Devils Chessboard

[Joe Bauer]

Years ago Coast To Coast Am radio talk show host Ian Punnett had David Talbot on regards his book "Brothers" which had just come out.

I was an avid listener back then.

I never called in to C2C but was so inspired by Talbot I sent a fairly lengthy e-mail to Punnett during one of the breaks. My first e-mail.

To my surprise Punnett read my entire e-mail on air minutes later.

Both he and Talbot commented favorably on it's main point contents.

Which were ones I have posted here from time to time.

Centered around the proposition that America was basically a much more corrupt nation and society than the average American ever contemplated. That this corruption, especially since WWII was one of our top 3,4 or 5 historical legacies during this time.

And how this corruption ( to a great degree ) brought about JFK's demise.

I quit listening to Coast To Coast AM a long time ago. I sensed it had been compromised by elements of the extreme right wing agenda.

To much Jerome Corsi, Alex Jones and even Roger Stone political view input for me.

I still feel this about that show.

I always felt that under Art Bell...the show was not as compromised.

 

Edited August 27, 2022 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Bulman]

11 hours ago, Henry Frost said:

More about William Harvey from David Talbot from an earlier interview, paraphrasing: William Harvey was seen, by his own deputy, leaving his Rome station flying to Dallas early in November 1963. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-fJ9V3tZV8&t=124s

If I can play the devil's advocate (ha ha) for a minute, was Dulles at the Farm before the assassination or after?  Obviously if he was there before, it could indicate he had some foreknowledge something was going to happen. If he went there after, it could be to start the cover up process and tie up loose ends (like getting Ruby to silence Oswald).

Interestingly, Dulles' calendar, which Talbot used in his book, no longer has the 1963 entries.

https://twitter.com/lisapease/status/1401296867590238208

 

Edit: I confirmed what Lisa says in her tweet by going to the Princeton site myself. I could not find calendar appointments for Dulles for 1963:

https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/MC019-09

Regarding the Farm, pgs. 245-47 in Chessboard.  An abbreviated synopsis.

11/22/63, Dulles was away from Washington, as he typically was at the outset of major operations (E.G. B.O.P.). In September and October, he maintained a busy schedule meeting with CIA officials involved in clandestine affairs such as Desmond Fitzgerald, Angleton !, Cord Meyer, Helms aide Thomas Karsamessines .  As 11/22 grew near Dulles went promoting his book Craft of Intelligence in Boston and New York.

He flew back to Washington that morning to give a Brookings Institute speech in West Virginia.  "After receiving the news form Dallas at 1:30 Dulles took a car back to Washington with John Warner, A Cia Attorney.".

According to Dulles date book, he headed back to northern Virginia where he would spend the entire weekend at Camp Peary, the Farm, "Thrroouuggh Sunday November 24".  Camp Peary, a sprawling compound in the densely wooded tidelands near Williamsburg.   The Farm was a bustling clandestine center Dulles inaugurated after he took over the CIA. A training area for assassins per agents Marchetti and Agee.  A what would later be called Black Site for questioning prisoners. 

" As CIA Director Dulles had built himself a comfortable home at the farm."

"The farm was basically an alternative CIA headquarters, from where Dulles could direct op's, said Congressional Investigator Dan Hardway".  

A later visitor commented he still had a current extensive library in 1967.  I imagine a state-of-the-art communication system in the fall of 1963. 

Edited August 28, 2022 by Ron Bulman

[Paul Cummings]

10 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

Years ago Coast To Coast Am radio talk show host Ian Punnett had David Talbot on regards his book "Brothers" which had just come out.

I was an avid listener back then.

I never called in to C2C but was so inspired by Talbot I sent a fairly lengthy e-mail to Punnett during one of the breaks. My first e-mail.

To my surprise Punnett read my entire e-mail on air minutes later.

Both he and Talbot commented favorably on it's main point contents.

Which were ones I have posted here from time to time.

