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John Alex McCone


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Do members think that it is possible that John Alex McCone could have been involved in the assassination of JFK? This is what I have on him.

McCone was born in 1902. After graduating from the University of California with a degree in engineering he found work with the Llewelyn Ironworks. He remained for seventeen years and eventually reached the position of Executive Vice President.

In 1937 he established the McCone Engineering Company. The company built and designed oil refineries and industrial plants. On the outbreak of the Second World War McCone established the California Shipbuilding Company. This was a successful move and in 1946 it was recorded that the company made $44 million in wartime profits on an investment of $100,000.

After the war McCone was Deputy to the Secretary of Defense (1948) and Under Secretary of the Air Force (1950-1951). While in these posts McCone gave contracts to Standard Oil and Kaiser Aluminum, two companies in which he had financial connections.

McCone was an ardent Cold War warrior and in 1956 attacked the suggestion made by Adlai Stevenson that there should be a nuclear test ban. McCone, a strong supporter of Dwight Eisenhower, accused American scientists of being "taken in" by Soviet propaganda and of attempting to "create fear in the minds of the uninformed that radioactive fallout from H-bomb tests endangers life."

In 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower rewarded McCone by appointing him Chairman of the Atomic Energy commission. After the Bay of Pigs disaster, Kennedy sacked Allen W. Dulles as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under pressure from right-wingers in the intelligence community, Kennedy appointed McCone as the new director of the CIA.

It is assumed that McCone was informed of Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). However, McCone always denied any knowledge of this policy. This included the ZR/RIFLE project, a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

In April 1963 McGeorge Bundy suggested to Kennedy that there should be a "gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro". In an interview given in 1995, Bundy, said Kennedy needed "a target of opportunity" to talk to Castro. Later that month Lisa Howard arrived in Cuba to make a documentary on the country. In an interview with Howard, Castro agreed that a rapprochement with Washington was desirable.

On her return Howard met with the Central Intelligence Agency. Deputy Director Richard Helms reported to Kennedy on Howard's view that "Fidel Castro is looking for a way to reach a rapprochement with the United States." After detailing her observations about Castro's political power, disagreements with his colleagues and Soviet troops in Cuba, the memo concluded that "Howard definitely wants to impress the U.S. Government with two facts: Castro is ready to discuss rapprochement and she herself is ready to discuss it with him if asked to do so by the US Government."

McCone was strongly opposed to Lisa Howard being involved with these negotiations with Fidel Castro. He argued that it might "leak and compromise a number of CIA operations against Castro". In a memorandum to McGeorge Bundy, McCone commented that the "Lisa Howard report be handled in the most limited and sensitive manner," and "that no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time."

While McCone was director the CIA was heavily involved in the Congo, supplying mercenaries and arms to the supporters of Sese Seko Mobutu. This enabled Mobutu to oust Patrice Lumumba from power.

When JFK was assassinated McCone immediately sought a meeting with Robert Kennedy. The two men met between 2 and 2:30 p.m. Kennedy later told his aide Walter Sheridan: "I asked McCone if they had killed my brother." When you consider that McCone was one of Robert Kennedy's closest friends in the administration, this was indeed an amazing question to ask.

In 1964 McCone arranged for the CIA and other agencies to provide the opponents of Salvador Allende with funds of $20 million. He was also active in helping to establish military rule in Ecuador.

McCone had clashed with Kennedy over his decision to try and withdraw from Vietnam. He got on better with President Lyndon B. Johnson but he objected to his Vietnam policy on the grounds that it could not be successful and advocated the use of increased force. This led to his resignation in 1965 as Director of the CIA.

Soon afterwards McCone was appointed to investigate the Watts Race Riot. The McCone Commission report was published in December, 1965. This was not well received. The California Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights claimed that "the report is elementary, superficial, unorganized and unimaginative... and... a marked and surprising lack of understanding of the civil rights movement.... The McCone Commission failed totally to make any findings concerning the existence or nonexistence of police malpractices."

McCone became a director of ITT. He also did consultancy work with the CIA. In 1970 McCone met with Henry Kissinger and CIA director Richard Helms. McCone later testified that he tried to persuade Helms to accept $1 million in order to prevent the election of Salvador Allende in Chile. The offer was refused by Helms, but $350,000 did pass from ITT to Allende's opponent with CIA assistance. This included implementing ITT dirty tricks campaign in Chile.

In retirement McCone was also director of Pacific Mutual Life Insurance, United California Bank, Standard Oil of California, and Western Bancorporation.

McCone also helped to establish Committee on the Present Danger. A pressure group that campaigned against cuts in military spending.

John Alex McCone died on 14th February 1991.

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

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Here is the Namebase entry for John McCone:

http://www.namebase.org/mccone.html

Adams,S. War of Numbers. 1994 (14-9)

Agee,P. Poelchau,W. Whitepaper Whitewash. 1981 (69-71)

Anderson,J. Peace, War, and Politics. 1999 (111, 115-6, 202)

Ashman,C. The CIA-Mafia Link. 1975 (28, 40, 104-5, 209-14)

Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Membership Directory. 1983

Atlantic Monthly 1982-12 (38, 44)

Bamford,J. Body of Secrets. 2001 (100, 128, 358)

Bamford,J. The Puzzle Palace. 1982 (71-2, 127, 189)

Barnet,R. Mueller,R. Global Reach. 1974 (81-2)

Bird,K. The Chairman. 1992 (488, 529, 531)

Bird,K. The Color of Truth. 1998 (231, 243, 288)

Bledowska,C. Bloch,J. KGB/CIA. 1987 (66)

Blumenthal,S. Yazijian,H. Government by Gunplay. 1976 (161)

Borosage,R. Marks,J. The CIA File. 1976 (80, 97, 101)

Burleigh,N. A Very Private Woman. 1999 (17)

Burrows,W. Deep Black. 1988 (113-4, 199-200)

CIA. Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel Castro 1967-04-25 (54, 65, 69-70, 113-7)

Chernyavsky,V. The CIA in the Dock. 1983 (143)

