General Motors

General Motors Corporation, incorporated in Delaware in 1916 and based at 300 Renaissance Center in Detroit, was an automobile manufacturer with overseas subsidiaries and defense electronics holdings.¹ Its principal holdings in this record are the German automaker Opel, which its overseas subsidiary controlled from the late 1920s until 1939 by the company's own account, Hughes Aircraft Company, which it owned from 1985 to 1997, and Electronic Data Systems, which it split off in 1996.

Ownership, du Pont and Ethyl

The du Pont company acquired a 23 percent stock interest in General Motors in 1917 through 1919. In 1949 the government sued over the holding under Section 7 of the Clayton Act. In 1957 the Supreme Court reversed the District Court's dismissal of the action as to du Pont and General Motors and remanded for equitable relief. Justice William J. Brennan wrote that "The fire that was kindled in 1917 continues to smolder. It burned briskly to forge the ties that bind the General Motors market to du Pont."²

The writer S. Dovey wrote in 2023 that Alfred P. Sloan managed General Motors on behalf of the du Ponts from 1923 to 1966, and that Sloan personally authorized the transfer of Ethyl lead to the Luftwaffe as late as 1938.³

The Ethyl Gasoline Corporation, which licensed tetraethyl lead to refiners, was owned in part by Standard Oil Company of New Jersey. In 1940 the Supreme Court recorded that Standard "owns one-half of the capital stock of the appellant" and that "The remainder is owned by General Motors Corporation and E. I. du Pont de Nemours Company."⁴ A German company, Ethyl G.m.b.H., was owned half by the British Associated Ethyl Company and half by I. G. Farbenindustrie. In a 1942 Senate reply, Standard Oil wrote that Ethyl G.m.b.H. "paid up in full a cash debit of nearly $900,000" owed to the American company about one month after the war began.⁵

Opel and the German Government

General Motors acquired control of the German automaker Adam Opel AG through its overseas subsidiary at the end of the 1920s. Michael M. Mooney, son of James D. Mooney, who was president of General Motors Overseas, wrote to Senator Hart in 1974 that "About 1928 General Motors Overseas bought Adam Opel, A.G., manufacturers at the time of Germany's most popular car." He wrote that "The Company maintained control of Opel until about November 1939, when it had to be abandoned to the Nazi Government," and that General Motors resumed control after the war.⁶

In 1974 Bradford C. Snell, assistant counsel of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, wrote a report titled "American Ground Transport: A Proposal for Restructuring the Automobile, Truck, Bus, and Rail Industries." It was printed in the subcommittee's hearings on S. 1167 under the subcommittee's imprint.⁷ Philip W. Copelin, a former GM executive who was assistant general sales manager of General Motors Continental at Antwerp in 1940, wrote to GM chairman Richard C. Gerstenberg that he was outraged by Snell's charge that GM assisted the Nazis. Copelin wrote that when he returned to Antwerp and Paris in August 1940, instead of being considered "impeccable Nazis" (Snell's words) the German authorities were "furious with GM for having removed personnel, vehicles, tools and material from our plants before they took them over."⁸

Snell also wrote that "GM for example, was in complete management control of its Russelsheim war plane factory for nearly a full year after Germany's declaration of war against the United States on December 11, 1941." The quotation appears in a reply by C. G. Stradella, who had served as finance manager of General Motors Overseas Operations from 1942 to 1952. Stradella called the statement "completely absurd."⁹ Snell's report also described the Brandenburg plant: "GM's truck plant in Brandenburg, East Germany [and Ford's facilities in Hungary] have more than likely become substantial factors in these Communist economies." Stradella called that sentence "laughable and a reprehensible inference."¹⁰

Hart stated for the record that the report, though issued under the subcommittee's imprint, did not represent the subcommittee's position. Philip A. Hart, who chaired the subcommittee, told the hearing that "just as your testimony does not represent the position of this committee or any of its members, the testimony to which you refer captioned 'American Ground Transport,' of the witness, Mr. Snell, does not represent the position of this subcommittee or any member of it."¹¹ Hart said that the use of the Opel plant "as a resource for the development of war material by the Hitler government" was "a vivid reminder to us of the dilemma that we have in encouraging overseas investments by American firms."¹²

