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Russia in the crosshairs: NATO's next target?

category international | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis author Friday March 16, 2007 20:35author by Brian Report this post to the editors

The world is in a state of chasis as Sean O'Casey might say. Since the advent of George Bush to the White House every other year seems to bring forth a war or talk of war. Few commentators believe that this will stop at Iraq. Last July even Newt Gingrich was quoted as saying that "we are in the early stages of what I would describe as the third world war..."(1) Many people are now openly speculating about who is next. Syria? North Korea? Saudi Arabia? And especially Iran are the subject of fevered speculation even in the established media. This writer would just like to opt for Russia as the next ultimate target.

Of course the obvious thing to do in this analysis of US/NATO intentions is to look at the real reasons why the US went into Iraq and then use that and apply it to Russia to see if they might wish to invade it. I am guided here by the revelations of Karen Kwiatkovski, a Lieutenant Colonel who served in the Pentagon during the run up to the last Iraq war. She describes some three or four issues that dominated the thinking of the Pentagon prior to the invasion, beginning with the question of US bases:
1) "One reason has to do with enhancing our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. There was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia, and thus the troubled monarchy. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter — to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important — that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in."(2)
Apparently then they wanted to establish themselves more centrally in the Middle East region, and right on top of the oil reserves. Iraq gave them that, it gives them extensive borders with nearly all the Middle East countries. The value of this is that in their future negotiations with say Syria and Iran they can threaten those countries with invasions from all sides. This threat can then hang over those countries and they can be more amenable to US pressure as a result.
If you look at Russia then it is a hugely strategic country in that way. If you could locate bases in Russia it gives you strategic access all the way from Central Europe, Kalingrad, to China and Japan, dominating all the oil and gas fields in between. Russia looks more and more isolated in that sense because they definitely do not permit NATO bases on their soil. Almost all of Europe, and much of the rest of the world, seems to have succumbed to US/NATO influence and permit bases within their borders. These bases could be in a way a sign of a country's sovereignty, if you have them then you aren't an independent country. Only India and China look like important countries that remain sovereign and outside US/NATO influence. But these are obviously compact countries with huge militaries and anyway few natural resources that aren't absorbed by their own populations. Russia is spread out across 12 time zones making it more vulnerable to attack, its military hardware was, until recently anyway, rusting away, and they are sitting on huge untapped natural resources like oil, gas, wood, diamonds etc. They are also outside some of these supranational organisations like the EU which often seems to work in close concert with the US.
Some prominent Russians are looking at the ever tightening ring of US bases that surround them and are wondering what this bodes for the near future. This is from Aleksander Solzhenitsyn speaking in April last year:
'"Though it is clear that present-day Russia poses no threat to it, NATO is methodically and persistently building up its military machine - into the east of Europe and surrounding Russia from the south," Solzhenitsyn was quoted as saying.
"This involves open material and ideological support for 'colour revolutions' and the paradoxical forcing of North Atlantic interests on Central Asia," he reportedly said, adding that there was "little substantial difference" between the actions of the US and NATO.
"All this leaves no doubt that they are preparing to completely encircle Russia and deprive it of its sovereignty," Solzhenitsyn was quoted as saying.' (3)

2) Lieut. Col. Kwiatkovski also worked on some of the "information manipulation" that went on prior to the war: "What the [Douglas] Feith group and the Office of Special Plans was doing was information manipulation, not the production of what we legitimately call "intelligence."... Unlike intelligence, this effort was designed not to inform decision makers, but to shape a national conversation such that decisions already made by the administration (to topple Saddam and get bases in Iraq) could be pursued without political backlash." In the Pentagon they were cooking up this brew of "propaganda and falsehoods" and feeding it into the big US media organisations like the New York Times etc, with a view to preparing the US public for a war they had already decided on waging.(4) This widespread, and quite long term, media manipulation by the US and UK intelligence agencies prior to the Iraq war has been confirmed by countless other sources too like the Downing St. memo. The effect, and intention, was to brainwash the public in those countries into believing all kinds of total nonsense about Iraq to smooth the path for the army to go in.

