Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 1 minute ago, Geo Kozma said: i am going to edit myself to make myself mor easy to understand. Thank you! And perhaps break-up what you are trying to say into smaller paragraphs, provided a little at a time. I hope that translates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 1 hour ago, Jim Hargrove said: That's an intriguing statement. Can you tell us more? It's a deeply complex story -- but for starters, as you should have gathered from my earlier reply to you about submitting the Moynihan interview to the JFK Library, I was Moynihan's personal aide, his last in fact. That is to say, I was an aide to the "Fourth Man," the "Mole," the "KGB interlocutor," the search for which holds the secret to unlocking the mysteries of the Cold War. It was Moynihan who had the VENONA decrypts -- which implicated Bentley "GOOD GIRL" -- released in 1995. For an excellent analysis of why there HAD to be a Fourth Man, see Intelligencer: Journal of U.S.. Intelligence Studies Winter/Spring 2009. A Counterintelligence Cold Case File The Fourth Mole by Mike Matson. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) 2 hours ago, Matt Cloud said: Well this says he had TWO daughters, was from Lubbock, Texas, and went to Texas Tech -- where Tina and I think J.D. went. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Tippit So, again, we have biographical ambiguities, uncertainties, inconsistencies ... I may have to retract the "brother" claim -- but then again I may not. That's really the point. The genealogy is quite difficult to pin down, without a dedicated project devoted to it. There's a lot of Tippits in Texas for sure. Needed is info on Tina Tippit, Jack Dempsey Tippit, Wayne Tippit, and J.D. Tippit. For starters at least. I maintain Wayne Tippit the actor bears an uncanny likeness to young Charles Allen Tippit -- the officer J.D. Tippit's supposed son. Charles Allen Tippit was pictured the days immediately after the assassination wearing a blue letterman's jacket. That jacket appears to match those worn by the two boys standing by the Stemmons Freeway sign in Dealey Plaza on 11/22. Also interesting is that the character actor Wayne Tippit is credited as assistant director on Stone's JFK. Wayne Tippit(1932-2009) IMDb https://www.imdb.com › name Wayne Tippit. Actor: JFK. Wayne Tippit was born on 19 December 1932 in Lubbock, Texas, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for JFK (1991) See also, obit for Wayne Tippit's mother apparently: https://newspaperarchive.com/tahoka-lynn-county-news-may-13-1949-p-1/ Page 1 of May 13 1949 Issue of Tahoka Lynn County News in Tahoka, Texas Mrs. Elizabeth Mao Tippit 55. Wife of t. I. Tippit died at 9 30 of clock wednesday morning in the Tahoka Hospital. She had been in very ill health for six months her condition becoming critical several weeks ago. Funeral services Are to be conducted in the first Baptist Church of Tahoka at three o clock this frill y afternoon followed by burial in the Tahoka cemetery. Survivors include the husband t. I. Tippit one daughter mrs. Linnie fir t i wife of Roy Finch two sons John Thomas Tippit Sand Gerald Wayne Tippit two grandchildren and one brother John Kincaid All of Tahoka. Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) 4 hours ago, Matt Cloud said: Well this says he had TWO daughters, was from Lubbock, Texas, and went to Texas Tech -- where Tina and I think J.D. went. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Tippit So, again, we have biographical ambiguities, uncertainties, inconsistencies ... Tina Tippit's first husband Jack D. Tippit of Connecticut DID go to Texas Tech, then Syracuse in '49. A B-24 pilot. https://www.newspapers.com/article/lubbock-avalanche-journal-tippit/2483622/ Lubbock Avalanche-Journal Lubbock, Texas • Sun, Jun 3, 1945Page 28 Lubbock man, 1st. Lt. Jack D Tippit son of Mr. and Mrs H E Tippit of 1705 Avenue T, a former student at Texas Tech, and a veteran B-24 pilot with the 13th Air Force in the Southwest pacific. I'm interested in any connections that may link Jack Dempsey Tippit, at one time of the 13th Air Force Division, with Luce / Chennault / Harriman / Flying Tigers. Remember Clare Boothe Luce who was funding anti-Castro Cubans had wanted Bay of Pigs to be "another Flying Tiger operation." (That's from her call to Colby in '75.) Tippit's B-24 service may have relevance to the B-24s of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Likewise, Clark AFB in the Philippines, where the 13th Air was stationed, may have Oswald / Subic Bay significance. See also bio for Charles Bond: Charles Rankin Bond, Jr. (April 22, 1915 – August 18, 2009) was an American pilot and United States Air Force officer. He served with the Flying Tigers in Burma and China during World War II. He was shot down twice and was credited with shooting down 9.5 Japanese airplanes. He later served in the Soviet Union as an aide and personal pilot to W. Averell Harriman. He rose to the rank of Major General and, during the Vietnam War, he was the deputy commanding officer of the 2d Air Division in Vietnam and the 13th Air Force in the Philippines. He retired from the United States Air Force in 1968 as commander of the Twelfth Air Force. In 1984, Bond's diary of his service with the Flying Tigers was published and became a bestseller. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bond_(pilot) Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandy Larsen Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 2 hours ago, Matt Cloud said: 14 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said: It appears that Wayne Tippit, the actor, could not have been the brother of Jack D. Tippit, the cartoonist. According to Jack D. Tippit's New York Times obituary, he had only sisters... two of them. (And one daughter.) https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/20/obituaries/jack-d-tippit-cartoonist-70.html Well this says he had TWO daughters, was from Lubbock, Texas, and went to Texas Tech -- where Tina and I think J.D. went. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Tippit So, again, we have biographical ambiguities, uncertainties, inconsistencies ... I don't see any inconsistencies between your source and mine: My source states that Jack D. Tippit had two sisters and one daughter. Your source states that Wayne Tippit had two daughters. I don't know of any source that states that Jack D. Tippit and Wayne Tippit were brothers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 2 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said: I don't see any inconsistencies between your source and mine: My source states that Jack D. Tippit had two sisters and one daughter. Your source states that Wayne Tippit had two daughters. I don't know of any source that states that Jack D. Tippit and Wayne Tippit were brothers. I stand corrected. Thank you. I got my Wayne bio twisted up with your Jack bio. Fair enough. I still smell something fishy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) 29 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said: I stand corrected. Thank you. I got my Wayne bio twisted up with your Jack bio. Fair enough. I still smell something fishy. As an example, which I'm sure most have seen by now, I find this blog post, apparently written by a one-time sports editor at the Westport News, totally bizarre. He begins by writing: "For years growing up here, I knew Westport had a special connection to the assassination of John F. Kennedy: J.D. Tippit and Jack Tippit were brothers." That is, he grew up "knowing" -- not "he thought" or "wondered" or "suspected" -- the Tippits were brothers. And not he had read in the paper of a "distant relation." He knew. But it is only after reading Dale Myers book, which obscures the CT Tippits' connection to TX as well as describing the call as a "crank call," and after checking the J.D. Tippit of TX genealogy site at https://www.jdtippit.com/tree.htm , which is run or written by who knows who (Myers?), does the blog writer conclude he was wrong in what he had previously "known" to be true. A very strange writing indeed. https://06880danwoog.com/tag/jack-tippit/ J.D. Tippit, And Jack Posted on November 24, 2013 | 1 comment For years growing up here, I knew Westport had a special connection to the assassination of John F. Kennedy: J.D. Tippit and Jack Tippit were brothers. J.D. was the Dallas police officer killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, less than an hour after JFK was shot. Jack Tippit, cartoonist. Jack Tippit was an award-winning cartoonist (“Amy”), co-founder of the Museum of Cartoon Art, and the editorial cartoonist for the Westport News. He lived here, but was born in Lubbock, Texas — and still spoke with a twang. My 1st job after college was as sports editor of the News. I knew Jack Tippit, but I never mentioned the connection. What would I say — “Hey, sorry about your brother”? He died in 1994. His obituary ran in the New York Times. I had forgotten about Jack Tippit — and J.D. — until the recent run-up to the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. Then, the other day, a Westporter posted on Facebook: “I went to school in Westport with J.D. Tippit’s niece.” Curious to learn more, I did the obvious thing. I googled “J.D. Tippit Jack Tippit.” Officer J.D. Tippit Up popped several books and newspaper articles. They described an “unknown, but clearly frightened, woman” who, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, called “a distant relative of Officer Tippit” in Connecticut. The woman claimed to have known Oswald’s father and uncle — who’d lived in Manhattan — and that they had been Hungarian communists. But there was also a link to With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit. There, author Dale K. Myers writes: There is no connection between Jack D. Tippit of Westport, CT (a self-employed cartoonist for several national magazines in 1963), and J.D. Tippit of Dallas, TX. Mrs. Jack D. Tippit got a crank call on Nov. 30, 1963 (her husband listened in on the call), after an article appeared in the Norwalk Hour, a local newspaper, on Nov. 25, stating that Jack was a “distant relative” of Officer Tippit. Genealogy research shows no direct relation between Jack and JD…. Author John Armstrong (“Harvey & Lee”) seized on an FBI report detailing the anonymous crank call, changed the date of the reported call to Nov.23, and used it to support his theory that two Lee Harvey Oswalds were used in an elaborate CIA plot to kill JFK. My own book, “With Malice” explores many conspiracy allegations made over the past 50 years while focusing on the true facts of Tippit’s life and death. The obscure FBI report regarding the crank call to the Jack D. Tippit household in 1963 was not one worthy of print. I checked out the genealogy on the J.D. Tippit home page (!). It shows that J.D. Tippit had 6 brothers and sisters. One, named John, was born in 1936. Jack Tippit was born in 1923. So the urban myth — well, suburban myth — that Jack Tippit was J.D.’s brother is untrue. Now, about that magic bullet theory… Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 3 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said: As an example, which I'm sure most have seen by now, I find this blog post, apparently written by a one-time sports editor at the Westport News, totally bizarre. He begins by writing: "For years growing up here, I knew Westport had a special connection to the assassination of John F. Kennedy: J.D. Tippit and Jack Tippit were brothers." That is, he grew up "knowing" -- not "he thought" or "wondered" or "suspected" -- the Tippits were brothers. And not he had read in the paper of a "distant relation." He knew. But it is only after reading Dale Myers book, which obscures the CT Tippits' connection to TX as well as describing the call as a "crank call," and after checking the J.D. Tippit of TX genealogy site at https://www.jdtippit.com/tree.htm , which is run or written by who knows who (Myers?), does the blog writer conclude he was wrong in what he had previously "known" to be true. A very strange writing indeed. https://06880danwoog.com/tag/jack-tippit/ J.D. Tippit, And Jack Posted on November 24, 2013 | 1 comment For years growing up here, I knew Westport had a special connection to the assassination of John F. Kennedy: J.D. Tippit and Jack Tippit were brothers. J.D. was the Dallas police