Posted by Dave Emory

July 29, 2002

1. This program supplements previous discussion of the Bush family’s Nazi financial heritage. Specifically, the program revisits the Bush/Thyssen-Bornemisza connection. Like Al Taqwa/Nada management and the overlapping Banco del Gotthardo, the Thyssen-Bornemisza operations are based in Lugano Switzerland. This program poses the question of whether the Thyssen-Bornemisza and Al Taqwa milieu may be linked, and whether the Nada/Banco del Gotthardo is part of the Bormann nexus.

2. Various Al Taqwa subsidiaries were recently placed on a list of individuals and institutions viewed by the Justice Department as supportive of terrorism.

“Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the State Department on Monday to list nine foreign groups and companies as terrorist organizations. The listing would prohibit any noncitizen members from entering the United States. . . . The groups proposed for by Ashcroft for listing: Al Taqwa Trade Property and Industry Co. Ltd.; Bank Al Taqwa Ltd; Nada Management Organization; Youssef M. Nada & Co. Gesellshaft . . .”

(“Other Developments: ... Terror Groups” [Chronicle News Services]; San Francisco Chronicle; 7/23/2002; p. A4.)

3. The program reviews the significance of Lugano for the Nada operations.

“While establishing its headquarters in a tax haven, the Brothers’ bank opened a branch, Al Taqwa Management Organization S.A., in Italian Switzerland, in Lugano. Lugano, a discreet frontier banking locale, is a stone’s throw from Milan, a major financial center, and above all the Islamist groups’ entry point to Europe.”

(Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam; by Richard Labeviere; pp. 139–140.)

4. Nada has been less than forthcoming about the true nature of his organization. It should be noted in this context that the Underground Reich/Bormann Organization also maintains a rigorous, and secretive infrastructure.

“Al Taqwa is situated on the top floor of a small glass building, right in the center of Lugano, in the banking district, a district where overly curious journalists are immediately denounced to the police who then conduct American-style identity checks in the middle of the street . . . In Lugano, bank secrecy is no laughing matter. Several times we tried to meet Mr. Nada, who eventually responded by mail, ‘We allow neither you nor any other journalist, nor publication, to speak about us -- positively or negatively -- without our written permission.’ Signed, Yussef Nada.”

(Ibid.; p. 140)

5. One of the questions concerning Nada’s possible affiliations with the Underground Reich derives from his past. Nada himself is alleged to have been an agent of the Abwehr, the military intelligence service of the Third Reich.

“But Yussef Nada is even better known to the Egyptian [intelligence] services, who have evidence of his membership in the armed branch of the fraternity of the Muslim Brothers in the 1940’s. At that time, according to the same sources, he was working for the Abwehr under Admiral Canaris and took part in a plot against King Farouk. This was not the first time that the path of the Muslim Brothers crossed that of the servants of the Third Reich. The founder of the Fraternity himself, Hasan al-Banna, served as an intermediary between those who went on to become the ‘free officers’ (in particular Anwar al-Sadat) and the agents of Nazi Germany.”

(Ibid.; pp. 140–141.) Al Banna is listed as a director of Al Taqwa (see FTR#‘s 359, 369.)

6. As discussed in past programs, Lugano, Switzerland is the center of operations for the Thyssen-Bornemisza family. (The Thyssens, in turn, are long-standing intimates of Martin Bormann and the Underground Reich.)

“Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza runs his private Dutch-based investment group from Lugano, Switzerland, and his cousin Count Federico Zichy-Thyssen, grandson of old Fritz Thyssen, exercises control over Thyssen A.G. from his base in Buenos Aires.”

(Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Manning; Copyright 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stuart Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; p. 237.)

7. Much of the program consists of a reading of important article on the Thyssen-Bornemisza/Bush connection. (“How the Bush Family Made its Fortune from the Nazis” by John Loftus; accessed at www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.htm .)

8. This article documents the fact that a Dutch bank served as a pivot-point for the Thyssen industrial interests and that, through this Dutch connection, the Thyssen-Bornemisza branch of the family held the reins of economic power that (ultimately) guided the Bush family’s fortune.

9.

