The Protocols of Satan, Part 7: The Supposed Ford Apology

The preliminary remarks made at the beginning of this program have been moved to the Christogenea Forum.

Our purpose here this evening is to discuss a federal lawsuit against Henry Ford which was filed by a Jew lawyer named Aaron Sapiro in 1925, and lasted until it was settled in 1927. While the lawsuit and its outcome have no bearing on the legitimacy of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, it was nevertheless taken advantage of in a ploy by prominent Jews to discredit the Protocols, for which they use it to this very day, and, as we shall see, that ploy of the Jews was used in turn by Henry Ford to get out of the lawsuit. Because of the popularity of Ford's publication of The International Jew among those who realize the veracity of the material in the Protocols, and because of the way in which Jews have mischaracterized the Sapiro lawsuit as another proof against the Protocols, we feel that no discussion of the Protocols would be complete without a discussion of this lawsuit, and what really happened when Henry Ford allegedly apologized for his articles in The Dearborn Independent which were later compiled in the volumes titled The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem.

Firstly, one major misconception must be clarified. The Sapiro lawsuit against Ford really had nothing to do with The International Jew, with the Protocols of Zion, or with most of the material ever published in The Dearborn Independent. The lawsuit only involved what certain articles in The Dearborn Independent had said of the Jewish lawyer Aaron Sapiro, who was engaged in organizing farm coops. Ford smelled a rat, and believed that through agents such as Sapiro, Jews were trying to corner the agricultural industry. According to a paper found at Harvard University, Sapiro vs. Ford: The Mastermind of the Marshall Maneuver, in reference to what Ford's newspaper said about Sapiro, “the New York Times summarized the accusations: “Mr. Sapiro was accused in the articles of being a cheat, a faker and a fraud”. We would agree, even if we would not publish such accusations without some evidence. Although we do not perceive that Sapiro himself was an agent for Jews in general, that he was indeed acting out of greed and the desire for control of the production of others is a characteristic inherent among the typical members of his race.

But what the Sapiro lawsuit does reflect is this: the problems with an egalitarian society. For thousands of years, Christians have known that the Jews are devils. The Christian Messiah has fully informed us that the Jews are devils, and His apostles warned us consistently not to have anything to do with them. Great Christian men such as Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther have warned us of the treachery of the Jews. In Medieval England, Jews were consistently portrayed as devils, even with the characteristic tails, pitchforks and horns of comic-book devils. In the Middle Ages, Jews were run out of the various principalities of Europe on hundreds of occasions. Yet in an egalitarian society such as ours, no matter how certain you are that the devil is up to no good, you cannot print it unless you can offer at least some proof in order to substantiate your claims. The Dearborn Independent accused the Jew Sapiro based on what he might do with the farm coops he was forming, and therefore Sapiro had grounds for a lawsuit regardless of what his future intentions may have been. Devils, in modern legal terms, are not really devils until they are caught red-handed.

Here we shall read a synopsis of the lawsuit from the Benson Ford Research Center in Dearborn Michigan:

Aaron Sapiro, a labor and agriculture cooperative activist, spent many years organizing farming cooperatives in an attempt to protect farmers through internal price controls and collective advertising. In 1924, Sapiro initiated a libel lawsuit against Henry Ford for anti-Semitic articles that appeared in the Dearborn Independent newspaper. The articles, appearing over Henry Ford's signature, accused Sapiro of using the cooperative movement to seize control of American farmers for Jewish bankers and financiers. Sapiro named Henry Ford in the lawsuit as opposed to the Dearborn Independent claiming that as the owner of the paper, Ford had final editorial approval over the content of the paper. Ford's defense, however, centered around William Cameron and Ernest Liebold, who claimed editorial control of the newspaper over Henry Ford. Hoping to avert additional negative publicity and avoid taking the stand in court, Ford agreed to an out of court settlement with Sapiro involving a cash payment and a written apology in the Dearborn Independent.

There is more to Ford's agreement than that, however, and there was much drama caused by both sides in the beginnings of a trial which had resulted in a mistrial, along with the promise of a new trial. During the first trial, the strategy of Ford's lawyer backfired when a writer for the paper offered testimony which conflicted with the assertions of Cameron and Liebold. Then Ford's car was run off a road and he suffered injuries which necessitated a short hospitalization. It was at that point that Ford sought an agreement to settle the case.

We are going to read a review from Legal Affairs Magazine of a book titled Suing Henry Ford, by Victoria Saker Woeste and Susam Radomsky, who are evidently both Jewesses. But while the article is rather candid concerning the actual circumstances of the case of the Henry Ford lawsuit and the apology – its conclusion concerning the apology which had supposedly been extracted from Ford, an apology that Ford never saw beforehand, has one obvious discrepancy with a crucial first-hand account. Otherwise, the article also contains several obvious political biases. Those biases are made even more evident where the author Woeste has written other articles connected to this book. For instance, an article written for the American Bar Association is entitled Suing Henry Ford: America's First Hate Speech Case, but that characterization of the case is an obvious lie. The Sapiro lawsuit was not a “Hate Speech Case”. Rather it was a case of simple libel which may have worked out better for the plaintiff if he were not a Jew.

