How's that for a strategic plan?*
It was October 1941 and J. Edgar Hoover had just received a strange bit of war intelligence. A secret German air base was being built in the Amazon. This was particularly worrisome, since such an airfield could be used to launch a secret Luftwaffe attack on the strategic Panama Canal. This idea did not come out of the blue. Americans were at the time very concerned about German influence in South America. To monitor potential fascist agents, the Federal Bureau of Investigation collaborated with a Brazilian agency, the Departamento de Ordem Política e Social (Department of Social and Political Order, Brazil's version of a secret police).
National Archives - College Park, MD
Memo from J. Edgar Hoover, raising the alarm on reports about a secret German air base
Then later another piece of evidence was received by US Army intelligence. There were reports that a large amount of fuel was seen sailing up the Beni River, in Bolivia. Gasoline was very much rationed and in short supply during the war, so the the great quantity of canisters flowing by in a river in Bolivia easily called a lot of attention. The ship was sailing towards the Amazon - could the fuel be for the secret air base?
National Archives - College Park, MD
Intelligence cable calling attention to fuel being shipped in the Beni River
The issue was investigated. The army played down the rumors, deciding that it was unlikely that so much material could be accumulated there. But alas, a surprise! The suspected culprits behind the secret scheme were ... Nazi monks! According to this report, a group of German monks living in the Amazon were suspected of stockpiling fuel and materials for a secret Luftwaffe base....MOREPreviously:
Shades of Venlo: "Estonian President: One Of Our Counterintelligence Officers Was Abducted And Taken Into Russia At Gunpoint"
*I stole the line from Warren Buffett:
...To earn even 15% annually over the next decade (assuming we continue to follow our present dividend policy, about which more will be said later in this letter) we would need profits aggregating about $3.9 billion.
Accomplishing this will require a few big ideas - small ones just won’t do. Charlie Munger, my partner in general management, and I do not have any such ideas at present, but our experience has been that they pop up occasionally. (How’s that for a strategic plan?)...
The next year he did reported:
...You may remember the wildly upbeat message of last year’s report: nothing much was in the works but our experience had been that something big popped up occasionally. This carefully-crafted corporate strategy paid off in 1985. Later sections of this report discuss (a) our purchase of a major position in Capital Cities/ABC, (b) our acquisition of Scott & Fetzer, (c) our entry into a large, extended term participation in the insurance business of Fireman’s Fund, and (d) our sale of our stock in General Foods.
Our gain in net worth during the year was $613.6 million, or 48.2%. It is fitting that the visit of Halley’s Comet coincided with this percentage gain: neither will be seen again in my lifetime.....
