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Operation Mockingbird


John Simkin

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Another interesting figure in Operation Mockingbird was Bertram D. Wolfe. He had been one of the founders of the Communist Party of the United States in 1919. He remained a loyal member of the party until Nikolay Bukharin was deprived of the chairmanship of the Comintern and expelled from the Politburo by Stalin in 1929. Attempts were now made to purge foreign communist parties who had previously supported Bukharin. Representatives from Stalin arrived in the United States and several members including Wolfe, Jay Lovestone and Ben Gitlow were expelled. They then formed the Communist Party (Majority Group). Later it changed its name to the Communist Party (Opposition), the Independent Communist Labor League and finally, in 1938, the Independent Labor League of America. The group was disbanded in 1940.

After the war these individuals came under the control of the CIA. Ben Gitlow gave evidence against the American Communist Party before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, chaired by Martin Dies of Texas. The following year he published his autobiography, I Confess: The Truth About American Communism. His second volume of autobiography, The Whole of Their Lives: Communism in America, was published in 1948. In the 1960s Gitlow was closely associated with another fanatical anti-communist, Billy James Hargis, a man who has been linked to the assassination of JFK.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAgitlowB.htm

Wolfe worked as an advisor to the State Department's International Broadcasting Office which was in charge of Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe. He also wrote anti-communist books such as Three who Made a Revolution (1956), The Marxism (1965), Strange Communists I have Known (1966), The Bridge and the Abyss (1967) and An Ideology in Power: Reflections on the Russian Revolution (1969).

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAwolfeBD.htm

Probably, the most interesting of the three is Jay Lovestone, who had been party secretary of the American Communist Party between 1927-29. After leaving the party Lovestone went to work for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). After the war he was active in the American Institute for Free Labor Development, an organization sponsored by the American Federation of Labor. Later it also received secret payments from the CIA. This began a long-term friendship with James Jesus Angleton, Director of Operations for Counter-Intelligence.

In 1963 Lovestone became director of the AFL-CIO's International Affairs Department (IAD), which arranged for millions of dollars from the CIA to aid anti-communist activities internationally, particularly in Latin America. The AFL-CIO president George Meany discovered in 1964 that Lovestone was involved with the CIA and instructed him to break-off contact with James Jesus Angleton. Lovestone agreed to do this but when Meany discovered in 1974 that he was still working with Angleton he forced him from office.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAlovestoneJ.htm

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''The oppositionists haven't just won. They are in charge.'' - The demise of the partisan review

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  • 5 months later...
Guest Tom Scully

If you had only these three items as a starting point, and you recognized some of the names and the family backgrounds, but did not know the careers or much about the deeper relationships of the people named in the wedding pieces of the two Baker sisters and the obituary of the husband of one of the sisters, Joan Baker, here are some the coincidences that can be gathered.:

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbs=ar:1,nws:1&&sa=X&ei=xyyWTKfkNYr2tgO1ytzkCQ&ved=0CCUQBSgA&q=john+whitney+shepardson&spell=1&fp=1&cad=b

MISS JOAN BAKER IS WED IN CHAPEL; Fifth Ave. Presbyterian...

- New York Times - Feb 5, 1950

Fifth Avenue and Millbrook, NY, to John Whitney Shepardson, son of Mr. and lairs . Whitney

H. Shepardson of 213 East Sixty-first Street. The Rev. ...

#

BARBARA (5, BAKER BECOMES A BRIDE; Alumna of Smith College...

‎ - New York Times - Dec 7, 1952

The bride, given in marriage by her father, wore her mother's bri- dal go,m, which also had

worn by her sister, Mrs. John Whitney Shepardson, who served as ...

