John Alex McCone

[William Kelly]

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?

Gary,

As a top spook once said, "The intelligence profession does not condition one to accept coincidence as an explanation for events."

I would be honored to know that something I post would be so threatening to cause such rude countermeasures, but why not also eleminate the article I posted too?

It doesn't seem like one of McCone's boys would really bother.

Not even their style.

Probably just some geek with too much time to waste.

As a computer guy yourself, is there a way to set up a system that expects to be hacked, so hackers set off alarms and are traced before they can do any dammage?

I don't mind the NSA listening in, as John Judge says, "Maybe they'll learn something," but when damage is done, I would think that a crime, or at least prosecutionable under the Patriot Act as a terrorist act.

BK

[John Dolva]

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?

Gary,

As a top spook once said, "The intelligence profession does not condition one to accept coincidence as an explanation for events."

I would be honored to know that something I post would be so threatening to cause such rude countermeasures, but why not also eleminate the article I posted too?

It doesn't seem like one of McCone's boys would really bother.

Not even their style.

Probably just some geek with too much time to waste.

As a computer guy yourself, is there a way to set up a system that expects to be hacked, so hackers set off alarms and are traced before they can do any dammage?

I don't mind the NSA listening in, as John Judge says, "Maybe they'll learn something," but when damage is done, I would think that a crime, or at least prosecutionable under the Patriot Act as a terrorist act.

BK

Also it's a pretty superficial analysis. What it has done is drawn attention to McCone. It's the more conspicuous or obverse of the possibility of drawing attention away from some concurrent event.

[John Dolva]

Perhaps so. Then one must consider that the average researcher sees that as a red flag and intensifies efforts, which in turns brings one back to the observation of it as an obverse. The items of actual significance are submerged in a flurry of diversions. And that in itself is ultimately doomed to fail as those who do percieve the subtleties are not so easily diverted, quite the opposite. That's the wonderful thing about reality, it has a dynamic which is self affirming, and deception likewise carries the seed of its own destruction. In the fullness of time it's stripped bare. It would merely facilitate if the 'masters of deception' accepted that they are only masters in their own minds and switched sides. They wont do that. Ultimately it's their loss. The harder they come, the harder they will fall.

[John Dolva]

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?

...

"As a top spook once said, "The intelligence profession does not condition one to accept coincidence as an explanation for events."

...

"Probably just some geek with too much time to waste."

...

BK

Also it's a pretty superficial analysis. What it has done is drawn attention to McCone. It's the more conspicuous or obverse of the possibility of drawing attention away from some concurrent event.

apt considering the 'attn mderator' thread

[John Simkin]

John, I got a blank page and a google search failed to list it.

I have now uploaded the page. It will probably take a few days before it appears in the search-engines. Before it was removed it was listed at number one at Google.

This should make us look even more closely at these persons and those connected with them. Very selective and sophisticated hacking to do that.....one wonders if the same people can't go into files and make slight changes we might not notice easily.

I agree. This is a much larger problem. However, my removing certain parts of the document they reveal what information they want to be kept out of the public domain.

Very strange. Nothing you might have done John e.g. Forgetting to 'put all' files back during an update.

No. The original document on my computer was unaffected. For that to have happened I would have needed to upload a blank McCone page. That page did not exist on my system so I could not have uploaded it. The problem was that the complete contents of the page was removed from my server. This was either done by a hacker on at the request of someone like the CIA.

To solve this problem I am in the process of creating a mirror site. This will be on a server that I am in control of and will be more difficult to remove.

The important question was why John McCone? I think I know why and I will be telling the forum later today.

[John Simkin]

Since creating my website and forum on the JFK assassination, I have been contacted by a lot of people offering information on the case that has not been published before. Some of these people needed to see a doctor. Others provided information that might have been true but was mainly speculation. However, some of these contacts have provided very important information. This included several people who have very close links to the CIA. It soon became clear that the CIA were trying to use me to spread disinformation. Included within this disinformation was accurate information. That is the way the CIA works. In fact, some of this information was “authorized” by the CIA. In other words, they wanted some information about the assassination to come out. This included the story that David Sanchez Morales and Rip Robertson helped organize the assassination.

There are other people who they have been very unwilling to give me information about other CIA operatives that I am convinced were involved in the assassination. For example, Carl E. Jenkins, Rafael Quintero and Bernardo de Torres. They were so-concerned about my posts on Quintero that they assigned one CIA asset to deal with my queries. According to this source, Quintero was a supporter of JFK and even helped RFK in the 1968 campaign. The thing that distinguishes Morales and Robertson from the others is that they are dead. Quintero died last month but he is currently still being protected.

