Archive for May, 2016

TBR News May 31, 2016

May 31 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. May 30, 2016: “We are on a brief vacation until June 1.”

The Müller Washington Journals   1948-1951
At the beginning of December, 1948, a German national arrived in Washington, D.C. to take up an important position with the newly-formed CIA. He was a specialist on almost every aspect of Soviet intelligence and had actively fought them, both in his native Bavaria where he was head of the political police in Munich and later in Berlin as head of Amt IV of the State Security Office, also known as the Gestapo.

His name was Heinrich Müller.

Even as a young man, Heini Müller had kept daily journals of his activities, journals that covered his military service as a pilot in the Imperial German air arm and an apprentice policeman in Munich. He continued these journals throughout the war and while employed by the top CIA leadership in Washington, continued his daily notations.
This work is a translation of his complete journals from December of 1948 through September of 1951.

When Heinrich Müller was hired by the CIA¹s station chief in Bern, Switzerland, James Kronthal in 1948, he had misgivings about working for his former enemies but pragmatism and the lure of large amounts of money won him over to what he considered to be merely an extension of his life-work against the agents of the Comintern. What he discovered after living and working in official Washington for four years was that the nation¹s capital was, in truth, what he once humorously claimed sounded like a cross between a zoo and a lunatic asylum. His journals, in addition to personal letters, various reports and other personal material, give a very clear, but not particularly flattering, view of the inmates of both the zoo and the asylum.

Müller moved, albeit very carefully, in the rarefied atmosphere of senior policy personnel, military leaders, heads of various intelligence agencies and the White House itself. He was a very observant, quick-witted person who took copious notes of what he saw. This was not a departure from his earlier habits because Heinrich Müller had always kept a journal, even when he was a lowly Bavarian police officer, and his comments about personalities and events in the Third Reich are just as pungent and entertaining as the ones he made while in America.

The reason for publishing this phase of his eventful life is that so many agencies in the United States and their supporters do not want to believe that a man of Müller¹s position could ever have been employed by their country in general or their agency in specific.

Thursday, 30 March 1950

Poor Owen Lattimore is coming to the surface. We have known for a long time that he was a great friend of the communists, although most carefully indeed, not a member of the party. (According to left wing logic, if a man is not a member of the party, he is not a communist!)

McCarthy hinted and on the 26th, (Drew, ed.) Pearson exposed him. We shall see where this goes. L. has the reputation of fighting over matters. No doubt he will become fierce and dramatic just like Harry White was. Much shouting and finger pointing. Fierce denials. “We aren’t communists, we are only agrarian reformers.” And then they rape your wife, loot your house and burn it down with your old grandmother inside because they have always lived under someone else’s bridges (but in their own filth.)

I have been translating Stefan George into English, just for entertainment and because George does not translate well. In fact, it is very difficult to translate poetry into another language. One can certainly get the meaning of the original but to capture the spirit of it in the new language is very hard indeed.

Here is my rendition of the Prince of Vermin (Der Fürst des Geziefers, ed.)

The Prince of Vermin enlarges his realm
Lacking no treasure, his luck holding firm
Destruction to all other rebels!
You rejoice, enthralled by the demonic fire,
Feast on the remains of the past
And sense the danger before the end.
They put down your tongues in the
emptying trough,
Stray aimless like cattle through the burning courtyard
And loud sounds the terrible trumpet.

Crazy Stauffenberg likened the Prince to Hitler but that doesn’t really fit the case. Not even Stalin could fit. And Roosevelt did not destroy his own people. Perhaps Churchill who did destroy England, or maybe Mussolini. One of the first Caesars such as Caligula or Nero could fit the picture. More likely, Lenin because of the terrible wave of blood that followed in his train. Not a profitable way to spend my leisure hours but entertaining.
Am still working on the state dinner for T.
More later.

Friday, 7 April 1950

A great fuss about Lattimore here. He, of course, denies being a communist, which is to be expected. McCarthy has been challenged and claims to have the necessary material. But of course, he does not. Hoover does and M. can’t get at it

The President is greatly annoyed with everyone, saying that those who attack his favorite, Acheson, and his people, are attacking his bipartisan foreign policy. Truman actually has no foreign policy. He has very little knowledge of what is actually going on in the world and the CIA is not helping this situation by feeding him deliberately false information. T. equates communism with Hitler and Franco. All three are, or were, police states. A great revelation! Both Russia and Germany have always been police states. The new, democratic Germany is now an American police state and Franco goes without saying.

I saw first hand the chaos of the so-called democratic Weimar Republic and have much knowledge of the equal chaos in pre-1936 Spain when the left was in power.
Communists can only destroy; they are constitutionally incapable of creating anything. Their attitude is that evil capitalists have taken control of the western nations and that this control rightfully belongs to the workers and peasants. In Russia, Lenin tried to give control to these groups only to drive his country to the brink of economic chaos and complete starvation.

Capitalism, while it does have its faults, is not to be compared with Marxism.
In capitalism, most men can succeed if they are able. In communism, the idea is that no one individual is ever permitted to succeed…only the masses. This is the product of a lunatic former Prussian civil servant who should have spent his life babbling in London coffee houses. It is ironic that Marx’s doctrines which he intended for a highly industrialized Germany were instead shoved down the uncomprehending throats of a highly rural and very primitive Russia. When the war broke out in 1914, Russia was just beginning to move into an industrialized phase…a phase which was dealt a terrible blow by the war they so eagerly embraced and was finally killed by the lunatics such as Lenin and his crew of intellectual nihilists.

Of course everyone here is very upset about what they call the “loss” of China.
Someone has to pay for the loss of such a potentially huge market so the left-wing ninnies of the Roosevelt era will have to take the blame. The real blame lies in the U.S. support of Chiang who is vicious, stupid and entirely corrupt. Mao, the communist, is far cleverer than Chiang.

This country poured millions of dollars into the support of a thoroughly corrupt warlord and lost China in the process. Now, someone has to pay the butcher’s bill for their stupidity. Of course the Chinese are born capitalists and when the ideological madness passes, (as it always does in the end), China will be back to doing business in the same marketplace.

Even if Stalin died today, I personally doubt if Russia would be able to follow the Chinese example. The country is basically too far behind the West in technology but more important, the Russians have never been independent and have always been a country with potential but no performance.
Here, it is said by the idiots in the CIA, Russia is overtaking the United States every day and we must spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer’s dollars to keep ahead of them. I know this is nonsense and the CIA monkeys know this is nonsense but it makes money for business here, keeps the army moving along and allows the CIA to establish more and more control through fear of an enemy that fears this country (and with very good reason) far more than we ought to fear them. This would have me burned at the stake if the Inquisition were still in force, but fortunately, things are so completely disorganized in Washington that no one would pay the slightest attention to anything I had to say.
I see that the actual danger is not from Stalin but from China. This country actively fought against the communists in the 1920s, sending troops to Murmansk and Vladivostok and fighting in Russia. That was then and memories fade.

Now, we have supported Chiang with weapons and money, the communists have won and this is now. I see the Chinese as far more dangerous than the Russians because basically, they are far more intelligent and at this moment, do not like us at all.
They also have a huge manpower pool, even if they have a very limited industrial base. If they should develop this, and they have the brains to do this, then we here should watch them very carefully indeed. One of my CIA colleagues here was talking about this the other day but officially the agency is of the opinion that China will take years to develop and would never attack the West.

There is as much proof in support of this theory as there is for mine: absolutely none whatsoever. Right now, the U.S. is preoccupied in Europe and doesn’t want any problems in Asia. Therefore, the CIA sees Europe as the main theater and not Asia.
What if Mao invaded Taiwan? Would we defend it? At the present moment, not likely. Or what if they attack their ancient enemy, Japan? There we might do something in defense. Or Korea? A very poor country, long a slave state of Japan but divided in half with a communist government in the north. Or French-Indo China (Vietnam, ed.) Another divided country.

This country appears to be in the same position that Hitler was in 1939. If he went to war with Poland, would the British and French attack his almost undefended western borders? Given their disunity, probably not, but it was a real gamble then. Now, of course, we realize that there was no danger whatsoever and the enemies, who I must point out, had declared war on us, not the other way around, finally got around to attacking us long after the Polish campaign was over and we had reinforced our troops holding the Westwall.

However, I regard the Chinese as a more formidable foe than the decaying British and French. These were, to quote Shakespeare (whom I have been reading lately) “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

China, on the other hand, is full of people who have been engaged in warfare for two decades and have just chased out the last of the corrupt warlords.

I regret now not having spent more time studying the problems of Asia. Of course during my work in Germany, there was no need for this and there are only so many hours in a day.

I have now been reading up on the Orient but I doubt if there will be much need for anti-Oriental counter intelligence. A Russian who speaks perfect English, (and many of them do) can pass for an American, but an Oriental is still an Oriental and easily identified. Besides, the Russians can appeal to the left wing in this country and the Chinese cannot.
There was sympathy for China during the last war but not the intimate connection that the Russians had with labor people, intellectuals, Jews and so on.

I have developed a great liking for Chinese food.

I am afraid McCarthy will have to soak his head in the toilet and calm down or he will stifle the anti-communist movement in the cradle. I will have the Msgr. talk firmly to him as soon as possible. McCarthy’s problem is that he loves to hear the sound of his voice and delights in attention. This leads him into intemperance that in turn makes him a very large target. He should surface quietly from time to time, let loose a few well-chosen shots and then go back into his bunker. Now, he runs around making wilder and wilder accusations that will eventually trip him up.

And of course, McCarthy doesn’t really care about communist infiltration in America. All he does care about is to pull the tails of the establishment monkeys and make faces at them. There are others to deal with but he gets the most newspaper coverage.

https://www.amazon.com/DC-Diaries-Translated-Heinrich-Chronicals-ebook/dp/B00SQDU3GE?ie=UTF8&keywords=The%20DC%20Diaries&qid=1462467839&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

Turkey’s Erdogan accuses Russia of arming PKK militants
May 30, 2016
by Orhan Coskun and Ece Toksabay
Reuters

ANKARA-Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has accused Russia of providing anti-aircraft weaponry and rockets to militants of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), government officials said on Monday, confirming reports in local media.

Speaking to reporters on board his airplane after a visit to the southeastern province of Diyarbakir over the weekend, Erdogan accused Moscow of transferring weaponry to the PKK via Iraq and Syria, the pro-government Star newspaper said.

“At this moment, terrorists are using anti-aircraft guns and missiles supplied by Russia. The separatist terrorist organization is equipped with these weapons. They have been transferred to them via Syria and Iraq,” the newspaper reported Erdogan as saying.
The “separatist terrorist organization” is a Turkish government term for the PKK, which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the state that has left more than 40,000 people dead, mostly PKK militants in the largely Kurdish southeast.

Two Turkish government officials confirmed Erdogan’s comments, but Russia said Turkey must show proof for its claims.

While Erdogan has previously castigated Russia for its support of Kurdish fighters in Syria, the latest comments appear to be the first time he has accused Moscow of supplying arms to the PKK, seen as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and Europe.

Responding to the accusation, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying: “When someone says something, let them show evidence.”

FIXING TIES

However, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus was relatively upbeat on Monday about the outlook for relations with Russia, a rare departure from months of tough rhetoric after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane last year.

“Neither Russia nor Turkey can afford to sacrifice their relationship with each other,” Kurtulmus, the government’s official spokesman, told a news conference.

“I wish such tensions had never emerged, but I believe that Turkish-Russian ties can be fixed in a short while. These two countries have no problems that cannot be overcome. I hope that these issues will be solved through dialogue.”

He did not directly address Erdogan’s comments about Russian military support for the PKK.

Ankara also considers the Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters to be terrorists and has been enraged by both Russian and U.S. backing for the militia in its battle with Islamic State in Syria.

NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria and is also a vocal opponent of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow backs Assad but says it also supports the Syrian Kurds in the struggle against Islamic State.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow hit their worst point in recent memory after Turkey shot down the Russian plane over Syria last year, prompting a raft of sanctions from Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin in April promised support for Syrian Kurds, saying they were a serious force in the fight against terrorism.

Moscow has accused Ankara of hindering Kurdish forces in their battle against Islamic State and of using the fight against terrorism as a pretext to crack down on Kurdish organizations in Syria and Turkey.

(Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses in Ankara, Seda Sezer in Istanbul and Lidia Kelly in Moscow; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Ticking Closer to Nuclear Midnight

President Obama embraced Japanese survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, but his policies, such as heightening tensions with Russia, have raised the potential for a far worse nuclear catastrophe

May 27, 2016
by Johnathan Marshall
consortium news

Even if you’ve never won an office raffle, a sports pool or a lottery, consider yourself supremely lucky. Unlike the atomic bomb victims who were recognized by President Barack Obama’s visit to Hiroshima, you’ve never experienced the horrors of nuclear war.
That’s nothing any of us should take for granted, says former Defense Secretary William Perry. On at least three occasions, he noted recently, the U.S. military received false alarms of a Soviet nuclear attack. At least twice the Soviet military went on high alert from similar alarms. And anyone who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 survived “as much by good luck as by good management,” he added.

The consequences of an accidental nuclear war would be staggering. Thousands of U.S. and Russian warheads, some of them orders of magnitude larger than the one that wiped out Hiroshima, are primed for launch on warning. Besides wiping out tens or hundreds of millions of people in urban centers, they would put a large fraction of the world’s population at risk from starvation.

A 2013 report by Physicians for Social Responsibility concluded that even a limited regional nuclear exchange — say between India and Pakistan — could “cause significant climate disruption worldwide” and jeopardize food supplies to as many as two billion people.

Many authorities believe the threat of accidental war is even greater today than during most of the Cold War. Last year, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its famous Doomsday Clock forward to three minutes to midnight, its “direst setting” since the nuke-rattling days of the early Reagan era.

The group cited continued bluster and brinkmanship between NATO and Russia, including the shooting down of a Russian warplane by Turkey, as indicators of today’s risky nuclear environment.

