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'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam by Richard Starnes, Washington Daily News, October 2, 1963


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The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Tuesday, 24 December 1963, p.13

Truman and the CIA

By Richard Starnes

The murmuring chorus of Americans who are deeply concerned with the growing power and headlong wilfulness of the Central Intelligence Agency has been joined by former President Truman.

Mr. Truman must be accounted an expert witness in this matter, because it was under his administration that the CIA came into being. In a copyrighted article he wrote recently that the CIA had strayed wide of the purposes for which he had organized it.

"It has," he wrote, "become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."

For writing substantially the same thing from South Viet Nam last fall, this reporter was (and still is) subjected to a calculated behind-the-scenes campaign of opprobrium at the hands of the CIA. So, indeed, has the United States' ambassador to Saigon been subjected to the same sort of behind-the-hand attack, on the theory that he was the source of my account of the CIA's heedless bureaucratic arrogance in Saigon.

Mr. Lodge, it is now charged by CIA apologists, destroyed the effectiveness of one of the CIA's most skilful agents. It is also charged that this reporter violated a gentleman's agreement in naming the agent.

Both charges are false, meaching and disingenuous.

The name of the agent, hurriedly summoned home from Saigon within 24 hours of my account of his stewardship of the huge spook operations, was John Richardson. In my several conversations with Ambassador Lodge, Richardson's name never passed between us.

It was, indeed, not necessary for any wayfaring journals to go to any such exalted figures to descry the activities of the CIA's station chief in Saigon. Richardson, a frequent visitor at the presidential palace and a close adviser to the devious and powerful Ngo Dinh Nhu, was widely known in the Vietnamese capital. Until Mr. Lodge replaced Frederick Nolting as ambassador, most knowledgeable Americans and sophisticated Vietnamese regarded Richardson as the most powerful foreigner in Viet Nam.

It is nonsense to say that Lodge destroyed Richardson's value as a CIA agent. In Saigon, Richardson was as clandestine as a calliope with a full head of steam. It is, moreover, a libel to allege (as high CIA officials have alleged) that this reporter violated an agreement to shield Richardson's identity. In all my assiduous inquiries about the man, never once was it suggested that there was an agreement to keep his identity secret. If there had been any such agreement, I would, of course, have respected it even though it would have been plainly absurd in view of Richardson's notoriety.

This is, unfortunately, more than a parochial dispute between a reporter and a writhing, unlovely bureaucracy. The President of the United States himself has been misled by the CIA mythology regarding just how and by whom Richardson's utility as chief resident spook was destroyed. Neither Lodge nor any journalist cast Richardson in his role in Saigon. If CIA chief John McCone really believes that his man in Saigon was compromised by my dispatches (and presumably he does believe this or he would not have planted and cultivated the tale as thoroughly as he has) then he does not know what is going on in the huge, bumbling apparatus he nominally leads.

Mr. Truman knows whereof he speaks. Wise in the ways of malignant bureaucracy, he knows that unfettered and unaccountable power such as is vested in the CIA is bound to feed upon itself until it poses a threat to the very free institutions it was founded to safeguard. No man alive knows the enormous power that is now vested in the CIA, nor the wealth it dispenses, nor the policy it makes. Most people in government would be appalled if they knew that already the CIA has overflowed its huge new headquarters building in McLean, Va., but it is fact that it has done.

There is far, far too much about the CIA that is unknown to far too many Americans. We will, occasionally and from time to time, twang this same sackbut. It is not a pretty tune it plays, but it is an important one.

Truman’s attack on the CIA in the Washington Post of 22 December 1963 was sure to prove a source of profound irritation to a murderous bureaucracy that believed itself above both criticism and the law. Dulles was still scratching vigorously four months later, even as he engrossed himself in the finer points of intimidating a Dallas doctor. Here’s the sequence in order:

A week after the publication of Truman’s attack, the Washington Post rubbed editorial salt into the wound:

“Truman and the CIA,” 28 December 1963, p.A8:

Former President Truman speaks with unique authority about the CIA inasmuch as the agency was organized in his Administration. When he writes, as he did in this newspaper last Sunday, that there “is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position” we can rightly sight up and take notice. Mr. Truman is concerned that the agency’s operational functions have gotten out of hand. So are many Americans.

The President makes perfectly clear that a central intelligence agency was an urgent requirement when the CIA was formed. The Chief Executive is virtually blanketed by intelligence documents from many existing agencies. He needs a central organization charged with the duty of assembling various estimates and presenting the facts without the tincture of special pleading. The intelligence reports of the various armed services obviously must reflect, consciously or unconsciously, the institutional bias of services with their own policies to defend.

The trouble is that over the years the CIA had become increasingly entangled in its own operations. It has seemed less an objective interpreter of events than a rival policy arm with a very sharp axe to grind. As Mr. Truman remarks:

“I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassments that I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue – and a subject for enemy cold war propaganda.”

President Truman emphasizes his confidence in the patriotism and ability of CIA officials. That is not in dispute. What is at issue is the wisdom of combining within the CIA functions that should be separate. Moreover, there is real doubt whether any arm of the United States Government should be involved in subversion of another government. Experience suggests that this is an area in which Americans do not excel. Morality suggests that it drains this country’s professed principles of meaning when a shadowy arm of the Government appears to practice the same subversion that we condemn in others.

Francis J. Gavin, “Politics, Power, and U.S. Policy in Iran, 1950-1953,” Journal of Cold War Studies, Winter 1999, (Vol. 1, No 1), pp.88-89:

Note 130:

Some of the mythology concerning cover operations may have come from Truman himself. In 1963, a review of a book by Allen Dulles called The Cult of Intelligence appeared in the Washington Post, with Truman listed as the reviewer. Although generally favourable, the review called for the CIA to get out of the covert operations business. Dulles wrote a letter to Truman reminding him that it was under Truman’s guidance that such operations began:

“You will also recall that about a year after the Truman Doctrine declaration of April [March] 1947, you were also the first to take stock of the fact that the Communist subversive threat could not be met solely by the overt type of assistance which you were able to render the beleaguered countries of Greece and Turkey. This peril was evidenced by events early in 1948, with the take-over of Czechoslovakia by secret subversion, the Communist threat to Italian independence in the elections of 1948, and the communizing of Poland, Hungary and the other ‘Satellite’ countries. It was then, in June 1948, that you, through National Security Council action, approved the organization within CIA of a new office to carry out covert operations directed against secret Communist subversion…The administration which followed your own, re-affirmed the need for this type of activity. While the charter that you initially gave the CIA in this field has been slightly modified over the years by NSC action, it remains substantially as you had approved it. It was during ‘Beedle’ Smith’s directorship and again under your directive that the responsibility of the Director of Central Intelligence for covert operations was established, subject of course to the high policy guidance it has always had and to which its has faithfully adhered, despite newspaper reports to the contrary.”