The book is also misleadingly subtitled: “The trial that forced the automaker to apologize for his anti-Semitism.” The Harvard Sapiro vs. Ford paper calls Woeste “the most prominent scholar on the case.” But in reality, Henry Ford himself never apologized. Ford had apparently only allowed an apology to be issued in his name, to get out of the pains of another trial in a million-dollar libel case which he was very likely to lose. Here we shall read the review of Woeste's book from Legal Affairs Magazine:

EMPLOYEES, SUPPLIERS, AND ENTHUSIASTS of Ford Motor Company were invited to spend five days in June celebrating the company's hundredth birthday at the Henry Ford II World Center in Dearborn, Mich. Among the event's biggest draws was its "Headlining History" concert, staged to pay tribute to a legendary company and its legendary founder, Henry Ford. Promotional materials touted Ford's innovative use of the assembly line, and his personal relationship with fellow inventors like Thomas Edison and George Washington Carver. But though Ford's contribution to industry is worthy of praise, a fuller portrait of his character should also take into account his dealings with a little-known lawyer named Aaron Sapiro.

Henry Ford's antipathy toward Jews has occupied many biographers. It first surfaced publicly during World War I, which he blamed on Jewish financiers and industrialists. Unable to peddle his views through the mainstream press, Ford bought his own weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, in 1918. Between 1920 and 1922, Ford's paper ran 91 articles based on excerpts from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a book describing a Jewish conspiracy to achieve world domination. Even after The Protocols was exposed by The Times of London as a forgery - it was concocted by the Russian secret police to shore up support for the Czar's government - Ford stubbornly defended his decision to publish them. "The only statement I care to make about The Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on," he said. Ford continued to sell articles adapted from The Protocols in a separate pamphlet titled The International Jew, eventually distributing over 500,000 copies.

But by 1927, Ford's public stance on Jews had changed. He released a statement offering his "friendship and goodwill" to the Jewish people and promised to halt publication of The International Jew. Strangely, the series of events that led Ford to make this promise began with a fight over the future of American agriculture. On one side was Ford, the founder of the nation's largest automaker and its wealthiest man, who believed in the tradition of small independent farms. His opponent was Aaron Sapiro, a leading proponent of farming collectives at the time who is now mostly forgotten.

THE POST-WORLD WAR I PERIOD was a time of recession in the United States, and farmers were hit particularly hard. Congress tried to help the farm sector by exempting it from federal antitrust law. Sapiro, a Chicago lawyer who was formerly legal counsel for a California state regulatory agency that oversaw private markets, used the new exemption to set up roughly 60 farming cooperatives that used their collective strength to keep prices up. A leading agricultural economist of the day credited Sapiro with changing "the whole direction of the [cooperative] movement."

Ford opposed Sapiro's work, believing that the future of agriculture depended upon small farms that remained independent. For Ford, the solution to the farm problem lay in finding new technology to help small farmers operate more efficiently. It was a vision at least partially inspired by Ford's own experience growing up on a small farm outside Detroit, and most small farmers embraced the automaker as one of their own. In contrast, Sapiro's claims to rural leadership rested on professional expertise in law and markets. He was a city-bred Jewish lawyer, someone easily labeled an outsider. In 1924, Ford's newspaper did just that, attacking Sapiro as an exemplar of the nefarious influence of the "International Jew" in American life.

In its 1924 attack, The Independent offered Sapiro's work in cooperative marketing as proof that the conspiracy theory of The Protocols was sound. "Jewish Exploitation of Farmers' Organizations" screamed one headline. According to the paper, Sapiro was manipulating his clients to put American agriculture under the thumb of Jewish speculators. The paper accused Sapiro of spreading the "vicious doctrines" of Communism and imposing Soviet-style controls on American agriculture.

Sapiro was not The Independent's only target. Its pages also assailed other prominent Jews, including the constitutional lawyer Louis Marshall, War Industries Board chairman Bernard Baruch, and Paul Warburg, a creator of the Federal Reserve Bank. These men, members of the East Coast establishment, chose to ignore the attacks. Like many prominent Jews of the time, they thought that calling attention to ugly rhetoric was out of keeping with the genteel image of successful assimilation that they wanted to maintain.

Sapiro saw no reason for restraint. In 1925, he sued Ford for libel in federal district court in Detroit, where he could look forward to cross-examining his adversary. At a time when President Calvin Coolidge earned $75,000 a year, Sapiro got the public's attention by asking for damages of $1 million. He hired William Henry Gallagher, a flamboyant Irish-Catholic trial lawyer in Detroit. "Henry Ford's attacks mean but one thing," Sapiro said, "that Ford and his hirelings are bent upon eliminating the Jew from agriculture."

Ford retained Senator James A. Reed, a Democrat from Missouri with his eye on the presidency, to serve as his lead counsel. Reed was paid $100,000 to preside over a stable of in-house lawyers and investigators. His objective, as he wrote in his notes, was to use Ford's considerable resources to "harass and impoverish the plaintiff."

Reed dispatched investigators and lawyers to search for proof of The Independent's allegations. They visited nearly every state to take depositions, generating over 40,000 pages of documents in sessions that Gallagher attended at Sapiro's expense. These tactics delayed the trial for 15 months until the presiding district judge, Arthur Tuttle, told Ford that he would have to start paying Sapiro's expenses if he wanted another continuance. Reed responded with an affidavit from his client that stated Tuttle was prejudiced against Ford because of his wealth. Under existing law, such an allegation required the judge to recuse himself. Disgusted, Tuttle complied.

