TBR News August 16, 2017

Aug 16 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., August 16, 2017:”When the left wing supported Hillary Clinton lost the White House, there was astonishment and rage.

Astonishment because the left wing believed they had the election locked up. Their press paid no attention to the Republican Trump and daily praised Hillary and told the pubic that she had “surged well ahead of Trump” and was a cinch to resided once again in the White House.

Millionaire Hungarian stock market successful manipulator, George Soros fully backed Hillary and all were waiting in anticipation of a wonderful victory.

Newsweek had even printed a cover showing a glowing and retouched Hilary’s picture and a caption rejoicing in her victory.

Her loss stunned the militant left as much as it did the inner circle of her supporters.

The Russians were blamed and the media launched an attack on Trump that has continued to this day.

The ugly business in Charlottesville was a Soros-supported attempt to stir up racial hatreds in America and, as the left wing believed, cause a saddened public to demand Trump to resign his office and let some Vladimir Lenin devotee take his place.

All that Charlottesville did has been to polarize the public into two warring camps.

When someone has a great deal of money, they get into their head that they are important and as they are important, the rest of the world needs to listen to them and follow them.

In this case, following the Soros-supported Neo-Coms (Neo-Communists) leads not to glorious victory but the quarry.”

 

Table of Contents

  • Which Way for the Trump Administration?
  • The DOJ Wants Anti-Trump Activists’ IP Addresses — Here’s How to Hide Your IP Address
  • Welcome to Charlottesville – proof that political correctness is wrecking America
  • Hack or Leak: Who Really Stole the DNC Files?
  • Hillary Clinton embraces George Soros’ ‘radical’ vision of open-border world
  • The Mueller Washington Journals   1948-1951

 

Which Way for the Trump Administration?

The battle over foreign policy

August 16, 2017

by Justin Raimondo

AntiWar

It’s decision time at the White House. We’re six months into the Trump administration, and several foreign policy issues have to be resolved. What happens in the next few weeks will likely determine the course Trump will take for the next four years – which is why we’re seeing more reports about the intense internal wrangling going on behind the scenes.

First and foremost is Afghanistan, with two White House factions battling it out in full public view: on one side we have newly-appointed National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, who wants a renewed long-term commitment to occupying that country and is angling for thousands more troops to be sent in. On the other side of the barricades is Steve Bannon, the Trumpian ideologue hated by the liberal media, who, as the Daily Caller puts it, “has pushed for the ‘America First,’ populist, noninterventionist foreign policy that Trump espoused during the campaign.”

At a policy meeting held last month, Bannon argued for a major pullback. McMaster made the case for yet another “surge.” Dissatisfied with those options, the President sent everyone back to the drawing board.

The good news is that Trump is reportedly highly skeptical of our continued presence in Afghanistan. The bad news is that he is also wary of presiding over a Taliban takeover of the country. Yet it may be that the non-interventionists have the advantage. As the Weekly Standard relates:

“Encouraging [Trump’s] skepticism are the America Firsters in the administration, led by [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions and Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, who is firmly fixed on the idea of Afghanistan as graveyard of empires. It may be owing to his conversations with Bannon that the president has cited to his war cabinet the unhappy experiences of the British at the Khyber Pass and even quoted Alexander the Great (‘Afghanistan is easy to march into, but hard to march out of’).

“Bannon vehemently opposes what he calls McMaster’s ‘Big Army plan,’ and his argument to the president is at least partly a political calculation: Does Trump want to explain to voters why he’s committing $50 billion to build schools in Afghanistan (on top of a 16-year military expenditure that is already nearing $1 trillion) before starting the infrastructure projects he’s promised to Michigan and Ohio?”

Another meeting, chaired by Vice President Pence, was held at the beginning of August, and three principals were tasked to come up with “creative” options for Trump to consider: McMaster, CIA chief Mike Pompeo, and Sessions. McMaster initially came up with a plan for inserting 50,000 more troops into Afghanistan, but scaled it back after realizing Trump would never go for it. Both Bannon and Pompeo want to lighten the US footprint, with the former coming up with a problematic scheme to “privatize” the military campaign, and the latter wanting to basically farm it out to the CIA and Special Operations units. As for Sessions, he’s the most radical of the anti-interventionists, according to the Weekly Standard, which reports:

“Sessions, stalwart of the America First camp, has long been ‘the biggest skeptic in the room’ when the subject of a continued presence in Afghanistan arises in meetings of Trump’s war cabinet, according to one participant in those meetings. Said another White House official, who is sympathetic to Sessions’ position, ‘The A.G. asks the same question: Is this what we were elected to do? And the answer to the question is no.’”

While you never can tell with the Trump administration, the outlook for us non-interventionists is surprisingly good: my guess is that the President will go with the light-footprint approach and the administration will continue to resist congressional calls to ramp up the US presence. In time, the light footprint will be so light as to be practically nonexistent.

Another upcoming decision on the foreign policy front is Ukraine – yes, the War Party is still pushing for arming the Kiev regime with offensive weapons. The proposal, coming from the Pentagon and the State Department, differs very little from the plan rejected by President Obama and disdained by Trump during the campaign. But as we all know, the War Party never rests, and they’re at it again – although they may have hit a rather large speed bump on the road to a conflict with Russia on the European front.

It turns out that the engines powering those North Korean “ICBMs” – you know, the ones that aren’t really ICBMs – came out of a factory in Ukraine. The factory is located in Dnipro, Urkraine’s fourth largest city, in the central part of the country: the city has been under the control of the Kiev government and is relatively untouched by the Donbass-centered rebellion. Investigators were shocked by the advanced technology utilized by Pyongyang in recent missile launches and concluded that it couldn’t have been achieved without outside help in the past two years. According to expert Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies:

“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine – probably illicitly. The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”

The factory, known as Yuzhmash, which is state-owned, denies any role in the technology transfer. However, the Times reports that “American investigators do not believe that denial.” The Ukrainian government has responded with its usual bombast: top national security honcho Oleksandr Turchynov said that “This information is not based on any grounds, provocative by its content, and most likely provoked by Russian secret services to cover their own crimes.”

Listening to the Ukrainians is like watching CNN or an episode of the Rachel Maddow show: it’s always Russia, Russia, Russia. They attribute everything that goes wrong in their corrupt ramshackle country to the machinations of Vladimir Putin, but this time it doesn’t look like that explanation is going to suffice. Chances are that their hopes of getting arms and “foreign aid” from Uncle Sam are going up in the smoke let out by those North Korean missiles.

Speaking of North Korea, that’s another front where there have been some hopeful developments. The Chinese have finally cracked down on Pyongyang, signing on to the UN sanctions, and letting Kim Jong Un know that if the North Koreans launch a first strike Beijing will not have their back. The result: the North Korean despot backed down from his threat to target Guam. Not that the threat was credible to begin with – at this point the range of Pyongyang’s missiles, not to mention their accuracy, is quite limited – but what’s significant is that this rhetorical retreat is unprecedented for the North Koreans.

Yet this lull in the storm is only temporary: Kim Jong Un’s Ukrainian allies have changed the equation. Now that North Korea has the technical means and expertise to upgrade the range and sophistication of their missile development program, it is only a matter of time before Pyongyang perfects a missile capable of hitting US cities, on the West Coast and perhaps beyond. As Elleman says in his report:

“It is not too late for the US and its allies, along with China and perhaps Russia, to negotiate an agreement that bans future missile testing, and effectively prevents North Korea from perfecting its capacity to terrorize America with nuclear weapons. But the window of opportunity will soon close, so diplomatic action must be taken immediately.”