Allen Dulles to the Honorable Harry S. Truman, 7 January 1964, in USNA, RG 263, History Source Collection, NN3-263-94-010, Box 18, File HS/HC, Folder 3.

Dulles then arranged a private meeting with Truman, which is described in the memo.

“I reviewed the various covert steps which had been taken under his authority in suppressing the Huk rebellion in the Philippines, of the problems we had faced during the Italian election in 1948…I then showed him the article in The Washington Post of December 22, 1963, which I suggested seemed to me to be a misrepresentation of his position. I pointed out the number of National Security Actions which…he had taken which dealt with covert operations by the CIA. He studied attentively the Post story and seemed quite astounded by it. In fact, he said that this was all wrong…At no time did Mr. Truman express other than complete agreement with the viewpoint I expressed and several times said he would see what he could do about it…He was highly disturbed at The Washington Post article.*

Dulles came to the reasonable conclusion that the review article attributed to Truman had been written by someone else.

Memo for Mr. Lawrence R. Houston, General Counsel, from A. W. Dulles, 21 April 1964, in USNA, RG263, History Source Collection, NN3-263-94-010, Box 18, File HS/HC, Folder 3.

*Dulles had evidently developed a taste for this sort of thing during the period in question:

http://www.jfk-assassination.com/warren/wch/vol3/page377.php

Monday, 30 March 1964:

Mr. Dulles: I suggest, Mr. Specter, if you feel it is feasible, you send to the doctor the accounts of his press conference or conferences. And possibly, if you are willing, sir, you could send us a letter, send to the Commission a letter, pointing out the various points in these press conferences where you are inaccurately quoted, so we can have that as a matter of record. Is that feasible?

Dr. Perry: That is, sir. Would you prefer that each clipping be edited individually or a general statement?

More on Truman’s attack on the CIA post-Dallas; and Dulles’ attempt to neutralise the former President’s criticisms

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/122909b.html

Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

By Ray McGovern

December 29, 2009

In the past, I have alluded to Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs. The reference is to CIA Director Leon Panetta and seven of his moral-dwarf predecessors — the ones who sent President Barack Obama a letter on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s Aug. 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations.”

Panetta reportedly was also dead set against reopening the investigation — as he was against release of the Justice Department’s “torture memoranda” of 2002, as he has been against releasing pretty much anything at all — the President’s pledges of a new era of openness, notwithstanding. [see Consortiumnews.com’s “CIA Torturers Running Scared.”]

Panetta is even older than I, and hearing is among the first faculties to fail. Perhaps he heard “error” when the President said “era.”

As for the benighted seven, they are more to be pitied than scorned. No longer able to avail themselves of the services of clever Agency lawyers and wordsmiths, they put their names to a letter that reeked of self-interest — not to mention the inappropriateness of asking a President to interfere with an investigation already ordered by the Attorney General.

Three of the seven — George Tenet, Porter Goss and Michael Hayden — were themselves involved, in one way or another, in planning, conducting or covering up all manner of illegal actions, including torture, assassination and illegal eavesdropping.

In this light, the most transparent part of the letter may be the sentence in which they worry: “There is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”

When asked about the letter on Sunday TV shows on Sept. 20, Obama was careful always to respond first by expressing obligatory “respect” for the CIA and its directors.

With Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” though, Obama did allow himself a condescending quip. He commented, “I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look out for an institution that they helped to build.”

That quip was, sadly, the exception to the rule. While Obama keeps repeating the mantra that “nobody is above the law,” there is no real sign that he intends to face down Panetta and the Seven Dwarfs — no sign that anyone has breathed new life into federal prosecutor John Durham, to whom Holder gave the mandate for further “preliminary investigation.”

What is generally forgotten is that it was former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who picked Durham two years ago to investigate the CIA’s destruction of 91 tapes of the interrogation of “high-value detainees.”

Durham had scarcely been heard from when Holder added to his job-jar the task of conducting a preliminary investigation regarding the CIA torture specialists. These are the ones whose zeal led them to go beyond the already highly permissive Justice Department guidelines for “harsh interrogation.”

Durham, clearly, is proceeding with all deliberate speed (emphasis on “deliberate”). Someone has even suggested — I trust, in jest — that he has been diverted to the search for the money and other assets that Bernie Maddow stashed away.

In any case, do not hold your breath for findings from Durham anytime soon. Holder appears in no hurry. And President Obama keeps giving off signals that he is afraid of getting crosswise with the CIA — that’s right, afraid.

Not Just Paranoia

In that fear, President Obama stands in the tradition of a dozen American presidents. Harry Truman and John Kennedy were the only ones to take on the CIA directly.

Worst of all, evidence continues to build that the CIA was responsible, at least in part, for the assassination of President Kennedy. Evidence new to me came in response to things I included in my article of Dec. 22, “Break the CIA in Two."

What follows can be considered a sequel that is based on the kind of documentary evidence after which intelligence analysts positively lust.

Unfortunately for the CIA operatives who were involved in the past activities outlined below, the temptation to ask Panetta to put a SECRET stamp on the documentary evidence will not work. Nothing short of blowing up the Truman Library might help some.

But even that would be a largely feckless “covert action,” copy machines having long since done their thing.

In my article of Dec. 22, I referred to Harry Truman’s op-ed of exactly 46 years before, titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence,” in which the former President expressed dismay at what the Central Intelligence Agency had become just 16 years after he and Congress created it.

The Washington Post published the op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, in its early edition, but immediately excised it from later editions. Other media ignored it. The long hand of the CIA?

