Paul Rigby
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The Guardian’s Richard Norton-Taylor, the paper’s veteran expert on matters spook, has long enjoyed a reputation as one of MI6’s most fervent admirers. In Saturday’s edition of the paper, he again demonstrated why the reputation is so richly deserved. “The calamity of disregard,” 4 August 2007, p.32, represents a significant attempt to rewrite the historical record of that bloated bureaucracy’s catastrophic contribution to the Iraq charnel-house: All mention of John Scarlett is banished, and we are instead treated to a portrait of the organisation’s Richard Dearlove, the service’s nominal head (the real masters, of course, are in Washington) as a dissident seer fearlessly resisting the drift to illegal invasion.
Read Norton-Taylor’s Stalinoid drivel here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...2141409,00.html
For a pithy, accurate, and pointed rebuttal, see today’s letters page contribution in the same paper from Dr. Brian Jones, a senior defense intelligence analyst who really did offer meaningful resistance to the lies concocted by, among others, MI6’s Scarlett, lies utilised so eagerly and efficiently by the wretched Dearlove:
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I dedicate the despatch’s web debut to Judy Mann, in affectionate remembrance.
The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3
'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE
'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam
SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power...
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.
So what was the CIA’s “Third Force” in Vietnam? The short answer, and the core component, was – the “National Liberation Front.” But wasn’t the NLF teeming with southern Viet Cong? To the contrary: It was full of zealous anti-communists.
George McT. Kahin, "The Pentagon Papers: A Critical Evaluation," The American Political Science Review, Vol. 69 No.2, (June 1975), pp.675-684: See page 682: "One looks in vain for an account of how Colonel Lansdale's group won over to Diem, or neutralized, some of the key military leaders of the two principal southern religious sects, the Cao Dai and Hoa Hoa, through dispensing funds that are generally estimated in the millions of dollars, and finding places for approx 30,000 of their troops in Diem's army…Nor by reading the section on the origins of the insurgency would one know that even as late as the time of Diem's death a probable majority of the NLF's adherents were members of the Cao Dai and Hoa Hoa."As contemporary press reports reveal, no sooner were Diem and Nhu dead than General Minh made a bee-line for the “NLF” to end hostilities:
From Cable Dispatches, “Peace with Hoa Hao Strengthens Saigon Junta: In Viet Delta – Cheers for Junta,” New York Herald Tribune, 27 November 1963, section 1, p.15:Hoa Hao, Viet Nam – Gen Duong Van Minh, leader of South Viet Nam’s military junta, was cheered by thousands of members of the militant Hoa Hao sect yesterday when he arrived without a bodyguard to make peace with the rebel religious group.
‘The disastrous policy of the former regime who tried to crush you has ended,’ Gen. Minh said in a speech at this chief Hoa Hao village, 90 miles southwest of Saigon. He was referring to the regime of late President Ngo Dinh Diem which waged war on the Hoa Hao for more than seven years till Diem was overthrown by the junta on Nov. 1.
‘If only we could win over these people we would have five battalions of soldiers,’ remarked Maj. Gen. Ton That Dinh, the Security Minister, eyeing the crowds of young men.
Gen. Minh, accompanied by other members of the junta and Premier Nguyen Ngoc Tho, visited Hoa Hao and the village of Long Xuyen, where the sect is also strong, to formalize an agreement under which the half million members of the Buddhist splinter religious group will support the government.
But negotiations are stalled on the question of bringing the Hoa Hao’s private army into the Vietnamese Army to help fight the Communist Viet Cong. Some Hoa Hao units have already joined the government, but 1,000 other sect soldiers have not done so.”
Hanoi well understood the CIA-origins of the NLF. In response to the “clandestine” radio broadcast in March 1960 announcing its formation - in the form of a proclamation by “Former Resistance Fighters” - Hanoi radio immediately denounced it as a trap. (1) Hanoi also acted militarily in concert with Diem against the NLF: In May 1962, Hoa Hao battalion 104 “was caught in a simultaneous drive by the ARVN and Viet Minh battalion 510.”(2)
(1) Senator Ernest Gruening & Herbert W. Beaser. Vietnam Folly (Washington, D.C.: The National Press, Inc., 1968), p. 186.
(2) Bernard Fall. The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963), p. 355.
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MF, NAra, everything will give you no answers.
Sounds just like British archives...
