Alfred C. Ulmer

[John Simkin]

Russ Baker's book has got me interested in Alfred Ulmer. This is his New York Times obituary:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...;sec=&spon=

Alfred C. Ulmer Jr., a former official of the Office of Strategic Services and the Central Intelligence Agency, died on June 22 in Virginia Beach. He was 83.

Mr. Ulmer did intelligence work in the Navy in World War II and then joined the O.S.S. He served in Turkey, Egypt, Italy and Austria, overseeing intelligence operatives gathering information about the German military in North Africa and the Balkans, his family said.

The service was disbanded by President Truman late in 1945, and Mr. Ulmer joined the C.I.A. not long after it was founded in 1947. He retired in 1962 and received the agency's Intelligence Medal of Merit.

In his C.I.A. years, he was stationed in Madrid, Athens, Paris and Washington. He ran the agency's Far East operations from 1955 to 1958.

''God, we had fun,'' he said in a 1994 interview. ''We went all over the world and we did what we wanted.''

Thomas Powers wrote in his book ''The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the C.I.A.'' (1979) that in 1956 Frank Wisner, a senior C.I.A. executive, told Mr. Ulmer, ''It's time we held Sukarno's feet to the fire.''

At the time, Sukarno was Indonesia's leader. Mr. Powers wrote that the director of central intelligence, Allen Dulles, and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, ''did not want to overthrow Sukarno exactly, just force him to suppress the P.K.I.'' -- Indonesia's large Communist Party -- ''send the Russians packing and get on the American team.'' So the agency aided anti-Sukarno rebels, but they were confronted successfully by Sukarno's forces and, Mr. Powers wrote, Allen Dulles decided that the rebels must be told that the United States had to disengage. ''The result,'' Mr. Powers said, ''was a humiliation for the United States.''

In a major covert operation in Japan, the agency spent millions of dollars in the 1950's and 60's to support the conservative party that dominated the country's politics for a generation, the Liberal Democratic Party.

Mr. Ulmer was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and graduated from Princeton in 1939. After the C.I.A., he worked in the financial world.

His marriage to Doris Gibson Bridges ended in divorce. He is survived by a son, Nicholas, of Geneva; a daughter, Marguerite Ulmer Power, of Virginia Beach; five grandchildren; a brother; and two sisters.

This is a passage from my page on Willem Oltmans:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKoltmans.htm

On 5th April 1961, Joseph Luns arranged for the New Guinea Council to take office in Netherlands New Guinea. President Sukarno threatened to invade this territory that he felt believed belonged to Indonesia and on 15th August, 1962, he ordered full mobilisation of his army. Oltmans claimed to have prevented a Dutch war against Indonesia over New Guinea by sending a memo to President John F. Kennedy. Whatever the truth of this statement, Kennedy, against CIA advice, applied pressure on the Dutch government to hand over the territory to a temporary UN administration (UNTEA). On 1st May, 1963, Indonesia took control of the country.

As David Kaiser pointed out in American Tragedy (2000) "Kennedy had courted President Sukarno - who at home balanced his large domestic Communist party with a pro-Western army - and his administration had supported the transfer of West New Guinea from Dutch to Indonesian sovereignty and successfully mediated the dispute between the two nations... In the week before his death, Kennedy had decided to visit Indonesia in the spring of 1964." After John F. Kennedy was assassinated, President Lyndon Johnson cancelled the visit and in December 1964 he cut off all aid to Indonesia.

[Linda Minor]

John,

Did you happen to see what I posted here?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...45&start=45

Winston Scott: CIA Station Chief in Mexico, Was he murdered?

I just finished the book last night and was amazed to come across the name of Fergie Dempster in connection with "another agency man named Al Ulmer, who first met Win back in his Havana days and more recently had served as London station chief."

I'm assuming this is the same Al Ulmer mentioned in Russ Baker's more recent book, Family of Secrets. Were you aware of any connection Ulmer may have had to Bush back in the "Havana days"?

[John Simkin]

John,

Did you happen to see what I posted here?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...45&start=45

Winston Scott: CIA Station Chief in Mexico, Was he murdered?