Truman wrote that he was “disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment” to keep the President promptly and fully informed and had become “an operational and at times policy-making arm of the government.”

The Truman Papers

Documents in the Truman Library show that nine days after Kennedy was assassinated, Truman sketched out in handwritten notes what he wanted to say in the op-ed. He noted, among other things, that the CIA had worked as he intended only “when I had control.”

In Truman’s view, misuse of the CIA began in February 1953, when his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, named Allen Dulles CIA Director. Dulles’s forte was overthrowing governments (in current parlance, “regime change”), and he was quite good at it.

With coups in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954) under his belt, Dulles was riding high in the late Fifties and moved Cuba to the top of his to-do list.

Accustomed to the carte blanche given him by Eisenhower, Dulles was offended when young President Kennedy came on the scene and had the temerity to ask questions about the Bay of Pigs adventure, which had been set in motion under Eisenhower.

When Kennedy made it clear he would NOT approve the use of U.S. combat forces, Dulles reacted with disdain and set out to mousetrap the new President.

Coffee-stained notes handwritten by Allen Dulles were discovered after his death and reported by historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke. They show how Dulles drew Kennedy into a plan that was virtually certain to require the use of U.S. combat forces.

In his notes Dulles explained that, “when the chips were down,” the new President would be forced by “the realities of the situation” to give whatever military support was necessary “rather than permit the enterprise to fail.”

Additional detail came from a March 2001 conference on the Bay of Pigs, which included CIA operatives, retired military commanders, scholars and journalists. Daniel Schorr told National Public Radio that he had gained one new perception as a result of the “many hours of talk and heaps of declassified secret documents”:

“It was that the CIA overlords of the invasion, Director Allen Dulles and Deputy Richard Bissell, had their own plan on how to bring the United States into the conflict.… What they expected was that the invaders would establish a beachhead … and appeal for aid from the United States. …

“The assumption was that President Kennedy, who had emphatically banned direct American involvement, would be forced by public opinion to come to the aid of the returning patriots. American forces, probably Marines, would come in to expand the beachhead.

“In fact, President Kennedy was the target of a CIA covert operation that collapsed when the invasion collapsed.”

The “enterprise” which Dulles said could not fail was, of course, the overthrow of Fidel Castro. After mounting several failed operations to assassinate him, this time Dulles meant to get his man, with little or no attention to what the Russians might do in reaction.

Kennedy stuck to his guns, so to speak; fired Dulles and his co-conspirators a few months after the abortive invasion in April 1961; and told a friend that he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

The outrage was mutual, and when Kennedy himself was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, it must have occurred to Truman that the disgraced Dulles and his outraged associates might not be above conspiring to get rid of a President they felt was soft on Communism — and, incidentally, get even.

In his op-ed of Dec. 22, 1963, Truman warned: “The most important thing … was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” It is a safe bet that Truman had the Bay of Pigs fiasco uppermost in mind.

Truman called for CIA’s operational duties [to] be terminated or properly used elsewhere.” (This is as good a recommendation now as it was then, in my view.)

On Dec. 27, 1963, retired Admiral Sidney Souers, whom Truman had appointed to lead his first central intelligence group, sent a “Dear Boss” letter applauding Truman’s outspokenness and blaming Dulles for making the CIA “a different animal than I tried to set up for you.”

Souers specifically lambasted the attempt “to conduct a ‘war’ invading Cuba with a handful of men and without air cover.”

Souers also lamented the fact that the agency’s “principal effort” had evolved into causing “revolutions in smaller countries around the globe,” and added:

“With so much emphasis on operations, it would not surprise me to find that the matter of collecting and processing intelligence has suffered some.”

Clearly, CIA’s operational tail was wagging its substantive dog — a serious problem that persists to this day.

Fox Guarding Hen House

The well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination.

Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.

So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964, Dulles spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.

No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”

No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.

A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it.

In a June 10, 1964, letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”

Dulles and Dallas

Dulles could hardly have expected to get Truman to recant publicly. So why was it so important for Dulles to place in CIA files a fabricated retraction? My guess is that in early 1964 he was feeling a good bit of heat from those suggesting the CIA might have been involved somehow in the Kennedy assassination.

Indeed, columnists were asking how the truth could ever come out with Allen Dulles on the Warren Commission. Prescient.

Dulles feared, rightly, that Truman’s limited-edition op-ed might yet hit pay dirt and raise serious questions about covert action. Dulles would have wanted to be in position to flash the Truman “retraction,” with the hope that this would nip any serious questioning in the bud.

The media had already shown how co-opted — er, I mean “cooperative” — it could be.

As the de facto head of the Warren Commission, Dulles was perfectly positioned to exculpate himself and any of his associates, were any commissioners or investigators — or journalists — tempted to question whether the killing in Dallas might have been a CIA covert action.

Did Allen Dulles and other “cloak-and-dagger CIA operatives have a hand in killing President Kennedy and then covering it up? The most up-to-date — and, in my view, the best — dissection of the assassination appeared last year in James Douglass’s book, JFK and the Unspeakable.

After updating and arraying the abundant evidence, and conducting still more interviews, Douglass concludes the answer is Yes

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Guest Tom Scully

After taking a good long look at Truman and the democratic party at the height of its power, I am strongly leaning to a conclusion that

Truman and the party were so corrupted by their partnership with elements of organized crime, the conduct and attitudes of JFK and RFK convinced Truman to either order the hit on JFK, participate in a small group at the top of the establishment from both major political parties, the military, CIA, FBI, along with the scions of the wealthiest families that could all be trusted to share in the deliberations and to agree to order the hit, or at minimum, Truman was in the loop just to the point that he agreed to put his name on the disinformation piece designed at just the right moment to draw suspicion toward the CIA, and away from all of the other interested and culpable parties.

The only other explanations I can see for things like the ASAP parole of Paul Ricca and his three buddies, the appointment of Tom Clark to the supreme court, Truman attending the funeral of boss Tom Pendergast, his escalating apppointments of this man,

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/21/us/david-bazelon-dies-at-83-jurist-had-wide-influence.html?pagewanted=all

...his non-interference with Hoover, the wealth men like Crown and Annenberg were permitted to accumulate and the power they were permitted to project, and even the deaths of two recent defense secretaries on his watch, Forrestal's. with the buried investigation into his suspicious death at Bethesda, and the death of Robert Patterson in January 1952 in a still unsolved airliner crash near Newark airport, persuade me that his anti-CIA piece was a "cherry on top," ...were that Truman was stupid, which I doubt, or he fell under "influence" similar to what was exerted on Jack Ruby to make him follow orders and fall into reliable silence, afterward.

