SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology (65 page)

And there is one more thing, also well-known to most assassination researchers: Atsugi Air Base was where the CIA’s U-2 flights over the Soviet Union originated.

As is well-known to many people, Oswald subsequently concocted a “family emergency” to tend to his sick mother, Marguerite Oswald, in order to be discharged from the Marines. After leaving the Marines, however, Oswald then traveled to the Soviet Union, where he then defected. He was placed in Minsk, Byelorussia (White Russia), in a television factory, and was given, by Soviet standards, a spacious apartment. He met and eventually married Marina Oswald, the daughter of a Soviet military intelligence colonel.

Many assassination researchers believe that Oswald fed the Soviets radar and other technical data which led to the shooting down of Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 later the same year. Of course, the U-2 was flown out of Atsugi AFB in Japan. Since the U-2 flights were CIA operations and not Air Force operations, this means that the CIA had a secret base at the Atsugi compound. More about this in a moment.

Then, unbelievably, Oswald was allowed to
re-
defect to the USA, along with his Russian wife – no mean feat in those days – where his subsequent movements and connections are more or less well-known.

But what many people do
not
know is that Oswald, in addition to his connections to extremist left-wing beliefs and organizations, also had some very peculiar connections to extremist right wing people and organizations. One of them, unbelievably, is to the émigré-and-spy networks of none other than former Wehrmacht general Reinhard Gehlen.

When (Allen) Dulles spoke, Gehlen listened. The CIA chief ws convinced, along with his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, that the “captive nations” of the Soviet bloc would rise up if given sufficient encouragement. At his behest, Gehlen recruited and trained an exile mercenary force ready to rush in without involving American units. Also at Dulles’ direction, Gehlen tapped the ranks of his wartime Russian collaborators for a cadre of spies to be parachuted into the Soviet Union. Some of these spies were schooled at the CIA’s clandestine base at Atsugi, Japan, where, in 1957, a young Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald was posted to the U-2 spy plane operation there.
⁶

While not establishing a direct connection to the Nazis, this is but one bit of information in a pattern of associations surrounding the assassination that Brussell uncovers.

Yet another piece in the assassination puzzle was the connection of Gehlen’s “Organization” with the émigré communities of Eastern Europeans in this country:

Gehlen pioneered the setting up of dummy fronts and cover companies to support his farflung covert operations. A major project was to form Eastern European émigré groups in the U.S. that could be used against the Soviets. Both the Tolstoy Foundation and the Union of Bishops of the Orthodox Church Outside Russia were funded by the CIA. Lee and Marina Oswald arrived from the Soviet Union in June, 1962. They were befriended by some three dozen White Russians in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area. Many had identifiable Nazi links; others were in the oil and defense industries. It was an improbable social set for a defector to the U.S.S.R. and his wife from Minsk.
⁷

In any case, it is clear that, via Oswald and similar people, Dulles’ CIA was playing a very dangerous game with two very dangerous elements – the Soviets and Gehlen’s own organization of “former” Nazis – that were implacable enemies of each other and, in turn, at root enemies of America as well. The intention of using the BND is clear: if the operation of training émigrés at Atsugi and elsewhere was exposed, American involvement could be “plausibly denied.” Gehlen’s Organization is thus the cut-out for the operation. As will be seen subsequently in this chapter, however, “cutouts” can quickly become semi-or even completely independent of their ostensible “controllers” and become, in effect, Trojan Horses.

a. Implication: The Infiltration of US Intelligence and Defense

It is worth pausing to consider again the implication of Operation Paperclip and the similar operation that led to the establishment of the Gehlen Organization with its numerous East European émigré front organizations. From one point of view, that of the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex itself, the U.S. was still in the driver’s seat, controlling these two groups and directing their activities. Even in the case of the Nazi rocket scientists in the space program and their counterparts in the defense industries, these men can be considered “cutouts,” fall guys to take the blame in case something goes wrong, and to insulate the bureaucracies of the Establishment from blame in case they did fail.

