Fire Me?

[Ron Bulman]

"That little Kennedy, he thought he was a God",  Allen Dulles to the editor of Harpers Magazine, 1965.  You can't fire Me, I Created the CIA?  Is this what Dulles thought when asked for his resignation in November 1961?  I realize trying to read his thoughts in hindsight is speculation but is the thought itself not reasonable?  Is it too far out to think maybe he and Angleton got drunk that night and Angleton consoled him with something along the lines of "Allen, as you well know there is a time for action but patience is often the most useful attribute in the craft of intelligence.  Wait a year or two for things to cool off and we will take care of Kennedy one way or the other."

Dulles, and Angleton both still had many loyal followers in the CIA who felt betrayed by what they were told or perceived of JFK's actions during the Bay of Pigs, as well as a bunch of Cubans in the US.  Several of the former went back at least 10 years to Guatemala or further on to the OSS in World War II.  E.G. Phillips and Morales and more to Guatemala or before, Angleton and Shackley among others to the OSS.

JFK may have rightly stripped Dulles of his title, and in turn his pride, but not much of his power, through Angleton in particular IMO.  Lest we forget Angleton did carry his mentors ashes at his funeral in 1969.  Dulles still had the backing of the old line east coast establishment all the way back to the founding of the Council on Foreign Relations in the 1920's, his time at Cromwell and Sullivan in the 1930's dealing with Hitler and Mussolini.  United Fruit, owners of the steel companies as well as the oil men in the southwest, some might not have shot him down in the street but were not sad to see him go.

After his refusal to attack during the Cuban Missile Crisis the military industrial intelligence complex felt even more animosity towards JFK. 

Per David Talbot he still had access to CIA headquarters and the residence he had built there on 11/22/63 if I remember right.

Then while others  tried to get out of serving on the Warren Omission he sought to be on it and once there proceeded to direct it.  His former protégé Angleton as CIA liaison to the Omission , hand in glove, preferred to wait them out on certain questions.

I think maybe a consensus was reached among the directors of the council on foreign relations and Dulles told Angleton to go ahead or something close to it.  Just speculation.    

Edited April 15, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

I've been reading again in The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot.  His friend and co-researcher's book Ghost by Jeff Morley along with comments in recent months about it spurred me to re read some of Lisa Pease work in The Assassinations on Angleton and to thumb through Tom Mangold's Cold Warrior and try to think back on it.  When one try's to mesh the information in Chessboard, Ghost, Ms. Pease, Mangold. and further information on this site in Jim DiEugino's  review of Ghost I think a reasonable person would come to the conclusion Dulles and Angleton had prior knowledge of the "Event".

Dulles did not become a recluse after his firing.  His CIA, after he had left it, produced the sham of a book The Craft of Intelligence in his name which came out in the fall of 1963.  He did a book tour.  Along the East coast, the West coast  then Houston and Dallas over four days in Texas, October 25th through the 29th, 1963.  The cosmopolitan east coast establishment icon chose to grace the West coast and then the two most right wing cities in Texas, including Dallas where the man who fired him would be Murdered in broad daylight on a public street, less than a month later.  Strange coincidence? Or Crafty Intelligence.    

Edited April 15, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

And do you know who ghost wrote The Craft of Intelligence?

[Ron Bulman]

2 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

And do you know who ghost wrote The Craft of Intelligence?

No sir. Not off the top of my head.  People within he CIA  itself in conjunction with a paid hack from one of the major newspapers or magazines I think whose name I know but can't remember at the moment.

[Ron Bulman]

Ah!  Howard Hunt, among others?

[Michael Clark]

E Howard Hunt is said to have been his ghost writer. 

Howard Roman is also suggested. Husband of Jane Roman

 

[James DiEugenio]

Howard Hunt.

He got the assignment because he had been assisting Dulles during the Taylor Commission.  

During that proceeding, Dulles saw that Bobby Kennedy was going to smoke him out about his secret agenda for the Bay of Pigs.  RFK did do that and he also consulted with Lovett because of a lead from his father.

So Dulles and Hunt decided on a preemptive strike.  Do you know about that one? 

 

Edited April 15, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

10 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Howard Hunt.

He got the assignment because he had been assisting Dulles during the Taylor Commission.  