It just seems to this observer anyway that the Western media are now doing that with respect to Russia. Personally I think that both Politskaya and Litvinenko were genuine Russian heroes, and deserved to be honoured as such, but the hype that surrounded their deaths appears unusually critical of Russia.(5) Look at Ireland and the fate of Martin O'Hagan as a comparison. His death received nothing like the media publicity that even the Irish media bestowed on the two Russians. Maybe then the media drift points to war against Russia ? Or at least some action in the short term like sanctions?

3) She gives another slightly less well known reason why they went into Iraq:
"Another reason is a uniquely American rationale, and it relates to our currency, and our debt situation. Saddam Hussein decided in November 2000 to sell his Food for Oil program oil sales in euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren't very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving from the dollar to the euro.

The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a bigtime debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar...
In any case, the first executive order regarding Iraq that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar."(6)
I'm sure this seems somewhat complicated, or unimportant, to some but it is often mentioned by others as a key factor in modern politics today. This is my tuppence worth as to how it works:

The US dollar is a fiat currency which means that you hold no collateral when you own a US dollar. It is just paper, its a confidence thing, you are confident that somebody will take it from you and give you value for it so you don't care that it is not backed up by gold or anything like that. If it is just paper then why doesn't the US govt. just print off a whole load of dollars and pay all its public wage bill like that, for example? Some countries have actually done that, like Mobutu in Zaire, but the problem is that this new money just sloshes around putting up prices, then you have to increase that wage bill so govt. employees can continue to afford the essentials, and so set off a disastrous inflationary cycle which in time would destroy all native businesses. But the beauty of it for the US govt. right now is that other countries are buying these dollars, which they are just printing off for free, so there is no native inflationary cycle. They can do this because it is an international reserve currency. Foreign governments need to hold dollars specifically because they need them to buy oil. Hence the fact that oil sales are nearly always denominated in dollars is central to US economic well being. Of course its all more complicated than that but this I think is the basic setup. The US govt. is running up huge debts using this kind of funny money dollar, which are in turn purchased by foreign governments who need them to buy oil, and then this money is used to build up the unbeatable huge US military apparatus. Or something like that, this is a quote from Paul Roberts explaining the current situation, he was Treasury Undersecretary under Ronald Reagan and a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal:
"The Bush Regime’s ability to wage war is dependent upon foreign financing. The Regime’s wars are financed with red ink, which means the hundreds of billions of dollars must be borrowed. As American consumers are spending more than they earn on consumption, the money cannot be borrowed from Americans.

The US is totally dependent upon foreigners to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime’s military aggressions and war crimes. The Bush Regime’s two largest lenders are China and Japan. It is ironic that Japan, the only nation to experience nuclear attack by the US, is banker to the Bush Regime as it prepares a possible nuclear attack on Iran.

If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war. The arrogant hubris associated with the “sole superpower” myth would burst like the bubble it is.

The collapse of the dollar would also end the US government’s ability to subvert other countries by purchasing their leaders to do America’s will.

The demise of the US dollar is only a question of time. It would save the world from war and devastation if the dollar is brought to its demise before the Bush Regime launches its planned attack on Iran."(7)

Iran certainly is thinking of changing over its oil sales from dollars to the euro, which is maybe why it is talked about so much as a possible target, but also Russia is quietly thinking of 'reforming' its oil trades away from the use of the dollar.(8) Such speculation may be going down badly in Washington.

A related point is that the Western powers might be anxious to restrict the supply of oil onto the world markets because this then puts up the price which in turn provides better support for the dollar.(Obviously if Japan say purchases x amount of dollars to buy oil at $20 dollars a barrel, it will now have to buy three times the amount of dollars to pay for the same amount of oil at $60 a barrel, so providing a nice parachute for the dollar.) As well as that from the point of view of the western oil companies a higher oil price simply allows them to charge a higher price at the pumps, which pads out their profits very nicely. Don't be under any illusions these oil companies are not buying that wholesale oil at the current $74 world market price, they simply sell at that price! They have their own longterm reserves that they are drawing on. So it is not surprising to hear that in 2004 British Petroleum's "rule of thumb" was that a dollar increase in the Brent price of crude oil added $570 million dollars to their pre-tax profits in a full year.(9) This would be the extra profit for every dollar increase from c.$20 a barrel. As you can see at current oil prices we are talking astronomical profits!

