Jump to content
The Education Forum

Harry Dean: Memoirs


Recommended Posts

Harry, at what stage did you start providing information to the FBI about the John Birch Society? Did you tell them about the plots to kill JFK?

John,

Just now answered your e-mail covering these questions.

{1} September 1963, as things heated-up.

{2} This also included discussions held about the idiotic plans regarding the main enemy, Kennedy.

Harry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 1.5k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Harry, at what stage did you start providing information to the FBI about the John Birch Society? Did you tell them about the plots to kill JFK?

John,

Just now answered your e-mail covering these questions.

{1} September 1963, as things heated-up.

{2} This also included discussions held about the idiotic plans regarding the main enemy, Kennedy.

Harry

How did the FBI react when you told them about the John Birch Society plots to kill JFK? Do you know if they checked it out?

I have updated your page. Please let me know if I have got anything wrong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, the Weissman you suspect was involved, is that the same Weissman who purchased the ad in the paper? After reading his testimony I was quite convinced he was an innocent. Are you implying that he was a sniper trained by Walker? If this is true, this is an important and little-know detail.

And Harry, excuse me if this is a dumb question, but were you aware at any time of any JBS activity at the TSBD? Is it possible that Truly or Caster were members? What about the DPD? Were you aware of any members there? Any ideas on which men we should focus on?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harry, at what stage did you start providing information to the FBI about the John Birch Society? Did you tell them about the plots to kill JFK?

John,

Just now answered your e-mail covering these questions.

{1} September 1963, as things heated-up.

{2} This also included discussions held about the idiotic plans regarding the main enemy, Kennedy.

Harry

How did the FBI react when you told them about the John Birch Society plots to kill JFK? Do you know if they checked it out?

I have updated your page. Please let me know if I have got anything wrong.

John,

It should be remembered, that before and after, reporting to the Bureau re;

conversations about Kennedy by those JBS persons involved, I was at the same time advising the Bureau, as requested, re; certain other individuals and groups,{eg} of my section {as a member} Southern California, Minuteman activities, Fair Play For Cuba Committee person{s}, Alpha 66 Los Angeles leader{s} etc;.

Certainly the Bureau checked any and all such details, as remote, or impossible as some reports might seem..... Bureau agents reactions were always no-nonsence, matter-of-fact, in personal meetings, or by phone.

It is important that further questions on these subjects be refered to the CD

as the agency {FBI} no doubt continues " upset" as shown by it's past denials

of my association with them. Which is nearly always the case, especially where

we who expose this association are concerned.

Harry

Edited by Harry J.Dean
Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, the Weissman you suspect was involved, is that the same Weissman who purchased the ad in the paper?  After reading his testimony I was quite convinced he was an innocent. Are you implying that he was a sniper trained by Walker?  If this is true, this is an important and little-know detail.

And Harry, excuse me if this is a dumb question, but were you aware at any time of any JBS activity at the TSBD?  Is it possible that Truly or Caster were members?  What about the DPD?  Were you aware of any members there?  Any ideas on which men we should focus on?

Pat,

I was not aware of TSBD JBS activities or of Truly and Caster but their connections should be checked-out. Under the extensive umbrella of the JBS there were

many police officer members. Yes focus on J.D. Tippet who worked weekends at a restaurant owned by another JBS member.

Harry

Edited by Harry J.Dean
Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, the Weissman you suspect was involved, is that the same Weissman who purchased the ad in the paper?  After reading his testimony I was quite convinced he was an innocent. Are you implying that he was a sniper trained by Walker?  If this is true, this is an important and little-know detail.

And Harry, excuse me if this is a dumb question, but were you aware at any time of any JBS activity at the TSBD?  Is it possible that Truly or Caster were members?  What about the DPD?  Were you aware of any members there?  Any ideas on which men we should focus on?

Pat,

I was not awarof TSBD JBS activities or of Truly and Caster but their connections should be checked-out. Under the extensive umbrella of the JBS there were

many police officer members. Yes focus on J.D. Tippet who worked weekends at a restaurant owned by another JBS member.

Harry

Harry, do you know anything about J.E. Day and why he resigned? Did it have anything to do with Dulles? JohnD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, the Weissman you suspect was involved, is that the same Weissman who purchased the ad in the paper?  After reading his testimony I was quite convinced he was an innocent. Are you implying that he was a sniper trained by Walker?  If this is true, this is an important and little-know detail.

And Harry, excuse me if this is a dumb question, but were you aware at any time of any JBS activity at the TSBD?  Is it possible that Truly or Caster were members?  What about the DPD?  Were you aware of any members there?  Any ideas on which men we should focus on?

Pat,

I was not awarof TSBD JBS activities or of Truly and Caster but their connections should be checked-out. Under the extensive umbrella of the JBS there were

many police officer members. Yes focus on J.D. Tippet who worked weekends at a restaurant owned by another JBS member.

Harry

Harry, do you know anything about J.E. Day and why he resigned? Did it have anything to do with Dulles? JohnD

John D.

Sorry John, nothing of J.E. Day is known to me in any connection.

Harry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harry, do you know if there was a rationale behind how the FBI codenamed their informers at that time. I'd imagine for security this probably had an element of randomness in it. But still, were there directives regarding this? JohnD

an example perhaps would be U8. Is there a way of determining or guessing who U8 was?

Edited by John Dolva
Link to comment
Share on other sites

John, the Weissman you suspect was involved, is that the same Weissman who purchased the ad in the paper?  After reading his testimony I was quite convinced he was an innocent. Are you implying that he was a sniper trained by Walker?  If this is true, this is an important and little-know detail.

Bernard Weissman was the same man who took out the black-bordered advert in the Dallas Morning News on 22nd November, 1963.

Most books about the Kennedy assassination have very little to say about Weissman. Those that do point out that Weissman placed the anti-Kennedy advert in the Dallas Morning News that appeared on the morning of the assassination. Others refer to the claims made by Mark Lane that Weissman met Ruby and Tippit at the Carousel Club on 14th November, 1963.

Weissman was interviewed by the Warren Commission and he had a very interesting story to tell.

In August, 1961, Weissman joined the U.S. Army and served in Germany where he met Larrie Schmidt. The two men served under General Edwin Walker. The two men shared an interest in right-wing politics and were both supporters of the John Birch Society. While in Germany the two men discussed the possibility of establishing a right-wing political group when they returned to the United States.

Weissman was discharged in August 1963 but was unable to find work. Short of money, Weissman contacted Larrie Schmidt who was at that time living in Dallas. Schmidt told Weissman about his involvement in the attack on the liberal politician, Adlai Stevenson. According to Schmidt, this had been organized by General Edwin Walker. Schmidt added that his brother was working as General Walker's chauffeur and general aide.

Schmidt invited Weissman to Dallas. Weissman later told the Warren Commission that Schmidt argued: "If we are going to take advantage of the situation, or if you are," meaning me, "you better hurry down here and take advantage of the publicity, and at least become known among these various right-wingers, because this is the chance we have been looking for to infiltrate some of these organizations and become known," in other words, go along with the philosophy we had developed in Munich."

Weissman arrived in Dallas on 4th November, 1963. Soon afterwards Weissman joined an organization called the Young Americans for Freedom. Schmidt also invited Weissman to join the John Birch Society but according to his testimony before the Warren Commission he changed his mind when he discovered too many of them were anti-Semitic (Weissman was Jewish).

Schmidt introduced Weissman to Joe Grinnan of the John Birch Society. Grinnan was involved in organizing protests against the visit of John F. Kennedy. Grinnan seemed to know about the visit before it was officially announced to the public. Grinnan suggested that they should place a black-bordered advert in the Dallas Morning News on 22nd November, 1963. The advert cost $1,465. Grinnan supplied the money. He claimed that some of this came from Nelson Bunker Hunt, the son of Haroldson L. Hunt. Weissman was given the task of signing the advert and taking it to the newspaper office.

The advert attacked Kennedy's foreign policy as being anti-American and communistic. This included the claim that Gus Hall, "head of the U.S. Communist Party praised almost every one of your policies and announced that the party will endorse and support your re-election in 1964". It also attacked Kennedy's domestic policies. Another passage asked why Robert Kennedy had been allowed "to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America."

Weissman was apparently shocked by the assassination of JFK and told Schmidt he feared he would be accused of being involved in the killing. He told the Warren Commission he suspected that Kennedy had been killed by supporters of General Edwin Walker and that as a result he would be implicated in the plot. Weissman watched the reports on the assassination in a bar with Schmidt. He told the Warren Commission he felt relieved when he discovered that Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested for the murder. The Warren Commission did not ask how he knew that Oswald was not a right-winger. Despite this news, Weissman and Schmidt decided to leave Dallas straight away.

