After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal.



Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators.



Bush's partners in the secret web of Thyssen-controlled ventures included former New York Governor W. Averell Harriman and his younger brother, E. Roland Harriman. Their quarter-century of Nazi financial transactions, from 1924-1951, were conducted by the New York private banking firm, Brown Brothers Harriman.



The White House did not return phone calls seeking comment.



Although the additional seizures under the Trading with the Enemy Act did not take place until after the war, documents from The National Archives and Library of Congress confirm that Bush and his partners continued their Nazi dealings unabated. These activities included a financial relationship with the German city of Hanover and several industrial concerns. They went undetected by investigators until after World War Two.



At the same time Bush and the Harrimans were profiting from their Nazi partnerships, W. Averell Harriman was serving as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's personal emissary to the United Kingdom during the toughest years of the war. On October 28, 1942, the same day two key Bush-Harriman-run businesses were being seized by the U.S. government, Harriman was meeting in London with Field Marshall Smuts to discuss the war effort.



Denial and Deceit



While Harriman was concealing his Nazi relationships from his government colleagues, Cornelius Livense, the top executive of the interlocking German concerns held under the corporate umbrella of Union Banking Corporation (UBC), repeatedly tried to mislead investigators, and was sometimes supported in his subterfuge by Brown Brothers Harriman.



All of the assets of UBC and its related businesses belonged to Thyssen-controlled enterprises, including his Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart in Rotterdam, the documents state.



Nevertheless, Livense, president of UBC, claimed to have no knowledge of such a relationship. "Strangely enough, (Livense) claims he does not know the actual ownership of the company," states a government report.



H.D Pennington, manager of Brown Brothers Harriman and a director of UBC "for many years," also lied to investigators about the secret and well-concealed relationship with Thyssen's Dutch bank, according to the documents.



Investigators later reported that the company was "wholly owned" by Thyssen's Dutch bank.



Despite such ongoing subterfuge, U.S. investigators were able to show that "a careful examination of UBC's general ledger, cash books and journals from 1919 until the present date clearly establish that the principal and practically only source of funds has been Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart."



In yet another attempt to mislead investigators, Livense said that 0,000 in banknotes in a safe deposit box at Underwriters Trust Co. in New York had been given to him by another UBC-Thyssen associate, H.J. Kouwenhoven, managing director of Thyssen's Dutch bank and a director of the August Thyssen Bank in Berlin. August Thyssen was Fritz's father.



The government report shows that Livense first neglected to report the 0,000, then claimed that it had been given to him as a gift by Kouwenhoven. However, by the time Livense filed a financial disclosure with U.S. officials, he changed his story again and reported the sum as a debt rather than a cash holding.



In yet another attempt to deceive the governments of both the U.S. and Canada, Livense and his partners misreported the facts about the sale of a Canadian Nazi front enterprise, La Cooperative Catholique des Consommateurs de Combustible, which imported German coal into Canada via the web of Thyssen-controlled U.S. businesses.



"The Canadian authorities, however, were not taken in by this maneuver," a U.S. government report states. The coal company was later seized by Canadian authorities.



After the war, a total of 18 additional Brown Brothers Harriman and UBC-related client assets were seized under The Trading with the Enemy Act, including several that showed the continuation of a relationship with the Thyssen family after the initial 1942 seizures.



The records also show that Bush and the Harrimans conducted business after the war with related concerns doing business in or moving assets into Switzerland, Panama, Argentina and Brazil - all critical outposts for the flight of Nazi capital after Germany's surrender in 1945. Fritz Thyssen died in Argentina in 1951.



One of the final seizures, in October 1950, concerned the U.S. assets of a Nazi baroness named Theresia Maria Ida Beneditka Huberta Stanislava Martina von Schwarzenberg, who also used two shorter aliases. Brown Brothers Harriman, where Prescott Bush and the Harrimans were partners, attempted to convince government investigators that the baroness had been a victim of Nazi persecution and therefore should be allowed to maintain her assets.



