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:1299600120:000:17324
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  7:03 pm  Mar  4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */
Bellant: Old Nazis/Am. Sec. Council 3
	     
PART TWO - SECTION 3
	
     - Not Exactly a Peaceful Coalition -
	
      While the Coalition for Peace Through Strength became more 
involved in elections and lobbying for Reagan Administration 
priorities, the number of organizations in the Coalition grew 
from about 40 in 1978 to 171 in 1986. As the Coalition grew, more 
bizarre groups were brought in. Many of the groups mentioned 
earlier are part of the Coalition: the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council and its Slovak, Romanian, Italian, Chinese and Cossack 
Republican units; the Slovak World Congress, the Bulgarian 
National Front, the Byelorussian-American Association and several 
other emigre fascist groups. But one organization that is a 
Coalition member and brings together, under ASC auspices, the 
Republican Heritage Groups Council and more ardent Nazis is the 
National Confederation of American Ethnic Groups (NCAEG).
	
      The NCAEG is an organization which becomes active about a 
year before presidential elections. Treasurer Richard Kolm says 
of the NCAEG "We don't have contact with the Democratic Party. 
NCAEG has a reputation as Republican." It is also called "Szaz's 
personal springboard" by one of its officers, in reference to 
Executive Vice President Z. Michael Szaz's dominance. Szaz is an 
official of the Virginia Republican Heritage Groups Council, an 
associate of racialist Roger Pearson (see Part 3), and a director 
of the ASC's American Foreign Policy Institute. In mid-1983, the 
NCAEG began operating out of the ASC's Washington office in 
preparation for the 1984 elections. [f-122]
	
      The NCAEG presents itself as a congress of American 
ethnicity with a mandate to fight for the interests of millions 
of ethnic Americans, which some NCAEG leaders say are treated as 
second class citizens. It is, however, an organizational forum 
for, and dominated by, Nazi collaborationists, emigre fascists 
and anti-Semites. A number of the groups and leaders within the 
NCAEG are also affiliated with the National Republican Heritage 
Groups Council. [f-123]
	
      One of the exceptions is the Romanian affiliate of the 
NCAEG, the Romanian American National Congress. Unlike the 
reticent Galdau, who denies being an Iron Guardsman, Dr. 
Alexander Ronnett, head of the Romanian American National 
Congress, has written a defense of the Iron Guard. [f-124]
	
      Throughout its sixty-year history, the Iron Guard has 
maintained a mystical, morose Romanian volkish nationalism and 
anti-Semitism. [f-125] The Iron Guard's links to the German SS 
and their attempted 1941 coup against the Romanian monarchy were 
evidence of the violent nature of the Guard. Their macabre ritual 
assassination practices were given full play during the three-day 
coup attempt, when thousands were rounded up and many murdered. 
Jews were a special target. [f-126]
	
      Today, Ronnett talks of "Jew-Communists" and the need for 
the American military to destroy the Warsaw pact. In his suburban 
Chicago M.D.'s office, Iron Guard symbols hang on the wall along 
with autographed photos of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet 
meeting with Ronnett and other Iron Guard leaders. The message of 
the Iron Guard is still taken seriously in some circles. [f-127]
	
      An Illinois ethnic advisor to the Reagan-Bush campaign in 
1984, Ronnett spoke at the February, 1986 annual meeting of the 
Institute for Historical Review, where he claimed Jews were 
enemies of the Iron Guard. [f-128] The IHR is the 
Holocaust-denial group in Los Angeles that attempts to rewrite 
the history of World War II in favor of the Axis powers and 
present Nazism in a favorable light. The IHR is sponsored by 
Willis Carto who also leads the anti-Semitic and quasi-nazi 
Liberty Lobby. Ronnett's Romanian American National Congress, 
which has long-standing ties to The World Anti-Communist League 
(WACL), [f-129] recently joined the Coalition for Peace 
Through Strength.
	
