John Simkin
-
Posts
15,705 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Store
Posts posted by John Simkin
-
-
In the Lend Lease Conspiracy thread I mentioned the way British Security Coordination (BSC) "penetrated" the George H. Gallup polling organization and managed to manipulate poll data to get the Lend Lease legislation through Congress.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=19331
One of the men they used to do this was Hadley Cantril who had established the Office of Public Opinion Research (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) at Princeton University Department of Psychology in 1938. Ernest Cuneo, who was a BSC agent has claimed that agents working for the organisation then went on to work for the OSS and then the CIA. (This view was supported by Thomas F. Troy, a staff officer of the CIA, in his book, "Wild Bill and Intrepid: Donovan, Stephenson and the Origins of the CIA" published in 1996). This was definitely true of Cantril and in 1960 the CIA commissioned a poll in Cuba that demonstrated great support for Fidel Castro. However, this information was not passed over to Kennedy and he did not know of its existence until after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
In 1962 H. Montgomery Hyde, a former BSC agent, wrote "The Quiet Canadian" about William Stephenson, the head of the organisation. David Ogilvy, another BSC agent who worked for Gallup during the war, saw a copy of the manuscript and requested that Stephenson put pressure on Hyde to remove all references to Cantil and Gallup in the book: "I beg you to remove all references to Hadley Cantril and Dr. Gallup... Dr. Gallup was and still is, a great friend of England. What you have written would cause him anguish - and damage. One does not want to damage one's friends... In subsequently years Hadley Cantril has done a vast amount of secret polling for the United States Government. What you have written would compromise him - and SIS (MI6) does not make a practice of compromising its friends."
Recently released files show that the CIA was deeply concerned by the contents of "The Quiet Canadian". A recently declassified CIA review said: "The publication of this study is shocking... Exactly what British intelligence was doing in the United States was closely held in Washington, and very little had hitherto been printed about it... One may suppose that Mr. Hyde's account... is relatively accurate, but the wisdom of placing it on the public record is extremely questionable." The CIA carried out a policy of discrediting the book. This was highly successful and the book was generally considered to be unreliable.
At the end of the Second World War the files of British Security Coordination were packed onto semitrilers and transported to Camp X in Canada. Stephenson wanted to have some record of the activities of the agency, "To provide a record which would be available for reference should future need arise for secret activities and security measures for the kind it describes." He recruited Roald Dahl, H. Montgomery Hyde, Giles Playfair, Gilbert Highet and Tom Hill, to write the book. Stephenson told Dahl: "We don't dare to do it in the United States, we have to do it on British territory... He pulled a lot over Hoover." Dahl commented "He (Stephenson) pulled a few things over the White House, too, now and again. I wrote a little bit but eventually I called Bill and told him that it's an historian's job... This famous history of the BSC through the war in New York was written by Tom Hill and a few other agents." Only twenty copies of the book were printed. Ten went into a safe in Montreal and ten went to Stephenson for distribution. The book, British Security Co-ordination: British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-45, edited by Nigel West, was eventually published in 1998. It showed that Hyde's book, "The Quiet Canadian" was accurate. However, the book received little publicity and quickly went out of print.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYcantril.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYbsc.htm
I am currently working on an article on George H. Gallup, the CIA and polling organizations, and would be grateful for any information anyone has on the subject.
-
As an Englishman I am very grateful that Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. However, recent research that the act would not have been passed but for the activities of British intelligence.
Winston Churchill became British prime-minister in May, 1940. Soon afterwards Churchill appointed William Stephenson as head of British Security Coordination (BSC). As William Boyd has pointed out: "The phrase (British Security Coordination) is bland, almost defiantly ordinary, depicting perhaps some sub-committee of a minor department in a lowly Whitehall ministry. In fact BSC, as it was generally known, represented one of the largest covert operations in British spying history... With the US alongside Britain, Hitler would be defeated - eventually. Without the US (Russia was neutral at the time), the future looked unbearably bleak... polls in the US still showed that 80% of Americans were against joining the war in Europe. Anglophobia was widespread and the US Congress was violently opposed to any form of intervention."
At the time Britain was in a very difficult situation. In 1940 Germany had a population of 80 million with a workforce of 41 million. Britain had a population of 46 million with less than half Germany's workforce. Germany's total income at market prices was £7,260 million compared to Britain's £5,242 million. More ominously, the Germans had spent five times what Britain had spent on armaments - £1,710 million versus £358 million. Churchill was informed that Britain would soon run out of money to fight the war.
