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er1chartmann · 2 months

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Klaus Barbie

These are some facts and curiosities about Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon:

He was born on October 25, 1913 in Godesberg.

In 1935 he joined the Protection Corps (Schutzstaffel), the SS, and was subsequently employed in the ranks of the SD, the Nazi secret service.

In 1937, as a member of the SS, he was officially registered with the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

He was assigned to the SD office in Amsterdam, occupied Netherlands, where he was responsible for the deportation of Dutch Jews. In Amsterdam he soon earned a reputation as a ruthless persecutor.

In 1942 he was transferred to Lyon: he became the deputy of Captain Heinz Hollert, the commander of a special unit (Einsatzkommando) responsible for crushing the French Resistance movements, and assumed command of Section IV, the investigative section involved in the search for Jews.

He was notable for the deportation of hundreds of Jews and the torture and physical elimination of hundreds more French patriots.

In September 1944, in anticipation of a possible Allied advance, he burned all the archives of the Lyon Gestapo, had a hundred people who knew of his activities killed and eliminated twenty-two agents who worked on his behalf and who had infiltrated the Resistance .[ Nothing is known about what Barbie did in the last ten months of the war: she literally disappeared from every document, from every archive, and even her personal file in the SS register does not provide any information.

In 1947, Barbie was recruited as an agent for the 66th Detachment of the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC)

In 1965 Barbie was recruited by the West German foreign intelligence agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) under the codename "Adler" (Eagle) and the registration number V-43118.

Reviews of the 2007 documentary My Enemy's Enemy, directed by the British director Kevin Macdonald, note that it suggests Barbie helped the United States' CIA orchestrate the 1967 capture and execution in Bolivia of Che Guevara, a revolutionary who was active in Cuba and South America.

In 1984, Barbie was indicted for crimes committed while he directed the Gestapo in Lyon between 1942 and 1944. The jury trial started on 11 May 1987, in Lyon, before the Rhône Cour d'assises.

On 4 July 1987, Barbie was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison in Lyon of leukemia and cancer of the spine and prostate four years later, at the age of 77.

Sources:

Military Wiki: Klaus Barbie

Wikipedia: Klaus Barbie

I DON'T SUPPORT NAZISM,FASCISM OR ZIONISM IN ANY WAY, THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST

#reichblr #ww2 germany #ww2 history #studyblr #austrian painter #the ss #klaus barbie

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maklodes · 2 months

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J. Robert Oppenheimer was perhaps the mid-20th century U.S. government employee most responsible for permanently shifting the world to a more precarious state, but Klaus Barbie was perhaps the mid-20th century U.S. government employee who was the most viscerally repugnant.

#j robert oppenheimer #klaus barbie #barbenheimer #united states #history

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eretzyisrael · 7 months

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On this day, September 25, in 1991, Nikolaus “Klaus” #Barbie

known as the “Butcher of Lyon” for his work as Chief of the #Gestapo in Lyon, #France (a vital center of the French Resistance during #WWII) died of cancer in a French prison while serving a life sentence for executing more than 4,000 people & deporting at least 7,500 #Jews to #Auschwitz where nearly all of them were killed. Barbie escaped justice for more than 40 years. After the war, Barbie cooperated with US Army Intelligence in reporting on communist activities in the American zone of occupation. Then, in 1951, with the help of the #CIA, Barbie obtained a visa for #Bolivia. In Bolivia, Barbie was protected by the government, and he worked for the West #German intelligence service. Finally, in 1983, Barbie was extradited to France to stand trial for #WarCrimes, and he was given a life sentence in 1987. He served four years before he died in prison of cancer.

Captain Allen

#WW2 #Klaus Barbie #Butcher of Lyon

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whatisonthemoon · 1 year

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The Rev. Moon, the Unification Church, and the KCIA

The following is excerpted from "The Death Squads: Bringing in the Kingdom of God Through Terror, Torture and Death" (1996) by S.R. Shearer

In addition to the Americans, the Argentineans, the conservative Catholic Church, and various right-wing politicos, business leaders, and the military - with their attendant intelligence apparatus - there was a final component to the deadly mix which constituted the environment in which the Death Squads worked: specifically, the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. WACL became involved in these operations as a result of its Korean connections - connections which also led back to Phoenix..

WACL is a Moonie front organization with strong ties to the KCIA (a creation of the American CIA); its ultimate allegiance is to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church.

Moon, of course, is no friend of democracy. He is a theocratic authoritarian who considers himself to be the Son of God and the new Messiah.[22] Moon believes that Jesus failed in His earthly mission to save man through His death on the cross; in addition, Moon claims that Jesus had sex with the women who followed Him.

