The Best Enemy Money can Buy
By Antony Sutton
CHAPTER I
America's Deaf Mute Blind Men
"To attribute to others the identical sentiments that guide oneself is never to
understand others."
— Gustav Le Bon
Over the past several decades, quietly, without media attention, many Americans in diverse
fields of activity have been pressured into silence, and failing silence, have been removed
from their positions or excommunicated from a chosen profession. These men range from
historians in Department of State, top level officials in Department of Commerce, engineers
working for IBM, to academics in America's leading universities.
In each case threats and pressures which led to censorship, firing, and excommunication
track back to the deaf mute blind men, and their associates in political Washington.
Who are the deaf mute blind men?
The Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilych (Ulyanov) Lenin coined the phrase, and whatever
we think of Lenin's revolutionary philosophy, we cannot deny his genius in the analysis of
capitalists and their motivations. Here is Lenin on the "deaf mute blind men."
The Capitalists of the world and their governments, in pursuit of conquest of
the Soviet market, will close their eyes to the indicated higher reality and thus
will turn into deaf mute blind men. They will extend credits, which will
strengthen for us the Communist Party in their countries and giving us the
materials and technology we lack, they will restore our military industry,
indispensable for our future victorious attacks on our suppliers. In other
words, they will labor for the preparation for their own suicide.1
The Suppressed Higher Reality
What is this "higher reality" that Lenin identifies? It is simply that the Soviet system cannot
generate sufficient innovation and technology to become a world power, yet Soviet global
ambitions demand that its socialist system challenge and surpass the capitalist systems of
the West. Lenin deduced just before he died in 1923 that Soviet communism had an
Achilles heel, a fatal defect. In a remarkable about-face Lenin then introduced the New
Economic Policy, a return to limited free enterprise and a prelude to a long-lasting
cooperation with Western capitalists — the deaf mute blind men. This policy was repeated
by Communist China in the early 1980s.
It is knowledge of this "higher reality" that has been ruthlessly suppressed by successive
Administrations under political pressure from internationalist businessmen. The State
Department, for example, has a disgraceful record of attempting to black out information
and present a false picture of historical events. Under John Foster Dulles, Dr. G. Bernard
Noble, a Rhodes scholar and an enemy of any attempt to change the Establishment's partyline, was promoted to take charge of the Historical Office at State Department. Two
historians, Dr. Donald Dozer and Dr. Bryton Barron, who protested the official policy of
distorting information and suppressing historical documents, were railroaded out of the
State Department. Dr. Barron, in his book, Inside the State Department,2 specifically
charged the State Department with responsibility for the exportation of military technology
to the Soviet Union, and listed four examples of highly strategic tools whose export to the
USSR was urged by officials of the State Department.
1. Boring mills for manufacture of tanks, artillery, aircraft, and the atomic
reactors used in submarines.
2. Vertical boring mills for manufacture of jet engines.
3. Dynamic balance machines used to balance shafts on engines for jet
airplanes and guided missiles.
4. External cylindrical grinding machines which a Defense Department expert
testified were essential in making engine parts, guided missiles, and radar.
Bryton Barron concludes:
It should be evident that we cannot trust the present personnel of the
Department to apply our agreements in the nation's interest any more than we
can trust it to give us the full facts about our treaties and other international
commitments.
Breathtakingly inaccurate are the only words that can describe State Department claims
regarding our military assistance to the Soviet Union. The general State Department line is
that the Soviets have a self-developed technology, that trade is always peaceful, that we
have controls on the export of strategic goods, and that there is no conceivable relationship
between our export to the Soviet Union and Soviet armaments production·
An example will make the point. Here is a statement by Ambassador Trezise to the Senate:
Ambassador Trezise: We, I think, are sometimes guilty, Senator, of a degree
of false and unwarranted pride in our industrial and technological might, a kind
of arrogance, if you will · . . we are ahead of the Soviet Union in many areas of
industry and technology. But a nation that can accomplish the scientific and
technological feats the Soviet Union has accomplished in recent years is clearly
not a primitive, mudhut economy .... It is a big, vigorous, strong, and highly
capable national entity, and its performance in the space field and in other
fields has given us every indication that Soviet engineers, technicians,
scientists, are in the forefront of the scientists, engineers, technicians of the
world.
Senator Muskie: So that the urge towards increased trade with Eastern
European countries has not resulted in a weakening of the restrictions related to
strategic goods?
Ambassador Trezise: I think that is an accurate statement, Senator.
Now we have, we think, quite an effective system of handling items which are in the
military area or so closely related thereto that they become strategic items by everybody's
agreement.
In fact, at the very time Trezise was making the above soothing statement, critical
shipments of strategic materials and equipment were going forward to the Soviet Union.
The so-called Export Control laws were a leaky sieve due to outright inefficiency in
Departments of State and Commerce.
Censorship has enabled politically appointed officials and the permanent Washington
bureaucracy to make such unbelievably inaccurate statements without fear of challenge in
Congress or by the American public.