THE TRIAL FINALLY GOT UNDER WAY - before a new judge - in March 1927. In his opening statement, Reed argued that the case was not about anti-Semitism, only the paper's decision to report on Sapiro's scheme of "controlling the farmers throughout the United States for the purpose of enriching himself." Gallagher countered that the anti-Semitic content of the articles and their many factual errors demonstrated malice, a necessary component of a libel case. In his opening statement, he pointed out that the paper's use of incendiary phrases such as "the Jewish submarine in America" and "the Jewish grip" underscored its bias.

First to take the stand was The Independent's editor, William J. Cameron, who testified that he alone was responsible for the newspaper's content. But the next witness, a former Independent writer named James Martin Miller, told the jury that Ford had instructed him to write an article that would "expose" Sapiro. "Let's print something that will 'upset the apple cart,'" Miller remembered Ford saying.

Reed cross-examined Sapiro for three weeks, hoping to showcase his abilities as an orator for his presidential run. But Sapiro held up under the attack. The Detroit Jewish Chronicle reported that Sapiro "answered [Reed's questions] with such swiftness that frequently he had completed his reply before Senator Reed had terminated the question." In the end, it was Reed who folded, taking to his hotel bed in exhaustion in mid-April.

Gallagher followed this spectacle by announcing that he intended to call Ford as his next witness. It had taken 16 months to serve Ford with a witness subpoena, and courthouse observers greeted the news with excitement. But Ford had no intention of taking the stand. He'd been humiliated when he testified in a 1919 libel suit against The Chicago Tribune, revealing his limited education and provincial ideas. (He named 1812 as the date of the American Revolution, identified Benedict Arnold as a writer, and declared his opposition to military preparedness.)

Reed promised Judge Tuttle's replacement, Judge Fred M. Raymond, that he would produce his client at the appropriate time. But soon afterwards, the senator announced that Ford had recently been injured in a car accident, of all things. Hardly anyone in the press believed it, and Gallagher prepared a motion to have his own doctors verify the injury.

Before that could happen, Ford's team moved to end the proceedings. Harry Bennett, Ford's top bodyguard, obtained 14 affidavits from jurors and others in the courthouse making the bizarre allegation that Sapiro had tried to bribe one of the jurors in the libel case with a box of candy. When Raymond refused to grant a mistrial, Bennett arranged to have a local reporter interview the juror in question, a Detroit housewife named Cora Hoffman. Hoffman angrily denied that anyone had bribed her, but she pointed to the affidavits as evidence that the defense was desperate "to have the case thrown out of court." Gallagher told reporters that the development carried "the mark of a perfect frame-up," but because Hoffman's statement showed her to have a predisposition against Ford, Judge Raymond was forced to grant the defense a mistrial. He promised Sapiro that he would convene a new trial shortly.

At this point, Ford sought a way out. The case had become personally embarrassing and a public relations nightmare. With his auto company's new Model A scheduled to debut in December, Ford had reason to get the trial behind him. He dispatched his friend Earl Davis, a former assistant U.S. attorney then in private practice in Detroit, to New York to negotiate an end to the case with Jewish leaders. Once in New York, Davis made his way to Louis Marshall, the president of the American Jewish Committee and a leading civil rights lawyer.

Marshall wasn't interested in helping Sapiro, whose lawsuit he'd opposed from the beginning. Though he had built a career crusading for civil rights, Marshall stayed away from cases about anti-Semitism. Approached by Davis, Marshall saw the negotiations as a chance to broker a resolution that served the wider interests of the Jewish community. He told Ford that to make good, he needed to repudiate The International Jew. And he handed Bennett a sample apology script to read to Ford over the telephone:

"To my great regret, I have learned that Jews generally, and particularly those of this country, not only resent these publications as promoting anti-Semitism, but regard me as their enemy," the draft read. "Had I appreciated even the general nature, to say nothing of the details of these utterances, I would have forbidden their circulation without a moment's hesitation." Accepting every word, Ford authorized Bennett to sign his name to the statement. It hit the newspapers on July 8, 1927.

The apology, which Marshall never thought would be accepted verbatim, was a masterpiece of evasion. It didn't mention Sapiro's name, and it let Ford maintain his posture at trial - that he was unaware of The Independent's anti-Semitic content. For Marshall these concessions were easily worth Ford's promise to halt publication of The International Jew. He assumed Ford's newfound contrition would allow Sapiro to settle his case easily.

The apology drew mixed reactions from the press. Though satirical parodies of the statement appeared in several newspapers and magazines, most influential newspapers accepted Ford's statement at face value. David Mosessohn, the editor of The Jewish Tribune, wrote, "It was with a feeling of profound satisfaction that I read of Mr. Ford's apology." The Pittsburgh Sun editorialized, "Let the ugly chapter now be closed. Mr. Ford's retraction is complete and earnestly sincere on its face."

With the majority of the Jewish press lauding the apology - and Marshall's role in it - Sapiro felt obliged to accept a resolution he privately regarded as hollow and stolen. "I got everything I was fighting for," Sapiro told the press. "I am glad that I have helped a great big man" – Ford - "get right." He settled with Ford in exchange for a full retraction and a payment of about $140,000 toward his expenses. Afraid of looking like an opportunist, Sapiro accepted a sum far less than his actual costs, which included a significant outlay for private investigators whose work he had kept secret. The libel case nearly bankrupted him.

