
 part 1 of 4


           OLD NAZIS, THE NEW RIGHT, AND THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION

        The Role of Domestic Fascist Networks in the Republican Party
                  and Their Effect on U.S. Cold War Politics

                               by Russ Bellant
                                Second Edition

                        Political Research Associates
                     678 Massachusetts Avenue, Suite 205
                             Cambridge, MA 02139
                                (617) 661-9313

                    Print version: $6.50 includes shipping
     
     Copyright 1988, 1989 Political Research Associates and Russ Bellant
                             ISBN # 0-915987-05-8

                   Support for this report was provided by
               The Funding Exchange / National Community Funds,
                         and many individual donors.

                     First Edition: September 9, 1988    
                     Second Edition: February 6, 1989



                     About Political Research Associates:

  Political Research Associates is an independent research  institute which 
collects and disseminates information on  right-wing political groups and 
trends. Centralized in its  archives is a continuously-updated collection of 
over one hundred  right-wing publications, including newspapers, magazines,  
newsletters, and direct mail appeals. The institute's library  contains 
hundreds of volumes relating to the political right  wing. Also maintained are
extensive files of primary and  secondary material on individuals, groups and 
topics of interest  to those researching the right wing.
     
  Political Research Associates offers classes on the  American right wing, 
provides speakers for groups and  conferences, publishes educational posters, 
and prepares, on  request, specific research reports on topics pertaining to 
the  political right wing.
     
  The Political Research Associates Topical Report Series  provides background
information on subjects of current interest  to those interested in 
understanding the right wing in America.

  Jean V. Hardisty, Ph.D., Director
  Chip Berlet, Research Associate
  Margaret Quigley, Archivist

  
Bellant: Old Nazis/1


  "One of the great lies of this century is that in the 1930's Generalissimo 
Franco in Spain was primarily a nationalist engaged in stopping the Reds.
Franco was, of course, a fascist who was aided by Mussolini and Hitler.

  "The history of this period is a press forgery. Falsified news manipulates 
public opinion. Democracy needs facts. Once, while I was questioning publisher
and editor William Allen White, we arrived at a formula that still is the best
rule for journalists -- the facts fairly and honestly presented, the truth 
will take care of itself."
                                 -- George Seldes, Hartland Four Corners, 
                                    Vermont, March 5, 1988

  "Fascism, which was not afraid to call itself reactionary... does not 
hesitate to call itself illiberal and anti-liberal."
                                 -- Benito Mussolini

  "Reactionary concepts plus revolutionary emotion result in Fascist 
mentality."
                                    -- Wilhelm Reich

  "If fascism came to America, it would be on a program of Americanism."
                                    -- Huey P. Long

  "The great masses of people. . .will more easily fall victims to a big lie 
than to a small one."
                                    -- Adolph Hitler



                                   Preface 
                                by Chip Berlet

  In this paper, author Russ Bellant tells us that an Eastern European emigre 
fascist network with direct ties to former Nazi collaborators has penetrated 
the Republican Party through its ethnic outreach program. He further argues 
that this network has played a significant role in shaping American foreign 
policy since World War II, with the goal of rolling back the borders of the 
Soviet Union in an inevitable military confrontation.

   Mr. Bellant faces a major hurdle convincing us that this lurid-sounding 
tale is true, and he faces this challenge head-on. That ultimately he is 
successful in this task is due to his dozens of interviews, hundreds of 
footnotes, and thousands of hours of research.

   Perhaps a harder question to address than the validity of the charges, is 
seemingly the simplest: Should we care? To understand why the answer is yes, 
we should care, one must start by examining the roots of the nationalist 
political movements of 1930's Europe, and the role played by political fascism
and Nazism in shaping these movements.

   We have all heard of the Nazis -- but our image is usually a caricature of 
a brutal goose-stepping soldier wearing a uniform emblazoned with a swastika. 
Most people in the U.S. are aware that the U.S. and its allies fought a war 
against the Nazis, but there is much more to know if one is to learn the 
important lessons of our recent history.

   Technically, the word NAZI was the acronym for the National Socialist 
German Worker's Party. It was a fascist movement that had its roots in the 
European nationalist and socialist movements, and that developed a grotesque 
biologically determinant view of so-called "Aryan" supremacy. (Here we use 
"national socialism" to refer to the early Nazi movement before Hitler came to
power, sometimes termed the "Brownshirt" phase, and the term "Nazi" to refer
to the movement after it had consolidated around ideological fascism.)

   The seeds of fascism, however, were planted in Italy. "Fascism is 
reaction," said Mussolini, but reaction to what? The reactionary movement 
following World War I was based on a rejection of the social theories that 
formed the basis of the 1789 French Revolution, and whose early formulations 
in this country had a major influence on our Declaration of Independence, 
Constitution, and Bill of Rights.

   It was Rousseau who is best known for crystallizing these modern social 
theories in <The Social Contract>. The progeny of these theories are sometimes
called Modernism or Modernity because they challenged social theories 
generally accepted since the days of Machiavelli. The response to the French 
Revolution and Rousseau, by Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche> and others, poured into an
intellectual stew which served up Marxism, socialism, national socialism, 
fascism, modern liberalism, modern conservatism, communism, and a variety of 
forms of capitalist participatory democracy.

   Fascists particularly loathed the social theories of the French Revolution 
and its slogan: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

   - Liberty from oppressive government intervention in the daily lives of its
citizens, from illicit searches and seizures, from enforced religious values, 
from intimidation and arrest for dissenters; and liberty to cast a vote in a 
system in which the majority ruled but the minority retained certain 
inalienable rights.

   - Equality in the sense of civic equality, egalitarianism, the notion that 
while people differ, they all should stand equal in the eyes of the law.

   - Fraternity in the sense of the brotherhood of mankind. That all women and
men, the old and the young, the infirm and the healthy, the rich and the poor,
share a spark of humanity that must be cherished on a level above that of the 
law, and that binds us all together in a manner that continuously re-affirms 
and celebrates life.

   This is what fascism as an ideology was reacting against -- and its support
came primarily from desperate people anxious and angry over their perception 
that their social and economic position was sinking and frustrated with the 
constant risk of chaos, uncertainty and inefficiency implicit in a modern 
democracy based on these principles. Fascism is the antithesis of democracy. 
We fought a war against it not half a century ago; millions perished as 
victims of fascism and champions of liberty.

   Fascism was forged in the crucible of post-World War I nationalism in 
Europe. The national aspirations of many European peoples -- nations without 
states, peoples arbitrarily assigned to political entities with little regard 
for custom or culture -- had been crushed after World War I. The humiliation 
imposed by the victors in the Great War, coupled with the hardship of the 
economic Depression, created bitterness and anger. That anger frequently found
its outlet in an ideology that asserted not just the importance of the nation,
but its unquestionable primacy and central predestined role in history.

   In identifying "goodness" and "superiority" with "us," there was a tendency
to identify "evil" with "them." This process involves scapegoating and 
dehumanization. It was then an easy step to blame all societal problems on 
"them," and presuppose a conspiracy of these evildoers which had emasculated 
and humiliated the idealized core group of the nation. To solve society's 
problems one need only unmask the conspirators and eliminate them.

   In Europe, Jews were the handy group to scapegoat as "them." Anti- Jewish 
conspiracy theories and discrimination against Jews were not a new phenomenon,
but most academic studies of the period note an increased anti-Jewish fervor 
in Europe, especially in the late 1800's. In France this anti-Jewish bias was 
most publicly expressed in the case of Alfred Dreyfus, a French military 
officer of Jewish background, who in 1894 was falsely accused of treason, 
convicted (through the use of forged papers as evidence) and imprisoned on 
Devil's Island. <144>mile Zola mile> led a noble struggle which freed Dreyfus 
and exposed the role of anti-Jewish bigotry in shaping French society and 
betraying the principles on which France was building its democracy.

   Not all European nationalist movements were necessarily fascist, although 
many were. In some countries much of the Catholic hierarchy embraced fascist 
nationalism as a way to counter the encroachment of secular influences on 
societies where previously the church had sole control over societal values 
and mores. This was especially true in Slovakia and Croatia, where the 
Clerical Fascist movements were strong, and to a lesser extent in Poland and 
Hungary. Yet even in these countries individual Catholic leaders and laity 
spoke out against bigotry as the shadow of fascism crept across Europe. And in
every country of Europe there were ordinary citizens who took extraordinary 
risks to shelter the victims of the Holocaust. So religion and nationality 
cannot be valid indicators of fascist sentiment. And the Nazis not only came 
for the Jews, as the famous quote reminds us, but for the communists and the 
trade union leaders, and indeed the Gypsies, the dissidents and the 
homosexuals. Nazism and fascism are more complex than popular belief. What, 
then, is the nature of fascism?

   Italy was the birthplace of fascist ideology. Mussolini, a former socialist
journalist, organized the first fascist movement in 1919 at Milan. In 1922 
Mussolini led a march on Rome, was given a government post by the king, and 
began transforming the Italian political system into a fascist state. In 1938 
he forced the last vestige of democracy, the Council of Deputies, to vote 
themselves out of existence, leaving Mussolini dictator of fascist Italy. 

   Yet there were Italian fascists who resisted scapegoating and 
dehumanization even during World War II. Not far from the area where Austrian 
Prime Minister Kurt Waldheim is accused of assisting in the transport of Jews 
to the death camps, one Italian General, Mario Roatta, who had pledged 
equality of treatment to civilians, refused to obey the German military order 
to round up Jews. Roatta said such an activity was "incompatible with the 
honor of the Italian Army."