#

Paid Notice: Deaths SHEPARDSON, JOHN WHITNEY - New York...

nytimes.com - Feb 22, 2009

SHEPARDSON--John Whitney, of Denver, Colorado, died at Porter Hospital on February 18,

2009. He was 83. He died of natural causes. John W. Shepardson ...

Feb, 1950 Joan Baker marries John Whitney Shepardson, only son of CFR founder and intelligence services executive, Whitney Shepardson. John's best man is :

William Alexander Stuart, Jr. Stuart, Jr. married Cynthia Bemiss (1st wife) in 1948. Cyntha dies soometime during this marriage. She is the daughter of close friends of Prescott and George HW Bush, Samuel M Bemiss and his wife, Doreen Fitzgerald Bemiss.:

http://www.vahistorical.org/arvfind/bemissser1.htm

FitzGerald Bemiss Papers, 1943-1997

Collection Number Mss1 B4252 c 1-500

Series 1. Correspondence, n.d., 1943-1997, with or about George H. W. Bush

Please note: All incoming letters are original, unless otherwise noted. All copies of Bush

letters are from the Bush Presidential Library at Texas A & M University, unless otherwise

noted. All FitzGerald Bemiss letters are outgoing copies, unless otherwise noted. [pm] =

Postmark date

No Date

n.d. Mary [?] to Doreen (FitzGerald) Bemiss, concerning George H. W. Bush (i.e., Poppy)

being ill with strep infection at Boston Hospital.

n.d. Dorothy (Walker) Bush to F. Bemiss, letter concerning George and Barbara Bush’s

move to Midland, Tex.

n.d. Barbara and George Bush to F. Bemiss, Christmas card.

n.d. G. Bush to F. Bemiss, letter concerning plans for New Year’s celebration.

n.d. Dorothy (Walker) Bush to F. Bemiss, letter concerning Prescott Sheldon Bush [sr.]

n.d. G. Bush to F. Bemiss, note card from Kennebunkport, Me.

n.d. G. Bush to F. Bemiss, note card concerning Kennebunkport; also China.

n.d. G. Bush to F. Bemiss, note card extending congratulations on a job; also mentions

Maine.

n.d. G. Bush to F. Bemiss, note card [on Republican National Convention stationary]

concerning a picture.

n.d. Barbara Bush to F. Bemiss, note card containing personal news and activities at

Kennebunkport.

n.d. Barbara Bush to FitzGerald Bemiss, birthday card....

Joan Baker Shepardson's sister Barbara marries in Dec., 1952, Yale grad. and WWII USS Gatlin destroyer communications officer, David Wells O'Brien. Two ushers in this wedding are new brother-in-law John W Shepardson, and John S. Ziinsser, Jr.

Zinsser, Jr. is the son of John J. McCloy's wife Ellen's brother. David Wells O'Brien was an usher in the 1948 wedding of Anne Lowe and John S. Zinsser, Jr.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/books/11zinsser.html

John S. Zinsser Jr., 84, Editor of Reader's Digest Condensed Books ...

Jun 11, 2008 ... Mr. Zinsser's first marriage, to Anne Lowe, ended in divorce. ... An obituary on Wednesday about John S. Zinsser Jr., a longtime editor of ...

This Anne Lowe Zinsser's brother.:

The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower: NATO and the campaign of 1952: Volumes 12-13

Dwight David Eisenhower, Alfred Dupont Chandler, Louis Galambos - 1970 - 1720 pages - Snippet view

2 Writing to Eisenhower on September 26, Hoffman had enclosed a copy of a letter of the same date that he had written to William Hyslop Lowe, Jr., the managing editor of Look magazine (copies in EM, same file as document).

Harvard magazine: Volume 101

1998 - Snippet view

WILLIAM HYSLOP LOWE JR. '42, of Hacken sack, NJ, died December 2. A retired journalist and editor, he received two Bronze Stars for his service as a Marine Corps officer in the central Pacific during World War II...

As a student, I read some of the 800 condensed books that John J McCloy's nephew John Zinsser, Jr., chose and then edited and abbreviated. Everyone who could read in 1967 bought or borrowed the Look Magazine editions edited by Zinsser, Jr.'s brother-in-law, William Hyslop Lowe, Jr., containing the syndicated work by William Manchester about JFK.

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Is it in Look Magazine International/ Pacific edition?

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  • 5 months later...
Guest Tom Scully
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/village-psy-ops.html

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Village Psy-ops

by digby

Wow. If you want to see some Village circling of the wagons, take a look at this "report" on the Army Psy-ops program against congressional leaders by Norah O'Donnell:

Tamron Hall: Norah, I saw you on Morning Joe talking about this This is a real buzz story, for many reasons, but now you have General David Petraeus calling for an investigation regarding the seriousness of what was going on.....

