Jim DiEugenio on The Devil's Chessboard

[Deborra Ann Low]

It's also interesting that Robert Baer has over the past few years, periodically been coming forward as a kind of a whistle-blower against the CIA by talking about operations he's been involved in for the purpose of destabilizing regimes (kind of like Economic Hitman, Perkins), such as his recent confession about the role he played in helping to widely distribute propaganda against the Serbs in Yugoslavia.

The above rang a bell as I'd just read this Robin Ramsay piece a few days earlier. Baer has been outspoken about a number of issues, but I'd take that recent confession with a grain of salt.

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/l...bridge.pdf

[scroll down to the 'Global Research' entry]

If you're reading this there's a good chance you have also looked at the site Global Research. Lots of good people have essays on that site and I agree with most of its positions. And yet I never quite trust it. There is so much material on it, unless there is an army of people working for it - of which there is no evidence - there is no way most of it can be edited or checked. There's not enough quality control. Its motto, if it had one, would be something like that of Rolling Stone in its first incarnation: all the news that fits.

I look at it pretty regularly and every once in a while see something really striking. Recently that was a purported interview with the former CIA officer, Robert Baer, 'Confession of a CIA Agent: They Gave Us Millions to Dismember Yugoslavia'.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/confession-...via/549200

I read only a few lines before becoming suspicious, did a little checking and, of course, it's a fake; it took just one Google search for the 'new book' by Baer upon which the 'interview' is based to discover there is no such book.

Not only is it a fabrication, it was put out before, by the same author, under a different heading, on a different pretext; and it's a fake I spotted at the time but had forgotten about.

[It first appeared in 2012 at

http://www.ebritic.com/?p=213256

and was commented on at

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/l...bridge.pdf

under subhead 'Disinfo']

Evidently no-one at Global Research thought it surprising that Baer was talking in this startling way, nor thought it worth a Google search before posting it. As I said: not enough quality control.

Thank you! It's too damned easy to get duped if you don't do any homework. I'm learning, but I've been burned more than a few times. Much appreciated!

[Drew Phipps]

The general end of Corsi's story about Hitler's escape (IIRC) was the house on the lake in Barriloche, Argentina, which our intrepid History Channel detective team visited. However, they then went to Columbia and found evidence that he arrived there, in the midst of civil unrest, in the company of a couple rocket scientists and some sort of plans....and the series ended. Perhaps following Corsi's story was planned, perhaps the extra bit about Columbia caused the series to fold...

[Magda Hassan]

The above rang a bell as I'd just read this Robin Ramsay piece a few days earlier. Baer has been outspoken about a number of issues, but I'd take that recent confession with a grain of salt.

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/l...bridge.pdf

[scroll down to the 'Global Research' entry]

If you're reading this there's a good chance you have also looked at the site Global Research. Lots of good people have essays on that site and I agree with most of its positions. And yet I never quite trust it. There is so much material on it, unless there is an army of people working for it - of which there is no evidence - there is no way most of it can be edited or checked. There's not enough quality control.
...

Evidently no-one at Global Research thought it surprising that Baer was talking in this startling way, nor thought it worth a Google search before posting it. As I said: not enough quality control.

Yep, quality control problem. Shoestring budget and staff. Not the first time I've seen it there too. Pretty sure I actually posted that article too! Wonder who is pushing Baer? And why? No doubt millions were spent to destabilise Yugoslavia though. Others have covered this as well. Doing the same now in Ukraine too.

Mark DePue: Okay. You've gone through an awful lot in your life. You contributed so much to your country. What lessons would you like to pass on to future generations about your own experiences about the Korean War?

Allen Macy Dulles: Well, I had so little experience there that I don't have very much of an idea to pass along to add to other people.

Mark DePue: Okay. Would you have any advice for future generations, or wisdom to pass along?

Allen Macy Dulles: Well nothing in particular that I can think of.

Mark DePue: Okay. How about anything else you'd like to say? Any closing comments on your part?

Allen Macy Dulles: No. I don't think so.

Mark DePue: Well, I want to thank you very much, Mr. Dulles, for this

Allen Macy Dulles: Thank you very much.

Mark DePue: It's important for us to hear these kinds of stories, to get an appreciation of what things were really like firsthand. It's an important piece of history, and I really appreciate your taking the time to do this with me.

Allen Macy Dulles: Well, as I said, one thing, the really basic fact that I had never realized was that Allen Welsh Dulles was a German spy.

Mark DePue: Okay. Well, again, thanks very much, Mr. Dulles, and it's been a pleasure.

Allen Macy Dulles: Well, thank you.

::::What a useless interviewer if he signed off after that.

[David Guyatt]

And it is at this point I note a curious fact. Allen Dulles son, Avery became a Catholic priest. So did Martin Bormann's son, Martin Jnr. In and of itself this isn't remarkable. But what is surprising is that they both shared the same "Guardian" during their early years in the Church. It's a small world, I know. But the real curiosity is that the "Guardian" in question was Bishop Alois Hudal, who established the so called Ratlines that enabled up to 40,000 of the very worst Nazis and SS to escape to freedom --- many of whom enrolled in America's cold war against the Soviet Union.

