two of the "Orders of Malta" which have received par-
ticular attention recently are what may be called the
"Shickshinny" Order and the "von Brancovan" Order.
The Shickshinny Order, officially called "The Sovereign
Order of Saint John of Jerusalem," has been headed by Col.
Thourot Pichel in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, although a
few years ago the Order was torn by serious internal rifts
between Pichel and the late Frank Capell, Contributing
Editor of the John Birch Society's Review of' the Nears.
(See, Rev. Anthony Cekada, Light on the OSJ, from the
Oyster Bay, New York The Roman Catholic, December
1981, for an article critical of the Order and discussing
some of its recent history.) It traces its legitimacy from a
dispute during the time the Order spent in Russia under Czar
Paul after it fled Malta. This Order achieved some notoriety
a few years ago when it officially recognized the claims of
controversial defector Michael Goleniewski to be Aleksei
Romanoff, heir to the Russian Imperial House of
Romanoff.
The case would be less interesting if James Angleton
were not one of the principal supporters of Goleneiwski
and some extremely rightwing members of the military in-
telligence community were not listed as members in a docu-
ment issued by the Order in 1970. The Order listed as mem-
hers of its Military Affairs Committee, under the Chairman-
ship of Gen. Lemuel C. Shepherd, Maj. Gen. Charles A.
Willoughby, Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, and Gen. Pedro A.
del Valle (who according to Stuart Christie's Stone Belle
Chiaie, Portrait of a Black Terrorist (London: Anarchy
Magazine, 1984), p. 6, invited Italian neo-Nazi Guido
Giannettini to the U.S. to conduct a seminar at the U.S.
Naval Academy at Annapolis, where del Valle was Com-
mander. Foster & Epstein's Danger on the Right (New
York: Random House, 1964), p.79; and Janson & Eis-
mann's The Far Right (New York: McGraw Hill, 1963),
p.154, both call del Valle an anti-Semite.)
The Honorary Grand Admiral of the Order is listed as
Admiral Sir Barry Domvile who had been jailed by the
British during WW II as a Nazi agent, and was listed as a
Contributing Editor of Willis Carto's Western Destiny,
November 1965, when Roger Pearson was the Editor. The
Associate Chief of International Intelligence listed was Her-
man E. Kimsey, a high-ranking CIA operative, now de-
ceased, who had worked with the Army CIC during the
war.
The von Brancovan Order, led by someone who calls
himself Prince Robert Bassaraba von Brancovan and several
other names as well, including Prince Khimchiachvili, is of-
ficially titled "The Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order
of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta Ecumenical.''
It is the order which apparently claims Frank Sinatra as a
member. It also claims to include Princes Arnaldo and
Basilio Petrucci. It appears to have a connection to Umberto
Stafanizzi who, with Francesco Pazienza, signed the incor-
poration papers for something else called the "Sovereign
Order of Saint John, Knights of Malta, Inc.," which was
incorporated in New York State, June 22, 1983. 0
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Asked why the Knights of Malta turned to Americares rather
than to established aid groups, such as the Red Cross, Grace
said, "The Knights have been doing this for 900 years. They
have their own cross [the Maltese cross]. . . . They'd con-
sider themselves way beyond the Red Cross." .. .
IA]t least one pro-government group, the Air Commando
Association of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., claims to have used
Knights of Malta warehouses in El Salvador. Retired general
H. C. Aderholt,head of the 1,500-member group, [said] that
the commandos delivered food and medicine to the Knights'
facilities and that together they ''get good support from the
Salvadoran air force commander."
Aderholt said the association has distributed to El Salvador
$4.5 million in food and medicine provided by the Christian
Broadcasting Network and World Medical Relief. He said
liberals in Congress have tried to "tie to some sinister plan
ssith the CIA" Isic], which he said is incorrect.
While the Post story does mention that CIA Director Wil-
liam Casey is a SMOM, it fails to point out that Aderholt is the
"Unconventional Operations" Contributing Editor of Soldier
o/ Fortune' and was a member of the "Singlauh panel" of the
Pentagon, set up to devise new counterinsurgency strategies in
the developing countries. Russ Bellant, in the Detroit Metro
Times of October 9, 1985, says Aderholt claimed that Pat
SMOM, Grace,
and Obando y Bravo
On August I , 1985 the New York Times reported that
during a visit to New York in May, Archbishop Miguel
Ohando Bravo of Nicaragua said that he is actively di-
recting efforts by his diocese to prevent the government
lion) imposing a communist system in Nicaragua. The
Archbishop said efforts included "dividing his diocese
into old and new units, including parishes, districts and
smaller groups, for leadership and religious training.'
He claimed the training lie established in Managua was
for "pastoral cadres, not military cadres. . . ... Follow-
ing a meeting with Archbishop Ohando, executives at
W. R. Grace arranged for the Sarita Kenedy East Foun-
dation to contribute copies of the Bible, rosary heads and
other supplies to aid the church effort, a company execu-
tive said. The foundation is headed by J. Peter Grace.
Whatever the real purpose of the "leadership train-
ing" and "pastoral cadres," it apparently seemed like
such a splendid idea to the Knights that a June 21 , 1985
press release from the Erlich-Manes & Associates News
Service of Bethesda, Maryland stated that the Southern
Association of SMOM had sent a $5.5 million shipment
of -40 massive containers" to he loaded on the ship
"Freedom" to he sent to Maputo, Mozambique.
"Roughly half of the shipment will go to aid agricultural
development in northern Mozambique; and half will he
distributed directly to the poor through the Archbishop of
Maputo's Catholic Charities." Eugene I. Kane, a Knight
and head of the trucking company Intermodal, Inc. or-
ganized the project. Official documents of SMOM list
such "charitable" projects in many countries throughout
the world. ?
Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network had given the
Knights of Malta $2 million for operations in Central America.
Conclusion
For many years progressive groups in the U.S. and else-
where have been engaged in extensive research into so-called
''secular" state and private organizations such as the CIA.
NSC, the military, private corporations, and foundations.
This article highlights the operative importance of uienthers
of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. which unlike tradi-
tional corporate, governmental. and foundation entities. has
not yet adequately conic under the scrutiny of progressive re-
searchers. Curiously, European researchers hale all but ig-
nored the Orders of Chivalry in analyzing the structural role of
their own aristocracy in organizing support for international
reaction and fascist terror.