Harvey arrived in Rome in january 1963 - dont know the date exactly. As you know, he was moved there after Helms intervention (RFK wanted him out of Cia, they say)...More, it will be helpfull to know some more on Harvey activities in Rome: was he linked to Demagnetize plan? Had he a role in Gladio/Stay Behind forces build up, and in the Nasco boxes (full of guns) sent to allow counterinsougency measures in case of Urss invasion?And so RFK did, sir, but the last place on earth he would have wanted WKH was in Italy as the Kennedy-inspired apertura a sinistra was in finely balanced motion. Was Harvey sent there to help co-ordinate its sabotage? I struggle to see what other value he had in Rome: his particular expertise was not in the field of paramilitary/Gladio actions, as far as I understand his career, but political sabotage. (Thinking aloud, however, was Harvey mixed up in the German gladio ops exposed in 52-53? Can't remember...)
CE1977 is cited by WC report as the prove of Sifar confirmation about the fact the C2766 ''was unique'' in the world, with that kind of serial.But, in many years, I found only a document (signed by Presland-Harvey) that talks about an italian inquiry on the rifle.
The italian minister of Defense Andreotti...
You mean the Andreotti?
Delighted to get an Italian viewpoint: please stick around!
Paul
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Who was this Mrs. Cross; and what press coverage did she receive, particularly in Miami, after her intervention?
Was Mrs. Cross by any chance connected, however distantly/covertly to the circle of businessman etc. who backed Roosevelt? For a goodly list of the latter, see Jeffery. M. Dorwart, "The Roosevelt-Astor Espionage Ring," New York History, July 1981, (62), pp.307-322.
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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.
The credibility of Butler’s allegations would have been considerably bolstered had they appeared in a different context. In fact, the plot described by Butler was not the first time FDR had been threatened with political destruction.
The shooting of Chicago mayor Anton Cermak – and Mrs. Joseph Gill - in Miami in February 1933 – begged the question was Roosevelt the real target? According to the London Times’ correspondent, basing his despatch in part on Roosevelt’s description of the attempt given while en route back to New York, very much so. The extract to follow first appeared in The Times on 17 February 1933; it was reprinted by the paper, in its series “On this day,” on 17 February 1998, p.23:
From our own correspondent (New York), “Mr. Roosevelt’s Escape,” 17 February 1933:“The presence of mind and courage of a slight, middle-aged woman, Mrs. W.F. Cross, did much to save Mr. Roosevelt, President-elect, from the attack made on him last night by a crazy Italian at Miami, Florida…Mrs. Cross, who is the wife of a Miami physician, seized the arm of the would-be assassin, Giuseppe Zangara, who stood beside her on a bench, and diverted his aim.…Zangara…said…he had shot at Mr. Roosevelt because he hated anyone rich and powerful.”
Who was this Mrs. Cross; and what press coverage did she receive, particularly in Miami, after her intervention?
Just as interestingly, information contained in the despatch suggests FDR would have been a more visible target if he had acceded to a request from newsreel photographers to repeat his speech for their benefit; and that he was “fixed” in place at the time of the shooting by “a man who came forward with a long telegram,” the contents of which the unnamed official (?) insisted upon elucidating. Who was this “official”?
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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:
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
While Mr. Turner takes a trip down memory lane, armed only with a good book, and a burning sense of well-founded injustice, a view from inside the spook leviathan that is the BBC. If you’re a dedicated spook-spotter, have a long, hard look at who does – and who has done - the editing within the organisation’s various news fronts:
Chris Harnett, “Mourning the loss of impartiality on the BBC,” The Guardian, 6 November 2006, Media, p.4: “…I began my near 40-year broadcast career in BBC TV news. It was impartial then; it certainly isn’t now. I have seen my own visual material presented in an entirely different timeline, totally distorting the actual event that I witnessed, and at no time did the intellectually lazy journalists ask me what I witnessed. I also have seen raw camera material destined for both BBC and ITN come out in completely different forms on air. The bias in both cases was pro-establishment during the Thatcher years.”Of course, there never was a golden age of impartiality at the BBC, as its actions during the 1926 miners’ strike demonstrated so graphically. When push came to shove, the Beeb served (serves) power, not the truth.
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Ciao Claudio,
questo 'Depatron' service e molto interessante! I have not heard it before but seeing as it appears connected to William Harvey I am intrigued! Soon I will translate the video you made which talks of the Depatron service
Francesca,
This is splendid - can you explain to me what the Depatron service was; and how it connects to Harvey?