"It appears, rather, that the subject was a member of the Nazi party," government investigators concluded.



At the same time the last Brown Brothers Harriman client assets were seized, Prescott Bush announced his Senate campaign that led to his election in 1952.



Investigation Investigated?



In 1943, six months after the seizure of UBC and its related companies, a government investigator noted in a Treasury Department memo dated April 8, 1943 that the FBI had inquired about the status of any investigation into Bush and the Harrimans.



"I gave 'a memorandum' which did not say anything about the American officers of subject," the investigator wrote. "(Another investigator) wanted to know whether any specific action had been taken by us with respect to them."



No further action beyond the initial seizures was ever taken, and the newly-confirmed records went unseen by the American people for six decades.



What Does It All Mean?



So why are the documents relevant today?



"The story of Prescott Bush and Brown Brothers Harriman is an introduction to the real history of our country," says L.A. art book publisher and historian Edward Boswell. "It exposes the money-making motives behind our foreign policies, dating back a full century. The ability of Prescott Bush and the Harrimans to bury their checkered pasts also reveals a collusion between Wall Street and the media that exists to this day."



Sheldon Drobny, a Chicago entrepreneur and philanthropist who will soon launch a liberal talk radio network, says the importance of the new documents is that they prove a long pattern of Bush family war profiteering that continues today via George H.W. Bush's intimate relationship with the Saudi royal family and the bin Ladens, conducted via the super-secret Carlyle Group, whose senior advisers include former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III.



In the post-9/11 world, Drobny finds the Bush-Saudi connection deeply troubling. "Trading with the enemy is trading with the enemy," he says. "That's the relevance of the documents and what they show."



Lawrence Lader, an abortion rights activist and the author of more than 40 books, says "the relevance lies with the fact that the sitting President of the United States would lead the nation to war based on lies and against the wishes of the rest of the world." Lader and others draw comparisons between President Bush's invasion of Iraq and Hitler's occupation of Poland in 1939 - the event that sparked World War Two.



However, others see an even larger significance.



"The discovery of the Bush-Nazi documents raises new questions about the role of Prescott Bush and his influential business partners in the secret emigration of Nazi war criminals, which allowed them to escape justice in Germany," says Bob Fertik, co-founder of Democrats.com and an amateur 'Nazi hunter.' "It also raises questions about the importance of Nazi recruits to the CIA in its early years, in what was called Operation Paperclip, and Prescott Bush's role in that dark operation."



Fertik and others, including former Justice Department Nazi war crimes prosecutor John Loftus, a Constitutional attorney in Miami, and a former Veterans Administration official, believe Prescott Bush and the Harrimans should have been tried for treason.



What Next?



Now, say Fertik and Loftus, there should be a Congressional investigation into the Bush family's Nazi past and its concealment from the American people for 60 years.



"The American people have a right to know, in detail, about this hidden chapter of our history," says Loftus, author of The Secret War Against the Jews. "That's the only way we can understand it and deal with it."



For his part, Fertik is pessimistic that even a Congressional investigation can thwart the war profiteering of the present Bush White House. "It's impossible to stop it," he says, "when the worst war profiteers are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who operate in secrecy behind the vast powers of the White House."



John Buchanan is a journalist and magazine writer based in Miami Beach. He can be reached by e-mail at jtwg@bellsouth.net.



Stacey Michael is a New Orleans-based journalist and the author of Religious Conceit. His most recent book is Weapons of Mass Dysfunction: The Art of "Faith-Based" Politics, due in early 2004. He can be reached by email at staceymichael@religiousconceit.com.

Prescott and his pals were not, of course, the only ones. IBM had extensive dealings with the Nazis, and both Henry Ford and Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of JFK, had quite friendly attitudes towards dear old Adolf, the enemy of Marxism. The fact that he was the enemy of Jews probably didn't hurt his popularity with this crowd, either.

