David Talbot: Allen Dulles, CIA and Rise of America's Secret Government

[Brian Schmidt]

There are a lot of gems even with the redacted text. It's clear that Dulles is working in concert with Helms, Angleton, Stuart Alsop, Cord Meyer, Howard Roman, etc. to counter any kind of criticism against the Agency aggressively. You can see the number of references to Truman's December 22nd opinion piece and how much time Dulles takes to try to negate it. Also note how many times he speaks with Angleton (and Raymond Rocca) in the months after the assassination.

Here are some interesting parts:

December 2, 1963:

Chief Justice Warren is having luncheon with Katzenbach today. First meeting of Commission will probably be Wednesday morning. Warren agreed that they will have to get a staff, should have no subpoena powers, no public hearings.

December 6, 1963:

(Redacted) reported that a group of air force officers had planned to try to impeach President Kennedy before next re-election. AWD advised he report to FBI (redacted).

December 26, 1963:

Mr. Angleton felt that lunch should be delayed; learned through Sam Papich that the Bureau had had some strong internal differences.

January 6, 1964:

Mr. McCloy. Both agreed that organization of Commission is proceeding at a very slow pace.

January 28, 1964

Mr. Rocca. Received Dulles-Jackson-Correa report. Mentioned article in Labor Monthly by Palme "After Kennedy"; thesis is that CIA killed the President. Said that Mrs. Oswald was going on a speaking tour, also said he is getting material together re AWD's briefing of Mr. Truman. Will send copies to AWD.

January 20, 1964:

Mr. Cord Meyer. Discussed Labour Monthly article.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Brian Schmidt

[Paul Brancato]

Good stuff Brian, thanks for reviewing and submitting a few highlights.

Talbot's new book is sitting on my Kindle waiting. Time to get on with it.

Edited October 13, 2015 by Paul Brancato

[Brian Schmidt]

Mine should be in my mailbox by now. I look forward to reading some of it tonight.

Here are a few more tidbits. My commentary in italics and parenthesis.

April 10, 1964:

Lee Winfrey, Knight newspapers. Re Parade story on Bay of Pigs by St. George. AWD stated that he knew nothing of alleged attempt on Castro’s life at time of Bay of Pigs. (Obviously lying)

May 27, 1964

11:00 - 1:00 AT Sullivan & Cromwell - re our wills & Mrs. Bancroft's Trust

September 22, 1966

Edward Norton called again to ask Mr. Dulles if he and a colleague could come talk with Mr. Dulles about the Warren Commission Report "off the record". Mr. D. said yes, and gave permission for them to bring a tape recorder. Mr. Norton promised not to ever make the tape public.

October 5, 1966

Mr. Lowrie, from the London Daily press, called to say that the pictures taken after the assassination showing the wounds and bullet holes, etc. are nowhere to be found. Archives denies having them, Robt. Kennedy denies having them.

October 31, 1967

3:00 Bill Harvey (This is around the time of the Johnny Rosselli-Jack Anderson column. It is believed the source of the leaked information was Harvey)

[Paul Rigby]

There are a lot of gems even with the redacted text. It's clear that Dulles is working in concert with Helms, Angleton, Stuart Alsop, Cord Meyer, Howard Roman, etc. to counter any kind of criticism against the Agency aggressively. You can see the number of references to Truman's December 22nd opinion piece and how much time Dulles takes to try to negate it. Also note how many times he speaks with Angleton (and Raymond Rocca) in the months after the assassination.

Here are some interesting parts:

January 28, 1964

Mr. Rocca. Received Dulles-Jackson-Correa report. Mentioned article in Labor Monthly by Palme "After Kennedy"; thesis is that CIA killed the President. Said that Mrs. Oswald was going on a speaking tour, also said he is getting material together re AWD's briefing of Mr. Truman. Will send copies to AWD.

January 20, 1964:

Mr. Cord Meyer. Discussed Labour Monthly article.