officer killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, less than an hour after JFK was shot. Jack Tippit, cartoonist. Jack Tippit was an award-winning cartoonist (“Amy”), co-founder of the Museum of Cartoon Art, and the editorial cartoonist for the Westport News. He lived here, but was born in Lubbock, Texas — and still spoke with a twang. My 1st job after college was as sports editor of the News. I knew Jack Tippit, but I never mentioned the connection. What would I say — “Hey, sorry about your brother”? He died in 1994. His obituary ran in the New York Times. I had forgotten about Jack Tippit — and J.D. — until the recent run-up to the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. Then, the other day, a Westporter posted on Facebook: “I went to school in Westport with J.D. Tippit’s niece.” Curious to learn more, I did the obvious thing. I googled “J.D. Tippit Jack Tippit.” Officer J.D. Tippit Up popped several books and newspaper articles. They described an “unknown, but clearly frightened, woman” who, in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, called “a distant relative of Officer Tippit” in Connecticut. The woman claimed to have known Oswald’s father and uncle — who’d lived in Manhattan — and that they had been Hungarian communists. But there was also a link to With Malice: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Murder of Officer J.D. Tippit. There, author Dale K. Myers writes: There is no connection between Jack D. Tippit of Westport, CT (a self-employed cartoonist for several national magazines in 1963), and J.D. Tippit of Dallas, TX. Mrs. Jack D. Tippit got a crank call on Nov. 30, 1963 (her husband listened in on the call), after an article appeared in the Norwalk Hour, a local newspaper, on Nov. 25, stating that Jack was a “distant relative” of Officer Tippit. Genealogy research shows no direct relation between Jack and JD…. Author John Armstrong (“Harvey & Lee”) seized on an FBI report detailing the anonymous crank call, changed the date of the reported call to Nov.23, and used it to support his theory that two Lee Harvey Oswalds were used in an elaborate CIA plot to kill JFK. My own book, “With Malice” explores many conspiracy allegations made over the past 50 years while focusing on the true facts of Tippit’s life and death. The obscure FBI report regarding the crank call to the Jack D. Tippit household in 1963 was not one worthy of print. I checked out the genealogy on the J.D. Tippit home page (!). It shows that J.D. Tippit had 6 brothers and sisters. One, named John, was born in 1936. Jack Tippit was born in 1923. So the urban myth — well, suburban myth — that Jack Tippit was J.D.’s brother is untrue. Now, about that magic bullet theory… I would also point out, and this gets into a point made in response to Jim's claim yesterday that the Tippits had done the proper thing and called the FBI, is there any indication that the Tippits notified the Warren Commission or were contacted by the WC regarding the call? None that I can find. An innocent explanation would be that having informed the FBI already they needed do no more. But that would be a very generous reading in their favor of the events. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) And once more, because I had previously only posted the article here via my Twitter post, and it seems to have not been incorporated into the understandings here, here is the Bridgeport Post from Sept. 22, 1965, stating that J.D. Tippit of Westport, CT -- the cartoonist -- was, in 1965 at least, working for Air Force Secretary Harold Brown. In Washington apparently, not in Connecticut, though he no doubt had legal residence there. "Col. Tippit presently is assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force, Headquarters USAF, in Washington, with duty in the Office of Information, as art editor of Airman Magazine .... He has been active in the Air Reserve Forces for the past 23 years." https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-bridgeport-post-tippit/2483919/ Brown would become Secretary of Defense in 1977 and testify before the House Assassinations Committee. Here from pp. 200-201 from John Armstrong's Harvey & Lee, is discussion of Brown providing (or not) to Blakey info on Oswald's Marine Corps record: But the HSCA also had Lee Harvey Oswald's Marine Corps medical records, published in the Warren Volumes, that showed Oswald was treated at the Atsugi station hospital on nu¬ merous occasions between September 14 and October 6. They knew these records placed “ Oswald" in two locations at the same time and needed to find a solution for this problem, but without interviewing former Marines like Lieutenant Charles Rhodes who knew fora fact that Oswald had been in Taiwan. The problem was resolved by Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel for the HSCA. Blakey wrote to Secretary of Defense Harold Brown and asked a very simple question, “During which peri¬ ods was Oswald separated from his units overseas because of hospitalization (BLAKEY ASKED NOTHING ABOUT TAIWAN) . ” 67 5S ~ 23 The Department of Defense answered this question by saying, “ Oswald did not sail from Yokosuka. Japan on September 16.1958 . He remained at NAS (Naval Air Station) Atsugi, as part of the MAG II rear echelon. ” 68 58 ~ 24 The DOD's answer clearly implied that Oswald did not travel to Taiwan, but remained in Japan. Blakey then allegedly reviewed Oswald's Marine Corps Unit Diaries for MAG II and 201 allegedly found no reference to Oswald departing from Yokosuka for Taiwan. However, the Marine Corps Unit Diaries do exist and contain the following notations: • Marine Corps Diary 151-58, p. 144, for September 14, 1958, reads: “Emb (em¬ barked) AKA 105 and sailedfr Yokosuku Japan f or the South China Sea Area auth 1st MAW Itr 04/303Hv PI6-1 of29Aug58. • Marine Corps Diary 158-58, p. 162, for October 6, 1958, lists Lee H. Oswald's lo¬ cation as “Ping Tung (North) Taiwan. ” This means that neither Blakey nor HSCA staff members reviewed the documentation upon which they based their conclusion. With misleading information from the POD, and lying about the contents of the Marine Corps Unit