Colby,G. Dennett,C. Thy Will Be Done. 1995 (406, 411, 422, 663)

Coleman,P. The Liberal Conspiracy. 1989 (222)

Corn,D. Blond Ghost. 1994 (176, 240)

Corson,W. The Armies of Ignorance. 1977 (391, 396-9)

CounterSpy 1976-SP (44)

CounterSpy 1978-12 (24)

CounterSpy 1980-W (25)

Covert Action Information Bulletin 1978-#2 (24)

Covert Action Information Bulletin 1990-#34 (59)

Davis,D. Katharine the Great. 1987 (160)

Dinges,J. Landau,S. Assassination on Embassy Row. 1981 (80)

Domhoff,G.W. Bohemian Grove. 1975 (38, 106)

Domhoff,G.W. The Higher Circles. 1971 (132)

Domhoff,G.W. Who Rules America? 1967 (127-8)

Dorril,S. Ramsay,R. Smear! 1992 (53-4)

Ellsberg,D. Secrets. 2002 (16)

Escalante,F. The Secret War. 1995 (101)

Fensterwald,B. Coincidence or Conspiracy? 1977 (23)

Fonzi,G. The Last Investigation. 1993 (333-6)

Frazier,H. Uncloaking the CIA. 1978 (57-8)

Freed,D. Death in Washington. 1980 (46, 54, 59, 61)

Furiati,C. ZR Rifle. 1994 (36, 40, 90, 110)

Galiullin,R. The CIA in Asia. 1988 (24-5)

Garwood,D. Under Cover. 1985 (136, 164)

Groden,R. Livingstone,H. High Treason. 1990 (356-7)

Halberstam,D. The Best and the Brightest. 1973 (188-91)

Halperin,M... The Lawless State. 1976 (20)

Hepburn,J. Farewell America. 1968 (320-1)

Hersh,S. The Dark Side of Camelot. 1997 (277-8, 284, 348-50, 375, 392, 416)

Hersh,S. The Samson Option. 1991 (71-3, 76-7, 105-7, 118-9, 150-1)

Hershman,D.J. Power Beyond Reason. 2002 (210, 294)

Hinckle,W. Turner,W. The Fish is Red. 1981 (112, 123, 189)

Hitchens,C. The Trial of Henry Kissinger. 2001 (111)

Jeffreys-Jones,R. The CIA and American Democracy. 1989 (121, 133-8, 141-2, 146-8)

Kantor,S. The Ruby Cover-up. 1992 (187-9)

Klare,M. War Without End. 1972 (44)

Lane,M. Plausible Denial. 1991 (107)

Lasky,V. It Didn't Start With Watergate. 1978 (98-9, 115-6)

Leigh,D. The Wilson Plot. 1988 (84-6)

Lernoux,P. Cry of the People. 1982 (204)

Lernoux,P. People of God. 1989 (297-8)

Lobster Magazine (Britain) 1992-#24 (6)

Mader,J. Who's Who in CIA. 1968

Mangold,T. Cold Warrior. 1991 (77, 108, 111, 118, 133, 172-3)

Marchetti,V. Marks,J. The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 1974 (338-9)

Marks,J. The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. 1980 (100-1)

Martin,D. Wilderness of Mirrors. 1981 (119-20, 138, 142-3, 185)

McCann,T. An American Company. 1976 (62)

McCartney,L. Friends in High Places. 1988 (51-5, 60-1, 69-70, 96-100, 108-12, 119)

McClintock,M. Instruments of Statecraft. 1992 (167)

Melanson,P. Spy Saga. 1990 (133)

Minnick,W. Spies and Provocateurs. 1992 (139)

Moldea,D. The Hoffa Wars. 1978 (134, 166)

Mother Jones 1978-10 (31-2)

Mother Jones 1983-07 (24-5)

Myerson,M. Watergate: Crime in the Suites. 1973 (149)

NACLA. Latin America and Empire Report 1974-08 (11)

Nair,K. Devil and His Dart. 1986 (29)

NameBase NewsLine 1993-10 (22)

NameBase NewsLine 1994-04 (13)

NameBase NewsLine 1995-07 (7)

Nation 1988-04-30 (615)

National Reporter 1986-W (57, 59)

New York Times 1988-08-10 (A16)

Newman,J. JFK and Vietnam. 1992 (141, 313-4, 442-3, 468)

Newman,J. Oswald and the CIA. 1995 (xvi)

Newsweek 1975-05-19 (28)

Olmsted,K. Challenging the Secret Government. 1996 (32)

Palast,G. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. 2003 (255)

Parapolitics/USA 1982-03-31 (32-3)

Parapolitics/USA 1983-03-01 (B18)

Payne,R. Dobson,C. Who's Who in Espionage. 1984 (112-3)

Perloff,J. The Shadows of Power. 1988 (111)

Petrusenko,V. A Dangerous Game: CIA and the Mass Media. 1977 (130-1)

Powers,T. The Man Who Kept the Secrets. 1981 (202-12, 290, 397)

Prados,J. Keepers of the Keys. 1991 (123, 131, 137)

Prados,J. Presidents' Secret Wars. 1988 (213, 232, 246-7, 316)

Prouty,L.F. JFK. 1992 (228-9, 322-3)

Quirk,J. Central Intelligence Agency: A Photographic History. 1986 (228-9)

Richelson,J. The Wizards of Langley. 2001 (39-41, 44-5, 61-2)

Riebling,M. Wedge. 1994 (186, 104-5, 263-4)

Russell,D. The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1992 (675)

Sampson,A. The Seven Sisters. 1976 (234, 246)

Sampson,A. The Sovereign State of ITT. 1974 (257, 263, 268-70)

Schorr,D. Clearing the Air. 1978 (160, 171)

Scott,P.D. Crime and Coverup. 1977 (23)

Scott,P.D... The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond. 1976 (378, 380)

Sergeyev,F. Chile: CIA Big Business. 1981 (123, 126, 133, 137-8)

Shoup,L. Minter,W. Imperial Brain Trust. 1977 (61, 237)

