TBR News July 20, 2019

Jul 20 2019

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. July 20, 2019:

“Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.

When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.

I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.

He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.

He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.

His latest business is to re-institute a universal draft in America.

He wants to do this to remove tens of thousands of unemployed young Americans from the streets so they won’t come together and fight him.

Commentary for July 20:”Bolton is a complete lunatic. He is frantic to make war on anyone he dislikes and has no interest in any consequences. He was sacked from the government once for his nutty behavior but now he is back, hissing in the wings like a furious snake and Fat Donald, who has the intellectual capacity of a chicken, listens to him. And he listens to the even weirder Jesus Freaks. And the public pays the bill from their viciousness and stupidity. The clock is ticking, however.”
 

The Table of Contents

  • How Trump’s arch-hawk lured Britain into a dangerous trap to punish Iran
    • Point
  • Germany: Merkel commemorates Hitler assassination plot 75 years after ‘Operation Valkyrie’
    • Counterpoint
  • The Truth Emerges
  • Encyclopedia of American Loons
  • The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

 

 

How Trump’s arch-hawk lured Britain into a dangerous trap to punish Iran

With the seizure of a supertanker off Gibraltar, distracted UK government was set up by John Bolton as collateral damage

July 20, 2019

by Simon Tisdall

The Guardian

John Bolton, White House national security adviser and notorious Iraq-era hawk, is a man on a mission. Given broad latitude over policy by Donald Trump, he is widely held to be driving the US confrontation with Iran. And in his passionate bid to tame Tehran, Bolton cares little who gets hurt – even if collateral damage includes a close ally such as Britain.

So when Bolton heard British Royal Marines had seized an Iranian oil tanker off Gibraltar on America’s Independence Day, his joy was unconfined. “Excellent news: UK has detained the supertanker Grace I laden with Iranian oil bound for Syria in violation of EU sanctions,” he exulted on Twitter.

Bolton’s delighted reaction suggested the seizure was a surprise. But accumulating evidence suggests the opposite is true, and that Bolton’s national security team was directly involved in manufacturing the Gibraltar incident. The suspicion is that Conservative politicians, distracted by picking a new prime minister, jockeying for power, and preoccupied with Brexit, stumbled into an American trap.

In short, it seems, Britain was set up.

The consequences of the Gibraltar affair are only now becoming clear. The seizure of Grace I led directly to Friday’s capture by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards of a British tanker, the Stena Impero, in the Strait of Hormuz. Although it has not made an explicit link, Iran had previously vowed to retaliate for Britain’s Gibraltar “piracy”. Now it has its revenge.

As a result, Britain has been plunged into the middle of an international crisis it is ill-prepared to deal with. The timing could hardly be worse. An untested prime minister, presumably Boris Johnson, will enter Downing Street this week. Britain is on the brink of a disorderly exit from the EU, alienating its closest European partners. And its relationship with Trump’s America is uniquely strained.

Much of this angst could have been avoided. Britain opposed Trump’s decision to quit the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the trigger for today’s crisis. It has watched with alarm as the Trump-Bolton policy of “maximum pressure”, involving punitive sanctions and an oil embargo, has radicalised the most moderate Iranians.

Yet even as Britain backed EU attempts to rescue the nuclear deal, Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt, foreign secretary, tried to have it both ways – to keep Trump sweet. They publicly supported Washington’s complaints about Iran’s “destabilising” regional activities and missile programme, and berated Iran when it bypassed agreed nuclear curbs.

Crucially, the government failed to significantly beef up protection for British-flagged vessels transiting the Gulf after attacks in May and June. This was partly because a depleted Royal Navy lacks capacity to mount adequate patrols. But it was also because officials feared that by raising its military profile, Britain could be sucked into armed conflict with Iran.

For Bolton, however, drawing Britain unambiguously in on America’s side was a desirable outcome. So when US spy satellites, tasked with helping block Iranian oil exports in line with Trump’s global embargo, began to track Grace I on its way, allegedly, to Syria, Bolton saw an opportunity.

The Spanish newspaper, El Pais, citing official sources, takes up the story: “The Grace 1, which flies a Panamanian flag, had been under surveillance by US satellites since April, when it was anchored off Iran. The supertanker, full to the brim with crude oil, was too big for the Suez Canal, and so it sailed around the Cape of Good Hope before heading for the Mediterranean.

“According to the US intelligence services, it was headed for the Syrian oil refinery of Banias. Washington advised Madrid of the arrival of the supertanker 48 hours ahead of time, and the Spanish navy followed its passage through the Strait of Gibraltar. It was expected to cross via international waters, as many Iranian vessels do without being stopped.”

Although Spanish officials, speaking after the event, said they would have intercepted the ship “if we had had the information and the opportunity”, Spain took no action at the time. But Bolton, in any case, was not relying on Madrid. The US had already tipped off Britain. On 4 July, after Grace I entered British-Gibraltar territorial waters, the fateful order was issued in London – it is not known by whom – and 30 marines stormed aboard.

Iran’s reaction was immediate and furious. It claimed Britain had acted illegally because the EU embargo on oil supplies to Syria, which Hunt claimed to be upholding, applied only to EU states and not to third countries such as Iran. In any case, Tehran said, the ship’s destination was not Syria.

Iran’s outrage was shared, to a lesser degree, by Josep Borrell, Spain’s socialist foreign minister. Borrell resented the British incursion into Gibraltar’s territorial waters, which Madrid does not recognise. He also appears to have been annoyed that Spain was drawn in – in Tehran, the Spanish ambassador had been summonsed by the foreign ministry to explain Madrid’s role. His reaction was to distance Spain from the affair. The Iranian tanker had been seized “following a request from the United States to the United Kingdom,” he said. And even though Britain was supposedly upholding EU regulations, the External Action Service, the EU’s foreign policy arm, has remained silent throughout.

Iran’s retaliation in snatching the Stena Impero has further exposed Britain’s diplomatic isolation and its military and economic vulnerability. The government has advised British ships to avoid the Strait of Hormuz, an admission it cannot protect them. But between 15 and 30 British-flagged tankers transit the strait each day. If trade is halted, the impact on energy prices may be severe.

Hunt’s appeal for international support for Britain has so far fallen on deaf ears, France and Germany excepted. China, Japan and other countries that rely on oil from the Gulf show no sign of helping. The US plan for a multinational coalition to protect Gulf shipping has few takers. Meanwhile, Trump’s promise to back Britain has scant practical value – and carries inherent dangers.

The Bolton gambit succeeded. Despite its misgivings, Britain has been co-opted on to the front line of Washington’s confrontation with Iran. The process of polarisation, on both sides, is accelerating. The nuclear deal is closer to total collapse. And by threatening Iran with “serious consequences”, without knowing what that may entail, Britain blindly dances to the beat of Bolton’s war drums.

 

Point

Germany: Merkel commemorates Hitler assassination plot 75 years after ‘Operation Valkyrie’

On July 20, 1944, Claus von Stauffenberg tried to kill Adolf Hitler by placing a suitcase bomb next to him during a meeting of senior Nazi officials. Merkel said he and his co-conspirators were “true patriots.”

July 20, 2019

DW

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday paid tribute to Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and other German military figures who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler 75 years ago.

“Following their conscience, they proved themselves to be true patriots,” Merkel said at a military ceremony in Berlin. “They urge us to be vigilant and to confront racism and nationalism in all its facets,” she added.

Stauffenberg and other senior officers such as Henning von Tresckow and Erwin von Witzleben planned to kill Hitler in his “Wolf’s Lair” headquarters in modern day Poland and then declare peace with the Western allies.

But a bomb that Stauffenberg  placed in a suitcase near to the Nazi dictator failed to kill him and the attempt to seize power, dubbed “Operation Valkyrie,” failed. The colonel and his co-conspirators were tracked down and executed in the days and weeks that followed.

After her speech, Merkel laid a wreath at the site where Stauffenberg and several others involved in the plot were shot.

Germany’s ambivalence

Stauffenberg’s legacy in postwar Germany has been mixed. Some view him as a hero of the anti-Hitler resistance movement and others see him as an opportunist who only turned against the Nazi dictator when Germany’s defeat became certain.

Historian Wolfgang Benz told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper that it was important for Germans to remember the broader resistance movement and not just the military officers involved in the July 20 plot.

“Conservatives have always focused on the military resistance, but it came very late [in the war],” he said.

 

 

 

Counterpoint: The Truth Emerges

 

In Germany, Stauffenberg is always portrayed as a great, selfless hero but the historical facts present a somewhat different picture.

