From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Bellant: Old Nazi Networks in US
Date: 12 Dec 92 02:27:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600110:cdp:1299600118:000:15426
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet    Dec 11 18:27:00 1992


/* Written  9:10 pm  Dec  8, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */
/* Written  8:30 pm  Dec  6, 1992 by cberlet in igc:p.news */
/* Written  6:50 pm  Mar  4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */
Bellant: Old Nazis/Am. Sec. Council 1
	     
PART TWO - SECTION 1
	
[ The American Security Council ]
	
     "In the councils of government we must guard against the 
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, 
by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the 
disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We 
must never let the weight of this combination endanger our 
liberty or democratic processes."
	
(President Dwight D. Eisenhower, January 17, 1961)
	
     - Cold Warriors -
	
          It's been called "The Cold War Campus" and "The Heart 
of the Military-Industrial Complex." [f-71] Both are names the 
American Security Council wears with pride. Its boards are filled 
with retired senior military officers, executives of major 
corporations, including some of the largest military contractors, 
and some New Right leaders. Wes McCune of the Washington, 
D.C.-based Group Research, which monitors the political right 
wing, says the ASC "is not just the representative of the 
military-industrial complex, it is the personification of the 
military-industrial complex." [f-72]
	
      The ASC focuses on foreign policy, military and 
intelligence issues. It is the clearinghouse for U.S. political 
rightists on arms control, aid to the Contras, new weapons 
programs and lobbying for special projects, such as aid to Jonas 
Savimbi's UNITA in Angola. In its specialized areas, the ASC 
probably has had more influence with the Reagan Administration 
than the well-publicized Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think 
tank in Washington, D.C., which produced massive studies 
suggesting conservative policies to the Reagan Administration 
following each election. However, the ASC is less visible than 
the Heritage Foundation.
	
      Little noticed by the press, the ASC is extremely 
influential among right-wing groups and within the Reagan 
Administration. In spite of the veneer of respectability its 
board members' credentials might provide in some circles, the ASC 
is in some respects more extremist than the Republican Heritage 
Groups Council. It also serves as a connecting point between Nazi 
collaborationists and fascists on one hand, and Reagan 
Administration policymakers on the other.
	
      The key outreach arm of the ASC is the Coalition for Peace 
Through Strength. Composed of 171 organizations that are supposed 
to form a grassroots lobby for ASC political priorities, the 
Coalition is where many of the ASC extremist ties are 
established. The Republican Heritage Groups Council and some of 
its component elements, such as Galdau's Romanian-American 
Republican Clubs, are members of the Coalition. These ties to the 
authoritarian, collaborationist and fascist Right are consistent 
with the history of the ASC.
	
     - Origins of the ASC -
	
      The ASC began in Chicago in 1955, staffed primarily by 
former FBI agents. In its first year it was called the 
Mid-American Research Library. Corporations joined to take 
advantage of what former FBI agent William Turner described in
<Power on the Right> as "a dossier system modeled after the 
FBI's, which was intended to weed out employees and 
prospective employees deemed disloyal to the free enterprise 
concept." [f-73]
	
      Before the founders of the ASC got into the business of 
collecting dossiers on Americans, however, they had another sort 
of political interest. Their political histories go back to the 
racialist and anti-Semitic groups in the 1930's that were working 
in concert with Hitler's war aims. Three groups in particular 
would later provide elements of the future ASC: the America First 
Committee, the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation, and 
the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies.
	
     - The America First Committee: -
	
      The person most responsible for establishing the ASC was 
General Robert Wood, then Chairman of Sears Roebuck. [f-74] Prior 
to Pearl Harbor, Wood was also the chairman of the America First 
Committee, an organization committed to opposing all efforts to 
aid Allies besieged by Nazi Germany. [f-75]
	
      As national chairman, Wood made no effort to keep out 
openly pro-Nazi groups known to have been supported by Germany, 
such as the German-American Bund. Radio priest Father Charles 
Coughlin's anti-Semitic and pro-Axis followers were also 
permitted by Wood to work within America First. A 1942 FBI report 
indicated that Wood's "patriotic" group had "been called upon to 
accept financial assistance from pro-Nazi sources." [f-76]
	
      After Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war on the 
United States, the America First Committee didn't go out of 
business as it officially declared on December 12, 1941. Five 
days later, a secret meeting of certain key leaders of America 
First took place in New York to plan for what they assumed (and 
hoped) would be the Axis victory in Europe and the Far East. 
[f-77] "[T]he Committee has in reality gone underground," FBI 
Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the White House. [f-78] It 
began planning for the day when they would be the Americans with 
whom the victorious Nazis would negotiate a surrender. Finally, 
when the defeat of the Nazis by Allied powers was a foregone 
conclusion, the America First Committee secretly dissolved itself 
in 1944.
	
