Cliff Varnell

Vincent Salandria: "Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012" <quote on, emphasis added> I explained [to Specter] that the day after the Kennedy assassination I met with my then brother-in-law, Harold Feldman. We decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the U.S. government were innocent of any complicity in the assassination, Oswald would live through the weekend. But if he was killed, then we would know that the assassination was a consequence of a high level U.S. government plot. Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot. We further decided that the killing of Oswald would signal that no government investigation could upturn the truth. In that event we as private citizens would have to investigate the assassination to arrive at the historical truth. <quote off>

Decent analysis from Uber-Establishment TIME, depending on how one defines “much of the world” in the concluding line. What America's Plutocrats Today Should Learn From Past Generations https://time.com/6072132/americas-plutocrats-learn-past-generations/ <quote on, emphasis added> There’s an emerging consensus in America today that the accumulation of vast wealth by a handful of individuals is untenable for our democracy. Balancing the other-worldly success of a few in contrast with the challenges many still face is one of the thornier dilemmas of a post-COVID-19 world where those gaps have grown ever wider. The recent analysisof the tax rates of the mega-rich—which showed that the 25 richest Americans, including Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet, paid a paltry $13 billion in federal taxes on income and gains of $400 billion over a four year period 2014 and 2018—is just the latest powerful example. There is, however, an earlier moment in the American past that points to a better balance: that those with great power bear great responsibility, that private gain should not be detached from public good, that the flows of money can create but also disrupt, and that you can’t endlessly beggar the commons. There’s no going back of course—and given how elites of an earlier time were an exclusive club, we wouldn’t want to, but that past does offer some hints of what might work today. The apex of that formula, where elites of wealth and privilege answered a call to service even as they were, admittedly, self-serving, was during and after World War II, and the exemplar was the private investment firm Brown Brothers Harriman. At the end of World War II, much of Europe was devastated. Japan had been devastated not just by two atomic bombs but by successive rounds of conventional bombings. Swaths of destruction extended throughout southeast Asia, China, and into Southern Europe. And the United States? It had suffered grievous casualties but its infrastructure and industrial capacity were untouched, and its relative power had never—and has never—been greater. And at that crucial juncture, American companies, the U.S. government and a slew of highly privileged individuals came together to craft a post-war global order, provide massive economic aid to Europe and Japan to rebuild, and set the parameters for trade and commerce that remain the operating code for the planet to this day. The world-order that was crafted, cemented by American leaders and U.S. leadership underpinned by the dollar, was only possible because those who had benefitted most from the evolution of American capitalism understood that they had a responsibility to preserve and maintain a collective order. They did not act selflessly—the system they erected served their interests. And in light of rigid ideology of Cold War that took hold, how they acted around the globe was far from perfect. But they nonetheless crafted a model of sustainable capitalism that juxtaposed private gain to the public good to create a potent formula that enriched both the U.S. and parts of the world and for a time at least didn’t lead to the wide gaps between winners and losers so troubling today. Founded at the turn of the 19th century by an Irish linen merchant named Alexander Brown who was fleeing the sectarian violence of Belfast, Brown Brothers became one of the most influential merchant in the U.S. in the decades before the Civil War, as one of the dominant cotton merchants (and thereby deeply complicit with slavery) but also a staunch supporter of the Union cause and the Republican party. They helped create the transatlantic trading system, innovating with financial instruments such as letters of credit that underpinned the whole system. They propelled American trade with the wider world in the later part of the 19th century, and became one of the pillars of an emerging WASP elite at the turn of the 20th century, centered around elite schools such as Groton and Yale, interlinked by professional and personal bonds. And then, during the Great Depression, the partners of Brown Brothers, led by the great-grand-children of Alexander, merged with one of the great railroad fortunes and its scion Averell Harriman to become Brown Brothers Harriman. They had a particular culture of noblesse oblige. In an interview in the 1920s, Averell Harriman explained, “It is indefensible for a man who has capital not to apply himself diligently to using it in a way that will be of most benefit to his country.” Another partner, Robert Lovett, who served in increasingly higher positions starting during World War II and culminating in his elevation to Secretary of Defense in 1950, never wavered from his mantra that his affluence and standing in society made it incumbent on him to serve the public good. In 1941, the founding editor of Time, Henry Luce, dubbed the moment the beginning of “The American Century,”which left a legacy of international institutions ranging from the United Nations to the World Trade Organization to the World Health Organization to an economic system underpinned by the dollar that is