Paul Rigby

The fear of the CIA (and the Pentagon) which gripped the highest circles of the Kennedy administration -described by Galbraith, as we have seen, in a diary published several years later - found contemporaneous expression. One of the most obviously well-informed manifestations appeared in mid-1962 in the course of a Theodore White puff-piece for Dean Rusk and the State Department. The “tense July-August weeks” referred to in the final extract below unsurprisingly coincided with Kennedy’s first, and most concerted, effort to rein in the Langley empire:

Development of the term “third force”: from proud self-description to figure of fear and loathing: 1.RICHARD & GLADYS HARKNESS, "The Mysterious Doings of CIA," Saturday Evening Post, (227), 6 November 1954, p.66: "Besides its spy network, and the open CIA function of research, the agency operates a superclandestine third force…"; 2.HARRY HOWE RANSOM. Central Intelligence and National Security (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp.203-204: "The CIA: A Third Force? Quite possibly the ascendancy of CIA to prominence and power in national policy making represents the growth of a third force within the Executive Branch in the production of foreign-military policy," pp.203-204. 3.RICHARD STARNES, "'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Vietnam," The Washington Daily News, (Wednesday), 2 October 1963, pp.1-3: "Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither," p.3. 4.ARTHUR COOK. Story Unused: A Correspondent in the Far East, 1963-1967 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), p.65: "[T]hey were CIA agents, America's third force and a law unto themselves…" 5.SEYMOUR HERSH. The Price Of Power: Kissinger In The Nixon White House (London: Faber & Faber, 1983), p.425: "The job of assassinating Diem and Nhu fell to Minh's personal bodyguard, who shot both men as they were supposedly being driven to safety…Minh's most significant support came from those elements in Vietnamese politics known as the "legal opposition," of the "Third Force," which included the influential Buddhist groups. The coalition was highly patriotic and far more interested in obtaining the endorsement of the American Embassy than in negotiating a compromise with the North Vietnamese."

James Jesus Angleton and SIG.

They're already off into Sudan - keeping the oil out of Chinese hands, and in their own - but the next big piece in the jigsaw of the next big confrontation would appear to be Pakistan. A nuclear armed "Caliphate"? How mouth-watering that must appear to the geopoliticians and their chums in the MIC!

Yet more Anglo-American state terrorism lies ahead, only this time to the soothing accompaniment of the Boston Symphony Orchestra: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffa...2139810,00.html

Next time you need a second-hand car, Tom, do call at my emporium. All only one owner, elderly spinsters to a man. For those unfamiliar with Bennett's amazing act of observation, do have a look at David Lifton's Best Evidence. It really is very good at explaining this and one other SS intervention in support of the official investigation's shifting fabrications. Paul

Terrible story, I'll keep it brief: He was called to testify, but couldn't find the way. He was directionally challenged, poor soul, as he demonstrated when recalling the route of the presidential motorcade off Main: : “…we made a left-hand turn and then a quick right” *. Awesome. I leave it to denizens of the fair city of Dallas to explain where on earth that sequence led. Cuba, perhaps? *Warren Commission Exhibit 2112

Fire away, sir...

"Liberal interventionists rarely love democracy; they pursue to efface it." (With apologies to the writers of Les Enfants du Paradis...)

What a pity Bennett was facing the wrong way... An observation Lifton was capable of making, but one which passed you by, Tom.

Now here's a glimpse of Helms in action in the mid-1960s, inverting the truth of Kennedy's position, and aligning him with the militarists. The Agency, we are to understand, straggled opinionless, but compliant to Presidential wishes, some way behind. The lucky recipient of this classic piece of Helmsian spin was Cecil King, a once legendary newspaperman now better known as a senior MI5 man up to his neck in the 1968 coup plot to replace Harold Wilson with a "coalition of all the talents" fronted by Mountbatten:

Kennedy’s decision to back Lodge and recall Richardson was not the first time he had sided with an ambassador at war with his CIA station-chief, as Andreas Papandreou revealed in Democracy at Gunpoint: The Greek Front (London: Andre Deutsch, 1971), p.80: It is a measure of the CIA’s contempt for Kennedy that Campbell was transferred to Paris (1), a capital in which conviction that the CIA had prompted the Challe putsch was matched only by the belief that Langley was now sponsoring OAS terrorism. Shades of Langley’s decision to send William Harvey to Rome at the height of the Kennedy-backed “opening to the left.” Writing of the same period in Greece, Peter Murtagh emphasises the clash between Ambassador Henry Labouisse, a Kennedy-appointee, and Campbell. Labouisse had attempted to preside over honest elections; and it was this unprecedented commitment to free and fair elections by a US Ambassador that permitted Papandreou’s Centre Union “to win not one but two elections” (2). Murtagh goes on to note: “Not long before the second general election, a number of Army generals approached the Ambassador. They asked him how the US would react to a coup to forestall a Papandreou victory. Labouisse said the US would be against such a move and cabled Washington with a copy of his answer. The State Department supported his position” (3). (1) August 1962 – see Peter Murtagh. The Rape of Greece: The King, the Colonels and the Resistance (London: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p.71. (2) Ibid. (3) Ibid.