How else can offenses to our sensibilities; the way LBJ conducted himself and his presidency, the makeup and sham investigations of the FBI and WC and their "findings", the trotting out of Ruby as an unlikely second lone nut in the same weekend, the death of RFK and the circumstances, the building and the looting of the Las Vegas casinos, the appointments of the unelected Ford to VP and then to the presidency, the election of the mob franchise known as Reagan, the 12 years in the white house of the two Bushes, and most recently, the Crown family sponsored puppet, Obama. Everyone neatly rewarded, in due time, with the spoils only the victors are expected to divide and enjoy, although those with operational responsibbilities seem to have been overcompensated for the parts aome of them played.

It is getting to be too obvious, and just a tad too much to swallow as they have presented it all to us, up until now.

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Guest Tom Scully

Jim,

These were other cast members in the Truman show. They were there because he picked them. Why do you think he picked Clark and Bazelon

and kept promoting them until one was on the Supreme Court and the other was on the DC Court of Appeals, on his way to become chief of

that court, the most influential judge aside from the chief justice?

What do you think JFK could have been thinking, letting his brother stir up the muck that could inevitably lead on up to these people; the most

powerful people in the Kennedy brothers' own party? Do you think if Dulles did not want you to know that he made a genuine plea to Truman to retract his criticism of the CIA, you would have the information you have today? Do you notice that the Warren Commission worked as one...with Jenner leading the "investigation", they found only two lone nuts?

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/21/us/david-bazelon-dies-at-83-jurist-had-wide-influence.html?pagewanted=all

David Bazelon Dies at 83; Jurist Had Wide Influence

By MARILYN BERGER

Published: February 21, 1993

. .David L. Bazelon, who as a Federal appeals court judge for three decades wrote landmark opinions extending the rights of the individual and expanding the rights of criminal defendants, died on Friday at his home in Washington. He was 83.

Judge Bazelon stepped down from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1985, saying he was having problems with his memory....

As Chief Judge of the appeals court from 1962 to 1978, Judge Bazelon presided as the court was breaking ground in criminal law and on issues as diverse as Presidential power and nuclear power, broadcasting and the use of the powerful insecticide DDT.

His court's broad reach resulted from its jurisdiction over Federal regulatory agencies and its role as the appellate court for the nation's capital. As the Federal Government grew, so did the influence of Judge Bazelon's court. Next to the Supreme Court, his was considered the most influential court in the country. As its Chief Judge, he was one of the most influential jurists in the land. He was also the focus of sharp debate among admirers and detractors. Pursuit of Fairness

In a career spanning eight Presidential administrations, Judge Bazelon (pronounced BAA-zeh-lawn) became a familiar figure in Washington society, ...

...The family, virtually penniless, moved to Chicago, where the future judge attended public schools. He attended the University of Illinois but transferred to Northwestern University, graduating in 1931 with a law degree. All the while he worked as a store clerk or movie usher to pay his way.

He entered private law practice in Chicago and became active in Democratic politics. In 1935 he was appointed an assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois....

....Called Upon by Truman

In 1940, he returned to private practice. But six years later he went back into Government service after President Harry S. Truman named him an assistant Attorney General. He was put in charge of the lands division of the Justice Department. In 1947 he became administrator of the Justice Department's Office of Alien Property.

J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was an early friend and patron, despite differences in political views. It was Hoover who urged Mr. Bazelon to take the job in the Justice Department and who supported him for the judiciary.

In 1949, Mr. Bazelon was named to the appeals court in Washington, becoming the youngest judge in the court's history. He became Chief Judge in 1962 and was the leader of the court's liberal majority before he stepped down in 1978. In 1979 he accepted senior status on the court and continued to hear occasional cases and write opinions until 1985.

Judge Bazelon wrote a series of opinions affecting the major issues of his time, from McCarthyism to the Watergate scandals. In the early 1950's, when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin held his highly publicized hearings on supposed Communist influence in government, Judge Bazelon upheld the rights of individuals to refuse to answer Congressional committees' questions that were not shown to be pertinent to the authorized inquiry.

In October 1973, he ruled that President Richard M. Nixon was required to hand over certain tape recordings sought by the Watergate grand jury and that claims of executive privilege were invalid. Three years later, he supported the dissemination and sale of recordings of Presidential tapes that were used as evidence in the Watergate trials. The possible embarrassment of Mr. Nixon, he wrote, "is largely that which results whenever misconduct or questionable conduct is exposed." Other Major Decisions...

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbs=bks%3A1&q=%22A+number+of+alien+properties+passed+into+the+hands+of+investors%2C+See+Appendix.*%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Captive city

Ovid Demaris - 1969 - 366 pages

...Nine years later, (Henry) Crown bought an abandoned mine on twenty-six thousand acres, near Farmersville, from the United States Alien Property Custodian for $150000. After mechanizing the operation, the Colonel delivered his first million tons of coal to Commonwealth Edison in 1952. Public utilities, whose margin of profit is dependent on the good will of politicians, have always enjoyed doing business with Colonel Crown. The demand for Crown coal was so overwhelming that the Colonel paid $12.5 million for the Chicago Wilmington & Franklin Coal Company in 1954. For a while there was almost enough Crown coal to satisfy the clamoring customers. But not quite. So, in 1959, the United Electric Coal Company was added to the long list of MSC subsidiaries. Immediately, something very pleasant happened to the company: After years of unsuccessful bidding for a portion of the Sanitary District's 1000-ton-a-day business, it broke the hex in 1961 with an 80000-ton order.

Then, in 1962, it limited its bid to 100000 tons and again received the contract.

The balance, some 260000 tons, was awarded to the District's chief supplier, the Truax-Traer Coal Company. Vinton Bacon had already ordered an investigation into coal

buying procedures when, in May 1963, the Sun-Times revealed that a "hoodlum-infiltrated" company had collected more than $500000 in "expediters" fees on $7 million worth of coal contracts awarded to Truax-Traer from 1959 to 1962.

