Rand Development and US Intelligence: More on Webster

[James DiEugenio]

This is a follow up by Paul Bleau and Gary Hill on Paul's review of Gary's Webster book: The Other Oswald.

Paul did an interesting intro about certain apparently private agencies that were never properly explored by any official inquiry into the JFK case.  Rand Development being on.  The FPCC being another.  But as we know this was not done.

Curtis LeMay figures into this story.  Webster is a really interesting character.  To say the least.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/rand-development-and-u-s-intelligence

 

[Anthony Thorne]

Really good article. And RAND came up a lot in some of the stuff I've looked at over the last year or two with the guys from CSIS, neocons, and all those disparate groups. Insofar in that, whenever I'd do a Google search to find out who was who at some conference somewhere, when people were typically gathering to discuss how the Cold War needed to keep going and can we get some more weapons contacts for Lockheed etc - frequently some obscure guy would turn out to have spent time at RAND before he moved elsewhere, or he'd moved from some think tank or science board direct into working with RAND. And all these guys cross over, shake hands, vouch for each other at Senate hearings when senators outside the loop wonder why some guy is being nominated into a position in the Reagan or Bush Sr administrations, join 'independent' groups where they produce a paper explaining why the world needs further weapons contracts again, and so on.

Sometime over the next few weeks I'll go back over some of the stuff I've written down and dig up some RAND stuff, as it is fascinating. Often RAND just served as an excuse to provide an official looking paper or report that folks outside RAND could wave at congress and say, you see, we do need more military spending. And then you'd find the folks that wrote the RAND paper would leave, join up with the folks from congress, and start up some security company or weapons advisory group together. Fred Kaplan wrote a great book on RAND in the late 80's called THE WIZARDS OF ARMAGEDDON. Three months ago, he published an interesting new book on a similar subject - THE BOMB: PRESIDENTS, GENERALS, AND THE SECRET HISTORY OF NUCLEAR WAR. I'm keen to read it. This link has more about it.

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2020-06/features/bomb-presidents-generals-secret-history-nuclear-war

During the early 70's former RAND analyst and executive Fred Ikle became the boss of many future neocons when he became director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency - Wolfowitz worked under him, for example. And the title of the agency was a funny one, because most of the guys in charge weren't keen on any disarmament at all.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Rand's influence is pretty powerful.

In the article Gary makes a difference between Rand and Rand Development.

The latter is who Webster worked for.

I find it so interesting that Henry Rand and George Bookbinder walked Webster to the Moscow embassy. Knowing that he would give company secrets to the Soviets.

And although Webster said he did not know about Oswald, Oswald did know about Webster.  He asked about him at the embassy before he left.  And although Marina said she did not know Webster in Russia, Webster said he knew Marina.

Finally, Webster was thoroughly debriefed upon his return, and even went before the SISS.  But not Oswald.