The Prince and the Nazis
Index | Homepage | Good Links | Bad Links | Search | Guestbook
Bilderberg | Reports | Origins | Bernhard | Anti-Jewish?
There have been some very interesting revelations in the Project's follow-up of research data. Due to the efforts of contributing researcher Mr. Eric Brothers U.S. State Department Protocol documents are now available to confirm one of this investigation's long-standing curiosities - the visit of members of the Dutch Royal Family to Chatham, Cape Cod during the very same time-frame in which the German Type XI-B U-Boat was known to have been operational off Cape Cod.
These documents consist of a series of notifications between the representatives of the Dutch Royal Family in exile and the Protocol Section of the Department of State. On the surface they do indeed appear to be routine in nature. It is only when viewed with the other known occurrences off Cape Cod at this time that these Protocol records seem to indicate more than just routine procedure.
For example: One of the most obvious details that stand out is the sudden departure from Chatham of Princess Juliana and her royal attendants on the morning of the 26th. of August, 1944, only hours after the known destruction of the Type XI fourteen miles to the southeast. This, combined with a published news report in the local Cape Cod Times for that date, quote the Princess as opening a short public statement upon her departure, stating: "I will not talk about anything political and cannot take questions". She goes on to say how the Royal Family enjoyed their stay at the Chatham Bars Inn, etc.
Within five minutes the impromptu interview is over and the Royal Family departs by car for Boston enroute to Canada. The fact that these State Department Protocol documents were only declassified at the time Mr. Brothers requested to view them in July of 1997 is possibly indicative - fifty four years after the fact.
To add to this new information Trident had conducted background research into the Dutch Royal Family due to its suspicions and has confirmed the following:
1) The Royal Consort, Prince Bernhardt, Husband of Juliana since 1937, was previous to their marriage an active card-carrying member of Hitler's black-shirted SS.
2) Prince Consort Bernhardt was employed prior to, during, and after the war by I.G.Farben's Industrial Espionage Unit "NW-7" which, needless to say, placed him under great suspicions by both the British and American intelligence communities. The mere fact of his employment as an "industrial spy" for Farben places him squarely within the sphere of the German Industrial community, links for which have already been established with the Type XI-B U-Boat.
There are many more details regarding the Dutch Royal Family, Prince Bernhardt, Princess Juliana and the German Industrialists which have not been included in this specific brief due to space considerations. However, the basic facts as listed above give very strong indications regarding the Dutch Royal visit to Cape Cod at this specific time in July and August of 1944. Suffice it to say that there is the very strong possibility that Prince Consort Bernhardt, through his wife Princess Juliana, may very well have been acting as a sort of liaison or facilitator in connections for Armistice Negotiations between German Industrialists and certain members of the American Department of State and Intelligence Community. The final proof for this is as yet not confirmed, but the stage is certainly set for such endeavors. Perhaps the amplified documentation for such a situation is contained within the hull of the Type XI off Cape Cod.
Used with permission - from http://www.subsearecovery.com/ca35/
©1998 Trident Research & Recovery Inc. - Sub Sea Recovery Inc.
[this article] All Rights Reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, downloading or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers of: The CA-35 website.
The Prince and the Nazis
The Bilderberg/NATO/Nazi links continue
In order to finish his education quickly Bernhard had to make some compromises with the monstrous political system that was fastening its grip on Germany. The story that the Prince of the Netherlands once wore the black uniform of Hitler’s SS is quite true. It came about in this way.
Only eleven days after his father’s death, on June 30, 1934, Hitler’s first purge, known as ‘The Night of the Long Knives,’ shocked Germany and the world. On that pleasant summer evening Ernst Rohm, who had been Hitler’s friend and ally from the beginning, and other leaders of the brown-shirted SA (Storm Troopers), the private army which had brought Hitler to power and who were now challenging his will, were taken in their beds and their offices, in beer-halls and on railway trains or in the streets, and shot without even a drumhead court-martial. They were an evil and degenerate crew who lived by violence and appropriately died by it, but the capricious manner of their liquidation proved that justice in Germany had been replaced by the will of a tyrant.
Nor were they the only victims. General Kurt von Schleicher, who had opposed Hitler politically, was shot in the doorway of his home, and when his wife protested too much she was murdered too. All sorts of private grudges were satisfied in the slaughter which was said at the Nuremberg trials to have taken over a thousand lives. It lasted for thirty-six hours.
From that moment no man or woman in the land was safe from the terror, especially not those who wielded power, least of all Hitler himself. The SA was disbanded and replaced by Heinrich Himmler’s black-uniformed SS (Schutzstaffel), and the Gestapo (Secret State Police). They quickly set about tightening the screws of the police state.
At the beginning of his serious studies Bernhard learned that a new sort of test had been decreed for every one graduating from the universities - a written and oral ‘political attitude” examination. With his ideals and high temper he knew that was one examination he could not pass.
However, there was a way round it. Members of the various Nazi paramilitary organizations were ipso facto considered “politically reliable.” Bernhard had joined the League for Air Sports because he wanted to learn to fly. It had been started by the Nazi Party as a sub-rosa method of training war pilots, but it had virtually no political implications. Its leaders were the old World War I airmen like Ernst Udet, who were not Nazis and cared only about teaching young people to fly.
So Bernhard was all set until he went larking around the sky with a wild young friend who flew their plane into a lake. They swam ashore, but the plane had ceased to exist.
When they got back to the base their commander was furious. “He was right, of course,” says Bernhard, “and we were wrong. Even though I was not at the controls, I knew I was out. So while the commandant was screaming at my friend I said, “ I resign too.” It was just a question of who could get the words out first.”
His ignominious ejection from Air Sports left Bernhard in a very vulnerable position. He belonged to no organization and had no uniform or badge to wear. He knew that the law examinations were made doubly difficult for uncommitted people, and that even if he passed them the political attitude test would eliminate him. So he looked around for a harmless cover. He found it by the grace of the son of the man who owned Bernhard’s favourite Berlin pub.
Young Walter Wunderlich was an idealistic Nazi: there were many such young men who truly believed in the noble aspirations of the party as voiced, but not practised, by Hitler and his lieutenants. Wunderlich was head of the Berlin unit of the Motor SS, which was made up of young men who had their own cars. They put on their uniforms and met once a week for what almost amounted to a sportscar rally. Bernhard and five or six friends in the same boat as he, including the Langenheim brothers from Morocco, went to Wunderlich.
Bernhard knew that a man had to serve in the SS for a year and a half before he was admitted to membership; until then he was on probation. Speaking for all of them, he said, “Look, Walter, you know exactly how we think and what we are. But we need some sort of protection. Will you take us into your motor unit until we finish our studies? Then out we go.”
Is that how you want it?” Walter asked.
“Yes,” said Bernhard. “You know just why we are doing this. Under no circumstances does any of us want to become and SS man by quicker promotion or whatsoever. We’ll come in our motorcars, and we’ll all drive together till we graduate. Then out. That is the understanding.”
Though Walter was a dedicated Nazi, he was a loyal friend ready to stick his neck out to help. “I’ll take you,” he said.
They were issued overcoats, and went to the best tailor in Berlin to have their uniforms specially made. “I must say we looked smart in them,” Bernhard says. “The extent of my services included the weekly rallies and standing guard occasionally, because if you did that you could have a free garage. We had a lot of fun and no trouble.”
At the end of their studies Bernhard’s whole group, with one exception, left the SS and severed all connection with the party. This fellow appeared later in Holland and took advantage of Bernhard’s trusting nature to commit an act of treachery.
By the time Bernhard had graduated he was completely determined to get out of Germany. Von Hindenburg was dead. The last vestige of constitutionalism had disappeared as the office of President of the German Republic was abolished and Hitler named himself Fuhrer. He was now more powerful than any German Emperor had ever been, and more obsessed by lust of conquest than old Frederick Barbarossa.
The Nazi movement had gathered such momentum that Bernhard could see no hope of stopping it short of bloody catastrophe. This is not to say that he foresaw the future clearly in all its Wagnerian tragedy. He did not. But neither did he believe for a moment that the Third Reich would last a thousand years, or fifty for that matter. Even if it did he could not conceive of living in a land of government by terror. And despite the military tradition of his family and h is own creed of loyalty, he had not the conscience to become, as conscription would soon compel him to, part of a military machine dedicated to conquest.
Had he been older and his character more hardened by adversity he might have considered remaining to oppose the regime, hopeless as opposition seemed. Even so, open dissent was impossible, and he had neither the talent nor the taste for conspiracy. In addition, the only organized underground resistance was the Communist Party, which was equally distasteful to him.The only solution was self-exile.