      Another NCAEG leader who was active with IHR was Austin App 
of the German American National Congress (also known by its 
German acronym "DANK"). App, a pro-Nazi activist for decades, 
wrote <The Six Million Swindle>, [f-130] asserting that 
the Nazi extermination of Jews didn't happen. Until his death in 
1986, App was also active with extreme rightists based in 
Germany. App was a founder of the NCAEG. DANK is its German 
affiliate. DANK was active in the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council in the early 1970's, but the GOP German slot has had no 
affiliate in recent years. DANK, a group that glories in the 
memory of the Third Reich, is also a member of the Coalition for 
Peace Through Strength, despite the fact that App had written in 
1946 that "the German armies [were] the most decent armies of the 
war." In his 1974 pamphlet, <A Straight Look at the Third Reich: 
Hitler and National Socialism, How Right? How Wrong?>, App wrote, 
"The truth is that in WWII the Third Reich fought for justice, 
and the Allies fought to prevent justice." [f-131] Writing 
in <Commentary>, December 1980, Lucy Dawidowicz bluntly called 
DANK "pro-Nazi," a characterization easily justified by the 
content of the group's literature.
	
      When NCAEG held a meeting in the fall of 1983, 
representatives of the White House and Republican National 
Commitee were participants. Republican Heritage Groups Council 
Executive Director Radi Slavoff was identified in the program as 
also being the NCAEG's Secretary/Director of Activities. One of 
the activities planned was to honor NCAEG founders Austin App and 
Slovak Josef Mikus, the former Tiso diplomat. [f-132]
	
      In 1985, Slavoff and Pasztor were replaced by American-born 
ethnics in order to campaign against the Justice Department's 
Office of Special Investigations (OSI), the Nazi prosecution 
unit. New Jersey NCAEG chair Joseph Plonski, who is also 
vice-chair of the New Jersey Republican Heritage Groups Council, 
says that the "Soviets are using OSI as a vehicle to divide and 
conquer America." He said they wanted NCAEG leaders to be 
American-born so they couldn't be accused of "war crimes." [f-133]
	
      NCAEG's anti-OSI campaign put together a booklet that has a 
friendly note from White House Communications Director Patrick 
Buchanan. [f-134] NCAEG credibility on the OSI question is 
further complicated by the public assertions of some of its 
associates that the Holocaust never happened.
	
      Other Republican Heritage Groups Council leaders who have 
been active with the NCAEG include Walter Melianovich, Nicolas 
Nazarenko, Alexander Aksenov, and Laszlo Pasztor. In a 1971 
<Washington Post> story on some of the extreme elements within 
the NCAEG and Republican Heritage Groups Council, Pasztor's 
attitude was described as uncritical of the fascists he was 
working with: "He talks to all of them, he says, and praises the 
concept of an umbrella organization for ethnics. He denounces no 
one." [f-135]
	
     Ethnic groups are not the only extremists in the Coalition 
for Peace Through Strength. Other groups include:
	
     ***{Catholics for Christian Political Action}. A lobby and 
newsletter operation run by Gary Potter. Its February-March 1983 
newsletter attacked "Zionist" wealth, and "skillful playing on 
the Holocaust theme." The proposed solution is stated thus: "The 
nation does not necessarily have to become Christian again to 
shake off the Zionist power. Germany didn't. Germany also 
ultimately failed. . .following Him [Christ] is the course the 
U.S. should take to be free." [f-136]
	
     ***{Order of St. John of Jerusalem}. Although it poses as a 
Catholic organization, the Order of St. John is a Masonic group 
that claims to be the real Knights of Malta. [f-137] Its Grand 
Master for 50 years until his death several years ago was Charles 
Pichel, an adviser (via correspondence from the U.S.) to Hitler 
aide Ernst Hanfstaengl. [f-138] Pichel's Order is a secret 
society led by anti-Semites who have worked with the quasi-Nazi 
Liberty Lobby and with neo-fascist Lyndon LaRouche groups. [f-139]
	