....O'Donnell: That's true, but remember that they, they still question a lot of the previous article even though that brought down General Stanley McCrystal.

Norah O'Donnell seemed very agitated.

Think about this. You have a big story that claims the military was using propaganda and psychological training on US Senators. If it's true, it's a big deal. And the military is logically very upset that the story has been reported and they are busily spinning reporters that the reporter and the publication are unreliable and they shouldn't be believed. Ok fine.

But what's truly amazing about this is that they are apparently selling this as a "national security" necessity since the General who is implicated in this is allegedly the "lynchpin" of the Afghan training program, which I guess we're supposed to take on faith --- and overlook any little unpleasantness like illegally trying to brainwash US Senators. Unbelievable.

I realize that everyone hates the fact that Michael Hastings breaks the Village rules and reports what he's heard and seen rather than keeping the government's secrets. Nothing upsets most journalists more than that. After all, if you fail to keep everything important off the record how ever will you get the little irrelevant tidbits you need for those sycophantic beat sweeteners?

As far as I know nothing Hastings reported about what McCrystal said wasn't true. What the military -- and most of the press corps are mad about is that he was apparently supposed to let that "sort of thing" go because it's a breach of protocol to reveal what your sources are telling you when they are just "blowing off steam." Moreover, it's got a sanctimonious air about it in that reporting accurately on what these General really do could 'endanger the troops" or American national security, which is just cheap....

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  • 4 months later...

Rupert Murdoch is a key figure in Operation Mockingbird (or whatever it is called now). One of the reasons that he has been allowed to obtain so much power over the world's media, is that he has always been willing to support the interests of the ruling elite. A good example of this is the Iraq War. Murdoch has always claimed that he allows all his editors to make their own decisions about the "political angle" of their newspaper. It is of course just a coincidence that of the 175 newspapers that he controlled, were keen supporters of the war. The Murdoch newspapers are always against political conspiracies. Look at the way they covered the death of Dr. David Kelly. Another interesting fact is that the CD with all the details of the MP expenses, was offered and rejected by Murdoch's newspapers, before being bought by the Daily Telegraph. Why did they reject what was considered to be the scoop of the century? One of the reasons was that they could not use the material to "hurt" MPs they did not approve of. The material meant that it would hurt some of their greatest friends in Parliament.

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  • 1 month later...
Guest Tom Scully

Murdoch is at it again, shilling in support of the recent enthusiastic embrace of neofascism as the panacea for "protecting our freedom", using News Corp's. WSJ and disgraced former NY Times ventriloquist's dummy, Judy "Goebbels" Miller to deliver the message.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904836104576560320809757438.html

How the NYPD Foiled the Post-9/11 Terror Plots

New York's police commissioner has 1,200 staff members devoted to counterterrorism, at home and abroad.

SEPTEMBER 10, 2011

By JUDITH MILLER

A specter has haunted the New York Police Department during this week's torrent of 10th anniversary commemorations of 9/11—the 13 terrorist plots against the city in the past decade that have failed or been thwarted thanks partly to NYPD counterterrorism efforts.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and his 50,000-strong department know that the 9/11 gatherings are an occasion not only to reflect on that terrible day. They're also a prime target for al Qaeda and other Islamist extremists...

Obviously, Murdoch is at work ingratiating himself with some of the very U.S. agencies that should be investigating him, his son, and their intelligence/propaganda international conglomerate.:

http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/09/11/nine-years-after-aluminum-tube-fear-mongering-judy-miller-is-back-at-it/

Nine Years after Aluminum Tube Fear-Mongering, Judy Miller Is Back at It

By: emptywheel Sunday September 11, 2011 4:18 pm

Murdoch’s empire has a funny approach to its own mantra, “never forget.” On what is effectively the ninth anniversary of Judy Miller’s aluminum tube extravaganza, she’s back at work fear-mongering in the WSJ.

This time, she’s serving as NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s stenographer. It appears Kelly decided to use the occasion that other anniversary, 9/11, to sow propaganda to counter the work the AP has done exposing Kelly’s CIA-on-the-Hudson.