Bernhard did not burn all his bridges immediately. As a first step he got a job in the Paris office of I.G.Farben, the great German chemical combine. Though his training had been in law, he was fascinated by industry and finance, and thought that his talents lay in this direction. Which proved to be the case.
In Paris Bernhard threw all his energy into his new career. He says that he wanted to prove that it was not nepotism that got him the job. But the truth is that by now he was so geared to high-pressure work that he could not have done otherwise. Also, the more he learned about business the more interested he became.
Though his working hours were from 8 am to 7 pm he was among the first to reach the office in the morning and the last to leave at night. In addition he took a course in shorthand and typing in the evening or during his lunch-hour, munching a sandwich while he worked. “They were mad for garlic in that school,” he says. “I have never smelt anything like it. I started eating it in self-defence and learned to like it very much. I still do, though my family is not quite in agreement with me.”
I.G.Farben’s Paris manager, Dr Passarge, soon recognized Bernhard as executive material and sent him on a training course through the various departments. In the sales department he really found his metier. He negotiated several barter deals with French Indo-China - rice for chemicals - and took part in various other selling campaigns. It gave him a chance to use all his talents - financial acuteness, ability to think fast, persuasiveness, and that God-given charm of which he was completely aware. He did so well that Dr Passarge said, “If you don’t do something stupid you’ll be a manager by the time you’re thirty.” A little later he got the same promise in writing.
In Paris Bernhard lived in the luxurious house of his uncle and aunt by marriage, Count and Countess Paul de Kotzebue. The Countess was an American, Allene Tew, whose first husband had been Anson Wood Berther, an executive of General Electric from whom she inherited a fine old-fashioned American fortune. Countess Kotzebue doted on Bernhard, Princess Armgard says, “She spoiled him terribly. All her cars were his to drive. She never refused him anything he asked. His wish was literally her command. The Kotzebues had no children, and she regarded him as a son.”
Bernhard, who always returned affection in full measure, was completely devoted to “Aunt Allene,” and equally willing to gratify her wishes. Count Kotzebue says that many years later, when the Countess was dying at Nice, Bernhard drove all the way from Soestdijk to see her once more. “Though my wife seemed to be unconscious,” he said, “she recognized his horn in the courtyard and said, ‘That’s my Bernilo come to see me.’ ”
It is not to be supposed that the life of a bachelor prince in Paris was a social blank. No matter how hard Bernhard worked he always had energy left for fun. He was invited to a great many parties and went to most of them. He was a great favourite in the embassies, with one exception. “Soon after I began working for I.G.Farben [see note below],” he says, “ the German Ambassador sent a man to ask me if I would join the organization of Germans living abroad. It was, of course, a party organization, so I said, ‘No’. They gave me no further trouble, but I was never invited to the German Embassy.”
However, the Belgian Ambassador, Count van Kerckhoven, was especially friendly. He had been Ambassador to Berlin when Bernhard was a student there and had been “awfully nice” to him. Their friendship continued in Paris. Though Bernhard had only an hour off at noon, the Ambassador often invited him for lunch and arranged things so that the meal was served the moment he arrived and protocol dispensed with, so that he could eat and run back to his job.
At one of these luncheons late in 1935 Bernhard found himself seated next do Dr Loudon, the Dutch Minister to Portugal, whom he also knew quite well. The conversation turned to the Winter Olympics at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where Bernhard planned to go during his winter holidays. Dr Loudon told him that Queen Wilhelmina and her daughter, Princess Juliana, also planned to go to the Olympics. “They will be staying at Igls, just over the mountain,” he said. “Perhaps you would like to call Her Majesty’s aide-de-camp and arrange to pay them a courtesy visit.”
“Thank you, I believe I will,” Bernhard said. “It might be amusing.”
Preceding extract from:
A celebration was held at the Petersburg Hotel in 1937 with top Nazis and the IG Farben board and friends to celebrate 'Nazification'.
During World War Two IG Farben paid the SS 3 marks a day for unskilled concentration camp workers and 4 marks a day for skilled. For child labour they paid the SS 1.5 marks a day.
We have demonstrated with documentary evidence a number of critical associations between Wall Street international bankers and the rise of Hitler and Nazism in Germany.
First: that Wall Street financed the German cartels in the mid-1920s which in turn proceeded to bring Hitler to power.
Second: that the financing for Hitler and his S.S. street thugs came in part from affiliates or subsidiaries of U.S. firms, including Henry Ford in 1922, payments by I.G. Farben and General Electric in 1933, followed by the Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T. subsidiary payments to Heinrich Himmler up to 1944.
Third: that U.S. multi-nationals under the control of Wall Street profited handsomely from Hitler's military construction program in the 1930s and at least until 1942.
Fourth: that these same international bankers used political influence in the U.S. to cover up their wartime collaboration and to do this infiltrated the U.S. Control Commission for Germany.
Our evidence for these four major assertions can be summarised as follows:
In Chapter One we presented evidence that the Dawes and Young plans for German reparations were formulated by Wall Streeters, temporarily wearing the hats of statesmen, and these loans generated a rain of profits for these international bankers. Owen Young of General Electric, Hjalmar Schacht, A. Voegler, and others intimately connected with Hitler's accession to power had earlier been the negotiators for the U.S. and German sides, respectively. Three Wall Street houses - Dillon, Read; Harris, Forbes; and, National City Company - handled three-quarters of the reparations loans used to create the German cartel system, including the dominant I.G. Farben and Vereinigte Stahlwerke, which together produced 95 per cent of the explosives for the Nazi side in World War II.
The central role of I.G. Farben in Hitler's coup d'etat was reviewed in Chapter Two. The directors of American I.G. (Farben) were identified as prominent American businessmen: Walter Teagle, a close Roosevelt associate and backer and an NRA administrator; banker Paul Warburg (his brother Max Warburg was on the board of I.G. Farben in Germany); and Edsel Ford. Farben contributed 400,000 RM directly to Schacht and Hess for use in the crucial 1933 elections and Farben was subsequently in the forefront of military development in Nazi Germany.
A donation of 60,000 RM was made to Hitler by German General Electric (A.E.G.), which had four directors and a 25-30 percent interest held by the U.S. General Electric parent company. This role was described in Chapter Three, and we found that Gerard Swope, an originator of Roosevelt's New Deal (its National Recovery Administration segment), together with Owen Young of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Clark Minor of International General Electric, were the dominant Wall Streeters in A.E.G. and most significant single influence.
We also found no evidence to indict the German electrical firm Siemens, which was not under Wall Street control. In contrast, there is documentary evidence that both A.E.G. and Osram, the other units of the German electrical industry - both of which had U.S. participation and control - did finance Hitler. In fact, almost all directors of German General Electric were Hitler backers, either directly through A.E.G. or indirectly through other German firms. G.E. rounded out its Hitler support by technical co-operation with Krupp, aimed at restricting U.S. development of tungsten carbide, which worked to the detriment of the U.S. in World War II. We concluded that A.E.G. plants in Germany managed, by a yet unknown manoeuvre, to avoid bombing by the Allies.
An examination of the role of Standard Oil of New Jersey (which was and is controlled by the Rockefeller interests) was undertaken in Chapter Four. Standard Oil apparently did not finance Hitler's accession to power in 1933 (that part of the "myth of Sidney Warburg" is not proven). On the other hand, payments were made up to 1944 by Standard Oil of New Jersey, to develop synthetic gasoline for war purposes on behalf of the Nazis and, through its wholly owned subsidiary, to Heinrich Himmler's S.S. Circle of Friends for political purposes. Standard Oil's role was technical aid to Nazi development of synthetic rubber and gasoline through a U.S. research company under the management control of Standard Oil. The Ethyl Gasoline Company, jointly owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey and General Motors, was instrumental in supplying vital ethyl lead to Nazi Germany - over the written protests of the U.S. War Department - with the clear knowledge that the ethyl lead was for Nazi military purposes.
In Chapter Five we demonstrated that International Telephone and Telegraph Company, one of the more notorious multi-nationals, worked both sides of World War II through Baron Kurt von Schröder, of the Schroder banking group. I.T.T. also held a 28-percent interest in FockeWolfe aircraft, which manufactured excellent German fighter planes. We also found that Texaco (Texas Oil Company) was involved in Nazi endeavours through German attorney Westrick, but dropped its chairman of the board Rieber when these endeavours were publicised.