Since it is forbidden, by German law, to denigrate Stauffenberg and his cohorts, very little of actual historical substance has even been printed and books about Stauffenberg sound like the efforts of the early Christian writers to attribute as many inventions into their writings as they could.

The clearest, if the least flattering, of the character of Claus von Stauffenberg, is to be found in the papers of one Heinrich Müller, once head of Hitler’s Gestapo. Müller who escaped to Switzerland after the war and from 1948 onwards, worked for Colonel James Critchfield’s CIA controlled Gehlen Org, kept his records and papers of various events and it is from these that the following chronicle has been drawn.

It was published, in English, in 1995 and once the German government and the Stauffenberg family learned of it, following a German publication, they threatened severe legal actions against the publisher and author for “Defaming the Dead.” In Germany, one cannot libel any deceased historical personage whom the German government has deemed to be a “National Hero.”

In the following transcript, made in Switzerland in 1948 while Müller was being interviewed by the CIA prior to being hired by them, ‘Q’ stands for James Speyer Kronthal, head of the CIA in Bern and ‘M’ stands for Heinrich Müller.

“Q Tell me about your role, and the role of the Gestapo, in the 20th July bomb plot.

M General Kaltenbrunner was chief of the State Security Office and was in charge of the entire investigation but the interrogation of actual suspects and development of cases was under my direct control at all times.

Q Did Kaltenbrunner assign this job to you?

M No, I was personally entrusted with it by Hitler. He wanted me to have the fullest power to follow every trail and to quickly seize any suspect I found through interrogations. There was a special commission for the 20th July set up under my direction. I had a staff of about four hundred specialists and was given extraordinary powers by Hitler. I was under orders to report only to Hitler when it was apparent that high level persons had been involved in the attempt. Hitler, himself, decided what was to be put into the official record and what was to be kept out.

Q Did you see Hitler often at this time?

M I cannot be exact. I would have to consult my records to be exact. Quite a few times.

Q Were you alone with Hitler?

M Oh yes, a number of times. It all depended on the material I had for him. If it was very important, Bormann had to wait outside. I remember that Bormann was not at all pleased with this state of affairs and I once commented on that to Hitler. He replied that Bormann was a valued person but certain matters were not to be put about for any reason. He also said that Bormann wished to attack the army in general and had had to be silenced. If I had any problems with Bormann over this, Hitler was to be informed at once. These private visits, by the way, were really private. I would fly to the headquarters in the courier plane or, several times, on the courier train. My visits were completely off the record and kept secret and I had to see Hitler only when he was off duty so to speak.

Q But Bormann was always with Hitler, wasn’t he?

M Most of the time. Mind you, Bormann did not control Hitler, only the access to him. If Hitler wanted to see someone, he saw them. Much of the time he didn’t wish to be bothered with petty bureaucratic nonsense and used Bormann to keep high NSDAP officials from pestering him. Actually, no one controlled Hitler for that matter. Bormann was certainly useful to Hitler, but Bormann was jealous of his position and vindictive beyond necessity if anyone weaker than he attempted to get close to Hitler. I said that Bormann did not enjoy my visits and he did make some small efforts to hinder me but Hitler soon put him right. Of course, that enraged Bormann even further but he only controlled the Party machinery and I controlled the Gestapo so he couldn’t harass my family or friends. You see, in the end, Bormann lost that battle with me because I don’t forget either.

Q I have some questions about Bormann but we can come to that later on. Had you dealings with Hitler prior to the 20th of July matter?

M I had met Hitler a number of times. In the beginning…when I first took over the Gestapo, I did not see him very much. Mostly at ceremonial occasions.

Q How did you get on with Hitler?

M You must remember that before he came to power, my branch of the Bavarian Police dealt with the Party and we often prosecuted them. Therefore, Hitler was not inclined to much like me personally nor were many Party members from Bavaria particularly pleased with my appointment.

Q How did you get into the SS if you made so much trouble for the Party?

M General Heydrich brought me and some of my fellow workers in the political section into the national police after the coming to power in 1933. Heydrich was a highly intelligent and practical man who overlooked many things. Please do not forget that my agency was also in opposition to the Communists and had been even more severe in our treatment of them than of the National Socialists.

Q Had Hitler any other reason to dislike or distrust you? Or let us say not include you in his circle?

M My father-in-law was a political opponent of his and I was always a strong Catholic. I did not join the Party until I was forced to. Hitler, when he first began his career and even in Vienna, had a dislike of the police whom he said were always persecuting him. Hitler had been very poor and that class always fears the police.

Q But you did become on better terms with him later, didn’t you?

M I think so. With Hitler it was impossible to tell what he really thought about anything. Later he became much friendlier to me and at the last in Berlin, he was very open and straightforward. He could be that way in private and it was a great surprise after one had seen him in public to discover that he was very human and easy to communicate with. Hitler, in fact, could be very amusing and entertaining at times. He could imitate people in a very perceptive and cruel way. He once did an imitation of Himmler, voice and gestures, that was remarkable. Hitler had a real eye for a person’s character and could see right through people almost from the beginning of his contact with them. But he concealed so much. This was a man who was always on stage, always before an audience. But at home, so to speak, he was a quiet, normal and very pleasant person. Hitler did have a temper but mostly when he was lied to and the anger passed quickly. I think his most serious fault was his emotional nature. He could be extremely logical but a remark could set him off and he was very much upset quite easily. As I said, when he had a chance to quiet down, he was basically a very intelligent and reasonable person. At least I later found him so, but then he needed my services so I cannot say what Hitler really thought about me. But to answer your point, yes, towards the end of the war I did get along quite well with him on both a professional and personal basis.

Q You spoke about the 20th of July commission which you chaired. Can you give me some generalities about that plot? I think you would know more about what actually happened than almost anyone else. For instance, a number of people survived and have come to us seeking to work for us. They want to become political figures in the government of our zone and it might be instructive to hear your views on motives and personalities. In general, can you comment on those subjects?

M I have more papers on the 20th of July than you could imagine. Where do you want me to begin?

Q Just an overview. Who was behind it, the attempt I mean. People involved, motives and so on.

M There were many dissatisfied people as the war went on. In the beginning, a number of left wing personalities and intellectuals did not approve of the more unpleasant aspects of the new government. The early SA and Nazi types were basically street thugs and bullies and their actions offended a number of people. Hitler eventually purged most of the less acceptable people and tried to make his government more acceptable to the middle class. He was, I think, generally successful although the intellectual classes and especially the military class always detested him. The military always ruled Germany, even after the war, and they were…and still are…very caste conscious. They threw out the Kaiser when it suited them, made Putsches when they could and wanted to set up a sort of paper government in the Republic that they could control. The trouble was that these paper governments were weak and ineffectual and while the army could for certain run them, they had no public confidence and Germany merely drifted. The army wanted a leader who could strengthen the country while at the same time be subject to their control. They made a terrible mistake when they chose Hitler. No one ever came close to controlling Hitler. When they realized this, they were furious and wanted to get rid of him. And, of course, Hitler was not of their class. These were mostly land-owning squires from East Prussia who all knew each other, had all been in the socially acceptable regiments before the war and lived almost entirely in the past. They found Hitler and his loud NSDAP people terrible. So they sabotaged him when they could and grumbled in their messes and at their hunt meetings. None of them would ever credit Hitler with having broken the back of the radical movements in Germany or of greatly improving the economic lot of the working people. That meant nothing to them at all. Even though Hitler had been a front fighter during the war and had won both Iron Crosses, they had nothing but contempt for him. So, as long as they were able to enjoy the benefits of his programs such as a much increased military, they confined themselves to grumbling. A number of the old women on the staffs, like Halder and Beck, tried to interfere with his programs but always behind the scenes. And many of them had worked in Soviet Russia during the Weimar period and had grown to like the Russian style. Very unfortunate situation. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the Poles became very angry because Pilsudski1 could see that a strong Germany on one side of Poland and a strong Russia on the other side could make trouble for him. So he planned to strike at Germany while the Reichswehr was still relatively weak and hoped to drive Hitler out of office. I don’t think the Poles knew whom they hated more, us or the Russians. So, in early 1933, I believe in March, the Poles began massing troops along the Corridor and on the East Prussian borders. There was no real way we could beat them so Hitler had to play for time.2 The Poles demanded that Hitler sever his connections with Russia, denounce the military aid treaty with them and sign a long term military friendship treaty with them. This Hitler was forced to do but I know he never forgot that episode and the Poles paid dearly for it later. The higher army commanders were also very angry with Hitler because he had cut off their friendly connections with the Russians. They could not, or would not, see that the security of the state, of their state, was more important than their training exercises in Russia. And these gentlemen now had another reason for disliking Hitler. These men may have been brilliant staff officers but they always thought in military terms, strictly military terms, and never considered anything else at all. Many of these officers joined the conspiracy when the war began to go against them. They were content to remain inactive as long as Hitler gave them Marshal’s batons and high decorations but eventually, that wore off. Also, as I said, many of the older, higher ranking officers sabotaged Hitler’s plans. I must say that while I am not a military specialist, I know that Hitler was far more often right in military matters than they were. He would issue an order and because some General was offended by Hitler’s person, this officer would not obey it directly. If a disaster happened, he and his friends would blame it all on Hitler. And they would lie to his face very often. That was never a good idea. It got so bad that Hitler had to have all of his conferences recorded by stenographers. He simply could not trust his military people. I heard a very senior army officer say once, “This is Hitler’s war. If we lose it, it’s his fault.” I must say that is something to hear during a major war against deadly opponents who want only to destroy your country. Many of these officers were involved in the conspiracy and many wanted to join with the Russians against the West. In interrogating some of these people, I was shocked to discover how really ignorant they were of Stalin’s criminal methods and they obviously did not believe that if they got rid of Hitler, Stalin would quickly destroy them too.