The State Department files are crammed with information concerning U.S. technical and
economic assistance to the Soviet Union. The author of this book required three substantial
volumes (see Bibliography) just to summarize this assistance for the years 1917-1970. Yet
former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, presumably acting on the advice of State Department
researchers, stated in 1961, "It would seem clear that the Soviet Union derives only the most
marginal help in its economic development from the amount of U.S. goods it receives." A
statement flatly contradictory to the massive evidence available in departmental files.
In 1968 Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, Assistant Secretary of State, made a statement that was
similarly inconsistent with observable fact, and displayed a fundamental lack of commonsense reasoning:
We should have no illusions. If we do not sell peaceful goods to the nations of
Eastern Europe, others will. If we erect barriers to our trade with Eastern
Europe, we will lose the trade and Eastern Europe will buy elsewhere. But we
will not make any easier our task of stopping aggression in Vietnam nor in
building security for the United States.3
In fact, aggression in South Vietnam would have been impossible without U.S. assistance to
the Soviet Union. Much of the key "European" technology cited derives from U.S.
subsidiaries.
Jack N. Behrman, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the
Department of Commerce, repeated the same theme on behalf of the Commerce
Department:
This is the old problem of economic dependency. However, I do not believe
that Russia would in fact permit herself to become dependent upon imported
sources of strategic goods. Rather she would import amounts additional to her
strategic needs, thereby relieving the pressure on her economy by not risking
dependence.4
In fact, Jack Behrman to the contrary notwithstanding, Soviet Russia is the most dependent
large nation in modern history, for wheat as well as technology.
Here's another statement from former Secretary of Commerce Maurice H. Stans:
Q: Is there danger of this country's helping the Russians build a war potential
that might be turned against the interests of the free world?
A: Under the circumstances, we might be very foolish not to accept business
which could create jobs in the United States, when refusing to sell to the Soviet
Union would in no way deter their progress.5
Suppression of Information
Information suppression concerning Soviet relations with the United States may be found in
all administrations, Democrat and Republican, from President Wilson to President Reagan.
For example, on November 28, 1917, just a few weeks after the Petrograd and Moscow
Bolsheviks had overthrown the democratic and constitutional government of Russia,
"Colonel" House (then in Paris) intervened on behalf of the Bolsheviks and cabled President
Wilson and the Secretary of State in the "Special Green" cipher of the State Department as
follows:
There has been cabled over and published here [Paris] statements made by
American papers to the effect that Russia should be treated as an enemy. It is
exceedingly important that such criticisms should be suppressed...6
Suppression of information critical of the Soviet Union and our military assistance to the
Soviets may be traced in the State Department files from this 1917 House cable down to the
present day, when export licenses issued for admittedly military equipment exports to the
USSR are not available for public information. In fact, Soviet sources must be used to trace
the impact of some American technology on Soviet military development. The Soviet
Register of Shipping, for example, publishes the technical specifications of main engines in
Russian vessels (including country of manufacture): this information is not available from
U.S. official sources. In November 1971, Krasnaya Zvezda published an article with
specific reference to the contribution of the basic Soviet industrial structure to the Soviet
military power — a contribution that representatives of the U.S. Executive Branch have
explicitly denied to the public and to Congress.
Even today U.S. assistance to the Soviet military-industrial complex and its weapons
systems cannot be documented from open U.S. sources alone because export license
memoranda are classified data. Unless the technical nature of our shipments to the USSR is
known, it is impossible to determine their contribution to the Soviet military complex. The
national security argument is not acceptable as a defense for classification because the
Soviets know what they are buying. So does the United States government. So do U.S.
firms. So do the deaf mute blind men. The group left out in the cold is the American
taxpayer-voter.
From time to time bills have been introduced in Congress to make export-license
information freely available. These bills have never received Administration support.
Nonavailability of current information means that decisions affecting all Americans are
made by a relatively few government officials without impartial outside scrutiny, and under
political pressure from internationalist businessmen. In many cases these decisions would not
be sustained if subjected to public examination and criticism. It is argued by policy-makers
that decisions affecting national security and international relations cannot be made in a
goldfish bowl. The obvious answer to this is the history of the past seventy years: we have
had one catastrophic international problem after another — and in the light of history, the
outcome would have been far less costly if the decisions had been made in a goldfish bowl.
For instance, little more than a decade after House's appeal to Wilson, Senator Smoot
inquired of the State Department about the possible military end-uses of an aluminum
powder plant to be erected in the Soviet Union by W. Hahn, an American engineer. State
Department files contain a recently declassified document which states why no reply was
ever given to Senator Smoot:
No reply was made to Senator Smoot by the Department as the Secretary did
not desire to indicate that the Department had no objection to the rendering by
Mr. Hahn of technical assistance to the Soviet authorities in the production of
aluminum powder, in view of the possibility of its use as war material, and
preferred to take no position at the time in regard to the matter.7
Congressional action in the Freedom on Information Act and administrative claims of
speedy declassification have not changed this basic situation. Major significant documents
covering the history of the past seventy years are buried, and they will remain buried until
an outraged public opinion puts some pressure on Congress.