When the window of opportunity closes, sometime after 2018, the US government will have a fateful decision to make: policymakers will have to decide whether we can tolerate North Korea in possession of such a capability. If so, then we’ll be in a situation of mutual assured destruction, with North Korea getting the worst of it by far: any North Korean attack on the US will surely result in the obliteration of Kim Jong Un and all his works.

The alternative to this stalemate is a preemptive attack by the United States, which will mean the destruction of Seoul, a city of several million, the decimation of the peninsula, huge losses to the 30,000 US troops stationed there, and most likely considerable damage to Japanese cities. In short, it would mean a disaster on a scale not seen since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Faced with this prospect, negotiations are the only possible road to take. Kim Jong Un is no doubt well aware of the fate that befell Moammar Gaddafi, who gave up his nuclear program in exchange for assurances that he’d be left alone – only to wind up being attacked by the Western alliance and sodomized with a sword. “We came, we saw, he died,” crowed Hillary Clinton at the time – a boast that the warlords of Pyongyang heard loud and clear.

The issues surrounding the Korean crisis are rooted in the unresolved outcome of the Korean war, which to this day has never resulted in a peace treaty. This is a frozen conflict, one that can only be thawed by the Korean people themselves. As long as US troops occupy half the peninsula, the North is going to maintain both its political legitimacy and its military prowess as a communist Sparta, armed to the teeth and ready to fight. What is needed, as a first step, is the denuclearization of the peninsula, and ultimately negotiations between the North and the South leading to reunification – ending in the withdrawal of US troops.

It’s long past time to end the Korean war.

 The DOJ Wants Anti-Trump Activists’ IP Addresses — Here’s How to Hide Your IP Address

August 15, 2017

by Frank Miniter

Forbes

DreamHost, a Los Angeles-based web hosting provider and domain name registrar, says the Department of Justice (DOJ) wants them to hand over an 1.3 million visitor IP (internet protocol) addresses. This request would include “contact information, email content and photos of thousands of people” who might have been involved in organizing protests against President Donald J. Trump back on Inauguration Day.

DreamHost says in a blog post: “At the center of the requests is disruptj20.org, a website that organized participants of political protests against the current United States administration. While we have no insight into the affidavit for the search warrant (those records are sealed), the DOJ has recently asked DreamHost to provide all information available to us about this website, its owner, and, more importantly, its visitors.”

This could be used to identify any protesters who used disruptj20.org to exercise and express First Amendment-protected political speech.

DreamHost is challenging the request in court.

In essence, the Search Warrant not only aims to identify the political dissidents of the current administration,” says Chris Ghazarian, general counsel for DreamHost, “but attempts to identify and understand what content each of these dissidents viewed on the website.”

DreamHost published links to documents filed by the DOJ and arguments from DreamHost as to why this invasion of privacy would chill free speech.

The DOJ’s argument begins: “The United States of America, by and through its attorney, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, hereby moves the court to order DreamHost, Inc. to show cause why DreamHost should not be compelled to comply with a warrant issued by this court….”

It is common for companies like Google, Facebook, Verizon and so on to get warrants from courts requiring them to provide information on individuals accused of a crime, but this is a wholesale effort to obtain information on protesters. It is also much broader than a case now underway, also by the DOJ, to force Glassdoor, an online job-review website, to give up the personal information of people who anonymously reviewed a company the DOJ is investigating. (I wrote about this case here.)

As government is now interested in whether you criticized a company they might be investigating or even if you organized a protest, keeping your privacy and therefore freedom increasingly means knowing how to safeguard it online.

There are actually several easy ways to hide your IP address as you navigate the Web. The best way is with a Virtual Private Network (VPN). A VPN allows you to connect to another network, which means your computer uses the IP address from the VPN provider. If you login in via a VPN all the traffic from your computer goes through the VPN network.

Setting up a VPN depends on the system you’re using, but it isn’t hard. Actually, there are a lot of companies out there already vying for your business.

Another way is to use Tor. The Tor Browser is a free software program you download. When you use it your signal is sent through thousands of relays that wipes out your IP address. This is basically the Dark Web.

Another simple way to hide your IP address is to login through a coffee shop’s free WiFi. You shouldn’t do private things like online banking on these open networks, but if you want to organize or check out a coming political rally that you don’t want Big Brother to tie you to then you could do so over a public WiFi, as your IP address doesn’t travel with your computer.

Welcome to Charlottesville – proof that political correctness is wrecking America

August 14, 2017

by Robert Bridge

RT

The events that just rocked Charlottesville, Virginia are symptomatic of every ailment now infecting the US political body – extreme political correctness, intolerance of free speech, and a police presence that seems designed to promote violence rather than curb it.

If ever there was a lightning rod for attracting the disciples of Liberalism and political correctness, the new creed that is destroying honest debate and discourse in the ‘Land of the Free,’ you could do no worse than a bronze statue of Robert E. Lee in the town square. For those who never heard of the man, Lee was a very skilled general who led the South’s Confederate forces against Lincoln’s Union during the Civil War, the bloodiest US military conflict to date.

Lee also proved irresistible to the alternative right (‘alt-right’), an increasingly vocal group of predominantly frustrated white men who, in this latest convulsion to rattle the US, view the removal of the Southern general’s statue as an appropriate metaphor for the ‘endangered white male.’ The Anti-Defamation League defines the alt-right as individuals who “want to preserve the white majority in the US,” over fears that descendants of white Europeans are “losing their majority status,” which will eventually result in “white genocide.”

Although there is a big temptation to connect this latest bout of left-right strife with the rise of Donald Trump, and the epic fall of Hillary Clinton, that explanation falls wide of the mark. As witnessed by the Tea Party and other right-wing movements, such as Unite the Right, Oath Keepers and the 3 Percenters, these groups were itching for a fight long before the mogul of Manhattan crashed the political scene. But the left has been equally guilty of kicking up its share of dirt.

The great schism in American politics began shortly after the attacks of 9/11 when George W. Bush initiated an opportunistic crackdown on civil liberties through the Patriot Act, a veritable tome that few legislators had a chance to read, yet signed it into law anyways. This slide towards totalitarianism continued under Barack Obama, the first president to carry out extrajudicial killings of US citizens outside of war zones, oversee a vast surveillance network courtesy of the NSA, and speak openly about ‘updating’ the Second Amendment right to bear firearms. These constitutionally-challenged moves made a lot of conservative-minded folks, and certainly some Liberals, very nervous.

However, what seems to have really triggered the right was Obama’s raft of culturally explosive legislation, which turned traditional American values on their head overnight. From the legalization of marijuana, to endorsing same-sex marriages, to opening the door, quite literally, to transgenders using the bathroom and changing facilities of their choice, it seems Obama punched every hot-button issue before leaving office.

At the same time, the left, well before Trump was considered hot political property, was also manning the trenches. On Sept. 17, 2011, a group called Occupy Wall Street took over Zuccotti Park in the heart of New York’s financial district, where they held protests against economic inequality. The protesters were forced to leave their site on November 15, 2011, but their message continues to resonate to this day.

Two years later, following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, the ‘Black Lives Matter’ hashtag became a social media phenomenon. The tag went from the world of virtual reality to the streets, where thousands of protesters condemned a reported rise in police brutality against blacks.

Finally, and very disturbingly, a group called ‘Antifa’ arrived on the scene, espousing ‘anti-fascist’ rhetoric against far-right groups. This militant group, which has been declared a ‘domestic terrorist organization’ by the New Jersey Department of Homeland Security, resorts to violent tactics that mirror the very ‘fascist’ ideology it purports to be challenging. At Berkeley, black-masked Antifa members reportedly left behind property damage and started fires, while the group violently disrupted the “March 4 Trump” event. This thuggish tendency, which seems to be strangely prevalent among groups on the left, to resort to outright violence every time somebody attempts to challenge an idea sets a disastrous precedent.

