However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the document out of hand, for careful examination of the components of the conspiracy – in its version of the event – reveal that with but one or two exceptions, it is the standard intelligence-military industrial complex-in-cahoots-with-the-Mafia scenario that are common themes among more popular versions of the conspiracy.8
But added to this there are a number of new players:
1. H.L. Hunt and an organization that is basically connected to fundamentalist-evangelical revivalist “Protestantism,” in other words, big oil masking behind a missionary organization;9
2. A group of Eastern European exiles of right-wing political complexion, “headed by Ferenc Nagy.”
Let us pause a moment to consider these new players on the scene.
Most JFK conspiracy literature does mention Lee Harvey Oswald’s and Marina Oswald’s connection to the Russian and White Russian émigré community in Dallas, and in turn the connections of that community to big oil. Nonetheless, not much is made of this connection. It is as if researchers do not really know what to make of it. About all that one typically encounters is the fact that the Oswalds’ landlord, Ruth Paine, was involved in this community, and that her husband, Michael, worked for Bell Aerospace, the same Bell Aerospace that employed General Walter Dornberger, military head of Hitler’s V-2 project in conjunction with Werner Von Braun. But here most assassination researchers stop, not really noticing that the Nazi connections would multiply like rabbits, if one cared to look for them, for the fact of the matter is, the various societies, organizations, and groups of this Eastern European émigré community were but the North American connections – the leftovers, so to speak – of the vast network of German military intelligence that operated on and behind the Russian front throughout World War Two.
This military intelligence group was called Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East) and was headed by General Reinhard Gehlen. We shall have much more to say both about this intelligence network and its commanding general later. For now, however, it is to be noted that the Torbitt document, by naming Ferenc Nagy as “head” of this émigré community, is perhaps speaking symbolically, pointing the finger to a very hidden Nazi presence in the assassination. We are now in a position to examine the last new player in the assassination that the document mentions:
3. NASA security, headed by Von Braun, working inside the Defense Industrial Security Command (D.I.S.C.!) at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.
In other words, the third new player in the assassination is the space program, and the Torbitt Document further implies that it is an aspect of the space program that is not only relatively hidden from the general public, but also which is under the direct control of Werner Von Braun, yet another Nazi connection.
But what of the “Permindex Corporation” in Switzerland, the entity allegedly coordinating all this malfeasance for the FBI and DIA? Who was involved with it? What were its purposes? A glance at its Board of Directors indicates why it attracted the attention of District Attorney Garrison, for among those on its board were, of course, Clay Shaw, the man Garrison actually indicted for conspiracy to murder the president. But others included an Italian Fascist who had married into the family of Hjalmar Schacht,10 Hitler’s president of the Reichsbank and finance minister, and interestingly enough, also father-in-law to Hitler’s favorite SS commando, Otto Skorzeny. But these men hardly exhaust the unusual characters. There was an uncle to Egyptian King Farouk,11 the Italian minister of agriculture under Mussolini’s government, and yet another Hungarian ex-Nazi besides Ferenc Nagy, H. Simonfay.12
As if that were not enough, the Torbitt Document then goes on to provide a rather thorough list of Permindex’s principal financial backing, a list that reads like a veritable who’s who of conspiracies and scandals that had not yet even happened:
The principal financiers of Permindex were a number of U.S. oil companies, H. L. Hunt of Dallas, Clint Murchison of Dallas, John DeMenil, Solidarist director of Houston, John Connally as executor of the Sid Richardson estate, Haliburton Oil Co., Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma, Troy Post of Dallas, Lloyd Cobb of New Orleans, Dr. Oechner of New Orleans, George and Herman Brown of Brown and Root, Houston, Attorney Roy M. Cohn, Chairman of the Board for Lionel Corporation, New York City, Schlemley Industries of New York City, Walter Dornberger, ex-Nazi general and his company, Bell Aerospace, Pan American World Airways and its subsidiary, Intercontinental Hotel Corporation…
and last but by no means least
…NASA contractors directed by the Defense Industrial Security Command.13
In reading this bizarre list, one cannot help but think of the scandals-to-come, the Hunts and their attempt to corner the silver market and create a silver-backed currency for Texas(H. L. Hunt), the numerous allegations of conspiracy involved in the death of Karen Silkwood and her exposure of Kerr-McGee(Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma), current allegations that the real motivation for war with Iraq was oil (Haliburton).
And that’s not all. Even Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ghost hovers over the list of Permindex characters in the form of his legal council Roy Cohn. As if that were not enough, one of the banks through which Permindex often allegedly worked or channeled funds was the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro of Italy, a bank linked to many other shady scandals, including that of the notorious Bank of Credit and Commerce International, or BCCI scandal. And, at the end of this list, as if to highlight its importance, is NASA and its contractors, who, notes the Torbitt Document, “are directed by the Defense Industrial Security Command,” which is headed by Werner Von Braun.
But directed to do what? Why would Werner Von Braun possibly be involved in such an affair?