Q At what level were the pro-Russian conspirators?

M At the very top.

Q Do you have specific names?

M Certainly I do. Stauffenberg himself was very pro-Russian as was the General of Cavalry von Köstring just to name a few. Schulenburg had been Ambassador to Moscow and Köstring had been military attaché and was actually a man born in Moscow. Then there was Gesievius, one of your good friends, whom we found out was a Soviet agent and there were active groups in the Foreign Office and even in the SS that supported a Russian solution.

Q In the SS?

M Yes, in the Germanic Section, the section that dealt with foreign Germanic volunteers in the Armed SS. I personally was of the belief that General Berger had connections with the Communists but I could not prove it and Himmler would hear nothing bad about Berger and became so angry that I was temporarily forced to abandon my pursuit of him. I never trusted the people in the Germanic section. There was too much contact by these mongrelized individuals with known Communists and Slavic groups.

Q Did you pass these suspicions to Hitler?

M Certainly, in good time.

Q To get back a little to what you said before. Stauffenberg was the man who planted the bomb, wasn’t he?

M Yes. He was the actual ringleader and he was in touch with the Soviets.

Q How did he come to get involved with the Russians?

M He was involved with setting up the Eastern People’s Military units through the Army High Command and came into contact with General Köstring.3 This man was for certain involved with the Soviets but it was not known at the time. The army was very protective of its people and it was only after the shock of the bomb attack and my own strong and thorough probings that the army and Soviet connections were finally exposed. I must say that Hitler told me he was not at all surprised. The Seydlitz connection is not to be forgotten…

Q Seydlitz? The Free Germany Committee.

M The same. There was liaison, you know, between this group, which was certainly an agency of the Russian intelligence, and the dissident groups in the upper levels of the army. These gentlemen are more interested in a man’s ancestors than his political convictions. They knew only about the “old Fritz’s” general and not the modern traitor.5 That is what we had to deal with, believe me. Don’t misunderstand me. There were very many brave and loyal officers, most of them in fact, but many of the very top generals, mostly aristocrats and Junkers, who were either infected with pro-Russian sentiments or were sabotagers of Hitler for reasons of class pride, got their fingers into the plot at one level or another. Often, while not directly involved, they tried to protect their guilty friends from discovery. In the end we found most of them. Although it really does not have anything to do with the 20th of July attempt, I should like to tell you some things here about Stauffenberg. There is a danger for you if you try to make him into some kind of a hero or a leader of the so-called resistance movement against Hitler.

Stauffenberg was not the leader of anything but a small cult of young men and their older friends. He got into the assassination affair through an uncle and some friends but his background is filled with very ugly facts. If you would want me to continue, I will, but if your people would not be interested, I will keep my silence.

Q What would this go to? Stauffenberg has a sort of historical following now in Germany but we are not using his name for anything. Does this have anything to do with the Soviet connection?

M Some.

Q Then perhaps we should go on.

M I think that Stauffenberg’s personality is important to consider. Any competent police officer likes to know as much as he can about a suspect. There was a man named Stefan George, a poet, who died in 1933. He taught elitism and racial superiority to a circle of young men that always surrounded him. He was the Oscar Wilde type.

Q George was a homosexual in other words.

M Yes, of course. I learnt of this affair after the 20th of July through a comrade in the Munich Police who had access to a long official report about George from the earlier times. George had seduced a pretty boy in Munich and his family intercepted disgusting love poems George had written to this boy. Complaints were made and an investigation followed. The names of the brothers Stauffenberg came up at several points. George was up in Heidelberg and had a sort of religious cult with all kinds of secret ceremonies with young men performing nude dances and so on. Revolting behavior.

Q And Stauffenberg was in this group?

M Yes, he and his brothers. Stauffenberg was quite handsome if you have seen his pictures. He was tall and slender with good features so I suppose George was drawn to him. Stauffenberg himself joined this cult when he was seventeen. George fled from Germany after the taking over of power in 1933 and the Stauffenbergs and others joined him in Switzerland. George died in that year.

Q But was this a permanent way of life for Stauffenberg or just something he experimented with as a young man?

M I could never prove anything for certain but many of Stauffenberg’s fellow staff officers believed he was a fumbling auntie. Or a homosexual to be more formal. He always surrounded himself with pretty young officers whom he preached Greek culture to. He went on about the body beautiful and the soul perfect or however he termed it. Many older, normal, officers found him loud and obnoxious, very dirty in his personal hygiene and strongly objected to his male harem that he dragged around the offices.

Also, this George talked about a secret Germany that was to be led by his special young friends after he had converted them to his perverted way of life. I have many papers which show me that the so-called secret Germany was in reality a clique of homosexuals with an interest in younger men and I think a case might very well be made that some of the plotters who were allied with Stauffenberg were as interested in repealing the very strictly applied State laws against homosexuality as in overthrowing Hitler. The whole business reeked of perversion. Like the Redl case.6

Q You have documentation on all this?

M Of course. I still have a huge file put away on these creatures. I told all of these things to Hitler who was disgusted and told me he wanted to hear nothing more about this. He said to me, “First there was Röhm and his gang of fairies and now this. Keep all that quiet for now. Later, we can bring it up and use it to clean out the degenerates from their positions but this is not the time.”

Q Could we have copies of these papers?

M Certainly. Perhaps you would like to find out who else was in this society so you could make use of their services. I don’t mean sexual services, of course, but such knowledge can assure better cooperation.

Q Let us say that we would be interested in more information in this area. I assure you we are not interested in blackmail…

M Oh, the furthest thing from my mind, I can tell you.

Q Do you think the Soviets know about this?

M They have a nose for such things. It is a cheap way to get free information and the Soviets are adept at sexual blackmail. I know that they were aware of this situation but exactly what they did about it is beyond my present knowledge.

Q Would…if the Soviets knew about Stauffenberg’s activities, would they have been…or would they be now…aware of surviving personalities who had connections with this group? The secret Germany group?

M Probably. If they have been running these people, you could turn them. While I am on that subject, I should tell you that there were a number of so-called heroes of that time who were very cooperative with me in supplying all kinds of information I needed, quite freely by the way, and helping me track down others in their various groups. Perhaps we could discuss someone whose name is probably known to you. Would you be interested in some history here

Q Why not.

M I read an interesting book not too long ago. By one von Schlabrendorff7…ah, I see that you know who the gentleman is.

Q I didn’t say a word to you.

M No, but your face did. So this von Schlabrendorff wrote a book that was published here in Switzerland. Did you read it by any chance?

Q I may have looked at it once. Officers Against Hitler was the title?

M Yes. Actually, I wonder who did write it. For certain it wasn’t written by von Schlabrendorff.

Q Why would you say that?

M I interrogated him and he was one of those who was of great assistance to my work. Of course now he, or certainly his writer, puts a brave show of resistance to the Gestapo. Brave resistance! Let me tell you, this individual was as cooperative as could be with me. Not in the beginning, of course…

Q Wasn’t he tortured?