Diaries. https://archive.org/stream/HarveyAndLeeByJohnArmstrong2003/Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong (2003)_djvu.txt Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) On 2/27/2024 at 2:28 PM, Geo Kozma said: QUOTE: PFIAB, that's the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Hi Jim, thanks for your advice that I am not able to express myself clearly. QUOTE: PFIAB, that's the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board Dear MATT CLOUD (or Jim, or someone who has time for it) may I ask you to look up the name of an advisor to the Presidents whose name is Paul Kecskeméti? -an uncle of my mom, pronounce it CATCH kEY MATE this is his story: 1 i am in my own bubble about the CORVINA COMIC booK from Oswalds shelf ( first sold by Marina in 63 and then popped up at some net site where they sell book--(put up by David Josephs or maybe paul Joliffe on 2019 here on EDU foR...on the Harvey and LEE topic- I first found it in January 024 2 The TipőIt Call had the Tip that Oswald had 2 Jewish Uncles after his Dad. Gardos/h an Weinstock. Because I looked it up on jewishgen.com- as surely the FBI did it too in a real archive. ...and we now know that GARDOs/H exists and existed even then in the Archive on the Oswald Family Tree (once among 200 other spouses in 300 years). And Jewish names were limited officially (which were allowed) so everyone can have everyone as a "relative" but the name limit causes the families to become phantomized ...no one can know for sure (except personal hometown legends and the moree famou rabbis.) SO anyone could have done the Call - even a Dulles envoy - as he surely knew the family name-sakes and simply wanted to save Kissinger from being shamed for an ancestor - or name-mate rather - who married an Oswald maybe centuies earlier. Fascinating. From “Strategic Surrender” By Michael Amrine Oct. 1, 1958 ... How do you end a war In the book, Strategic Surrender, subtitled, “The Politics of Victory and Defeat,” a member of the Social Science Division of Rand Corporation reports on a research study pointed at end-of-war questions. For the most part, any high-ranking staff officer could well consider the questions and answers raised by the author, Paul Kecskemeti. This most study does not purport to tell anyone just how to end a war, but it does ask many of the side questions relevant to this large and probably unanswerable one. The author of Strategic Surrender does not spend much of his time on the ponderable and imponderable factors of the future. What he does do, for the most part, is set forth some fresh thinking on the subject of goals and methods in war and in victory, backed up by a study of recent history. In most of the book, he reports, with the high degree of objectivity, on four important surrenders of World War II. There is simply no comparison possible between this study, and what was said about it, on the floors of Congress and by government spokesmen in the White House and the Pentagon. Many persons erroneously believed – that somewhere, somehow, a “government agency,” or perhaps two or three agencies, were working on plans for ways and means to engineer the future surrender of the United States. Under what conditions anyone was thinking of surrender, the critics never specified. Some cool-headed persons may suggest that somewhere, somehow, in all good faith, the Defense Department ought to have some planners giving thought to this surrender contingency. In the past. It has been standard doctrine contingencies; for example, that under some conditions the British might once again come down on us – from Canada. So, without being a Benedict Arnold, some military planners might suggest a study of a possible US surrender. This review will not go into that subject, for two reasons; One, there is no use in further stirring up the animals, and two, this book does not happen to mention the subject of a United States surrender. As the Rand Corporation said in a public statement prepared following the publicity brannigan on Capitol Hill, “Nowhere does the study or the book deal with any hypothetical US surrender. The question of negotiation with an opponent of the US in a wartime situation is treated solely in the context of a termination of a war in which the US would be victorious.” Mr. Kecskemeti, who is an exceptionally clear writer, and therefore a rare bird indeed among social scientists, has written straightforwardly about two subjects. One is the historical record of four surrender-victories, which takes 184 of his 258 pages. The other subject is the general conclusions, which he personally draws from his analysis of that record. Like most human beings, Mr. Kecskemeti seems to have some biases, and like all social scientists and historians, he deals with subjects in which there must be interpretation. But on ironic note in this episode of charges and countercharges about “plotting to surrender’ is that there is nothing invidious or devious about the style of this book. The author is lucid and explicit in what he says. When he is critical of a policy, as he is of “unconditional surrender,” Kecskemeti bluntly says so, without any academic circumlocutions. If a military reader disagrees completely with Kecskemeti’s conclusions, he may still find the absorbing story of the four surrenders worth the price of admission. Now there are some of the things that Mr. Kecskemeti does talk about: Allied strategy in World War II was dominated by the concept of surrender. This is the opening sentence of the book and Mr. Kecskemeti says that both the Axis and the Allies took for granted that final defeat would take the shape of mass surrender of forces. Mr. Kecskemeti holds that this is a new idea in the modern era – that previously people had thought that wars ended in other ways, perhaps with the conquest of the enemy’s capital, perhaps with the “battle of annihilation.” He holds that World War I did end in a final mass surrender, but we came to the strategy by trial and error and the terms of capitulation “came as a surprise.” He says one of his purposes is to “throw some light on why surrender became such a dominating concept in the last war.” He says the second purpose was to show why “planning of postwar political arrangements was