Archive/File: people/b/bellant.russ bellant.pt1 From: cberlet@igc.apc.org (NLG Civil Liberties Committee) Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy Subject: Re: Bellant: Old Nazi Networks in US Message-ID: <1299600113@igc.apc.org> Date: 12 Dec 92 02:27:00 GMT References: <1299600110@igc.apc.org> Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600110:cdp:1299600113:000:13060 Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!cberlet Dec 11 18:27:00 1992 [Editor's Note: The articles comprising this file were posted in multiple parts, which I have concatenated here. Header information, excepting ID's, is removed from all but the first article (see header, above). knm. Dec 14, 1992.] /* Written 9:10 pm Dec 8, 1992 by cberlet in igc:publiceye */ /* Written 8:30 pm Dec 6, 1992 by cberlet in igc:p.news */ /* Written 6:26 pm Mar 4, 1990 by nlgclc in igc:publiceye */ Bellant: Old Nazis/Heritage Groups 1 PART ONE - SECTION 1 [The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities)Council] "While the large majority of the organizations in the Republican Nationalities Council are thoroughly respectable, it is nonetheless true that the council has become fertile grounds for political organizing by certain former Nazi collaborators still active in immigrant communities in this country. " (Christopher Simpson,, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988) ---------------- - Republicans, Authoritarians, anti-Semites and Fascists - The emigre fascist network within the Republican Party represents a small but significant element of the coalition which brought Ronald Reagan into the White House. It is from this network that the George Bush presidential campaign assembled its ethnic outreach unit in 1988. . .a unit that saw eight resignations by persons charged with anti-semitism, racism, facsist leanings and even Nazi collaboration. These right-wing emigre's are a small but vocal element within the broader ethnic communities they claim to represent. They frequently utilize anti-communist sentiments, historical revisionism and lack of knowledge about Eastern and Central Europe as a shield to deflect inspection and criticism of their past actions and current views. The emigre fascist network organizes support for its ideological agenda through national and international coalitions of like-minded constituencies which often work with other authoritarian, anti-democratic and pro-fascist forces. This broader coalition ranges from Axis allies and their apologists to friends and allies of contemporary dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. In the case of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, the nature of the right-wing emigre network can be illustrated by briefly reviewing the backgrounds of some of the past and current leadership of the Republican Heritage Groups Council: - Axis Allies and Apologists - *** Laszlo Pasztor: The founding chair and a key figure in the Council, Pasztor began his political career in a Hungarian pro-Nazi party and served in Berlin at the end of World War II. He continues to be involved in ultra-rightist groups and fascist networks while working with the GOP. *** Radi Slavoff: The Republican Heritage Groups Council's executive director is a member of a Bulgarian fascist group and leader of the Bulgarian GOP unit of the Council. He was able to get the leader of his Bulgarian nationalist group a White House invitation even though that leader was being investigated for concealing alleged World War II war crimes. He is also active in other emigre fascist groups. *** Nicolas Nazarenko: A former World War II officer in the German SS Cossack Division, Nazarenko heads a Cossack GOP unit of the Republican Heritage Groups Council but declares that Jews are his "ideological enemy." He is still active with pro-Nazi elements in the U.S. *** Florian Galdau: A close associate and defender of Valerian Trifa, the Romanian archbishop prosecuted for concealing his involvement in war crimes of the pro-Nazi Romanian Iron Guard in World War II. Charged by former Iron Guardists and others with being the East Coast recruiter for the Iron Guard in the U.S., Galdau heads the Romanian Republican unit of the Republican Heritage Groups Council. *** Method Balco: Head of the Slovak GOP unit, which is filled with supporters and at least one former diplomat of the Slovak Nazi government of World War II. Balco also organizes annual commemorations of the Slovak Nazi regime. *** Walter Melianovich: Head of the Byelorussian GOP unit, which has had collaborators of the Nazi World War II occupation in leadership roles, Melianovich has worked with other fascist groups. *** Croatian GOP: Their group wrote an apology for the Croatian Ustashi's World War II alliance with Hitler which appeared in a Republican Heritage Groups Council publication signed by GOP Chair Frank Fahrenkopf. - Friends of Dictatorship - *** Philip A. Guarino: An honorary American member of the conspiratorial P-2 Masonic Lodge of Italy, which plotted in the early 1970's to overthrow the Italian government in order to install a dictatorship. P-2 was exposed widely in the European press and investigated by the Italian Parliament. Guarino, an Italian Heritage Council member and Republican National Committee advisor, offered aid to those being investigated. *** Anna Chennault: The newly-elected Republican Heritage Groups Council chairperson and funder of the Chinese Republican affiliate, which for years has been closely linked to the authoritarian Taiwan regime. The names of all but one of the persons listed above appeared on the invitational literature for the October, 1987 meeting