Centered around the proposition that America was basically a much more corrupt nation and society than the average American ever contemplated. That this corruption, especially since WWII was one of our top 3,4 or 5 historical legacies during this time.

And how this corruption ( to a great degree ) brought about JFK's demise.

I quit listening to Coast To Coast AM a long time ago. I sensed it had been compromised by elements of the extreme right wing agenda.

To much Jerome Corsi, Alex Jones and even Roger Stone political view input for me.

I still feel this about that show.

I always felt that under Art Bell...the show was not as compromised.

 

Like you my loyalty was with Art Bell. The direction of Coast to Coast with George Noory was a slow political move to the right which eventually led to the demise of the program. It's very unlistenable with the amount of ad's they play on Coast to Coast and haven't listened to a program in over two years. I always listen to Art's previous shows on Spotify.

[Ron Bulman]

17 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Regarding the Farm, pgs. 245-47 in Chessboard.  An abbreviated synopsis.

11/22/63, Dulles was away from Washington, as he typically was at the outset of major operations (E.G. B.O.P.). In September and October, he maintained a busy schedule meeting with CIA officials involved in clandestine affairs such as Desmond Fitzgerald, Angleton !, Cord Meyer, Helms aide Thomas Karsamessines .  As 11/22 grew near Dulles went promoting his book Craft of Intelligence in Boston and New York.

He flew back to Washington that morning to give a Brookings Institute speech in West Virginia.  "After receiving the news form Dallas at 1:30 Dulles took a car back to Washington with John Warner, A Cia Attorney.".

According to Dulles date book, he headed back to northern Virginia where he would spend the entire weekend at Camp Peary, the Farm, "Thrroouuggh Sunday November 24".  Camp Peary, a sprawling compound in the densely wooded tidelands near Williamsburg.   The Farm was a bustling clandestine center Dulles inaugurated after he took over the CIA. A training area for assassins per agents Marchetti and Agee.  A what would later be called Black Site for questioning prisoners. 

" As CIA Director Dulles had built himself a comfortable home at the farm."

"The farm was basically an alternative CIA headquarters, from where Dulles could direct op's, said Congressional Investigator Dan Hardway".  

A later visitor commented he still had a current extensive library in 1967.  I imagine a state-of-the-art communication system in the fall of 1963. 

Stuff get's buried here in a hurry.

[Robbie Robertson]

43 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

Stuff get's buried here in a hurry.

Lol my original thread turned into coast to coast I know what you mean

[Joe Bauer]

9 hours ago, Robbie Robertson said:

Lol my original thread turned into coast to coast I know what you mean

RR...Coast To Coast AM was one of the few nationally broadcast media venues that kept the JFK event as a fairly regular discussion matter and with guests such as David Talbot ( the author of your initial thread subject book ) I don't see this as anything close to off topic veering. 

Every year almost the entire week of 11/22 Coast to Coast went big time with the JFK assassination as the main topic of discussion.

That ended many years ago. 

 

[Robbie Robertson]

11 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

RR...Coast To Coast AM was one of the few nationally broadcast media venues that kept the JFK event as a fairly regular discussion matter and with guests such as David Talbot ( the author of your initial thread subject book ) I don't see this as anything close to off topic veering. 

Every year almost the entire week of 11/22 Coast to Coast went big time with the JFK assassination as the main topic of discussion.

That ended many years ago. 

 

Art bell is no longer coast to coast is still doing shows I’ve shared many guests with them 

 

[Gene Kelly]

Chessboard is one of those books that speaks for itself, without having to 'prove' anything.  I had several copies, and would give one to friends who ask, "who really did it" ... or "if I could read just one book about the assassination, which one should it be?".   It becomes clear that Dulles was a sociopath and behind the plot to kill John Kennedy.  If you study his career and body of work, he specialized in government overthrows (including assassination's) to benefit the power elite.  His arrogant tactics and pathological fingerprints are all over the JFK murder plot. When I consider the infamous "little god" quote, it is both revealing and provides perspective ... I believe it was meant to convey that JFK felt he was above the power elite ... rich Wall Street power brokers that controlled the world economy, and whom Dulles law firm represented (and served).  Those are real 'gods', in Dulles' world view.  Chessboard is also a good history lesson. Here are ten key points that Chessboard highlighted for me - and really opened my eyes - about the true allegiances that Allen Dulles maintained:

1. Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C) earned its reputation as the firm of choice for generations of ambitious lawyers and clients seeking fortune and power around the world.  The World Wars provided the political and financial opportunity which S&C rode to global influence.  Two partners, brothers, led the firm from War One until they left to marshal the Cold War.   While America fought two wars with Germany, John Foster and Allen Dulles proved the best friends, and the best lawyers, that German industry and banks ever had.  Talbot notes: “Dulles was more in step with many poopoo leaders than he was with President Roosevelt.”
2. Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, who as a young lawyer served with Allen in the OSS, later declared that both brothers were "guilty of treason” as regards their role in the wartime blackmail of the U.S. and their continued advancement of German interests including the protection of General Reinhard Gehlen. The Dulles brothers had control over U.S. foreign policy.  S&C clients included United Fruit, whose vast holdings controlled Latin America (Guatemala, CIA coup, 1954).   Standard Oil of New Jersey was a long-time Cromwell client (Iran, CIA coup, 1953).   Another major client, International Nickel, was closely tied to Cuba.  
3. While the Dulles's publicly maintained some distance on the Senate side from Joseph McCarthy, they found a willing but useful unknown Congressman from California. Allen leaked confidential CIA files on Hiss to Richard Nixon, with the help of his cloak and dagger friends.  Nixon claimed he had a "cherished relationship" with Dulles, and his destruction of the reputation of Alger Hiss before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the late 1940s served as an unmistakable warning to Congressional committee members about the cost of too vigorous unmasking of the large, U.S.-based multinationals that the Dulles brothers represented for S&C.
4. Foster Dulles’ nuclear brinksmanship was the order of the day. And his younger brother was left free to pursue his own course at the CIA, free from scrutiny or moral scruples. In many ways, the two were the most powerful men in America. Talbot sums up the case in stark terms: “In the name of defending the free world from Communist tyranny, they would impose an American reign on the world enforced by nuclear terror and cloak-and-dagger brutality.”
5. Dulles had a lifetime of experience in arranging assassinations; under Dulles’ leadership in April 1961, the CIA colluded with right-wing French officers in a plot to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. The plot had been organized by the OAS, the secret paramilitary organization that attempted to prevent Algeria’s independence from France. As Talbot notes, “Allen Dulles was once again making his own [foreign] policy, this time in France.” The plot was thwarted only after President Kennedy personally warned de Gaulle’s ambassador to the U.S. that the CIA might be involved. Kennedy ordered U.S. base commanders in France to disguise the landing strips where the OAS might land its planes from Algeria, and de Gaulle mobilized the French citizenry to oppose the conspirators through strikes and other actions.
6. The lurid story of how Jesus de Galindez, a lecturer at Columbia University, was kidnapped in Manhattan by U.S. government cutouts and delivered to Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo. Trujillo then had Galindez, whose exposés of corruption Trujillo feared, boiled alive and fed to sharks, and ordered the murder of the American pilot who’d flown Galindez there. All under the beneficent gaze of CIA Director Allen Dulles.
7. The insular existence of the CIA under Dulles’ direction began to unravel following the election of JFK and came to a head with the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. As Talbot reveals, the truth about the cause of the invasion's failure is far different from the popular belief that JFK refused to provide air cover. The CIA's own Inspector General brought many of the facts to light, although many years after the classified report had been released.  “It is now clear that the CIA’s Bay of Pigs expedition was not simply doomed to fail, it was meant to fail. And its failure was designed to trigger the real action — an all-out, U.S. military invasion of the island.”
8. After JFK fired Dulles, most of the agency’s leadership in place. Dulles’ acolytes, Richard Helms and James Jesus Angleton, continued to dominate the CIA. Operations continued in secret, outside the oversight of the White House. As Talbot makes clear, “it was a mood of hatred and rage.” In this explosive atmosphere, Kennedy’s decision to lower the tension over Cuba following the Cuban Missile Crisis proved fatal. “This marked the fateful turning point when the rabid, CIA-sponsored activity that had been aimed at Castro shifted its focus to Kennedy.”
9. Talbot details how it was not only enemies who had reason to fear Dulles, but his own friends and family, as well. The hideous “mind control program” developed by the CIA during Dulles’ reign as director - that dosed unsuspecting people with LSD and engaged in other deeply unethical experiments - was exposed thanks to lawsuits and investigative reporting, but Talbot sheds light on how Dulles subjected his own son and attempted to “enroll” his wife in these hideous “therapies.”
10. Allen and John Foster Dulles manipulated of religious groups (e.g., Quakers, Unitarians) to achieve U.S. elitist goals, and further U.S. psychological warfare operations. Allen Dulles (while based in Switzerland) abused Protestant individuals and institutions for U.S. intelligence through two World Wars and the subsequent "Cold War."   The use of Michael and Ruth Paine in this regard becomes transparent. 