   Franco's fascist movement in Spain claimed state power in 1936, although it
took three years, the assistance of the Italian fascists and help from the 
secretly reconstituted German Air Force finally to crush those who fought for 
democracy. Picasso's famous painting <Guernica> depicts the carnage wrought in
a Spanish village by the bombs dropped by the forerunner of the <Luftwaffe> 
which all too soon would be working on an even larger canvas. Yet Franco's 
fascist Spain never adopted the obsession with race and anti-Jewish conspiracy
theories that were hallmarks of Hitler's Nazi movement in Germany.

   Other fascist movements in Europe were more explicitly racialist, promoting
the slogan still used today by some neo-Nazi movements: "Nation is Race." The 
Nazi racialist version of fascism was developed by Adolph Hitler who with six 
others formed the Nazi party during 1919 and 1920. Imprisoned after the 
unsuccessful 1923 Beer Hall putsch in Munich, Hitler dictated his opus, <Mein 
Kampf> to his secretary, Rudolph Hess.

   <Mein Kampf> (My Battle) sets out a plan for creating in Germany through 
national socialism a racially pure <Volkish> state. To succeed, said Hitler,
"Aryan" Germany had to resist two forces: the external threat posed by the 
French with their bloodlines "negrified" through "contamination by Negro 
blood," and the internal threat posed by "the Marxist shock troops of 
international Jewish stock exchange capital." Hitler was named Chancellor of 
Germany by Hindenburg in January 1933 and by year's end had consolidated his 
power as a fascist dictator and begun a campaign for racialist nationalism 
that eventually led to the Holocaust.

   This obsession with a racialism not only afflicted the German Nazis, but 
also several eastern European nationalist and fascist movements including 
those in Croatia, Slovakia, Serbia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, and the 
Ukraine. Anti-Jewish bigotry was rampant in all of these racialist movements, 
as was the idea of a link between Jewish financiers and Marxists. Even today 
the tiny Anti-communist Confederation of Polish Freedom Fighters in the U.S.A.
uses the slogan "Communism is Jewish." 

   One element shared by all fascist movements, racialist or not, is the 
apparent lack of consistent political principle behind the ideology -- 
political opportunism in the most basic sense. One virtually unique aspect of 
fascism is its ruthless drive to attain and hold state power. On that road to 
power, fascists are willing to abandon any principle to adopt an issue more in
vogue and more likely to gain converts.

   Hitler, for his part, committed his act of abandonment bloodily and 
dramatically. When the industrialist power brokers offered control of Germany 
to Hitler, they knew he was supported by national socialist ideologues who 
held views incompatible with their idea of profitable enterprise. Hitler 
solved the problem in the "Night of the Long Knives," during which he had the 
leadership of the national socialist wing of his constituency murdered in 
their sleep.

   What distinguishes Nazism from generic fascism is its obsession with racial
theories of superiority, and some would say, its roots in the socialist theory
of proletarian revolution.

   Fascism and Nazism as ideologies involve, to varying degrees, some of the 
following hallmarks:

   - Nationalism and super-patriotism with a sense of historic mission. 

   - Aggressive militarism even to the extent of glorifying war as good for 
the national or individual spirit.

   - Use of violence or threats of violence to impose views on others (fascism
and Nazism both employed street violence and state violence at different 
moments in their development). 

   - Authoritarian reliance on a leader or elite not constitutionally 
responsible to an electorate.

   - Cult of personality around a charismatic leader.

   - Reaction against the values of Modernism, usually with emotional attacks 
against both liberalism and communism.

   - Exhortations for the homogeneous masses (<Volk> or folk) to join 
voluntarily in a heroic mission -- often metaphysical and romanticized in 
character.

   - Dehumanization and scapegoating of the enemy -- seeing the enemy as an
inferior or subhuman force, perhaps involved in a conspiracy that justifies 
eradicating them.

   - The self image of being a superior form of social organization beyond 
socialism, capitalism and democracy.

   - Elements of national socialist ideological roots, for example, ostensible
support for the industrial working class or farmers; but ultimately, the 
forging of an alliance with an elite sector of society.

   - Abandonment of any consistent ideology in a drive for state power.

   It is vitally important to understand that fascism and Nazism are not 
biologically or culturally determinant. Fascism does not attach to the gene 
structure of any specific group or nationality. Nazism was not the ultimate 
expression of the German people. Fascism did not end with World War II.

   After Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies, the geopolitical landscape of
Europe was once again drastically altered. In a few short months, some of our 
former fascist enemies became our allies in the fight to stop the spread of 
communism. The record of this transformation has been laid out in a series of 
books. U.S. recruitment of the Nazi spy apparatus has been chronicled in books
ranging from <The General was a Spy> by Hohne & Zolling, to the recent 
<Blowback> by Simpson. The laundering of Nazi scientists into our space 
program is chronicled in <The Paperclip Conspiracy> by Bowers. The global 
activities of, and ongoing fascist role within, the World Anti-Communist 
League were described in <Inside the League> by Anderson and Anderson. 
Bellant's bibliography cites many other examples of detailed and accurate 
reporting of these disturbing realities.

   But if so much is already known of this period, why does journalist and 
historian George Seldes call the history of Europe between roughly 1920 and 
1950 a "press forgery"? Because most people are completely unfamiliar with 
this material, and because so much of the popular historical record either 
ignores or contradicts the facts of European nationalism, Nazi 
collaborationism, and our government's reliance on these enemies of democracy 
to further our Cold War foreign policy objectives.

   This widely accepted, albeit misleading, historical record has been shaped 
by filtered media reports and self-serving academic revisionism rooted in an 
ideological preference for those European nationalist forces which opposed 
socialism and communism. Since sectors of those nationalist anti-communist 
forces allied themselves with political fascism, but later became our allies 
against communism, <apologia> for collaborationists became the rule, not the 
exception.

   Soon, as war memories dimmed and newspaper accounts of collaboration faded,
the fascists and their allies re-emerged cloaked in a new mantle of 
respectability. Portrayed as anti-communist freedom fighters, their 
backgrounds blurred by time and artful circumlocution, they stepped forward to
continue their political organizing with goals unchanged and slogans slightly 
repackaged to suit domestic sensibilities.

   To fight communism after World War II, our government forged a tactical 
alliance with what was perceived to be the lesser of two evils -- and as with 
many such bargains, there has been a high price to pay. 

   This manuscript tallies some of the moral and political costs of our 
government's disquieting alliance with Nazi collaborationists and fascists; 
and follows the trail from the bloody atrocities of the Waffen SS to the
ethnic outreach arm of the Republican Party and even to the paneled walls of 
White House briefing rooms. It is a story many will find unbelievable, yet its
documentation is thorough and its conclusions warranted -- leaving only the 
question of whether or not we as a nation find the situation morally 
tolerable. 
                                   --Chip Berlet 
                                    Cambridge, Massachusetts



                               Acknowledgments

   This study was researched and written over a four-year period, beginning in
mid-1983. The research was begun to satisfy my own curiosity, evolved into a 
magazine article proposal, and finally grew into this report.

  The summer of 1983 was spent in Detroit-area libraries, researching 
individuals, organizations and political history. Later in the research 
process, trips to the Library of Congress and use of interlibrary loan 
broadened my access to published sources.

  During the course of my research, I attended both small and large events 
sponsored by groups described herein. Examples include the 1984 and 1985 World
Anti-Communist League conventions, the 1985 and 1986 Republican Heritage 
Groups Council conventions, a number of American Security Council activities, 
and many events of other groups utilized by the U.S. fascist network, 
including events sponsored by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's organizations and by 
Liberty Lobby. I interviewed nearly a hundred leaders and observers of these 
organizations and studied many of the books, periodicals and newsletters they 
publish.

  Occasionally I became skeptical that what I was finding could, in fact, be 
true. To help me chart my way in these little-known political waters, I would 
periodically share my results with a handful of journalists and other somewhat
detached observers of American political realities, to test my information and
hypotheses and to help maintain a balanced perspective.

  When reading this study, some may be inclined to see it as a partisan attack
on the Republican Party, but it was not conceived or researched from a 
partisan standpoint. Nor was it done with the knowledge of, or in concert 
with, any element of the Democratic party or any other political organization.
Certainly Democrats are included where warranted, but of the two parties, the 
fascist network has chosen the GOP as its home. This is an objective problem 
that exists within the American political process; it is not the product of 
partisan bias.

  Perhaps the greatest impediment to understanding the networks discussed in 
this paper lies in the failure of academic research to address thoroughly a 
period of history of crucial importance. There is very little literature on 
the histories of the German occupation of countries on the Eastern Front, much
less a discussion of the role of the Waffen SS and other collaborationist 
elements in that region. The escape of important collaborationists from the 
East, and the integration of these individuals and organizations into the 
Western political system, is also virtually ignored. Finally, most of the 
literature, admittedly sparse, on American fascism appears to have been 
produced by journalists and political activists, with little in-depth research
by academicians. As the last leaders of these European and American groups 
die, I wonder how much of this history will ever be recovered. I have included
a short list of readings related to matters discussed in this report.

  I would like to thank those whose own research and support helped with my 
report, including Dr. Fred Chary, Dr. Barry Mehler, Dennis Debbaudt, Kris 
Jacobs and Wes McCune. Christopher Simpson volunteered useful suggestions 
after reading a final draft. Certain friends provided assistance during the 
four-year period of my work, especially Bo and Chris, as well as Dee and 
Suzanne. This paper would not have been possible without the support of 
Political Research Associates: the encouragement and comments of its director,
Dr. Jean Hardisty, the careful editing of Chip Berlet, and the relentless 
pursuit of footnotes by Margaret Quigley. The most important support, however,
came from my wife, Debi, as this work was conducted for so long in so many 
out-of-town places. She accepted my work schedule with great patience.