As early as 1978 newspapers like the Washington Post began to pick up on the connections between Moon (WACL) and the Latin American Death Squads. For instance, one such article which appeared in the Post describing these connections carried the headline: "The Fascist Specter behind the World Anti-Red League."[23] In 1984 these connections were further explored in a series of columns by Jack Anderson.[24] Other publications carried additional articles detailing these connections and the Nazi components which comprised these elements.[25]

ORIGINS OF THE UNIFICATION CHURCH

In the light of all this, it might be fair to ask, what was it in the history of Moon and the Unification Church which would have led to such links between what ostensibly is supposed to be a religious organization and Nazi-oriented, right-wing Death Squads? The tides which produced these strange relationships originated in the very early 1950s in the murky right-wing political, religious and military currents which swept through Korea as a result of the Korean War; specifically in the wrath of Korean President Syngman Rhee and other right-wing elements in the Korean military who were furious at Truman and Eisenhower for not prosecuting the Korean War through to a successful conclusion - by which they meant the re-unification of the Korean Peninsula under President Rhee.

Right-wing elements in the United States were also enraged; many saw in the U.S. "surrender" the outlines of a sinister conspiracy. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin went so far as to blame the U.S. "surrender in Korea" on the machinations of a White House clique besotted by "bourbon and benzedrine;" in a rage, he actually called the President a "son-of-a-bitch" from the floor of the Senate. Senator William Jenner of Indiana, echoed McCarthy's rage; he too saw the silhouette of an ominous conspiracy; he went on to declare that "... this country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union." Both groups - right-wing Americans on the one hand, and right-wing Koreans on the other - felt they had been stymied in Korea by a vast, underground intrigue which had seized control of the United States and which was aiming at the destruction of the Free World; they perceived themselves as engaged in an immense struggle against an implacable foe which not only controlled Communist China and the Soviet Union, but powerful, secret elements in the West as well (i.e., the "Illuminist Conspiracy"). This view of things was only strengthened when Rhee was toppled in April of 1960 with Eisenhower's help.

It was this witches' brew of virulent right-wing politics which gave birth to the aberrant theology and politics of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church; Moon became as much a believer in the existence of the "world-wide communist (Illuminist) conspiracy" as had been Korean strongman Syngman Rhee and Senators Joseph McCarthy and William Jenner. Moon believed that the conspiracy could only be stopped by uniting the Western World under the banner of "Christianity" (by which he meant his own weird blend of New Age philosophy and aberrant religious teachings). Thus, Moon's movement was (is) as much a political movement as it is a religious movement; it is the result of a strange convergence of extreme right-wing politics (which stem not only out of sources in Korea, but also elements in the United States) and a bizarre mixture of fanatical, authoritarian religious beliefs.

There are, of course, many such movements throughout the world; but what has given Moon's organization such power is the relationship it enjoys with the government of South Korea - a relationship which endows Moon's religious empire with unlimited funds, business fronts, and access to sensitive intelligence matters - things which no other religious association in the world enjoys - outside of the Vatican; and it is precisely these things which have bought Moon entrance - if only through the back door - into America's Religious Right; the Religious Right in this country has seemingly found itself unable to resist the allure of Moon's money, the high-paying jobs he is able to offer through his various business fronts, and the excitement generated out of his intelligence (KCIA) contacts.

THE DEATH SQUADS AND THE REV. MOON

All this brings us back to Moon's involvement with Latin America's Death Squads; Moon's involvement originated as a result of his contacts with the KCIA, and the KCIA's involvement flowed out of Korea's connections with the Vietnam War. Korea was one of the very few U.S. allies which actively participated militarily in Vietnam alongside American forces. ROK (Republic of Korea) forces thus came into direct contact with Phoenix.

