Fire Me?

[Ron Bulman]

Why did Dulles meet with JFK's Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglass Dillon on October 2, 1963, 41 days/ 6 weeks before the assassination?  He'd been fired almost two years before from government employment by JFK.  Granted he had a Long standing relationship with Dillon in other respects, which might affect the reason for the meeting, in more was than one.  There was no official reason for such a meeting.  But since as head of the Treasury Dillon  was  also ultimately head of the Secret Service it is suspect.  Some suspect the SS didn't fail to protect JFK but might have been prevented from doing so. 

When finally called to testify before the Warren Omission in September 1964 a month before it was over Dulles greeted him as his friend Doug and he was not questioned in depth about the performance of the SS on 11/22/63 at all.  In fact when pressed for SS documents by the WO he called on the new president to defer at that late date.  Like Dulles former protégé and subordinate at the CIA, Angleton, he chose to "wait them out".  Does anybody really believe Dulles lost his power when fired?

The Secret Service failed to protect the President on 11/22/63.  It was no accident.  Don't believe me?  See Vince Palamara's  Survivors Guilt.

 https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=please+come+to+boston&view=detail&mid=3434B8B5E1E6A22702A43434B8B5E1E6A22702A4&FORM=VIRE 

And  the source of most of this thread.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+devils+chessboard 

It gets much deeper.

Edited April 18, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[Andrew Prutsok]

What do you think the odds are that almost nobody was publicly critical of Dulles when he died?

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Andrew Prutsok said:

What do you think the odds are that almost nobody was publicly critical of Dulles when he died?

There's a photo of Angleton carrying Dulles's ashes out of the chapel after the ceremony - the sole pallbearer.

Clover Dulles was perhaps the most critical.  She locked Dulles's bedroom door and threw a party while he was dying - suffocating from pneumonia, if I recall.  Concerned Agency types at the party broke open the door and called an ambulance.  Clover later died in an old age home.  I wonder what the intervening years were like for her.

Edited April 18, 2018 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

Bobby Kennedy was critical of Dulles when he was alive.

Except it was all secret because of the classification of the Taylor Commission report.  RFK was way ahead of everyone on what really happened at the Bay of Pigs.  He exposed Dulles whole network of deceit around the operation.  And then he talked to his father about it and his father referred him to Robert Lovett.  Lovett gave him the Bruce/ Lovett report.  Bobby read that, took extensive notes, and then brought Lovett in to see JFK and Lovett said, hey we tried to get the guy fired, but his brother protected him.  You have a great opportunity now to do what we could not.

And that was it for Dulles, Bissell and Cabell. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition,  p. 50)

And also Eleanor Dulles.  Because Bobby called in Rusk and said, "Is there any other member of that family in our employ?"  Rusk said, "Yes, his sister works for me."  Bobby said, "I want her fired too.  I do not want any Dulles in this administration."

[Cliff Varnell]

https://cryptome.org/0001/bruce-lovett.htm

[link dead]

Center for the Study of Intelligence Newsletter

Spring 1995 Issue No. 3

The Elusive ``Bruce-Lovett Report''

Judging by the number of presidential and congressional commissions, panels, boards, and committees formed to study CIA's mission and purpose, one could conclude that the Agency is one of the most studied of all federal agencies. The best known studies are closely identified with their principal authors or sponsors. Hence we have the "Church Committee'' report (1976), the "Schlesinger'' report (1971), and the "Dulles-Jackson-Correa'' report (1949). The final product of the ongoing Presidential Commission to study the future of the intelligence community will undoubtedly be remembered as the "Aspin Commission'' report.

These reports make fascinating reading as well as invaluable sources for the CIA History Staff. The Staff recently ran across a reference to another item, the so-called "Bruce-Lovett'' report, that it would very much like to read -- if we could find it! The report is mentioned in Peter Grose's recent biography Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles [excerpts below]. According to Grose, two American elder statesmen, David Bruce and Robert Lovett, prepared a report for President Dwight Eisenhower in the fall of 1956 that criticized CIA's alleged fascination with "kingmaking'' in the Third World and complained that a "horde of CIA representatives'' was mounting foreign political intrigues at the expense of gathering hard intelligence on the Soviet Union.