“For the Bush family, it is a lingering nightmare. For their Nazi clients, the Dutch connection was the mother of all money laundering schemes. . . .Thyssen did not need any foreign bank accounts because his family secretly owned an entire chain of banks. He did not have to transfer his Nazi assets at the end of World War II, all he had to do was transfer the ownership documents -- stocks, bonds, deeds and trusts -- from his bank in Berlin through his bank in Holland to his American friends in New York City: Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker. Thyssen’s partners in crime were the father and father-in-law of a future President of the United States.”

(Ibid.; p. 1)

10.

“It was a secret that would lead former U.S. Intelligence agent William Gowen, now pushing 80, to the very doorstep of the Dutch royal family.”

(Idem.)

11.

“Under the rules of the Allied occupation of Germany, all property owned by citizens of a neutral nation which had been seized by the Nazis had to be returned to the neutral citizens upon proper presentation of documents showing proof of ownership. Suddenly, all sorts of neutral parties, particularly in Holland, were claiming ownership of various pieces of the Thyssen empire.”

(Ibid.; p. 2)

12. Allied investigators focused on the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, the Dutch financial institution that served as the pivot-point for the Thyssen-Bornemisza/Bush family dealings at the center of the discussion.

“Their suspicions focused on one Dutch Bank in particular, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, in Roterdam. This bank did a lot of business with the Thyssens over the years. In 1923, as a favor to him, the Rotterdam bank loaned the money to build the very first Nazi party headquarters in Munich. But somehow the allied investigations kept going nowhere, the intelligence leads all seemed to dry up.”

(Idem.)

13. Next, the program highlights the role of Allen Dulles in helping to stage-manage the investigation of the Dutch/Thyssen connections.

“If the investigators realized that the U.S. intelligence chief in post­war Germany, Allen Dulles, was also the Rotterdam Bank’s lawyer, they might have asked some very interesting questions. They did not know that Thyssen was Dulles’ client as well. Nor did they ever realize that it was Allen Dulles’s other client, Baron Kurt Von Schroeder, who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen companies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch. The Rotterdam Bank was at the heart of Dulles’ cloaking scheme, and he guarded its secrets jealously.”

(Idem.)

14. Although he distances himself from the Martin Bormann aspect of Paul Manning’s investigation, Loftus goes on to develop the relevance of the Manning observations concerning the Thyssen-Bornemisza branch of the family and its operations on behalf of the Third Reich.

“Several decades after the war, investigative reporter Paul Manning, Edward R. Murrow’s colleague, stumbled across the Thyssen interrogations in the U.S. National Archives. Manning intended to write a book about Nazi money laundering. Manning’s manuscript was a dagger at Allen Dulles’ throat: his book specifically mentioned the Bank voor Han­del en Scheepvaart by name, albeit in passing.”

(Idem.)

15. Without casting aspersions on either Loftus or Manning (Mr. Emory views them both as heroes whose work is invaluable), the program digresses briefly to review an aspect of Manning’s investigation of Bormann, per se. When Manning reviewed the FBI’s file on Martin Bormann, it found some interesting information.

“When the [FBI] file (now in my possession) was received at FBI headquarters, it revealed that the Reichsleiter had indeed been tracked for years. One report covered his whereabouts from 1948 to 1961, in Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Chile. The file revealed that he had been banking under his own name from his office in Germany in Deutsche Bank of Buenos Aires since 1941; that he held one joint account with the Argentinean dictator Juan Peron, and on August 4, 5, and 14, 1967, had written checks on demand accounts in First National City bank (Overseas Division) of New York, The Chase Manhattan Bank, and Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co., all cleared through Deutsche bank of Buenos Aires.”

(Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile; Paul Manning; Copyright 1981 [HC]; Lyle Stuart Inc.; ISBN 0–8184-0309–8; P. 205.)

16. As Loftus points out, both he and Manning had uncovered different ends of the Thyssen-Bornemisza/Bush connection.

“American investigators had to be sent anywhere but Holland. And so the Dutch connection remained unexplored until 1994, when I published the book The Secret War Against the Jews. As a matter of historical curiosity, I mentioned that Fritz Thyssen (and, indirectly, the Nazi Party) had obtained their early financing from Brown Brothers Harriman, and its affiliate, the Union Banking Corporation. Union Bank, in turn, was the Bush family’s holding company for a number of other entities, including the ‘Holland American Trading Company.’”