Now, with the arrival of Donald Trump on the scene, all of this accumulated political firewood, as it were, has paved the way for round one of a conflagration that won’t be resolved anytime soon.

PC insanity

In considering the violent events that shook Charlottesville, where actual fatalities and numerous injuries occurred, it is important to consider what sparked this event, and that was the decision to remove Robert E. Lee’s statue from the city center. It seems a reasonable case could be made for both sides of the debate, yet that is exactly what is missing in America these days – healthy debate.

First, it must be said the Confederate cause that Lee defended – that is, an agrarian system based on slavery – is obviously noxious and indefensible. Hundreds of thousands of Africans were physically removed from their homeland and delivered to American shores, forced to till the fields of their ‘masters’ from morning til night. Not until the emergence of Abraham Lincoln and the North’s hard-fought victory in the Civil War did African Americans secure their full-fledged membership in US society. Thus, many Americans find it distasteful that a statue of Lee, gallantly astride his horse, sits in a park that bears his namesake.

Yet the question remains. Will removing Lee’s statue eliminate the stain of slavery from American history books? No, it won’t. So what is it exactly that we wish to accomplish by its removal? Should Americans be expected to tear down every physical reminder of those historical figures whose ultimate legacy was being on the wrong side of history? Should we be prepared to close down Gettysburg Military Park in Pennsylvania, for example, the sprawling site of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War’s bloodiest battle that precipitated the final defeat of Lee’s army? It was on the basis of that victory, after all, that lent inspiration to Lincoln’s famous ‘Gettysburg Address.’

“To forget history is to repeat it” is not some silly cliche, but sound advice that we ignore at our own peril.

The willingness to remove statues from our main squares is just one step away, I believe, from demanding history books be purged from any reference to such events for fear of offending somebody. In both cases, we wish to remove the physical content because we find it morally offensive. But isn’t that the same thing as forgetting history? Thanks to the toxic atmosphere of political correctness that has sanitized all debate and discussion, we already see the first signs of such extreme thinking. It’s a sad day in America when university campuses, the very fountain of free thought, resort to violence every time a controversial guest speaker is invited to address a group of students.

So deeply entrenched are the roots of political correctness that Americans, who can barely pronounce the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ these days without facing a lawsuit, are now willing to remove not only stone representations of dead historical figures who still have hard lessons to teach, but living, breathing individuals carrying messages that some may find unsettling, yet that have a right to be spoken nevertheless.

As a nation, we’ve traveled light years away from the sound advice given by the English writer, Beatrice Hall, who said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Where is the police protection?

Meanwhile, the right of assembly by all participants should have been protected by the authorities in Charlottesville since the idea of allowing these two groups, which exist at extreme ends on the political spectrum, to mingle in the proximity of tiny Emancipation Park (formerly called ‘Lee Park’) was simply insane.

It is true that Unite the Right (UtR) had secured the necessary permits to assemble to hear various speakers discuss the decision to remove the historical Lee statue. They also had the blessing of the American Civil Liberties Union (Yet this did not stop “Unite The Right” organizer Jason Kessler from being attacked by protesters while attempting to hold a news conference). This decision naturally led to counter groups, notably from Antifa, to also secure permits to hold counter rallies. Thus, this quaint Virginia town had collected together enough combustible material to have given the authorities enough incentive to ensure public safety, yet once again the police failed spectacularly on that point.

Reminiscent of the violence that left Berkeley campus resembling a war zone over a scheduled talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, a British commentator associated with the so-called alt-right, the Charlottesville police fueled the tension by driving the conflicting sides into something resembling a mosh pit. Indeed, by all outside appearances, it looked as if the police were willfully inciting violence between the leftist and rightist camps.

Are the local police forces really so inept as to force two opposing groups together during a protest? According to various accounts I have heard, that is exactly what happened. While I will leave the question of police measures to other commentators, it needs to be emphasized that if Americans are to retain their constitutionally protected freedom of speech and assembly, then the authorities must be expected to create the safe spaces for such events.

When Americans are being physically denied the right to express themselves due to an oppressive atmosphere of political correctness, then the authorities must take the necessary steps to protect them, otherwise the natural result will be more violence.

It’s sad that the national state of debate in America has reached the point when such measures are required, but without open discussion on all issues, America will be stuck in a Civil War mindset.

 Hack or Leak: Who Really Stole the DNC Files?

Lack of forensics leads to muddy waters indeed.

August 15, 2017

by Philip Giraldi

The American Conservative

Congress and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are looking into whether there was Donald Trump campaign collusion with the Russian government to “influence” the results of the 2016 presidential election. Stupidity and naivete will probably be revealed in abundance, but collusion to alter the outcome of an election—and thereby damage American democracy—is unlikely to be demonstrated.

The mantra in Washington, both within the media and the inside-the-beltway establishment, is that Russia actively “interfered” in the election and may have changed the outcome, but that is largely speculative. Since the line between possibly influencing or favoring a certain outcome and interfering has been rather difficult to discern, Russiagate has evolved into a seemingly never-ending inquiry that will likely produce nothing in terms of indictable criminality among the Trumpsters. The Russians for their part will likely be seen to have engaged important individuals in a foreign country to advance their own interests—something governments worldwide do.

Indeed, the process itself seems to be backwards. Unlikely to be revealed is how the whole affair became a national-security issue in the first place. Who exactly stole the files from the DNC server and the emails from John Podesta? It would seem to me that appreciating how the theft of the documents took place is crucial to understanding what has come to be called Russiagate. Demonstrate exactly what occurred and many of the other pieces will inevitably fall into place.

At this point, all that is clearly known after more than a year of huffing and puffing is that last summer files and emails pertaining to the election were copied and then made their way to WikiLeaks, which published some of them at a time that was damaging to the Clinton campaign. Those who are blaming Russia believe that there was a hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server and also of John Podesta’s emails that was carried out by a Russian surrogate or directly by Moscow’s military intelligence arm. They base their conclusion on a statement issued by the Department of Homeland Security on October 7, 2016, and on a longer assessment prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on January 6.

Both government appraisals implied that there was a U.S. government intelligence agency consensus that there was a Russian hack, though they provided little in the way of actual evidence that that was the case and, in particular, failed to demonstrate how the information was obtained and what the chain of custody was as it moved from that point to the office of WikiLeaks. The January report was particularly criticized as unconvincing, rightly so, because the most important one of its three key contributors, the National Security Agency, had only moderate confidence in its conclusions, suggesting that whatever evidence existed was far from solid.

Leaked reporting in the mainstream media subsequently provided some clues regarding what was behind the alleged intelligence community judgement. A hacker identified as Guccifer 2 might have broken into the system on behalf of Russia and there were reportedly traces of electronic fingerprints in the alleged intrusion that were characteristic of Russian intelligence hacks. Both of those assertions have been separately challenged and it has been observed that they are somewhat speculative. There are also reports that intercepted Kremlin phone conversations involving high level officials expressed considerable joy at the Trump victory, suggesting that Moscow was closely monitoring and possibly playing some role in the electoral process.

An alternative view that has been circulating for months suggests that it was not a hack at all, that it was a deliberate whistleblower-style leak of information carried out by as yet unknown parties that may have been provided to WikiLeaks for possible political reasons, perhaps to express disgust with the DNC manipulation of the nominating process to favor Hillary Clinton.

