Was Geithner in Europe to Advance a Decades Long Secret Plan of the US?

As part of the eurozone financial rescue effort, Treasury Secretary Geithner traveled to Europe four times in recent months. In fact, this week, just before the EU announced a tighter "fiscal union," Geithner was in Europe visiting government officials from  France, Italy Spain and Germany, to consult on the plan.

The result was the announcement of an agreement for a more unified financial eurozone. All European Union members, except for Great Britain. signed on to the plan, that clearly was heavily influenced by the United States efforts. Indeed, in addition to Geithner, the American and former State Department official, Robert Zoellick, the current president of the World Bank, told the WSJ CEO Council that he had been to Europe twice in recent weeks.

Given these developments, it may be instructive to review a September 2000 report by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard about then declassified documents that point to plotting by the U.S. as early as the fifties and sixties  to create a more unified Europe. Pritchard wrote in 2000:

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.

The documents confirm suspicions voiced at the time that America was working aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into a European state. One memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.

The documents were found by Joshua Paul, a researcher at Georgetown University in Washington. They include files released by the US National Archives. Washington's main tool for shaping the European agenda was the American Committee for a United Europe, created in 1948. The chairman was Donovan, ostensibly a private lawyer by then.

The vice-chairman was Allen Dulles, the CIA director in the Fifties. The board included Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA's first director, and a roster of ex-OSS figures and officials who moved in and out of the CIA. The documents show that ACUE financed the European Movement, the most important federalist organisation in the post-war years. In 1958, for example, it provided 53.5 per cent of the movement's funds.

The European Youth Campaign, an arm of the European Movement, was wholly funded and controlled by Washington. The Belgian director, Baron Boel, received monthly payments into a special account. When the head of the European Movement, Polish-born Joseph Retinger, bridled at this degree of American control and tried to raise money in Europe, he was quickly reprimanded. 

The leaders of the European Movement - Retinger, the visionary Robert Schuman and the former Belgian prime minister Paul-Henri Spaak - were all treated as hired hands by their American sponsors. The US role was handled as a covert operation. ACUE's funding came from the Ford and Rockefeller foundations as well as business groups with close ties to the US government. 

The head of the Ford Foundation, ex-OSS officer Paul Hoffman, doubled as head of ACUE in the late Fifties. The State Department also played a role. A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth. 

It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which "adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable".

Huh, the crashing eurozone made the recent crisis virtually an inescapable situation for EZ members to band together, or so many EZ political leaders said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week while addressing the German parliament that  tighter regulation of eurozone members was the only way out of what she described as "the most difficult chapter in the history of the euro, if not the most difficult in the history of the European Union".

Also last week, Poland’s Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said ““We should all be aware what the stake of the game is. Because the game is not only about the well-being of this generation or the next generation, but is goes without saying we’re also fighting for the safety of this and future generations,”

And then there's that Ford Foundation again, where Geithner's father worked, who I have long suspected is/was a high ranking CIA official.

Makes you wonder.

(htRyanUnderwood)