Even the USSR had NAZIs on the payroll.
Can you show me where you got that information? Seems highly doubtful, USSR was really blunt in those issues, I would imagine them killing or imprisoning every prisoner instead of 'buying' them...
I trust no one here is at all surprised by this revelation.
I actually made a research on an ex-Nazi on CIA payroll in Bolivia few months ago so I will post that here, I had actually started this by studying on twenty first century Bolivian History but it developed in a different way, topic pushing me in new directions so it is still relative relative but I also talk a lot about Bolivian history.
CIA, BOLIVIA AND KLAUS BARBIE
Nationalist Revolutionary Movement and Barrientos Coup
In 1935, Bolivia was a country which had just lost a war against Paraguay. A great loss of life and territory had occurred. Government was only loyal against the upper class that weren’t in a very good condition, and working class was suffering deeply and there were wide dissatisfaction in the country. The country suffered until 1952, when an organization called Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) took power, with the support of the people in the country. They had actually won the 1951 elections, but their victory was denied, so they organized a successful revolution against the government. The 1952 revolution began when a hunger march through La Paz attracted most sectors of society. The Bolivian military was severely demoralized, and the high command called unsuccessfully for unity in the armed forces; many officers assigned themselves abroad, charged each other with coup attempts, or deserted. MNR tried everything, finally they made the army surrender and Paz Estensoro assumed the presidency on April 16, 1952. MNR took Mexico as its role model. MNR had a bizarre political ideology which merged left-bourgeoise populism with fascist notions of social order. They did fine for a time but Paz Estensorro had disappointed his American patrons on two issues: he maintained cordial relations with Fidel Castro and he refused to send Bolivian military to crush the striking miners. The CIA sent Colonel Edward Fox to La Paz to search for a candidate to replace Paz. The man who won the CIA’s favor was General Rene Barrientos. The movement came in 1964 when the presidential palace was stormed and the Paz was presented with a simple choice between two destinations: the airport and the cemetery. He took the first one. US, however didn’t also take chances, they sent dozens of advisors and brought 1,600 of Bolivian military officers for military training, including Bolivia’s top three Generals.
Even tough Barrientos was selected by the CIA officers, he was planning a coup with another man, who were living in Bolivia and had worked for American intelligence in the past. This man was Klaus Barbie, famous Nazi war criminal, the butcher of Lyons, who had came to Bolivia from Europe and served Paz and had actually been proved so useful to the Bolivian ruler that on October 7, 1957 he and his family were rewarded a prize: Bolivian citizenship. His citizenship papers were signed by the vice president Hernan Siles Zuazo, who, many coups later, would be forced to relinquish Barbie to the French Nazi Hunters
Klaus Barbie
On August 18, 1947 three men sat over drinks in a cafe in Memmingen in American-occupied Germany. One was Klaus Barbie. Nazi war criminal who had worked for Amsterdam Gestapo, led the raid on the Jewish farm village Weiringermeer where he and his men used German shepherd dogs to round up 420 Jews, who were sent to their deaths in the stone quarries and experimental gas chambers of Mauthausen. Later transferred to Eastern Front where he joined one of the SS’s special task forces, Einsatzgruppen, mobile units assigned the murder of every Jew and Communist they could find in Russia and Ukraine without regard “to age or sex”. In less than a year, those death squads, under command of Barbie and others like him killed more than a million people. However, Barbie committed his worst and most famous war crimes when he moved to Lyons. Among his achievements in Lyons, he had tortured and killed French Résistance leader Jean Moulin, among other members and the infamous descended upon the Jewish orphan’s home at Izieu, rounding up forty one children whose ages were between three to thirteen, along with ten of their teachers. The other one was Kurt Merck, a former officer in Nazi Germany’s military intelligence agency, the Abwehr. Merck had worked in France during the war, although Abwehr and Gestapo had interservice rivalries, he and Barbie had worked together and gotten along well. Now, Merck was on the payroll of American Intelligence. The last man was Lieutenant Robert Taylor, an American officer in Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). Merck was hired by the US intelligence in 1946, and he thought Barbie would be a good hire as well. However CIC was interested in hiring him because he could (and did) identify the former SS members working for the British. For the next four years, the most wanted SS man in Germany worked for the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps. However by 1948, the French government had information that Barbie was living under the protection of the US somewhere in Germany. They were more eager than ever to catch this war criminal who had already been sentenced to death in absentia. In December 1950, the US decided to trundle Barbie and his