      William Regnery, an incorporator and early leader of 
the Committee with Robert Wood, [f-79] helped Wood to found the 
ASC. His son, Henry Regnery, replaced him at their book 
publishing company and at the ASC. The younger Regnery told an 
interviewer several years ago that "I was very much opposed to 
our getting into the war; and I published this book, which was 
highly critical of Roosevelt and of the whole realm of American 
policies involving World War II. Very gladly, I must say." 
Regnery said that the book, published in the early 1950's, 
reflected his "personal tastes." [f-80]
	
     - American Vigilante Intelligence Federation: -
	
       The ASC began collecting dossiers in the McCarthy era in 
what was often seen as a blacklisting operation against union 
organizers and those with "suspect" political orientations. Files 
and documents were collected from the House Committee on 
Un-American Activities and several private file collections. One 
such collection originally was compiled by Harry Jung, [f-81] 
whose research was motivated by a search for what he saw as a 
Jewish-Communist conspiracy. [f-82]
	
      Jung founded the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation 
(AVIF) in 1927 as an anti-union spy operation. [f-83] With the 
rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Jung became the first major 
distributor in the U.S. of the anti-Semitic forgery, "The 
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." [f-84] The "Protocols" 
text had been used as a pretext by Russian Czars and European 
Nazis to conduct pogroms and extermination campaigns against 
European Jewry. His AVIF became involved with German Nazi agents 
in the U.S. In 1942, Jung's East Coast operative, a Col. Eugene 
Sanctuary, was indicted by the Justice Department for sedition. 
[f-85] One can only wonder at the purpose and content of the 
files collected by Jung, and purchased by the ASC. The Jung file 
collection reportedly had one million names indexed when the ASC 
acquired it some thirty years ago.
	
     - American Coalition of Patriotic Societies: -
	
      The American Coalition of Patriotic Societies (ACPS) is 
another "patriotic" group that flourished during Jung's heyday 
and still exists as a member of the Coalition for Peace Through 
Strength. The ACPS was founded by John Trevor in 1929 to support 
and maintain tight U.S. immigration restrictions enacted into law 
in 1924. [f-86] Trevor was the behind-the-scenes architect of the 
1924 Immigration Restriction Act, designed to exclude East 
Europeans, Italians, Jews and other non-Nordics. [f-87]
	
 The American Coalition of Patriotic Societies leadership included 
Harry Jung and others with links to German National Socialism. 
One associate of Trevor, Madison Grant, explicitly repudiated 
"democratic ideals and Christian values in the interest of a 
Nordic philosophy," according to John Higham's <Strangers in the 
Land>. [f-88] Another ACPS director, Harry Laughlin, was 
given an honorary Ph.D. in 1936 by a Nazi-controlled German 
university for his work in the area of racial eugenics. [f-89]
	
      John Trevor, Jung and a third ACPS official, Walter Steele, 
were among 15 Americans whose names appeared inside a 1933 German 
Nazi book, recommending it for an American audience. Begun with 
an endorsement by Adolph Hitler, the book contains such 
statements as "The total contrast to Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevism is 
exclusively represented by German National Socialism." [f-90] In 
1942, U.S. Army Intelligence called Walter Steele's <National 
Republic> "fascist." [f-91] In the same year, the 
American Coalition of Patriotic Societies was named by the 
Justice Department as "a factor" in the sedition charges brought 
against those thought to be aiding the Axis. [f-92]
	
      General Wood, John Trevor, Walter Steele and their 
associates all became patriotic anti-Communists after World War 
II, however, aiding Senator Joe McCarthy, lobbying for a more 
intense Cold War, and supporting reprieves for convicted 
Nazi war criminals.
	
      General Wood helped establish <Human Events>, then a 
monthly magazine, that in late 1945 called the Nuremberg Trials 
a "travesty of justice." [f-93] Involved in a number of 
other rightist groups after the war, he recruited John M. Fisher, 
a World War II bomber pilot, from the FBI as a security 
consultant for Sears Roebuck in 1953.
	