Getting Lucky

National security experts and reporters such as Eric Schlosser, author of Command and Control (2014), have compiled long lists of nuclear accidents and near-misses, some of which might have cost millions of lives but for a few quick-thinking heroes. Here’s a small sample:

–In 1958, a B-47 dropped a 30 kiloton Mark 6 atomic bomb into a family’s backyard in Mars Bluff, South Carolina. Its high-explosive trigger blasted the home and left a 35-foot crater. A few months later, another B-47 dropped a Mark 39 hydrogen bomb near Abilene, again setting off its high explosives but not a nuclear blast.

–In 1961, a B-52 exploded over North Carolina, dropping two Mark 39 hydrogen bombs. One of them nearly detonated after five of its six safety devices failed. The Air Force never did recover the uranium trigger.

–In October 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Soviet submarine thought it was under attack from U.S. warships, which were practicing dropping depth charges in the Sargasso Sea. The submarine commander ordered a launch of nuclear missiles, but was persuaded to stop by his second-in-command.

Other near misses during that mother of all nuclear crises in 1962 included a reckless U.S. spy plane over-flight of Siberia, the explosion of a Soviet satellite that U.S. authorities interpreted as the start of a Soviet missile attack, American test launches of two nuclear-capable ICBMs, and a screw-up at a Minuteman site that allowed a single operator to launch a fully armed missile.

–In 1966, a B-52 bomber collided with a refueling tanker over Palomares, Spain and broke apart, dropping its four hydrogen bombs. Two of them partially detonated, contaminating a wide region with radiation.

–Two years later, a B-52 crashed in Greenland, losing three hydrogen bombs and contaminating nearly a quarter million cubic feet of ice and snow.

–In 1979, a technician mistakenly confused NORAD’s computers with a war games simulation, triggering signals of a Soviet nuclear launch. The Strategic Air Command scrambled its bombers before learning of the false alarm.

–A year later, a defective computer chip prompted the Pentagon to waken President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser with reports of a massive launch of Soviet missiles from submarines and land-based silos.

–In 1985, a glint of sunlight confused a Soviet early-warning satellite, which reported that the United States had launched five intercontinental ballistic missiles. Fortunately, the watch commander risked his career by not reporting the alarm, saving the day.

–In 1995, Russia’s early-warning system confused a small Norwegian weather rocket with an incoming U.S. Trident missile. The Russian military went on high alert, notifying President Boris Yeltsin and preparing a possible counter-attack before recognizing the mistake.

Tensions Reduce the Odds

As MIT nuclear expert Theodore Postol noted last year, “Had the false alert of 1995 occurred instead during a political crisis, Russian nuclear forces might have been launched. American early warning systems would have immediately detected the launch, and this might then have led to the immediate launch of US forces in response to the Russian launch.”

Recent years have brought us accounts of missing nuclear missiles, drug use by Minuteman missile crews, shocking security breaches, crew commanders falling asleep, computer failures, a silo fire that went undetected by smoke alarms, and much more
And just this week we were reminded by the Government Accountability Office that the Pentagon’s “Strategic Automated Command and Control System” uses 8-inch floppy disks and 1970s-vintage computers.

The Pentagon insisted in 2014 that the system “is extremely safe and extremely secure” — after all, how many hackers know how to operate such ancient technology? — but Princeton University’s Bruce Blair, a former Air Force ICBM launch-control officer, said this week, “The floppy disks are associated with a nuclear-communications system that was unreliable even when the system was upgraded in the 1970s.”

No doubt the odds of any one of these accidents triggering a war or mass catastrophe were low. But odds increase with the number of incidents. If the probability of a disaster from one incident is only one in 100, the odds of ruin from 20 such incidents rise to nearly one in five. Those are not comforting numbers.

That’s why it’s critical that the United States and Russia get serious about promoting world security by eliminating first-use and “launch on warning” policies that heighten the risk of accidental wars. They must also sharply reduce the size of nuclear arsenals that are difficult to track, safeguard and maintain.

Instead, President Obama has embarked on a trillion dollar program of nuclear modernization and a dangerous policy of confrontation with Russia in Eastern Europe. (Russia is not blameless in these matters, of course.) Such policies are, in turn, prompting China’s military to pursue a nuclear expansion program of its own — including a dangerous shift to hair-trigger alerts and a launch-on-warning policy.

Former Defense Secretary Perry warns that all of this is putting the world “on the brink of a new nuclear arms race.” That’s not what we expected from the President who was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in part for his call to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons. Let’s hope Obama’s visit to Hiroshima rekindles his commitment to helping create a safer world.

Why water scarcity is a bigger threat to Pakistan’s security than militancy
Pakistan is facing an acute water shortage and may run dry by 2025, according to a latest study. Experts say the water scarcity is also stoking violent conflicts in the country, which is already battling insurgency.
May 30, 2016
DW

A country which is dealing with homegrown Islamic militancy and an exponential rise in extremism might not be too concerned about water shortage, or at least it would not be its top priority. That is why the Pakistani government has hinted that it will significantly increase the defense budget for the next financial year, ignoring the fact that water scarcity could be a bigger menace than Islamic terrorism.

The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) has warned that the country may run dry by 2025 if the authorities didn’t take an immediate action. According to a yet-to-be released report, parts of which have been made available to the media, the Islamic country touched the “water stress line” in 1990 and crossed the “water scarcity line” in 2005.

If this situation persists, Pakistan is likely to face acute water shortage or drought-like situation in the near future, predicts the PCRWR, which is affiliated with the South Asian country’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

The organization says there is an urgent need to carry out research at various levels to find a solution to the crisis. “Unfortunately, the PCRWR has no funds to ensure sustainable research,” said a ministry official.

Islamabad-based water expert Irfan Chowdhry confirms the report’s findings and says that Pakistan is on the verge of a huge catastrophe. “It is alarming that our capacity to preserve water has shrunk over the years. We haven’t built new dams since the 1960s, and the capacity of existing ones to store water is decreasing,” Chowdhry told DW.
Climate change and poor management

Pakistan has the world’s fourth highest rate of water use. Its water intensity rate – the amount of water, in cubic meters, used per unit of GDP – is the world’s highest. This suggests that no country’s economy is more water-intensive than Pakistan’s.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan is already the third most water-stressed country in the world. Its per capita annual water availability is 1,017 cubic meters – perilously close to the scarcity threshold of 1,000 cubic meters. Back in 2009, Pakistan’s water availability was about 1,500 cubic meters.

The bulk of Pakistan’s farmland is irrigated through a canal system, but the IMF says in a report canal water is vastly underpriced, recovering only one-quarter of annual operating and maintenance costs. Meanwhile, agriculture, which consumes almost all annual available surface water, is largely untaxed.

Experts say that population growth and urbanization are the main reasons behind the crisis. The issue has also been exacerbated by climate change, poor water management, and a lack of political will to deal with the crisis.

“Pakistan is approaching the scarcity threshold for water. What is even more disturbing is that groundwater supplies – the last resort of water supply – are being rapidly depleted. And worst of all is that the authorities have given no indication that they plan to do anything about any of this,” Michael Kugelman, South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, told DW.

The expert says that the Pakistani authorities need to step up efforts to overcome the crisis, which is partly man-made. “First of all, Pakistan’s leaders and stakeholders need to take ownership of this challenge and declare their intention to tackle it. Simply blaming previous governments, or blaming India, for the crisis won’t solve anything. Next, the government needs to institute a major paradigm shift that promotes more judicious use of water,” Kugelman emphasized.

Ashfaq Ahmed Sheikh, the director of the PCRWR, told DW that the authorities had already introduced several schemes in the cities of Sheikhupura and Sargodha and saved up to 50 percent water in the rice fields, without compromising on the production. He called on the government to initiate more such projects all over the country.

A cause of conflicts

The scarcity of water is also triggering conflicts in the country. Experts say the economic impact of the water crisis is immense, and the people are fighting for resources. Three out of four Pakistani provinces blame the most populous and politically empowered province, Punjab, for usurping their water sources.

“The government is ignoring the interests of our province,” Ayaz Lateef Palejo, a nationalist leader from the southern Sindh province, told DW. “There is massive corruption in the water sector, and we are unhappy with the situation,” he added.
Kugelman also believes that the economic implications of the conflict are creating rifts among the population, which are likely to aggravate the security situation in the country.

“The political implications of the crisis have yet to be determined, but we can expect that if nothing is done and the situation gets worse, pressure on the political leadership will intensify. In the years ahead, this could lead to unrest-and, if things get sufficiently out of hand, perhaps even a military takeover. None of this can be ruled out. Such is the seriousness of the situation,” said Kugelman.

“Some may say that loose nukes and Islamist militant takeovers are the big fear for Pakistan. For me, the nightmare is water scarcity, because in Pakistan it is very real and already upon us,” the expert added.

Additional reporting by Sattar Khan, DW’s correspondent in Islamabad.

Pathetic Frauds
by Harry von Johnston, PhD

When Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she did so prompted by the highest of motives. Yet she, herself, relates the incident that when she first met Abraham Lincoln in 1863, he commented “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!”

Few will deny that the printed word in this instance fanned the flames of passion which brought about one of the bloodiest and saddest wars of American history, with brother sometimes pitted against brother, father against son. Perhaps if there had been less appeal to the emotions the problems might have resolved themselves through peaceful means. However, almost universally read at the time, few people then recognized the potency of one small book or the injustice done the South through its wide acceptance as a fair picture of slavery in the South.

Propaganda, as a weapon of psychological warfare is in even wider use today. Communists were masters of the art. Often they used the direct approach; just as often they employed diversion tactics to focus the eyes and ears of the world in directions other than where the real conflict was being waged. For many years, through propaganda alone, the dead threat of Hitler and Nazism had been constantly held before the public in a diversion maneuver to keep attention from being directed against the live threat of Stalin, Khrushchev and Communism.

Such has been the effect, if not the deliberate intention of many who have promoted its distribution, of a book of popular appeal-The Diary Of Anna Frank. It has been sold to the public as the actual diary of a young Jewish girl who died in a Nazi concentration camp after two years of abuse and horror.

Many Americans have read the book or seen the movie version, and have been deeply moved by the real life drama it claims to present. But have we been misled in the belief that Anna Frank actually wrote this diary? And if so. should an author be permitted to produce a work of fiction and sell it to the world as fact, particularly one of such tremendous emotional appeal?

The Swedish journal Frio Ord published two articles commenting on The Diary of Anna Frank. A condensation of these articles appeared in the April 15, 1959 issue of Economic Council Letter, as follows:

“History has many examples of myths that live a longer and richer life than truth. and may become more effective than truth.

The Western world has for some years hem made aware of a young Jewish girl through the medium of what purports to he her personally written story, “Anne Frank’s Diary.” Any informed literary inspection of this book has shown it to have been impossible as the work of a teenager.

A noteworthy decision of the New York Supreme Court confirms this point of view, in that the well known American writer, Meyer Levin, has been awarded $50.000 to be paid him by the father of Anna Frank as an honorarium for Levin’s work on the “Anna Frank Diary.”

Mr. Frank, in Switzerland, had promised to pay to prominent Jewish author, Meyer Levin. not less than $50,000 because he had used the literary creation of author Levin in toto, and represented it to his publisher and the public as his late daughter’s original work.

Inquiry of the County Clerk. New York County. as to the facts of the case referred to in the Swedish press, brought a reply on April 23, 1962, giving the name of a New York firm of lawyers as “attorneys .far the respondent.” Reference was to ”The Dairy of Anna Frank 2203-58.”

A letter to this firm brought a response on May 4, 1962 that “Although we represent Mr. Levin in other matters, we had nothing to do with the Anna Frank case.”
On May 7, 1962, came the following reply from a member of a firm of New York lawyers to whom the original inquiry had been forwarded:

“I was the attorney for Meyer Levin in his action against Otto Frank and others. It is true that a jury awarded Mr. Levin $50,000 in damages, as indicated in your letter. That award was later set aside by the trial justice. Hon. Samuel C. Coleman. on the ground that the damages had not been proved in the manner required by law. The action was subsequently settled between the litigating parties, while an appeal from Judge Coleman’s decision was pending.

I am afraid that the case itself is not officially reported, so far as the trial itself, or even Judge Coleman’s decision, is concerned. Certain procedural matters were reported. both in 141 New York Supplement. Second Series 170. and in 5 Second Series 181. The correct file number in the New York County Clerk‘s office is 2241-1956 and the file is probably a large and full one which must include Judge Coleman’s decision. Unfortunately, our file is in storage and 1 cannot locate a copy of that decision as it appeared in the New York Law Journal early in the year 1960.”

The Diary Of Anna Frank was first published in 1952 and immediately became a bestseller. It has been republished in paperback, 40 printings. It is impossible to estimate how many people have been touched and aroused by the movie production.
Why has the trial involving the father of Anna Frank, bearing directly on the authenticity of this book, never been “officially reported”? In royalties alone, Otto Frank has profited richly from the sale of this book, purporting to depict the tragic life of his daughter. But is it fact, or is it fiction? Is it truth or is it propaganda? Or is it a combination of all of these? And to what degree does it wrongfully appeal to the emotions through a misrepresentation as to its origin?

School publications for years have recommended this book for young people, presenting it as the work of Anna Frank. Advertising in advance of the movie showing has played up the “factual” nature of the drama being presented. Do not writers of such editorials and promoters of such advertising, “fan the flames of hate” they rightly profess to deplore?
Many American Jews were shocked at the handling of the Eichmann case, the distortions contained in the book Exodus and its movie counterpart, but their protests have had little publicity outside of their own organ, Issues, by the American Council for Judaism. Others who have expressed the same convictions have been charged with anti-Semitism. Yet it is to be noted that both Otto Frank and his accuser Meyer Levin, were Jewish, so a similar charge would hardly be applicable in pursuing this subject to an honest conclusion..

File number 2241-1956 in the New York County Clerk’s office should be opened to the public view and its content thoroughly publicized. Misrepresentation, exaggeration, and falsification has too often colored the judgment of good citizens. If Mr. Frank used the work of Meyer Levin to present to the world what we have been led to believe is the literary work of his daughter, wholly or in part, then the truth should be exposed.
To label fiction as fact is never justified nor should it be condoned.

Since actual period documentation does not exist in support of the Holocaust myth, it has always been incumbent on its supporters to create it.