M No, such foolishness. This man was a reserve officer attached to Army Group Center. He was involved with explosives intended to be used against Hitler. I wonder where these explosives came from? The British? They were certainly British in origin. The Abwehr? Or maybe they came from Switzerland. Perhaps your Mr. Dulles8 in Bern had a hand in that business. I kept a close eye on him and had two people inside his organization so I can speak with some authority about his actions. I believe that one of his top aides, a certain Gero von Gävernitz9 gave them to Schlabrendorff. Of course this could be done because Mr. von Schlabrendorff worked for your people. He was very cooperative indeed. We hanged five people on his testimony and even though he was involved in the plot, I kept him alive. After all, the war would be over soon enough and he was an American spy, wasn’t he? A hero to you, perhaps, but a traitor to me. Generally, I saw to it that such traitors were hanged but an OSS man might be of some value to me later. Most of the OSS people I encountered were idiotic Communists. I always thought the OSS wanted to kidnap Hitler and make use of him. Or maybe another faction wanted to blow him up. We have the Russians running the Stauffenberg group, the Americans into the Kreisau circle and I wonder who the British had? They had a minor fairy diplomat, some Turks, a pen full of Italian monarchists and pomaded nancy boys, and a few anglophile Americans whose names I am sure you will be delighted to receive as a present from me. Who really wrote the book?

Q Mr. von Gävernitz edited the manuscript…

M Mr. von Gävernitz wrote the manuscript. The thing was too full of errors. Putting a bomb on Hitler’s aircraft. Such nonsense.

Q Didn’t that happen?

M No, that did not happen. The story goes that Schlabrendorff, stalwart hero, handed a fuzed bomb to a General Staff officer named Brandt, who was later blown up by Stuffenberg’s real bomb, who took it onto Hitler’s Condor aircraft. This bomb failed to explode so Schlabrendorff flew at once in a special plane to Rastenberg and picked it up. That’s the story, isn’t it?

Q As I recall it, yes.

M Brandt certainly was at Army Group Center headquarters when Hitler was but he flew on the second aircraft and not with Hitler. Even if this fictitious bomb went off, it wouldn’t have done a thing. Saved me from having a few more staff officers hanged later. And what about the bomb at the exhibition?

Q This I don’t know about.

M You never heard about the brave Colonel who had a bomb in his pocket and planned to jump on Hitler at an exhibition and blow him up?

Q There have been so many stories along these lines that I can’t reasonably be expected to remember them all.

M The Gersdorff myth.10 The bomb in his pockets? There were no bombs in the hands of this one either. Gersdorff is a self-important man who started waving his arms around after the war claiming to have tried to kill Hitler with another fictitious bomb. I know who Gersdorff is. I assure you he has a guilty conscience, that’s why the story about the failed bomb attempt. Maybe someone would like to know why he has a guilty conscience? We had to cover for Schlabrendorff to make it look as if he was only going to get a sentence in prison, just like his good friend, Gerstenmeier. Now the two of them pose like old whores in a window claiming to be heroes. I think they have a good point after all. They really do represent the true spirit of the resistance. I must agree with this. And tell your Gävernitz to do more research on his fairy tales next time. But my foresight in preserving Schlabrendorff when I should have liked to hang him has brought us together after all. Who would have thought it?

Q You, probably.

M I am just a simple Bavarian policeman trying to do his best. I’m not a subtle man after all. I read in some book that I was a stupid and brutal Nazi thug so it must be true. Books never lie, do they?

Q I really wish, General, that you would treat these sessions with some seriousness.

M If you keep bringing up funny stories, how can I keep from laughing?

Q To be quite frank, I cannot imagine you laughing at anything.

M We Germans have a great sense of humor. If I saw Stalin drowning in a sewage pit, I assure you I should find that something to laugh about.

Q I think we should return to the Stauffenberg business, don’t you?

M More sewage and before lunch, too. Very well, let us proceed. What more do you want to know about the secret Germany happy boy society?

Q Was the Stauffenberg group working with the Soviets or were they merely friendly towards them?

M Worked directly with them! Stalin was afraid…you know the attempt came after the Western invasion of France and the breakout and Stalin was afraid that the West…the Americans and the British…would get into the industrial Ruhr before the Russians could. That was the big prize for Stalin. He must get the Ruhr and its industrial potential first. That’s why they struck a bargain. Get rid of Hitler and replace him with someone with whom Stalin could deal and get physical control of the industrial areas of Silesia and the Ruhr quickly. They made many promises to get their way. Stauffenberg, Beck and the others could keep the power as a caretaker government until a new democratically elected socialist government could be set up. Russian-style socialism to be sure. A shot in the back of the neck or off to the work camps in Siberia. There was even talk about replacing Hitler with Himmler! That would have never been acceptable to the military or anyone else, for certain. But Himmler had been approached several times about replacing Hitler and he at least was interested in the idea. Himmler believed in his own importance and in the importance of the SS and wanted to stay in power. He once told me that he felt he alone had the position to deal with the West and with Russia. A very foolish man.

Q Did you mention Himmler’s involvement to Hitler?

M Himmler had already done so as to head me off. One had to be very careful. I know that Hitler did not like Himmler on a personal basis and I think he would have replaced him given an opportunity. Hitler liked professionalism and Himmler was too much of a schoolmaster type to please Hitler. And next to the police, Hitler disliked the schoolmaster almost as much.

Q Might Hitler have given the National Leader SS position to you?

M I don’t think so. I did not have the support of the old-time SS senior officers. What I do feel, and Hitler mentioned this to me a number of times, is that I might well have been given control of a unified intelligence system. I know that he was pleased with my performance after the 20th July and he gave me a signed portrait and a high decoration.

Q Which decoration was that?

M The Knight’s Cross of the War Service Cross with Swords in October of 1944. Part of the reason for this decoration was my work on the enemy radio playback and the rest for the successes of the Gestapo in rooting out the 20th July plotters.

Q In looking at your record, I see you had received the Iron Crosses in 1940. Were you in combat?

M No. That was for my work in August and September of 1939. During the Gleiwitz business. Where Heydrich staged a fake Polish attack on the Gleiwitz radio station to give an excuse for the attack on Poland. The date had been changed because Hitler was attempting to negotiate until the last minute but one group didn’t get the cancellation order and began to shoot at a German customs post. I had to go personally into the business and stop the shooting. But this wasn’t the Iron Cross. It was a renewal bar for these medals that I got in the 1914 war.

Q We can discuss this at another time. Right now I am interested in the 20th of July. Was Hitler aware of the Russian connection in the plot and how did he react?

M He was aware and he did not seem surprised. He had first thought that the British were behind the whole thing from his own observations but he later rejected this when I gave him the evidence. Hitler always felt that the British were trying to assassinate him. Stauffenberg, through his wife’s family, had British connections. The actual bombs and fuzes were British in origin but we later determined that they had come from the Abwehr stores and were not intended for use specifically against Hitler.

Q Now you see you were accusing the OSS of doing this…

M A small joke.

Q How did the Abwehr get British explosives and fuzes?

M The Abwehr had control of the entire SOE11 network in Holland and the British dropped tons of weapons and sabotage equipment into the Abwehr’s hands. The British were unaware that they had been compromised. That’s where it all came from. The first reports of the Criminal Commission indicated the use of British explosives and Hitler himself related to me his own experiences with British explosives in the war with the color of the blast flame and the odor of the explosives.

Q Is there any proof of the Stauffenberg group’s Soviet connections?

M Certainly. The Gestapo seized all of Stauffenberg’s personal papers from every source. Actually, when we searched his quarters in Berlin…I mean his private living quarters in Potsdam…we found that Stauffenberg had put everything down on paper. Not only that, we found the house stuffed with illegal black market food, wine, clothing and other luxury items. A very law abiding and patriotic man was Stauffenberg. You asked me about perversion before? Several albums of pictures of naked young Italian boys by the infamous von Glöden. Those I don’t have in my papers. We followed up all the information we had and the Soviet thread came up almost at once. We missed Köstring although he was interrogated but we did get all of the others. Hitler ordered all these documents kept strictly secret and in my own hands because he wanted no one else to be aware of what he did or did not know. There were many frightened people after that time, let me assure you.

Q What happened to these documents?

M Stauffenberg’s papers?

Q Yes.

M I kept them. And to answer your unasked question, I still have them. Except for the pictures of the little boys.

Q I don’t think we would be interested in those.

M I would hope not. Now the British…

Q Please, shall we follow the agenda? Now, besides Stauffenberg, were other German personalities working for the Soviets?

M Many so-called intellectuals had sympathy with them such as the Red Orchestra that was rooted out earlier. That was typical. The Russians have a reputation for very good intelligence but what they do is tap into the pro-Communist intellectual groups in different countries and from these broken down creatures, get all kinds of free information. The Russians hate to pay for anything in the end. University students, writers, artists, professors and so on gladly give them state secrets just to help out the socialist cause. But personalities? No, not very many at best and then mostly secret supporters of Stalin. They had no real courage to act. Sneak around at night stuffing badly written leaflets in letter boxes or chalking anti-government slogans on walls. I said they were a sorry lot and believe me, they were.