of the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council in Washington, D.C. - The History of the Republican Heritage Groups Council - Many of the Republican Heritage Groups Council leaders of Central and Eastern European nationalities were part of the post-World War II immigration from displaced persons camps. It would be unfair to suggest that all or even a majority of Eastern and Central Europeans were anti-Semites or fascists. . .most displaced persons were victims of the war who played no role in collaborating with Nazism. Yet quite a few persons in the displaced persons camps were there as political escapees to avoid the consequences of their collaboration with the German occupation of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The Displaced Persons Commission, which worked from 1948 to 1952, arranged for approximately 400,000 persons to come to the U.S. [f-1] Initially it sought to bar members of pro-Nazi groups, but in 1950 a dramatic reversal took place. The Commission declared "the Baltic Legion not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States. . . ." [f-2] The Baltic Legion was also known as the Baltic Waffen (armed) SS. The final report of the Commission noted that the decision "was the subject of considerable controversy."[f-3] As well it should have been. The Waffen SS participated in the liquidation of Jews in the Baltic region because the SS units were comprised of Hitler's loyal henchmen, recruited from fascist political groups long tied to the German Nazi Party. Anyone opposed to the German occupation of the Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) was likely to meet a cruel death at their hands. They were now considered qualified to come to the United States, to become American citizens. Further, pro-Nazi elements from other parts of Europe came to the U.S. through nominally private groups associated with the Commission. In 1952, the Commission completed its work. The Eisenhower-Nixon presidential campaign was on. The Republicans were charging the Democrats with being "soft on Communism," and talk of "liberating" eastern Europe became part of the GOP message. That year, the Republican National Committee formed an Ethnic Division. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to power by a Eisenhower-Nixon "liberation" policy, were among those who signed on. This would become the embryo for the formation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1969. In a sense, however, the foundation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council lay in Hitler's networks into East Europe before World War II. In each of those Eastern European countries, the German SS set up or funded political action organizations that helped form SS militias during the war. In Hungary, for example, the Arrow Cross was the Hungarian SS affiliate; in Romania, the Iron Guard. The Bulgarian Legion, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Latvian Legion, and the Byelorussian (White Russian) Belarus Brigade were all SS-linked. In each of their respective countries, they were expected to serve the interests of the German Nazi Party before and during the war. Many of these groups formed SS divisions: the Ukrainian Nationalists formed the 14th Galician Division, Waffen SS; the Latvians formed the 15th and 19th Divisions, Waffen SS; etc. [f-4] These units and related German-controlled police units had several functions. The Ukrainian division unsuccessfully tried to impede the advance of the Soviet army against the Nazi army. Others hunted down those fellow countrymen who opposed the German occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II. More sadistically, many units rounded up hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles and others and conducted mass murders on the spot, sometimes decimating whole villages. They perfected "mobile killing teams" as efficient means of mass executions. Little is known about these units compared to the concentration camps, gas chambers and ovens, but they were an integrated component of the "Final Solution." Approximately one-third of the victims of the Holocaust, perhaps as many as 2 million, died at the hands of these units. This should not be taken to suggest that all Eastern and Central Europeans were Nazi collaborators who participated in atrocities, but it is a historical fact that some right-wing elements from virtually every Eastern European nationality tied their nationalistic goals to the rising star of fascism and Hitler's racialist Nazism. - The Council's Leadership - The founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council was Laszlo Pasztor, an activist in various Hungarian rightist and Nazi-linked groups. In World War II Pasztor was a member of the youth group of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian equivalent of the German Nazi Party. [f-5] As the Germans retreated from the USSR back to Germany in 1944, their allied Hungarian government collapsed. The Arrow Cross took power in Hungary, with Hitler's aid, to help defend Germany. Pasztor was sent to Berlin as part of the new diplomatic mission to Hitler, until the war's end. When Pasztor came to the U.S. in the 1950's, he joined the GOP's Ethnic Division. One of the leaders of the 1968 Nixon-Agnew campaign's ethnic unit, Pasztor says that Nixon promised him that if he won the election, he would form a permanent ethnic council within the GOP, as the Ethnic Division was only active during presidential campaigns. [f-6] Pasztor was made the organizer of the Council after Nixon's victory. Says Pasztor, "It was my job to identify about 25 ethnic groups" to bring into the