I just finished the book last night and was amazed to come across the name of Fergie Dempster in connection with "another agency man named Al Ulmer, who first met Win back in his Havana days and more recently had served as London station chief."

I'm assuming this is the same Al Ulmer mentioned in Russ Baker's more recent book, Family of Secrets. Were you aware of any connection Ulmer may have had to Bush back in the "Havana days"?

I was not aware that Ulmer was connected to Cuban operations. However, he did meet a lot of the CIA suspects in the assassination of JFK while he ran the agency's Far East operations (1955-1958). Ulmer traveled to Taiwan soon after his appointment. He later recalled: "We were dropping Chinese agents into China - two a month - but we weren't getting much." Ulmer quoted Desmond FitzGerald as saying that he "had no use for the Chinese Nationalists... and wanted out."

According to Evan Thomas, the author of The Very Best Men (1995), Ulmer had a meeting with Frank Wisner, the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA, in 1956, to discuss what they could do if revolution broke out behind the Iron Curtain. After the meeting Wisner told Richard Bissell that they agree to send in "lots of arms" to those resisting the communists. As Ulmer later pointed out: "We went all over the world and we did what we wanted.''

Ulmer's main task was to try and overthrow President Sukarno of Indonesia.The CIA spent a million dollars to try to influence the Indonesian elections in 1955, but much of the money was wasted or stolen and Sukarno became stronger, while the Communist Party polled six million votes. Frank Wisner told Ulmer that "I think it's time we held Sukarno's feet to the fire." Allen Dulles agreed and told Ulmer he would be "given $10 million to back a revolution in the Indonesian archipelago."

In 1956 the CIA began supporting the PRRI-Permesta rebellion in Sulawesi. This ended in failure and President Sukarno became even stronger. The following year the CIA arranged for arms to be supplied to rebels on the island of Sumatra. In February 1958, the rebels felt strong enough to declare the island independent. Within days "Sukarno's navy blockaded the rebels, his air force raided them, and his army began to move on Sumatra". The CIA sent in paramilitary expert Anthony Poshepny to Sumatra.

On 18th May 1958, Allen Lawrence Pope, one of the CIA pilots, was shot down in his B-26 after accidentally bombing a church and killing most of the congregation. Allen Dulles decided to call off the operation. Thomas Powers, the author of The Man Who Kept The Secrets (1979): "The result, of course, was a humiliation for the United States, but it was a quiet humiliation. The Indonesians knew who had been behind the rebels, of course, but they elected to treat the matter calmly... and the American press somehow never got wind of the CIA's role."

Richard Helms asked Sam Halpern to investigate why the operation failed. Halpern reported back that "everything that could have gone wrong with a paramilitary operation, had gone wrong with this one." The result was that Ulmer lost his job as head of the CIA's Far East operations.

Ulmer retired in in 1962 and received the agency's Intelligence Medal of Merit. Later that year President Sukarno threatened to invade Netherlands New Guinea that he felt believed belonged to Indonesia. On 15th August, 1962, he ordered full mobilisation of his army. Willem Oltmans claimed to have prevented a Dutch war against Indonesia over New Guinea by sending a memo to President John F. Kennedy. Whatever the truth of this statement, Kennedy, against CIA advice, applied pressure on the Dutch government to hand over the territory to a temporary UN administration (UNTEA). On May 1, 1963, Indonesia took control of the country.

Russ Baker suggests in his book Family of Secrets (2009), that Ulmer visited George H. W. Bush in Texas a few days before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Several researchers have suggested there is a link between his assassination and the conflict with the CIA over the policy towards Cuba. What about JFK's policy on Indonesia?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKulmer.htm

[John Kelly]

Ulmer was also a close associate of Robert Maheu.

JK

[John Simkin]

Ulmer was also a close associate of Robert Maheu.

JK

Robert Maheu worked with Ulmer in the attempt to overthrow President Sukrno in 1958. It involved making a pornographic home movie with an actor who looked like Sukarno.