The answer, perhaps, lies in the Torbitt Document’s stated purposes of the Permindex Corporation:
1. To fund and direct assassinations of European, Mid-East and world leaders considered threats to the Western World and to petroleum interests of the backers.
2. To furnish couriers, agents, and management in transporting, depositing and re-channeling funds through Swiss banks for Las Vegas, Miami, Havana and international gambling syndicate.
3. To coordinate the espionage activities of the Solidarists and Division Five of the FBI with groups in sympathy with their objectives and to receive and channel funds and arms from the financiers to the action groups.
4. To build, acquire and operate hotels and gambling casinos in the Caribbean, Italy and at other tourist areas.14
Permindex, in other words, was the “Murder Incorporated” referred to by subsequent American Presidents.
But what does all this mean? What do these “purposes” indicate about the real nature of Permindex and its “backers”? Note first of all the purpose of eliminating, by assassination, any threat to the “petroleum interests of the backers.” In other words, big oil once again. Note also, that any alternative technology such as those represented by cold fusion, or “zero point energy” devices, would represent precisely such a threat. So one may safely assume that one is to take “the protection of the oil interests” in the widest possible sense, as not only eliminating foreign governments or parties that would threaten these interests’ overseas investments, but also the elimination of anyone presuming to a develop a technology not dependent on oil for energy.
Points two and three, however, point to something even deeper, and that is not only a hidden intelligence connection – a group operating within or only in conjunction with established and official agencies of the U.S. Federal government – but also a means for the independent financing of such groups and means of laundering the money to do it: casinos, ideal vehicles for laundering vast amounts of money quickly. This would explain the Mafia connection and involvement: it was at a “low” level of the conspiracy, the level necessary only for ensuring easy access and flow of dirty money to finance these projects.
All this makes a very strange context in which to view the last component of Permindex’s backers, “NASA contractors directed by
the Defense Industrial Security Command.” What possible connection could NASA’s DISC under the direction of Von Braun have to do with this? One answer, perhaps, lies in the implied suggestion that Permindex may have conducted assassinations to protect more than just the oil industry.
The Torbitt Document later provides an indicator of just who might have really been pulling the strings in the “corporation” when it stated “Permindex in Switzerland, basically a NATO intelligence front using the remnants of Adolph Hitler’s intelligence units in West Germany and also, the intelligence unit of the Solidarists headquarters in Munich, Germany.”15 Munich was, of course, also General Reinhard Gehlen’s personal headquarters for his Gehlenorg,16 the network of spies and “Solidarists” he continued to run both behind the Iron Curtain and elsewhere, ostensibly for the Central Intelligence Agency and the West German Bundesnachrichtendienst. The Gehlenorg and its many connections were even implicated in the Generals’ Plot, the assassination attempt on French President Charles DeGaulle, an attempt DeGaulle’s Sureté quickly and efficiently traced and eliminated.17
But why, again, would Von Braun be involved in such a conspiracy? While the Torbitt Document ultimately does not provide much of an answer to this question, it does hint at an answer that, shorn of its Nazi associations, will become a standard theme in some conspiracy views on the assassination, most notably that of Oliver Stone in his famous movie on the Garrison investigation, JFK. The Torbitt Document raises the prospect of the immense profits to be made from war, namely, the war in Vietnam:
The Nazi scientists are on management level also in the munitions and aerospace industry. Walter Dornberger, the Nazi general, left the space agency in the 1950’s to become a high official in Bell Aerospace Corporation and he was followed by over thirty of the Nazi scientists to control level in the corporations manufacturing munitions and aerospace material. This still left well over sixty of the scientists at command level in NASA.18
Of course, in the 1950s the war in Vietnam was ending its French phase and only entering the American one, but in any case, the motive is clearly implied: there were big profits to be made in war.
Moreover, the positioning of these Paperclip Project Nazis in key American defense industries may be an indicator of something far different taking place: the extension of influence by means of interlocking personnel in many management positions. This may easily be understood by recalling a method noted by many other writers on conspiracy, namely, that the method whereby power was concentrated in fewer and fewer hands by such financial dynasties as Rockefeller, Morgan, Warburg, or Rothschild, was simply to insist, as part of a condition of receiving a loan or grant from their institutions, that those institutions themselves were allowed to seat a representative on the loan recipient’s governing board. This was usually done by collateralizing the loan with stock in the company receiving the loan.
Here, a similar pattern is at least implied: these Nazi scientists may have been acting to extend their own independent network of power and influence throughout the American military-industrial complex by being seated in senior management positions in return for their expertise. We shall present evidence later that will corroborate this. In any case, viewed against the backdrop of General Gehlen’s effective preservation of his spy network and its grafting and penetration into postwar American intelligence, the picture that now emerges from the Torbitt document is chilling in its potentialities.
