The American Security Council
enrique
from the book
Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party,
1988
by Russ Bellant
THE AMERICAN SECURITY COUNCIL
COLD WARRIORS
It has been called "The Cold War Campus" and "The Heart of the
Military-industrial Complex." Both are names
the American Security Council wears with pride. Its boards are filled
with retired senior military officers,
executives of major corporations, including some of the largest military
contractors, and some New Right leaders.
Wes McCune of the Washington, D.C.-based Group Research, which monitors
the political right wing, says the
ASC "is not just the representative of the military-industrial complex,
it is the personification of the
military-industrial complex."
The ASC focuses on foreign policy, military, and intelligence issues. It
is the clearinghouse for U.S. political
rightists on arms control, aid to the contras, new weapons programs, and
lobbying for special projects, such as aid
to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in Angola. In its specialized areas, the ASC
probably has had more influence with the
Reagan Administration than the well-publicized Heritage Foundation, a
right-wing think tank in Washington, D.C.,
which produced massive studies suggesting conservative policies to the
Reagan Administration following each
election. However, the ASC is less visible than the Heritage Foundation.
Little noticed by the press, the ASC is extremely influential among
right-wing groups and within the Reagan
Administration. In spite of the veneer of respectability its board
members' credentials might provide in some
circles, the ASC is in some respects more extremist than the Republican
Heritage Groups Council. It also serves
as a connecting point between Nazi collaborationists and fascists on one
hand, and Reagan Administration
policymakers on the other.
The key outreach arm of the ASC is the Coalition for Peace Through
Strength. Composed of 171 organizations that
are supposed to form a grassroots lobby for ASC political priorities,
the Coalition is where many of the ASC
extremist ties are established. The Republican Heritage Groups Council
and some of its component elements, such
as Galdau's Romanian-American Republican Clubs, are members of the
Coalition. These ties to the authoritarian,
collaborationist, and fascist Right are consistent with the history of
the ASC.
ORIGINS OF THE ASC
The ASC began in Chicago in 1955, staffed primarily by former FBI
agents. In its first year it was called the
Mid-American Research Library. Corporations joined to take advantage of
what former FBI agent William Turner
described in Power on the Right as "a dossier system modeled after the
FBl's, which was intended to weed out
employees and prospective employees deemed disloyal to the free
enterprise concept."
Before the founders of the ASC got into the business of collecting
dossiers on Americans, however, they had
another sort of political interest. Their political histories go back to
the racialist and anti-Semitic groups in the
1930's that were working in concert with Hitler's war aims. Three groups
in particular would later provide elements
of the future ASC: the America First Committee, the American Vigilante
Intelligence Federation, and the American
Coalition of Patriotic Societies.
THE AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE
The person most responsible for establishing the ASC was General Robert
Wood, then Chairman of Sears
Roebuck. Prior to Pearl Harbor, Wood was also the chairman of the
America First Committee, an organization
committed to opposing all efforts to aid Allies besieged by Nazi
Germany.
As national chairman, Wood made no effort to keep out openly pro-Nazi
groups known to have been supported by
Germany, such as the German-American Bund. Radio priest Father Charles
Coughlin's anti-Semitic and pro-Axis
followers were also permitted by Wood to work within America First. A
1942 FBI report indicated that Wood's
"patriotic" group had "been called upon to accept financial assistance
from pro-Nazi sources."
After Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war on the United
States, the America First Committee didn't go
out of business as it officially declared on December 12, 1941. Five
days later, a secret meeting of certain key
leaders of America First took place in New York to plan for what they
assumed (and hoped) would be the Axis
victory in Europe and the Far East. "The Committee has in reality gone
underground," FBI Director l. Edgar
Hoover reported to the White House. It began planning for the day when
they would be the Americans with whom
the victorious Nazis would negotiate a surrender. Finally, when the
defeat of the Nazis by Allied powers was a
foregone conclusion, the America First Committee secretly dissolved
itself in 1944.
William Regnery, an incorporator and early leader of the Committee with
Robert Wood, helped Wood to found the
ASC. His son, Henry Regnery, replaced him at their book publishing
company and at the ASC. The younger
Regnery told an interviewer several years ago that "l was very much
opposed to our getting into the war; and I
published this book, which was highly critical of Roosevelt and of the
whole realm of American policies involving
World War 11. Very gladly, I must say." Regnery said that the book,
published in the early 1950's, reflected his
"personal tastes."
AMERICAN VIGILANTE INTELLIGENCE FEDERATION
The ASC began collecting dossiers in the McCarthy era in what was often
seen as a blacklisting operation against
union organizers and those with "suspect" political orientations. Files
and documents were collected from the
House Committee on Un-American Activities and several private file
collections. One such collection originally was
compiled by Harry Jung, whose research was motivated by a search for
what he saw as a Jewish-communist
conspiracy.