It has also been made clear that my CIA sources were unwilling to help provide information on the cover-up. This is because this involved figures at the very top of the CIA. This of course includes John McCone, who was director of the CIA in 1963. I have also been warned that if post information of this cover-up via the forum or my website I am in danger of being “discredited”. I was told at the same time that the CIA no longer kill people trying to disclose information on covert activities. Interestingly, Gene Wheaton used the same term when he gave information on Jenkins and Quintero in the filmed interview with William Law.

My page on McCone was ranked number one at Google and other search-engines. As well as the information on the cover-up I have also exposed McCone’s corrupt relationship with Tommy Concoran, Stephen D. Bechtel and Henry J. Kaiser. The Bechel Corporation is currently enjoying multimillion contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The page is also linked to this thread where I have tried to show the links between these corrupt businessmen with the assassination of JFK and other progressive political leaders.

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

I suspect that the CIA will not have been too happy about my information on the role that McCone played in the cover-up. On 23rd November, 1963, the day after the assassination, McCone informed Lyndon B. Johnson that Lee Harvey Oswald had been in contact with Valery V. Kostikov, a Soviet diplomat, in Mexico. He also passed on information that Winston Scott, CIA station chief in Mexico, believed that Kostikov was a KGB agent who specialized in assassination.

Four days after the assassination, McCone sent a copy of a highly classified document to the White House, the State Department and the FBI. This document claimed that on 18th September, 1963, Gilberto Alvarado, an agent of the Nicaraguan Secret Service, had infiltrated the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, saw an employee of that embassy give $6,500 to Oswald, to carry out the assassination of an "important political figure."

Further investigations revealed that Alvarado admitted that he had made up this story to incite hostilities between the United States and Cuba. However, Alvarado's story continued to be promoted by McCone and Thomas C. Mann, the US ambassador in Mexico. In his book, The JFK Assassination Debates (2006), Michael L. Kurtz claims that both McCone and Mann "received reprimands" for trying to blame the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Fidel Castro.

The reason for this was that LBJ refused to have anything to do with the idea of a Soviet/Cuban conspiracy. The official story is the LBJ did this to avoid a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. That is of course a lot of rubbish. However, this decision, meant that the original conspiracy that was linked to the overthrow of both JFK and Castro, ended in failure.

[John Simkin]

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.

John McCone is now back in the Google database and is ranked number 2 (Wikipedia is 1st).

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Tim Weiner, in his book Legacy of Ashes, credits John McCone with coming up with the idea of the naval blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Given his background as a master shipbuilder, McCone understood the military, political,a nd economic power of ships at

sea. The notes he drew up included the idea of imposing "an all out blockade" on Cuba--"the interrupton of all incoming

shipping," backed up with the treat of an attack. In meetings with Bobby Kennedy, McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy that

went on until nearly midnight, he elaborated on the blockade strategy. McCones's notes show that the idea received

no edident support from the president's top advisors (p. 202)

Ted Sorenson however did not associate McCone with the idea of the blockade:

Theodore Sorensen: I believe that CIA Director John McCone preferred the air strike/invasion option to the blockade/quarantine option. And it was those two choices that we finally came down to. But he was careful to offer policy recommendations only when requested by the president and to keep the CIA's primary role as one of gathering the facts. (from a CNN interview, 1998?)

Weiner gives the Kennedys very, very little credit for the peaceful resolution of the crisis. He also offers no background on McCone's profitable backgound as a "master shipbuilder".

Is this an accurate description of the CMC? Regardless, it is one that a lot of people will be left with: Weiner's book is now 19 on Amazon.

Edited July 17, 2007 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[William Kelly]

Can anyone confirm that John A. McCone was born in Texas?

Also, it appears that David Robarge, the CIA's chief historian, has written a classified biography of McCone. I guess that means that we can't read it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/washingt...4fc&ei=5070

Published: June 26, 2007Dr. Robarge is the chief historian of the Central Intelligence Agency and has been a member of the agency's history staff since 1996. Before that he worked in the C.I.A. Counterterrorism Center and the Directorate of Intelligence as an analyst on the Palestinian and Iraq accounts.

He has published a classified biography of Director of Central Intelligence John McCone,

and his articles and book reviews have appeared in the C.I.A.'s in-house journal "Studies in Intelligence," and in "Intelligence and National Security" and the "Journal of Intelligence History." Dr. Robarge holds a Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University, has taught United States intelligence history at George Mason University and has written a biography of Chief Justice John Marshall.