These oil companies are quite influential in all western countries - some would even include Shell in Ireland in that category - and might in fact be involved in artificially inflating the oil price right now, by restricting the supply and no doubt other means. Clearly the world economy has been there and done that in the 70s and here are a few interesting comments on that period from the famous Saudi oil minister Sheikh Yamani:
"His voice quickens further when he reminisces about the era of great oil
diplomacy in the Seventies and his contemporary, former US Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger.

At this point he makes an extraordinary claim: 'I am 100 per cent sure that
the Americans were behind the increase in the price of oil. The oil companies
were in real trouble at that time, they had borrowed a lot of money and they
needed a high oil price to save them.'

He says he was convinced of this by the attitude of the Shah of Iran, who
in one crucial day in 1974 moved from the Saudi view, that a hike would be
dangerous to Opec because it would alienate the US, to advocating higher
prices.

'King Faisal sent me to the Shah of Iran, who said: "Why are you against
the increase in the price of oil? That is what they want? Ask Henry Kissinger
- he is the one who wants a higher price".'

Yamani contends that proof of his long-held belief has recently emerged in
the minutes of a secret meeting on a Swedish island, where UK and US officials
determined to orchestrate a 400 per cent increase in the oil price."(10)
That was in an interview in the Observer. It makes interesting reading doesn't it? The point is that if something like that is happening now Russia would have to play a huge part in it because she is now I think the world's largest oil exporter. Basically then if the Western powers want to continue to manipulate the oil price then they need to have control over Russia because otherwise she could undercut them in the marketplace. This might again be another reason to put Russia in the crosshairs.

4) I would add in another point about the invasion of Iraq that Kwiatkovski doesn't mention. While it might seem a strange reason I think that those Western leaders that dealt with Saddam Hussein over the years, like famously Donald Rumsfeld, might have been anxious to get into Baghdad simply to control the flow of information from there. They might have liked to seize their archives and imprison their leading intelligence and diplomatic figures in order to cover up the close relationship between the neocons and Saddam Hussein in the 80s. It might strike some as an unusual reason to give but I think if you were in Rumsfeld's shoes, and George Bush Sr's, then it might be a quietly good reason to get into Baghdad in a hurry.

This kind of reason would make even more sense if you compare it to Russia today. Many members of the elite in Eastern Europe, who are now in the EU and NATO, rose to prominence during communist times and might not be uninterested in what is locked away in Russian archives and in the memories of old KGB agents.(11) This might even include prominent clerical figures like famously members of the Polish hierarchy.(12) Some of these intelligence leaks that are now coming out of Moscow are also hitting closer to home among the elites in Western Europe. One English MEP announced in the EU parliament that Litvinenko before his death had fingered Romano Prodi as a leading old KGB agent. This MEP, Gerard Batten, clearly now thinks that that was the reason for his assassination.(13) Obviously Romano Prodi has recently served as EU President which makes you wonder under what kind of influence the EU is now under. Another interesting leak has come from Vladimir Bukovsky who is a prominent Russian veteran of the gulags. He managed to get access to some of the Soviet Union archives in 1991 at a time when Boris Yeltsin wanted his help in fighting a major constitutional court case in Moscow. He says that some of these Russian documents show that the EU was designed as a western clone of the Soviet Union, particularly from the mid 80s on. This was as part of a secret alliance between some of the European parties and Gorbachov. Apparently this alliance began when Valery Giscaird d'Estaing visited Moscow representing the Trilateral Group, and pressed for Soviet help in deepening and expanding the EU. According then to this important Russian dissident it is 'no accident' that EU institutions work exactly like Soviet ones:
"The Soviets came to a conclusion and to an agreement with the left-wing parties that if they worked together they could hijack the whole European project and turn it upside down. Instead of an open market they would turn it into a federal state.