As one writer stated, our darkest suspicions about how the world operates are likely an underestimate. There exists an amorphous group of unelected corporate lawyers, bankers, and intelligence and military officials who form an American “deep state,” setting real limits on the rare politicians who ever try to get out of line. Talbot points out that the surveillance state Snowden and others have exposed is very much a legacy of the Dulles past ... and he would have been delighted by how technology and other developments have allowed the American security state to go much further than he went.  As a staff member of the 1970s congressional investigation of Kennedy’s murder said in an interview with Talbot:

“One CIA official told me, ‘So you’re from Congress — what the hell is that to us? You’ll be packed up and gone in a couple of years, and we’ll still be here.’” 

Gene

[Paul Brancato]

Great summary Gene. The OAS story is troubling, and I didn’t recall JFK warning DeGaulle’s ambassador in early 1961. He had only been president for a few months. How did he know? I recall reading once about Howard Hunt meeting with OAS in Madrid, but officially Hunt was stationed there several years later. 

[Bob Ness]

16 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

and his destruction of the reputation of Alger Hiss before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in the late 1940s served as an unmistakable warning to Congressional committee members about the cost of too vigorous unmasking of the large, U.S.-based multinationals that the Dulles brothers represented for S&C.

Yeah unfortunately Hiss was uncovered in Venona for being exactly what he was accused of being, a Soviet spy. Much of what the HUAC was accusing people off turned out to be true, at least truer than what was assumed until the 1990s when the decrypts we're released. Of course accusing the Dulles bros of being the scumbags they were was and is an easy case to make. It still insults me maybe even more than Confederate monuments that his name adorns the DC airport.

[Gene Kelly]

Bob

I think there remains doubt about the VENONA transcripts, and their outing of Hiss.  A good reference/read is Peter Dale Scott's "The Dulles Brothers, Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, and the Fate of the Private Pre-War International Banking System" The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 16, No. 3, April 21, 2014.  Here are some excerpts:

VENONA evidence also was used to raise suspicions about two other suspects, senior Treasury official Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss. However, the VENONA evidence against these two men is still fiercely debated. And the campaign against both men was not powered by security concerns alone. In part at least also it was a by-product of a deeper conflict over the future of America - between Wall Street (represented by the Dulles brothers) and the remnants of the New Deal (represented by White, a principal architect of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.)  Hiss or Chambers was apparently guilty of perjury ... Truman’s Justice Department was in the process of preparing a perjury indictment against Chambers, a key witness against White.  Matters would change five days later: on August 16, three days after his HUAC testimony, White died, after suffering two swift heart attacks. It was then that Hiss became by default HUAC’s principal target (and the key to Dewey’s presidential ambitions in the same year).