Each of the Nazi connections alluded to in the Torbitt document indicate influential Nazi presence not only in America’s space program, but moreover, strongly hint of Nazi influence in the awarding of contracts for the space program, Nazi influence in control of the security of the space program, Nazi influence in the intelligence organs of America and the West, Nazi influence in the defense and aerospace industries, and Nazi influence lurking in the background of Permindex, “Murder Incorporated.” Indeed, Von Braun himself may be viewed as the best exemplar of the type of smiling, glad-handing “networking” that make such influence possible, for shortly after arriving in the United States, he made a point of befriending none other than J. Edgar Hoover, and the then Senator Lyndon Johnson.19 And who was one of the individuals who helped expedite Von Braun’s and Dornberger’s repatriation to the United States? None other than Clay Shaw, the man Garrison would ultimately indict for conspiracy to murder President Kennedy.20 The transfer of the Nazi Project Paperclip scientists was also aided by none other than General Gehlen.21
All we know about the pseudonymous William Torbitt was that he was a prominent attorney in South Texas politics in the 1960s and 1970s.22 This makes the Torbitt Document’s revelations all the more sensational. While some might be inclined to dismiss its many claims out of hand, a picture does emerge of quietly exercised Nazi influence behind the scenes, an influence working in conjunction with other interests – big oil, technology suppression, Mafia, gambling and money laundering, aerospace and defense – and working effectively at that.
Moreover, the Torbitt Document suggests, albeit only slightly and only on very careful reading, that there is some hidden aspect to America’s space program, a hidden aspect represented by the mysterious Defense Industrial Security Command and its head, Werner Von Braun. It suggests that this was one of the many motivations represented by the various groups that whose interests coalesced in the murder of the President. But beyond that, it does not go. And this leaves a very disturbing question hovering in the air:
If there was some hidden aspect to the space program, and if its principals had some motivation for participating in the murder of the President, what was it? What did this hidden aspect of the space program have to gain? Or, alternatively, what about President Kennedy threatened it; what did it have to protect? Or was it some combination of both? To answer these questions requires an examination of some of the other versions of the Two Space Programs Hypothesis, even, as we shall see, the absurd ones.
2. The False Planetary Geology, Climate, and Archaeology Versions:
a. The Absurdist Versions
One may summarize the “absurdist” versions of the Two Space Programs very easily:
The Moon has an atmosphere and water, and even vegetation.
Venus, beneath its canopy of clouds, is not the carbon dioxide pressure-cooker and barren desert greenhouse we’ve been told, but rather, a temperate planet of rich vegetation, a veritable paradise.And, if one believes Adamski – and this author most decidedly does not – it is home to a wonderful race of peaceful, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, human space brothers who come in peace to bring earthbound humanity a message of hope.
And Mars really does have canals, and, thankfully, isn’t planning an invasion of Earth anytime soon.
But what has this to do with a hidden and public space program?
Very simple: according to the absurdist version the governments of the world that have space programs have hidden the truth about the planets of our solar system, carefully doctoring pictures to edit out any evidence that shows any of the above!
b. A Scientifically and Politically Plausible Version:
The Hoagland Model
A much more serious model, and much more plausible one, has been argued in various ways over the years by Richard C Hoagland, best known for his association with the ongoing investigations of the anomalous Martian surface features in the Cydonia region of Mars, features he believes strongly suggest an artificial origin.
While an extended presentation of Hoagland’s views is not possible here – after all they have evolved over many years of continual research, requiring a scholarly study in their own right – there are certain stable features that one may point to as summarizing some aspects of his version:
1. The Brookings Report: Immediately after its formation, NASA commissioned a study of the possible impact of human contact with an extraterrestrial civilization in its explorations of the solar system, or alternatively, with human discovery of any artifacts of such a civilization. As Hoagland has pointed out
on more than one occasion, the Brookings report indicated that there might be severe cultural implications and repercussions of such discoveries or events. Thus, Hoagland argues, the government may have adopted the policy, based on the Brookings recommendations, of concealing such discoveries.
2. In this context, one way of concealment is the alteration of photographic or other scientific data that indicates the presence of such contact or civilization artifact. Another method is the outright dismissal of evidence after-the-fact, such as NASA’s post-Viking dismissal of the Face on Mars as nothing but a “trick of light and shadow.” These and other tactics were subsequently employed by NASA down to the present whenever anomalous findings are returned by space probes.
3. A third component of Hoagland’s view is that there is a “hidden space program”, or better, group within NASA, exercising influence in an esoteric or occult direction over the scheduling, naming, and symbolism attached to missions. In support of this allegation, Hoagland has noted the high predominance of Masons in the astronaut corps, particularly in the formative days of NASA during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. Additionally, Hoagland has also maintained that many missions are designed to align with significant celestial (astrological) correlations, as if space missions were deliberate acts in a vast system of ritual magic being done on a planetary scale via the space program itself.
4. The final and most important component in Hoagland’s model is that the surface features of Cydonia on Mars encode a lost “hyperdimensional physics,” a physics Hoagland sees in evidence in the planetary upwellings of energy at the “tetrahedral latitude” of 19.5 north or south degrees on every celestial body in the solar system.
SS Brotherhood of the Bell: The Nazis’ Incredible Secret Technology Page 8