EPISODE 268: Conspiracy: Why FDR’s White House Ignored a Chance to Change History with Chris Farrell and Shea Bradley-Farrell

Speaker 1 (00:04):

Welcome to the Bill Walton Show, featuring conversations with leaders, entrepreneurs, artists and thinkers. Fresh perspectives on money, culture, politics, and human flourishing. Interesting people, interesting things.

Bill Walton (00:25):

What if in 1943, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his White House advisors had acted on the knowledge that high ranking German officials had conceived a bold plot to kidnap Hitler and his top officials, and were prepared to turn them over to the United States to end the war with Germany? What if after capturing Hitler and not needing to fight Germany to the bitter end for its unconditional surrender, we agreed to an armistice and joined forces with Germany to stop the communist Soviet Union in its bid to conquer all of Eastern Europe. And in doing so, closing it behind an iron curtain that would endure for over four decades. World events might have turned out quite differently if FDR had acted on the council of this one man, George H. Earle the Third. He didn’t. And the rest they say is history.

(01:31):

Here to tell the story is Chris Farrell, the director of Investigations and research at Judicial watch, an author of Exiled Emissary: the Story of George Earle. And in returning to the show, I think this is your third or fourth time.

Shea Bradley Farrell (01:45):

It is.

Bill Walton (01:45):

Thankfully. Dr. Shea Bradley Farrell, author of Last Warning to the West, which we talked about last time, about Hungary. Who’s the founder of Counterpoint Institute and has written extensively on the agony of Eastern Europe under communism. Chris, Shea.

(02:03):

Now, I think I noticed some similarity here. You both have the same last name, so you two might know each other before coming on the show.

Chris Farrell (02:12):

Very well.

Bill Walton (02:12):

But as I understand it, this is the first show you’ve done together.

Shea Bradley Farrell (02:16):

Well, we’ve done shows together like on OAN or his podcast, but no one’s ever pointed out that we’re married and no one’s noticed. So weave a good working relationship. We just go with the flow.

Bill Walton (02:31):

I’ve read the book and I try to read all the stuff that we talk about on the show, but this one’s particularly interesting because it’s one of those stories that when you read it seems absolutely true, and yet nobody knows about it.

Chris Farrell (02:44):

It is absolutely true. I have a document, I have a record for every single fact, issue, or point in the book. And so it isn’t speculative, it isn’t hypothetical. It’s not one of these books that examines an alternative history. Everything in the book is documented either from something out of the National archives, something from the Pennsylvania State Archives in Harrisburg, or at the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Pennsylvania. Or personal records, excuse me, personal records from either the Earle family, or actually even from my own grandfather who was business partners with George Earle.

Bill Walton (03:34):

And just to do your background a bit, you spent 20, 25, 30 years in military intelligence, and you’re now Director of Investigations through Judicial Watch. So this is your home turf.

Chris Farrell (03:46):

Yeah. So I was a counterintelligence officer and a human intelligence officer, clandestine human, CIA trained case officer. I did that for about 10 years. Then I got out, I did some contracting work. I taught school for a while. But then since 1999, so for the last 25 years, I’ve been the Director of Investigations and research at Judicial Watch.

Bill Walton (04:11):

And you encouraged him. I guess you saw this stack of papers lying around on Chris’ library and said, “What are you doing?”

Shea Bradley Farrell (04:19):

Well, he told me about it. Actually, when we were dating he told me he had all these documents that had been classified documents, some of them, but they were from the National Archives, and he had spent 15 years collecting this data. He had also interviewed George Earle’s son, grandson.

Chris Farrell (04:37):

No, his son. He had a 94-year-old son who was in a nursing home outside of Philadelphia. And I went and interviewed him. He’s quite a character. He was an OSS officer in World War II at the time that his dad was serving as the naval attache in Istanbul. So the whole family is fascinating.

Bill Walton (04:55):

Well, let’s jump into your description of him. He is a mainline Philadelphia millionaire.

Chris Farrell (04:59):

True.

Bill Walton (05:00):

Family was quite wealthy, but he added-

Chris Farrell (05:02):

Enormously wealthy.

Bill Walton (05:04):

… he added to the family wealth.

Chris Farrell (05:05):

He did.

Bill Walton (05:06):

He was a successful businessman.

Chris Farrell (05:07):

Indeed.

Bill Walton (05:07):

He was a war hero, awarded the Navy Cross.

Chris Farrell (05:10):

In World War One, he took his uncle’s yacht that had been converted into a Navy Reserve submarine chaser.

Bill Walton (05:19):

He took the family boat out for a cruise for the Navy,

Chris Farrell (05:24):

He did. An 80-foot yacht that they converted for Naval Reserve use as a submarine chaser. He patrolled the Atlantic Coast along New Jersey and Delaware. The ship caught fire. The engine room burst into flame. He saved the ship, no hands lost in the middle of winter and was awarded the Navy Cross during World War One. And that’s just sort of the preamble of this guy’s life. He’s a fascinating character.

Shea Bradley Farrell (05:53):

And to the point before, Bill, he told me he had all this research already, and being a PhD, a researcher myself, I was like, “Why haven’t you written this book?” This is a researcher’s dream. So he set about and did it. And the other thing is he has a personal connection, his grandfather, with his grandfather.