GM's chief economist, Henry L. Duncombe Jr., told the subcommittee that the charges against GM's railroad sales were "as unfounded as the ludicrous assertion also made recently that GM helped the Nazi war machine prosper." He added: "It amazes us that, after so many years, we have had to remind anyone that the Nazi government took over our Opel plant before the war."¹³ GM introduced Copelin's letter for the record. Copelin wrote that the American management at Opel was reassigned in the fall of 1939, that the American directors left the Opel board after Germany declared war on the United States, and that the Office of Strategic Services asked him in late 1941 or early 1942 to gather intelligence from former Opel managers who had returned to the United States. The report he prepared, dated January 9, 1942, included a concluding paragraph stating that the destruction of any one of the plants "would be a most serious blow to the German war machine."¹⁴

Stradella's reply stated that from the beginning of American involvement in the war, GM Overseas personnel "assisted the U.S. military by providing intelligence and strategic information with respect to the Adam Opel facilities in Germany for use against the German government." He wrote that in 1942 and 1943 he gave Colonel Edward L. Barlow, who had been introduced to him as a representative of United States military intelligence, drawings and blueprints of the Opel works at Russelsheim and Brandenburg that Barlow said would be useful for strategic bombing. He wrote that Barlow later showed the group an air photograph of "what was left of the Brandenburg truck plant" after its bombing.¹⁵

Federal records place Opel's plants under German control in November 1942. The Foreign Claims Settlement Commission's 1967 annual report, reproduced in the 1974 hearing, states that the Russelsheim plant "was placed under the control of the German Enemy Property Custodian on November 25, 1942," and that the Brandenburg plant "was placed under a German administrator as enemy property on November 25, 1942." The Commission was reviewing a claim by General Motors and General Motors Overseas for property losses under the War Claims Act of 1948. It recorded that the Russelsheim plant "sustained severe war damage as a result of allied bombing raids in 1942 and 1944."¹⁶ A Library of Congress translation of a German resolution dated November 25, 1942, appointed an administrator, "Prof. Dr. Carl Luer," to the Adam Opel company at Russelsheim.¹⁷ The Commission's report states that the Brandenburg plant has been "located in the Soviet controlled area of Germany since the end of World War II."¹⁸

The writer S. Dovey stated in 2023 that Opel was the largest tank manufacturer in Nazi Germany.¹⁹ The 1974 record describes the Russelsheim works as Snell's "war plane factory" and the Brandenburg works as a "truck plant."⁹

Surveillance of Ralph Nader, 1966

Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed (1965) criticized the design of the Chevrolet Corvair, a GM model. Nader testified before Abraham Ribicoff's Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization on February 10, 1966, on the federal role in traffic safety. On March 10, 1966, Ribicoff told the Senate that a GM statement issued the previous evening "raised issues which go beyond the question of witness harassment and a violation of the U.S. criminal code," and he invited Nader, the president of General Motors and the detective agencies to appear before the subcommittee on March 22.²⁰

GM's statement of March 9, 1966, said that "following the publication of Mr. Ralph Nader's criticisms of the Corvair" its office of general counsel "initiated a routine investigation through a reputable law firm to determine whether Ralph Nader was acting on behalf of litigants or their attorneys in Corvair design cases pending against General Motors." The statement added that "It is a well known and accepted practice in the legal profession to investigate claims and persons making claims in the product liability field," that the investigation "did not include any of the alleged harassment or intimidation recently reported in the press," and that Nader had spent a day at the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, early in January.²¹

Gaylord Nelson, speaking for Wisconsin, described the episodes on the Senate floor. He said that two private investigators had shadowed Nader into the Senate Office Building, that his landlady had been questioned about his rent payments, that his stockbroker, editor and business associates had been questioned, and that on February 20 and February 23 women approached him in a drugstore and a grocery store with invitations to meetings. Nelson described an investigator who used "a fake reason for the interview, two different phony names, apparently even a recording device in an attaché case."²²

A March 1966 newspaper article reprinted in the House section of the Congressional Record identified the investigating firm as Vincent Gillen Associates of Garden City. It reported that "General Motors publicly apologized for the probe which asked questions about the author's sex habits, political beliefs and attitudes toward Jews."²³

The Senate hearing took place on March 22, 1966. James M. Roche, the president of General Motors, testified: "As president of General Motors, I hold myself fully responsible for any action authorized or initiated by any officer of the corporation which may have had any bearing on the incidents related to our investigation of Mr. Nader." He added: "I am not here to excuse, condone, or justify in any way our investigating Mr. Nader. To the extent that General Motors bears responsibility, I want to apologize here and now to the members of this subcommittee and Mr. Nader."²⁴ On March 25, 1966, Senator Paul H. Douglas told the Senate that when Nader appeared before the committee, "the president of General Motors had the good grace to apologize and say he did not know the nature of the investigation being made."²⁵