The self-styled expediter was Edwin C. Roth, Sr., president of the Roth-Adam Fuel Company and owner of a string of race horses.

Roth classified himself as a "watchdog," offering the press various explanations for his fees: service charges, handling charges and "checking things through."

A spokesman for Truax-Traer thought Roth was more of a troubleshooter: "We were having trouble on our contracts with the Sanitary District until we began paying commissions to Roth. He is our troubleshooter. . . . We use him so we don't have to deal directly with the district."

Roth's knack for troubleshooting was suddenly acquired in 1958 when he placed Nick Bravos* on the payroll at $1000 a month.

Police have since linked three other hoodlums to the firm's operation: Bravos' brother, George, and Charles and Sam English, who "have the run of the place" and "drive company cars all over town" and to the racetracks. The 8 percent "expediter" fee (thirty-eight cents a ton) was thoughtfully added to the coal firm's bid and passed on to the taxpayers. That United Electric was able to crack this rather formidable monopoly (Truax-Traer was the District's sole supplier) was another tribute to the Colonel's competitive spirit. The Alien Property Custodian in 1947, the year the Colonel purchased the Farmersville mine, was David L. Bazelon, formerly an assistant US Attorney in Chicago (1935-1940) and a senior member of the Chicago law firm of Gottlieb and Schwartz (1940-1946). In both positions he worked with Paul Ziffren, later a law partner of Jake Arvey, who represented Chicago interests in Southern California. Considered close friends, Ziffren and Bazelon joined in several multimillion-dollar ventures across the country. A number of alien properties passed into the hands of investors, See Appendix. who at times included

page 223

Ziffren, Bazelon, and Jake Arvey. Some of the properties were the Franklin Hotel in Chicago, the Rohm-Haas Corporation of Luxembourg and the Resinous Products and Chemical Corporation of Philadelphia, in which Rohm-Haas owned a big block of stock — it was described as a $12 million deal. Los Angeles interests included the Los Angeles Warehouse Company, United Credits Corporation and a whole string of hotels. In one hotel, police discovered that listed with Ziffren on the hotel's liquor license was the wife of Fred Evans, the late partner of Humphreys and Glimco. Another principal was Samuel Genis, a financial wizard who fronted for Alex Louis Greenberg, who in turn fronted for the Chicago mob's top hierarchy. At the time, Genis held all the outstanding stock in Store Properties, Inc.

Another Humphreys-Glimco business enterprise came to light in 1964 when government investigators revealed that Glimco's son, Joseph Jr., and Humphreys' brother, Jack Wright, were on the payroll of Paolo Sake, Inc., a paving firm that received city contracts totaling $4 million. Victor P. Salce, president of the firm, was a close associate of Glimco. After its investigation of the coin machine industry in I960, the McClellan Committee named Glimco as a major figure in a $200000- a-year extortion racket against Chicago operators which was "enforced by coercion, violence and murder. Glimco's hidden interests in this field included the Mercury Record Corporation, Automatic Phonograph Distributing Company, AMI Music Company and Automatic Music Instrument Company. (An investigation disclosed in 1966 that Joseph "Gags" Ga- gliano,* a syndicate loan shark, was a director of Commercial Phonograph Survey, which collected monthly tithes of ninety cents from each of the 6975 jukeboxes owned by 492...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=Evans+glimco&btnG=Search+Archives&ned=us&hl=en&scoring=a

2 GUNMEN KILL GLIMCO PAL

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Aug 23, 1959

Frederick Evans, 60, once the financial wizard of the Capone gang and a business associate of Joseph [Joey] Glimco, was killed Saturday by two gunmen in a ... Ex-capone Wizard Shot Dead .Witnesses See Ambush... - Miami News - Google News Archive

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22*%27Matilda+B.+Evans%2C+anoth-+er+partner+with+Ziffren+in+the+Hayward+Hotel%2C%22&btnG=Search+Archives&ned=us&hl=en&scoring=a

Knowland Hits Ziffren Link to Gang Figures

- Los Angeles Times - ProQuest Archiver - Oct 17, 1958

'Matilda B. Evans, anoth- er partner with Ziffren in the Hayward Hotel, was the wife of Fred Evans. Fred Evans was regarded by manv authorities as the 'fi-

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22Fred+Evans+was+regarded+by+manv+authorities+as+the+%27fi-%22&btnG=Search+Archives&ned=us&hl=en&scoring=a

Knowland Hits Ziffren Link to Gang Figures

Los Angeles Times - ProQuest Archiver - Oct 17, 1958

Fred Evans was regarded by manv authorities as the 'fi- nancial brains' of the Capone gang. "Yesterday I stated that Mr. Ziffren should give an- swers

Here is a reference to A law clark picked by Earl Warren to work in his Supreme Court office, the year after the Warren Commission. The clerk is Paul Ziffren's son.:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=earl+warren+Ken+Ziffren,+son+Paul&cf=all

SON OF LAW FIRM'S SENIOR PARTNER WED

Pay-Per-View - Los Angeles Times - ProQuest Archiver - May 18, 1970

... Mrs Stanley Ko ganCathy Brock to Ken neth Ziffren son of Paul Ziffren senior ... a law clerk to f o r m e r Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1965.

Tom Clark went from this level of awareness:

4863227969_c20f953bc1_b.jpg

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=A8sqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=gc0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=840,5517179&dq=songbird+chicago+businessmen+househol&hl=en

http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/bitstream/2041/50038/b18f07-1026zdisplay.pdf

October 26, 1963

...I took the story back to Washington and Attorney General Clark authorized a dozen or so FBI men to check on

Ragen's facts. A couple of weeks later they reported that they were true. They also reported that control of the underworld reached into very high places. Some of the rulers of the underworld had become supposedly respected businessmen and politicians whose names were household words in Chicago. Some of them, it was stated, had reformed. Yet they still controlled the mob....[/

To this level:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=earl+warren+Ken+Ziffren,+son+Paul&cf=all

EX-COOK COUNTY CIRCUIT JUDGE JOHN J. CROWN, 67

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - Mar 6, 1997

John J. Crown, 67, a retired Cook County Circuit Court(Court Justice Tom Clark) judge, served on the bench from 1974 to 1996. He was the son of the late ... Chicago Sun-Times: John J. Crown, judge, philanthr... - Chicago Sun-Times - NewsBank

Daily Herald: Ex-farmer, judge Crown remembered... - Daily Herald - NewsBank

Chicago Sun-Times: Family ties: tracing judges' roots

$2.95 - Chicago Sun-Times - NewsBank - Aug 30, 1987

JOHN J CROWN is a member of the Henry and Lester Crown family ... THOMAS R FITZGERALD is the son of Thomas H Fitzgerald a longtime circuit judge and friend ...