Henry Ford was an early (1922) Hitler backer and Edsel Ford continued the family tradition in 1942 by encouraging French Ford to profit from arming the German Wehrmacht. Subsequently, these Ford-produced vehicles were used against American soldiers as they landed in France in 1944. For his early recognition of, and timely assistance to, the Nazis, Henry Ford received a Nazi medal in 1938. The records of French Ford suggest Ford Motor received kid glove treatment from the Nazis after 1940.
The provable threads of Hitler financing are drawn together in Chapter Seven and answer with precise names and figures the question, who financed Adolf Hitler? This chapter indicts Wall Street and, incidentally, no one else of consequence in the United States except the Ford family. The Ford family is not normally associated with Wall Street but is certainly a part of the "power elite."
In earlier chapters we cited several Roosevelt associates, including Teagle of Standard Oil, the Warburg family, and Gerard Swope. In Chapter Eight the role of Putze Hanfstaengl, another Roosevelt friend and a participant in the Reichstag fire, is traced. The composition of the Nazi inner circle during World War II, and the financial contributions of Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T. subsidiaries, are traced in Chapter Nine. Documentary proof of these monetary contributions is presented. Kurt von Schroder is identified as the key intermediary in this S.S. "slush fund."
Finally, in Chapter Ten we reviewed a book suppressed in 1934 and the "myth of 'Sidney Warburg.'" The suppressed book accused the Rockefellers, the Warburgs, and the major oil companies of financing Hitler. While the name "Sidney Warburg" was no doubt an invention, the extraordinary fact remains that the argument in the suppressed "Sidney Warburg" Book is remains that the argument in the suppressed "Sidney Warburg" book is remarkably close to the evidence presented now. It also remains a puzzle why James Paul Warburg, fifteen years later, would want to attempt, in a rather transparently slipshod manner, to refute the contents of the "Warburg" book, a book he claims not to have seen. It is perhaps even more of a puzzle why Warburg would choose Nazi von Papen's Memoirs as the vehicle to present his refutation.
Finally, in Chapter Eleven we examined the roles of the Morgan and Chase Banks in World War II, specifically their collaboration with the Nazis in France while a major war was raging.
In other works, as in our two previous examinations of the links between New York international bankers and major historical events, we find a provable pattern of subsidy and political manipulation.
Looking at the broad array of facts presented in the three volumes of the Wall Street series, we find persistent recurrence of the same names: Own Young, Gerard Swope, Hjalmar Schacht, Bernard Baruch, etc.; the same international banks: J.P. Morgan, Guaranty Trust, Chase Bank; and the same location in New York: usually 120 Broadway.
This group of international bakers backed the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequently profited from the establishment of a Soviet Russia. This group backed Roosevelt and profited from New Deal socialism. This group also backed Hitler and certainly profited from German armament in the 1930s. When Big Business should have been running its business operations at Ford Motor, Standard of New Jersey and so on, we find it actively and deeply involved in political upheavals, war, and revolutions in three major countries.
The version of history presented here is that the financial elite knowingly and with premeditation assisted the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in concert with German bankers. After profiting handsomely from the German hyper-inflationary distress of 1923, and planning to place the German reparations burden onto the backs of American investors, Wall Street found it had brought about the 1929 financial crisis.
Two men were then backed as leaders for major Western countries: Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States and Adolf Hitler in Germany. The Roosevelt New Deal and Hitler's Four Year Plan had great similarities. The Roosevelt and Hitler plans were plans for fascist take-overs of their respective countries. While Roosevelt's NRA failed, due to then-operating constitutional constraints, Hitler's Plan succeeded.
Why did the Wall Street elite, the international bakers, want Roosevelt and Hitler in power? This is an aspect we have not explored. According to the "myth of 'Sidney Warburg,'" Wall Street wanted a policy of revenge; that is, it wanted war in Europe between France and Germany. We know even from Establishment history that both Hitler and Roosevelt acted out policies leading to war.
The link-ups between persons and events in this three-book series would require another book. But a single example will perhaps indicate the remarkable concentration of power within a relatively few organisations, and the use of this power.
On May 1st, 1918, when the Bolsheviks controlled only a small fraction of Russia (and were to come near to losing even that fraction in the summer of 1918), the American League to Aid and Co-operate with Russia was organised in Washington, D.C. to support the Bolsheviks. This was not a "Hands off Russia" type of committee formed by the Communist Party U.S.A. or its allies. It was a committee created by Wall Street with George P. Whalen of Vacuum Oil Company as Treasurer and Coffin and Oudin of General Electric, along with Thompson of the Federal Reserve System, Willard of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and assorted socialists.
When we look at the rise of Hitler and Nazism we find Vacuum Oil and General Electric well represented. Ambassador Dodd in Germany was struck by the monetary and technical contribution by the Rockefeller-controlled Vacuum Oil Company in building up military gasoline facilities for the Nazis. The Ambassador tried to warn Roosevelt. Dodd believed, in his apparent naiveté of world affairs, that Roosevelt would intervene, but Roosevelt himself was backed by these same oil interests and Walter Teagle of Standard Oil of New Jersey and the NRA was on the board of Roosevelt's Warm Springs Foundation. So, in but one of may examples, we find the Rockefeller-controlled Vacuum Oil Company prominently assisting in the creation of Bolshevik Russia, the military build-up of Nazi Germany, and backing Roosevelt's New Deal.
Within the last decade or so, certainly since the 1960s, a steady flow of literature has presented a thesis that the United States is ruled by a self perpetuating and unelected power elite. Even further, most of these books aver that this elite controls, or at the least heavily influences, all foreign and domestic policy decisions, and that no idea becomes respectable or is published in the United States without the tacit approval, or perhaps lack of disapproval, of this elitist circle.
Obviously the very flow of anti-establishment literature by itself testifies that the United States cannot be wholly under the thumb of any single group or elite. On the other hand, antiestablishment literature is not fully recognised or reasonably discussed in academic or media circles. More often than not it consists of a limited edition, privately produced, almost hand-to-hand circulated. There are some exceptions, true, but not enough to dispute the observation that anti-establishment critics do not easily enter normal information/distribution channels.
Whereas in the early and mid-1960s, any concept of rule by a conspiratorial elite, or indeed any kind of elite, was reason enough to dismiss the proponent out of hand as a "nut case," the atmosphere for such concepts has changed radically. The Watergate affair probably added the final touches to a long-developing environment of scepticism and doubt. We are almost at the point where anyone who accepts, for example, the Warren commission report, or believes that the decline and fall of Mr. Nixon did not have some conspiratorial aspects, is suspect. In brief, no one any longer really believes the Establishment information process. And there is a wide variety of alternative presentations of events now available for the curious.
Several hundred books, from the full range of the political and philosophical spectrum, add bits and pieces of evidence, more hypotheses, and more accusations. What was not too long ago a kooky idea, talked about at midnight behind closed doors, in hushed and almost conspiratorial whispers, is now openly debated - not, to be sure, in Establishment newspapers, but certainly on non-network radio talk shows, the underground press, and even from time to time in books from respectable Establishment publishing houses.
So let us ask the question again: Is there an unelected power elite behind the U.S. Government?
A substantive and often-cited source of information is Carroll Quigley, Professor of International Relations at Georgetown University, who in 1966 had published a monumental modern history entitled Tragedy and Hope. Quigley's book is apart from others in this revisionist vein, by virtue of the fact that it was based on a two-year study of the internal documents of one of the power centres. Quigley traces the history of the power elite:
.The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each county and the economy of the world as a whole.
Quigley also demonstrates that the Council on Foreign Relation, the National Planning Association, and other groups are "semi-secret" policy-making bodies under the control of this power elite.
In the following tabular presentation we have listed five such revisionist books, including Quigley's. Their essential theses and compatibility with the three volumes of the "Wall Street" series are summarised. It is surprising that in the three major historical events noted, Carroll Quigley is not at all consistent with the "Wall Street" series evidence. Quigley goes a long way to provide evidence for the existence of the power elite, but does not penetrate the operations of the elite.
Possibly, the papers used by Quigley had been vetted, and did not include documentation on elitist manipulation of such events as the Bolshevik Revolution, Hitler's accession to power, and the election of Roosevelt in 1933. More likely, these political manipulations may not be recorded at all in the files of the power groups They may have been unrecorded actions by a small ad hoc segment of the elite. It is noteworthy that the documents used by this author came from government sources, recording the day-to-day actions of Trotsky, Lenin, Roosevelt, Hitler, J.P. Morgan and the various firms and banks involved.