influenced by the Allies’ preoccupation with surrender as the epitome of victory.” Why is surrender and how does it differ from rout or disruption Kecskemeti says that “surrender means that winner and loser agree to dispense with a last round of fighting.” He says that when a loser’s forces still have some semblance of order but the handwriting is on the wall, it is a rational decision for the loser to save himself the losses of the last battle or the last few battles. By the same token, accepting surrender is a rational decision for the winner. To a great extent then he sees surrender “as an act by which one side renounces any further use of a residual fighting capability,” and he distinguishes between tactical surrender, when surrounded or starved-out units give up, from strategic surrender, in which the entire hostilities are brought to an end. He describes the German surrender to the Allies as one in which successive tactical surrenders added up to a strategic surrender. And the German surrender was the only truly unconditional surrender of the examples he gives. Besides the German surrender to the Allies he studies the surrender of Italy, the surrender of France to Germany, and of Japan. Offering and accepting surrender is a negotiation in which the losers’ bargaining power is not absolutely nil. Kecskemeti says that it is natural that the winner, who is operating emotionally as well as logically, should tend to think that the loser has no strength worth considering, but in this reviewer’s opinion he documents very well his thesis that all of these losers, even shattered Germany and demoralized France, had bargaining counters in their surrenders. He says that “it is possible to pay too much for victory and even for stalemate,” a concept which he gives new meaning in the nuclear age. But in this reviewer’s opinion he goes too far with his very next sentence: “One may safely say that the maxim in war there is no substitute for victory’ is totally erroneous.” However, he has done a very thorough study of the military-political situation in each of his examples. He shows how members of the French government had extremely mixed and sometimes corrupt motives in their surrender, but he makes obvious that reasonable men could differ in their assessment at the time of the French debacle, as to the values of holding out for neutralizing the French fleet, for example. He summarizes this one by saying. “The French succeeded in surrendering on a qualified bases and salvaging partial sovereignty; the German avoided time-consuming terminal operations.” The doctrine of unconditional surrender. Space does not permit an adequate summary of Kecskemeti’s masterly discussion of the pros and cons of our doctrine of unconditional surrender. He shows the contradictions and confusions involved in our efforts to deal with the king of Italy and Premier Badoglio when we were trying to wind up the Italian war and to preserve some of their military capability so that it could be used on our side. As things worked out we not only did not wish to annihilate their forces; we eventually gave them the never-never status of cobelligerent. Of this fantastic period, Harry Butcher, Eisenhower’s aide, wrote in his book My Three Years with Eisenhower that “Ike regretted existence of raped communications. If we were still in the day of sailing ships, he thought he could deal more quickly and advantageously with the Italians than is possible when he has to communicate to both Washington and London and wait for the two capitals to concur or direct.” Unconditional surrender and a vacuum of power. Kecskemeti makes a very convincing case, in the opinion of this reviewers, that rigid application of the doctrine of unconditional surrender leads to a strange impasse in which one is saying that one will never deal in any way whatever with the criminal aggressors who are running the enemy countries. If there is no dealing whatever and one is waiting for that government to fall, one is really hoping is waiting for that government to fall, one is really hoping for a complete vacuum of power, in which case there will really be no one with any authority to surrender. Kecskemeti does an excellent job of showing the contradictions involved. He holds that the American view of international affairs is that “in the normal, healthy stat of national affairs there is no need for the actual or threatened ‘use of coercion,’” Then he says things may be unhealthy and someone may commit aggression, and war against them has but one political objective, “the elimination of all political forces responsible for aggression.” So he holds that wars waged in this spirit are “essentially crusades.” One may note that General Eisenhower called his book Crusade for Europe. Kecskemeti says that this “crusading concept of war” has been vigorously criticized in recent years. At the end of his book he says that in the nuclear age we must learn to be satisfied with more limited objectives. He notes that even Germany, after the death of Hitler, was not utterly disorganized and that the caretaker government of Admiral Karl Dönitz still had something to gain by the stalling tactics. Essentially the Germans kept on bitterly fighting the Russians in the East while they surrendered in the field very readily to the British and Americans. This permitted many civilians and the military to leave the area, which was to be dominated by the Russians. “All in all two and a half to three million German soldiers and civilians escaped from the path of the Russians during Dönitz’ tenure.” If we were able to spring 2,500,000 people today from behind the Iron Curtain so that they defected to our side we would count it a major victory in the cold war. Thus we can credit Kecskemeti’s convictions that even the Germans salvaged something which they wanted very much by the manner of their surrender, although they were not able technically to secure separate surrender agreements with the West and with the East. A proper surrender policy might have ended the Japanese war much earlier. The incredibly complicated story of Japan’s effort to surrender is very well told in this study. In his belief the Japanese were not only defeated, but those who