nazigop

A Fresh Look
by Carla Binion

Nazis and the Republican Party

   Investigative reporter Christopher Simpson says in BLOWBACK that after World War II, Nazi émigrés were
   given CIA subsidies to build a far-right-wing power base in the U.S. These Nazis assumed prominent positions
   in the Republican Party's "ethnic outreach committees." Simpson documents the fact that these Nazis did not
   come to America as individuals but as part of organized groups with fascist political agendas. The Nazi agenda
   did not die along with Adolf Hitler. It moved to America (or a part of it did) and joined the far right of the
   Republican Party.

   Simpson shows how the State Department and the CIA put high-ranking Nazis on the intelligence payroll "for
   their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare," among other purposes. The most important Nazi
   employed by the U.S. was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler's most senior eastern front military intelligence officer. After
   Germany's defeat became certain, Gehlen offered the U.S. certain concessions in exchange for his own
   protection. Gehlen promoted hyped up cold war propaganda on behalf of the political right in this country, and
   helped shape U.S. perceptions of the cold war.

   Journalist Russ Bellant (OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY) shows that
   Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Nazi war collaborator, built the Republican émigré network. Pasztor, who served as
   adviser to Republican Paul Weyrich, belonged to the Hungarian Arrow Cross, a group that helped liquidate
   Hungary's Jews. Pasztor was founding chairman of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.

   Two months before the November 1988 presidential election, a small newspaper, Washington Jewish Week,
   disclosed that a coalition for the Bush campaign included a number of outspoken Nazis and anti-Semites. The
   article prompted six leaders of Bush's coalition to resign.

According to Russ Bellant, Nazi collaborators involved in the Republican Party included:

      1.Radi Slavoff, GOP Heritage Council's executive director, and head of "Bulgarians for Bush." Slavoff was a
        member of a Bulgarian fascist group, and he put together an event in Washington honoring Holocaust
        denier, Austin App.

2.Florian Galdau, director of GOP outreach efforts among Romanians, and head of "Romanians for Bush."
Galdau was once an Iron Guard recruiter, and he defended convicted Nazi war criminal Valerian Trifa.

3.Nicholas Nazarenko, leader of a Cossack GOP ethnic unit. Nazarenko was an ex-Waffen SS officer.

4.Method Balco, GOP activist. Balco organized yearly memorials for a Nazi puppet regime.

5.Walter Melianovich, head of the GOP's Byelorussian unit. Melianovich worked closely with many Nazi
groups.

6.Bohdan Fedorak, leader of "Ukrainians for Bush." Fedorak headed a Nazi group involved in anti-Jewish
wartime pogroms.

   The Philadelphia Inquirer ran an article on the Bush team's inclusion of Nazis (David Lee Preston, "Fired Bush
   backer one of several with possible Nazi links," September 10, 1988.) The newspaper also ran an investigative
   series on Nazi members of the Bush coalition. The article confirmed that the Bush team included members
   listed by Russ Bellant.

   Journalist Martin A. Lee, has written for The Nation, Rolling Stone, The San Francisco Chronicle, and other
   publications. In THE BEAST REAWAKENS, Lee confirms that during both the Reagan and Bush years, the
   Republican Party's ethnic outreach arm recruited members from the Nazi émigré network.

   Lee says that the Republican Party's ethnic outreach division had an outspoken hatred of President Jimmy
   Carter's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), an organization dedicated to tracking down and prosecuting Nazi
   war collaborators who entered this country illegally. Former Republican Pat Buchanan attacked Carter's OSI
   after it deported a few suspected Nazi war criminals.

   According to Lee, public relations man Harold Keith Thompson was principal U.S. point man for the postwar
   Nazi support network known as die Spinne, or the Spider. In the late 40s and early 50s, Thompson worked as
   the chief North American representative for the remaining National Socialist German Worker's Party and the
   SS. Lee writes that the wealthy Thompson gave generously to Republican candidates Senator Jesse Helms and
   would-be senator Oliver North. Thompson's money gained him membership in the GOP's Presidential Legion
   of Merit. Lee says Thompson also "received numerous thank-you letters from the Republican National
   Committee." Those letters are now in the Hoover Institute Special Collections Library.

   Christopher Simpson writes in BLOWBACK that in 1983, Ronald Reagan presented a Medal of Freedom, the
   country's highest civilian honor, to CIA émigré program consultant James Burnham. Burnham was a
   psychological warfare consultant who promoted something called "liberationism." Just before the 1952 election,
   the CIA worked up a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign aimed at selling Americans on expanding
   cold war activities in Europe. Part of the guiding theory (given the name "liberationism") was the idea that
   certain Nazi leaders from World War II should be brought in as "freedom fighters" against the USSR.

   Reagan said that Burnham's ideas on liberation "profoundly affected the way America views itself and the
   world," adding, "I owe [Burnham] a personal debt, because throughout the years of traveling on the
   mashed-potato circuit I have quoted [him] widely." Reagan may not have known Burnham's theories were
   based on his work on projects that enlisted many Nazi collaborators, but it seems that Reagan's CIA Director
   Casey or former CIA Director, Vice President George Bush, would have informed him.

   At a May 9, 1984 press conference, Simon Wiesenthal said, "Nazi criminals were the principal beneficiaries of
   the Cold War." The cold war mentality, hyped by Reinhard Gehlen and other Nazis, became the shelter for tens
   of thousands of Nazi criminals. Helping the far right in this country to promote cold war hysteria became the
   Nazi war criminals "reason for being." As Christopher Simpson says, the cold war became those criminals'
   means "to avoid responsibility for the murders they had committed."

   Journalist Seymour Hersh says Christopher Simpson's BLOWBACK is "the ultimate book about the worst
   kind of cold war thinking, in which some of our most respected statesmen made shameful decisions that they
   mistakenly believed to be justified." To this day, says Simpson, the U.S. intelligence agencies hide the scope of
   their post-World War II collaboration with Nazi criminals.

   Are Republicans like George H. W. Bush, Oliver North, and Jesse Helms, aware they have been assisted by
   Nazi collaborators? Bush once worked for the CIA and should have known about the nature of the Nazis in his
   '88 campaign. No doubt he knows the history of Nazi/CIA collaboration. Whether or not Bush knew of the
   fascists' involvement in his campaign, the Republican Party should have done a far better screening job. One
   thing is certain: The intelligence agencies know the scope and extent of Nazi involvement with the political
   right in this country. It is a shame they keep it hidden from the majority of the American people.