Congress has on the other hand investigated and subsequently published several reports on
the export of strategic materials to the Soviet Union. One such instance, called "a life and
death matter" by Congress, concerned the proposed shipment of ball bearing machines to
the USSR.8 The Bryant Chucking Grinder Company accepted a Soviet order for thirty-five
Centalign-B machines for processing miniature ball bearings. All such precision ball
bearings in the United States, used by the Department of Defense for missile guidance
systems, were processed on seventy-two Bryant Centalign Model-B machines.
In 1961 the Department of Commerce approved export of thirty-five such machines to the
USSR, which would have given the Soviets capability about equal to 50 percent of the U.S.
capability.
The Soviets had no equipment for such mass production processing, and neither the USSR
nor any European manufacturer could manufacture such equipment. A Department of
Commerce statement that there were other manufacturers was shown to be inaccurate.
Commerce proposed to give the Soviet Union an ability to use its higher-thrust rockets with
much greater accuracy and so pull ahead of the United States. Subsequently, a
congressional investigation yielded accurate information not otherwise available to
independent non-government researchers and the general public.
Congressional investigations have also unearthed extraordinary "errors" of judgment by
high officials. For example, in 1961 a dispute arose in U.S. government circles over the
"Transfermatic Case" — a proposal to ship to the USSR two transfer lines (with a total
value of $4.3 million) for the production of truck engines.
In a statement dated February 23, 1961, the Department of Defense went on record against
shipment of the transfer lines on the grounds that "the technology contained in these
Transfermatic machines produced in the United States is the most advanced in the world,"
and that "so far as this department knows, the USSR has not installed this type of
machinery. The receipt of this equipment by the USSR will contribute to the Soviet military
and economic warfare potential." This argument was arbitrarily overturned by the incoming
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Secretary McNamara did not allow for the known
fact that most Soviet military trucks came from two American-built plants even then
receiving equipment from the United States. The Transfermatic machines approved by
McNamara had clear and obvious military uses — as the Department of Defense had
previously argued. Yet McNamara allowed them to go forward.
Yet another calculated deception of the American public can be traced to the Johnson
Administration. In 1966 the U.S. Department of State produced a beautiful, extravagantly
illustrated brochure of American hand tools. This was printed in Russian, for distribution in
Russia, with a preface — in Russian — by Lyndon Johnson. Requests to the State
Department for a copy of this brochure went unanswered. The book is not listed in official
catalogues of government publications. It is not available or even known to the general
public. No printer's name appears on the back cover. The publisher is not listed. The author
obtained a copy from Russia. Here is the preface:
Hand Tools — USA9
Welcome to the "Hand Tools — USA" exhibit — the eighth consecutive
exhibit arranged for citizens of the Soviet Union.
At this exhibit you will see samples of various hand tools currently
manufactured in the United States — tools that facilitate manual work and
make it possible to produce better-quality industrial goods at a much lower
cost.
Since the very early days of the history of our country, Americans of all ages
have worked with hand tools. In industry and at home, in factories and on
farms, in workshops and schools, the hand tool has become indispensable in
our lives.
Some of these tools have retained their original simplicity of design; others
have acquired entirely new forms and are now used to perform new functions.
We sincerely hope that this exhibit will lead to a better understanding of the
American people and their way of life.
/s/ Lyndon B. Johnson
Why all the secrecy? Imagine the public reaction in 1966, when the Soviets were supplying
the North Viets with weapons to kill Americans (over 5,000 were killed that year), if it had
become known that the State Department had published lavish booklets in Russian for free
distribution in Russia at taxpayers' expense.
However, the point at issue is not the wisdom of publication, but the wisdom of
concealment. The public is not told because the public might protest. In other words, the
public cannot be trusted to see things in the same light as the policymakers, and the
policymakers are unwilling to defend their positions.
Further, what would have been the domestic political consequences if it had been known
that a U.S. President had signed a document in Russian, lavishly produced at the taxpayers'
expense for free distribution in Russia, while Russian weapons were killing Americans in
Vietnam with assistance from our own deaf mute blind men? The citizen-taxpayer does not
share the expensive illusions of the Washington elite., The political reaction by the
taxpayer, and his few supporters in Congress, would have been harsh and very much to the
point.
The Deaf Mute Blind men
The key party interested in concealment of information about our export to the Soviet
Union is, of course, the American firms and individuals prominently associated with such
exports, i.e., the deaf mute blind men themselves.
In general, the American public has a basic right to know what is being shipped and who is
shipping it, if the Soviets are using the material against us. The public also has a right to
know about the personal interests of presidential appointees and previous employment with
firms prominent in trade with the USSR.