Q One of the more important questions here on my agenda is to ask you if you have any knowledge of the diaries of Admiral Canaris?

M I do. After the 20th July, Canaris was not charged even though a number of his closest associates were involved in treason. Himmler protected him almost to the last. Then, in April of 1945, an officer accidentally found the diaries at the army headquarters, hidden in a safe. These were turned over at once to Rattenhuber…

Q Rattenhuber? The security officer?

M He was Hitler’s chief of personal security from the RSD12 He was a professional police officer, a Bavarian from Munich. He read through these and gave them to me at once.

Q Not to Kaltenbrunner?

M No, to me directly. By Hitler’s order, all such things came to me first. And I read through the pages and had photographs made of all the papers. I showed the diaries to Hitler…

Q The originals or the photographs?

M The originals always for Hitler. He read over them carefully and told me to keep them safely in my custody. The photographs of selected pages were to be given to Kaltenbrunner and he later gave them to Hitler.

Q The originals? I mean what happened to the originals?

M I kept them safe.

Q Are they still safe?

M Good enough.

Q What was in the diaries?

M These idiots put everything down on paper. My problem in dealing with the traitors was not to find important papers but to decide which important papers were really important. Everyone from Stauffenberg on kept diaries, made notes and wrote all kinds of justifying documents which they kept locked up in desks, safes at their offices or in other equally easy to find places. Canaris was no different, even though as an intelligence chief he should have known better.

Q But the actual content of his diaries were…?

M The same as everyone else. To justify himself and his actions. It was a record of contacts with both the West and East by various high level officials of the government, religious persons and so forth. By the way, these religious gentlemen were the worst of all. Although I am a church goer, I agree with Bormann when it comes to the bleating sheep of the Lord. These moral pests all assumed that God wanted them to kill Hitler and that anything they did was acceptable because they had their collars on backwards. And they were the very first to inform on their friends, their friends’ friends and anyone else they could think of. I personally preferred not to interrogate these creatures if I could help it. I had to interrogate Canaris on several occasions and he was a real Greek, that one was. He had answers for everything and none of them the truth. He should have sold carpets somewhere and kept out of the military. His diaries were his death warrant in the end. There was a plot to seize Hitler using the “Brandenburg” division which had been plotted right down to the last detail, Except, of course, they forgot to talk to the commanding officer or anyone on his staff. It came as a great shock to them later when the commander absolutely refuted their program and would not support them when he was interrogated. You have to understand, these idiots were arrested or detained and at once blabbed everything they knew to the Gestapo. I never had to mistreat anyone at all. It wasn’t necessary. Of course I was very rough talking to this person but to that one, I was pleasant and friendly. The tone of the interrogation depends on the person one is questioning. Most of these creatures gave me all the information I needed as fast as they could and now when I read books about heroic resistance and terrible tortures, I have to laugh. Being locked up is not a pleasant situation, especially for some soft bureaucrat or arrogant general and the psychological pressures I applied were very strong but I had no one beaten. It isn’t necessary when most of them fell all over themselves to confess and implicate as many people as they could. And among many whom they implicated were quite innocent of any knowledge. I think we released far more than we kept. Of course when a suspect lied to me and tried to get someone else dragged into his mess, I could be very severe with him. Most of them were hanged anyway but they obviously wanted company.

Q How many were actually executed as a result of the 20th July? Four or five thousand is the figure…

M Nonsense. There were thousands in jail but as far as I know, only about two hundred were actually executed. I remember at the end, Hitler gave me a special order about these creatures. It was in Berlin in April. He said to me that he wanted all of these creatures liquidated at once so that if Germany was under the control of its enemies from without that the enemies from within could not now crawl out from under their stones and be made the new government. He was very serious about my doing this and he said, “Müller, if I can trust any man at this time, I feel I can trust you. Once we were enemies but I have come to see that you are a real professional man and as one, I ask you to see that this thing is done at once.”

Q What were you expected to do and did you do it?

M Remove them, with or without a trial. You understand exactly what I was expected to do.

Q Murder them all in other words.

M Call it what you like. These men were guilty of high treason and of wishing to destroy the state for their own ends. Like the generals I talked about, the ones who said, “It’s Hitler’s war and if we lose it, it’s his fault.” And it is true that most of them hoped to become important figures in the post-war government. That is probably why they kept their criminally stupid memoranda and diaries so that they could produce them later as proof of their resistance to Hitler. You can give my actions any name you choose but do not forget that I had reviewed all of the evidence against them and had personally interrogated most of them so I have a better knowledge of their characters and motives than others from the outside do now. In furtherance of Hitler’s orders, I got together a group of my men upon whom I could rely and passed on the order. I personally ordered these men to have the 20th July prisoners executed at once. The major criminals had already paid the penalty for their deeds but the Canaris gang remained and there were also some still in jail in Berlin awaiting trial or under sentence. As far as I was able to do so, I carried out Hitler’s orders. Canaris and his gang were hanged at their prison and the others taken out and shot, some of them at the last minutes before the Russians arrived to save them. I must tell you very clearly that I have no problems with carrying out that order and if I have any regrets today it is that I missed a few along the way.

Q Although this is not important to this discussion, could you perhaps answer a question about the twentieth of July aftermath? One of the Stauffenberg family has asked about the fate of the Colonel…

M He was shot in the courtyard of the headquarters of the Replacement Army in the Bendler Street early on the 21st.

Q I was referring to the actual disposition of the remains. There has been a rumor that the bodies were secretly buried somewhere in Berlin and the family wants to get some verification of this. This isn’t because they are aware of your existence but I have a note here…

M They were taken away to the St. Matthew’s cemetery and buried. The next day…or rather that day, I was at a conference with Himmler present and I mentioned to him that perhaps it would be a good idea to make positive identification of the bodies. I had not seen them and neither had Himmler. He agreed that this was probably a good idea. Then I suggested that I do this personally. Also, there was a question about what the final disposition would be. I said that we shouldn’t leave even a scrap behind that our enemies could make relics from and again he agreed. I suggested that after the corpses were properly and accurately identified that they be totally destroyed. By cremation. And the ashes disposed of. There was general agreement then but the question of how the ashes should be gotten rid of came up. I said I would see to it personally. I went out to the cemetery with a forensic group and the bodies were dug up, photographed with and without their uniforms. The pictures went to Himmler and to me and I have a set somewhere if you want to see it. They weren’t in the best of shape. Beck had head wounds and of course Stauffenberg had lost an arm and an eye before, not to mention a bullet hole in one shoulder. But they could be identified without any real problems and then we had them put into postal service cloth mail sacks and transported to a nearby crematorium and burned. I stayed there throughout and personally supervised the business. When it was all over, there was a question about the ashes. I had them put into a metal bucket that had been full of sand for fire bombs and made very sure there were no teeth or other bits left over.

Q Not a pleasant task for you, I imagine.

M You imagine wrong. The question of what to do with the ashes was solved when one of the technicians asked the director of the crematorium where the lavatory was. I could see at once what to do with the remains so I simply put the contents of the bucket down the toilet and pulled the chain. I think it took two or three flushings to finish the business. Only then did I let the man use the facility. There was nice frosting on their cake, believe me. The bucket I took with me and threw it into the river. Tell the family not to look too hard for poor Claus. I would say he was in his proper element. I mentioned this once to Göring and he laughed for quite some time and later sent me a box of very good cigars and a case of excellent wine.

Q I don’t think I will repeat any of this conversation. At least not outside our agency. We don’t view Stauffenberg as any kind of a hero but then we know quite a bit about him and not only from you.

M We should have done it all while he was still alive.”

The ugly facets of Stauffenberg’s persona are entirely true and Müller’s inelegant but blunt reports are not fictions designed to entertain Hitler and his entourage.

The comments on the homosexual poet, George, are true. They might be interpreted differently by persons who find themselves in sympathy with his lifestyle but this does not change their veracity. There are still reports in the Munich police files, not generally available to the public, that cover the subject in detail. There is no question that Stauffenberg and his brothers were intimate members of George’s inner circle and accompanied him into exile in Switzerland. The point can be made that Stauffenberg’s sexual activities do not negate his political ones but to understand clearly the nature of the resistance movement, it is necessary to examine not only the motives but the character of its par

The Stauffenberg family was, even to sympathetic biographers, strange.