Shultz,R. The Secret War Against Hanoi. 1999 (34, 44, 207, 209, 301, 305)

Sklar,H. Washington's War on Nicaragua. 1988 (239)

Smith,R.J. The Unknown CIA. 1992 (175-8, 190-1)

Summers,A. Conspiracy. 1981 (161, 516, 519-20)

Summers,A. Conspiracy. 1989 (506, 512, 531)

Thomas,E. The Very Best Men. 1996 (307, 325)

Thomas,G. Gideon's Spies. 2000 (226)

Thomas,G. Journey Into Madness. 1990 (233-4)

Trento,J. The Secret History of the CIA. 2001 (214, 372)

Tully,A. CIA: The Inside Story. 1962 (266-7)

Uribe,A. The Black Book of America in Chile. 1975 (40-2, 51-2, 86, 152-3)

Vankin,J. Whalen,J. The 60 Greatest Conspiracies. 1998 (69)

Volkman,E. Baggett,B. Secret Intelligence. 1989 (131)

Volkman,E. Warriors of the Night. 1985 (85-6, 117)

Warner,R. Back Fire. 1995 (97, 128-9)

Washington Post 1991-02-16 (B8)

Weissman,S. Big Brother and the Holding Company. 1974 (210)

West,N. Games of Intelligence. 1990 (40)

Wise,D. Molehunt. 1992 (114)

Wise,D. Ross,T. The Invisible Government. 1974 (viii, 193-9, 238-9)

Wise,D. The American Police State. 1978 (198, 216)

Wyden,P. Wall: The Inside Story of Divided Berlin. 1989 (242-3)

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"While McCone was director the CIA was heavily involved in the Congo, supplying mercenaries and arms to the supporters of Sese Seko Mobutu. This enabled Mobutu to oust Patrice Lumumba from power."

John: Lumumba was murdered at the very end of the Eisenhower administration, while Alan Dulles was Director of CIA. See the Church Committee "Alleged assassination Plots involving foreign leaders."

The assassination of JFK didn't do much for McCone's career, IMO and I am one who does not see him as a suspect (or as we say nowadays, "a person of interest")

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"While McCone was director the CIA was heavily involved in the Congo, supplying mercenaries and arms to the supporters of Sese Seko Mobutu. This enabled Mobutu to oust Patrice Lumumba from power."

John: Lumumba was murdered at the very end of the Eisenhower administration, while Alan Dulles was Director of CIA. See the Church Committee "Alleged assassination Plots involving foreign leaders."

The CIA continued to be active in the Congo under McCone. See John Stockwell's book, In Search of Enemies (1978) and and The Praetorian Guard: The US Role in the New World Order (1991). Stockwell was considered to be the CIA's leading expert on the Congo (he had lived there as a child and even spoke local languages). Interestingly, Stockwell believes the CIA was involved in the assassination of JFK.

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

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After his strong disagreement with Adlai Stevenson in 1956 over the latter's proposal for a nuclear test ban treaty, it's interesting to speculate whether McCone's opinion of JFK changed after JFK signed such a treaty with the Soviets in August '63. In addition to the public admonishment they recieved, as outlined in John's post, influential scientists at the California Institute of Technology were outraged in 1956 by what they believed was an effort by McCone to have ten of their fellow scientists fired after they had publicly supported Stevenson's proposal. McCone was a trustee of Caltech at the time.

According to Wise and Ross (Invisible Government,1964), McCone was JFK's third choice for the job as CIA director after Clark Clifford and Fowler Hamilton. The decision to appoint him shocked some in Washington. Members of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board were surprised that JFK had appointed someone with such strong ties to the Republican Party. After the BOP, both JFK and the CIA were vulnerable to political attack from the Republicans so with a conservative Republican as boss of the CIA, the President thought the political fire would be somewhat diverted. My opinion of this is that it shows that sometimes JFK was too politically astute for his own good. He may have outsmarted himself by appointing such a strong cold war advocate to such a critical post.

Incidentally, the book also cites that in 1948, when McCone became special deputy to James Forrestal, the Secretary of Defense, he worked closely with Forrestal in his efforts to create the CIA.

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After his strong disagreement with Adlai Stevenson in 1956 over the latter's proposal for a nuclear test ban treaty, it's interesting to speculate whether McCone's opinion of JFK changed after JFK signed such a treaty with the Soviets in August '63.

They say a week is a long time in politics, so a great deal of change could occur in mcCone's thinking between 1956 and 1961. Let us not forget that the test ban treaty became a major goal of Eisenhower's second term, and doubtless many republicans came to embrace the test ban even though they had opposed it initially.

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  • 5 months later...

I have been doing some more research on John McCone. It is an interesting story:

On another thread I have argued that Tommy Corcoran was a key figure in developing what became known as the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

It is well documented that one of Corcoran’s most important clients was Henry J. Kaiser. It is less well-known that Kaiser was a business partner of John A. McCone and Steve Bechtel.

Kaiser began his business relationship with the Bechtel family when he became a partner of Warren Bechtel in 1921. Together they won the contract to build the Boulder Dam (later known as the Hoover Dam). Also involved in this project was John A. McCone. At the time he worked as sales manager for Consolidated Steel. He arranged with Kaiser and Bechtel to provide 55 million tons of steel for the Hoover Dam. The sale saved Consolidated Steel from bankruptcy. McCone got the contract because he was a close friend of Warren Bechtel’s son, Steve Bechtel (they met while students at Berkeley studying engineering).

After Warren Bechtel’s death in 1933, Henry J. Kaiser joined forces with Steve Bechtel. In 1937, McCone joined the team. As a result the Bechtel-McCone Corporation was formed. (1) Over the next few years the three men formed several companies with them taking it in turn to become the front man. In some cases, they remained silent partners. This was especially true after the war when McCone sought a career in politics and was responsible for giving government contracts to Kaiser and Bechtel.