desired the atomic bombs were dropped. In general he supports the airpower advocates who believe that bombing had already accomplished their military objectives in the Japanese war, but to this reviewer he overstates his case when he says, “The atomic bombs, far from being the ‘controlling’ factor, caused no significant reorientation of attitudes, no manifest change in points of view.” In concluding his book he gives only thirteen pages to discussion of possible surrender policies of the future. He particularly addresses himself to questions of limited war, which have obvious implication for consideration of limited victories. It is here that he discusses the possibility that sometime in the future one or more countries might develop the ability to deliver a first strike that would utterly destroy the significant military capability of the enemy. To him this raises the possibility of a surrender without fighting. It is this passage, which has set off pinwheels of oratory, but he does not mention either America or Russia in the connection. The reader might note, however, that during the brief period of American atomic monopoly we were almost in this position as regards Russia, and today Great Britain, America, and the USSR are in precisely this position toward many smaller countries who are not armed with modern weapons. He is only saying that it is theoretically possible that through scientific and production breakthroughs one of the great powers, for a brief period, might be in this same position toward other great powers. In that case the bargaining power of the underdog would be very close to nil and his will to fight might logically be absolutely nil. On his final page he says that the new strategic situation, which has been brought about by nuclear weapons, may be put as follows: “Powers may seek to survive in the nuclear age, either by going to extremes of inhumanity and malevolence never imagined before, or by drastically limiting their expectations of gain from the application of armed power. Adjusting to the new conditions is bound to be particularly difficult for the United States, because both of the available alternatives are diametrically opposed to traditional American political attitudes. Systematic malevolence is as alien to the American makeup as overblown emotional expectations of unlimited gains are congenial to it.” Although this reviewer believes that this book over-simplifies things in some of its interpretations, it I recommended as extremely stimulating reading. Mr. Kecskemeti has done some very clear and provocative thinking, not just about conjectures, but about the realities of our time. It should go on the shelf alongside the books of George F. Kennan, Thomas K. Finletter, Henry A. Kissinger, Brig. Gen. Dale O. Smith, and Sir John Slessor, as important reading for anyone trying to understand what our national policies should be in the future. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1058strategic/ His RAND writings here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/k/kecskemeti_paul.html Insurgency as a Strategic Problem 1967 Static and Dynamic Society 1966 A Reply to Mr. Waskow. 1963 Social patterns in the Hungarian revolution 1960 Strategic Surrender: The Politics of Victory and Defeat 1958 Outline of a Study for the Plans Analysis Section 1951 The Satellite Rocket Vehicle: Political and Psychological Problems 1950 His writings for Commentary magazine here: https://www.commentary.org/author/paul-kecskemeti/ Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) On 2/27/2024 at 2:28 PM, Geo Kozma said: QUOTE: PFIAB, that's the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board http://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A32169/datastream/OBJ/view/Hungary_under_Soviet_rule_II__a_survey_of_developments_for_September_1957_to_August_1958.pdf Hungary Under Soviet Rule HUNGARY UNDER SOVIET RULE II A Survey of Developments From September 1957 to August 1958 Prepared by THE AMERICAN FRIENDS of the CAPTIVE NATIONS and THE ASSEMBLY of CAPTIVE EUROPEAN NATIONS in association with THE HUNGARIAN COMMITTEE ) EDITORIAL COMMITTEE A. A. Berle, Jr. Leo Cherne Clare Boothe Luce Very important. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_A._Berle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Cherne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Boothe_Luce Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) 23 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said: Fascinating. From “Strategic Surrender” By Michael Amrine Oct. 1, 1958 ... How do you end a war In the book, Strategic Surrender, subtitled, “The Politics of Victory and Defeat,” a member of the Social Science Division of Rand Corporation reports on a research study pointed at end-of-war questions. For the most part, any high-ranking staff officer could well consider the questions and answers raised by the author, Paul Kecskemeti. This most study does not purport to tell anyone just how to end a war, but it does ask many of the side questions relevant to this large and probably unanswerable one. The author of Strategic Surrender does not spend much of his time on the ponderable and imponderable factors of the future. What he does do, for the most part, is set forth some fresh thinking on the subject of goals and methods in war and in victory, backed up by a study of recent history. In most of the book, he reports, with the high degree of objectivity, on four important surrenders of World War II. There is simply no comparison possible between this study, and what was said about it, on the floors of Congress and by government spokesmen in the White House and the Pentagon. Many persons erroneously believed – that somewhere, somehow, a “government agency,” or perhaps two or three agencies, were working on plans for ways and means to engineer the future surrender of the United States. Under what conditions anyone was thinking of surrender, the critics never specified. Some cool-headed persons may suggest that somewhere, somehow, in all good faith, the Defense Department ought to have some planners giving thought to this surrender contingency. In the past. It has been standard doctrine contingencies; for