Republican Heritage Groups Council. "In 1972 we used the Council as the skeleton to build the Heritage Groups for the re-election of the President." Pasztor's choices for filling emigre slots as the Council was being formed included various Nazi-collaborationist organizations mentioned above. Each formed a Republican federation, with local clubs around the country. The local clubs of the various federations then formed state multi-ethnic councils. Today there are 34 nationality federations and 25 state councils that constitute the National Republican Heritage Groups Council. To discover the names of the leaders of these federations is not an easy task. "That information is private. I have to get their permission before I can give you their names," responded Radi Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups Council executive director, when asked for a list of the federation leaders. [f-7] He agreed that federation heads were bona fide Republican Party posts which are not secret, "but the leaders prefer it that way." Although some names were gleaned from signature ads supporting funding for the contras, CIA-backed forces fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, [f-8] it required attendance at the Republican Heritage Groups Council convention in May of 1985 to learn the names of federation leaders. It was this convention that Reagan was addressing at the Shoreham Hotel. Some Republican Heritage Groups Council delegates were reluctant to talk; others were unstoppable. A pattern began to emerge from these conversations--that in setting up the Council, Pasztor went to various collaborationist and fascist-minded emigre groups and asked them to form GOP federations. It eventually became clear that it wasn't an accident or a fluke that people with Nazi associations were in the Republican Heritage Groups Council. In some cases more mainstream ethnic organizations were passed over in favor of smaller but more extremist groups. And it seems clear that the Republican National Committee knows with whom they are dealing. Reviewing the federations illustrates this point. Message-ID: <1299600114@igc.apc.org> References: <1299600110@igc.apc.org> PART ONE - SECTION 2 [The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities)Council] Axis Allies and Apologists -{Bulgarians}: - One of the organizations Pasztor approached to help form the Council was the Bulgarian National Front, headed by Ivan Docheff. As early as 1971, the GOP was warned that the National Front was beyond the pale. A Jack Anderson column quoted another Bulgarian-American organization, the conservative Bulgarian National Committee, which labeled Docheff's National Front as "fascist." [f-9] Neither the GOP nor the Nixon campaign took action. Professor Spas T. Raikin, a former official of the National Front, says the group grew out of an organization in Bulgaria that in the 1930's and 40's was "pro-Nazi and pro-fascist." [f-10] Although Docheff, 82, is semi-retired from GOP activity, the National Front is still represented in the person of Radi Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups Council executive director and head of the Bulgarian GOP federation. Slavoff also represents the National Front in several other Washington, D.C. area coalitions, including one that is Nazi-linked. [f-11] While Docheff was representing the National Front, however, the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations was investigating him for possible war crimes he was suspected of committing while the mayor of a German-occupied city in Bulgaria. Docheff denies he ever committed war crimes, and OSI never brought charges. Docheff's political history, however, is not in dispute. Founder of a Bulgarian youth group in the early 1930's, Docheff met with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi movement's leading philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, in 1934 shortly after the Nazis came to power. [f-12] Docheff then established the Bulgarian Legion, a pro-Hitler group that agitated for government action against Bulgarian Jews. Docheff later began publishing a newspaper, , which carried a swastika as part of the design at the top of the front page. One of its headlines reads ">Long live the sacred struggle against the Jews." with a "Dear George" message in what appears to be Reagan's handwriting. Docheff wrote an endorsement of Reagan in the same issue of . [f-16] When interviewed on the BNF's role in the Reagan-Bush campaign, Docheff said that the 25 U.S. chapters of the Front were active in the re-election effort: "If you want to know who the local chapter leaders of the Bulgarian National Front are, find out who heads the local Bulgarian unit of the Reagan-Bush campaign. They are the same persons." [f-17] Although the warning by the Bulgarian National Committee and the subsequent investigation of Docheff have provided adequate levels of warning to the GOP, it has continued to maintain ties to the Bulgarian National Front. Even while the U.S. government was investigating Docheff on war crimes charges, he was a pre-election guest of the White House in September, 1984, [f-18] arranged through Republican Heritage Groups Council executive director Radi Slavoff. -{Cossacks}: - Attending the Reagan speech at the Shoreham was another Pasztor choice, "Major General" Nicholas Nazarenko. Slightly over six feet and a lean 200 pounds with dark hair and a pencil mustache, Nazarenko is still consumed with his wartime hatred of Russians and Jews. He organizes annual "Captive Nations" marches in New York City every summer, in which he appears in Cossack military dress. Nazarenko is a