On the other hand, such authors as Jules Archer, Gary Allen, Helen P. Lasell, and William Domhoff, writing from widely different political standpoints, are consistent with the "Wall Street" evidence. These writers present a hypothesised "power elite" has manipulated specific historical events.
Obviously any such exercise of unconstrained and supra-legal power is unconstitutional, even though wrapped in the fabric of law-abiding actions. We can therefore legitimately raise the question of the existence of a subversive force operating to remove constitutionally guaranteed rights.
Twentieth-century history, as recorded in Establishment textbooks and journals, is inaccurate. It is a history which is based solely upon those official documents which various Administrations have seen fit to release for public consumption.
But an accurate history cannot be based on a selective release of documentary archives. Accuracy requires access to all documents. In practice, as previously classified documents in the U.S. State Department files, the British Foreign Office, and German Foreign Ministry archives and other depositories are acquired, a new version of history has emerged, the prevailing Establishment version is seen to be, not only inaccurate, but designed to hide a pervasive fabric of deceit and immoral conduct.
The centre of political power, as authorised by the U.S. Constitution, is with an elected Congress and an elected President, working within the framework and under the constraints of a Constitution, as interpreted by an unbiased Supreme Court. We have in the past assumed that political power is consequently carefully exercised by the Executive and legislative branch, after due deliberation and assessment of the wishes of the electorate. In fact, nothing could be further from this assumption. The electorate has long suspected, but now knows, that political promises are worth nothing. Lies are the order of the day for policy implementors. Wars are started (and stopped) with no shred of coherent explanation. Political words have never matched political deeds. Why not? Apparently because the centre of political power has been elsewhere than with elected and presumably responsive representatives in Washington, and this power elite has its own objectives, which are inconsistent with those of the public at large.
In this three-volume series we have identified for three historical events the seat of political power in the United states - the power behind the scenes, the hidden influence on Washington - as that of the financial establishment in New York: the private international bankers, more specifically the financial houses of J.P. Morgan, the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank, and in earlier days before amalgamation of their Manhattan Bank with the former Chase Bank), the Warburgs.
The United States has, in spite of the Constitution and its supposed constraints, become a quasi-totalitarian state. While we do not (yet) have the overt trapping of dictatorship, the concentration camps and the knock on the door at midnight, we most certainly do have threats and actions aimed at the survival of non-Establishment critics, use of the Internal Revenue Service to bring dissidents in line, and manipulation of the Constitution by a court system that is politically subservient to the Establishment.
It is in the pecuniary interests of the international bankers to centralise political power - and this centralisation can best be achieve within a collectivist society, such as socialist Russia, national socialist Germany, or a Fabian socialist United States.
There can be no full understanding and appreciation of twentieth-century American politics and foreign policy without the realisation that this financial elite effectively monopolises Washington policy.
In case after case, newly released documentation implicates this elite and confirms this hypothesis. The revisionist versions of the entry of the United States into World Wars I and II, Korea, and Vietnam reveal the influence and objectives of this elite.
For most of the twentieth century the Federal Reserve System, particularly the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (which is outside the control of congress, unaudited and uncontrolled, with the power to print money and crate credit at will), has exercised a virtual monopoly over the direction of the American economy. In foreign affairs the Council on Foreign Relations, superficially an innocent forum for academics, businessmen, and politicians, contains within its shell, perhaps unknown to many of its members, a power centre that unilaterally determines U.S. foreign policy. The major objective of this submerged - and obviously subversive - foreign policy is the acquisition of markets and economic power (profits, if you will), for a small group of giant multi-nationals under the virtual control of a few banking investment houses and controlling families.
Through foundations controlled by this elite, research by compliant and spineless academics, "conservatives" as well as "liberals," has been directed into channels useful for the objectives of the elite essentially to maintain this subversive and unconstitutional power apparatus.
Through publishing houses controlled by this same financial elite unwelcome books have been squashed and useful books promoted; fortunately publishing has few barriers to entry and is almost atomistically competitive. Through control of a dozen or so major newspapers, run by editors who think alike, public information can be almost orchestrated at will. Yesterday, the space program; today, an energy crisis or a campaign for ecology; tomorrow, a war in the Middle East or some other manufactured "crisis."
The total result of this manipulation of society by the Establishment elite has been four major wars in sixty years, a crippling national debt, abandonment of the Constitution, suppression of freedom and opportunity, and creation of a vast credibility gulf between the man in the street and Washington, D.C. While the transparent device of two major parties trumpeting artificial differences, circus-like conventions, and the cliché of "bipartisan foreign policy" no longer carries credibility, and the financial elite itself recognises that its policies lack public acceptance, it is obviously prepared to go it alone without even nominal public support.
In brief, we now have to consider and debate whether this New York-based elitist Establishment is a subversive force operating with deliberation and knowledge to suppress the Constitution and a free society. That will be the task ahead in the next decade.
The arena for this debate and the basis for our charges of subversion is the evidence provided by the revisionist historian. Slowly, over decades, book by book, almost line by line, the truth of recent history has emerged as documents are released, probed, analysed, and set within a more valid historical framework.
Let us consider a few examples. American entry into World War II was supposedly precipitated, according to the Establishment version, by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Revisionists have established that Franklin D. Roosevelt and General Marshall knew of the impending Japanese attack and did nothing to warn the Pearl Harbour military authorities. The Establishment wanted war with Japan. Subsequently, the Establishment made certain that Congressional investigation of Pearl Harbour would fit the Roosevelt whitewash. In the words of Percy Greaves, chief research expert for the Republican minority on the Joint Congressional Committee investigation Pearl Harbor:
The complete facts will never be known. Most of the so-called investigations have been attempts to suppress, mislead, or confuse those who seek the truth. For the beginning to the end, facts and files have been withheld so as to reveal only those items of information which benefit the administration under investigation. Those seeking the truth are told that other facts or documents cannot be revealed because they are intermingled in personal diaries, pertain to our relations with foreign countries, or are sworn to contain no information of value.
But this was not the first attempt to bring the United States into war, or the last. The Morgan interests, in concert with Winston Churchill, tried to bring the U.S. into World War 1 as early as 1915 and succeeded in doing so in 1917. Colin Thompson's Lusitania implicates President Woodrow Wilson in the sinking of the Lusitania - a horror device to generate a public backlash to draw the United States into war with Germany. Thompson demonstrates that Woodrow Wilson knew four days beforehand that the Lusitania was carrying six-million rounds of ammunition plus explosives, and therefore, "passengers who proposed to sail on that vessel were sailing in violation of statute of this country."
The British Board of Inquiry under Lord Mersey was instructed by the British Government "that it is considered politically expedient the Captain Turner, the master of the Lusitania, be most prominently blamed for the disaster."
In retrospect, given Colin Thompson's evidence, the blame is more fairly to be attributed to President Wilson, "Colonel" House, J.P. Morgan, and Winston Churchill; this conspiratorial elite should have been brought to trial for wilful negligence, if not treason. It is to Lord Mersey's eternal credit that after performing his "duty" under instructions from His Majesty's government, and placing the blame on Captain Turner, he resigned, rejected his fee, and from that date on refused to handle British government commissions. To his friends Lord Mersey would only say about the Lusitania case that it was a "dirty business.
Then in 1933-4 came the attempt by the Morgan firm to install a fascist dictatorship in the United States. In the words of Jules Archer, it was planned to be a Fascist putsch to take over the government and "run it under a dictator on behalf of America's bankers and industrialists." Darlington Butler, who blew the whistle on the Wall Street conspiracy. And once again Congress stands out, particularly Congressmen Dickstein and MacCormack, by its gutless refusal to do no more than conduct a token whitewash investigation.
Since World War II we have seen the Korean War and the Vietnamese War - meaningless, meandering no-win wars costly in dollars and lives, with no other major purpose but o generate multibillion-dollar armaments contracts. Certainly these wars were not fought to restrain communism, because for fifty years the Establishment has been nurturing and subsidising the Soviet Union which supplied armaments to the other sides in both wars - Korea and Vietnam. So our revisionist history will show that the United States directly or indirectly armed both sides in at least Korea and Vietnam.
In the assassination of President Kennedy, to take a domestic example, it is difficult to find anyone who today accepts the finding of the Warren Commission - except perhaps the members of that Commission. Yet key evidence is still hidden from public eyes for 50 to 75 years. The Watergate affair demonstrated even to the man in the street that the White House can be a vicious nest of intrigue and deception.