Not only is the “Anna Frank” diary now considered to be a fake, so also is “The Painted Bird” by Jerzy Kosinski. This book, which is a mass of pornographic and sadistic imagery which, had it not been taken so seriously by the Jewish community, would be merely the pathetic manifestation of a self-serving and very sick person.

This was duly exposed as a shabby, though much revered (by the Jewish community) and quoted, fraud. When this was exposed, Kosinski committed suicide. Later, in Kosinski’s footsteps we find the next fiction entitled “Fragments,” by a Swiss Protestant named Bruno Dosseker who spent the war in Switzerland as a young child. Dosseker posed as a very young Baltic Jewish concentration camp inmate named Binjamin Wilkomerski. This work consists of allegedly fragmented “memories” and is very difficult to read

Dosseker became the poster boy for the Holocaust supporters and was lionized by the international Jewish community, reaping considerable profit and many in-house awards for his wonderful and moving portrayal of German brutality and sexual sadism.

Another book, allegedly by a Hungarian doctor, concerning his deportation from Budapest in 1944 and subsequent journey by “Death Train” to Auschwitz is another fraud. There was never such a doctor in Hungary during the period involved and the alleged route of the train from Budapest to Auschwitz did not exist.

These sort of pathetic refugees from the back wards seem to be drawn to the Holocausters…and they to them. There are now “Holocaust Survivors” as young as thirty which is an interesting anomaly because the last concentration camp was closed in 1945. Perhaps they consider the last frenzied spring sale at Bloomingdale’s department store to be what they survived.

Next we can expect to see a book based on twenty-seven volumes of secret diaries prepared on a modern word processor within the current year by an alleged inhabitant of the Warsaw ghetto, describing the Nazi slaughter of tens of millions of weeping Jews by means that would shame a modern African state.

And, predictably, the publication of these howlers would be greeted with joy on the part of the fund raisers and fanatics, praised in the columns of the New York Times and scripted by Steven Spielberg for a heart-wrenching and guaranteed Oscar-winning film.
Hundreds of thousands of DVD copies will be donated to American schools and the Jewish community will demand that subservient executive and legislative bodies in America create a Day of Atonement as a National Holiday to balance the terrible Christian Christmas and the wickedly Satanic Halloween.

Conservationists must hate these books because so many otherwise beautiful and useful trees are slaughtered for their preparation

Insofar as the Anna Frank diary is concerned, herewith is some background on Anna Frank, her family and her alleged diary.

The Franks were upper class German Jews, both coming from wealthy families. Otto and his siblings lived on the exclusive Meronstrasse in Frankfurt. Otto attended a private prep school, and also attended the Lessing Gymnasium, the most expensive school in Frankfurt.

Otto attended Heidelberg University. After graduation he left for a long vacation in England.

In 1909, the 20 year old Otto went to New York City where he stayed with his relatives, the Oppenheimers.

In 1925 Anna’s parents married and settled in Frankfurt, Germany. Anna was born in 1929. The Frank’s family business included banking, management of the springs at Bad Soden and the manufacture of cough drops. Anna’s mother, the former Edith Holländer, was the daughter of a manufacturer.

In 1934, Otto and his family moved to Amsterdam where he bought a spice business, Opekta, which manufactures Pectin used in making household jellies.

On May 1940, after the Germans occupied Amsterdam Otto remained in that city while his mother and brother moved to Switzerland. Otto remained in Amsterdam where his firm did business with the German Wehrmacht. From 1939 to 1944, Otto sold Opeka, and Pectin, to the German army. Pectin was a food preservative, and a anti infectant balm for wounds and as a thickener for raising blood volume in blood transfusions. Pectin was used as an emulsifier for petroleum, gelatized gasoline for fire bombing. By supplying the Wehrmacht, Otto Frank became, in the eyes of the Dutch, a Nazi collaborator.

On July 6, 1942 Otto moved the Frank family into the so-called ‘Secret Annex’. The annex is a three story, mostly glass townhouse that shares a garden park with fifty other apartments.

While he was allegedly in hiding, Otto Frank still managed his business, going downstairs to his office at night and on weekends. Anna and the others would go to Otto’s office and listen to radio broadcasts from England.

The purported diary begins on June 12, 1942, and runs to December 5,1942 . It consists of a book that is six by four by a quarter inches. In addition to this first diary, Anne supplemented it with personal letters. Otto said Anna heard Gerrit Bolkestein in a broadcast say: ~ “Keep a diary, and he would publish after the war”, and that’s why Anne’s father claimed she rewrote her diaries second time in 1944.

In this second edition, the new writer changed, rearranged and occasionally combined entries of various dates.

When Anna allegedly rewrote the diaries, she used a ball point pen, which did not exist in 1945, and the book took on an extremely high literary standard, and read more like a professional documentary than a child’s diary. In Anna’s second edition her writing style, and handwriting, suddenly matured.

The actual diary of Anna Frank contained only about 150 notes, according to The New York Times, of October 2 ,1955.

In 1944, German authorities in occupied Holland determined that Otto Frank had been swindling then via his extensive and very lucrative Wehrmacht contracts. The German police then raided his apartment attic, and the eight Jews were sent to Westerbork work camp and forced to perform manual labor .Otto himself was sent to Auschwitz.. Anna, her sister Margot, and her mother, subsequently died of typhus in another camp.

In 1945, after being liberated from German custody, Otto returned to Amsterdam, where he claimed he found Anna’s diary cleverly hidden in the Annex’s rafters. However, another version has a Dutch friend, Meip Geis finding Anna’s diary of fictional events, which she then gave to Otto Frank.

Otto took what he claimed were Anna’s letters and notes, edited them into a book, which he then gave to his secretary, Isa Cauvern, to review. Isa Cauvern and her husband Albert Cauvern , a writer, authored the first diary.
Questions were raised by some publishers as to whether Isa and Albert Cauvern, who assisted Otto in typing out the work used the original diaries or whether they took it directly from Mr. Frank’s personal transcription.

American author, Meyer Levin wrote the third and final edition

Meyer Levin was an author, and journalist, who lived for many years in France, where he met Otto Frank around 1949.

Born in 1905, Meyer Levin was raised in the section of Chicago notoriously known in the days of gangster warfare as the “Bloody Nineteen Ward.” At the age of eighteen he worked as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News and during the next four years became an increasingly frequent contributor to the national literary magazine, The Menorah Journal. In 1929 he published The Reporter , which was the first of his sixteen novels.
In 1933 Levin became an assistant editor and film critic at the newly-created Esquire Magazine where he remained until 1939.

Perhaps his best-known work is Compulsion (1956), chronicling the Leopold and Loeb case and hailed by critics as one of the greatest books of the decade. The compelling work was the first “documentary novel” or “non-fiction novel.”

After the enormous success of Compulsion , Levin embarked on a trilogy of novels dealing with the Holocaust. The first, Eva  (1959) was the story of a Jewish girl’s experiences throughout the war and her adjustment to life after the concentration camps. This was followed by The Fanatic (1963), which told the hypnotic story of a Jewish poet dealing with the moral questions that arose from his ordeal at the hands of the Nazis. The last in the triptych, The Stronghold (1965), is a thriller set in a concentration camp during the last days of the war.

At the outset of World War II Levin made documentary films for the US Office of War Information and later worked in France as a civilian expert in the Psychological Warfare Division. He eventually became a war correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, with the special mission of uncovering the fate of Jewish concentration camp prisoners. Levin took his role very seriously, sometimes entering concentration camps ahead of the tanks of the liberating forces in order to compile lists of the survivors.

After the war Levin went to Palestine and turned his attention again to the motion picture camera. His film My Father’s House told the story of a child survivor searching for his family in Palestine. He wrote this story as a novel as well and the book was published in 1947.

Levin also joined the Hagana underground and helped smuggle Jews from the interior of Poland to Palestine, then basically an Arab country under the control of the British..

In 1951 Levin came upon a copy of the French edition of the Anna Frank diary He made a number of attempts to have the work published in English, and conceived it as a play and film. When the diary finally found an American publisher, his play was accepted for production but then suddenly barred, ostensibly for being “unstageworthy,” and another writer’s version was commissioned.

Levin fought for the rights to perform his version of the play, claiming that the real reason the producers refused to stage his work was because they thought it “too Jewish.” He saw the suppression of the play as an extension of the Stalinist attack on Jewish culture and, outraged that even Anna Frank could be censored, he took the producers to court and began an agonizing, prolonged struggle that dragged on for years.
Levin eventually won a jury award against the producers for appropriation of ideas, but the bitterness of the trial made him many enemies in the Jewish and literary communities.

Although Levin’s version of the play is still banned by the owners of the dramatic rights, underground productions of the work are frequently staged throughout the world.
Meyer Levin died in 1981

Levin rewrote the various post-war treatments of the Anna Frank diary with an eye toward a Broadway production, but Otto decided to cut him out, refusing to honor his contract or pay him for his work. Meyer Levin sued Otto Frank for his writings, and the New York Supreme court awarded Meyer Levin $50,000, for his ‘intellectual work’.
In 1980, Otto sued two Germans, Ernst Romer and Edgar Geiss, for distributing literature denouncing the diary as a forgery. The trial produced a study by official German handwriting experts that determined everything in the diary was written by the same person. The person that wrote the diaries had used a ballpoint pen throughout.

Unfortunately for Herr Frank, the ballpoint pen was not available until 1951 whereas Anne was known to have died of typhus in 1944.

Because of the lawsuit in a German court, the German state forensic bureau, the Bundes Kriminal Amt [BKA] forensically examined the manuscript, which at that point in time consisted of three hardbound notebooks and 324 loose pages bound in a fourth notebook, with special forensic equipment.

The results of tests, performed at the BKA laboratories, showed that “significant” portions of the work, especially the fourth volume, were written with a ballpoint pen. Since ballpoint pens were not available before 1951, the BKA concluded those sections must have been added subsequently.

In the end, BKA clearly determined that none of the diary handwriting matched known examples of Anna’s handwriting.

They also determined that the paper on which the diary was written contained paper whiteners which were not in use before 1951.

The German magazine, Der Spiegel, published an account of this report alleging that (a) editing postdated 1951; (b) an earlier expert had held that all the writing in the journal was by the same hand; and thus (c) the entire diary was a postwar fake.

The BKA information, at the urgent request of the Jewish community, was redacted at the time but later inadvertently released to researchers in the United States.

How an industry helps Chinese students cheat their way into and through U.S. colleges
May 25, 2016
by Koh Gui Qing, Alexandra Harney, Steve Stecklow and James Pomfret
Reuters

IOWA CITY, Iowa – The advertisements were tailored for Chinese college students far from home, struggling with the English language and an unfamiliar culture.
Coaching services peppered the students with emails and chat messages in Chinese, offering to help foreign students at U.S. colleges do much of the work necessary for a university degree. The companies would author essays for clients. Handle their homework. Even take their exams. All for about a $1,000 a course.

For dozens of Chinese nationals at the University of Iowa, the offers proved irresistible.
“Test-taking services. Paper-writing. Take Online Courses for you,” says the social-messaging profile of one Chinese coaching outfit used by Iowa students, UI International Student Services. A pitch emailed by another business ended with this reassuring claim: “Your friends are all using us.”

Today, the University of Iowa, one of the largest state universities in the American Midwest, says it is investigating at least 30 students suspected of cheating. Three sources familiar with the inquiry say the number under investigation may be two or three times higher.

University spokespeople declined to name the students or comment on their nationality, citing academic privacy laws.

But those familiar with the investigation said that most, perhaps all, of the cheating suspects are Chinese nationals. They stand accused of cheating in online versions of at least three courses, including law and economics. Three of the Chinese suspects admitted to Reuters that they hired Chinese-run outfits to take exams for them.

A May 8 letter sent by the university to a fourth Chinese student, who allegedly had imposters take his midterms for him, says the school will recommend expulsion. “We are unable to be sure that you will not cheat in the future, since your past actions call your future behavior into question,” it reads. Foreigners in the United States on student visas face possible deportation under U.S. immigration law if expelled from school.

The Iowa cheating rings are the latest evidence of how a vibrant East Asian industry is corrupting the U.S. higher education system by gaming entrance exams, concocting college applications and completing college coursework on behalf of students. These nimble operators not only help students cheat their way into universities. They also help them cheat their way through.

The companies are prospering by exploiting two intersecting interests: the growing demand by Chinese nationals to study overseas, and the desire by U.S. colleges to profit from foreign students willing to pay full tuition.
As Reuters reported in March, some companies are leveraging weaknesses in the SAT, a standardized college entrance exam, to help clients gain an unfair advantage on the test by feeding them questions in advance.

In addition, Reuters has identified companies in China that help students contrive their entire college application – embellishing or ghostwriting application essays, doctoring letters of recommendation from high school teachers, and even advising kids to obtain fake high school transcripts. Other providers continue the illicit assistance after admission, such as those that performed coursework for hire in Iowa City.

“The reality is for international students, particularly in Asia, there’s a worry about whether the application is authentic, whether the essay is authentic, whether the person who shows up at your door is the same person who applied,” said Joyce E. Smith, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling in Arlington, Virginia.

The cheating services extend far beyond Iowa. At the University of Washington, the University of Alabama and Penn State University, for example, students received Chinese-language advertisements by email this semester from unnamed firms. The pitch: Students could raise their grade point averages and graduate early if they hired the outfits to take classes and do assignments for them. The ads, reviewed by Reuters, offered a money-back guarantee. Students who didn’t get As would get refunds.

APPLICATION FRAUD”

The market for such services has major potential. About 761,000 degree-seeking foreign students now study in the United States, according to the Institute of International Education. A third come from China. Department of Commerce statistics show that Chinese students spent almost $10 billion on tuition and other goods and services in America in 2014.

Of course, not all Chinese students are dishonest, and American students aren’t immune to the lure of cheating. Still, the temptation to break the rules is great in China because the stakes are extraordinarily high.

Most seats at universities in China are awarded through a competitive national entrance exam known as the gaokao, a test that requires years of round-the-clock preparation. A growing number of Chinese parents are reluctant to put their children through that gauntlet. U.S. universities offer an easier way to get ahead, with a quality education and better job prospects.