Chris Farrell (06:14):

So George Earle, as you mentioned, mainline Philadelphia family, millionaire. His family dates back to colonial days. He’s the great-great-grand-nephew of Benjamin Franklin, enormously wealthy family. One of his holdings was something called the Flamingo Sugar Mill. And Flamingo Sugar at the turn of the century, last century was the equivalent of Domino Sugar now. It was the dominant figure in retail sugar.

(06:48):

My maternal grandfather, Jack Fitzgerald, was a founding member of the New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange, a commodities broker, and his chief client was George Earle and Flamingo Sugar. So they were great business partners, but also very close personal friends. And that’s really how I even came to know about George Earle was my grandmother bragging about how my grandfather had known and worked with Governor Earle. That’s how they always referred to him.

Bill Walton (07:20):

He was Pennsylvania governor. He was also ambassador to Austria and Bulgaria.

Chris Farrell (07:24):

Both.

Bill Walton (07:25):

And he was a close friend of FDR.

Chris Farrell (07:27):

Yeah, they went to Harvard together for a while. George Earle quit Harvard, went off to Europe to run around and have fun. But that’s how they knew each other from basically being teenagers.

Bill Walton (07:36):

He was one of the top polo players in the world.

Chris Farrell (07:38):

He was. Absolutely true. So, one of the other little twists to this whole thing is that the reason why my grandmother was bragging to me about my grandfather’s involvement with George Earle was that in March of 1936, a very dark time in Germany, my grandfather had a friend and business partner on the commodities exchange named Max Meyer, a ethnically German-Jewish businessman, now American. And they wanted to get their business friends out of Frankfurt because of the suppression, the oppression of the Jews in Frankfurt in around 1936.

(08:24):

And so Max Meyer had gone to my grandfather and said, “Hey, you’re buddies with Earle. Earle’s, the governor of Pennsylvania. He just came from being the ambassador to Vienna. He’s got to know people in Washington. He knows FDR. Get these people some visas so they can get out.” And I have the letters. My grandfather communicated with Earle, and in fact, they saved several Jewish businessmen and their families out of Nazi Germany in 1936. And so my grandmother, I’m a child, I’m like eight or 10 years old, and my grandmother’s bragging to me about how my grandfather had gotten these people out of Nazi Germany working with George Earle. And that planted the seed in my head, and that’s why I pursued the story.

Bill Walton (09:13):

So George Earle, friends of FDR was an extreme, he was a playboy, but he also was a good businessman, extreme extrovert. He got to know everybody in Vienna got to know everybody in Bulgaria.

Chris Farrell (09:26):

Correct.

Bill Walton (09:27):

They trusted him. And I think he also had an affair with the woman who was the nightclub singer.

Chris Farrell (09:33):

He did, yeah.

Shea Bradley Farrell (09:34):

Everybody loves that story.

Chris Farrell (09:36):

A stunning willowy blonde.

Bill Walton (09:37):

You’ve got a picture of her in the book.

Chris Farrell (09:38):

Everybody loves, all the men love that story.

Bill Walton (09:41):

She looked great. I mean, let’s see if we can, we will dig this one [inaudible 00:09:48] Adrienne Molinard. She got quite around, didn’t she?

Chris Farrell (09:51):

She did.

Bill Walton (09:51):

She was covered by the British. Anyway, all the agencies were very interested in her.

Chris Farrell (09:56):

For a variety of reasons.

Bill Walton (10:00):

So he had developed these relationships. He spoke German?

Chris Farrell (10:02):

He did.

Bill Walton (10:03):

And so he was one of the reasons I think the German high command. Now, let’s set the stage here. The Germans are in the ascendance, Nazis are in the Senate, Hitler’s in charge. World War Two kicks off. They’re winning. Then by 1943, though, it becomes clear that perhaps Germany wasn’t going to win. Perhaps Germany had overextended itself, and that this thing was going to be a catastrophe for Germany. And particularly after FDR in an offhanded remark said, “We demand unconditional surrender.”

Chris Farrell (10:39):

At the Casablanca Conference in January of ’43. That’s right.

Bill Walton (10:43):

Well, let’s first talk about FDRs blunder with unconditional surrender. What were the implications of that?

Chris Farrell (10:49):

Well, that really put the German high command, the German military leadership in a box, because now you’re not offering any other way out. No other conclusion to the war except absolute unconditional surrender, right? A term really that was coined in our civil war. I’m not sure. No one really knows why FDR glommed onto it. Churchill claims to have been surprised by the statement, that it was not coordinated with him at the Casablanca Conference. They came out of that conference, they had a press event, and FDR blurts this out.

(11:27):

The consequences for the German military is that you have got a very long military history and tradition within the German Officer Corps, and they’ve taken a personal oath to the fuhrer, to Hitler. And so you put them in the position where they can’t turn over and surrender their troops without breaking their oath, and you’re asking them to dishonor themselves. There’s no negotiation. There’s no armistice. World War One was settled with an armistice, but there’s no option for that now.

Bill Walton (11:58):

Well, I grew up hearing unconditional surrender. We all did in the movies or whatever, but this was really unique, almost unique in history.

Chris Farrell (12:07):

Unprecedented.

Bill Walton (12:08):

Wars were never fought with the notion that the other society is going to have to unconditionally surrender.

Chris Farrell (12:13):

Correct.

Bill Walton (12:14):

Which raised the stakes beyond belief. Now, did FDR give any thought to this or this was one of the things he did after a couple of martinis?

Chris Farrell (12:22):

This is a great conundrum. There’s no-

Bill Walton (12:24):

He liked his martinis. We know that.