Stauffenberg’s father had been Hofmarschall or major-domo to the King of Württemberg. He managed the King’s financial affairs and after the deposed King died, members of the royal family accused the elder Stauffenberg of dipping into the treasury. The elder Stauffenbergs were considered to be eccentric to a degree. Stauffenberg’s father and uncle did not talk to each other but barked back and forth like dogs. Stauffenberg’s mother wandered about the town of Lautlingen dressed in flowing gowns, reading poetry aloud to no one in particular.

Stauffenberg was initially impressed with Hitler, being attracted to dominant male figures, but soon grew tired of the new head of state and began to seek other father figures.

Often stated to be a brilliant staff officer, Stauffenberg was a competent and energetic planner but was so abrasive and opinionated that he was generally shunned by his peers. Stauffenberg was one of those persons whom one either deeply admires or detests. His personal hygiene left much to be desired. He bathed occasionally, wore clean uniforms when he thought about it, sometimes had his hair cut by a barber and rarely used a toothbrush. These eccentricities, coupled with his loud, insistent domination of any conversation he chanced to encounter, did not endear him to members of the German General Staff whose motto was, “Be more than you seem.”

Merely because Stauffenberg possessed a number of irritating mannerisms does not mean that he was incompetent or in error in his actions. Stauffenberg was in error because he failed. He was also wrong because his overweening ego blinded him to the fact that his attempt was doomed to failure from the start. Killing Hitler and his top military leadership might have pleased Stalin but it would not have stopped the war with any degree of certainty and his plans for a quick and happy ending to the savage conflict are, at this remove, so idealistic as to border on lunacy.

Stauffenberg put a bomb under Hitler’s table and almost literally ran out of the room to watch the carnage at a distance. He was not a martyr in any sense of the word. When he returned to Berlin after a three hour trip by slow aircraft, he found the headquarters of the Reserve Army in a state of torpid inaction. It was at this point that Stauffenberg committed an unforgivable act: he lied to his fellow plotters and told them that he had actually seen Hitler’s corpse with his one good eye. On the strength of his insistence and the knowledge that if they did not take action, the Gestapo would soon be paying a visit to their headquarters in force, the reluctant Generals began to act. With his lie, Stauffenberg doomed most of the men around him to an ugly and degrading road to death but like most fanatics, to Stauffenberg the end justified the means.

A number of apocryphal stories about intended assassination attempts against Hitler have proliferated since the end of the war. Gersdorff’s story about the bomb in his pocket has been proven false and the Schlabrendorff aircraft bomb has been disproved by the discovery of Hitler’s official travel orders of the day in question that show Colonel Brandt on another aircraft. One story relates how intrepid officers were planning to bomb Hitler at an exhibition of new uniforms in Berlin. This failed, the story goes, because a bomb dropped by an Allied pilot destroyed the uniforms and the showing was canceled.

In fact the display was made but not in Berlin and the uniforms in question were not developed until a year after the date of the imaginary attack.

In his book, Putsch, (Wyden, New York, 1970) Richard Hanser discusses the homoerotic nature of George and his movement. The poems to a handsome Munich youth are also mentioned. (pps.54-57.). On the other hand, Stauffenberg biographer Joachim Kramarz devotes an entire chapter to George and his influence over Stauffenberg, mentions the suspicion of homosexuality but dismisses it out of hand. It should be noted that Kramarz has also dismissed any negative report on Stauffenberg as Nazi propaganda designed to smear a great hero of impeccable character and high motives. The forward to his book was written by Trevor-Roper. (Stauffenberg, Macmillan, New York, 1967, pps 29-35.)

 

 

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Kelly Khuri

Kelly Khuri is the founder of the Clark County Tea Party Patriots, and as you’d expect a rather extreme wingnut. She’s OK with being called “extreme”, though: “Some people say I’m extreme, but they said the John Birch Society was extreme, too.” Indeed they did. Partially because the John Birch Society declared President Eisenhower to be a communist infiltrator and secret member of the American Communist Party.

She is also a global warming denialist, diligently refuting mountains of scientifically produced evidence by candid analyses: “This so-called climate science is just ridiculous,” pointing out that “I think it’s all cyclical.” And what more evidence could you possibly need when you’re the founder of the Clark County Tea Party Patriots? Take that, you scientists.

Diagnosis: Wingnut extremist. Her individual influence is probably limited, but she’s not alone.

 

Paul G. Humber

 

Paul G. Humber is the director of CR Ministries and author of things like 400+ Prophecies, Appearances, or Foreshadowings of Christ in the Tanakh and Evolution Exposed. Humber is, of course, a young-earth creationist, and has also penned articles for the Institute of Creation Research and Creation Matters, the newsletter of the Creation Research Society (both organization apparently put “Research” in their name since otherwise no one would ever have guessed that this is what they think they are doing).

Well, Humber’s writings on science contain the usual tropes, appeal to the Bible, obvious lack of expertise and rank denialism, and we’ll limit ourselves to an example: One obvious problem for young-earth creationists is radioactive decay, which rather clearly, uh, suggests that the Earth is somewhat older than they’d like to think. Their solution is of course to (completely out of the blue) assert that radioactive decay isn’t constant but happened much faster in the past. So here’s Humber:

“[C]onsider Deuteronomy 32:22 – ‘For a fire is kindled by My anger, and it burns to the depths of Sheol, devours the earth and its increase, and sets on fire the foundations of mountains.’ This verse may point us in the direction that radioactive decay is a physical manifestation of God’s anger against evil, affecting even biological life. Prior to the Noachian flood, mankind lived much longer. His lifespan has diminished substantially since the flood. Also, even though Noah might well have had some immature dinosaurs on the ark, their nearly total extinction following the flood seems obvious. This also holds with respect to many other animals that have become extinct.”

Or put differently: radioactive decay can’t be used to measure the age of anything, but is instead a measure of how angry God is at any moment. It’s hard to express how mind-boggling it is that anyone above the age of 7 can write this with a straight face and expect to be taken seriously (it’s at the level of “rain is angels relieving themselves”), but at least it entails that God is much less angry these days and accordingly unlikely to be overly concerned with gay marriage, abortion or transgender people using their bathroom of choice.

Diagnosis: Oh, you silly duck. All the facepalms in the world wouldn’t reflect how crazy and silly Humber’s pseudoscientific babbling is, yet he is apparently viewed as an authority in certain quarters.

Bill Federer

William J. “Bill” Federer is the host of the program Faith in History on the TCT Network the radio show The American Minute, affiliated with the World Congress of Families, president of Amerisearch (“a publishing company dedicated to researching America’s noble heritage”), as well as an author of several books with titles like America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, The Ten Commandments and Their Influence on American Law, Three Secular Reasons Why America Should Be Under God and What Every American Needs to Know About the Quran: A History of Islam and the United States. Federer is, in other words, one of the central promoters of the idea of The United States As a Christian Nation, and that Christians are currently being persecuted (tax exemption rules for churches are like Nazi Germany, for instance). Like David Barton, Federer is also a pseudo-historian (he has a degree in accounting), and though he hasn’t achieved quite the fame of Barton, he is known for sharing Barton’s aptitude for facts, accuracy, honesty, accountability and general reasoning skills. He is also a conspiracy theorist, signatory to the Manhattan Declaration and madman.

So, for instance, Federer thinks that the “atheist homosexual gay agenda movement” will move America “into an Islamic future” complete with mythical Sharia law “no-go zones”. And the conspiracy is governed from the very top. Federer thinks that the Arab Spring was designed by evil forces who wanted to create a surge in Muslim refugees who would then settle in the U.S. in order to establish Islamic “sleeper cells.” These cells will then soon “get a signal to have Ferguson riots in malls across America,” thereby giving Obama the justification to “restore order” by setting up a “militarized dictatorship.” And then, Federer warns, Obama could follow in the footsteps of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot and kill millions of Christians. (As his source, Federer cited Avi Lipkin – we’ll cover him in due course – who heard from his wife, who heard from an unspecified Arabic-language broadcast). He has previously worried that atheists would kill millions of Christians if they could take over the military; in other words, people he disagree with on theological and/or political issues – libruls, atheists, Muslims, gays and the American government – are secretly working together, and their goal is to kill him, which tells you quite a bit about the mindset of people like Bill Federer. How is it supposed to work? Well, according to Federer, Europe “went from a Judeo-Christian past into a neutral-secular-gay-agenda present and now it’s going into an Islamic future;” hence, it is clear that “the sexual confusion agenda is simply a transition phase” that will soon “be taken over by Islam.” The process by which LGBT equality is leading to Islamic dominion is already in full effect in the military, where Christians have been forced into the closet by the fact that gays are allowed to serve, and proselytizing classes on Islam (he may be referring to classes on Islamic culture for soldiers who are going to be stationed in Muslim countries and who are expected to interact with the civilian population) are already winning numerous converts.

