June 22, 2004
By Joseph Zyble
At the Holocaust Memorial Service at St. Peter Cathedral May 2, a former war crimes investigator spoke about his discovery more than 20 years ago that Nazis were on the CIA’s payroll, and he explained how the terrorist network al Qaeda spawned from Nazi and Islamic extremist movements following WWII.
John Loftus, who regularly appears on Fox News and ABC Radio, was the key speaker at the service. His talk addressed the theme of “the roots of prejudice and hatred in the world.”
He began by explaining that he didn’t set out to become a Nazi hunter. Early in his law career he took a volunteer attorney job created by the Carter administration to hunt Nazis “because I thought it would look good on my resume.”
To his surprise, rather than traveling to Germany to investigate he was sent to Suitland, Maryland, where the government’s massive underground vaults protect classified information. He was given complete access to the 20 acre-sized vaults, each owned by a different agency within the government. He found some disturbing information.
NAZIS IN THE UNITED STATES
“I stumbled across some Nazi files I wasn’t supposed to see. No one was supposed to see them until the year 2015,” he said. “I discovered to my horror that many of the Nazis I was assigned to prosecute were on the CIA payroll.”
He discovered that at the end of WWII, the fledgling U.S. intelligence agency hired Nazis spies and helped them avoid prosecution. The British Secret Service convinced American intelligence that the Nazis would be indispensable as “freedom fighters” in preparing for the next major war, which was anticipated against the Soviet Union.
According to Loftus, neither the president nor Congress was informed of this plan that was known as the “Freedom Fighter Project.”
“The nitwits in the State Department committed mutiny. They threw away the American constitution and handed out thousands of visas,” he said.
Even worse, the British agent responsible for arranging the project was a man named Kim Philby, Loftus said. Philby was a Soviet spy who had penetrated the higher ranks of the British Secret Service.
The “freedom fighters” Philby recruited for the United States weren’t simply Nazis who were opposed to communism; they were among the “dregs” of the Nazi war criminals.
“Our state department was too stupid to realize they were being conned. We were bringing thousands of the East European war criminals, the worst of the worst, into the United States,” he said.
Soviet spies were also among the Nazis who came to the United States for training.
“In 1963, when Philby defected to Moscow, our State Department did something intolerable,” Loftus said. “They classified all the files top secret and they hid them down in the vaults to protect their own careers.”
Loftus decided to forego a promising future with the U.S. Justice Department. Instead he blew the whistle.
“I think I still hold the record for the longest segment ever on 60 Minutes. In 1982 it caused a minor national uproar,” Loftus said. “Mike Wallace got the Emmy, and my family got death threats.”
THE ROOTS OF MODERN TERRORISM
During his time in the government’s underground vaults, Loftus said he read a file on an organization known as the Muslim Brotherhood. In the file was information about a man named Hasam al-Banna who founded the organization in 1920.
“Mr. al-Banna was a devout admirer of a young Austrian writer named Adolph Hitler. His letters to Hitler were so supportive that when Hitler came to power in the 1930s he had Nazi intelligence make contact with al-Banna to see if they could work together,” Loftus said.
Hitler had al-banna establish a spy network for Nazi Germany throughout Arabia.
Al-Banna promised Hitler that when Gen. Rommel’s Nazi tank division arrived in Cairo and Alexandria, the Muslim Brotherhood would ensure all of the British troops would be killed.
“These men were Nazi agents, they were spies, who adopted the Third Reich’s policy towards the Jews,” Loftus said.
He spoke about another prominent member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a man known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was the organization’s representative in Palestine. The Grand Mufti brought with him a hatred of the Jews. He was a principal organizer of the 1920 “Bloody Passover” massacre of Jews who were praying at Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall.
Following a failed attempt to create a Nazi uprising in Iraq, the Grand Mufti fled to Europe to organize international Arab forces for the Third Reich disguised as SS divisions.
“In truth these forces were Arab fanatics, Arab Nazis from all across the Middle East,” Loftus said.
Though a certain war criminal, the Grand Mufti and his troops were spirited away from prosecution to Egypt by the British Secret Service.
“Kim Philby, the Soviet agent who infiltrated the British Secret Service, was also recruiting Arab Nazis to poison the West’s efforts in the Middle East forever,” Loftus said. “By using Arab Nazis, democracy would be discredited, America would be discredited, Britain would be discredited.”
Philby “helped” the United States acquire the Arab Nazis who were expelled from Egypt in the 1950s after the Egyptians recognized them as a threat
According to Loftus, the CIA evacuated the Arab Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
“To keep them employed they were given jobs as religious education instructors,” Loftus said.