(“How the Bush Family made its Fortune from the Nazis” by John Loftus; p. 2–3.)

17.

“It was a matter of public record that the Bush holdings were seized by the U.S. government after the Nazis over­ran Holland. In 1951, the Bushes reclaimed Union Bank from the U.S. Alien Property Custodian, along with their ‘neutral’ Dutch assets. I did not realize it, but I had stumbled across a very large piece of the missing Dutch connection. Bush’s ownership of the Holland-American investment company was the missing link to Manning’s earlier research in the Thyssen investigative files. In 1981, Manning had writ­ten: ‘Thyssen’s first step in a long dance of tax and currency frauds began [in the late 1930’s] when he disposed of his shares in the Dutch Hollandische-Amerikanische Investment Corporation to be credited to the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, N.V., Rotterdam, the bank founded in 1916 by August Thyssen, Sr.’”

(Ibid.; p. 3)

18.

“In this one obscure paragraph, in a little known book, Manning had unwittingly documented two intriguing points: 1) The Bushes’ Union Bank had apparently bought the same corporate stock that the Thyssens were selling as part of their Nazi money laundering, and 2) the Rotterdam bank [had bought them]. Far from hindsight, Manning and I had uncovered different ends of the Dutch connection. After reading the excerpt in my book about the Bushes’ ownership of the Holland-American trading Company, retired U.S. intelligence agent William Gowen began to put the pieces of the puzzle together.”

(Idem.)

19.

“In 1999, Mr. Gowen traveled to Europe, at his own expense, to meet a former member of Dutch intelligence who had detailed inside information about the Rotterdam bank. The scrupulous Gowen took a written statement and then had his source read and correct it for error. Here, in summary form, is how the Nazis hid their money in America.”

(Idem.)

20. After establishing the Rotterdam bank to mask his assets from the Allies in World War I, August Thyssen determined that it would never happen again.

“One of his sons would join the Nazis; the other would be neutral. No matter who won the next war, the Thyssen family would survive with their industrial empire intact. Fritz Thyssen joined the Nazis in 1923; his younger brother married into Hungarian nobility and changed his name to Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza. The Baron later claimed Hungarian as well as Dutch citizenship. In public, he pretended to detest his Nazi brother, but in private they met at secret board meetings in Germany to coordinate their operations. If one brother were threatened with loss of property, he would transfer his holdings to the other.”

(Idem.)

21.

“To aid his sons in their shell game, August Thyssen had established three different banks during the 1920’s -- The August Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam, and the Union Banking Corporation in New York City. To protect their corporate holdings, all the brothers had to do was move the corporate paperwork from one bank to the other. This they did with some regularity. When Fritz Thyssen ‘sold’ the Holland-American Trading Com­pany for a tax loss, the Union Banking Corporation in New York bought the stock. Similarly, the Bush family invested the disguised Nazi profits in American steel and manufacturing corporations that became part of the secret Thyssen empire.”

(Ibid.; pp. 3–4)

22.

“As soon as Berlin fell to the allies, it was time to ship the documents back to Rotterdam so that the ‘neutral’ bank could claim ownership under the friendly supervision of Allen Dulles, who, as the OSS intelligence chief in 1945 Berlin, was well placed to handle any troublesome investigations.”

(Ibid.; p. 4)

23. When the manager of the Dutch bank attempted to alert the allies about the truth of the Thyssen affairs, he died.

“In 1945, the former Dutch manager of the Rotterdam bank resumed control only to discover that he was sitting on a huge pile of hidden Nazi assets. In 1947, the manager threatened to inform Dutch authorities, and was immediately fired by the Thyssens. The somewhat naïve bank manager then fled to New York City where he intended to talk to Union Bank director Prescott Bush. As Gowen’s Dutch source recalled, the manager intended ‘to reveal [to Prescott Bush] the truth about Baron Heinrich and the Rotterdam Bank, [in order that] some or all of the Thyssen interests in the Thyssen Group might be seized and confiscated as German enemy property. ‘The manager’s body was found in New York two weeks later.”

(Idem.)