Labour Monthly, January 1964, pp. 1-15;

Notes of the Month: After Kennedy

By R. Palme Dutt

December 10, 1963

Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid long

Shakespeare

Extract:

Presidential Murders as a Political System

For a century the murder of the President from time to time has been an unwritten article of the American Constitution. Commentators have observed that out of thirty-two Presidents during the past century four have been assassinated (leaving out the score unsuccessful attempts on others), and that one in eight chances of sudden death might appear a somewhat high casualty rate. But they have either remarked on this as a curious phenomenon, or deduced from it a strain of violence in the American Way of Life. What they have not observed is the constitutional significance of this practice. Under the United States Constitution the President, once he is installed in office for his term of four years (which in practice in the modern period has tended to become a term of eight years), exercises supreme executive power at will, and cannot be removed by any device in the Constitution. He cannot be forced to resign by a vote of Congress. He cannot be impeached. If a President develops progressive tendencies, and begins to enter on courses of action displeasing to the great propertied interests which are the real rulers of America, there is no legal or constitutional way of removing him, there is no way of getting rid of him save by physical elimination. The record of the kingdom of the Carnegies and Rockefellers has shown no scruples in that respect, either within the United States or through the actions of the Marines or the C.I.A. or other agencies in Latin America or other countries.

A Roll of Dead Presidents

Lincoln and Kennedy were shot dead in public. Others also from the moment of causing displeasure to the ruling interests vanished rapidly from the scene. Woodrow Wilson, aflame with the ideal of the League of Nations as a vision of international peace, incurred the obstructive hatred of the Elders of the Senate, who understood very well that American monopoly capitalism could not yet dominate an international organisation of this type and would therefore be stronger outside. Buoyantly Wilson entered on a speaking tour to convert the nation with his unrivalled prestige and popularity. On the tour he was suddenly struck down with physical collapse from which he never recovered; and he died an embittered man. Roosevelt returned from Yalta with its triumphant vision of American-Soviet co-operation for peace and popular advance in the post-war world, and incurred such venomous hatred from American reaction as has never been equalled. Within two months he was dead. He was replaced by the miserable pigmy Truman to inaugurate the cold war.

A C.I.A. Job?

The facts of the Dallas murder may become later more fully known. Or, as is more likely, they may remain forever buried. Universal suspicion has certainly been aroused in all countries by the peculiar circumstances and the still more peculiar actions and successive statements of the authorities both before and after. The obvious tale of "a Communist" was too crude to take in anyone anywhere, especially as it was evident to all that the blow was a blow precisely against the aims most ardently supported by Communists and the left, the aims of peaceful co-existence, American-Soviet co-operation and democratic rights, which Kennedy was accused by the right of helping. The old legal maxim in a case of murder, cui bono "for whose benefit?" still has its value for sniffing out the guilty party. It is natural therefore that most commentators have surmised a coup of the Ultra-Right or racialists of Dallas. That may be but the trail, if followed up seriously, seems to reach wider. Any speculation at present can only be in the air, since the essential facts are still hidden. But on the face of it this highly organised coup (even to the provision of a "fall guy" Van der Lubbe and rapid killing of the fall guy while manacled in custody, as soon as there appeared a danger of his talking), with the manifest complicity necessary of a very wide range of authorities, bears all the hallmarks of a C.I.A. job.

Can the Rat be Deodorised?