spry 76 years old, but could pass for 60; his energy seems boundless. The evening after Reagan's speech at the Shoreham Hotel, he insisted on showing this writer a huge suitcase of materials he carries with him as part of his political activity. It was filled with literature on the "Jewish problem," Cossack publications, and memorabilia from his service in World War II--on the German side. Nazarenko chain smoked and drank vodka throughout our seven-hour interview. He described his involvement with the German army as an officer in special Cossack units, battle by battle. His final military action was in an SS Cossack unit under German General von Panwitz. In order to prove his sincerity, he showed me his German officer's ID, and photographs of him and his unit. There were swastikas on the uniforms. Toward the end of the war, Nazarenko headed intelligence operations in Berlin for a Cossack "government-in-exile." After working with the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps, he came to the U.S. in 1949. He became head of a Cossack War Veterans group--a group of veterans allied with Germany during WWII which was later renamed the World Federation of Cossacks for the Liberation of Cossackia. Nazarenko was active in Richard Nixon's 1968 and 1972 campaigns, and his Cossack veterans group is one of two Cossackian components of the Republican Heritage Groups Council. Alex Aksenov, another Cossack delegate to the Republican Heritage Groups Council convention, spoke briefly about his past, volunteering that he was "in Berlin from 1939-45." He went to South America after the war, he said, but in the 1950's was brought to the U.S. to work on the first nuclear submarine program. [f-19] Nazarenko says he has been charged by other Cossack emigres as having hung Jews in Odessa and executed Soviet soldiers. He claimed that these were lies intended to discredit him. He does say, however, that Jews are our "ideological enemies." In that spirit, Nazarenko said that he was in touch with "patriotic" publications such as the neo-Nazi , the anti-Semitic> , and , a racialist and >anti-Semitic monthly. A well-publicized controversy erupted when was praised by Joseph Sobran> in> , May 1986, as "an often brilliant magazine, covering a beat nobody else will touch. . . ." writers and editors are all anonymous. Nazarenko says he's also in touch with various "Nazi" organizations. "They respect me because [I was a] former German army officer. Sometimes when I meet these guys, they say `Heil Hitler'." A recipient of a pension from the West German government for his wartime service, Nazarenko claims that Germany didn't commit atrocities in World War II. "Jews didn't die from gas chambers," says Nazarenko. "Those mountains of bones are from people who starved to death or died from disease." -{Romanians}: - Romanian-American Republicanism is led by a retired priest who claimed in 1984 that the most important issue for Romanian Republicans is "the deportation of our beloved spiritual leader, Archbishop Valerian Trifa." [f-20] Faced with charges by the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) that he participated in the murder of Jews as part of a coup plot in Bucharest, Romania in 1941, Trifa left the U.S. in 1984. But his political network stayed behind. The Romanian Republican priest, Florian Galdau, is part of that network. Valerian Trifa was a leader of the Iron Guard in Bucharest in 1941. The Guard was a pro-Nazi Romanian group linked to the SS by liaison officers such as Otto von Bolschwing of the German SS.[f-21] In January, 1941 the Guard, with SS backing, attempted a coup. Trifa was one of the leaders who instigated crowds on a rampage that sought out Jews for gruesome deaths. Three days of chaos ensued. When order was restored, Trifa fled. During those three days, witnesses charged, Trifa personally went into a jail and killed Jews who had been put into a cell there. After the war, Trifa was able to come to the U.S. and take over the Romanian Orthodox church by means of physical coercion and with some help from the U.S. government. In 1952, Trifa became an Archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. [f-22] FBI documents from the years 1954 and 1955 (which were used in the prosecution of Trifa) report claims that Trifa "is bringing Iron Guard members into the U.S. and installing them as priests." One of those priests, according to a report of Oct. 5, 1955, was Florian Galdau, whom an FBI source described as "a Romanian Iron Guard member and who at Trifa's instructions was elected Pastor of St. Dumitru," a Manhattan parish. [f-23] Galdau had escaped Romania after the war, eventually settling in London. He began broadcasting over the BBC in programs aimed at Romanian citizens, a project comparable to the Radio Free Europe programs being established at the time under the covert control of the CIA. In 1955 Trifa brought Galdau to the U.S. According to an former Iron Guardist, the late George Roman, Galdau was brought in to head a New York City Iron Guard unit. His task was to recruit new Romanian immigrants into the Guard. [f-24] Galdau says he has brought 20,000 immigrants into the U.S. "I have files on 15,000 people I helped settle," he claims. He is aided by the Tolstoy Foundation and the International Rescue Committee, [f-25] two resettlement groups with links to the CIA. [f-26] Over the years, Galdau has performed priestly functions at events that commemorated Iron Guard founder Corneliu Codreanu. Trifa himself once concurred in an interview that the Galdau church was "a center of Fascists." [f-27] In 1974, the of New York City headlined a story "Florian Galdau, A Priest, Heads New York Iron Guard Cell." [f-28] The charge has also been repeated in recent interviews with other Romanians, including a priest, all of whom, fearing reprisals, requested anonymity. Galdau himself denies any association with the Iron Guard. Further, he denies any knowledge of the existence of the Iron Guard in the U.S. Dennis Debbaudt, who has researched the Iron Guard for ten years, finds such denials "incredible." Debbaudt, who has assisted a Canadian government investigation of the Iron Guard presence there, estimates that at least 25% of the priests of Trifa's church were Guardists. "It's impossible for Galdau to be unaware of the Guard presence in the Romanian Orthodox Church."