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

[Larry Hancock]

Uh, that would be a "quiet landing" with tanks, brought in by tank landing craft, thousands of troops along with heavy weapons brought in by landing craft and paratroop drops over the beach?

Its almost like there are two different operations still being discussed...

[Gene Kelly]

Greg/Chris/Larry/Jim:

Your insights on BOP are priceless. I've enjoyed reading this thread. Not only because of its well-informed commentary and high-level assessment, but the professional discourse. Too many threads these days disintegrate into personal attacks and animosity. This one is refreshing in its collegiality.

It is after all focused on Dulles, and his means/motive for what transpired in 1963. I too have read much on BOP and have always thought that it precipitated what happen to JFK. As Jim points out, many of the BOP players (Ferrie and Bannister, Arcacha Smith and de Torres, Morales, Hunt and Phillips) come back as as suspects in Dealey Plaza.

The comment about Nixon "salting" the land prior to the Kennedy administration and Dulles' script writers reversing the blame upon JFK bring the reasons for his death full circle in a common sense way. And the bigger picture also becomes more clear ... the Kennedy's and Rockefeller's were at war.

Gene

[Greg Burnham]

Gene,

Thanks for the kind words. Although there is so much more to analyze as to the underlying motives of the actual "Commanders-in-Chief" (not JFK) leading up to and during the Bay of Pigs, we have made significant progress in removing at least one part of JFK's post mortem character assassination.

There was so much effort put into the "blame the Bay of Pigs Fiasco on Kennedy" campaign over the decades that it is very difficult to set the record straight even 50 years after the fact and more than several years after the declassification of the most revelatory documentation on the subject. The public has labored under the misapprehension that "JFK failed to provide promised US air support at the BOP" for more than 5 decades. Yet Americans can sense that something doesn't jibe with that story. When they weigh the "personality, character, moral fiber and principles" displayed by JFK, against those of a President supposedly capable of betraying Brigade 2506, there is a mismatch.

Yet, in the absence of sufficient access to the evidence, It has become one of the most "presumed to be true falsehoods" ever promoted.

But, for me personally, there is much that has only very recently changed and for which I am eternally grateful. It is a small, but important, victory for the truth. It is this:

In this thread much was discussed / debated about many aspects of the failed / sabotaged Bay of Pigs Operation. Those who participated in the BOP portion of this discussion don't agree on everything. And, in some areas, we very much disagree. However, perhaps for the very first time, not a single Bay of Pigs expert (real or perceived) even suggested that Kennedy refused to provide the (fabricated) promised US air support. Not one person. So even though there is much to be discussed about all of it, at least that Big Lie has been completely vanquished from this learning center.

It is a start.

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Gene, I guess that is ideally what forums are all about, or supposed to be.

And Greg is correct also, with all of this info finally out there, its pretty hard to blame Kennedy for this debacle.

The operation just morphed into something that the CIA could not handle. It was way beyond a covert or clandestine operation.

And as I said previously, the JCS should have done a lot more than just nod off on it. Which is why Kennedy was so upset with them after.

Dulles understood that he was culpable in large part, so he got his cover story out there via Henry Luce. Thereby reversing the blame and creating a legend.

One that many people involved actually swallowed.

[Chuck Schwartz]

I don't think the JFK Assassination was about the Kennedy's vs. the Rockefeller's- I think it was about the CIA (Dulles/Cabell) and certain generals in the US Military vs. JFK.

[James DiEugenio]

Chuck:

That is a tenable argument and a sensible one, on the operational level.

But when one examines the way the power structure of the USA was set in 1963, there was a level above that one, just as there was a level above the White House and congress.

Some people, like C. Wright Mills, called it the Power Elite, some, like Don Gibson, call it the Eastern Establishment. Either way, there is no denying it existed and there is no denying its influence. To use just one example: if you look at John McCloy's suggested amendments to the Warren Report, you will see that they are written at his office in Rockefeller Center, where he was serving as the chief counsel to what is called the Seven Sisters.

Secondly, in the fall of 1963, David Rockefeller asked for a meeting with JFK. Kennedy refused the meeting since he knew what it was about: Rockefeller wanted to request a coup in Brazil; where his empire had huge holdings, and then President Goulart, was getting too much like Guzman in Guatemala in 1954.

Well, after Kennedy's murder, LBJ did accept that meeting. Since he was much friendlier with the Rockefellers, especially Nelson. The coup was on and the man who the CIA picked to be the early point man in the affair was none other than John McCloy. Yep, as he was sitting on the Warren Commission.

