by J. W Lateer
Immediately following the 1964 election, LBJ asked the Congress for a 90-day hiatus so he could launch his Great Society, but this hiatus included any action on the case of Otto Otepka. Some people were puzzled about Dodd’s turnabout on the Otepka case. But the key to that turnabout was Dodd’s personal support for his friend LBJ. Dodd would not even release transcripts of Otepka’s testimony for four years. Some in Washington compare Dodd’s turnaround on Otepka to his famous turnaround on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Soon it was clear that Dodd was prepared to sell out Otepka. He called him a prima donna. This defense of Rusk and the State Department was the exact opposite of the threats against Rusk’s State Department only a year earlier on the Senate floor while Rusk was working for JFK.
Gill, too, flip-flopped in his opinion of Senator Thomas Dodd. Gill describes Dodd’s anti-Communist posture as mostly mere rhetoric. As evidence, Gill returns to his shibboleth, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The promotion, by Gill, of the Test Ban Treaty as a litmus test of anti-Communist resolve, has simply not stood the test of time. In fact, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty has, since the 1960s, stood as the shining example of the triumph of good sense over the sleazy side of the professional anti-Communists, which promoted Communophobia-for-hire. According to Gill, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was an issue where the future of the United States was at stake. No matter the fact that the atmospheric testing was putting radioactive Strontium 90 fallout into the milk of baby bottles all over the world. No matter the fact that the U.S. Government produced, over the years, 66,000 nuclear weapons, Test Ban Treaty or no Test Ban Treaty.
The parents of Thomas J. Dodd were devout Roman Catholics, and they sent their son to Catholic Providence College in nearby Rhode Island. Dodd was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958. Upon his election, Dodd immediately set himself up as the pillar of anti-Communism.
Dodd was active both on SISS and his Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee of which he was also chairman. Seemingly out of nowhere, Dodd was the subject of an inexplicable large-scale mutiny of his staff. Dodd’s speechwriter, James Boyd, organized a massive campaign against his own boss. His staff employees kept their own hidden set of books where they tracked Dodd’s often clandestine income. Then his staffers, acting in total concert, borrowed and photocopied an estimated 3000 pages of documents from his private Senatorial files.
Because of this extreme “mutiny/investigation” and the collusion with his staffers with some key journalists, Dodd was censured by the Senate for financial corruption on June 23, 1967 by a vote of 92-5. His staffers wound up being fired because of their actions, and their careers went down the drain.
Was Otepka, as being allied to Dodd, on the financial take along with Dodd? The gorilla in the room is the fact that out of 5 Senators censured in recent history, two of them were McCarthy and Dodd, both of whom were Catholic activist anti-Communists elected from states in the north.
As a part of an unusual situation surrounding the Rostow brothers, in April 1966, LBJ brought Walter Rostow back from the State Department to the White House, and at the same time installed his brother, Eugene Rostow as number-three man in the State Department. All the while, Otto Otepka considered these two men as major security risks who should be legally forbidden to work in even the lowliest posts in the U.S. Government. There seems to be something illogical about this entire situation. Did the concept of “security” followed by Otepka have anything at all to do with actual security? There was another man who continued to give Otepka encouragement and that was Strom Thurmond. (OOO p. 401). Senator Eastland, backed by Dirksen, Hruska and Dodd, introduced the first of several bills designed to overhaul SY. None of the bills became law.
In the fall of 1965, the State Department named a retired judge to be the hearing officer in Otepka’s State Department hearing. Reports surfaced that LBJ had ordered administration officials to settle the case as soon as possible. Otepka’s hearing began in June 1967. Otepka and Roger Robb, his attorney, continued to protest the closing of the coming hearing to the press. The State Department’s hearing into the dismissal of charges leveled against Otepka was to last four weeks. In total, only three witnesses testified: Otepka, Sourwine and Reilly.
Robb stated “the evidence will show that these charges (against Otepka) were the culmination of a conspiracy, beginning as early as 1960, to get rid of Otepka by a relentless campaign of harassment and reprisal, by surrounding him with unfriendly and disloyal associates, by wiretapping, by clandestine surveillance … and finally on the part of his immediate superiors, by perjury.
One long-standing issue brought out in the hearing by Otepka, was the transfer of the duties regarding reports received from other intelligence and law enforcement agencies over to the bureau of Intelligence and Research at the SD. Otepka claimed to know that in that bureau of Intelligence Research, there was a large concentration of officials who had records of activities and associations with Communists.
Should the reader believe that there were Communist sympathizers who might be running the Intelligence function of the State Department? This contention by Otepka would seem to automatically impugn the top officials at the State Department. If Otepka actually had any evidence of such Communist infiltration, why couldn’t he just write a letter to the highest officials in the State Department and they would take care of the problem? What about the FBI? Was J. Edgar Hoover covering up for State Department Communists, too? And if Strom Thurmond was a continuing supporter of Otepka, why couldn’t Otepka just hand the list of Communist-affiliated workers at the State Department to Thurmond and then Thurmond would have raised the issue through proper channels?