family down the ratline, an escape hatch for Nazi agents created by CIC officers Lt. Colonel James Milano and Paul Lyon. Lyon and Milano were shipping Nazis out of Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe, to Argentina, Chile, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia since 1946. The tour guide of this operation was Father Krunoslav Draganovic, himself a war criminal. This Croatian had overseen the relocation of several hundred thousand Jews from Yugoslavia to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. As the Fascist government of Croatia crumbled, this Priest made his way, safely to Vatican, and using the cover of his position in the Red Cross and Vatican, he shuttled hundreds of war criminals out of Europe. He had first shipped local Ustashi war criminals, than in 1947 he had been connected by CIC, and the deal was made in Rome by Paul Lyon. The priest was not an altruist, even for Nazis. He demanded 1,400$ for each criminal who shipped through his doors. In 1951, Barbie was moved to a CIC safehouse in Austria. There Barbie family took Spanish lessons. Barbie was given 8,000$ and a new identity, Klaus Altmann, mechanic. In a grim jest, Barbie took the name Altmann himself, after the chief rabbi in his hometown Trier. Rabbi Altmann was one of the symbols of the anti-Nazi movement however he was later exiled and finally ended up at Auschwitz in 1942. From Vienna, Barbies were passed via Draganovic’s ratline to Argentina and then to Bolivia, La Paz on April 23, 1951. The CIC memo noted, “The final disposal of an extremely sensitive individual has been handled.”
From Barrientos to Banzer
After Barrientos took power, Barbie secured a position in Barrientos’s internal security force, known as the Department 4 where he planned counterinsurgery operations and instructed his underlings on Nazi techniques of interrogation and state terror. Barbie also used this position to put into play once more his ideology of political eugenics. This time victims were Bolivian Indian tribes, whom he considered genetically and culturally inferior.
Barrientos and Barbie lost no time in going after tin miners, executing a series of bloody raids by the army and Barbie’s secret police. Hundreds of miners and labor organizers were killed. Leaders of the union and of the opposition political party were exiled, dooming the tin mines, principal revenue source of Bolivia. Barrientos tried to replace this loss of revenue with oil profits. He handed out huge concessions around the town of Santa Cruz to Gulf Oil. In return he got what the company chastely termed “campaign contributions.” Gulf Oil also gave him a helicopter, which the company said that was made at the instruction of the CIA. As we shall see, it was a present which would come back to haunt the general.
Revolutionary movements were growing in Central and South America and the CIA correctly calculated that Bolivia, with its mixture of Indian peasants and radical groups, was ripe terrain for revolt. The CIA spent several million dollars for Bolivia, some of this money; about 800,000 went to Barrientos, making it easier for the general to tolerate the American takeover of his government.
With a more stable and authoritarian regime in power, Barbie took the opportunity to expand his financial empire. He started an enterprise called the Estrella Company, which sold quinine bark, coca paste and assault weapons. He also hooked up with Frederich Schwend, the SS’s financial whiz, who ended up in Lima, Peru. He had been sent to Latin America by the OSS after telling Allen Dulles where the SS had cached millions in cash, gold and jewels looted from its victims. He claimed to be a chicken farmer but he was a high-paid consultant to generals in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia. Two Nazis joined forces to create Transmaritania, a shipping company that was to generate millions in profits. Barbie invited General Alfredo Ovando Candia who was the head of the Bolivian navy, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the secret police. Transmaritania begun by handling cotton, flour, tin and coffee but soon turned to much more portable cargo: guns and drugs. The source of weapons was a German company called Merex which was run by another ex-Nazi called: Otto Skorzeny, the man who saved Mussolini from prison. At least one of the people associated with Transmaritania was a CIA agent: Antonia Argudas Mendieta, who served as a minister of interior during the Barrientos regime and had been on CIA’s payroll for many years when he entered into business with Klaus Barbie.
In 1967, CIA agents in Bolivia learned that Che was leading a revolution among the peasants in the Bolivian Andes. A detailed squad of CIA officers was Cuban veterans of the CIA’s previous plots against Che and Castro, including Aurelio Hernandez and Felix Rodriguez. At this critical hour, the CIA once again sought out Barbie’s help. Acting through intermediaries in the Barrientos government, such as Ovando Candia and Arguedas. Barbie played a role in the tracking down and murder of Che Guevara, given his close association with General Ovando Candia. In true Nazi fashion, General Ovando Candia demanded proof of Che’s identity after he had been shot on Barrientos’s orders. The general originally ordered that Che’s head be cut off and sent back to La Paz. Felix Rodriguez thought that this would be counterproductive and convinced the General to cut Che’s hands instead.
