New Information on the Assassination of Alfred Herrhausen

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the spectacular assassination of Alfred Herrhausen in Bad Homburg.  I wrote about the assassination five years ago, and the crime remains unsolved even today.  I had met Herrhausen on several occasions while working for Deutsche Bank in New York and Frankfurt in the early 1980s, when Herrhausen had board responsbility for the bank's North American operations. 

Last evening the German television network ARD broadcast a show examining the latest information on the bombing.  The show includes some great footage of Herrhausen filmed the day before he was killed.  The entire show (Die Spur der Bombe - "Tracing the Bomb") is currently available in its entirety on the ARD Mediathek which, unfortnately, I am unable to embed.

However, a preview of the show is available on YouTube:

 

The show does point out that it is extremely unlikely that the Red Army Faction (RAF) had the know-how or sophistication to build a precision bomb with the power to penetrate Herrhausen's armored limosine.  There is evidence that the RAF had support from terrorist organizations in the Lebanon who actually deployed similar bombs.

Of course, this being Germany, the anniversary of Herrhausen's assassination is also an occasion for resurrecting conspiracy theories.  Many believe that an act so evil and so sophisticated could only have been carried out by the Amis - the Americans.  But why would the CIA want to kill a prominent international banker?  According to the narrative, Herrhausen had announced an international initiative to forgive and write-off loans that had been made to Third World countries - a program that upset bankers in the US.  Herrhausen had to die!

Besonders häufig wird dabei auf das auffällige Engagement Herrhausens hinsichtlich eines Schuldenerlasses für die Entwicklungsländer verwiesen. Seine diesbezüglichen Vorschläge, die er unter anderem auf der Weltbanktagung 1987 und der Bilderberg-Konferenz 1988 vorgebracht hatte, stießen nämlich auf erbitterten Widerstand in der Finanzwelt, wobei insbesondere die US-Banken in eine ausgeprägte Kampfrhetorik verfielen. Aus diesem Grunde fühlte sich Herrhausen auch persönlich bedroht, was dazu führte, dass er auf der Konferenz der Weltbank ausnahmsweise sogar seine schusssichere Weste trug. Hieraus leiten manche Autoren eine Täterschaft des US-amerikanischen Geheimdienstes CIA ab. Auf jeden Fall verschwand das Thema Schuldenerlass nach Herrhausens Tod umgehend in der Versenkung. Sein Nachfolger Hilmar Kopper tat das Ganze als intellektuelles Experiment ab, welches niemals ernst gemeint gewesen sei.

(People have pointed repeatedly to Herrhausen's commitment to debt relief in developing countries. His proposal - which he presented at the 1987 World Bank conference and at the 1988 Bilderberg Conference - met with bitter resistence from the financial sector.  The US banks were especially forceful in rejecting this policy.  Herrhausen felt so threatened that he actually wore a bullet-proof vest at the World Bank Conference. Because of this, several authors assume that the CIA was involved in his assassination.  In any event, the debt-relief discussions evaporated after Herrhausen's death.  His successor Hilmar Kopper wrote off the entire discussion as an intellectual exercise which was never taken seriously.)

Truly, we are living in a golden age of anti-Americanism in Germany.

Comments

[P. Uhlmann]

Sir. By May 20 1987, Citibank had already announced that they would write off all of their third world debt, they believed that Citibank was much better capitalized than the other banks and a preemptive strike would weaken their competition. See John Reed:
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/20/business/citicorp-accepts-a-big-loss-linked-to-foreign-loans.html