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Jack Anderson


John Simkin

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John, you are correct about Harvey being the source for some of the information in the 1967 Drew Pearson article.

I found this interesting datum in "Live By the Sword"":

"In the fall of 1968, columnist Jack Anderson submitted a secret report to President-elect George Bush in which he provided more details about his initial 1967 disclosure of the anti-Castro assassination plot's and Robert Kennedy's links to them.  Anderson informed the President [sic] that his sources included not only Johnny Rosselli, but the CIA's William Harvey, as well as other high-ranking Agency officers. Anderson also admitted that he was provided with copies of 'two memos from the CIA's most sensitive files, which summarize the whole operation.'

"The disclosure of Harvey as a source comes as no surpise, because, accotrding to the CIA's own documents, Harvey was professionally associated with the law firm of Rosselli's attorney, Ed Morgan."

The secret Anderson report to President-Elect Bush is found on pages 444-445 of "Live By theSword".  There were several other items in that report that I will be posting in the thread "Did Fidel Do It"

I think Anderson is still alive.  Someone should interview him.  Query what were the two top-secret CIA memos he reviewed (presumably given to him by Harvey)?  Does he still have copies of them?

Now, I was able to add to your comments that your judgment that Harvey was probably a source of some of the information in the 1967 Anderson column was "right on".

Jack Anderson is an interesting character and deserves his own thread. He is still alive but is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. I suspect he will be unwilling to talk to us about the case.

For many years Anderson was considered to be a fearless investigative reporter. I have to admit he was one of my heroes. I first began having doubts about him when I read his biography of Drew Pearson (Confessions of a Muckraker).

Anderson went to work for Pearson after the war. He became his assistant and providing information to Pearson about corrupt politicians and businessmen. Pearson was on the left and refused some of the material Anderson gave him. Some of this information came from Joseph McCarthy who was a friend of Anderson. When McCarthy was discredited Anderson also became one of his critics.

Anderson was also close to LBJ. Pearson thought LBJ was a crook and despite Anderson’s pleas he refused to help him in his campaigns. However, Pearson did agree to call off his investigation of LBJ’s relationship with George and Herman Brown.

When Pearson died Anderson replaced him at the Washington Post. He was considered to be a liberal campaigning journalist. However, his reputation was hurt by the publication of the LBJ tapes. It became clear that Anderson was being used by LBJ to smear his opponents. In most cases Anderson’s stories were true (in many cases they were coming from Hoover), however, they were being used to keep LBJ’s critics quiet. LBJ had files on every person in Congress. Robert Kennedy tells an interesting story of how LBJ tried to use these files on those who were asking questions about the Bobby Baker case in 1963.

I believe that Anderson was CIA. I suspect he was recruited to the secret services while in China during the war. Pearson was the most dangerous investigative journalist in America in the 1940s. It make sense for the security services to infiltrate his operation. Anderson became Pearson’s assistant when he came back from China.

It was Anderson who persuaded Pearson to expose the corruption of Owen Brewster, chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee was being paid by Pan American Airways (Pan Am) to persuade the United States government to set up an official worldwide monopoly under its control. Brewster was destroyed by these stories. He was obviously corrupt and deserved to go.

However, Brewster was doing some important work investigating corruption in the armaments industry. This included investigating the activities of LBJ's friends in Texas. Brewster was also investigating Howard Hughes who was awarded two contracts, of $18m and $22m each, to create and build two revolutionary aircraft - a giant plywood cargo seaplane that could carry thirty-five tons of men and weapons (HK-1), and a very fast photo-reconnaissance aircraft (F-11). This was the real reason why Hughes wanted to get Bewster.

The information that was used by Pearson to destroy Brewster came from Howard Hughes. As the owner of Trans World Airlines, Hughes posed a serious threat to this plan. Hughes claimed that Brewster had approached him and suggested he merge Trans World with Pan Am. I have now come to the conclusion that Howard was part of the LBJ Texan Network.

Anderson was ideally placed to help LBJ and the CIA with the “Mafia did it” theory ("Plan B"). This he did very well. As I suspected, Anderson was working closely with William Harvey on this. I think he was also working with LBJ in covering up the assassination of JFK.

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

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JS-

I agree with you this far, Jack Anderson is far to the right of where most people place him. He had very good sources, highly placed "elite" information and an "elite" point of view.

Jack Anderson is a Mormon, and is typical of the Nevada Utah backward looking US western COWBOY habitus, or social predisposition.

Looking back on the Jack Anderson material, it is much like the Bob Woodward corpus, it reeks of spin and suppressed blockbusters.

Jack Anderson had a very common sense right wing approach in FIASCO the 1970s book he wrote on the oil crisis.

He outlines the OPEC price hike, and looks at the relationship between Abdul Nasser, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran and Lieutenant Gaddafi of Libya... in this book, he carries a viewpoint that unified leadership in oil market national security interests were lacking under Nixon, Ford and Carter.

Jack Anderson couldn't believe the Seven Sisters and the federal government couldn't come together in a united face to deal with these middle east petroleum barons.

Jack Anderson was an uptight white rightie....