To help those students succeed, a multi-faceted industry is taking advantage of vulnerabilities in the U.S. higher education system. For colleges, vetting the applicants who use these services can be daunting. The case of Xuan “Claren” Rong shows why.
A native of Shenzhen, a city of about 11 million people on the Chinese mainland near Hong Kong, Rong spent part of high school in America. He entered the MacDuffie School, a boarding and day school in Granby, Massachusetts, as a ninth-grader in September 2011.

“He seemed to be a diligent, hard-working kid,” said Steven Griffin, MacDuffie’s head of school. Trouble was, “he was in the middle of the pack in terms of his grades,” Griffin recalled. “Apparently that was not good enough for his family.”

Reuters reviewed Rong’s transcript at MacDuffie, which the school verified as authentic. It shows his overall grade point average as of April 2014 was 2.8 out of 4 – about a B – though it was marred with Ds in Latin and Physics. Rong was supposed to graduate in 2015 but dropped out after his junior year.

In March 2014, he became a client of Cunshande, a company that helps Chinese students get accepted to top U.S. colleges. Cunshande, also known as Transcend Education, is located on the 25th floor of an office tower in the financial district of Shenzhen.
Its founders – Kevin Li and Michael Du – both attended one of America’s top public schools, the University of California, Los Angeles. Li said they began advising Chinese students on applying to American colleges while at UCLA. Du wouldn’t comment other than to say in an email that he is “no longer involved with the operations at Transcend.”
Li and Du opened Transcend in Shenzhen about five years ago. Li said Transcend has about 40 clients a year and charges between $12,000 and $18,000 for its services, which he described as mentoring and counseling students.

A receipt shows that Claren Rong’s parents paid about $13,700 to Transcend. With the company’s help, Rong applied to at least 15 U.S. colleges, emails reviewed by Reuters indicate. He was accepted in 2015 by the University of California, Davis.
In March 2015, more than a hundred U.S. colleges began receiving emails from an anonymous former Transcend employee. The emails included details about 40 Chinese applicants, including Rong.

“I am writing this e-mail to inform you that the student Xuan Rong … under the influence of Cunshande, a company which ghostwrites applications for Chinese students applying to American universities, committed application fraud,” the tipster wrote to some of the schools.

Rong, the tipster alleged, claimed in his college applications that he attended a Chinese high school in downtown Shenzhen, where he maintained an A average in his sophomore and junior years. In fact, the tipster said, Rong was attending MacDuffie in Massachusetts.

The tipster attached two transcripts for Rong – his real one from MacDuffie, the other from the school in Shenzhen. Both transcripts list grades for his sophomore and junior years, even though Rong didn’t take classes at the Shenzhen school those years.
Admissions offices often lack the staff to pursue such red flags. At UC Davis, where Rong was admitted, 68,519 people applied to attend the school this fall. One of every five were international students. The school has just seven admissions officers on staff to vet those 13,560 international applicants.

Even so, an admissions officer at UC Davis, Mitsuko Leonard, did email the former Transcend employee, promising that “any real evidence you are able to provide will be considered.”

The tipster responded five days later, on March 30, 2015, offering information about 21 students in 217 attached documents. Leonard forwarded the material to the UC president’s office. “Yikes… this is from the anonymous source in China. Please review,” she wrote.

Most of the attachments were different versions of college essays that, the tipster claimed, had been doctored by Transcend employees. They included nine versions of an essay by Rong. The evolving drafts, reviewed by Reuters, display dramatic improvement in grammar and writing. The email also included a “Special Note” about where Rong attended high school.

The tipster alleged that Rong’s parents had obtained “a fake Chinese high school transcript” from a local Chinese high school to “hide his poor” average at MacDuffie. The attachments included his legitimate transcript from the Massachusetts school.
UC Davis didn’t contact the school at that time, and it admitted Rong.

Griffin, MacDuffie’s school head, said a UC Davis representative called months later, in late September, asking about Rong. The call came shortly after Reuters obtained,  through a public records request, the correspondence between the admissions office and the Transcend tipster.

A UC Davis spokesman initially told Reuters the university couldn’t comment on specific students. He later said Rong would be leaving the university after the fall semester in December 2015.

Rong declined to comment. His father, Yuanxin Rong, confirmed in an interview in Shenzhen last November that UC Davis had expelled his son. “The university said that we didn’t provide the right information” in his application, he said.

Rong’s father also confirmed that his son submitted a bogus Chinese high school transcript. He said Transcend had advised his family to obtain a transcript from the Chinese high school because of his son’s low grade point average at MacDuffie.
Ketty Kang, director of the international department at Cuiyuan High School in Shenzhen, confirmed that the school issued a transcript for Rong showing he spent his sophomore and junior years there. “I should have added more information to say he wasn’t actually at the school for several years,” she said.

Li, the co-founder of Transcend, initially said he had no knowledge of the Chinese transcript for Rong. Reuters obtained a copy of the transcript, which was a Microsoft Word file. Its metadata – computer information about the document – showed that it had last been saved by Li. Shown a copy of the document and the metadata, Li conceded that Transcend had the fake transcript on file and that he had seen it before. But he said Transcend played no part in obtaining the document.

Li told Reuters the company does not ghostwrite applications. He also said Transcend doesn’t help students create teacher recommendations for themselves. Drafts seen by Reuters of more than 200 recommendation letters written for more than 50 Transcend students suggest otherwise.
The metadata on those documents indicates that they, too, had been stored on Transcend’s computers. Letters of recommendation are customarily confidential, and teachers rarely let anyone change them. The letters disclosed by the tipster bear signs of having been scripted or altered by students or Transcend employees.

Two of the recommendations are for Rong. Both claim he attended Cuiyuan High. One referred to his “outstanding academic performance.” In another, a teacher claimed he had taught Rong math in 11th grade and that he was “a great student.”

In a purported teacher’s recommendation for another student, Li commented in the margins, “This part needs to be expanded.” He added that two other paragraphs could be “combined into one and shortened so we have enough space for this expanded paragraph.”

Shown a copy of that letter, Li said Transcend never changes recommendations. Transcend’s input on that particular letter, he said, was “definitely authorized by the school teacher.”

The teacher says otherwise. Phillip Stout, then a teacher at Shenzhen Middle School, said he did write a letter for the student, whose name Reuters is withholding. But Stout said he never gave a copy of the letter to the student or authorized anyone to change it. He also said he never heard of Li or his company. How Transcend got the letter is a mystery to Stout. “If somebody else is editing it, it’s not something I ever wanted,” Stout said. “It’s upsetting to hear.”

Rong’s father said the family would now try to find another U.S. school for his son. He expressed no remorse about obtaining the fake Chinese transcript.
“We just wanted to get in a better school,” he said. “It’s normal. Anyone would do that.”

THEY TEMPTED US”

The situation at the University of Iowa illustrates how Chinese cheating-service providers can cause trouble long after admission.

At Iowa, four or five so-called transcript evaluators review international applications from potential freshmen, according to a school spokesman. For the fall 2016 term, nearly 5,000 international students applied, leaving each of the admissions officers to scrutinize on average about a thousand applications.

In 2015, 4,540 international students were enrolled at Iowa. Of those, 2,797 were from China. That’s 9 percent of the school’s student body. Most or all of the students accused of cheating are Chinese nationals.

An email sent on April 25 to faculty members of Iowa’s business school explained how the suspects were caught. The students, wrote Kenneth G. Brown, associate dean at the university’s Tippie College of Business, had taken online examinations monitored by a proctoring services company, ProctorU.

The contractor discovered that students taking online classes had other people take their exams for them, he wrote. ProctorU is able to monitor students through the cameras mounted in the computers used to take the test. In checking the faces of the exam-takers against the identification photos of the legitimate students, ProctorU came to believe that imposters had stepped in for the students. It then alerted the university.

“Some of these students conducted this type of cheating in more than one class,” Brown wrote. He said that some of the ringers cheated for more than one student. Brown declined to comment. ProctorU confirmed the outlines of how it detected the cheating.
It isn’t clear if the university has identified any of the ringers, known as “gunmen” in China. But the three Chinese students interviewed for this article mentioned several services they had used. The students spoke on the condition that they not be named.
One, a third-year transfer student from a Chinese university, said UI International Student Services took a midterm exam for her in March. In a series of Chinese-language messages via the WeChat app, UI International confirmed to Reuters that it has provided “substitute” course-taking services to students at the University of Iowa. But contradicting the student, UI International denied taking exams for students and said none of its clients had been accused of academic fraud.

UI International told Reuters that it also provides services at a handful of other American colleges, which it declined to name. Its students-for-hire are all undergraduates, UI International said, but not all are Chinese.

“We’re students, too, making a little hard-earned money,” UI International said in the WeChat exchange. “I hope you can have mercy on us in your writing. Don’t wipe us out. Thanks a million.”

Another student caught in the cheating crackdown, a sophomore, said she hired a company that goes by the names Fanyi Translation and Fanyi Creation Translation. Fanyi’s website, fanyishop.com, became inaccessible May 23. It had carried the motto “diligently creating value.”

Its specialties include writing papers for students. “We have native English speakers from the UK and the US who can guarantee the quality of the writing,” the site said. Fanyi charged 5 cents a word for “polishing” an existing piece of writing and 21 cents a word for “gold medal expert service” – editors writing bespoke pieces for the student. Fanyi also said it would create documents for students going abroad, including personal statements and recommendation letters.

Fanyi accepted payment in U.S. and Canadian dollars, British pounds and Chinese renminbi, by Visa, MasterCard and UnionPay, its website said. Reuters was unable to reach the operators of the company.

The transfer student who said she used UI International is a 21-year-old junior. She has been at Iowa for two semesters. She paid $1,200 to UI International to take the midterm exam for her in the Introduction to Law course, she said.

“At the start, I wasn’t looking for someone to take my exams for me,” she said. “But when I did my homework, I discovered the grades I got for my homework were always very poor. Then I began to worry.”

“My family is very strict with me and has very high expectations for my grades,” she said. Her mother teaches at a university back home in China, she said. “My mother’s health is not good, too, and I didn’t want to disappoint her, which led me to make a wrong decision.”

The sophomore student who hired Fanyi Translation said she paid the service $1,400 to take the midterm exam for her in the same law course. The service, she said, “sweet talked and tricked us. They told us they can get As for us – that they can guarantee Bs and strive for As.”

Fanyi delivered on one promise: She got a B on her midterm. But because she was caught cheating, she failed the course.

“We really regret it now,” she said.

A third student, also a sophomore, said he paid $2,400 through PayPal to someone a friend recommended through WeChat. The service would take two online economics classes for him. The sophomore didn’t even know the ringer’s name. A mediocre student, he thought the service would help his grades. He said he recognizes that what he did is wrong.

When the university told him he’d been caught, he said, “it was a bolt out of the blue. I was really scared.”

Now, the student is looking to put the incident behind him. He says he hopes to stay in the United States – and transfer to another school.

Additional reporting by Renee Dudley in Boston and Jane Lanhee Lee in Davis, California.

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TBR News May 30, 2016

May 30 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C. May 30, 2016: “We are on a brief vacation until June 1.” Continue Reading »

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TBR News May 29, 2016

May 29 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 29, 2016: “We are on a brief vacation until June 1.” Continue Reading »

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TBR News May 28, 2016

May 28 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

 

 

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 28, 2016: “Now that Donald Trump has secured enough delegates to make him the Republican candidate for President, the media is not sure whether to continue trashing him or rush over to kiss his backside. Trump is an outsider who does not play by the Beltway game. He has a forceful personality and did not become very wealthy by being stupid. The press has been claiming Trump was a buffoon but he has obviously resonated with the mass of the voting public who is tired of the useless politicians, crooked and stupid, that run the country. It remains to be seen whether one of the alphabet agencies will try to assassinate him, as they did Kennedy for threatening to break up the CIA. The Chinese are furious with the concept of a Trump who wants to bring American business back to this country to improve American economy and lessen a severe unemployment problem. The current administration is careful not to anger the Chinese, who hold huge amounts of US Treasury notes, but Trump could well flatten the Chinese economy with his project.”

 The Müller Washington Journals   1948-1951

At the beginning of December, 1948, a German national arrived in Washington, D.C. to take up an important position with the newly-formed CIA. He was a specialist on almost every aspect of Soviet intelligence and had actively fought them, both in his native Bavaria where he was head of the political police in Munich and later in Berlin as head of Amt IV of the State Security Office, also known as the Gestapo.

His name was Heinrich Müller.

Even as a young man, Heini Müller had kept daily journals of his activities, journals that covered his military service as a pilot in the Imperial German air arm and an apprentice policeman in Munich. He continued these journals throughout the war and while employed by the top CIA leadership in Washington, continued his daily notations.

This work is a translation of his complete journals from December of 1948 through September of 1951.

When Heinrich Müller was hired by the CIA¹s station chief in Bern, Switzerland, James Kronthal in 1948, he had misgivings about working for his former enemies but pragmatism and the lure of large amounts of money won him over to what he considered to be merely an extension of his life-work against the agents of the Comintern. What he discovered after living and working in official Washington for four years was that the nation¹s capital was, in truth, what he once humorously claimed sounded like a cross between a zoo and a lunatic asylum. His journals, in addition to personal letters, various reports and other personal material, give a very clear, but not particularly flattering, view of the inmates of both the zoo and the asylum.

Müller moved, albeit very carefully, in the rarefied atmosphere of senior policy personnel, military leaders, heads of various intelligence agencies and the White House itself. He was a very observant, quick-witted person who took copious notes of what he saw. This was not a departure from his earlier habits because Heinrich Müller had always kept a journal, even when he was a lowly Bavarian police officer, and his comments about personalities and events in the Third Reich are just as pungent and entertaining as the ones he made while in America.

The reason for publishing this phase of his eventful life is that so many agencies in the United States and their supporters do not want to believe that a man of Müller¹s position could ever have been employed by their country in general or their agency in specific.