Mark Lane testified before that Warren Commission that Thayer Waldo, a journalist on the staff of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, had told him that Weissman was involved in a two-hour meeting with Jack Ruby and J. D. Tippit at the Carousel Club on 14th November, 1963. According to Joachim Joesten (How Kennedy Was Killed), "a rich oil man" was also at this meeting. Weissman denied he had ever been to the Carousel Club and had never met Ruby or Tippit.

George Senator told reporters that Jack Ruby had tried to contact Weissman after the assassination. According to Seth Kantor (Who Was Jack Ruby): "He (Ruby) couldn't get to Bernard Weissman. There was no such person in the Dallas phone book. He checked"

I don't want to divert this thread from Harry Dean's story so please reply to comments on Weissman here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=660

I have also started a thread on Larrie Schmidt here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4436

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Harry, do you know if there was a rationale behind how the FBI codenamed their informers at that time. I'd imagine for security this probably had an element of randomness in it. But still, were there directives regarding this? JohnD

an example perhaps would be U8. Is there a way of determining or guessing who U8 was?

John D.

In that one-way only information system { from informants} I think informants names were above the level of special agents, in determining who { U8 } would be.

Harry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is amazing stuff Harry. You are clearly not afraid to name names. Will you be naming the gunmen involved in the assassination?

Hi, John

Edwin A. Walker, removed from command and forced into retirement by the Kennedy administration,was acting on his own behalf,as much as for the 'new Americanist order' that he served in both military and civilian life. Walker was more than a leader of ultra-conservatism. He was an arrogant, powerless, but explosive force, enjoying the praise of his LDS/JBS co-conspirators and followers. When Kennedy entered Texas, his life was in the deadly hands of 'extremist veteran riflemen' of Walkers former Munich, Germany 24th infantry command!

Harry Dean, 1990

More from the 1990 manuscript/book, YROJ Connection To The JFK Assassination.

After the {1961} unsuccessful Bay Of Pigs Invasion, and the wholesale capture of more than twelve hundred war prisoners, certain leading Americans, with the unofficial blessing of the Kennedy administration, organized a "Tractor for Prisoner Committee". The committee included influential AFL-CIO Union President Walter Reuther, Milton Eisenhower {brother of the former U.S. president}, Elenore Roosevelt, and other famous persons. They were to raise thirty-five million dollars for the purchase of 500 huge D-9 Catapiller earthmoving tractors. These were to be exchanged with Castro for the captured invasion survivors.

Even as the equiptment was readied... for shipment to Cuba, Castro, who had originally suggested the idea and desperatley wanted the trade-off, suddenly rejected the deal.

It was again a breach of my spy position to influence official dealings between governments, under U.S. Criminal Procedure, Title 18. This effort worried me for years until I at last realized that under all that concern, the operation was technically unofficial. Then there was the statue of limitations that allowed protection from prosecution.

President Kennedy stated on July 5,1961, "the tractor Committee has done everything conceivable, but Mr. Castro has not accepted!"

The tractor-prisoner deal failed as a direct result of the "self-created" misinformation transmitted to Castro by this "trusted agent". It was the hidden factor that no one would suspect. Even Castro's "war prisoners committee" sent to the U.S. for on-sight inspections of the tractors under construction could not hoped to detect..... such destructive actions. The urgent last minute treachery convinced Castro that the tractors were,in fact, being built "metallurgically unsound". The Tractors and spare parts would crack and breakdown after little use, and missile launching pads could not be built in Cuba with such junk!

My feelings against Castro had increased over the years because of his unjust treatment of fellow revolutionaries who had given their all to overthrow the murderous tyranny of the Fulgencio Batista government in Cuba, only to be imprisoned or executed by Castro after the war. The list is long, and these are yet remembered as the dedicated, youthful heros of the true Cuban revolution. None of them were communists. Their only politics were of liberty!

In fouling up the tractor-prisoner plan, I was striking another blow against the totalitarian dictator who betrayed the aspirations of a suffering nation. Nothing was wrong with the tractors. The prisoners were finally freed{ the following year} in late 1962 by another U.S. Cuba....... deal. Many Americans, Cubans and the war prisoners themselves, opposed the tractor deal,saying it would be a super propaganda victory for Castro. In destroying these efforts two things occupied my thoughts. One was a propaganda defeat for Castro, the other was in saving the U.S. thirty-five million dollars.

I was always concerned..... but there were never any regrets! I would repeat the actions if I had to be in that position again. Anyway, it was sort of "on-the-job training for the lowly spy.

Harry Dean, 1990

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Mr. Dean.

Thanks very much for all of the insight and information you have provided. I hold you in high esteem.

Any chance you may be able to shed light on INCA? Was this formed independently of the JBS, or was it a faction? Actually, I'd like to ask the same question about the YAF. Were all of these various organizations launched, or later infiltrated and controlled/influenced by the JBS?

General William Westmoreland [who died yesterday at age 91], appears to have been an advisor to INCA at one time.

Kind regards,

Lee

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/arti..._us_in_vietnam/

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_076-100/doc0078.html

CUBAN INFORMATION ARCHIVES

DOCUMENT  0078

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SHORT HISTORY OF INCA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SHORT HISTORY OF INCA

(INFORMATION COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS)

by Frank DeBenedictis

            One aspect of anti-communism which has not received the attention given to the US conflict with the Soviet Union is the more recent war with Fidel Castro and his Communist regime in Cuba. Cuba's conversion to Marxism in 1959 caused much consternation in the United States, and especially in cities doing trade with that Latin American country. New Orleans in particular feared the new regime, and out of this fear a new anti-communist organization based in this city was born in 1961 called the Information Council of the Americas (INCA).

                By the 1950s, 75% of US imports from Latin America came through the port of New Orleans. Civic and business leaders of the Crescent City throughout the decades forged closer business, political and social ties with their Latin American counterparts. Fidel Castro's rise to power sent shock waves through New Orleans and threatened a lucrative mutual relationship. In Tampa, Florida (another large port city) where cigar manufacturing played an important part of that cities industry, the Cuban Revolution also caused alarms to go off when Senator George Smathers of Florida proposed an embargo against Cuban tobacco. But Tampa reacted differently from New Orleans.

                Instead of fear and reaction leading to the anti-communist INCA, Tampa saw a rise in pro-Castro activity. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee started a chapter and in an early 1961 rally proclaimed Smathers action, "would lead to unemployment in Tampa." Castro's revolution began to take effect in the United States. Three months after the Tampa FPCC rally, the Information Council of the Americas would begin its own campaign against the changing economic sensibilities of a Communist Cuba.

                INCA was founded on May 15, 1961 by public relations professional Edward Scannell Butler. From the beginning its agenda was narrowly focused on Communism as an issue. INCA in fact sought support from liberal as well as conservative anti-communists, asking liberal anti-communist Smathers to speak at an organization function. Ed Butler had prior to the Castro takeover, laid plans for an anti-communist organization. But when Castro took over in Cuba, and New Orleans expressed growing anxiety over the new Latin American dictator, the 27 year old public relations man was handed a searing issue and an alarmed constituency.

                Ed Butler had an interest in both pubic relations and psychology, so in a real sense his organization was not ideologically based, even though this public relations man exhibited a penchant for conservative politics. He especially expressed admiration for red-baiting Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy whom he described as a great American. So Ed Butler the founder of INCA did have ideological convictions beyond the function of INCA, but he put his promotional talents rather than politics into the organization. INCA soon evolved into an effective propaganda machine under its youthful leader.

                Loyola University archivist Arthur Carpenter expressed anti-communism in a realpolitik sense when he poses the question, "Was anti-communism a manifestation of popular, democratic sentiment or of elite interests?" He answers that question in the latter vein, including the formation of INCA. Carpenter also describes anti-communism and the origins of INCA in a post-World War II context.

                Popular anti-communism as opposed to an elitist based movement died with the more excessive reactions of  Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. Then the writings of historian Richard Hofstader and sociologist Daniel Bell dismissed the idea of a popular anti-communist movement. They were saying that legitimate anti-communism could be properly understood only by the elite; the public should be encouraged to divert in other directions. So by the late 1950s the better known organizations which had anti-communism as a primary function tended to be organs of business, civic and academic leaders. The John Birch Society in 1958 was founded by Robert Welch and twelve well off business friends in Indianapolis. In 1961 the Young Americans for Freedom met at the Connecticut mansion lawn of  National Review editor William F. Buckley to form that group. INCA came on the heels of both of these conservative organizations and had similar patrician origins.

                Along with founder Ed Butler, the most important member of INCA was famed physician Dr. Alton Ochsner. Ochsner, 38 years Butler's senior formed a partnership with his younger colleague which would last twenty years. Ed Butler, who didn't have a great knowledge of Latin American affairs, benefited substantially from the association with the celebrated doctor. Alton Ochsner had an internationalist outlook---especially when it pertained to the field of medicine. Ochsner felt medicine transcended national boundaries, and had trained many physician exchange students from Latin America since the 1920s.  His prominence as an international physician led him to be elected to leadership of both the International Trade Mart and International House in the 1960s. Both business groups  promoted Latin American trade for New Orleans, and had been founded immediately after World War II. Ochsner also was elected to the presidency of the Cordell Hull Foundation which administered a program of Inter-American university study.

                Ochsner fit the mode of the wealthy educated elite. He was elderly and encouraged other New Orleans prominent and wealthy citizens to join INCA. Ochsner's persuasiveness helped Ed Butler recruit United Fruit's Joseph W. Montgomery, Delta Steamship Line's John W. Clark, International Trade Mart's William Zetzmann and William B. Reily of Reily Coffee Company. The local Catholic hierarchy also joined with Archbishop Phillip M. Hannan and Dean of Loyola University Law School AE Papale becoming members. INCA also received endorsements from Mayor deLesseps Morrison and Congressman Hale Boggs.

                INCA's approach to anti-communism (in addition to being anti-Castro) tended to follow a practical approach of containment. This approach was not conciliatory, but echoed the realities of American foreign policy in the early 1960s with the newly elected Kennedy administration. Dr. Alton Ochsner had written a letter to President Kennedy, at a friend's request, urging a quarantine of Cuba from shipments of troops and military equipment. Yet Ochsner doubted the plea would matter since, "many of Kennedy's advisors were leftists." Presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. echoing the new administrations desire to chart a new course in foreign policy---both with regard to the Cold War and the developing nations---called for a new liberal anti-communism, one that would be more cooperative with the American progressive left, and sensitive to changes in the less rigid post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Schlesinger had expressed his opinion that, "a policy designed for the age of Stalin was not necessary in the age of Khruschev."

                Cold War containment dominated foreign policy in Eisenhower's administration. Advisor Dean Acheson was its main proponent, and the incoming Kennedy  saw it as static and a remnant of the old order. When Kennedy became president in January, 1961 he faced a dilemma since he inherited the CIA sponsored war against Castro. This war started with the Eisenhower administration and continued with Kennedy, culminating  with the Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961. Eisenhower's vice president and Kennedy rival Richard Nixon was one of the first Republicans to make a career out of anti-communism and also had been one of the first in his party to support the Democratic Party's contrived Marshall Plan. Nixon was not a disciple of Dean Acheson either, favoring a more aggressive stand against Communism. The Vice President's former membership on the House Committee on Un-American activities belied the difference between two types of anti-communist thought. One was liberal anti-communism which dismissed the American Communist Party as a real political danger in the United States.  The other anti-communist wing was politically conservative and domestically counter-subversive in its outlook. Conservatives saw Communists infiltrating public life and imposing "collectivist" values on the population at large. Both Nixon and the Information Council of the Americas with its leadership of Butler, Ochsner and the New Orleans business elite  fit the latter. Both Nixon and INCA were also internationalist in outlook. Yet with the new Kennedy administration, INCA opted for a containment policy, since it was unable to be more aggressive toward Cuba. It directed its propaganda energies toward Latin American nationals who had not fallen to  Communism, but (who) like the New Orleans business elite  felt threatened by Castro.

                INCA started expanding its bi-directional support lines into Latin America. Ed Butler in an interview explained to me that INCA was, "an international organization." Nurtured by its benefactor Dr. Ochsner, it expanded its list of supporters to include former Latin American heads of state. Among them were former Guatemalan president Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza, and Juan Peron, former president of Argentina. Ochsner's medical prowess made him revered in Latin American circles, some of the Latins saw him almost like a god. In his early career, Ochsner studied in Europe, practiced in New Orleans, set up the Ochsner medical clinic in 1941, and "cultivated relations with Latins in New Orleans." While he did profess at times extremist personal views toward integration and communism, historically these were somewhat offset by his dedication to internationalism, trade and medicine.

                Fear of Communism was no less a concern for Ed Butler, Dr. Ochsner, or the other prominent INCA members than it was for the many right-wing segregationist groups springing up in the South in the early 1960s. INCA, however, studiously avoided forming alliances with the segregationists. INCA had never defended segregation.  Its own rapport with Latin Americans further strengthened this image, and the organization made alliances with local anti-Castro Cuban refugees. Then in August, 1963 an event proving important to both the Cubans and INCA occurred. INCA was to have an encounter in New Orleans with the future accused assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald.

                On August 5, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald visited Casa Roca, a clothing store managed by Carlos Bringuier. Bringuier, a Cuban refugee, was one of the important Cuban exile leaders in New Orleans at the time. The ex-Marine offered help to the beleaguered Cuban exiles in the form of military training for the purpose of fighting Castro. Four days later Bringuier became inflamed when he saw Oswald on Canal Street passing out pro-Castro literature, urging "hands off Cuba" and promoting the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). The two got into a fight and were arrested. Again on August 16, Oswald passed out literature, this time in front of the International Trade Mart.  On August 21, Oswald joined in a radio debate with Bringuier of the Cuban Student Directorate, an anti-Castro group and Ed Butler of INCA. The participants were ready for Oswald, having done some research on him, and shifted the discussion to his defection to the Soviet Union, his sympathy for Cuba and his professed Marxism.  Ed Butler described Oswald as an articulate speaker, and well versed in his topic. But having looked into the defector's background and discrediting him, the INCA director also expressed the view that they had driven him and the FPCC out of town.

                President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, three months after the New Orleans radio and TV sessions. Oswald was charged with the murder. Ed Butler recorded the debate sessions and produced a new propaganda tool with two LP records entitled Oswald: Self-Portrait in Red and Oswald Speaks. Butler after the assassination argued Communist propaganda had incited Oswald to violence. The Oswald episode also provided new raw material for yet another propaganda film, the lurid Hitler in Havana---which equated the Cuban Communist and Nazi German leaders. The film showed graphic accounts of murder replete with firing squads and corpses in both totalitarian states. Also the there was a split screened sequence showing the rantings of both Castro and Hitler side by side. This film went on to blame Castro for Kennedy's death. Possibly foreseeing a future spread of INCA out of New Orleans, Ed Butler and his organization claimed that if there had been an INCA chapter in Dallas, Oswald may have been neutralized and the president's life may have been saved.

                Louisiana politics has had a tendency,during certain periods, of not only being colorful, but spreading beyond the boundaries of the state and into the nation. The first example of this phenomenon was former governor and US senator Huey P. Long who challenged Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the presidency in 1932 and found himself to be at odds with the Roosevelt administration many times in the early 1930s. Long founded the Share Our Wealth Clubs, which originated in Louisiana and spread to other states. INCA in the mid-Sixties started seeing something similar for its organization. Unlike Long's left wing group, INCA made no pretensions to populism. But it did share with Long a desire to move its politics out of the South and into the nation. So INCA soon found itself in a new partnership with California contributors such as National Airline chairman Dudley Swim and more importantly with Schick Razor executive Patrick Frawley, Jr. In the fall of 1966, Frawley underwrote the cost for television showings of Hitler in Havana in several large cities. The reaction proved rewarding for Butler in New Orleans as several hundred Cuban exiles rallied at New Orleans city hall and saluted INCA's film. By this time Butler had relocated his home base from New Orleans to practice his public relations craft in Los Angeles, the communications center of America. Since he felt Oswald was the vanguard of the later student revolt, he held meetings to determine what to do---what program would best expose the radicals.

                Ed Butler also worried about the Kennedy assassination since many books started coming out during this period. He noticed a predilection among the new writers to questioned the Warren Report and its conclusion that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. Although the investigation of District Attorney Jim Garrison  occurred in New Orleans and in fact implicated Clay Shaw, who at the time was a former director of the International Trade Mart, INCA itself never was implicated. He and Carlos Bringuier both were very critical of Garrison and his theory of CIA and  Cuban exile involvement in the assassination, but INCA's propaganda instead focused on writer Mark Lane.

                Ed Butler criticized Mark Lane, claiming he had been informed that Lane had been associated with several communist front groups between 1952 and 1967. He had gotten the information by asking Louisiana Congressman F. Edward Hebert to get information on Lane from HUAC committee member Congressman Willis. INCA's memos showed much concern for Lane, who was one of the leading critics of the Warren Commission. Two INCA leaders in a public statement criticized Lane's Rush to Judgment and branded him an unscrupulous communist. The Garrison investigation and the descendency upon New Orleans by Lane and others proved to be a distraction for INCA. But the organization continued in New Orleans, California and Washington DC with propaganda activities unrelated to the JFK assassination trial.

                In a 1968 memo explaining INCA's "programs and plans," a warning enveloped in hysteria was issued. Calling for mobilization of anti-communists from the left, right and center, INCA touched on several issues in this very turbulent year. Described in the memo was a resistance to the war in Vietnam in the US, which was according to INCA designed to split children from their parents. It spoke of events creating urban anarchy, and creating divisions between blacks and whites. Assassination was also spoken of in this April 8, 1968 memo which it describes as being used to divide government from the people. The memo went on to talk about the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions, which warned of "Communist convergence and predicted riots. INCA also lambasted black militancy claiming "Castroite Black Power extremists" wanted to assassinate black moderates such as Roy Wilkins and Whitney  Young.

                While in the early 1960s the issue of race was generally avoided by INCA, the latter part of the decade proved different. This memo and Butler's book Revolution is My Profession outlines this change of emphasis brought on by urban riots and campus unrest. In the memo the example of race as an issue outside the US is brought out. The INCA memo states, "From experience in Malaya and elsewhere, Communists know a one-race revolution won't work. If the Communists capture campuses, and attack the white sections from these sanctuaries the outlook will be very dark for America. Reiterating an old INCA theme in this memo, the New Orleans based group called for a mobilization of anti-communists of the left, right and center.

                In order to counteract the increasing radical and anti-war activities on college campuses, INCA set up some of their own programs. In a Readers Digest article from January, 1965 the author speaks of "red agents" and "front groups" and calls upon citizens to organize specific attack forces to "wreck the wreckage." The article brought up as one of its examples INCA and the Oswald/FPCC episode in New Orleans. And it went at the end to tell its readers how to contact INCA and get involved. INCA turned its attention to college campuses. In St. Louis, Missouri it set up a booth at the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) national conference. In Chicago at another conference, INCA members picketed the Student for a Democratic Society's national headquarters. INCA member Dick Warren of New Orleans was congratulated by hawkish South Carolina Congressman Mendel Rivers for his organization's work.

                INCA in the late 1960s took on the image as an all-American organization which believed in wholesome positive values. This attitude nurtured in part by  negative New Left rhetoric became incorporated into Ed Butler's organization with vigor. Another project was Up With People (UWP). UWP developed as a singing group in 1966 and expressed its desire to work with others, promote non-violent programs, and  avoid rebellion toward the older generation. INCA also got involved in drug education with a program entitled "Drugs and Teenagers." The purpose of the proposed TV documentary was to focus on why teenagers used drugs. It proved to be another effort by INCA which indicated a yearning for the turbulence of the 1960s to end, not unlike the so-called "decency rallies" which took place in some localities during this time. INCA's lip service to creating anti-communist coalitions were not that successful. Butler's organization did spread but increasingly sought out and formed alliances with politically conservative groups. One of the most important of these was the Young Americans for Freedom. The YAF increasingly started mimicking the New Left in its tactics. YAF engaged in liberating campus buildings taken over by the New Left activists.  One YAF activist exclaimed quite succinctly, "We don't need all the flag-wavers (referring to "Old Right" heroes such as California Superintendent of schools Max Rafferty and radio talk show host Joe Pyne). We need people who are hip to the media, like [Yippie leader] Jerry Rubin.  Increasingly Ed Butler found his organization's themes dated when compared to the YAF, but he understood the media, imagery of the person, and its effect on an audience. So the New Orleans public relations man grew his hair longer, wore mod clothing and hosted a television show called the SQUARE world of Ed Butler.

                Ed Butler's Westwood village SQUARE started in California as an auxiliary to the INCA organization. It too was funded by California business executive Patrick J. Frawley. Among the persons he debated were 1960s radical figures such as Chicago Seven trial defendants Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and William Kunstler. Butler also used a tactic which he learned from his public relations work which consisted in "aping" or copying the opposition. He countered the hippie "love-ins" with "SQUARE-ins, and accused the New Left of sponsoring love-ins to break down moral values." Butler also organized the INCA Information Service to counteract the counterculture and New Left oriented Liberation News Service. The object was to give timely reports of happenings at universities around the country. INCA's media proved as slanted as the New Left media was. At one particular gathering reported by SQUARE magazine, Butler sat on a panel with SDS founder Tom Hayden, and other 1960s radical figures such as Stu Alpert and Steve Shapiro. The radicals chastised Butler and when he rose to speak his mike cord was pulled. The radicals got up to leave and Butler's magazine reported it with the caption, "the revolutionaries beat an ignominous retreat."

                In addition to the radical left criticizing INCA's counterrevolutionary incursions, the establishment press chided in also. Hitler in Havana was roundly criticized in a New York Times review unflatteringly, "as the crudest form of  propaganda." Dr. Ochsner complained to his friend Turner Catledge the executive editor of the Times, but reported to Butler, "that we have a real problem when we have to fight the leftist press."  But INCA had friends on the right such as Patrick Frawley, Congressman Edward Hebert (a Congressional Medal of Honor Winner), and eventually included in its list of advisors General William Westmoreland, Cuban military figure Admiral George Anderson, and some intelligence experts such as Herbert Philbrick (former FBI agent and subject in the television series I Led Three Lives), and Malaysian psychological warfare expert C.C. Too. The inclusion of the Asian intelligence expert is revealing since INCA in addition to fighting Communism in the Western Hemisphere became increasingly involved in countering campus unrest and urging support of the US war effort in Vietnam. Butler continuously described the leftists as "tyrannists."

                A figure from the early INCA days started complaining about this turn of events. Carlos Bringuier, who had earlier debated Lee Harvey Oswald with Ed Butler,  voiced his support of the U.S. war effort, but lamented with concern how Castro had increased subversive activities when the U.S. started escalating in the Vietnam war. This article by Bringuier appeared in INCA's information service newsletter. Bringuier wrote about President Nixon's plan to "Vietnamize" the war, and urged a new program on called "Flan Torrienta" which would create an organization of Latin American nations for the purpose of countering Castro's subversion. This article appeared in March, 1970 and is an early indication of at least one INCA associate expressing a desire to get the organization back to its original purpose---which was to combat Communism in Latin America.

                INCA rhetoric is described by Arthur Carpenter as "rational but overwrought and its analysis simplistic."  But when one takes into account Butler's profession of public relations, the simplicity, the reliance on visual symbols and the need for simple but persuasive rhetoric Butler's communications style becomes  more understandable. Ed Butler was a salesman at heart, and since his constituency was an elite and consequently more prominent, wealthy and educated, the message conveyed need not be complex, philosophical, and academically inclined. It also didn't need alliances with other anti-communist groups on the far right which were concerned with segregation and paranoiac conspiracy theories of the variety talked about by the likes of Richard Hofstadter in his book the Paranoid Style of American Politics. One of Ed Butler's associates during the late 1960s was Lee Edwards, a former campaign worker for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.

                Edwards writes in his book Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution about Goldwater and the attacks made on him by both the far right and far left. The Nazi like National States Rights Party labeled him a kosher conservative due to his Jewish heritage. Goldwater had opposed civil rights programs, but he saw it as a constitutional issue rather than as a way to enforce segregation, Edwards writes. In 1964 Goldwater carried much of the South. It proved to be a seminal event for this solidly Democratic area of the nation. Since Butler's organization's emphasis was on free trade and anti-communism and not on race, INCA's political leanings and refusal to defend segregation  proved to be somewhat ahead of its time with regard to the region it originated in. But Lee Edwards and Ed Butler had other things in common besides ideology. Both had promotional skills. Edwards developed his in the service of Barry Goldwater, and Butler in the service of INCA. By the late 1960s both were now promoting the Information Council of the Americas as Lee Edwards became an advisor to the group.  Butler himself in many debates chastised both the extreme left and extreme right. He had debated Frank Colin head of the American Nazi Party at one point for the same reasons he took on the New Left.

                In fighting against extremism of both the left and right, and in his book Revolution is My Profession, Ed Butler expressed his plan of action. Butler's anti-communism was practically rather than ideologically based. On page 171 he describes "Model Making...as the deliberate construction and elevation of a model attitude, act, fad, concept, or personality for political purposes. He goes on to write, "By capturing or creating peer leaders in entertainment, sports, political and cultural figures with whom people can identify (especially youth) one can control the opinion climate in America as clearly as steering a car." Butler went on to use his nemesis, Kennedy assassination author Mark Lane and others as an example of this in defining books used to exonerate Oswald. Revolution is My Profession goes on to say, "In this age of instant idea via mass telecommunications, simply saying it is (or isn't) so, can make it so (or not so).

                In talking about his new profession of Conflict Management (which is basically a offshoot of public relations), INCA, and the coming war against communism and the media Butler describes the use of "Truth Tapes" which his organization made and used Cuban refugees such as Juanita Castro (sister of Fidel Castro) to serve as the voice on the tape recordings. These tapes were sent to over 15 Latin American countries and over 100 broadcast stations. Juanita Castro and Paul Bethel of the Free Cuba Committee in Miami, Florida both were advisors to INCA.  Butler and Dr. Ochsner saw the importance of propaganda early in the organizations inception and gave INCA credit in keeping leftist Salvador Allende out of power in Chile's 1964 presidential elections.

                Butler's obsession with the media is apparent in his book, when he writes, "The media are the delivery system for mental missiles. The messages are the warheads, The vehicles are the rockets." His experiences in Latin American propaganda show when he writes in the book, "Conflict Managers must learn to relate, to articulate for large numbers of people. As a spokesman for the SQUARE movement, I have learned no one can create fads or trends, but can identify and anticipate latent convictions and viewpoints, help verbalize them and give them form, content and substance." Butler applied this knowledge and used it when in Los Angeles with graphic symbols and other stimuli in his magazine as a way to counteract the New Left and hippie visual imagery at the time. He referred to the New Left as the anti-establishment and the hippies as the non-establishment. He saw both as being in need of Conflict Management. His INCA information service depicted hippie types in derogatory situations.

                In a 1973 New Orleans newspaper article, Ed Butler took credit for breaking the defunct SDS, and claimed a victory against tyranny. But this article proved to be one of the few jubilant moments for the Information Council of the Americas as the 1970s got under way. INCA's magnanimous California contributor Patrick Frawley incurred financial difficulties and his past generous support was lost. Also Dudley Swim, another generous California contributor died. In 1972 Butler closed the California operation, and moved back to New Orleans, but met with financial difficulties there also. Other things of Ed Butler's own doing lost ground for INCA in the early 1970s. Butler and Ochsner's weak explanation for the Watergate scandal placed the blame on the Communists. It proved to be a pathetic time for the organization in this narrow thinking analysis as anti-Castro exile compatriots and conservative fellow travelers Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez, G. Gordon Liddy and Bernard Barker all  were arrested, tried and convicted of the break-in of Democratic headquarters.

                INCA continued until 1981, its final demise attributed to the death of  an aged Dr. Alton Ochsner that year.  His son Dr. Alton Ochsner, Jr. helped start another organization similar to INCA. The Caribbean Commission was formed in 1982 by the younger Ochsner and several influential  New Orleanians. While INCA had directed its energies on the Cuban Revolution, the CC concentrated on Nicaragua.

                INCA proved to make a definitive statement with regard to anti-communism in its time. Ed Butler in September, 1980, late in the organization's history, interviewed president-to-be Ronald Reagan. Several years later in June, 1982 Reagan addressed the British Parliament. He surprised his supporters and infuriated his enemies by returning to the idea of the Cold War as a conflict between value systems. Reagan said, "The struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated..." Reagan went on in the speech, "At the same time, we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?" Reagan presided over the disintegration of communism. INCA founder Ed Butler like his president  was a communicator. The reference to Reagan infuriating his enemies by taking on an idea of calling the Cold War a conflict of value systems, and where communications and not bombs were the key to winning the struggle was one not foreign to Ed Butler. His own style preceeded the likes of other communications wizards such as Lee Atwater and Ralph Reed. While his own propaganda organization was wrought with covert activities, some of which we do not know everything about yet, he and INCA still proved to be politically effective. An American History magazine article showed some of the possible intelligence links of Butler to the CIA directly and through  the International Trade Mart and Cuban Student Directorate members such as his Cuban exile colleague Carlos Bringuier. Butler's own ties to INCA, the trade mart and possibly to the CIA was peripheral to the Garrison investigation of  Kennedy's death, and the congressional intelligence inquiries that followed.  These CIA links  may or may not be true, but if so would put another interesting footnote in the history of the Information Council of the Americas.

           

Bibliography for the INCA topic:

Michael Zatarain. David Duke: Evolution of a Klansman. Pelican Publishing Co. Gretna, La. 1990.

"David Duke: Evolution of a Klansman," Reviewed by Lance Hill. Journal of  Southern History.  No. 58. (Feb. 1992) pp. 176-177.

"The Emergence of David Duke and the Politics of Race," Reviewed by David J. Garrow. Georgia Historical Quarterly. No. 76. (Winter, 1992) pp. 1018-1019.

"Huey Long: Progressive Backlash?" Matthew J. Schott. Louisiana History. 1986 No. 27 (2): pp. 133-145.

"The Pine Island Situation: Petroleum, Politics, And Research Opportunities In Southern History. Brady M. Banta. Journal of Southern History. 1986 No. 52 (4) : pp. 589-610.

"Four Anti-Longites: A Tentative Assessment. Mark T. Carleton. Louisiana History. 1989 No. 30 (3) : pp. 249-262.

"Huey Long and the Communists." Edward F. Haas. Louisiana History. 1991. No. 32 (1) : pp. 29-46.

"Huey Long and Racism." Glen Jeansonne. Louisiana History. 1992. No. 33 (3) : pp. 265-282.

"Social Origins of Anti-Communism: The Information Council of the Americas." Arthur E. Carpenter. Louisiana History. 1989. No. 30 (2) : pp. 117-143.

Dan T. Carter. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge and London. 1995.

Lee Edwards. Goldwater :The Man Who Made A Revolution. Regency Press. New York. 1995.

Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw. Plot or Politics : The Garrison Case and its Cast. Pelican Publishing House. New Orleans, La. 1967.

Ed Butler. Revolution Is My Profession. Twin Circle, 1968.

Florida Legislative Investigative Committee (aka---The Johns Committee). Records From 1954-1965.

T. Harry Williams. Huey Long. Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. New York, 1981.

Richard Gid Powers. Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Communism. The Free Press. New York and others. 1995.

Alan Brinkley. Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression. Vintage Books. New York, 1983.

Carol Flake. New Orleans: Behind the Mask of America's Most Exotic City. Grove Press, New York, 1994.

Carlos Bringuier. Red Friday. Chas. Hallberg and Company. Chicago, Ill. 1969.

"Declassified." by Roger S. Peterson. American History. Vol. XXXI No. 3. August, 1996.

Philip H. Melanson, PhD. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and US Intelligence. Praeger Publishers. New York, 1990.

INCA. Political Ephemera. Tulane University Special Collections.

Papers of  Dr. Alton Ochsner. Williams Center. New Orleans Historical Society.

James DiEugenio. Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case. Sherridan Square Press. New York, 1992.

The Warren Commission Report : Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of

President John F. Kennedy. Vol. I-XXVI.

Telephone Interview with Ed Butler. February 28, 1997.

"Counterrevolution," George Fox. Playboy. Vol. 17 No. 3.March, 1970.

"Castro's Foes, Backers Battle on Embargo."  Tampa Times. March 1, 1961.

"Cigar Workers on the Spot." Tampa Times. March 3, 1961.

 

End of Page

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 1998-2004 Cuban Information Archives. All Rights Reserved.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Mr. Dean.

Thanks very much for all of the insight and information you have provided.  I hold you in high esteem.

Any chance you may be able to shed light on INCA?  Was this formed independently of the JBS, or was it a faction?  Actually, I'd like to ask the same question about the YAF.  Were all of these various organizations launched, or later infiltrated and controlled/influenced by the JBS?

General William Westmoreland [who died yesterday at age 91], appears to have been an advisor to INCA at one time. 

Kind regards,

Lee

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/arti..._us_in_vietnam/

http://cuban-exile.com/doc_076-100/doc0078.html

CUBAN INFORMATION ARCHIVES

DOCUMENT  0078

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SHORT HISTORY OF INCA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A SHORT HISTORY OF INCA

(INFORMATION COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS)

by Frank DeBenedictis

            One aspect of anti-communism which has not received the attention given to the US conflict with the Soviet Union is the more recent war with Fidel Castro and his Communist regime in Cuba. Cuba's conversion to Marxism in 1959 caused much consternation in the United States, and especially in cities doing trade with that Latin American country. New Orleans in particular feared the new regime, and out of this fear a new anti-communist organization based in this city was born in 1961 called the Information Council of the Americas (INCA).

                 By the 1950s, 75% of US imports from Latin America came through the port of New Orleans. Civic and business leaders of the Crescent City throughout the decades forged closer business, political and social ties with their Latin American counterparts. Fidel Castro's rise to power sent shock waves through New Orleans and threatened a lucrative mutual relationship. In Tampa, Florida (another large port city) where cigar manufacturing played an important part of that cities industry, the Cuban Revolution also caused alarms to go off when Senator George Smathers of Florida proposed an embargo against Cuban tobacco. But Tampa reacted differently from New Orleans.

                 Instead of fear and reaction leading to the anti-communist INCA, Tampa saw a rise in pro-Castro activity. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee started a chapter and in an early 1961 rally proclaimed Smathers action, "would lead to unemployment in Tampa." Castro's revolution began to take effect in the United States. Three months after the Tampa FPCC rally, the Information Council of the Americas would begin its own campaign against the changing economic sensibilities of a Communist Cuba.

                 INCA was founded on May 15, 1961 by public relations professional Edward Scannell Butler. From the beginning its agenda was narrowly focused on Communism as an issue. INCA in fact sought support from liberal as well as conservative anti-communists, asking liberal anti-communist Smathers to speak at an organization function. Ed Butler had prior to the Castro takeover, laid plans for an anti-communist organization. But when Castro took over in Cuba, and New Orleans expressed growing anxiety over the new Latin American dictator, the 27 year old public relations man was handed a searing issue and an alarmed constituency.

                 Ed Butler had an interest in both pubic relations and psychology, so in a real sense his organization was not ideologically based, even though this public relations man exhibited a penchant for conservative politics. He especially expressed admiration for red-baiting Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy whom he described as a great American. So Ed Butler the founder of INCA did have ideological convictions beyond the function of INCA, but he put his promotional talents rather than politics into the organization. INCA soon evolved into an effective propaganda machine under its youthful leader.

                 Loyola University archivist Arthur Carpenter expressed anti-communism in a realpolitik sense when he poses the question, "Was anti-communism a manifestation of popular, democratic sentiment or of elite interests?" He answers that question in the latter vein, including the formation of INCA. Carpenter also describes anti-communism and the origins of INCA in a post-World War II context.

                 Popular anti-communism as opposed to an elitist based movement died with the more excessive reactions of  Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. Then the writings of historian Richard Hofstader and sociologist Daniel Bell dismissed the idea of a popular anti-communist movement. They were saying that legitimate anti-communism could be properly understood only by the elite; the public should be encouraged to divert in other directions. So by the late 1950s the better known organizations which had anti-communism as a primary function tended to be organs of business, civic and academic leaders. The John Birch Society in 1958 was founded by Robert Welch and twelve well off business friends in Indianapolis. In 1961 the Young Americans for Freedom met at the Connecticut mansion lawn of  National Review editor William F. Buckley to form that group. INCA came on the heels of both of these conservative organizations and had similar patrician origins.

                 Along with founder Ed Butler, the most important member of INCA was famed physician Dr. Alton Ochsner. Ochsner, 38 years Butler's senior formed a partnership with his younger colleague which would last twenty years. Ed Butler, who didn't have a great knowledge of Latin American affairs, benefited substantially from the association with the celebrated doctor. Alton Ochsner had an internationalist outlook---especially when it pertained to the field of medicine. Ochsner felt medicine transcended national boundaries, and had trained many physician exchange students from Latin America since the 1920s.  His prominence as an international physician led him to be elected to leadership of both the International Trade Mart and International House in the 1960s. Both business groups  promoted Latin American trade for New Orleans, and had been founded immediately after World War II. Ochsner also was elected to the presidency of the Cordell Hull Foundation which administered a program of Inter-American university study.

                 Ochsner fit the mode of the wealthy educated elite. He was elderly and encouraged other New Orleans prominent and wealthy citizens to join INCA. Ochsner's persuasiveness helped Ed Butler recruit United Fruit's Joseph W. Montgomery, Delta Steamship Line's John W. Clark, International Trade Mart's William Zetzmann and William B. Reily of Reily Coffee Company. The local Catholic hierarchy also joined with Archbishop Phillip M. Hannan and Dean of Loyola University Law School AE Papale becoming members. INCA also received endorsements from Mayor deLesseps Morrison and Congressman Hale Boggs.

                 INCA's approach to anti-communism (in addition to being anti-Castro) tended to follow a practical approach of containment. This approach was not conciliatory, but echoed the realities of American foreign policy in the early 1960s with the newly elected Kennedy administration. Dr. Alton Ochsner had written a letter to President Kennedy, at a friend's request, urging a quarantine of Cuba from shipments of troops and military equipment. Yet Ochsner doubted the plea would matter since, "many of Kennedy's advisors were leftists." Presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. echoing the new administrations desire to chart a new course in foreign policy---both with regard to the Cold War and the developing nations---called for a new liberal anti-communism, one that would be more cooperative with the American progressive left, and sensitive to changes in the less rigid post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Schlesinger had expressed his opinion that, "a policy designed for the age of Stalin was not necessary in the age of Khruschev."

                 Cold War containment dominated foreign policy in Eisenhower's administration. Advisor Dean Acheson was its main proponent, and the incoming Kennedy  saw it as static and a remnant of the old order. When Kennedy became president in January, 1961 he faced a dilemma since he inherited the CIA sponsored war against Castro. This war started with the Eisenhower administration and continued with Kennedy, culminating  with the Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961. Eisenhower's vice president and Kennedy rival Richard Nixon was one of the first Republicans to make a career out of anti-communism and also had been one of the first in his party to support the Democratic Party's contrived Marshall Plan. Nixon was not a disciple of Dean Acheson either, favoring a more aggressive stand against Communism. The Vice President's former membership on the House Committee on Un-American activities belied the difference between two types of anti-communist thought. One was liberal anti-communism which dismissed the American Communist Party as a real political danger in the United States.  The other anti-communist wing was politically conservative and domestically counter-subversive in its outlook. Conservatives saw Communists infiltrating public life and imposing "collectivist" values on the population at large. Both Nixon and the Information Council of the Americas with its leadership of Butler, Ochsner and the New Orleans business elite  fit the latter. Both Nixon and INCA were also internationalist in outlook. Yet with the new Kennedy administration, INCA opted for a containment policy, since it was unable to be more aggressive toward Cuba. It directed its propaganda energies toward Latin American nationals who had not fallen to  Communism, but (who) like the New Orleans business elite  felt threatened by Castro.

                 INCA started expanding its bi-directional support lines into Latin America. Ed Butler in an interview explained to me that INCA was, "an international organization." Nurtured by its benefactor Dr. Ochsner, it expanded its list of supporters to include former Latin American heads of state. Among them were former Guatemalan president Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza, and Juan Peron, former president of Argentina. Ochsner's medical prowess made him revered in Latin American circles, some of the Latins saw him almost like a god. In his early career, Ochsner studied in Europe, practiced in New Orleans, set up the Ochsner medical clinic in 1941, and "cultivated relations with Latins in New Orleans." While he did profess at times extremist personal views toward integration and communism, historically these were somewhat offset by his dedication to internationalism, trade and medicine.

                 Fear of Communism was no less a concern for Ed Butler, Dr. Ochsner, or the other prominent INCA members than it was for the many right-wing segregationist groups springing up in the South in the early 1960s. INCA, however, studiously avoided forming alliances with the segregationists. INCA had never defended segregation.  Its own rapport with Latin Americans further strengthened this image, and the organization made alliances with local anti-Castro Cuban refugees. Then in August, 1963 an event proving important to both the Cubans and INCA occurred. INCA was to have an encounter in New Orleans with the future accused assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald.

                 On August 5, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald visited Casa Roca, a clothing store managed by Carlos Bringuier. Bringuier, a Cuban refugee, was one of the important Cuban exile leaders in New Orleans at the time. The ex-Marine offered help to the beleaguered Cuban exiles in the form of military training for the purpose of fighting Castro. Four days later Bringuier became inflamed when he saw Oswald on Canal Street passing out pro-Castro literature, urging "hands off Cuba" and promoting the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). The two got into a fight and were arrested. Again on August 16, Oswald passed out literature, this time in front of the International Trade Mart.  On August 21, Oswald joined in a radio debate with Bringuier of the Cuban Student Directorate, an anti-Castro group and Ed Butler of INCA. The participants were ready for Oswald, having done some research on him, and shifted the discussion to his defection to the Soviet Union, his sympathy for Cuba and his professed Marxism.  Ed Butler described Oswald as an articulate speaker, and well versed in his topic. But having looked into the defector's background and discrediting him, the INCA director also expressed the view that they had driven him and the FPCC out of town.

                 President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, three months after the New Orleans radio and TV sessions. Oswald was charged with the murder. Ed Butler recorded the debate sessions and produced a new propaganda tool with two LP records entitled Oswald: Self-Portrait in Red and Oswald Speaks. Butler after the assassination argued Communist propaganda had incited Oswald to violence. The Oswald episode also provided new raw material for yet another propaganda film, the lurid Hitler in Havana---which equated the Cuban Communist and Nazi German leaders. The film showed graphic accounts of murder replete with firing squads and corpses in both totalitarian states. Also the there was a split screened sequence showing the rantings of both Castro and Hitler side by side. This film went on to blame Castro for Kennedy's death. Possibly foreseeing a future spread of INCA out of New Orleans, Ed Butler and his organization claimed that if there had been an INCA chapter in Dallas, Oswald may have been neutralized and the president's life may have been saved.

                 Louisiana politics has had a tendency,during certain periods, of not only being colorful, but spreading beyond the boundaries of the state and into the nation. The first example of this phenomenon was former governor and US senator Huey P. Long who challenged Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the presidency in 1932 and found himself to be at odds with the Roosevelt administration many times in the early 1930s. Long founded the Share Our Wealth Clubs, which originated in Louisiana and spread to other states. INCA in the mid-Sixties started seeing something similar for its organization. Unlike Long's left wing group, INCA made no pretensions to populism. But it did share with Long a desire to move its politics out of the South and into the nation. So INCA soon found itself in a new partnership with California contributors such as National Airline chairman Dudley Swim and more importantly with Schick Razor executive Patrick Frawley, Jr. In the fall of 1966, Frawley underwrote the cost for television showings of Hitler in Havana in several large cities. The reaction proved rewarding for Butler in New Orleans as several hundred Cuban exiles rallied at New Orleans city hall and saluted INCA's film. By this time Butler had relocated his home base from New Orleans to practice his public relations craft in Los Angeles, the communications center of America. Since he felt Oswald was the vanguard of the later student revolt, he held meetings to determine what to do---what program would best expose the radicals.

                 Ed Butler also worried about the Kennedy assassination since many books started coming out during this period. He noticed a predilection among the new writers to questioned the Warren Report and its conclusion that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. Although the investigation of District Attorney Jim Garrison  occurred in New Orleans and in fact implicated Clay Shaw, who at the time was a former director of the International Trade Mart, INCA itself never was implicated. He and Carlos Bringuier both were very critical of Garrison and his theory of CIA and  Cuban exile involvement in the assassination, but INCA's propaganda instead focused on writer Mark Lane.

                 Ed Butler criticized Mark Lane, claiming he had been informed that Lane had been associated with several communist front groups between 1952 and 1967. He had gotten the information by asking Louisiana Congressman F. Edward Hebert to get information on Lane from HUAC committee member Congressman Willis. INCA's memos showed much concern for Lane, who was one of the leading critics of the Warren Commission. Two INCA leaders in a public statement criticized Lane's Rush to Judgment and branded him an unscrupulous communist. The Garrison investigation and the descendency upon New Orleans by Lane and others proved to be a distraction for INCA. But the organization continued in New Orleans, California and Washington DC with propaganda activities unrelated to the JFK assassination trial.

                 In a 1968 memo explaining INCA's "programs and plans," a warning enveloped in hysteria was issued. Calling for mobilization of anti-communists from the left, right and center, INCA touched on several issues in this very turbulent year. Described in the memo was a resistance to the war in Vietnam in the US, which was according to INCA designed to split children from their parents. It spoke of events creating urban anarchy, and creating divisions between blacks and whites. Assassination was also spoken of in this April 8, 1968 memo which it describes as being used to divide government from the people. The memo went on to talk about the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions, which warned of "Communist convergence and predicted riots. INCA also lambasted black militancy claiming "Castroite Black Power extremists" wanted to assassinate black moderates such as Roy Wilkins and Whitney  Young.

                 While in the early 1960s the issue of race was generally avoided by INCA, the latter part of the decade proved different. This memo and Butler's book Revolution is My Profession outlines this change of emphasis brought on by urban riots and campus unrest. In the memo the example of race as an issue outside the US is brought out. The INCA memo states, "From experience in Malaya and elsewhere, Communists know a one-race revolution won't work. If the Communists capture campuses, and attack the white sections from these sanctuaries the outlook will be very dark for America. Reiterating an old INCA theme in this memo, the New Orleans based group called for a mobilization of anti-communists of the left, right and center.

                 In order to counteract the increasing radical and anti-war activities on college campuses, INCA set up some of their own programs. In a Readers Digest article from January, 1965 the author speaks of "red agents" and "front groups" and calls upon citizens to organize specific attack forces to "wreck the wreckage." The article brought up as one of its examples INCA and the Oswald/FPCC episode in New Orleans. And it went at the end to tell its readers how to contact INCA and get involved. INCA turned its attention to college campuses. In St. Louis, Missouri it set up a booth at the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) national conference. In Chicago at another conference, INCA members picketed the Student for a Democratic Society's national headquarters. INCA member Dick Warren of New Orleans was congratulated by hawkish South Carolina Congressman Mendel Rivers for his organization's work.

                 INCA in the late 1960s took on the image as an all-American organization which believed in wholesome positive values. This attitude nurtured in part by  negative New Left rhetoric became incorporated into Ed Butler's organization with vigor. Another project was Up With People (UWP). UWP developed as a singing group in 1966 and expressed its desire to work with others, promote non-violent programs, and  avoid rebellion toward the older generation. INCA also got involved in drug education with a program entitled "Drugs and Teenagers." The purpose of the proposed TV documentary was to focus on why teenagers used drugs. It proved to be another effort by INCA which indicated a yearning for the turbulence of the 1960s to end, not unlike the so-called "decency rallies" which took place in some localities during this time. INCA's lip service to creating anti-communist coalitions were not that successful. Butler's organization did spread but increasingly sought out and formed alliances with politically conservative groups. One of the most important of these was the Young Americans for Freedom. The YAF increasingly started mimicking the New Left in its tactics. YAF engaged in liberating campus buildings taken over by the New Left activists.  One YAF activist exclaimed quite succinctly, "We don't need all the flag-wavers (referring to "Old Right" heroes such as California Superintendent of schools Max Rafferty and radio talk show host Joe Pyne). We need people who are hip to the media, like [Yippie leader] Jerry Rubin.  Increasingly Ed Butler found his organization's themes dated when compared to the YAF, but he understood the media, imagery of the person, and its effect on an audience. So the New Orleans public relations man grew his hair longer, wore mod clothing and hosted a television show called the SQUARE world of Ed Butler.

                 Ed Butler's Westwood village SQUARE started in California as an auxiliary to the INCA organization. It too was funded by California business executive Patrick J. Frawley. Among the persons he debated were 1960s radical figures such as Chicago Seven trial defendants Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and William Kunstler. Butler also used a tactic which he learned from his public relations work which consisted in "aping" or copying the opposition. He countered the hippie "love-ins" with "SQUARE-ins, and accused the New Left of sponsoring love-ins to break down moral values." Butler also organized the INCA Information Service to counteract the counterculture and New Left oriented Liberation News Service. The object was to give timely reports of happenings at universities around the country. INCA's media proved as slanted as the New Left media was. At one particular gathering reported by SQUARE magazine, Butler sat on a panel with SDS founder Tom Hayden, and other 1960s radical figures such as Stu Alpert and Steve Shapiro. The radicals chastised Butler and when he rose to speak his mike cord was pulled. The radicals got up to leave and Butler's magazine reported it with the caption, "the revolutionaries beat an ignominous retreat."

                 In addition to the radical left criticizing INCA's counterrevolutionary incursions, the establishment press chided in also. Hitler in Havana was roundly criticized in a New York Times review unflatteringly, "as the crudest form of  propaganda." Dr. Ochsner complained to his friend Turner Catledge the executive editor of the Times, but reported to Butler, "that we have a real problem when we have to fight the leftist press."  But INCA had friends on the right such as Patrick Frawley, Congressman Edward Hebert (a Congressional Medal of Honor Winner), and eventually included in its list of advisors General William Westmoreland, Cuban military figure Admiral George Anderson, and some intelligence experts such as Herbert Philbrick (former FBI agent and subject in the television series I Led Three Lives), and Malaysian psychological warfare expert C.C. Too. The inclusion of the Asian intelligence expert is revealing since INCA in addition to fighting Communism in the Western Hemisphere became increasingly involved in countering campus unrest and urging support of the US war effort in Vietnam. Butler continuously described the leftists as "tyrannists."

                 A figure from the early INCA days started complaining about this turn of events. Carlos Bringuier, who had earlier debated Lee Harvey Oswald with Ed Butler,  voiced his support of the U.S. war effort, but lamented with concern how Castro had increased subversive activities when the U.S. started escalating in the Vietnam war. This article by Bringuier appeared in INCA's information service newsletter. Bringuier wrote about President Nixon's plan to "Vietnamize" the war, and urged a new program on called "Flan Torrienta" which would create an organization of Latin American nations for the purpose of countering Castro's subversion. This article appeared in March, 1970 and is an early indication of at least one INCA associate expressing a desire to get the organization back to its original purpose---which was to combat Communism in Latin America.

                 INCA rhetoric is described by Arthur Carpenter as "rational but overwrought and its analysis simplistic."  But when one takes into account Butler's profession of public relations, the simplicity, the reliance on visual symbols and the need for simple but persuasive rhetoric Butler's communications style becomes  more understandable. Ed Butler was a salesman at heart, and since his constituency was an elite and consequently more prominent, wealthy and educated, the message conveyed need not be complex, philosophical, and academically inclined. It also didn't need alliances with other anti-communist groups on the far right which were concerned with segregation and paranoiac conspiracy theories of the variety talked about by the likes of Richard Hofstadter in his book the Paranoid Style of American Politics. One of Ed Butler's associates during the late 1960s was Lee Edwards, a former campaign worker for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.