Until recently, the firms involved could publicly claim ignorance of the use to which the
Soviets put imported Western technology. It is not a good claim, but it was made. From the
1970's on, ignorance of end-use is not a valid claim. The evidence is clear, overwhelming,
and readily available: the Soviets have used American technology to kill Americans and
their allies.
The claim that publication of license information would give undue advantage to
competitors is not the kind of argument that an honest businessman would make. It is only
necessary to publish certain basic elementary information: date, name of firm, amount,
destination in the USSR, and a brief statement of the technical aspects. Every industry has a
"grapevine" and potential business in an industry is always common knowledge.
In any event, suppose there was adverse comment about a particular sale to the Soviets? Is
this a bad thing? If our policies are indeed viable, why fear public opinion? Or are certain
sectors of our society to be immune from public criticism?
Soviet dependency on our technology, and their use of this technology for military
purposes, could have been known to Congress on a continuing basis in the 1950s and 1960s
if export license information had been freely available. The problem was suspected, but the
compilation of the proof had to wait several decades until the evidence became available
from Soviet sources. In the meantime, Administration and business spokesmen were able to
make absurd statements to Congress without fear of challenge. In general, only those who
had already made up their minds that Soviet trade was desirable had access to license
information. These were the deaf mute blind men only able to see their own conception of
events and blind to the fact that we had contributed to construction of Soviet military
power.
In 1968, for example, the Gleason Company of Rochester, New York shipped equipment to
the Gorki automobile plant in Russia, a plant previously built by the Ford Motor Company.
The information about shipment did not come from 'the censored licenses but from foreign
press sources. Knowledge of license application for any equipment to be used to Gorki
would have elicited vigorous protests to Congress. Why? Because the Gorki plant produces
a wide range of military vehicles and equipment. Many of the trucks used on the Ho Chi
Minh trail were GAZ vehicles from Gorki. The rocket-launchers used against Israel are
mounted on GAZ-69 chassis made at Gorki. They have Ford-type engines made at Gorki.
Thus, a screen of censorship vigorously supported by multinational businessmen has
withheld knowledge of a secret shift in direction of U.S. foreign policy. This shift can be
summarized as follows:
1. Our long-run technical assistance to the Soviet Union has built a first-order
military threat to our very existence.
2. Our lengthy history of technical assistance to the Soviet military structure
was known to successive administrations, but has only recently (1982) been
admitted to Congress or to the American public.
3. Current military assistance is also known, but is admitted only on a case by case basis when information to formulate a question can be obtained from
non government sources.
4. As a general rule, detailed data on export licenses, which are required to
establish the continuing and long-run dependence of the Soviet military industrial complex on the United States, have been made available to Congress
only by special request, and have been denied completely to the American
public at large.
In brief, all presidential administrations, from that of Woodrow Wilson to that of Ronald
Reagan, have followed a bipartisan foreign policy of building up the Soviet Union. This
policy is censored. It is a policy of suicide.
Persistent pressure from nongovernmental researchers and knowledgeable individuals has
today forced the Administration to at least publicly acknowledge the nature of the problem
but still do very little about it. For instance, in an interview on March 8, 1982, William
Casey, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, made the following revealing statement:
We have determined that the Soviet strategic advances depend on Western
technology to a far greater degree than anybody ever dreamed of. It just doesn't
make any sense for us to spend additional billions of dollars to protect
ourselves against the capabilities that the Soviets have developed largely by
virtue of having pretty much of a free ride on our research and development.
They use every method you can imagine — purchase, legal and illegal; theft;
bribery; espionage; scientific exchange; study of trade press, and invoking the
Freedom of Information Act — to get this information.
We found that scientific exchange is a big hole. We send scholars or young
people to the Soviet Union to study Pushkin poetry; they send a 45-year-old
man out of their KGB or defense establishment to exactly the schools and the
professors who are working on sensitive technologies.
The KGB has developed a large, independent, specialized organization which
does nothing but work on getting access to Western science and technology.
They have been recruiting about 100 young scientists and engineers a year for
the last 15 years. They roam the world looking for technology to pick up.
Back in Moscow there are 400 or 500 assessing what they might need and
where they might get it — doing their targeting and then assessing what they
get. It's a very sophisticated and far flung operation.10
Unfortunately, Mr. Casey, who pleads surprise at the discovery, is still concealing the whole
story. This author (not alone) made this known to Department of Defense over 15 years
ago, with a request for information to develop the full nature of the problem. This exchange
of letters is reproduced as Appendix A. Nothing was done in 1971. In the past 15 years
there has been a superficial change — the Reagan Administration is now willing to admit
the existence of the problem. It has not yet been willing to face the policy challenge. Until
the deaf mute blind men are neutralized, our assistance for Soviet strategic advances will
continue.
CHAPTER II
American Trucks in Korea and
Vietnam —
For the Other Side
If we do not develop our automobile industry, we are threatened with the
heaviest losses, if not defeats, in a future war.
