Posted on 02/15/2004 9:41:37 AM PST by Hon
This is from John Loftus' own website. Look at the articles. (If you can't click through, I will repost the links.)
Explosive Story: GOP has asked British SS to bug phones of American political candidates!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1078599/posts?page=51
Most of that tinfoil has been unrolled right here on FR.
Hold on! According to those who saw it the guy was a guest on Fox and he completely caught the anchor off guard! It was NOT "lazy-assed reporting". I'm surprise at you, you're better than this.
Many here will spout off without the facts, or worse yet, ignore the facts.
Don't be surprised. ;)
Of course he caught them off-guard. They didn't research his tin-foil background as Hon as done.
I heard another "reliable source" on Friday on C-SPAN. Kevin Phillips, who's still living off the success of a book he wrote back in the 70s.
Since he hasn't had a book in a while, he decided to jump on the "trash Bush" bandwagon and write one about the Bush dynasty. I notice it's #2 on the NYT best-seller list.
These charlatans know there's a sucker born every minute.
In 1997 he wrote a book called The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People, which basically was an anti-western government screed, saying that the western governments had betrayed Israel for oil. The latter section of the book tied it all in to the Reagan administration, VP Bush, Dick Casey, Cheney, and Iran-Contra. This book review (from the link above near the bottom) is telling:
I was referred to this work by a friend who found it the most substantial and damning work of scholarship he had ever encountered. When he recounted the books charges to me, I had to find out why this material had not been given wider publicity.He also has a book called "Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss Banks. This review talks about the same tendency to rely on unverifiable information and to ignore counter-evidence:By the end of Chapter 1: Philby of Arabia, I knew why. First of all, we must acknowledge that over 1/3rd of the bibliography notes "Interviews with Confidential...". Now the authors, to their credit, acknowledge the weakness in their case that much of their information can not be sourced. So one must wonder, why did they bother to include these references in the bibiliography. They could have simply noted it in the body of the text.
Furthermore, some of the biblio. notes of confidential sources are fleshed out with notes on the circumstances of the conversations, etc. Again, this material could have been included in the text. It looks conspicuously as if the authors are trying to beef up the work's credentials with empty footnotes.
However, I do accept that any such work is going to have to include some degree of anonymous contributions. Now onto Chapter One. In Philby of Arabia, the authors try simultaneously to tell us that the British were among the first nations to employ anti-semitic policy in the middle east AND that Jack Philby, as an operative, was hell-bent on interfering with British policy to avenge their failure to promote his career. They go on to assert that Philby becomes the nexus of anti-semitic policy in the region. Now, if Philby is intent on thwarting British policy and the British were trying to undermine the Jewish people...wouldn't we logically conclude that Philby would work on BEHALF of the Jews??!?!!!
The authors also note that the Arab nations had reason to feel betrayed for the British treatment of them. They note the British appointment of a partisan Zionist to a key position in their middle east delegation and say that was finally what caused Philby to resign his government position. Philby is quoted as writing something to the effect that he can not work under a person who is so biased against the Arabs in the conflict. I'm paraphrasing, but that was the general sentiment and the words were no more inflamatory. The authors immediately use that quote to then assert something silly like "Philby's hatred for the Jews was cemented". They had done NOTHING to even EVIDENCE his supposed animosity.
There are other weaknesses here. The authors seem to toss about Philby's alleged homosexuality for no apparent reason, unless they were trying to evoke some latent prejudice against him. The simultaneously muse that he was lured to the religeon of Islam by the opportunity to use the Saudi king's harem! This first chapter is all over the map. It's really quite amusing. I don't know how the most avowed conspiracy theorist could read this tripe and not be saying..."Wait a minute here" due to the massive conjecture and contradictions. There's a weakly substantiated assertion that Philby "raped" his wife and other various attempts at character assasination. It's a common ploy of propagandists. You villify your opponent, make assertions that are unsupported and then use those assertions as the foundation for your next attack. This book is a house of cards.