But from the point of view of the “cutouts” themselves, they are infiltrators, “users” of the host country’s protection and economic power. Such a view, however, can only be reasonably sustained if one detects patterns of behavior on the part of the cutouts that would indicate
independence
from their “controllers,” for such independence would indicate a measure of underlying, though hidden, organization on their part. As will be seen, there are indicators that this is the case, and from within the space program itself.

b. Nazis and “the Rogue Element” In US Intelligence

Various conspiracy researchers
⁸
have pointed out that there seems to be some “rogue” element within the American (and to a lesser extent, other nations’) intelligence services, acting on its own and often counter to its host nation’s national interest, and following its own more-often-than-not murky agenda. Others have pointed out that the recent spate of terrorism has to have, at some point, major financial backing and the backing of some major world power. Still others have even hinted of the historical connection of Nazism to militant Islam and to the roots of other terrorist groups.
⁹
In any case, a surviving and organized network of international Fascism would certainly fit the requirements for all these, though, of course, beyond the historically known connections, the case is speculative.

But while the case for a “Nazi International” being the oft-dicussed “rogue element” within intelligence is only tenuous and speculative, the case for its deeply hidden and high-level connections to the JFK assassination becomes stronger the closer one looks. Consider only the fact that Hitler’s financial wizard, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, former President of the Reichsbank, and father-in-law to SS Commando Otto Skorzeny, was subsequently “on the payroll of Aristotle Onassis.”
¹⁰

We all know who subsequently married Aristotle Onassis, and who strictly refused to talk about what she knew about the murder of her husband. We all know she died relatively recently, still as poised and beautiful as ever, and gave strict instructions that her private diaries were not to be released until long in the future:

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

What we never knew, is that by marrying Onassis, Jackie had married into a family of organized crime with its own set of very strange, very Nazi, connections dating from World War Two.

And what of Otto Skorzeny?

Skorzeny survived the war, helped direct the notorious O.D.E.S.S.A. organization (
Organization der Ehemalige SS Angehörige
, or “Organization of Former SS Members), and established the “Internationale Fascista” in Madrid, Spain, in the same building as was occupied by Spanish Intelligence,
and
by the Madrid section of the CIA!

Weirder still were some of the people chosen to be on the Warren Commission, two of whom can only be viewed with extreme suspicion.

One of them, former CIA director Allen Dulles, has already been mentioned. Dulles, of course, was OSS station chief in Zurich, Switzerland, during the war, and helped negotiate the secret deal with General Reinhard Gehlen, and one can only assume, other secret “deals” with Nazi bigwigs, perhaps including Martin Bormann and SS
Obergruppenführer
Hans Kammler themselves. Dulles will be encountered again later in this chapter, for we have yet to consider what he was up to
before
World War Two. Dulles as a member of the Warren Commission is perhaps the best example of the post-assassination spin network’s ability to undo the “damage” caused by the Kennedy Administration, for Dulles was of course fired by Kennedy for his role in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

We do know what another prominent member of the Warren Commission was up to before the war: John J. McCloy. For those who may have forgotten, John J. McCloy was the postwar American High Commissioner for (West) Germany, and was responsible for pardoning many Nazis from their war crimes sentences in order to expedite their extradition to the U.S.A. and their use in Operation Paperclip and similar projects.

But before the war John J. McCloy was so highly placed, so “in” on the “inside track,” that he managed to share a box with Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in what may have been his first television appearance. But why such high honors for an American lawyer? This is in part because he was an attorney for the German chemical cartel I.G. Farben before the war.

Just in case it was missed, a review is in order:

One Warren Commission member was postwar U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, pardoned numerous Nazis, had personally met Adolf Hitler, and legally represented German chemical-industrial giant I.G. Farben before the war: John J. McCloy.

One Warren Commission member had been fired by President Kennedy for his role in the Bay of Pigs, had been Director of the CIA, was OSS station chief in Zurich during the war, and had negotiated the secret deal between German military intelligence guru General Reinhard Gehlen, as was as possible other secret deals between “surrendering” Nazis and the U.S.A.: Allen Dulles.