24. A Dutch journalist also experienced a sudden bout of mortality when he attempted to unearth the truth about the Thyssen-Bornemisza empire, nearly fifty years after the death of the Dutch bank manager.

“Similarly, in 1996, a Dutch journalist Eddy Roever went to London to interview the Baron, who was neighbors with Margaret Thatcher. Roever’s body was discovered two days later. Perhaps, Gowen remarked dryly, it was only a coincidence that both healthy men had died of heart attacks immediately after trying to uncover the truth about the Thyssens.”

(Idem.)

25.

“Neither Gowen nor his Dutch source knew about the corroborating evidence in the Alien Property Custodian archives or in the OMGUS archives. Together, the two separate sets of U.S. files overlap each other and directly corroborate Gowen’s source. The first set of archives confirms absolutely that the Union Banking Corporation in New York was owned by the Rotterdam Bank. The second set (quoted by Manning) confirms that the Rotterdam Bank in turn was owned by the Thyssens.”

(Ibid.; pp. 4–5)

26.

“He [Man­ning] was very close to uncovering the fact that the Bush’s bank in New York City was secretly owned by the Nazis, before during and after WWII. Once Thyssen ownership of the Union Banking Corporation is proven, it makes out a prima facie case of treason against the Dulles and Bush families for giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war.”

(Ibid.; p. 5)

27. Lof­tus goes on to demonstrate, from Thyssen-Bornemisza company records, that the Netherlands bank was the key to the Bush/Thyssen money-laundering connection.

“In 1979, the present Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza (Fritz Thyssen’s nephew) prepared a written family history to be shared with his top management. A copy of this thirty-page tome entitled The History of the Thyssen Family and Their Activities was provided by Gowen’s source.”

(Idem.)

28.

“Thus, at the beginning of World War II the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart had become the holding of my father’s companies -- a Dutch firm whose only shareholder was a Hungarian citizen. . . Prior to 1929, it held the shares of the August Thyssen Bank, and also American subsidiaries and the Union Banking Corporation, New York. The shares of all the affiliates were [in 1945] with the August Thyssen Bank in the East Sector of Berlin, from where I was able to have them transferred into the West at the last moment. After the war the Dutch government ordered an investigation into the status of the holding company and, pending the result, appointed a Dutch former general man­ger of my father who turned against our family. . . In that same year, 1947, I returned to Germany for the first time after the war, disguised as a Dutch driver in military uniform, to establish contact with our German directors.’”

(Idem.)

29.

“‘The situation of the Group gradually began to be resolved but it was not until 1955 that the German companies were freed from Allied control and subsequently disentangled. Fortunately, the companies in the group suffered little from dismantling. At last we were in a position to concentrate on purely economic problems -- the reconstruction and extension of the companies and the expansion of the organization. The banking department of the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart, which also functioned as the Group’s holding company, merged in 1970 with Nederlandse Crediet­bank N.V. which increased its capital. The Group received 25 per­cent. The Chase Manhattan Bank holds 31%. The name Thyssen-Bornemisza Group was selected for the new holding com­pany.’ Thus the twin U.S. Archives, Gowen’s Dutch source, and the Thyssen family history all independently confirm that President Bush’s father and grandfather served on the board of a bank that was secretly owned by the leading Nazi industrialists. The Bush connection to these American institutions is a matter of public record. What no one knew, until Gowen’s brilliant research opened the door, was that the Thyssens were the secret employers of the Bush family.”

(Idem.)

30. The Loftus article deals with the Bush family’s awareness of the Thyssen-Bornemisza connection and its implications.

“But what did the Bush family know about their Nazi connection and when did they know it? As senior managers of Brown Brothers Harriman, they had to have known that their American clients, such as the Rockefellers, were investing heavily in German corporations, including Thyssen’s giant Vereinigte Stahlwerke. As noted historian Christopher Simpson repeatedly documents, it is a matter of public record that Brown Brother’s investments in Nazi Germany took place under the Bush family stewardship.”

(Ibid.; p. 6)

31.