Chris Farrell (12:26):

He did. There’s no simple answer to that question. There’s no definitive. FDR himself was interviewed on it, and he treats it really in a very cavalier way, kind of just shrugs it off like, “Oh, well, it was a great talking point. It really made it sound like we were tough.” And not realizing that one thing is a rhetorical argument, another thing is shifting facts for military officers.

Bill Walton (12:49):

So the high command in Germany, which was beginning to doubt Hitler, I mean, Hitler, he took sole control of the command and ignored the experience of all his generals and engaged in a lot of blunders. And I guess at some point they said, “We’ve got to get out of this.”

Chris Farrell (13:08):

And Stalingrad of course happens at the same time, roughly, as January of ’43. So an entire German army led by a field marshal is surrounded and entrapped and lost. And that was an enormous shift of weight in the-

Bill Walton (13:29):

Well, and Hitler’s very good reason for wanting to conquer Stalingrad, it was named after Stalin. And he thought that would be a juicy target to be able to conquer Stalingrad to show he had the whip end on it. He had no strategic purpose.

Chris Farrell (13:44):

None other than they dug themselves into a position and they weren’t going to back away from it.

Bill Walton (13:50):

So who went to Earle and what happened next? And I also want to talk in depth about who was surrounding FDR in the White House because that bears-

Shea Bradley Farrell (14:02):

This is the part that I use in my book with the German resistance-

Bill Walton (14:06):

Yeah, you write about this.

Shea Bradley Farrell (14:07):

… to Earle because, and I’ll let you tell the story about it, because Earle came to FDR as you mentioned in the beginning and said, “We will give you, the German resistance has said they will give us Hitler. But in exchange, the US has to go against the Soviet Union.” And FDR would not do that. And you’re talking about the communist connections and the communists that were in his administration. But again, I will let you talk about it.

(14:38):

But the thing that fascinated me about the story is that the German resistance had said to Earle, “We are concerned about the Soviets advancing not just on them, but on Europe and changing the culture and the ideology of Central Europe and of Europe.” And certainly that’s what happened when we gave Russia or the Soviet Union, Central Europe.

Chris Farrell (15:07):

It was a civilizational threat. The Europeans can go after each other every 30 or 40 years like they do. And Germany and France-

Bill Walton (15:15):

Which they did for about 1,000 years.

Chris Farrell (15:17):

Correct. Yeah. But it was never a civilizational threat. And what the Soviets, Bolshevik Marxists sought to do was erase Christianity, erase history. They were going to create an entirely new existence. And the Germans saw that and said, “Look, the Soviets are the real threat. Don’t mind our intramural fighting that we do on and off again. These guys are going to rewrite the world. They’re going to rewrite history.”

Shea Bradley Farrell (15:47):

And they did.

Chris Farrell (15:49):

And they did. In late January of ’43, the Casablanca Conference is early January ’43, late January ’43, George Earle finds himself as the lieutenant commander in the US Navy Reserve at 53 years old, which is kind of funny age wise. But he’s asked FDR, his old buddy, “Hey, post me overseas. I want to be the naval attache in Istanbul.” He comes up with his own job, he invents it, and FDR says, “Okay,” because it’s his friend. So he lets him.

Shea Bradley Farrell (16:21):

And also he’s given a lot of money to FDRs campaign.

Chris Farrell (16:24):

That’s another point. Before he was even governor back in ’32, he had given hundreds of thousands of dollars, 1932 dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars to FDRs campaign. So surprise, surprise, he’s ambassador to Vienna. He goes home and becomes governor. Then he goes and he’s appointed as ambassador in Sofia, Bulgaria. Well, the war breaks out, so he can’t be ambassador there anymore. So he gets this position as US naval attache in Istanbul.

Bill Walton (16:55):

Now, Istanbul in that time, maybe for forever, really, I think of the movie Casablanca.

Chris Farrell (17:02):

And you should, you should.

Bill Walton (17:04):

And all the intrigue and every different country had somebody there, all the swirling, all the spies.

Chris Farrell (17:10):

That os correct.

Bill Walton (17:11):

All the intrigue. That was in Istanbul in the early 1940s.

Chris Farrell (17:17):

Absolutely.

Shea Bradley Farrell (17:18):

In fact, what was the connection to that movie in your book?

Chris Farrell (17:21):

Yeah, I mean, so you’ll remember-

Bill Walton (17:23):

The bar fight.

Shea Bradley Farrell (17:23):

The bar scene.

Bill Walton (17:24):

The bar scene, yeah.

Chris Farrell (17:26):

With the band playing, that is actually derived from George Earle being in Sofia, Bulgaria. And so while he was ambassador in Bulgaria, just before the US entered the war, the Germans were using Sofia, Bulgaria, as an R&R spot. They were hanging out there having fun out of combat, but in a good position. The scene in Casablanca, which is produced two years after the event we’re talking about right now, was based upon George Earle getting in a bar fight over a band playing … George Earle wanted the band to play Tipperary, which was a not very pleasant gesture to the Germans that were in this nightclub bar. The Germans want to hear the Horst Wessel Leid, which is the Nazi party theme. And so there’s a back and forth that results in a fight. Earle’s hustled out of the bar. He had clocked a German in the head with a champagne bottle, and it was quite a big deal to the point where-

Bill Walton (18:36):

Well, he also got clocked.

Chris Farrell (18:37):

He did as well. He was pretty well beaten up in the process. But he’s hustled out of the bar by a combination of press correspondents that are with him and some Bulgarian taxi drivers.