The KCIA was thrilled with Phoenix - and this favorable impression was passed on to WACL where the KCIA, as already indicated, exercised a great deal of influence; as a result, WACL soon became a purveyor of Phoenix-like operations throughout the world as an effective means of combating the spread of communism - so much so that in Latin America many of the Death Squad networks which were later established became synonymous with Moon and the Unification Church. Indeed, investigative reporter Russ Bellant writes that "... the ... Death Squad network{26} (in many of the various Latin American countries) is (in instance after instance) also the Latin American branch of Moon's World Anti-Communist League (WACL)."[27] For example, in Argentina, the Death Squads and WACL were so closely identified that in Buenos Aires the various Death Squad cadres constituted in fact the main Argentine branch of WACL.[28] These kinds of connections between the Death Squads and the Unification Church were repeated throughout Central and South America. So closely and effectively did Moon and the Death Squads cooperate in Latin America that they were actually responsible - along with Nazi fugitive Klaus Barbie - in helping to establish a Nazi-style state in Bolivia in 1982.[29] And what about the individuals who constitute the membership of these organizations? - they have been variously described as a mix of Hitler collaborators, anti-Semites, right-wing politicos, rich businessmen, etc. - all of whom hold to an unshakable belief in a world-wide conspiracy directed against capitalism and Christianity[30] - the same kind of ideological mix which - to a large degree - can be found in the CNP (the principle coordinating agency bringing together members of the Religious Right with members of the political right and the business right) today.

Full article: https://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000105.htm

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playitagin · 10 months

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1987-Butcher of Lyon

In France, former Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie (a.k.a. the "Butcher of Lyon") is convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Nikolaus Barbie (25 October 1913 – 25 September 1991) was a German operative of the SS and SD who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon. After the war, United States intelligence services employed him for his anti-communist efforts and aided his escape to Bolivia, where he advised the dictatorial regime on how to repress opposition through torture.

In 1972, it was discovered he was in Bolivia. While in Bolivia, the West German Intelligence Service recruited him. Barbie is suspected of having had a role in the Bolivian coup d'état orchestrated by Luis García Meza in 1980. After the fall of the dictatorship, Barbie lost the protection of the government in La Paz. In 1983, he was arrested and extradited to France, where he was convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. Although he had been sentenced to death in absentia twice earlier, in 1947 and 1954, capital punishment had been abolished in France in 1981. Barbie died of cancer in prison in 1991, at age 77.

#Jul.4.1987 #Klaus Barbie #crimes against humanity #Butcher of Lyon #history today

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erikahammerschmidt · 1 year

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"this Barbie was abnormally, monstrously cruel even by the standards of a Nazi SS officer in World War Two"

#klaus barbie

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lorenzlund · 8 months

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Drachenbootrennen auf dem Main. Teil 3.

Arsch ab er! (Der selbst 'us-amerikanische Rapper'). *'R app er.

der Ar*** muss 'passen'. 'passieren'. Von einem Ufer zum anderen. Die Flussüberquerung. (the Jordan River)

'Ein Eis geht doch immer!!!' (der Greis). 'Speise-Eis : der Ass diesmal stammt er sogar von Greisen, aus dem es zumindest mit-gefertigt wurde. Es-Greise-Eis. der Greis auch Italiens. 'Eis am Stil' (Filmemacher selbst Israels der 70er) mit Sack-Ei Neu (Zachy Noy als 'Dickem').

'Gebt die Sicht frei auf eure Rücken'. *re + spectre : die Rückenansicht. re- : rück...

'Sirtak-i tanzen am griechischen Strand'. the sir, wegnehmen, das Ei. 'Ich will dir ja nicht unnötig auf der Nase herumtanzen, aber ...!'

Die Bundesregierung mit eigenem Schiff, aber mit Schweizer Radar.

das auch: Callgirl.

'Sie singen und sie spielen auch besser als die da drinnen'

*Max-Anton Raiter vor dem Festspielhaus von Bad Hersfeld.

'Auch ich finde, dass es gelegentlich doch etwas zu laut klingt ... und auch schräg!!'

'Raiter, stoppen sie sofort erneut mit ihrem Spiel. Denn wie wir bemerkten, parkt seit kurzem in einer Seitenstraße bereits erneut ein Van der Polizei, und ihnen fehlt weiter so wie bisher ein gültiges Ausweisdokument. Offenbar wurden sie verraten. Möglicherweise ist man erneut auf dem Weg schon wieder zu ihnen so! Zumindest ausschließen können wir das so nicht! Die Besatzung in ihm fehlt! Genauso konnten wir nichts darüber herausfinden, wo sie sich womöglich aufhält!'

'Ohnehin hat ihr Handy kaum noch Ladung!' (Auf ihm befinden sich Liedersammlungen)

'Auch dahinter steckt doch nur ihr dann wieder, bin ich überzeugt!'