“If Union Bank was not the conduit for laundering the Rockefeller’s Nazi investments back to America, then how could the Rockefeller-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank end up owning 31% of the Thysssen group after the war? It should be noted that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest industrial conglomerate in Germany, and with a net worth of more than $50 billion dol­lars, one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp family, famous arms makers for Hitler, leaving the Thyssens as the undisputed champion survivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up money to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II? The enormous sums of money deposited into the Union Bank prior to 1942 is the best evidence that Prescott Bush knowingly served as a money launderer for the Nazis.”

(Idem.)

32.

“A fortune this size could only have come from the Thyssen profits made from rearming the Third Reich, and then hidden, first from the Nazi tax auditors, and then from the Allies. The Bushes knew perfectly well that Brown Brothers was the American money channel into Nazi Germany, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi money back to America from Holland. The Bushes had to have known how the secret money circuit worked because they were on the board of directors in both directions: Brown Brothers out, Union Bank in. Moreover, the size of their compensation is commensurate with their risk as Nazi money launderers. In 1951, Prescott Bush and his father-in-law each received one share of Union Bank stock, worth $750,000 each. One and a half million dollars was a lot of money in 1951.”

(Idem.)

33. Further developing the subject of the disposition of the post­war disposition of the Bush/Nazi assets, the program highlights the placing of the Bush/Third Reich assets in a blind trust for George H.W. Bush’s heirs, including the current president.

“According to classified documents from Dutch intelligence and U.S. government archives, President George W. Bush’s grandfather, Prescott Bush made considerable profits off Auschwitz slave labor. In fact, President Bush himself is an heir to these profits from the holocaust which were placed in a blind trust in 1980 by his father, former president George Herbert Walker Bush.” (“Heir to the Holo­aust” by Toby Rogers [Clamor Magazine]; accessed at www.john-loftus.com/Thyssen.htm .)

34. Much of the conclusion of the program focuses on the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company, in turn controlled by the Bush/ Harriman venture called The Harriman 15 Corporation. (For more about this program, see, among other broad­casts, FTR#361.)

“Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush reestablished a holding company called The Harriman 15 Corporation. One of the companies Harriman had held stock in was the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation. . . On March 19, 1934, Prescott Bush handed Averell Harriman a copy of that day’s New York.”

(Ibid.; p. 6)

35. Because of its proximity to Auschwitz, the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation was one of the firms that utilized the camp’s slave labor capabilities. Prescott Bush allegedly helped to manage some of the Auschwitz labor force.

“Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation was located near the Polish town of Oswiecim, one of Poland’s richest mineral regions. That was where Hitler set up the Auschwitz concentra­ion camp. . . The prisoners of Auschwitz who were able to work were shipped to 30 different companies. One of the companies was the vast Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation. ‘Nobody’s made the connection before between Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, Auschwitz and Prescott Bush,’ John Loftus told Clamor. ‘That was the reason why Auschwitz was built there. The coal deposits could be processed into either coal or additives for aviation gasoline. . . A portion of the slave labor force in Poland was ‘managed by Prescott Bush,’ according to a Dutch intelligence agent.”

(Ibid.; p. 7)

36. The program con­cludes with review of the connection between the liquidation of UBC and the genesis of George H.W. Bush’s business ventures.

“That money enabled Bush to help his son, George Herbert Walker Bush, to set up his first royalty firm, Overby Development Company, that same year. It was also helpful when Prescott Bush left the business world to enter the public arena in 1952 with a successful senatorial campaign in Connecticut. On October 8th, 1972, Prescott Bush died of cancer and his will was enacted soon after. In 1980, when George H.W. Bush was elected vice president, he placed his father’s family inheritance in a blind trust. The trust was managed by his old friend and quail hunting partner, William ‘Stamps’ Farish III. Bush’s choice of Farish to manage the family wealth is quite revealing in that it demonstrates that the former president might know exactly where some of his inheritance originated. Farish’s Grandfather, William Farish Jr., on March 25th 1942, pleaded ‘no contest’ to conspiring with Nazi Germany while president of Standard Oil in New Jersey. He was described by Senator Harry Truman in public of approaching ‘trea­son’ for profiting off the Nazi war machine. Standard Oil invested millions in IG Farben, who opened a gasoline factory within Auschwitz in 1940.”

(Ibid.; pp.8–9)