Bill Walton (18:49):

But let’s also remind ourselves, he was the former governor of Pennsylvania-

Chris Farrell (18:54):

Correct.

Bill Walton (18:54):

… Ambassador to Austria, a multimillionaire in the ’30s.

Chris Farrell (18:58):

Yep. Independently wealthy.

Bill Walton (18:59):

A polo player. I mean, this was a very high concept guy.

Chris Farrell (19:02):

He was, and very frankly, and I put this in the book, he drank too much, he chased women. He had a very exciting life, let’s put it that way. But part of the thing with Earle, and I interviewed his 94-year-old son in a nursing home in Philadelphia, and his son turned to me and said, “Look, he would do any damn thing he felt like.” He was sort of Trump before Trump, really.

Shea Bradley Farrell (19:30):

Right. That’s what I was going to say. That’s what you say about him, because he also came to FDR and said, “Hey, it was the Soviets that did the Katyin massacre of 20,000 intellectuals.”

Bill Walton (19:43):

Yeah, I want to get to that.

Shea Bradley Farrell (19:45):

Right? Well, just following on that, he got exiled. I know. We’ll talk about that in a little bit. But yeah, he was very Trumpian because he was canceled before being canceled was cool. He was sent to exile for saying what he believed to FDR.

Bill Walton (20:04):

So the bar scene happens. And then at what point did the Germans approach him with their idea?

Chris Farrell (20:10):

So, this late January ’43, Earle is very well known to the Germans. He had been ambassador in Vienna. He had been an ambassador in Sofia, Bulgaria. They knew both him as a character, but the Germans also knew that he was personally linked to FDR, that he was now an Istanbul, not just as the US Naval attache, which is very thin diplomatic cover, but that he had an appointment literally as FDR’s personal representative to the Balkans, that was part of his title. So the Germans are very well aware of who he is. Late January ’43, following the Casablanca Conference, an unconditional surrender. He had rented out the entire top floor of a hotel in Istanbul?

Bill Walton (21:00):

No, the top hotel in Istanbul. The top luxury hotel.

Chris Farrell (21:04):

He did. It’s like the Ritz-Carlton. You take the entire top floor just for himself.

Bill Walton (21:07):

On steroids, yeah.

Chris Farrell (21:09):

And while he’s only there maybe a week, and one evening there’s a knock on his door and he opens the door and standing there in front of him is Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who is the chief of the AB there, German military intelligence. And Canaris has quite a history himself, but he was also a very leading figure in the German underground. The resistance to Hitler and Canaris is very well known to him and vice versa. Earle invites him into his suite. They have a conversation and Canaris lays it out for him and says, “Look, we will give you Hitler dead or alive, but we have to have an armistice, and then we have to turn around and fight the Soviets. We have to keep them out of Europe because they’re the civilizational threat to Europe. They will end everything that we hold in common.”

Bill Walton (22:08):

Canaris was a formidable figure.

Chris Farrell (22:10):

Very.

Bill Walton (22:11):

I mean, he was considered one of the, everybody knew he was amazingly smart, amazingly knowledgeable, and had credibility among almost everyone in the high command.

Chris Farrell (22:23):

That is correct. And a very wily fox is how he was thought of.

Shea Bradley Farrell (22:28):

It was a credible offer.

Chris Farrell (22:30):

Yeah. And he himself had an incredible career going back to the Spanish Civil War, and he had World War One service as well. Very intriguing figure, fascinating guy. But he is there, and this is not some wishful thinking or vague concept. They had a very well-thought out, established plan as to what units they knew were loyal, what units they knew would actually move on the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s Prussian, East Prussian headquarters.

Bill Walton (23:04):

That was the place down there in Munich?

Chris Farrell (23:06):

No, no, no. This is up, way up in Northern Germany.

Bill Walton (23:09):

Up north in Prussia. Okay.

Chris Farrell (23:10):

Where they were going to, how he was going to be seized the method of cutting off communications. So it was a very elaborate plan, and it was … Anyway, so Canaris makes this very clear pitch to Earle and says, “Please communicate this to FDR. We want this done, the sooner the better.” And he says, “I will recontact you in approximately four to six weeks and hope to hear good news.” Earle then immediately sends this message back via two different channels, via State Department and naval communications channels back to FDR, and he hears nothing. Complete silence from the White House. And so he presses it again, and the last best word he gets is, “Well, bring it up with Eisenhower.”

Bill Walton (24:11):

Which means …

Chris Farrell (24:13):

A circular ropeadope kind of answer, because if he brings it up with Eisenhower, Eisenhower is going to say, “Well, I’ll talk to the President about it.” It’s a logic loop. It goes around and around. Nothing comes out of it. And he’s very frustrated by this, but not so frustrated that he doesn’t continue to meet with the German resistance and plan, if they ever came through, how they would actually affect an armistice, a link up on the ground, affect an armistice, and actually turn the game around against the Soviets.

Bill Walton (24:49):

This is Bill Walton. I’m here with Chris Ferrell and Shea Bradley Ferrell. We’re talking about Chris’s book I think Shea had a hand in, Exiled Emissary-

Chris Farrell (24:57):

She did.

Bill Walton (24:57):

…. about George Earle. We’re about to talk about the reasons why FDR might not have accepted the Nazis, or not the Nazis, but the German offer.

Chris Farrell (25:10):

The resistance. [inaudible 00:25:11]

Bill Walton (25:11):

To end the war. So let’s talk about that. Goes into the White House, silence.

