"False flag" terrorist attacks are an old political ploy. This particular attack was blamed on the Bolsheviks but that would make no sense. The US was warming up to the Bolsheviks at the time and it was thought that relations would be normalized and the Bolsheviks be recognized as the legitimate rulers of Russia. That would be great for them and they would certainly do nothing to stop that from happening.
Excerpt from "Trust No One...The Secret World of Sidney Reilly" p304-305
The prayers of Brunstrom, et al., did not go unanswered. Just after noon on 16 September, a massive explosion rocked the man-made canyons of Manhattan's financial district. A wagon laden wuth high explosives and iron sash weights detonated directly across the street from the JP Morgan offices at 23 Wall. Scars from the blast can still be seen today. The aftermath was a scene of utter carnage; 39 persons were blown to bits or mortally wounded, and some 400 injured. A gigantic manhunt, supervised by Red-hunting Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, descended on New York and spread out across the country. Nevertheless, despite years of investigation,dozens of suspects and numerous "confessions", the outrage went unsolved and remains so today. The one point that was never questioned by Palmer or any other of the investigators, publicly, was that the deed was the work of "radicals" somehow linked to Bolshevik Russia. Of course, this did not suit Lenin's plans at all. The Wall Street bomb excited the "Red Scare" to a fever pitch and was the final straw in putting an end to Marten's adventure. Deported in January 1921, he and most of his comrades boarded a ship bound for Russia. The incident also cast its pall over the upcoming elections. As expected, Warren G. Harding took the White House, but any further rapproachement with the Bolsheviks was politically incorrect for the near future.
As noted, Reilly's early 1919 visit to New York had a curious synchronicity with equally unexplained bombings. Could Sidney have had a hand in this most recent outrage? Given that he was not around New York at any time proximate
to the blast, the answer would seem a simple no, but remember that simple answers seldom apply to the Ace-Of-Spies. He never made or planted bombs himself but had a long history of association with persons who did. One of these, recall, was the veteran German saboteur, Kurt Jahnke. Jahnke was marginally connected to the abortive Kapp Putsch in which Reilly had been so interested in. During July, Paul Dukes, Sidney's stand-in and troubleshooter, made a hasty visit to berlin to exchange information with Vladimir Orlov, but he also could have met Jahnke. Dukes rushed to London where, on 27 July, he recorded a meeting with Reilly.
In mid-August, Jahnke slipped out og germany bound for Mexico on some secretive mission, but not for the german government. He did not show up until late September, so where was he in the interim? The big german was intimately familiar with New York and a master of disguise; during his many wartime sabotage forays into the U.S., he always evaded detection. At this point, he was a gun for hire and had the expertise to assemble the rather sophisticated bomb used on Wall Street. A clue is the use of the sash weights as shrapnel, a technique that Jahnke pioneered back in 1915. Paul "Pablo" Altendorf, an ex-MID operative-cum-private detective who worked on the case for the FBI, later linked Jahnke to the bombing, though he never revealed just how.
Reilly had other friends to lend a helping hand. The foremost was Brasol who was, naturally, violently opposed to any normalization of American relations with the hated "Judaeo-Bolsheviks". He had personal connections to the Bureau of Investigation and the MID. For instance, his friend and employer Frederick Coudert was himself and ex-special assistant to the Attorney General and still influential in that quarter. Brasol was well placed to monitor the investigation and, if necessary, give it a nudge in the "right" direction. None of this proves that Reilly arranged the Wall Street Bomb, but it certainly shows how he might have. If nothing else, he had every reason to be pleased with the result.
amazon.com |