Now, take a look at Bugliosi's 2,600 page book and see if you can locate that fact there. I will save you the trouble. You cannot. But yet is that not somewhat relevant to how the WC worked? All of these cover up guys--Bugliosi, Posner, Jim Moore, McAdams etc--all of them deny that 1.) this split existed, or that 2.) It had anything to do with the murder of JFK. No matter how much evidence one accumulates to show such was the case. And the Bay of Pigs is a very good example of this split. In fact, I have always said that one of the things that puzzled me about Kennedy is why he did not send in the Navy to bail out the operation. I did not figure this out for a long time afterwards.

But yet, it is things like that which tell you what the power structure was like at the time. I am not saying that the Rockefellers and the EE motivated the coup. What I am suggesting is that the people who did start it, and then organized it, would not have done it unless they got prior approval from that group in advance. The main reason being that they knew they needed the big power centers, like the media, to cooperate in the cover up.

Which they did. In excelsis.

Edited August 30, 2015 by James DiEugenio

[Jon G. Tidd]

Jim D,

As to your comment #111, I guess you'd say the EE was behind the murder.

If you wish to ignore Tippit's murder, the murder, singular.

I agree with you. The EE was on-board.

[Gene Kelly]

Good comments. This thread and the pending book by Talbot will shed more light on the upper echelons of the plot. I cite the Rockefeller's because they were (as one poster put it) the "stars" of the show and tell earlier in 1959 for Khrushchev. I believe that they were the power elite coming out of the 1950's, but the Kennedy's posed a threat to their power. I am reminded of a comment by Bobby in 1965 that "Oh, come on. We Kennedy's eat Rockefeller's for breakfast".

Later, President Ford directed then Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller to head up a President’s Commission on CIA Activities in the United States. The “Rockefeller Commission” (whose Executive Director was David Belin) investigated CIA mail opening programs, monitoring of anti-war dissidents, and conducted a very limited review of JFK’s assassination. The Commission was accused of being an attempt to fend off more thorough investigations, although the Church Committee soon followed.

Rockefeller claimed that there was no "credible evidence" that Oswald or Ruby were CIA agents or informants (obviously not true). His report argues: "Hunt's employment record with the CIA indicated that he had no duties involving contacts with Cuban exile elements or organizations inside or outside the United States after the early months of 1961" (also not true). The Commission predictably concluded there was no credible evidence of any CIA involvement.

The report was condemned as a cover-up and openly criticized by Cyril Wecht who accused the Rockefeller Commission of "deliberately distorting and suppressing" part of his testimony as to the nature of Kennedy's head and neck wounds. Wecht demanded that a full transcript of his testimony be released, but Rockefeller refused on the grounds that the commission proceedings were confidential. I think its fair to conclude that Rockefeller's Commission was a strategic effort to fend off the upcoming congressional investigations, with little interest in getting at the truth... in essence, one of those infamous "limited hang-outs".

William Colby has just been appointed as CIA Director, and appeared before the Commission, but after Colby's second or third appearance before the commission investigators, Rockefeller drew Colby aside and said, "Bill, do you really have to present all this material to us? We realize there are secrets that you fellows need to keep, and so nobody here is going to take it amiss if you feel there are some questions you can't answer quite as fully as you seem to feel you have to." Colby was fired in late 1975, and replaced by George Bush. John Simkin started a thread on the Rockefeller Commission in December 2006.

[Cliff Varnell]

I don't think the JFK Assassination was about the Kennedy's vs. the Rockefeller's- I think it was about the CIA (Dulles/Cabell) and certain generals in the US Military vs. JFK.

For whom did the CIA and military work?

Dean Rusk was the head of the Rockefeller Foundation for nine years before he became Sec of State.

Sure looks to me Dean Rusk was pushing the CIA around prior to the BOP.

Richard Helms was the grandson of a top Rockefeller banker Gates McGarrah.

Primary consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure -- the promotion of Richard Helms as head of clandestine services.

Joe Kennedy: "Lucky thing [Dulles et al] were found out early."

I'm not sure luck had a lot to do with it...

[James DiEugenio]

You are right Gene.

That whole Rockefeller Commission was a dead giveaway once Belin came in as chief counsel.

See, that was a very iffy time frame which I have done a lot of work on. In the wake of Watergate, plus the exposure of the Hosty note, and the first mass viewing of the Z film, it was really touch and go there for awhile: Was Pandora's Box going to open?

Ford gave the game way in a private meeting with the NY Times. Someone, I think it may be Dan Schorr--or at least he wrote about it--asked Ford: Why did you stack the Rockefeller Commission with these conservative types, like Reagan. Ford replied that there was a real danger that some dark state secrets could be revealed. The guy said, like what? Ford replied, like assassinations.

When that got out, two things happened: First, Otis Pike and Frank Church now realized that they had to open up their own inquiries since Belin was supervising a whitewash. And second, the CIA went into high gear trying to spin Ford's reply as pertaining to only foreign assassinations. Although since Ford served on the WC, he seemed to be in prime position to talk about domestic ones.

