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The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
Paul: There you go again. Now i he have to read this nonsense. Dulles was trying to kill Lumumba without telling the winning candidate, and then he did not tell JFK even after the guy was dead. Dulles secretly knew that Bay of Pigs was going to fail, yet told JFK he felt confident it would succeed. He approved the plots to kill Castro, again without informing the president. As the Bruce/ Lovett report makes clear Dulles turned the CIA into a covert action machine, one which Kennedy complained he was in the dark about at times. Before Smathers sold out his pal, he said that one night at dinner he was trying to encourage JFK into backing a plot to kill Castro. Kennedy exploded in rage and smashed a plate over the table. He said he wanted no such talk in his presence and complained about the CIA doing these kinds of things on their own, as he suspected they had done with Trujillo. Need I even mention Truman? That column in the Washington Post worried Dulles so much that he went to Truman's house and tried to get him to retract it. -
From my review of Larry Tye's hack book on RFK. Another point that Tye scores his subject on is that RFK pondered whether an air strike would be enough to get the missiles out, or if there needed to be an invasion. At this first meeting President Kennedy had just listed four options his advisors had mapped out for him. Robert Kennedy then chimes in: We have the fifth one really, which is the invasion [which was already raised by Maxwell Taylor]. I would say that you’re dropping bombs all over Cuba if you do the second, air and the airports, knocking out their planes, dropping it on all their missiles. You’re covering most of Cuba. You’re going to kill an awful lot of people, and we’re going to take an awful lot of heat on this. And then—you know the heat. You’re going to announce the reason that you’re doing it is because they’re sending in these kinds of missiles. Well, I would think it’s almost incumbent upon the Russians then, to say, Well we’re going to send them in again. And if you do it again, we’re going to do the same thing in Turkey” or “we’re going to so the same thing to Iran.” (The Kennedy Tapes, edited by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, p. 66) Does this sound like RFK is pushing for an invasion? He is making an overall air strike, which is what Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had described, sound very unappealing. As Steven Schneider writes, Bobby Kennedy was against even the air strike option, comparing it to what the Japanese did to America at Pearl Harbor. So how could he have been for an invasion? (Robert F. Kennedy, pp. 56-57) In fact, after an unsettling meeting with congressional leaders who thought the agreed upon blockade of Cuba was too weak, the brothers were shaken by the sabre rattling. They both agreed that the blockade was the least JFK could do without being impeached. (op. cit. Probe, p. 16)
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Having to look at what was a decent thread after Cloud and Koch jump on is discouraging. Oh no, Moynihan and the Missile Crisis? May and Zelikow were working from a baseline, the tapes. So whatever the politics of Zelikow, there was little wiggle room. Plus May was his check and balance. There was a slight debate over this later, but I checked it out. I thought it was minor at best. The whole thing about the Jupiters is silly, if you go back and look at the newspaper stories, they were named at the time. I will say it again, The Kennedy Tapes, is an invaluable chronicle because its in the participants' own words. Plus its comprehensive, it lays in the prologue and goes all the way to the final removal of the bombers. Please note, Nitze wanted to retaliate for the U2 shootdown--which was a really dumb thing for Castro to do--Kennedy did not do it.
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The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
Paul: I was writing about the Dulles vs Kennedy confrontation over Lumumba. I consider Mahoney and Jonathan K to be good sources on that. In fact their books are considered classics today. That Dulles/JFK confrontation ended in early 1961. And its one of the reasons Dulles was terminated. Dulles also may have had something to do with the assassination of Dag Hammarskjold. Gullion sent a cable to DC saying that the Hammarskjold plane crash was not an accident. . But I did not go into that. -
I have to add here, that although I have no dog in this fight, the fact that there is not an explosion out the back of the head is not at all probative. As Mili Cranor demonstrated, the explosion--sometimes called a bloodburst-- in not any meter of directionality. It comes from a phenomenon called cavitation. This is where the pressure center builds in the skull and then bursts through at the weakest point. She did a lot of research on this through some of the best wound ballistics authors she could find. The indications of a rear skull wound come from the 42 witnesses who saw such, and the fact the HSCA tried to cover it up. Plus Jackie Kennedy going out the trunk of the car to retrieve a bone from JFK's skull.
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The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
That is also some really interesting information that Bob Morrow added. I think that plot with the ring was covered up in the Church Commission. But it indicates that the CIA was trying to get rid of DeGaulle for a long time. Thanks Bob. -
BTW, there is an important piece of information that did not come out until much later. See, when the blockade worked and the Russian ships stopped, our side thought this was the turning point, with the whole Rusk quote "The other side blinked." Not true. McNamara attended a conference later in Havana. The Russian general in charge said that at the time the blockade was constructed and went into effect, all the land missiles were already in place, waiting to be loaded. McNamara couldn't believe it. He was stunned that they did not know that at the time. And there is a debate about whether or not the White House knew about the tactical nukes. But with all the land missiles in place, the Soviets had a first strike ready.
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The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
I love what DeGaulle said last, talk about a prophecy: -
Joe has a point there about Nikita.. Just recall, a year later Kennedy was taken out, shortly followed by Nikita.
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The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion
James DiEugenio replied to Benjamin Cole's topic in JFK Deep Politics
Oh c'mon. That is a legitimate question which allows the JFK case to get into the MSM. Which it just did in Newsweek. If you recall, back in 2017 when Trump said he was going to release the records, that made the nightly news. I saw it on CBS. Then when he reneged, that also made the news IN REAL TIME, they were covering it on NBC. So when Trump now reverses field in public, that is a legitimate question to ask him. And no, there should not be just one thread on this issue, because there are many aspects to this important topic, which most members do not know about or understand. Again, I ask: if you guys just do not give two cents about it, then just ignore it. Let others who understand how important, and what the ramifications are, and what a defiance of law it is, elucidate the subject. That is what this forum should be about. -
The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
Well, thanks Chuck. I did not mean to write it that way, I just meant to indicate how incompatible JFK's foreign policy was with what Dulles was about. In the space of three months, Lumumba, overthrow of DeGaulle and the Bay of Pigs? Bobby Kennedy bringing in Lovett was a smart move to be the icing on the cake. Because him and Bruce wanted to get rid of Dulles 5 years prior. -
The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion
James DiEugenio replied to Benjamin Cole's topic in JFK Deep Politics
John Newman is working on a book on the King assassination. That is why its taking him so long on Armageddon. The King book is going to be two volumes. -
The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
Here you go Ron: The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired One of the most distinguished aspects of David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard is that it shows just what conflicts led to the termination of Allen Dulles by President John Kennedy. In his milestone biography of Dulles, Talbot showed that the prevailing wisdom, that it was only the Bay of Pigs, was likely incomplete. There were two other crises going on around the same time that multiplied Kennedy’s doubts about being able to live with Dulles as CIA Director. James’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribed Talbot had a book translated into English from the French which described Kennedy’s tense and worried reaction to the Secret Army Organization (OAS) attempt to overthrow President Charles DeGaulle. The OAS was a group of military veterans who violently disagreed with DeGaulle’s decision to grant the former French colony of Algeria its independence. That disagreement led to several attempts to assassinate DeGaulle. It has been proven beyond any serious doubt that the CIA was knowledgeable and complicit in these plots. Even a friendly source for the Agency, Andrew Tully, admitted such was the case.( CIA: The Inside Story, pp. 48-49, 54; also NY Times, 4/29/61, and The Nation 5/20/61) The OAS actually attempted an overthrow in Paris in April of 1961, the same month as the Bay of Pigs operation. As Talbot notes, Allen Dulles had a rather lengthy history of antagonism with the French president. And DeGaulle suspected the coup plotters were acting with the knowledge and support of the Agency. (Talbot, pp. 413-14) As the overthrow attempt began to materialize, Kennedy phoned Herve Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington. He assured him that he had nothing to do with the attempt. But he qualified that by saying “…the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.” (ibid, p. 418) But he made a public pledge :” In this grave hour for France, I want you to know of my continuing friendship and support as well as that of the American people.” (Talbot, p. 419) Kennedy even offered miliary support, which DeGaulle declined. Due to superb leadership by DeGaulle and the loyalty of the French people who arranged themselves into militias, the coup failed. But as early as 3 months into his presidency Kennedy understood that Dulles was up to things that the president did not endorse. But there had already been a suggestion of that two months earlier. As Richard Mahoney noted in his excellent book JFK: Ordeal in Africa, before the 1960 election, Kennedy asked Averill Harriman if he should openly endorse the Congo’s Patrice Lumumba. (Mahoney, p. 59) Belgium had titularly set Congo free, the largest and one of the richest countries in sub-Sahara Africa. Lumumba’s party had won the elections in May of 1960 under a constitutional plan. In June, Lumumba began to form his government. On June 23rd Lumumba gave his first public speech promising national unity, the sovereignty of the will of the people and a neutralist foreign policy. (Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, p. 55) Lumumba’s ascension, and the hopes he had of making Congo a model for Africa, did not last long. Neither Belgium, England, or France wanted Congo to be free from European imperialism. Especially in the Katanga region, the richest area of the huge country. So they encouraged and paid Moise Tshombe to lead a breakaway state. The Belgians still in country helped recruit mercenaries for Tshombe’s army. (Kwitny,p. 55) But there was a fourth antagonist to Lumumba: the USA. Allen Dulles was aware of the European scheming to break off Katanga months before it happened. (John Newman, Countdown to Darkness, p. 153) Dulles quickly joined the anti-Lumumba forces which now mushroomed. The Belgians dropped paratroopers, and Katanga declared itself a separate state. Lumumba did what he had to do: he went to the UN and Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, and also to the Russians. When this happened, the CIA station chief in Leopoldville now said that Congo, as had been the case in Cuba, was experiencing a classic communist takeover. (Newman, p. 223) When that cable arrived in Washington, President Eisenhower instructed Dulles to begin assassination efforts against Lumumba. (Newman, p. 227) By September 1960, the CIA had three agents in Leopoldville assigned to kill Lumumba. These were Sidney Gottlieb, master of poisons; and two mercenaries code named WIROGUE and QJWIN, part of the ZR Rifle assassination program. But Hammarskjold’s deputy, Rajeshwar Dayal, protected Lumumba by placing him under house arrest. But when Lumumba decided to escape and make his way to his political base in Stanleyville, the CIA changed tactics. The Agency now monitored his progress and cut off his escape routes. He was captured and sent to Katanga. (Newman p. 295) He was executed by firing squad and his body soaked in sulphuric acid. This was the sorry end to the first democratically elected leader of a post-colonial nation in sub-Sahara Africa. As historian John Morton Blum noted in his book Years of Discord, from the cable traffic, it appears the CIA was consciously encouraging Lumumba’s murder to occur before Kennedy’s inauguration. (p. 23) Which it did by three days. Yet, Dulles did not inform Kennedy of the murder. This happened almost a month later when ambassador to the UN, Adlai Stevenson, called Kennedy while a White House photographer was taking pictures of the president with his children. The famous picture taken at the time epitomizes the difference between Dulles and JFK. Kennedy’s face is torn with sorrow and he has his hand over his eyes. It was so inconsequential to Dulles that he did not even deign to inform his commander in chief. The third event in this sequence of Dulles/Kennedy conflict is, of course, the Bay of Pigs operation. I will not go into it in any detail since it has been written about so often. I will just state that due to the belated discovery of Dulles’ 1965 notes on an article he was going to pen on the subject, he knew that the operation was doomed. He had planned on Kennedy salvaging the project with direct American intervention once he saw it failing. Kennedy declined. While Dulles was writing a draft of the article, he told his editor Willie Morris, “That Kennedy, he thought he was a god.” (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition pp. 47-48) This segues into the main topic. Attorney General Robert Kennedy was part of the Taylor Commission, the White House inquiry into why the operation was such an abject failure. After some acute questioning of Dulles, he realized what the director’s secret agenda had been: direct American intervention. Yet, just about a week before the operation, this is something JFK had specifically said he would not do. (ibid) Once Bobby Kennedy realized that Dulles had deliberately deceived the president, he decided Allen had to go. But since Dulles was so well established, RFK realized that he needed to have another icon with which to counter him. Joseph Kennedy had served on what was the forerunner to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He told his son that he knew of a blistering but suppressed report written by Robert Lovett and David Bruce about Dulles and his mismanagement of the CIA. Somehow, RFK got hold of the 1956 Bruce-Lovett Report. He copied pages and took copious notes from it. Today, there are three main sources on this watershed report: Peter Grose’s Gentleman Spy, Arthur Schlesinger’s Robert Kennedy and His Times, and Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes. The last features several pages of the actual report in an appendix. Incredibly, some of the report is still redacted. Lovett and Bruce were very upset that Dulles had let the CIA become a covert action agency rather than an intelligence gathering one. But further, the covert actions were largely done through unvouchered funds which could not be traced. And the approval for such actions was pretty much pro forma. The governance of the operation was done by the Agency until its conclusion. After the fact, the National Security Council was then briefed in an off the record oral report done from a biased point of view. Finally, there was almost never any cost or liability for failure. The report also states that paramilitary operations and psychological warfare were done in consultation between the CIA and the foreign head of state. Sometimes, that foreign head of state was the opposition which the CIA had brought to prominence. Often, the ambassador was out of the loop. Which means there was a split in American policy. Which allowed the foreign head of state to play off one power center against the other. People in the State Department and diplomatic corps were thus left without full knowledge of what American policy was. Bruce and Lovett wrote that they had heard complaints about this directly from people at State. For instance, the CIA had covertly influenced local news media, labor groups, political figures and other activities abroad. Again, this led to differences of opinion between the CIA and State Department. And Dulles did not really care who was running these operations or what their political judgment and orientation was. Thus strange things were bound to occur due to the accent on themes suggested from headquarters. (Author’s Note: This idea clearly presages what happened in the case of Lumumba.) Lovett and Bruce asked: what impact did these CIA operations have on our present alliances? What will that impact be tomorrow? They then built to this peroration: Bobby Kennedy brought in former Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of State Lovett twice. Once to testify before the Taylor Commission, and once in consultation with the president. Lovett had not one kind word for what Dulles had done with the Agency. But in 1956 the Bruce-Lovett report was ineffective since Eisenhower was under the influence of John Foster Dulles. (Schlesinger, pp. 477-78) But now, after being lobbied by his brother, President Kennedy decided the whole top level of the CIA had to go: Dulles, Deputy Director Charles Cabell, and Director of Plans Richard Bissell. Bobby Kennedy went even further. He called in Secretary of State Dean Rusk and asked him if there was any other member of the Dulles family still in their employ. Rusk said yes, Allen’s sister Eleanor. She was thus terminated also. (Leonard Mosley, Dulles, p. 473-74) It is interesting to note that it was Eleanor who stopped the cooperation of her brother with editor Willie Morris on the Bay of Pigs article for Harper’s magazine. (Ibid, p. 479) Let us close with some comments on the first incident studied, the plots to kill DeGaulle. Recall, Kennedy complained to the French that he was unaware at times of what the CIA was doing. But, as shown above, they had a role in OAS murder plots and the overthrow attempt. When DeGaulle returned from Kennedy’s funeral he said to his information director that Oswald was simply part of a front. A trial would have been very bad and people would have talked. Therefore they brought in a clean up man, “supposedly in defense of Kennedy’s memory!” The French president then said that this was all hogwash. It was “Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder.” He then predicted: There was one thing left out of this perceptive summation. The man who Kennedy terminated would then serve on the commission inquiring into his death. Not just that, Dulles would be the single most active member of that dubious body. (Walt Brown, The Warren Omission, pp. 85-87) After all, thanks to Kennedy, he didn’t have a job. James’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribed 16 Likes · 2 Restacks 16 12 2 Share 12 Comments -
The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
Its not supposed to do that Ron, sorry, I will have to do what I did last time then. -
The Report that got Allen Dulles Fired
James DiEugenio replied to James DiEugenio's topic in JFK Assassination Debate
The quotes by DeGaulle about Kennedy's death at the end are really sensational. They even go past Castro and Nikita K. -
This is my latest substack that is fast becoming my most popular essay yet. It had the highest view number and the highest open number of anything I have written so far. But it tells a little related story as to just how Dulles got canned and the role of Robert Lovett in that termination. Its still free and will be for a few months more. Get it while you can. You won't be disappointed. https://jamesanthonydieugenio.substack.com/p/the-report-that-got-allen-dulles?utm_campaign=reaction&utm_medium=email&utm_source=substack&utm_content=post
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The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion
James DiEugenio replied to Benjamin Cole's topic in JFK Deep Politics
Well Paul, should we meet in San Luis Obispo? -
The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion
James DiEugenio replied to Benjamin Cole's topic in JFK Deep Politics
First of all, I think Pat is confusing the extremely important declassified documents about Cuba with Alfred Hitchcock's classic film from 1959. Its the Northwoods documents. And those did get a lot of attention when they were declassified. James Bamford of ABC News went on TV and talked about them in detail. I actually thought the Sec Def Vietnam documents of May 1963, declassified in late 1997, were a bit more important. But those also got MSM attention in no less than the NY Times and Philadelphia Inquirer and the AP. Also, the court case in Northern California has also gotten some attention. But since when does the critical community rely on the MSM for anything? We are supposed to rely on the alternative media. And there are some outlets there that we could use to trumpet any new discoveries in those documents. I mean the whole point of the success of people like Russ Baker or Patrick Bet David or Joe Rogan is that there has been a tremendous loss of belief by a huge amount of citizens who do not buy the MSM. And I think one reason for that is the JFK case. -
No I have never seen that one , thanks.
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The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion
James DiEugenio replied to Benjamin Cole's topic in JFK Deep Politics
This is the point. There is no accurate directory to the records. This was brought out in the Northern California court case. And this is why the Gannon memo tries to bring in NARA as arbiter. Because they want to keep it that way. NARA was never supposed to be an active participant in the act. They are just a repository. The Gannon memo did three things, it completely dismissed the record by record accounting in the JFK Act. That allowed NARA to post, what is for many, an ersatz directory. Third, it also discounted the role of congress which was to keep tabs on the updated inventory. It sort of swapped out congress for NARA. This is what a mockery the JFK act has been reduced to. This is why Mark's goal is to move congress to reinstate the ARRB since he thinks that is the only way the last of the documents will ever see the light of day. I have seen some of these documents. The combination of the redactions and the utterly horrendous conditions the papers are in is just a disgrace; you can barely read some of them. To me its the raised middle finger to the critical community. -
I agree Johnny. And we all know now that the Russians had given Castro tactical nukes, both short range, about 25 miles, and long range, about 75 miles. Any invasion force would have been incinerated.
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The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion
James DiEugenio replied to Benjamin Cole's topic in JFK Deep Politics
Paul, when someone quotes CV I have to read his junk, which proves to me all over that he is not worth reading. Rubbish. I would rather not vote for anyone than vote for Trump. This is a see-through attempt to politicize a legal issue for his own personal agenda. PS I just got a message from Mark. He is getting closer for Napolitano. -
The JFK Assassination Records Act Discussion
James DiEugenio replied to Benjamin Cole's topic in JFK Deep Politics
Again, there are certain people who just do not give anything about the documents. Or that the law has been disobeyed. I take a back seat to no one on the Insurrection. I have written more about it than anyone here. And its on my substack board. This is not about the Insurrection, and there was never any chance that the Insurrection was going to succeed, thanks to Pelosi, Pence and Schumer. This is about making the issue of the declassified records one that can be debated. If you do not give 2 cents about that, then just say that. And after you admit it , then just stay out of it. I want the American public to know that 61 years on, the government is still keeping secrets about the JFK case, in specific defiance of the JFK Act. And if this issue spreads, it can go back to where it belongs, congress. And the senate. Because it is their law that has been subverted, by two presidents. If we can get Mark on Napolitano, hopefully that point can be brought home. -
I always felt that this was the best book on the Missile Crisis. Because its in everyone's own words. Plus there is good background material on the flow of events, and also why the taping system was installed. The two most interesting meetings I thought were the ones with the JCS, and the one with the congressional leaders. Even the latter had become hawkish, even Fulbright, who was the lone dissenting voice against the Bay of Pigs. After that meeting RFK says to his brother, if this doesn't end you are going to be impeached. And when Kennedy asks LBJ for his opinions, Oh man.