In today’s Grauniad, yet more BBC news footage manipulation-by-editing from the 1980s recalled. This is proving to be a fruitful little series. What a pity the paper couldn’t assign a reporter to bring all these disparate items together. Or re-evaluate its slavish editorial support for this discredited organisation. http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2137476,00.html The two letters (Sense of injustice over strike reports, July 28) reminded me of a similar incident in the 80s. The TUC held a peaceful rally close to the Commons. Between us and a line of mounted police at the bottom of Whitehall were TV cameras. Suddenly floodlights came on and the mounted police charged towards us, stopping within 20 yards of the main crowd, then retreated. On that evening's TV news we saw the charge with the comment "police charge unruly trade unionists threatening parliament". Nothing could have been further from the truth. David Buckle Abingdon, Oxfordshire

In today’s Grauniad, yet more BBC news footage manipulation-by-editing from the 1980s recalled. This is proving to be a fruitful little series. What a pity the paper couldn’t assign a reporter to bring all these disparate items together. Or re-evaluate its slavish editorial support for this discredited organisation. http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2137476,00.html The two letters (Sense of injustice over strike reports, July 28) reminded me of a similar incident in the 80s. The TUC held a peaceful rally close to the Commons. Between us and a line of mounted police at the bottom of Whitehall were TV cameras. Suddenly floodlights came on and the mounted police charged towards us, stopping within 20 yards of the main crowd, then retreated. On that evening's TV news we saw the charge with the comment "police charge unruly trade unionists threatening parliament". Nothing could have been further from the truth. David Buckle Abingdon, Oxfordshire

That special relationship - on all fours, with a ring through the nose.

Non-UK members might well have missed the finer details of the brouhaha which arose when an independent film maker, on a BBC contract, edited film to suggest, quite erroneously, that Brenda had stormed out of a photo-shoot with an American photographer. And thank goodness, too, for the matter is of little interest, save to note the grovelling apologies of the Beeb’s hierarchy to our reigning greatness. Far more interesting is the opportunity the row gave to some tiresome souls who insist upon refusing to forget the BBC’s MI5-directed role in propagandising against the miners during the strike that destroyed both them and the UK coal-mining industry in the mid-1980s. Four letters have recently been printed in the Guardian reminding us that the BBC engaged in a sustained and duplicitous campaign propaganda war in favour of Thatcher and the permanent state throughout that strike. The four can be read below. Astonishingly - or perhaps not – no apologies have yet been offered by anyone to the miners. 1) 14 July 2007, fifth letter down: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2126224,00.html 2) 26 July 2007, p.39: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2134594,00.html 3) 28 July 2007, p.33: http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2136625,00.html

Very good piece in today’s Mail on Sunday: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/a...in_page_id=1770 Needless to say, given the fear that grips UK politicians when it comes to the “intelligence” services, nothing will happen. Shocking stuff.

Interesting piece here: http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/ar...06&rel_no=1

Noel-Baker's view on who - or rather, what - was running US foreign policy in 1965 was hardly unique. Here's a similar point of view from the same year: Galbraith's "take" on the same question, four years earlier:

We agree to differ about Harriman's approval of the coup; but, yes, you're right, he was a significant Washington casualty of both coups, the one in Saigon and the other one. Andrei Navrozov. The Gingerbread Race: A Life in the Closing World Once Called Free (London: Picador, 1993) [iSBN 0330376368] Try p.332 for a very good joke - one made by Raymond Seitz, no less - about the number 322! The unmistakable number, on which page Professor Winks begins his chapter on Angleton - not a Bonesman - in Cloak and Gown: Scholars in America's Secret War (London: Collins Harvill, 1987). Yale in-jokes - doing good for American democracy by stealth. Paul

You are right he did. You can read the articles here: http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak.html Great find and delighted to see both Spivak pieces available on the web. I've often wondered at the market for a book along the lines of Great American Political Journalism of the 20th Century: An Anthology; within, Spivak, Stone, Starnes et al. Pity it would almost certainly have to be done outside the US. What was it De Tocqueville wrote? Bitter experience or foreigners? Paul

As a dedicated anti-Harrimanite, Cliff, have you read this? Andrei Navrozov. The Gingerbread Race: A Life in the Closing World Once Called Free (London: Picador, 1993) [iSBN 0330376368] Try p.332 for a very good joke - one made by Raymond Seitz, no less - about the number 322! Paul

Good to see Butler getting a thread of his own. But recall that Spivak wrote two articles for New Masses, not just the one. Details to follow: From the Education Forum thread entitled: Roosevelt and Kennedy (Feb 2007) http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...15&start=15 To finish, a suggestion for John/the appropriate mod; and a couple of reflections on the BBC programme. John/the appropriate mod, why not simply re-label this thread something like "Smedley D. Butler and the plot to overthrow Roosevelt," and subtitle it "Link to BBC Radio 4 programme on the subject, July 2007"? The programme was a solid enough primer on the subject, marred only by a bizarre intro that wondered why we'd heard so little about it. Er, could it be that organisations like the Beeb have hitherto steered clear of such controversial - and, for understanding US politics, essential - subject matter? Or didn't the BBC exist in 1934, and in all years subsequently? What exasperates me about the BBC - leaving aside trivial matters like compelling me to pay to be lied to - is the way it allocates resources. This topic surely demanded longer than 30 mins - was there really insufficient cash to devote an hour to it, and produce some new material? I'm not advocating wall-to-wall conspiracism or anything of the sort - God forbid - just the proper application of tax payers money to more interesting, if uncomfortable, truths about the world we really inhabit. Paul

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/document/document.shtml Still, better late than never. But do remember, ALL BBC programmes are brought to you care of spook-vetted reliables.

According to Mieczyslaw Maneli, the Polish diplomat at the heart of the hitherto most publicized diplomatic attempt to bring peace to Vietnam, Saigon saw a profound change in atmosphere at precisely the time Kennedy’s "soundings" began: Elsewhere, Maneli notes, in passing, that one consequence of the Buddhist revolt - in which he "possibly" saw the CIA's hand, and reported home to that effect at the time (p.126), but not the ambassador's (Nolting's) - was to delay Nhu's participation in peace negotiations (pp.126-7).