A key source of information in the book are intelligence reports by the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.) and other agencies. Yet information in these reports is often anonymous; it is uncertain if the subject is an important official with direct knowledge or just someone repeating a rumor.A Google Search on him shows where his stuff has appeal. Some tin-foil sites. A whole lot of indy-media and other leftist type sites. I particularly like that islamonline.net has some of his propaganda up.The authors make no mention of an Italian journalist named Virgilo Scattolini. From 1939-1948, he made a valuable living by selling false information about Vatican affairs to intelligence agents, diplomats and reporters. Through his non-existent contacts in the Vatican, Scattolini claimed he got his information, which often reported verbatim what Pope Pius XII said to visitors in audiences. In 1944, the O.S. enlisted Scattolini, paying him $500 per month. He regularly fed them false reports about Vatican goings-on. Scattolini was also used by other intelligence agencies from other countries as well. In 1948, Italian Communists published two volumes of Scattolini's reports in "Documenti segreti della diplomazia del Vaticano" ("The Secret Diplomacy of the Vatican"). Scattolini was then exposed, arrested and jailed for six months. As Vatican historian Rev. Robert Graham, S.J. said, reports based on Scattolini's lies can be found in the various archives, thus creating a minefield for researchers. Several of "Unholy Trinity's" major scoops can be traced to Scattolini.
The authors write that the Vatican and Nazi Germany made a secret deal over Ukraine in 1942. If this was true, then there would be evidence in Nazi archives, but there isn't. The source behind this story is Scattolini. Loftus and Aarons also use Scattolini's reports that invent damaging conversations between the Pope and one of his deputies, Msgr. Giovanni Montini, the future Paul VI. The book's claim that Montini was an informant for American intelligence is also based on Scattolini's work. The authors consulted Fr. Graham for the book, and he warned them about "the Scattolini factor." Yet the authors used the material anyway, dismissing Graham's warning.
Scattolini and the embarrassment he caused the O.S.S. are discussed in several books, Graham's "The Vatican and Communism" (1996), Bradley F. Smith's "The Shadow Warriors" (1983) and Owen Chadwick's "Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War" (1988). Scattolini's file extends to 1,500 pages and can be obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The authors claim Bishop Alois Hudal, with the support of the Vatican, ran an operation that smuggled Nazis to South America. Hudal did help several Nazis escape. However, as Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal wrote in a letter to the New York Times in 1984, there is no evidence that the Pope or his advisors were aware of Hudal's activities. The book claims that Hudal was close to the Pope. In fact, Hudal had no authority at the Vatican and just served as the rector of the German Catholic Church in Rome. The fact that Hudal was never promoted to cardinal suggests that he and the Pope did not enjoy a close relationship. Hudal's memoirs were posthumously published in German in 1976. Hudal claimed Vatican officials shunned him because of his pro-Nazi sympathies.
Loftus and Hudal also cite Croatian priest Fr. Dragonovic, who worked with American agents to spirit war criminal Klaus Barbie out of Europe. Dragonovic may have helped Croatian dictator Ante Pavelic escape as well. To support their case, the authors argue that the Vatican and Croatia were on friendly terms during the war. However, they ignore several facts. Pavelic was morally outraged that the Vatican did not recognize his regime during the war. (The book's claim that Pavelic had an audience with the Pope in 1943 is incorrect.) Also, Archbishop Alois Stepinac and the Vatican's liaison with the Croatian bishops, Msgr. Joseph Marcone, frequently opposed the persecution of Serbs and Jews in Croatia on Vatican orders. Like Hudal, Dragonovic acted on his own without Vatican knowledge or support.
The authors also cite the "La Vista" report forwarded to the State Department. The report states that the Vatican was deliberately helping Nazi war criminals in order to "propagate the Catholic faith." I obtained the report using the Freedom of Information Act. The report actually discusses illegal immigration allegedly abetted by the Vatican, the Red Cross, Hungarian groups AND Jewish groups. LaVista, an American agent, claims he verified his claims, but the people he allegedly spoke to are not quoted or identified. The authors also take events out of context.
After the war, there were tens of thousands of displaced refugees, including Jews, in Italy. The Pope (and the Allies) set up organizations to help resettle them as quickly as possible. How could identities be checked in post-war Europe? Although it is possible that Nazi fugitives, with false identities and papers, used these agencies to escape, it is something else to claim the Vatican deliberately helped war criminals. In the book, the authors claim the Soviets penetrated the Vatican's "ratlines." If this is so, there would be evidence in the Soviet archives, which have been open to researchers for ten years. Why didn't Loftus and Aarons travel to Russia to conduct research for the updated version of their book?
Eli Rosenbaum, who hunts Nazi war criminals for the Justice Department, has said that while some priests assisted war crminals, he found no evidence that Vatican had a wide scale operation to help fugitive Nazis.
In the end, the thesis of "Unholy Trinity" collapses like a house of cards. The book belongs on the same shelf with literature on the Roswell UFO, Kennedy assassination theories, and alien autopsies.
I hope you expose this fraud, and don't offer him the slightest bit of credibility.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/715498/posts?page=106#106
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