According to the [secret Soviet] documents, 1985-86 is the turning point. I have published most of these documents. You might even find them on the internet. But the conversations they had are really eye opening. For the first time you understand that there is a conspiracy – quite understandable for them, as they were trying to save their political hides. In the East the Soviets needed a change of relations with Europe because they were entering a protracted and very deep structural crisis; in the West the left-wing parties were afraid of being wiped out and losing their influence and prestige. So it was a conspiracy, quite openly made by them, agreed upon, and worked out.
....
It is no accident that the European Parliament, for example, reminds me of the Supreme Soviet. It looks like the Supreme Soviet because it was designed like it. Similarly, when you look at the European Commission it looks like the Politburo. I mean it does so exactly, except for the fact that the Commission now has 25 members and the Politburo usually had 13 or 15 members. Apart from that they are exactly the same, unaccountable to anyone, not directly elected by anyone at all."(14)
In any case you can easily see then why the Western political establishment might like to cut off once and for all this intelligence flow from Moscow. Anymore leaks like this and it will shake the complacency of the Europeans about the EU project!

I might mention one potential flaw in the above reasoning. Why would the very right wing neocon group want to go to war against Russia to protect the good names of these socialist figures in Europe? Aren't they their enemies, opposite sides of the ideological coin? Frankly you'd wonder how much those differences really matter at the high level of the political establishment while they seem to occupy all the time of the lower ranks. Think about some of these extreme left figures in Ireland at the time, the Workers Party say, who might - and I'm not making any accusations - be uncommonly interested in those archives. They seem to get on quite well now in the upper reaches of the Irish state and commerce, in the media, judiciary, the Labour party, in some famous cases arguing an extreme right wing philosophy as aggressively as they did a leftwing one before. Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong at all with changing your opinions, or holding them and receiving high office at the same time, but the list of senior figures that seem to oscillate freely between the extremes of this spectrum makes this writer feel that those ideological differences are not taken seriously among the powers that be.(15) Half the time I think they are just bamboozling the general public, hiding the real political drifts behind endless talk about where this or that policy or person stands in the right/left political spectrum.
This is Karen Kwiatkovski's impression of neocon ideology which she must have known quite well:
"Neoconservative ideology does not embrace free trade in the sense that libertarians or Adam Smith embrace it, but instead prefers significant state involvement and leans towards a social democratic model of domestic governing." (16) So its all kind of mixed up ! Looking at things from a left/right perspective only clouds what is really going on? This is Ashley Mote's impression of the big political power plays in the EU parliament that he is a member of:
"Such as it is, the EU’s parliament has a built-in majority in favour of the social market. It is the repository of an unspoken agreement between the left and the multinationals. This ‘understanding’ appears to have the backing of the bureaucratic elite..."(17)
Presumable the neocons and multinationals favour heavy native government control over a country's economy because they usually exercise more influence over the government than the ordinary people, and so as the government's power increases so does theirs. Look at Rossport for example. Shell had no trouble getting land from Coillte, and every other facility from government bodies, and was only upset in its plans by the fact that some of the land was privately owned. Even stranger alliances are possible behind the scenes, consider this quote from an OSS report on Giovanni Montini's secret diplomacy in 1944:
"... the discussion between Msgr. Montini and Togliatti was the first direct contact between a high prelate of the Vatican and a leader of Communism. After having examined the situation, they acknowledged the potential possibility of a contingent alliance between Catholics and Communists in Italy which would give the three parties -- Christian Democrats, Socialists and Communists -- an absolute majority, thereby enabling them to dominate any political situation. A tentative plan was drafted to forge the basis on which the agreement between the three parties could be made."(18)
This is a very important report because of the personalities involved, Montini was arguably the most influential Vatican diplomat for some 30 years before his death as Pope Paul VI in 1978, and the OSS officer who dealt with this was probably James Angleton who served later as CIA chief of Counter Intelligence. These people don't mess around with idle fancies, this was possibly a serious reflection of things to come. But how could these parties come together like this, what about all those ideological differences? The more you read of the Cold War the more you think that all these ideological differences are only to amuse and divide the plebs while the big shots run off with the loot!(19)
I might as well leave you with one final comforting thought :-) It might not have escaped your attention that Russia is bristling with long range nuclear weapons, the only part of their arsenal that never rusted, and they have every intention of using them against the civilian population of an invading country. 'Interesting times' and all that !