While evidence for such a conspiracy does not exist, Federer sees it everywhere. For instance, the 2006 scandal involving Ted Haggard was timed to help Democrats retake Congress, and the subprime mortgage crisis was orchestrated to stop the momentum the McCain campaign had gained by choosing Sarah Palin as its running mate. And predictably, Federer thinks that Benghazi was all part of a plan hatched by Obama and Hillary Clinton to spread Sharia law around the world. It is also all about Saul Alinsky, of course. In particular, Clinton was “using Alinsky tactics” in her response to the attack to engender a “hurried rush for Americans to give up their free speech rights” and to impose Sharia law: “So the question is was Benghazi just inept actions by our government, was it something to put down negative speech that could affect the President’s reelection campaign or was it an Alinsky tactic to push an agenda to forbid free speech insulting Islam,” asked Federer, but it wasn’t really a question: “We’re talking about a global goal of establishing Sharia law and we came very, very close to it happening right after the Benghazi attempt with this effort to forbid free speech insulting Islam.” He didn’t give any details on the latter claim. Before the 2012 election, Federer also speculated (and promptly took to be established) that the Obama administration would intentionally bring about war between Iran and Israel which Obama could use as a pretext to take control of the radio, TV and internet … or he might fake a plot on his life that can be blamed on the Tea Party in the manner of Stalin.

As is to be expected, Federer is a creationist, and has criticized the theory of evolution for Darwin’s alleged racist motivations, which would be irrelevant to the validity of the theory even if the speculations were true, which they aren’t. But according to Federer, “Darwin is best known for the theory of evolution, arguing that all men are not equal because some are more evolved,” an assertion that has nothing to do with anything remotely connected to evolution – though to Federer, the idea that some humans are more evolved than others “influenced the Dred Scott Case,” which took place three years before the publication of The Origin of Species and fifteen years before The Descent of Man. Here is Federer on the Scopes trial. It’s … a pretty feeble smearing attempt, even for a wingnut hack.

Federer has appeared in numerous conspiracy documentaries, like Truth that Transforms, which was released to coincide with the Titanic anniversary and set out to expose the “iceberg” or the “radical homosexual agenda”.

Diagnosis: A poor man’s David Barton; a hack with little or no aptitude for reason, honesty, accuracy or facts. Even so, he has managed to become an influential voice among certain rightwing groups, which tells you a bit about those groups. Dangerous.

The CIA Confessions: The Crowley Conversations

July 20, 2019

by Dr. Peter Janney

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal, Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment.

Three months before, on July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson’s death, Trento and the well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento’s house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA’s actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA’s horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA’s activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious ‘Regional Interrogation Centers’ in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

A massive, preemptive disinformation campaign was readied, using government-friendly bloggers, CIA-paid “historians” and others, in the event that anything from this file ever surfaced. The best-laid plans often go astray and in this case, one of the compliant historians, a former government librarian who fancied himself a serious writer, began to tell his friends about the CIA plan to kill Kennedy and eventually, word of this began to leak out into the outside world.

The originals had vanished and an extensive search was conducted by the FBI and CIA operatives but without success. Crowley’s survivors, his aged wife and son, were interviewed extensively by the FBI and instructed to minimize any discussion of highly damaging CIA files that Crowley had, illegally, removed from Langley when he retired. Crowley had been a close friend of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s notorious head of Counterintelligence. When Angleton was sacked by DCI William Colby in December of 1974, Crowley and Angleton conspired to secretly remove Angleton’s most sensitive secret files out of the agency. Crowley did the same thing right before his own retirement, secretly removing thousands of pages of classified information that covered his entire agency career.

Known as “The Crow” within the agency, Robert T. Crowley joined the CIA at its inception and spent his entire career in the Directorate of Plans, also know as the “Department of Dirty Tricks. ”

Crowley was one of the tallest man ever to work at the CIA. Born in 1924 and raised in Chicago, Crowley grew to six and a half feet when he entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in N.Y. as a cadet in 1943 in the class of 1946. He never graduated, having enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II. He retired from the Army Reserve in 1986 as a lieutenant colonel. According to a book he authored with his friend and colleague, William Corson, Crowley’s career included service in Military Intelligence and Naval Intelligence, before joining the CIA at its inception in 1947. His entire career at the agency was spent within the Directorate of Plans in covert operations. Before his retirement, Bob Crowley became assistant deputy director for operations, the second-in-command in the Clandestine Directorate of Operations.

Bob Crowley first contacted Gregory Douglas in 1993 when he found out from John Costello that Douglas was about to publish his first book on Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo who had become a secret, long-time asset to the CIA. Crowley contacted Douglas and they began a series of long and often very informative telephone conversations that lasted for four years. In 1996, Crowley told Douglas that he believed him to be the person that should ultimately tell Crowley’s story but only after Crowley’s death. Douglas, for his part, became so entranced with some of the material that Crowley began to share with him that he secretly began to record their conversations, later transcribing them word for word, planning to incorporate some, or all, of the material in later publication.

 

 

Conversation No. 32

Date: Monday, August 19, 1996

Commenced: 9:37 AM CST

Concluded: 10:15 AM CST

 

GD: I hear conversations there, Robert. Am I calling at a wrong time for you?

RTC: No, nothing at all. They’ll leave in a minute or so.

GD: Thank you for the material on ZIPPER, Robert. Very, very interesting but not unexpected.

RTC: But we do not speak of specifics, do we?

GD: No, not necessary. Is there an original of the Driscoll report?

RTC: Somewhere, no doubt, but I never had one.

GD: Did you know him?

RTC: Met professionally. I understand he died some time ago.

GD: I could check with a Russian friend about the original of their report unless you objected.

RTC: Why not just wait? Unless your connection might retire.

GD: I’ll think about it.

RTC: You mentioned one James Atwood a while ago as I recall.

GD: I know I did.

RTC: Mr. Atwood is very unhappy with you, Gregory. He accuses you of stealing money meant for us and in removing two loyal subjects of the Queen.

GD: The money was never intended for your people, in spite of what Atwood says and as far as the SAS types are concerned, I was as shocked as anyone when they vanished.

RTC: Vanished off of your boat in the middle of the Caribbean one dark night, as I was told.

GD: That’s as may be, Robert. Perhaps they decided to swim in the warm water. Who knows? You can’t believe anything Atwood says. Did you know that he worked for your people, the STASI and the KGB all at the same time while he was in Berlin?

RTC: Atwood is not an honest person, Gregory. But as to his accusations, they are private comments. I wouldn’t worry about them getting out.

GD: If it weren’t for Mueller’s tips, I would never have found the money and Atwood would still be contemplating another facelift. And I wouldn’t believe that your people would see a penny of it. When my Russian friend tipped me that Jimmy was going to detour to New Orleans and off-load our cargo, I was very upset as you can imagine. On the other hand, the next day, he was very upset when his two friends turned up missing. I never believed they were broke British tourists, stranded in Italy and willing to work their way back. Military types with shined shoes and sidewall haircuts. Atwood was about as subtle as a fart in a space suit.

RTC: (Laughter)

GD: Well, it’s true. He made such a fuss in the morning when he found we were still headed for the Panama Canal that I had to convince him he would be much more relaxed spending his time locked in his cabin. There was some expressed unhappiness there but he saw my point. We let him out off Mexico because there was nothing he could do at that point. Besides, I had tossed his piece over the side along with a few other things I found in his cabin. He was very fortunate he didn’t join the gun.

RTC: But the gold? There was trouble about that as you might have guessed.

GD: Well, probably when we docked in California and he called his chums to get his trunk full of gold, he lied to them. Imagine their chagrin when they looked inside and found what they thought were bars of gold but were really paving stones from the hotel’s parking lot. A spray can full of gold paint covers many sins, including paving bricks, Robert. Did it ever occur to the men with the pointed heads that Jimmy might have been ripping them off? I always get blamed for the dirty work of others. They weren’t too mad because he’s still alive and up to his old tricks in Savannah, at least the last I heard.

RTC: ‘In the midst of life…’ Gregory.

GD: In the midst of life, we’re in peanut butter, Robert, or something else that looks like it. Memories, Robert, memories. I would assume you have a few of your own, don’t you?

RTC: And your gold?