#Max-Anton Raiter singt Nothing Else Matters in Frankfurt #Harry kommt erneut nach Düsseldorf #Barbie Gestapo-Chef von Lyon #Klaus Barbie #Hitler in Paris #im Leben passen müssen #der Tinnitus #die Tinnitus-Erkrankung an beiden Ohren #der plötzliche sehr laute beständige Pfeifton in beiden Ohren #Blasorchester #'Remmi-Demmi-Musik'#Es gibt 'was auf die Ohren!#der Stereo-Effekt #mp3 #the machine pistol #deutsche Ministerpräsidenten der Vergangenheit #the cock #tails

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dirjoh-blog · 9 months

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The pure evil of Klaus Barbie.

If there would be a chart of the top 10 most evil Nazis’ I reckon Klaus Barbie would be in that list. Known as the “Butcher of Lyon” for his reign of terror in Nazi-occupied Lyon, France, Barbie not only sent Jews to concentration camps but also brutally tortured French Jews and Resistance fighters. His torture rooms had tables with restraints, ovens, and implements for electrocution. He…

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#Barbie #Bolivia #Children #Escaped War Crimnal #France #History #Holocaust #Klaus Barbie #World War 2

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sergephilippelecourt · 9 months

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Dernier jour pour voir l'exposition sur Jean Moulin

Les élèves de CM2 du groupe scolaire Jean Moulin ont réalisé une exposition en hommage à Jean Moulin à l’occasion du 80e anniversaire de son arrestation et de sa mort en juin 2023. Ils ont été accompagnés dans ce projet par leurs enseignantes Florence Le Maux et Sabrina Vigouroux. J’ai eu l’honneur de photographier leurs réalisations et leur travail. Ils ont porté un grand intérêt à ce projet.…

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#Commémorations #exposition Serge Philippe Lecourt #Groupe scolaire Jean Moulin Vire #histoire #Jean Moulin #Klaus Barbie #Résistance #Seconde guerre mondiale #Vire Normandie

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hcdahlem · 10 months

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L’été en poche (20): Enfant de salaud

L’été en poche se poursuit avec «Enfant de salaud» de Sorj Chalandon. Sans doute l’un de ses romans les plus personnels, mais aussi un message universel. Du drame intime, celui d’un fils qui découvre la part sombre de son père, au procès historique.

En deux mots Et si les beaux exploits contés par son père n’étaient que mensonges? Et si le résistant était passé du mauvais côté? À la veille du procès Barbie, qu’il est chargé de couvrir pour son journal, un journaliste découvre qu’il est peut-être un enfant de salaud. Et va dès lors tenter d’extirper le vrai du faux. Ma note ★★★★ (j’ai adoré) Si vous voulez en savoir plus… Ma chronique…

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#division Charlemagne #Famille #justice #Klaus Barbie #nazi #Procès #résistance #relation Père-fils #Seconde guerre mondiale #Trahison

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danielnothing · 10 months

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"This Barbie is ready for the weekend."

#barbie #klaus barbie

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adrianomaini · 11 months

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La Resistenza francese, alla vigila dello sbarco Alleato in Francia, ha realizzato un’ampia unione nazionale

La Resistenza francese segue due percorsi distinti, una parte facente fede alla guida di De Gaulle, che nel mentre guida le redini della Francia Libera dall’estero, dall’altra un gruppo indipendentista di posizioni politiche prevalentemente di sinistra, che prendono il nome di maquis. Questi si procurano armi aggredendo le truppe, si riforniscono assalendo rimorchi e convogli, svaligiano banche…

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whatisonthemoon · 1 year

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Hitler’s Shadow Reaches toward Today

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/14/hitlers-shadow-reaches-toward-today-2/

From the Archive: The key role of neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s U.S.-backed coup is denied by the mainstream U.S. press, which can’t believe the U.S. government would collaborate with such unsavory characters, but that isn’t the real history, as Robert Parry reported in 2010.

By Robert Parry (Originally published on Dec. 17, 2010)

The U.S. government protected Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie in the years after World War II and later unleashed the infamous Butcher of Lyon on South America by aiding his escape from French war-crimes prosecutors, according to a report issued by the National Archives in 2010.

The report, entitled “Hitler’s Shadow,” concentrates on the decisions by the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps to use Barbie and other ex-Nazis for early Cold War operations, but other work by investigative journalists and government investigators has shown how Barbie’s continued allegiance to Nazi ideology contributed to the spread of right-wing extremism in Latin America.

▲ Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie.

With his skills as an intelligence operative and his expertise in state terror, Barbie helped shape the particularly vicious style of anti-communism that dominated South America for most of the Cold War. He also played a role in building a conduit for drug proceeds to fund right-wing paramilitary operations, including Ronald Reagan’s beloved Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

In 1980, Barbie used his perch in Bolivian intelligence to organize an alliance of military leaders and cocaine barons to overthrow Bolivia’s democratically elected leftist government in a bloody coup. Though fitting with Washington’s distrust of left-wing populist governments in South America, the so-called Cocaine Coup had other long-term consequences for the United States.

