From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Book review: Inside the League (autopost)
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 08:30:05 GMT

                 The World Anti-Communist League

                Reagan's Fascist Slip is Showing

                       "Inside The League"
                       by Scott Anderson,
                      and Jon Lee Anderson

                     Reviewed by Chip Berlet

"Inside The League:  The Shocking Expose Of How Terrorists, Nazis, And
Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated The World Anti-Communist
League."  Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson.  Dodd Mead, New York,
1986. 352 pages.  $19.95 hardcover.  ISBN 0- 396-08517-2.  Publication
date May 28, 1986.

For over ten years progressive researchers in this country and in Europe
have been uncovering evidence linking certain American conservatives and
rightists to racist and fascist movements around the globe through a
shadowy organization called the World Anti-Communist League.  Now the
book "Inside the League" exposes the hidden nature of the League and
documents in devastating detail a parade of League-affiliated
authoritarian ideologues marching from the death camps of Nazi Germany
into the parlors of Reagan's White House.

The idea for the book came when Jon Lee Anderson was researching a
series of columns on Latin American death squads for Jack Anderson, (Jon
Lee's employer but not his relative).  Enlisting the aid of his brother
Scott, the two first began tracing the connections between the death
squads but soon were unravelling networks and alliances that involved
terrorists, Nazi collaborators, racists, assassins, anti-Jewish bigots,
and right- wing anti-communist American politicians.  The one factor all
had in common was their involvement with the World Anti-Communist
League.

The Latin American death squads, for instance, were found to be linked
through an umbrella group of Central and South American rightists called
the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL).  CAL in turn was
affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), lead by a
retired U.S.  Major General, John Singlaub.  Singlaub boasts WACL is the
coordinating body for raising private aid for the Contras, a task
supported explicitly by the Reagan White House which has sent government
officials and glowing letters of support to WACL meetings in recent
years.

WACL also serves as an umbrella for several Eastern European emigre
groups founded and lead by Nazi collaborators, and there is far more.
As the Anderson brothers write:

"We have examined the World Anti-Communist League...because it is the
one organization in which representatives of virtually every right-wing
extremist movement that has practiced unconventional warfare are to be
found.  The League is the one constant in this netherworld; whether
looking at Croation terrorists, Norwegian neo-Nazis, Japanese war
criminals, or American ultra-rightists...."  (Author's Note).

WACL is more than a club for aging facists and their modern- day
hero-worshipers, it serves as the primary coordinating body through
which anti-communist groups meet and debate and implement strategies to
prop up anti-Communist authoritarian regimes and defeat popular
movements for social and political liberation around the world.  The
current strategy is to avoid when possible the use of military troops -
and use instead a process called "unconventional warfare".  This
practice is employed by the Reagan administration but couched in popular
terminology with calls for supporting heroic "freedom fighters" such as
the Contras.  The Scott brothers explain:

"As defined by a League member who advocates its use, unconventional
warfare includes 'in addition to terrorism, subversion and guerilla
warfare, such covert and non-military activities as sabotage, economic
warfare, support to resistance groups, black and gray psychological
operations, disinformation activities, and political warfare.'

"Certainly the Nazi forces of World War Two and the rightist death
squads of El Salvador and Guatemala today are among this century's most
accomplished practitioners of this unconventional warfare," write the
Andersons.  They note that many historians have made the comparison
before them, but point out "What has not been as well publicized is that
the Salvadoran rightist killing peasants today learned his methods from
the Nazis and their collaborators in Europe, and that he didn't receive
this knowledge through the reading of books but through careful
tutoring" through the network established by the World Anti- Communist
League.

It is this group that President Reagan has praised for playing "a
leadership role in drawing attention to the gallant struggle now being
waged by the true freedom fighters of our day."  A list of persons
involved over the years with WACL is printed on the back cover of
"Inside the League."  Among the more notable:

Yaroslav Stetsko, a Nazi collaborator who in July 1941 presided over the
extermination of 7,000 Jews; Stefano delle Chiaie, a fugitive Italian
terrorist wanted for robbery, kidnapping and murder; Mario Sandoval
Alarcon, architect of the Guatemalan death squads; Chirila Ciuntu, a
Romanian fascist who participated in a 1941 massacre of Jews; Ray Cline,
former deputy director of the CIA; Jess Helms, Republican Senator from
North Carolina; Fred Schlafly, Phyllis' husband; General Jorge Rafael
Videla, former Argentine dictator now imprisoned for mass-murder; and
Roger Pearson, a scientific racist whose books on racial superiority are
still sold today by American neo-Nazi groups.

The authors devote considerable attention to showing that Reagan
administration officials and U.S. supporters of the World Anti-Communist
League cannot claim lack of knowledge or evidence to support the charges
that WACL is riddled with fascists.  Almost apologetically they reach
the conclusion that in, essence, certain anti-communist forces in this
country have decided that working with fascists is an acceptable
alternative to dealing with communism.

The book sets out to show how Nazis have infiltrated a worldwide
anti-communist organization.  It achieves this goal admirably, using a
popular style and approach that should have attracted far more media
attention than it has so far received.  It is almost as if reporters
cannot accept the evidence because the conclusions conflict with our
basic notions of decency and morality - how hard it must be for most
Americans to believe that among the hands that have crafted our current
foreign policy are those bloodied through participation in the Nazi
Holocaust and latter-day bloodbaths.  But then history does reveal that
the Nazi movement was, among other things, ardently anti-Communist.  Why
are these lessons so hard to recall, and why do so many voices that
still cry out against Nazi ideology remain silent when the Nazis