The first major customer of Bechtel-McCone was Standard Oil of California (Socal). The company obtained a contract to build Socal’s new refinery in Richmond. It was the first of many refineries built by Bechtel-McCone. By 1939 the company had more than 10,000 employees and was building refineries, chemical plants and pipelines all over the world. (2)

It was Kaiser’s connections with Tommy Corcoran that was to be the most important factor in the growth of this business empire. In the summer of 1940 Steve Bechtel and John McCone had a meeting with Admiral L. Vickery of the U.S. Maritime Commission. Vickery told the men he “had received a telegram from the British Purchasing Commission (BPC) urgently requesting that the Maritime Commission arrange the building of 60 tankers to replace the ships the British had lost to German torpedoes”. At another meeting a few weeks later, Maritime Commission chairman, Admiral Emory S. Land, told Bechtel and McCone that: “Besides building ships for the British, they would have to build them for the Americans as well. Not merely tankers, but Liberty and Victory cargo ships, troop transports, the whole makings of a merchant navy.” Admiral Land confidently added that thousands of vessels would be needed as “America was headed into war.” (3)

As a result of these two meetings, Bechtel, McCone and Kaiser built shipyards at Richmond and Sausalito. Several of their companies were involved in this project that became known as “Operation Calship”. It was a terrible gamble because at that time they were relying on the predictions of Admiral Emory S. Land.

However, Land was right and only a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Maritime Commission awarded Calship its first shipbuilding contract. Within a year, Calship was employing over 42,000 workers at its two shipyards.

In 1942 John McCone and Steve Bechtel obtained a contract to build aircraft at Willow Run in Alabama. The War Department agreed to pay all the company’s costs plus 5 percent on work estimates presented by Bechtel-McCone every six months.

A 300-acre factory was built and 8,000 employees hired to staff it. However, no aircraft were built. Employees were paid for doing nothing. A local man, George P. Alexander, discovered details of this scam and collected affidavits from workers who admitted that they “went in every day at 9.00, punched the time clock, then went home”. They then returned to the factory at 5.00 to “punch out”.

Alexander filed suit against Bechtel-McCone in federal district court on 31st July, 1943. He claimed that the company had made “many and various claims against the government of the United States, or a department or officer thereof, knowing such claims to be false, fictitious or fraudulent.” (4)

However, the judge dismissed the case. The problem was with the contract, not the claims by Bechtel-McCone. As John McCone admitted to Fortune Magazine on 17th May, 1943: “Every six months, we estimate how much work we expect to do in the next six months and then we get a fee of five percent of the estimated amount of work regardless of how much work we actually do turn out.” (5)

Bechtel-McCone was also involved in another scandal concerning war contracts. Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell, head of the Army Sources of Supply Command, decided to build “a major refinery at the Norman Wells oilfields in Canada’s Northwest Territories, and run a pipeline from there 1,200 miles southwest through the Yukon Territory into Alaska.”

The contract to do this was given to John McCone and Steve Bechtel. The terms of the contract were very unusual. The Bechtel-McCone Corporation was guaranteed a 10% profit on the project (the kind of deal that George Bush gave to Halliburton in Iraq). The other surprising thing about the Canol Project was that it was to be a secret contract. It seems that Somervell did not want anyone outside the War Department and the Bechtel-McCone Corporation to know about this deal. The reason for this is that Harold Ickes, as Interior Secretary and the head of the Petroleum Administration for War, should have been the person who oversaw this project.

The $35 million for the project came from within a massive war appropriations bill that was passed by Congress in April 1942. After working on it for a year the cost had reached over $100 million. It was finished in May 1945. However, the wrong sized pipes had been used and it was discovered that to pump the oil it cost $150 per barrel rather than the $5 estimated by Somervell, Bechtel and McCone. Less that a year after it was finished, the plant and pipeline was abandoned. It had cost the American taxpayer $134 million. (6)

After the war the “General Accounting Office told a House Merchant Marine Committee investigation that the company had made $44,000,000 on an investment of $100,000. The same committee a few months later complained that Mr McCone's company was “paid $2,500,000 by the government to take over a shipyard costing $25,000,000 and containing surplus material costing $14,000,000.” (7)

Tommy Corcoran was not the only person arranging for Kaiser, Berchtel and McCone to obtain lucrative government contracts during the war. John L. Simpson was a close friend of an interesting group of people including Allen and John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson and William Donovan. In 1942 Simpson was recruited into the OSS by Allen Dulles. His official title was chief financial advisor for the U.S. Army in Europe. In 1944 Simpson returned to San Francisco and became a consultant to the Betchtel-McCone Corporation. His arrival brought even more contracts from the War Department. (8)

At the end of the Second World War the Bechtel-McCone company was brought to an end. John McCone now invested much of the profits he had made from war production in Pacific Far East Lines. McCone was the majority stockholder but Steve Bechtel and Henry Kaiser were also silent investors in this company.

McCone also formed a partnership with Henry Mercer, the owner of states Marines Lines, whose vast fleets operated in the Atlantic. As Laton McCartney pointed out in ‘Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story’, McCone was now “one of the dominant shipping figures in the world.” (9)

McCone and Bechtel were also directors of the Stanford Research Institute. McCone was also chief fund-raiser for the California Institute of Technology, whose scientists had been involved in the development of the atom bomb and were now involved in nuclear research.

McCone took a keen interest in politics and was a fanatical anti-communist. McCone told his friends that the Soviets intended to achieve “world domination”. I. F. Stone described him as a “rightest Catholic… a man with holy war views.” (10)

John L. Simpson, chief financial officer to the various corporations owned by Steve Betchel, introduced McCone to Allen Dulles at a meeting in 1947. It was at this time he became friends with William Knowland and Dwight D. Eisenhower. McCone played a lot of golf with Eisenhower and was later to play a key role in persuading him to become the Republican Party presidential candidate. In 1948 Harry S. Truman appointed McCone as Deputy to the Secretary of Defense. According to Laton McCartney, despite his title “it quickly became apparent that he was the department’s real boss.” (11)

However, it is in the 1950s that this story becomes very interesting. I will post details of this later.

1. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (page 53)

2. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (page 55)

3. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (pages 56-58)

4. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (pages 66-70)

5. John McCone, interview with Fortune Magazine, 17th May, 1943. The article was never published.

6. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (pages 61-66)

7. I. F. Stone, I. F. Stone Weekly (9th October, 1961)

8. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (pages 74-75)

9. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (page 97)

10. I. F. Stone, I. F. Weekly, 7th November, 1960

11. Laton McCarthy, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, 1988 (page 99)

John A. McCone and Steve Bechtel during the prosperous Second World War.

post-7-1137682182_thumb.jpg

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I have been doing some more research on John McCone. It is an interesting story:

On another thread I have argued that Tommy Corcoran was a key figure in developing what became known as the Military Industrial Congressional Complex.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5799

It is well documented that one of Corcoran’s most important clients was Henry J. Kaiser. It is less well-known that Kaiser was a business partner of John A. McCone and Steve Bechtel.

Kaiser began his business relationship with the Bechtel family when he became a partner of Warren Bechtel in 1921. Together they won the contract to build the Boulder Dam (later known as the Hoover Dam). Also involved in this project was John A. McCone. At the time he worked as sales manager for Consolidated Steel. He arranged with Kaiser and Bechtel to provide 55 million tons of steel for the Hoover Dam. The sale saved Consolidated Steel from bankruptcy. McCone got the contract because he was a close friend of Warren Bechtel’s son, Steve Bechtel (they met while students at Berkeley studying engineering).

After Warren Bechtel’s death in 1933, Henry J. Kaiser joined forces with Steve Bechtel. In 1937, McCone joined the team. As a result the Bechtel-McCone Corporation was formed. (1) Over the next few years the three men formed several companies with them taking it in turn to become the front man. In some cases, they remained silent partners. This was especially true after the war when McCone sought a career in politics and was responsible for giving government contracts to Kaiser and Bechtel.

The first major customer of Bechtel-McCone was Standard Oil of California (Socal). The company obtained a contract to build Socal’s new refinery in Richmond. It was the first of many refineries built by Bechtel-McCone. By 1939 the company had more than 10,000 employees and was building refineries, chemical plants and pipelines all over the world. (2)

It was Kaiser’s connections with Tommy Corcoran that was to be the most important factor in the growth of this business empire. In the summer of 1940 Steve Bechtel and John McCone had a meeting with Admiral L. Vickery of the U.S. Maritime Commission. Vickery told the men he “had received a telegram from the British Purchasing Commission (BPC) urgently requesting that the Maritime Commission arrange the building of 60 tankers to replace the ships the British had lost to German torpedoes”. At another meeting a few weeks later, Maritime Commission chairman, Admiral Emory S. Land, told Bechtel and McCone that: “Besides building ships for the British, they would have to build them for the Americans as well. Not merely tankers, but Liberty and Victory cargo ships, troop transports, the whole makings of a merchant navy.” Admiral Land confidently added that thousands of vessels would be needed as “America was headed into war.” (3)

As a result of these two meetings, Bechtel, McCone and Kaiser built shipyards at Richmond and Sausalito. Several of their companies were involved in this project that became known as “Operation Calship”. It was a terrible gamble because at that time they were relying on the predictions of Admiral Emory S. Land.

However, Land was right and only a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Maritime Commission awarded Calship its first shipbuilding contract. Within a year, Calship was employing over 42,000 workers at its two shipyards.

In 1942 John McCone and Steve Bechtel obtained a contract to build aircraft at Willow Run in Alabama. The War Department agreed to pay all the company’s costs plus 5 percent on work estimates presented by Bechtel-McCone every six months.

A 300-acre factory was built and 8,000 employees hired to staff it. However, no aircraft were built. Employees were paid for doing nothing. A local man, George P. Alexander, discovered details of this scam and collected affidavits from workers who admitted that they “went in every day at 9.00, punched the time clock, then went home”. They then returned to the factory at 5.00 to “punch out”.

Alexander filed suit against Bechtel-McCone in federal district court on 31st July, 1943. He claimed that the company had made “many and various claims against the government of the United States, or a department or officer thereof, knowing such claims to be false, fictitious or fraudulent.” (4)

However, the judge dismissed the case. The problem was with the contract, not the claims by Bechtel-McCone. As John McCone admitted to Fortune Magazine on 17th May, 1943: “Every six months, we estimate how much work we expect to do in the next six months and then we get a fee of five percent of the estimated amount of work regardless of how much work we actually do turn out.” (5)

Bechtel-McCone was also involved in another scandal concerning war contracts. Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell, head of the Army Sources of Supply Command, decided to build “a major refinery at the Norman Wells oilfields in Canada’s Northwest Territories, and run a pipeline from there 1,200 miles southwest through the Yukon Territory into Alaska.”

The contract to do this was given to John McCone and Steve Bechtel. The terms of the contract were very unusual. The Bechtel-McCone Corporation was guaranteed a 10% profit on the project (the kind of deal that George Bush gave to Halliburton in Iraq). The other surprising thing about the Canol Project was that it was to be a secret contract. It seems that Somervell did not want anyone outside the War Department and the Bechtel-McCone Corporation to know about this deal. The reason for this is that Harold Ickes, as Interior Secretary and the head of the Petroleum Administration for War, should have been the person who oversaw this project.

The $35 million for the project came from within a massive war appropriations bill that was passed by Congress in April 1942. After working on it for a year the cost had reached over $100 million. It was finished in May 1945. However, the wrong sized pipes had been used and it was discovered that to pump the oil it cost $150 per barrel rather than the $5 estimated by Somervell, Bechtel and McCone. Less that a year after it was finished, the plant and pipeline was abandoned. It had cost the American taxpayer $134 million. (6)

After the war the “General Accounting Office told a House Merchant Marine Committee investigation that the company had made $44,000,000 on an investment of $100,000. The same committee a few months later complained that Mr McCone's company was “paid $2,500,000 by the government to take over a shipyard costing $25,000,000 and containing surplus material costing $14,000,000.” (7)

Tommy Corcoran was not the only person arranging for Kaiser, Berchtel and McCone to obtain lucrative government contracts during the war. John L. Simpson was a close friend of an interesting group of people including Allen and John Foster Dulles, Dean Acheson and William Donovan. In 1942 Simpson was recruited into the OSS by Allen Dulles. His official title was chief financial advisor for the U.S. Army in Europe. In 1944 Simpson returned to San Francisco and became a consultant to the Betchtel-McCone Corporation. His arrival brought even more contracts from the War Department. (8)

At the end of the Second World War the Bechtel-McCone company was brought to an end. John McCone now invested much of the profits he had made from war production in Pacific Far East Lines. McCone was the majority stockholder but Steve Bechtel and Henry Kaiser were also silent investors in this company.