The History Staff decided to get a copy of the report and see what the two former diplomats had really said. The first place to look was the CIA files on the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (PBCFIA). Bruce and Lovett had been charter members of this blue-ribbon panel. There was no reference to such a report. We then checked with the Eisenhower Library and National Archives, which holds the PBCFIA records, but came up emptyhanded. The Virginia Historical Society, the custodian of David Bruce's papers, did not have a copy either.

Having reached a dead end, we consulted the author of the Dulles biography, Peter Grose. Grose told us that he had not seen the report itself but had used notes made from it by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger for Robert F. Kennedy and His Times (1978) [excerpts below]. Professor Schlesinger informed us that that he had seen the report in Robert Kennedy's papers before they were deposited at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. He had loaned Grose his notes and does not have a copy of these notes or of the report itself.

This raises an interesting question: how did a report on the CIA written for President Eisenhower in 1956 end up in the RFK papers? We think we have the answer. Robert Lovett was asked to testify before Gen. Maxwell Taylor's board of inquiry on the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. Robert Kennedy was on that board and may have asked Lovett for a copy of the report. But we do not have the answer to another question: where is the "Bruce-Lovett'' report? The JFK Presidential Library has searched the RFK papers without success. Surely the report will turn up some day, even if one government agency and four separate archives so far haven't been able to find it. But this episode helps to prove one of the few Iron Laws of History: the official who keeps the best records gets to tell the story.

 

---

Robert Kennedy and His Times, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 1978.

[pp.455-458]

Eisenhower, reluctant to commit conventional armed force, used the CIA as the routine instrument of American intervention abroad. Covert-action operators, working on relatively small budgets, helped overthrow governments deemed pro-Communist in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954), failed to do so in Indonesia (1958), helped install supposedly prowestern governments in Egypt (1954) and Laos (1959) and planned the overthrow and murder of Castro in 1960.

Congress and the press looked on these activities, insofar as they knew about them, with complacency. Only one group had grave misgivings and informed criticism: expressed, however, in the deepest secrecy. This, improbably, was the President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, created by Eisenhower in 1956 and composed of unimpeachably respectable private citizens.

Almost at once the board had appointed a panel, led by Robert Lovett and David Bruce, to take a look at CIA's covert operations. "Bruce was very much disturbed," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry in 1961. "He approached it from the standpoint of 'what right have we to go barging around into other countries buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?' He felt this was an outrogeous interference with friendly countries. . . . He got me alarmed, so instead of completing the report in thirty days we look two months or more"³⁸

The 1956 report, written in Bruce's spirited style, condemned

the increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being. ... Busy, moneyed and privileged, [the CIA] likes its "King Making." responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!).

Bruce and Lovett could discover no reliable system of control. "There are always, of course, on record the twin, well-born purposes of 'frustrating the Soviets' and keeping others 'pro-western' oriented. Under these almost any [covert] action can be and is being justified." Once having been conceived, the final approval given to any project (at informal lunch meetings of the OCB [Operations Coordinating Board] inner group, can, at best, be described as pro forma." One consequence was that "no one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day to day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on," With "a horde of CIA representatives" swarming around the planet, CIA covert action was exerting "significant, almost unilateral influences . . . on the actual formulation of our foreign policies . . . sometimes completely unknown" to the local American ambassador. "We are sure," the report added, "that the supporters of the 1948 decision to launch this government on a positive [covert] program could not possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the operations which have resulted from it." Bruce and Lovett concluded with an exasperated plea:

Should not sumeone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government on a continuing basis, be . . . calculating . . . the long-range wisdom of activities which have entailed our virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? . . . Where will we be tomorrow?³⁹