Footnotes
I'd just like to thank in advance any commentators because sometimes I don't get a chance to reply later, for whatever reason...:-) Happy St. Patrick's day too to all out there!
1. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/7/16/155736.shtml

2. http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski128.html .

3. http://www.hinduonnet.com/holnus/003200604280921.htm .

4. "What the Feith group and the Office of Special Plans was doing was information manipulation, not the production of what we legitimately call "intelligence." Intelligence is vetted, contextualized, and conservative. What Feith's OSP wanted, needed and produced was inflammatory bits of data, cherry-picked statements, and isolated observations by often shady characters, presented as if they were vetted, contextualized and conservative intelligence. Unlike intelligence, this effort was designed not to inform decision makers, but to shape a national conversation such that decisions already made by the administration (to topple Saddam and get bases in Iraq) could be pursued without political backlash. That's what Doug Feith and his folks did for Bush and Cheney in the Pentagon." After it was compiled "the offices fed information directly and indirectly to sympathetic media outlets, including the Rupert Murdoch-owned 'Weekly Standard' and FoxNews Network, as well as the editorial pages of the 'Wall Street Journal' and syndicated columnists, such as Charles Krauthammer."(http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0703/S00070.htm and http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0807-02.htm). A bit more from her from this interview:
"It seems clear that many in the Congress were fed OSP derived and developed information and talking points from the Pentagon -- and that this information was believed by those Congressmen to be "intelligence" instead of propaganda and falsehoods. Frankly, I believe that many in Congress wanted this invasion of Iraq, and didn't care if what they were seeing from Feith, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld was true or not. This is why "politicized" intelligence – the focus of the so-called Part II investigation was so critical, and so successfully opposed and blocked by many Senators and Congressmen.
It seems even more certain that the New York Times and other major papers were fed the same type of material by Pentagon and Office of the Vice President as if it were verified intelligence, and that they believed that it was. Doug Feith today denies he did anything wrong at all. Feith and many of the neoconservatives are fundamentally ethically challenged when it comes to American national security. Given everything we know, it is unlikely any of these war advocates told the truth to Congress about the story they were helping to "sell" to Congress and the rest of the country back in 2002 and early 2003."

5. They were already mentioned here on indymedia at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/70223 .

6. http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski128.html .

7. www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17035.htm . Who knows maybe they will also attack Iran but I still think that Russia is the ultimate prize. This is from an article in the Observer:
"The majority of countries that require oil imports require dollars to pay for their fuel. Oil exporters similarly hold, as their currency reserve, billions in the currency in which they are paid. Investing these petrodollars straight back into the US economy is possible at zero currency risk.

So the US can carry on printing money - effectively IOUs - to fund tax cuts, increased military spending, and consumer spending on imports without fear of inflation or that these loans will be called in. As keeper of the global currency there is always the last-ditch resort to devaluation, which forces other countries' exporters to pay for US economic distress. It's probably the nearest thing to a 'free lunch' in global economics."
.....[Then it goes on to talk about the euro and whether that might take over from the dollar, and shows that the Saudi government, at least, knows well the importance to the US of pricing oil in dollars :]
" 'The Saudis are holding the line on oil prices in Opec and should they, for example, go along with the rest of the Opec people in demanding that oil be priced in euros, that would deal a very heavy blow to the American economy,' Youssef Ibrahim, of the influential US Council on Foreign Relations, told CNN.

Last year the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia told a committee of the US Congress: 'One of the major things the Saudis have historically done, in part out of friendship with the United States, is to insist that oil continues to be priced in dollars. Therefore, the US Treasury can print money and buy oil, which is an advantage no other country has. With the emergence of other currencies and with strains in the relationship, I wonder whether there will not again be, as there have been in the past, people in Saudi Arabia who raise the question of why they should be so kind to the United States.' " (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,90....html)

8. For talk of Russia, and Iran, changing from the dollar trade in oil see .e.g. http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20060627/50549408.html .