>The fact that he was the enemy of Jews probably didn't hurt his popularity with this crowd, either.

No doubt. If there's anyone who hates Jews, it's the IMC pro-palestinian crowd. You know, people like Meyer.

Unsubtantiated allegation that all the "pro-Palestinians" who post on IMC, including me, are anti-semites. Possible evidence of brain damage caused by inhaling poisonous industrial fumes legalized under Reagan, alcohol intake, being shot in the head during rifle practice by the militia or the Jewish Defense League, or corrosion of reasoning skills brought on by watching hours of Fox News or listening to jock talk radio shows.

It's not slander, nor is it unsubstantiated. You hate Jews. Anyone who would want the state of Israel to dissolve hates Jews. That's not even up for debate, it's etched in stone, it's true, it's established, it cannot be erased by your lies. That you would believe otherwise shows how demented you are and how little you understand the politics of the region. We all have read your twisted lies, i.e. anti-zionist does not equal anti-Jew, but we know better. If you are not in favor of the state of Israel, a state where Jews can govern themselves, you are automatically anti-Israel, and therefore, anti-Jew. You can't have it both ways. You either like Jews and you want them to have their own country, or you hate Jews and you want Israel to dissolve. You have chosen. You hate Jews.

Of brain damage?

Of religious fanaticism?

Both?

.......that Meyer London hates Jews.

And doesn't like to face it. He's mentally deranged, just like most socialist are. The need to control the populace and redefining the popular language is part of their control methods. From Marx, to Lenin, to Stalin and Mao, these methods have served the socialist mindset well. By shifting the blame to other factors other than their own failed policies and finding something to hate, the socialists desire is to obfuscate that which is obvioulsy true to the naked eye, to make what is true to be a lie, to make themselves out to be the savior of the poeple by appointing themselves the leaders of the working class.

Whenever you find these people, follow them back to their lairs, and kill them. Socialism is a running sore on the face of the human plight and should be eliminated however it can be done. In this case, the ends do justify the means. By any manner possible.

In a civilized society, with a national health service, this fellow would already be receiving the care and attention he so obviously needs, and would not be posing the kind of violent threat to society he so obviously poses. The kind of statements he just made were rightly assumed to be symptoms of madness when Fr. Niet. made them on his deathbed.

Yes, Meyer, you are in need of treatment. But, I would not want to waste money on treating the likes of those who believe as you do. Better just to rid society of you, leave the money to help feed the poor and rebuild the countries that have been devistated by the marxist regimes you support. There is nothing mad about wishing to rid the world of the marxist scumbags who have imprisoned almost half the world for nearly 100 years. You and people like you are in the crosshairs and the trigger is being squeezed.

Provide for us one good reason why people like you who are marxists should be permitted to voice your beliefs?

I didn't know that pop-guns had cross-hairs. But hide that thing under your blanket, because if the nurse sees it you will be in big trouble and may not be allowed to watch the Brittney Spears Special with the other patients.

Geez Meyer. How hard is it for you to understand that you don't need to be posting on LA-IMC anymore? You're in serious need of medication if you don't understand that you need to shut up while your still.....shall we say.....ahead.

You got mail.

Face it Meyer. Everyone knows you for what you are.

An illinformed, hysterical, effeminate racist.

Save your breath and typing trying to deny it.

You give yourself away at every corner.

And the old, "they disagree with me so they must need medication " schtick is juvenile and tired.

You're a fucking racist. You prove it over and over again by your incessant unconditional support of the murdering babykillers of "palestinian" terrorism.

End of story.