« Return to the Analysis of the CIA Documents

[Sandra Michelle Farr]

xx

Edited September 9, 2007 by Sandra Michelle Farr

[Sandra Michelle Farr]

xx

Edited September 9, 2007 by Sandra Michelle Farr

[William Kelly]

Thanks Sandra,

And for the tidbit too. I guess Cheney and Rummy were proteges.

BK

[Guest Tom Scully]

Wow! Sensitive subject, I see from reading the posts in this long dormant thread. I'm here because of the observation I posted earlier today on the Hemming - Oswald thread, at this link.:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=8066&pid=204506&st=15entry204506

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks%3A1&q=%22*%2C+for+example.+His+sudden+employment+as+chair+of+Bechtel%27s+high-level+finance+committee+in+1952%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

....Take John Lowrey Simpson, for example. His sudden employment as chair of Bechtel's high-level finance committee in 1952 surprised the company's old-timers. He was a distant relative of Steve Bechtel, but Bechtel has a strong tradition of internal promotion, and Simpson, whose prior job was as executive vice president of the obscure Schroder Bank in New York, seemed to come out of nowhere.....

But John L. Simpson didn't "come out of nowhere." and he was not "a distant relative of Steve Bechtel." John L. Simpson was the uncle of Bechtel's wife and business partner, Laura Adeline Peart Bechtel. Born in 1862, Lela Simpson Peart was the mother of Laura Bechtel and the older sister of John L. Simpson. John was 29 years younger than Lela. After their father John Lowery Simpson, Sr. died in Sept., 1892 when John was one year old, John's mother Gertrude Pendegast Simpson, became the 38 year old widow of 58 year old Simpson, Sr., with three young children and step-daughter, Lela, age 30 in 1892. In many ways, John L. Simpson and his sisters Lola Jean and Irma have related to their sister Lela, more like the parent she later was to the three Simpson children's niece, Laura A.P. Bechtel.

I did some reading of the posts on this thread a few days ago after a google search served up John Simkin's opening post. My search terms were McCone and Simpson. I was looking for pages mentioning McCone and Gerry Hemming's mother's two brothers and not the John L. Simpson associated with Schroeder Bank, Becthel, and the OSS. The first exposure I had to Bechtel Engineering and Construction I can recall, was in an article in Mother Jones Magazine I read more than 30 years ago.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/cias-open-secrets

Read Mark Dowie's 1978 Mother Jones article on Bechtel—as highlighted by the CIA.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/bechtel-file-mark-dowie

Fri Apr. 3, 2009 2:36 PM PDT

Inside the CIA's (sort of) secret document stash, a MoJo reporter found this article by Mark Dowie from 1978 (pdf.).

The highlighted version includes original CIA notes. (pdf)

If You Liked This, You Might Also Like...

Inside the CIA's (Sort of) Secret Document Stash

What the Agency thinks of Mother Jones, and other tidbits I found in a digital vault in Maryland.

The companies and Stephen Bechtel were described as secretive, privately held, and principal design and construction contractor for CIA and other US government, sensitive foreign and domestic building projects. Bechtel came to my attention again a few years later when the new Reagan administration tapped Bechtel's Caspar Weinberger as secretary of defense and his boss, Bechtel's president, George P. Schulz as secretary of state.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7vwtAAAAIBAJ&sjid=580FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1141,2475680&dq=warren+bechtel&hl=en

The Palm Beach Post - Jun 26, 1982

A Construction Company Of Ton Republicans .

Palm Beach Post - Google News Archive - Jun 26, 1982

Founded in 1898 by Warren Bechtel work on railroad construction, has been involved in

construction projects more than 100 countries, with a heavy and ...

Some background.:

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Warren+Bechtel&cf=all

IA BECHTEL DIES IN MOSCOW HOTEL; The Head of

Six Contracting ...

- New York Times - Aug 29, 1933

Warren Bechtel was born on Sept. 12, 1872, on a farm near Freeport, 111., the fifth in a

family of five girls and three boys. He worked at arduous ferm ...

WA BECHTEL DIES IN RUSSIA - Los Angeles Times

http://articles.latimes.com/1992-08-19/news/mn-5596_1_build-bechtel-group

Laura Adeline Peart Bechtel; Helped Build Bechtel Group

August 19, 1992

Laura Adeline Peart Bechtel, 89, who helped build the family-owned Bechtel Group Inc. into one of the world's biggest construction and engineering companies. Over the years she was credited with helping her husband of 66 years, the late Bechtel Chairman Stephen D. Bechtel, strengthen and enlarge the company he inherited from his father, Warren. She and Bechtel lived on job sites early in their marriage, for a time living in a rebuilt railroad observation car, which was moved to various locations. Mrs. Bechtel was born in Yolo County, Calif., and attended UC Berkeley before marrying Bechtel in 1923 and settling in Oakland. In Oakland on Sunday of the complications of age.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/20/obituaries/laura-p-bechtel-89-widow-of-industrialist.html?pagewanted=1?pagewanted=1

Laura P. Bechtel, 89, Widow of Industrialist

Published: August 20, 1992

... Mrs. Bechtel was married for 66 years to Stephen D. Bechtel, who inherited the San Francisco-based company from his father, Warren, in 1933 and headed it until 1960. He died three years ago.

