Major Jordan Talks about his Diaries

CHAPTER TWELVE - How Russia Got U.S. Treasury Plates
I returned to Great Falls, for the first time as an Army Officer, on June 13th, since I had just been replaced by Lieutenant George Walewski Lashinski. I was due to speak in Omaha on the 16th, and this was my last chance to say good-by to my friends, including Colonel Kotikov.
On a personal level, I had always been very friendly with the Colonel; he was one of the most unusual people I had ever known, and he had many likable traits as a human being. It was only when politics intervened, or orders came to him from above, that his attitude and manners became difficult. During our farewell talk, Colonel Kotikov mentioned the “money plane” which had crashed in Siberia and had been replaced. I asked what he meant by “money plane.” The U.S. Treasury, he explained, was shipping engraving plates and other materials to Russia, so that they could print the same occupation money for Germans as the United States was printing. I was certain he was mistaken. I was quite sure that never in history had we let money plates go out of the country. How could there be any control over their use? “You must mean, Colonel,” I said, “that we have printed German occupation money for Russia and shipped the currency itself.”

“No, no,” he replied. He insisted that plates, colored inks, varnish, tint blocks, sample paper – these and similar materials had gone through Great Falls in May in two shipments of five C-47s each. The shipments had been arranged on the highest level in Washington, and the planes had been loaded at the National Airport.

I was still incredulous, but I was impressed enough to pass these remarks on to Colonel Bernard C. Hahn, the Air Force Inspector who had come on as a result of my trip to Washington.

Not until 1950 did I learn all the particulars about these money plates. The full story has never been released to the general public, and only a few people in Washington seem to know the details of this Lend-Lease scandal. I see no reason why every citizen should not know how his public servants handled such a grave matter in wartime.

The sum of money which we lost in redeeming the marks which the Russians rolled off their presses, with no accountability whatever, appears to have been $250,000,000! It was not until September, 1946, that we put a stop to the siphoning of our treasury by refusing to redeem further marks. By this time the plates had been in Russian hands over two years.
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