OBITUARIES - Lake Zurich Courier (IL) | HighBeam Research - FREE trial

Pay-Per-View - Lake Zurich Courier - NewsBank - Mar 13, 1997

Former Judge John J Crown died March 3 1997 in Palo Alto Calif Funeral services ... Court Justice Tom Clark from 1956 to 1959 He began working at Jenner and ...

...and then down to this level:

4287502320_6f0951e05d.jpg

...and of course, chief WC cconspiracy investigator himself,

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50717F83E590C748CDDAB0994DE484D81

THE ORDEAL OF LESTER CROWN - Free Preview - The New York Times

New York Times - Dec 7, 1986

"..... Here sits Henry's second son, Lester. Over the last decade, he has gradually assumed direction of the empire - the 23.2 percent stake in General Dynamics worth more than $700 million, significant positions in other public companies and private holdings in major industrial and real-estate enterprises. (See box, page 42.) Lester Crown's hair is just beginning to show signs of gray. He is tall, with a quiet, controlled manner, but the first mention of his security-clearance case unleashes hidden fury and resentment. ''I'm angry over the time and effort this has cost me, my family and my friends,'' he says. ''The whole thing is unwarranted.''..

...Meanwhile, seven officers and employees of Material Service were padding their expense accounts -''at the direction of Crown,'' according to the Government report - and reimbursing their boss. The project was cut short when Material Service was subpoenaed by a Federal grand jury investigating corruption in the industry.

The family turned to Albert E. Jenner Jr., a lawyer and longtime friend who is on the board of General Dynamics. ''Whenever the kids got into trouble,'' Jenner says, ''they never bothered the old man. They talked to me, and I got them out of trouble.'' In return for his cooperation with the grand jury, Lester Crown was granted immunity from prosecution.

Jim... Tom Clark, Bazelon, and the others from Chicago were Harry Truman's boys, do you really think he sat back and watched Bobby go after organized crime, and Jack veer sharply to neutral as far as a formerly aggressive military policy, and Truman just sat at home, writing a sincere whine about the CIA, for publication? From the moment JFK was shot, these guys worked remarkably well together, Ruby was given his orders, the WC sham proceeded swiftly to complete its cover up of the century, and everybody got rich or the political appointments they coveted.

You've got Truman here working out of synch with the rest. These are all one party guys, the ones who only serve the interests of great wealth.

Dulles was in that one party with Truman. Unfortunately for the Kennedys they didn't seem to have gotten the memo advising them who they were to

answer to.

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Guest Robert Morrow

"All of this seems to me to be very important new material, not about Truman, but a man who Jim Garrison had no doubt was in on the Kennedy plot."

Jim are you referring to ALLEN DULLES? Meaning Jim Garrison was convinced Allen Dulles was in on the plot to murder Kennedy?

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This is not about who Truman was, or the Pendergast machine, or who Truman's appointments were. This is about three things:

1.) Was Truman's editorial a veiled recognition of what he thought happened to Kennedy?

2.) Dulles seems to have contemplated that. Recall, Dulles was on the WC, but formally out of the CIA. Why is it him there and not say Larry Houston, CIA counsel?

3.) Did Dulles want to cut off any theorizing at the time about VIetnam being a motive for the assassination? His comments to Truman seem to suggest this.

All of this seems to me to be very important new material, not about Truman, but a man who Jim Garrison had no doubt was in on the Kennedy plot.

All the above is spot-on. Pity Truman came so late to the game. Kennedy was warned about Dulles almost immediately after his election. And this wasn't the wisdom of post-assassination hindsight:

The evening after his election, the President-elect and Mrs Kennedy were alone at Hyannis Port with three close friends. In the happy, relaxed conversations after dinner, one of the men remarked, 'There is one thing I want you to do - fire J. Edgar Hoover!' 'No,' the second interrupted, 'much more important than that, get Allen Dulles out of CIA immediately.' He had sat at the dinner table of a national columnist the night after the U-2 incident, he said, and heard Dulles declare that flight 'a triumph of American foreign policy.' 'Dulles,' Kennedy's guest warned, 'would be trying to carry on his dead brother's policies in your Administration,'

Helen Fuller. Year Of Trial: Kennedy's Crucial Decisions (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1962), p.36

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Guest Robert Morrow

"All of this seems to me to be very important new material, not about Truman, but a man who Jim Garrison had no doubt was in on the Kennedy plot."

Jim are you referring to ALLEN DULLES? Meaning Jim Garrison was convinced Allen Dulles was in on the plot to murder Kennedy?

Yes, in an interview Garrison gave at the time On the Trail of the Assassins was first published he was asked that question. He replied with words o the effect that he had little or no doubt that Allen Dulles was one of the conspirators.

Today, I feel the same way. And the visit with Truman about his editorial is one of the things that did it.

Yep, I believe Allen Dulles was "in on" the JFK assassination and by that I mean he helped to plan it. People today just don't know how powerful Dulles brothers were back in the 50's and 60's. They were as powerful as US presidents behind the scenes. And the more I learn about Edward Lansdale being a "pet" of the Dulles brothers and being identified ON SCENE at TSBD ... that tells me a LOT. Looks like they used some of those Operation 40 and Operation Mongoose assassins on Kennedy rather than Fidel Castro.