In December 1956 the full board passed on to Eisenhower its concern about "the extremely informal and somewhat exclusive methods" used in the handling of clandestine projects.⁴⁰ (Among those signing this statemem was another board member, Joseph P. Kennedy. "I know that outfit," the ambassador said after the Bay of Pigs, "and I wouldn't pay them a hundred bucks a week. It's a lucky thing they were found out early.")⁴¹ In February 1957 the board pointed out to the White House that clandestine operations absorbed more than 80 percent of the CIA budget and that few or the projects received the formal approval of the so-called 5412 Special Group, the National Security Council's review mechanism. The CIA's Directorate of Plans (i.e., covert action), the board said, "is operating for the most part on an autonomous and free-wheeling basis in highly critical areas." All too often the State Department knew "little or nothing" of what lhe CIA was doing. "In some quarters this leads to situations which are almost unbelievable because the operations being carried out by the Deputy Director of Plans are sometimes in direct conflict with the normal operations being carried out by the Department of State."⁴²

. . .

The board pressed its campaign in 1959 and 1960. Allen Dulles made minor organizational changes. In 1959 the 5412 Special Group began for the first time to meet regularly.⁴⁷ The board was not satisfied, then or later. When Dulles, Bissell and J. D. Esterline briefed the board late in 1960 on the Cuban project, its members, Lovett particularly, registered dismay, especially over the manner in which the planning was being administered.⁴⁸ In its last written report to Eisenhower, in January 1961, the board said grimly: "We have been unable to conclude that, on balance, all of the covert action programs undertaken by CIA up to this time have been worth the risk or the great expenditure of manpower, money and other resources involved. In addition. we believe that CIA's concentration on political, psychological and related covert action activities have tended to detract substantially from the execution of its primary intelligence-gathering mission. We suggest, accordingly, that there should be a total reassessment of our covert action policies."⁴⁹ "I have never felt," Lovett told the Cuba board of inquiry, "that the Congress of the United States ever intended to give the United States Intelligence Agency authority to conduct operations all over the earth."⁵⁰

The Board of Consultants had no visible impact. Allen Dulles ignored its recommendations. Eisenhower gave it no support. But its testimony demolishes the myth that the CIA was a punctilious and docile organization. acting only in response to express instruction from higher authority. Like the FBI, it was a runaway agency. in this case endowed with men professionally trained in deception, a wide choice of weapons, reckless purposes, a global charter, maximum funds and minimum accountability.

[Schlesinger's notes 38-50 not yet available.]

 

---

Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles, Peter Grose, 1994.

[pp. 444-48]

Eisenhower, however, did not let Hoover's broader concern drop. One weekend late in 1955 a presidential helicopter flew Allen to Gettysburg, where Eisenhower was recuperating from his heart attack, so the two men could have an uninterrupted -- and unrecorded -- chat as they drove back together to Camp David. The president's latest idea, he informed Allen, was to name a high-level board of distinguished but discreet private citizens to keep an ongoing monitor on intelligence operations. Allen had no choice but to agree, probably assuming that he could manage this group as he had all the others that had looked in upon the unfamiliar plays of the Great Game. The President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities held its first meeting with Eisenhower on January 24, 1956.³²

__________

32 Diary series, Nov. 1955, folders 1 and 2; DDE personal, 1955-56 folder 2, Eisenhower Library.

Under the persistent leadership of James Killian, president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the consultants set upon their charge with unexpected diligence. They tackled the problems still plaguing CIA relations with the military intelligence services and sought to nudge the civilian director into a more forceful role in the bureaucratic confrontations that Allen always sought to avoid. They examined the various directives guiding the work of the intelligence services and the status of CIA representatives in relation to the American ambassadors in foreign capitals. Inevitably they turned to the psychological and political warfare programs, which they found to be consuming much of the agency's resources: more than half of CIA personnel and over 80 percent of the budget were said to be dedicated to clandestine operations. Killian delegated two of his consultants, Robert Lovett and David Bruce, to investigate yet again Allen's covert action programs, the 10/2 operations against vicious communism.