[f-29] Interviewed at the Republican Heritage Groups Council convention, Galdau criticized Jews for the debate over Bitburg, saying "Jews have harmed themselves in this country over this controversy." He says his protest of Trifa's prosecution was "as a Republican," and did not have anything to do with Iron Guard politics. A founder of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1969, Galdau and his wife were the sole representatives of the Romanian-American Republican Clubs to the 1985 and 1986 Council conventions. In 1985, a third delegate "got sick" and the three alternates "just didn't show." Galdau's wife is vice-chair of the Romanian-American Republican Clubs. His principle contributions at the conventions were to charge that the "Democratic Party is controlled by the KGB," and to argue successfully for a resolution passed by the convention condemning the Justice Department's OSI investigation into the presence of Nazi-era war criminals in the United States. Galdau claims his Romanian-American Republican Clubs include ten local units. He says that they "recruited 600 volunteers for the 1984 Reagan-Bush campaign." But getting details to substantiate these assertions is difficult. Although he holds a party post, he won't discuss his role within the party. When I asked Republican Heritage Groups Council leaders for information on the Romanian Clubs, they said Galdau doesn't share details with them either. Galdau was listed as a member of the Host Committee for a reception honoring Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Frank J. Fahrenkopf during the Council's 1987 meeting in Washington, D.C. In 1988 he was named National Chair of Romanians for Bush. -{Byelorussians}: - Another federation leader who makes the charge that the Democratic Party aids communism is Walter Melianovich, head of the Byelorussian-American Republican Federation. "The Democratic Party is doing the dirty work of Communism. They don't call themselves Communists, they just parrot the Communist line. . . ." Melianovich is unhappy. At fifty years of age, he is too young to have worked with the Nazis. But some of his friends weren't. "The damn OSI is hounding my friends," he complains. This is some of the "dirty work of Communism" that Democrats do. They hunt Nazis, and the Byelorussian GOP wants to put a stop to it. [f-30] Melianovich's federation is closely associated with the Byelorussian-American Association (BAA), an emigre group made up, in part, of former collaborators of the Nazi occupation and its extermination campaign. An early BAA leader was Franz Kushel, an SS major general and commander of the Belarus Brigade, a Waffen SS unit. According to , a book about >Byelorussian Nazi collaboration, Kushel's "men carried over 40,000 Jews to an execution ground in 1941." [f-32] Another BAA leader, Stanislaw Stankievich, one-time editor of a Nazi-funded newspaper, came from an upper-class family of Nazi collaborators. He became a mayor of Borissow in 1941. After having a wall built around the Jewish section of the city, Stankievich conducted a series of financial extortions on the contained ghetto. His police then sadistically exterminated the 7,000 Jews of Borissow on October 20, 1941. [f-33] As the Soviets advanced on German-occupied Byelorussia, a puppet government was formed to help mobilize support for the defense of Germany. The 1,039 delegates to this "All-Byelorussian Second Congress" were screened and approved by Germany. Some of these delegates, many of them leaders of police units and a Byelorussian Waffen SS division, came to dominate BAA. [f-34] Cheslav Nadjuik of Los Angeles was a delegate to the German-sponsored 1944 puppet government. [f-35] He was also a delegate to the 1986 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention in Los Angeles. Now in his seventies, Nadjuik said that he was involved in nationalist politics all his life. "I joined a nationalist group in high school, in the 1920's, and was active in Poland when I was in school there." He said he was a judge during the German occupation, and "I attended the Second (All-Byelorussian) Congress." After the war, the Congress reassembled in Germany and then in the U.S., holding annual meetings to direct their various front activities. Nadjuik attended at least one of those meetings, in 1954. His co-delegate at the 1986 Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting, Joe Arciuch, head of the technical services division of Hughes Aircraft, "escaped Byelorussia in 1951 just ahead of Communist bayonets," according to a friend of his who joined our interview. Arciuch declined to discuss the details of his activities in Byelorussia. The 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention delegation, led by Melianovich, also included Raisa Stankievich, wife of Stanislaw Stankievich and herself a former head of the BAA. Melianovich says the 1944 puppet government was "not a legitimate government," but in