The concept of guilt by association, not provable in the light of day, goes totally against the Constitution. It also contradicts our traditional American concept of fairness and justice as well as the rest of our laws. Otepka’s concept of security was, in itself, the major challenge to true American security. When Otepka said he put his love of county ahead of orders from his supervisors, it begs the question. What would our country be like, if the Otepka theory of government ever came to be? Outraged at his own phone being wiretapped, Otepka would eagerly turn around and persecute people using the fruits of illegal and clandestine wiretaps.
Harry Truman’s motto emblazoned on his desk was “The Buck Stops Here.” Otepka always maintained that Truman’s motto should have been on his, Otepka’s desk. If Otepka had such a low opinion of the value of laws, and of duly elected or appointed officials, then Otepka and his gang would think nothing of (at least) tacitly supporting the murder of a President.
At a later hearing about the Otepka case, the hearing officer kept asking him to identifiy the people who were out to get rid of him. Referring to the Senate subcommittee’s record, Otepka first named Boswell and Roger Jones. Then the following exchange took place:
Jaffe: Who else [that was out to get you] entered your mind?
Otepka: [after another sentence] Otepka answered: “The person was Robert Kennedy.”
Rusk, in denying Otepka his appeal within the State Department, wrote: “I therefore decide that disciplinary action is required in this case and hereby direct that the following actions be taken with respect to Mr. Otto F. Otepka: a) That he be severely reprimanded, b) The he be reduced in grade from GS-15 to GS-14, c) That he be transferred to duties which do not involve the administration of personnel security functions.
In the first week of January, 1968, SISS finally issued its long-awaited official report on the Otepka matter. Released in four separate volumes over an eight-day span, the report was virtually ignored. In April the Civil Service Commission issued a ruling upholding Secretary of State Rusk’s reprimand and demotion of Otepka. Otto Otepka, perhaps more acutely than any other man, understood the central tragedy of the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy.
Those who held a viewpoint similar to Otepka might have argued that Lyndon Johnson’s appointment to the Supreme Court of Abe Fortas was the most flagrant flaunting to date of the nation
’s internal security laws. This was because Fortas had been close friends with Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White in 1945, Fortas is said to have helped Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White draft the U.N. Charter, both Hiss and White were proven at least at one point to be actual Communists.
Nixon appointed Henry Kissinger, Harvard Professor and former advisor to Nelson Rockefeller, to replace Walter W. Rostow. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach issued a memorandum summarily restoring a security clearance to John Paton Davies, the China cabalist who for fifteen years had been classified as a security risk.
Nixon’s Secretary of State upheld the prior findings of Dean Rusk and refused to favor Otto Otepka. SISS in the person of Everett Dirksen, worked out a compromise: Ottepka would be appointed to the Subversive Activities Control Board. The New York Times came out against Otepka and labeled him “a member of the John Birch Society and also an anti-Semite.” On April 15, 1969, the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing on the President’s appointment of Otepka to the SACB and Senator Dirksen volunteered to testify. Senator Edward Kennedy, taking his cue from the Times and perhaps a memory of his brother Bobby, launched a final assault against Otepka during the Judiciary Committee’s deliberations. Kennedy and three other Senators, Quentin Burdick of South Dakota [sic s.b. North Dakota], Philip Hart of Michigan and Joseph Tydings of Maryland had Otepka recalled to Capitol Hill twice to answer a series of silly questions about his alleged connection to the John Birch Society and a group known as the Liberty Lobby. Kennedy… quickly zeroed in on a meeting Otepka had attended as a guest in San Diego in March, 1965. He demanded to know with “what organization” the man who invited Otepka was connected. Otepka replied that the man was “connected with the United Republicans of California.” The full Senate voted 61-28 to confirm Otepka’s appointment to the SACB. By the late 1960’s there was a Congressional hearing into the dismissal of Otepka but in the end Otepka was never returned to his previous station. In 1958 under John Foster Dulles, he was given the State Department Meritorious Service Award. Otepka retired in 1972 and moved to Cape Coral, Florida in 1975. He was a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, which also included former CIA agents and bureaucrats.
One of his last, if not the last, interview, was granted to JFK assassination research author Joan Mellen in Florida in 2006, just prior to his death. It is recounted in her excellent book A Farewell To Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination and the Case That Should Have Changed History.
Notes:
Nearly all the information in this chapter can be verified by referring to: The Ordeal Of Otto Otepka, (1969) by William J. Gill, sometimes abbreviated as OOO.
Another excellent source on the subject of Otto Otepka is: Despoilers Of Democracy: The Real Story Of What Washington Propagandists, Arrogant Bureaucrats, Mismanagers, Influence Peddlers, And Outright Corrupters Are Doing To Our Federal Government (1965), by Clark R Mollenhoff, sometimes abbreviated as DOD.
For information on Ladejinsky, see: [Wikipedia Wolf Ladejinsky]
For information on John Stewart Service, see: [Wikipedia: John Stewart Service]
For information on John Paton Davies, see: [Wikipedia:John Paton Davies]
Anglo-American Establishment (1981) by Quigley Carroll, see page 50.
A Farwell To Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case That Should have Changed History (2007), by Joan Mellen, sometimes abbreviated as FTJ.