So the Church Committee now focused on foreign assassinations and Hart and Schweiker were only allowed to investigate the performance of the CIA and FBI in service to the WC. Although, as we now know, the Schweiker Hart staff went much further than that.

The CIA was enraged at both Church and Pike for what they did. In fact, the CIA liaison to the Pike Committee famously said: "Pike will pay for this, you wait and see....We will destroy him for this." (Pike Report, p. 7) And they did shortly after. In fact, Pike could not even get his report published. It had to be smuggled out by Schorr and given to the Village Voice which published it in a special issue.

The new CIA Director, George Bush, then visited CBS and told them how disappointed they were in Schorr. Instantly, without any due process, Schorr was fired.

Shorlty after this, the CIA set up an offshore campaign fund to target the senators and congressman who had backed Church and Pike. It was supervised by the infamous Terry Dolan, a closeted homosexual who was later exposed in the underrated book God's Bullies. The existence of that secret fund was very closely held and it was not exposed until years later by The Nation. It was clearly illegal, but that is the whole point of a clandestine operation.

In my opinion, although many people look at the election of Reagan as the great milestone in how this country turned sharply right--to the point now that is is almost unrecognizable from what it was in the sixties--I have alway held that it was that operation, which got rid of so many progressive senators and congressmen, that was really the beginning of the rightward swerve.

Edited August 30, 2015 by James DiEugenio

[Larry Hancock]

Jim, could you give a reference for that offshore CIA fund, is it a particular Nation article, a book, I'd like to take a look......thanks, Larry

[James DiEugenio]

Larry:

I have been looking for that article now for about two hours.

To the best of my memory, it was in The Nation, about two or three years after the 1980 election. In two election cycles, Dolan's NCPAC had targeted seven senators and taken out five, including Church. I should have clipped it, but I didn't do that in those days.

[Cliff Varnell]

In our culture villains tend to get mythologized.

A life-long screw-up like Charlie Manson is a larger than life "cult leader" or "drug gang master-mind."

Or is he a run of the mill loser terrible at drug dealing who got in over his head, caught up in Sadie Mae's blood lust?

Allen Dulles is often treated as if he were the personification of High Level Evil but it sure looks to me he was an employee who fell out of favor with his employers and removed.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Gene Kelly]

Cliff:

I recommend reading Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer. This book was written in 1991, and gives a semi-fictional account of the CIA, including BOP, Angleton, Harvey and Allen Dulles. I had the strong sense that there was authenticity to it, and of course Mailer's special touch. It is especially insightful into the enigmatic William Harvey.

The book paints a picture of Dulles as a revered figure within intelligence circles. Hunt was devoted to Dulles, plus I believe that Richard Helms was a pallbearer at his funeral. Dulles was a puppet master and cult figure within CIA.

I see BOP as another operation right out of their 1950's third world playbook, with deception and vaudevillian magician tricks plus Northwoods-like pretext plots designed to induce a military invasion for pure economic objectives. The United fruit Company brought to you by the Ugly Americans.

When it failed, they salted the land (as another thread explained) and placed blame on Kennedy -- just as they (i.e. Nixon) attempted to do during Watergate with the false Diem cables in Hunt's safe -- to poison his legacy. Ironically, this is much clearer today than it was 50+ years ago, when the history books were written. I'll go out on a limb and state that Dulles was an evil person.

Gene

[Cliff Varnell]

Cliff:

I recommend reading Harlot's Ghost by Norman Mailer. This book was written in 1991, and gives a semi-fictional account of the CIA, including BOP, Angleton, Harvey and Allen Dulles. I had the strong sense that there was authenticity to it, and of course Mailer's special touch. It is especially insightful into the enigmatic William Harvey.

The book paints a picture of Dulles as a revered figure within intelligence circles. Hunt was devoted to Dulles, plus I believe that Richard Helms was a pallbearer at his funeral. Dulles was a puppet master and cult figure within CIA.

I see BOP as another operation right out of their 1950's third world playbook, with deception and vaudevillian magician tricks plus Northwoods-like pretext plots designed to induce a military invasion for pure economic objectives. The United fruit Company brought to you by the Ugly Americans.

When it failed, they salted the land (as another thread explained) and placed blame on Kennedy -- just as they (i.e. Nixon) attempted to do during Watergate with the false Diem cables in Hunt's safe -- to poison his legacy. Ironically, this is much clearer today than it was 50+ years ago, when the history books were written. I'll go out on a limb and state that Dulles was an evil person.

Gene

Gene, no question Dulles was an evil person.

But that doesn't change his status as an employee.