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JS-

I agree with you this far, Jack Anderson is far to the right of where most people place him. He had very good sources, highly placed "elite" information and an "elite" point of view.

Jack Anderson is a Mormon, and is typical of the Nevada Utah  backward looking US western COWBOY habitus, or social predisposition.

Looking back on the Jack Anderson material, it is much like the Bob Woodward corpus, it reeks of spin and suppressed blockbusters.

Jack Anderson had a very common sense right wing approach in  FIASCO the 1970s book he wrote on the oil crisis.

He outlines the OPEC price hike, and looks at the relationship between Abdul Nasser, Saddam Hussein, the Shah of Iran and Lieutenant Gaddafi of Libya... in this book, he carries a viewpoint that unified leadership in oil market national security interests were lacking under Nixon, Ford and Carter.

__________________________________

Great posts John and Shanet, I totally agree.

Dawn

Jack Anderson couldn't believe the Seven Sisters and the federal government couldn't come together in a united face to deal with these middle east petroleum barons.

Jack Anderson was an uptight white rightie....

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John, you are correct about Harvey being the source for some of the information in the 1967 Drew Pearson article.

I found this interesting datum in "Live By the Sword"":

"In the fall of 1968, columnist Jack Anderson submitted a secret report to President-elect George Bush in which he provided more details about his initial 1967 disclosure of the anti-Castro assassination plot's and Robert Kennedy's links to them.  Anderson informed the President [sic] that his sources included not only Johnny Rosselli, but the CIA's William Harvey, as well as other high-ranking Agency officers. Anderson also admitted that he was provided with copies of 'two memos from the CIA's most sensitive files, which summarize the whole operation.'

"The disclosure of Harvey as a source comes as no surpise, because, accotrding to the CIA's own documents, Harvey was professionally associated with the law firm of Rosselli's attorney, Ed Morgan."

The secret Anderson report to President-Elect Bush is found on pages 444-445 of "Live By theSword".  There were several other items in that report that I will be posting in the thread "Did Fidel Do It"

I think Anderson is still alive.  Someone should interview him.  Query what were the two top-secret CIA memos he reviewed (presumably given to him by Harvey)?  Does he still have copies of them?

Now, I was able to add to your comments that your judgment that Harvey was probably a source of some of the information in the 1967 Anderson column was "right on".

Jack Anderson is an interesting character and deserves his own thread. He is still alive but is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. I suspect he will be unwilling to talk to us about the case.

For many years Anderson was considered to be a fearless investigative reporter. I have to admit he was one of my heroes. I first began having doubts about him when I read his biography of Drew Pearson (Confessions of a Muckraker).

Anderson went to work for Pearson after the war. He became his assistant and providing information to Pearson about corrupt politicians and businessmen. Pearson was on the left and refused some of the material Anderson gave him. Some of this information came from Joseph McCarthy who was a friend of Anderson. When McCarthy was discredited Anderson also became one of his critics.

Anderson was also close to LBJ. Pearson thought LBJ was a crook and despite Anderson’s pleas he refused to help him in his campaigns. However, Pearson did agree to call off his investigation of LBJ’s relationship with George and Herman Brown.

When Pearson died Anderson replaced him at the Washington Post. He was considered to be a liberal campaigning journalist. However, his reputation was hurt by the publication of the LBJ tapes. It became clear that Anderson was being used by LBJ to smear his opponents. In most cases Anderson’s stories were true (in many cases they were coming from Hoover), however, they were being used to keep LBJ’s critics quiet. LBJ had files on every person in Congress. Robert Kennedy tells an interesting story of how LBJ tried to use these files on those who were asking questions about the Bobby Baker case in 1963.

I believe that Anderson was CIA. I suspect he was recruited to the secret services while in China during the war. Pearson was the most dangerous investigative journalist in America in the 1940s. It make sense for the security services to infiltrate his operation. Anderson became Pearson’s assistant when he came back from China.

It was Anderson who persuaded Pearson to expose the corruption of Owen Brewster, chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee was being paid by Pan American Airways (Pan Am) to persuade the United States government to set up an official worldwide monopoly under its control. Brewster was destroyed by these stories. He was obviously corrupt and deserved to go.

However, Brewster was doing some important work investigating corruption in the armaments industry. This included investigating the activities of LBJ's friends in Texas. Brewster was also investigating Howard Hughes who was awarded two contracts, of $18m and $22m each, to create and build two revolutionary aircraft - a giant plywood cargo seaplane that could carry thirty-five tons of men and weapons (HK-1), and a very fast photo-reconnaissance aircraft (F-11). This was the real reason why Hughes wanted to get Bewster.

The information that was used by Pearson to destroy Brewster came from Howard Hughes. As the owner of Trans World Airlines, Hughes posed a serious threat to this plan. Hughes claimed that Brewster had approached him and suggested he merge Trans World with Pan Am. I have now come to the conclusion that Howard was part of the LBJ Texan Network.

Anderson was ideally placed to help LBJ and the CIA with the “Mafia did it” theory ("Plan B"). This he did very well. As I suspected, Anderson was working closely with William Harvey on this. I think he was also working with LBJ in covering up the assassination of JFK.