There are, of course, still other equally non-mainstream explanations for how the bundle of information got from point A to point B, including that the intrusion into the DNC server was carried out by the CIA, which then made it look like it had been the Russians as perpetrators. That explanation has some plausibility due to the fact that the agency does indeed have cyber-capability to do just that when it goes around the globe and invades foreign information systems. It could also have easily come up with a credible role player who might have pretended that the information came from a dissident Democrat for passage to Assange.

And then there is the hybrid point of view, which is essentially that the Russians or a surrogate did indeed intrude into the DNC computers but it was all part of normal intelligence agency probing and did not lead to anything. Meanwhile and independently, someone else who had access to the server was downloading the information, which in some fashion made its way from there to WikiLeaks.

Both the hack vs. leak viewpoints have marshalled considerable technical analysis in the media to bolster their arguments. The hack school of thought has stressed that Russia had both the ability and motive to interfere in the election by exposing the stolen material while the leakers have recently asserted that the sheer volume of material downloaded indicates that something like a higher speed thumb drive was used, meaning that it had to be done by someone with actual physical direct access to the DNC system.

What the many commentators on the DNC server issue choose to conclude is frequently shaped by their own broader political views, producing a result that favors one approach over another depending on how one feels about Trump or Clinton. Perhaps it would be clarifying to regard the information obtained and transferred as a theft rather than either a hack or a leak, since the two expressions have taken on a political meaning of their own in the context of Russiagate. I am not qualified to judge the technical analyses that have been done on the theft, but I would like to suggest that the bottom line is that we (the American people and government) have no idea who actually stole the material in question.

If Congress were seriously interested in determining who did what to whom, it would have started with the theft of the information. The inquiry should have begun with the DNC server or servers where the information that was stolen was stored, but, oddly, the FBI was not allowed access. So whatever forensic insights that might have been obtained from the actual computers has never been collected or developed by federal law enforcement, which perforce relied instead on an assessment made by a DNC contractor, CrowdStrike, whose co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a prominent critic of the Russian government. CrowdStrike ran its own investigation and inevitably blamed the Russians.

If the FBI had moved quickly to do a forensic examination on the computers, information retained in the system presumably could have told investigators exactly who logged in and at what times. With that in hand, questioning of the individuals identified could have begun. Also, a thorough investigation would include obtaining a list of all those individuals who theoretically had access to the information that was stolen under the assumption that someone might have been using an associate’s password. Yet there is no indication that any questioning of those with access to the DNC system has occurred or is even being contemplated.

A good investigation would also examine possible motive. Back in July there was little doubt that Hillary Clinton would win the election and it is far-fetched to think that the Russians would in even their wildest imaginings think that they could change the result. But that is not to say that they would not have been interested in weakening the Clinton presidency by surfacing evidence of a scandal. Nor is there any motive for then CIA Director John Brennan to do a hack and blame it on Moscow since he would have known that the information being released would damage his candidate, Hillary Clinton—but he might have thought that promoting the Russian connection would do even worse damage to Trump. It seems to me that likely motive also includes two other plausible possibilities: that someone took the information to sell it to a party who has not yet been identified, or that someone stole the information to get even either with the Democratic establishment or with individuals running the primaries and the convention.

As there would have been only a limited market for the Clinton papers and their sale would be tricky and require developing contacts desirous of obtaining such information, revenge would seem to be the more likely explanation. But even there we know nothing as no names have surfaced as part of whatever has been passing for an investigation. DNC staffer Seth Rich, who was killed in a still unexplained “robbery attempt” in Washington on July 10, 2016, has been identified as a potential suspect by conservative media, but that possibility has been strenuously rejected by his family and others, and it does not appear that there has been any FBI follow-up on his case.

I honestly believe that we the public will never know who stole the Clinton and Podesta emails unless Julian Assange of WikiLeaks chooses to come clean on the issue, which is unlikely. In fact, Assange, who has denied that it was the Russians, might not know whom he was dealing with. If a sophisticated intelligence agency was somehow involved it could have used its own recruited assets as interlocutors, pretending to be who they were not. A well-constructed cover story could have easily fooled Assange. A capable spy agency would also have run its operation replete with red herrings while using cut-outs to break the transmission belt of the information so the theft could not plausibly be traced back to it, or to its sponsoring government.

The fact that more than a year of inquiry has gone by without anyone inside the DNC IT system being investigated suggests that whatever happened has been buried so deep that it will never surface. Even now, it might pay some dividends for the FBI to examine the DNC server, but there is virtually no pressure from anyone to make that happen. Certainly the FBI has given no indication that it has a clue about what took place and is content with attributing it to the Russians, particularly since that seems to be the conventional wisdom. Blaming the theft and what happened subsequently on Moscow is both convenient and comforting because no American constituency gets offended and it means you don’t really have to annoy anyone but Vladimir Putin.

 

Hillary Clinton embraces George Soros’ ‘radical’ vision of open-border world

October 20, 2016

by Rowan Scarborough

The Washington Times

Hillary Clinton has aligned herself closely with a vision for America laid out by her benefactor — left-wing financier George Soros, who talks of “international governance,” more open borders, increased Muslim immigration and diminished U.S. global power.

The phrase “American exceptionalism” is not part of his agenda. He wrote in 1998: “The sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions.”

“We need some global system of political decision-making. In short, we need a global society to support our global economy,” Mr. Soros wrote.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, he said, “Military power is of limited use in dealing with asymmetric threats such as terrorism.”

The Clinton-Soros symbiosis came into clearer focus this month with WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of hacked emails from John Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman. Mr. Soros‘ name comes up nearly 60 times.

The financial and ideological alliance is so complete that after Mr. Soros dined with Mrs. Clinton in 2014 and asked her to attend a liberal group’s fundraiser, her campaign manager, Robby Mook, wrote in an email, “I would only do this for political reasons (ie to make Soros happy).”

Rep. Duncan Hunter, the California Republican who is co-chairman of Donald Trump’s congressional leadership caucus, said a vote for Mrs. Clinton is a vote for the Soros agenda.

“The fact that Hillary Clinton and her campaign are so closely aligned with George Soros and his radical agenda is serious cause for alarm,” Mr. Hunter told The Washington Times. “Publicly, it’s a relationship she’s never really talked up, but communications at least now reveal how closely aligned they are, and Americans deserve to know that a Clinton presidency means even more direct influence from George Soros.

“And as for an agenda, there probably won’t be much daylight between the two, and Americans should be concerned that a vote for Clinton is no different than a vote for George Soros for president,” Mr. Hunter said.

The Times reached out to the press offices for Mr. Soros and Mrs. Clinton but received no reply.

With a Forbes-pegged fortune of $24 billion, Mr. Soros is America’s — and the world’s — most prominent financial star in a constellation of liberal activist groups. They have funded anti-police protests, some of them violent; rhetorical attacks on conservatives and their media; open border initiatives; and efforts to control journalists’ reporting.

The Hungarian-born U.S. citizen grew even closer to Bill and Hillary Clinton after Mr. Clinton became president, all the while funneling millions of dollars to their campaigns and to those of other Democrats.

“I do now have great access in [the Clinton] administration,” Mr. Soros told PBS in 1995. “There is no question about this. We actually work together as a team.”

Mr. Soros has donated nearly $11 million to Hillary Clinton’s Democratic presidential campaign and three main super PACS — USA Action, American Bridge 21st Century and Hillary for America, according to an analysis by The Washington Times.

His foundation has given up to $6 million to the Clinton Foundation, the global charity the Clintons set up that has proved to be a good networking tool to obtain paid speaking engagements. The Clintons have a personal net worth of $100 million to $150 million, most of it gained by giving speeches to bankers, corporations, colleges and trade associations.

