I’ve noticed that every conspiracy theory that turns out to be conspiracy fact tends to land right back at the same doorsteps.
When I refused to play ball and sell out humanity, I was blacklisted. It shouldn’t be this way.
It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees. When the majority agrees with me on this, we will regain our sovereignty.
How an Oil Company Greased my Palms
The former President of Germany Johannes Rau (SPD) once said "It becomes dangerous when journalists influence political processes or even the outcome of elections through active meddling, which is guided by outside interests. It becomes dangerous when sentiments are deliberately intensified or even fostered in the first place by aggravation or half-truths."
Johannes Rau
Looking back, I was one of those people who was supposed to influence political processes by my reporting. When I was supplied with "information" for my articles during my countless foreign assignments, by Federal Intelligence Service field agents among others, I thought this was “normal."
However, it was almost always impossible to confirm if the information was accurate. Still, I published it with the full support of my former editor-in-chief. The phrasing I was expected to use was "according to information from within intelligence circles."
At the FAZ, we were really proud of having good contacts within "intelligence circles." Nevertheless, nobody was able to verify any of the "information" they were leaking to us.
We just printed it.
In retrospect, it's embarrassing to me. Even though I was participating in it voluntarily, I was also told that I could be fired if I didn't play along. Yes, that actually does happen. Yes, I had studied law at university and, just to be sure, I even asked some colleagues who were lawyers.
They confirmed the fact that an employer can fire an employee if they refuse to work with the Federal Intelligence Service. Later, verdicts confirming this have become a matter of the public record. For example:
A pilot working for Aero-Flugdienst, an affiliate of ADAC (Germany's largest automobile club with their own fleet of air ambulances), who didn't want to work undercover for the Federal Intelligence Service, was fired for "endangering national security."
The labor court also approved of this dismissal.
Many readers might think that something like this isn't possible in a democracy, associating acts like these with countries such as the former East Germany, but that's exactly what happened. The large network of German foreign correspondents was also very tempting to the Federal Intelligence Service. It was the perfect cover, letting innocent "journalists" do their sensitive research for them.
Colleagues who did that told me about it while we were abroad together because I was a part of this network as well. We promised each other we would never tell anyone else. Moreover, don't forget that in addition to 6,000 salaried employees, the Federal Intelligence Service has around 17,000 more “informal" employees. They have completely ordinary day jobs, and would never openly admit that they also work for the Federal Intelligence Service. It is the same all over the world.
As I inevitably found out during my decades abroad, almost every foreign reporter with an American or British newspaper was also active for their national intelligence services.
That's just something to keep in mind whenever you think you've got “neutral" reporting by the media in front of you.
I remember when I got involved with the Federal Academy for Security Politics, with their close ties to intelligence agencies. This was encouraged by my employer. I also remember that in the late summer of 1993 I was given time off to accept a six-week invitation from the transatlantic lobbying organization, the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
All of this surely affected my reporting. The German Marshall Fund sent me to New York, and I did a night shift with police officers in the Bronx. I wrote an article for the FAZ about this titled: "The toughest policemen in the world go through these doors."
It was one of many positive articles I wrote about the USA – discreetly organized by the German Marshall Fund. It may be hard to believe, but I was actually given a loaded firearm in New York. There's even a photo of the New York City Police Department handing it to me.
The reader didn't learn anything about what was going on behind the scenes, behind this favorable reporting in the FAZ. They also didn't find out about the discreet contacts I made during my stay in the US. These included a meeting with Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, the son of the Shah of Persia, who still hoped to regain the throne in Tehran with the help of the CIA.
Reza Cyrus Pahlavi
Reza Cyrus Pahlavi needed one thing above all else: attention in the media. Thus, as one of the world's many prestigious newspapers, the FAZ should support these plans through the media when the time was ripe, or so I found out when we met. This German Marshall Fund is a propaganda organization of the USA, one of the great powers that occupied Germany after the war. It was founded by Guido Goldman, son of Nahum Goldman, the founder and president of the World Jewish Congress.
According to their own information, the Marshall Fund exists to "develop leaders who are committed to transatlantic relationships." That may sound positive, but it really means the following: They want to recruit and train pro-American lobbyists. You're having trouble picturing what that means?