Bolivia’s coup regime ensured a reliable flow of coca to Colombia’s Medellin cartel, which quickly grew into a sophisticated conglomerate for smuggling cocaine into the United States. Some of those drug profits then went to finance right-wing paramilitary operations, including the CIA-backed Contras, according to other U.S. government investigations.

Barbie reportedly collaborated, too, with representatives of Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church as they worked with Bolivia’s Cocaine Coup regime to organize anti-communist operations in South America. By then, the region had become a center for Moon’s global money-laundering operations. In 1982, Moon began pouring hundreds of millions of his mysterious dollars into the right-wing Washington Times newspaper to influence U.S. politics.

Eventually, as Bolivia’s corrupt Cocaine Coup government crumbled and Barbie’s identity became well known, French authorities finally secured Barbie’s return to France to face a war-crimes trial in 1983. (He died in 1991.)

The Butcher of Lyon’s role in these South American anti-communist activities caused brief embarrassment for Moon’s church and some right-wing Americans. But the Nazi collaboration didn’t draw much attention from the U.S. news media, which was already shying away from critical reporting on the Reagan administration’s unsavory alliances in Central and South America.

A Long Continuum

Indeed, the Right’s growing dominance of Washington opinion circles can be viewed as a continuum dating back to those days right after World War II, when U.S. priorities switched quickly from prosecuting Axis war criminals to seeking their help in crushing leftist political influence in Western Europe and Asia.

Suddenly, U.S. intelligence agencies were freeing Nazi and Japanese war criminals from prison and exploiting their talents to neutralize labor unions, student groups and other left-wing organizations.

Though the National Archives report deals with ex-Nazis in Europe, a similar program was underway in Japan where war criminals such as right-wing yakuza gangsters Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa were freed and allowed to become important political figures in Japan and later internationally by supporting a global crusade against communism.

In the 1960s, Kodama and Sasakawa joined with Rev. Moon and two right-wing dictators, Taiwan’s Chiang Kai-shek and South Korea’s Park Chung Hee, to create the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which also brought in right-wing leaders from Latin America and Europe, including ex-Nazis and neo-Nazis, according to authors Scott and Jon Lee Anderson in their landmark 1986 book, Inside the League.

So, with the Cocaine Coup in 1980, Barbie not only closed the circle, bringing together death-squad commanders, ex-Nazis, neo-Nazis and various sociopaths from around the globe, but he helped ensure that drug proceeds would be available to fund right-wing causes in the future.

“Hitler’s Shadow,” in effect, tells the first chapter of this right-wing restoration as U.S. intelligence agencies turned to former Nazi officials and SS officers to counter the perceived greater threat from the Soviet Union and Communist groups in Europe.

“Gestapo officers, who also held ranks in the SS, were in the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps’s automatic arrest category after the war,” the report said. “Later, CIC used former Gestapo officers to garner useful intelligence for the postwar period on everything from German right-wing movements to underground communist organizations. Intelligence officers often overlooked the significant role Gestapo officers played in the murder of Jews, POWs, and the political enemies of the Nazis.”

The report notes that “approximately 1,200 newly released files relate to the penetration of German Communist activities and specifically to ‘Project Happiness,’ the CIC’s codename for counterintelligence operations against the KPD,” the German Communist Party.

Though Barbie notorious for personally torturing French partisans during the war may be the best known ex-Gestapo officer recruited by the CIC, others had similar histories.

For instance, Anton Mahler was the chief interrogator of Hans Scholl, a leader of the White Rose, a Munich-based student organization that secretly passed out leaflets urging Adolf Hitler’s overthrow and decrying German apathy in the face of Hitler’s crimes. Hans and his sister Sophie Scholl were convicted of high treason and beheaded in February 1943.

Mahler also served in Einsatzgruppe B in occupied Belarus as the group slaughtered more than 45,000 people, most of them Jews, the report said. Nevertheless, CIC deployed Mahler as an informant starting in February 1949 and soon made him a full-time employee.

Regarding Barbie, the report builds on a 1983 investigation by a Justice Department investigator who confirmed suspicions that U.S. intelligence had worked with and protected this hunted war criminal who was accused of executing 4,000 people and shipping 7,000 Jews to concentration camps.