GD: I know nothing about Nazi gold, Robert. A dream, nothing more. If I had any, it wouldn’t be in the Bank of America. They would have run, panting with news of it, to the government years ago, eager for that thrilling pat on the head. I had quite a problem with them once, when I lived in Santa Monica. They put my paycheck into someone else’s account and it took two weeks to get the dim bulbs to put it back. And to add injury to insult, they bounced my rent check, and others, and had the testicles to charge me for each and every check.

RTC: Banks do things like that.

GD: Not to me, they don’t. I simply went down and drew out all my money, including the overdraft charges, by going to a teller I knew that was a heavy pot smoker and confused sometimes. And then I did something very entertaining. I went to the fish market and bought two very large, cooked Dungeness crabs, froze them in my freezer and put them into my briefcase along with some really gross animal pornography. I had a safe deposit box at the local branch and I opened the box, took out various objects of value and replaced them with the crabs. Oh, and of course the lovely, instructional pictures. Robert, have you ever smelt shellfish when it goes off?

RTC: I can’t say as I have.

GD: It smells worse than someone pissing on a hot stove. Believe me, that’s a smell that really stands out. And in time, the crabs thawed and began the process of filling the bank with lovely odors. Of course no one could go into the vault without vomiting so they had to find out which box had the treasures. Most local box holders were on vacation, it being July and very hot down there, so they had to drill open about ten boxes to find the prize in mine. I was moving anyway and I heard later from my old landlord that the bank was greatly upset and wanted to charge me thousands of dollars for expenses. Not that they ever got any of it.

RTC: If you could only channel your creative energy, Gregory, you could be a formidable operator.

GD: I’m aware of that but I do enjoy having fun and listening to all the methane leaking out of the bloated idiots that the people in this country think are actually protecting them. Who will protect us from the agencies? God? I have my fun and sometimes I make my point. And gathering intelligence material, and I have had my own experiences with this, is sometimes such a waste of time, Robert. No matter how true or valuable it is, it always has to be passed up the ladder where it ends up in the hands of those who rule us. And if your information, accurate or not, doesn’t please them or reflect their idiot views, then into the trash basket with it. Are you with me, Robert? Does this ring a bell with you?

RTC: Oh yes, many bells. I recall, for example, a report by Joe Hovey, our station chief in Saigon, very accurately pinpointing the coming VC Tet offensive as early as November in 1967. This was about two months before the actual attack. I mean, Gregory, Joe was spot on. And, you would say, if we knew, why did we let it happen? Why because the leadership both at the Company and in the White House and the Pentagon didn’t want to believe it. Oh, Joe’s accurate report wasn’t the only one, believe me, but it was all ignored. Johnson may have been a great politician but he was worthless as a military leader and Westmoreland was only a sycophant who always did what his bosses wanted.

GD: I’ve noticed that weak leaders want weaker men around them because subconsciously they are aware that they are poor specimens of humanity and they want no one around who might show them up. A strong leader, on the other hand, will have strong and competent men around him. This is an entirely predictable happening. And Vietnam was a mess. From both a political and a military point of view, we walked right into a bog, got stuck and lost whatever it was we started out to do. And no one ever thinks about the dead their stupidity caused. A dead soldier is a piece off the board and a wounded one can’t fight so they forget them.

RTC: Well, I have quit a bit of background on Vietnam, Gregory and in one sense, you’re right but this is hindsight and hindsight is always right. We got into Vietnam a little bit at a time and for reasons that seemed to be correct at the time. The French ran their Indo-China for years and had a lucrative trade, especially in rubber. The war came, France was beaten by the Germans and the Vichy French government was controlled by the Germans. When the Japanese, who were allied with Germany, wanted to get into Indo-China, they asked the Germans who told the French to let them in. It was the rubber they were all after. It couldn’t do Germany any good so they forced Vichy to help the Japs for political reasons. During the war over there, a local resistance group started up, anti-Japanese of course. The problem was that it was run by local Communists but as FDR loved to cooperate with Communists, it was partially supplied by us. War was over, Japan defeated and the country reoccupied by the French. Political dissent and the French began to lose effective control over the rubber. We wanted DeGaulle to join NATO and his price was for us to assist France in their colony. Little by little, we did. And there was another element. JFK was Catholic and South Vietnam was filled with Catholics who wanted to be protected from the Communists and Buddhists. Cushing  put on the heat and Kennedy then began to send some support units over there. The French had suffered a major propaganda defeat at Dien Bien Phu and French popular opinion demanded a withdrawal. The French got us to substitute our people for theirs with an agreement to share the rubber revenues with us. And it went on from there. Ho had little to work with but he conducted guerrilla warfare that was very effective. To counter it, we had to pour huge numbers of troops and equipment into the country. We did terrible damage to their infrastructure but they kept coming back. We set Colby up with ‘Phoenix’ to neutralize VC supporters in the south and of course they launched a program of terror, as the press called it, against practically all the civilian population outside of Saigon.

GD: That sort of thing never works, Robert. The Communists are real experts at that game. The more innocent civilians that are tortured or killed, the more recruits the movement gets. They win always, you know, in the end, they win.

RTC: The Tet offensive was a huge political victory for the VC but from a military sense, they lost. Their real victory was to focus domestic anger and force a demarche. McNamara was booted out, Johnson just gave up and eventually, we got out. I mean, Gregory, it was not a military defeat but a political one.

GD: When the French pulled out, they were not defeated in the field, except for one very public battle, but as you said, it was a political victory. Once the public gets its wind up, the politicians are forced to heed the noise or they will be torn to pieces.

RTC: You do understand that we were not defeated in Vietnam, don’t you? It was the intrusive and self-serving press coupled with the perception of a useless and very destructive war from the civilians that forced us our. Not a military defeat.

GD: Call it what you wish, it was a defeat. You can parse it until the cows come home, Robert, but it was a defeat. I read that there are large untapped oil fields offshore there. Give it a few years and we will be back, cultivating the former enemy, hat in hand and money in bags for their leaders. Oh yes, and contracts for the development of the oil. Unless, of course, the Chinese beat us to it. Marx was right when he said the basis of wars was economic and Clausewitz said that war was just an extension of politics. Of course, that doesn’t do much for destroyed cities and huge civilian casualties, does it? I don’t suppose something like that matters in the long run. The victor always writes the history and it takes hundreds of years and the death of everyone connected with it before the objective truth ever comes out. And concerning the policy of torture, it is totally unnecessary and to me, the hallmark of a stupid sadistic type. Mueller, who was one of the best, used to discuss techniques with me. I’ve done my own work in this area at times and never, ever had to torture anyone. Besides, if you torture someone, they will tell you anything you want to hear just to make you stop. I recall hearing about a certain Dr. Black and Decker. Am I ringing any bells there?

RTC: Go on.

GD: One of your people, sent down from the cultural office in our embassy in Tokyo. Used to interrogate suspected VC by running an electric drill into one eye. If they wouldn’t talk then, in went the drill, right into the brain. Of course, then the victims couldn’t tell them anything because they were dead. I was told by my source, who got violently sick once viewing the messes he created, that the good man kept putting in slips for new shoes. He kept ruining them with a slurry of blood and brains. I understand after we pulled out, he left your employ and is now working at a very respectable establishment university on the East Coast, teaching comparative religion to the daughters of the wealthy.

RTC: These things happen in war, Gregory.

GD: He’s fortunate I wasn’t running his operation. I would have hanged him from the nearest tree, Robert. When he prates about the perfect love of Jesus, does he think about his ruined shoes?

RTC: I knew the man you’re talking about and I can assure you, he feels great remorse for some of his actions…

GD: He should feel the rope around his neck, Robert. Things like that always come out. Talleyrand said to Napoleon once, over the shooting of the Duc d’Enghein, ‘Sire, it is worse than a crime: it is a mistake.’ And not necessary. And all of us pay for such things. I know Colby authorized and encouraged this filthiness and, Robert, I’m glad your people put him into the river.

RTC: These things must be taken in context, Gregory. I spoke about hindsight, didn’t I?

GD: If these things never happened, we wouldn’t need hindsight at all. I recall reading a comment Bismarck once said to a German politician bent on some mischief. He said, in essence, are you prepared to carry your ideas through with cannon? If not, forget them. You know, Bismarck was the greatest and most pragmatic political leader of his time and a very great man. Can you imagine Johnson even thinking that way? Or Reagan? What did the grunts say in Vietnam? Kill them all and let God sort it out? Isn’t that a wonderful monument on the road to perfection? Oh well, read Malthus and pray.

RTC: You’re far too liberal in your views, Gregory. If you want to be successful, you have to be more realistic.

GD: I am realistic in practice but not in theory.

 

(Concluded 10:15 AM CST)

 

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