Churchill asked Franklin D. Roosevelt for help to beat Nazi Germany. At first Roosevelt said he was unable to help because public opinion in the United States was completely opposed to becoming involved in the war. However, British intelligence had some important agents within the White House. This included Ernest Cuneo, Robert Sherwood and David Niles. Cuneo later recalled: "Given the time, the situation, and the mood, it is not surprising however, that BSC also went beyond the legal, the ethical, and the proper. Throughout the neutral Americas, and especially in the U.S., it ran espionage agents, tampered with the mails, tapped telephone, smuggled propaganda into the country, disrupted public gatherings, covertly subsidized newspapers, radios, and organizations, perpetrated forgeries - even palming one off on the President of the United States - violated the aliens registration act, shanghaied sailors numerous times, and possibly murdered one or more persons in this country."
Eventually Roosevelt was persuaded to change his mind. On 17th December, 1940, Roosevelt made a speech to the American public: "In the present world situation of course there is absolutely no doubt in the mind of a very overwhelming number of Americans that the best immediate defence of the United States is the success of Great Britain in defending itself; and that, therefore, quite aside from our historic and current interest in the survival of democracy in the world as a whole, it is equally important, from a selfish point of view of American defence, that we should do everything to help the British Empire to defend itself... In other words, if you lend certain munitions and get the munitions back at the end of the war, if they are intact - haven't been hurt - you are all right; if they have been damaged or have deteriorated or have been lost completely, it seems to me you come out pretty well if you have them replaced by the fellow to whom you have lent them."
Isolationists like Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan and Thomas Connally of Texas argued that this legislation would lead to American involvement in the Second World War. In early February 1941 a poll by the George H. Gallup organisation revealed that only 22 percent were unqualifiedly against the President's proposal. It has been argued by Thomas E. Mahl, the author of Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 (1998), has argued that the Gallup organization had been infiltrated by the British Security Coordination (BSC).
Hadley Cantril, a member of the faculty of Princeton University Department of Psychology, had used a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to establish the Office of Public Opinion Research. A supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and intervention in the Second World War he was also an agent for the British Security Coordination and did work for the anti-isolationist group, Fight for Freedom. Cantril was of the opinion that Roosevelt needed "an improving body of public opinion to sustain him in each measure of assistance to Britain and the USSR." Cantril was also an advisor to George H. Gallup and worked closely with David Ogilvy, who was employed by Gallup and was also an agent for BSC.
Another BSC agent, Sanford Griffith, established a company Market Analysts Incorporated and was initially commissioned to carry out polls for the anti-isolationist Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies. Griffith's assistant, Francis Adams Henson, a long time activist against the Nazi Germany government, later recalled: "My job was to use the results of our polls, taken among their constituents, to convince on-the-fence Congressmen and Senators that they should favor more aid to Britain."
As Richard W. Steele has pointed out: "public opinion polls had become a political weapon that could be used to inform the views of the doubtful, weaken the commitment of opponents, and strengthen the conviction of supporters." William Stephenson later admitted: "Great care was taken beforehand to make certain the poll results would turn out as desired. The questions were to steer opinion toward the support of Britain and the war... Public Opinion was manipulated through what seemed an objective poll."
Michael Wheeler, the author of Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America (2007) has pointed out how this could have been done: "Proving that a given poll is rigged is difficult because there are so many subtle ways to fake data... a clever pollster can just as easily favor one candidate or the other by making less conspicuous adjustments, such as allocating the undecided voters as suits his needs, throwing out certain interviews on the grounds that they were non-voters, or manipulating the sequence and context within which the questions are asked... Polls can even be rigged without the pollster knowing it.... Most major polling organizations keep their sampling lists under lock and key."
The main target of these polls concerned the political views of leading politicians opposed to Lend-Lease. This included Hamilton Fish. In February 1941, a poll of Fish's constituents said that 70 percent of them favored the passage of Lend-Lease. James H. Causey, president of the Foundation for the Advancement of Social Sciences, was highly suspicious of this poll and called for a congressional investigation.