A further couple of questions: when did Harvey arrive in Rome and what did he do while there?
Paul
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Was JFK a Liberal? When?
What is a liberal?
Charles,
Let me offer three useful criteria by which to judge JFK's position on the American spectrum.
Until the time of Truman, it was common for New Deal Democrats to describe the big business right and the family corporate dynasties as "Tories." For American High Tories, as for their British predecessors, power unutilised was (and remains) power surrendered. The neo-cons are today intermittently very frank about this: Occasionally, we must go out and blat a weaker power to encourage the others. Kennedy's persistent refusal from the very earliest days of his administration - pre-Bay of Pigs - to deploy US military power to the full marked him irrevocably as "not one of us." He was, in short, a multilateralist, not a nationalist.
Second, Kennedy was entirely relaxed about foreign governments using the state to intervene economically to improve the lot of their people. He said as much in the course of his visit to Mexico (in 62?). He again evidenced powerful sympathy for the economic predicament of developing nations by throwing his weight behind the Volta Dam project, the hope being, of course, that a country such as Ghana would cease merely to export its raw materials.
Third and finally, he threw his full weight behind the attempt to prevent the Congo being balkanised by US and European mining interests, a policy in which he was predictably resisted by the CIA, as part of a determined effort to woo neutralists to the US cause, not exterminate or overthrow them. His contempt for the CIA policy of murdering those it did not like was unwavering: He even sent a trusted emissary, at considerable risk to his good friend's life, to Saigon in a vain attempt to save Diem.
Paul
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John Kenneth Galbraith. Ambassador's Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years (NY: Signet, 10/70), pp.131/2: Diary entry for 1 June 1961:
"I spent the day talking on domestic matters with Walter Heller and James Tobin and with Chester Bowles and Arthur Schlesinger on more general matters. The mood of the Kennedy Administration is not what it was when I left in April. Cuba had a profoundly depressing influence, and everyone worries over the extent to which the soldiers and the CIA are making policy. So do I…
"The fundamental division in American politics is coming to be over foreign policy. On the one hand are the proponents of all kinds of direct anti-Communist action. They have a strong military base in the CIA and the support of the Congressional right wing. On the other side are those who argue for the more complex forms of economic and social defense against Communism. By rejecting armed intervention, they invite the suspicion of being appeasers."
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:
Theodore H.White, "Does He Drive Or Is He Driven?", Life (International Edition), 2 July 1962 (Vol.33 No.1): pp.52-59:p.54: "There is the hidden bureaucracy of the CIA, over which, in theory, the Secretary has responsibility for 'political guidance,' a task which successive Secretaries have not so much bungled as shirked out of simple lack of adequate executive channels to link the two agencies. (In many countries the CIA has more agents than, and 10 times the spending money of, State.)"
p.55: "The pressure of these bureaucracies on high policy sometimes takes on a juggernaut effect; once set in motion by high policy, the bureaucracies seem to acquire a momentum of their own, as if fueled by internal wellsprings of power. No Secretary of State approved the specific U-2 overflight across Russia two weeks before Eisenhower's doomed meeting with Khrushchev in Paris. This was a decision ground out as routine by the mills of the CIA. Nor was it a decision of the Secretary of State, President Eisenhower or President-elect Kennedy to send, a week after the election of 1960, the submarine George Washington, armed with 16 Polaris missiles, on a mission to patrol off the Soviet Union - a dagger at the Russian throat. The decision was ground out automatically by the defense agencies.
But perhaps no episode in recent U.S. history highlights more dramatically how bureaucratic momentum, unless thoroughly controlled, can lead policy to disaster than the decision to invade Cuba last year. The CIA had been training forces fully a year before. Neither Rusk nor Kennedy on coming to power positively initiated the plan to invade; they both were asked whether they wanted to liquidate preparations under way, thus stopping an invasion already plotted, or go through with it. When they reluctantly assented, bureaucracy had won; leadership had failed.
The supreme task in modern democracies is for elected political leadership to control such bureaucracies, to goad them without destroying their morale, to refresh them with new faces and new blood, to resist them when the public good requires that they be resisted. ("You know," said Dean Rusk recently, "even Khrushchev has that problem. At times, when we met at Vienna, he talked about the pressures of his military men and scientists just like a plaintive Western politician.")