Pravda, July 20, 1927
At the end of World War II the U.S. government appointed an interagency committee to
consider the future of the German automobile industry and its war-making potential. This
committee concluded that any motor vehicle industry in any country is an important factor
in that country's war potential.
More than half U.S. tanks, almost all armored and half-track vehicles and one-third of guns
over 33 millimeter were manufactured in U.S. civilian motor vehicle plants.
Consequently, the committee unanimously recommended:
1. Any vehicle industry is a major force for war.
2. German automotive manufacturing should be prohibited because it was a war
industry.
3. Numerous military products can be made by the automobile industry,
including aerial torpedoes, aircraft cannon, aircraft instruments, aircraft
engines, aircraft engines parts, aircraft ignition testers, aircraft machine guns,
aircraft propeller subassemblies, aircraft propellers, aircraft servicing and
testing equipment, aircraft struts, airframes, and so on. A total of 300 items of
military equipment was listed.
A comparison of the recommendations from this committee with subsequent administrative
recommendations and policies for the export of automobile-manufacturing plants to the
Soviet Union demonstrates extraordinary inconsistencies. If automobile-manufacturing
capacity has "warlike" potential for Germany and the United States, then it also has
"warlike" potential for the Soviet Union. But the recommendations for post-war
Germany and the Soviet Union are totally divergent. Some of the same Washington
bureaucrats (for example, Charles R. Weaver of the Department of Commerce) participated
in making both decisions.
In brief, any automobile or tractor plant can be used to produce tanks, armored cars, military
trucks, other military vehicles and equipment. A major conclusion reached by a U.S.
interagency committee formed to study the war-making potential of the U.S. and German
automotive industries was that a motor vehicle industry has enormous military potential.
"The Committee recognized without dissent that [Germany's] motor vehicle industry was an
important factor in her waging of war during World War II."
On the basis of its findings, the committee recommended that the manufacture of complete
automobiles in Germany be prohibited, that the manufacture of certain parts and
subassemblies be "specifically prohibited," and that Germany "should not be permitted to
retain in her possession any types of vehicles or particular military application, such as
track-laying vehicles, multi-axle vehicles, etc."
The committee further listed more than 300 "war products manufactured by the automotive
industry."
These conclusions have been ignored for the Soviet automobile industry, even while the
Soviets themselves officially stated their intention to use foreign automobile technology for
military vehicles as early as 1927. V. V. Ossinsky, a top planner, wrote a series of articles
for Pravda (July 20, 21 and 22, 1927) with the following warning:
If in a future war we use the Russian peasant cart against the American or
European automobile, the result to say the least will be disproportionately
heavy losses, the inevitable consequences of technical weakness. This is
certainly not industrialized defense.
The Soviet military-civilian vehicle manufacturing industry, as subsequently developed,
produces a limited range of utilitarian trucks and automobiles in a few large plants
designed, built by, and almost entirely equipped with Western, primarily American,
technical assistance and machinery. These motor vehicle plants mostly manufacture their
own components and ship these to assembly plants elsewhere in the Soviet Union.
There is a high degree of integration between Russian military and civilian vehicle models.
Military and civilian vehicles have interchangeable parts and Soviet policy is to maximize
unification of military and civilian designs to assist model change-over in case of war.
This unification of military and civilian automobile design has been described by the Soviet
economist A. N. Lagovskiy:
The fewer design changes between the old and the new type of product, the
easier and more rapidly the enterprise will shift to new production. If, for
example, chassis, motors, and other parts of a motor vehicle of a civilian model
are used for a military motor vehicle, or course, the shift to the mass production
of the military motor vehicle will occur considerably faster and more easily
than if the design of all the main parts were different.
Lagovskiy notes that Soviet "civilian" agricultural tractors and motor vehicles can be used
directly as military vehicles without major conversion. Soviet tractors (direct copies of
Caterpillar models) were used as artillery tractors in World War II and Korea. General G. I.
Pokrovski makes a similar argument about the U.S. 106-millimeter recoilless weapon
mounted on a Willys jeep and comments that "even relatively powerful recoilless artillery
systems can, at the present time, be mounted on a light automobile without reducing the
number of men accomodated."11
Almost all — possibly 95 percent — of Soviet military vehicles are produced in very large
plants designed by American engineers in the 1930s through the 1970s.
The Soviet Military Truck Industry
Soviet civilian and military trucks are produced in the same plants and have extensive
interchangeability of parts and components. For example, the ZIL-131 was the main 31/2-
ton 6x6 Soviet military truck used in Vietnam and Afghanistan and is produced also in a
civilian 4 x 2 version as the ZIL-130. Over 60 percent of the parts in the ZIL-131 military
truck are common to the ZIL-130 civilian truck.