“In the spring of 1947 a CIC agent named Robert S. Taylor from CIC Region IV (Munich) recruited Klaus Barbie, the one-time Gestapo Chief of Lyon (194244),” the new report said. “Barbie helped run a counterintelligence net named ‘BÃ¼ro Petersen’ which monitored French intelligence.

“In 1948 Barbie helped the CIC locate former Gestapo informants. In 194950, he penetrated German Communist Party (KPD) activities in CIC Region XII (Augsburg). He continued to work for the CIC in return for protection against French war crimes charges.”

Ratline to Bolivia

The story of Barbie’s escape to South America with the CIC’s collaboration was addressed in the 1983 report by Allan A. Ryan Jr., head of the Justice Department’s Nazi-hunting Office of Special Investigations. Ryan’s 218-page report said that in 1951, the CIC helped Barbie evade French authorities and flee over a “ratline” to Bolivia.

Ryan said that a half dozen CIC officers participated in the cover-up of Barbie’s identity and excused their actions by claiming that the French arrest of Barbie could jeopardize the security of other CIC operations. To get Barbie to Bolivia, the CIC officers used a ratline run by a Croatian priest, Father Krunoslav Draganovich, Ryan wrote.

Ryan said the Central Intelligence Agency later rebuffed suggestions that Barbie be reactivated in the 1960s, but Barbie using the name Altmann held an official position with a state-owned shipping company that allowed him to move freely and even to travel to the United States. [For more on Ryan’s report, see Time magainzse, Time magazine, Aug. 29, 1983]

More significantly, Barbie became a figure in Bolivian intelligence and used that perch to coordinate with other right-wing intelligence services around the continent that were engaged in Operation Condor, a program of assassinating suspected subversives and other dissidents.

In the 1970s, these intelligence agencies had teamed up to give their assassination squads regional and even global reach, including the murder of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker on the streets of Washington in 1976.

For the Cocaine Coup in 1980, Barbie recruited Argentina’s feared intelligence service along with young neo-Nazis from Europe. The World Anti-Communist League arranged support from Moon and other Asian rightists.

For years, Moon had been sinking down roots in South America, especially in Uruguay after right-wing military dictators seized power there in 1973. Moon also cultivated close ties with dictators in Argentina, Paraguay and Chile, reportedly ingratiating himself with the juntas by helping the regimes buy weapons and by channeling money to allied right-wing organizations.

“Relationships nurtured with right-wing Latin Americans in the [World Anti-Communist] League led to acceptance of the [Unification] Church’s political and propaganda operations throughout Latin America,” the Andersons wrote in Inside the League.

“As an international money laundry, the Church tapped into the capital flight havens of Latin America. Escaping the scrutiny of American and European investigators, the Church could now funnel money into banks in Honduras, Uruguay and Brazil, where official oversight was lax or nonexistent.”

Moon expanded his network of friends when Barbie helped pull together a right-wing alliance of Bolivian military officers and drug dealers for the Cocaine Coup. WACL associates, such as Alfredo Candia, coordinated the arrival of some of the paramilitary operatives from Argentina and Europe who would help out in the violent putsch.

Barbie, then better known as Altmann, was in charge of drawing up plans for the coup and coordinating with Argentine intelligence. One of the first Argentine intelligence officers to arrive was Lt. Alfred Mario Mingolla.

“Before our departure, we received a dossier on” Barbie, Mingolla later told German investigative reporter Kai Hermann. “There it stated that he was of great use to Argentina because he played an important role in all of Latin America in the fight against communism. From the dossier, it was also clear that Altmann worked for the Americans.”

The Cocaine Motive

As the coup took shape, Bolivian Col. Luis Arce-Gomez, the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, also brought onboard neo-fascist terrorists such as Italian Stefano della Chiaie who had been working with the Argentine death squads. [See Cocaine Politics by Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall]

Still a committed fascist, Barbie started a secret lodge, called Thule. During meetings, he lectured to his followers underneath swastikas by candlelight.

On June 17, 1980, in nearly public planning for the coup, six of Bolivia’s biggest traffickers met with the military conspirators to hammer out a financial deal for future protection of the cocaine trade. A La Paz businessman said the coming putsch should be called the “Cocaine Coup,” a name that would stick. [See Cocaine Politics]

Less than three weeks later, on July 6 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, U.S. undercover drug enforcement agent Michael Levine said he met with a Bolivian trafficker named Hugo Hurtado-Candia. Over drinks, Hurtado outlined plans for the “new government” in which his niece Sonia Atala, a major cocaine supplier, will “be in a very strong position.” [See Levine’s Big White Lie]

On July 17, the Cocaine Coup began, spearheaded by Barbie and his neo-fascist goon squad which was dubbed the “FiancÃ©s of Death.”