Research into the current role of SMOM and its individual
members is just beginning. The most serious problem is the
dearth 'of documents available, due to the e\trenrc seerec\ of
the organization. Except for a less scattered references in vari
ous hooks, magazines, and nessspapers, and a less ronran-
ticiied stories about ancient glories of the Order, the necessary
amount of materials has not yet surfaced, and this account rep-
resents only a starting point for further research.
In the U.S., forexanrple. although the 198(1 nrenihership list
was published (Nutionul Cutholi( Reporter. Oetoher 14.
1983), since then the Order in the U.S. has gross n and been di
vided into an Eastern, Southern (based in DV,). and Western
Association. The published 1980 list comprises plinr;uily
members in the Northeast. Although sonic others are knoss n.
complete and current lists of n)enthers in other regions is ohs i
ously crucial. Lists for other countries would also he helpful.
C,IB in its Winter 1983 issue. .. fife ('IA and Religion...
and Spring 1985 issue, "Disconnecting the Bulgarian ('ounce
tion," began to explore the operational role of specific religi
ors, or non-secular, organizations such as Opus I)ei ' and the
26. Interested leaders should also role to the arUCles is Marlin I CC (111 the
SMOM which appeared in the Aammul ('utholG Krport, r of October Il.
1983 (the issue which included the complete 1950 1' S nienihership list), and
Mather Jonws of luty 1953. (These two articles lorlnel I the basis 101 the relct
ences to SNION1 in Gordon I h011las and Al;A Morg;m As its lilt t ii ''( fit
rrwgcdrlun (London: Granada Publishing I td. 1954) )
An interesting discussion of sonic post -AV'W 11 SMOA1 piston based ;wound
an account of the 1949-53 attempts by Vatican-centered R11-'1111111 Ill IL'Itt III fill'
sovercigni\ of the Order is Kmr h1.c u/ Multi by the "III sers:uive I ,mill ;u1111(1r
Roger Peyretitle originally published by I'Iamntarion in 19.57, and uansl;ued
into English and published in Ness York hs ('riiesion Books in I9~9
King and Luke's The l(ni,gh1% olSt. Jahn ire ill( British N
15. The Oilier Heni, PP 223-224.
Frank Chervasi (correspondent for Collier',,; magazine):
One cold morning on December 3, Greek policemen.
who for four years imposed "law and order" for their
German bosses, armed with machineguns and grenades,
poured into it disturbed Athens. . . . The police had or-
ders to disperse the demonstration, which was going to be
held by members and supporters of LAM. . . . They as-
sembled with great order in Constitution Square. . . . It
was evident that this demonstration was an appeal to
America to support the aim of EAM, that is a democratic
government, cleansing of the country by legal means, of
the fascists . . . and the Nazi collaborators. . . . Sud-
denly at 10:45 shooting was heard. . . . A group of
policemen was firing on the unarmed crowd . . . ten men
and women rolled down dead and another fifteen lay
wounded. The police fired on the wounded. Mr. Poulos,
it brave American reporter, hands raised, rushed between
the police and the crowds, asking for the shooting to stop.
To no avail. . . . This is how the civil war started.'
Buford Jones (British officer; eyewitness):
During the next quarter of an hour I watched the demon-
strators arrive into the square. . . . I was standing in front
of the coffeehouse of "Giannakis," which is on the
ground floor of the building occupied by the Police Di-
rectorate. The head of the demonstration had reached the
3 . Anti mami/ine (Athens). No. 60, December I I, 1976, p. 33.
street in front of the Palace when my attention was at-
tracted by the shouting of a group of police officers. who
leaned over the second floor balconies . . . directly above
the coffeehouse. I was surprised to notice that the officers
were holding guns at the ready to fire. . . . The demon-
stration did not present any threat. . . . My attention was
once more attracted to the balcony by a connnanding
shout, that sounded more like an order in Greck. At that
moment the head of the procession was about 10(1 feet
away. Mr. Barber of the United Press explained to inc
later that the shout that was heard was an order to
fire. . . . What happened then was so unbelievable. . . .
The police emptied their guns of bullets upon the denion-
strators . . . amen, women, and children . . . fell on the
pavement, blood spurting out of their heads and
bodies. . . .
Those of the spectators who found ourselves in the firing
line expected any moment that LAM would reply with
guns. On the roof of the Central Offices of the KKI'.
(Communist Party of Greece) that was situated at the
square there were machineguns that could have strafed
the entire neighborhood with gusts of gunfire. F.AM hokk-
ever limited itself only to curses and threats. I do not
think there were armed demonstrators. The rage of the
crowds was such that if they were armed, civil war would
have burst out that very moment.' ?
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Concentration Camps
To accommodate and systematize all this cruelty the English
and their Greek "employees" built a series of concentration
camps all over Greece. The "flagships" of this network were
Yaros and Makronesos, both uninhabited islands. (See map
and photos.)
Yaros and Makronesos were the Dachau and Auschwitz of
Greece. The fact that there were no crematoria on them was
compensated for by the non-stop and "innovative" torture.
(Men were thrown into the cold sea in burlap sacks with cats;
the reaction of the animals drowning could cause the men to
Andartes march through the fog.
46 CovertAction
loose their minds.) The cruelty was inexhaustible; tens of
thousands of people passed through these prisons. The build-
ings at Yaros are a rare example of English architecture in
Greece; the prison was designed by Englishmen.
All this cataclysm is rendered in Gage's Eleni as follows:
"For everyone who had aligned himself with ELAS, it was a
time of fear and flight. There were rumors of night raids and
brutal reprisals in the larger towns to the south.""'
It was those "rumors," which had been happening since
1918, that brought the andartes to Eleni's village in-1 947!
16. F_leni, p. 219.
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The Execution of Eleni
However, there is one more question to be answered. Why
did the andartes execute Eleni'?
To this date, the only systematic answer to that question is
the hook The Other Eleni, by Vasilis Kavathas, a Greek inves-
tigative reporter." He interviewed the same people that Gage
had. But he did not pretend to be a leftist when he talked to
people on the left, or to terrorize interviewees with an ill-con-
cealed gun, as Gage had.
Here are some of his findings and the answer to the question
why Eleni was tried and executed.
People from Eleni's village and other people who had
known her did not agree with Gage that his mother was an
angel. Some of their remarks: "She behaved in a provoking
way: she was a snob.""She was killed because they [the an-
dartes] had a score to settle with her.""' "I tell you. she had an
antagonistic spirit.'