example, that under some conditions the British might once again come down on us – from Canada. So, without being a Benedict Arnold, some military planners might suggest a study of a possible US surrender. This review will not go into that subject, for two reasons; One, there is no use in further stirring up the animals, and two, this book does not happen to mention the subject of a United States surrender. As the Rand Corporation said in a public statement prepared following the publicity brannigan on Capitol Hill, “Nowhere does the study or the book deal with any hypothetical US surrender. The question of negotiation with an opponent of the US in a wartime situation is treated solely in the context of a termination of a war in which the US would be victorious.” Mr. Kecskemeti, who is an exceptionally clear writer, and therefore a rare bird indeed among social scientists, has written straightforwardly about two subjects. One is the historical record of four surrender-victories, which takes 184 of his 258 pages. The other subject is the general conclusions, which he personally draws from his analysis of that record. Like most human beings, Mr. Kecskemeti seems to have some biases, and like all social scientists and historians, he deals with subjects in which there must be interpretation. But on ironic note in this episode of charges and countercharges about “plotting to surrender’ is that there is nothing invidious or devious about the style of this book. The author is lucid and explicit in what he says. When he is critical of a policy, as he is of “unconditional surrender,” Kecskemeti bluntly says so, without any academic circumlocutions. If a military reader disagrees completely with Kecskemeti’s conclusions, he may still find the absorbing story of the four surrenders worth the price of admission. Now there are some of the things that Mr. Kecskemeti does talk about: Allied strategy in World War II was dominated by the concept of surrender. This is the opening sentence of the book and Mr. Kecskemeti says that both the Axis and the Allies took for granted that final defeat would take the shape of mass surrender of forces. Mr. Kecskemeti holds that this is a new idea in the modern era – that previously people had thought that wars ended in other ways, perhaps with the conquest of the enemy’s capital, perhaps with the “battle of annihilation.” He holds that World War I did end in a final mass surrender, but we came to the strategy by trial and error and the terms of capitulation “came as a surprise.” He says one of his purposes is to “throw some light on why surrender became such a dominating concept in the last war.” He says the second purpose was to show why “planning of postwar political arrangements was influenced by the Allies’ preoccupation with surrender as the epitome of victory.” Why is surrender and how does it differ from rout or disruption Kecskemeti says that “surrender means that winner and loser agree to dispense with a last round of fighting.” He says that when a loser’s forces still have some semblance of order but the handwriting is on the wall, it is a rational decision for the loser to save himself the losses of the last battle or the last few battles. By the same token, accepting surrender is a rational decision for the winner. To a great extent then he sees surrender “as an act by which one side renounces any further use of a residual fighting capability,” and he distinguishes between tactical surrender, when surrounded or starved-out units give up, from strategic surrender, in which the entire hostilities are brought to an end. He describes the German surrender to the Allies as one in which successive tactical surrenders added up to a strategic surrender. And the German surrender was the only truly unconditional surrender of the examples he gives. Besides the German surrender to the Allies he studies the surrender of Italy, the surrender of France to Germany, and of Japan. Offering and accepting surrender is a negotiation in which the losers’ bargaining power is not absolutely nil. Kecskemeti says that it is natural that the winner, who is operating emotionally as well as logically, should tend to think that the loser has no strength worth considering, but in this reviewer’s opinion he documents very well his thesis that all of these losers, even shattered Germany and demoralized France, had bargaining counters in their surrenders. He says that “it is possible to pay too much for victory and even for stalemate,” a concept which he gives new meaning in the nuclear age. But in this reviewer’s opinion he goes too far with his very next sentence: “One may safely say that the maxim in war there is no substitute for victory’ is totally erroneous.” However, he has done a very thorough study of the military-political situation in each of his examples. He shows how members of the French government had extremely mixed and sometimes corrupt motives in their surrender, but he makes obvious that reasonable men could differ in their assessment at the time of the French debacle, as to the values of holding out for neutralizing the French fleet, for example. He summarizes this one by saying. “The French succeeded in surrendering on a qualified bases and salvaging partial sovereignty; the German avoided time-consuming terminal operations.” The doctrine of unconditional surrender. Space does not permit an adequate summary of Kecskemeti’s masterly discussion of the pros and cons of our doctrine of unconditional surrender. He shows the contradictions and confusions involved in our efforts to deal with the king of Italy and Premier Badoglio when we were trying to wind up the Italian war and to preserve some of their military capability so that it could be used on our side. As things worked out we not only did not wish to annihilate their forces; we eventually gave them the never-never status of cobelligerent. Of this fantastic period, Harry Butcher, Eisenhower’s aide, wrote in his book My Three Years with Eisenhower that “Ike regretted existence of raped communications. If we were still in the day of sailing ships, he thought he could deal more quickly and advantageously with the Italians than is possible when he has to communicate to both