Sunday, 22 January 1950

We have in the papers, (I am just catching up on the back pile) an interesting story from the 13th of this month. The Hiss people have hired some grossly incompetent Harvard psychologist named (Dr. Harold A., ed.) Murray who “analyzed” Hitler for the U.S. government in 1943. I read a copy of this odd document recently and I must say that my initial impression of psychologists, made years ago with reference to that opium-addict Freud (whom we know from files captured in Vienna was having a sexual affair with his sister!) has not changed. This is about as much of a “science” as Christian Science. I was once introduced to one in Berlin who wanted to work for me, “analyzing” various people, such as Stalin and Churchill. There were people in our government who believed in soothsayers, chicken entrail observers, astrologists and those who spoke with the dead. That’s what happens when a revolutionary government comes into power. Helping Hitler with free sandwiches in the Kampfzeit (early days of the Nazi Party, ed.) then seemed to entitle them to cast the horoscopes of Himmler and other fatuous idiots. I recall the story about the spear of Longinas. There were two originals and neither of them came from the period.

Hiss must be desperate indeed to hire such idiots. We all know that Chambers is slightly strange but I am positive his information on Hiss (and many others) is certainly very accurate whenever it can be checked out.

Last week I had the distinct honor of meeting with Clark Clifford, a St. Louis lawyer who is one of Truman’s top advisors. A tall man with wavy blondish hair that a woman would envy and who looks like a male model, Clifford has heard that I have been giving advice of my own to Truman and wanted to see who, and what, I am. I find him to be an intelligent man with a bloated and exaggerated opinion of his talents. He loves to talk down to people in a well-modulated voice and asks questions which indicate he thinks everyone else is an idiot.

He has no idea who I am but assumes I am merely an interfering and ignorant foreigner who needs to be put in his place to avoid disturbing Truman and deflecting his attention from Clifford’s well-rounded phrases. I pretended to be interested in his boring lectures for some time until I decided to bring the conversation to a conclusion. Clifford had been speaking to me for nearly thirty minutes on foreign affairs, waving his hands around like an Italian tenor in a Verdi opera, when I very politely cut in on him.

“Mr. Clifford,” I said, looking very earnestly at him, “might I ask you a very important question?”

“Why of course, sir.”

“As you can see, I am losing my hair. Could you recommend a good wig maker? Yours seems to be a first class production, I must say.”

That was the end of my conversation with Clark Clifford who became very red in the face and assured me repeatedly and loudly that his hair was absolutely genuine. Genuine weasel or baboon hair?

So much for the King’s counselors. General Vaughn is another thick head. Why Truman puts up with such useless people is beyond me.

Clark Clifford was a long-time advisor to a number of Presidents and once served as Secretary of Defense. He also nearly served a term in Federal prison for an outrageous bank swindle and it was only the fact that he was completely senile that prevented justice from being done. He died, disgraced, in 1998.

Thursday, 26 January 1950

More delights! Hiss is sentenced to five years in the prison but as I predicted, will remain free until he appeals. He doesn’t have a chance.

Well, now that they’ve gotten that one and Harry White is dead, there are a few more like Lattimore, Currie and Wallace who ought to be gone after. We shall see about these but the left wing is stiffening its resistance to the purges, claiming, among other things, that they are anti-Semitic! Nonsense. Hiss and White are both Jews but the others certainly are not. Wallace is of English background and as crazy as a squirrel. The others are “friends of Josef the Saint” and at the least must be discredited. Currie is not even an American, coming from Canada. We should deport him back again. In a box preferably.

(Dean, ed.) Acheson, (Secretary of State, ed.) has made a pubic statement that whatever happened, he did not intend to turn his back on Alger Hiss. Such a stupid and ill-advised man! Hiss had worked for A. and so did his brother who is also a spy. Now there is an uproar here about this stupid statement and demands being made for a full investigation of the State Department hiring policies. Question: Did Hiss sneak in any other communist spies during his days of power?

I had a message from Philby stating that he had information for me and wanted to make contact again. It seems to be a question of money. Always this with him. The Acheson business is nothing for me to get into with the President because T. thinks the world of two men: Marshall (a very efficient staff officer and very cold and heartless) and Acheson (who puts on cultivated airs and impresses Truman very much).

The Admiral (Roscoe Hillenkoetter, retired Admiral and Director of the CIA, ed.) wants to retire and several names have been put forward, strongest among them is General Bedell Smith. I really do not look forward to having that small-minded martinet in above me. He is a man of savage temper who glares at everyone. His bad temper conceals a very weak character and limited intelligence. If I put up with Himmler’s vaporizing, I suppose I can put up with the tin soldier.

Looking through transcripts of intercepted telephone calls to and from the British Embassy is good entertainment. Such elitists! They obviously loathe all Americans from the Ambassador (who is a fairy) all the way down. It is obvious they would like to see the Russians defeat us somewhere just so they can cackle and rub their hands together.

I know that the economic situation in England is terrible with some rationing still in place five years after the end of their war against us. Germany is rebuilding and has even now begun to outstrip England who is prostrate.

Robert talked with me today about the successes of the counterfeiting program we initiated. We discussed instituting another one through the CIA but to what end? The pound is totally destroyed and the ruble doesn’t circulate outside Russia. A talk about printing rubles and dumping them inside Russia to wreck their economy. The Russians are doing it to us so why not do it to them runs the thought.

How would we get the faked rubles inside that enormous jail? Drop them by aircraft? Any Russian caught with faked money would be shot at once and I can see nothing worthwhile coming from this. We could, on the other hand, counterfeit American money and use it to bribe Americans to spy for the British. A few of my men, cunningly disguised as Englishmen, could no doubt get hundreds of greedy Americans to spy for Britain. Of course, we could then catch the spies and embarrass them but both Robert and I agree that this would come to nothing because the government here would suppress the whole thing and never attack the British.

I just got a copy of a secret document from Churchill to Roosevelt trying to goad him into invading Ireland during the war. C. refers to that country as a “nest of Nazi vipers” and urges R. to use American troops to invade. A copy of a minute to R. saying that this would result not only in a disproportionate number of American dead (the Irish are fierce fighters after all) but would cause havoc in the Irish communities here in America. Most vote Democratic in the end. Roosevelt turned this down and Churchill was very angry. I think he hates the Irish almost as much as he hates all Germans. No doubt if the fat fairy had his way, Dublin would be bombed from the air like Dresden and all the inhabitants incinerated.

I have worked with a number of the Irish and find them attractive people with a flare for words coupled with violent temperament. But not bad people and to me, one Irishman is worth ten Englishmen.

Robert, who is Irish, asked me by way of having a joke, if I had ever met a good Englishman since I dislike them so much. I replied that the cemeteries were filled with them and we went on to other matters.

There isn’t too much in progress now, except for paperwork, so I suggested to Bunny that she might like to go skiing with me. She surprisingly agreed (without the aunt at last!) and she wants to go close by and I want to go to Colorado. We will go to Colorado, of course, because with women, I always get my way.

Who can we take? Irmgard likes to ski and Heini has to come along as my bodyguard. I will invite his luscious sister as well. Not for myself (unfortunately) but for Arno who now claims that the sister has become his new interest in life. Since Arno is a good fellow, if a bit too adept with knives and other implements of death, he might make a good match. His activities are not due to impulse but rather business. He would never become a Jack the Ripper and slit up women for sexual gratification. Arno is merely a very cold-blooded man while on the job.

Off, he is a jolly companion and a charmer with the ladies. I have no problem assisting a little romance. I would like to invite his brother to pay some attention to Irmgard. Heini approves with this so I assume both brother and sister will be brought to the marriage market by the two Heinies. Everyone will benefit and it will be like the last act of a Mozart opera when everyone pairs off and sings duets to the audience.

Of course life is not like that but one dreams.

If the brother comes along, Irmgard will get damp looking at him and I am sure we can get him into her bed. I told Heini that he would be all alone and he said a bit of quiet would be just fine with him.

https://www.amazon.com/DC-Diaries-Translated-Heinrich-Chronicals-ebook/dp/B00SQDU3GE?ie=UTF8&keywords=The%20DC%20Diaries&qid=1462467839&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

 

Berlin: Turkey visa liberalization ‘not a done deal’

German ministers have said the EU won’t lift visa requirements for Turkish citizens if Ankara fails to meet the requirements. This comes despite threats from the Turkish president.

May 28, 2016

DW

Germany’s government struck a harder line with Turkey after two ministers went on record to insist all criteria must be met by Ankara if the EU’s visa regime is to be lifted for Turkish citizens.

“If the conditions for the introduction of visa liberalization (for Turkish citizens)

are not met, there will be no visa liberalization,” Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told the Funke Mediengruppe newspaper chain in an interview published Saturday.

“One must not allow public threats to leave an impression when it comes to politics,” de Maiziere said. “At least you must not lend credence to them by displaying too much concern.”

Brussels has promised Turkish citizens visa-free travel into Europe in return for stopping the flow of illegal migrants to the bloc. And while Europe is desperate for the deal to work, it also insists Ankara meet 72 criteria, including narrowing the scope of its broad anti-terrorism laws to meet European standards.

This comes despite stark warning from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Ankara would pull out of the controversial EU refugee deal if the visa regime was not lifted for its citizens this summer.

Justice Minister Heiko Maas – of the Social Democrats, the junior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition – says Berlin is not impressed by threats.

“We will not be blackmailed; Mr. Erdogan can bluster as much as he wants,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung newspaper in an interview published Saturday.

The pubic disagreement has threatened the future of the migrant deal and put pressure on Ankara’s relationship with the 28-member bloc.

One of the sticking points is Turkey’s broad anti-terror laws, which critics say is used to target political opponents and Turkey’s Kurdish minority which have legitimate grievances against the Turkish state.

EU and Turkish officials are due to meet next week to try and iron out these differences.

 

US halts cluster bomb deliveries to Saudi Arabia amid growing civilian death toll in Yemen – report

May 28. 2016

RT

The US has reportedly frozen the deliveries of cluster bombs to Riyadh amid human rights groups’ condemnation the use of indiscriminate weapons in the Yemeni conflict, over the course of which Saudi Arabia’s airstrikes have been blamed for numerous civilian casualties.

According to a Foreign Policy report, based on the publication’s own investigation, the hold on deliveries applies to CBU-105 cluster bombs made by Textron Systems. After Saudi Arabia joined the Yemeni conflict and started a massive air campaign against Houthi positions, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have on numerous occasions exposed the use of cluster bombs in the conflict.

Cluster munitions contain hundreds of smaller explosive submunitions that are spread over a wide area. This type of weapon is dangerous because some submunitions aren’t immediately detonated and can lie dormant for decades before exploding. Civilians and particularly children have traditionally been the primary victims of such lethal traps.

In recent years, the United States has been selling multi-million dollar shipments of cluster bombs to Riyadh. Revealing the alleged freeze of cluster munitions deliveries, the publication however notes that is unclear whether the ban will affect the already agreed shipments, or whether the freeze will only apply to future contacts. Delivery of weapons is a process which can take years to complete.

“Textron Systems does not comment on delivery dates with our customers,” Matthew Colpitts, a spokesman for Textron Systems, replied to FP’s request for clarification, while the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to the request for comment.

Discussing the reason for the cluster bomb deliveries’ cessation, a senior US official told FP that Saudi-led coalition used these munitions “in areas in which civilians are alleged to have been present or in the vicinity,” adding that while US is seeking more information, Saudis are looking into the matter.

“Saudi Arabia has also pledged to create an investigations commission to evaluate military targeting, ensure the protection of civilians, and investigate incidents of civilian harm during the conflict in Yemen,” said the US official.

On Thursday, US senators introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2016 aimed at placing additional conditions and Congressional oversight on future air-to-ground weapons sales to Saudi Arabia.

“For too long the Obama administration has not been holding countries receiving US military munitions accountable in the Middle East. It is no secret that Saudi Arabia’s record on strictly targeting combatants and legitimate military targets in Yemen has been questionable,” US Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said in a press release. “The US should halt the sale of air-to-ground munitions to Saudi Arabia until Congress has conducted proper oversight and ensured that such munitions are being used in a way that is consistent with our country’s national security strategy and values.”

Currently the arms sales are proposed by the State Department and then approved by Congress. Once approved the White House finalizes and implements the transfer. The new amendment seeks to add an additional step to the approval process by “requiring the President of the United States to attest that Saudi Arabia is concretely demonstrating its anti-terror efforts and protection of civilians before Congress can consider the sale.”

Since March 26, 2015, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition of nine Arab states has been conducting a military operation in Yemen against Houthi rebel forces. A ceasefire that came into force on April 10, 2016, has been repeatedly violated by all sides. At least 6,200 people have died in fighting while nearly three million civilians have been displaced from their homes.

 

 

US anti-extremism group asks Israel to curb rightwing Jewish activist

Anti-Defamation League calls for action against Lehava leader Bentzi Gopstein for allegedly inciting hatred against Arabs

May 27, 2016

by Harriet Sherwood

The Guardian

A US-based organisation that campaigns against antisemitism has taken the unusual step of calling on the Israeli government to act against an extreme rightwing Jewish activist with “abusive, racist, inflammatory and violent” opinions.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has urged Israel’s attorney general to use all legal means possible against Bentzi Gopstein, the leader of Lehava – an extremist Jewish organisation that allegedly incites hatred against Arabs.

The activities of Gopstein and Lehava have “destructive implications to Israeli society and the Jewish people”, said a letter from the ADL’s Israeli executive director, Carol Nuriel, to the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit.

“From our point of view as an organisation based in the United States, we see this hateful discourse as harmful not only to Israeli society, but also to the reputation of the state of Israel,” the letter says. The discourse is “used as a weapon by Israel’s enemies, who use it as a basis for their rushed conclusions and generalisations about Israeli society”.

The ADL’s move follows the launch of a petition by the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC) asking Mandelblit to take action against Gopstein. By Friday, it had been signed by about 12,000 people.

Both the ADL and the IRAC say Gopstein and Lehava have encouraged “price tag” attacks on Palestinians and their property in response to moves by the Israeli authorities which the perpetrators view as hostile to settlers.

According to the IRAC, Lehava activists post more than 200,000 statements on social media every year, many of which are offensive and some of which include calls to violence.

“Gopstein’s Facebook page is filled with unequivocal expressions of hate, mostly towards the Arab population [but also towards the gay community, for example]. The opinions expressed on his page, by him and his followers are extremely abusive, racist, inflammatory and violent,” said Nuriel’s letter.