No, Fresca, the reason why you need treatment is not your disagreement with me. You need it because of uncontrolled anger and infantile outbursts that must get you into constant difficulties with fellow drivers,cops, neighbors, etc.; because of you obsession with homosexuality and so-called effeminate opinions, which clearly reveal your inner torment over ambivalent sexuality; illogical thinking which leads you to fantasize that anyone who disagrees with Zionist ideology must be out to get Jews in general and you in particular; paranoid tendencies which evoke in you fears of Marxist conspirators and anarchist terrorists forever plotting to do you harm; and the barely suppressed rage and fear that leads you to seek security in praising militarism and wishing that strong men in the armed services will protect you from whatever evil forces are out to get you. You must have had a terrible childhood. You need to seek help.

Isn't it a pathetic but usual reaction of morons to infer threats towards

views that differ from their own convoluted phobias?

Like certain TV pundits that scream SHUT UP and threaten their guests?

Moron nose picking knuckle dragers that they are.

Yes, it gives us an insight into Bill O'Reilly's problems. Of course, reading Al Franken's book on liars explains it pretty well.

What are you two idiots blathering on about now?

Neither one of you can tell us even one good reason why people with your political beliefs should be permitted to live. Not one good reason.

If either of you die as a result of your political beliefs, consider it to be an honor. I'll be glad to honor you by taking a piss on your graves.

To Meyer London or Sheepdog:

What do you guys believe would solve the Israel-Palestine quagmire?

Meyer, you're killin' me here.

First of all, when have I ever even mentioned homesexuality other then to condemn the Islamic "religion" for openly vilifying and, in many areas of the middle east, simply murdering gay men and women.

Secondly, I couldn't care less about marxists, communists and anarchists because they couldn't be more toothless or irrelevant.

Still on about the treatment.

Look, you and sheep can stay locked up in your fear and hate filled world.

In no uncertain terms, I'm confident that I'm happier than you, certainly more intelligent, have a much broader range of interests and friends and, ultimately, am just plain a better person.

Sound conceited?

Not at all. I'm simply comparing how utterly racist and fear driven you are with what I know to be true about me.

As far as treatment goes, I could care less whether you get it or not.

Bigots like you and creeps like sheep are non-existent outside of this small hole in cyberspace.

Books and articles by Edward Said and Noam Chomsky have some very good ideas. Also, there are some good articles all the time in Z Magazine and The Progressive. While there are various ideas for the future of Palestine as a whole, a complete Israeli pullout from the West Bank is an absolute essential before anything can be accomplished. This would involve, of course, the abandonment of all Israeli settlements in the area.

I didn't ask what Noam Chomsky or Edward Said thinks. I asked what YOU think.

So let's say that Israel completely pulls out of the West Bank. Then what?

"Books and articles by Edward Said and Noam Chomsky have some very good ideas."

No they don't. They're idiots. How can idiots have good ideas? Only other idiots would actually believe that Said and Chumpski two aren't idiots.

"Also, there are some good articles all the time in Z Magazine and The Progressive."

"a complete Israeli pullout from the West Bank is an absolute essential before anything can be accomplished."

No they don't. They're mags for idiots.

No. A complete retreat of Palestinains to the east side of the Jordan River would be helpful, and better voluntarily for their sake.

"This would involve, of course, the abandonment of all Israeli settlements in the area."

Israel is there to stay. But should they be foolish and do pull out of the West Bank (like that would actually bring peace? No. These anti-Jews won't be happy until all Jews are dead, just like Meyer), they should not abandon the settlements. They should dismantle them and take them with them. Then, no US support of Palestinians. Not a dime.

Israel, will probably, regretably, have to dismantle the "settlements" at some point in order to achieve peace.

Of course, since the "occupied" and misnamed territories are rightfully and inarguably Israel's to begin with since attaining them in 1967, this will amount to a GIFT of land to the "palestinians".

"Palestine" will of course, not have to concede or comprimise in any way. Decades of murder and atrocities will be rewarded. And then, the world will have, yet another, backwards, de-evolving Islamic despotic nightmare of a state.

Hurrah for us.

Weapon inspectors to disarm the mentally ill leaders of their toys.