McCone also formed a partnership with Henry Mercer, the owner of states Marines Lines, whose vast fleets operated in the Atlantic. As Laton McCartney pointed out in ‘Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story’, McCone was now “one of the dominant shipping figures in the world.” (9)

McCone and Bechtel were also directors of the Stanford Research Institute. McCone was also chief fund-raiser for the California Institute of Technology, whose scientists had been involved in the development of the atom bomb and were now involved in nuclear research.

McCone took a keen interest in politics and was a fanatical anti-communist. McCone told his friends that the Soviets intended to achieve “world domination”. I. F. Stone described him as a “rightest Catholic… a man with holy war views.” (10)

John L. Simpson, chief financial officer to the various corporations owned by Steve Betchel, introduced McCone to Allen Dulles at a meeting in 1947. It was at this time he became friends with William Knowland and Dwight D. Eisenhower. McCone played a lot of golf with Eisenhower and was later to play a key role in persuading him to become the Republican Party presidential candidate. In 1948 Harry S. Truman appointed McCone as Deputy to the Secretary of Defense. According to Laton McCartney, despite his title “it quickly became apparent that he was the department’s real boss.” (11)

I knew Henery Kaiser’s top aid and he told me and confirmed much of this before his death.

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  • 9 months later...

(This essay first appeared as a leaflet at the University of Southern California in 1977.)

From CIA to USC: Political Biography of a Trustee

Many USC students are aware that the roots of Watergate were nourished by the dirty tricks and political intrigues of Ronald Ziegler, Dwight Chapin, Gordon Strachan and Donald Segretti when they were students on this campus. The USC environment during the early sixties provided these student-government power brokers with experience and training that proved useful a decade later, especially after cross-fertilization with the USC alumni talents of H.R. Haldeman, Herb Klein and Herbert Kalmbach.[1]

Much less is known about USC trustee John A. McCone. His exploits make Watergate look like a mild diversion from the workaday world of international covert operations. While Watergate had its amusing moments, McCone's career is much more sobering. Millions of lives have been affected by his intrigues. When playing politics at McCone's level of sophistication, one does not bargain with slush funds and short prison terms, but with the future of entire nations.

McCone began in the steel industry before World War II, and from 1941-1946 he was president and director of the California Shipbuilding Company. According to the 1946 testimony of Ralph E. Casey of the General Accounting Office, California Shipbuilding made $44 million in wartime profits on an investment of $100,000.[2] After the war McCone was Deputy to the Secretary of Defense (1948), Under Secretary of the Air Force (1950-1951), and Chairman of the Atomic Energy commission (1958-1961).[3]

While a Cal-Tech trustee in October, 1956, McCone criticized ten Cal-Tech scientists for supporting Adlai Stevenson's mild proposal for a nuclear test ban. McCone, an Eisenhower campaigner, accused the scientists of being "taken in" by Soviet propaganda and of attempting to "create fear in the minds of the uninformed that radioactive fallout from H-bomb tests endangers life." The scientists felt that McCone was trying to get them fired.[4]

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy tried to appease the right-wing by appointing McCone as CIA director.[5] McCone's tenure at the CIA lasted from November 29, 1961 to April 11, 1965. He became a director of ITT and a USC trustee in 1965, while remaining a consultant for the CIA at least through 1970.[6]

McCone resigned in 1965 partly because the CIA's intelligence sources in Vietnam were being ignored by Johnson in favor of the Pentagon's more optimistic sources. The Pentagon Papers depict McCone as one who recognized the futility of Vietnam sooner than most policy makers. He objected to U.S. policy on the grounds that it could not be successful and advocated the use of increased force.[7]

During McCone's tenure at the CIA, the secret war in Laos (secret from Congress and the public), organized and directed by the CIA, increased to major proportions.[8] Diem was overthrown in 1963 with CIA assistance,[9] and the CIA ignored the Mafia/Saigon-government heroin connections that were developing.[10] After 1965 the heroin trafficking moved to Laos in a big way and received important logistical support from the CIA.[11]

The CIA assisted efforts to overthrow Sukarno of Indonesia in 1958,[12] but almost nothing has been revealed about CIA involvement in the 1965 coup and its aftermath. There is no doubt that CIA penetration of Indonesia's post-1958 government was substantial.[13] Although Indonesia received little attention in the wake of U.S. escalation in Vietnam, it was not a minor event -- 300,000 to 1 million workers, peasants, intellectuals and soldiers were slain after the coup,[14] and between 30,000 and 100,000 political prisoners are detained today under the most wretched conditions.[15] McCone may have had a special interest in Indonesia. While CIA director he owned $1 million in stock from Standard Oil of California, which had extensive operations there.[16]

While McCone was director the CIA was heavily involved in the Congo, supplying mercenaries and arms to the supporters of Adoula and Mobutu.[17] They also trained and equipped Tibetan rebels[18] and orchestrated many of the events that led to military rule in Ecuador in 1963[19] and Brazil in 1964.[20] And the threat of Allende in Chile's 1964 election prompted the CIA and other agencies to funnel up to $20 million to his opponents.[21]

Several attempts on Castro's life were sponsored by the CIA after McCone took office, but no documentary evidence exists to counter his claim that he knew nothing about it. McCone's successor Richard Helms is skeptical of his testimony: "He was involved in this up to his scuppers just the way everybody else was that was in it, and ... I don't understand how it was he didn't hear about some of these things that he claims that he didn't."[22] Perhaps McCone also had no knowledge of the CIA's drug experiments on unsuspecting citizens that occurred during his tenure.[23]