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

Mormon bishop, Jeffrey Willis a long time CIA personal director, while no stranger to public controversy Willis was forced {in one case} to face the cameras personally rather than relying on CIA public relations staff. His comments revealed

that Many other CIA men were LDS Ward members, and that he had sought public relations advise from an old friend, newspaper columnist Jack Anderson himself

a member of the Silver Springs,Maryland, Ward.

Larry Bush, an official at the Agriculture Department explained in 1981 that

Washington Saints 'Mormons' refer to themselves, among themselves, as a

Sisterhood. It's a term with roots at the CIA where the Church is well represented. CIA agents also refer to one another as "Sisters".

George Bush 'Sr' learned to appreciate the Mormon Sisterhood within the larger

CIA Sisterhood when he served as director of Central Intelligence. At that time he worked closely General, Brent Scowcroft at the Ford White House. For Scowcroft

the Bush cabinet-level appointment capped a long carreer serving those at the seat of power from Nixon, Ford and Reagan.

Even before taking the oath of office, Bush named Scowcroft,Roger Porter and Steve Studdert, all Mormons to top White House posts in foreign affairs, domestic policy and political scheduling. The Sisterhood was overjoyed.

While Scowcroft,Porter and Studdert were the most visable Mormons running the government as the Bush administration began, they were three among hundreds,

perhaps thousands of DC Saints with influential positions in the federal government. Furthermore , similar Mormon 'knots' thrive at the state, county and local levels throughout the U.S. .

Mormon elder,James Fletcher, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration {NASA}, visited the Sterling Ward House to read a letter

from the Twelve Mormon Church Apostles ordering the Saints to oppose a constitutional amendment.The letter was then sent to Mormon lawmakers on Capitol Hill,Saints on the White House staff,and throughout the federal bureaucracy

killing chances for ratification.

Mormon Political Manifesto.....Saints must consult their ecclesiactical superiors to

obtain permission before accepting Any appointment that might interfere with

their religious duties.

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Here's an interesting article written by Anderson in about 1973. I find it curious that he refuses to name David Morales but instead uses the 'Big Indian' nickname.

Given Anderson's background on Brad Ayers, he would have known all too well who Morales was.

James

Edited by James Richards
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John, you are correct about Harvey being the source for some of the information in the 1967 Drew Pearson article.

I found this interesting datum in "Live By the Sword"":

"In the fall of 1968, columnist Jack Anderson submitted a secret report to President-elect George Bush in which he provided more details about his initial 1967 disclosure of the anti-Castro assassination plot's and Robert Kennedy's links to them.  Anderson informed the President [sic] that his sources included not only Johnny Rosselli, but the CIA's William Harvey, as well as other high-ranking Agency officers. Anderson also admitted that he was provided with copies of 'two memos from the CIA's most sensitive files, which summarize the whole operation.'

"The disclosure of Harvey as a source comes as no surpise, because, accotrding to the CIA's own documents, Harvey was professionally associated with the law firm of Rosselli's attorney, Ed Morgan."

The secret Anderson report to President-Elect Bush is found on pages 444-445 of "Live By theSword".  There were several other items in that report that I will be posting in the thread "Did Fidel Do It"

I think Anderson is still alive.  Someone should interview him.  Query what were the two top-secret CIA memos he reviewed (presumably given to him by Harvey)?  Does he still have copies of them?

Now, I was able to add to your comments that your judgment that Harvey was probably a source of some of the information in the 1967 Anderson column was "right on".

Jack Anderson is an interesting character and deserves his own thread. He is still alive but is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. I suspect he will be unwilling to talk to us about the case.

For many years Anderson was considered to be a fearless investigative reporter. I have to admit he was one of my heroes. I first began having doubts about him when I read his biography of Drew Pearson (Confessions of a Muckraker).

Anderson went to work for Pearson after the war. He became his assistant and providing information to Pearson about corrupt politicians and businessmen. Pearson was on the left and refused some of the material Anderson gave him. Some of this information came from Joseph McCarthy who was a friend of Anderson. When McCarthy was discredited Anderson also became one of his critics.

Anderson was also close to LBJ. Pearson thought LBJ was a crook and despite Anderson’s pleas he refused to help him in his campaigns. However, Pearson did agree to call off his investigation of LBJ’s relationship with George and Herman Brown.

When Pearson died Anderson replaced him at the Washington Post. He was considered to be a liberal campaigning journalist. However, his reputation was hurt by the publication of the LBJ tapes. It became clear that Anderson was being used by LBJ to smear his opponents. In most cases Anderson’s stories were true (in many cases they were coming from Hoover), however, they were being used to keep LBJ’s critics quiet. LBJ had files on every person in Congress. Robert Kennedy tells an interesting story of how LBJ tried to use these files on those who were asking questions about the Bobby Baker case in 1963.

I believe that Anderson was CIA. I suspect he was recruited to the secret services while in China during the war. Pearson was the most dangerous investigative journalist in America in the 1940s. It make sense for the security services to infiltrate his operation. Anderson became Pearson’s assistant when he came back from China.