  Finally, I would like to thank those leaders of the groups mentioned herein 
who gave their time to be interviewed, including John Fisher. They will not be
happy with this study. To them, I can only say that I, myself, wish it weren't
so.
                                   --Russ Bellant 
                                     Detroit, Michigan, 08/03/88


                     Author's Note for the Second Edition

  In my original acknowledgements, I stated that this report was in no way 
associated with the Democratic Party or any element thereof. Nevertheless the 
report, released in September, 1988, was attacked by the George Bush 
presidential campaign, the Republican Party and emigre rightists as a partisan
attack timed for the November 1988 elections.

  No evidence was offered for these assertions, because none exists. There is 
evidence to the contrary, including attempts to publish versions of the report
in 1986 and 1987 in several magazines and journals. When the report was 
released in September of 1988, it was as much news to the Dukakis campaign as 
it was to the rest of the country.

  Furthermore, some Republicans circulated false statements about the 
publisher and myself in an apparent effort to discourage serious examination 
of the report by the press, public and other Republicans. 

  The Republican Party and President George Bush have yet to address the 
serious issues raised in this report.
                                        --R.B.  12/15/88


                                 INTRODUCTION

  Reagan, Remorse and Revisionist History
 

   It's May 17, 1985: President Reagan has been back in the nation's capital 
less than two weeks from his much-criticized trip to the Bitburg cemetery in 
Germany. Now, floodlights and television cameras that are part of a 
President's entourage are waiting at the Shoreham Hotel, as are 400 luncheon 
guests. 

   Ronald Reagan had recently characterized the Nazi Waffen SS as "victims." 
It seemed a rewrite of the history of World War II rather than a recommitment 
to its painful lessons. Reagan's comments held special meaning for some of his
afternoon luncheon guests. Although it was a Republican Party affair, it was 
not the usual GOP set, but a special ethnic outreach unit, the National 
Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council (NRHG{N}C). The Republican
Heritage Groups Council is an umbrella for various ethnic Republican clubs and
operates under the auspices of the Republican National Committee. 

   If President Reagan needed a boost after the Bitburg fiasco, this was the 
crowd to supply it. To the assembled media, Reagan's visit that afternoon 
appeared as a routine stop, perhaps paying a re-election debt. The Republican 
Heritage Groups Council did, in fact, help elect Reagan. And they gave him a 
long standing ovation that afternoon at the Shoreham. To some of those 
attending the 1985 Council meeting, Reagan's rehabilitation of the Waffen SS 
must have offered a sense of personal and historic vindication. 

   The Republican Heritage Groups Council has a special type of outreach. It 
appears to have consciously recruited some of its members -- and some of its 
leaders -- from an Eastern European emigre network which includes 
anti-Semites, racists, authoritarians and fascists, including sympathizers and
collaborators of Hitler's Third Reich, former Nazis and even possible war 
criminals. The persons in this network represent only a radical right fraction
of the ethnic communities they claim to represent. 

   These anti-democratic and racialist components of the Republican Heritage 
Groups Council use anti-communist sentiments as a cover for their views while 
they operate as a <de-facto> emigre fascist network within the Republican 
Party. Some of these less savory anti-democratic personalities were part of 
the 1987 Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting as well as that 1985 
luncheon audience; and some would later join the 1988 election campaign of 
President George Bush.

                            PART ONE - SECTION 1 

       The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council 

  "While the large majority of the organizations in the Republican 
Nationalities Council are thoroughly respectable, it is nonetheless true that 
the council has become fertile grounds for political organizing by certain 
former Nazi collaborators still active in immigrant communities in this 
country." 
             --Christopher Simpson, <Blowback>, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988 


  Republicans, Authoritarians, anti-Semites and Fascists 

   The emigre fascist network within the Republican Party represents a small 
but significant element of the coalition which brought Ronald Reagan into the 
White House. It is from this network that the George Bush presidential 
campaign assembled its ethnic outreach unit in 1988. . .a unit that saw eight 
resignations by persons charged with anti-semitism, racism, facsist leanings 
and even Nazi collaboration. These right-wing emigre's are a small but vocal 
element within the broader ethnic communities they claim to represent. They 
frequently utilize anti-communist sentiments, historical revisionism and lack 
of knowledge about Eastern and Central Europe as a shield to deflect 
inspection and criticism of their past actions and current views. 

   The emigre fascist network organizes support for its ideological agenda 
through national and international coalitions of like-minded constituencies 
which often work with other authoritarian, anti-democratic and pro-fascist 
forces. This broader coalition ranges from Axis allies and their apologists to
friends and allies of contemporary dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.  

  In the case of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, the nature of the 
right-wing emigre network can be illustrated by briefly reviewing the
backgrounds of some of the past and current leadership of the Republican 
Heritage Groups Council: 

  Axis Allies and Apologists

  - Laszlo Pasztor: The founding chair and a key figure in the Council, 
Pasztor began his political career in a Hungarian pro-Nazi party and served in
Berlin at the end of World War II. He continues to be involved in 
ultra-rightist groups and fascist networks while working with the GOP. 

  - Radi Slavoff: The Republican Heritage Groups Council's executive director 
is a member of a Bulgarian fascist group and leader of the Bulgarian GOP unit 
of the Council. He was able to get the leader of his Bulgarian nationalist 
group a White House invitation even though that leader was being investigated 
for concealing alleged World War II war crimes. He is also active in other 
emigre fascist groups. 

  - Nicolas Nazarenko: A former World War II officer in the German SS Cossack 
Division, Nazarenko heads a Cossack GOP unit of the Republican Heritage Groups
Council but declares that Jews are his "ideological enemy." He is still active
with pro-Nazi elements in the U.S. 

  - Florian Galdau: A close associate and defender of Valerian Trifa, the 
Romanian archbishop prosecuted for concealing his involvement in war crimes of
the pro-Nazi Romanian Iron Guard in World War II. Charged by former Iron 
Guardists and others with being the East Coast recruiter for the Iron Guard in
the U.S., Galdau heads the Romanian Republican unit of the Republican Heritage
Groups Council. 

  - Method Balco: Head of the Slovak GOP unit, which is filled with supporters
and at least one former diplomat of the Slovak Nazi government of World War 
II. Balco also organizes annual commemorations of the Slovak Nazi regime. 

  - Walter Melianovich: Head of the Byelorussian GOP unit, which has had 
collaborators of the Nazi World War II occupation in leadership roles, 
Melianovich has worked with other fascist groups. 

  - Croatian GOP: Their group wrote an apology for the Croatian Ustashi's 
World War II alliance with Hitler which appeared in a Republican Heritage 
Groups Council publication signed by GOP Chair Frank Fahrenkopf. 


  Friends of Dictatorship

  - Philip A. Guarino: An honorary American member of the conspiratorial P-2 
Masonic Lodge of Italy, which plotted in the early 1970's to overthrow the 
Italian government in order to install a dictatorship. P-2 was exposed widely 
in the European press and investigated by the Italian Parliament. Guarino, an 
Italian Heritage Council member and Republican National Committee advisor, 
offered aid to those being investigated. 

  - Anna Chennault: The newly-elected Republican Heritage Groups Council 
chairperson and funder of the Chinese Republican affiliate, which for years 
has been closely linked to the authoritarian Taiwan regime. 

   The names of all but one of the persons listed above appeared on the 
invitational literature for the October, 1987 meeting of the National 
Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council in Washington, D.C. 


  The History of the Republican Heritage Groups Council

   Many of the Republican Heritage Groups Council leaders of Central and 
Eastern European nationalities were part of the post-World War II immigration 
from displaced persons camps. It would be unfair to suggest that all or even a
majority of Eastern and Central Europeans were anti-Semites or fascists. . 
.most displaced persons were victims of the war who played no role in 
collaborating with Nazism. Yet quite a few persons in the displaced persons 
camps were there as political escapees to avoid the consequences of their 
collaboration with the German occupation of eastern Europe and the Soviet 
Union. 

   The Displaced Persons Commission, which worked from 1948 to 1952, arranged 
for approximately 400,000 persons to come to the U.S. [f-1] Initially it 
sought to bar members of pro-Nazi groups, but in 1950 a dramatic reversal took
place. The Commission declared "the Baltic Legion not to be a movement hostile
to the Government of the United States. . . ." [f-2] The Baltic Legion was 
also known as the Baltic Waffen (armed) SS. 

   The final report of the Commission noted that the decision "was the subject
of considerable controversy."[f-3] As well it should have been. The Waffen SS 
participated in the liquidation of Jews in the Baltic region because the SS 
units were comprised of Hitler's loyal henchmen, recruited from fascist 
political groups long tied to the German Nazi Party. Anyone opposed to the 
German occupation of the Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) was 
likely to meet a cruel death at their hands. They were now considered 
qualified to come to the United States, to become American citizens. Further, 
pro-Nazi elements from other parts of Europe came to the U.S. through 
nominally private groups associated with the Commission. 

   In 1952, the Commission completed its work. The Eisenhower-Nixon 
presidential campaign was on. The Republicans were charging the Democrats with
being "soft on Communism," and talk of "liberating" eastern Europe became part
of the GOP message. That year, the Republican National Committee formed an 
Ethnic Division. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to power by a 
Eisenhower-Nixon "liberation" policy, were among those who signed on. This 
would become the embryo for the formation of the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council in 1969. 