Nader sued General Motors and three other defendants, alleging invasion of privacy among other torts. In January 1970 the New York Court of Appeals, in an opinion by Chief Judge Stanley Fuld and applying the law of the District of Columbia, held that the first two causes of action stated claims for invasion of privacy. The court recorded that "the mere observation of the plaintiff in a public place does not amount to an invasion of his privacy," and that "under certain circumstances, surveillance may be so 'overzealous' as to render it actionable." The opinion recorded Nader's allegation that one of the company's agents followed him into a bank, close enough to see the denominations of the bills he was withdrawing.²⁶ On August 13, 1970, the suit was settled out of court for 425,000 dollars; Nader said the money would fund "continuous legal monitoring of General Motor's activities in the safety, pollution and consumer relations area," and his attorney called it "by far the largest amount ever paid as damages for invasion of privacy or in any similar type case."²⁷

Hughes Aircraft and General Motors

In 1971 a CIA memorandum for the record described a "nonofficial cover arrangement" with the Aircraft Division of the Hughes Tool Company in Culver City, California, then being worked out by a former agency employee. The memorandum names Rhea Hopper, vice president in charge of the division, as the "principle cleared witting official."²⁸ The 1953 transfer that separated the aircraft business from the Hughes Tool Company is described in the Barlett and Steele biography of Hughes, and the aircraft company is the one General Motors later bought.

General Motors acquired Hughes Aircraft Company and its subsidiaries effective December 31, 1985, for "$2.7 billion in cash and cash equivalents" and 100 million shares of GM Class H common stock, according to its 1993 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.²⁹ The purchase price exceeded Hughes's net book value by 4,244.7 million dollars, of which 500 million was assigned to patents and related technology. On February 28, 1989, GM and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, agreed to terminate GM's guarantee obligations on the Institute's Class H shares in exchange for put options at 30 dollars per share, which the Institute exercised in 1991, 1992 and 1993.²⁹ In the same 1993 report GM stated that Hughes was cooperating with a federal grand jury investigation in Boston into the delivery and quality of components of two missile guidance systems and had been advised that it was a target of the investigation, and that Hughes's 1973 suit over the Williams Patent on spin-stabilized satellites had produced a Federal Circuit ruling in 1983 that the government had infringed it, with Hughes asserting damages of 1.5 billion to 4.8 billion dollars.²⁹ The Class H stock was a tracking stock. GM's 2002 annual report states that Class H holders "would have no direct claim against the assets of Hughes," and that their dividends were computed as a fraction of the earnings allocated to the Class H shares.³⁰

On January 16, 1997, GM and Hughes announced the spin-off of the Hughes defense business to GM stockholders and its tax-free merger with Raytheon. The announcement said that "Delco Electronics will be transferred from Hughes to GM's Delphi unit," and that GM's Class H stock would be recapitalized into a tracking stock tied to the telecommunications and space business of Hughes.³¹ GM reported the completion of the transactions on December 17, 1997.³²

The company's defense electronics business remained in the news after the spin-off. In December 1998 The New York Times reported that a Central Intelligence Agency scientist, Ronald Pandolfi, had visited "the Hughes Electronics Corporation in Los Angeles in 1995 to learn more about China's missile capabilities," and had become concerned that the satellite manufacturer "might have helped improve Chinese military capabilities." The paper described the company as "a unit of General Motors and major customer of the C.I.A.," which had denied any wrongdoing and said it was cooperating with the investigations.³³

In March 2003 DIRECTV Latin America, LLC, a 75 percent owned subsidiary of Hughes Electronics Corporation, which GM described as a wholly owned subsidiary of General Motors, announced a voluntary petition for reorganization under Chapter 11.³⁴ On September 12, 2003, GM announced a private-letter ruling from the Internal Revenue Service confirming that the distribution of Hughes Electronics stock to the holders of GM Class H common stock, in connection with the split-off of Hughes, would be tax-free to GM and its Class H stockholders.³⁵

Defense and Space Work

General Motors' defense and space work before and after the Hughes purchase ran through its electronics and engineering divisions. A January 15, 1967 student study guide on Apollo guidance and navigation for the Lunar Module computer was issued by the AC Electronics Division of General Motors.³⁶ For the Apollo lunar roving vehicle, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center awarded the prime contract to the Boeing Company; with the exception of the chassis, the mobility subsystems were "designed, developed, and delivered by the General Motors Delco Electronics Division in Santa Barbara, California, under subcontract" to Boeing.³⁷