It has been argued that both Arthur Vandenberg and Thomas Connally were targeted by British Security Coordination in order to persuade the Senate to pass the Lend-Lease proposal. Mary S. Lovell, the author of Cast No Shadow (1992) believes that the spy, Elizabeth Thorpe Pack (codename "Cynthia") who was working for the BSC, played an important role in this: "Cynthia's second mission for British Security Coordination was to try and convert the opinions of senators Connally and Vandenberg into, if not support, a less heated opposition to the Lend Lease bill which literally meant the difference between survival and defeat for the British. Other agents of both sexes were given similar missions with other politicians... with Vandenberg she was successful; with Senator Connally, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, she was not."
During the Lend-Lease debate Vandenberg announced on the floor of the Senate that he had finally decided to support the loan. He warned his colleagues: "If we do not lead some other great and powerful nation will capitalize our failure and we shall pay the price of our default." Richard N. Gardner, the author of Sterling Dollar Diplomacy in Current Perspective (1980), has argued that Vandenberg's speech was the "turning point in the Senate Debate" with sixteen other Republicans voting in favour of the bill.
On 11th March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act. The legislation gave President Franklin D. Roosevelt the powers to sell, transfer, exchange, lend equipment to any country to help it defend itself against the Axis powers. A sum of $50 billion was appropriated by Congress for Lend-Lease. The money went to 38 different countries with Britain receiving over $31 billion.
When David Ogilvy read an early draft of The Quiet Canadian (1962) he requested that William Stephenson put pressure on H. Montgomery Hyde to remove all references to Hadley Cantril and George H. Gallup: "I beg you to remove all references to Hadley Cantril and Dr. Gallup... Dr. Gallup was and still is, a great friend of England. What you have written would cause him anguish - and damage. One does not want to damage one's friends... In subsequently years Hadley Cantril has done a vast amount of secret polling for the United States Government. What you have written would compromise him - and SIS (MI6) does not make a practice of compromising its friends."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWlendlease.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYbsc.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWstephensonW.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcuneo.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYpack.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsherwoodR.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfishH2.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYcantril.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYgriffithS.htm
-
You can not pay your expenses making $7.25 an hour!
That was a poor wage when I graduated from college some 30 years ago!
This is a problem in the UK as well. One of the problems that we have is that East Europeans are willing to work for the low minimum wage and therefore there is no pressure on the employers to pay higher wages.
-
Heather Stewart, Guardian, Saturday 21 July 2012
A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network.
James Henry, former chief economist at consultancy McKinsey and an expert on tax havens, has compiled the most detailed estimates yet of the size of the offshore economy in a new report, The Price of Offshore Revisited, released exclusively to the Observer.
He shows that at least £13tn – perhaps up to £20tn – has leaked out of scores of countries into secretive jurisdictions such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands with the help of private banks, which vie to attract the assets of so-called high net-worth individuals. Their wealth is, as Henry puts it, "protected by a highly paid, industrious bevy of professional enablers in the private banking, legal, accounting and investment industries taking advantage of the increasingly borderless, frictionless global economy". According to Henry's research, the top 10 private banks, which include UBS and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, as well as the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, managed more than £4tn in 2010, a sharp rise from £1.5tn five years earlier.
The detailed analysis in the report, compiled using data from a range of sources, including the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund, suggests that for many developing countries the cumulative value of the capital that has flowed out of their economies since the 1970s would be more than enough to pay off their debts to the rest of the world.
Oil-rich states with an internationally mobile elite have been especially prone to watching their wealth disappear into offshore bank accounts instead of being invested at home, the research suggests. Once the returns on investing the hidden assets is included, almost £500bn has left Russia since the early 1990s when its economy was opened up. Saudi Arabia has seen £197bn flood out since the mid-1970s, and Nigeria £196bn.
"The problem here is that the assets of these countries are held by a small number of wealthy individuals while the debts are shouldered by the ordinary people of these countries through their governments," the report says.
The sheer size of the cash pile sitting out of reach of tax authorities is so great that it suggests standard measures of inequality radically underestimate the true gap between rich and poor. According to Henry's calculations, £6.3tn of assets is owned by only 92,000 people, or 0.001% of the world's population – a tiny class of the mega-rich who have more in common with each other than those at the bottom of the income scale in their own societies.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jul/21/global-elite-tax-offshore-economy
-
I posted the quote on my Spartacus Educational Facebook page. Jerry Okafor commented: "Bullxxxx. A radical is one that turns to violence or other underhanded tactics in other to promote or denigrate an ideology."