   In a sense, however, the foundation of the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council lay in Hitler's networks into East Europe before World War II. In each
of those Eastern European countries, the German SS set up or funded political 
action organizations that helped form SS militias during the war.  

   In Hungary, for example, the Arrow Cross was the Hungarian SS affiliate; in
Romania, the Iron Guard. The Bulgarian Legion, the Organization of Ukrainian 
Nationalists (OUN), the Latvian Legion, and the Byelorussian (White Russian) 
Belarus Brigade were all SS-linked. In each of their respective countries, 
they were expected to serve the interests of the German Nazi Party before and 
during the war. 

   Many of these groups formed SS divisions: the Ukrainian Nationalists formed
the 14th Galician Division, Waffen SS; the Latvians formed the 15th and 19th 
Divisions, Waffen SS; etc. [f-4] These units and related German-controlled 
police units had several functions. The Ukrainian division unsuccessfully 
tried to impede the advance of the Soviet army against the Nazi army. Others 
hunted down those fellow countrymen who opposed the German occupation of 
Eastern Europe during World War II. 

   More sadistically, many units rounded up hundreds of thousands of Jews,
Poles and others and conducted mass murders on the spot, sometimes decimating 
whole villages. They perfected "mobile killing teams" as efficient means of 
mass executions. Little is known about these units compared to the 
concentration camps, gas chambers and ovens, but they were an integrated 
component of the "Final Solution." Approximately one-third of the victims of 
the Holocaust, perhaps as many as 2 million, died at the hands of these units.


   This should not be taken to suggest that all Eastern and Central Europeans 
were Nazi collaborators who participated in atrocities, but it is a historical
fact that some right-wing elements from virtually every Eastern European 
nationality tied their nationalistic goals to the rising star of fascism and 
Hitler's racialist Nazism. 


  The Council's Leadership

   The founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council was Laszlo 
Pasztor, an activist in various Hungarian rightist and Nazi-linked groups. In 
World War II Pasztor was a member of the youth group of the Arrow Cross, the 
Hungarian equivalent of the German Nazi Party. [f-5] As the Germans retreated 
from the USSR back to Germany in 1944, their allied Hungarian government 
collapsed. The Arrow Cross took power in Hungary, with Hitler's aid, to help 
defend Germany. Pasztor was sent to Berlin as part of the new diplomatic 
mission to Hitler, until the war's end. 

   When Pasztor came to the U.S. in the 1950's, he joined the GOP's Ethnic 
Division. One of the leaders of the 1968 Nixon-Agnew campaign's ethnic unit, 
Pasztor says that Nixon promised him that if he won the election, he would 
form a permanent ethnic council within the GOP, as the Ethnic Division was 
only active during presidential campaigns. [f-6] 

   Pasztor was made the organizer of the Council after Nixon's victory. Says 
Pasztor, "It was my job to identify about 25 ethnic groups" to bring into the 
Republican Heritage Groups Council. "In 1972 we used the Council as the 
skeleton to build the Heritage Groups for the re-election of the President." 

   Pasztor's choices for filling emigre slots as the Council was being formed 
included various Nazi-collaborationist organizations mentioned above. Each 
formed a Republican federation, with local clubs around the country. The local
clubs of the various federations then formed state multi-ethnic councils. 
Today there are 34 nationality federations and 25 state councils that 
constitute the National Republican Heritage Groups Council. 

   To discover the names of the leaders of these federations is not an easy 
task. "That information is private. I have to get their permission before I 
can give you their names," responded Radi Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups 
Council executive director, when asked for a list of the federation leaders. 
[f-7] He agreed that federation heads were bona fide Republican Party posts 
which are not secret, "but the leaders prefer it that way." Although some 
names were gleaned from signature ads supporting funding for the contras, 
CIA-backed forces fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in 
Nicaragua, [f-8] it required attendance at the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council convention in May of 1985 to learn the names of federation leaders. It
was this convention that Reagan was addressing at the Shoreham Hotel. 

   Some Republican Heritage Groups Council delegates were reluctant to talk; 
others were unstoppable. A pattern began to emerge from these conversations --
that in setting up the Council, Pasztor went to various collaborationist and 
fascist-minded emigre groups and asked them to form GOP federations. It
eventually became clear that it wasn't an accident or a fluke that people with
Nazi associations were in the Republican Heritage Groups Council. In some 
cases more mainstream ethnic organizations were passed over in favor of 
smaller but more extremist groups. And it seems clear that the Republican 
National Committee knows with whom they are dealing. Reviewing the federations
illustrates this point.  


                            PART ONE - SECTION 2 

       The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council 

 Axis Allies and Apologists 

 - Bulgarians - 

   One of the organizations Pasztor approached to help form the Council was 
the Bulgarian National Front, headed by Ivan Docheff. As early as 1971, the 
GOP was warned that the National Front was beyond the pale. A Jack Anderson 
column quoted another Bulgarian-American organization, the conservative 
Bulgarian National Committee, which labeled Docheff's National Front as 
"fascist." [f-9] Neither the GOP nor the Nixon campaign took action. Professor
Spas T. Raikin, a former official of the National Front, says the group grew 
out of an organization in Bulgaria that in the 1930's and 40's was "pro-Nazi 
and pro-fascist." [f-10] 

   Although Docheff, 82, is semi-retired from GOP activity, the National Front
is still represented in the person of Radi Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups
Council executive director and head of the Bulgarian GOP federation. Slavoff 
also represents the National Front in several other Washington, D.C. area 
coalitions, including one that is Nazi-linked. [f-11] 

   While Docheff was representing the National Front, however, the Justice 
Department's Office of Special Investigations was investigating him for 
possible war crimes he was suspected of committing while the mayor of a 
German-occupied city in Bulgaria. Docheff denies he ever committed war crimes,
and OSI never brought charges. 

   Docheff's political history, however, is not in dispute. Founder of a 
Bulgarian youth group in the early 1930's, Docheff met with Adolph Hitler and 
the Nazi movement's leading philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, in 1934 shortly 
after the Nazis came to power. [f-12] Docheff then established the Bulgarian 
Legion, a pro-Hitler group that agitated for government action against 
Bulgarian Jews. 

   Docheff later began publishing a newspaper, <Prelom>, which carried a 
swastika as part of the design at the top of the front page. One of its 
headlines reads ">Long live the sacred struggle against the Jews."<f-13] 
Docheff's employer, Dr. Dimiter Waltscheff, was a German intelligence agent, 
according to Nuremberg documents obtained by Dr. Fred Chary of Purdue 
University. In 1944 Docheff fled when the pro-German Bulgarian government 
collapsed. After the war, he and other Legionnaires formed the Bulgarian 
National Front (BNF). [f-14] Until recently, Docheff was the group's chair, a 
post he held since the Front's founding in 1950. Several years ago the Front, 
with chapters in South America, Europe, Canada and the U.S., met in Germany. 
There they honored Dr. Waltscheff for his "contribution to the struggle of the
Bulgarian people for freedom. . . ." [f-15] 

   In 1984, Docheff stepped aside and George Paprikoff, another former 
Legionnaire according to Dr. Chary, temporarily became chair. Reagan's
autographed photo appeared on the cover of the BNF publication <Borba> with a 
"Dear George" message in what appears to be Reagan's handwriting. Docheff 
wrote an endorsement of Reagan in the same issue of <Borba>. [f-16] 

   When interviewed on the BNF's role in the Reagan-Bush campaign, Docheff 
said that the 25 U.S. chapters of the Front were active in the re-election 
effort: "If you want to know who the local chapter leaders of the Bulgarian 
National Front are, find out who heads the local Bulgarian unit of the 
Reagan-Bush campaign. They are the same persons." [f-17] 

   Although the warning by the Bulgarian National Committee and the subsequent
investigation of Docheff have provided adequate levels of warning to the GOP, 
it has continued to maintain ties to the Bulgarian National Front. Even while 
the U.S. government was investigating Docheff on war crimes charges, he was a 
pre-election guest of the White House in September, 1984, [f-18] arranged 
through Republican Heritage Groups Council executive director Radi Slavoff. 

  - Cossacks - 

   Attending the Reagan speech at the Shoreham was another Pasztor choice, 
"Major General" Nicholas Nazarenko. Slightly over six feet and a lean 200 
pounds with dark hair and a pencil mustache, Nazarenko is still consumed with 
his wartime hatred of Russians and Jews. He organizes annual "Captive Nations"
marches in New York City every summer, in which he appears in Cossack military
dress. 

   Nazarenko is a spry 76 years old, but could pass for 60; his energy seems 
boundless. The evening after Reagan's speech at the Shoreham Hotel, he 
insisted on showing this writer a huge suitcase of materials he carries with 
him as part of his political activity. It was filled with literature on the 
"Jewish problem," Cossack publications, and memorabilia from his service in 
World War II -- on the German side. 

   Nazarenko chain smoked and drank vodka throughout our seven-hour interview.
He described his involvement with the German army as an officer in special 
Cossack units, battle by battle. His final military action was in an SS 
Cossack unit under German General von Panwitz. In order to prove his 
sincerity, he showed me his German officer's ID, and photographs of him and 
his unit. There were swastikas on the uniforms. 

   Toward the end of the war, Nazarenko headed intelligence operations in 
Berlin for a Cossack "government-in-exile." After working with the U.S. Army's
Counter Intelligence Corps, he came to the U.S. in 1949. He became head of a 
Cossack War Veterans group -- a group of veterans allied with Germany during 
WWII which was later renamed the World Federation of Cossacks for the 
Liberation of Cossackia. Nazarenko was active in Richard Nixon's 1968 and 1972
campaigns, and his Cossack veterans group is one of two Cossackian components 
of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.  