All Soviet truck technology and a large part of Soviet truck-manufacturing equipment has
come from the West, mainly from the United States. While some elementary transfers-lines
and individual machines for vehicle production are made in the Soviet Union, these are
copies of Western machines and always obsolete in design.
Many major American companies have been prominent in building up the Soviet truck
industry. The Ford Motor Company, the A. J. Brandt Company, the Austin Company,
General Electric, Swindell-Dressier, and others supplied the technical assistance, design
work, and equipment of the original giant plants.
This Soviet military-civilian truck industry originally comprised two main groups of plants,
plus five newer giant plants. The first group used models, technical assistance, and parts and
components from the Ford-built Gorki automobile plant (GAZ is the model designation).
The second group of production plants used models, parts, and components from the A. J.
Brandt-rebuilt ZIL plant in Moscow (Zavod imeni Likhachev, formerly the AMO and later
the Stalin plant). Consequently this plant was called the BBH-ZIL plant after the three
companies involved in its reconstruction and expansion in the 1930s: A. J. Brandt, Budd,
and Hamilton Foundry.
There is a fundamental difference between the Ford and Brandt companies. Brandt had only
one contract in the USSR, to rebuild the old AMO plant in 1929. AMO in 1930 had a
production of 30,000 trucks per year, compared to the Gorki plant, designed from scratch by
Ford for an output of 140,000 vehicles per year. Ford is still interested in Russian business.
Brandt is not interested and has not been since 1930.
The Ford-Gorki group of assembly plants includes the plants at Ulyanovsk (model
designation UAZ), Odessa (model designation OAZ), and Pavlovo (model designation
PAZ). The BBH-ZIL group includes the truck plants at Mytischiy (MMZ model
designation), Miass (or URAL Zis), Dnepropetrovsk (model designation DAZ), Kutaisi
(KAZ model), and Lvov (LAZ model). Besides these main groups there are also five
independent plants. The Minsk truck plant (MAZ) was built with German assistance. The
Hercules-Yaroslavl truck plant (YaAz) was built by the Hercules Motor Company. The
MZMA plant in Moscow, which manufactures small automobiles, was also built by Ford
Motor Company.
In the late 1960s came the so-called Fiat-Togliatti auto plant. Three-quarters of this
equipment came from the United States. Then in 1972 the U.S. government issued $1
billion in licenses to export equipment and technical assistance for the Kama truck plant.
Planned as the largest truck plant in the world, it covers 36 square miles and produces more
heavy trucks, including military trucks, than the output of all U.S. heavy truck
manufacturers combined. (Togliatti and Kama are described in Chapter Three below.)
This comprises the complete Soviet vehicle manufacturing industry — all built with
Western, primarily American, technical assistance and technology. Military models are
produced in these plants utilizing the same components as the civilian models. The two
main vehicle production centers, Gorki and ZIL, manufacture more than two-thirds of all
Soviet civilian vehicles (excluding the new Togliatti and Kama plants) and almost all
current military vehicles.
The Ford Gorki "Automobile" Plant
In May 1929 the Soviets signed an agreement with the Ford Motor Company of Detroit.
The Soviets agreed to purchase $13 million worth of automobiles and parts and Ford agreed
to give technical assistance until 1938 to construct an integrated automobile-manufacturing
plant at Nizhni-Novgorod. Construction was completed in 1933 by the Austin Company for
production of the Ford Model-A passenger car and light truck. Today this plant is known as
Gorki. With its original equipment supplemented by imports and domestic copies of
imported equipment, Gorki produces the GAZ range of automobiles, trucks, and military
vehicles. All Soviet vehicles with the model prefix GAZ (Gorki Avtomobilnyi Zavod) are
from Gorki, and models with prefixes UAX, OdAZ, and PAZ are made from Gorki
components.
In 1930 Gorki produced the Ford Model-A (known as GAZ-A) and the Ford light truck
(called GAZ-AA). Both these Ford models were immediately adopted for military use.
By the late 1930s production at Gorki was 80,000-90,000 "Russian Ford" vehicles per year.
The engine production facilities at Gorki were designed under a technical assistance
agreement with the Brown Lipe Gear Company for gear-cutting technology and Timken-Detroit Axle Company for rear and front axles.
Furthermore, U.S. equipment has been shipped in substantial quantifies to Gorki and
subsidiary plants since the 1930s — indeed some shipments were made from the United
States in 1968 during the Vietnamese War.
As soon as Ford's engineers left Gorki in 1930 the Soviets began production of military
vehicles. The Soviet BA armored car of the 1930s was the GAZ-A (Ford Model-A) chassis,
intended for passenger cars, but converted to an armored car with the addition of a DT
machine gun. The BA was followed by the BA-10 — the Ford Model-A truck chassis with
a mount containing either a 37-millimeter gun or a 12.7-millimeter heavy machine gun. A
Red Army staff car was also based on the Ford Model-A in the pre-war period.