After the settlement, Sapiro moved from Chicago to New York, where the Jewish community treated him like a hero. But in the years that followed, his career went into free-fall. When he worked with Chicago businesses to raise their prices through trade associations, he was indicted, along with 23 others, on charges of conspiring to restrain trade.

Touted by prosecutors as a blow against corruption, the "Chicago racket trial," as it was called, linked Sapiro and other prominent professionals (including a University of Chicago economist and a local alderman) with gangsters like Al Capone. It was the longest criminal proceeding in Cook County history. All of the defendants were acquitted, but for Sapiro it would be the beginning of a series of professional setbacks.

In 1934, a former client accused Sapiro's firm of investigating the jurors in one of his cases and not reporting the incident to the court. Sapiro was again cleared of criminal wrongdoing, but his reputation suffered. Already on the FBI watch list because of his Chicago indictment, he was disbarred by the state and federal courts in New York.

Broke and discredited, Sapiro moved back to California in 1937 and retreated from public view. He was still a member of the state bar there and practiced law quietly in Los Angeles, providing legal services to friends, including the actor John Barrymore and the composer Igor Stravinsky. Though Sapiro ended his career in obscurity, he never expressed regret for his fight against Ford. He died in 1959 at the age of 75.

As for Ford, his apology to the Jews cost him little. After Marshall died in 1929, no one stepped forward to hold the automaker to his promise of withdrawing The International Jew from circulation, and the pamphlet became hugely popular in Nazi Germany. Ford remained devoted to his cars and his prejudices. On his 75th birthday in 1938, he accepted the Grand Service Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle from Hitler's Third Reich. The award recognized his achievements as a manufacturer and an industrialist. Few contemporary observers missed the symbolism. In his heart and mind, Ford wasn't sorry at all.

Now we are going to present a different side of this story, from a rather despised individual and long-time Ford employee named Harry Bennett. Bennett was fired by Ford's grandson, Henry II, in 1945, two years before the death of Henry Ford. The following is from a book first published in 1951, but which is now available in reprints, titled Ford: We Never Called Him Henry, by Harry Bennett as told to Paul Marcus (who, rather ironically, was a Jew). We are going to include enough of this story so that some of Harry Bennett's own biases are illustrated.

There were times when Mr. Ford tried to convert me to prejudice. But I'd never had any feeling of that kind, and the training I had got from my mother, who was a fine, principled woman, saved me from being susceptible.

And now I want to talk about two men: Ernest Liebold and Bill Cameron. This is a good place to do it, since Cameron had become editor of the Dearborn Independent, and Liebold, Mr. Ford's business secretary, was, among his other duties, general manager of the parent company, the Dearborn Publishing Company. Both of them, but particularly Cameron, were constantly stirring up Mr. Ford.

During all the time I was with Mr. Ford, I was completely antagonistic to both Cameron and Liebold. I made endless attempts to fire them. It is hard for me to say which one I disliked most, but I guess honors would go to Liebold.

Liebold was squat, heavy-set, had a short, bull neck and close-cropped hair; he looked like a typical Prussian, and often acted like one. He had a Gestapo of his own within the Ford Motor Company; he kept elaborate files and had something there about everyone.

Bill Cameron was a short, stout, round-faced man; he looked and talked a lot like W. C. Fields, with the difference that Fields was funny. I have heard that he was once a preacher in Brooklyn, Michigan. He came to the Ford Motor Company from the Detroit Daily News.

Cameron and I were enemies almost from the very beginning. Back in the early days when Cameron was very close to Mr. Ford, and I had but little standing in the company, I slapped Cameron's face in my office for using profanity before a young woman. He took it, too; backing out of the room, he said, "By God, I didn't think you had the nerve." After a while, our mutual hostility grew so that Cameron refused to talk to me in person, and if I called him on the phone, he just hung up.

For the thirty years that I knew him, Bill Cameron was quite a drinker. When he became the commentator on the Ford Sunday Evening radio hour in 1934, two men were assigned to the job of getting him to the studio. Mr. Ford, inconsistent in so many things, was also inconsistent in his hatred of drinking. He might fire a workman in the plant caught with liquor on his breath, but when it came to someone like Cameron, his attitude was different.

Well, to get back to the Sapiro trial. It began on March 15 in Detroit's Post Office Building in the court of Federal Judge Fred M. Raymond. Mr. Ford was represented by a legal staff of seven attorneys, headed by Senator James M. Reed of Missouri: Sapiro was represented by William Henry Gallagher, a Detroit attorney who was an Irish Catholic. Mr. Ford considered Gallagher a "Christian front" for Sapiro, and after that always spoke of the Catholics as "tools of the Jews."

A jury of six men and six women was selected that first day. The trial began with Cameron as the first witness. He testified that Mr. Ford had had no knowledge of the Sapiro articles at the time they were published. Over a period of about five days on the witness stand, Cameron took all responsibility for everything that had ever appeared in the Dearborn Independent, and said, in effect, that Mr. Ford had no connection whatsoever with the editorial policy of the paper. He testified: "I run the paper and use my own judgment."