three hours of interviews he was uncritical of any Nazi collaborators or of the BAA, of which he is a member. Critical of those exposing criminal collaborators, he strongly supported Republican Heritage Groups Council convention efforts to oppose the OSI. The Byelorussian GOP leader said that his federation's biggest concern was increasing the amount of Byelorussian broadcasting into the USSR by the U.S. government-run Radio Liberty. He has met with various agencies, including National Security Council staff, lobbying for more programming. Access to administration policymakers, says Melianovich, is enhanced by being part of the Republican Heritage Groups Council. By lobbying for increased Radio Liberty propaganda, they hope to destabilize the USSR, returning the Byelorussian fascists to power. Melianovich even provided what appears to be their future map of of Byelorussia, complete with new "ethnogenetical borders." Melianovich claims that the Republican Heritage Groups Council has "changed the image of the Republican Party under our pressure." Charging the Democrats with only caring about "the Black and Jewish vote," he says that "if anyone should be called nationalist, it is the GOP." Melianovich was named National Chairman of Byelorussians for Bush in 1988. - Croatians: - The Croatian Republicans are the only federation who have put their sympathies with the Axis powers into print in Republican Party literature. In , a 1984 Republican Heritage Groups Council booklet, listing commemorative dates of significance to ethnic Americans, is the following entry for April 10th: "The Independent State of Croatia was declared by unanimous proclamation in 1941. . . .Lack of Western support and Axis occupation forced the new state into an unfortunate association with the Axis powers." The booklet preface is signed by Frank Fahrenkopf, Jr., Chairman of the Republican National Committee. [See graphic]. The "unfortunate association" was, in fact, a long-standing relationship between Nazi Germany and the Croatian Ustashi beginning years before World War II. [f-36] The Nazis conspired with the Ustashi to create the Croatian split from Yugoslavia. When the Vatican-backed Ustashi took power in 1941, they began liquidating Orthodox Serbians, Jews and Gypsies. Even the Nazis were taken aback by the barbarity of Ustashi concentration camps and the liquidations of whole villages. Huge ovens at Jasenovac reportedly burned people alive. An estimated 750,000 people, mostly Serbians, were killed by the Ustashi in the crucible which forged Croatian independence. The "independent state of Croatia," whose founding the GOP suggests we commemorate, ceased to exist after the fall of the Third Reich. - Slovaks: - Slovakia, another puppet state created by Hitler, has not only apologists but also at least one former collaborationist leader on the Republican Heritage Groups Council. When Hitler invaded and split Czechoslovakia in 1939, he created the Slovak state under Monsignor Josef Tiso. When the U.S. declared war on Germany on December 12, 1941, Tiso declared Slovakia at war with the U.S. Complete with their own imitation SS, called the Hlinka Guard, the Tiso leadership mimicked the Nazis. [f-37] They also imitated the worst of German racial policies, shipping Jews to extermination camps in Poland. Lucy Dawidowicz, in , estimated that 75,000 of 90,000 Slovak Jews were killed. [f-38] Today, Method Balco is the head of the Slovak-American Republican Federation. Despite the fact that Tiso was executed in 1946 as a war criminal, Balco still organizes in New York City an annual commemoration of the Tiso rule. The Slovak Republican delegation to the Republican Heritage Groups Council also included Josef Mikus, a former diplomat of the Tiso regime. Balco, Mikus, and a third delegate, John Hvasta, all work closely with the Toronto-based Slovak World Congress, a group set up and greatly influenced by former aides to Tiso. Hvasta, the key Washington liaison for the Slovak World Congress, has also helped the 1988 Presidential Campaign of former Ku Klux Klan leader and white supremacist David Duke. Hvasta's American Public Research Council rented its mailing list to the Duke campaign in September of 1987 for $2,000, according to records obtained from the Federal Election Commission. [f-39] Joseph Kirschbaum, a top commander of the SS-like Hlinka Guard and a principal of the Slovak World Congress, edited a series of speeches made by Slovak nationalists, including several former Tiso officials. [f-40] One speech calls for the establishment of a new Slovak state along "ethnogenetical" lines. Tiso's former foreign minister and Josef Mikus' former boss, Ferdinand Durcansky, wrote: ". . .anti-Semitism in Slovakia had no racial, but exclusively political, economic and social roots. Racial elements were imported into Slovakia from the Reich as manifested along many lines in many conflicts. I hope we live to see the time when the Jews draw from these facts the necessary objective conclusions. . . .