Kavathas asked Gastis, a former andartes judge, point
blank: "Why did they execute her'?" He replied, "She was an
informer for the enemy. The information she was giving was
accurate. They pinpointed us and then bombed us-without
missing their targets by a hand's width. Because of this infor-
mation hundreds of freedom fighters perished. This is the
truth. What he [Gage] writes about the sacrifice of his mother,
etc., are fairy tales. There is only one fact: The mother of Gat-
zoyiannis was informing on a struggle, she was betraying
fighters. . . . She wrote notes and took them to a field where
she pretended to do farm work . . . she put them under a stone
17. Op. cit., n. 8. Vasilis Kavathas writes tor the Athens daily Ta Nea, and for
Tachvdromos magazine. He is also the author of several other hooks.
18. The Other Eleni, p. 159.
19. Ibid., p. 187.
20. Ibid., p. 194.
Andartes and villagers transport military materiel airdrop-
ped by the British. When victory over Nazis was imminent,
the British turned on the Andartes.
. . . she took trips . . . she was an informer . . . many people
paid with their lives for her actions. ""
The man Zeltw. "The only thing I have to say is that he
[Gage] is a scoundrel. And a liar.""
Christos Sdravos, accused by Gage of killing prisoners:
"These arc stupidities, ties. . . . All of them the prisoners]
are alive today. I invoke their testimony."'
21. Ibid., pp. 275-276.
22. Ibid.. p. 313.
23. Ibid., p. 319.
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Finally, the famous Katis, Gage's obsession, the man he
searched for to kill, in fact a judge named Lykas, tells
Kavathas, trembling with rage: "Lies.... Ah the cuckold
Gage . . . the scoundrel . . . the bastard. . . . He is a public
enemy." Lykas denies categorically and with indignation that
he was even the presiding judge at Eleni's trial. At the time he
was away at Vitsi. He says that the judge who tried Eleni was
Yiorgos Anagnostakis, now dead.21
Gage says he tried to interview Anagnostakis. He writes:
"Before my search was over I would encounter several coinci-
dences. . . . The first one happened on a February afternoon
when I arrived outside the modern apartment building where
the former judge Anagnostakis lived, to see a black, glass-en-
closed 1950s Cadillac hearse parked at the door. I asked an old
man outside the entrance . . . if the lawyer Yiorgos Anagnos-
takis lived inside. . . . `His body is inside, yes,' he replied,
`but his soul has flown.' On the day I went looking for him, the
judge Anagnostakis had died of a heart attack.""
Kavathas interviewed Yiannis Anagnostakis, son of Yiorgos
the judge. The above description by Gage is characterized by
Yiannis as fiction. He declares that his father died in a hospital
and his body was carried directly to the mortuary of the cemet-
ery where he was buried." Why Gage made up the hearse story
is beyond comprehension.
A similar situation involved Yiorgos Kalianesis, a Major
General of the andartes army. For Gage, Kalianesis is a small-
eyed, heavy-jowled man who reminds him "of an aging gang-
land enforcer . . . [who] eagerly launched into a recitation of
his military triumphs . . . and was delighted to relive his past
glory for an interested stranger.""
24. thid., pp. 328, 336.
25. Eleni, p. 29.
26. The Other Fleni, pp. 349-350.
27. Eleni. pp. 32-33.
Aris Velouhiotis (real name Thanasis Klaras) was a his-
torical personality of major importance, though his his-
tory has been suppressed for more than four decades, not
only by the right, but also by much of the Greek left, as a
result of inter-party conflicts. The photo above shows his
head on display after his death. Gage refers extensively
to Aris in Eleni, and lies about his actions and the cir-
cumstances of his death in order to slander the Com-
munist Party. One of the persons who knew Aris and
tried, unsuccessfully, to inform the American people
about him and his importance, was a former OSS officer,
Costa G. Couvaras, who reported to the OSS on the
political and military situation in occupied Greece. He
suffered persecution by the FBI and the CIA after his re-
turn to the U.S. and wrote about what had really hap-
pened in Greece.
Ms Velouhiotis
Chief of Andartes Aris Velouhiotis (Thanassis Claris), with
his brother Babis Claris, and some of his 70,000 partisans
during the resistance against the German occupation.
48 CovertAction
OSS officer Costas Couvaras and Aris.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
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Kavathas also interviewed Kalianesis, whom he described as
very modest, and though he had "written pages of glory for the
Democratic Army," he did not say a word about those battles.
Kalianesis described Eleni as "an unprecedented compilation
of lies. Written by an individual who aims at creating
trouble. . . . He has me saying that Lykas is here and lives at
Napoleon Zervas Street, etc. The least I can accuse hint [Gage]
of is corruption."Why Gage made up the story of Lykas's
whereabouts is a mystery.
Kavathas believes that "some people" in it Citroen tried to
kill him while he was working on The Other Elerti. He insists
that only luck saved him from certain death.
Kavathas's 400-page hook closes with an amazing revela-
tion. A Greek-Australian journalist, Panos Georgiou, the same
age as Gage, has been researching for years the death of his
mother, an andartina executed by the extreme rightist friends
of Eleni. Georgiou is determined to write a hook about this.
Conclusion
In Eleni Gage explains his philosophy: ''Nikola also realized
at an early age that he would' have to compensate for lack of
brawn with shrewdness, and he vowed to become as wily as his
grandfather.'' But this admirable confession is belied by
Gage's decision to pass off his fiction as investigative jour-
nalism. He boasts that in the past his reporting was always
"too well documented" for anyone to challenge it."' Even if
28. The Other h:leni, pp. 257-259.
29. li/eni, p. 335-
30. Ibid., p. 19.
This is the result of the application of a 38-page "Instruc-
tion Manual" published and distributed in 1947 by the
leadership of the Greek national police. It states: "Three
servicemen are to approach the slain brigands [i.e., the an-
dartes] . . . . The corpses should be searched
thoroughly.... Subsequently they should be decapitated
and the heads should he placed in sacks and should be
transported to the local deputy commands to be displayed
for public viewing." From Dominique Eudes, Oi
Kapetanioi (Athens: Exantas, 1970), p. 354. In 1947
Greece was a training ground for the newly created ('IA;
Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Nicaraguan contras were to
come much later.