“The masked thugs were not Bolivians; they spoke Spanish with German, French and Italian accents,” Levine wrote. “Their uniforms bore neither national identification nor any markings, although many of them wore Nazi swastika armbands and insignias.”

The slaughter was fierce. When the putschists stormed the national labor headquarters, they wounded labor leader Marcelo Quiroga, who had led the effort to indict former military dictator Hugo Banzer on drug and corruption charges. Quiroga “was dragged off to police headquarters to be the object of a game played by some of the torture experts imported from Argentina’s dreaded Mechanic School of the Navy,” Levine wrote.

“These experts applied their ‘science’ to Quiroga as a lesson to the Bolivians, who were a little backward in such matters. They kept Quiroga alive and suffering for hours. His castrated, tortured body was found days later in a place called ‘The valley of the Moon’ in southern La Paz.”

To DEA agent Levine back in Buenos Aires, it was soon clear “that the primary goal of the revolution was the protection and control of Bolivia’s cocaine industry. All major drug traffickers in prison were released, after which they joined the neo-Nazis in their rampage.

“Government buildings were invaded and trafficker files were either carried off or burned. Government employees were tortured and shot, the women tied and repeatedly raped by the paramilitaries and the freed traffickers.”

The fascists celebrated with swastikas and shouts of “Heil Hitler!” Hermann reported. Col. Arce-Gomez, a central-casting image of a bemedaled, pot-bellied Latin dictator, grabbed broad powers as Interior Minister. Gen. Luis Garcia Meza was installed as Bolivia’s new president.

The victory put into power a right-wing military dictatorship indebted to the drug lords. Bolivia became South America’s first narco-state.

Moon’s Throne

One of the first well-wishers arriving in La Paz to congratulate the new government was Moon’s top lieutenant (and former KCIA officer) Bo Hi Pak. The Moon organization published a photo of Pak meeting with the new strongman, General Garcia Meza. After the visit to the mountainous capital, Pak declared, “I have erected a throne for Father Moon in the world’s highest city.”

According to later Bolivian government and newspaper reports, a Moon representative invested about $4 million in preparations for the coup. Bolivia’s WACL representatives also played key roles, and CAUSA, one of Moon’s anti-communist organizations, listed as members nearly all the leading Bolivian coup-makers.

Soon, Colonel Luis Arce-Gomez, a coup organizer and the cousin of cocaine kingpin Roberto Suarez, went into partnership with big narco-traffickers, including Cuban-American smugglers based in Miami. Nazi war criminal Barbie and his young neo-fascist followers found new work protecting Bolivia’s major cocaine barons and transporting drugs to the Colombian border.

“The paramilitary units conceived by Barbie as a new type of SS sold themselves to the cocaine barons,” German journalist Hermann wrote. “The attraction of fast money in the cocaine trade was stronger than the idea of a national socialist revolution in Latin America.”

A month after the Cocaine Coup, General Garcia Meza participated in the Fourth Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation, an arm of the World Anti-Communist League. Also attending that Fourth Congress was WACL president Woo Jae Sung, a leading Moon disciple.

As the drug lords consolidated their power in Bolivia, the Moon organization expanded its presence, too. Hermann reported that in early 1981, war criminal Barbie and Moon leader Thomas Ward were seen together in apparent prayer.

On May 31, 1981, Moon representatives sponsored a CAUSA reception at the Sheraton Hotel’s Hall of Freedom in La Paz. Moon’s lieutenant Bo Hi Pak and Bolivian strongman Garcia Meza led a prayer for President Ronald Reagan’s recovery from an assassination attempt.

In his speech, Bo Hi Pak declared, “God had chosen the Bolivian people in the heart of South America as the ones to conquer communism.”

Flush with Cash

In the early 1980s, cocaine kingpin Suarez his coffers now overflowing with cash invested more than $30 million in various right-wing paramilitary operations, including the Contra forces in Central America, according to U.S. Senate testimony in 1987 by an Argentine intelligence officer, Leonardo Sanchez-Reisse.

Sanchez-Reisse testified that the Suarez drug money was laundered through front companies in Miami before going to Central America. There, Argentine intelligence officers, including Sanchez-Reisse and other veterans of the Cocaine Coup, trained the fledgling Contra forces.

But by late 1981, the cocaine taint of Bolivia’s military junta was so deep and the corruption so pervasive that U.S.-Bolivian relations were stretched to the breaking point. “The Moon sect disappeared overnight from Bolivia as clandestinely as they had arrived,” Hermann reported.