In 1969, Barrientos died when his Gulf Oil helicopter crashed under suspicious circumstances. His death paved the way for General Ovando Candia’s short lived presidency. His government lasted less than a year before he was voted off in favor of the nationalist General Juan Jose Torres.
Torres released Che’s comrades, Regis Debray and Ciro Bustos from prison and made dangerous overtures to the Chilean government of Salvador Allende and to Castro’s Cuba. His government also nationalized lands owned by foreign companies, including lucrative mineral rights controlled by Gulf Oil.
This resulted in another coup, plotted by CIA. This time CIA chose Hugo Banzer Suarez, a General trained by the US Military. Banzer was also a longtime friend of Klaus Barbie, who was to play a crucial role in the coup. The coup culminated in August 1970, even in Bolivia, the overthrown of the Torres government became known for its extreme violence. Universities were shut down, newspapers were closed, more than 3,000 leftist revolutionaries disappeared and most importantly, Gulf Oil seized its properties back.
By the mid- 1970s Bolivian economy was in ruins. Following the advice of his close friend Roberto Suarez who owned a drug empire and enjoyed a monopoly on the most productive coca farms in Bolivia which is 80% of the world, Banzer ordered the nation’s ailing cotton trees to be planted with coca trees. Banzer’s take from the drug trade reportedly tallied at several million dollars a year.
However things didn’t really go well for Banzer, his private secretary, his son in law, his nephew and his wife had been arrested for cocaine trafficking in US and Canada. Embarrassed by these revelations, Banzer stood down in 1978 and promised free elections in 1979. Despite widespread fraud and voter intimidation, right-wing parties lost the election.
The Infamous Cocaine Coup
CIA couldn’t afford the loss of support in Bolivia. This time coup plotters were led by General Luis Arce Gomez who was the head of military intelligence and Roberto Suarez’s cousin and partner General Luis Garcia-Meza. In plotting the coup, Arce Gomez called on the services of his close friend, the man he called “my teacher”, Klaus Barbie. The CIA was posted on the events leading up to the coup, in fact had been given a tape recording of a planning session involving Arce Gomez, Roberto Suarez and Klaus Barbie.
To aid the cause, Barbie recruited help of the Italian neo-fascist terrorist Stefano “Alfa” Delle Chiaie. At that time Della Chiaie was on the move following the murder in Washington, D.C. of the Chilean Orlando Letelier by the Italian’s associate Michael Townley, the American agent in the employ of Pinochet’s secret police. Della Chiaie was brought with a group of 200 Argentine terrorists, veterans of the “dirty was”. In a nod of William Colby’s Vietnam assassins, Delle Chiaie called his band of murderers “the Phoenix Commandos.”
On July 17, 1980 the Bolivian cocaine coup unfolded. Liberal newspapers and radio stations were bombed. The universities were shut down. Barbie and Della Chiaie’s hooded troops, armed with machine guns, swept through the streets of La Paz in ambulances, they converged the center of resistance, the headquarters of Bolivian National Union. Labor leaders had been shot, burned, beaten, and castrated. Women prisoners were raped.
The following day General Garcia-Meza was sworn in as Bolivia’s new president. He appointed Arce Gomez as minister of interior. Barbie was selected as the head of internal security forces and Stephano Delle Chiaie was assigned the task of securing international support for the regime, which quickly came from Argentina, Chile, South Africa and El Salvador.
Over the next few weeks, thousands of opposition leaders were rounded up and herded in the large soccer stadium in La Paz. They were shot en masse and their bodies were dumped into rivers and deep canyons outside the capital.
In a show support for the international drug war, the new Bolivian regime quickly began a drug suppression campaign. Klaus Barbie was the supervisor. The operation had three objectives: soften criticisms from US and UN of Bolivia’s role in the drug trade; eliminate 140 rivals to the Suarez monopoly; and ruthlessly suppress the regime’s political opponents. Over the next year, the cocaine generals made an estimated $2 billion in drug trade.
Aftermath and Conclusion
Ultimately, the situation in Bolivia became so flagrant that the regime’s backers in US decided to pull the plug. Garcia Meza was forced to resign in August 1981: he left Bolivia a wealthy man after securing his country’s position as world’s leading supplier of cocaine. On In October 1982 Hernán Siles Zuazo became President. Severe social tension, exacerbated by economic mismanagement and weak leadership, forced him to call early elections and relinquish power a year before the end of his constitutional term.