During World War II Gorki produced the GAZ-60 — a hybrid half-track personnel carrier
that combined the GAZ-63 chassis. In the late 1940s the plant switched to production of an
amphibious carrier — The GAZ-46. This was a standard GAZ-69 chassis with a U.S.
quarter-ton amphibious body.
In the mid-1950s Gorki produced the GAZ-47 armored amphibious cargo carrier with space
for nine men. Its engine was the GAZ-61, a 74-horsepower Ford-type 6-cylinder in-line
gasoline engine — the basic Gorki engine.
In the 1960s and 1970s production continued with an improved version of the BAZ-47
armored cargo carrier, using a GAZ-53 V-8 type engine developing 115 horsepower.
In brief, the Ford-Gorki plant has a continuous history of production of armored cars and
wheeled vehicles for Soviet army use: those used against the United States in Korea and
Vietnam.
In addition to armored cars, the Ford-Gorki factory manufactures a range of truck-mounted
weapons. This series began in the early thirties with a 76.2-millimeter field howitzer
mounted on the Ford-GAZ Model-A truck. Two similar weapons from Gorki before World
War II were a twin 25-millimeter antiaircraft machine gun and a quad 7.62-millimeter
Maxim antiaircraft machine gun — also mounted on the Ford-GAZ truck chassis.
During World War II Gorki produced several rocket-launchers mounted on trucks. First the
12-rail, 300-millimeter launcher; then, from 1944 onwards, the M-8, M-13, and M-31
rocket-launchers mounted on GAZ-63 trucks. (The GAZ-63 is an obvious direct copy of the
U.S. Army's 21/2-ton truck.) Also during World War II Gorki produced the GAZ-203, 85-
horsepower engine for the SU-76 self-propelled gun produced at Uralmashzavod.
(Uralmash was designed and equipped by American and German companies.)
After World War II Gorki production of rocket-launchers continued with the BM-31, which
had twelve 300-millimeter tubes mounted on a GAZ-63 truck chassis. In the late 1950s
another model was produced with twelve 140-millimeter tubes on a GAZ-63 truck chassis.
In the 1960s yet another model with eight 140-millimeter tube was produced on a GAZ-63
chassis.
Finally, in 1964 Gorki produced the first Soviet wire-guided missile antitank system. This
consisted of four rocket-launchers mounted on a GAZ-69 chassis. These weapons turned up
in Israel in the late 1960s. The GAZ-69 chassis produced at Gorki is also widely used in the
Soviet Army as a command vehicle and scout car. Soviet airborne troops use it as a tow for
the 57-millimeter antitank gun and the 14.5-millimeter double-barrelled antiaircraft gun.
Other Gorki vehicles used by the Soviet military include the GAZ-69 truck, used for towing
the 107-millimeter recoilless rifle (RP-107), the GAZ-46, or Soviet jeep, and the GAZ-54, a
1 1/2-ton military cargo truck.
In brief, the Gorki plant, built by the Ford Motor Company the Austin Company and
modernized by numerous other U.S. companies under the policy of "peaceful trade," is
today a major producer of Soviet army vehicles and weapons carriers.
The A. J. Brandt-ZIL Plant
A technical assistance agreement was concluded in 1929 with the Arthur J. Brandt
Company of Detroit for the reorganization and expansion of the tsarist AMO truck plant,
previously equipped in 1917 with new U.S. equipment. Design work for this expansion was
handled in Brandt's Detroit office and plant and American engineers were sent to Russia.
The AMO plant was again expanded in 1936 by the Budd Company and Hamilton Foundry
and its name was changed to ZIS (now ZIL). During World War II the original equipment
was removed to establish the URALS plant and the ZIS plant was re-established with LendLease equipment.
The first armored vehicle produced at AMO was an adaptation of the civilian ZIL-6 truck
produced after the Brandt reorganization in 1930. This vehicle was converted into a mount
for several self-propelled weapons, including the single 76.2-millimeter antiaircraft gun and
the 76.2-millimeter antitank gun.
In World War II the ZIL-6 was adapted for the 85-millimeter antitank and antiaircraft guns,
quadruple 7.62 Maxims, and several self-propelled rocket-launchers, including the M-8 36-
rail, 80-millimeter, and the Katyusha model M-13/A 16-rail, 130-millimeter rocketlauncher.
In the immediate postwar period the ZIL-150 truck chassis was used as a mount for the
model M-13 rocket-launcher and the ZIL-151 truck was used as a mount for the M-31
rocket-launcher. In addition, the ZIL-151 truck was used as a prime mover for the 82-
millimeter gun.
In 1953 the ZIL-151 truck was adapted for several other weapons, including the BM-24,
240-millimeter, 12-tube rocket-launcher; the RM-131-millimeter, 32-tube rocket-launcher;
the BM-14, 140-millimeter, 16-tube rocket-launcher, and the 200-millimeter, 4-tube rocketlauncher.
In the 1960s the ZIL-157 truck became a mount for the GOA-SA-2 antiaircraft missile, and
a prime mover for another rocket system.