   Alex Aksenov, another Cossack delegate to the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council convention, spoke briefly about his past, volunteering that he was "in
Berlin from 1939-45." He went to South America after the war, he said, but in 
the 1950's was brought to the U.S. to work on the first nuclear submarine 
program. [f-19] 

   Nazarenko says he has been charged by other Cossack emigres as having hung 
Jews in Odessa and executed Soviet soldiers. He claimed that these were lies 
intended to discredit him. He does say, however, that Jews are our 
"ideological enemies." 

   In that spirit, Nazarenko said that he was in touch with "patriotic" 
publications such as the neo-Nazi <Thunderbolt>, the anti-Semitic> 
<Spotlight>, and <Instauration>, a racialist and >anti-Semitic monthly. A 
well-publicized controversy erupted when <Instauration> was praised by Joseph 
Sobran> in> <National Review>, May 1986, as "an often brilliant magazine, 
covering a beat nobody else will touch. . . ." <Instauration's> writers and 
editors are all anonymous. 

   Nazarenko says he's also in touch with various "Nazi" organizations. "They 
respect me because [I was a] former German army officer. Sometimes when I meet
these guys, they say `Heil Hitler'." 

   A recipient of a pension from the West German government for his wartime 
service, Nazarenko claims that Germany didn't commit atrocities in World War 
II. "Jews didn't die from gas chambers," says Nazarenko. "Those mountains of 
bones are from people who starved to death or died from disease."  


  - Romanians - 

   Romanian-American Republicanism is led by a retired priest who claimed in 
1984 that the most important issue for Romanian Republicans is "the 
deportation of our beloved spiritual leader, Archbishop Valerian Trifa." 
[f-20] Faced with charges by the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) that 
he participated in the murder of Jews as part of a coup plot in Bucharest, 
Romania in 1941, Trifa left the U.S. in 1984. But his political network stayed
behind. The Romanian Republican priest, Florian Galdau, is part of that 
network. 

   Valerian Trifa was a leader of the Iron Guard in Bucharest in 1941. The 
Guard was a pro-Nazi Romanian group linked to the SS by liaison officers such 
as Otto von Bolschwing of the German SS.[f-21] In January, 1941 the Guard, 
with SS backing, attempted a coup. Trifa was one of the leaders who instigated
crowds on a rampage that sought out Jews for gruesome deaths. Three days of 
chaos ensued. When order was restored, Trifa fled. During those three days, 
witnesses charged, Trifa personally went into a jail and killed Jews who had 
been put into a cell there. 

   After the war, Trifa was able to come to the U.S. and take over the 
Romanian Orthodox church by means of physical coercion and with some help from
the U.S. government. In 1952, Trifa became an Archbishop of the Romanian 
Orthodox Church. [f-22] 

   FBI documents from the years 1954 and 1955 (which were used in the 
prosecution of Trifa) report claims that Trifa "is bringing Iron Guard members
into the U.S. and installing them as priests." One of those priests, according
to a report of Oct. 5, 1955, was Florian Galdau, whom an FBI source described 
as "a Romanian Iron Guard member and who at Trifa's instructions was elected 
Pastor of St. Dumitru," a Manhattan parish. [f-23] 

   Galdau had escaped Romania after the war, eventually settling in London. He
began broadcasting over the BBC in programs aimed at Romanian citizens, a 
project comparable to the Radio Free Europe programs being established at the 
time under the covert control of the CIA. In 1955 Trifa brought Galdau to the 
U.S. According to an former Iron Guardist, the late George Roman, Galdau was 
brought in to head a New York City Iron Guard unit. His task was to recruit 
new Romanian immigrants into the Guard. [f-24] 

   Galdau says he has brought 20,000 immigrants into the U.S. "I have files on
15,000 people I helped settle," he claims. He is aided by the Tolstoy
Foundation and the International Rescue Committee, [f-25] two resettlement 
groups with links to the CIA. [f-26] 

   Over the years, Galdau has performed priestly functions at events that 
commemorated Iron Guard founder Corneliu Codreanu. Trifa himself once 
concurred in an interview that the Galdau church was "a center of Fascists." 
[f-27] 

   In 1974, the <United Israel Bulletin> of New York City headlined a story 
"Florian Galdau, A Priest, Heads New York Iron Guard Cell." [f-28] The charge 
has also been repeated in recent interviews with other Romanians, including a 
priest, all of whom, fearing reprisals, requested anonymity. 

   Galdau himself denies any association with the Iron Guard. Further, he 
denies any knowledge of the existence of the Iron Guard in the U.S. 

   Dennis Debbaudt, who has researched the Iron Guard for ten years, finds 
such denials "incredible." Debbaudt, who has assisted a Canadian government 
investigation of the Iron Guard presence there, estimates that at least 25% of
the priests of Trifa's church were Guardists. "It's impossible for Galdau to 
be unaware of the Guard presence in the Romanian Orthodox Church."[f-29] 

   Interviewed at the Republican Heritage Groups Council convention, Galdau 
criticized Jews for the debate over Bitburg, saying "Jews have harmed 
themselves in this country over this controversy." He says his protest of 
Trifa's prosecution was "as a Republican," and did not have anything to do 
with Iron Guard politics. 

   A founder of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1969, Galdau and his
wife were the sole representatives of the Romanian-American Republican Clubs 
to the 1985 and 1986 Council conventions. In 1985, a third delegate "got sick"
and the three alternates "just didn't show." Galdau's wife is vice-chair of 
the Romanian-American Republican Clubs. His principle contributions at the 
conventions were to charge that the "Democratic Party is controlled by the 
KGB," and to argue successfully for a resolution passed by the convention 
condemning the Justice Department's OSI investigation into the presence of 
Nazi-era war criminals in the United States. 

   Galdau claims his Romanian-American Republican Clubs include ten local 
units. He says that they "recruited 600 volunteers for the 1984 Reagan-Bush 
campaign." But getting details to substantiate these assertions is difficult. 
Although he holds a party post, he won't discuss his role within the party. 
When I asked Republican Heritage Groups Council leaders for information on the
Romanian Clubs, they said Galdau doesn't share details with them either. 
Galdau was listed as a member of the Host Committee for a reception honoring 
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and Frank J. Fahrenkopf during the Council's 1987 meeting
in Washington, D.C. In 1988 he was named National Chair of Romanians for Bush.
  


                            PART ONE - SECTION 3 

       The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council 

 - Byelorussians -

   Another federation leader who makes the charge that the Democratic Party 
aids communism is Walter Melianovich, head of the Byelorussian-American 
Republican Federation. "The Democratic Party is doing the dirty work of 
Communism. They don't call themselves Communists, they just parrot the
Communist line. . . ." Melianovich is unhappy. At fifty years of age, he is 
too young to have worked with the Nazis. But some of his friends weren't. "The
damn OSI is hounding my friends," he complains. This is some of the "dirty 
work of Communism" that Democrats do. They hunt Nazis, and the Byelorussian 
GOP wants to put a stop to it. [f-30] 

   Melianovich's federation is closely associated with the 
Byelorussian-American Association (BAA), an emigre group made up, in part, of 
former collaborators of the Nazi occupation and its extermination campaign. An
early BAA leader was Franz Kushel, an SS major general and commander of the 
Belarus Brigade, a Waffen SS unit. According to <The Belarus Secret>, a book 
about >Byelorussian Nazi collaboration, Kushel's "men carried over 40,000 Jews
to an execution ground in 1941." [f-32] Another BAA leader, Stanislaw 
Stankievich, one-time editor of a Nazi-funded newspaper, came from an 
upper-class family of Nazi collaborators. He became a mayor of Borissow in 
1941. After having a wall built around the Jewish section of the city, 
Stankievich conducted a series of financial extortions on the contained 
ghetto. His police then sadistically exterminated the 7,000 Jews of Borissow 
on October 20, 1941. [f-33] 

   As the Soviets advanced on German-occupied Byelorussia, a puppet government
was formed to help mobilize support for the defense of Germany. The 1,039 
delegates to this "All-Byelorussian Second Congress" were screened and 
approved by Germany. Some of these delegates, many of them leaders of police 
units and a Byelorussian Waffen SS division, came to dominate BAA. [f-34] 

   Cheslav Nadjuik of Los Angeles was a delegate to the German-sponsored 1944 
puppet government. [f-35] He was also a delegate to the 1986 Republican 
Heritage Groups Council convention in Los Angeles. Now in his seventies, 
Nadjuik said that he was involved in nationalist politics all his life. "I 
joined a nationalist group in high school, in the 1920's, and was active in 
Poland when I was in school there." He said he was a judge during the German 
occupation, and "I attended the Second (All-Byelorussian) Congress." After the
war, the Congress reassembled in Germany and then in the U.S., holding annual 
meetings to direct their various front activities. Nadjuik attended at least 
one of those meetings, in 1954. His co-delegate at the 1986 Republican 
Heritage Groups Council meeting, Joe Arciuch, head of the technical services 
division of Hughes Aircraft, "escaped Byelorussia in 1951 just ahead of 
Communist bayonets," according to a friend of his who joined our interview. 
Arciuch declined to discuss the details of his activities in Byelorussia. 

   The 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention delegation, led by 
Melianovich, also included Raisa Stankievich, wife of Stanislaw Stankievich 
and herself a former head of the BAA. Melianovich says the 1944 puppet 
government was "not a legitimate government," but in three hours of interviews
he was uncritical of any Nazi collaborators or of the BAA, of which he is a 
member. Critical of those exposing criminal collaborators, he strongly 
supported Republican Heritage Groups Council convention efforts to oppose the 
OSI.  