Jung founded the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation (AVIF) in
1927 as an anti-union spy operation. With
the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, Jung became the first major
distributor in the U.S. of the anti-Semitic forgery,
"The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." The "Protocols" text had
been used as a pretext by Russian Czars
and European Nazis to conduct pogroms and extermination campaigns
against European Jewry. His AVIF became
involved with German Nazi agents in the U.S. In 1942, Jung's East Coast
operative, a Col. Eugene Sanctuary, was
indicted by the Justice Department for sedition. One can only wonder at
the purpose and content of the files
collected by Jung, and purchased by the ASC. The Jung file collection
reportedly had one million names indexed
when the ASC acquired it some thirty years ago.
AMERICAN COALITION OF PATRIOTIC SOCIETIES
The American Coalition of Patriotic Societies (ACPS) is another
"patriotic" group that flourished during Jung's
heyday and still exists as a member of the Coalition for Peace Through
Strength. The ACPS was founded by John
Trevor in 1929 to support and maintain tight U.S. immigration
restrictions enacted into law in 1924. Trevor was the
behind-the-scenes architect of the 1924 Immigration Restriction Act,
designed to exclude East Europeans, Italians,
Jews, and other non-Nordics.
The American Coalition of Patriotic Societies leadership included Harry
Jung and others with links to German
National Socialism. One associate of Trevor, Madison Grant, explicitly
repudiated "democratic ideals and
Christian values in the interest of a Nordic philosophy," according to
John Higham's Strangers in the Land.
Another ACPS director, Harry Laughlin, was given an honorary Ph.D. in
1936 by a Nazi-controlled German
university for his work in the area of racial eugenics.
John Trevor, Jung, and a third ACPS official, Walter Steele, were among
fifteen Americans whose names appeared
inside a 1933 Nazi book, recommending it for an American audience. Begun
with an endorsement by Adolph Hitler,
the book contains such statements as "The total contrast to
Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevism is exclusively represented
by German National Socialism." In 1942, U.S. Army Intelligence called
Walter Steele's
32 OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
National Republic "fascist." In the same year, the American Coalition of
Patriotic Societies was named by the
Justice Department as "a factor" in the sedition charges brought against
those thought to be aiding the Axis.
General Wood, John Trevor, Walter Steele, and their associates all
became patriotic anticommunists after World
War 11, however, aiding Senator Joe McCarthy, lobbying for a more
intense cold war, and supporting reprieves for
convicted Nazi war criminals.
General Wood helped establish Human Events, then a monthly magazine,
that in late 1945 called the Nuremberg
Trials a "travesty of justice." Involved in a number of other rightist
groups after the war, he recruited John M.
Fisher, a World War 11 bomber pilot, from the FBI as a security
consultant for Sears Roebuck in 1953.
John Trevor was a leader of a group, Ten Million Americans Mobilizing
for Justice, attempting to prevent the
censure of Joe McCarthy. Its leadership represented a Who's Who of
American anti-Semitism. At their 1954 rally
for McCarthy, a female photographer taking pictures of the special guest
section for Time magazine was physically
assaulted amid shouts of "Dirty Jew" and "Hang the communist bitch!"
John B. Trevor, Jr. became acting secretary of the American Coalition of
Patriotic Societies after his father's death
in 1956, but the political character of the group showed no noticeable
change. The ACPS in 1962 condemned the
Nuremberg war crimes trials as a "dreadful retrogression into
barbarism," and called for the release of those "who
may still be suffering imprisonment."
John B. Trevor, Jr. was one of eight members of the American Security
Council Board of Directors until several
years ago. In 1985, the president of the American Coalition of Patriotic
Societies was John Fisher, and their
address was the same as the ASC.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
Although the ASC began as an anti-labor operation with support from
Sears (Fisher was on the Sears payroll the
first five years he headed ASC) and other businesses, it soon became
involved in foreign policy
issues. It cosponsored a series of annual meetings from 1955 to 1961
called National Military-industrial
Conferences in which elements of the Pentagon, National Security
Council, and organizations linked to the CIA
discussed cold war strategy with leaders of many large corporations,
such as United Fruit, Standard Oil, Honeywell,
U.S. Steel, and, of course, Sears Roebuck. Robert Wood was the key
organizer of these events.' One conference
"cooperating organization" was the ClA-linked Foreign Policy Research
Institute.
The Institute's foreign policy thesis during this period was spelled out
in a book, A Forward Strategy for America
by Robert Strausz-Hupe, William R. Kintner, and Stefan T. Possony . In
discussing nuclear-option scenarios in a
hypothetical expanding U.S.-Soviet conflict, the book makes the
following statement:
Even at a moment when the United States faces defeat because, for
example, Europe, Asia and Africa have fallen
to communist domination, a sudden nuclear attack against the Soviet
Union could at least avenge the disaster and
deprive the opponent of the ultimate triumph. While such a reversal at
the last moment almost certainly would
result in severe American casualties, it might still nullify all
previous Soviet conquests.