-
True,Google are powerful,I often use this search engine for privacy reasons John.Unfortunately enhanced by Google,but it gets rid of a lot of tracking.
This article about being banned by Google is interesting.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/when-google-gets-penalties-wrong/
In this way Google are forcing all website owners to sell advertising space via Google.
-
There is a lot of information on Ernest Cuneo in Thomas E. Mahl's "Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States: 1939-44" (1998). Mahl argues that Cuneo was "liaison between British Security Coordination and several departments of the U.S. government". Cuneo did what he could to cover up his role. He later wrote to Charles Howard Ellis, assistant-director of the British Security Coordination: "I saw Adolf Berle at State Department, Eddie Tamm, J. Edgar Hoover and more often the Attorney General; on various other matters Dave Niles and the White House and Ed Foley at the Treasury, but as far as I know there wasn't a sentence recorded. I reported to Bill Donovan and George Bowden, but never in writing."
-
The Internet is okay as long as Governments keep their hands of it,sadly,there are signs that they are beginning to take notice that we can find out stuff they don't like.Hence them bringing in various acts to try,"To Protect Us."
The main information power broker is Google. They only have to take your website out of their database and you are in trouble. Who knows if the CIA and the FBI are involved in these decisions.
-
H.L. Mencken could have been talking about JFK researchers: “The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
-
I do believe in a Power Elite,not sure about wealthy protestants though.Governments today are no more than a front for the Establishment.The Military Industrial power brokers.
It seems to me,JFK was killed on the orders of these people.
I agree that religion has little to do with it. C. Wright Mills also underestimated the role of the media in the power elite.
"Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth." - Mark Crispin Miller
I do feel that things have improved since the internet. Mind you, in time, we might find Google just as objectionable as the media barons.
-
I do not think Allen Dulles had a great enough motive to kill JFK.
The risk-reward was not there. He did not gain much and the risk was very high.
I don't think he was involved in the original plot (although he probably knew it was going on). However, he clearly organised the cover-up.
-
Dulles?
Yes. Did you know he worked with British Security Coordination (BSC) in order to bring the USA into the Second World War. It was during this operation he got to know Ernest Cuneo and Dick Ellis, who some believe was a member of Philby's Soviet network.
-
Whose assassination are you referring to?
John F. Kennedy
-
Does anyone recognize this man?
-
I do believe in a Power Elite,not sure about wealthy protestants though.Governments today are no more than a front for the Establishment.The Military Industrial power brokers.
It seems to me,JFK was killed on the orders of these people.
I agree that religion has little to do with it. C. Wright Mills also underestimated the role of the media in the power elite.
-
Obituary in the TES:
To TES forum users, he was GroovyGuzi, font of modern- language knowledge. But, alongside his prolifically generous online presence, Graham Davies was also a pioneer in the field of computer-assisted language learning.
Professor Davies was born in Kent in June 1942. He attended Maidstone Grammar, a traditional boys' school, where he demonstrated a facility for Latin grammar. He understood how languages worked, ancient or modern. In 1961, he began studying German and French at Queen Mary, University of London. He followed this with a teaching qualification and a PhD on the heraldic terminology of medieval German.
During this time, he met Sally Campbell at a party. He pursued her doggedly; she eventually succumbed, and they married in 1968, the same year he completed his PhD.
His first job was German and French teacher at Tiverton Grammar in Devon. Constrained by the demands of the curriculum, however, he moved to Ealing College (later Thames Valley University) in 1971. The college was at the forefront of research into language learning and he began looking into the role that new technologies could play. Colleagues described him as the "forefather" and "godfather" of language-learning technology.
In 1982, he set up his own software publishing and consultancy company, Camsoft. Seven years later, he was named professor of computer-assisted language learning and director of his university's language centre.
Professor Davies could embrace new technology with alacrity and ease. However, he did not embrace it purely because it was new. He approached everything with a meticulous logic: would it offer anything that previous technology had not?
This was his approach to everything; he did not base his conclusions on hunches, but on evidence and research. He applied the same technique to people. He did not judge others on hearsay, but took the time to make up his own mind.
Professor Davies retired in 1993 and immediately set up Eurocall, working internationally in language technology. He spoke seven or eight languages fluently and was always looking for opportunities to pick up new ones. Together with his daughters, Sian and Fran, he would take annual six-week camping trips across Europe. This provided an excuse to demonstrate his linguistic dexterity, although he was unexpectedly stymied by the impenetrability of Serbo-Croat.