   The Byelorussian GOP leader said that his federation's biggest concern was 
increasing the amount of Byelorussian broadcasting into the USSR by the U.S. 
government-run Radio Liberty. He has met with various agencies, including 
National Security Council staff, lobbying for more programming. Access to 
administration policymakers, says Melianovich, is enhanced by being part of 
the Republican Heritage Groups Council. By lobbying for increased Radio 
Liberty propaganda, they hope to destabilize the USSR, returning the 
Byelorussian fascists to power. Melianovich even provided what appears to be 
their future map of of Byelorussia, complete with new "ethnogenetical 
borders."

   Melianovich claims that the Republican Heritage Groups Council has "changed
the image of the Republican Party under our pressure." Charging the Democrats 
with only caring about "the Black and Jewish vote," he says that "if anyone 
should be called nationalist, it is the GOP." Melianovich was named National 
Chairman of Byelorussians for Bush in 1988. 


  - Croatians - 

   The Croatian Republicans are the only federation who have put their 
sympathies with the Axis powers into print in Republican Party literature. 

   In <Guide to Nationality Observances>, a 1984 Republican Heritage Groups 
Council booklet, listing commemorative dates of significance to ethnic 
Americans, is the following entry for April 10th: "The Independent State of 
Croatia was declared by unanimous proclamation in 1941. . . .Lack of Western 
support and Axis occupation forced the new state into an unfortunate 
association with the Axis powers." The booklet preface is signed by Frank 
Fahrenkopf, Jr., Chairman of the Republican National Committee. [See graphic].


   The "unfortunate association" was, in fact, a long-standing relationship 
between Nazi Germany and the Croatian Ustashi beginning years before World War
II. [f-36] The Nazis conspired with the Ustashi to create the Croatian split 
from Yugoslavia. When the Vatican-backed Ustashi took power in 1941, they 
began liquidating Orthodox Serbians, Jews and Gypsies. Even the Nazis were 
taken aback by the barbarity of Ustashi concentration camps and the 
liquidations of whole villages. Huge ovens at Jasenovac reportedly burned 
people alive. 

   An estimated 750,000 people, mostly Serbians, were killed by the Ustashi in
the crucible which forged Croatian independence. The "independent state of 
Croatia," whose founding the GOP suggests we commemorate, ceased to exist 
after the fall of the Third Reich. 


  - Slovaks - 

   Slovakia, another puppet state created by Hitler, has not only apologists 
but also at least one former collaborationist leader on the Republican 
Heritage Groups Council. When Hitler invaded and split Czechoslovakia in 1939,
he created the Slovak state under Monsignor Josef Tiso. When the U.S. declared
war on Germany on December 12, 1941, Tiso declared Slovakia at war with the 
U.S. 

   Complete with their own imitation SS, called the Hlinka Guard, the Tiso 
leadership mimicked the Nazis. [f-37] They also imitated the worst of German 
racial policies, shipping Jews to extermination camps in Poland. Lucy 
Dawidowicz, in <The War Against the Jews>, estimated that 75,000 of 90,000 
Slovak Jews were killed. [f-38] 

   Today, Method Balco is the head of the Slovak-American Republican 
Federation. Despite the fact that Tiso was executed in 1946 as a war criminal,
Balco still organizes in New York City an annual commemoration of the Tiso 
rule. The Slovak Republican delegation to the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council also included Josef Mikus, a former diplomat of the Tiso regime. 
Balco, Mikus, and a third delegate, John Hvasta, all work closely with the 
Toronto-based Slovak World Congress, a group set up and greatly influenced by 
former aides to Tiso.

  Hvasta, the key Washington liaison for the Slovak World Congress, has also 
helped the 1988 Presidential Campaign of former Ku Klux Klan leader and white 
supremacist David Duke. Hvasta's American Public Research Council rented its 
mailing list to the Duke campaign in September of 1987 for $2,000, according 
to records obtained from the Federal Election Commission. [f-39] 

   Joseph Kirschbaum, a top commander of the SS-like Hlinka Guard and a 
principal of the Slovak World Congress, edited a series of speeches made by 
Slovak nationalists, including several former Tiso officials. [f-40] One 
speech calls for the establishment of a new Slovak state along 
"ethnogenetical" lines. Tiso's former foreign minister and Josef Mikus' former
boss, Ferdinand Durcansky, wrote: 

  ". . .anti-Semitism in Slovakia had no racial, but exclusively political, 
economic and social roots. Racial elements were imported into Slovakia from 
the Reich as manifested along many lines in many conflicts. I hope we live to 
see the time when the Jews draw from these facts the necessary objective 
conclusions. . . .[f-41]" 

   The book of speeches was published by the Slovak World Congress. Editor 
Kirschbaum and writer Durcansky were in key positions to have been aware of 
Adolph Eichmann's implementation of the "Final Solution" against Slovak Jews. 
Their presence in the Slovak World Congress, along with others such as Balco 
and Mikus, may explain why the Congress does not repudiate the Slovak puppet 
government, its declaration of war on the United States, or its extermination 
campaign. In an interview in his northwest Washington, D.C. home, Republican 
Heritage Groups Council delegate Mikus said that the U.S. should not have 
allied with or aided the USSR in World War II. He noted that "without the aid,
the USSR would have been defeated by Germany," an outcome Mikus said would 
have been preferable. 

   Balco said that the chief concern for Slovak Republicans is to get the 
Voice of America and the State Department to recognize Slovakia as separate 
from Czechoslovakia.  


                            PART ONE - SECTION 4

       The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council 


  Friends of Dictatorship 

  - Italians - 

   Certain Republican Heritage Groups Council members have been close allies 
in recent years of those in Italy who would overthrow the government and 
re-install fascism in Rome. Italy's problems with fascism have been much more 
recent than World War II. In 1981 a conspiracy was foiled in which a group of 
business, political, Mafia, military and Vatican-connected figures planned to 
overthrow Italian parliamentary democracy and install a dictatorship. The 
group, called the P-2 Masonic Lodge, had nearly a thousand members. The 
prestige of P-2 members (heads of the intelligence agencies, 38 generals and 
admirals, and 3 cabinet officers, for example), plus revelations of financial 
scandals, brought extensive European press coverage, the collapse of the 
Italian government, and an extensive parliamentary inquiry. [f-42] 

   Although P-2 had existed for many years as an illegal secret society, in 
the 1970's it became involved in efforts to destabilize the Italian system
through economic warfare and terrorism, including bombings of public places. 
The P-2 goal was to create a demand for fascism to restore order. 

   A 1987 article by Jerry Meldon in the <Boston Globe> discussed the Italian 
neo->fascist right's strategy of terror: 

  "In many ways, it [the Italian right] has been a much more dangerous 
movement than the kidnappers and murderers of the extreme left. Far more 
deaths can be attributed to right-wing terrorists' acts. More significantly, 
the neo-fascists have enjoyed the protection and support of Italian 
intelligence agencies and, according to a 1976 congressional report, the CIA."


  "With such offical support, the fascists have pursued a `strategy of 
tension' through their own [terrorist] acts and those of leftist groups they 
penetrated. They have cultivated a climate of fear to undermine support for 
the West's most popular communist party and justify an authoritarian takeover 
of the Italian government. [f-43] " 

   The calculated terror began in 1969, when the right resolved to fight the 
growth of the left in Italy. On December 12, a bomb exploded in a plaza of 
downtown Milan, killing 16 people and injuring another 100. Within the hour 
several more bombs went off in Rome. Fascist stormtrooper groups formed. In 
December, 1970 a rightist coup was attempted but failed. 

   Police discovered further plots as violence continued throughout the 
1970's. Reaction to and fear of assassinations, kidnappings, knee-cappings and
mob violence began seeping into Italy's everyday life. Lifestyles changed as 
Italians altered spending habits, dress and daily routine to avoid becoming a 
victim. Much of this early terrorism was blamed on the left. 

   In 1973, police found that terrorist activity and the control of fascist 
groups was being orchestrated by a group called the Rose of Twenty, made up of
military officers and industrialists. After their arrests, however, the 
violence continued. More plots were uncovered, including lists of targets for 
assassination. The police still had not uncovered P-2, the control center of 
the terror. In 1980, a bomb ripped through the Bologna train station, killing 
85 people. The bombing was eventually linked to members of P-2 and Italian 
neo-fascist terrorist groups. 

   By the mid-70's, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was gaining electoral 
support and leaders of the ruling Christian Democratic Party were meeting with
the PCI to discuss the possibility of a coalition government. P-2 and its 
friends abroad worked to stop the coalition and PCI's electoral success. P-2's
immediate target: defeat the PCI in the 1976 elections. Their long-term 
strategy was to defeat the system which allowed the PCI to exist. 

   One American involved in this intrigue was Philip A. Guarino, 79, an 
adviser to the Republican National Committee on senior citizens' affairs, who 
was long active in Italian GOP politics. A theology student in Mussolini's 
Italy in the late 20's and much of the 1930's, Guarino helped establish the 
ethnic division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican 
Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75. [f-44] He attended the 1985 Council 
convention to ensure that his friend Frank Stella won the chairmanship of the 
Council in a tight race with former Cleveland mayor Ralph Perk. 

   Guarino was also described in <St. Peter's Banker>, a book about activities
involving P-2, as an "honorary member of P-2." [f-45] Foreign members of P-2 
were rare. One other of the select was Jose Lopez Riga, founder of the Latin 
American death squad group known as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance.

