Re: CIA Stashes and Looted Gold?

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

U.S. Hid Weapons In Austria
     
Vienna, Austria, Jan 21 (AP) -- Fearful of a Soviet
takeover after World War II, the United States hid at
least 79 weapons caches in Austria for anti-communist
partisans.

According to the newspaper Kurier, a U.S. congressional
committee monitoring CIA activities found documents on
the weapons caches that had not been known to the Clinton
administration.  

A report Saturday in the Boston Globe prompted Hunt to
inform the Austrian government, Kurier said.

The Boston Globe report said CIA agents stashed the
weapons while the U.S. military conducted loud military
maneuvers.

However, Fritz Molden, a former Austrian journalist, said
Sunday that the secret weapons depots were established at
the initiative of the Austrian government led by
Chancellor Leopold Figl, and planning for them began in
1948. He claimed that some depots were also placed in the
Soviet occupation zone in eastern Austria.

Molden told the APA he had acted as a liaison between the
Americans and the postwar Austrian government. However,
it was not clear why the information was not handed down
to subsequent governments.

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Austria demands details on secret US arms depots

Vienna, Austria, Jan. 21 (Reuter) -- Austria's leadership
Sunday demanded the United States supply details of 79
secret U.S. arsenals scattered across Austria.

"The Americans should give us a plan indicating where the
weapons depots are, how serious they have to be taken and
what dangers they pose," Chancellor Franz Vranitzky said. 

Speaking on television Sunday, Vranitzky cautiously 
indicated the possibility of secret stockpiles from the
other occupation forces -- France, Britain and the Soviet
Union.

"Approaching the other three occupation powers and asking
them whether they too still have secret depots on
Austrian soil will be dealt with in a very pragmatic and
sensible way," Vranitzky said.

The chancellery said the U.S. government was working on
an exact list detailing the locations of the depots, and
U.S. Ambassador Hunt promised to furnish details as
quickly as possible.  

The television said experts assume each of the arsenals 
contained sufficient weapons and explosives for 150 
anti-communist guerrillas and could also contain
significant amounts of gold.  

Austrian television said that while the U.S. foreign 
ministry had assured Austria it would act as soon as
possible, the CIA, which alone knows the exact locations
of the arsenals, has remained silent on the issue.

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Postwar leaders acted with U.S. on arms caches

Vienna, Austria, Jan. 22 (Reuter) - Austria's postwar
leaders cooperated with the United States to stockpile
arms around the country in a top-secret operation to
safeguard against a Soviet attack, an ex-resistance
fighter said Monday.

Fritz Molden, who acted as a liaison officer between the 
resistance and the allied powers, said that if the
Kremlin had discovered the plan to organize an
anti-communist underground, Soviet troops would have
immediately annexed eastern Austria.

"It was all top secret. There were no archives, no papers
made, no protocols written," Molden told Reuters.  

Molden said he was surprised that Austria's current 
political leaders were unaware of the arsenals. Details
had appeared in two books, one of which he wrote 16 years
ago.

Austrian media speculated that the arsenals were part of
a wider anti-communist strategy by the United States,
which feared Soviet expansionism following the end of
World War II.

Newspapers cited the Gladio operation in Italy, set up as
a secret Cold War resistance group in the 1950s to fight
any Warsaw Pact invasion.

Austrian experts estimated the depots held enough weapons
and explosives for 150 anti-communist guerrillas and
might also contain gold. They said likely sites included
graveyards where digging would have gone unnoticed.

Molden said arms were transported on U.S. trucks and
trains into Vienna, which was surrounded by the Soviet
eastern zone, and then secretly passed on to Austrians
who risked their lives stashing the weapons away.

He suspected most arsenals in western Austria were handed
over to the Austrian army and gendarmerie after 1955 and
that the arms sites in eastern Austria might now also be
empty.

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