She also pointed out that Gopstein had advocated the burning of churches and has called Christians “bloodsucking vampires”.

The move by the ADL, an organisation known for its support of Israel, indicates the degree of alarm over the rise of the extreme right in the country, particularly among hardline settlers.

In April, Gopstein was acquitted of assaulting two leftwing activists after a judge said he could have mistaken them for Palestinians.

Lehava was launched in 2009 with the aim of preventing relationships between Jewish women and Arab men.

 

Draft paper: Germany to boost military role on world stage

Germany is ready to take on a bigger military role to maintain global security, according to a government white paper. The draft document indicates a possible shift away from Germany’s postwar era of military restraint.

May 27, 2016

DW

The government’s position paper on security policy, seen by media outlets on Friday, said Germany was increasingly seen as a “key player” in Europe, and had “a responsibility to actively help shape the global order.”

It added that Germany could do more at a time when the global community was grappling with threats including terrorism waged by “Islamic State,” cybercrime and a more aggressive Russia. At the same time, however, the paper pointed out that there would be clear limits to Berlin’s contribution.

“Our larger role in international security policy will not lead to automatic reactions or to pressure for action that conflicts with our values and interests or that overstretches our capabilities,” it said.

The document also stressed that Germany would avoid unilateral action, and would instead rely on engagement with the European Union, NATO and a close partnership with the United States

Bundeswehr shortcomings

he new white paper on security policy, the first of its kind since 2006, aims to provide guidelines for the future operations of the German armed forces. The Foreign and Defense ministries, as well as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office, have reportedly agreed on the draft plan, which is expected to be debated in cabinet before July.

The paper comes a fortnight after Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced plans to boost troop numbers for the first time since 1990. The increases will see 14,300 soldiers and 4,400 civilian soldiers join the military in the next seven years.

The policy document acknowledged that the Bundeswehr faced challenges it was “neither sufficiently trained nor effectively prepared for.” It pointed specifically to the subpar standard of equipment, and said the Bundeswehr would need more funds and no “rigid ceilings” on troop numbers in order to be effective.

Germany’s military has been steadily shrinking since the country’s reunification after the end of the Cold War in 1990. At that time, Germany’s armed forces totaled 800,000 military and civilian personnel. Numbers have since dropped to a target of 185,000 troops and 56,000 civilians, according to government officials.

German officials have made similar statements in the past. One of the more recent instances occurred at the annual Munich Security Conference in 2014 when the defense and foreign ministers as well as the president all said it was time for Germany to talk a leading role in global affairs.

 

Government still holding on to 5 years of NSA phone-snooping metadata

May 26, 2016

by Stephen Dinan

The Washington Times

The National Security Agency’s phone-snooping program ended six months ago this Saturday, but the government is still holding on to the mountain of data it piled up over the previous five years, worrying civil liberties advocates who say it’s time to start expunging the legally questionable information.

Government officials say they no longer access the information, but the intelligence community’s past behavior has some civil libertarians skeptical of those assurances. And the mere existence of the data, which includes the time, duration and numbers involved in phone calls, worries critics who say there’s no reason for it to be sitting under government control.

The intelligence community, though, says its hands are tied — chiefly by the very same advocates who are demanding that most of the data be expunged.

Some of those groups are helping pursue lawsuits seeking damages from the government’s snooping program, and courts have ordered all of the data to be preserved. That means the NSA can’t purge the information, even though it says it wants to.

“We take seriously the public’s concerns about the government’s retention of bulk telephony metadata collected under the now-terminated bulk metadata program,” said Timothy Barrett, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “Retention of this data is necessary to comply with preservation obligations in civil litigation challenging that program, including court orders entered in two of those cases.”

The phone records program began under President George W. Bush and was kept in place by President Obama, based on powers claimed under the Patriot Act’s “business records” provision. The NSA demanded that phone companies turn over their records of calls, which were then stored in government databanks for five years.

Analysts queried the data when they had a number they believed associated with terrorism, and could pursue up to three “hops,” meaning they could see check numbers associated with the initial lead, all the numbers associated with that set and then all the numbers associated with the second set.

Former government contractor Edward Snowden revealed the program’s existence in 2013, spawning a massive public backlash that forced Congress to curtail the program. Lawmakers passed the USA Freedom Act last year, giving the NSA 180 days to shut down its own database and instead rely on private companies to keep the data, which the government could query under more strict circumstances.

The program expired on Nov. 28, and the government was to dispose of its data.

But the administration got an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allowing it to preserve all of the data, arguing that the government needs it to fight the 10 court cases challenging the defunct program.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is assisting the plaintiffs in several of the key cases, said the government should find a way to get rid of most of the data.

“Talks are continuing about a plan under which the government would destroy the phone records — including those still lingering in its various databases — while ensuring that the courts can still consider our challenge to 14 years of NSA telephone records collection from millions of innocent Americans,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene.

But government attorneys say it’s impossible to cull the data to just the 10 ongoing cases. Indeed, the attorneys won’t even acknowledge what records they have or which phone carriers they have targeted — creating a legal morass.

The government is not holding on to only the metadata, but it also still has everything it derived from the data — the information it turned up in the “hops” when it investigated suspects’ phone numbers.

Mr. Barrett, the intelligence office spokesman, said they plan to expunge the query data once they are free to get rid of the metadata itself, with “narrow exceptions” laid out in a November order from the secret court.

The court order suggests those exceptions could be broad. The court said the government can retain “information derived from the metadata that has been previously disseminated,” as well as “select query results generated that formed the basis of such disseminations.”

Patrick C. Toomey, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said limits must be imposed.

“The government should purge the call records it collected illegally, including the results of its queries, and should retain only the data necessary to comply with its legal obligations,” he said.

But he said that’s not enough. “The NSA continues to search and store Americans’ private information in vast quantities under other spying programs, all without ever obtaining a warrant,” he said.

Not all of those challenging the NSA want the data expunged.

Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer who won his case against the NSA in federal district court in Washington, says the data are needed so he can win a massive settlement from the administration.

“We basically want to show what it is that they have control over, and have had access to, to make our claim to damages,” he said.

Mr. Klayman also doesn’t trust the NSA to expunge the data even if it’s ordered to.

“To me it’s irrelevant, any kind of agreement you reach with them,” he said. “I want them to preserve all of it because I know even if they say they’re purging it, they’re not going to.”

He said the only acceptable solution is to have the federal judge in his case, Judge Richard J. Leon, oversee the NSA’s activities going forward.

Slaying of Colorado prison chief ordered by neo-Nazi gang – report

May 27, 2016

by Keith Coffman

Reuters

Denver-The murder of Colorado’s prison chief by a white supremacist ex-convict in 2013 was ordered by leaders of a neo-Nazi gang, the Denver Post reported on Friday, citing newly released documents.

The disclosures came in a report by the Texas Rangers, who conducted their own probe into the slaying after the suspect in the murder of prison chief Tom Clements died in a shootout with police outside the town of Decatur, Texas, two days after fleeing Colorado.

Reuters could not independently obtain the report.

Clements, 58, who headed the Colorado Department of Corrections, was gunned down in March 2013 after he answered the door of his home in the town of Monument, about 45 miles south of Denver, sparking a nationwide manhunt.

Colorado authorities have said the suspected shooter, Evan Ebel, was a member of the 211 Crew, a prison-based white supremacist gang. No one has been arrested or charged as an accomplice in Clements’ murder.

An investigative report by Texas Ranger James Holland states that the killing was an orchestrated hit, the Post reported.

“The murder of the Colorado Department of Corrections director was ordered by hierarchy of the 211 prison crew,” the newspaper quoted the report as saying.

Jacqueline Kirby, a spokeswoman for Colorado’s El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, the lead agency in the Clements murder investigation, said in an email that her office would not comment on the Texas report.

“Our investigation into the Clements homicide is still ongoing, therefore we will not be speaking to that,” Kirby said.

According to the Post article, an informant said to investigators that he was told by James Lohr, a 211 “general,” that Lohr ordered Ebel to kill Clements and told other gang members to help Ebel flee to Texas.

Ebel, 28, who had been paroled two months before the killing, was demoted from a soldier in the gang to a mere “prospect,” the Texas Ranger report said. Lohr said killing Clements would enhance his gang status, according to the report.

Authorities said Ebel fatally shot a pizza delivery driver, Nathan Leon, dumped his body in the foothills west of Denver, stole his work uniform, then drove to Clements’ home.

When Clements answered the door, apparently thinking a deliveryman was at the wrong house, Ebel opened fire.

Lohr is serving a nine-year sentence in state prison on unrelated weapons charges and for eluding police.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Editing by Curtis Skinner and Leslie Adler)

Hillary Clinton Won’t Say How Much Goldman Sachs CEO Invested With Her Son-in-Law

May 27 2016

by Lee Fang, Henrik Moltke

The Intercept

When Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law sought funding for his new hedge fund in 2011, he found financial backing from one of the biggest names on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein.

The fund, called Eaglevale Partners, was founded by Chelsea Clinton’s husband, Marc Mezvinsky, and two of his partners. Blankfein not only personally invested in the fund, but allowed his association with it to be used in the fund’s marketing.

The investment did not turn out to be a savvy business decision. Earlier this month, Mezvinsky was forced to shutter one of the investment vehicles he launched under Eaglevale, called Eaglevale Hellenic Opportunity, after losing 90 percent of its money betting on the Greek recovery. The flagship Eaglevale fund has also lost money, according to the New York Times.

There has been minimal reporting on the Blankfein investment in Eaglevale Partners, which is a private fund that faces few disclosure requirements. At a campaign rally in downtown San Francisco on Thursday, I attempted to ask Hillary Clinton if she knew the amount that Blankfein invested in her son-in-law’s fund.

After repeated attempts on the rope line, I asked the Clinton campaign traveling press secretary Nick Merrill, who said, “I don’t know, has it been reported?” and said he would get in touch with me over email. I sent the question but have not heard a response back.

The decision for Blankfein to invest in Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law’s company is just one of many ways Goldman Sachs has used its wealth to forge a tight bond with the Clinton family. The company paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 in personal speaking fees, paid Bill Clinton $1,550,000 in personal speaking fees, and donated between $250,000 and $500,000 to the Clinton Foundation. At a time when Goldman Sachs directly lobbied Hillary Clinton’s State Department, the company routinely partnered with the Clinton Foundation for events, even convening a donor meeting for the foundation at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan.

Mezvinsky, who married Chelsea in 2010, previously worked at Goldman Sachs and started his fund along with two other former employees of the investment bank. Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures show that Eaglevale required new investors to put down a minimum of $2 million.

Clinton has dodged questions about her relationship with Goldman Sachs throughout the campaign. In January, we were the first to ask Clinton if she would release the transcripts of her paid speeches to Goldman Sachs. She responded by laughing and turning away. Since our question, other media outlets, including the New York Times editorial board, have called on Clinton to release the transcripts.

Clinton at times tried to conflate the money she received with campaign finance donations to Barack Obama — though the issues are separate; Obama never personally profited from paid speeches before running for president.

Clinton most recently said she would only release the transcripts if Bernie Sanders and her Republican opponents also reveal transcripts of their paid speeches. Disclosures show Sanders made $1,867.42 from two paid speeches and a television appearance last year, and donated the money to a nonprofit in Vermont that assists low-income families.

Putin says Crimea’s status as part of Russia not up for discussion

May 27, 2016

Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he would not entertain any discussions about the status of Crimea, the Ukrainian region which Moscow annexed.

“As far as Crimea is concerned, we consider this question is closed forever,” Putin said at a joint news conference in Athens with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. “Russia will not conduct any discussions with anyone on this subject.”

(Reporting by Denis Dyomkin; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

France paralyzed by the ‘War of the Lefts’

May 27, 2016

by Pepe Esccobar

RT

Paris burns as Hollande fiddles. Take it as shorthand for nationwide protests in France against a proposed labor “reform” while the President poses at the G-7 in Japan as if he’s one of the Masters of the Universe.

France is semi-paralyzed – from dockworkers in the port of Le Havre (a key trade hub) to workers in refineries, oil depots, nuclear power stations (accounting for 75 percent of the national electricity supply), airports, and the metropolitan Paris rail system. This has translated into panic at myriad petrol stations – with much of the French transportation system brought to a standstill.

All this because the cataclysmically unpopular, nominally “socialist” Hollande administration has introduced a draft law that drastically modifies the French labor code and essentially adopts Anglo-Saxon neoliberal “hire and fire” in a deeply regulated, regimented nation where workers’ rights and protections are taken extremely seriously. Hollande and his astonishingly mediocre Prime Minister Manuel Valls defend it as the best way to fight chronic unemployment.

Scrap the bill to unblock the nation

May 2016 in France is certainly no May 1968 remix. It features a vortex of complicating factors, such as the “terra terra terra” psychosis (Paris is in a semi-disguised state of siege); the ongoing Nuit Debout movement at the Place de la Republique – the French version of Occupy Wall Street; and police with their nerves on edge complaining, and even demonstrating, that they are not getting all the love they need from the general population.

May 2016 is essentially configured as a battle between the socialist government and French unions. It’s bound to get nastier. Police figures suggest 153,000 strikers/demonstrators this past Thursday – a huge mobilization day that touched public services and air transport; unions claim there were almost 300,000. The executive is beginning to use force to unblock key refineries. Panic at empty petrol stations is becoming the norm.

The Hollande-Valls duo has gone hardcore; the labor reform bill must be approved, otherwise that’s the end of the government. Valls’ red line is that if the bill goes, he also goes. Yet he’s already been forced to (slightly) backtrack; he’s now allowing “modifications” and “improvements” to the bill.

So this is essentially a battle of the French Lefts – a radical, working-class branch against a nominally social-democratic one in power, actually neoliberal. It’s also a dialogue of the deaf. The Prime Minister is not exactly a participant of social dialogue. For him these two Lefts are irreconcilable. You don’t need to be a reader of Barthes or Deleuze to infer that France is running the risk of reaching degree zero of social democracy.

After the eighth day of demonstrations, the secretary-general of the powerful CGT union, Philippe Martinez, is now demanding to be received by the President and the President only – actually throwing Valls into the dustbin. From Japan, Hollande emitted a laconic “I’m being briefed.”