Avery Dulles was the son of John Foster Dulles, not Allen Welsh Dulles. Allen's son, Allen Macy Dulles suffered for the remainder of his life from a brain injury he sustained during the Koren war when he was hit by shrapnel just after one week of being on the front lines. After he returned home and while he was living with his parents, his behavior was sometimes erratic, uncontrollable and rather embarrassing as to his accusations about his father's involvement with Nazis. Allen then decided to put his son under the care of MKULTRA doctors (maybe to erase some of his "paranoid" thoughts, perhaps??). If so, it wasn't fully successful. Here's a small excerpt from the very tail end of an interview that Mark DePue conducted with Allen Macy Dulles regarding his life and his service as a marine in Korea.

Mark DePue: Okay. You've gone through an awful lot in your life. You contributed so much to your country. What lessons would you like to pass on to future generations about your own experiences about the Korean War?

Allen Macy Dulles: Well, I had so little experience there that I don't have very much of an idea to pass along to add to other people.

Mark DePue: Okay. Would you have any advice for future generations, or wisdom to pass along?

Allen Macy Dulles: Well nothing in particular that I can think of.

Mark DePue: Okay. How about anything else you'd like to say? Any closing comments on your part?

Allen Macy Dulles: No. I don't think so.

Mark DePue: Well, I want to thank you very much, Mr. Dulles, for this

Allen Macy Dulles: Thank you very much.

Mark DePue: It's important for us to hear these kinds of stories, to get an appreciation of what things were really like firsthand. It's an important piece of history, and I really appreciate your taking the time to do this with me.

Allen Macy Dulles: Well, as I said, one thing, the really basic fact that I had never realized was that Allen Welsh Dulles was a German spy.

Mark DePue: Okay. Well, again, thanks very much, Mr. Dulles, and it's been a pleasure.

Allen Macy Dulles: Well, thank you.

I love DePue's response. "Okay. Well, again, thanks very much, Mr. Dulles, and it's been a pleasure." ::comfort::

Yes, you're right. I guess it was the fact that Allen and John Foster were almost wholly in league when it came to the Nazis that resulted in me conflating the both of them.

[David Guyatt]

The general end of Corsi's story about Hitler's escape (IIRC) was the house on the lake in Barriloche, Argentina, which our intrepid History Channel detective team visited. However, they then went to Columbia and found evidence that he arrived there, in the midst of civil unrest, in the company of a couple rocket scientists and some sort of plans....and the series ended. Perhaps following Corsi's story was planned, perhaps the extra bit about Columbia caused the series to fold...

That's the strange thing Drew, because the Gerard Williams book also almost concludes at Bariloche too. I have Hunting Hitler and it is quite slim at 135 pages. Whereas Williams and Dunstin's Grey Wolf, which was published 3 years earlier at nearly 400 pages is more in depth and is very well footnoted. Whereas Corsi's has none.

Where the two books diverge is what happened after Bariloche and also the role Bormann played in Hitler's escape and how the latter went on to run the Organization, whereas Hitler gradually faded in importance and died a lonely old man. That and the fact that Bormann, after Peron's overthrow, arranged in 1955 for Hitler to be moved from Bariloche to a smaller residence deeper in the countryside of Patagonia with just his two closest aides, his doctor, Otto Lehman and Heinrich Beth. The house they moved to was La Clara - which the documentary team touch on in one episode, but in no way wished to conclude with it.

Lastly, Grey Wolf concludes with an observation that whereas there were many FBI reports, albeit somewhat fragmentary, there were very little CIA documents that had ever come to light. But one did and that was dated 1955, which they reproduce, and which shows that Hitler had fled to Colombia and has a photograph of Hitler - still with his classic moustache. The authors conclude that it is an obvious fake. For me, this is probably another plant with another fake photograph aimed at deflecting attention away from reality.

The fact that the documentary makers end their series in Colombia, where Hitler didn't go and didn't live out his last years in failing health is telling. As we saw with the Ladislas Farago episode, all it takes is one wrong step to fold an otherwise substantial story.

[David Guyatt]

I also want to point out that the authorized version of history, that Hitler died in his Berlin bunker, came from British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper in his 1947 book, The Last Days of Hitler. During WWII, Trevor-Roper was an intelligence analysts for British Secret Intelligence Service and was involved in decrypting signals from Nazi intelligence, the Abwehr for the Double Cross System "XX" (which I believe was the British precursor to the CIA's Operation 40).

Trevor-Roper's decision to write his book stemmed from being ordered, by Dickie White, head of Britain's Counterintelligence in Berlin to investigate Hitler's death to rebut Stalin's "propaganda" that Hitler was alive and well and living in the West (which at that time was almost certainly true). Dick White became Director General of MI5 in 1953 and then head of Mi6 (SIS) from 1956-68.

[Anthony Thorne]

I'll mention as an update that as of late February 2016, THE DEVIL'S CHESSBOARD is at #2899 (very high) of all books on the Amazon charts, and now has more than 200 reviews, nearly all five stars. It's doing extremely well. A bookshop here in Melbourne told me they had sold a number of copies already, and when I returned, they had three or four copies displayed on their new release stand in the centre of the store. It's very encouraging.