For information on William Wieland, see: [http://havanaschooleng.blogspot.com/2012/05/cuban-conspiracy-nine-wielands-case-i.html] Viewed 3-19-15.
Memoirs: Years of Trial and Hope (1956) by Harry S. Truman.
Chapter 31
Important Issues in International Relations in 1963
The General Analine and Film Case
Klein: “I am always accused of being a representative working for the return of confiscated German property which is not true and that I am a front for IG Farben [ an accusation made by Senator Smathers in an op-ed] which is also not true.”
(per General Julius Klein in testimony before the U.S. Senate, 1963)
General Julius Klein was the bagman who was apparently bribing U.S. Senators and furiously meeting with assassination suspect Senator Thomas Dodd in the few short weeks before the assassination. And General Klein, as shown in the above testimony he gave before Congress, was allegedly representing IG Farben. Farben was behind the front of ownership of General Analine and Film at the time GAF was seized as enemy property in World War II under the Trading With The Enemy Act. Der Spiegel, the top German newsmagazine claimed, in an article on October 4, 1963 that Klein represented “a half dozen of the largest German automotive, heavy industrial and pharmaceutical companies operating in the United States.”
As has been referred to previously, the German Government had been engaged in spying in the U.S. continuously since at least 1890. It was in that year that a chemist named Walter Theodore Scheele came to the U.S. Scheele had been in the German military and achieved the rank of Captain. After this, he came to the U.S. in 1890 but he was kept on the military payroll and was paid $1500 per year, which would be almost $40,000 in 2016 money.
While he was on the German payroll, he worked on creating explosives for the German military. In the book The Secret War Against the United States in 1915, by Heribert von Feilitzsch, the author describes in great detail the intricate German spy network in the U.S. beginning in the 1890’s and continuing on without interruption ever since, likely to this very day. German spies were paid through Bayer Company and Hamburg-American Cruise Lines. One of our three Barons, General Charles Willoughby, probably came to the U.S. as a German spy in 1910 and joined the U.S. military.
What most Americans never appreciated is the fact that in Germany, the line between government action and private industrial action was much more blurred than in the United States. Germany encouraged the existence of giant industrial cartels. This was exactly the same thing that our American anti-trust laws were invented to eradicate and prevent.
In the World War I era, there was a German industrial behemoth called the “Bix Six.” The Big Six was a conglomerate of the largest chemical companies in Germany. Although it was ostensibly working with the ordinary chemical color dye industry, the invention and production of various color dyes involved such advances in chemistry that a whole new world of chemicals was opened up as a result. The German government and the chemical cartel threw huge resources in to this effort because they knew two things. First, advances in chemicals would lead to powerful new explosives for bombs and munitions. Second, they knew this research would also lead to the production of artificial rubber and artificial fuels from coal which would make Germany independent from the rest of the world and allow Germany to wage war without the fear of a British or other naval blockade.
For an apt comparison, one should look at the major U.S. defense contractors such as Lockheed, General Dynamics and Bell Aerospace. They were quasi-governmental. They guarded the American defense secrets which secured our survival as a nation. The famous Lockheed Corporation “Skunk Works” led by engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson would be an example. The Skunk Works designed the U-2 spy plane and the SR-71 spy aircraft. It was a quasi-governmental operation because its funding depended almost entirely on the U.S. government and most of its discoveries could not be shared with other countries.
During the World War I era, the U.S. Congress passed the Trading With The Enemy Act. This allowed the Federal Government to seize and hold onto German and other foreign assets after war was declared against Germany. These assets became the property of the Alien Property Custodian.
During the lead-up to World War II, this act had never been repealed. FDR used it to seize property owned by citizens of Denmark and Norway after those countries were invaded by Germany in April 1940. Then, when war was declared following Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Government seized the ownership of General Aniline & Film in February, 1942. It was the largest company seized un
der the Trading With The Enemy Act. At the time, it owned over 3900 patents on chemical processes. All told, the WWII Alien Property Custodian owned assets worth $800 million, which would be $15 billion in 2016.
General Aniline was technically owned by a Swiss corporation called Interhandel. The U.S. acted against General Aniline (now GAF) on the theory that Interhandel was just a front for IG Dyes which most Americans would recognize by the name IG Farben. This dispute was held up and delayed in court the entire time GAF was owned by the U.S. Government Alien Property Custodian. According to author Sidney Jay Zabludoff, General Aniline was transferred to a Swiss holding company IG Chemie. IG Chemie in turn owned the shares of the U.S. company General Aniline and Film Corp. A man named Albert Gadow had a “repurchase agreement” whereby he could, at any time, repurchase the shares of General Aniline. Gadow, in turn had an agreement that he could sell those shares to no one but IG Farben. So IG Farben, in reality, owned or completely controlled General Aniline & Film Corp.
GAF was a main competitor of du Pont for chemicals, Kodak for film and Xerox for the photocopy business. Those of us who were of age in the 1950’s and 1960’s can appreciate the central role of du Pont, Kodak and Xerox. These were essentially monopolies and if their main competitor, GAF, were owned by the U.S. government, the stakes in this situation would be astronomical.