A case can be made that the Hollande-Valls duo is so disconnected from the street pulse that they had no idea this bill would be met with so much hostility. They should have gone for a wider reach – and should have previously invested in a lot of dialogue, not to mention semantic niceties, with the unions.

So what does the French public think about this mess? Essentially, three-quarters of the population is against the bill. And you can’t “modernize” France without the French. Yet this being France, subtle nuances matter. According to one of the latest polls, 69 percent are in favor of the bill being scrapped, to avoid the nation being paralyzed. Another poll shows that 62 percent consider the strikes “justified” despite parts the country being paralyzed. So a sound cross-pollination of these polls tells us that social movements are legitimate even as most people don’t want to see the nation paralyzed.

In a lighter vein, Paris café talk now rules that the Socialist Party better not even try to stage an upcoming presidential campaign; what’s going on is proof that the working class hates their guts. It’s a fact that the current état d’urgence – as in the French version of the US Patriot Act – plus the neoliberal drive made the Socialist Party (PS) lose the votes of artists and intellectuals as well as ‘bobos’ (bourgeois bohemians) which used to be the mainstay of their electoral base. And all this while CEOs so much courted by the PS will continue to vote for the right.

Time to be an ‘indignado’ with a cause

So what next? The sound money is on some sort of compromise; the text of the bill will be amended by the Senate next month, before coming back to the Assembly. This means it will be “retouched” – as even the government is now admitting; and that will mean a victory for social movements. Whatever happens the War of the Lefts won’t be over. And the final result may even come up in the form of a collective suicide – to the benefit of the Right.

Meanwhile, growth in France remains feeble at best. Euro 2016 starts in only two weeks, on June 10. France may expect to receive as many as 1.5 million foreign tourists and profit to the tune of €1.3 billion. The fan zone under construction in front of the Eiffel Tower will attract at least 100,000 people daily.

If there is no solution in the coming days, the Hollande-Valls duo will have to back down. The French security system won’t be able to cope, simultaneously, with a high terrorist alert and policing myriad demonstrations (a huge one is already scheduled for June 14). A lot is riding on the success of the Euro football, not the currency. Football, in this case, is far from politically neutral; if the whole show is a major success, it’s Hollande who will reap the benefits.

Socialists in France, meanwhile, could do worse than take a look at neighboring Spain.

In Spain under Franco, communists and socialists were at the vanguard of democratic resistance, incorporating in their struggle those who created Workers’ Commissions and some of the best intellectuals of the times.

But then came the recent neoliberal drift of the European socialist parties – which led them to lose their historical hegemony. They have not adapted to being able to defend their social base – and the welfare state – and at the same time satisfy the harsh requirements of the financial casino system as well as a European Commission economic policy of fiscal austerity as demanded by Germany and financialization as influenced by Britain.

During Franco and the Cold War, it was common to use “communist” and “socialist” as a disqualification of any political argument. What reigned was the politics of fear. France, for its part, was way more sophisticated politically (and not under a fascist regime.)

What’s left for the ‘Lefts’ in Europe is to pay close attention to the emerging path opened by social movements, bent on rebuilding the welfare state and creating worthy forms of employment; all that has been denied by market fundamentalism and the austerity TINA (There Is No Alternative) mindset.

Among the Spanish ‘indignados’ one finds anarchists, communists, socialists – a microcosm of modern history in Spain rooted in the indignation against dictatorship and social injustice, all trying to reinvent themselves while neoliberalism flounders. If only the French Lefts would pay attention.

Guardian admits its reporter fabricated interviews

May 27, 2016

RT

Britain’s center-left Guardian newspaper has apologized after it emerged one of its reporters had been fabricating interviews and falsely claiming to have been at events he wrote about.

Joseph Mayton, a California-based freelancer who has been writing for the paper since 2009, was accused of making up quotes in some stories and filing interviews with people who later said they had never spoken to him.

The Guardian, which has been forced to make a large number of its reporters redundant in recent months owing to financial difficulties, published an apology to readers and to the “people whose words were misrepresented or falsified.”

Guardian US editor Lee Glendinning said suspicions were raised in February when sources contacted the company to say they had not spoken to Mayton despite being quoted by him.

The journalist was “unable to provide convincing evidence that the interviews in question had taken place.”

An independent fact-checker was hired to look through the 64 articles written by Mayton and speak to around 50 people supposedly quoted. They found widespread evidence of “likely or confirmed fabrication.”

“Dozens of sources could not be found – either they had no online presence or they were anonymous and could not be substantiated – and several people quoted in Mayton’s articles either denied speaking with him or giving the quotes attributed to them.”

The Guardian has now removed 13 of Mayton’s articles from its website, and many others have been amended to remove inaccuracies.

Mayton, however, denies any fabrication.

“These accusations are incorrect and I have provided evidence showing that many sources had in fact spoken with me and either did not remember or refused to be truthful.

“Granted many of these sources had been spoken with months or years in the past.”

Mayton says many of his interview notes have been lost or were not kept, so could not provide the evidence the Guardian was asking for.

“I admit that I did not do a solid job of keeping records older than a few months and that is my mistake and I am responsible for it. I, like everyone else in our profession, has made mistakes,” he wrote.

The Weissensee Gold

Globocnik’s Treasure Horde

by Harry von Johnston PhD

A history of one of the largest and proven buried treasures in the world: what has been discovered and what is still waiting to be found.

In late April 1945, a convoy of German trucks left the German-occupied Italian city of Muggia [in Istria] on the Adriatic Sea and drove north through Udine and then northeast to Villach in what was once the Greater German Reich and is now Austria.

There were five trucks, all painted the medium camouflage yellow of the later war German Wehrmacht, and one staff car bearing license plates of the SS. This car was occupied by SS-Gruppenführer Odlio Globocnik, Senior SS and Police Commander of the Adriatic Region, his driver and two SS aides. The trucks each had, besides the driver, two armed Ukrainian guards, all in field-gray Waffen-SS uniforms.

Inside the trucks were stacked dozens of heavy wooden German ammunition boxes, containers of food, cases of liquor and miscellaneous furniture, carpets and household goods.

Before the convoy reached Villach, it turned off the main highway and headed west through the Gaitaler Alps, finally stopping on the north shore of the Weissensee, a long, deep mountain lake.

The ground was still hard from the winter cold, but throughout the night and into the early hours of the next day, holes were dug in the ground at various points around the lake and the wooden ammunition boxes carefully buried. The fresh earth was hastily covered with armfuls of old pine needles and branches. All of the sites were carefully marked on a map and then the trucks drove off, past the small towns of Neusach and Techendorf and onto the main road which is now E-66.

Globocnik was later captured by a British armored unit and purported by them to have killed himself while under interrogation. In fact, U.S. intelligence reports indicate very clearly that not only did Globocnik survive the end of the war, but ended up in American employment.

He had bought his freedom by bribing the British and turning over to them the contents of two of his buried cases, which consisted of many thousands of British pound notes. The remainder of the wooden chests contained millions of dollars worth of gold coins, religious medals, gold jewelry, platinum, silver, antique coins, gold pencils, containers of dental gold and bridgework, and wedding rings.

These had originated in the concentration camps under Globocnik’s control in the Lublin district of what had been pre-war Poland. While the head of such camps as Belzec and Treblinka, Globocnik who had been fired by Hitler from his official prewar position as Gauleiter, or Governor, of Vienna for theft, took advantage of his situation. He sequestered a large amount of treasure he took from the occupants of his camps as well as additional assets obtained from extensive treasure hunts in the districts he controlled.

When Heinrich Himmler learned of Globocnik’s completely unauthorized activities in his Polish domain, he ordered him to close the camps, destroy any trace of them and remove himself with a promotion, to the city of Trieste where Globocnik, a Slovenian, had been born in 1904. While there, Globocnik managed to acquire more loot and it was this money which he took into the Austrian Alps with a crew of his loyal Ukranians who had served as camp guards at Treblinka.

Himmler, and the head of the SS economic section, Oswald Pohl, were well aware that the Slovenian SS general had made off with money belonging to the SS, and the U.S. National Archives has an extensive file of correspondence between the trio, a file that also contains lists of stolen valuables. Globocnik, who ended up in Syria as a corresponding member of the CIA-controlled Gehlen Organization, was never able to recover any of his hidden treasure, but his disclosures to his captors, and later employers, led to an extensive treasure hunt after the war.

Globocnik supplied a map overlay which he claimed showed the exact locations of each burial spot along with a brief notation of the contents. The problem, as noted in U.S. reports, was that the overlay did not correspond to the standard German Wehrmacht 1:50 000 scale maps of the Alpen- und Donau-Reichsgaue of 1944. Other military maps were checked with equally negative results and the official opinion expressed both in the United States and England was that Globocnik had sold his captors a bill of goods.

In the following years, the thought of the buried treasure had energized a number of people from various countries and the Weissensee became a very popular vacation spot. In the winter, when the ground was frozen, the visitors were tourists partaking of winter sports. But in the summer, the guest registries in the various inns and pensions indicate a remarkable number of visitors from Germany, England and Israel, all of whom were no doubt seeking rest and relaxation in the deep pine woods or out on the placid lake.

Globocnik, however, had not sold his captors a bill of goods. The transparent overlay was completely accurate and it was the lack of persistence of both the British and Americans that led them to discount the validity of the treasure map.

Obtaining the overlay was one matter, after all no one believed it officially, but trying to find out what kind of a map Globocnik might have used was quite another. Eventually one was found in a shop in Klangenfurt which was of a pre-1938 printing and dealt specifically with the Weissensee area. It had originally been produced for hikers and was never used by the military.

When the overlay was placed over this map, the markings on the edges matched perfectly with the map, even down to penciled in lines showing the roads and trails that existed in the years before the war.

On this overlay, which was folded and repaired with transparent tape, were nine crosses marked in indelible pencil and after each mark was the notation “10 Kisten” or “8 Kisten,” and brief notations about the depth of the burial sites such as “1.5 m.”  The translation of Kisten is box or crate and the metric depths are obvious.

When the information about the positive location of Globocnik’s horde was confirmed in 1989, individuals in possession of the overlay and the map embarked on an expedition to recover as much as possible, if not all, of the buried treasure.

Under then-current Austrian law, the treasure trove was to be divided equally between the finder or finders, the government of Austria and the owner or owners of the land on which it was found. Very discreet inquiry with agencies in Vienna disclosed that the Austrian government did not view their former Gauleiter’s money as having been acquired through criminal activities and that, therefore, the division of the find was to follow standard procedure. Had the government decreed that the buried money resulted from a criminal endeavor, the state would assume complete control over it and its eventual disposal.

Given this written assurance, four individuals embarked on a treasure hunt which, if successful, would rival any other such hunt, even the discovery of the Spanish treasure galleons in the waters of Florida. Two of these entrepreneurs were American. One was a CIA employee who worked in Berlin…for both the Company and the East German Stasi. and the other was along because of his possession of the map and overlay. The other two seekers were a German, once an officer in the SS and a former aide to Globocnik, and a Ukrainian SS man who had been involved with the original plantings, but had no specific memory of what he helped bury, and more important, where.

There were nine sites involved. One site had been discovered and looted by Globocnik’s British military captors in 1945, another had been paved over as a parking lot for a postwar inn and was completely inaccessible. Jackhammering up sections of asphalted parking lots was apt to draw the ire of the building’s operators as well as the completely unwelcome attentions of the Austrian gendarmes.

The remaining seven deposits were the goals of the recent arrivals at the towns of Techendorf and Neusach. It was decided to break the group into two sections for security reasons, the two Americans renting quarters at Neusach and the other two remaining at Techendorf.

The German had rented a camper wagon and was pretending to be deeply interested in healthful tours of the woods while his Ukrainian companion developed an equal interest in rowing about the lake in a rented boat, looking for ideal fishing spots.

One of the Americans, who had some artistic abilities, posed as a landscape artist and spent some of his time conspicuously working in watercolors in areas easily observed by the curious. His fellow countryman devoted a good deal of his time in courting various young women, who as often happens, came to the summer resort looking for remote and discreet romance far from permanent boyfriends, husbands or prying relatives. Both were reasonably successful and after two weeks of convincing the local residents that they were indeed both artistic and lecherous, the group came together one night to consolidate their strategy.

The first dig was begun on Sunday, June 10, 1990 at 11:30 p.m. The area selected was just past the town of Neusach where the main road ended. It was about a kilometer past the end of the official road and could easily be reached on foot.

Armed with the map, the overlay, shovels, two tarpaulins and a very expensive metal detector, they spent almost two hours in attempting to finesse Globocnik’s notes. The land had remained the same since 1945, but the growth of new trees since then created a number of problems.

The cache, consisting of four boxes, was located by the detector eventually, surprisingly close to the original location noted on the map and the digging began. The tarps were placed on either side of the opening and dirt from the dig was carefully dumped on top of them to facilitate filling in the excavation when they were finished.

The ground was well-thawed and after thirty minutes of shared digging, a spade resounded from the lid of one of the chests. Very much like 19th century grave robbers, the quartet worked in furtive haste, all of them positive that someone would discover their activities. No one came, however, and the first box was opened in situ. Much of the wood had rotted and the metal fittings were almost shapeless with rust, but the contents of the crate had been carefully packed in tin boxes which had been dipped in wax and were completely intact.

The small boxes, which were pleasantly heavy, were lifted out and carefully stacked at one end of the rectangular hole and the excavation process was continued until all four cases had been located, broken into and emptied.

Without making any attempt, pleasurable though it would have been for all concerned, to open the metal containers, the hole was quickly filled in again. The loose earth was tamped down by stamping on it and finally, a collection of small rocks, twigs, pine needles and forest detritus spread over the surface. The use of the tarps had kept telltale fresh earth from giving the site away and shortly before the sun came up, the German returned along a hiking path with his rented camper to load up the fruits of their nocturnal labors.

The Americans had rented a small vacation home at the edge of Neusach and by the time dawn had touched the tops of the trees and the mountains above the north side of the lake, the small boxes were being opened one by one. Each box had its own inventory and the contents were checked against this. The first expedition had garnered a considerable quantity of jewelry including many gold wedding rings, brooches, cameos, glass frames and gold coins.