[f-41]" The book of speeches was published by the Slovak World Congress. Editor Kirschbaum and writer Durcansky were in key positions to have been aware of Adolph Eichmann's implementation of the "Final Solution" against Slovak Jews. Their presence in the Slovak World Congress, along with others such as Balco and Mikus, may explain why the Congress does not repudiate the Slovak puppet government, its declaration of war on the United States, or its extermination campaign. In an interview in his northwest Washington, D.C. home, Republican Heritage Groups Council delegate Mikus said that the U.S. should not have allied with or aided the USSR in World War II. He noted that "without the aid, the USSR would have been defeated by Germany," an outcome Mikus said would have been preferable. Balco said that the chief concern for Slovak Republicans is to get the Voice of America and the State Department to recognize Slovakia as separate from Czechoslovakia. Friends of Dictatorship - Italians: - Certain Republican Heritage Groups Council members have been close allies in recent years of those in Italy who would overthrow the government and re-install fascism in Rome. Italy's problems with fascism have been much more recent than World War II. In 1981 a conspiracy was foiled in which a group of business, political, Mafia, military and Vatican-connected figures planned to overthrow Italian parliamentary democracy and install a dictatorship. The group, called the P-2 Masonic Lodge, had nearly a thousand members. The prestige of P-2 members (heads of the intelligence agencies, 38 generals and admirals, and 3 cabinet officers, for example), plus revelations of financial scandals, brought extensive European press coverage, the collapse of the Italian government, and an extensive parliamentary inquiry. [f-42] Although P-2 had existed for many years as an illegal secret society, in the 1970's it became involved in efforts to destabilize the Italian system through economic warfare and terrorism, including bombings of public places. The P-2 goal was to create a demand for fascism to restore order. A 1987 article by Jerry Meldon in the discussed the Italian neo->fascist right's strategy of terror: "In many ways, it [the Italian right] has been a much more dangerous movement than the kidnappers and murderers of the extreme left. Far more deaths can be attributed to right-wing terrorists' acts. More significantly, the neo-fascists have enjoyed the protection and support of Italian intelligence agencies and, according to a 1976 congressional report, the CIA." "With such offical support, the fascists have pursued a `strategy of tension' through their own [terrorist] acts and those of leftist groups they penetrated. They have cultivated a climate of fear to undermine support for the West's most popular communist party and justify an authoritarian takeover of the Italian government. [f-43] " The calculated terror began in 1969, when the right resolved to fight the growth of the left in Italy. On December 12, a bomb exploded in a plaza of downtown Milan, killing 16 people and injuring another 100. Within the hour several more bombs went off in Rome. Fascist stormtrooper groups formed. In December, 1970 a rightist coup was attempted but failed. Police discovered further plots as violence continued throughout the 1970's. Reaction to and fear of assassinations, kidnappings, knee-cappings and mob violence began seeping into Italy's everyday life. Lifestyles changed as Italians altered spending habits, dress and daily routine to avoid becoming a victim. Much of this early terrorism was blamed on the left. In 1973, police found that terrorist activity and the control of fascist groups was being orchestrated by a group called the Rose of Twenty, made up of military officers and industrialists. After their arrests, however, the violence continued. More plots were uncovered, including lists of targets for assassination. The police still had not uncovered P-2, the control center of the terror. In 1980, a bomb ripped through the Bologna train station, killing 85 people. The bombing was eventually linked to members of P-2 and Italian neo-fascist terrorist groups. By the mid-70's, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was gaining electoral support and leaders of the ruling Christian Democratic Party were meeting with the PCI to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. P-2 and its friends abroad worked to stop the coalition and PCI's electoral success. P-2's immediate target: defeat the PCI in the 1976 elections. Their long-term strategy was to defeat the system which allowed the PCI to exist. One American involved in this intrigue was Philip A. Guarino, 79, an adviser to the Republican National Committee on senior citizens' affairs, who was long active in Italian GOP politics. A theology student in Mussolini's Italy in the late 20's and much of the 1930's, Guarino helped establish the ethnic division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75. [f-44] He attended the 1985 Council convention to ensure that his friend Frank Stella won the chairmanship of the Council in a tight race with former Cleveland mayor Ralph Perk. Guarino was also described in , a book about activities involving P-2, as an "honorary member of P-2." [f-45] Foreign members of P-2 were rare. One other of the select was Jose Lopez Riga, founder of the Latin American death squad group known as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance. The exposure of P-2 and Guarino's involvement (which Guarino has denied) came about when Michele Sindona, head of Vatican banking operations, was sentenced to 25 years in a New York prison for illegal banking activities. Italian investigations of Sindona led to Licio Gelli, grandmaster of the secret, illegal P-2 Lodge. Sindona and Gelli were associates of Guarino. Gelli was an ardent Blackshirt in the Fascist Party of Mussolini's Italy and one of his firm supporters to the end. As the leader of P-2, he made violations of the Lodge's oaths punishable by death. The presence of certain Mafioso and police officials in P-2 made the death threats credible. After Italian police traced Sindona to Gelli, it was discovered that Guarino had been corresponding with Gelli. The reported that Guarino wrote Gelli that "things were going badly for `Michele'," the banker imprisoned in New York. Guarino had hosted Gelli at Reagan's 1981 inauguration, and introduced him to "members of the entourage." [f-46] Guarino's dealings with the P-2 network began no later than 1976, when the Mafia-linked Sindona financed an group called Americans for a Democratic Italy, cochaired by Guarino and Paul Rao, Jr. who is described in as "a prominent member of the Italian-American community and attorney for the head of the Gambino family." [f-47] Sindona and Gambino family members were indicted in 1982 for "operating a $600 million- a-year heroin trade between Sicily and America." [f-48] Guarino was also involved in John Connally's Committee for the Defense of the Mediterranean, which propagandized on the Italian Communist Party (PCI) threat to the West. [f-49] Connally, Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury and member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Nixon and Gerald Ford, was a friend of Sindona. [f-50] Another friend and guest at Connally's Texas ranch was Roberto Calvi, a Vatican banker and P-2 member, according to Larry Gurwin in . Calvi was in Gelli's inner circle, serving as an "executioner," one of a dozen hooded men with axes who served Gelli in the secret initiation rites for new members of P-2. The ceremony included the mixing of the initiate's blood with that of Gelli and his "executioners," the testing of courage with vipers, and an oath that bound the new P-2 member to Gelli and the netherworld of fascism for life. [f-51] Calvi's life was cut short, however, when he was found hanging from a bridge in London in 1982. In 1978, Guarino's Italian Heritage Council ally, Frank Stella, became National Chair of the Heritage National Committee of Connally for President, when Connally sought the 1980 GOP nomination for president. [f-52] Later Stella got on track with Ronald Reagan. Mark Valente, a Stella protege and suburban Detroit City Council member now serving as a Republican National Committee Ethnic Liaison staffer, says, "Everyone at the White House knows Frank." Stella's name has gone through the White House appointment process on several occasions. In 1981 he was nominated for the little-known Intelligence Oversight Board, which is supposed to monitor the legalities of covert operations of the intelligence agencies. [f-53] He withdrew his name after it had been publicly released. Stella was being considered for the post of Ambassador to Italy in 1985, but withdrew his name again, according to Valente. In 1983 he was made a White House Fellow. Stella, a Detroit businessman, has many local civic service activities to his credit. In February, 1988 he was named cochair of a panel evaluating the advisability of legalized casino gambling for the city of Detroit. He is also a top Michigan GOP fundraiser. Stella had an seat on the Republican National Committee by virtue of his chairmanship of the >Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1981-83 and 1985-87. In 1988 Stella was named National Chairman of Italian-Americans for Bush. Stella can't quite forget about Italy. In February, 1986 he gave an award of "honorary member" in the National Italian American Foundation to Victor Emmanuel of Savoy. [f-54] Stella is president of the foundation. He says it is "perceived to be the spokesman for the Italian-American community in the United States."[f-55] The man he honored, Victor Emmanuel, would be the king of Italy today, except his family, the House of Savoy, was expelled from Italy in 1946 due to its die-hard support of Mussolini's fascist order. [f-56] Victor Emmanuel, a reputed gunrunner for the Shah of Iran, is an arms trafficker and member of P-2. He is alleged to have used his wealth and influence to avoid a long prison sentence after he shot and killed a West German tourist in a party brawl on a Mediterranean island several years ago. [f-57] The irony of the award to this erstwhile fascist by the "spokesman" for Italian-Americans, is that Victor Emmanuel, until recently, was one of only two Italians in the world not allowed to set foot on Italian soil. The other person banned was his father. [f-58 -{Chinese}: - The Chinese-American and Asian-American Republican federations are led by Anna Chennault, who gained fame in the 1950's and 1960's as an ardent advocate of Chiang Kai-Shek's dictatorship on Taiwan. Both federations appear to be little more than adjuncts to Taiwan government activities in the U.S. That was highlighted at the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention, when an official Taiwan delegation arrived at the Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting as part of a nationwide tour belatedly celebrating Reagan's second inauguration four months earlier. While the foremost visitor from Taiwan was the Deputy Minister for National Defense, the honorary president of the delegation was Ben John Chen, who also chairs the Asian-American Republican Federation. [f-59] Other Chinese and Asian GOP federation members are part of trade groups linked to Taiwan. The Republican Heritage Groups Council agenda was interrupted at the Chinese federation's request so that the delegation could present awards from the Taiwan government to Michael Sotirhos, the outgoing Republican Heritage Groups Council chair (who later became Reagan's ambassador to Jamaica). Also receiving an award from the Taiwan regime was Anna Chennault, who funds the Asian American GOP federation, according to its chairman, Ben John Chen. Chennault became chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1987.
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