THE BEST ENEMY MONEY CAN BUY - By Antony C. Sutton - Copyright 2000

In December of 1979, the Soviet Union launched a lightning-fast military offensive against
the backward nation of Afghanistan. It was after this invasion that President Jimmy Carter
admitted publicly that it had taught him more about the intentions of the Soviets than
everything he had ever learned. Never again would he kiss the cheeks of Premier Brezhnev
before the television cameras of the West. The Democrat-controlled Senate even refused to
ratify his SALT II treaty. (By the way, President Reagan has been honoring its terms
unofficially, and he already has ordered the destruction of several Poseidon submarines,
including the U.S.S. Sam Rayburn, the dismantling of which began in November of 1985,
1
and which cost a staggering $21 million for the destruction of that one ship.
2 The Nathan
Hale and the Andrew Jackson are scheduled for destruction in 1986.
3 To comply with
SALT II, we will have to destroy an additional 2,500 Poseidon submarine warheads. "Good
faith," American diplomatic officials argue. ("Good grief," you may be thinking.)
The invasion of Afghanistan was a landmark shift in Soviet military tactics. Departing from
half a century of slow, plodding, "smother the enemy with raw power" tactics, the Soviet
military leadership adopted the lightning strike. Overnight, the Soviets had captured the
Kabul airfield and had surrounded the capital city with tanks.
4
Tanks? In an overnight invasion? How did 30-ton Soviet tanks roll from the Soviet border
to the interior city of Kabul in one day? What about the rugged Afghan terrain?
The answer is simple: there are two highways from the Soviet Union to Kabul, including
one which is 647 miles long. Their bridges can support tanks. Do you think that Afghan
peasants built these roads for yak-drawn carts? Do you think that Afghan peasants built
these roads at all? No, you built them.
In 1966, reports on this huge construction project began to appear in obscure U.S.
magainzes. The project was completed the following year. It was part of Lyndon Johnson's
Great Society. Soviet and U.S.' engineers worked side by side, spending U.S. foreign aid
money and Soviet money, to get the highways built. One strip of road, 67 miles long, north
through the Salang Pass to the U.S.S.R., cost $42 million, or $643,000 per mile. John W.
Millers, the leader of the United National survey team in Afghanistan, commented at the
time that it was the most expensive bit of road he had ever seen. The Soviets trained and
used 8,000 Afghans to build it.
5
If there were any justice in this world of international foreign aid, the Soviet tanks should
have rolled by signs that read: "U.S. Highway Tax Dollars at Work."
Nice guys, the Soviets. They just wanted to help a technologically backward nation. Nice
guys, American foreign aid officials. They also just wanted to help a technologically
backward nation... the Soviet Union.

Seven Decades of Deals
The story you are about to read is true. The names have not been changed, so as not to
protect the guilty.
In the mid-1970's, the original version of this book led to the destruction of Antony Sutton's
career as a salaried academic researcher with the prestigious (and therefore, not quite
ideologically tough enough) Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. That was a
high price for Sutton to pay, but not nearly so high as the price you and I are going to be
asked to pay because of the activities that this book describes in painstaking detail.
Lenin is supposed to have made the following observation:
"If we were to announce today that we intend to hang all capitalists tomorrow,
they would trip over each other trying to sell us the rope."
I don't think he ever said it. However, someone who really understood Lenin, Communism,
and capitalist ethics said it. This book shows how accurate an observation it is.
Antony Sutton is not about to offer the following evidence in his own academic self-
defense, so I will. Perhaps the best-informed American scholar in the field of Soviet history
and overall strategy is Prof. Richard Pipes of Harvard University. In 1984, his chilling book
appeared, Survival Is Not Enough: Soviet Realities and America's Future (Simon &
Schuster). His book tells at least part of the story of the Soviet Union's reliance on Western
technology, including the infamous Kama River truck plant, which was built by the
Pullman-Swindell company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of M. W. Kellogg Co.
Prof. Pipes remarks that the bulk of the Soviet merchant marine, the largest in the world,
was built in foreign shipyards. He even tells the story (related in greater detail in this book)
of the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company of Springfield, Vermont, which sold the Soviet
Union the ball-bearing machines that alone made possible the targeting mechanism of
Soviet MIRV'ed ballistic missiles. And in footnote 29 on page 290, he reveals the
following:
In his three-volume detailed account of Soviet purchases of Western equipment
and technology . . . [Antony] Sutton comes to conclusions that are
uncomfortable for many businessmen and economists. For this reason his work
tends to be either dismissed out of hand as "extreme" or, more often, simply
ignored.