It was Anderson who persuaded Pearson to expose the corruption of Owen Brewster, chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee was being paid by Pan American Airways (Pan Am) to persuade the United States government to set up an official worldwide monopoly under its control. Brewster was destroyed by these stories. He was obviously corrupt and deserved to go.

However, Brewster was doing some important work investigating corruption in the armaments industry. This included investigating the activities of LBJ's friends in Texas. Brewster was also investigating Howard Hughes who was awarded two contracts, of $18m and $22m each, to create and build two revolutionary aircraft - a giant plywood cargo seaplane that could carry thirty-five tons of men and weapons (HK-1), and a very fast photo-reconnaissance aircraft (F-11). This was the real reason why Hughes wanted to get Bewster.

The information that was used by Pearson to destroy Brewster came from Howard Hughes. As the owner of Trans World Airlines, Hughes posed a serious threat to this plan. Hughes claimed that Brewster had approached him and suggested he merge Trans World with Pan Am. I have now come to the conclusion that Howard was part of the LBJ Texan Network.

Anderson was ideally placed to help LBJ and the CIA with the “Mafia did it” theory ("Plan B"). This he did very well. As I suspected, Anderson was working closely with William Harvey on this. I think he was also working with LBJ in covering up the assassination of JFK.

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

Mormon bishop, Jeffrey Willis a long time CIA personal director, while no stranger to public controversy Willis was forced {in one case} to face the cameras personally rather than relying on CIA public relations staff. His comments revealed

that Many other CIA men were LDS Ward members, and that he had sought public relations advise from an old friend, newspaper columnist Jack Anderson himself

a member of the Silver Springs,Maryland, Ward.

Larry Bush, an official at the Agriculture Department explained in 1981 that

Washington Saints 'Mormons' refer to themselves, among themselves, as a

Sisterhood. It's a term with roots at the CIA where the Church is well represented. CIA agents also refer to one another as "Sisters".

George Bush 'Sr' learned to appreciate the Mormon Sisterhood within the larger

CIA Sisterhood when he served as director of Central Intelligence. At that time he worked closely General, Brent Scowcroft at the Ford White House. For Scowcroft

the Bush cabinet-level appointment capped a long carreer serving those at the seat of power from Nixon, Ford and Reagan.

Even before taking the oath of office, Bush named Scowcroft,Roger Porter and Steve Studdert, all Mormons to top White House posts in foreign affairs, domestic policy and political scheduling. The Sisterhood was overjoyed.

While Scowcroft,Porter and Studdert were the most visable Mormons running the government as the Bush administration began, they were three among hundreds,

perhaps thousands of DC Saints with influential positions in the federal government. Furthermore , similar Mormon 'knots' thrive at the state, county and local levels throughout the U.S. .

Mormon elder,James Fletcher, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration {NASA}, visited the Sterling Ward House to read a letter

from the Twelve Mormon Church Apostles ordering the Saints to oppose a constitutional amendment.The letter was then sent to Mormon lawmakers on Capitol Hill,Saints on the White House staff,and throughout the federal bureaucracy

killing chances for ratification.

Mormon Political Manifesto.....Saints must consult their ecclesiactical superiors to

obtain permission before accepting Any appointment that might interfere with

their religious duties.

AD ON;

The resulting power elite - a tightly knit, almost exclusively white male assemblage of jurists, journalists, FBI agents, CIA executives, Interior Department managers, Pentagon brass, corporation chiefs, and ranking White House officials. Mormons make up a substantial management of the United States Government.

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Another interesting connection with Jack Anderson was his employer, Philip Graham, who took over control of the Washington Post after the war (he married the owner’s daughter, Eugene Meyer, in 1940).

Both Anderson and Graham had been intelligence officers in the Far East during the war. It has been claimed that Graham had close links with the Central Intelligence Agency and it has been argued that he played an important role in Project Mockingbird, the CIA program to infiltrate the domestic American media. According to Katherine Graham, her husband worked overtime at the Post during the Bay of Pigs operation to protect the reputations of his friends who had organized the ill-fated venture.

Graham became friends with LBJ in 1957 when he spent time on his ranch in Texas. Apparently LBJ had done this to get the support of the Washington Post in his bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1960. It was at this meeting that LBJ convinced the Grahams that he really supported civil rights. Although this meant doing it the Texas way (the Grahams were shocked by his constant use of the “N” word when he discussed this issue).

Graham was a supporter of the Democratic Party and played an important role in persuading JFK to accept LBJ as his running mate. However, in the 1960 presidential election Graham, despite being a supporter of the Democratic Party, refused to endorse Kennedy/Johnson.

Graham of course committed suicide just before JFK was assassinated. It was said he was suffering from depression. Had he discovered what the conspirators were planning to do? I cannot think of another example of a successful businessman that was not entangled in some sort of scandal killing himself.

The Washington Post was of course involved in exposing the Watergate scandal. I have for long time suspected that Deep Throat was CIA. Bob Woodward was of course a former officer in Naval Intelligence. Katherine Graham, who took over from her husband at the Washington Post, is said to have also taken over his job as head of Project Mockingbird.

Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics and the Death of JFK) argues that Nixon was removed with the help of the CIA because of his attempts to negotiate with China (whereas JFK was removed because of his willingness to negotiate with the Soviet Union in order to end the Cold War). It is not only the individuals involved in the Watergate break-in that are linked to the JFK assassination.

Here are a couple of extracts from articles that I found interesting about the Grahams.

Michael Hasty, Secret Admirers: The Bushes and the Washington Post (February, 2004)

In an article published by the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Henwood traced the Washington Post's Establishment connections to Eugene Meyer, who took control of the Post in 1933. Meyer transferred ownership to his daughter Katherine and her husband, Philip Graham, after World War II, when he was appointed by Harry S. Truman to serve as the first president of the World Bank. Meyer had been "a Wall Street banker, director of President Wilson's War Finance Corporation, a governor of the Federal Reserve System, and director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation," Henwood wrote.

Philip Graham, Meyer's successor, had been in military intelligence during the war. When he became the Post's publisher, he continued to have close contact with his fellow upper-class intelligence veterans - now making policy at the newly formed CIA - and actively promoted the CIA's goals in his newspaper. The incestuous relationship between the Post and the intelligence community even extended to its hiring practices. Watergate-era editor Ben Bradlee also had an intelligence background; and before he became a journalist, reporter Bob Woodward was an officer in Naval Intelligence. In a 1977 article in Rolling Stone magazine about CIA influence in American media, Woodward's partner, Carl Bernstein, quoted this from a CIA official: "It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from." Graham has been identified by some investigators as the main contact in Project Mockingbird, the CIA program to infiltrate domestic American media. In her autobiography, Katherine Graham described how her husband worked overtime at the Post during the Bay of Pigs operation to protect the reputations of his friends from Yale who had organized the ill-fated venture.

After Graham committed suicide, and his widow Katherine assumed the role of publisher, she continued her husband's policies of supporting the efforts of the intelligence community in advancing the foreign policy and economic agenda of the nation's ruling elites. In a retrospective column written after her own death last year, FAIR analyst Norman Solomon wrote, "Her newspaper mainly functioned as a helpmate to the war-makers in the White House, State Department and Pentagon." It accomplished this function (and continues to do so) using all the classic propaganda techniques of evasion, confusion, misdirection, targeted emphasis, disinformation, secrecy, omission of important facts, and selective leaks.

Graham herself rationalized this policy in a speech she gave at CIA headquarters in 1988. "We live in a dirty and dangerous world," she said. "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

Doug Henwood, The Washington Post: The Establishment's Paper (January, 1990)

After World War II, when Harry Truman named this lifelong Republican as first president of the World Bank, Meyer made his son-in-law, Philip L. Graham, publisher of the paper. Meyer stayed at the Bank for only six months and returned to the Post as its chairman. But with Phil Graham in charge, there was little for Meyer to do. He transferred ownership to Philip and Katharine Graham, and retired.

Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Like many members of his class and generation, his postwar view was shaped by his work in wartime intelligence; a classic Cold War liberal, he was uncomfortable with McCarthy, but quite friendly with the personnel and policies of the CIA. He saw the role of the press as mobilizing public assent for policies made by his Washington neighbors; the public deserved to know only what the inner circle deemed proper. According to Howard Bray's Pillars of the Post, Graham and other top Posters knew details of several covert operations--including advance knowledge of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion--which they chose not to share with their readers.

When the manic-depressive Graham shot himself in 1963, the paper passed to his widow, Katharine. Though out of her depth at first, her instincts were safely establishmentarian. According to Deborah Davis' biography, Katharine the Great, Mrs. Graham was scandalized by the cultural and political revolutions of the 1960s, and wept when LBJ fused to run for reelection in 1968. (After Graham asserted that the book as "fantasy," Harcourt Brace Jovanovich pulled 20,000 copies of Katharine the Great in 1979. The book as re-issued by National Press in 87.)

The Post was one of the last major papers to turn against the Vietnam War. Even today, it hews to a hard foreign policy line--usually to the right of The New York Times, a paper not known or having transcended the Cold War.

There was Watergate, of course, that model of aggressive reporting ed by the Post. But even here, Graham's Post was doing the establishment's work. As Graham herself said, the investigation couldn't have succeeded without the cooperation of people inside the government willing to talk to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

These talkers may well have included the CIA; it's widely suspected that Deep Throat was an Agency man (or men). Davis argues that Post editor Ben Bradlee knew Deep Throat, and may even have set him up with Woodward. She produces evidence that in the early 1950s, Bradlee crafted propaganda for the CIA on the Rosenberg case for European consumption. Bradlee denies working "for" the CIA, though he admits having worked for the U.S. Information Agency--perhaps distinction without a difference.

In any case, it's clear that a major portion of the establishment wanted Nixon out. Having accomplished this, there was little taste for further crusading. Nixon had denounced the Post as "Communist" during the 1950s. Graham offered her support to Nixon upon his election in 1968, but he snubbed her, even directing his allies to challenge the Post Co.'s TV license in Florida a few ears later. The Reagans were a different story--for one thing, Ron's crowd knew that seduction was a better way to get good press than hostility. According to Nancy Reagan's memoirs, Graham welcomed Ron and Nancy to her Georgetown house in 1981 with a kiss. During the darkest days of Iran-Contra, Graham and Post editorial page editor Meg GreenfieId - lunch and phone companions to Nancy throughout the Reagan years - offered the First Lady frequent expressions of sympathy. Graham and the establishment never got far from the Gipper.