I don't know about that. During the time Cameron was speaking of, Mr. Ford dropped in to Cameron's office just about every day of the week.

When Cameron's testimony was finished, he disappeared somewhere in Canada. It took us days to find him.

Sapiro took the stand as the next witness.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ford, who had been subpoenaed by Sapiro to appear as a witness and had expected to testify at the opening of the trial, began to lose his nerve. On the day when Sapiro went on the stand, I had taken Mr. Ford down to the Post Office Building to see if they were ready for him.

"Well, Harry," Mr. Ford said, when I came back to where I had left him sitting in the car, "I want to stop this. I'm not coming down here again."

Two days later the newspapers called me at my home. They said Mr. Ford had been in an automobile accident, and what did I know about it? The story, embodied in a formal statement issued by Cameron, was then on their presses.

It said that Mr. Ford had been driving alone in a Ford coupe from the Dearborn laboratories to his residence; that a big touring car driven by two men had knocked Mr. Ford's car off a bridge crossing the Rouge River. It was stated, further, that after a period of unconsciousness, Mr. Ford had walked to his gatehouse in great pain, that the gatekeeper called Mrs. Ford, who took Mr. Ford to the Residence and summoned Mr. Ford's physician. Mr. Ford's physician had stayed with Mr. Ford two days, and then taken him by ambulance to the Henry Ford Hospital, where an operation had been performed. The story said the statement had been held up two days because of the "unavoidable and, unfounded inferences that may be drawn" – thus, neatly, inferring that Sapiro and/or his agents had made an attempt to kill Mr. Ford.

I went to the Residence, and there saw Mr. Ford. He looked all right to me. I said: "The papers said you have a broken rib."

"Did they?" Mr. Ford said. "Well, maybe I have."

I said: "I'm going to find out who knocked you into the river if it takes me the rest of my life."

"Now," Mr. Ford said, "you just drop this – probably it was just a bunch of kids."

I kept at it. I was half indignant, and half skeptical. On my way to the Residence, I had stopped at the scene of the "accident" and looked around, and there were things that seemed phony to me. I said: "No, I'm not going to drop it. If someone has tried to kill you, I'm going to find out about it. I don't have to work for you to do that – I can do that on my own."

Finally, he saw there was no way to put me off, and he said: "Well, Harry, I wasn't in that car when it went down into the river. I don't know how it got down there. But now we've got a good chance to settle this thing. We can say we want to settle it because my life is in danger." The case dragged along for a few more weeks. Sapiro was kept on the stand by an exhaustive cross-examination from Senator Reed.

We had a large number of investigators checking the courtroom and following people around, to see what we could "get" on someone, thinking we might settle the case that way, but without results.

Finally, one day when I was with Mr. Ford, he gave me some information that had been brought to him; which purported to be an attempt at bribing a juror. I thought this evidence pretty slim, but I saw a chance to use it.

From the very beginning of the trial, I had been persistently followed everywhere I went by a man named Hutcheson, a Hearst correspondent who had been covering the trial. It seemed that everywhere I went, he popped up.

So I now said to Mr. Ford: "Do you want to settle this thing? If you do, I'll give your tip to this fellow Hutch. He'll print it, and the judge will toss the jury out. Then you can settle it." Mr. Ford told me to go ahead.

I approached Hutch and told him about Mr. Ford's information. "Mind," I said, "this isn't something I can prove. It's just something we've heard."

Our lawyers then took Mr. Ford's allegations up with the judge. They gave him fourteen affidavits alleging irregularities. The judge turned this information over to the FBI for investigation. Sapiro was not informed of this development. Judge Raymond called in all the newspapermen covering the case and warned them to print nothing about the matter. Hutch was conspicuous by his absence.

Hutch wrote a story based on the affidavits that our attorneys had filed with the judge and turned it in to the Detroit Times. They printed the story in screaming headlines.

When the Times appeared on the streets, Judge Raymond at once said that the story constituted contempt of court and that he would start proceedings against the paper.

Mr. Ford's attorneys now filed an application for a mistrial. Judge Raymond granted the mistrial the next day, April 21. He also completely exonerated Sapiro of any charges of jury tampering.

A few months passed, and before the case could come up for retrial, Mr. Ford settled it out of court. Not much of that story is known.

A man whose name has never been publicly mentioned in connection with the Aaron Sapiro case is Herman Bernstein. He had more to do with Mr. Ford's repudiation of anti-Semitism than anyone else.

Bernstein, editor of The Jewish Tribune, had gone to Europe in 1915 with Mr. Ford on the "Peace Ship." He came to see Mr. Ford before the Sapiro trial began. They had a long and bitter discussion about Mr. Ford's bigotry, and Mr. Ford claimed that nothing he had ever caused to be printed had "hurt anyone." Bernstein insisted it had stimulated real physical violence against Jews in Europe. "If you can prove that," Mr. Ford said, "I'll take back everything I've ever said."

Bernstein promptly departed for Europe. He made a five months' tour, returning to New York on June 9, 1927, after the mistrial had been granted. He brought to Mr. Ford documentary evidence that Mr. Ford's Dearborn Independent had indeed "hurt" a great many people. When he saw this evidence; Mr. Ford decided he was ready to quit publishing anti-Semitic material.