Chris Farrell (25:18):

Correct.

Bill Walton (25:19):

Now, Diana West, who’s been on the show, wrote a book called American Betrayal.

Chris Farrell (25:23):

Absolutely.

Bill Walton (25:23):

And she gets into this in depth-

Shea Bradley Farrell (25:26):

She does.

Bill Walton (25:26):

… about who are the people surrounding FDR and what FDR sympathies were then.

Chris Farrell (25:32):

Diana’s book is brilliant, American Betrayal. It’s pivotal. Really, it’s a foundational book. I think everyone should read it.

Shea Bradley Farrell (25:38):

We both cite her book in our books.

Chris Farrell (25:39):

Yeah, exactly.

Shea Bradley Farrell (25:39):

And some other of her-

Bill Walton (25:40):

By the way, book plug, shameless plug, Last Warning to the West. This is about Hungary and the events that happened in the exiled emissary bear on what happened in Germany.

Shea Bradley Farrell (25:54):

Absolutely.

Bill Walton (25:56):

And it’s all sort of interrelated and fascinating.

Shea Bradley Farrell (26:02):

It is.

Bill Walton (26:02):

So we were talking about Diana West, and we had Harry Hopkins who lived in the White House, slept in Lincoln’s bedroom for what? Three years?

Chris Farrell (26:12):

He did.

Shea Bradley Farrell (26:12):

He was part of the pushback on Earle, correct?

Chris Farrell (26:14):

Yeah. I mean, one thing to look at is that when it comes to supporting underground resistance movements, whether it’s Marshall Tito with the Free French, or whoever you want to look at in Europe, FDR always loves subsidizing, financing, arming, equipping, training, the full menu of services, anyone who is anti-fascist. But never, never anybody who’s anti-communist. And that’s the hook in this whole.Q

Shea Bradley Farrell (26:51):

It really is. It’s very interesting. And I’m sorry, Bill, did I interrupt you?

Bill Walton (26:55):

No, I’m just, no I’m waiting.

Shea Bradley Farrell (26:55):

Well, that’s one of the things that I get to in my book, because we have the Nazis rolling into Hungary in 1944 in March. And our government was looking at the Nazis and the communists as different, and of course they are. But what I also try to make people understand is that they’re both, they were both based on socialism, and Nazi is an acronym for National Socialist. You know the word in German, and I don’t. They’re both different forms of socialism. They both take control. The government must have control of its people to make socialism work.

(27:37):

And what was interesting in finding out about Hungary is the Nazis treated the Hungarians the same as the communists did. They even had the same headquarters, the House of Terror, where they punished and tortured their political opponents down in the basement, of the House of Terror.

Bill Walton (27:55):

So the Nazis move out, and the next week the Soviets move in.

Chris Farrell (27:57):

Correct.

Shea Bradley Farrell (27:57):

Exactly.

Bill Walton (27:57):

Same house, same rooms for torture.

Chris Farrell (27:59):

Exactly right.

Shea Bradley Farrell (28:00):

And in some instances, the Nazis changed their uniform and were hired by the Soviets to … They went right back to work. So anyway, that’s-

Chris Farrell (28:11):

Literally, they took off a black uniform, put on a green uniform, and went back to doing the same thing that they were doing before. The other interesting, this goes back to the intersection with Istanbul. The Hungarians had dispatched, Admiral Horthy, who was the Regent of Hungary, had dispatched a team, it really hangs on one person, but a diplomat to Istanbul, who actually pre-surrendered Hungary to the British, onboard the British ambassador’s yacht in the Bay outside of Istanbul. And the Hungarians were trying to play a double game where they were reaching out to the Allies, mostly to the OSS saying, “We are ready to surrender.” They were in a squeeze play. They had the Nazis on one side and the Soviets on the other, and they’re saying, “We don’t want either one. And would you please drop a team of OSS officers into Budapest to act as a buffer to keep both sides out?” The OSS created a Budapest team. It was 50-some-odd guys. They trained, they were prepared. They never were dropped into Budapest. This is another case of lost history. The things that didn’t happen.

Bill Walton (29:28):

Was the White House also involved in this non-intervention?

Chris Farrell (29:31):

Exactly. Correct.

Shea Bradley Farrell (29:33):

So yeah, we really dropped the ball. And I didn’t realize it until I started, as Chris says, uncovering lost history. In 1945, for example, the Soviets came early right around Christmas time and sieged Budapest. And right during that same time was Yalta with FDR, with Churchill and Stalin. Where Stalin, we handed over to Stalin, Central Europe.

Bill Walton (29:57):

But the point, I think I want to make this point stronger though, because this was not just FDR saying, “Gee, I sort of like Uncle Joe,” Joe Stalin. But this was Diana West, and you write, all three of you write about the fact that the White House was not just Harry Hopkins, but there are lots of other people. Alger Hiss was the famous name, but lots of other people involved.

Chris Farrell (30:19):

Alger Hiss managed the [inaudible 00:30:22]

Bill Walton (30:22):

In the FDR administration who were verily pro-Soviet.

Shea Bradley Farrell (30:26):

Yes, and some were piece.