still in place. Luce himself was part of what we know call “the Establishment,” a group almost entirely white men connected by a small set of schools and economic interests. Luce had gone to Yale, as had the four leading Brown Brothers partners of his age: Averell Harriman, Roland Harriman, Robert Lovett and Prescott Bush. They had helped Luce launch his media empire. They had all pledged to the elite society Skull & Bones, and their close affinity later led to a backlash (during the Vietnam War) that there was something seriously awry with democracy when a small cabal of WASP elites was pulling the levers of power to their advantage. In a few short years in the 1940s and into the 1950s, this coterie framed the rules and institutions that define American national security and the global international system to this day. It doesn’t matter whether you celebrate or denigrate that: we live in the world that they made. Lovett and Averell Harriman were integral to every major foreign policy decision during the seven years of the Truman administration from 1945-1952. Harriman served as secretary of commerce, then administrator of the Marshall Plan in Europe and then coordinator for all U.S. aid to Europe in the early 1950s before becoming governor of New York. Lovett served as the number two twice to General George C. Marshall, first in the state department and then the Pentagon before himself becoming secretary of defense for the final years of the Korean War. Prescott Bush then went on to serve two terms as a Republican senator from Connecticut, as well as being the father to one president and grandfather to another. Their post-war architecture was derived from formula that had made them and their class and by extension the United States rich and powerful: a world governed by an elite and by rules that transcended any one individual or firm. They had helped establish the dollar as the most reliable currency. With the Bretton Woods system (named after the hotel in New Hampshire where the details were hashed out), they engineered the replacement of the British pound, which had been the fulcrum of international trade and commerce for almost two centuries, with the dollar. That made sense, given the relative strength of the U.S. economy at the end of the war, but it nonetheless put partnerships such as Brown Brothers and an entire class of financiers along with the U.S. government as the issuer of dollars in a privileged position in global commerce, which they gladly took advantage of. That dollar-denominated world, more than anything other than U.S. military might, has ensured the primary of the country ever since. And they also were integral to the creation of that military might. Lovett during the war helped create the modern air force and then been one of the designers of the modern Pentagon and the national security apparatus at the White House: the national security council, and the CIA. He was a staunch Cold Warrior, and under his aegis, the Pentagon developed the first peacetime standing military in American history. Finally, in one of the more overlooked contributions at the time, Lovett was central to the signing of the multi-nation General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, which eventually turned into the World Trade Organization and was founded on the belief that more free-flowing commerce between nations bound by consensual rules would expand the arc of global prosperity, which it undoubtedly did even as in time it came to threaten domestic industry in multiple countries. Beginning in the 1960s and intensifying in the decades since, the system these men created has come under closer scrutiny for assorted ills: it made America rich but also led to stunted development in much of Africa, Latin America and parts of East Asia; it hyper-charged global trade, but privileged American rules, the dollar and U.S. companies; and the standing army was used and abused with disastrous consequences not just in Vietnam but in multiple countries throughout the world. Many of those critiques hold water, but it remains true that these men, and a firm such as Brown Brothers, saw a responsibility to address the common good and not just their own pocketbooks. Lovett, a Republican, supported many of the financial regulations of the New Deal including the separation of commercial and investment banking in the Glass-Steagall Act and the formation of a regulator in the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He also went into government service because he believed that it was his responsibility as someone with more to give back and help as he could. Harriman and Bush were both deeply ambitious men of their class, but they too had an unquestioned belief that, as Harriman put it, “public service is a duty.” The formula of elites cleaving to an ideal of public responsibility unfolded in an era where the gap between the very wealthy and the average worker was a comprehensible multiple of perhaps 20 to 1. Today it is over 300 to 1. They were a closed insular class but they were nonetheless connected to the world around them. Lovett told a story of getting ready to take the train to work from his Long Island home at early one morning when his wife answered the phone and it was Truman calling to ask him to come to Washington. Lovett barked that he was going to miss his train until he realized who was on the other end. He was rich, privileged and called to serve, but he still took a commuter train to work, not a car and driver. In the middle of the 20th century, elites more or less understood that they had an obligation to public service; in the early 21st century, that is hard to be found. The world that Brown Brothers Harriman and their class created was hardly flawless, and it was deeply exclusive, but it was a coherent system of rules and responsibilities that on balance benefitted not just the United States but much of the world for many years. </q>