Kavathas Interview With Gage
In May 1976, seven years before the publication of Eleni,
Vasilis Kavathas interviewed Nicholas Gage for his news-
paper, Ta Nea. Excerpts from the interview, and Kavathas's
commentary, reprinted in The Other Eleni (pp. 80-81), fol-
low:
"I Have Sources in the CIA and the Mafia"
"I was horn at the village of Lia. . . . I left for America
in 1949, when I was nine years old. There, at 13, I wrote
something [sic[. And my teacher sent it to a competition. I
got the first prize. . . .
''Then the New York Times invited me to work. There I
changed my surname . . . it did not fit in the column. How-
ever, I did not change. I am referred to as Gatzoyiannis on
all official documents, on my identity card, on my
passport. . . . " I touch on it controversial subject (after all,
that is why the interview was done): "How is it you have
dealings with the people of the underworld and the CIA'?''
"In the beginning, they came to me because they had
confidence in my work [sic]. I explained to them how I
worked and what I was interested to know. Of course I al-
ways doublechecked what I heard.(!) When I had put out
some strong pieces, more people came to nee. In a five year
stretch I had the best sources in New York. I ant in a posi-
tion to know what is going on every nionient in the
megalopolis. Later on I managed to have source, in other
cities of the United State,. And out of the U.S.''
"Do you have transactions with the CIA'.'..
"No, but I know its power. . . . ..
Our conversation, a revealing one event, have drown,
took place at an unsuspecting time and in a transitory period
in the career of Gatzoyiannis, who, it turned out, did not
like the title, ''I Have Sources in the ('IA and the Mafia.
Those words, that gave the gist of the interview according
to my paper, annoyed Nicholas Gage serv much. He re-
membered them years later---when I approached hint fur an
interview for Turhvrhromm0.c niaga/ine. ''When I was told
that you were looking to talk to nte.'' he told me, ''I
thought not to give you an interview. You had used a title
that was irrelevant, that did me harm.' I explained to hint
that titles were the decisions of im paper, but that it came
Out of what lie had been saying. He said. ''I am a serious
journalist. At my paper I decide what title I scant.'' But
when I lived in America and Canada. Gage was known as
the reporter of the CIA and the Mafia. That is boss I knew
him and that is why I interviewed hini. ?
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WACL Convention
(Continued from page 56)
World Anti-Communist League, which was founded by "those
governments" at a conference in Taiwan in 1967, expanding
the Asian regional predecessor, which had been created after
the Korean War and the Chinese Revolution.
WACL's agenda today is not limited to the Nicaraguan con-
tras. The WACL annual conference in Dallas in September
1985, was an orgy of public relations pizzazz and backroom
fundraising for at least six armed insurgencies-Afghanistan,
Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Southeast Asia, as well as
Nicaragua. The theme of the conference was "Counter-Offen-
sive for World Freedom." Some 400 delegates and observers
from every continent discussed how to support anti-communist
revolts and develop an activist agenda.
The notion of "freedom fighters" as an organizing principle
is largely the handiwork of publicist and former Rand Corpora-
tion consultant, Jack Wheeler.' Wheeler was responsible for a
conclave of four such groups in June in Jamba, Angola on be-
half of Citizens for America (CFA), a grassroots network
headed by New York politician and entrepreneur Lew
Lehrman. CFA's stated purpose is to promote the Reagan leg-
islative program, especially with respect to Central America.
I WALL. CON
fl ie R I E563 "" D , L.
Wheeler's activist approach compliments Singlaub's efforts
to promote a new WACL image, that of being not only anti-
communist, but anti-totalitarian and "pro-freedom" as well.
Last year, Singlaub was compelled to purge much of the Latin
American affiliate after columnist Jack Anderson disclosed its
control by a group of Mexican World War II era Nazi sym-
pathizers called Los Tecos. Its members were linked to death
squad training in Argentina, Guatemala, and Honduras. Re-
searchers observed that although Los Tecos was expelled,
much of the rest of this network was merely reshuffled into the
new regional organization.' Historically, WACL been an inter-
national network of fascists, anti-Semites, and political ex-
tremists, but this has not deterred Ronald Reagan from close
association and endorsement. In 1982, for example, the White
House debated sending a greeting to the WACL meeting in
Tokyo, and whether, because of WACL's closeness to
Taiwan, China would be offended. Reagan sent the message.
He also sent warm greetings to the Dallas conference, eliciting
a standing ovation as Singlaub read his note, praising "the
mechanism of peaceful change through popular pressure exer-
cised under conditions of human rights." The irony of this was
not lost on most of the journalists. (See sidebar on some partic-
ipants.)
Vietnamization Without Vietnam
The administration's policy of low-intensity warfare has
generated a struggle between Congress's constitutional powers
to declare war and direct how the taxpayers' monies shall he
spent, and the President's power to conduct foreign policy. A
U.S. Army official in Honduras quoted recently in the
Washington Times said: "We are learning that our appropriate
role is in the kind of low-intensity warfare going on in this re-
gion," he said. "We know that what it does not involve is big
formations slogging through the countryside shooting their
way through peasant villages. We've learned that almost the
fewer U.S. personnel the better."`
The Reagan model appears to be Vietnamization, Nixon's
attempt to replace U.S. troops with U.S.-trained Vietnamese.
Indeed, the New York Times reported" that the Reagan adminis-
tration's reason for backing the contras is to avoid having to
send American troops to Nicaragua.
Congress, reflecting both American public opinion and its
own anger at CIA excesses in Nicaragua, formally cut off
"covert" U.S. backing for the contras. However, covert oper-
ations merely took another form, as a crafty White House
sought ways around the laws. The Times article broke the news
that a military officer assigned to the National Security Council
was directing the contras from the White House. Colonel
Oliver North, a deputy to National Security Adviser Robert
("Bud") McFarlane, "facilitated the supplying of logistical
help. "
Col. North was hardly a newcomer to the job. As the Wall
Street Journal had revealed-, North, a Marine officer with ex-
tensive paramilitary experience, served on the NSC staff in
1982 and had been a member of an elite "inter-agency group"
that coordinated the war against Nicaragua. Other members in-
cluded U.S. Army General Paul Gorman (later replaced by
3. See, Fred Clarkson, "'Privatizing' the War," in CA/B Number 22; and see
also, "Who Are the Contras?" Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus Re-
port, available from the Arms Control and Foreign Policy Caucus, 501 House
Annex 2, Washington, DC 20515, and, The Resource Center, "New Right
Humanitarians," a 10-page directory available from The Resource Center,
Box 4506, Albuquerque, NM 87196 ($2.00).
