-----Original Message----- From: Catherine Austin Fitts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2001 12:14 AM To: Bill Murphy Subject: ESF Manipulations, 1941-48/Excerpt from Blowback, by Christopher Simpson, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1988 Bill: I have been going back and reviewing Reg Howe's lawsuit and the documents on the GATA trying to figure out how to connect the dots between Treasury's gold transactions and material omissions and misleading disclosure with what I believe are Treasury/FED manipulation of government slush funds for black budget/covert operations at HUD, Social Security and other federal agencies---and a pattern of material omissions and misleading disclosure at those agencies. With that in mind, I was re-reading Christopher Simpson's description of Dulles and Sullivan & Cromwell's role in working with the Vatican to influence post WW-II elections in Italy, using the slush funds financed with Nazi Gold. I first started looking at this in response to trying to understand the game that Rubin was playing with reparations for Nazi gold during 1995-97. (For more information on the reparations "war" during the Clinton Administration, see http://www.newsmakingnews.com/catharvarddatadumpnazigold.htm) It helps as your read the excerpt below to remember that the US intelligence agencies (including ONI) worked very closely with the Italian mafia for their help in the Italian landing and WWII. Oddly enough it was the Administration's efforts on Nazi gold that enabled researchers to access the archives for OSS and WWII intelligence operations that illuminate the extraordinary interconnections between AIG and the CIA and US intelligence operations. I can forward some of that material if you are interested. I believe that much of US history in the last fifty years can be explained by the process required to replenish these slush funds, as the black budgets and covert operations grew steadily and hence the hunger for off balance sheet money grew with it. The Sullivan & Cromwell-Goldman Sachs-AIG-Treasury-State-Fed dance is not something that sprung up lately. Here are some excerpts. As roads grew up along cow paths, so perhaps what we are seeing in terms of false accounting and missing assets--whether at HUD or Treasury---is something for which history can provide some clues. Our thanks to Simpson whose book is truly remarkable. I recommend it highly for those who want to understand how the money really works. Catherine Austin Fitts Solari ============================================================================ =========== Pages 87-92: Not all the clandestine containment programs were aimed at the USSR and its satellites. Some of the early applications of these tactics began in Western Europe. The Italian elections of early 1948 marked another important milestone in the development of US covert operations and in high-level US support for use of former Nazi collaborators.... The Italian Communist party was favored to score heavily in the 1948 elections, and many analysts said that the party might democratically win control of the country's' government. This prospect created such alarm in Washington that George Kennan--by then the foremost long range strategist for the US government--went so far as to advocate direct US military occupation of the Foggia oil fields if the voting results went wrong from the point of view of the United States. Washington's apprehension was shared-indeed, was enthusiastically fueled--by the Holy See. The church's hierarchy, which was already under severe economic and political pressure in Eastern Europe, feared a Community takeover of the very heart of its institution, or at least of its worldly resources...... The election campaign became a major test of containment and of its accompanying clandestine political warfare strategy. Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, James Angleton, William Colby, and a team of other top-ranked US intelligence officials put together a crash program of propaganda, sabotage, and secret funding of Christian Democratic candidates designed to frustrate the Italian Communist Party's ambitions. The CIA was a young organization in those days and was primarily limited (until June 1948) to simple information gathering and analysis. Therefore, much of this campaign was handled on an ad hoc basis out of the offices of Allen and John Foster Dulles at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm in New York. Kennan watched events unfold from his vantage point at State Department headquarters in Washington, while Thayer kept up a steady cannonade of pro-West and anti-Communist broadcasts over the Voice of America. Working in close coordination with the Vatican and with prominent Americans of Italian or Catholic heritage, the CIA found that its effort in Italy succeeded well beyond expectations. On a public level the United States dumped $350 million in announced civil and military aid into the country during this campaign alone. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, and a score of other prominent Americans were enlisted to make radio broadcasts to Italy warning against the Communist electoral menace....... Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York served as a crucial go-between in CIA-Vatican negotiations. "The Vatican [has] been promised that American funds would be available to assist in the presentation of the anti-Communist appeal to the Italian public," Spellman wrote following a meeting with US Secretary of State Marshall. The US government, the cardinal said, had secretly "released large sums in 'black currency' in Italy to the Catholic Church." This "black currency" did not come from the American taxpayers. Rather, a substantial part of the funding for clandestine activities in Italy came from captured Nazi German assets, including money and gold that the Nazis had looted from the Jews. The trail of this tainted money dates back to 1941, when the War Powers Act authorized the US Treasury's Exchange Stabilization Fund to serve as a holding pool for captured Nazi valuables--currency, gold, precious metals, and even stocks and bonds--seized as the Germans or other Axis governments attempted to smuggle them out of Europe. The captured wealth, which eventually totaled tens of millions of dollars, included substantial amounts of blood money that the Nazis had pillaged from their victims. Indeed, it was precisely this type of criminal booty that overeager Nazis had most frequently attempted to export from Europe. The Exchange Stabilization Fund was authorized to safeguard the portion of the Nazi hoard that had been uncovered and confiscated by the United States in the Safehaven program which sought to interdict the German smuggling efforts. The official purpose of the fund was to serve as a hedge against inflation and as a bankers' tool to dampen the effects of currency speculation in the fragile economies of postwar Europe and Latin America. In reality, this pool of money became a secret source of financing for US clandestine operations in the early days of the CIA. The first known payments from the Exchange Stabilization Fund were made during the hotly contested Italian election. The CIA withdrew about $10MM from the fund in late 1947, laundered it through a myriad of bank accounts, then used that money to finance sensitive Italian operations. This was the 'black currency' that Cardinal Spellman asserted was given to the Vatican for anti-Communist agitation.