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Here's an interesting article written by Anderson in about 1973. I find it curious that he refuses to name David Morales but instead uses the 'Big Indian' nickname.

Given Anderson's background on Brad Ayers, he would have know all too well who Morales was.

James

James,

Everyone should read the Jack Anderson article. He is obviously VERY SENSITIVE about naming Morales, and pulls his hard-hitting investigatory punch when he talked about the Big Indian.

Does the rest of the story check out? The Roselli material and the Belgian Rifles stuff points to an early HSAC/ limited exposure (limited hangout). If he was a conduit, this is an example of the "spin"

((I have heard the politically reactionary Mormons described as similar to the Victorian Masons, heirs to a powerful secret tradition, hostile to transparent and aboveboard representative governance.))

Edited by John Simkin
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Hi Shanet,

It makes one wonder about Morales, doesn't it? I guess very few desired to take him on and understandably so.

I see you picked up on the Belgian FAL issue. This of course was a part of William Harvey's Executive Action blueprint which called for weapons and ammunition to be used in Castro assassination plots be untraceable to American agents. The FAL's were the type used by the Cuban army. Harvey was the one who secured these weapons.

To add to that, it seems the likes of Eddie Bayo, Tony Cuesta and their men were recipients of such weapons while the run of the mill exile trudging around sand boxes in the Florida Keys had to make do with whatever they could lay their hands on.

Below is a shot of Eddie Bayo with a Belgian FAL. The second photograph shows Vicente Mendez (center frame holding a Grease Gun) and on the far left is Herminio Diaz Garcia with a Belgian FAL.

I believe the Roselli stuff was pretty accurate.

James

Edited by James Richards
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I want to return to the topic of Jack Anderson as a CIA asset. In his biography of Drew Pearson, Confessions of a Muckraker, Anderson said it was Spencer Moosa of the Associated Press, who first suggested that he should go and work for drew Pearson. Anderson on the Washington Post. Anderson was in China at the time. So also was Philip Graham, the son-in-law of the owner of the Washington Post. They had both been members of the intelligence staff but interestingly despite their relationship, Anderson never mentions Graham in this book or his own autobiography. At the end of the war Anderson began working on the Shanghai edition of Stars and Stripes.

Anderson, who had worked for a short period on the Salt Lake City Tribune before the war, goes to see Pearson when he returns to America after the war. As luck would have it, Pearson’s assistant, Andrew Older, had just been forced to resign (Hoover had named him as a communist). His timing was perfect and Pearson gave him Older's job. Up until this time Anderson had no experience in investigative journalism. However, he soon proved to be an important figure in Pearson’s work as he was a great source of information about corrupt behaviour in government. In his books Anderson never explains why he was able to get this information. Later it becomes clear that Lyndon Johnson is one source. I suspect the FBI and the CIA were other sources.

It has to be remembered that at the time Drew Pearson was seen as a left-wing (although anti-communist) investigative journalist. Therefore, if your target was someone on the right, then Pearson would be a good person to leak your information to.

Anderson admits to being party responsible for two key stories in the couple of years after he joined Pearson as his “legman”. They both involved ousting from office two right-wing political figures.

The first case involved the Republican senator for Maine, Owen Brewster. He was chairman of the Senate War Investigating Committee that was looking into the possibility that US companies had corruptly obtained government armaments contracts during the Second World War. Brewster first began investigating Howard Hughes who was awarded two contracts, of $18m and $22m each, to create and build two revolutionary aircraft - a giant plywood cargo seaplane that could carry thirty-five tons of men and weapons (HK-1), and a very fast photo-reconnaissance aircraft (F-11).

These contracts were a financial disaster for the American taxpayer (at this time $40 million had been paid to Hughes without delivery of one aircraft). Hughes claimed he had been unlucky, however, Brewster suspected that the contracts had been obtained corruptly. He focused in on the role Elliot Roosevelt had played in these deals. Franklin Roosevelt had overruled his military experts in giving these contracts to Hughes. There was evidence that Elliot had been close to Hughes during the war. He had also attended sex-parties provided by Hughes. So also had Julius Krug, the chief of the War Production Board. These parties had been organized by Johnny Meyer. He was the one responsible hiring the girls for the parties. He had also paid $5,068 in night club and hotel bills for Elliot Roosevelt. Meyer was in fact LBJ’s Bobby Baker. It was his parties that entrapped politicians into giving Hughes his contracts.

LBJ would have been very nervous about these hearings. If Hughes had been exposed during Bewster’s investigations, the next people on the list would have included George and Herman Brown. Interestingly, another one on the list would have been John McCone, who had made a fortune from government shipbuilding contracts.

According to Anderson, Pearson and himself were approached by Hughes with information about Brewster. He claimed that Brewster was taking this action because Hughes had refused his suggestion that his company, Trans World Airlines, should merge with Pan American Airways (Pan Am). Hughes told Pearson and Anderson that Brewster was on the take from Pan Am. There investigations later showed that he had received free flights from this company (worth $1,400).