She was his active partner and adviser in the business and often traveled with him to projects around the world.

Among the company's projects during Mr. Bechtel's stewardship of it were the Hoover Dam; the first commercial nuclear reactor, at the since-closed Dresden plant in Morris, Ill.; shipyards that built 560 vessels during World War II; petroleum refineries, and oil and gas pipelines in Alaska, Canada and the Middle East.

Mrs. Bechtel was born in Yolo County, Calif., grew up in Woodland, near Sacramento, and was educated at the University of California at Berkeley. She became a director of the Ladies' Home Society of Oakland and was active in several other organizations.

Surviving are her son, Stephen Bechtel Jr. of San Francisco, chairman emeritus of the company; a daughter,...

http://www.kindredkonnections.com/ancestry/California/Married-1894/Si/Simpson-family/Lela-Simpson-kk000001-38597.html

Father: BARKLEY GILBERT PEART

Birth/Chris: ... 1860 at ...

Death/Burial: ... 1930 at ...

Mother: LELA ADALINE SIMPSON

Birth/Chris: ... 1862 at ...

Death/Burial: ... 1950 at ...

Married: ... 1894 at ...

Children:

1. PEART, LAURA ADALINE - Birth/Chris: ... 1903 at ...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=gertrude+john+irma+lela&cf=all

LOLA JEAN SIMPSON, N0LIST, 50, DIES; m Author of 'Treadmill' Had ...

- New York Times - Feb 27, 1934

Miss Simpson is survived by her mother, Mrs. Gertrude Simpson; a brother, John L . Simpson, and two sisters, Mrs.r Irma G. Adams and Mrs. Lela Pert.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22*Dec+7+1935+in+net+eighty+fifth+year+beloved+mother+of+John+L+Simpson+of+New+York+City+and+Irma%22&btnG=Search+Archives&hl=en&ned=us&scoring=a

Obituary 1 No Title

- New York Times - Dec 9, 1935

... A. M. Brookside Cemetery $1Gertrude on Dec 7 1935 in net eightyfifth year beloved mother of John L Simpson of New York City and Irma Adams of Sacramento ...

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/john-l-john-lowrey-simpson/activities-in-a-troubled-world--war-relief-banking-and-business--oral-history-hci/page-2-activities-in-a-troubled-world--war-relief-banking-and-business--oral-history-hci.shtml

Read the ebook Activities in a troubled world : war relief ...

Gertrude Pendegast Simpson 1851-1935. Woodland : John Simpson's new bicycle. Very young John Simpson Mother and the Girls Simpson: There's every evidence ...

(page 2 of 23)

....Riess: And your grandparents on the paternal side, did you know anything

of who they were?

Simpson: Not much. My father died shortly after my birth in 1891. He

came from Indiana, but communications being what they were in

those days, I really know very little about his background. I

know about him from things related by my mother, sisters, and

family friends, but that's information from Woodland , not Indiana.

Riess: He didn't have a diary or that sort of thing?

Simpson: Not that I know of. From all I've learned, he was a highly

respected man in the community and certainly dearly beloved

and honored by my mother. He was a widower when he married

her, about twenty years her senior. His first wife's name was

Laura and that name has been handed down in the family ever since.

What did your father do?

Frankly, I do not know, but cudgeling my wits and talking

recently with Mrs. S.D. Bechtel, Laura Bechtel,* our best

speculation is that he was a teacher, because he was obviously

a man given to literary pursuits...

*Mrs. S.D. Bechtel is the daughter of Mr.

Simpson ' s half -sister Lela...

John Lowrey Simpson, Sr.

1831-1892

Gertrude Pendegast Simpson

1851-1935

**See Appendix A. Between the April 28...

...interview and June 21,

Mr. Simpson and Mrs. Bechtel pursued further

information on his

father, her grandfather , J.L. Simpson. After

finding the date of

death in a family Bible, Mr. Simpson wrote to

the Wgod_land Daily

Democrat and was sent the obituary that is

appended...

..Lola Jean Simpson

ca. 1930...