The Warren Commission investigated the assassination of Kennedy while McCone was CIA director. There is considerable evidence that the CIA (and FBI) obstructed certain avenues of inquiry.[24] Apparently the Warren Commission report turned out to the CIA's satisfaction, for in 1967 they directed their field offices to "employ propaganda assets" to refute the report's critics.[25]

The cover-up continues to this day. Independent investigators of the John Kennedy assassination have found new life and new leads in the connections between the CIA, Howard Hughes, the Mafia, and the anti-Castro exile community.[26] Recent leaks from the government, on the other hand, seem designed to place the blame on Castro.[27] Such a second-level cover-up appears likely, especially in light of the recent assassinations of Sam Giancana and John Roselli (they were part of the CIA/Mafia/anti-Castro network and were willing to talk about it),[28] and the apparent suicide of George de Mohrenschildt.[29]

McCone certainly knows more than he's telling, but he is not likely to reveal anything voluntarily. Before resigning as CIA director, McCone attempted to suppress the publication of The Invisible Government by David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, two independent journalists.[30] And his record after leaving the directorship is hardly better.

In 1965 McCone was appointed by Gov. Brown to investigate the unrest in Watts. The McCone Commission included USC trustee Asa V. Call, and after spending nearly $300,000 in tax money the report was released in December, 1965.

The California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights did not think much of McCone's efforts: "The report is elementary, superficial, unorganized and unimaginative ... [exhibiting] a marked and surprising lack of understanding of the civil rights movement.... The McCone Commission failed totally to make any findings concerning the existence or nonexistence of police malpractices."[31]

McCone deserves equally poor marks in Latin American studies. As an ITT director and CIA consultant, McCone met with Kissinger and CIA director Helms in 1970. McCone testified that he encouraged them to prevent Allende's election and offered $1 million to the CIA from ITT chairman Harold Geneen.[32] The offer was refused by Helms, but $350,000 did pass from ITT to Allende's opponent with CIA assistance.[33] To make a long story short, the Forty Committee eventually adopted ITT's destabilization plan for Chile and added numerous dirty tricks of their own.[34] The results were ideal for ITT, Anaconda, and Kennecott, and catastrophic for the Chilean people.

Edward M. Korry, U.S. ambassador to Chile from 1967-1971, has accused top officials of ITT and the CIA of conspiring to commit perjury before two Senate committees. Helms, McCone and Geneen are under investigation by a grand jury.[35] The whole truth is not yet out, but the brutal facts are clear to Chileans.

McCone's success in Chile prompted further efforts on ITT's behalf. CounterSpy magazine reported that McCone met with deposed Portuguese leader Gen. Antonio de Spinola in Switzerland in August, 1975.[36] At that time it appeared that the left in Portugal was viable, despite CIA funding of the right-leaning Socialist party.[37] Spinola was organizing a clandestine army in Spain, and ITT provided funds and communications equipment to the commandos.[38] If the Socialist candidate had lost to the left in last year's elections, Spinola and ITT were prepared to make amends.

Presently McCone is one of the directors of the Committee on the Present Danger. This group -- a recent coalition of big-name hawks, military-industrial complex leaders, and intelligence- community academicians -- is actively lobbying against proposed cuts in military spending.[39] McCone is also a director of Pacific Mutual Life Insurance, United California Bank, Standard Oil of California, and Western Bancorporation.[40]

On July 5, 1977, President Hubbard cited USC's 25-year "warm and long-lasting relationship" with Iran while presenting the Shah's wife with an honorary "Doctor of Humane Letters."[41] USC has an exchange program with Iran, receives money from the Shah, and currently enrolls nearly 500 Iranian students. The CIA put the Shah in power in 1953,[42] and Helms was ambassador to Iran until recently. Iran routinely subjects up to 100,000 political prisoners to torture.[43] Their secret political police network is worldwide, and SAVAK agents even operate on U.S. campuses with the full knowledge and occasional assistance of the CIA.[44]

Hubbard told the Empress that his visits to Iran had impressed him with the "supreme grace and friendship of your great nation."[45] Five hundred demonstrators, many wearing masks to prevent their identification by SAVAK, protested the USC ceremony and the Shah's regime.[46] McCone would be a logical place to begin if one were to investigate the USC/Iran connection.

The issue of McCone's 12-year association with this campus raises serious questions about the integrity of USC as an educational institution. These questions were pursued by student activists in the late sixties. We spent much of our time arguing with others over the facts because sometimes we were weak on documentation. Ironically, the revelations of the past few years have shown that our most paranoid fears were underestimations, yet today the campuses are relatively quiet. Do students need another draft system and dirty war before they are ready to reflect on their role in the world?

Let's hope not. Our government geared up to repress dissent during the late sixties and early seventies, but even at its worst it was still more benevolent than many of the regimes we now support. The next time around students may not be so lucky. Not if John McCone has something to say about it.

1. USC, Daily Trojan, 14 May 1974.

2. David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government (Vintage, 1974), p. 194.

3. Who's Who in America 1974-1975.

4. Wise and Ross, pp. 193-4.

5. Ibid., p. 197.

6. Anthony Sampson, The Sovereign State of ITT (Fawcett, 1974), p. 263.

7. The Pentagon Papers (Bantam, 1971), pp. 440-1; David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Fawcett, 1973), pp. 374, 702-3.

8. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (Dell, 1974), p. 54.

9. The Pentagon Papers, pp. 158-233.

10. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 149-222.

11. Ibid., pp. 242-354.

12. L. Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team (Ballantine, 1974), pp. 363-8.

13. David Ransom, "Ford Country: Building an Elite for Indonesia," in The Trojan Horse: A Radical Look at Foreign Aid, ed. Steve Weissman (Ramparts, 1975), p. 105; Peter Dale Scott, "Exporting Military-Economic Development: America and the Overthrow of Sukarno, 1965-67," in Ten Years' Military Terror in Indonesia, ed. Malcolm Caldwell (Spokesman, 1975), pp. 209-63.