And where did Jackie and the kids spend the night 11/22/63? Not the White House... At Harriman’s pad in Georgetown. The ultimate ruthless big time operator, that Ave.

A real lightweight, that Ave. Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averell Harriman, by Rudy Abramson, pgs 624-5, 630 emphasis added: <quote on> Some of Averell's friends, including [Roger] Hilsman, who had heard Bob Kennedy muse about the possibility of Harriman as secretary of state, thought there was still a chance that Averell might yet get the Foggy Bottom job he long coveted. But that had been before the notorious coup cable [243 authorizing Diem coup 8/24/63]. Though the President had avoided criticism of Averell in the episode, Harriman knew Kennedy's confidence in him was shaken. After working his way to the seventh floor, he was suddenly viewed as a problem. Almost overnight, he looked ten years older. Privately, the President and the attorney general talked of finding a way to rehabilitate him, to find a job that would get him out of the Vietnam business. There was a need to put more emphasis on hemispheric matters, and the President thought that one way to solve two problems might be to create a new post of undersecretary for Latin American affairs for him. As deeply as the administration had involved itself in the machinations against Diem, Kennedy still appeared stunned when the long-anticipatred coup ended with the assassination of Diem and Nhu on November 1. The United States could technically claim that it had been a Vietnamese affair; but the administration had conditioned the atmosphere, beginning with the Harriman-Hilsman cable to Lodge. By that time, Averell was already turning more attention to hemispheric problems. The afternoon of November 22 was set a side for a meeting with oil company executives about the future of their contracts with the government in Argentina. Beforehand, he went to a Hilsman luncheon for a delegation of politicians from the Phillipines. He was finishing his dessert and talking with Senator Frank Church about extremism in American politics when Church was called to the telephone. A minute later, the senator rushed back into the room, his face ashen. The President had been shot, and was feared dead. There was a momen of silence, and then turmoil, shouted questions, and people getting up from the table to head for telephones. Averell hadn't heard, and when Church repeated the news, his reaction was that it couldn't be true. "No, sir, I'm not joking," said Church. Averell heard the shattering confirmation of Kennedy's death in George Ball's office moment later. So undone that he could only think of nothing else to do, he convened his oil meeting, but it lasted only a few minutes. When an executive tastelessly suggested an urgent approach to the new President to write the government of Argentina in behalf of American oil interests, he adjourned in disgust. He spent the afternoon helping Ball, who was, if anyone truly was, running the United States government, since Rusk and several other Cabinet members were airborne, coming home after turning back from a flight to the Far East. As darkness fell, Averell drove out to Andrews Air Force Base with Ball and Alexis Johnson, joining the official mourning party standing silently on the floodlit ramp as the President's casket was lowered from the rear door of Air Force One. The following days were a blur of meetings and trips to airports to greet delegations arriving from all over the world for the state funeral. While Rusk and Ball attended to ceremonial duties, Harriman sat down with visitors who brought urgent diplomatic problems with them--an insurgency developing against the government in the Dominican Republic, intelligence warnings of political upheaval in Brazil, and signs of new trouble between India and Pakistan over Kashmir... <quote off>