...Woodland: John next to his mother

Lola standing, Irma, and Lela on

the right.

http://books.google.com/books?id=P0wzAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA319&dq=prentiss+gray+vienna&hl=en&ei=ZliATNyGIsH6lwf49NXtDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=prentiss%20gray%20vienna&f=false

California alumni fortnightly: Volumes 9-13 - Page 319

University of California (1868-1952). Alumni Association - 1916 -

John Lowrey Simpson, who is connected with the European work of the Prentiss Gray t'ompany, with headquarters in Vienna, spent a month this summer in Berkeley, visiting his mother and his sister, Lola Simpson '99

http://www.google.com/search?q=John%20Lowrey%20Simpson.&ned=us&hl=en&tbo=u&tbs=bks:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=np

The pleasant Isle of Aves: a camp in Bohemia, its people and its ...

Waring Jones, Charles Kingsley, John Lowrey Simpson, Chaffee E. Hall, Bohemian Club (San Francisco, Calif.)

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=john+l+simpson+schroeder&cf=all

Display Ad 33 -- No Title

Pay-Per-View - Chicago Tribune - ProQuest Archiver - May 24, 1929

J, Henry Schroder & Company, London John L. Simpson Vice-President. J. Henry Schroder Bankin Corporation, New York Frank C. Tiarks Messrs. ...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=john+l+simpson+schroeder&cf=all

US Electric Power Corp.

Pay-Per-View - Wall Street Journal - ProQuest Archiver - Mar 9, 1933

... vacancy caused by the resignation of Baron Bruno Schroder of J. Henry Schroder & Co., London, who are still represented on the board by John L. Simpson, ...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=Rockefeller%2C+Fuller+and+Donovan&btnG=Search+Archives&ned=us&hl=en&scoring=a

NEW BANKING FIRM OPENS; Schroder, Rockefeller & Co. Offices Are ...

- New York Times - Jul 20, 1936

Rockefeller, Fuller and (Gerald J) Donovan, will be John L. Simpson. executive vice president and director of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation, and Frederick ...

E L. CORD INTERESTS TO BE SOLD TODAY; Banking Group to Acquire ...

- New York Times - Aug 6, 1937

... Co. and Schroeder, Rockefeller Co. at a meeting to be held here today. EJ L. ... Avery Rockefeller, Carl ton P. Fuller, John L. Simpson and Read Hager. ...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=john+l+simpson+schroeder&cf=all

GET HIGH OFFICES IN SCHRODER BANKS

- New York Times - Dec 17, 1951

... executives in the Schroder banks was announced over the weekend by Gerald F. Beal, ... vice president to succeed John L. Simpson, who recently resigned. ...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02E5DB1039F932A05750C0A967948260

John L. Simpson Dead on Coast; Banker Was Director of Bechtel

Published: March 31, 1981

SAN FRANCISCO, March 30— John L. Simpson, a former international banker and director of the Bechtel Corporation, died Saturday at Presbyterian Hospital. He was 90 years old.

Mr. Simpson joined J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation in 1925 and became a director and executive vice president. In 1945 he joined Bechtel as a director and he became chairman of the finance committee for the international engineering company, based here, in 1952.

For 15 years he served a chairman of the board of International Railways of Central America. Mr. Simpson was a former president of the World Affairs Council of Northern California and received the French Legion of Honor and Belgian Order of the Crown. Mr. Simpson was a native of Woodland.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=bks%3A1&q=%22*%2C+for+example.+His+sudden+employment+as+chair+of+Bechtel%27s+high-level+finance+committee+in+1952%22&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Raising hell: how the Center for Investigative Reporting gets the ...

David Weir, Dan Noyes, Center for Investigative Reporting (U.S.) - 1983 - 340 pages

Take John Lowrey Simpson, for example.

His sudden employment as chair of Bechtel's high-level finance committee in 1952 surprised the company's old-timers. He was a distant relative of Steve Bechtel, but Bechtel has a strong tradition of internal promotion, and Simpson, whose prior job was as executive vice president of the obscure Schroder Bank in New York, seemed to come out of nowhere. What the old-timers didn't realize, though, was that Simpson had strong ties with the Office of Strategic Services through his friendship with Allen Dulles (a founding director of Schroder Bank as well as of the OSS), and that Simpson, who had access to military intelligence during the war, served as a Bechtel adviser during

those years. After the war the OSS, of course, became the CIA, and the Schroder Bank,

of which Simpson remained a director after joining Bechtel, was recently discovered to have been a bank for the CIA director's controversial discretionary fund.

Then there is C. Stribling Snodgrass (whose name is not an alias), who went the other way. As vice president at Bechtel, Snodgrass masterminded the company's near-monopolization of Saudi Arabian heavy construction, primarily through cordial relationships with influential State Department officials who sold Bechtel to King Faisal and his predecessor, ....