A specter has haunted the New York Police Department during this week’s torrent of 10th anniversary commemorations of 9/11—the 13 terrorist plots against the city in the past decade that have failed or been thwarted thanks partly to NYPD counterterrorism efforts.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and his 50,000-strong department know that the 9/11 gatherings are an occasion not only to reflect on that terrible day. They’re also a prime target for al Qaeda and other Islamist extremists who long to convince the world, and perhaps themselves, that they’re still capable of killing in the name of their perverse interpretation of Islam.

Commissioner Kelly allocates some $330 million of his $4.6 billion annual budget and 1,200 of his staff to counterterrorism. He and his staff, not surprisingly, spent the week bolstering security at the remembrance gatherings throughout the city. On Wednesday, he came to the Manhattan Institute to tout the NYPD’s counterterrorism record and defend his department against press allegations that his intelligence division has been spying illegally on Muslims and infringing on their privacy and civil rights. [my emphasis]

As is typical for Judy, she parrots the crafty misdirection of her sources.

The police have to factor terrorism into “everything we do,” Mr. Kelly said. If that means following leads that take NYPD undercover detectives into mosques, Islamic bookstores, Muslim student associations, cafes and nightclubs, so be it.

A journalist, after all, would have pointed out that the NYPD’s spooks aren’t simply following leads. as Kelly suggested. Rather they have sought to map out entire communities, based solely on ethnic and racial profiling.

The Demographics Unit, a squad of 16 officers fluent in a total of at least five languages, was told to map ethnic communities in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and identify where people socialize, shop and pray.

Once that analysis was complete, according to documents obtained by the AP, the NYPD would “deploy officers in civilian clothes throughout the ethnic communities.”

Nor does Judy show any more critical assessment when listing 7 of those 13 plots against NYC that Kelly mentioned, leaving the incorrect impression that Judy’s description that these were “thwarted thanks partly to NYPD counterterrorism efforts” applies to all these plots.

You can check out the real story of those 7 cases below. As I’ve pointed out, the NYPD failed to discover the two most developed plots. At least from what is publicly known, the NYPD was only involved in 4 of the 7 cases and the ones it led have been criticized as entrapment or mere aspirational plots. And there’s a bit of leakiness from the NYPD that on at least one (and possibly two) occasions has hurt ongoing investigations.

So here’s what New Yorkers have gotten for Ray Kelly’s $3.3 billion investment (assuming the $330 million cited by Judy has remained constant) in his very own spy department.

1) It was an undercover officer in an Islamic bookstore who helped stop Shahawar Matin Siraj, a homegrown Muslim extremist and self-professed al Qaeda admirer, from bombing the Herald Square subway station during the 2004 Republican convention, Mr. Kelly said.

The NYPD “undercover officer” in this case, Osama Eldawoody, had infiltrated Siraj’s Bay Ridge Islamic community, getting paid almost $100,000 for his three year effort setting up the plot. He incited Siraj and his young, schizophrenic friend, James Elshafay, in part by showing pictures from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Siraj never had any explosives–Eldawoody was supposed to provide those–and in fact tried to back out of the plot days before he was arrested.

2) Another undercover officer prevented homegrown terrorists Ahmed Ferhani, 26, and Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, from bombing a Manhattan synagogue and trying to “take out the entire building.”

As with the Siraj case, the NYPD had long cultivated Ferhani (according to his lawyers, like Elshafay, he is mentally ill) and Mamdouh; the cops provided the arms used as an excuse to arrest them. The NYPD tripped the sting just days after the killing of Osama bin Laden. The Feds declined to take the case, questioning whether the gun deal was really a terrorism case and whether the case would hold up in court. And the grand jury rejectedthe most serious charges against the men.

3) Yes, he declared, if that was what was needed to keep tabs on the likes of Carlos Almonte and Mohammed Alessa—al Qaeda sympathizers arrested en route to Somalia at JFK Airport in 2010 “who were determined to receive terrorist training abroad only to return home to kill us here.”