He also developed a second internet life, contributing regularly and copiously to discussion forums such as Linguanet and the TES forums. Various online contacts considered him a close friend, although he was not averse to telling them to switch off their computers and go out and enjoy real life.
One of his internet handles was GroovyGuzi. This was originally the name of one of his five pet greyhounds, adopted over the years after their racing careers were finished.
He was diagnosed with a rare form of abdominal cancer in 2005, after which he found solace in a Facebook community of others who had the illness. Graham Davies died on 20 June.
-
In 1956 C. Wright Mills published "The Power Elite". He argued that the United States was controlled not by the mass of its citizens as described by democratic theory, but by a wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite from Ivy League schools. In a series of caustic reviews, critics denied that there was such an elite.
Two questions: (1) Do you agree in the Power Elite theory? (2) If so, did it play an important role in the cover-up of the assassination of JFK?
-
New inquiry set up into death of UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld
Commission will investigate 1961 plane crash after new claims of assassination and cover-up
-
Julian Borger -
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 July 2012 22.41 BST
A fresh international inquiry is to be opened into the mysterious 1961 plane crash that killed the UN secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld following the emergence of new evidence over the past year.
A Guardian investigation in August 2011 and a book published the following month both pointed to witness testimony that the plane was shot down over British-ruled Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, possibly by western mercenaries, and that the assassination was covered up by the colonial authorities.
The commission of inquiry will include a retired British appeal court judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, as well as Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who was formerly chief prosecutor at The Hague war crimes tribunal. The panel will also include a retired Swedish ambassador, Hans Corell, and a Dutch judge, Wilhelmina Thomassen.
The findings will not carry legal status but will be presented to the UN.
The commission was established after a preliminary review of the new evidence by an "enabling committee" including Lord Lea of Crondall, a former Commonwealth secretary general, Emeka Anyaoku, and the former archbishop of Sweden Karl Gustav Hammar.
"Why are we doing this? Because we believe that the whole of the truth, in significant respects, has yet to be told," said Lea, a former senior trade unionist. "There is prima facie evidence from a book published in 2011, Who Killed Hammarskjöld? by Susan Williams, and from other sources, that there is new information that ought to be evaluated."
"The legacy of colonialism won't go away," said Williams. "Here at last is an opportunity for a distinguished group of international jurists to examine a most disturbing episode at the dying end of colonial rule in Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hammarskjöld carried the hopes of a generation in Africa, for whom his death was a tragedy."
The unanswered questions the commission will look into include why the sole survivor of the crash said the plane "blew up" before it fell from the sky, why local residents reported seeing a smaller second plane attack Hammarskjöld's DC-6 aircraft, and why the wreckage was not officially found for 15 hours, though it was only eight miles from the airport.
The crash happened during the struggle for post-colonial Congo just over the border. Williams says the evidence suggests the DC-6, known as the Albertina, was fired on by a plane piloted by mercenaries fighting for Katanga separatists who had revolted against the government of the newly independent Congo with the help of Belgian mining interests.
Hammarskjöld was hated by many white settlers in the region for the UN's military support of the Congolese government in Leopoldville, now Kinshasa. He went to Ndola in Northern Rhodesia with the aim of brokering a ceasefire, flying under cover of darkness to avoid being intercepted by Katangese war planes.
A British-run commission of inquiry blamed the crash in 1961 on pilot error and a later UN investigation recorded an open verdict.
Dickson Mbewe, a former charcoal burner, was sitting outside his house near Ndola on the night of the crash.
"Suddenly, we saw another aircraft approach the bigger aircraft at greater speed and release fire which appeared as a bright light," Mbewe, 84, told the Guardian last year.
"The plane on the top turned and went in another direction. We sensed the change in sound of the bigger plane. It went down and disappeared."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/18/inquiry-death-un-dag-hammarskjold-2
-
-
Glenn Mulcaire forced to reveal who gave phone-hacking order
Investigator used by the News of the World told to reveal who told him to hack Max Clifford assistant's phone
-
Lisa O'Carroll
-
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 July 2012 15.48 BST
Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator used by the News of the World has been forced to reveal who ordered him to hack the phone of an assistant to PR Max Clifford in compliance with a supreme court order.
He was due to hand over the information in relation to the hacking of the phone of Nicola Phillips phone at 4pm on Wednesday.