Of all recent history the story of Operation Keelhaul is perhaps the most disgusting. Operation Keelhaul was the forced repatriation of millions of Russians at the orders of President (then General) Dwight D. Eisenhower, in direct violation of the Geneva Convention of 1929 and the long-standing American tradition of political refuge. Operation Keelhaul, which contravenes all our ideas of elementary decency and individual freedom, was undertaken at the direct orders of General Eisenhower and, we may now presume, was a part of a long-range program of nurturing collectivism, whether it be Soviet communism, Hitler's Nazism, or FDR's New Deal. Yet until recent publication of documentary evidence by Julius Epstein, anyone who dared to suggest Eisenhower would betray millions of innocent individuals for political purposes was viciously and mercilessly attacked.
What this revisionist history really teaches us is that our willingness as individual citizens to surrender political power to an elite has cost the world approximately two-hundred-million persons killed from 1820 to 1975. Add to that untold misery the concentration camps, the political prisoners, the suppression and oppression of those who try to bring the truth to light.
When will it all stop? It will not stop until we act upon one simple axiom: that the power system continues only so long as individuals want it to continue, and it will continue only so long as individuals try to get something for nothing. the day when a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from government, declares it will look after its own welfare and interests, then on that date power elites are doomed. The attraction to "go along" with power elites is the attraction of something for nothing. That is the bait. The Establishment always offers something for nothing, but the something is taken from someone else, as taxes or plunder, and awarded elsewhere in exchange for political support.
Periodic crises and wars are used to whip up support for other plunder-reward cycles which in effect tighten the noose around our individual liberties. And of course we have hordes of academic sponges, amoral businessmen, and just plain hangers-on, to act as non-productive recipients for the plunder.
Stop the circle of plunder and immoral reward and elitist structures collapse. But not until a majority finds the moral courage and the internal fortitude to reject the something-for-nothing con game and replace it by voluntary association, voluntary communes, or local rule and decentralised societies, will the killing and the plunder cease.
AUTHOR :Sutton, Antony C.
TITLE :Wall Street and the rise of Hitler
PLACE :Seal Beach, California
PUBLISHER :'76 Press,
ISBN/ISSN :0892450045
Certainly there was no hint, late in 1974, of a Lockheed connection. Which is why, in total ignorance of the time-bomb on which his American friends were sitting, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands felt confident enough in September to write to Burbank asking for a new commission arrangement. The sum involved this time: anything up to six million dollars.
Early in 1973 the Dutch government had begun to consider a long-term replacement for the navy's obsolete Lockheed P-2V Neptune patrol and anti-submarine planes. By June the admiralty council had three candidates under consideration: the British Nimrod from Hawker Siddeley, the French Breguet Atlantique Mark lA and II, and Lockheed's P-3C Orion.
The Dutch deliberations soon came to the notice of Fred C. Meuser in his mountain retreat at St Moritz. Mouser was by now something of an elder-statesman among the master-salesmen of the aerospace industry. He had served Lockheed, Northrop, and Lockheed again. His loyalty to Prince Bernhard, meanwhile, had never wavered. Now, with an immense new order in the offing (the Dutch admiralty were talking of spending up to 148 million guilders on thirteen planes between 1974 and 1978, and a further 452 million in the 1979-83 period) his eye for the main chance did not fail him.
Meuser contacted the prince and put to him a simple proposition. If the Orion were selected, and if a consultant's contract were concluded with Lockheed on the basis of commission for aircraft supplied to the Dutch navy and for the supply of spare parts, a large sum of money would be at the prince's disposal. He might wish to pass it, for instance, to his very own prestige charity, the World Wildlife Fund.
Bernhard didn't turn down the idea and Meuser was encouraged to take it a step further. In April 1974 he gave the prince a draft note and suggested he send it to Lockheed. It read:
Last time around it would have been of no use to accept Lockheed's offer to appoint Dr. H. Weisbrod agent for the reequipping of the Navy's ASW aircraft fleet with Orions, as European pressures required a European solution. This time around the situation may be more favourable for the Orion, in part due to Dr. Weisbrod's efforts, and it would now seem appropriate for Lockheed to appoint him their 'sub silentio' agent for a prospective Orion program. This could be done on the basis of an agent's agreement between Lockheed and Dr. Weisbrod, calling for a 4 per cent commission on all Lockheed billings for complete aircraft and 8 per cent for parts, services, etc., for the life of the program. As and when payments are received by Lockheed, corresponding commission payments to be made in a manner to be indicated by Dr. Weisbrod.
It was the same old formula that had proved so successful in the past: The Meuser-Weisbrod connection, with Bernhard as the intended principal beneficiary. When Meuser wrote that the Orion's prospects were good 'in part due to Weisbrod's effort,' he was unmistakably signalling to Lockheed that the prince himself had been, and could continue to be, active on Lockheed's behalf. In fact there is no evidence whatever that Bernhard really did involve himself in any way with the admiralty's evaluations. But what mattered was that Lockheed should believe he was rooting for them, and that this could be decisive.
Bernhard accepted Meuser's draft but did not send it to Lockheed immediately. Possibly he was shaken by the much-publicised conviction of his friend Tom Jones on May 1 and fearful of further revelations: but if so, he had overcome such fears by September. On the ninth of that month he sent the note to Roger Bixby-Smith, the intermediary with Lockheed on the abortive Orion deal in 1968 when $100,000 had ended up in the pocket of 'Victor Baarn'. With it he sent a covering letter in his own handwriting. It was one of two letters which, when unexpectedly made public, would finally destroy his good name.
It was short and to the point. He recalled the talks of 'a few years ago', evidently meaning 1968, and said that 'after a hell of a lot of pushing and pulling' it now looked as if something positive might develop and that it therefore might be a good idea to 'process the enclosed idea personally'. Neither the letter nor enclosure referred to the World Wildlife Fund, which seems by now to have dropped from Bernhard's mind.
Bixby-Smith passed the letter and note on to Burbank, probably direct to Haughton or Kotchian, but when they calculated that commission at the rate suggested would add up to between $4 million and $6 million they decided the prince's price was altogether too high. Smith was asked to convey as much to Bernhard, and to explain that in any case commission wasn't allowed on a government-to-government contract - though this prohibition hadn't always inhibited the company in the past.
Accordingly, Bixby-Smith arranged to meet the prince on October 30 on one of his frequent visits to Paris in the elegant company of Miss Helen 'Pussy' Grinda. The prince expressed surprise that the commission rate he was asking had checked out at so high a total. He had in mind, he told Smith, 'only about $1 million'. But he was angry at Lockheed's flat rejection of his proposal, and as the evening wore on he became angrier.
Three days later the prince despatched a second hand-written letter to Burbank. He was to claim later that he based it on a draft suggested by Smith. It seemed incredible, he wrote, that his approach had been rejected without discussion and without consideration of other possibilities. And he added bitterly: 'It would never have happened in the days of Bob or Courtlandt Gross.' He had 'spent a great deal of time and effort' since 1968 'to turn things in the right direction and to prevent wrong decisions influenced by political considerations'—meaning a French or British purchase in the interests of European unity (of which he was a professed champion.). He had done this because of his old friendship for Lockheed 'and based on its past actions'. He now felt 'a little bitter' and would do nothing more for the company. What's more, he would make his attitude clear if he were consulted on the procurement decision by the admiralty or government. Finally, he was considering writing to or phoning Courtlandt Gross, who was still on Lockheed's board with the title 'Senior Adviser', and—at least in Bernhard's view—not without influence.
The letter evidently made a strong impression on Haughton and Kotchian. Whether moved by Bernhard's recollections of old and productive friendships, or by the implied threat to throw his influence decisively against the Orion, Lockheed came up with a new otter. Presumably Bixby-Smith had conveyed to them the prince's expectation of 'about $1 million', because that is exactly what was now proposed: a fixed commission of $1 million provided at least four aircraft were bought. The prohibition of commission on a government-to-government sale was conveniently forgotten. Bixby-Smith conveyed the offer to the prince on December 2 during a visit to the royal palace at Soestdijk, and he accepted immediately. Weisbrod, however, was to be cut out of the reduced sum. The prince, for reasons which are not clear, told Smith he did not wish the money to be paid through the Weisbrod route and would prefer it to be paid into a numbered account in Geneva specially opened for the purpose.
As it turned out, Bernhard never received his million dollars. The Dutch Government opted for defence cuts and postponed its purchase of a successor to the Neptunes. The prince's fateful, tell-tale letter lay forgotten in Haughton's files. And meanwhile the timebomb in Washington ticked away on an ever-shortening fuse.