      John Trevor was a leader of a group, Ten Million Americans 
Mobilizing for Justice, attempting to prevent the censure of Joe 
McCarthy. Its leadership represented a Who's Who of American 
anti-Semitism. [f-94] At their 1954 rally for McCarthy, a female 
photographer taking pictures of the special guest section for 
<Time> magazine was physically assaulted amid shouts of "Dirty 
Jew" and "Hang the communist bitch!" [f-95]
	
      John B. Trevor, Jr. became acting secretary of the American 
Coalition of Patriotic Societies after his father's death in 
1956, but the political character of the group showed no 
noticeable change. [f-96] The ACPS in 1962 condemned the 
Nuremberg war crimes trials as a "dreadful retrogression into 
barbarism," and called for the release of those "who may still be 
suffering imprisonment." [f-97]
	
      John B. Trevor, Jr. was one of eight members of the 
American Security Council Board of Directors until several years 
ago. The current president of the American Coalition of Patriotic 
Societies is John Fisher, and their address is the same as the 
ASC. [f-98]
	
     - The Emergence of the Military-Industrial Complex -
	
      Although the ASC began as an anti-labor operation with 
support from Sears (Fisher was on the Sears payroll the first 
five years he headed ASC) [f-99] and other businesses, it soon 
became involved in foreign policy issues. It cosponsored a series 
of annual meetings from 1955 to 1961 called National 
Military-Industrial Conferences in which elements of the 
Pentagon, National Security Council and organizations linked to 
the CIA discussed Cold War strategy with leaders of many large 
corporations, such as United Fruit, Standard Oil, Honeywell, U.S. 
Steel, and, of course, Sears Roebuck. Robert Wood was the key 
organizer of these events. [f-100] One conference "cooperating 
organization" was the CIA-linked Foreign Policy Research 
Institute. [f-101]
	
      The Institute's foreign policy thesis during this period 
was spelled out in a book, <A Forward Strategy for America> by 
Robert Strausz-Hupe, William Kintner and Stefan Possony . In 
discussing nuclear option scenarios in a hypothetical expanding 
U.S.-Soviet conflict, the book makes the following statement:
	
     "Even at a moment when the United States faces defeat 
because, for example, Europe, Asia and Africa have fallen to 
communist domination, a sudden nuclear attack against the Soviet 
Union could at least avenge the disaster and deprive the opponent 
of the ultimate triumph. While such a reversal at the last moment 
almost certainly would result in severe American casualties, 
it might still nullify all previous Soviet conquests. [f-102]"
	
      Another sponsor of the conferences was the Aircraft 
Industries Association (AIA). According to Clarence Lasby's 
<Project Paperclip>, the AIA pressured the U.S. government in the 
1950's to get Nazi scientists into the United States. 
[f-103] Werhner von Braunwho worked on the Nazi rocket 
program, and General John Medaris, who supervised the Nazi 
scientists in the U.S. (and has opposed the investigations of the 
program by the Justice Department's OSI), were both conference 
participants. [f-104]
	
      Influential private groups such as the National Association 
of Manufacturers, Chambers of Commerce, and several university 
institutes also participated in the conferences. In 1959 the 
National Military-Industrial Conferences established an Advisory 
Committee on Foreign Affairs that included a number of 
representatives of big business. Also included, however, were 
three political figures of the anti-Semitic extreme right. One of 
these was Mark M. Jones, who followed Mervin K. Hart as head of 
the anti-Semitic National Economic Council. Also a member of the 
Advisory Committee was Martin Blank, from Germany. Blank's 
entries in <Who's Who in Germany> described him as having worked 
in Berlin for a mine and steel mill business group from 1922 to 
1945. [f-105] A study of backers of German Nazism, <Who 
Financed Hitler>, says that Blank represented a secret group of 
12 Ruhr industrialists called the <Ruhrlade>, "the most 
powerful secret organization of big business that existed during 
the Weimar period." [f-106] <Ruhrlade> and its political 
emissary, Martin Blank, became involved in funding the rise of 
Hitler. The 1959 Military-Industrial conference bulletin 
identifies him as a representative of German industry.
	
      A third member of the committee was Baron Frederich August 
von der Heydte, who had also been active with the 1958 
conference. His entry in <Who's Who in Germany> and other sources 
say that he was an "active officer 1935-47" in the German army. 
[f-107] Heydte, whose family was close to the exiled 
Hohenzollen monarch, [f-108] was reported to have written in 1953 
that "democracy is linked with collapse, defeat and foreign 
uniforms stalking German soil," and that "democracy was brought 
by the victorious enemy together with the army of occupation." 
[f-109] Von der Heydte was a co-founder and ideological leader of 
the Christian Democratic Union, a party that brought a variety of 
Nazi elements into its fold after the first post-war German 
elections. [f-110] In recent years von der Heydte has formed an 
association with Lyndon LaRouche's neo-fascist cult group. 
[f-111] The only foreign members of the National 
Military-Industrial Conference's Foreign Affairs Committee during 
this period were Blank and von der Heydte.
	
Xref: sparky alt.conspiracy:13208 talk.politics.misc:64404