But a high court judge, Mr Justice Vos ruled this information should only be handed to her barrister, her solicitor and to the Metropolitan police and could not be shared by other litigants who are suing News International over alleged phone hacking.
He will hold a separate one-day hearing to determine how widely the Mulcaire witness statement could be shared on 30 July, he said.
Lawyers acting for 50 phone-hacking victims argued at a case management conference hearing on Wednesday that this information could be critical to their claims.
Vos agreed there was some merit in their argument, but said he did not want to make "a knee-jerk decision" as he could "foresee there are difficult questions that affect his rights, his article 6 rights".
Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights relates to an individual's right to a fair trial.
Mulcaire, who was jailed in 2007 for charges in relation to hacking of phones of members of the royal household, had argued that disclosure could leave himself open further prosecution.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jul/18/glenn-mulcaire-phone-hacking-order
-
Lisa O'Carroll
-
Peter Wright, a former member of MI5, and the author of Spycatcher (1987) has argued that in the early 1950s he began investigating the possibility that Dick Ellis had been a Soviet spy. Wright became convinced that he had been working with Kim Philby. "Within a year of Philby's falling under suspicion Ellis took early retirement, pleading ill-health. He traveled to Australia, and took up a job as a consultant to ASIS, the Australian overseas intelligence-gathering organization. While there he was briefed by the Australians on the impending defection of Vladimir Petrov, a Beria henchman who opted to stay in the West rather than take his chances in Moscow. Almost immediately Ellis returned to Britain and contacted Kim Philby, despite being specifically warned against doing so by Maurice Oldfield... The reasons for Ellis' hasty flight from Australia have never been clear, but I have always been assumed that he thought that Petrov who was about to defect was the same Von Petrov with whom he had been involved in the 1920s, and who must have known the secret of his treachery."
In his book Peter Wright claims that Ellis confessed to his spying but Maurice Oldfield refused to take action against him. James Dalrymple has claimed that Ellis sold "vast quantities of information" about the British secret service to the Germans. However, his biographer, Frank Cain, has argued that Ellis was not guilty of spying: "Experts have dismissed these claims, if only because important information held by Ellis was known not to have been transmitted to the Soviet Union."
-
Roald Dahl claims that William Stephenson told him that British Security Coordination (BSC) managed to record the conversations of Japanese special envoy Suburu Kurusu with others in the Japanese consulate in November 1941. Marion de Chastelain was the cipher clerk who transcribed these conversations. On 27th November, 1941, William Stephenson sent a telegram to the British government: "Japanese negotiations off. Expect action within two weeks." According to Dahl, who worked for BSC: "Stephenson had tapes of them discussing the actual date of Pearl Harbor... and he swears that he gave the transcription to FDR. He swears that they knew therefore of the oncoming attack on Pearl Harbor and hadn't done anything about it.... I have no way to judge if he was telling the truth, except Bill didn't usually tell stories like that."
-
Roald Dahl claims that William Stephenson told him that British Security Coordination (BSC) managed to record the conversations of Japanese special envoy Suburu Kurusu with others in the Japanese consulate in November 1941. Marion de Chastelain was the cipher clerk who transcribed these conversations. On 27th November, 1941, William Stephenson sent a telegram to the British government: "Japanese negotiations off. Expect action within two weeks." According to Dahl, who worked for BSC: "Stephenson had tapes of them discussing the actual date of Pearl Harbor... and he swears that he gave the transcription to FDR. He swears that they knew therefore of the oncoming attack on Pearl Harbor and hadn't done anything about it.... I have no way to judge if he was telling the truth, except Bill didn't usually tell stories like that."
-
Another book I read during this period was Donald Chase Downes's Orders to Kill (later made into a great film). Downes worked for British Security Coordination (BSC), Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war.
His story, Orders to Kill, was co-written by Paul Dehn, a former member of the BSC. The story tells of a young American pilot, Gene Summers, who is selected to go on a mission to Nazi-occupied Paris to kill Marcel Lafitte, a man believed to be a double agent working in the French Resistance.
When Summers arrives in Paris he meets his contact, Leonie, who provides information about the man he is to assassinate. Summers befriends Lafitte and the more he finds out about him, the more doubts he has of his guilt. Summers tells Leonie that he does not think Lafitte is a traitor. She becomes very angry, pointing out that Summers has dropped hundreds of bombs on people while he was a pilot. Summers replies that there is a difference between killing a lot of people and one person up close.