Concurrent with all the Watergate investigations and quite independent of them was another which had quite separate origins. In 1972 the Democratic Senator from Idaho, Frank Church, had set up a Sub-committee on Multinational Corporations of the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to follow up disclosures of ITT's interventions in Chile and to investigate how far big companies were influencing or forming foreign policy. From ITT Church and his Sub-committee moved on to the oil giants, opening public hearings on Gulf, Exxon and Mobil on May 16, 1975.
'What we are concerned with', Church told a huge array of press, radio and television reporters who would soon become very familiar with the dark-panelled Hearings Room, No. 4221, in the Dirksen Senate Building, 'is not a question of private or public morality. What concerns us here is a major issue of foreign policy for the United States.' Watergate had shown how domestic corruption could weaken democratic government. The multinationals' investigation would show that corruption abroad subverted the free world and weakened America's international standing.
The Senate's revelations of huge, systematic bribery by the oil companies caused a sensation. Suddenly it was Church rather than Sam Irvin, Archibald Cox or Stanley Sporkin who held the limelight; and now the Sub-committee decided to expand its reach and go after Northrop.
To attract donors, large and small, as well as media attention, Nicholson, Scott and the founding fathers of WWF wanted the royal family to lend their name. They approached Prince Philip to be president. Philip was an avid outdoorsman and hunter—in January 1961 he had bagged a Bengal tiger in India—and he and Queen Elizabeth had been to Kenya, on a safari best remembered because King George VI died while they were watching wild animals and Princess Elizabeth had become Queen. Scott sent Philip a draft of the proposed charter. Philip read it carefully, replying that one provision was "unctuous," and another "to wordy." This careful reading was not what Scott hold expected. It is "a great bore that he suggests so much alteration," Scott wrote Nicholson. The founding fathers had wanted the Prince only as a figurehead. Philip agreed to head up the British chapter of WWF, but he turned down the presidency of the International and suggested his friend Prince Bernhard for the post. The men were alike in many ways. Both had been born into European royal families, but not very distinguished ones, and had acquired their status and string of titles when they married—Bernhard to the future Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. The two men were handsome, dashing, and staunchly conservative politically.
Scott, who liked consorting with royalty, made the pitch. "Prince Philip (who was sailing with me at Cowes in the 12 metre 'sceptre' on Saturday) . . . told me that he was very keen that you should 'head-up' the international Trustees," Scott wrote to Bernhard. "Please may I ask Your Royal Highness to say that you will be President of the Trustees of The World Wildlife Fund.'' Prince Bernhard he eventually said yes, and he served as president until 1976, when he was forced to resign after it became public that he had solicited more than a million dollars in 'commissions" from Lockheed in exchange for Lockheed's receiving contracts to build warplanes for the Netherlands. (At One point after the scandal broke, Bernhard said that he had intended to give the money from Lockheed to WWF; a member of the board at the time insists this is not true.
Bernhard remained active behind the scenes in WWF, but a couple of years after he resigned, Philip became president of the International, and though it was thought he would serve for only a few years, he is still in power. The Prince is a committed conservationist and he undoubtedly has given prestige and visibility to WWF around the world. At the same time, however, many in the Third World have questioned whether he is the right person to head an organisation that does most of its work in developing countries. At a meeting of the Commonwealth Heads of state, most of them from the Third World and black, Philip said to an aide, "You wouldn't think the peace of the world rested on this lot, would you'?" on another occasion, he referred to the Chinese as "slitty-eyed."
WWF WAS SET UP to raise money, but in spite of the initial successes, it did not prove very effective. Nicholson had said that $1.5 million each year would be needed for conservation, which Scott thought he could easily raise; indeed, he anticipated coaxing $25 million from the rich. Scott discovered that socializing with the elite was one thing, getting them to part with their money quite another, and it was several years before the total of WWF's revenues reached $1 million.
WWF's financial fortunes began to change dramatically after a hard-driving South African businessman, Anton Rupert, joined the board. An Afrikaaner from the Cape, Rupert had already made millions as the owner of Rothmans International tobacco company, the foundation of the Rembrandt Group, his wholly owned business empire. When Rupert expanded beyond South Africa, he bought Dunhill and Cartier, and eventually he became one of the richest men in South Africa, rivalled only by Harry Oppenheimer, the gold and diamond industrialist. Rupert had long been interested in conservation, including the restoration of historic buildings, and in 1968 he joined the WWF board of trustees; he stayed on the board for twenty-two years, ill spite of a provision in the organisation's original incorporation documents that limited members to two three-year terms, a provision that was routinely ignored for the benefit of several other influential members of the board as well. Rupert brought a considerable amount of his own money to WWF, but, more important, he conceived a plan that would raise millions
Rupert's idea was the "1001 Club" The "one" was Prince Bernhard The other one thousand were wealthy individuals who could be persuaded to part with $10,000. The one-time donation brings lifetime membership, and the names of the generous patrons are kept secret by the organisation. According to these secret lists, American givers have included August A Busch, Jr, of the beer company; Henry Ford II; Peter Grace; Nelson Bunker Hunt, the silver trader; Mrs Geoffrey Kent, of Abercrombie & Kent; Robert S. McNamara; Cyril Magnin; Lew Wasserman, of MCA; Thomas Watson, of IBM. Many of the donors understandably wish to remain anonymous (in part to avoid being badgered by other charities), but it is also understandable why WWF does not want the list made public. It has included many less savoury individuals—Zaire's President Mobutu, Sese Seko, one of the most corrupt leaders in Africa; Daniel K Ludwig, the reclusive American billionaire, whose companies destroyed thousands of miles of the Amazon rain forest; Agha Hasan Abedi, the founder of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCC1); Robert Vesco, the financier who fled the United States in the 1970s to escape trial on charges of fraud, embezzlement and obstruction of justice; Tibor Rosenbaum, founder of a Swiss bank that laundered billions of dollars of organised crime money and who was accused of embezzling Israeli deposits in the bank; Thomas Jones, who was forced out as chief executive of Northrop after it was revealed that the company paid $30 million in bribes to government officials and agents around the world in exchange for contracts; Lord Kagan, a British businessman convicted of theft and conspiracy to defraud the British tax service; a Norwegian shipowner convicted of taking a £1 million bribe; an individual who was the conduit for the money from Lockheed to Prince Bernhard.
There has been another remarkable feature about the 1001 Club—the number of South Africans. On the 1989 list, at least sixty individuals were from South Africa, including seven of Rupert's relatives. Many were also members of the Broederbond, the secret, conservative Afrikaaner society that has traditionally wielded immense political power in South Africa. Only five countries had more donors, and as a percentage of their population, South African whites had three hundred times as many members as the United States. It is easy to understand why so many South Africans have been willing to part with $10,000 to Join the 1001 and not all of it has to do with conservation. Not many international clubs welcomed white South Africans, and membership in the 1001 provided them an opportunity to mingle and do business with tycoons, as well as with Prince Philip and Prince Bernhard. What else they may have gained from the membership is unknown, in part because so much of what WWF-lnternational does is kept from the public and even from the organisation's own trustees. Because of the secrecy and closed nature of the WWF club, it is also difficult to know the extent of the influence that so much South African money has had on the organisation's conservation work. There can be little doubt, however, that WWF-International's initial opposition to the ivory ban reflected South African power on the board—South Africa was adamantly opposed to the ban, because its elephants were not being poached and it made money from selling ivory.
One place where South Africa's clout has been felt is in the office of the director-general, the man who runs WWF. Since 1977 that man has been Charles de Haes. Much of de Haes's past is vague, which seems to be by design: he has chosen to reveal very little about his background and some of what the organisation does say publicly about him is at odds with the facts. On WWF's public list of officers and trustees, de Haes is identified as being from Belgium, and he was born there, in 1938. But as a young boy, he moved with his family to South Africa. After graduating from Cape Town University with a law degree, he got a job with Rothmans International, Rupert's tobacco company. De Haes's Official resume—that is, the one WWF distributes—makes a point of noting that he went to work for the tobacco company "although himself a nonsmoker." It then says de Haes "helped establish companies" in Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. What it does not say is that these were companies that sold cigarettes. Maybe de Haes didn't smoke, but he made money by encouraging others to do so.
De Haes was brought to WWF through the back door by Anton Rupert in 1971. He was first assigned to be personal assistant to Prince Bernhard. One of his tasks was to implement the 1001 Club project. He was tremendously successful. Ten thousand dollars was worth even more back then, yet it took de Haes only three years to find one thousand donors. Prince Bernhard provided the letters of introduction, but de Haes was the salesman who clinched the deals. Even de Haes's fiercest critics—and they are many—use the word "brilliant" when describing his fund-raising skills.