50 CovertAction
4. WACL has a long history of such controversies, much of which has been
detailed by Joe Conason and Murray Waas in the Village Voice (October 22,
1985).
5. Washington Times, October 14, 1985.
6. August 27, 1985.
7. March 5, 1985.
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Navy Vice Admiral Arthur Moreau), Assistant Secretary of
State Thomas Enders (later replaced by Langhorne Motley),
and Duane ("Dewey") Clarridge, then covert operations head
of the CIA's Latin American Division and now assigned to op-
erations in Europe. When North proposed to McFarlane and
Reagan the orchestration of private aid, it made sense that he
he assigned to carry it out and Singlaub be designated the front
man in the effort. Singlaub has acknowledged that he checks in
with North from time to time.
Foreign Affairs and Public Relations
Both Congress and the public have been blatantly manipu-
lated by the administration and the CIA. Some details were re-
vealed by former contra leader Edgar Chamorro, who had been
a director of the Nicaraguan Democratic Front (FDN). He
wrote: "The CIA men didn't have much respect for Congress.
They said we could change how Representatives voted as long
as we knew how to 'sell' our case, and place them in a position
of looking soft on communism. They suggested members
whom we should lobby and gave us the names of big shots we
should contact in their home districts."'
Chamorro also said the CIA paid, through the FDN front
group, the Human Development Foundation, for the advertise-
ments in American newspapers in July 1984 seeking funds for
"the victims of communist-dominated Nicaragua." The CIA
and the FDN created the Nicaraguan Development Council as
another fundraising arm, with a sub-group called the Nicara-
guan Refugee Fund. It was on behalf of this Fund that Presi-
dent Reagan spoke at an April 1985 fundraising dinner in
Washington attended by about 700 wealthy rightwingers. An
investigation by the Associated Press revealed that only a tiny
fraction of the 5200,000 raised ever reached Central America.
The rest went for expenses related to the dinner, or disap-
peared."
The August 1985 issue of Freedom Fighter, a newsletter of
rightwing political strategist Paul Weyrich's Free Congress
Foundation, was surprisingly open: ''Tax-deductible donations
may be made to the FDN through the Nicaraguan Development
Council. . . . ..
The Role of CMA
After the funding cutoff, the contras had a difficult time
with logistics, supply lines, and ongoing training..''' Civilian
Military Assistance (CMA), based in Decatur, Alabama, has
been of great help. It has grown from about 40 members and
supporters to over 5,000, according to head Tom Posey, who
thanks the media for all the publicity after two CMA members
were killed in an operation in Nicaragua. (See "Front Phoenix
Associates to Civilian Military Assistance," in CA/13 Number
22.)
CMA's efforts to "help the freedom fighters" have become
multinational. A group of armed mercenaries from the U.S.,
France, and the U.K., were exposed as CMA members follow-
ing their arrest in April 1985 by Costa Rican authorities. One
American volunteer in the group, Steven Carr, helped train
Brigade 2506 members (CIA-trained Cuban exile veterans of
the Bay of Pigs invasion) to set up perimeter defenses and stage
raids in Nicaragua. He also claimed he procured 50-caliber
machine guns, M-16 rifles, and a 20 mm cannon in Miami.
S. The New Republic . August 5, 1985.
9. Associated Press, September 2, 1985. The event raised 5219,525; astonish-
ingly. expenses, according to an internal audit, were $218,376
10. New York Times, August 27, 1985.
Number 25 (Winter 1986)
According to an investigative report by Jacqueline Sharkey,''
Carr said CMA got "lethal equipment'' trot Toni Posey. ('air
was first introduced to the Bay of Pigs veterans by Bruce
Jones, later exposed in Li/c magazine as a ('IA operative.
Another American arrested in Costa Rica was Peter Glih-
bery, who said Posey arranged his trip. He identified the ('IA
liaison there as John Hull, an expatriate American landos tier
and Bruce Jones's partner in it citrus nursery. According to
Sharkey, Hull told Glibhery that he gels S 10,000 a month Iron)
the National Security Council to finance contra operations in
Costa Rica and southern Nicaragua. The NS(' denies this.
Although Jones and Hull both deny any ('IA connection,
Jones was expelled from Costa Rica after the Li/c story ap-
peared. He currently lives in Tucson. Arizona and works with
Singlaub raising funds for the contras and organizing a Tucson
chapter of the U.S. Council for World Freedom (the WA('I, al'-
filiate for the United States).
Singlaub has said that he is doing through the "private sec-
tor" what Congress prohibited the government from doing
Now, I'll admit that the good many years I've served in the
CIA . . . give me a feel probably of what they were doing,
which probably makes me more efficient,'' he told Sharkey.
His efficiency is not limited to the orchestration of small
wars. He was active in domestic operations, as the Education
Field Director for the non-governmental American Security
Council (on whose hoard Reagan served before his election).
and as a member of the advisory board of Western Goals, it
1 I. Jacqueline Sharkey. "Disturbing the Peace." in ('omnn+Cau.ce, October
1985, available from Common Cause, 2030 M Street, NW, Washington, DC
20036.
12.Life magazine. February 1985.
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rightwing private intelligence agency in Alexandria, Virginia.
(A Spring 1984 Western Goals report had a cover story prais-
ing Salvadoran rightist Roberto D'Aubuisson.)
Deeper Background
Over the past few years the private aid issue has become a
matter of public debate. Does private aid, if it is in fact private,
break the law? And if so, which law? Can supposedly private
entities wage their own wars, and carry out their own foreign
policies?
Such questions need to be understood in a historical context.
This activity has been the policy of successive administrations
for many years. The best example of ongoing financing of sec-
ret wars by "private" groups is the 30-year history of World
Medical Relief (WMR) of Detroit, Michigan." During the past
30 years, WMR has provided over $100 million in supplies to
CIA-directed counter-insurgency programs in Asia and Latin
America, according to Russ Bellant.'? The WMR supply lines
go back to the 1950s when the CIA's Dr. Tom Dooley operated
medical clinics in Laos while gathering intelligence and pro-
viding cover for Special Forces medics posing as civilian doc-
tors.
Dooley died in 1961, but his operations were continued and
expanded by the Air Commando Wing, the Air force counter-
part to the Green Berets, headed by Harry C. Aderholt.