Mr. Ford sent me to New York to settle the case.

I got in touch with Arthur Brisbane, and through him learned that the American Jewish Committee could settle the matter. I entered into negotiations with Samuel Untermeyer and Louis Marshall of that organization, and with Brisbane. They drew up the now-famous "apology," which was to be the basis for a settlement. In this formal statement, it was said that Mr. Ford would see to it that no more anti-Semitic material circulated in his name and that he would call in all undistributed copies of The International Jew, which were booklet reprints of the Independent's articles. For the rest, the "apology" said that Mr. Ford had had no knowledge of what had been published in the Dearborn Independent, and was "shocked" and "mortified" to learn about it. Arthur Brisbane brought this statement to me at 1710 Broadway. I phoned Mr. Ford. I told him an "apology" had been drawn up, and added: "It's pretty bad, Mr. Ford." I tried to read it to him over the phone, but he stopped me.

"I don't care how bad it is," Mr. Ford said. "The worse they make it, the better. You sign it, and settle the thing up."

So I signed Mr. Ford's signature to the document. I had always been able to sign his name as realistically as he could himself. I sent the statement to Untermeyer and Marshall. The signature was verified, and the case was closed.

All this was done without Mr. Ford's taking anyone else into his confidence. Edsel knew nothing about it, and Cameron and Senator Reed heard about it by reading the papers.

Cameron's reaction was quoted by the newspapers: "It's all news to me and I cannot believe it is true."

Mr. Ford paid Aaron Sapiro's legal expenses, and he also paid Bernstein's expenses incurred on his trip. Neither man would take a cent over that.

The "apology" was printed in the Dearborn Independent, and the paper ceased publication early in 1928.

Actually, the last edition of the paper was December 31st, 1927. The Ford heirs hated Harry Bennett, and this book, and when it was published they allegedly sought to buy up all of the copies in order to keep it from the public. Used copies of various 1951 publications – there seem to have been at least two editions of the book – are available online.

So the Protocols are not a forgery, but the signature on Henry Ford's supposed apology for telling us about them, that is a forgery. Regardless of what we may think or learn of Harry Bennett, his testimony – that Ford never saw nor heard the supposed apology which he also never signed, conflicts with the story which we presented earlier from the book on the Ford lawsuit by the Jewess Victoria Woeste, who admitted the same circumstances except to claim that Ford did hear every word the apology. The only testimony available from first-hand eyewitnesses is this from Harry Bennett, the guy who was talking to Ford on the phone, so we see that Victoria Woeste has told another lie. Harry Bennett certainly had no reason to lie about this. While Bennett expressed concern over the truth behind the Auto accident, Ford may have only been trying to get him to disregard it. Ford had been dead for 4 years when his book was first published. Bennett himself was fired from Ford Motor Co. for 6 years before his book was published. The Jewish writer Bennett got to do the book with him had even less reason to lie. So we must accept Bennett's testimony to be credible, and it unplugs both Louis Marshall and Victoria Woeste as well as so many other analysts of the so-called Ford “apology”. How can someone analyze words attributed to Ford, if Ford never uttered, and never even saw or heard them before they were published? That is a joke, and it is why we will not offer the apology itself here this evening.

Even Jewish publications such as the online newspaper Haaretz freely admit that the Jew Louis Marshall had written the so-called apology of Henry Ford. But they do not admit that Ford never saw it before it was published, and Ford never signed it himself. The ADL does make a partial admission in this regard in its own article entitled The Sapiro Trial and Ford's Apology where it says “Though Ford apologized for The International Jew and closed the Dearborn Independent, he later accepted the Grand Cross of the German Eagle from Hitler's Nazi government in July, 1938. Some remain skeptical of his apology, claiming that Ford himself neither wrote nor personally signed it.”

We must note, that we had not yet determined with certainty whether the closing of The Dearborn Independent was directly related to the settlement of the case. But according to Harry Bennett, it was evidently only connected to the agreement Ford made with his old acquaintance Herman Bernstein, and not at all to the Sapiro settlement.

But when all things are considered, Aaron Sapiro was thrown under the bus by his fellow Jews, so that they could capitalize on his libel case and get a retraction from Ford for what they considered to be his greater crime of antisemitism. But Ford had nothing to do with the apology, never heard it, and only wanted out of an embarrassing position if the second trial of the case were to commence. Ford was obviously in danger of losing the case, and the opportunistic willingness of Louis Marshall and Samuel Untermyer gave Ford that way out, with much less bad publicity and at a fraction of the cost that Ford would have incurred if the case had not been settled. Having already been run off the road, even if Jews were not responsible for that incident Ford also may have believed that his life was endangered if the case continued.

G. F. Green, the editor for the popular abridged version of The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem which is still available in print but which is also now found on many websites, including the Saxon Messenger at Christogenea, said this in his own introduction to the book written in 1948:

IN an interview published in the New York World February 17, 1921, Mr. Henry Ford put the case for the "Protocols of Zion" tersely and convincingly. He said: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now." He made this statement when Jewish leaders and the Jewish Press in America were fulminating against a series of articles printed in Ford's newspaper The Dearborn Independent during the years 1920 to 1922. After some years of pressure such as only organized Jewry can conceive or inflict, Henry Ford was made to apologise to Jewry in a letter addressed to Louis Marshall, then leader of the American Jewish Committee, dated June 30, 1927. Ford's apology was abject, but neither then nor since did he ever deny the truth of the articles.