It is on this third task, control of America's instruments of foreign policy, that Dean Rusk and John F. Kennedy have been laboring hardest in the past year and a half. In their difficulties the two men have provided not only a new perspective on American power but a fascinating study in two personalities of contrasting experience and background."
p.56: "The low point in relations between White House and State Department was reached in three months - with Cuba. The State Department's Latin American experts were against a Cuban invasion. Inwardly Rusk was against it too. He so stated before the invasion to at least one member of the White House staff. But in the final counsel, as the Joint Chiefs and the CIA pressed forward, Rusk, when asked his ultimate yea or nay, said "yes." After which the President also voted "yes," and the disaster of the Bay of Pigs was ordained."
"What followed was a summer chaos in the mechanisms of American foreign policy, in which it seemed that the Department of State's authority was dissolving. Presidential task forces with diplomatic functions were established outside of State. "
"…the tense July-August weeks…Quietly, one by one, the Cuban, Berlin and Vietnam task forces were drawn back under Rusk's direction at State."
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I dedicate the despatch’s web debut to Judy Mann, in affectionate remembrance.
The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3
'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE
'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam
SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power...
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.
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."
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It is a common failing to assume that all those who participated in the coverup must also, ergo, have been witting participants in the crime. It is a logical fallacy, and must be eschewed at all costs, for otherwise there will never be any truth disclosed.
James Jesus Angleton and SIG.
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Great; now The Nation readers can comfortably back Barack 'N Bomb 'Ems Really Strategic Nukes into Waziristan while the CIA and ISI trade seasons of The Wire.
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!
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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
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"The significance of the attached notes is that they were prepared by SA Bennet on the President's plane during it's return flight to Washington on November 22, before the details of President Kennedy's wounds became general knowledge."
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
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Unfortunately however, Bennett was never called to testify, and his factual reporting only came to light when much of the SS Agent Testimonies was published..
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
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Perhaps we should start a thread on MI5, and Roger Windsors role in this?
Fire away, sir...
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As John Gray, a history professor at the London School of Economics pointed out in today’s Guardian:
The era of liberal interventionism in international affairs is over. Invading Iraq was always in part an oil grab. A strategic objective of the Bush administration was control of Iraqi oil, which forms a key portion of the Gulf reserves that are the lifeblood of global capitalism. Yet success in this exercise in geopolitics depended on stability after Saddam was gone, and here American thinking was befogged by illusions. Both the neoconservatives who launched the war and the many liberals who endorsed it in the US and Britain took it for granted that Iraq would remain intact.
As could be foreseen by anyone with a smattering of history, things have not turned out that way. The dissolution of Iraq is an unalterable fact, all too clear to those who have to cope on the ground, that is denied only in the White House and the fantasy world of the Green Zone. American-led regime change has created a failed state that no one has the power to rebuild. Yesterday's Oxfam report revealed that nearly one in three Iraqis is in need of emergency aid, and yet the anarchy that prevails prevents any such assistance.
"Liberal interventionists rarely love democracy; they pursue to efface it."
(With apologies to the writers of Les Enfants du Paradis...)
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The "originator' of the Body Snatch theory appears to have neglected to expound on the fact that Glen Bennet, shortly after the assassination, wrote down that he observed the bullet strike JFK in the back.
Now, as we all know, no back wound was observed at Parkland, and even during the actual autopsy it was not found until later in the course of the autopsy.
Nevertheless, Glenn Bennet, in handwritten notes which were made in route between Dallas and Bethesda, referenced that this wound existed and that the impact was observed on Elm St.
I know! Bennett was a part of the GIANT Master Plan to confuse us, and was merely a "plant" to lead us astray
Unfortunately however, Bennett was never called to testify, and his factual reporting only came to light when much of the SS Agent Testimonies was published..
What a pity Bennett was facing the wrong way...
The "Lifton" theory of body snatch and wound alteration is one of the poorest "Bar Bet" jokes which I have ever encountered.Or, on the other hand, it could be just pure ignorance of the actual facts on the part of someone who lacks the ability to conduct proper research, and thus had to come up with some answer.
An observation Lifton was capable of making, but one which passed you by, Tom.
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The Times, Tuesday, 8 October 1963, p.13:
Second leader
An Elusive Agency
The American Government was split over the proper policy for Vietnam, and in the resulting cleavage the State Department went one way and some of the C.I.A., with some of the Pentagon, another. There should have been especially keen vigilance over the C.I.A., for it is well known that many members of its staff are out of sympathy with the basic assumptions of the Administration’s policies, as they were not, on the whole, in the days of MR. DULLES.