The ZIL plant has also produced unarmored cargo and troop vehicles for the Soviet Army.
In 1932 the ZIL-33 was developed; an unarmored half-track used as a troop carrier. In 1936
the ZIL-6 was developed as a half-track and during World War II the ZIL-42 was developed
as a 21/2-ton tracked weapons carrier. In the postwar period the ZIL-151 truck chassis was
adapted for the BTR-152 armored troop carrier. In the 1950s the ZIL-485 was developed; a
replica of the American DUKW mounted on a ZIL-151 truck, and followed by an improved
DUKW mounted on a ZIL-157 truck.
From 1954 onwards new versions of the BTR-152 were added, based on the ZIL-157 truck. In the 1960s a new BTR-60 (8 x 8) amphibious personnel carrier was developed with a ZIL375 gasoline engine.
Other ZIL vehicles are also used for military purposes. For example the ZIL-111 is used as
a radar and computer truck for antiaircraft systems and as a tow for the M-38 short 122-
millimeter howitzer The ZIL-111 is copied from Studebaker 6 x 6 trucks supplied under
Lend-Lease.
There is a great deal of interchangeability between the military and civilian versions of the
ZIL family of vehicles. For example, an article in Ordnance states:
In the 1940s the ZIL-151, a 21/2-ton 6 x 6 was the workhorse of the Soviet
Army. It was replaced in the 1950s by the ZIL-157, an apparent product
improved version. In the 1960s, however, this vehicle class requirement was
met by the ZIL-131, a 31/2-ton 6 x 6 vehicle, essentially a military design. It is
of interest to note that a civilian version was marketed as the ZIL-130 in a 4 x 2
configuration. Over 60 percent of the components in the military version are
common to the civilian vehicle.
Thus the ZIL plant, originally designed and rebuilt under the supervision of the A. J. Brandt
Company of Detroit in 1930 and equipped by other American companies, was again
expanded by Budd and Hamilton Foundry in 19;36. Rebuilt with Lend-Lease equipment
and periodically updated with late model imports, ZIL has had a long and continuous
history of producing Soviet military cargo trucks and weapons carriers.
On April 19, 1972, the U.S. Navy photographed a Russian freighter bound for Haiphong
with a full load of military cargo, including a deck load of ZIL-130 cargo trucks and ZIL-555 dump trucks (Human Events, May 13, 1972). Thus the "peaceful trade" of the 1930s,
the 1940s, the 1950s, 1960s and the 1970s was used to kill Americans in Vietnam, and
commit genocide in Afghanistan.
The original 1930 equipment was removed from ZIL in 1944 and used to build the Miass
plant. It was replaced by Lend-Lease equipment, was supplemented by equipment imports
in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
The Urals plant at Miass (known as Urals ZIS or ZIL) was built in 1944 and largely tooled
with equipment evacauted form the Moscow ZIL plant. The Urals Miass plant started
production with the Urals-5 light truck, utilizing an engine with the specifications of the
1920 Fordson (original Ford Motor Company equipment supplied in the late 1920s was
used, supplemented by Lend-Lease equipment). The Urals plant today produces weapons
models: for example, a prime mover for guns, including the long-range 130-millimeter
cannon, and two versions — tracked and wheeled — of a 12-ton prime mover.
Possibly there may have been doubt as to Soviet end-use of truck plants back in the 20s
and ;30s, but the above information certainly was known to Washington at least by the mid
1960s when this author's first volume was published. The next chapter presents official
Washington's suicidal reaction to this information, under pressure from the deaf mute
blind men.
next
The Deaf Mutes Supply Trucks for Afghan Genocide 33s
Footnotes:
Chapter 1
1 Quoted in Joseph Finder, Red Carpet (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York,
1984), p. 8
2 Bryton Barron, Inside the State Department (New York: Comet Press, 1956).
3 House of Representatives, To Amend the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945
(Washington, DC, 1968), p. 64.
4 Ibid.
5 U.S. News & World Report, December 20, 1971.
6 See Antony Sutton, Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution {New York:
Arlington House, 1974).
7 U.S. State Dept. Decimal File, 861.659-Du Pont de Nemours & Co/5.
8 U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Proposed Shipment of Ball Bearing
Machines to the U.S.S.R. (Washington, 1961).
9 Author's translation from Russian of brochure for "Hand Tools -- USA"
exhibit.
10 United States Senate, Transfer of United States High Technology to the
Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc Nations Hearings before the Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations, 97th Congress Second Session, May 1982,
Washington, D.C., p. 55
Chapter 2
*The report is Study by Interagency Committee on the Treatment of the German
Automotive Industry the Standpoint of National Security (Washington, D.C.: Foreign
Economic Administration, July 14, 1945), Report T.I.D.C. No. 12.
11 G. I. Pokrovski, Science and Technology in Contemporary War (New York:
Frederick A. Praeger, 1959), p. 122.
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