   The exposure of P-2 and Guarino's involvement (which Guarino has denied) 
came about when Michele Sindona, head of Vatican banking operations, was 
sentenced to 25 years in a New York prison for illegal banking activities. 
Italian investigations of Sindona led to Licio Gelli, grandmaster of the 
secret, illegal P-2 Lodge. Sindona and Gelli were associates of Guarino. 

   Gelli was an ardent Blackshirt in the Fascist Party of Mussolini's Italy 
and one of his firm supporters to the end. As the leader of P-2, he made 
violations of the Lodge's oaths punishable by death. The presence of certain 
Mafioso and police officials in P-2 made the death threats credible. After 
Italian police traced Sindona to Gelli, it was discovered that Guarino had 
been corresponding with Gelli. The <New York Times> reported that Guarino 
wrote Gelli that "things were going badly for `Michele'," the banker 
imprisoned in New York. Guarino had hosted Gelli at Reagan's 1981 
inauguration, and introduced him to "members of the entourage." [f-46] 

   Guarino's dealings with the P-2 network began no later than 1976, when the 
Mafia-linked Sindona financed an <ad hoc> group called Americans for a 
Democratic Italy, cochaired by Guarino and Paul Rao, Jr. who is described in 
<St. Peter's Banker> as "a prominent member of the Italian-American community 
and attorney for the head of the Gambino family." [f-47] Sindona and Gambino 
family members were indicted in 1982 for "operating a $600 million- a-year 
heroin trade between Sicily and America." [f-48] 

   Guarino was also involved in John Connally's Committee for the Defense of 
the Mediterranean, which propagandized on the Italian Communist Party (PCI) 
threat to the West. [f-49] Connally, Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury
and member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Nixon 
and Gerald Ford, was a friend of Sindona. [f-50] 

   Another friend and guest at Connally's Texas ranch was Roberto Calvi, a 
Vatican banker and P-2 member, according to Larry Gurwin in <The Calvi 
Affair>. Calvi was in Gelli's inner circle, serving as an "executioner," one 
of a dozen hooded men with axes who served Gelli in the secret initiation 
rites for new members of P-2. The ceremony included the mixing of the 
initiate's blood with that of Gelli and his "executioners," the testing of 
courage with vipers, and an oath that bound the new P-2 member to Gelli and 
the netherworld of fascism for life. [f-51] Calvi's life was cut short, 
however, when he was found hanging from a bridge in London in 1982. 

   In 1978, Guarino's Italian Heritage Council ally, Frank Stella, became 
National Chair of the Heritage National Committee of Connally for President, 
when Connally sought the 1980 GOP nomination for president. [f-52] 

   Later Stella got on track with Ronald Reagan. Mark Valente, a Stella 
protege and suburban Detroit City Council member now serving as a Republican 
National Committee Ethnic Liaison staffer, says, "Everyone at the White House 
knows Frank." Stella's name has gone through the White House appointment 
process on several occasions. In 1981 he was nominated for the little-known 
Intelligence Oversight Board, which is supposed to monitor the legalities of 
covert operations of the intelligence agencies. [f-53] He withdrew his name 
after it had been publicly released. Stella was being considered for the post 
of Ambassador to Italy in 1985, but withdrew his name again, according to 
Valente. In 1983 he was made a White House Fellow. 

   Stella, a Detroit businessman, has many local civic service activities to 
his credit. In February, 1988 he was named cochair of a panel evaluating the 
advisability of legalized casino gambling for the city of Detroit. He is also 
a top Michigan GOP fundraiser. Stella had an <ex officio> seat on the
Republican National Committee by virtue of his chairmanship of the >Republican
Heritage Groups Council from 1981-83 and 1985-87. In 1988 Stella was named 
National Chairman of Italian-Americans for Bush. 

   Stella can't quite forget about Italy. In February, 1986 he gave an award 
of "honorary member" in the National Italian American Foundation to Victor 
Emmanuel of Savoy. [f-54] Stella is president of the foundation. He says it is
"perceived to be the spokesman for the Italian-American community in the 
United States."[f-55] The man he honored, Victor Emmanuel, would be the king 
of Italy today, except his family, the House of Savoy, was expelled from Italy
in 1946 due to its die-hard support of Mussolini's fascist order. [f-56] 
Victor Emmanuel, a reputed gunrunner for the Shah of Iran, is an arms 
trafficker and member of P-2. He is alleged to have used his wealth and 
influence to avoid a long prison sentence after he shot and killed a West 
German tourist in a party brawl on a Mediterranean island several years ago. 
[f-57] 

   The irony of the award to this erstwhile fascist by the "spokesman" for 
Italian-Americans, is that Victor Emmanuel, until recently, was one of only 
two Italians in the world not allowed to set foot on Italian soil. The other 
person banned was his father. [f-58 


  - Chinese - 

   The Chinese-American and Asian-American Republican federations are led by 
Anna Chennault, who gained fame in the 1950's and 1960's as an ardent advocate
of Chiang Kai-Shek's dictatorship on Taiwan. Both federations appear to be 
little more than adjuncts to Taiwan government activities in the U.S. That was
highlighted at the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention, when an
official Taiwan delegation arrived at the Republican Heritage Groups Council 
meeting as part of a nationwide tour belatedly celebrating Reagan's second 
inauguration four months earlier. While the foremost visitor from Taiwan was 
the Deputy Minister for National Defense, the honorary president of the 
delegation was Ben John Chen, who also chairs the Asian-American Republican 
Federation. [f-59] Other Chinese and Asian GOP federation members are part of 
trade groups linked to Taiwan. 

   The Republican Heritage Groups Council agenda was interrupted at the 
Chinese federation's request so that the delegation could present awards from 
the Taiwan government to Michael Sotirhos, the outgoing Republican Heritage 
Groups Council chair (who later became Reagan's ambassador to Jamaica). Also 
receiving an award from the Taiwan regime was Anna Chennault, who funds the 
Asian American GOP federation, according to its chairman, Ben John Chen. 
Chennault became chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1987.  


                            PART ONE - SECTION 5 

       The National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council


 - Ethnic Realignment - 

   The Republican Heritage Groups Council's ethnicity is broad, ranging from 
Albanians to Vietnamese. But two groups are missing at the Republican Heritage
Groups Council. There are no Black or Jewish Republican federations. Remarks 
by a number of delegates at the 1986 Heritage meeting made it clear that there
was no desire to have either community represented on the Council. [f-60] 
Republican leaders say that Black and Jewish relations are "special" and are
dealt with in separate units of the GOP. 

   It might be said that American Indians, Hispanics and Vietnamese all have 
"special" problems beyond traditional European ethnic concerns, but they are 
represented in the National Republican Heritage Groups Council. Given the 
background of the Council's leadership, it is difficult not to conclude that 
elements of racism and anti-Semitism may play a role in the decision to 
exclude Black and Jewish constituencies. 

   The key issues for every one of the Eastern European Heritage Council 
leaders interviewed were foreign policy issues. All of them called for more 
support for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Most called for the 
abandonment of the Yalta agreement, the major treaty that set the post-war 
features of Europe, and they want a far more aggressive foreign policy against
the USSR. The most public activity the Republican Heritage Groups Council 
affiliates participate in is the yearly "Captive Nations" rallies held in a 
handful of cities across the U.S. "Captive Nations" is the term used to 
describe those countries and national groups which have Communist governments.


   The only domestic issue raised in the interviews was their opposition to 
the Office of Special Investigations, the anti-Nazi unit of the Justice 
Department. Clearly lacking was any identifiable interest in domestic issues 
that pertain to the welfare of the ethnic communities of America -- 
unemployment, crime, discrimination, educational quality and opportunities for
a younger generation. Instead, the Republican Heritage Groups Council still 
fits the description conservative commentator Kevin Phillips gave ten years 
ago: 

  "Instead of addressing itself to the social and economic issues underlying 
ethnic unrest, the [Republican] National Committee put on a Captive Nations 
rally. . .Captive Nations preoccupation is the rule, not the exception, among 
Republican National Committee ethnic activities. [f-61]" 

   Still, while the Eastern European Republican Heritage Groups Council 
leaders are preoccupied with Cold War issues, there is a broader strategy on 
the part of the Republican National Committee, which uses the anti- communist 
and anti-liberal currents in the emigre fascist network to its political 
advantage. The invitation to the 1987 Council meeting lays out these broader 
priorities in carefully chosen language with a special meaning for the Eastern
European emigre community: 

  "We are at the crucial point now, in view of international and domestic 
conditions. Ethnic Americans were committed to Ronald Reagan's vision of 
America in 1980 and sustained that commitment in 1984. Ethnic Americans were 
in the forefront of support to the President then and continue to stand by him
now. We have seen his programs work successfully, while the Democrats had no 
new approach to offer other than socialist experimentalism -- free spending, 
free taxing at home, and `detente' abroad. We have accomplished the 
philosophical realignment within a wide spectrum of mainstream America, while 
the Democratic Party has withdrawn into a narrow "liberal" sectarian extreme. 
[f-62]" 

   This less than subtle baiting of the Democratic Party as closet "Reds" is 
one hook used by the Republican Party to unify the constituents of the 
Republican Heritage Groups Council into an electoral force. As the invitation 
to the 1987 meeting also pointed out, "The continuing growth of the Republican
Heritage Groups Council must be solidified and translated into a voting power 
for Republican candidates in next year's election." 