In its 1993 annual report GM described its "other products" segment as consisting of "military vehicles, radar and weapon control systems, guided missile systems, and defense and commercial satellites." GM Hughes Electronics Corporation carried a 13.4 billion dollar backlog of defense and commercial contracts at the end of 1993, and defense electronics revenues for that year were 6,112.1 million dollars, 45 percent of the Hughes business mix.³⁸ In the fourth quarter of 2002 GM agreed to sell its GM Defense operations, a light armored vehicle business, to General Dynamics Corporation for about 1.3 billion dollars in cash; the sale closed on March 1, 2003.³⁹

Kit Green and the General Motors Research Post

Christopher C. Green, a physician who served in the CIA's scientific and life sciences components, left the Central Intelligence Agency in March 1985 and joined General Motors that month. According to his curriculum vitae of November 20, 2007, he headed Automotive Safety and Health Research at the company's North American Operations Research and Development Center in Warren, Michigan, from March 1985 to September 1993. The CV describes a department of Biomedical Science with 80 physicians, pharmacologists, physiologists, physicists, engineers, toxicologists, microbiologists and biochemists.⁴⁰ The CV, which Green wrote himself, lists work on the Glomar Explorer project among his CIA duties, the Glomar Explorer recovery operation, Project Azorian, and lists advisory memberships of the Army Science Board and the National Research Council's Board on Army Science and Technology.⁴¹

In July 1993 the magazine Defense Electronics reported on closed briefings by the Russian physician Igor Smirnov on "a computerized acoustic device allegedly capable of implanting thoughts in a person's mind," held from March 17 in suburban Northern Virginia. The article said a participant in the meetings described FBI officials asking for a proposal on using the device in Waco, Texas, and that officials from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Advanced Research Projects Agency were also present. Among the "non-military attendees" the article listed "Dr. Richard Nakamura of the National Institute of Mental Health and Dr. Christopher Green, director of General Motors Corp. (GM) biomedical research department in Detroit."⁴²

A GM spokesman told the magazine that Green "attended the Smirnov briefings in his capacity as a member of a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel on 21st Century Army technologies," and added: "This has no connection to anything being done by GM."⁴³ The National Research Council's 1992 report on Army technologies, STAR 21, lists Green, of General Motors Research Labs, as lead expert of its Biotechnology and Biochemistry Technology Group.⁴⁴

Luis Elizondo's 2024 book includes Green among those who "worked with and supported AAWSAP/AATIP."⁴⁵ Richard J. Boylan's roster of a network he called The Aviary lists Green as "Blue Jay."⁴⁶

A Private-Sector Program, 1994

Human Potential Foundation president C. B. Scott Jones wrote on August 11, 1994, to John H. Gibbons, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, on Foundation letterhead, with a handwritten "Pell" at the top (the letter describes Senator Pell as an active board member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded in 1973 by the Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell). Jones wrote that he had spent several hours with Mitchell at a Chicago conference and briefed him on Foundation projects, and that he hoped "at a minimum someone senior in the administration will make a statement that the area we have been discussing is a researchable subject of potential great significance to a number of fields."⁴⁷

The letter's second page begins with Jones's report that James Woolsey "has a document search project under way" and "has not discovered anything of significance," and continues: "The Agency is not a logical place for a program on this subject." The letter continues: "If I had the responsibility to run a super safe black program on this subject, I would take it completely out of the government's bureaucracy and run it from the private sector, probably somewhere within the aerospace community, or perhaps General Motors. Then, when the time comes, as it surely will, when Congress wakes up to the subject, it would not be a lie to say 'No' to the question: 'Mr. Secretary, is there a program on this subject located in the Department of Defense?'"⁴⁷ The foundation's primary donor in its first two and a half years was Laurance Rockefeller, whose support was "conditional with a program designed to get the United States government to acknowledge the existence of alien life."⁴⁸

The Oakland County Child Killer and the Busch Family

The Oakland County Child Killer case covered a series of child killings in Oakland County, Michigan, in 1976 and 1977. Investigators focused on two convicted pedophiles who were tied to Francis Shelden and the North Fox Island network, and both were cleared by polygraph.⁴⁹ Dovey wrote that Christopher Busch was the son of Harold Lee Busch, an executive financial director at General Motors, and that Christopher Busch attended the Swiss boarding school Institut Le Rosey during his father's European posting.⁵⁰

Busch was arrested in January 1977 together with Gregory Greene for sexually assaulting a boy. Greene told police that Busch had killed a boy during a trip to the family cabin, and Busch was polygraphed and cleared.⁴⁹