During that proceeding, Dulles saw that Bobby Kennedy was going to smoke him out about his secret agenda for the Bay of Pigs.  RFK did do that and he also consulted with Lovett because of a lead from his father.

So Dulles and Hunt decided on a preemptive strike.  Do you know about that one? 

 

Nope.  Went back to Chessboard pg. 486 and saw Hunt, Roman, Murphy, Kent and Wisner.

Did not make the connection to what Jane Roman Said, thanks Michael.

https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/WhatJaneRomanSaid/WhatJaneRomanSaid_1.htm

I remember the words "Taylor Commission" but not what it was about.

 

[Ron Bulman]

Strange how perception changes over time.  I'd thought of for many years as E. Howard Hunt as a cia agent who wrote fiction on the side for fun or profit.

https://www.amazon.com/House-Dick-Hard-Case-Crime-ebook/dp/B004TH2V4I

But never erudite enough considering his operational endeavors to be a propagandist within Mockingbird.  

[James DiEugenio]

The Taylor Commission was the White House inquiry into the Bay of Pigs.

RFK was his brother's agent on the board of inquiry.  Bobby really went after Dulles and smoked him out on a number of lies about the operation.  He then consulted with his father and he told him to see Robert Lovett.  Bobby did so and got a load of how Lovett had tried to get Dulles fired years earlier along with his friend and colleague on the FIAB, David Bruce.  Bobby found their report, and then got Lovett to go see JFK.  And that was really what got Dulles fired.

But that does not explain the preemptive strike I talked about.

Edited April 15, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[David Josephs]

So Lovett, one of the 6 Wise Men, is influential and powerful enough (with friends) to get Dulles removed...

Lovett, Kennan, Harriman, McCloy, Acheson, Bohlen.  

If you've not read it... It is an eye opener as to the real power brokers and influencers in this country....

Harriman and McCloy alone ran most of the US foreign and domestic policy....

Politicians come and go.. The Military is eternal. 

[Paz Marverde]

6 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Dulles and Angleton had prior knowledge of the "Event".

 

Agree

[James DiEugenio]

Realizing that he was going to get terminated over the Bay of Pigs, Hunt and Dulles decided to perform a preemptive strike on JFK. So they got in contact with Charles Murphy, a journalist from Fortune Magazine, employed by Henry Luce.

Hunt then wrote a story attacking Kennedy's foreign policy, and blaming him for the Bay of Pigs debacle because of the so called "Cancelled D Day air strikes".  

When Kennedy saw the story he hit the roof.  Not realizing that Hunt and Dulles had written it, he stripped Murphy of his Air Force reserve status.  Murphy made one of the most psychologically  revealing comments on the matter I ever read.  He said words to the effect: Kennedy stripped me of my military reserve status but that was OK because my loyalty was not to him but to Allen Dulles.

When I read that comment I realized that there really were such people in the world who really did believe that presidents were not really presidents.

What you don't know about this case, you can find in Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition. (pgs. 53-55)

 

[Ron Bulman]

I never realized Hunt was quite high enough in the hierarchy of the cia in 61 to be directly involved in Dulles defense regarding the bay of pigs/ the Taylor Commission.  Or that he was apparently the lead on ghostwriting Dulles book in late 62 early 63.  He actually knew and worked with Dulles albeit in a lesser role than the former DCI's stature, as a CIA employee at the time, after Dulles had been fired.  Read this before but the importance didn't sink in.  Hunt called Dulles "That remarkable man"  "whom it had been his honor to serve".  Loyalty.

[James DiEugenio]

I remember that, "remarkable man" comment.  And Hunt thought that the New Frontier guys were now going to dump the blame for Zapata on his boss.

So he and Dulles and Murphy connived a way to hit back first.  And what is really kind of startling is that the whole cancelled D Day air strikes story was then used to rile up the Cuban exiles against Kennedy.  So as you can see from that Paul Bleau article I just posted about Escalante's "Mechanism",  that is the glue that got the exiles involved. 

But beyond that, the whole cancelled D Day strikes story held on historically and in the public mind until the declassification of the Kirkpatrick IG report.  Which was not released until the mid nineties.  This is how badly historical truth is served when the facts are bottled up by secrecy.  Hunt and Dulles won that argument in the public mind for over 35 years. 

Edited April 16, 2018 by James DiEugenio