13. See, CAIB Number 18 (Winter 1983) and Number 22 (Fall 1984).
14. Russ Bellant, The Politics of Giving," Metro Times (Detroit), October 9,
1985. Available from the Detroit Metro Times, 800 David Whitney Bldg., De-
troit, MI 48226.
Aderholt extended WMR's operations as suppliers of CIA pro-
grams in Latin America and of the CIA's army of Hmong
tribesmen in Laos and Montagnards in Vietnam. WMR ship-
ping reports from 1984 show that since 1982 it has supplied the
camps inside Thailand used by the insurgents fighting the gov-
ernment of Kampuchea.
The group representing the Son Sann faction of the anti-
Kampuchean coalition attended the WACL conference in Dal-
las, openly seeking outside training and support in "intelli-
gence" and "demolition." Moreover, the government of
Taiwan paid the travel and conference expenses of Edward En-
tero Chey, the "Secretary General" of the Khmer chapter of
WACL.
WMR's current focus is Central America. Bellant notes that
in January 1984, the Air Commando Association (retired vet-
erans of Aderholt's old unit) received $20 million in supplies
from WMR, for use in support of official counter-insurgency
programs in strategic areas of El Salvador and Guatemala.
WMR has supplied the Tom Dooley Foundation in New
York-headed by former Dooley associate Verne Chaney-
with $300,000 worth of surgical supplies. The Foundation aids
the contras through Friends of the Americas, and directly to
the FDN. Chaney plays an active role in the work.
Orwellian Terms of Debate
It is clear that the use of private groups by military and intel-
ligence agencies is nothing new. What is new is that the re-
lationship is referred to as the providing of "humanitarian
aid." Though Congress appropriated the money for
A WACL Rogues' Gallery
The World Anti-Communist League, having adopted the
cause of "freedom fighters" around the world, includes
many members whose own political activities and philoso-
phies belie the very idea of freedom or democracy. Despite
the new WACL "pro-freedom" image displayed in Dallas,
WACL remains rife with Nazis, racists, and death squad
leaders. Among the delegates at the convention were:
Mario Sandoval Alarcon, whose National Liberation
Movement (NLM) party organized the White Hand death
squads in Guatemala in the 1960s. The NLM was reportedly
responsible for the murders of eight to ten thousand civil-
ians in 1966 and 1967. According to investigative reporter
Craig Pyes, Sandoval introduced El Salvador's neo-fascist
leader Roberto D'Aubuisson to his WACL contacts in
Argentina. They later arranged for Argentinean operatives
to visit El Salvador to help set up safe houses from which
death squad operations were carried out.' D'Aubuisson,
who was recently forced out as head of the ARENA party,
has announced he will head a political institute in San Sal-
vador affiliated with WACL.2
Dr. Yaroslav Stetsko, a member of the WACL Execu-
tive Board, was a prominent Nazi collaborator who briefly
headed a puppet government in the Ukraine. Joe Conason,
Murray Waas, and Kevin Coogan reported in the Village
Voice on other Nazis in attendance, including Chirila
Ciuntu of Canada, a member of the Rumanian Iron Guard,
notorious for its pogroms against the Jews in the early
1940s, and Ivan Kosiak, a member of the wartime pro-
Nazi Byelorussian Central Council.'
Dr. Manuel Frutos, also a member of the WACL Exec-
utive Board, chaired the 1979 WACL conference in
Paraguay, said to have been the "most Nazified" of all
their annual meetings, at which former Nazi SS officers and
wanted neo-fascists from Italy were present.
Benito Guanes, former chief of Paraguayan military in-
telligence, which supplied passports to the Chilean agents
who came to the U.S. to assassinate Orlando Letelier.
John K. Singlaub, leader of the CIA's "counter terror
program" in Vietnam in 1965, according to Anthony Her-
bert's book, Soldier.' This operation, the Intelligence Coor-
dination and Exploitation Program later known as the
Phoenix Program-ran assassination teams which killed
thousands of Vietnamese civilians. In 1978, Singlaub was
forced to resign his command of U.S. troops in Korea for
insubordination after repeated public attacks on President
1. The New Republic, September 30, 1985.
2. Washington Post, October 1, 1985.
52 CovertAction
3. Village Voice, October 22, 1985.
4. Anthony Herbert, Soldier (New York: Holt, Reinhart, 1972).
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"humanitarian assistance" to the contras, no formal definition
of the term was established, and FDN leader Adolfo Calero ad-
mitted to the New York Times that the $27 million voted by the
Congress "will free other money for weapons."" In addition
to food, clothing, and medical supplies, what the FDN wants
are helicopters, small airplanes, trucks, boats, and outboard
motors, all of which have clear military implications. As CAIB
went to press, Congress appeared to be capitulating; it was au-
thorizing the use of the U.S. funds for "transportation equip-
ment . . . so long as no modifications are made . . . designed
to be used to inflict severe bodily harm or death."
The abuse of so-called humanitarian aid has become clear in
the refugee camps. An investigation by Vicki Kemper in
Sojourners magazine charges mistreatment and political ma-
nipulation of refugees by the contras. It also alleges diversion of
funds and supplies from the refugees to the contras, notably by
the Christian Broadcasting Network(CBN) of Pentecostal tele-
vision preacher Pat Robertson and by Friends of the Americas,
headed by Louisiana state legislator Woody Jenkins. One
former Christian relief worker says that the Nicaraguan border
relief programs are intended to aid the contras: "Everything
they do is justified as long as they're fighting the 'com-
munists.' They are a bunch of thugs down there. Steadman
Fagoth la Miskito contra leader] is a thug. He has killed inno-
cent people. The contras are constantly terrorizing the refugee
camps, forcibly recruiting people.""
Sojourners documented close working relationships bet" cen
CBN. Friends of the Americas, the Air Commando Associa-
tion, and others in laundering money and materiel in Hon-
duras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. All these groups, in turn,
work closely with another major channel of aid, the Anieri-
cares Foundation and its distribution network run by the
Knights of Malta. (See the article on SMOM in this issue.)
Tom Posey of Civilian Military Assistance says that CMA
works with World Medical Relief and other groups, sometimes
as a supplier, sometimes as a transporter. depending on the
need. At the conference in Dallas, he said he is trying to work
out an arrangement with Americares to ship to Central America
50,000 pounds of supplies CMA has stored in Las Vegas.