Prof. Pipes knows how the academic game is played. The game cost Sutton his academic
career. But the academic game is very small potatoes compared to the historic "game" of
world conquest by the Soviet empire. We are dealing with a messianic State which intends
to impose its will on every nation' on earth — a goal which Soviet leaders have repeated
constantly since they captured Russia in their nearly bloodless coup in October of 1917. Sutton identifies the deaf mute blindmen who sell the Soviets the equipment they need for
world conquest. But at least these deaf mute blindmen get something out of it: money. Not "soft currency" Soviet rubles, either; they get U.S. dollars from the Soviets, who in turn get
long-term loans that are guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers. Their motivation is fairly easy to
understand. But what do the academic drones get out of it? What do they get for their
systematic suppression of the historical facts, and their callous treatment in book reviews of
works such as Sutton's monumental three-volume set, Western Technology and Soviet
Economic Development? What was in it, for example, for C. H. Feinstein of Clare College,
Cambridge Unversity, who reviewed Sutton's first volume, covering 1917-1930? He could
not honestly fault Sutton's basic scholarship, nor did he try:
. . . he has examined a vast amount of information, much of it previously
unknown to scholars, regarding the trading contacts and contracts between the
U.S.S.R and the West, notably Germany and the United States. The primary
sources were the fascinating and extraordinarily detailed files of the U.S. State
Department and the archives of the German Foreign Ministry, and these were
supplemented by a wide-ranging and multilingual selection of books and
journals.
He even wrote that "Sutton's prodigious researches (and this is apparently only the first of
three projected volumes) have provided students of Soviet economic development with a
detailed survey of the way in which 'Western' technology was transferred to the Soviet
Union, and for this we are indebted to him." But having admitted this —thereby preserving
the surface appearance of professional integrity —Feinstein then lowered the academic
boom: Unfortunately, his attempt to go beyond this, and to assess the significance of
this transfer and of the concessions policy, is unsatisfactory and overstates the
extent and impact of the concessions as well as their importance for Soviet
economic development .... the defects of Sutton's approach . . . a similar lack of
understanding... Sutton exaggerates... He further indulges his fondness for
exaggeration ....
6
You get the basic thrust of the review. "Facts are fine; we are all scholars here." But even
the mildest sort of first-stage conclusions concerning the importance and significance of
such facts are anathema, for the facts show that the Soviet economy should have this sign
over it: "Made in the West." Sutton's subsequent two volumes were never reviewed in this
specialized academic journal — the journal, above all other U.S. scholarly journals, in
which it would have been most appropriate to include reviews of scholarly books on Soviet
economic history. The information blackout had begun, and it was augmented by the
publisher's own blackout beginning in 1973, a blackout discussed in this book.
Less than three years after Feinstein's review was published, Bryant Chucking Grinder Co.
sold the Soviets the ball-bearing grinders that subsequently placed the West at the mercy of
the Soviet tyrants. At last, they possessed the technology which makes possible a relatively
low-risk first-strike by Soviet missiles against our missiles and "defenses."7 Until Bryant
supplied the technology, the Soviets couldn't build such offensive weapons, which is why
they had lobbied from 1961 until 1972 to get the U.S. government's authorization to buy the
units. Within a few years after delivery, they had the missiles installed. Then they invaded
Afghanistan. So much for Sutton's "exaggerations."
This book is not really designed to be read word for word. It is a kind of lawyer's brief, filled with facts that none of us will remember in detail. But if the facts were not included,
the book's thesis would be too far-fetched to accept. He therefore includes pages and pages
of dull, dreary details — details that lead to an inescapable conclusion: that the West has
been betrayed by its major corporate leaders, with the full compliance of its national
political leaders.
From this time forward, you can say in confidence to anyone: "The United States financed
the economic and military development of the Soviet Union. Without this aid, financed by
U.S. taxpayers, there would be no significant Soviet military threat, for there would be no
Soviet economy to support the Soviet military machine, let alone sophisticated military
equipment." Should your listener scoff, you need only to hand him a copy of this book. it
will stuff his mouth with footnotes.
It probably will not change the scoffer's mind, however. Minds are seldom changed with
facts, certainly not college-trained minds. Facts did not change Prof. Feinstein's mind, after
all. The book will only shut up the scoffer when in your presence. But even that is worth a
lot these days.
From this day forward, you should never take seriously any State Department official (and
certainly not the Secretary of State) who announces to the press that this nation is now, and
has always been, engaged in a worldwide struggle against Communism and Soviet
aggression. Once in a while, Secretaries of State feel pressured to give such speeches. They
are nonsense. They are puffery for the folks out in middle America.
You may note for future reference my observation that Secretaries of Commerce never feel
this pressure to make anti-Communist speeches. They, unlike Secretaries of State, speak
directly for American corporate interests. They know where their bread is buttered, and
more important, who controls the knife.
When it comes to trading with the enemy, multinational corporate leaders act in terms of the
political philosophy of the legendary George Washington Plunkett of Tammany Hall: "I
seen my opportunities, and I took 'em." Plunkett was defending "honest graft"; our modern
grafters have raised the stakes considerably. They are talking about bi-partisan treason.