Another sponsor of the conferences was the Aircraft Industries
Association (AIA). According to Clarence Lasby's
Project Paperclip, the AIA pressured the U.S. government in the 1950's
to get Nazi scientists into the United
States. Werhner von Braun who worked on the Nazi rocket program, and
General John Medaris, who supervised
the Nazi scientists in the U.S. (and has opposed the investigations of
the program by the Justice Department's
OSI), were both conference participants.
Influential private groups such as the National Association of
Manufacturers, Chambers of Commerce, and several
university institutes also participated in the conferences. In 1959 the
National Military-industrial Conferences
established an Advisory Committee on Foreign Affairs that included a
number of representatives of big business.
Also included, however, were three political figures of the anti-Semitic
extreme right. One of these was Mark M.
Jones, who followed Mervin K. Hart as head of the anti-semitic National
Economic Council. Also a member of the
Advisory Committee was Martin Blank, from Germany. Blank's entries in
Who's Who in Germany described him
as having worked in Berlin for a mine and steel mill business group from
1922 to 1945. A study of backers of
German nazism, Who Financed Hitler, says that Blank represented a secret
group of twelve Ruhr industrialists
called the Ruhrlade, "the most powerful secret organization of big
business that existed during the Weimar
period." Ruhrlade and its political emissary, Martin Blank, became
involved in funding the rise of Hitler. The 1959
Military-industrial Conference bulletin identifies him as a
representative of German industry.
A third member of the committee was Baron Frederich August von der
Heydte, who had also been active with the
1958 conference. His entry in Who's Who in Germany and other sources say
that he was an "active officer
1935-47" in the German army. Heydte, whose family was close to the
exiled Hohenzollen monarch, was reported to
have written in 1953 that "democracy is linked with collapse, defeat and
foreign uniforms stalking German soil,"
and that "democracy was brought by the victorious enemy together with
the army of occupation." Von der Heydte
was a co-founder and ideological leader of the Christian Democratic
Union, a party that brought a variety of Nazi
elements into its fold after the first postwar German elections." In
recent years von der Heydte has formed an
association with Lyndon LaRouche's neofascist cult group."' The only
foreign members of the National
Military-industrial Conference's Foreign Affairs Committee during this
period were Blank and von der Heydte.
EISENHOWER'S NIGHTMARE
In 1958, the Military-industrial Conference formed the Institute for
American Strategy (IAS) to conduct ongoing
cold war propaganda. It was left to the American Security Council and
the University of Pennsylvania's Foreign
Policy Research Institute to administer the IAS. The IAS became a center
of controversy in 1961, however,
because of its role in political indoctrination of the military and its
ties to active duty military organizations that
were beginning to conduct propaganda in civilian forums. The concern of
IAS critics was that an emerging
military-industrial complex could begin to dominate politics and
government policymaking, as was noted by
President Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address. Senator William
Fulbright and President John F. Kennedy
began to share that concern especially when it became clear that it was
liberalism itself that was under attack.
In 1961, the New York Times reported that a 1958 National Security
Council directive recommended that "the
military be used to reinforce the cold war effort." The NSC decided that
the military should conduct indoctrination
campaigns for the American public on cold war and foreign policy issues.
The Institute for American Strategy
became the vehicle for the NSC program, organizing "National Strategy
Seminars." The Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists noted:
What is particularly striking about the National Strategy Seminars is
that through the authorization of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the Institute for American Strategy, in effect, took
over from the services the responsibility for
training reserve officers on active duty, even though the National War
College, whose facilities were used, had
been giving courses on strategy to senior officers of the three services
as well as civilians for the past ten years.
At the same time, while the government paid for allowance, travel,
facilities and services, the Richardson
Foundation provided the funds for other expenses, including the cost of
developing a curriculum for the seminar,
hiring a staff, securing speakers, and purchasing books and other
materials to be distributed to the students without
charge.
Fulbright warned of the dangers implicit in the situation:
The relationships between the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the
Institute for American Strategy, the
Richardson Foundation, the National War College, and the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, should be re-examined from the
standpoint of whether these relationships do not amount to official
support for a viewpoint at variance with that of
the Administration.
These relationships may give one particularly aggressive view a more
direct and commanding influence upon
military and civilian concepts of strategy than is desirable.