In 1975, with the backing of Rupert and Prince Philip de Haes was named joint director-general of WWF, and two years later he had the top position to himself. De Haes had no education or experience in conservation, other than his few years at WWF, yet he was now in charge of the most prestigious and influential conservation organisation in the world. It was a position that would have appealed to the most qualified and eminent individuals in the field, yet no effort was made to recruit any of them.
WWF may have taken on someone without conservation experience, but then, it cost the organisation nothing: Rupert agreed to pay de Haes's salary—which, according to a British trustee, goes far in explaining why de Haes got the Job. WWF never said at the time that Rupert was paying de Haes, and it still tries to conceal this fact. The organisation's chief spokesman, Robert SanGeorge, stated emphatically during an interview in 1991 that de Haes had not been seconded from Rothmans to Prince Bernhard and WWF during the early years. But an internal WWF memorandum signed by the organisation's executive vice-president in 1975 talks specifically about "Mr. de Haes's period of secondment to WWF." What this means, of course, is that de Haes was still employed by a South African corporation while working for WWF. "I thought it was a scandal," says a former board member from North America, Who added that it was only by accident that he learned that Rupert was paying de Haes. This board member did not like the arrangement. "Who does the director general serve'? Is the interest of a South African tobacco company synonymous with the world conservation movement? Even more troubling to this director was the fact that it was kept a secret. "lf it was such a good thing, why weren't they willing to say so in the annual report?"
In a similar vein, the organisation treats as a state secret the question of who paid de Haes after he became director-general. It was "an anonymous donor" SanGeorge says. Even board members have been in the dark. When on occasion one asked, he was told that the donor wished to remain anonymous.
It is unlikely that any other charitable organisation that depends on public support operates with such little accountability and in such secrecy as WWF has under de Haes. It is easier to penetrate the CIA. And when WWF has been caught in embarrassing conducts it has engaged in damage control and cover-ups of the kind that might be expected from a company whose products have caused injury to consumers and the environment. Under rules de Haes promulgated, WWF employees are prohibited from talking to anyone outside the organization about anything except what the organisation has already made public; the obligation to secrecy binds the employee even after he or she has left WWF. Few are willing to break this code of silence—given their fear of de Haes and, in the case of current employees, the generous salaries and pleasant living conditions in Switzerland.
It may well be, as one senior WWF officer put it somewhat defensively, that a dollar given to WWF is still a dollar well spent for conservation. But, as this person added, "imagine what the organisation could be with better leadership."
Over the years there has been increasing dissatisfaction with de Haes's leadership. One of the most serious challenges to his rule came in the early 1980s, when the heads of the WWF organisations in Britain, the Netherlands and Switzerland began to discuss among themselves changes they thought were necessary in the organisation. These organisations should be able to effect change because they provide most of the funds for the International—WWF-UK alone contributes nearly one-third of the International's budget, and Switzerland and the Netherlands rank second and third. The way WWF was set up, two-thirds of the money raised by the national organisations goes to the International, while one third remains with the national organisation. The "dissident" leaders of the three national organisations objected to this because there was no accountability over how the International spent the money. They also did not like the fact that the WWF-International board of trustees doesn't represent the national organisations. The board is a self-selected body— that is, those on the board decide whom to place on it—and the national organisations, even though they give the money, have no right of representation. In short, the heads of the British, Dutch and Swiss organisations felt that too much power was concentrated in Gland—the Swiss town where WWF-lnternational's headquarters is located—and that the local organisations should have more autonomy.
Sir Arthur Norman, the head of WWF-UK at the time, was particularly disturbed by the manner in which WWF-International set up chapters in other countries. He thought they should "be triggered off by local people, local enthusiasm, and not by someone in Bland saying "it's time".
Phillipson found that "a diligent auditor set among the project account files in Switzerland would surely open a cupboard full of skeletons." He was referring to the International's field projects—from some there were no reports at all, and many others had made no accounting of how the money was spent. Phillipson's conclusion that WWF's attitude engendered accusations of "neo-colonialism" remained in the summary.
Occasionally other skeletons got out, and when they did, it became clear that WWF had lost its ethical way, at least in carrying out its conservation work in Africa. In the late 1980s, for example, WWF provided Zimbabwe's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management with funds to buy a helicopter for its anti-poaching operations in the Zambezi Valley, where the black rhino was on the verge of extinction because of poachers. The department used the helicopter to deploy anti-poaching units when it received reports of poachers in an area. At least fifty-seven poachers were killed in the helicopter-supported operations, and the WWF office in Zimbabwe reported that the helicopter "has made an enormous difference to staff morale and efficiency" in the wildlife department.
That WWF was involved was not flown publicly until the environment correspondent of the British newspaper The Guardian, Paul Brown, broke the story. WWF responded with a statement saying that it had provided the funds for the helicopter "on the strict understanding that the helicopter would never be used as a gun-ship," and that it was "official WWF policy not to use any of its funds for purchase of arms or ammunition." The truth is the organisation knew that the helicopter would be used in operations in which poachers would be killed. Indeed, there had been a long and fierce debate within WWF about the project, and many on the staff were opposed because Zimbabwe's policy was "Shoot first, ask questions later," as one of those involved in the debate puts it. Providing the helicopter "made the policy more effective," he said. As for WWF's statement that it did not provide funds for arms or ammunition, the organisation's internal documents show that it was doing precisely that for at least one project in Tanzania in 1987.
De Haes and WWF-International had to work harder to cover up another scandal in Africa, this one involving mercenaries, intrigue, high level WWF officials and Prince Bernhard. The mercenaries were former British commandos who worked for KAS Enterprises, a company headed by Sir David Stirling, the legendary founder of Britain's Special Air Services (SAS), Britain's most elite commando force. Stirling, who died in 1990, engaged in clandestine activities throughout the world, setting up ostensibly private companies that were in fact covers for Britain's MI-5 and MI-6. In Africa s conservation wars, in the late 1980S KAS, as part of its arrangement with WWF officials, trained anti-poaching units in Namibia, which was then still under the control of South Africa, as well as Mozambicans in South Africa. (The South African government was trying to destabilise Mozambique.) KAS also set up a "sting" operation to catch traffickers in ivory and rhino horn. The project was code-named "Operation Lock," Lock being the maiden name of the wife of a former SAS officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Crooke, who was in charge of it.
Some of KAS's anti-poaching activities were exposed in July 1989 by Robert Powell, the Reuters correspondent in Nairobi. Powell, however, was unable to link WWF to the operation, and so WWF remained silent when Powell's story appeared, and continued working with KAS. But Powell's article provoked Stephen Ellis, editor of Africa Confidential, a fortnightly newsletter published in London, to probe further. Ellis, also a freelance journalist, got an assignment from The Independent to write an article about Operation Lock. In the course of his reporting he called WWF and talked with Robert SanGeorge, the organisation's chief spokesman. SanGeorge, an American, had come to WWF-International in 1940 along with his wife, a tough lawyer who became executive assistant to de Haes. Without telling Ellis, SanGeorge, who has been seen with a recording device attached to his phone, made a verbatim transcript of their conversation, which he passed on to de Haes—SanGeorge even noted when Ellis "paused to fetch a cup of coffee he had left in another room.
A few days later, SanGeorge faxed a statement to Ellis. The statement began: "it is, and always has been, the policy of WWF not to engage in clandestine or covert operations which might be considered unethical by governments, the public, or supporters of WWF." The organisation then went on to lay the blame for the covert operation on John Hanks, head of the Africa Programme at WWF-International. It said that Hanks had initiated the project "without the knowledge or approval of WWF-lnternational's management." Six months earlier Hanks had been forced out of WWF by de Haes and had gone to South Africa as director of the Southern African Nature Foundation, the name of WWF's affiliate in South Africa. Not wanting to cross de Haes again and being loyal to WWF, Hanks signed a statement assuming responsibility for Operation Lock.
Ellis wrote his story, and the day it appeared, SanGeorge sent a memorandum to all WWF national organisations. The memo reiterated what SanGeorge had told Ellis, and emphasised that Operation Lock "was initiated without the knowledge or authority of the Director General" and that "no funds for the Operation were channelled through WWF International's books." It was a carefully crafted statement, befitting the work of a lawyer who wants to keep his client out of Jail. But it was hardly an honest explanation befitting a charitable organisation.