Almonte and Alessa were first identifiedin 2006 via the FBI tip line. They traveled to Jordan (Jordan?! Who goes to Jordan to join a terrorist group?) allegedly to try join terrorists, but failed to do so. It’s unclear when the NYPD first assigned an undercover officer to the two (or why the NYPD did so instead of the FBI), but the first mention of that officer came shortly after the Nidal Hasan attack, so it’s possible the NYPD decided to more aggressively pursue people who had read or listened to Anwar al-Awlaki’s and other English-language jihadist propaganda after that attack. The men definitely did intend to try to join a terrorist group in Somalia (though there are reasons to suspect the undercover officer suggested it; and the evidence suggests they wanted to engaged in jihad there, not in the US) and they did listen to jihadist propaganda. But the bulk of the evidence simply consists of the number of times they trained using gyms or video games and accounts of the number of Camelbak water systems they bought.

4) Sigint was key in disrupting at least two of the most serious al Qaeda plots targeting New York since 9/11: the 2006 “Liquid Bomb Plot,” or “Operation Overt,” in which 25 British citizens of Pakistani descent targeted some seven transatlantic commercial flights from London to North America;

This was, by all appearances, a real, serious plot. While I’m sure the NYPD was alerted to the plot, there’s no reason to believe the NYPD was ever central to the investigation. And Dick Cheney’s sabotage of the British investigation into it would later lead to Najibullah Zazi’s attempted plot.

5) Operation Highrise, an attempt to use suicide bombers to blow up New York City subways in 2009. The homegrown Islamist in that plot was Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan immigrant with al Qaeda ties who grew up in New York City and staged his operation from there and Colorado.

Not only did the NSA and FBI discover this plot, and not only did the NYPD not discover it in spite of using Zazi’s imam as an informant, but they damaged the investigation by tipping Zazi off through that imam.

6) Another serious plot that was disrupted thanks to Internet intercepts was a 2006 scheme by Assem Hammoud, a 31-year-old Lebanese al Qaeda member, and several other still unnamed Islamists—all overseas—to flood Lower Manhattan by setting off explosives in the PATH railway tunnels under the Hudson River.

This plot was apparently discovered via chat room surveillance, with FBI leading the investigation (though Peter King was quotedas saying the NYPD was involved in the investigation). FBI sources described the plot as aspirational, not the “serious plot” Judy describes. Not only hadn’t suspects traveled to the US, they hadn’t yet done the Pakistani training they hoped would prepare them for the attack. Of particular interest, international cooperation was disrupted on this investigation because someone leaked news of it to the NY Daily News. Given that after that leak NYC’s leaders used it to call for more counter-terrorism funding, and given that some reports insisted the Feds would continue to share information with local authorities, it seems likely that someone in NY leaked it.

7) Faisal Shazad, a middle-class Pakistani–American resident of Connecticut, failed last year to detonate a bomb in Times Square only because he received too little training in Pakistan.

And Faisal Shahzad. Judy doesn’t mention that the NYPD’s investigations outside of NYC didn’t include Shahzad’s community in CT nor the hawala he used in Long Island to obtain funding from Pakistan. But at least she included it in her list, implicitly admitting that the CIA-on-the-Hudson she was celebrating didn’t find this plot.

So the story Kelly wanted Judy to tell was that the 1,200 people spying on New Yorkers have done something. And, an obedient stenographer as always, that’s what she uncritically wrote. But even a cursory look behind the claims she makes shows Kelly’s spooks have largely been entrapping dull-witted young Muslim men and hurting FBI investigations with leaks.

Be afraid, Judy says. But it’s clear she’s mistaken about what we need to fear.

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  • 2 months later...

Henry Luce, the owner of a large media empire, became a key figure in Operation Mockingbird. David Halberstam has pointed out in The Powers That Be (1979): "Luce's politics hardened in the postwar years and Time had become increasingly Republican in its tone. He had been stunned by Truman's defeat of Dewey in 1948. Then in the fall of 1949 China had fallen, the Democratic administration had failed to save Chiang, and that was too much; Truman, and even more Acheson, would have to pay the price. Time was now committed and politicized, an almost totally partisan instrument. The smell of blood was in the air. There was a hunger now in Luce to put a Republican back in power. It was as if Luce, between elections, stood as the leader of the opposition, a kingmaker who had failed to produce a king. The fall of China and the rise of a post-war anti-Communist mood had produced the essential issue to use against the Democrats: softness on Communism."