CMA is it member of WACL and provided the "security''
team in Dallas and at the Soldier of Fortune conference two
weeks later in Las Vegas.
The degree of coordination among all the groups is east,
though the degree to which it is coordinated by the U.S. gov-
ernment is just beginning to he unraveled. History and recent
revelations suggest that supplying the contras, and the contra-
controlled refugee camps is neither private nor humanitarian,
and is not unique to Nicaragua. Indeed, the same distribution
network operates throughout Central America, and in mane
parts of the world, where U.S.-hacked ''freedom fighters''
wage war. ?
IS. Neu York7imes. August 13. 1955.
I(, Vicki Kemper, "Contras, Retugee,, and Private Aid: Who Benetits. Who
Carter's Korea policy. Sin'-daub announced in Dallas that in
honor of the twelfth anniversary of the "military overthrow
of the Allende re,,*ime in Chile" and the ninety-eighth an-
niversary of the "Paraguayan Republic," congratulations
would he sent to General Pinochet and the head of the ruling
Paraguayan Colorado Party.
Takeshi Furuta, representative of the International Fed-
eration for Victory Over Communism, the original political
organization of the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun
Myung Moon. Moon asserts that democracy must be re-
placed with "unificationism" in order to strengthen the
West for the final assault on communism. Moon also
blames the Jews firr the death of Christ and explains the suf-
fering of the Jews in history, including the Nazi holocaust,
as "indemnity'' for this "collective sin." William Starr, a
Moonie from "Tucson, Arizona represented Moons CAUSA
as an observer. (Osami Kuboki, it longtime member of the
WACL Executive Board, was not present in Dallas; he
heads the Japanese WACL chapter, which is dominated by
the Unification Church, whose Japanese branch he also
leads.)
Hubert Kelly of the Christian Patriots Defense League
(CPDL) was present as an official observer. According to
an Anti-Defamation League report,` "racism and anti-
Semitism are an integral part of the CPDL ministry." The
group's official statement of purpose, signed by president
John Harrell, says CPDL is "dedicated to the preservation
of Anglo-Saxon. American-type culture. . . . We believe
the forced mixing of races of people is a self-evident, obvi-
5. Anti-Defamation League of B"nat B pith, ''Extremism on the Right-
( 1983),
Sutlers?' in Soiouers, October 1955, anailahle from Sojournerti Book Sep
vice, Box 29272, Washington, t)C 201)17 ($2.00)
John K. Singlaub at WALL conference.
ous, proven tragedy. We believe such firrced integration re-
sults in racial suicide, creating an endangered species prob-
lem. . .... CPDL runs several paramilitary training camps
in the U.S. ?
('overtAction 53
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SECRET
CONTENDERS
The Myth of Cold War
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directorates of the KGB and the GRU.
Detailed index; photographs, 192pp.
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believe it should he."
-Col. Anthony B. Herbert, author of Soldier.
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Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines, McGehee
proves that the CIA is the covert action arm of the
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Correction:
l
S
In my article, "The Covert War Against Native Amer-
icans" (CAIB Number 24), a pair of misstatements ap-
pear. Although the correct information also appears in
the same issue, it seems appropriate to clarify matters.
On page 17 1 indicate that research by Candy Hamil-
ton shows that "at least 342 AIM members and suppor-
ters were killed" on Pine Ridge Reservation between
1973 and 1976. This is incorrect; the sentence should
have indicated, as I note on page 26, that this was the
number of AIM people known to have been shot. Of
these 350-odd casualties, approximately 70 are known to
have been killed outright or to have died later of their
wounds.
This correction does not affect the comparison of the
violent political death rate occurring on Pine Ridge dur-
ing the three years in question to those of Uruguay, El
Salvador, and Chile. The murder rate was actually calcu-
lated using the lower figure.
Secondly, on page 20 1 say that FBI agent David Price
was involved in the assassinations of Mark Clark and
Fred Hampton in Chicago prior to going to South
Dakota, and that he later moved on to Detroit to conduct
repression operations against the Republic of New Af-
rika. This is also incorrect. As I note on page 27, Price
may have been involved in the Clark/Hampton murders,
under the alias of Daniel Groth. Price currently resides in
Rochester, Minnesota where his primary activity seems
to be trying to sue author Peter Matthiessen for having
told the truth about Price's Pine Ridge activities in his
1983 book, In the Spirit of Cra:v Horse (Viking Press).
As I also point out on page 27, the FBI agent defi-
nitely known to have been involved not only in the Pine
Ridge repression but also in that occurring in Chicago
and Detroit, is Richard Held. (This high FBI officer,
Richard G. Held, now retired, is the father of Richard
W. Held, the former agent in charge of the Puerto Rico
office, who coordinated the massive raids there in Au-
gust and September of 1985 against independence sup-
porters. The son now heads the San Francisco office. At
the time of the Puerto Rico arrests, the FBI disingenu-
ously let it be known that "Richard Held," speaking
about their officer in San Juan, never served in Chicago,
suggesting that articles such as that in CAIB were in
error.)
I apologize for any confusion my last-minute rush may
have engendered in readers, and I hope this correction
sets the record straight.
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Back Issues: No. 1 (July 1978): Agee on CIA, Cuban exile trial: consumer
re'earch in Jamaica. (Pho(ocopy oTl1% )
No. 2 (Oct. 1978): 11mm CIA recruits diploniats, researching undercover of-
ft-ors: double agent in ('I,V
No. 3 (,Ian. 1979): CIA attacks Bulletin: Secret Supp. R to Arnty Field Man-
ual: spying on host countries.
No. 4 (Apr.-N1a 1979): t S. spies in Italian service,: CIA in Spain: CIA re-
cruitinC for Africa: subser,i\c academics: Angola.
No. 5 (July-Aug. 1979): U.S. intelligence in Southeast Asia: CIA in Den-
mark. Sweden. Grenada. (Photocopy only.)
No. 6 (Oct. 1979): (' S in Carihhean: Cuban exile terrorists: CIA plans for
Nicaragua: ('IA's secret "Perspectives for Intelligence. ' (Photocopy only.)
No. 7 (Dec. 1979-Jan. 1980): Media destahiliiation in Jamaica. Robert Moss:
('I:A budge(: media Operation,, I'N) FA: Iran,
No. 8 )Mar.-Apr. 1980): .Attack, on Agec: U.S. intelligence legislation:
( :-Ill? statcment to Congress: /inhahwe, Northern Ireland.