     ***{Heritage Groups Council for Citizenship Education}. A 
subsidiary of the pro-Nazi German American National Congress 
(DANK), the Council is headed by Karol Sitko. Active in NCAEG, 
Sitko was described in the <Washington Post> as an ally of Austin 
App and Ivan Docheff. [f-140] Sitko was also the 
organizer for the West German branch of the Western Goals 
Foundation, a far-right political organizing and research group 
which, until the death of its founder, Congressman Larry 
McDonald, was essentially a front for the John Birch Society's 
private intelligence network. In Germany, Sitko organized rallies 
in Nuremberg and Hanover drawing 240,000 people. He was supported 
by billionaire H.L. Hunt and General John Singlaub. [f-141] His 
activities were conducted in concert with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc 
of Nations (See Section 3, part 4).
	
     ***{Conservatives Against Liberal Legislation}. Renamed 
Conservative Alliance (CALL), this group was organized by the 
late Terry Dolan's National Conservative Political Action 
Committee (NCPAC is also in the Coalition for Peace Through 
Strength). CALL receives major funding through groups affiliated 
with Rev. Sun Myung Moon, according to the <Wall Street Journal> 
and other reports. [f-142] CALL started The National 
Coalition for America's Survival, which includes the 
newly-reincarnated America First Committee. [f-143] The current 
America First Committee, related only by name to the earlier 
group, is a Chicago-based racist and anti-Semitic organization 
headed by neo-Nazi Art Jones. Jones alternates Nazi uniforms with 
Klan robes and participated in a Klan-Nazi unity meeting 
sponsored by Aryan Nations in October of 1985. [f-144] Jones 
constantly issues attacks on Blacks, Jews and Hispanics, and 
functions as the ideological leader of Chicago-area Nazi groups.
	
     ***{Committee to Unite America}. One of three groups in the 
Coalition headed by Lady Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton, who is also on 
the board of the American Security Council Foundation. Her 
deceased husband, part of the British aristocracy, was the 
brother of the host of Rudolph Hess when, in 1940, Hess made his 
secret flight to England. Hess, a top aide to Hitler and Nazi 
Party official, sought to meet with the British aristocratic 
circles known as the Cliveden Set. [f-145] Sympathetic to 
Hitler's war aims, the Cliveden Set tried to get England out of 
the war it had declared against Germany in September, 1939, after 
Germany invaded Poland. Hess was arrested and imprisoned. After 
Lord Malcolm Douglas  came to the U.S., he established an 
American branch of a racial eugenics group headquartered in 
Scotland. The oil billionaire Hunt brothers and Senator Jesse 
Helms are members of the group. It was headed by Robert Gayre, 
who published the racialist <Mankind Quarterly> until Roger 
>Pearson took it over in 1978. (See Section 3, part 1.) Lady 
Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton set up a number of groups, including the 
Committee to Unite America. John Fisher is listed among its 
Founders and on its Sponsoring Committee, as are other ASC principals.
	
     - The ASC, the White House, and the National Security Council -
	
      The American Security Council sponsors weekly private 
meetings between National Security Council representatives, 
congressional staffers and New Right groups active on foreign 
policy issues. Begun in January, 1985, the Tuesday Group, as it 
has become known for its Tuesday morning Capitol Hill sessions, 
has focused on gaining aid for the Contras, a top White House and 
ASC priority. 
	
      ASC leaders in 1985 were reluctant to discuss the Tuesday 
Group due to the participation of Lt. Col. Oliver North, then a 
deputy director of the National Security Council, and the 
attendance of  Constantine Menges, the former head of Latin 
American affairs at NSC. North eventually came under 
Congressional fire in 1987 for his role in coordinating secret 
and private aid to the Contras. North has participated in other 
ASC activities and had his picture in the <Peace Through Strength 
Report>, January, 1986, with Fisher, even though the White House 
demanded that the <Washington Post> and other papers not use 
North's picture--for reasons of national security.
	