   The Republican National Committee seems to identify the Republican Heritage
Groups Council as one of its keys to past electoral success and future 
opportunities. Republican Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf told the 1985 Council 
meeting, "On behalf of the Republican Party I want to express thanks for all 
of you in this room who were such a vital, integral part of the great victory 
we achieved on November 6 last year [1984]. We couldn't have done it without 
you, and I want you to know that." [f-63] 

   A few minutes later, President Reagan told the meeting, "The work of all of
you has meant a very great deal to me personally, to the Party and to our 
cause. . .I can't think of any others who have made a more vital contribution 
to the effort than those of you who are in this room today. . .I want to 
encourage you to keep building the Party. Believe me, bringing more ethnic 
Americans into the fold is the key to the positive realignment that we are 
beginning to see take shape." Former Republican Heritage Groups Council chair 
Michael Sotirhos said in an interview that "The Council was the linchpin of 
the Reagan-Bush ethnic campaign. . .The decision to use the Republican 
Heritage Groups was made at a campaign strategy meeting that included Paul 
Laxalt, Frank Fahrenkopf, Ed Rollins and others." He claims that 86,000 
volunteers for Reagan-Bush were recruited through the Council.[f-64] 

   Jack Kemp also gave a keynote speech at the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups
Council meeting as part of his long-standing effort to woo support from the 
Captive Nations groups. 

   Several White House staffers who appeared on a panel at the 1985 Republican
Heritage Groups Council meeting identified the area of GOP growth as ethnic 
outreach. Linas Kojelis, then the White House Office of Public Liaison Ethnic 
Coordinator, also said that the Republican Heritage Groups Council "has been 
very helpful to coordinate with mainline ethnic groups on day-to-day 
[legislative] issues." 

   Sotirhos adds that not only has the Republican Heritage Groups Council 
aided the GOP, but "the success of Reagan-Bush has helped build the Council." 
Ethnics more inclined to work with the GOP, due to their attraction to Reagan,
structure their work through the Republican Heritage Groups Council. Thus, the
image and prestige of Council leaders are enhanced and legitimized within 
their ethnic networks by the GOP. 

   Council members benefit also by having access to GOP leaders and 
Administration policymakers. One Republican Heritage Groups Council brochure 
notes that "Members are also concerned with foreign policy and keep the 
Administration advised on pertinent historic facts{and attitudes}[author's 
emphasis] concerning their land of origin. They communicate with Congressmen, 
Senators and the State Department. . .particularly [regarding] 
communist-dominated countries." [f-65] 

   The GOP, White House and Republican Heritage Groups Council also benefited 
from one other election effort in 1984 when Maryland Congressman Clarence Long
was replaced by Helen Bentley, a Republican Heritage Groups Council cochair 
and a long time Council activist. Long, a persistent critic of White House 
policy in Central America, was also targeted by the Maryland Republican 
Heritage Groups, whose members claimed to have organized the margin of defeat 
over Long. Bentley was the only elected official to attend all three days of 
the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting. She said that it was "the
coalition of ethnics" that made her victory in Maryland possible. [f-66] 


  - Forgive and Forget - 

   The GOP cannot be ignorant of the backgrounds of their ethnic leaders. When
Nixon was encouraging the growth of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 
1971, Jack Anderson did a series of reports on the pro-Nazi backgrounds of 
various GOP ethnic advisors. Included in the reports were Ivan Docheff and 
Laszlo Pasztor. In November of 1971, the <Washington Post> did a story that 
elaborated on some of the fascist elements coming into the GOP. [f-67] 

   In the late 1970's, sporadic pieces appeared in the media that should have 
amply warned the GOP, including a 1978 Jack Anderson column on Josef Mikus's 
unrepentant support for Tiso. [f-68] Mikus and other Tiso collaborators were 
identified as advisors to various Republican figures. Reagan himself had an 
opportunity to learn of the character of the persons being drawn into the GOP 
since he served on the National Council of the Crusade for Freedom, a group 
tied to Radio Free Europe. [f-69] 

   Radio Free Europe (RFE) was established under the direction of the CIA 
using the various national groupings previously described. Many of these 
elements were brought into the operations of RFE. Some are still working with 
RFE today, which may be why some of their American-based conationalists lobby 
so hard for the radio operations. Whether Reagan even knew much about these 
RFE emigres is unclear, but he was in a position to learn more than most 
Americans of the early 1950's about just who some of the emigres were.  

   The ethnic advisors to Reagan clearly know of Docheff's past, yet he was 
invited to the White House to a pre-election event. According to Andy Valucek,
an expert on the myriad ethnic groups and leaders in the U.S. and currently on
the staff of Democratic Congressman Tom Foley, the Slovaks within the GOP 
prevented a commemoration by the White House of the 40th anniversary of the 
1944 Allied-supported Slovak uprising that attempted to topple Tiso near the 
end of the World War II. [f-70] The White House, however, previously had 
commemorated the anti-Nazi uprising in Poland, an event widely supported by 
the Polish community. 

   In 1988 many of the key figures in the Republican Heritage Groups Council 
were named as leaders of the George Bush presidential campaign's ethnic 
outreach arm, the Coalition of American Nationalities. These included Anna 
Chennault, Walter Melianovich, Laslo Pasztor, Frank Stella, Radi Slavoff, 
Philip A. Guarino, and Florian Galdau. Other persons on the Bush ethnic panel 
with questionable views or pasts were Bohdan Fedorak and Akselis Mangulis. 

   In August of 1988 draft copies of the first version of this report were 
mailed to several journalists. At the same time a reporter for <Washington 
Jewish Week> began collecting information on the backgrounds of the Bush 
campaign's Coalition of American Nationalities (CAN) members after hearing 
criticisms of the Justice Deartment's Office of Special Investigations while 
covering the Republican Convention. <Washington Jewish Week> originally 
focused on CAN members Ignatius Billinsky and Jerome Brentar>, but expanded 
the article after receiving documentation and background information on the 
Republican Heritage Groups Council from the author of this report. The 
<Philadelphia Inquirer> also began a substantial investigation of the charges 
in this report. 

   In early September of 1988, Pasztor, Slavoff, Guarino, Galdau, Fedorak, 
Brentar, and Billinsky resigned from the Bush panel following revelations 
about their pasts or views appearing in the first edition of this report, 
<Washington Jewish Week> and the <Philadelphia Inquirer>. 

   Bush adviser Fred Malek resigned from the Bush campaign after the 
<Washington Post> identified him as having compiled lists of Jews working at 
the Bureau of Labor Statistics on orders from the Nixon White House.

   In early November, the <Philadelphia Inquirer> raised questions about a 
Latvian member of CAN, which prompted the final resignation, that of Akselis 
Mangulis, charged with having belonged to the pro-Nazi Latvian Legion which 
had connections to the SS. 

   While Bush campaign spokespersons pledged there would be an investigation 
into the backgrounds and views of the CAN members whose resignations it had 
announced, no serious investigation ever took place, and the campaign 
repeatedly referred to the charges as unsubstantiated politically-motivated 
smears. Several of the persons who had been reported as resigning told 
journalists they had never been asked to resign and considered themselves 
still active with the Bush campaign. Furthermore, Guarino, Slavoff, Galdau and
Pasztor are still active with the Republican Heritage Groups Council. 

   Leonard Zakim, director of the Boston office of the Anti-Defamation League,
is troubled by the handling of the resignations of CAN members by the Bush 
campaign. Zakim says that if in fact the Bush campaign has never completely 
investigated the charges concerning the Republican ethnic advisors as 
requested by ADL, then he is "extremely unsatisfied" with that response:  

  "The ADL is very clear in demanding a full explanation take place, these 
charges are extremely serious and we expect the response to be equally 
serious. We are very disturbed that spokespersons for the Bush camp did not 
see fit to repudiate in full those individuals whose stated views are 
offensive. We don't see this as a Jewish issue. When charges like these are 
raised, all people should be concerned. It shouldn't only be Jewish 
organizations calling on the political campaigns to deal with issues of racism
and anti-Semitism, but all persons of good conscience. " 

   As a candidate, President Bush defended Galdau, Pasztor, Guarino and 
Slavoff as innocent of all accusations of collaboration, and insisted they are
all honorable men. But the historical record belies his assertions. 

   The GOP for decades has misread ethnic America's concerns about crime, 
employment, anti-ethnic discrimination and the future of its youth. It has 
offered instead the fascism and ethnic prejudices of the Heritage Council, 
which focuses primarily on funding Radio Free Europe and stopping Justice 
Department prosecutions of war criminals who illegally entered the country. 

   As chairman of the Republican National Committee in the early years of the 
Council, and now as head of the Republican Party and President of the United 
States, Mr. Bush owes Americans a complete explanation. 

   That the Republican Party considers its Republican Heritage Groups Council 
members representative of ethnic America shows their confusion between the 
traditionalism that exists in many ethnic communities and the anti-democratic 
and pro-fascist sentiments present within some of the constituent units of the
Republican Heritage Groups Council. To the degree that the GOP decides to use 
the Council to lure ethnics away from the Democratic Party, "it is missing the
boat and will fail," says Valuchek. 

   But the GOP goal may be to create a new leadership in ethnic communities, 
in the same way that conservative and far-right groups have funded and 
credentialed new Black and Latin American spokespersons in those communities. 

   Yet no matter what the intent or goal, the Republican Heritage Groups 
Council has incorporated racist, anti-Semitic and fascist forces, and even 
rehabilitated some Nazi collaborators; legitimized them as ethnic leaders in 
their own communities and in the press; and provided a vehicle for expanding
their influence in the Executive branch and Congress, where they have played a
role in shaping American foreign policy. 

                                                     continued...
 ---------------------------------------
 Source: PeaceNet cdp:pn.publiceye
 Written 3:20 pm Mar  4, 1990 by nlgclc in cdp:pn.publiceye
 From The NY Transfer BBS  718-448-2358
 ---------------------------------------