The following passage makes a lot of sense to me. I keep posting it because no one ever seens to talk about it, but its in the public record... and by the way Trenton Parker is STILL ALIVE today about age 67, living in Colorado:

From Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, 3rd edition 1998 p. 638-639]:

The Role of deep-cover CIA officer, Trenton Parker, has been described in earlier pages, and his function in the CIA's counter-intelligence unit, Pegasus. Parker had stated to me earlier that a CIA faction was responsible for the murder of JFK … During an August 21, 1993, conversation, in response to my questions, Parker said that his Pegasus group had tape recordings of plans to assassinate Kennedy. I asked him, "What group were these tapes identifying?" Parker replied: "Rockefeller, Allen Dulles, JOHNSON of Texas, GEORGE BUSH, and J. Edgar Hoover." I asked, "What was the nature of the conversation on these tapes?"

I don't have the tapes now, because all the tape recordings were turned over to [Congressman] Larry McDonald. But I listened to the tape recordings and there were conversations between Rockefeller, [J. Edgar] Hoover, where [Nelson] Rockefeller asks, "Are we going to have any problems?" And he said, "No, we aren't going to have any problems. I checked with Dulles. If they do their job we'll do our job." There are a whole bunch of tapes, because Hoover didn't realize that his phone has been tapped. Defrauding America, Rodney Stich, p. 638-639]:

Edited by Robert Morrow
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  • 2 years later...

HARRY S. TRUMAN ON CIA COVERT OPERATIONS

Hayden B. Peake

The now defunct Washington Daily News, on 5 January 1964, carried an article by Richard Starnes, "Harry S. Fires Telling Broadside at the CIA," which is typical, though more strident in tone, of the early press reaction:

“The Central Intelligence Agency, a cloudy organism of uncertain purpose and appalling power, promises to have an uncomfortable time of it in the year just begun. Former President Truman, who hatched the coiling, mysterious creature, spoiled the holidays for the busy apologists of the CIA by firing a telling broadside in a copyrighted newspaper article. Mr. Truman is no great shucks as a writer, but there is nothing wrong with his thinking or his facts. He echoed the charge (early made here) that the monstrous spook apparatus had metastasized into policymaking and operational functions, neither of which was intended by the founders of the CIA ... in spite of the outraged howls of denial by the nominal head of the CIA, both charges are quite true.”

http://media.nara.gov/dc-metro/rg-263/6922330/Box-7-89-4/263-a1-27-box-7-89-4.pdf

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  • 4 weeks later...

While it was nice to see the cover of Dick’s noirish mystery – And When She Was Bad She Was Murdered (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1950), one of three he dashed off in the period to pay the bills – much the most apposite of his books in this context is his classic 1967 assault on the CIA and liberal illusion, Requiem In Utopia (NY: Trident Press). It’s one of the outstanding spy novels of the decade and I commend it to all.

Walter Pforzheimer, the Agency’s Historical Curator, in a memo lamenting the publication of Richard Starnes’ Requiem in Utopia, July 1967:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/5829/CIA-RDP80B01676R001600030024-8.pdf

Or here for many additional reviews of books of interest to Langley in the same year:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/search-results?search_api_views_fulltext=&field_collection=&page=23619

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  • 3 months later...

The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3

'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE

'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam

SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.

Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.

In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.

This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.

It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.

Others Critical, Too

Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.

"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.

("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)

CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.

An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.

Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."

Few Know CIA Strength

Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.

Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.

A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.

"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.

"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.

Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.

The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).

Hand Over Millions

Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.

Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.

Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)

Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.

It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.

And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.

A Typical Example

For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.

One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.

Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.

There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.

John F. Kennedy's Vision of Peace

On the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, his nephew recalls the fallen president's attempts to halt the war machine

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

November 20, 2013 12:30 PM ET

The Joint Chiefs, already in open revolt against JFK for failing to unleash the dogs of war in Cuba and Laos, were unanimous in urging a massive influx of ground troops and were incensed with talk of withdrawal. The mood in Langley was even uglier. Journalist Richard Starnes, filing from Vietnam, gave a stark assessment in The Washington Daily News of the CIA's unrestrained thirst for power in Vietnam. Starnes quoted high-level U.S. officials horrified by the CIA's role in escalating the conflict. They described an insubordinate, out-of-control agency, which one top official called a "malignancy." He doubted that "even the White House could control it any longer." Another warned, "If the United States ever experiences a [coup], it will come from the CIA and not from the Pentagon." Added another, "[Members of the CIA] represent tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/john-f-kennedys-vision-of-peace-20131120page=3#ixzz2ltCFo4RJ

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  • 2 weeks later...

While it was nice to see the cover of Dick’s noirish mystery – And When She Was Bad She Was Murdered (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1950), one of three he dashed off in the period to pay the bills – much the most apposite of his books in this context is his classic 1967 assault on the CIA and liberal illusion, Requiem In Utopia (NY: Trident Press). It’s one of the outstanding spy novels of the decade and I commend it to all.

Walter Pforzheimer, the Agency’s Historical Curator, in a memo lamenting the publication of Richard Starnes’ Requiem in Utopia, July 1967:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/5829/CIA-RDP80B01676R001600030024-8.pdf

Or here for many additional reviews of books of interest to Langley in the same year:

http://www.foia.cia.gov/search-results?search_api_views_fulltext=&field_collection=&page=23619

Why the CIA so loathed Requiem in Utopia:

Max helped himself to his feet on the cane. "Mr. Ambassador, if I remember the file on you, you are new to this business."

"Yes." The Ambassador was beyond the point of caring at the blush that crept up his face. "Yes, I'm new it."

"Then tell me, sir, what assurance do you have that your CIA people don't already have Nils Lund?"

The Ambassador looked bewildered.

"Why, they - the station chief - gave me his word. He proposed it - please keep that secret, Mr. Speed - he proposed, uh, taking Nils Lund to some place for safekeeping until we could convince him not to issue his manifesto. But I forbade it. I told them positively not. You know there has been this sort of trouble before, between the CIA and the chief of mission. And President Kennedy issued a directive. The CIA station chief is bound by the orders of the Ambassador, the chief of mission."

"And what assurance do you have that the CIA obeyed your order with respect to Nils Lund?"

"Why - why, Mr. Speed, they gave me their word. The station chief gave me his word."

Max moved toward the door, his feet mired in exhaustion. "It isn't enough, Mr. Ambassador. It just isn't enough."