While Islam is a very peaceful religion, Saudi Arabia practiced an extreme form of Islam called Wahhabi.
“Saudi Wahhabism is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity,” Loftus said. “It’s an extreme and perverted form of religion that was condemned as a heresy by Islam more than 60 times before the 1900s.”
“Here is this corrupt cult and all of a sudden the school teachers are Nazis. Here a fusion is born between the two. Schools of hatred were built all over Saudi Arabia,” Loftus said.
A well known pupil of these schools is Osama bin Laden, Loftus said. Bin Laden and other graduates of the schools were inducted into an underground neo-Nazi Wahhabi army for Saudi Arabia.
“The CIA approved. We thought it was great. Just as Russia was using Communist Arabs during the cold war, we would use Arab Nazis as a counterweight to oppose them,” Loftus said. “When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 the CIA ordered the Arab (neo) Nazis out of the closet. There leaders were brought to the United States for training and fund raising.”
“Because of the combination of Wahhabi fanaticism and Nazi ideology, waves of people came pouring into Afghanistan to kill the Communists,” Loftus said.
The Soviets were defeated and the United States left. And, according to Loftus, Osama bin Laden took control.
“The nitwits of the CIA declared victory and went home and left this entire army of neo-Nazi theological cultists alive in the field,” Loftus said.
Bin Laden drew up a list of those who he knew he could rely on and called this list ‘the base.’ Loftus said the Arabic translation of ‘the base’ is ‘al qaeda.’
“Al Qaeda is the direct lineal descendant of the Arab Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood,” he said. “We let the Muslim Brotherhood, now known as Al Qaeda, to roam free upon the world. Many, many human beings have paid for that mistake with their lives. It wasn’t a mistake. It was negligence I think on the part of the American intelligence community.”
THE NUCLEAR PLOT, WMDS AND WHAT’S NEXT
In the summer of 2002, Loftus said, the British intercepted a message which revealed a nuclear weapons plot between N. Korea, Libya and Iraq. Iraqi nuclear scientists were working in Libya using enriched uranium supplied by North Korea, according to Loftus.
“Saddam new he couldn’t have a nuclear program in his country because U.N. inspectors were all over,” Loftus said.
When the United States confronted Libya with the evidence, Mommar Khadafi agreed to cooperate.
According to Loftus, Khadafi said there is a Chinese component as well. Not the official government of China, but the radical right wing People’s Liberation Army. This group supplied Libya with detailed instructions on how to build an atomic warhead.
Loftus said had the plot not been discovered, the project would have produced an atomic warhead within 18 months.
According to Loftus, Iran is the only country remaining that is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. In mid June, when the International Association of Atomic Energy meets in Vienna, Loftus expects the member nations, including the European nations who opposed war in Iraq, to vote to impose sanctions against Iran.
“We think the blockade will go into effect very quickly. Iran is the last country that is actively financing terrorist groups. It is one of the few places where sanctions will work because 90 percent of its economy comes from oil exports,” Loftus said.
In the al Qaeda plot to unleash a cloud of deadly chemicals in Amman, Jordan’s capital, that was foiled last month, Loftus said, the chemicals likely came from the hidden cache of WMDs created by Saddam.
According to Loftus, evidence gathered by U.S. special forces, Israeli intelligence, statements by defectors, and satellite imagery point to three locations in Syria and one location in Lebanon where the WMDs are expected to be hidden.
“U.S. intelligence believes they know where the WMDS are. When the new Arab government of Iraq begins July 1 they are going to ask for their property (the WMDs) back,” Loftus said. “If Syria and Lebanon don’t give the WMDs back, the new Iraqi government will ask us for help—and we will help.”
In an interview with The U.P. Catholic, Loftus said, “The evidence looks pretty strong. Is it a 100 percent sure? No. But there is a high degree of probability” that the weapons are there.
He said this information has not been reported in the American media because the government will not confirm any of the information. However, he said, the story has been circulating through the European press.
“We are at the tipping point in the scale. I think we are going to win. In the next 12 months we may see a number of other nations surrender without firing a shot. If half of what my intelligence sources tell me is accurate, we are in for a very good year,” he said.
In summary, Loftus said he has spent his career trying to help make a difference. He says the United States is now paying the price for negligence of leaders who looked the other way for inexpensive Arab oil over the years.
“Now we pay for our negligence with the lives our sons and daughters,” he said. “There are lessons we must never forget. We must teach our children.”
Loftus’ appearance at St. Peter Cathedral was sponsored by the Marquette County Interfaith Forum.
http://www.dioceseofmarquette.org/webupcatholic/May21_04_stories/alQaeda.htm