This information was published by Pearson during the Senate Investigation. Brewster was not helped by the fact that Meyer went missing and was unable to testify for a second time before the committee (he first testimony had proved to be very embarrassing to Hughes, as he had admitted that his employer had spent $164,000 on these sex parties).

Pearson also applied considerable pressure on other members of Brewster’s committee. This included a mixture of carrot and stick. Gradually he managed to turn the majority against Brewster. Interestingly, the one person who refused to do this was John Williams, the man who later exposed the Bobby Baker scandal.

Brewster and Williams were isolated and in 1948 it was decided to disband the Senate War Investigating Committee. This saved not only Hughes but McCone and the Brown brothers. Pearson continued to persecute Brewster and in 1952 managed to get him replaced by a liberal Republican, Frederick Payne (this included a $50,000 bribe paid by Howard Hughes).

The second case involved James Forrestal, Harry Truman’s Secretary of the Navy. Pearson was opposed to Forrestal’s political views. Pearson claimed that Forrestal had “an obsession that the Cold War was the prelude to a shooting war”. Pearson, who was a Quaker, believed that if Forrestal remained in post, America would eventually go to war with the Soviet Union. He therefore decided to get Forrestal removed.

He relied on leaks. One such leak concerned the deal that Forrestal had done with Saudi Arabia. Pearson was told that that the US Navy had been overcharged for the oil it had obtained from Saudi Arabia. As I have explained on the Suite 8F Group thread, LBJ’s group attempted to control who was Secretary of the Navy. This was partly because of the huge oil contracts that they dished out. Forrestal, based in New York, was not under their control. It was in their interests to get rid of Forrestal. Did LBJ leak this story to Pearson? Or did it come from another member of this group? However, It was this story about Saudi oil that helped to bring Forrestal down.

Truman moved Forrestal to the post as Secretary of Defense. To Pearson, this was an even more dangerous position for him to hold. He continued his campaign and on 28th March, 1949, Truman sacked Forrestal. Soon afterwards, Forrestal, suffering from depression, was admitted to Bethesda Hospital. On 22nd May 1949 Forrestal committed suicide by throwing himself out of a 16th-floor hospital window.

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Another interesting connection with Jack Anderson was his employer, Philip Graham, who took over control of the Washington Post after the war (he married the owner’s daughter, Eugene Meyer, in 1940).

Both Anderson and Graham had been intelligence officers in the Far East during the war. It has been claimed that Graham had close links with the Central Intelligence Agency and it has been argued that he played an important role in Project Mockingbird, the CIA program to infiltrate the domestic American media. According to Katherine Graham, her husband worked overtime at the Post during the Bay of Pigs operation to protect the reputations of his friends who had organized the ill-fated venture.

Graham became friends with LBJ in 1957 when he spent time on his ranch in Texas. Apparently LBJ had done this to get the support of the Washington Post in his bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 1960. It was at this meeting that LBJ convinced the Grahams that he really supported civil rights. Although this meant doing it the Texas way (the Grahams were shocked by his constant use of the “N” word when he discussed this issue).

Graham was a supporter of the Democratic Party and played an important role in persuading JFK to accept LBJ as his running mate. However, in the 1960 presidential election Graham, despite being a supporter of the Democratic Party, refused to endorse Kennedy/Johnson.

Graham of course committed suicide just before JFK was assassinated. It was said he was suffering from depression. Had he discovered what the conspirators were planning to do? I cannot think of another example of a successful businessman that was not entangled in some sort of scandal killing himself.

The Washington Post was of course involved in exposing the Watergate scandal. I have for long time suspected that Deep Throat was CIA. Bob Woodward was of course a former officer in Naval Intelligence. Katherine Graham, who took over from her husband at the Washington Post, is said to have also taken over his job as head of Project Mockingbird.

Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics and the Death of JFK) argues that Nixon was removed with the help of the CIA because of his attempts to negotiate with China (whereas JFK was removed because of his willingness to negotiate with the Soviet Union in order to end the Cold War). It is not only the individuals involved in the Watergate break-in that are linked to the JFK assassination.

Here are a couple of extracts from articles that I found interesting about the Grahams.

Michael Hasty, Secret Admirers: The Bushes and the Washington Post (February, 2004)

In an article published by the media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), Henwood traced the Washington Post's Establishment connections to Eugene Meyer, who took control of the Post in 1933. Meyer transferred ownership to his daughter Katherine and her husband, Philip Graham, after World War II, when he was appointed by Harry S. Truman to serve as the first president of the World Bank. Meyer had been "a Wall Street banker, director of President Wilson's War Finance Corporation, a governor of the Federal Reserve System, and director of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation," Henwood wrote.