Edited September 3, 2010 by Tom Scully

[Guest Tom Scully]

Excerpted from the John Lowery Simpson Oral History, from a series of interviews conducted in 1978.:

http://www.ebooksread.com/authors-eng/john-l-john-lowrey-simpson/activities-in-a-troubled-world--war-relief-banking-and-business--oral-history-hci/page-2-activities-in-a-troubled-world--war-relief-banking-and-business--oral-history-hci.shtml

Read the ebook Activities in a troubled world : war relief ...

....Page 82

Introducing the Dulleses

(John L.) Simpson: Anyway, we were battling out these last details. Ferd Eberstadt

knew much more about the whole thing than we did, really. We

were at a disadvantage. And Prent Gray said, "You know, at the

Paris Peace Conference I met a lawyer named Dulles and I think

he's a very smart fellow. And there's just a chance that he

might be working late on something. Let's go over to his office

and see if we can catch him in." We did and he was in his

office and we told him what our situation was and got his advice

and worked the thing out reasonably well from our standpoint.

That was our first contact with the Dulleses and from then

on we became closer and closer. They became general counsel

for the banking corporation and Allen came into the picture.

And that's the way it happened.

Riess: John Foster Dulles was in 1924 a senior partner with Sullivan &

Cromwell, but he was a young man, relatively, wasn't he?

Simpson: Yes.

Page 83

...Riess: You've introduced John Foster Dulles. What about Allen?

Simpson: Well, Allen did his law at George Washington University. And

one crack that was made in this book on Foster is that Douglas,

I think it was, or somebody who is very prominent now, graduated

with honors from either Yale or Harvard law school and was turned

down by Foster for a job because he didn't consider him adequately

prepared.* But Allen, who was not well known at all, was given

a job right away with Sullivan & Cromwell.

-Dulles, by Leonard Mosley, The Dial Press/ James Wade, 1978, p. 76.

Page 84

Simpson: Allen was never the lawyer that Foster was as a lawyer, or

Eustace Seligman, or Green. But he was an extremely able fellow;

as a lawyer he had a lot of common sense and balance. Foster

was our senior lawyer and Allen was also our lawyer. (Schroder Bank) )And in

matters where you had to take a chance, where you were about

90 percent certain that this was all right but there was a 10

percent possibility you might find some trouble, Allen would be

for taking the chance and he never was badly wrong that I can

remember.

Riess: Foster wouldn't be for it?

Simpson: Foster perhaps would want to play at 100 percent safe.

Riess: Of course, the lawyer takes no risk; I mean, the relationship

was always advisory.

Simpson: But he takes a risk of losing his prestige and reputation if

he's wrong too often.

Riess: Would that be generally known on the street, so to speak, or

just in the bank?

Simpson: Well, it would depend on the circumstances, whether it was a

big public matter or just private.

Riess: Were Sullivan & Cromwell particularly an international law firm?

Simpson: They didn't start by being an international law firm, but they

did develop a great expertise, let's say, in international law.

When the time came that that was a very important branch of the

practice of law, they took a leading role in it....

Page 131

The Introduction of McCone to Dulles

Riess: I have a note that you introduced Allen Dulles and John McCone.

How and when did they meet?

Simpson: The occasion was the 1948 election when Dewey was supposed to

win and didn't. We were invited to an election dinner at the

Allen Dulleses', who, as I said, lived in the same block with us.

At that time we were seeing quite a bit of John McCone and

his then wife, who has since died, Rosemary McCone. I guess we

had invited them to dinner before we'd received the Dulleses'

invitation, because we had an engagement with them, and when we

received the Dulleses' invitation we said, "We'd love to come,

of course, but we have some guests from out of town."

And they said, "Oh, bring them along. It's going to be a

buffet. It makes no difference. Bring them along, by all

means. "

Well, the guests from out of town were John and Rosemary

McCone, and we went over to Allen and Clover Dulleses' house for

a gala dinner, and we had the dinner, but the gala got a little

tarnished .

Riess: [Laughter] Yes, when you got the news.

Simpson: In the course of the evening. But, in any event, that's how

Allen Dulles and John McCone met, and that's really all there

is to the story. It was just an amusing incident that we did

introduce them to each other and later each one successively

became head of the CIA.*

*Allen Dulles, Deputy Director, CIA, 1951-1953; Director, CIA,

1953-1961. John A. McCone, Chairman, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission,

1958-1960; Director, CIA, 1961-1965.

Page 132

Simpson: John McCone , in the meantime, had become chairman of the

Atomic Energy Commission.

Riess: You've talked about your friend Lewis Strauss a couple of times.