Summers eventually agrees to murder Lafitte. After trying to kill him with a blow to the head he is forced to resort to stabbing him with a pair of scissors. He decides to steal Lafitte's money in order to make it look like a robbery. Summers returns to Leonie but discovers she has been captured by the Gestapo. He remains in Paris and after the liberation of the city by the Allies he is told that Lafitte was not a traitor and was really a loyal member of the resistance. Summers seeks out Lafitte's wife and daughter. He tells her that her husband was one of their best agents in the resistance and gives her the money he stole from their home.
I watched the film last night. I was very impressed. One of the few films that I have seen that explores the morality of war. There is a great scene where the hero is taught the best way of killing double-agents by the British SIS. The dialogue on the morality of killing in war is fantastic. (It won the British screenplay award that year.) Downes was in charge of assassinations of Nazi agents in France and claims it was based on a true story.
When Hoover discovered that Downs was working for the British and carrying out dirty tricks against the American First Committee he tried to get him sacked from the SOS. William Donovan refused because by this time he was too important to the organisation.
-
Randolph Churchill remembering the morning of 18th May, 1940
I went up to my father's bedroom. He was standing in front of his basin and was shaving with his old fashioned Valet razor. He had a tough beard, and as usual he was hacking away.
"Sit down, dear boy, and read the papers while I finish shaving:" I did as told. After two or three minutes of hacking away, he half-turned and said: "I think I see my way through." He resumed shaving.
I was astounded, and said: "Do you mean we can avoid defeat? (which seemed credible), or beat the bastards?" (which seemed incredible).
He flung his razor into the basin, swung around, and said: "Of course I mean we can beat them."
Me: "Well I'm all for it, but I don't see how you can do it."
By this time he had dried and sponged his face and turning around to me, said with great intensity: "I shall drag the United States in."
Reporting the JFK Assassination: The Origins of Operation Mockingbird
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Part 1
I have started several threads over the years on the reporting of the JFK assassination. Probably the most significant is the thread on Operation Mockingbird. Remember, when I started this thread, Wikipedia was stating that Operation Mockingbird was an urban myth. They kept on deleting my version but eventually they left it after I completely referenced the article. It has since been severely edited but you can find the original version here:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
Even given the existence of Operation Mockingbird, the fact that none of the important investigative journalists of the time showed any real interest in the case is surprising. For example, Drew Pearson was seen as the leading investigative journalist in 1963. Some believe he helped JFK elected in 1960 with his articles about Nixon. He was also no friend of LBJ and wrote several articles about his relationship with Bobby Baker. Yet, as far as I can see, he wrote no serious articles that questioned the lone gunman theory. This raised the possibility that Pearson was part of Operation Mockingbird.
Who therefore was in Mockingbird? Carl Bernstein had an article, CIA and the Media, published in Rolling Stone Magazine on 20th October, 1977. His article included the following: “Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, The Miami Herald, and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with The New York Times, CBS, and Time Inc.”
It is noticeable that Bernstein fails to name anybody who worked for The Washington Post, the newspaper he actually worked for. Deborah Davis, the author of Katharine the Great (1979) and the first to use the term “Operation Mockingbird” in print, believed that the Washington Post was the key organization in this CIA Operation. Davis claimed that Philip Graham, the publisher of the newspaper, and Ben Bradlee, the editor, were key figures in the conspiracy. She also were their journalists, James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."
Most articles on Operation Mockingbird state that it began in the late 1940s. In a sense this was true as the CIA was established in 1947, however, several of these named figures were connected earlier than that. I thought it might be an interesting idea of tracing back the careers of those named as members to see if it might bring in other names such as Drew Pearson. I therefore decided to take a close look at Henry Luce, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Barry Bingham Sr., Ernest Cuneo, Frank Wisner, Allen W. Dulles , Philip Graham, C. D. Jackson and Joseph Alsop. Eventually I found an important link with all these people in something that happened as early as 1940. What is more it brought in others such as Drew Pearson, Walter Winchell, Walter Lippmann, William Allen White, Dorothy Thompson, Raymond Gram Swing, Edward Murrow, Vincent Sheean, Helen Kirkpatrick, Eric Sevareid, Edmond Taylor, Rex Stout, Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Whitelaw Reid, Helen Rogers Reid (publisher of New York Herald Tribune), Barry Bingham (publisher of Louisville Courier-Journal), Paul C. Patterson (publisher of Baltimore Sun) and Dorothy Schiff (publisher New York Post).