Green evidently believed that Henry Ford apologized, but he probably could not have learned of the true circumstances of the so-called apology before the Harry Bennett book was published in 1951.

Another figure, one who probably had the opportunity to realize differently, was Elizabeth Dilling. She also seems to have taken it for granted that Ford actually apologized, at least as she expressed in her 1964 book The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today in a portion of chapter 12, which was subtitled The Jews and the Communization of Russia, where she had written:

Ford “Apologizes” to Jewry

Even one of the most wealthy and powerful men in the World was not immune to Jewish power and intimidation. The unqualified crawl, even the misstatement that he had been unaware of the contents of his Dearborn Independent, appeared over Henry Ford’s signature, June 30, 1927, just about six-and-a-half years after the above article appeared. The apology was addressed to Louis Marshall as head of the American Jewish Committee.

The renowned theologian, Dr. James M. Gray, head of the Moody Bible Institute, wrote, concerning this apology by Ford (Moody Monthly, September, 1927):

“This confession in our opinion is another link in the chain of prophecy. As we read it we were impressed that the great millionaire went further than the circumstances of the case required him to do. To put it another way, we do not believe the editor of the Independent, Mr. Ford’s paper, was either as foolish or as wicked as the confession of its proprietor would make him appear. We believe he had good grounds for publishing some of the things about the Jews which he did publish … Indeed, the pressure brought to bear upon Mr. Ford to make his confession was in itself such corroborative evidence. This pressure came from Jews all over the world, and in the face of it Mr. Ford was panic-stricken. He is one of the richest men in the world, and of course, conscious of the power that money brings with it; but he was made to feel that the Jews have more money and hence more power than he, and that in such a cause their money and their power can be quickly mobilized against an opponent and with crushing consequence …”

Dr. Gray knew what he was talking about, having been subjected to Jewish threats himself. But he refused to recant his assertions that the Protocols of Zion represent the program of Talmudic World Jewry.

I knew Dr. Gray. Large numbers of my book The Red Network were sold in the Moody Bookstore. I spoke in the Moody Church and over the Moody radio. Unfortunately Dr. Gray’s successor has quieted down many matters in favor of Jewry.

The context of Elizabeth Dilling's statements here were in a larger chapter characterizing the political and economic pressure which the Jews of the period had exerted against many notable men who stood in their way, including former US President Howard Taft. However she is quoting a source from 1927 which also took it for granted that Henry Ford had actually issued an apology, when in fact it is only true that an apology that Henry Ford had never seen nor signed was issued in his name by an employee. Because the apology was never seen nor signed by Ford himself, all attempts to analyze its contents are vain. The apology only reflects the wishes of the Jews, and not the thoughts of Henry Ford.

With this, we shall read the better summary of Ford's thoughts after the matter was finished as they were related by Gerald L. K. Smith:

At the apex of his business career Henry Ford, the industrial genius sensed that a terrific effort was being made to take his business from him and manipulate it into the hands of the money-changers. Mr. Ford had the impression that these manipulators were being engineered by powerful Jewish financiers.

He called to his office the most intelligent research men within his acquaintance. He commissioned them to make a thorough study of the International Jew and publish their findings in "The Dearborn Independent," which at that time was the official organ of the Ford Motor Company. No expense was spared, and it is estimated that literally millions of dollars were spent by Mr. Ford on this project. The original articles were carried first in "The Dearborn Independent," and then published in book form.

I have in my possession every copy of "The Dearborn Independent." This complete set is beautifully bound in Morocco leather and was given to me by an inner-circle member of Mr. Ford's personal staff.

When the report on "The International Jew" was originally published it opened each chapter with a text taken from "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," or from the published statements of world prominent Jews. The moment the manuscripts dealing with the Jewish problem reached the public, a terrific howl went up from official Jewry. If I were to summarize the campaign of reprisal and abuse which was carried on against Mr. Ford and his Company, this summary alone would require a book. Every instrument of torture and abuse which could be imagined was carried on against Mr. Ford – smear, character assassination, ridicule, physical threat, boycott. The pressure was constant, consistent and endless. The most powerful and enigmatic pressures imaginable were brought to bear on Mr. Ford to stop the publication of "The International Jew." Finally the order came through to cease publication and to destroy the copies which were available. Jews and others went into the book stores and bought and destroyed all copies which could be found. Sneak thieves were commissioned to visit libraries and steal the report out of the libraries. This made the book so rare and unfindable that it became a collector’s item.

The day finally came when the one ambition of the Jews was fulfilled. Mr. Ford apologized for publishing "The International Jew" and blamed subordinates for the deed.

In 1940 I interviewed Mr. Ford on numerous occasions. In fact, on the day before his first automobile was put under glass, he and Mrs. Ford invited Mrs. Smith and myself to be their guests at Dearborn. On this occasion he told me the whole story of his first car and how he happened to make it. Among the precious souvenirs which have come to Mrs. Smith and myself is a New Testament autographed by Mr. Ford, and handwritten letters from Mrs. Ford commenting favorably on some of my speeches and expressing in her own handwriting Mr. Ford’s appreciation for my activities.

It was on the occasion of one of these personal visits with Mr. Ford that he gave me a sensational and shocking report. He said: "Mr. Smith, my apology for publishing ‘The International Jew’ was given great publicity, but I did not sign that apology. It was signed by Harry Bennett."

For the information of the reader Harry Bennett was a very officious and aggressive employee of the Ford Motor Company. He presumed his way into the confidence of Mr. Ford and later became known as an enigmatic and obnoxious personality. Space will not permit a thorough discussion of the activities of Harry Bennett. Mr. Ford's personal secretary for 34 years, Mr. Ernest Liebold, told me that one of the worst things that ever happened to the Ford Motor Company was the employment of Harry Bennett. For a certain period of time Bennett exerted virtually a dictatorial control over the affairs of the Company. His alleged deeds, if summarized might make rather a scandalous book. [And we have read how badly Bennett had spoken of Ernest Liebold as well as William Cameron in his own book.]

When Mr. Ford told me that he had not signed the apology, it seemed almost unbelievable. In fact, I could scarcely believe my own ears. Furthermore, on the occasion of this same visit, Mr. Ford said: "Mr. Smith, I hope to republish ‘The International Jew’ again some time." He showed no signs of regret for having published it in the beginning. [So we see that for once, the ADL was right about something.]

I did not report this conversation even to my most faithful followers because the original ‘apology’ had been so thoroughly publicized that I knew it would be difficult to make people believe what I had heard from Mr. Ford’s own lips.

After Mr. Ford died, the man Harry Bennett evidently was very much disillusioned and embittered by the fact that he did not share generously in the inheritance. He collaborated with a Jew by the name of Paul Marcus in the writing of a book entitled '"We Never Called Him Henry."

Here is Mr. Bennett’s own story concerning the much publicized "apology" Mr. Ford is supposed to have made for exposing the machinations of the International Jew. Here are Mr. Bennett’s own words:

• "I got in touch with Arthur Brisbane, and through him learned that the American Jewish Committee could settle the matter. I entered into negotiations with Samuel Untermeyer and Louis Marshall of that organization, and with Brisbane. They drew up the now-famous ‘apology,’ which was to be the basis for a settlement. In this formal statement, it was said that Mr. Ford would see to it that no more anti-Semitic material circulated in his name and that he would call in all undistributed copies of ‘The International Jew,’ which were booklet reprints of the (Dearborn) Independent's articles. For the rest, the ‘apology’ said that Mr. Ford had had no knowledge of what had been published in the Dearborn Independent, and was ‘shocked’ and ‘mortified’ to learn about it.
• "Arthur Brisbane brought this statement to me at 1710 Broadway. I phoned Mr. Ford. I told him an ‘apology’ had been drawn up, and added ‘It’s pretty bad, Mr. Ford.’ I tried to read it to him over the phone, but he stopped me.
• "So I signed Mr. Ford’s signature to the document. I had always been able to sign his name as realistically as he could himself. I sent the statement to Untermeyer and Marshall. The signature was verified, and the case was closed.
• "All this was done without Mr. Ford’s taking anyone else into his confidence. Edsel knew nothing about it, and Cameron and Senator Reed heard about it by reading the papers.
• "Cameron’s reaction was quoted by the newspaper: ‘It’s all news to me and I cannot believe it is true’."

Later, Mr. Bennett’s story appeared in abbreviated form in True Magazine. The above quotation appeared on page 125 of that magazine for October, 1951.

I give the reader this information in order that he may read what follows without the risk of any deception concerning the Ford apology.

To summarize:

1. The press quoted Mr. Ford as apologizing for the publication of "The International Jew."

2. Mr. Ford told me in the presence of Mrs. Ford, Mrs. Smith and Mr. Ernest Liebold (his secretary for 34 years) that he hoped to republish it and that he did not sign the apology.

3. Mr. Bennett, who at one time was one of the three most powerful individuals connected with the Ford Motor Company, admits that Mr. Ford did not sign the apology but that he (Bennett) copied Mr. Ford's signature with accuracy and that this signature is the only one which appeared on the formal apology.

As far as I am concerned, I am willing to base my Conclusions relative to the report ("The International Jew") on the personal statement which Mr. Ford made to me.

Whatever the case may be, the report in its original form as well as the abridged edition herewith, speaks for itself and is supported by the logic of its contents.

Concerning "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" Mr. Ford said on February 17, 1921: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on... They have fitted the world situation up to this time. They fit it now.

It must be observed that when Mr. Ford made this statement concerning the Protocols in relationship to his publication "The International Jew," this document, which is allegedly the secret minutes of the Elders of Zion, was only 16 years old. The Jews had advertised to the world that "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" were forgeries. Mr. Ford wasted no time arguing this question. He merely said to his friends: "No matter what they are, they fit what is going on."

…

Thus we conclude our presentation of the Ford apology which never happened, for a lawsuit that was never about the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, or The International Jew in the first place. Only the Jews made it that way, to procure an apology which never really came. Just as our Messiah and His apostles have warned us, when a Jew moves his lips, he is lying.

This probably concludes our introductory materials to a planned presentation of the Protocols themselves. I say probably because in my ongoing research, I never really know where I am going to be led to next. I hope to commence with that project perhaps in early November, if Yahweh God is willing.