Philip Graham, Meyer's successor, had been in military intelligence during the war. When he became the Post's publisher, he continued to have close contact with his fellow upper-class intelligence veterans - now making policy at the newly formed CIA - and actively promoted the CIA's goals in his newspaper. The incestuous relationship between the Post and the intelligence community even extended to its hiring practices. Watergate-era editor Ben Bradlee also had an intelligence background; and before he became a journalist, reporter Bob Woodward was an officer in Naval Intelligence. In a 1977 article in Rolling Stone magazine about CIA influence in American media, Woodward's partner, Carl Bernstein, quoted this from a CIA official: "It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from." Graham has been identified by some investigators as the main contact in Project Mockingbird, the CIA program to infiltrate domestic American media. In her autobiography, Katherine Graham described how her husband worked overtime at the Post during the Bay of Pigs operation to protect the reputations of his friends from Yale who had organized the ill-fated venture.

After Graham committed suicide, and his widow Katherine assumed the role of publisher, she continued her husband's policies of supporting the efforts of the intelligence community in advancing the foreign policy and economic agenda of the nation's ruling elites. In a retrospective column written after her own death last year, FAIR analyst Norman Solomon wrote, "Her newspaper mainly functioned as a helpmate to the war-makers in the White House, State Department and Pentagon." It accomplished this function (and continues to do so) using all the classic propaganda techniques of evasion, confusion, misdirection, targeted emphasis, disinformation, secrecy, omission of important facts, and selective leaks.

Graham herself rationalized this policy in a speech she gave at CIA headquarters in 1988. "We live in a dirty and dangerous world," she said. "There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."

Doug Henwood, The Washington Post: The Establishment's Paper (January, 1990)

After World War II, when Harry Truman named this lifelong Republican as first president of the World Bank, Meyer made his son-in-law, Philip L. Graham, publisher of the paper. Meyer stayed at the Bank for only six months and returned to the Post as its chairman. But with Phil Graham in charge, there was little for Meyer to do. He transferred ownership to Philip and Katharine Graham, and retired.

Phil Graham maintained Meyer's intimacy with power. Like many members of his class and generation, his postwar view was shaped by his work in wartime intelligence; a classic Cold War liberal, he was uncomfortable with McCarthy, but quite friendly with the personnel and policies of the CIA. He saw the role of the press as mobilizing public assent for policies made by his Washington neighbors; the public deserved to know only what the inner circle deemed proper. According to Howard Bray's Pillars of the Post, Graham and other top Posters knew details of several covert operations--including advance knowledge of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion--which they chose not to share with their readers.

When the manic-depressive Graham shot himself in 1963, the paper passed to his widow, Katharine. Though out of her depth at first, her instincts were safely establishmentarian. According to Deborah Davis' biography, Katharine the Great, Mrs. Graham was scandalized by the cultural and political revolutions of the 1960s, and wept when LBJ fused to run for reelection in 1968. (After Graham asserted that the book as "fantasy," Harcourt Brace Jovanovich pulled 20,000 copies of Katharine the Great in 1979. The book as re-issued by National Press in 87.)

The Post was one of the last major papers to turn against the Vietnam War. Even today, it hews to a hard foreign policy line--usually to the right of The New York Times, a paper not known or having transcended the Cold War.

There was Watergate, of course, that model of aggressive reporting ed by the Post. But even here, Graham's Post was doing the establishment's work. As Graham herself said, the investigation couldn't have succeeded without the cooperation of people inside the government willing to talk to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

These talkers may well have included the CIA; it's widely suspected that Deep Throat was an Agency man (or men). Davis argues that Post editor Ben Bradlee knew Deep Throat, and may even have set him up with Woodward. She produces evidence that in the early 1950s, Bradlee crafted propaganda for the CIA on the Rosenberg case for European consumption. Bradlee denies working "for" the CIA, though he admits having worked for the U.S. Information Agency--perhaps distinction without a difference.

In any case, it's clear that a major portion of the establishment wanted Nixon out. Having accomplished this, there was little taste for further crusading. Nixon had denounced the Post as "Communist" during the 1950s. Graham offered her support to Nixon upon his election in 1968, but he snubbed her, even directing his allies to challenge the Post Co.'s TV license in Florida a few ears later. The Reagans were a different story--for one thing, Ron's crowd knew that seduction was a better way to get good press than hostility. According to Nancy Reagan's memoirs, Graham welcomed Ron and Nancy to her Georgetown house in 1981 with a kiss. During the darkest days of Iran-Contra, Graham and Post editorial page editor Meg GreenfieId - lunch and phone companions to Nancy throughout the Reagan years - offered the First Lady frequent expressions of sympathy. Graham and the establishment never got far from the Gipper.

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GREAT stuff John. It makes me sick when I hear the Post and Times called 'liberal press". I have always wondered about Ben Bradlee for very personal reasons: In 1976 or so my then boyfriend, Harvey Yazijian, of the Assassination Information Bureau was on tv in a debate with Bradlee. Of course the subject was the assassination conspiracy and Bradley was just going NUTS. Even Gerald Posner can speak very rationally as he spouts his lying filth, but Bradlee became a total madman. I thought he was actually going to attack Harv physically on national tv. At the time it was "reported" that he (Bradley) just could not bear the thought of his good friend FJK being killed by a CONSPIRACY, and that was why his reaction was so personal and visceral. Your words now make total sense of that long ago tv debate.

Dawn

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