Frank Barnett was director of research for the Richardson Foundation
(now the Smith-Richardson Foundation) and
program director of the Institute for American Strategy. Barnett
advocated "political warfare" abroad that
included fomenting "diverse forms of coercion and violence including
strikes and riots, economic sanctions,
subsidies for guerrilla or proxy warfare and, when necessary, kidnapping
or assassination of enemy elites." Riled
by those who did not share his militant foreign policy outlook, Bamett
told attendees at one cold war seminar that
"it is within the capacity of the people in this room to literally turn
the State of Georgia into a civilian war college,"
in order to overcome their opponents."
William Kintner, a twenty-five-year ASC veteran who left the CIA after
eleven years as a planning officer and
joined IAS in 1961, attacked the critics of extreme rightism in the
Reader's Digest, May 1962. He said the
campaign against extreme rightists, including the John Birch Society,
began when "dossiers in Moscow's
espionage headquarters were combed for the names of unsuspecting persons
in the United States who might do the
Kremlin's work." In other words, Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy were
dupes of the KGB . . . or worse. In the
jargon of today's extreme right, those concerned over the growing
military-industrial complex were spreading
"Soviet disinformation."
Despite the controversy, the NSC directive authorizing the military's
role in cold war propaganda remained in
effect. Edward Lansdale became administrative director of IAS in the
mid-1960's, serving while John Fisher was
president of the organization. Lansdale was also an architect of CIA
covert operations in Vietnam. The Institute for
American Strategy later changed its name to the American Security
Council Foundation.
In the early 1960's the ultraright was planning Goldwater's presidential
campaign effort, helping to build the
political base of extreme right groups. In concert with the Goldwater
campaign, the American Security Council in
1964 published a book called Guidelines for Cold War Victory which
listed board members and cooperating
organizations from several far-right groups including some linked to the
John Birch Society. At least one ASC
official was even associated with the quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby.
These relationships take on greater significance as one learns more
about the nature of groups such as Liberty
Lobby and the John Birch Society. For instance, the founder of the John
Birch Society, Robert Welch, once called
President Eisenhower "a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist
conspiracy," while the leader of Liberty
Lobby, Willis Carto, edited a publication in 1960 calling for voter
support for the American Nazi Party.
In his book The Liberty Lobby and the American Right, author Frank P.
Mintz outlines the "overlap in ideology
and clientele" between Liberty Lobby and the John Birch Society as well
as the important differences:
The John Birch Society in the early 1960's aspired to the leadership of
a radical right that strongly defended
national sovereignty and opposed American membership in international
organizations such as the United Nations.
Closely related to the nationalist stance was a conspiratorial
interpretation of U.S. history that made the Council on
Foreign Relations an ally of the Communist conspiracy.
But while the Birch Society trumpeted jingoistic patriotism via
conspiracy theories, Mintz says that the "Lobby
voiced racist and anti-Semitic beliefs in addition to conspiracism."
Mintz explains:
Structurally, the Lobby was a most unusual umbrella organization
catering to constituencies spanning the fringes of
Neo-nazism to the John Birch Society and the radical right. It was not
truly paramilitary, in the manner of the Ku
Klux Klan and Nazis, but was more accurately an intermediary between
racist paramilitary factions and the recent
right.
The pro-defense network being created by the American Security Council
in the 1960's offered a respectable and
anonymous way for members of the radical right John Birch Society and
quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby to pursue the
pro-military, anticommunist portions of their ideology in a setting
where the less savory portions of their views
could be ignored in the spirit of coalition building.
***
The guiding principle of the ASC throughout the cold war was to I
cultivate as an ally anyone who supported the
military destruction of the Soviet Union as the font of communism. Since
this was also a primary goal of German
National Socialism and other European fascist movements it should not be
surprising that adherents of these
philosophies, which revere militarism, power, and the cleansing crucible
of war, would find allies within the
American Security Council. Nor is it surprising that the ASC received
both moral and financial support from the
same corporations who had a financial stake in large budgets for
military armaments. In the politics of militarism,
the bedfellows are not really very strange.
For over thirty years the ASC has successfully focused public discussion
of foreign policy on aggressive militarist
options, and it continues this mission unabated. In early 1991, the
American Security Council coordinated the
formation of the Coalition for Desert Storm, "a bipartisan alliance
organized by the National Security Caucus in the
U.S. Congress." In a full-page ad in the February 27, 1991 Washington
Post, the Coalition announced it was
launching a campaign to garner one million signatures for the
proclamation from Americans across the nation. The
coupon for signers and contributors was to be mailed to the ASC's John
M. Fisher, "Administrative Chairman" of
the Coalition.
Some thirty years ago President Eisenhower warned of the "unwarranted
influence" of the "military-industrial
complex" in the councils of government. The Bush Administration's quick
reliance on the military option in the Gulf
war reflects, at least in part, the groundwork laid by the ASC and its
allies, and suggests Eisenhower's nightmare
has become a reality.