No. 9 (JUne 198(1): NSA in Novas: Glontar Explorer: mind control: notes on
NSA
No. 10 (Aug.-Sept. 1980): Caribbean: destahiliiation in Jamaica: Guy-
ana: Grenada honhing: "The Spike" : deep cover manual.
No. II (Dec. 1980): Rightvinp terrorism: South Koica, KCIA, Portugal:
(iuv, n,i. (,i ihhean, AFIO: NSA intcn icnr.
No. 12 (Apr. 1981): (' S. III BI SAvador and Guatcmada. nest right: William
Cries: ('IA's Moiaunhiquc spy ring: mail surveillance.
No. 13 (July-Aug. 1981): South Africa documents: Namibia "solution": mer-
cen:uics and gunrunning: the Kl:ut: Globe Aero::Angol,r. Moiamhique: BOSS:
Ccnual America: Max Ilueel: maul suncill:nce
No. 14-15 (Oct. 1981): Complete index to nos Ireview of intelligence
legislation: CAM plans: extended Naming Nantes
No. 16 (Mar. 1982): Grecn Beret torture in I:I Salvador: Argentine death
squads. CIA media operations. Sevchclles: Angola: Moiamhiyue: Klan in
Cai ihhean: Nugan Hand. (Photocopy only.)
No. 17 (Sumpter 1982): Historc of CBW': current CBW pLms: Cuhan dengue
epidemic: Scott Barnes ,ltd yclloss rain fahricauions: oysters death in
Bangkok
r
l
Note Re Overseas Airmail: The quoted figures are hrr: 1)
Central America and the Carihhean: 2) South America and
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Number 25 (Winter 1986)
No. 18 (Winter 1983): CIA and religion. 'secret' tv;u in Nir.uagua: Opus
Dci: the Miskitu ease: c\angelicul` in Guatcntela: Sumpter Insuunc of I incurs
tics: \\orld Medical Relict: CIA ;end BOSS: torture in Somh ,Vrica; icurun
defoliation. (Photocopy only I
No. 19 (Spring-Sumpter 1983): ('IA arid Iltc nreuli;r. hislon of disintonmr
Lion: "plot against the Pope: Grenada airport, fie rr_'ic Anne ( icier
No. 24) (Winter 1984): Invasion ofGren;tda: war in Nic;u;igu;r. I I Iltia,li r.i:
Israel and South Korea in Central : Aniciica. KAI Might 00-
No. 21 (Spring 1984):,Vc,r)mAlimC, on Ill Salvaloeelection: manipulation
Ill Tiny' and VC? y,eCt'4::\ccurucy in Media: Nic irrgua update
No. 22 (Fall 1984): Mcrcenatics and tcrmrisn:AoL/err of l ~~rrrmr: ''jr s iii
ing'' the war: Nicaragua update: U.S.-South Africa terrorism: Italian frig ists
No. 23 (Spring 1985): Special issue on "plot" to kill the Pope and the "Bul-
garian Connection": CIA ties to Turkish and Italian neotaseists.
No. 24 (Summer 1985): State repression and use of infiltrators and pro-
vocateurs; infiltration of sanctuary movement: attacks against American Indian
Movement: Leonard Peltier: NASSCO strike: Arnaud de Borchgravc and Rey
Moon: Robert Moss: Tetra Tech.
No. 25 (Win(er 1986): U.S., Naiis, and the Vatican, Naiis in the tS and
Latin America: the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the Greek civil Isar and
Nicholas Gages Fleni: 55 ACI, and Nicarrgu,r: torture.
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Behind the Supply Lines
By Fred Clarkson *
The military supply lines fueling the war against the govern-
ment of Nicaragua extend from that country to the White
House. The contra army, directed by the CIA, now also re-
ceives direction, supplies, and cash from White House desig-
nees. Even though Congress initially ordered a funding cutoff
and a prohibition against CIA orchestration of the war, there is
considerable evidence that the CIA and other government
agencies have violated the law.
The "private aid" network of rightwing groups, TV
preachers, retired military and intelligence personnel, and the
like, has been organized into an elaborate public relations and
lobbying effort which packages and presents the notion of the
"freedom fighter" for domestic and international consump-
tion.
At the center of this growing army of ideological vigilantes
is the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), spearheaded
by retired Army Major General John K. Singlaub. WACL, an
18-year-old coalition of conservative and fascist groups and
political parties from some 100 countries is often referred to as
"the fascist international." Singlaub claims WACL has raised
between $20-30 million dollars in cash and "non-lethal"
supplies for the contras.
Although the revitalization of CIA covert operations came as
a matter of course with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980,
* Fred Clarkson. a frequent contributor to CAIB, is a free-lance journalist
based in Washington, DC. He has written extensively on Rev. Sun Myung
Moon's enterprises, on mercenaries, and on the extreme Right.
the work of a special Pentagon panel from April 1983 to Oc-
tober 1984 appears to be the critical point from which the cur-
rent policy of "low-intensity warfare" on many fronts was for-
malized. Chaired by Singlaub, the panel assembled experts in
special operations, including the eminence grise of dirty tricks,
retired General Edward G. Lansdale. The panel also included
Harry C. ("Heinie") Aderholt of the Air Commando Associa-
tion and New Right activist Andy Messing of the private Na-
tional Defense Council.' In mid-1984 the contra aid funding
cutoff led to the extraordinary development of "private" fund-
ing, supply, and to some degree, direction, of the contras.
White House officials picked Singlaub as the chief fundrais-
er for the contras, advising him how to structure the campaign
within the confines of the Neutrality Act and other laws that
bar U.S. citizens from supporting foreign wars. Further, Presi-
dent Reagan reportedly approved "the secret plan to replace
CIA funds with assistance from American citizens and U.S. al-
lies." The key countries providing aid are South Korea,
Taiwan, and Israel, which agreed to sell captured PLO
weapons. Aid from Taiwan and South Korea "came from pri-
vate businessmen and an anti-communist organization with
close ties to those governments.'' That organization is the
(Continued on page 50)
1. See, The Nation, November 2, 1985, for a discussion of Aderholt and Mes-
sing; and see, Walt Bogdanich, Christopher Jensen. and Joe Frolik, "The CIA
Ties of World Medical Relief," from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, November
24, 1982, reprinted in CAIB Number 18 (Winter 1983).
2. Robert Parry, Associated Press report, October 8, 1985.
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