Chris Farrell (30:30):

Here’s a fun example of one Lachlan Currie, which is not a very well-known name. Originally, Canadian becomes an American, works his way through all of FDRs alphabet soup agencies. He was in the Agricultural Adjustment Agency, all these different, but he wheeled his way through FDRs administration until he was working in the White House. Lachlan Currie, we know through the Venona decrypts, which were Army Security Agency cables, they had grabbed every Soviet cable that was sent from DC back to Moscow during World War Two. And they didn’t bother to decrypt them until about 1946 when someone said, “We got all these old Russian cables, why don’t we see what they were saying?” And they decrypt them. They’re referred to as Venona. That’s the code name to these files. They were finally published in 1996.

(31:26):

But Lachlan Currie is identified specifically with the cryptonym Page, Page was his code name. The Soviets didn’t give code names to just anybody. They gave them to recruited assets who were collecting intelligence, and more importantly, running influence operations. They weren’t interested in their ability to get their hands on secrets. They wanted agents in place to influence policy.

Bill Walton (31:55):

Decisions, yeah.

Chris Farrell (31:56):

And so Lachlan Currie is in the White House.

Bill Walton (31:59):

What was his job? What was his title?

Chris Farrell (32:01):

That’s going to be a stump the chump question here. I forget the exact title.

Bill Walton (32:06):

But he was in the White House, he had a job

Chris Farrell (32:06):

[inaudible 00:32:06]

Bill Walton (32:06):

He was in the East Wing.

Chris Farrell (32:09):

Correct.

Bill Walton (32:10):

Or West Wing, rather?

Chris Farrell (32:11):

In a senior position. And he flees the United States minutes before being arrested by the FBI. And he goes to Colombia, and he is hanging out in Bogota, Colombia. The reason I mentioned this is because Teddy Kennedy, when he is thinking about making his run for the Senate to replace his older brother, JFK, who had become President, goes on a European tour, excuse me, goes on a Latin American tour to bolster his foreign policy credentials. I have the cables declassified from the State Department showing that when Teddy Kennedy made this Latin American tour, he specifically asked to meet with Lachlan Currie in Bogota Columbia in 1961. He was emphatic about it.

Shea Bradley Farrell (33:07):

And Bill, things were actually-

Chris Farrell (33:08):

So ask yourself, I mean, you want to talk about influence operations,

Shea Bradley Farrell (33:12):

And things were actually suppressed by our government when Earle came to FDR and told him that the Soviets had decapitated and thrown into these open graves, the 20,000 intelligentsia, he said it was Nazi propaganda.

Bill Walton (33:30):

Let me give the quick summary of that, and then you amplify.

Shea Bradley Farrell (33:33):

Okay, sure.

Bill Walton (33:34):

As I understand it, FDR asked George Earle to investigate the murder of 20,000 Poles, the cream of Polish society, head of the military, head of the academic institutions, head of government, all that. These were not just random people who-

Shea Bradley Farrell (33:49):

No, they weren’t.

Bill Walton (33:50):

And FDR wanted them to come back and say that the Nazis did it. The Germans did it, and instead he came back and he said no.

Shea Bradley Farrell (33:58):

Yeah. And he had papers.

Bill Walton (34:00):

It was the Soviets that did it.

Shea Bradley Farrell (34:01):

It was the Soviets. He had the papers, he had eyewitnesses, he had all kinds of documentation to prove it. And FDR dismissed it as Nazi propaganda. And the reason that the Soviets did this, this is the type of thing that they would do in each of the satellite countries, is they wanted to be able to control the social and civic organizations, the educational institutions. So you had to get rid of the people that might give you some pushback on that.

Bill Walton (34:31):

Well, decapitate. I mean, well Stalin-

Shea Bradley Farrell (34:35):

Literally and figuratively.

Bill Walton (34:36):

… decapitated his own army before World War Two.

Chris Farrell (34:38):

Correct.

Bill Walton (34:38):

He killed how many? 15,000 of his top officers.

Chris Farrell (34:42):

That’s correct.

Shea Bradley Farrell (34:43):

So the thing is, Bill, is that we were, is the word complicit? Is that the right word?

Bill Walton (34:49):

Complicit.

Shea Bradley Farrell (34:50):

Complicit in covering these things up because we find out decades later that the Soviets, during openness and transparency, they admitted finally that they had done the Katyin Massacre. But just to remind you this, let’s talk about this too, because we helped cover up the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Bill Walton (35:09):

Let’s talk about that.

Shea Bradley Farrell (35:11):

Okay.

Bill Walton (35:12):

We could-

Chris Farrell (35:13):

Everyone forgets that in September of 1939 as Nazi Germany invades Poland, and they say, “Oh, look at this war of aggression, what the Nazis have done.” And it’s true. No one will doubt it or deny it for a moment, nor should they. But about nine days later, the Soviets invaded Poland from the East. They’re allied. They waged a war of aggression and carved up Poland. But the irony is, by the time we get to Nuremberg in 1945, who’s sitting on the tribunal judging the Nazis for waging a war of aggression?

Shea Bradley Farrell (35:48):

The Soviets.

Chris Farrell (35:50):

The Soviets are.

Shea Bradley Farrell (35:50):

With us.

Bill Walton (35:51):

Wasn’t that something?

Shea Bradley Farrell (35:53):

Yes.

Chris Farrell (35:53):

And we’ve handed back at Yalta, as Shea mentioned earlier, we’ve handed back at Yalta all of Central and Eastern Europe to Stalin, which is what he negotiated.

Shea Bradley Farrell (36:04):

That’s the Hitler-Stalin pact.

Chris Farrell (36:05):

In the Hitler-Stalin.