Mr. Soros pumps money into a list of who’s who on the American left. They include Media Matters; MoveOn.org, which organized aggressive protests at Trump rallies; and the Center for American Progress, founded by Mr. Podesta. Institutions that educate future journalists also take Mr. Soros‘ money.

A review of Mrs. Clinton’s private and public comments shows she has very much absorbed Mr. Soros‘ grand plan for the world, a blueprint that hangs under the title “open societies.” His New York-based Open Societies Foundation is at the center of his philanthropy and politics.

Open borders

Mr. Soros has complained of national borders as an impediment to world ruling bodies.

He finances at least seven groups in the U.S. that promote open borders and mass immigration, according to the book “Shadow Party” by David Horowitz and Richard Poe.

WikiLeaks’ massive release of hacked campaign emails shows that in one of Mrs. Clinton’s paid speeches to bankers, she pledged to work for open borders. Her “dream” presumedly means that the southern U.S. border would be a conduit for untold numbers of immigrants.

“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,” she told a closed-door audience at Brazilian bank Banco Tau in May 2013.

Illustrating how far Mrs. Clinton has moved to the Soros position is a 2003 statement in which she said she was “adamantly opposed to illegal immigrants.”

Conservative bloggers say one of Mr. Podesta’s emails shows him explaining how illegal immigrants can vote by obtaining driver’s licenses and attesting to U.S. citizenship at the polls. Noncitizen voting in federal elections is against U.S. law.

Muslim immigration

Mr. Soros is a big proponent of bringing more Muslims into Europe and, by extension, to America. He views Muslim immigrants as a savior for Europe because of the continent’s low birthrate.

He has funded private groups helping Muslims enter Germany and other countries, and he wants Europe to borrow billions of dollars to pay for resettling them. He wrote in the Australian newspaper last year that Europe should bring in 1 million Muslim refugees per year “for the foreseeable future.”

Hungary built walls to keep out Middle Eastern refugees, fearing they would turn the country from its “Christian roots” into an Islamic state.

“This invasion is driven, on the one hand, by people smugglers, and on the other by [human rights] activists who support everything that weakens the nation-state,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “This Western mindset and this activist network is perhaps best represented by George Soros.”

Mr. Soros told Bloomberg News: “Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

Mrs. Clinton said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that she wants to boost President Obama’s mark of 10,000 Syrian refugees resettled in the U.S. in one year to 65,000 — a 500 percent increase.

Anti-police protests

The Washington Times reported that groups that went to Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and stirred up anger during protests of the police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown were funded by one of Mr. Soros‘ umbrella grant-makers.

One recipient was the Organization for Black Struggle, which established the HandsUp United coalition, which helped create the protest chant, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” Brown never put his hands up and assaulted a white police officer in the fatal altercation, according to a Justice Department report.

Mrs. Clinton is clearly in their corner. She has made statements supporting Black Lives Matter, whose followers call for violence against police officers, and scolded police across the board.

“Let’s admit it: There is clear evidence that African-Americans are disproportionately killed in police incidents compared to any other group,” she said in July.

“And surely we can all agree that’s deeply wrong and needs to change. And, yes, we do need to listen to those who say black lives matter,” Mrs. Clinton said.

She said during the primary election season, “There needs to be a concerted effort to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system. And that requires a very clear agenda for retraining police officers.”

The nation’s largest police union has endorsed Mr. Trump.

American sovereignty

Mr. Soros says one of his pet peeves is that the U.S. launches military operations against other nations yet jealously guards its own self-determination.

“We are willing to violate the sovereignty of other states in the name of universal principles, but we are unwilling to accept any infringement of our own sovereignty,” he wrote in 1999 in The Washington Post. “We need a new international authority that transcends the sovereignty of states to promote an open society.”

Mr. Soros castigates the United States for not subjecting its deployed armed service members to international courts.

He wrote: “We are willing to drop bombs on others from high altitudes, but we are reluctant to expose our own men to risk. We refuse to submit ourselves to any kind of international governance. We were one of seven countries that refused to subscribe to the International Criminal Court; the others were China, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Qatar and Yemen. We do not even pay our dues to the United Nations. This kind of behavior does not lend much legitimacy to our claim to be the world’s leader.”

In her private 2013 speech to Brazilian bankers, Mrs. Clinton said a “dream” of hers is to establish a “hemispheric common market.” Presumedly, this would be modeled after the European Union, which dictates economic policy to member countries. The U.S. would find itself obliged to follow the dictates of a bureaucracy made up of South and Central America, Mexico, the U.S. and Canada.

The mission statement of Mr. Soros‘ flagship operation — the Open Societies Foundation — is that it works “to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable and open to the participation of all people.”

One group Mr. Soros helped start with a $1 million-plus donation was MoveOn.org, which helped organize violent protests at Trump rallies last spring. It celebrated the cancellation of Mr. Trump’s Chicago rally in March because of protesters and their attacks on Trump supporters.

“Mr. Trump and the Republican leaders who support him and his hate-filled rhetoric should be on notice after tonight’s events,” MoveOn said. “To all of those who took to the streets of Chicago, we say thank you for standing up and saying enough is enough. To Donald Trump, and the GOP, we say, welcome to the general election.”

Mr. Soros adamantly opposed President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism. In a 2004 book blasting the Iraq War, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” Mr. Soros described the 9/11 attacks this way:

“Admittedly, the terrorist attack was a historic event in its own right. Hijacking fully loaded airplanes and using them as suicide bombs was an audacious idea, and the execution could not have been more spectacular. The destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center made a symbolic statement that reverberated around the word and the fact people could watch the event on their television sets endowed it with an emotional impact that no terrorist act had ever achieved.”

Mr. Soros and his Soros Fund Management made his fortune by trading currencies. France indicted him on charges of insider trading in the 1980s and fined him $2.6 billion. France’s highest court upheld his conviction. In Britain, he dumped so many pounds into the currency market that the media said he “broke the Bank of England.”

Mrs. Clinton said in 2004, “We need people like George Soros, who is fearless and willing to step up when it counts.”

Steven Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com, said: “If she does win, she won’t need Soros or anyone else anymore. She will be ‘Crooked Hillary‘ unchained and beholden to no one. She may do Soros‘ bidding, but he’s going to have to pay her to do it. She will service the left-wing ideological agenda to the extent she needs to maintain her voter base for 2020. But I see her focus being consolidation of power and money, or money and power.”

 

The Mueller 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.

 

 

Introduction

In the early morning hours of September 25, 1963, a grave was opened in the West Berlin Kreuzberg military cemetery and the contents removed for forensic examination. The marker indicated that the occupant of the grave was Heinrich Müller, born April 28, 1900, and killed in the street fighting in Berlin in 1945 when the Soviet Army seized the German capital. The memorial stone did not indicate that Müller had been an SS-Gruppenführer and a Lieutenant General in the German Police and that since 1935, was the head of the German Gestapo or the Secret State Police.

The exhumation had been requested by the West German Ludwigsburg Center that dealt with ex-Nazis sought for prosecution. This Center had information that Müller was not dead and was, in fact, gainfully employed by a foreign government. One of the first steps in proving this was to ascertain whether the corpse in the grave was that of Heinrich Müller who had been issued a death certificate from the Death Bureau of Berlin-Center numbered 11 706/45.

A subsequent pathological examination proved that there were the remains of three different men in the grave, none of whom were Heinrich Müller.