Simpson: Yes, he was a very good friend.

Riess: How does that all fit together? McCone was chairman of the

Atomic Energy Commission at the same time that Dulles was head

of the CIA?

Simpson: I don't remember whether there was an exact overlap as to time.

Perhaps there was, I don't know.

Riess: Did Dulles have his eye on McCone for grooming for the CIA?

Simpson: Not so far as I know. Let's see. Strauss was head of the

Atomic Energy Commission preceding McCone, wasn't he [1953-1958]?

And then he was appointed Secretary of Commerce and was turned

down by the Senate.

Riess: Strauss comes out of the banking background. Wasn't he Kuhn Loeb

also?

Simpson: Yes.

Riess: And why does someone with that background become chairman of the

Atomic Energy Commission? It seems like a scientist's job.

Simpson: Well, it became a scientist's job. Glenn Seaborg succeeded

McCone .

I suppose there's an argument both ways. In some respects

a businessman is good for the qualities that he has; in other

respects, a scientist, because he'll know more about what the

physicists are talking about. I don't know. I didn't appoint

them.

Page 143

XII BECHTEL Bechtel Notes

Riess: During World War II you took some time away from Schroder and

came back to help the Bechtel Corporation. How did that come

about?

(John L)Simpson: That came about, first of all, because Grete and I made a visit

out here really as a vacation and, of course, saw Steve and Laura

[bechtel]. Steve and others showed us around the ship-building

[Marinship] , which was going full tilt. It inspired enthusiasm.

You could see they were doing a whale of a job, a very big job,

in a field in which they had not had direct experience. Before

we left Steve said, "Why won't you take leave from Schroder and

come out and get into this thing?"

I said, "Well, I don't know why. I'm not an engineer."

"Oh," he said, "we have plenty of engineers. But you've

had broad experience and the very fact that you are different

makes it interesting."

At this point I should say something about Steve Bechtel,

because there's a saying that a construction company is the

"lengthened shadow of a man," and if ever that was true, it was

true in this case.

Steve Bechtel 's father, Warren A. Bechtel, was a fine man

and had a construction company which did, very competently,

medium-size construction jobs. He had a great break with the

Hoover Dam, and he died in 1933. There were three sons. All

three had grown up in the business. Steve was the second in age.

Steve's younger brother, Kenneth, participated in the construction

business and was head of the wartime shipyard in Sausalito. Ken

Bechtel headed Marinship, the shipbuilding operation in Sausalito

which was one of Bechtel 's important contributions to the war

Simpson: effort. But he devoted his main attention to insurance in his

capacity as director, president, and chairman of Industrial

Indemnity Company. I was on the Board of Industrial Indemnity

for several years.

Warren, the elder brother, retired from the business at

the end of World War II in order to devote himself to ranching.

I think the reason for Steve's great success, if you had

to sum it up briefly, was that he had great vision and, unlike

most visionaries, he had the capacity to put it into effect.

If somebody said, "Can you sum up Steve Bechtel's success in a

few words?", I would say that would just about do it.

Steve Bechtel must have got out of his crib determined to

do something active and important. First, there was W.A.

Bechtel & Company, which was a construction company, but Steve

said, "Why don't we add engineering to construction and be a

construction and engineering company instead of just a construction

company?" And that's where he brought in John McCone, and why

he brought in John McCone.

And then there were the two companies: W.A. Bechtel &

Company, and Bechtel -McCone Corporation.

Riess: He kept the W.A. Bechtel name. Was that because it had such a

good reputation?

Simpson: Yes, and because war contracts had been taken in that name.

Riess: From my reading about the philosophies and intentions of the

Bechtel Corporation, there always was a distinction between

providing goods and providing services, and it seems that they

were more oriented to providing services.

Simpson: Absolutely.1

Riess: And when was that first articulated?

Simpson: I think it was there from the beginning. And that was the great

difference betweenthis comes a little later the Bechtel

development and the Kaiser development. Steve Bechtel was

determined to concentrate on service and to avoid fixed

investments....

Page 147

Riess: During the war they were looking ahead to the peacetime

activities?

Simpson: Yes.

Riess: And you had been advising on that kind of growth?

Simpson: Well, I ask myself, "What did I really do?" But there always

seemed to be innumerable things which came up that we discussed.

Bridges, Walling, and I talked together a great deal.

Riess: You said you had had a role in the reorganization of the company

after the war. I'd like to hear about that.

Simpson: Well, after the war there had to be a new look, of course, and

several approaches were made to this reorganization and the

people who would be involved. I accompanied John McCone and,

I guess, Steve, to New York to talk corporate matters with

Sullivan & Cromwell. And the upshot was that John McCone went

off on his own, and Warren Bechtel retired, and Steve Bechtel,

with the association and the assistance of Kenneth, functioned

with the new company called Bechtel Corporation.