                 Edwards writes in his book Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution about Goldwater and the attacks made on him by both the far right and far left. The Nazi like National States Rights Party labeled him a kosher conservative due to his Jewish heritage. Goldwater had opposed civil rights programs, but he saw it as a constitutional issue rather than as a way to enforce segregation, Edwards writes. In 1964 Goldwater carried much of the South. It proved to be a seminal event for this solidly Democratic area of the nation. Since Butler's organization's emphasis was on free trade and anti-communism and not on race, INCA's political leanings and refusal to defend segregation  proved to be somewhat ahead of its time with regard to the region it originated in. But Lee Edwards and Ed Butler had other things in common besides ideology. Both had promotional skills. Edwards developed his in the service of Barry Goldwater, and Butler in the service of INCA. By the late 1960s both were now promoting the Information Council of the Americas as Lee Edwards became an advisor to the group.  Butler himself in many debates chastised both the extreme left and extreme right. He had debated Frank Colin head of the American Nazi Party at one point for the same reasons he took on the New Left.

                 In fighting against extremism of both the left and right, and in his book Revolution is My Profession, Ed Butler expressed his plan of action. Butler's anti-communism was practically rather than ideologically based. On page 171 he describes "Model Making...as the deliberate construction and elevation of a model attitude, act, fad, concept, or personality for political purposes. He goes on to write, "By capturing or creating peer leaders in entertainment, sports, political and cultural figures with whom people can identify (especially youth) one can control the opinion climate in America as clearly as steering a car." Butler went on to use his nemesis, Kennedy assassination author Mark Lane and others as an example of this in defining books used to exonerate Oswald. Revolution is My Profession goes on to say, "In this age of instant idea via mass telecommunications, simply saying it is (or isn't) so, can make it so (or not so).

                 In talking about his new profession of Conflict Management (which is basically a offshoot of public relations), INCA, and the coming war against communism and the media Butler describes the use of "Truth Tapes" which his organization made and used Cuban refugees such as Juanita Castro (sister of Fidel Castro) to serve as the voice on the tape recordings. These tapes were sent to over 15 Latin American countries and over 100 broadcast stations. Juanita Castro and Paul Bethel of the Free Cuba Committee in Miami, Florida both were advisors to INCA.  Butler and Dr. Ochsner saw the importance of propaganda early in the organizations inception and gave INCA credit in keeping leftist Salvador Allende out of power in Chile's 1964 presidential elections.

                 Butler's obsession with the media is apparent in his book, when he writes, "The media are the delivery system for mental missiles. The messages are the warheads, The vehicles are the rockets." His experiences in Latin American propaganda show when he writes in the book, "Conflict Managers must learn to relate, to articulate for large numbers of people. As a spokesman for the SQUARE movement, I have learned no one can create fads or trends, but can identify and anticipate latent convictions and viewpoints, help verbalize them and give them form, content and substance." Butler applied this knowledge and used it when in Los Angeles with graphic symbols and other stimuli in his magazine as a way to counteract the New Left and hippie visual imagery at the time. He referred to the New Left as the anti-establishment and the hippies as the non-establishment. He saw both as being in need of Conflict Management. His INCA information service depicted hippie types in derogatory situations.

                 In a 1973 New Orleans newspaper article, Ed Butler took credit for breaking the defunct SDS, and claimed a victory against tyranny. But this article proved to be one of the few jubilant moments for the Information Council of the Americas as the 1970s got under way. INCA's magnanimous California contributor Patrick Frawley incurred financial difficulties and his past generous support was lost. Also Dudley Swim, another generous California contributor died. In 1972 Butler closed the California operation, and moved back to New Orleans, but met with financial difficulties there also. Other things of Ed Butler's own doing lost ground for INCA in the early 1970s. Butler and Ochsner's weak explanation for the Watergate scandal placed the blame on the Communists. It proved to be a pathetic time for the organization in this narrow thinking analysis as anti-Castro exile compatriots and conservative fellow travelers Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez, G. Gordon Liddy and Bernard Barker all  were arrested, tried and convicted of the break-in of Democratic headquarters.

                 INCA continued until 1981, its final demise attributed to the death of  an aged Dr. Alton Ochsner that year.  His son Dr. Alton Ochsner, Jr. helped start another organization similar to INCA. The Caribbean Commission was formed in 1982 by the younger Ochsner and several influential  New Orleanians. While INCA had directed its energies on the Cuban Revolution, the CC concentrated on Nicaragua.

                 INCA proved to make a definitive statement with regard to anti-communism in its time. Ed Butler in September, 1980, late in the organization's history, interviewed president-to-be Ronald Reagan. Several years later in June, 1982 Reagan addressed the British Parliament. He surprised his supporters and infuriated his enemies by returning to the idea of the Cold War as a conflict between value systems. Reagan said, "The struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated..." Reagan went on in the speech, "At the same time, we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?" Reagan presided over the disintegration of communism. INCA founder Ed Butler like his president  was a communicator. The reference to Reagan infuriating his enemies by taking on an idea of calling the Cold War a conflict of value systems, and where communications and not bombs were the key to winning the struggle was one not foreign to Ed Butler. His own style preceeded the likes of other communications wizards such as Lee Atwater and Ralph Reed. While his own propaganda organization was wrought with covert activities, some of which we do not know everything about yet, he and INCA still proved to be politically effective. An American History magazine article showed some of the possible intelligence links of Butler to the CIA directly and through  the International Trade Mart and Cuban Student Directorate members such as his Cuban exile colleague Carlos Bringuier. Butler's own ties to INCA, the trade mart and possibly to the CIA was peripheral to the Garrison investigation of  Kennedy's death, and the congressional intelligence inquiries that followed.  These CIA links  may or may not be true, but if so would put another interesting footnote in the history of the Information Council of the Americas.

            

Bibliography for the INCA topic:

Michael Zatarain. David Duke: Evolution of a Klansman. Pelican Publishing Co. Gretna, La. 1990.

"David Duke: Evolution of a Klansman," Reviewed by Lance Hill. Journal of  Southern History.  No. 58. (Feb. 1992) pp. 176-177.

"The Emergence of David Duke and the Politics of Race," Reviewed by David J. Garrow. Georgia Historical Quarterly. No. 76. (Winter, 1992) pp. 1018-1019.

"Huey Long: Progressive Backlash?" Matthew J. Schott. Louisiana History. 1986 No. 27 (2): pp. 133-145.

"The Pine Island Situation: Petroleum, Politics, And Research Opportunities In Southern History. Brady M. Banta. Journal of Southern History. 1986 No. 52 (4) : pp. 589-610.

"Four Anti-Longites: A Tentative Assessment. Mark T. Carleton. Louisiana History. 1989 No. 30 (3) : pp. 249-262.

"Huey Long and the Communists." Edward F. Haas. Louisiana History. 1991. No. 32 (1) : pp. 29-46.

"Huey Long and Racism." Glen Jeansonne. Louisiana History. 1992. No. 33 (3) : pp. 265-282.

"Social Origins of Anti-Communism: The Information Council of the Americas." Arthur E. Carpenter. Louisiana History. 1989. No. 30 (2) : pp. 117-143.

Dan T. Carter. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge and London. 1995.

Lee Edwards. Goldwater :The Man Who Made A Revolution. Regency Press. New York. 1995.

Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw. Plot or Politics : The Garrison Case and its Cast. Pelican Publishing House. New Orleans, La. 1967.

Ed Butler. Revolution Is My Profession. Twin Circle, 1968.

Florida Legislative Investigative Committee (aka---The Johns Committee). Records From 1954-1965.

T. Harry Williams. Huey Long. Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. New York, 1981.

Richard Gid Powers. Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Communism. The Free Press. New York and others. 1995.

Alan Brinkley. Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression. Vintage Books. New York, 1983.

Carol Flake. New Orleans: Behind the Mask of America's Most Exotic City. Grove Press, New York, 1994.

Carlos Bringuier. Red Friday. Chas. Hallberg and Company. Chicago, Ill. 1969.

"Declassified." by Roger S. Peterson. American History. Vol. XXXI No. 3. August, 1996.

Philip H. Melanson, PhD. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and US Intelligence. Praeger Publishers. New York, 1990.

INCA. Political Ephemera. Tulane University Special Collections.

Papers of  Dr. Alton Ochsner. Williams Center. New Orleans Historical Society.

James DiEugenio. Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case. Sherridan Square Press. New York, 1992.

The Warren Commission Report : Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of

President John F. Kennedy. Vol. I-XXVI.

Telephone Interview with Ed Butler. February 28, 1997.

"Counterrevolution," George Fox. Playboy. Vol. 17 No. 3.March, 1970.

"Castro's Foes, Backers Battle on Embargo."  Tampa Times. March 1, 1961.

"Cigar Workers on the Spot." Tampa Times. March 3, 1961.

 

End of Page

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright 1998-2004 Cuban Information Archives. All Rights Reserved.

Lee,

All anti-communist, anti-castro, anti-jfk et al; of which JBS, with it's creator LDS, and it's sponsors, was the "Ultra and pseudo conservative" vanguard, each had a total of intermingling followers.

Harry

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...