The man being sought was the son of a minor official, had completed a primary school education, had taken technical training in aircraft engines and in June of 1917 had joined the German Army. Because of his background, after his preliminary training, Müller was assigned to Flieger Ausbildung Abteilung 287 in April of 1918. In the seven months remaining before the war ended, Müller was promoted to NCO in August of 1918 and won the Iron Crosses First and Second Class. He was also awarded the Bavarian pilot’s badge and after injuring his leg in an aircraft accident, the retired Bavarian pilot’s badge. Müller served on the Western Front throughout the war.

When the war was over, Müller joined the Munich Police in 1919 as a junior assistant. He passed his entrance examination and became a police officer. He was promoted to Police Secretary in 1929 and was in Section VI of the Bavarian State Police, a unit that dealt with Communist activity. In 1934, Müller and a number of his associates were transferred to the Gestapo in Berlin and joined the SS as a Sturmführer on April 20, 1934. In 1935, Müller was head of Department II (Gestapo). In 1936, he was head of the Gestapo division of the headquarters of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei). In 1937, he was promoted to senior police official (Kriminalrat) and in 1939, to the rank of Reichskriminaldirektor or Director of Police.

His SS promotions were:

SS-Obersturmführer on July 1, 1934,

SS-Sturmhauptführer on January 30, 1935,

SS-Sturmbannführer on April 20, 1936,

SS-Obersturmbannführer on November 9, 1936,

SS-Standartenführer on January 30, 1937, SS-Oberführer on April 20, 1939,

SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der deutschen Polizei on December 12, 1940

and

SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der deutschen Polizei on November 9, 1941.1

 

The organization that Müller controlled, the Secret State Police, had been instituted by Hermann Göring as Minister President of Prussia in 1933 but was acquired by Heinrich Himmler as part of his empire building. The numerous changes, additions, absorptions and expansions of the Gestapo during the course of its existence would fill a volume, because like Himmler, Müller was also an empire builder.

 

Although on Müller’s orders, most of the Gestapo records were destroyed in 1945, it can be approximated that the entire personnel roster of the Gestapo numbered 25,000 with a much larger but undetermined number, of V agents or Vertrauensleute, voluntary and paid informers. In 1943, when the army Intelligence system, the Abwehr, was broken up due to its poor performance, Müller managed to acquire its counter-intelligence department. Although Hitler had ordered in June 1941 that the army was to be the sole radio interception agency, Müller moved into this field as well and by the end of the war, was running an extensive radio intelligence department that specialized in “playback” or the turning of enemy agents to feed their former employers false information and locate other agents arriving or in place.

The Gestapo was renowned for its excellent filing system which permitted very close observation of the population. The Germans have always required the use of internal passports and required its citizens to register their current addresses and their places of employment so the Gestapo had less difficulty maintaining its control. The Gestapo also maintained telephone interdiction facilities and watched the mails. These methods are not unique to Germany or the Gestapo but were more prevalent and pervasive than in other western countries. Müller’s men did not have the modern American technology of using privately owned television sets connected to the universal cable systems as a means of listening to private conversations, mainly because the television set was not in use in Germany at that period. Almost any other conceivable form of observation was in use and after the war, the victors expressed considerable professional interest in the Gestapo’s methods and techniques.

Heinrich Müller married Sophie Dischner in 1924. Her father published a right wing Bavarian newspaper that was opposed to Hitler. A son, Reinhard, was born January 4, 1927, and a daughter, Elizabeth, on September 9, 1936. His daughter was stated to be “not entirely normal,” and there was considerable friction in Müller’s domestic life because of this. He eventually became estranged from his wife and had a lengthy relationship with his private secretary, Barbara Hellmuth. Müller and his wife were devout Catholics and even as a high-ranking SS officer, Müller refused to leave the church. He only joined the NSDAP very late when he was compelled to do so. In fact, Müller had been known to the Party as a strong opponent when they were struggling for power in the Munich of the 1920s and early 1930s. Party members were shocked when Müller and the men of his bureau were taken into the SS and put in charge of the Gestapo, and never ceased complaining about what they felt was ideological outrage. Müller owed his continued career and subsequent advancements to his intelligence, drive and ruthlessness. He was a self-effacing man, photographs of whom are rare. His putative superior, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was extensively interrogated by US authorities after the war when they were seeking Müller. Excerpts from the comments of a man who disliked Müller and was not only disliked in return but also virtually ignored, are interesting. This quote is from the interrogation:

 

“MÜLLER’S influence in forming the Stapo staff was manifest not only in its foundation; later all posts in Amt IV were occupied by persons selected by him, including the Police Attachés…MÜLLER was unhappily married, had two children, one a boy of 17 called up for service just before the end of the war. The second child was much younger. The latter child had pronounced Mongolian features, and it is believed that on this account, MÜLLER avoided all social intercourse between friends and neighbors. MÜLLER spent practically all his time in his office on account of his unpleasant conditions at home. Most of his social life was confined to such officials as HUBER, PIFFRADER, GEISLER, MEISINGER and GOTTHALMSEDER. …When I met him for the first time, I did not notice any peculiarities. He had a remarkably small figure, a piercing look in his dark eyes and there was, in his appearance, nothing frank and kind but rather ‘luring’. He was, however, polite (“korrekt”) but perhaps too modest…MÜLLER had a remarkable memory and knew every person who had ever crossed his path and all events. He was a living encyclopedia for HIMMLER….He always wanted to do everything for himself, and gave his associates no chance for independent development; in fact this bad habit had been criticized even by HIMMLER.”

 

There exist very few descriptions of Müller engaged in the art of interrogation, something he was very skilled at. Müller was persistent and would take hours over these sessions. With his remarkable memory, he was almost always able to extract the truth. The only surviving account comes from the writings of captured British intelligence agent Captain Best. Kidnapped in Holland after the November, 1939 bomb attempt on Hitler’s life, Best was brought before Müller and questioned.

 

“Müller was a dapper, exceptionally good-looking little man, dressed in imitation of Adolf Hitler, in a gray uniform jacket, black riding breeches and top boots. He started his ‘snort’ immediately when he entered, and as he walked towards me, increased the pitch and the volume of his voice with great virtuosity. He managed to get right up close to me before his vocal chords tore into shreds. ‘You are in the hands of the Gestapo. Don’t imagine that we shall show you the slightest consideration. The Führer has already shown the world that he is invincible and soon he will come and liberate the people of England from the Jews and Plutocrats such as you. You are in the greatest danger and if you want to live another day must be very careful.’ Then he sat down on a chair in front of me and drew it up as close as possible, apparently with the intention of performing some mesmerizing trick. He had rather funny eyes which he could flicker from side to side with the greatest rapidity and I suppose that this was supposed to strike terror into the heart of the beholder.” Best then encountered Heydrich who shouted to him: “So far you have been treated as an officer and a gentleman, but don’t think that this will go on if you don’t behave better than you have done. You have two hours left in which to confess everything. If you don’t, I shall hand you over to the Gestapo, who are used to dealing with such gangsters and criminals—you won’t enjoy their methods a bit.”

“I turned to Müller, who was standing at my side and asked: ‘Who is this excitable young officer?’ At this Heydrich really went off the deep end and literally foamed at the mouth; at all events, he sprayed me liberally with saliva. Müller quickly pushed me out of the room and into my own. Later on he came in again and told me I must not take the matter too seriously: ‘Soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked.’”

 Best concluded his description of Müller by saying: “In my experience, I always found Müller a very decent little man.”[1]

 

Heinrich Müller was five feet seven inches, strongly built with dark brown hair, cut high on the sides and good features. He had a small, tight mouth and rarely smiled but his face, and in fact his entire persona, was dominated by a pair of hooded brown eyes that fixed themselves on people with great intensity. He walked with a slight limp as a result of a wartime injury. Müller was descended from Germans living in Alsace and he went to some trouble to conceal the family French connections because of Hitler’s strong dislike of the French.