9. The Times 5 Oct. 2004 p.46. I think this was their source: http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGI...n.pdf . Here is a quote from that report showing these sort of figures:
"For the purposes of cash returns analysis, BP adjusts for a blend of oil and natural gas prices. As a simplifying assumption, a blended marker price is calculated using a 60% / 40% Brent [crude oil price] / Henry Hub [Natural Gas price] weighting. A pre-tax adjustment of $800 million is then applied to the Group's RCP BIT [Replacement Cost Profit Before Interest and Tax] for every $1 change in this blended marker price while a post-tax adjustment of $475 million for every $1 change in blended marker price is applied to the Group's RCP. Although this is merely an estimation, statistical analysis has shown that over the 2000-2003 period changes in this blended Brent / Henry Hub price are correlated to changes in the Group's RCP BIT / RCP, with $800 million and $475m per $1 change representing the magnitude of this relationship."

10. The Observer 14 Jan 2001 http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,42....html .

11. This story has blown up again with the drama in Poland involving the Archbishop of Warsaw, you can follow some of the political earthquakes that are being caused by this in all East European countries in the Financial Times 29 Jan 2007 p.15.

12. As everybody knows Archbishop Stanisław Wielgus resigned the See of Warsaw and admitted to being a long term Communist agent. There are all kinds of rumours that the Vatican knew this full well before they appointed him which has attracted some gossip: http://www.polskieradio.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=46315, one of many Polish bishops and clergy who were communist spies apparently: http://www.traditio.com/comment/com0703.htm .

13. Speech by Gerard Batten MEP to the European Parliament :
"Mr President, I should like to pay tribute to my constituent, Mr Alexander Litvinenko. Alexander was fearless in exposing the political gangsters that now run Russia, and the creatures of the KGB and FSB that still hold political office in Europe. For his bravery, he paid the ultimate price.
In April, I made two speeches in this Parliament repeating allegations made to me by Alexander that Romano Prodi had been an agent of some kind of the KGB. Alexander told me that the key figure to understanding Mr Prodi’s alleged relationship with the KGB in the 1970s was a man named Sokolov, also known as Konopkine, who worked for TASS in Italy.
Since Alexander can no longer testify to this effect, as he was ready, willing and able to do, I am pleased to provide this service for him posthumously."
(Speech made on Wednesday 29th November, Brussels http://www.ukip.org/ukip_news/gen12.php?t=1&id=2765 .)

Batten says that Litvinenko was told this by Colonel-General Anatoly Trofimov, a former deputy chief of the FSB the successor organisation to the KGB.
"Alexander Litvinenko was known to want to testify about allegations regarding Russian intelligence links to European political leaders and Russian intelligence involvement within organised crime in Europe prior to his assassination. "(http://kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/11/27/6559.shtml see also http://www.ukip.org/ukip_news/gen12.php?t=1&id=2055 )

14. http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865 . He describes how he got access to these archives here: http://bukovsky-archives.net/buk-intro.html .

15. Just to take a few examples:
Armand Hammer
Some say a billionaire, he was certainly extremely wealthy, he was one of the biggest oil magnates in the US in the 20th century and yet even his name comes from the Soviet flag!. "Politically, Hammer was a staunch supporter of the Republican party", with high up White House connections, a close friend of Al Gore and his father and, believe it or not, knew both Vladimir Lenin and Ronald Reagan. His father, a friend of Lenin's since 1907, was the founder of the Communist Party in the US and it was discovered later that Armand himself was a Soviet agent. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer , http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/armand_h...r.htm and www.amazon.com/Dossier-Secret-History-Armand-Hammer/dp/0786706775).

Viktor Rothschild
Another business person worth looking at is the incredibly wealthy Viktor Rothschild. As a socialist he joined the Cambridge Apostles while at University, a secret society of a 'mainly Marxist' hue. This has lead to much speculation that he in fact was the fifth man in the Soviet spy ring along with his close friends Burgess and Blunt etc. During and after the war he was a senior, if unofficial, figure in the UK intelligence world, for decades friendly with the heads of MI6 and 5, head of research for Shell Oil, ran an influential 'Think Tank' in 10 Downing St under Ted Heath, and was security adviser to Margaret Thatcher.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Rothschild,_3rd_Bar...child , http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/perry.html and http://www.savethemales.ca/001411.html)