One example: On July 22, 1993, the then Governor of Oklahoma officially proclaimed me an honorary citizen of the State of Oklahoma. Governor David Walters signed the certificate of honorary citizenship, which was then framed and given to me at an official ceremony (Honorary Citizen of the State of Oklahoma).
The German Marshall Fund surprised me with the ceremony, organizing it without my knowledge. The certificate, with the state's seal and Governor's signature on official parchment, is still hanging in my office today. It hangs as a reminder of the perfidious tricks that are used to entice mainstream media journalists.
Needless to say, I wasn't awarded honorary citizenship in the US because my name is Udo Ulfkotte and I had a hobby of collecting inkwells at the time. I was given the honor because the transatlantic German Marshall Fund wanted to bring me so deep into the fold, that as an honorary citizen, I had no other choice but to produce pro-American reporting.
For six weeks in the USA, I got to experience this perfidious lobbying work up close and personal. In the meantime, I have broken off all contact. However, I can't say this about Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, my former FAZ colleague and the current head of the foreign policy desk at the FAZ.
Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger
His name continues to show up again and again in connection with the German Marshall Fund. Naturally, I also went on business trips with politicians who handed me portfolios with their "background information." Naturally, I was to incorporate this “information" in the newspaper without any changes.
That was all lobbying in its purest form. The only ones left in the dark were the readers. My long-standing employer, the FAZ, reassured my belief that journalists aren't "prostitutes."
Their journalists also weren't selling themselves, even if they accepted invitations on expensive foreign trips from companies like Shell on behalf of the FAZ - and then wrote flattering articles about it in the FAZ.
After one of these trips, when another journalist accused me of corruption, (“Bribed by Shell"), the FAZ sued my accuser in the District Court of Cologne (case no.: 28 0 19/97) – and lost.
That was in 1997. Since then, anyone can rightfully claim that I was "bribed" by Shell. This is because, in one of the articles I wrote about Shell in Nigeria, what the reader didn't learn was that my entire, luxurious research trip to the oil-producing region, including the use of a helicopter on location, was financed for the FAZ by Shell.
Even though I did note that Shell paid for the trip in my original text, this was later cut out by a colleague in the editorial office so the article would fit on the page – hence, the FAZ and I had to own up to it.
The judges ruled that: "The required consideration between the protection of the plaintiff's honor," that was mine, “and the defendant's freedom of opinion leads to the presumption that the contested statements are permissible.
I focus on the words of those who were likely murdered on this blog because that’s what they are hiding from us.
According to the opinion of the Chamber, this is not a case of prohibited, abusive criticism. Now, anyone thinking my Shell-sponsored trip for the FAZ, which left me officially designated as being "bribed," was a nice 5-star experience, only needs to take a look at an article by one of my colleagues who accompanied me on the trip.
Klaus Podak from the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote about our experiences together during that Shell trip in Nigeria. In his article, he wrote: "A young man, jumping around in perfectly ironed fatigues, is apparently about to lose it. He's waving his machine gun around, finger on the trigger. Just a few seconds before this, he was holding the gun to my colleague's head through the window of our small bus, his finger on the trigger."
Podak's colleague whose life was threatened like that during his field research was Udo Ulfkotte. Can you imagine how it feels, after experiencing something that approaches a mock execution, to have to swallow being called "bribed?"
Yet, in retrospect, I can only agree with everyone who called me that at the time. A few of my first trips abroad on behalf of the FAZ took me to southern Africa in the 1980s – of course, these were completely paid for by what was still the South African apartheid regime at the time, the South African airline, South African mining companies and/or the local tourism industry.
These trips were signed off and approved by my superiors at the FAZ. None of this was mentioned in any of my articles. And, because it was so "beautiful" there in the Country on the Cape, I got to tape a few videos with the team from the FAZ's own private TV station at the time ("Tele FAZ").
Of course, these videos painted my trip's financiers in a very positive light. Of course, they were also paid for by the backers of the apartheid regime. In southern Africa, they flew us around in a private plane. My FAZ colleagues and I were courted and ultimately bought. The viewers, (if I remember correctly, a few of the reports were broadcast on RTL), were also oblivious to this. RTL probably didn't even know that South Africa had financed this propaganda garbage the FAZ was passing off on them.