Given the position Müller occupied in the Third Reich and the role he played during its course, the question arises as to why no writer or historian has made any attempt to produce an in depth work on the head of the Gestapo. Aside from several pages in two of Heinz Höhne’s books and some material in Aronson, there is almost nothing in print about Heinrich Müller, and much of that extremely superficial or inaccurate. Although considerable information does exist in official files in archives, Müller has fallen through the cracks for several reasons.

Primarily, Heinrich Müller was a man who neither sought nor encouraged publicity. Unlike many of Hitler’s satraps, Müller disliked public display and was rarely photographed. Also, Müller was devoted to hard work and results, and preferred to work in private.

Secondarily, writers are drawn to the dramatic and the flamboyant, not the cold and secretive. Most treatments of historical personages consist, in the main, of wholesale filchings from previous writers, gotten up in new clothing but without substance. In the academic world, this is not called plagiarism, which it is, but instead labeled as research, which it is not.

Thirdly, U.S. intelligence agencies give every appearance of being singularly displeased by any mention of the name of Heinrich Müller.

In 1973, West German authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of Heinrich Müller, having good reason to believe that he did not die in Berlin in 1945. Correspondence, still classified in US files, between German legal agencies and their US counterparts indicates unhappiness, frustration and growing displeasure on the part of the Germans and classic stonewalling on the part of the Americans. Portions of Müller’s US CIC files now in Ft. Meade, Maryland, have been censored. None of the documents refused to researchers deal with immediate postwar searches for Müller but cover a much later period. The reasons given for continued classification is that their release would adversely affect US national security.

 

 

Historical Background

Living comfortably in Switzerland under the name of Schwartzer after the end of the Second World War, as an intelligence resource of the Swiss government, Heinrich Müller was contacted in 1948 by his onetime deputy in the Gestapo, SS-Oberführer Willi Krichbaum. Krichbaum, a long-time personal acquaintance of Müller, had been a senior Gestapo official in the Southeastern Grenz-Polizei or Border Police and had headed the Geheime Feld Polizei, the investigative body of the Abwehr since September of 1939.

After the war, Krichbaum had been recruited by former Major General Reinhard Gehlen and in 1946 was Gehlen’s chief agent recruiter stationed in Bad Reichenhall. Krichbaum was responsible for locating former Gestapo and SD agents and securing positions for them inside the Gehlen Organization.

This organization, located at the former Nazi official complex at Pullach southeast of Munich, became affiliated with the CIA when that organization was officially founded in 1948. According to Müller’s papers, Krichbaum had been in touch with his former chief through ex-Gestapo personnel living in Switzerland and opened discussions with the Americans about the possibility of employing Müller.

The head of this organization, Lt Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA, had heard rumors that the head of the Gestapo had fled to Switzerland and was working with Swiss intelligence. Through the services of former SS-Oberführer Krichbaum, Critchfield made contact with Müller in early 1948

Because of Müller’s knowledge and expertise in matters concerning Soviet intelligence, backed with archival material that the former head of the Gestapo had hidden in Berlin and Switzerland, the CIA expressed an immediate and intense interest in recruiting Müller. Krichbaum acted as a go-between in the negotiations with his former superior who was chafing at his comfortable but boring retirement and the CIA controlled Gehlen Organization under Colonel James Critchfield.[2]

It was never a question of the Americans threatening Müller with exposure if he did not cooperate, but more a question if Müller was willing to work for a former enemy. In the event, because of his detestation of communism and the perceived opportunity to do further damage to this system, Müller had little difficulty in working for American intelligence.

 

 

 

Müller and His Journals

 

As a young man, Heinrich Müller began to keep a brief record of his daily activities, a practice that he maintained throughout his life. There were times during the Sturm und Drang of his life when he was unable to maintain his entries, but these gaps were generally filled in when he had the opportunity.

In the beginning, Müller only noted down how much he had paid for something or a brief record of a trip or a chance meeting with an attractive woman, generally including her address and other such important information. When he was a young mechanic at the BMW aircraft engine plant, he kept notes on various engines he worked on, with occasional comments about the progress of the First World War that erupted when he was fourteen years old. Once Müller joined the army in 1917 and was assigned to a flying unit, his notes became more personal and began to cover his flights, actions and a host of other incidents that were far more interesting than the day-to-day drudgery of factory work.

He met his future wife at a Munich bus stop and was careful to note down the time and place of the meeting as well as her address and the fact that her father published a newspaper for the Bavarian People¹s Party (BVP). After the war, Müller joined the Bavarian Political Police and was heavily involved in activities against both the communists and Nazis and his earlier journals were now eclipsed by locally momentous events. The Hitler Putsch of 1923 was one event which got considerable coverage as well as the aftermath of the earlier communist seizure of power in Munich and its eventual overthrow by units of the Freikorps, the army, and police.

As Müller advanced in the Bavarian police, his notebooks are filled with observations on the political scene of the late 1920s and the eventual rise to power of Hitler and the National Socialists. Thinking he would be removed from his post when Hitler became Chancellor and the NSDAP came to power in Bavaria in 1933, Müller, who was always an ambitious man, began to prepare a flood of well-researched papers on his struggles with the communists in Bavaria and his observations on how they could best be countered by the new state.

These reports came into the hands of Heinrich Himmler who turned them over to Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS intelligence service. Heydrich then decided to overlook Müller¹s persecution of the Nazi movement as well as his adherence to the Catholic-oriented conservative Bavarian People¹s Party and put him in charge of the Gestapo. This agency was a Prussian state entity, not very large in size and certainly not particularly influential. Müller, ever using his ambition as a goad and his intelligence as a weapon, began to develop this small group of professional police officials into a huge agency that at its height had over fifty thousand agents, sub agents and informers. Müller developed card files on nearly everyone in Germany and his organizational skills increased not only the size, but also the effectiveness of the Gestapo.

This agency dealt mainly with internal subversion and was in essence a police counter-intelligence group. Many of Müller¹s associates were professional police officers and many were not members of the Nazi Party. Müller himself did not join the Party until 1939, at which time he was awarded the Blood Order, one of the most prestigious Party decorations, ironically intended for members of the NSDAP who had been involved with the 1923 Putsch in Munich. Since Müller was involved in the crushing of this uprising, his award of the Blood Order, plus his membership in the SS, infuriated loyal Party officials in Munich who bombarded their superiors with loud complaints about Müller¹s new plumage, as they termed it. During this time, Müller kept his journals up but as the war approached, their pages were no longer filled with women¹s addresses or telephone numbers or how much he had paid for a sausage and beer in the local restaurant. Instead of bratwurst, the pages were filled with high-level material on internal matters, often affairs that were never reported in the German press and certainly not outside the country.

It would be entirely safe to say that Heinrich Müller with his telephone taps, legions of informers, mail surveillance departments, radio interception teams and millions of index cards, knew more about the internal workings of Hitler¹s Third Reich than anyone else. Müller wrote much of this fascinating but little-known historical material down on a daily or weekly basis. When working on his journals at home, Müller taught himself to write backwards so his ever curious and always disapproving wife, Sophie, could not read his acid and often secret remarks.

After the war and his resettlement in Switzerland, Müller resumed keeping his journals and he brought these with him to the United States in 1948. Heinrich Müller¹s journals were certainly never intended for publication or justification. They are always brutally frank, cynical, highly informative and at least for some readers, entertaining. Müller did not suffer fools gladly and even though he had to work with his former enemies, there was no reason for him not to perform private literary surgery on their overweight, alcoholic bodies and flabby personalities.