The truth, which has never come out publicly, is found in a series of communications from Frans Stroebel, executive director of WWF's South African affiliate when Operation Lock commenced and the man who had introduced Lieutenant-Colonel Crooke to senior police and conservation officials in South Africa. Stroebel wrote Prince Philip:
I have given Mr. de Haes a number of comprehensive briefings on the project since I first became involved. In May 1989, I gave him full details. He then went to HRH Prince Bernhard to confirm that Prince Bernhard was indeed the sponsor. Mr. de Haes satisfied himself with the developments, and in subsequent discussions with me he never expressed any concern about my involvement, or, for that matter, the covert programme itself.
As for the funds for the operation, Stroebel said, in another letter, "The funds for Operation Lock were actually WWF funds." The money had come to WWF-lnternational, then was channelled back out to Bernhard for Operation Lock in a series of strange transactions. First, in December 1988, Sotheby's auctioned two paintings owned by Bernhard—The Holy Family, a seven-by-five-foot oil by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, and The Rape of Europa, a four-by-five-foot oil by Elisabetta Sirani. Together they brought in £610,000. On Bernhard's instructions the proceeds were donated to WWF-International; Sotheby's had noted in its catalogue that they would be. But if the buyer—who remains anonymous—thought the money was going toward WWF's general conservation work, he was mistaken. Within a few weeks after the sale, Bernhard called the administrator of the 1001 Club and asked her to transfer £500,000 from the 1001 Club account to Queen Juliana's (his wife's) account in the Netherlands. The £500,000 was needed for Operation Lock, according to Stroebel, and de Haes "agreed to the use of these funds as requested." (Bernhard told WWF it could keep the remaining £110,000, which at the time was worth a little less than $200,000.)
After Ellis's story appeared, many Western conservationists working in Africa were embarrassed, because Operation Lock had been exposed—not because they thought it was wrong to engage in a covert operation to stop the illegal trade in rhino horn and ivory. Indeed, the possibility of covert operations had often been discussed by elephant and rhino specialists. On one occasion, at a meeting attended by conservationists from WWF, AWF and other organisations, Hanks outlined what he had in mind and the general response, as described by a person who attended, was "Get on with it. Don't tell us what you're doing, but get on with it." Government officials in Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya did not feel quite the same way. They declined offers of assistance from KAS.
That there was a schism as big as a canyon between the approach to conservation taken by the Africans on the one hand and the conservation organisations on the other was not surprising, not when one looked at the conservation organisations: they were the monopoly of white Westerners. Whites headed them, hired whites to staff them, and implemented programs that reflected Western values.
WWF-International has its headquarters in Gland, a quintessential Swiss town—small, quiet, neat, and white. It carries out programs around the world, most of them in the Third World, yet one has rarely seen other than a white face in the Gland offices.. For thirty years, not a single African, and only a handful of Asians and Latin Americans, were ever hired by WWF-International. Only one black has ever held a professional position in the Africa section of WWF-US, and he was not hired until 1991. In the field—that is, in Africa—walk into the organisation's offices, and it is like colonial days: white at the top, blacks in the inferior positions. WWF's major presence in Africa has been its regional office in Nairobi, which in various incarnations has existed since the 1960s; it has always been headed by whites, and not until 1989 was there a single African in a professional position. Only one WWF program anywhere on the continent has ever been headed by an African.
Dodgyness is the keyword in all the Dutch Royal Affairs. Following the tradition of Queen Beatrix's marriage to an ex-Hitlerjugend member and her mother Juliana's marriage to an up-to-1938 member of the German Nazi's, Dutch crown prince Willem Alexander is marrying the daughter of a minister in the Argentinian fascist junta.
Committee March on the House of Orange (COMODO) is planning to have a big party of resistance and anarchy in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on the day of the royal wedding, 2-2-2002 of the crownprince with his Argentinian sweetheart Maxima.
As the Dutch royal family, the Dutch parliament, the police and security services are preparing for the wedding, so should we.
It will be a day with lots of actions, fun and possibilities: so please join us and come to Holland on the wedding day! Interested to help preparing? Send an email to comodo@squat.net
A first public meeting, dicussion and action will take place on May 26th in Amsterdam by De Vrije Zone (The Free Zone) and COMODO.
In dutch newspapers and magazines the hype around the father of Maxim, Jorge Zorreguieta, who has been Minister of agriculture in the Videla-junta in Argentinia and was spokesman for the big farmers and landowners, has been going on for months now.
"Is it appropiate for such a person to attend the wedding of his daughter with 'our' prince?" Or: "Shouldn't he be ill just for that day?". And the most progressive: "Should she not denounce the junta publicly before she can become princess of the Netherlands?"
For us the questions are of course different: should there be a royal family at all and is this case not precisely what is wrong with an institute like the monarchy? The Dutch royal family is quite famous for their contacts with "wrong" regimes and dictators throughout history. This is nothing new for us. An institute like the monarchy is an expression of how this capitalistic world works, nothing is democratic, just 'bread and plays' for 'normal people'. Give us queensday every year, a handwaving queen and people will be happy?
We cannot accept backward institutes like monarchies. That is why we will not accept the royal wedding. There is no justification for the existance of a wealthy elite which stands above the law, consolidates hierarchic strucures, stimulates nationalism and tortures animals. We want the entire monarchy abolished.
Well, it shouldn't. But it is interesting to note that our current queen, Beatrix, is one of the few permanent members of the Bilderberg group, and very respected in those high level circles that discuss what should happen to the world. The secretary general of the group is a Dutch economic professor, Victor Rosenboom, and has been put in charge by Beatrix of teaching Maxima Zorreguieta the finer points of Dutch society, such as the world renowned dutch policies of repressive tolerance.
The Dutch monarchy is a powerful party in global high-circles and represents Dutch transnationals, such as Shell, Unilever and Philips on the forefront of developments in globalisation. The Dutch tend to be a favorite for international posts because of their pseudo-neutrality, always wearing the coat of political correctness and compromise. Recent example is the appointment of ex prime minister Ruud Lubbers as UN high commissioner for refugees. In the eighties and early nineties he was the responsible cabinet leader for closing the borders, disallowing refugees to work, the Schengen and Maastricht treaties.
In this time, the Dutch also invented the 'third way', now so revered by social democrats worldwide, by starting the Dutch 'poldermodel' of permanent negotiation between unions and employers, effectively paralysing what was left of worker's protests, while inequality kept growing.
A decade earlier, the Dutch were one of the major economic partners for the fascist Argentinian junta under general Videla. Tens of thousands of people, especially thousands of leftists and jews, were tortured and murdered. "We have to seperate the economic and political side of things", have always been the Dutch motto. Thus the Dutch supplied the Fokker planes with which the Argentinian victims where simply thrown in to the ocean. "Now we have to seperate politics and romance", and thus allow one of the fascist cabinet members become the queen's father and have a direct line of influence in both dutch and global politics.
Anarchists and antifascists may find the Dutch monarchy a worthy symbol of hierarchy, backwardness, fascism and especially deceit.
There is a lot more about the Dutch royal family. Interested in the history of the Dutch royal family?
Send us an email: comodo@squat.net or look at the website
Our group, Committee March on the House of Orange (COMODO) was formed last year when queen Beatrix planned to visit Leiden on queensday (30th of april, the birthday of her mother) and a lot of repressive measures were announced. With a succesful day of action and a public tribunal against the royals in Leiden, we had a load of fun.
For the manifesto (in English as well) of Comittee March on the House of Orange: see our website http://squat.net/beakomt There is the possibilty to get on the mailinglist.
Note: our phone nr. has changed! (see below)
NO COMPROMISE!
http://www.antenna.nl/nvda/groenfront
groenfr@dds.nl (PGPkey on site)
PO BOX 85069 3508 AB Utrecht Netherlands
Giro 4370351 tnv Steungroep NVDA te Utrecht ovv GroenFront!
Phone/fax: +31 84 8666018
The sensibility for "shadow governments" and "New World Order" is quite minor in Ger"money"... the reasons may lie in the tendency of Germans to "black out" their past. So far as I know Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was a former SS-officer before marrying into the Dutch Kings-House. He was also employee of a sub-division of the German "IG Farben", "IG Farben und Bilder". The latter fact indicates, that the choice of the Hotel Bilder-Burg for the first meeting was not accidental. There was even a close relationship between Exxon (Standard Oil company) and IG Farben. This connections last until the present time - Monsanto Inc. took over much of the expertise of IG Farben concerning chemical weapons. "Agent Orange" was a "follow up" of Sarin, Senfgas and Tabun. When Monsanto faced financial difficulties in restructuring from a chemical to a biogenetic Company, Citibank (part of the Rothschild-universe) helped out with a loan.
Hannes Oberlindober <h2o@tekomedia.de>