Richard Lawson, an informant in the cold case, connected the North Fox Island network to Busch and said that an associate, Robert Moore, had taken young boys to visit H. Lee Busch at his home. Lawson's claims are reported in the Detroit Free Press's cold-case series.⁵¹ Tips in the investigation pointed to protection from powerful figures, among them General Motors executives.⁵²

The Letelier Car and the Townley Test

Orlando Letelier was killed on September 21, 1976, when a bomb attached beneath the driver's seat of his car exploded at Sheridan Circle in Washington. Zach Dorfman described the car as a light blue Chevy Chevelle.⁵³ Dorfman reported that the FBI agent Carter Cornick asked an agent in Detroit to contact General Motors and see whether the company could sell a car to blow up. Dorfman wrote that "It turned out GM had exactly the model and color Cornick was looking for."⁵³

Cornick's own account, published in 2016 by the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, describes a replication test: a second car of the same model, a bomb built by Michael Townley from the same components, and a comparison of the damage. The request for the test went for approval to the bureau's deputy director.⁵⁴ Dorfman reported that the FBI took Townley, chaperoned by U.S. marshals, to each place he had bought parts while building the bomb, including a Radio Shack behind FBI headquarters, and that the replica was attached to a car and detonated at an FBI training center in Quantico.⁵³

The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and Wickliffe Draper

Douglas A. Blackmon wrote in 1999 that John C. Satterfield organized the Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms in Washington in 1963 to oppose the pending civil rights bill, and that Wickliffe Draper, founder of the Pioneer Fund, was the client behind an anonymous gift of stock to the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.⁵⁵ The Mississippi Department of Archives and History states that the commission took part in the national campaign to prevent passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, "establishing and providing funds for the Coordinating Committee for Fundamental American Freedoms."⁵⁶

The shares Blackmon described were in Reynolds Tobacco, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Addressograph-Multigraph. Morgan Guaranty Trust sold them at Draper's direction and recorded the proceeds as a donation, which Blackmon wrote totaled 98,612 dollars.⁵⁵

Miami Dealerships

Gary Webb wrote in Dark Alliance (1998) that Danilo Blandón invested in Alpha II Rent-a-Car, which spread to twenty-four locations in southern Florida and became "an authorized outlet for Chrysler and General Motors vehicles." The company operated in Miami.⁵⁷

Electronic Data Systems

General Motors split off Electronic Data Systems in June 1996. The company's 2002 proxy statement says that the board structure "was established at the time of our split-off from General Motors Corporation in June 1996."⁵⁸ James A. Baker III, a director of EDS, is a senior partner of Baker Botts, which EDS retained to provide legal services.⁵⁸

Scale AI and Later Contracts

In July 2023 Alexandr Wang, the founder of Scale AI, told the House Armed Services Committee's cyber subcommittee that from the company's earliest days it had worked "with the leading autonomous vehicle programs at General Motors and Toyota."⁵⁹

The 2009 Bankruptcy and the Treasury Rescue

In June 2009 the Treasury loaned General Motors an additional 30.1 billion dollars from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to fund the company's bankruptcy. The loan was conditioned on the bankruptcy ending in 40 days. With 19.4 billion dollars already invested in GM under two administrations, the combined TARP investment was 49.5 billion dollars, and Treasury became the majority, 61 percent, owner of the new company that purchased substantially all of GM's assets.⁶⁰ The new company emerged from the bankruptcy on July 10, 2009, with most of the company's debt and liabilities left with the old company.⁶¹

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program issued a 2013 report on Treasury's role in the decision for GM to top up the pension payments of certain Delphi hourly employees.⁶² The report concluded that the TARP injection in General Motors and Chrysler "was the only bailout with a President's Designee overseeing the companies' restructurings."⁶³ The special inspector general also reported in July 2010 on the factors behind the decisions of GM and Chrysler to reduce their dealership networks.⁶⁴

Executives and Directors in the Record

Richard C. Gerstenberg was GM's chairman in April 1974, when Copelin and Stradella addressed their letters to him.⁶⁵ Henry L. Duncombe Jr. was GM's chief economist and its witness on the Snell report.¹³ James D. Mooney, president of General Motors Overseas, received the German decoration described in his son's letter. Michael M. Mooney wrote that the Order of the German Eagle was presented to his father at the German consulate in New York on August 17, 1938, that his father forwarded it to the Department of the Navy on August 22, 1938, and that the Navy passed it to the State Department.⁶⁶ C. G. Stradella was finance manager of General Motors Overseas Operations from 1942 to 1952.⁶⁷ Dovey wrote that Harold Lee Busch was an executive financial director at General Motors.⁵⁰