Bill Walton (36:07):

But after Truman died, after Roosevelt died, Truman became President. And Truman was equally skeptical of George Earle, was he not?

Chris Farrell (36:16):

He was. In fact, when Earle was pointing out … See, here’s the other thing. While Earle is running around Istanbul, he is debriefing and meeting many, many refugees from the Soviet Union and from Eastern Europe because they’re all trying to escape through Istanbul because it’s a neutral city. So Earle’s been talking to everybody under the sun doing these debriefings of very important figures from across the spectrum. And when he returns to the United States, he carries the same message and says, “Look, the real threat is the Soviet Union. We may have been allied during the war for whatever reason you want to explain, but they’re a civilizational threat.” And when he keeps pressing this point, immediately after the war, Truman dismisses his commentary, his testimony before Congress at one point, and says that, “This Soviet communism thing, it’s all just a bugaboo.” Bugaboo is the word that Truman uses to dismiss Soviet communism.

Shea Bradley Farrell (37:23):

But can I make this point? Because I want to make sure people understand this. Before Nazi Germany rolled into Poland, before Stalin rolled into Poland, they had made an alliance. The Hitler-Stalin pact was part of that alliance that nobody knew about until the Nuremberg trials. And even then we were skeptical about it. But the Hitler-Stalin pact actually divided up Central Europe between Hitler and between Stalin.

(37:51):

And where we come in on this is fast-forward to Yalta with FDR Churchill and Stalin. Stalin got exactly what he wanted in that pact that he had made with Hitler. We gave him the territory. We didn’t know it at the time that he had had this pact. But the point is is our government was supporting the Soviet Union. And at Yalta, when we gave him these satellite countries, Stalin of course promised that they were going to have free and fair elections, democracy was going to be upheld in these countries. He had no intention of that.

(38:27):

And looking in my book, that’s the history of Hungary that I trace. They had no intention of that. It was decades of oppression and taking people’s freedom away from them and destroying the country. But it’s just extremely ironic that we allowed that to happen during the Nuremberg trials when the Hitler-Stalin pact came out. Our government was silent on it. It was even in a few newspapers in the us, but mainly we were totally silent about this.

Bill Walton (39:03):

The Polish massacre and then Earle, they wouldn’t believe him about that. And then he was rewarded with an assignment to Samoa.

Chris Farrell (39:17):

Right. So here’s what [inaudible 00:39:20]

Bill Walton (39:20):

“We got to get this guy as far away from us as we can stand without eliminating him. So let’s send him to Samoa.”

Shea Bradley Farrell (39:26):

This former governor, millionaire.

Chris Farrell (39:27):

March of 1945, Earle comes back to Washington DC and he detects a marked change in what’s going on at the White House. Forrestal, who was then our Secretary of War, we still called it that for all who was a conservative [inaudible 00:39:45]

Bill Walton (39:44):

This was before politically correct. It actually is war. But anyway …

Chris Farrell (39:49):

Forrestal’s meeting with Earle in one of the ante rooms in the White House, and he turns to Earle and says, “The whole place has gone pink,” which was 1940s slang for they’re a bunch of commies, they’re all lefties now. And even the people surrounding FDR had turned over to a certain degree and we’re markedly more hard over to the left.

(40:13):

Earle finally gets in to see the President and they discuss two things, two burning issues. Number one, “Why the hell, didn’t you ever answer me when I told you the Germans were ready to roll over and give you Hitler?” But more importantly, the discussion of the Katyn forest massacre that Shea mentioned earlier. It’s quite a blow up. I mean, they know each other. Earle still respects him as President, but he has also known him since he was 18 or 19 years old. So he speaks to him in a way that is probably a little more frank than he is used to being spoken to. So it’s a very frank, very heated conversation. And Earle says, “Look, it’s probably best that I resign my commission as a naval officer, and let me just go back to private business and goodbye. Good luck.” And he goes home. And that’s the end of the meeting.

(41:04):

Eventually, Earle, when he gets home, decides, “You know what? I need to tell FDR what I really think I’m going to do here. I’ve thought this over.” Whenever he writes to FDR at this point, his mail is intercepted. It never actually gets to FDR. He knows this because of conversational tidbits that come up in their kind of back and forth. So, he writes to FDRs daughter, Anne, and he includes a gift, a knife from a Moroccan prince that he had picked up along the way. And he says, “By the way, pass this along to your dad and let him know that it’s my intention to go to the press and Congress and explain to them all that I’ve learned about what the Soviet threat is.” The response back to Earle is a letter, and I have it, FDR explicitly forbidding him to say anything about anything that he has learned as his personal emissary to the Balkans, or as a naval officer or as an ambassador. He forbids him in any way. Earle says, “You have my agreement. I won’t say anything as long as you’re President. I won’t say a word.” Well, FDR then has a little special treat for him.

Bill Walton (42:20):

Enclosed was also a ticket to Samoa.

Chris Farrell (42:22):

Well-

Shea Bradley Farrell (42:23):

That’s right.

Chris Farrell (42:24):

… Earle’s out fishing at Deep Creek Lake, Maryland. And he sees a motorboat speeding toward him, and there’s two FBI agents on board, and they grab him and they bring him back to Washington. They stick him on a plane. And he’s then 8,000 miles out in the Pacific as the Deputy Governor of Samoa. Here’s a man who’s been governor of Pennsylvania.

Shea Bradley Farrell (42:51):

He’s a billionaire, basically, right?

Chris Farrell (42:51):

Ambassador twice.