Barbie and Della Chiaie would remain in Bolivia another year and half. Italian police and US DEA planned a raid to capture Delle Chiaie in 1982, but he fled after being tipped off by a CIA contact. Klaus Barbie wasn’t as lucky, however. He was arrested and later taken to France, where he was put on trial, and he spent the rest of his life in prison. He always kept saying that he did not have any regrets.
However the cocaine empire kept flourished. The amount of cocaine produced in Bolivia rocketed from 35.000 metric tons to 60.000 metric tons a year by the late 1980s. Nearly all of it was marked for sale in US. By 1987 Bolivia was racking up $3 billion a year in cocaine trade.
In 1980s, CIA and DEA went to Bolivia and trained anti-drug shock troops, the Leopards. It soon turned out that many of the Leopards had begun a fruitful partnership with the drug traffickers. A congressional review in 1985 found that “not a hectare of coca leaf has been eradicated since the US established the narcotics assistance program” but CIA didn’t mid much, because Leopards turned their guns on Indian insurgents.
Roberto Suarez himself announced that since 1985 elections, all politicians were involved in drug trade. Later presidents Sánchez de Lozada and former dictator Hugo Banzer followed capitalist policies. Drug trade had not been reduced. In 2000 Lozada became president again, but he had to resign because of the unrest in 2003. A coca farmer, a native and an anti-imperialist coming from the land reform movement, Evo Morales had been elected to office in 2006, with absolute majority of %50, following the policy “Yes to coca, no to cocaine.”
Amusing Scrotum
8th June 2006, 15:13
Originally posted by Leo
[email protected] 8 2006, 08:15 AM
Even the USSR had NAZIs on the payroll.
Can you show me where you got that information? Seems highly doubtful, USSR was really blunt in those issues, I would imagine them killing or imprisoning every prisoner instead of 'buying' them...
The old USSR wasn't that "blunt"; for instance, many former Nazi's were released in either 53' or 56'....can never remember which of the two dates. The old USSR did court former Nazi scientists, but they mostly went to America because the pay was better....but there were certainly some former Nazi's on the payroll of the Russian State.
A good example, is the guy from the Russian Military who "led" the Hungarian (?) Uprising, he was originally captured by the Russian Army, then after his release he joined the Russian Army....and his transformation was certainly complete by the time of his involvement in the Uprising.
The USSR only shot SS members. Many Nazi scientists were relocated to Russia. I believe that Moscow got the best of chemical researchers while the Allies got the nuclear and flight ones.
The old USSR wasn't that "blunt"; for instance, many former Nazi's were released in either 53' or 56'....can never remember which of the two dates. The old USSR did court former Nazi scientists, but they mostly went to America because the pay was better....but there were certainly some former Nazi's on the payroll of the Russian State.
I wasn't actually reffering to the scientists, I was referring to SS members and other intelligence officers. Naturally both states would have loads of ex-Nazis because they controlled the Nazi fatherland. But as it is said, they shot down the SS members, they did not employ them, where the CIA is really an organization taking its strength from all former Nazi Intelligence members. Before the WWII, American Intelligence was something to make fun of.
A good example, is the guy from the Russian Military who "led" the Hungarian (?) Uprising, he was originally captured by the Russian Army, then after his release he joined the Russian Army....and his transformation was certainly complete by the time of his involvement in the Uprising.
I think what you mean is that he "led" the Russian tanks that crushed the uprisinig, is that correct?
Amusing Scrotum
9th June 2006, 00:14
Originally posted by Leo Uilleann+--> (Leo Uilleann)....I was referring to SS members and other intelligence officers.[/b]
Ah, okay. I don't know about SS members, but, as I said, a load of former Nazi's were released in either 1953 or 1956; this included Nazi soldiers and, I would suspect, former SS members. Indeed, Tito's partisans were far more "blunt" with former Nazi's and their supporters.
Originally posted by Leo
[email protected]
I think what you mean is that he "led" the Russian tanks that crushed the uprisinig, is that correct?
Nope.
I was wrong about the "led" bit, but this is the guy I was thinking of....
Pál Maléter. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1l_Mal%C3%A9ter)
Wikipedia
He fought on the Eastern Front, until captured by the Red Army. He became a Communist, trained in sabotage and was sent back to Hungary, where he was noted for his courage and daring.
In 1956 he was commander of an infantry division stationed in Budapest. He was sent to suppress the rebellion, but on making contact with the insurgents during the Hungarian Uprising he decided to join them, helping to defend the Kilian Barracks. He was the most prominent member of the Hungarian military to change sides.
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