Nixon and his fellow HUAC members knew that their case against White was weak. Earlier in the year, the former Treasury official had already made a successful appearance before a federal grand jury in New York ... the same body would later bring charges against Hiss but found insufficient evidence to indict White. Foster Dulles moved quickly to distance himself from Hiss, pressuring him behind the scenes to resign his Carnegie Endowment post, while Allen Dulles fed incriminating intelligence to Nixon to bolster his case. Some of this confidential information about Hiss likely came from the Army intelligence program that had been set up in 1943 to decrypt messages sent by Soviet spy agencies. The VENONA project was so top secret that it was kept hidden from President Truman, but the deeply wired Dulles enjoyed access.

A secret weapon used by the Dulles brothers and Nixon against White and Hiss was a tendentious interpretation of material which existed about White and Hiss in the then secret VENONA transcripts of deciphered Soviet cable traffic… an unresolved question is whether Nixon’s secret sources (Hoover, Allen Dulles, or other OSS/CIA contacts) were aware by 1948 of the deciphered VENONA messages - and of the ALES cable in particular (of March 30, 1945) - that seem to point to Hiss’s guilt.  The HUAC investigation could have been “acutely embarrassing” to Foster, Nixon later noted. But instead, with Nixon’s help, they turned the Hiss case to their advantage, with Dewey fulminating against the laxity of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations that had allowed Communists to penetrate the government. The VENONA transcripts (3,000 translations) would be only made public 50 years later, in 1995.  

To what extent the various individuals referred to in the messages were involved with Soviet intelligence is a topic of historical dispute. While a number of historians assert that most of the individuals mentioned in the VENONA decrypts were most likely either clandestine assets and/or contacts of Soviet intelligence agents, others argue that many of those people probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes (e.g., Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer).   Many academics and archivists consider the VENONA evidence on Hiss to be inconclusive

Gene

 

[Michael Griffith]

Last week I finally got around to reading David Talbot's 2016 book The Devil's Chessboard: Alan Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government. I had watched three of Talbot's presentations on the book on YouTube, but I didn't get around to reading the book until last week. What an incredibly educational book. I'm going to add it to my list of recommended books on my JFK site.

As someone who is ardently pro-Israeli, I was stunned and disgusted to discover that Dulles suppressed evidence of the Holocaust during WW II. I was raised Jewish for part of my early childhood. I was a Hebrew linguist for 13 of my 21 years in the U.S. Army. And, I was lucky enough to live in Israel for a short time. Thus, I was thoroughly appalled to read about Dulles's suppression of Holocaust evidence during the war and about his coddling of murderous Nazis after the war.

 

Edited September 9, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Henry Frost]

I found this short clip from 1966 of a smug Dulles discussing the Warren Commission:

 

[Ron Ege]

3 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Last week I finally got around to reading David Talbot's 2016 book The Devil's Chessboard: Alan Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government. I had watched three of Talbot's presentations on the book on YouTube, but I didn't get around to reading the book until last week. What an incredibly educational book. I'm going to add it to my list of recommended books on my JFK site.

As someone who is ardently pro-Israeli, I was stunned and disgusted to discover that Dulles suppressed evidence of the Holocaust during WW II. I was raised Jewish for part of my early childhood. I was a Hebrew linguist for 13 of my 21 years in the U.S. Army. And, I was lucky enough to live in Israel for a short time. Thus, I was thoroughly appalled to read about Dulles's suppression of Holocaust evidence during the war and about his coddling of murderous Nazis after the war.

 

Dulles was not alone.

Richard Cohen: FDR’s moral failure on the Holocaust - The Washington Post

[Michael Griffith]

54 minutes ago, Ron Ege said:

Dulles was not alone.

Richard Cohen: FDR’s moral failure on the Holocaust - The Washington Post

Oh, I totally agree. David Wyman's 2018 book The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945 is a devastating indictment of FDR's feckless, immoral response to the Holocaust.