Luce used his magazines to get Dwight D. Eisenhower elected as president. In 1953 Eisenhower appointed Clare Booth Luce ambassador to Italy; the first American woman ambassador to a major country. Claudio Accogli, a Italian historian, argues that luce was heavily involved in covert anti-communist activities with local cia personnel. Larry Hancock adds: "With no-holds barred political activism and heavy spending (including the support of the SIFAR/Italian Army Secret Service), Luce and the CIA managed to block the probable takeover of the center-left governments, an alliance between Christian Democrats (DC) and the Socialist Democratic Party (PSI)."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAluce.htm

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  • 9 months later...

One of the interesting aspects of "Operation Mockingbird" is that it started with a British intelligence operation against fascism in 1940 but had to be turned into a CIA anti-communist operation in the 1950s. By the time of the JFK assassination, it was a totally integrated intelligence operation that controlled the media in the western world. Here is an interesting passage that helped to explain what was going on in the early 1950s.

Wilfrid Sheed, Clare Boothe Luce (1982)

For a Spellman, anti-communism rallied his flock into a Church militant and gave a fighting edge to their faith, while it also made him seem nationally important, a quasi-statesman; for Joe McCarthy, it gave a classic American showman a chance to do his stuff, and eventually to make a mockery of the whole cause; for "the Luces," it was a chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of a global America, wielding a power and vitality like unto their own, in the cause of Western Christian civilization. Clare's friend Senator Arthur Vandenberg had told Harry Truman, "You've got to scare hell out of them," in order to get Americans involved in the outside world at all. In other words, you cannot have a Marshall Plan without a cold war; you cannot do good without an enemy to do it against.

Both Clare and Harry felt that isolationism would stunt America's growth and choke off its manifest destiny, which Harry had made his own, and they were willing to do whatever amount of saber-rattling would prevent this. But for them it had to be good clean saber-rattling, not the back-alley switch-blade stuff McCarthy went in for. Unfortunately, since most Americans can see only two of everything, us and them, Left and Right, all the anti-Communists found themselves herded into the same tent, like so many liberals. It was in vain for Time to attack Joe McCarthy as a vulgarian; Spellman gave Joe a memorial dinner, to bolster his own constituency; Fulton Sheen and Spellman went to Australia together to review the Pax Americana, as a sort of benign Cohn and Schine, and Clare was Sheen's convert. Around and around went the web, saints and knaves all weaving together.

McCarthy gave the Right a bad name, in which the Luces willy-nilly received their share. But he also gave it protection in the Mafia style. This had nothing to do with specific witch-hunts. It has often been said that Joe never came up with any real Communists, but it can be seriously debated whether he needed to. The chief object of the game was simply to neutralize the American Left and to keep it from mounting sustained attacks on such institutions as NATO and SEATO and our overseas military investment, or on the business structure at home that complements these: all Luce's babies. And in this respect, McCarthyism was a smashing success, with or without victims, with or without Joe himself.

For Luce to become a moderate, a mighty displacement had to occur, as with a large man on an elevator; and this was taken care of by the goon squad. By calling George Marshall a traitor and Dean Acheson "the Red Dean of Washington" the McCarthy gang moved the Left so far to the center that you could barely call it a Left at all. One spent so much time denying that one was a Communist or even a Socialist or a disarmer or a troop-withdrawer that the statement one finally felt free to make was scrupulously emasculated. This was the era that spawned liberals like Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow and John F. Kennedy (who, as we know, took sick leave when McCarthy was censured), colder-than-thou warriors against the veriest hint of communism.

Insofar as the Luce interventionist Right considered this a tolerable climate (it certainly made the Pax Americana hum), they can be said to have profited from McCarthyism, as a southern aristocrat profits from a redneck sheriff. With Clare, this tenuous link further alienated her from the young Catholic Left, which was having its own troubles. We were damned if we were going to be called Communists by anybody. But McCarthyism had given so many blunt weapons to the know-nothings that we spent desperate evenings distinguishing among shades of pink and agreeing finally to denounce McCarthy's "methods," as if McCarthy were anything but methods and as if his methods were not the sole reason for our having to argue like this in the first place.