Nelson Rockefeller
The CIA Director, Walter Smith, warned Eisenhower that Nelson Rockefeller was a Communist spy. Obviously the Rockefellers are among the richest, and most influential, banking families in the US. (Stephen E. Ambrose "Ike's Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment"(Jackson, 1999) p.170)

John Reid the current UK Home Secretary.
This is a quote from Craig Murray, the former UK diplomat: "For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling University he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer," (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line."
(http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2006/08/looks-like-....html)

Here is a bit of gossip picked up by W. Cleon Skousen, formerly of the FBI and Chief of Police in Salt Lake City, in discussions with a former senior official in the US Communist Party: "Dr. Dodd said she first became aware of some mysterious super-leadership right after World War II when the US Communist Party had difficulty getting instructions from Moscow on several vital matters requiring immediate attention. The American Communist hierarchy was told that any time they had an emergency of this kind they should contact any one of three designated persons at [New York City's] Waldorf Towers. Dr. Dodd noted that whenever the party obtained instructions from any of these three men, Moscow always ratified them. What puzzled Dr. Dodd was the fact that not one of these three contacts was a Russian. Nor were any of them Communists. In fact, all three of them were extremely wealthy American capitalists!"(http://www.natall.com/american-dissident-voices/adv0305....html)
Skousen is also the source for a list of aims of the Communist Party in the US, read into the Congressional Record in 1963 you can read them at http://kentroversypapers.blogspot.com/2006/02/forty-fiv....html .

16. http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski128.html .

17. http://www.newswithviews.com/guest_opinion/guest65.htm .

18. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n5p26_Martinez.html , a fuller quotation from the document is given in Piers Compton (1984)"The Broken Cross" (http://www.walkinthelight.ca/the_broken_cross_part_thre...e.htm). The document is numbered as JR1022 and I think was first revealed in Richard Harris Smith "OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency." (Berkeley, 1972).
Pope Paul VI is accused of being both an OSS and a KGB agent. For some of the OSS links see the radio interview with Attorney Jonathan Levy on 27 Feb 2006 http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0602/20060227_Mon_Greg1.mp3 and http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Greg/0602/20060227_Mon_Greg2.mp3 . Also
http://www.maebrussell.com/Bibliography%20Sheets/346347....html , http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/betrayalp5.htm and www.cia-on-campus.org/yale.edu/henwood.html .

The KGB allegations:
"Then in 1954 he was suddenly 'dismissed' to Milan under circumstances which have never been entirely clear. Myra Davidoglou documents the following facts: In July of 1944 Montini offered his services without the knowledge of Pius XII to the Soviet Union through the offices of his childhood friend Togliatti (then head of the Communist Party in Italy). The details of this sinister affair were exposed to the Pope by the Archbishop Primate of the Protestant Church in Sweden who was a state official and as such had access to governmental intelligence reports. This information came as a shock to Pius XII. An enquiry was made and among other things it was found that Montini's private secretly, the Jesuit Tondi, was a Russian agent and the man responsible for giving the Soviets the names of Catholic priests who were being sent into Russia. This explained why they were all being immediately caught and executed (54). The upshot of this was that Montini was exiled to Milan without the traditional red hat."(http://www.wandea.org.pl/giovanni-montini.html)