The Cocaine Coup leaders soon found themselves on the run, too. Interior Minister Arce-Gomez was extradited to Miami and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for drug trafficking. Drug lord Suarez got a 15-year prison term. General Garcia Meza became a fugitive from a 30-year sentence imposed on him in Bolivia for abuse of power, corruption and murder.

SS veteran Barbie was returned to France to face a life sentence for war crimes. He died in 1991 at the age of 77.

But Moon’s organization suffered few negative repercussions from its role in the Cocaine Coup. By the early 1980s, flush with seemingly unlimited funds, Moon had moved on to promoting himself as a key friend of the new Republican administration in Washington.

A guest at Reagan’s First Inauguration, Moon made his organization useful to the new President and to Vice President George H.W. Bush, who would later become a paid speaker for Moon’s organization. Where Moon got his cash was not a mystery that American conservatives were eager to solve.

“Some Moonie-watchers even believe that some of the business enterprises are actually covers for drug trafficking,” wrote Scott and Jon Lee Anderson.

While Moon’s representatives have refused to detail how they’ve sustained their far-flung activities including many businesses that insiders say lose money Moon’s spokesmen have denied recurring allegations about profiteering off illegal trafficking in weapons and drugs.

In a typical response to a gun-running question by the Argentine newspaper, Clarin, Moon’s representative Ricardo DeSena responded, “I deny categorically these accusations and also the barbarities that are said about drugs and brainwashing.” [Clarin, July 7, 1996]

Nevertheless, Moon’s organization did its best to disrupt the work of U.S. investigative reporters and government investigators looking into the connections between the drug trade and right-wing paramilitary operations such as the Nicaraguan Contras.

In the mid-1980s, for instance, when journalists and congressional investigators began probing the evidence of Contra-connected drug trafficking, they came under attack from Moon’s Washington Times. An Associated Press story that I co-wrote with Brian Barger about a Miami-based federal probe into gun- and drug-running by the Contras was disparaged in an April 11, 1986, front-page Washington Times article with the headline: “Story on [contra] drug smuggling denounced as political ploy.”

When Sen. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, uncovered additional evidence of Contra-drug trafficking, the Washington Times denounced him, too. The newspaper published articles depicting Kerry’s probe as a wasteful political witch hunt. “Kerry’s anti-contra efforts extensive, expensive, in vain,” declared the headline of one Times article on Aug. 13, 1986.

Despite the attacks, Kerry’s Contra-drug investigation eventually concluded that a number of Contra units were implicated in the cocaine trade.

“It is clear that individuals who provided support for the contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply network of the contras was used by drug trafficking organizations, and elements of the contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug traffickers,” Kerry’s investigation stated in a report issued April 13, 1989.

Mysterious Contra Backer

In 1998, CIA’s Inspector General Frederick Hitz confirmed the earlier allegations of extensive cocaine trafficking by the Contras, including significant ties to Bolivia’s traffickers. Hitz also cited a partially redacted document referring to a “religious” group cooperating with the Contra-cocaine trade.

“There are indications of links between [a U.S. religious organization] and two Nicaraguan counter-revolutionary groups,” read an Oct. 22, 1982, cable from the office of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. “These links involve an exchange in [the United States] of narcotics for arms.”

In 1982, the CIA quickly shut down any further reporting on this drug deal, citing the role of U.S. citizens. “In light of the apparent participation of U.S. persons throughout, agree you should not pursue the matter further,” CIA headquarters wrote on Nov. 3, 1982.

During the Inspector General’s investigation, Hitz conducted a follow-up interview, with Contra-connected drug trafficker Renato Pena, who described the redacted U.S. religious organization as a Contra “political ally that provided only humanitarian aid to Nicaraguan refugees and logistical support for contra-related rallies, such as printing services and portable stages.”

Moon’s religious-political groups, some based in the United States, were extremely active supporting the Contras in the early 1980s, suggesting that Moon’s Washington Times might have had more than an ideological reason to attack investigators exploring Contra drug trafficking.

To this day, the Washington Times remains a reliably right-wing voice in the U.S. capital. [Moon died on Sept. 3, 2012.]

Still, the CIA’s shielding of the name of that “religious organization” and similar protective behavior represented a continuation of a long-standing pattern in which U.S. intelligence covered up for right-wing and neo-Nazi criminality, a dark history that began with the likes of Klaus Barbie and has extended “Hitler’s Shadow” to modern times.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.