14. Ransom, p. 198; Caldwell, p. 13.

15. Amnesty International, Annual Report 1974-75, pp. 91-4.

16. Wise and Ross, p. 194.

17. Marchetti and Marks, pp. 53, 131.

18. David Wise, The Politics of Lying (Vintage, 1973), pp. 239-62.

19. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (Penguin, 1975), pp. 131-316.

20. Ibid., p. 362; James Petras and Morris Morley, The United States and Chile: Imperialism and the Overthrow of the Allende Government (Monthly Review, 1975), pp. 44-68; Guardian, 12 January 1977, p. 12; 27 April 1977, p. 16.

21. Marchetti and Marks, p. 39.

22. David Wise, The American Police State: Government Against the People (Random House, 1976), p. 216.

23. Los Angeles Times, 4 August 1977, I, p. 4.

24. This is the conclusion of the subcommittee report released by Senators Richard S. Schweiker and Gary Hart on 23 June 1976.

25. CIA document quoted in Los Angeles Times, 5 February 1977, I, p. 5.

26. A sampling of recent research: Howard Kohn, "Strange Bedfellows: The Hughes-Nixon-Lansky Connection," Rolling Stone, 20 May 1976, pp. 40-92; Robert Sam Anson, They've Killed the President! (Bantam, 1975); Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection (Westworks, 1977); Carl Oglesby, The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate (Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1976).

27. Jeff Cohen and Donald Freed, "Fidel on the Grassy Knoll," Liberation, March/April 1977, pp. 5-9.

28. Newsweek, 23 August 1976, p. 38.

29. Mike Shuster, "George de Mohrenschildt: The Freelance Spy Who Said He Helped Kill Kennedy," Seven Days, 9 May 1977, pp. 7-9.

30. Wise and Ross, p. viii.

31. Robert Conot, Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness (Bantam, 1967), pp. 415-6.

32. Sampson, p. 263.

33. Newsweek, 10 January 1977, p. 25.

34. North American Congress on Latin America, Latin America & Empire report, October 1973; July/August 1974; October 1974; November 1976; December 1976.

35. Newsweek, 10 January 1977, p. 25.

36. Carl Michael and Julie Brooks, "Mercenaries Prepare to Invade Portugal," CounterSpy, Spring 1976, p. 44

37. Philip Agee and Steve Weissman, "The CIA in Europe," Oui, January 1977, pp. 141-2.

38. Michael and Brooks, p. 44.

39. Radio Havana, 14 March 1977.

40. Who's Who in America 1974-1975.

41. USC, Trojan Family, August/September 1977, p. 4.

42. Wise and Ross, pp. 110-4.

43. Amnesty International, pp. 128-9.

44. Jack Anderson and Les Whitten, "Activities of Foreign Spies in U.S. Said Aided by CIA," Spokane Daily Chronicle, 26 October 1976, p. 4; CBS, 60 Minutes, 24 October 1976 and 6 March 1977.

45. Trojan Family, p. 4.

46. Los Angeles Times, 6 July 1977, I, p. 3.

About the history of this leaflet

After trying unsuccessfully for months to interest two different Daily Trojan editors in this article, I finally scraped up enough to have it professionally printed as a leaflet. I first began passing it out to those entering Bovard Auditorium on the University of Southern California campus on September 17, 1977. This event was a public debate, with appearances by Daniel Ellsberg, William Colby, Donald Freed, David Atlee Phillips, John Gerassi, Ray Cline, and Mark Lane. (Lane describes some of what happened at this debate in his book Plausible Denial, on pages 75-87.) Certainly this was a unique exercise in free speech by people with important things to say -- just what universities are for, and something that happened infrequently at my alma mater.

Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. After leafletting for a while, the campus police threatened to arrest me, and I was escorted off campus. This leaflet, including all of its footnotes, was unauthorized literature!

The next week I flooded the campus with seven thousand copies of the leaflet, and complained to a faculty member who belonged to the ACLU about the violation of my rights. Nothing came of it, but at least the campus newspaper finally saw fit to print the name of John McCone (this just in!):

The leaflet Brandt was distributing contained an allegation that John McCone, university trustee, has had extensive involvement in the past with covert CIA activity. (Daily Trojan, 21 September 1977, p. 6)

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The research in this thread really helps in assembling another piece of the puzzle. It sure looks like McCone was quite the company man, and war profiteer. It appears that his appointment was one of Kennedy's bigger mistakes, along with his buildup of the CIA in Miami, prior to the Cuban Missle Crisis.

Those steps allowed the CIA to become stronger when they were already out of control.

I'm reading about the CIA buildup in Miami in this excellent article by Gaeton Fonzi:

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=2

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In 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower rewarded McCone by appointing him Chairman of the Atomic Energy commission.

I assume this would have made him privy to certain information concerning the experimentation on human beings [for the purpose of studying the effects of radiation, certain chemicals, bio-hazard materials, etc.,] that were being conducted before, during and after his tenure.

http://www.eh.doe.gov/ohre/roadmap/experim...ml#0491_Listing

God told me to skin you alive

Jello Biafra

Edited by Lee Forman
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I have just had an email from a user of my website to tell me that my page on John McCone has been removed from my website. He is right. Take a look yourself.

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

The page has also gone missing from the Google database. This has happened before. For example, my page on Bernardo De Torres.

Please check it out. Let me know if it is blank for you. I will reload it later today.

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Guest Gary Loughran

Further, to my previous post. Is it merely a coincidence that this has happened shortly after WK refreshed the topic of John McCone with his excelllent piece? :P

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John Simkin Posted Yesterday, 07:44 PM

I have just had an email from a user of my website to tell me that my page on John McCone has been removed from my website. He is right. Take a look yourself.

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

The page has also gone missing from the Google database. This has happened before. For example, my page on Bernardo De Torres.

Please check it out. Let me know if it is blank for you. I will reload it later today.

Aye,

It's gone.

Someone must be "slightly upset" about your pages, considering that they go through the trouble of deleting them. I wonder if your service provider can provide you with any answers as to why this happens to some of your select pages?

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