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  • 2 years later...

I see Hal Hendrix has died. His obituary in the Miami Herald covers up his role working with the CIA. Although he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963 (based on reports on Cuba provided by the CIA) there is very little information on the web about Hendrix (he does not even have a Wikipedia entry). My page on Hendrix appears first but Howard Cohen appears to have ignored this and seems to have completely replied on an interview with his daughter.

In October, 1962, Hendrix reported on the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to William Pawley, Hendrix was fed information by Ted Shackley, the CIA chief in Miami (quoted by David Corn in his book, Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades). As a result Hendrix wrote a number of articles on the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. The following year he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Journalism as a result of his reports on Cuba.

In September, 1963, Hendrix joined Scripps-Howard News Service as a Latin American specialist. Instead of moving to Washington he remained in Miami "where his contacts were". In an article on 24th September, 1963, Hendrix was able to describe and justify the coup that overthrew Juan Bosch, the president of Dominican Republic. The only problem was the coup took place on the 25th September. Some journalists claimed that Hendrix must have got this information from the CIA.
A few hours after John F. Kennedy had been killed, Hendrix provided background information to a colleague, Seth Kantor, about Lee Harvey Oswald. This included details of his defection to the Soviet Union and his work for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This surprised Kantor because he had this information before it was released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation later that evening.
However, Jeff Morley has pointed out that there is another explanation for this story. "A tape of the WDSU radio debate was first played on the air by NBC television at 3:30 Central Time (4:30 Eastern) on November 22. So the imputation that Hendrix had some inside knowledge is not confirmed. He could have gotten the information about the WDSU debate that he relayed to Kantor from watching TV."
In her book, A Farewell to Justice (2005) Joan Mellen argues that Hal Hendrix was one of a group of journalists in Miamia working for the CIA. Mellen claims that Don Bohning was given the code-name AMCARBON-3. On 8th September, 2005, Larry Hancock speculated on the Education Forum that whereas Bohning was AMCARBON-3, Hal Hendrix was AMCARBON-1 and Al Burt, also a journalist at the Miami Herald, was AMCARBON-2.
Hendrix left the Scripps-Howard News Service in 1966 and went to work for the International Telephone & Telegraph Corporation, as director of inter-American relations in Buenos Aires. Officially, Hendrix worked in public relations but according to Thomas Powers, "he was something in the way of being a secret operative for the company". Later Hendrix moved to ITT's world headquarters in New York City.
In 1970 ITT sent Hendrix to represent the company in Chile. On 4th September, 1970, Salvador Allende was elected as president of the country. Hendrix was disturbed by this development as Allende had threatened to nationalize $150 million worth of ITT assets in Chile if he won the election. It later emerged that Hendrix worked with the CIA in the overthrow of Allende. His CIA contact during the Chile operation was David Atlee Phillips.
On 20th March, 1973, Hendrix gave evidence before Frank Church and his Multinational Corporations Subcommittee. He denied ever being a paid agent of the CIA. However, an investigation by Justice Department lawyer Walter May discovered documents that showed that Hendrix had lied when interviewed by Church's committee. Hendrix was allowed to plead guilty to lying under oath (which cost him a $100 fine and a one-month suspended sentence) in return for his cooperation with the Justice Department in its pursuit of perjury charges against higher-ranking ITT and CIA officials in the Chile matter.

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhendrixH.htm

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks to John from me as well. Hendrix figured prominently in the goings-on in Miami and Cuban intrigue at JMWave. He was clearly affiliated with intelligence and used to spread disinformation, particularly about Oswald. His passing marks the loss of a first-hand witnesses to the story of Kennedy's murder.

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  • 1 year later...

...... Operation Mockingbird. It is in the Google database but for some reason the normal rules do not apply. The same is also true of the two leading figures in Operation Mockingbird: Frank Wisner and Philip Graham. Interestingly both Graham (1963) and Wisner (1965) committed suicide in the same way (shotgun to the head)."

and... Bump, in relation to the recent post in "Oswald leaving the TSBD?" Thread.

Edited by Michael Clark
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