Nothing about Lovett and Bruce could have upset Allen as he assembled his defenses against this latest inquiry into matters he preferred to keep hidden from outsiders. Both men were of the Eastern Establishment and had been privy to the 10/2 concept from the start. Lovett, a partner in the investment banking firm of Brown Brothers Harriman and a protege of Henry Stimson in the War Department during World War II, was a sophisticated Wall Street colleague of Allen's and an old hand at political warfare.

As for David Bruce, he was among Allen's oldest and closest friends. His older brother had been a classmate at Princeton, and as a young diplomat in Paris, Allen had helped the younger Bruce get his first job in diplomacy, as a courier to the Peace Conference. Bruce was not yet part of the elite diplomatic club of Bern and Paris, but in Calvin Coolidge's Washington he and Allen spent countless bachelor weekends together while Clover and the girls were escaping the summer heat. Independently-wealthy, Bruce had remained in the diplomatic profession after Allen went off to make money on Wall Street.* Pressures of time and distance had separated the two friends in recent years, but Allen had little reason to doubt Bruce's reliability in assessing the sensitive matters that had become so central to his, and CIA's, preoccupations.

__________

* To Bruce had gone the post of ambassador in Paris that Allen himself had briefly hoped for in 1948.

Allen could hardly have been more wrong in his nonchalance. Lovett later recalled that Bruce "was very much disturbed" as he started looking into the CIA; he asked, presaging the questions of generations to come, "What right have we to go barging around into other countries, buying newspapers and handing money to opposition parties or supporting a candidate for this, that or the other office?" As Lovett reported:

We felt some alarm that here was an extremely high-powered machine, well endowed with money, and the question was how could any Director of Central Intelligence navigate, fly, drop the bomb, get back and say what he had seen and everything else. . . . The idea of these young, enthusiastic fellows possessed of great funds being sent out in some country, getting themselves involved in local politics, and then backing some local man and from that starting an operation, scared the hell out of us.³³

__________

33 Lovett in the subsequent Taylor Board of Inquiry, May 11, 1961; the transcript of this session remains classified, though the bulk of the ensuing report has been made public. Aurthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., found a copy of the secret manuscript in the Robert Kennedy Papers before they were deposited at the John F. Kennedy Library under restricted access; see his Robert Kennedy, p. 455.

If any living man was capable of measuring how far Allen had drifted from his beginnings as a cautious and judicious diplomat, it was David Bruce. "He got me alarmed," Lovett said, "so instead of completing the report in thirty days we took two months or more."

The 1956 Bruce-Lovett report on covert action stands decades later as the most sweeping official assault on the CIA's propensities to dabble in the politics and social frameworks of other lands. "We are sure that the supporters of the 1948 decision to launch this government on a positive [psychological and political warfare] program could not possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the operations which have resulted from it. No one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day-to-day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on."³⁴

__________

34 The Bruce-Lovett report is still tightly classified; the reference staff of the Eisenhower Libary told me they have no knowledge of such a document. Once again, it was only because of Professor Schlesinger's unrestricted accesss to the Robert Kennedy Papers that these excepts can be published. I am grateful to him for providing me with the note he took from this rich file of intelligence matters. His own discussion of the report is in Robert Kennedy, pp. 454-57.

Covert actions were in the hands, Bruce and Lovett asserted, of "a horde of CIA representatives (largely under State or Defense cover), . . . bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being." In a particularly cruel dig at Allen's penchant for favoring his special proteges, they added that "by the very nature of the personnel situation" many of these CIA men were "politically immature." Mindful of recent experiences in Iran and Guatemala, they concluded:

The CIA, busy, monied and privileged, likes its "kingmaking" responsibility. The intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collective covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods! . . . There are always, of course, on record the twin, well-born purposes of "frustrating the Soviets" and keeping others "pro-Western" oriented. Under these, almost any [psychological and political] action can be, and is being, justified.

As a general salvo, this would have been quite enough to rivet attention. But then Bruce and Lovett plunged without mercy into specifics. For any given project, they said, final pro forma approval from outside the agency came only at informal luncheon meetings. "In most instances, approval of any new project would appear to comprise simply the endorsement of [Allen's] proposal, usually without demurrer, from individuals preoccupied with other important matters of their own." The two intrepid investigators did not hesitate to raise the personal circumstance that even Eisenhower chose to resist, the fact that Allen and Foster were, after all, brothers, in a relationship of unique access and mutual trust. "At times, the Secretary of State/DCI brother relationship may arbitrarily set 'the US position,' . . . whether through personal arrangement between the Secretary of State and the DCI (deciding between them on anyone occasion to use what they regard as the best 'assets' available) or undertaken at the personal discretion of the DCl." They elaborated on the grievance of State Department professionals, frustrated careerists in diplomacy who could seldom get Foster's attention in the office.

The State Department people feel that perhaps the greatest contribution this Board could make would be to bring to the attention of the President the significant, almost unilateral, influences that CIA [covert] activities have on the actual formulation of our foreign policies. . . .

CIA support, and its maneuvering of local news media, labor groups, political figures and parties and other activities, are sometimes completely unknown to or only hazily recognized by [the local ambassadors]. . . . It is somewhat difficult to understand why anyone less than the senior U.S. representative. . . should deal directly with [the head of a foreign government]. . . . One obvious, inevitable result is to divide US foreign policy resources and to incline the foreigner, often the former "opposition" now come to power (and who knows with whom he is dealing) to play one US agency against the other, or to use whichever suits his current purpose.

The report concluded with a call for '''unentanglement' of our involvements, and a more rational application of our activities than is now apparent."

Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be counting the immediate costs of disappointments, . . . calculating the impacts on our international position, and keeping in mind the long range wisdom of activities which have entailed our virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? What of the effects on our present alliances? What will happen tomorrow?

The Bruce-Lovett report was submitted in top secrecy the autumn of 1956, just as the triple crises of Suez, Hungary, and Foster's illness were smothering the agendas of harassed policymakers. Though its immediate effect was thus muffled, its impact endured, anticipating the charges of an "invisible government," the criticisms of irresponsible procedures and inept personnel that would resound against the CIA in the eras of Watergate in the 1970s and the Iran/Contra deception of the 1980s. To be sure, other branches of the agency -- the National Estimates staff, the intelligence collection operations, and such -- emerged relatively unscathed, even praised. But the centerpiece of Allen's CIA, the "Plans" Directorate for Cold War covert action, was mercilessly exposed to the scrutiny of Eisenhower's top policymakers.

Allen's first reaction, at a moment of policy and personal crises, was as muffled as his friends' assault, but when the full board of consultants under Killian adopted the Bruce-Lovett report at the end of the year, he responded with a deft diversionary tactic. He was considering, he told the president in January 1957, hiring one of Eisenhower's trusted military colleagues to manage intelligence administration and collection, so he himself could concentrate on covert action programs. Eisenhower muttered merely that he would prefer it the other way around, and Allen dropped the idea. Goodpaster told historian Michael Beschloss years later that the president realized he had to make a choice; "if he wanted Dulles to stay, he wasn't going to be able to force this upon him. At that point, he decided it would be better to have Dulles stay, and keep the pressure on him."³⁵

__________

35 Memorandum of conversation, Jan. 17, 1957, diary series, Eisenhower Library; Beschloss, Mayday, p. 133.

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

24 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The board pressed its campaign in 1959 and 1960. Allen Dulles made minor organizational changes. In 1959 the 5412 Special Group began for the first time to meet regularly. The board was not satisfied, then or later. When Dulles, Bissell and J. D. Esterline briefed the board late in 1960 on the Cuban project, its members, Lovett particularly, registered dismay, especially over the manner in which the planning was being administered.

Robert Lovett was opposed to the Bay of Pigs operation.

Right after the '60 election, Joe Kennedy brought Lovett into JFK's kitchen cabinet and Lovett recommended Dean Rusk for Sec. of State, McGeorge Bundy for National Security Advisor, C. Douglas Dillon for Sec. of Treasury, and Robert McNamara for Sec. of Defense.

Were Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy more loyal to JFK than Robert Lovett, the guy who got them their jobs?

Rusk immediately started complaining about the scope of the Cuban project and kept up his complaints all the way to D-Day -2.

It was Bundy's bright idea to knock out all of Castro's air force with a false flag attack on D-Day -2, but the attacking force was cut in half and the mission failed, dooming the planned invasion.

JFK ordered the go ahead anyway, D-Day-1.  Rusk didn't complain.  Bundy didn't protest either.  Both knew the operation was going to fail.

The primary consequence of the BOP fiasco was the firing of Allen Dulles, Charles Cabell, and Richard Bissell -- and the promotion of Richard Helms as chief of clandestine operations.

Could that have been the plan all along?

Edited April 18, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Kirk Gallaway]

2 interesting posts Cliff. JFK initially asked Lovett to be Secretary of Defense, but Lovett declined and recommended Mac Namara. MacNamara had been part of the "whiz kids" who had structured Ford Motors into the black. Only 5 weeks  after becoming CEO of Ford Motors,  Mac Namara stepped down when JFK asked him to be Secretary of Defense.

Cliff, I don't know if you saw the taped conversation I posted between Bobby and Dulles in June 64, with Bobby asking Dulles to go down to Mississipi to investigate the Civil Rights workers who were found dead. I tried to glean from their conversations whether Bobby suspected Dulles in the murder of his brother. And I concluded Bobby was clueless, but who could know for sure?  But another issue involves your contention that Dulles was growing too senile to have effectively masterminded the JFKA, by that point. Though he does handle all the issues Bobby brings to him very coherently. I'd give your theory about 1.4% more credibility,  (tongue in cheek, though a plus it is!) as he does appear rather detached and giddy.

[Ron Bulman]

6 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Robert Lovett was opposed to the Bay of Pigs operation.

Right after the '60 election, Joe Kennedy brought Lovett into JFK's kitchen cabinet and Lovett recommended Dean Rusk for Sec. of State, McGeorge Bundy for National Security Advisor, C. Douglas Dillon for Sec. of Treasury, and Robert McNamara for Sec. of Defense.

Were Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy more loyal to JFK than Robert Lovett, the guy who got them their jobs?

Rusk immediately started complaining about the scope of the Cuban project and kept up his complaints all the way to D-Day -2.

It was Bundy's bright idea to knock out all of Castro's air force with a false flag attack on D-Day -2, but the attacking force was cut in half and the mission failed, dooming the planned invasion.

JFK ordered the go ahead anyway, D-Day-1.  Rusk didn't complain.  Bundy didn't protest either.  Both knew the operation was going to fail.

The primary consequence of the BOP fiasco was the firing of Allen Dulles, Charles Cabell, and Richard Bissell -- and the promotion of Richard Helms as chief of clandestine operations.

Could that have been the plan all along?

It's hard for me to see that much subterfuge from JFK that early in office.  The BOP was conceived and developed under Nixon as Eisenhower's point man on it and Dulles CIA. From what I've read pretty much everybody expected Nixon to win.  Then invade Cuba.  Lovett and maybe other writers of the report likely let JFK know what he was up against (maybe why he didn't go all in?).  But developing such a plan while selecting a cabinet and many other things over three-four months from the election to the inauguration would be quite a task.  Some might say the primary consequence of the BOP ultimately was JFK being slaughtered in Dallas. 

[Ron Bulman]

Could Secretary of the Treasury Dillon have altered security in Dallas and would he? 

If he cut straight through to the head of the Secret Service who dealt directly with the Whitehouse agent overseeing the trip who ordered Emory Roberts to back off in Dallas, yes.  A emphatic order from him before the parade that day to stay back and let the crowd see the President.  Nobody on the rear bumper.  A last minute order to Dallas Police for motorcycle cops to stay back.  Leave an agent xxxigned to the right running board of the follow up car waving his hands at Love Field.  Call back agent Ready who stepped off the running board when he heard shots.  Admit that he did not call agents to action when he heard what he admitted he knew were shots?   Somebody got to Roberts beforehand.  Such orders would have come from a high source.

Dillon and Dulles did go way back and had much in common.  After Dulles died Dillon was appointed to the Rockefeller commission by President Gerald Ford to serve with his "lifelong friend".  Dulles represented the Rockefeller's at Sullivan and Cromwell.  I.E. Dulles was a Wall Street lawyer, Dillon was a Wall Street banker.  Dulles was a founder of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dillon was a vice president(?).  In 1948 Dulles and Dillon welcomed new protégé Nixon to Washington (after Prescott Bush helped finance his campaign).  Serving in Eisenhower's State Department he supported action against Lumumba since his family controlled bonds for the Congo.  In 1958 Allen Dulles visited hi brother, Secretary of State John Foster recovering from colon cancer treatments at Dillon's Palm Beach estate.

The bankers were not pleased with JFK's stance on colonialism regarding their investments, and future returns on them.  They were not pleased that JFK ordered the Treasury to print Money either.

     

   

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

It's hard for me to see that much subterfuge from JFK that early in office. 

I don't see any subterfuge on the part of JFK at all.

I see the subterfuge from Robert Lovett and his hand picked tools Rusk and Bundy.

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

The BOP was conceived and developed under Nixon as Eisenhower's point man on it and Dulles CIA. From what I've read pretty much everybody expected Nixon to win.  Then invade Cuba.  Lovett and maybe other writers of the report likely let JFK know what he was up against (maybe why he didn't go all in?).  But developing such a plan while selecting a cabinet and many other things over three-four months from the election to the inauguration would be quite a task.  Some might say the primary consequence of the BOP ultimately was JFK being slaughtered in Dallas. 

Recall the words of Joe Kennedy following the BOP -- "I know that outfit, and I wouldn't pay them a hundred bucks a week. It's a lucky thing they were found out early."

"Lucky thing" -- old Joe sounds practically triumphant.

[Steve Thomas]

12 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The Elusive ``Bruce-Lovett Report''

 "In some quarters this leads to situations which are almost unbelievable because the operations being carried out by the Deputy Director of Plans are sometimes in direct conflict with the normal operations being carried out by the Department of State."⁴²

.

Cliff,

 

Yours was a terrific post.

Congratulations.

 

Steve Thomas

[Paul Brancato]

11 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Could Secretary of the Treasury Dillon have altered security in Dallas and would he? 

If he cut straight through to the head of the Secret Service who dealt directly with the Whitehouse agent overseeing the trip who ordered Emory Roberts to back off in Dallas, yes.  A emphatic order from him before the parade that day to stay back and let the crowd see the President.  Nobody on the rear bumper.  A last minute order to Dallas Police for motorcycle cops to stay back.  Leave an agent xxxigned to the right running board of the follow up car waving his hands at Love Field.  Call back agent Ready who stepped off the running board when he heard shots.  Admit that he did not call agents to action when he heard what he admitted he knew were shots?   Somebody got to Roberts beforehand.  Such orders would have come from a high source.

Dillon and Dulles did go way back and had much in common.  After Dulles died Dillon was appointed to the Rockefeller commission by President Gerald Ford to serve with his "lifelong friend".  Dulles represented the Rockefeller's at Sullivan and Cromwell.  I.E. Dulles was a Wall Street lawyer, Dillon was a Wall Street banker.  Dulles was a founder of the Council on Foreign Relations, Dillon was a vice president(?).  In 1948 Dulles and Dillon welcomed new protégé Nixon to Washington (after Prescott Bush helped finance his campaign).  Serving in Eisenhower's State Department he supported action against Lumumba since his family controlled bonds for the Congo.  In 1958 Allen Dulles visited hi brother, Secretary of State John Foster recovering from colon cancer treatments at Dillon's Palm Beach estate.

The bankers were not pleased with JFK's stance on colonialism regarding their investments, and future returns on them.  They were not pleased that JFK ordered the Treasury to print Money either.

     

   

I find your conjecture interesting. Whether or not Dillon took steps personally to have his agents withdraw protection from the motorcade someone surely did. I agree that Dulles and Dillon were against JFK’s anti-colonialist policies, and that the Wall st establishment they represented did likewise. Prescott Bush and Nixon is real history. It’s one reason why I suspect George Bush of being part of the conspiracy.

[Cliff Varnell]

11 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Cliff,

 

Yours was a terrific post.

Congratulations.

 

Steve Thomas

It was a cut-and-paste job from a website that appears to have gone down.

[Ron Bulman]

On ‎4‎/‎18‎/‎2018 at 3:27 PM, Kirk Gallaway said:

2 interesting posts Cliff. JFK initially asked Lovett to be Secretary of Defense, but Lovett declined and recommended Mac Namara. MacNamara had been part of the "whiz kids" who had structured Ford Motors into the black. Only 5 weeks  after becoming CEO of Ford Motors,  Mac Namara stepped down when JFK asked him to be Secretary of Defense.

Cliff, I don't know if you saw the taped conversation I posted between Bobby and Dulles in June 64, with Bobby asking Dulles to go down to Mississipi to investigate the Civil Rights workers who were found dead. I tried to glean from their conversations whether Bobby suspected Dulles in the murder of his brother. And I concluded Bobby was clueless, but who could know for sure?  But another issue involves your contention that Dulles was growing too senile to have effectively masterminded the JFKA, by that point. Though he does handle all the issues Bobby brings to him very coherently. I'd give your theory about 1.4% more credibility,  (tongue in cheek, though a plus it is!) as he does appear rather detached and giddy.

Kirk, I did not see the taped conversation you mention.  It sounds interesting. Any chance of re posting it? Or a link to where you posted it?

Lovett and company prove at least some were aware of what was going on with the cia in the 50's.

Edited April 20, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

Oh no, here we go again.

The idea that somehow Bundy and Rusk were actually responsible for the Bay of Pigs debacle is simply ridiculous.

The plan all along was to have the D Day air strikes launched from a strip on the island. 

The CIA knew this and it was in the plan submitted on March 15th. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 45)  In fact, when JFK vetoed the first location, the second location was chosen for precisely that reason--it had  clearing that could serve as an airstrip.  In fact, the designer of the plan, Hawkins, admitted that he was aware of this himself. (ibid, p. 46)  

McGeorge Bundy, Cliff's Darth Vader, told Cabell the night before the launch that there would be no D Day air strikes unless an air strip was secured by the invaders. (ibid) It was at this point that Bissell and Cabell went to see Rusk.  Rusk offered to let them speak to JFK, they said no thanks.

Its obvious from the evidence in the Kirkpatrick Report and the Taylor Commission report that Bundy and Rusk were carrying out Kennedy's wishes.  And McNamara told Noel Twyman the same thing.(ibid)  The CIA knew there were no D Day air strikes included in the final plan.  They then tried to get JFK to approve them at the midnight hour.

I ask any objective reader, if Rusk, Bundy and McNamara are all saying the same thing are we really to believe that somehow they were all betraying JFK, when the CIA KNEW IN WRITING A MONTH BEFORE THERE WOULD BE NO D DAY AIR STRIKES UNLESS A STRIP WAS ATTAINED ON THE ISLAND!  How much more clear can the evidence be?

Well, if you still need more, how about getting it from the horse's mouth.  When the idea of a strike came up launched from Nicaragua with JFK, Rusk and Stevenson, Kennedy said he was not signed on with that decision.  He wanted any D Day air strike to come from an air strip on the island. (ibid)

In other words, here you have JFK, Bundy, Rusk, Stevenson and McNamara all saying the same thing.  But Cabell and Bissell are trying to change the plan at he last minute.  As was Burke. As was Nixon, who JFK called after the first day.

If one combines that with the confessions of Dulles and Bissell in Lucien Vanden Broucke's groundbreaking article in Diplomatic History,  what else do you need?  They both admitted that they thought Kennedy would cave when he saw the operation failing.  That to avoid defeat he would send in the navy and Marines.  He did not.  And he himself realized this and said it to Red Fay, that Dulles and Burke had him figured wrong.

 

 

Edited April 20, 2018 by James DiEugenio