After all, the C.I.A. had just arrived fresh from bumping off Diem earlier in the same month. The Kennedy job was certainly a larger order to undertake; but the operation was manifestly organised with the customary elaborate attention to detail. Even the background information offered with regard to the Van der Lubbe presented a highly peculiar story. From the Marines; a supposed "defector" to the Soviet Union being rejected by the Soviet Union; after he has done his job there, returning with all expenses paid by the U.S. Government (not usually so generous to "defectors"); endeavours to join anti-Castro gangs in New Orleans, but is rejected by them on the grounds that they regard him as an agent of the C.I.A.; turns up next as a supposed Chairman of a non-existent branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, which denies knowledge of him or the existence of any branch either in Louisiana or Texas; applies vainly for a visa to Cuba; travels about widely, including to Mexico, with no visible source of finance. Here is typical small fry (�so weary with disasters, tugg�d with fortune, that I would set my life on any chance, to mend it or be rid on �t�) fit to be chosen, and equipped with damning "evidence" as an expendable fall guy, while a more skilled hand does the deed. By accident, when the whole of Dallas is screened in vigilant preparation, the one most strategic building on the route is overlooked. By accident the one notorious suspect, already under supervision by the F.B.I., but intended this time to be found as a suspect, is overlooked in the general rounding up and clearing out of all suspects. By accident, when immediately after the murder the whole building is swarming with police, he is able to walk out unmolested. And then the unhappy fall guy, tricked and trapped and no doubt double-crossed in face of previous promises of an easy getaway and rich reward, noisily protests his innocence, a quick shot inside the prison closes his mouth; and the shot is fired, oddly enough, again through an accidental oversight in letting this unauthorised intruder come close with a revolver, by a type described as an underworld character close to the police. No. The whole story is really too thick; and the more details are offered, the thicker it gets. Of course it will all be cleared up now by the Presidential Commission of Enquiry. Or perhaps not. Naturally we can have every confidence. For on the Presidential Commission Enquiry sits appropriately enough our old friend Allen Dulles, former Director of the C.I.A.

The full piece here:

https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?1251-Suspicion-in-Plenty-An-anthology-of-scepticism-published-in-Britain-1963-1973&p=6147#post6147

[William Kelly]

My review:

JFKcountercoup: The Devil's Chessboard and the New Political Landscape

[Gene Kelly]

"Dulles is working in concert with Helms, Angleton, Stuart Alsop, Cord Meyer ... to counter any kind of criticism against the Agency aggressively."

That entry speaks volumes.

And if that Mockingbird don't sing....

[David G. Healy]

My review:

JFKcountercoup: The Devil's Chessboard and the New Political Landscape

great job, Bill....

[Douglas Caddy]

David Talbot writes on Facebook today:

There are trolls in the kitchen at Amazon -- a reviewer gave my book one star, claiming that the Kindle version has no citations. Completely false, as other readers are pointing out. Readers -- please set Amazon straight by pointing this out:

http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Chessboard-Dulle…/…/ref=sr_1_1…

Meanwhile, the book rose to #322 on the Amazon list this morning and is being hotly debated in the media, including The Daily Beast and the UK Daily Mail.

Writin' is fightin' -- as Ishmael Reed once observed. And I'm in a dogfight.

[Cliff Varnell]

Does David Talbot say anything about the Bruce-Lovett Report?

http://cryptome.org/0001/bruce-lovett.htm

[Cliff Varnell]

Writin' is fightin' -- as Ishmael Reed once observed. And I'm in a dogfight.

Might have a dogfight with me over the Bay of Pigs...

What about Joe Kennedy saying it was a "lucky thing" Allen Dulles went down?

[Douglas Caddy]

Part 2 of the interview of David Talbot on Democracy Now:

The Rise of America’s Secret Government: The Deadly Legacy of Ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles Pt. 2

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/10/14/the_rise_of_america_s_secret

[James DiEugenio]

That article in The Daily Beast is really a half loaf type.

The author consults with Doug Brinkley who says that JFK's views on foreign policy differed from what came before only as a matter of tactics.

LOL

ROTF

Oh really Mr. Brinkley.

You mean like in the Congo, where Ike and Dulles decided to kill Lumumba. Whereas JFK was going to completely reverse American policy there and back him?

Or do you mean like in Indonesia? Where Dulles and Ike attempted to overthrow Sukarno. When JFK asked his intrepid CIA director for the report on this, Dulles gave him a redacted copy. But Kennedy still understood what happened and again he reversed policy and invited Sukarno to Washington for a state visit.