However, the story begins in 1935 when Allen Dulles visited Nazi Germany. He was appalled by the treatment of Jews in the country he encouraged his law firm to close their Berlin office. Dulles also joined forces with Hamilton Fish Armstrong to produce a pamphlet, Can We Be Neutral? (1936). As a result of this publication, Dulles came to the notice of MI6. He also came to the attention of Ernest Cuneo, one of Roosevelt’s main advisers on foreign policy. Cuneo, who was Jewish, like Dulles, was very concerned about the treatment of his race in Nazi Germany.
At the time British intelligence had mixed feelings about its attitude towards Nazi Germany. For example, Charles Maxwell Knight, the head of B5b, a unit that conducted the monitoring of political subversion, was a former fascist who expected Hitler to head east and destroy communism in the Soviet Union. Most members of MI6 shared this view and fully supported the British government's policy of appeasement. However, some, believed, like Desmond Morton, that Hitler needed to be taken on as he would eventually pose a threat to Britain, and by this time he would be too strong to defeat. (Franklin Roosevelt also held this view as regards Hitler's long-term threat to the United States). In his efforts to deal with the appeasers, Morton leaked classified files to Winston Churchill, who at that time was the leader of the Conservative faction, of those opposing the foreign policies of Neville Chamberlain.
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 undermined the pro-appeasement group within MI5 and MI6. However, it was not until Winston Churchill became prime minister in May 1940 that he was able, with the help of Morton, to purge this group. Churchill realised straight away that it would be vitally important to enlist the United States as Britain's ally. Randolph Churchill, on the morning of 18th May, 1940, claims that his father told him "I think I see my way through.... I mean we can beat them." When Randolph asked him how, he replied with great intensity: "I shall drag the United States in."
Churchill sent William Stephenson, an anti-fascist businessman, who had been working with Morton, to the United States later that month. Stephenson's main contact was Gene Tunney, a friend from the First World War, who had been World Heavyweight Champion (1926-1928) and was a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI. Tunney later recalled: "Quite to my surprise I received a confidential letter that was from Billy Stephenson, and he asked me to try and arrange for him to see J. Edgar Hoover... I found out that his mission was so important that the Ambassador from England could not be in on it, and no one in official government... It was my understanding that the thing went off extremely well." Stephenson was also a friend of Ernest Cuneo who met with Roosevelt and reported back that the president wanted "the closest possible marriage between the FBI and British Intelligence."
On his return to London, Stephenson reported back to Churchill. After hearing what he had to say, Churchill told Stephenson: "You know what you must do at once. We have discussed it most fully, and there is a complete fusion of minds between us. You are to be my personal representative in the United States. I will ensure that you have the full support of all the resources at my command. I know that you will have success, and the good Lord will guide your efforts as He will ours." Charles Howard Ellis, a member of MI6, who became Stephenson’s assistant, said that he selected Stephenson because: "Firstly, he was Canadian. Secondly, he had very good American connections... he had a sort of fox terrier character, and if he undertook something, he would carry it through."
Churchill now instructed Stewart Menzies, head of MI6, to appoint William Stephenson as the head of the British Security Coordination (BSC). Menzies told Gladwyn Jebb on 3rd June, 1940: "I have appointed Mr W.S. Stephenson to take charge of my organisation in the USA and Mexico. As I have explained to you, he has a good contact with an official (J. Edgar Hoover) who sees the President daily. I believe this may prove of great value to the Foreign Office in the future outside and beyond the matters on which that official will give assistance to Stephenson. Stephenson leaves this week. Officially he will go as Principal Passport Control Officer for the USA."
As William Boyd has pointed out: "The phrase (British Security Coordination) is bland, almost defiantly ordinary, depicting perhaps some sub-committee of a minor department in a lowly Whitehall ministry. In fact BSC, as it was generally known, represented one of the largest covert operations in British spying history... With the US alongside Britain, Hitler would be defeated - eventually. Without the US (Russia was neutral at the time), the future looked unbearably bleak... polls in the US still showed that 80% of Americans were against joining the war in Europe. Anglophobia was widespread and the US Congress was violently opposed to any form of intervention." An office was opened in the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan with the agreement of President Roosevelt and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI.