Victor Marchetti dies at age 88

[Douglas Caddy]

Victor  Marchetti dies at age 88

https://www.dailyrepublic.com/all-dr-news/wires/state-nation-world/victor-marchetti-disillusioned-cia-officer-who-challenged-secrecy-rules-dies-at-88/

[Joe Bauer]

What a sadly profound last sentence or two quoted to Marchetti regards his efforts to expose what he felt were wrongs by his employer.

 He ( Marchetti ) often looked back on his days in the CIA.

“I lost everything I had,” he told The Post in 1980. “If I had it to do all over again, I’d have kept my mouth shut. I’d have played the game.”

 

 

quoted to Marchetti in this article.

 

 

[Alan Ford 2]

Rest in Peace, Mr. Marchetti, courage like yours doesn't grow on trees. 

[James DiEugenio]

I interviewed him at his office in Virginia in the nineties.

An interesting afternoon.  He was very open and sharp, with a neat sense of humor.

He told me that during the Bay of Pigs, Cabell came down to his office and said he needed something to show the president that there were MIGs on the beach.  Marchetti said, I cannot do that since I know that there are no MIGs in Cuba.  I asked him how he knew and he said the CIA had pictures of the stuff being unloaded from Russian freighters and there were no crates or boxes that could have carried either the planes or the parts to assemble them with.

It was also funny when he commented on his meeting with David Phillips at what he called a spook restaurant in New York.  Phillips wanted him to join the ARIO.  Marchetti decided not too. But in commenting on Phillips he said, "Dave was retired, but he wasn't really retired."

Edited November 1, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Joe Bauer]

Jim, why do you think Marchetti had regrets about doing what he did..as related in that quote at the end of the article?

Do you think in the end, he felt his sacrifice wasn't worth what we all gained from it...regards the truth?

To me it's very sad that he felt keeping to his moral principles under immoral pressure and power wasn't worth it in the end.

[James DiEugenio]

I really don't know what he means by that.

But I would guess that it meant that he was trying to buck something that simply was too big to buck.

[Douglas Caddy]

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I interviewed him at his office in Virginia in the nineties.

An interesting afternoon.  He was very open and sharp, with a neat sense of humor.

He told me that during the Bay of Pigs, Cabell came down to his office and send he needed something to show the president that there were MIGs on the beach.  Marchetti said, I cannot do that since I know that there are no MIGs in Cuba.  I asked him how he knew and he said the CIA had pictures of the stuff being unloaded from Russian freighters and there were no crates or boxes that could have carried either the planes or the parts to assemble them with.

It was also funny when he commented on his meeting with David Phillips at what he called a spook restaurant in New York.  Phillips wanted him to join the ARIO.  Marchetti decided not too. But in commenting on Phillips he said, "Dave was retired, but he wasn't really retired."

At the time of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 I was enrolled in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Senator Kenneth Keating of New York,  who lived one block off the university's campus, released U.S. aerial photographs that showed the buildup of missiles in Cuba. Publication of the photographs immediately heightened awareness of the public of the serious threat posed to our country.

So the Cuban missile crisis that followed the Bay of Pigs crisis of the year before was the end result of the failure of our invasion of Cuba in 1961.

[James DiEugenio]

I would not agree with that.

I have done a lot of work, I mean a lot of work, on Kennedy's foreign policy in addition to studying up about Krushchev.

In my opinion, if one studies the Vienna summit and then the prelude to NIkita's decision, and then the transcripts of the crisis, I believe the reason for Krushchev taking that gamble was because of Berlin.  And that is what Kennedy thought.  It is also what Graham Allison, the foremost expert on the crisis thought.

There is no way in the world that Castro needed that kind of giant nuclear armada to protect himself from MONGOOSE or even an invasion.  What the Russians sent in was essentially  a first strike with all three arms of the triad: air, submarine, rockets.  Enough to knock out over 100 cities. JFK thought that what Krushchev was going to ask for was a deal: we get out of Cuba, you get out of Berlin.

Kennedy was not going for that.  Berlin was one place that the USA was not leaving.  Kennedy thought that if we did that it would be the beginning of the end of the European alliance. Making it much easier for the Russians to move into Europe.  

Kennedy did not think that Indochina was a threat to our security and was ready to leave that theater.  But not Berlin. 

Edited November 1, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Ron Bulman]

"Dave was retired, but he wasn't really retired".  Once a spook, always a spook.  One could retire and keep their mouth shut or have it shut for them through marginalization like Marchetti or elimination if you knew too much like Morales.  Happy Halloween to all the spooks who keep us safe, and in the dark.