In his journals, Müller emerges early on as a womanizer, a cynical and very often amoral man, consumed with ambition and tolerating no one who attempted to stand in his way.

The CIA offered him a job. He took it and used his position to ingratiate himself with the President of the United States and the Director of the FBI as well as to marry into a wealthy and influential Washington family. He had no hesitation in exchanging information and confidences with a high-level Soviet agent although his raison d¹etre was to assist his new employers in tracking down and exposing the same people. At one time, he had the same agent to dinner with two of the senior members of the CIA and, from his notes, thoroughly enjoyed the irony of the situation. In fact, it could be said that Müller always seemed to enjoy the ironical side of his work, took nothing seriously and filled his journals with comments and asides which the complaisant and conventional view with genuine horror and, more often than not, great disgust.

In Washington, Müller lost no time in climbing the social ladder and filling his Georgetown home with a fortune in art stolen by the Germans during the war. Some of this art, which included portions of the famed Amber Room, he sold off for the private purses of his co-workers in the CIA. He once gave a small, very private dinner for the President to which Müller wore all of his Third Reich and Imperial decorations and while sitting across from President Truman, discussed the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a man to whom Müller was supplying inside information to aid him in his reign of terror.

Müller had known the British-Soviet spy, Harold “Kim” Philby who worked for everyone from the Nazis to the communists, before the war and renewed his acquaintance when Philby was sent to Washington as British liaison to the FBI and CIA.

There are several instances where Müller, Philby and Viktor, his NKVD friend, would sit in the refined atmosphere of Washington¹s highly exclusive Metropolitan Club library and discuss all manner of highly classified information. In return for his hospitality, Müller was given an equal amount of highly classified Soviet and British information that his CIA employers found of great value. This high level information trading between putative enemies is typical of the intelligence communities of all nations and is certainly the rule, not the exception.

Initially, when Müller came to Washington in 1948, he was not fluent in English and was certainly a stranger, but he quickly adapted. From trivia about his water pipes and the weather, Müller¹s journals quickly expand into detailed, highly opinionated, coverage of the Red spy hunts, the internecine fighting in the nation’s capital, open warfare between the FBI and the CIA, and Müller¹s negative and often highly entertaining views on the top levels of the CIA. It is in these passages that Müller wields the knife as well as the bludgeon.

Although happily married, Müller had no problem conducting brief but intense affairs with the bored and unsatisfied wives of his closest co-workers, affairs which he had no problem entering in his journals, along with any significant pillow talk he gleaned from his romps in a Gretna Green hotel bedroom.

Becoming a friend of Sothenes Behn, wealthy and powerful head of IT&T, Müller took a great interest in the American stock market and with the advent of the Korean War, began to buy stock in companies dealing with the Pentagon. He obtained highly secret, inside information on contracts to be let by the American military and he and his Soviet spy friend began to invest heavily in the market.

In his relations with his personal staff, Müller clearly emerges as a kind and very considerate man but outside of his inner circle, he was entertaining, pleasant… and utterly ruthless. He kept at least one assassin on his staff and had no qualms when this man dispatched people who Müller felt might have identified him as the former head of the Gestapo. At the same time, Müller encouraged romances among his staff members, gave extensive financial support to the family of one assistant and certainly was very kind and affectionate to his dog.

Frederick the Great once said that the more he saw of humanity, the more he loved his dogs, and Müller, by his actions and personal views, certainly agreed with the Prussian King¹s commentary.

Although it is doubtful if Müller could have added valuable medical knowledge to his other attributes, nevertheless, he instructed his CIA co-workers in various methods of giving unwanted people sudden heart attacks.

When he first came to Washington, Müller noted that a number of inconvenient people, to include James Forrestal, were being thrown out of upper floor windows to their deaths on the pavement below. He suggested that an induced heart attack was far less dangerous to people passing by on the sidewalk beneath the victim.

One of the criticisms of the series on, and by, Heinrich Müller is that the tenor of the conversations held between American government officials and the former chief of the Gestapo is outrageously cynical, manipulative and amoral on the part of all parties involved. There seems to be an image fixed in the minds of a few which has all leading members of a government in general and the CIA in particular, participants in an elegant and refined tableau reminiscent of a dinner at Thomas Jefferson¹s Montecello where serious matters of state were debated by high-minded gentlemen over port and a pipe of fine Virginia tobacco. In reality, the days when gentlemen were to be found in government are long over and forgotten with only the memory lingering on to uplift the spirits of the hopeful and trusting. Pragmatism and ruthlessness have replaced manners and morals so that the private discussions of Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet members and heads of intelligence agencies sound far more like a sit-down in a Brooklyn clam house between Mafia dons than an eighteenth century literary salon. As Müller himself often said, morals and ethics are excellent norms but not very effective techniques.

Nearly all of the historical events depicted in these books run counter to the history which has been taught in the schools or depicted in an endless flood of works on the Second World War and the years subsequent. In the main, this is because the propaganda of those eras has been codified by the participants themselves and embroidered by a following legion of obedient court historians, poured into literary concrete and pointed to with great pride by their creators.

No government or leader has ever admitted being wrong, as witness the complete reluctance to absolve Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short of culpability in the lack of preparation at Pearl Harbor in 1941. It is now generally believed by the majority of interested Americans that President Franklin Roosevelt, and his immediate cohorts, had ample pre-knowledge of the pending Japanese attack but in spite of this widespread belief, no administration will ever admit to the errors of another administration, even sixty years after the fact.

The survival and employment by the United States of Heinrich Müller and a significant number of his former agents is contained in American archives but for reasons that are entirely obvious, these papers are still sealed with the highest security classifications. Even though all the participants in this event are long dead, governments, like corporations, are living entities and the sins of the fathers are not to be visited upon their children.

The journals of Heinrich Müller are by their very nature, revisionistic in the extreme and because of this revision of favorite myths and legends, abhorrent to the orthodox as well as those who chance to be employed by the same agencies that Müller so brutally scores. In order to refute his ugly depictions of national icons, legions of historians, government officials and ubiquitous academics have been improving their shining hours by frantic and extensive searches in various archives and official records on two continents. The sole purpose of their labors is to attempt to disprove the myriad allegations of ignorance, idleness and vice expressed by the former head of Hitler¹s secret police in his private journals. The sum and total of all this wasted labor can be found in such unhappy comments as are found in a British intelligence journal which states with shrill authority that because there were two typographical errors in three volumes, the contents of all of them have no historical value whatsoever.

Less substantive objections generally center on the fact that the reader¹s sensibilities and beliefs have been badly shaken; that the material simply cannot be true because the reader believes something else which, because he believes it, means it must be the personification of truth itself. At the end of the twentieth century one finds hope, trust and idealism residing in adjoining cots at a cut rate nursing home while waiting for the lights to go out.

Müller¹s journals did not begin in 1948 nor end in 1952 but they represent an important era in American history and present views of an insider who was privy to the most intimate secrets of the United States government and its senior members at the beginning of the Cold War, a campaign whose long-term effects are still being felt throughout the world.

(to be continued)

 

               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Best, S.Payne, “The Venlo Incident,” London, 1950.

[2]The American Army even recruited and evacuated the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Mueller. To prevent later accusations that the United States government was employing the notorious Mueller, the Americans used Gehlen’s organization to finance his work.” Trento, Joseph, “The Secret History of the CIA” New York, 2001, p29.

No responses yet

Leave a Reply