Riess: I see. Why were there two separate companies, the Bechtel -McCone

and the W.A. Bechtel?

Simpson: I suppose that was largely to give John McCone a large enough

role to enlist his cooperation. Furthermore, it may have been

convenient to have two companies. Bechtel-McCone Corporation

operated, I think, twelve or fourteen ways in Los Angeles.

Riess: Twelve or fourteen ways?

Simpson: Where you build a ship is a way.

Riess: Oh J McCone had his own successful engineering business up until

then?

Simpson: No, I don't think so. But Steve had known him well. They'd

been approximately the same time in college, in Berkeley.

Riess: When this Bechtel reorganization was completed, John McCone

went on his way. Was that an unhappy split?

Simpson: No. Very friendly. John had a company that he had a major

interest in, which did very well, and he soon became deeply

involved in government affairs.

Page 148

Simpson: He and Tom Finletter wrote a memorandum pointing out the

dangers to us as a nation if we fell behind in the nuclear

development. And then John, I think, became assistant secretary

of air [1950-1951], and then Atomic Energy and CIA.

Riess: That's interesting. I wonder why he got into those jobs. I

mean, this was not business any more; this was patriotism or

something like that?

Simpson: Patriotism and ambition, the two combined. I am a great

believer in mixed motives. I think lots of things are done

partly for ambition and partly for the general good. [see

Churchill's "Life of Marlborough." J.L.S.]

.....Page 170

The Mother Jones Issue

Riess: Mr. Simpson, since our last interview, on August 3rd, an

article about Bechtel Corporation has come out in the magazine

Mother Jones.* We talked a little by phone about this piece

and about Bechtel 's response. And now, given two months to

let it become "history," I'd like your answer to a few related

questions for the oral history.

What is your reaction to the line about "the mysterious

figure of John Simpson" and accompanying innuendos about your

ties with OSS and access to military information during WW II?

Simpson: I can answer briefly and categorically the reference to me. I was

indeed, as mentioned, a close friend of Allen Dulles and his

family. I never in any way, directly or indirectly, had anything

to do with any relations between Allen Dulles, or the CIA, and

the Bechtel organization. I have no knowledge whatsoever on this

subject.

You have in hand a statement issued by the Bechtel organization

on August 17, 1978, which explains my joining that organization.**

Inasmuch as the Bechtel organization has made its position

clear and since I have had no official connection with Bechtel

since 1973, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further

on the subject. [subsequent questions unanswered. S.B.R.]

*: 'The Bechtel File," How the Master Builders Protect Their Beach

heads, by Mark Dowie, Mother Jones. Sept. /Oct. 1978, pp. 29-38.

**"fyi" For Your Information, Bechtel Response to Mother Jones

Article, Vol. 4, No. 7, August 17, 1978. [see Appendices]

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/cias-open-secrets

Read Mark Dowie's 1978 Mother Jones article on Bechtel—as highlighted by the CIA.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/bechtel-file-mark-dowie

Fri Apr. 3, 2009 2:36 PM PDT

Inside the CIA's (sort of) secret document stash, a MoJo reporter found this article by Mark Dowie from 1978 (pdf.).

The highlighted version includes original CIA notes. (pdf)

If You Liked This, You Might Also Like...

Inside the CIA's (Sort of) Secret Document Stash

What the Agency thinks of Mother Jones, and other tidbits I found in a digital vault in Maryland.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22+Also+working+for+Bechtel+as+consultants+are+Richard+Helms%2C+%22&btnG=Search+Archives&ned=us&hl=en&scoring=aBechtel and Its Link to Reagan; Reclusive Owner Issues Note on Ethics Long Struggle for Privacy Bechtel Wary of Link to Reagan Building an Arab City

By THOMAS LUECK Special to The New York Times ();

- New York Times - Dec 5, 1980

... Also working for Bechtel as consultants are Richard Helms, the former Director of Central Intelligence and former Ambassador to Iran, and Frank Jungers, ...

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=Pres.+Reagan%27s+special+Middle+East+envoy,+Philip+C.+Habib,+is+also+serving+as+a+private+consultant+to+Bechtel+Group,+Inc.&cf=all

BECHTEL ASIA UNIT IS HABIB EMPLOYER - Free Preview - The New …

- New York Times - Jul 26, 1982

President Reagan's special Middle East envoy Philip C Habib is also serving as a private consultant on Asia to the Bechtel Group Inc ...

Edited September 4, 2010 by Tom Scully