Doug, maybe you mean with Egypt? Where the Dulles brothers decided to freeze out Nasser because he would not join the Baghdad Pact, and then reneged on Aswan. Which made Nasser go to the USSR for the funds for the Aswan Dam. So Kennedy decided to rebuild that relationship by backing Nasser's importation of troops into Yemen in order to defeat the Saudi influence there. And the Saudis were the ones Dulles now backed in the Middle East after Nasser was abandoned.

This is tactical? What BS, these are reversals, plain and simple.

Brinkley is the acolyte of the late Steve Ambrose. Who was the darling official historian for Hanks and Spielberg. Its from Ambrose that the (highly fictionalized) story for Saving Private Ryan emerged. (See Reclaiming Parkland, pgs. 21-24) Ambrose of course blasted Stone for the NY Times for his film JFK. He then attacked Nixon on TV. Well Brinkley now runs Ambrose's WW 2 museum--which Hanks and Spielberg contributed mightily to-- and wrote a puff piece on Hanks for Time.

​Now any reviewer should know about these connections before consulting a supposed neutral historian for a review of an important book. But, we all know who edits The Daily Beast right?

Edited October 15, 2015 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, Brinkley is also the official biographer of Dean Acheson, who again, JFK had clashes with in the White House over foreign policy.

And, in fact, Acheson criticized young Kennedy over his great Algeria speech back in 1957. It was so bad that when Jackie saw him waiting for a train at Penn station, she started yelling at him in public.

Nice source eh?

[Douglas Caddy]

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=bridge+of+spies+trailer

Today I saw the new movie, Bridge of Spies, which is about the exchange of the Soviet spy Rudolf Abel for U.S. pilot Gary Francis Powers. Excellent film. However,I was startled when a scene suddenly appeared on the screen in which CIA Director Allen Dulles sketches out how the exchange is to be accomplished. He is portrayed as being in total command of the situation. Fortunately, it is the only scene in which he appears.

Edited October 17, 2015 by Douglas Caddy

[Douglas Caddy]

David Talbot posted this on Facebook today (Oct. 16):

More blowback from the guardians of official (and dull) U.S. history. The San Francisco Chronicle found some obscure academic named Glenn Altschuler from the continuing education program at Cornell to review my book. I've never heard of the gentleman and he does not seem to have published anything of distinction, or have any expertise at all about U.S. intelligence history. And yet in his breathless and uninformed review, he proclaims the book "animated by conspiracy theories." This of course has become the convenient way for the academic and media establishments and all credulous chroniclers of power to dismiss deep research into American history that they find too disturbing. It's a way of shutting off true intellectual debate -- because once you've been tarred a conspiracy theorist, you are exiled to the lunatic fringe.

It's clear that Altschuler does not have the background to seriously engage with my book, and he consistently misreads it, out of ignorance or malice. For instance, he states that my only source for writing that Dulles's CIA was suspected of supporting a 1961 military coup attempt against President de Gaulle were reports in the French press. But I actually drew from French and U.S. government documents as well, and from the work of French historians. Even the NY Times, certainly no watchdog when it came to covering the the rampant mischief of the CIA, carried reports at the time about how CIA collusion with the mutinous French generals was causing concern in the Kennedy White House.

The Chronicle hired a clerk to do a real historian's job. But this is all too typical of San Francisco's daily paper these days -- a newspaper in the heart of a well-educated bastion of higher learning that has no serious intellectual content, has reduced its book review to a couple random pages stuck inside its entertainment calendar, and which is more interested in serving as a mouthpiece for the SF Chamber of Commerce and the corporate interests that are ruining the city than it is in fostering real civic debate and public enlightenment. This is a newspaper that would rather crusade against the homeless than challenge the big-money interests that are making people homeless.

The paper is a disgrace to all who have a brain...or a heart. And it's about time that we built a rival daily that can take away the Chronicle's dwindling and increasingly dispirited readership, and put the thing out of its money-losing misery.

Oh, did I tell you that I hate the mainstream media, with all its shady, petty, corporate-driven agendas, and it shabby relationship to the truth? Throughout the Cold War, and now the War on Terror, the press has been a willing party to our intellectual enslavement.