So Khrushchev visited Harriman’s pad in NYC. It must have been an intimate affair, wearing their striped pants and sipping tea with extended pinkies...right, Ben? On September 15, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev landed in Washington DC on the first stop of a two week tour of the States. The next day he showed up at W. Averell Harriman's place in Manhattan. From Spanning the Century The Life of W. Averell Harriman, by Rudy Abramson, pg. 575 <quote on> In his second-floor drawing room, Harriman gathered leaders from mining, manufacturing, oil, chemicals, banking, and insurance industries, including John D. Rockefeller III; General David Sarnoff, chairman of RCA; Frank Pace, chairman of General Dynamics Corporation; W. Alton Jones, chairman of Cities Service Corporation; and John J. McCloy, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. By his estimate, scribbled on a yellow legal pad before Khrushchev arrived, they represented assets of some $38 billion. Among them, as witnesses to history, were a few men of ordinary means, former ambassadors, educators, and, notably, Rockefeller Foundation president Dean Rusk, and Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, the latter having invited himself as a "representative of the proletariat." Surround by Picassos and Derains, their voices muffled by Persian carpets, the capitalist Titans greeted the Communist chieftain one by one, then sat in a semi-circle savoring caviar and sipping champagne and New York wine as Averell conducted his exposition of capitalism, war profits, and American politics. No one present, nor any of their friends, he and the others assured the guest of honor, favored world tensions. The assembled war profiteers, said the host, were men who'd champion disarmament the moment it became safe for the United States. There was not a hint, however, that mingling with the millionaires did anything except reinforce Khrushchev's belief that he was then in the presence of the men who controlled America far more than Eisenhower and the members of Congress he had met in Washington. One testimonial to free enterprise followed another. And when the Soviet leader reasserted his stubborn belief that the men present composed the country's ruling circle, Galbraith later tattled, "Somebody demurred, but in perfunctory fashion." After it was over, Harriman insisted that the Soviet leader had gained insights of "real importance." <quote off>

As usual, Ben, your challenge is not knowing what you’re talking about. The Harriman-Rockefeller race was in 1958. He got grubby and did a snuff job on Diem. Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5 <quote on, emphasis added> Who changed the coup [overthrow of Ngo Brothers in South Vietnam 11/01/63] into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.” Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.” The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.” At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Sagon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal. According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance. <quote off> Which is why Truman put Harriman in charge of the Mutual Security Agency. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Security_Agency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_Security_Act https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp80-01065a000400060005-3 In Harriman’s biography, Allen and John Foster Dulles were described as “his lawyers.” In the cloak and dagger world Harriman was a Boss.

The Situation Room said no evidence of conspiracy, the wire services were hammering Oswald-the-Commie. This created a “melange of confusion” amidst LBJ’s staff. Harriman cleared up the confusion and the US government closed ranks behind no-conspiracy.

Salandria noted Bundy’s role in pushing the LN very early on. Why is his meaning mysterious? Someone Would Have Talked, pg 288: <quote on> 4:19 PM, Hoover memo related that he had told RFK that the killer has “Communist leanings” and is a “very mean-minded individual.” Hoover also related and confirmed again in a 5:15 PM memo that the subject Oswald “went to Cuba on several occasions but would not tell us what he went to Cuba for.” </q> So while Bundy was telling LBJ there was no evidence of conspiracy, Hoover was telling RFK that Oswald was a big Commie.

Even though Katzenbach said he was pressured by the State Department. Way to approach the subject with an open mind, Ben. You’re an inspiration to us all.

Your contentless dismissal of anything contrary to your pet theories. More contentless dismissal. For someone who constantly lectures others about keeping an open mind, yours is so closed it’s hermetically sealed. But that’s not what happened. Why do you insist on making stuff up? That’s not what the record shows. Someone Would Have Talked, Larry Hancock, pg 289. <quote on> On Friday night the White House placed telephone calls to Dallas DA Henry Wade, to Texas State Attorney General Carr and Police Chief Curry requesting that they avoid any official statements, charges, or discussion relating to conspiracy. Johnson’s aide Cliff Carter was making the calls and if the individual in question raised objections, President Johnson was used as the authority for the message. </q> You’re making up the CIA-scared-LBJ bit. Your inability to absorb information outside your pet theories is remarkable.