Richard T. Starnes. Requiem In Utopia (NY: Trident Press, 1967), p.119

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  • 3 years later...
On 7/27/2006 at 2:17 PM, Paul Rigby said:

“The most important consequence of the Cold War remains the least discussed. How and why American democracy died lies beyond the scope of this introductory essay. It is enough to note that the CIA revolt against the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the single event which did more than any other to hasten its end – was, quite contrary to over forty years of censorship and deceit, both publicly anticipated and publicly opposed.

No American journalist worked more bravely to thwart the anticipated revolt than Scripps-Howard’s Richard Starnes. His ‘reward’ was effectively to become a non-person, not just in the work of mainstream fellow-journalists and historians, but also that of nominally oppositional Kennedy assassination writers. It could have been worse: John J. McCone, Director of Central Intelligence, sought his instant dismissal; while others within the agency doubtless had more drastic punishment in mind, almost certainly of the kind meted out to CBS’ George Polk fifteen years earlier.

This time, shrewder agency minds prevailed. Senator Dodd was given a speech to read by the CIA denouncing Starnes in everything but name. William F. Buckley, Jr., suddenly occupied an adjacent column. In short, Starnes was allowed to live, even as his Scripps-Howard career was put under overt and intense CIA scrutiny - and quietly, systematically, withered on the Mockingbird vine.”

From “Light on a Dry Shadow,” the preface to ‘Arrogant’ CIA: The Selected Scripps-Howard Journalism of Richard T. Starnes, 1960-1965 (provisionally scheduled for self-publication in November 2006).

As far as I am aware, the remarkable example below of what Claud Cockburn called “preventative journalism” has never appeared in its entirety anywhere on the internet. Instead, readers have had to make do with the next-day riposte of the NYT’s Arthur Krock. The latter, it should be noted, was a veteran CIA-mouthpiece and messenger boy.

Dick Starnes was 85 on July 4, 2006. He remains, in bucolic retirement, a wonderfully fluent and witty writer; and as good a friend as any Englishman could wish for.

I dedicate the despatch’s web debut to Judy Mann, in affectionate remembrance.

The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3

'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE

'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam

SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.

Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.

In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.

This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.

It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.

Others Critical, Too

Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.

"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.

("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)

CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.

An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.

Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."

Few Know CIA Strength

Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.

Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.

A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.

"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.

"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.

Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.

The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).

Hand Over Millions

Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.

Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.

Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)

Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.

It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.

And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.

A Typical Example

For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.

One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.

Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.

There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.

This thread deserves a bump.

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Good to see the Krock article, Jim.  Often that article is cited as anti-CIA and the source of warnings that the CIA was too powerful and interfering, but it's clear from reading Krock that his is an equivocating response to Richard Starnes' courageous work.  Krock is doing damage control, goading Kennedy, and stealing Starnes' glory, all in one shot.  If a plot against Kennedy were not already underway, this piece would be a serious incitement to war between the Agency and the Executive. 

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21 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

It certainly does!  The Starnes article is what sent Arthur Krock of the NYTimes to DefCon 11 the very next day.  I didn't see the Krock piece here, so....

Krock_CIA.jpeg?dl=0

I have have a few things that I want to transcribe. I am testing how well the voice-type feature on my phone works for that purpose. I used this article as part of that test. I'll share that transcription.

 


By Arthur Krock
New York Tomes, Oct. 3, 1963

In The Nation

The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam


Washington, Oct. 2- The Central intelligence agency is getting very bad press in dispatches from Vietnam to American newspapers and in articles originating in Washington. Like the Supreme Court when under fire, the CIA cannot defend itself in public retorts to criticism of its activities as they occur. But unlike the Supreme Court the CIA has no open record of its activities on which the public can base a judgmentmen of the  validity of the criticisms. Also the agency is precluded from using the indirect defensive tactic which is consistently employed by all other government units under critical fire.
This tactic is to give information to the press, under a seal of confidence, that challenges or refutes the critics. But the CIA cannot father such inspired articles, because to do so would require some disclosure of its activities. 
   And not only does the effectiveness of the agency depend on the secrecy of its operations, every president since the CIA was created has protected this secrecy from claimants- Congress or the public through the press, for examples- of the right to share any part of it.
This presidential policy has not, however, always re-strained other executive units from going confidentially to the press with the attacks on CIA operations in their common field of responsibility. And usually it has been possible to deduce these operational details from the nature of the attacks. But the peak of the practice has recently been reached in Vietnam and in Washington. This is revealed almost every day now in dispatches from reporters-in close touch with intra-administration critics of the CIA-with excellent reputations for reliability.
One reporter in this category is Richard Starnes of the Scripps Howard newspapers. Today, under a Saigon dateline, he related that, "according to a high United States source here, twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from ambassador Henry Cabot lodge... And in one instance frustrated the plan of action Mr. Lodge brought from Washington because the agency disagreed with". 
Among the views attributed to the United States officials on the scene, including one described as a "very high American official... who has spent much of his life in the service of the democracy.... are the following: The CIA's growth was "likened to a malignancy" which the "very high official was not sure even the White House could control... any longer". If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the government] it will come from the CIA and not the Pentagon." The Agency "represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone."
Whatever else these passages disclose, they most certainly established that representatives of other executive branches have expanded their war against the CIA from the inner government councils to the American people via the press. And published simultaneously are details of the agencies operations in Vietnam that can come only from the same critical official sources. This is disorderly government. And the longer the president tolerates it-the period is already considerable-the greater will grow it's potentials of hampering the real war against the Vietcong and the impression of a very indecisive administration in Washington.
   The CIA maybe guilty as charged. Since it cannot, or at any rate will not, openly defend its record in Vietnam, or defend it by the same confidential press "briefings" employed by its critics, the public is not in a position to judge. Nor is this department, which sought and failed to get even the outlines of the agencies case in rebuttal. But Mr. Kennedy will have to make a judgment if the spectacle of war within the executive branch is to be ended and the effective functioning of the CIA preserved. And when he makes this judgment, hopefully he also will make it public, as well as the appraisal of fault on which it is based.
   Doubtless, recommendations as to what his judgment should be were made to him today by Secretary of Defense McNamara and General Taylor on their return from their fact-finding expedition into the embattled official jungle in Saigon.

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