      The Tuesday Group is chaired by Sam Dickens, ASC's Director 
for Inter-American Affairs and editor of Radio Free Americas, a 
radio program picked up by the ASC in 1968 when a similar program 
was exposed in 1967 as CIA-sponsored. Others in the group, whose 
attendance varies slightly depending on the weekly topic, 
include: representatives of the Pentagon and State Department; 
the Heritage Foundation; the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies; the National Forum Foundation; former U.S. 
Ambassador to Costa Rica Curtin Winsor, Jr.; Lynn Bouchey, head 
of the Council on Inter-American Security;  Dave Sullivan, an 
aide to Senator Jesse Helms, Steve Symms and James McClure; and, 
until recently, Angelo Codevilla, a former aide to Sen. Malcolm 
Wallop, who now works for the Hoover Institution in California. [f-146]
	
      Menges described the meetings as purely "social affairs" 
and said he only came in contact with the Tuesday Group "a couple 
of months ago." He had left the NSC a month prior to our 
interview, in early 1987, to work for Jack Kemp's Fund for an 
American Renaissance.
	
      One Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs 
also attends the Tuesday meetings in order to maintain contacts 
with other foreign policy hard-liners. At the risk of losing his 
job, he blasts the policies of Secretary of State George Schultz, 
Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Chester Crocker and 
Deputy Assistant Secretary Frank Wisner. The impact of Tuesday 
Group work was noted by one source who said "the Michel 
Amendment" for Contra aid was written through its process.
	
      Various experts are brought in to discuss the topic of any 
given meeting. According to Dickens, guests may include 
"Congressmen, former heads of state, ambassadors, military 
leaders from El Salvador, Honduras--Eden Pastora, Roberto 
D'Aubuisson we've had at our breakfast." According to Winsor, Sol 
Sanders of <Business Week> made one presentation on the situation 
in Mexico. "His views are virtually the same as [former 
Ambassador] Jim Gavins," Winsor added.
	
      Dickens said in 1986 that the focus of the Tuesday Group 
had been on Contra aid, and would continue to be. The Tuesday 
Group's purpose was "to bring people together to develop ideas 
and action plans to get support from Congress for the Freedom 
Fighters," according to the ASC activist. Dickens said that for 
Reagan to get consensus on the Hill for funding the Contras it 
was going to take private sector involvement, "So we've been 
working on that basis. . . ." Dickens said that he would "advise 
Contra leaders" and "help raise money for them through foundations."
	
      After insisting that "the U.S. ought to break diplomatic 
relations" with Nicaragua and "recognize UNO [United Nicaraguan 
Opposition]," Dickens said that the NSC at the time was 
considering such a move after initial funding for the contras was 
approved. He predicted that the break would come after "another 
country takes the lead in South America" to end diplomatic ties 
with Nicaragua. These predictions came shortly before the story 
of Iran-Contragate broke in the national news media.
	
      In addition to the foreign policy subjects of the Tuesday 
Group, a working group meets in "crisis" situations, presumably 
to aid funding for programs that need Congressional lobbying, 
such as Star Wars, chemical weapons and the MX. The appropriate 
administration officials, military contractors and political 
groups are believed to participate. [f-147]
	
      The relationship between Reagan and the ASC has been a long 
and mutually beneficial partnership. Presidential candidate 
Ronald Reagan joined the Coalition for Peace Through Strength as 
an individual member as the Coalition was being formed in 1978. 
[f-148] The ASC supplied campaign advisors and a drumbeat of 
propaganda for the defeat of Jimmy Carter. After Reagan's 1980 
victory, the ASC was heavily represented on the transition teams 
and in the new administration. In turn, Reagan provided three 
fundraising letters for the ASC during his first year 
in office. [f-149]
	
      Observing this relationship near the end of 1980, retired 
Admiral Gene La Rocque, director of the Washington, D.C.-based 
Center for Defense Information, stated that "the American 
Security Council, which only a few years ago was generally 
dismissed in serious defense circles as an insignificant fringe 
group left over from the McCarthy era, today stands poised to 
take control of the defense policies of this nation." La Rocque 
noted that Reagan's inexperience in defense issues meant that 
"[w]hen it comes to military policy, Governor Reagan depends 
totally on his advisors." [f-150]