Thanks Pat. Maybe Audrey Meadows could explain it to Ben.

Your hostility to conspiracy-friendly info so noted.

You bet. The Tale Told by Two Tapes by Vincent Salandria <quote on> [National Security Adviser] McGeorge Bundy was in charge of the [White House] Situation Room and was spending that fateful afternoon receiving phone calls from President Johnson, who was calling from Air Force One when the lone-assassin myth was prematurely given birth. (Bishop, Jim, The Day Kennedy Was Shot, New York & Funk Wagnalls, 1968, p. 154) McGeorge Bundy as the quintessential WASP establishmentarian did not take his orders from the Mafia and/or renegade elements. <quote off>

Harriman — Skull & Bones ‘13. Bundy — Skull & Bones ‘40.

Your go-to move. Making faces because you can’t make a point. You betray an odd double standard— if it’s CIA files you demand to see it. But if a notorious Loner Nutter relates damning, conspiracy friendly information it cannot be credible, according to you.

Are you accusing Max Holland of making up something incredibly damning? It isn’t obvious that he’s spinning something incredibly damning? Jack Valenti corroborated the meeting. A Very Human President, Jack Valenti (1973, p3) <quote on> Shortly before 7:00 P.M., I escorted Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ambassador Averell Harriman into the office. I fidgeted outside, in the middle of what would have appeared to be an objective onlooker to be a melange of confusion. No one of the Johnson aides, Marie Fehmer, his secretary; the late Cliff Carter, his chief political agent; Bill Moyers, nor any of the rest, was quite certain of what lay ahead. We were all busy on the phone and trying to assemble what measure of office discipline we could construct. <quote off> So when Katzenbach said he was under pressure from the State Department — that had to be a lie because it doesn’t fit your theory.

Pushing the angle Oswald was connected to the Soviets. Bundy called AF1 to inform Johnson there was no evidence of conspiracy. It didn’t start with Hoover.

After Harriman and Bundy gave the marching orders. Hoover was a reluctant lone nutter.

Quote Newman claiming someone from the CIA spoke with Johnson on 11/22/63. As opposed to linking LHO to the commies for the express purpose of blaming Castro as a pretext for invading Cuba? Of course you don’t Ben, since the following doesn’t fit your pet theories. Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes, pg 57: <quote on> At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey Oswald [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association. </q> There was no meeting of “top Kremlinologists” — Harriman made that up to leverage the US foreign policy establishment in support of the Lone Nut scenario. Katzenbach admitted he was under pressure from State. Don’t you read Pat Speer’s posts?

I couldn’t agree more! In his WC testimony Rusk spoke of the urgency he felt on the flight back to DC to join the inquiry into possible foreign involvement. By the time he got back the “inquiry” was already over — all on Harriman’s say so.

It was a done deal Friday night when LBJ ordered Cliff Carter to call the Texas authorities and order them to drop the conspiracy angle. Why would we expect Katzenbach to refuse to follow similar orders? He said he was under pressure from the State Department. The historical record shows Johnson under pressure from the State #3, Averell Harriman. Those who either demonize or lionize Katzenbach have not processed those facts.

Newman didn’t write this nonsense, you did. Someone at the CIA told LBJ, "'Hoo-boy, look at this LHO-Kostikov meeting, we better put the lid on this, or its WWIII."

You didn’t quote John Newman, did you?

Nonsense. The first people LBJ met with at the White House were Averell Harriman and William Fulbright. Harriman claimed to speak for all the US Gov’t Kremlinologists and informed him the Soviets were not involved. Harriman was the #3 man at the State Department. Katzenbach claimed he was under pressure from State. I don’t see why folks can’t believe him.

Hoover apparently changed his mind. "I urged strongly that we not reach conclusion Oswald was the only man." — Hoover on 12/12/63. He said Foggy Bottom leaned on him. The historical record shows the State Department behind the Lone Nut push.