Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4480638.stm

==http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4480638.stm

===If President Bush ever stood before the ICC (Intl. Criminal Court)

I hope there will be time to discuss this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/germany/article/0,,1312542,00.html

=How Bush's (paternal) grandfather (Prescott Bush)[and his maternal
great-grandfather Herbert Walker] helped Hitler's rise to power

{They left out Operation Paperclip}

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war
machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how
repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading
with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington

Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a
director and shareholder of companies that profited from their
involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian
has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US
National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director
was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets
were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led
more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being
brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave
labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

=The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes
prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been
grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the
surface for some time.

There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi"
connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents,
many of which were only declassified last year, show that even
after America had entered the war and when there was already
significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he
worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very
German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also
been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to
establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received
public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the
documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal
action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush
family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject
are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an
uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-
election.

While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to
the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for,
Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German
industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s
before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian
has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-
based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US
interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered
the war.

Tantalizing

Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that
formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow
Thyssen to move assets around the world. Thyssen owned the largest
steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts
to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's
international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was
owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands.

More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel
Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish
border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour
from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of
CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the
US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC,
although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the
company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.

Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All
three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive
system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of
Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of
Maryland.

The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of
Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a
number of companies involved with Thyssen.

The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are
contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of
the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942
the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which
Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the
bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-
American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment
Corporation.

By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott
Bush's ventures, had also been seized.

The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are
contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war
crimes.

A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942
stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining)
properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the
German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable
assistance to that country's war effort".

Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the
founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a
potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George,
and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his
descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and
Bones student society.

He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married
Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.

In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker,
helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the
wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had
gone into banking.

One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a
founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which
list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC
worth $125.

The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a
US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.

August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major
contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he
and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas
banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked
offshore if threatened again.

By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926,
Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler
speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined
the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his
autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still
a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to
bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow
Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the
Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from
another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en
Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.

By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the
world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and
shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US
treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-
up to war.

Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of
which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the
Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and
between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping
to $1m only on a few occasions.

In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he
was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.

There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens
throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names
invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything
changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be
argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations
with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still
technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble
started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an
article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank".

UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in
fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other
Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an
investigation.

There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a
string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the
autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in
dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these
companies on paper.

Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of
investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business.
The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and
the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but
merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one
seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's
president.

May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking
Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank
voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My
investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the
Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no
knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it
possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may
own a substantial interest."

May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi
leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out
from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor
Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.

By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board
members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with
Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition
to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the
director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz
Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled
Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.

Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation
and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC
recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named
the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's
name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals,
however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam,
Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family,
nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set
out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of
enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo
from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.

Red-handed

Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of
the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually
returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that
Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of
money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support
this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the
investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed
operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight
months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank
that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.

The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery:
the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated
Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.

Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and
steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel
magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German
chemical company.

Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the
concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article
published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC
while "American interests" held the rest.

The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with
CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's
friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH,
wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with
CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant.

"The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become
increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan
and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected,"
wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is
insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain
the information which the directors here should have. You will recall
that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be
certain that there is no liability attaching to the American
directors."

But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded
Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not
clear.

"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935,
but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete
evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a
few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and
author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next
month.

Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion,
but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging
to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were
treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US
to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says
American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The
Nazis bought some out, but not others.

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush
family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially
benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world
war.

Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class
action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge
Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held
liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".

Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President
Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty
[that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to
protect himself and his family."

Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by
international law, which does hold governments accountable for their
actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.

In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of
the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what
was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.

The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on
whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear
their case. A ruling is expected within a month.

The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American
Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as
the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The
murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been
prevented."

The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by
President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all
measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was
ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American
companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.

Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will
cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable
to pay compensation." The US government and the Bush family deny all
the claims against them.

In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be
published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history.
The author of the second book, to be published next year, John
Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in
the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living
as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is
working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered
on Bush.

Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what
many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.

"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you
can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks -
but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so
successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for
us today?" he said.

"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power,
this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry
was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were
repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by
which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich
were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust
Museum in St Petersburg.

"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis,
for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family
has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it
wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now
the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush
supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back.
Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence
investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute
horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."

"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get
away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would
make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker)
and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to
the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing
that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."

Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening
in Germany at the time.

"My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who
did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two
evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they
cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."

What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his
involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share.
Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence
communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George
Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There
is, however, no paper trail to this sum.

The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan,
54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files
while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his
findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette
under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George
Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor".
He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing
America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and
the Religious Right.

The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any
reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to
comment.


More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at
the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of
scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some
people, war can be a profitable business.