But during the period that Dulles was still well-ensconced in the CIA, U.S. Marine Lee Oswald was stationed at Atsugi Air Force Base in Japan, where, in spite of his openly professed Marxism and “admiration” for the Soviet Union, he was given security clearances to relatively sensitive radar data connected with the CIA’s U-2 flights over Russia. Additionally, since Atsugi AFB was home to the secret U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, it therefore had to have a secret CIA base hidden within the Air Force Base. General Reinhard Gehlen’s West German
Bundesnachrichtendienst
(Federal Security Service) was apparently training foreign émigrés as a paramilitary force to be dropped into the Soviet Union. Part of this training would doubtless have been in Russian, and part would have included knowledge of Communist doctrine, party organization, and how to “pass oneself off” as a committed Communist. This means that Oswald, if in fact he was being “sheep dipped” for an intelligence assignment in the Soviet Union, as Garrison himself believed, was likely being trained for the role by Gehlen’s Organization and by former Nazis! In other words, all the elements converge at Atsugi, and in the person of Lee Harvey Oswald.

In this connection it will be shown later that Oswald’s “address book” contained more than just the addresses of FBI agents….

7. South American Death Squads: The “Kinder, Gentler

Gestapo” for Hire

Having reviewed the Nazi situation, we are now in a better position to consider other details presented by Brussell, details that begin to hint of what the
Nazi
motivation and role may have been, in addition to all the other groups and their individual reasons for playing a role in the assassination might have been.

When Brussell wrote her assassination piece for Larry Flint’s
The Rebel
magazine on the twentieth anniversary of the assassination in 1983, she referred to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report entitled “Latin America: Murder Inc.,” a report that she noted was “still classified” at the time of her article.
¹¹

Brussell indicated that the report stated that the U.S.A.’s intelligence community had “joint operations” with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay,” known as “Operation Condor.” Brussell then explains the possible significance of the code name by citing a paragraph from a Jack Anderson column:

Jack Anderson gave a few details in his column “Operation Condor, An Unholy Alliance,” August 3, 1979:

“Assassination teams are centered in Chile. This international consortium is located in Colonia Dignidad, Chile. Founded by Nazis from Hitler’s SS, headed by Franz Pfeiffer Richter, Adolf Hitler’s 1000-year Reich may not have perished.”

Brussell then explains the historical connection of Operation Condor to these Nazi-trained and based South American Death squads:

Otto Skorzeny codenamed his assault on American soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge Operation Greif, the “Condor.” He continued Condor with his postwar special teams that imposed “sanctions,” meaning the assassination of enemies.

And lest one forget, Brussell reminds her readers of the serpents’ nest of connections Skorzeny unlocks:

Skorzeny’s father-in-law was Hjalmar Schacht, president of Hitler’s Reichsbank. Schacht guided Onassis’ shipyards in rebuilding the German and Japanese war fleets. In 1950 Onassis signed on Lars Anderson for his whaling ships on the hunt of Antarctica and Argentina. Anderson had belonged to Vidkum Quisling’s Nazi collaborationist group in Norway during the war. Clay Shaw, who was charged by New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison with complicity in the JFK assassination, was a close friend of Hjalmar Schacht.
¹²

This presents a very interesting, very nasty, picture.

One can assume, once again, that the U.S. intelligence community’s involvement with such groups as Colonia Dignidad was to use them as “cutouts”, accomplishing the necessary political assassination when necessary, and achieving “plausible deniability” when something went wrong. After all, who would believe that such an extensive network of Nazis still existed so long after the war? And who would believe that the American intelligence community was in cahoots with it? That was, after all, 1983, almost forty years after the end of the war. Who would believe that there were still Nazis well-enough organized and well-enough financed to run such South American continent-spanning covert operations? Who would believe that they were still even ideologically committed to Nazism after such a long period?