Bill Walton (42:52):

I wondered about that title. They couldn’t make him gov, they made him Deputy governor.

Chris Farrell (42:56):

[inaudible 00:42:58]

Shea Bradley Farrell (42:58):

FDR’s friend, supported him.

Chris Farrell (43:00):

Yeah. So not too long after that FDR dies, and very shortly after that, Earle communicates back to Truman, “Okay, fun’s fun, game is over. I’m coming home.” And he does in fact return to the United States.

Bill Walton (43:16):

So the lesson here though is that people, and I used to be in the skeptical camp. Actually when I first met Diana West, I was, “Oh gosh, were all these communists really in the White House?”

Shea Bradley Farrell (43:28):

Me too. I was too. I thought the same thing.

Bill Walton (43:31):

I thought, “Come on.” But it turns out that-

Shea Bradley Farrell (43:33):

They really were.

Bill Walton (43:35):

And you learned a lot of this from previously unclassified documents. [inaudible 00:43:39]

Chris Farrell (43:38):

And I got a ton of declassified as well along the way. We went through the process.

Bill Walton (43:41):

You went through the process.

Chris Farrell (43:41):

Of getting all this.

Bill Walton (43:44):

And so we learned that in fact, what seemed to be just paranoia was in fact true.

Chris Farrell (43:50):

100%

Bill Walton (43:51):

So fast-forward to today, now we’re worried about whether there are people inside the United States government now who may be playing for the other team, the other team being China, that that could in fact be going on.

Chris Farrell (44:05):

Yeah, I mean, it’s worse than that because not just China as an active opponent of ours, there is a societal shift where we have people who have glommed onto this neo Marxism, this globalism, and they’ve sworn their allegiance to it. It’s like a religion to them. This is above and beyond a political discussion that a Republican and a Democrat might have 20 or 30 years ago. This is something that they are … I mean, Obama described it perfectly. It’s fundamental transformation.

Shea Bradley Farrell (44:47):

And can I explain something? I mean, the reason that I wrote the book, Bill, Last Warning to the West, is because the Hungarians were telling me that the rhetoric coming out of the United States reminded them of their Soviet era. That’s like a kick in the gut. But doing the research, and you look back in my big point about all this is that we helped to spread communism. We helped to give the Soviet Union, these countries to foment this ideology, which was the goal of the common term, the Communist International. I also didn’t know if that was a real thing. I did the research. That was a real thing too. And it has spread into this country. Progressivism is very similar to the tenets of Marxism. And again, I’ve done the research to prove all of that. But that’s my big lesson is that we have got to stop doing this. And as you’re saying, there are people in the government that are very much standing up for Marxism.

Bill Walton (45:51):

Well, if these ideas have taken hold and they have taken hold, there are people, I guess one of the books was called, yours is Last Warning of the West. There’s another one, War in the West. And my feeling is the West is committing suicide.

Shea Bradley Farrell (46:05):

Yeah, I agree with that.

Bill Walton (46:06):

And it’s done from, it starts in our universities and the hatred of the US or the American institutions.

Chris Farrell (46:14):

Correct.

Bill Walton (46:15):

And loving all things globalism. And so we’ve got, you’re right, China is an issue, but maybe the bigger issue is the war of ideas.

Shea Bradley Farrell (46:28):

Yes, the ideology. And we have loved Marxism, we have loved communism. This is what FDR did at the same time thinking that fascism was bad. Well, of course it is.

Bill Walton (46:39):

It’s got such a great track record too.

Shea Bradley Farrell (46:41):

Yeah, it does. But I want people to understand that these are similar ideologies and that they control and kill a society.

Bill Walton (46:50):

Yeah. Yes. Chris, Shea, thank you. We have to come back. I’ve had a chance to do duets here. These are both tremendously interesting reads, and I think you need to understand this because what’s going on then is going on now.

Shea Bradley Farrell (47:12):

Let’s stop it. We’ve got to stop it.

Chris Farrell (47:12):

Absolutely.

Bill Walton (47:13):

Yeah.

Shea Bradley Farrell (47:14):

It’s always a pleasure, Bill.

Chris Farrell (47:15):

There should be airports and bridges named after George Earle, and he has been airbrushed out of history.

Bill Walton (47:23):

Well, no more. We’re going to get this book more widely read and see if we can’t resurrect it as a warning to the West now.

(47:31):

And you can catch Chris on his own podcast, Judicial Watch. Your show is called On Watch. Shea, you don’t have a podcast yet.

Shea Bradley Farrell (47:41):

I feel like I need one, right?

Bill Walton (47:42):

Everybody I know has a podcast. We all need a podcast.

Shea Bradley Farrell (47:44):

I’ll get on that, Bill. I’ll get on that.

Bill Walton (47:48):

But anyway, great talking to you guys. We’ll be talking again, I’m sure soon.

Shea Bradley Farrell (47:52):

Always a pleasure.

Chris Farrell (47:53):

Thank you, Bill.

Bill Walton (47:53):

And to be continued.

Chris Farrell (47:54):

Thank you.

(47:54):

Thanks very much.

Bill Walton (47:55):

Thanks. Okay, great.

(47:56):

Thank you for joining. As always. You can catch us on all the podcast platforms and rumbling on YouTube, on CPAC now on Monday nights. And sign up, subscribe if you haven’t already done so. And also get your friends to subscribe and drop us a note email to let us know what else you’d like us to be covering. So thanks and stay tuned. We’ll talk soon.