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:
The Cecil King Diary, 1965-1970 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), pp.86-89:p.86: "Am in Washington. First port of call this morning was to see Helms, the head of the CIA…"
pp.87-88: "I said it was widely believed, particularly in Asia, that the CIA pursued a policy very often antagonistic to that of the State Department. He said this was not so, but there had been some appearance of this in Laos at one time: this was due to the fact that the Pentagon and the State Department had followed divergent policies and the President had supported the Pentagon and had instructed the CIA to do likewise."
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The Times, Tuesday, 8 October 1963, p.13:
Second leader
An Elusive Agency
President Kennedy’s failure to control the political activities of the Central Intelligence Agency has been one of the more disappointing and mysterious aspects of his Administration. It is to be hoped that his belated recall of MR. RICHARDSON, the head of the C.I.A. mission in South Vietnam, is a sign of a new determination to exert the full political control which the agency so badly needs. Few things damage a country more than if its representatives on the spot appear to be at odds with each other.
The Cuban fiasco provided a unique opportunity to reassess the role of the C.I.A. The evidence of Laos and South Vietnam is that the opportunity was fumbled. (In Laos two years ago the C.I.A. was still opposing the neutralist coalition some time after PRESIDENT KENNEDY had formally endorsed it.) It is important, however, that the C.I.A. should not become a scapegoat for what are often the sins of the Government. Its involvement with NGO DINH DIEM’S family in Vietnam was encouraged by the absence of clear direction from Washington. The American Government was split over the proper policy for Vietnam, and in the resulting cleavage the State Department went one way and some of the C.I.A., with some of the Pentagon, another. There should have been especially keen vigilance over the C.I.A., for it is well known that many members of its staff are out of sympathy with the basic assumptions of the Administration’s policies, as they were not, on the whole, in the days of MR. DULLES.
The difficulty that has always dogged the C.I.A. is that it is basically inimical to American traditions, and the country has been unable to assimilate it. Born out of the shock of Pearl Harbour, it found its present name in 1947. The original intention was that it should confine itself to the collection and evaluation of information, and many think it should return to this pristine state. It outgrew the restrictions almost by accident. The State Department was weak in staff and funds, and American policy demanded methods that were not compatible with normal diplomacy. Gradually MR. JOHN FOSTER DULLES found that he could sometimes act more effectively through his brother ALLEN, then head of the C.I.A., than through his own department. Repeated attempts to subject the agency to Congressional control stumbled on the obvious need for secrecy. Secrecy would disappear in the open arenas of American political life. At the same time the Dulles fraternity inhibited control by the Executive. The result was a new and secret kingdom which combined the collection of information with the formulation and the execution of policy.
After the Bay of Pigs PRESIDENT KENNEDY tried to restore the making of policy to the State Department, local authority to his ambassadors, and most operational responsibilities to the Pentagon. He has had some success with these reforms, but not enough. The recent troubles have already revived demands for more Congressional control, and some increase may be possible. In the end, however, only one person is in a position to exert full control, and that is the President himself.
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:
“Ellis Briggs, the career diplomat who was ambassador at the time” was a “rather straight-laced man” who “had no patience with ‘democratic excesses’ in Greece…during the summer of 1963, it was disclosed that Briggs, testifying before the Senate Security Committee, had admitted that while in Greece he did not have control over the American services. The CIA had bypassed him and, at the request of Queen Frederika, had undertaken a series of projects which it financed by drawing in its secret funds.“When I read Briggs’ Christmas message I decided to fly to the United States, and protest this unbelievable performance of the American services in Greece. I had hopes that I could be accorded a fair hearing and that President Kennedy would respond to my appeal. But he was in Florida when I reached in Washington. I saw Carl Kaysen…We spent a night talking about the electoral coup [October 29, 1961 – PR], the role of the Embassy, the role of the CIA’s Laughlin Campbell…Not long after my visit, Laughlin Campbell was removed from Athens.”
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.
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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:
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
-
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:
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
-
You're such good poodles.
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:
The Corruption of New Labour: Britain’s Watergate?
in Political Conspiracies
Posted
Seconded: and faced by an equally fine piece - by Simon Jenkins - on the British foreign policy elite's moronic consensus with regard to Afghanistan. Care to do the honours, John?