19. For more curious tales from the Cold War I think another look at the Solidarity movement might be in order. The new revelations in Poland about extensive secret police infiltration of the Catholic church are I think impacting now on their understanding of the that movement. Many are now wondering about how genuinely free of Communist influence it really was. This is an example of that type of speculation:
"Last month the headlines from Eastern Europe reported that Lech Walesa, the anti-communist Soldarity leader and former Polish president,
had been accused of working for the secret police by Piotr Naimski, former head of the Polish secret service.
Naimski claims to have seen Walesa's file, which lists the former Gdansk shipyard electrician as a secret agent
of the communists, recruited in the early 1970s, code-named Bolek. Walesa denies the charges, which have
been officially dismissed on more than one occasion. But if Walesa was an agent of the communists from the
start, who is to say the communists haven't been calling the shots all along?
As it happens, the stories about Walesa go way back. Ten years ago Dr. Wojcieck Myslecki, former managing
director of Warsaw's Technical University, told me that Solidarity was a communist front. He called it a
"controlled opposition movement." Myslecki also told of Lech Walesa's pro-communist activities before being
elevated to a starring role in Poland's liberalization process. Myslecki was quite clear in making his allegations:
Walesa was an agent of the secret police, who helped the communists infiltrate and control Solidarity for many
years.
Myslecki's testimony is of particular interest because it agrees with the analysis of KGB defector Anatoliy
Golitsyn, who wrote of Solidarity's role in his 1984 book "New Lies for Old." According to Golitsyn the
communists were using organizations like Poland's Solidarity to attempt "previously unthinkable stratagems"
such as "the introduction of false liberalization in Eastern Europe and, probably, in the Soviet Union. ..."
Golitsyn wrote that the West did not understand communist strategy and disinformation. The appearance of
Solidarity in Poland, he explained, "has been accepted as a spontaneous occurrence comparable with the
Hungarian revolt of 1956 and as portending the demise of communism in Poland." But one has to question
Solidarity's credentials, warned Golitsyn, pointing out that the French, Italian and Spanish communist parties
"all took up pro-Solidarity positions."
Golitsyn further pointed to evidence that Poland's emerging democratic movement "was prepared and controlled
from the outset within the framework of bloc policy and strategy.".... Even Zofia Gryzb, who sat in the politburo, was a
leading Solidarity figure. But none of these people were expelled from the party of Marx and Lenin for anti-
socialist agitation.
Golitsyn and Myslecki would argue that Poland's democratic movement was orchestrated and guided by the
communists from the start. According to their way of thinking, Solidarity was one of many superficially anti-
communist organizations built by the communists. Those who worked closely with the secret police -- like
Walesa -- received special publicity. Cameras were put on them. Their faces were broadcast around the world.
Such people would build popular organizations under communist control, especially organizations that would
be accepted as "liberal" in the West. But the communist bloc would remain in existence, as always, beneath the
surface."
The publicity given to this Solidarity Movement must have overshadowed what was said to have been a more authentic opposition group:
"Look at what happened to Farmers' Solidarity," says [Andrew] Suda. "It was a genuine grass roots organization."
As it happened, the Polish secret police could not allow Farmers' Solidarity to survive under Warsaw's
controlled democracy. Therefore, in short order, Farmers' Solidarity was afflicted with a rash of mysterious
deaths, accidents and arrests -- until that organization ceased to matter."
(By J.R. Nyquist for WorldNetDaily.com in 1999 and 2000, http://www.aisjca-mft.org/suda.pdf)

At the same time everybody agrees that the Solidarity movement was backed enthusiastically by the West, especially the CIA, as even Time magazine acknowledged:
"Now comes Time with a cover story on the "holy alliance" between President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II--their intimate and active collaboration to keep the Solidarity labor union alive in Poland after Brezhnev's henchmen imposed martial law in 1981.
It is a dramatic and even glowing investigative account--under the byline of red-diaper baby Carl Bernstein, no less--detailing how the Church operated as a vast network shielding and nurturing Solidarity's underground activities inside Poland; how the Vatican and the United States Government constantly exchanged information and coordinated many of their actions; and how the United States, especially the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy, along with the AFL-CIO, provided another lifeline of vital resources."
(http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n5_v...37629)

Food for thought on the goings on of the Cold War? Are both sides conspiring to hoodwink the people of Poland? Here are two further sources in the same vein:

'Red Symphony' is the name given to the transcript of the interrogation of Christian G. Rakovsky, onetime Soviet ambassador to Paris, by Stalin's agents in Moscow in 1938. (http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/red-symphony.html)

Anthony Sutton "The Best Enemy Money Can Buy" (http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/best_enemy/index.html) is an academic work detailing the astonishing assistance given to the Soviet Union by the west during the Cold War. See also Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution by the same author at http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_r....html .

author by Brianpublication date Thu Apr 03, 2014 19:19author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I don't agree now with the detail in footnotes 18 and 19 above, I don't believe any Pope was a communist agent but no doubt the Soviets tried to infiltrate the Vatican over the years and would have succeeded with some.
But otherwise I think this might be a topical article? It's also a chapter in this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0955681227/ .

 
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