These were put into tubes which consisted of black PVC plumbing pipe, about six inches in diameter and one meter long, threaded at both ends, and closed with PVC caps. Each tube was marked with a letter and number and the same markings were inked in at the top of the original typed inventory.

The tin boxes were flattened, put into a fishing bag and later discreetly dumped into the lake by the Ukrainian.

Everyone was tired after the evening’s exertions and with the exception of the Ukrainian’s foray onto the lake, the balance of the day was devoted to rest.

The next dig began on the evening of Monday, June 11, 1990 at the eastern end of the lake. There was a camping ground there and a road that led to Highway E-55, some 9 kilometers away. The site was about two kilometers from the camping ground and it was necessary to be especially vigilant to avoid attracting any unwanted attention from late hikers, inquisitive children or romantic couples seeking a nesting place in the trees.

The second site was discovered to have a pine tree growing over it, and a good deal of time was consumed in procuring a saw, removing the tree, dragging its carcass into the woods and hacking through the extensive root system. There were eight boxes in this horde and the root system had broken into several of them, but as before the contents were well protected in waxed tin boxes and removed without incident. The camper van became stuck in a deep rut on the way back and it took nearly an hour to extricate it. But stuck vehicles and muddy, unshaven individuals were not out of place and aside from an athletic young male camper who spent some time in assisting the treasure hunters in getting their loot-packed van back onto the track, there were no incidents.

The sun was well up when the second load was unpacked, checked and put into the PVC tubes. This load consisted almost entirely of rings, jewelry and scrap gold. There were a number of coins and the artistic American was delighted to note that a number of them were very valuable ancient Greek silver and gold coins, the true value of which seemed to be lost on everyone, but himself.

The Ukrainian made another trip with a far larger load of flattened containers, and because of a number of legitimate fishermen on the lake that morning, had to expend considerable effort in rowing around to unoccupied areas to discard the evidence.

The various members were experiencing considerable physical problems with sore muscles and it was generally agreed that they resume their regular social activities for several days to thwart any possible curious tourists. Two French-speaking individuals had been seen moving along the water’s edge between the towns carrying a metal detector. One of the Americans pointed them out to the Austrian proprietor of a restaurant who remarked in a sarcastic tone that they were looking for some treasure a “big Nazi” was supposed to have buried there at the end of the war. When pressed for information, he continued that there was no treasure, but it was considered good business to discuss the probability of it with foreign tourists. There was even one enterprising local gentleman who rented out metal detectors.

The next expedition set out on the night of Friday, June 15. It was decided to avoid the section of the eastern end of the lake and its campers and pot holes so they began early, circling around the end of the lake and commencing to dig about 1 a.m. on the morning of the 16th.

There were no tree roots to deal with and they were far enough from the main roads and unwanted visitors to make their labors much easier. The soil was looser, containing a quantity of sand, and the six boxes were in far better shape than the others they had encountered previously.

This dig went entirely without incident and the contents consisted mainly of gold coins, loose gem stones and a large number of gold bars weighing ten kilos each. These were packed at the bottom of the crates without wrappings, but as gold is relatively impervious to rot or destruction by the elements, they all appeared to be in pristine condition. All these bars had their weight stamped into them and they appeared to have been cast in a mold designed for lead bars. The only other marks on the bars were from an Italian metal foundry which had obviously been put into the molds on manufacture and did not indicate a bank or refinery origin.

The fourth exhumation took place on the night of Sunday, June 17th, about 20 meters west of the third site. It proceeded without incident and the contents of the six chests proved to be more gold coins, several large boxes of gold religious medallions, a quantity of old American paper gold certificates, several jewel-studded, gold-sheathed old Russian religious icons, an 18th century silver Jewish Torah case complete with parchment document inside, a silver table service bearing the double-headed Polish eagle, and a brace of cased, silver-mounted flintlock pistols from the palace of Catherine the Great at Tsarskoe Selo outside of what was then Leningrad. How these got into the hands of General Globocnik was never discovered. There were also a number of original musical scores by the Polish composer Chopin in excellent condition, and a miscellany of other items of value.

The German was beginning to have problems in his lower lumbar region following the exertions and it was decided to take a short break. During this period, the Americans borrowed the camping van and drove off to the city of Villach where they bought a truck. This was painted to resemble a moving van. As a number of people seeking peace and quiet from the more metropolitan areas of Austria bought property in the Weissensee area, the arrival and departure of moving vans was not considered a noteworthy event.

On Thursday, June 21, 1990, the visitation to the fifth site in the cluster of remaining burials was interrupted briefly by a nocturnal party of drunken hikers, who decided to rest within clear view of where the resurrection men were planning to work. What was worse, one of the hikers was possessed of a handgun which he began to discharge on a fairly regular basis at various trees and other objects. This eventually drew the attentions of the local police who drove down the sandy track in a lurching vehicle, frightening off the inebriates, and leaving the field to the treasure hunters who were concealed at some distance in the underbrush.

The German was now complaining of back pains again and his Ukrainian companion was terrified that the police would return, so the digging went much slower. This horde consisted of five cases, two of which had throughly rotted, spilling their contents out when the boxes were moved. From this find came more gold coins, several boxes of unset jewels, more wedding rings, a large German Bible from the sixteenth century with silver clasps and an inset coat of arms, another collection of ten kilo gold bars, and a thick file of official German records wrapped in oil skin and sealed in copper tubes. These proved to be the records of Globocnik’s prison camps listing the names, occupations and eventual fates of a large number of inmates.

The gold bars put a strain on the tires of the camper which blew a tire on its trip out of the area and the van had to be emptied to get at the spare. Throughout this process, the German complained constantly about the pains he was suffering, and the Ukrainian joined in as a sort of chorus. His lamentations centered around the fact that the police would certainly return and they would then lose everything they had worked so hard to acquire.

On the forenoon of Friday, June 22nd, an impromptu conference was held on the terrace of a convenient inn with all the parties participating. Over the consumption of various local beverages and a lengthy lunch, the European Union branch of the association declared that it was their unanimous wish to leave the area at once, taking with them their portion of the recovered loot. It was pointed out that two more sites remained and that these sites were sufficiently remote as to virtually preclude discovery. The objectors claimed that they now had more than enough precious metal to satisfy them and would have some problems transporting it to the relative safety of Germany. They agreed to abandon their shares in the remaining two troves in exchange for a larger share of the material already recovered. They had no interest in the guns or the religious artifacts, preferring to take just the coins and the jewels which were more easily transported.

Finally, after much muted disputation, it was agreed that the precious stones, containing a large number of loose diamonds, some of the gold coins, all of the gold jewelry, and a few of the gold bars would go to the German/Ukrainian part of the team. The balance of the heavy gold bars, the coins and the religious artifacts would remain with the Americans.

As one of the Americans later remarked to his fellow national, the value of diamonds was completely artificial and they were always hard to sell for a decent profit. Since the German was fascinated with the cold glitter of the stones, he was given all of them along with large, but flawed natural emeralds, some of the gold coins which would be more difficult to convert to cash, boxes of scrap gold, nineteenth century watches, and a considerable number of wedding rings.

Following this, the participants in this Last Supper went their separate ways, leaving the Americans in possession of a very valuable bible, a collection of ancient coins worth, at the very least, the aggregate value of all the unset stones, the more easily disposed of gold coins, and almost all the gold bars.

There were now two men left to exhume the remaining two sites, and while the panic of the departed team members had some effect on those remaining behind, it did not deter them from going forth twice more on the evenings of the 29th and 30th of July.

The final gathering consisted mainly of gold bars, a small suit of dress 16th century armor designed for a child and set with stones of some value, and a collection of books in Latin which later turned out to have come from the Polish state library at Cracow. With the cleansing of the last site and the scattering of the last armfuls of forest litter, the first part of the saga of the Globocnik gold was over.

The second part was about to begin.

Finding the treasure, unearthing it and dividing it was child’s play compared with the logistical problems inherent in moving a truck full of contraband gold out of Austria, and to an area where it could be removed from the European continent and enjoyed at leisure elsewhere.

On Wednesday, July 4, 1990, the freshly-painted moving van left Weissensee forever, heading the nine kilometers to E-66 and south towards Italy with its inviting port cities on the Adriatic.

The truck was properly registered and a portion of it was loaded with cheap, second-hand furniture purchased in Austria to lend some versimillitude to the story that an Austrian family was moving to Venice for business reasons. The former CIA man had obtained all the correct forms and was prepared to encounter Italian customs. However, the customs post was closed and he drove straight through without incident.

What happened to the German and his partner is not known, although they both managed to drive into Germany without any incident. It was rumored that the German retired to nurse his bad back in an expensive suburb of Munich while his co-worker married a fellow Slav and opened an ethnic restaurant in Switzerland.

The Americans bought a servicable ship in a marina at the northern end of the Adriatic, loaded up their cargo and engaged several local fisherman who had a desire to emigrate as far and as quickly from Italy as possible. The boat, which was a large diesel custom-built fishing boat, was entirely capable of transversing the Mediterranean as well as the central reaches of the Atlantic without undue effort.

The first part of the trip was very scenic, the artistic American spending most of his time making sketches of such points of interest as the ancient palace of Diocletian at Split, and taking a brief detour to make drawings of the palace of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria on the Greek island of Corfu.

They sailed through the wine-dark seas of Greece and out, eventually, past the Pillars of Hercules and vanished completely from this narrative.

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TBR News May 27, 2016

May 27 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

 

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 27, 2016:”Acording to F.B.I statistics nearly 800,000 people are reported missing each year. Out of the 800,000 people reported missing, approximately 75% percent of missing person cases are resolved within 24 hours. Most of these are runaways and victims of parental kidnapping.  650,000 are accounted for, leaving a balance of 150,000 per annum unaccounted for. This figure varies from year to year but remains in the 125,000 to 150,000 figure year after year. Many of those who have vanished have had no social, economic or legal problems to compel them to vanish. Where the vanished have gone and why they have disappeared is not known. Questions without an answer.” Continue Reading »

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TBR News May 26, 2016

May 26 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 26, 2016: “Both Turkey and Israel are quickly turning into right-wing dictatorships. The right wing is making strides in Austria and Germany. Europe is filled with discontent and the flood of Muslim immigrants, coupled with fears of murderous Sunni Muslim acts of terrorism are enhancing the popularity of the right wing and creating the Muslims as a casus belli. The UN is a hopeless talking shop and the perennial threats of force by the United States have lost their effectiveness throughout the world. It is strange indeed that other than the Saudi-controlled 9/11 attacks, there have been no Muslim terrorist attacks inside the United States.” Continue Reading »

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TBR News May 25, 2016

May 25 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 25, 2016:” ’They spy on us and we spy on them.’ This is a phrase sent to me by a reader who is heavily involved in computer code-writinig and apparently very proficient. The more official Washington’s minions spy on American citizens, the more computer experts spy on them. One of them said recently to a communicant that there are no secure computer systems operating in the United States systems that cannot be read. This, it has been said, extends to the specially protected computer system of the President himself. There are no secrets anymore. When US agencies send top secret information to Israel, Russian implants in their systems send these to Moscow so Putin knows exactly what is on the table. He probably also knows what is under it! Bibi the Fat’s messaging to his embassy in Washington is being read by others as fast as the embassy staff can.” Continue Reading »

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TBR News May 24, 2016

May 24 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 24, 2016: “Many factors combined to create the current housing crisis in the United States.

Low interest rates after the 2001 stock market crash spurred the housing boom. Housing prices skyrocketed above historic trendlines. People were duped into thinking prices would rise forever, but it was inevitable that the housing bubble would burst, and houses would suddenly be worth a lot less. With house prices falling, lots of people are now finding they owe more than their house is worth. This problem is exacerbated by predatory loan arrangements that have left millions facing suddenly rising mortgage payments.

A lot of people and corporations deserve blame for this state of affairs.

Instead of warning consumers about the housing bubble – which would have gone a long way to counter the excessive price run-ups – then-Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan denied a bubble was occurring.

Wall Street firms created exotic investment instruments that made possible the purchase and trading of large numbers of mortgages. This created conditions so that banks and initial lenders took less care in issuing mortgages – since they wouldn’t be responsible for mortgages gone bad. The Wall Street firms not only sold these instruments to duped investors, they took on major liabilities on their own – even though it was obvious the housing bubble would have to burst.

Rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which evaluated the riskiness of these new mortgage investment instruments, failed utterly. The housing bubble meant mortgage investments were sure to lose money, but the ratings agencies gave them top ratings anyway. Along with the “innovation” of the Wall Street firms, the ratings agencies helped maintain a market that dramatically exacerbated, and to a considerable degree may have created, the housing bubble.

Financial bubbles create an incentive for criminal and shady activity. Just like the stock bubble of the late 1990s created the climate for Enron and dozens of other companies to cook their books, the housing bubble created incentives for predatory lenders to exploit consumers.” Continue Reading »

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TBR News May 23, 2016

May 23 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 23, 2016:” The very close election in Austria shows that the flood of Muslim refugees now jamming into Europe is causing a public reaction by a sharp swing to the far right. Liberals and their media outlets may wail and protest but this political shift is not temporary and unless the respective governments of countries now hosting potentially violent and disruptive foreign elements take firm steps to control the influx, the certain reaction of the outraged public will be to force expulsion. We will then see a Europe firmly in far right wing hands and this will lead to the tragic death of many trees as the liberal media cranks up a hopeless campaign to reestablish more liberal ways. Their movement can easily be seen in the constant exortations in print that everyone is really the same and we should all embrace our mud-blood neighbors in an orgy of self-humiliation.” Continue Reading »

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TBR News May 22, 2016

May 22 2016 Published by under Uncategorized

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 22, 2016:

“1. Only in America……can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

  1. Only in America……are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink.
  2. Only in America……do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
  3. Only in America……do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
  4. Only in America……do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
  5. Only in America……do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.
  6. Only in America……do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won’t miss a call from someone we didn’t want to talk to in the first place.
  7. Only in America……do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
  8. Only in America……do we use the word ‘politics’ to describe the process so well: ‘Poli’ in Latin meaning ‘many’ and ‘tics’ meaning ‘bloodsucking creatures’.
  9. Only in America……do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.”

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