Washington and London and wait for the two capitals to concur or direct.” Unconditional surrender and a vacuum of power. Kecskemeti makes a very convincing case, in the opinion of this reviewers, that rigid application of the doctrine of unconditional surrender leads to a strange impasse in which one is saying that one will never deal in any way whatever with the criminal aggressors who are running the enemy countries. If there is no dealing whatever and one is waiting for that government to fall, one is really hoping is waiting for that government to fall, one is really hoping for a complete vacuum of power, in which case there will really be no one with any authority to surrender. Kecskemeti does an excellent job of showing the contradictions involved. He holds that the American view of international affairs is that “in the normal, healthy stat of national affairs there is no need for the actual or threatened ‘use of coercion,’” Then he says things may be unhealthy and someone may commit aggression, and war against them has but one political objective, “the elimination of all political forces responsible for aggression.” So he holds that wars waged in this spirit are “essentially crusades.” One may note that General Eisenhower called his book Crusade for Europe. Kecskemeti says that this “crusading concept of war” has been vigorously criticized in recent years. At the end of his book he says that in the nuclear age we must learn to be satisfied with more limited objectives. He notes that even Germany, after the death of Hitler, was not utterly disorganized and that the caretaker government of Admiral Karl Dönitz still had something to gain by the stalling tactics. Essentially the Germans kept on bitterly fighting the Russians in the East while they surrendered in the field very readily to the British and Americans. This permitted many civilians and the military to leave the area, which was to be dominated by the Russians. “All in all two and a half to three million German soldiers and civilians escaped from the path of the Russians during Dönitz’ tenure.” If we were able to spring 2,500,000 people today from behind the Iron Curtain so that they defected to our side we would count it a major victory in the cold war. Thus we can credit Kecskemeti’s convictions that even the Germans salvaged something which they wanted very much by the manner of their surrender, although they were not able technically to secure separate surrender agreements with the West and with the East. A proper surrender policy might have ended the Japanese war much earlier. The incredibly complicated story of Japan’s effort to surrender is very well told in this study. In his belief the Japanese were not only defeated, but those who desired the atomic bombs were dropped. In general he supports the airpower advocates who believe that bombing had already accomplished their military objectives in the Japanese war, but to this reviewer he overstates his case when he says, “The atomic bombs, far from being the ‘controlling’ factor, caused no significant reorientation of attitudes, no manifest change in points of view.” In concluding his book he gives only thirteen pages to discussion of possible surrender policies of the future. He particularly addresses himself to questions of limited war, which have obvious implication for consideration of limited victories. It is here that he discusses the possibility that sometime in the future one or more countries might develop the ability to deliver a first strike that would utterly destroy the significant military capability of the enemy. To him this raises the possibility of a surrender without fighting. It is this passage, which has set off pinwheels of oratory, but he does not mention either America or Russia in the connection. The reader might note, however, that during the brief period of American atomic monopoly we were almost in this position as regards Russia, and today Great Britain, America, and the USSR are in precisely this position toward many smaller countries who are not armed with modern weapons. He is only saying that it is theoretically possible that through scientific and production breakthroughs one of the great powers, for a brief period, might be in this same position toward other great powers. In that case the bargaining power of the underdog would be very close to nil and his will to fight might logically be absolutely nil. On his final page he says that the new strategic situation, which has been brought about by nuclear weapons, may be put as follows: “Powers may seek to survive in the nuclear age, either by going to extremes of inhumanity and malevolence never imagined before, or by drastically limiting their expectations of gain from the application of armed power. Adjusting to the new conditions is bound to be particularly difficult for the United States, because both of the available alternatives are diametrically opposed to traditional American political attitudes. Systematic malevolence is as alien to the American makeup as overblown emotional expectations of unlimited gains are congenial to it.” Although this reviewer believes that this book over-simplifies things in some of its interpretations, it I recommended as extremely stimulating reading. Mr. Kecskemeti has done some very clear and provocative thinking, not just about conjectures, but about the realities of our time. It should go on the shelf alongside the books of George F. Kennan, Thomas K. Finletter, Henry A. Kissinger, Brig. Gen. Dale O. Smith, and Sir John Slessor, as important reading for anyone trying to understand what our national policies should be in the future. https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1058strategic/ His RAND writings here: https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/k/kecskemeti_paul.html Insurgency as a Strategic Problem 1967 Static and Dynamic Society 1966 A Reply to Mr. Waskow. 1963 Social patterns in the Hungarian revolution 1960 Strategic Surrender: The Politics of Victory and Defeat 1958 Outline of a Study for the Plans Analysis Section 1951 The Satellite Rocket Vehicle: Political and Psychological Problems 1950 His writings for Commentary here: https://www.commentary.org/author/paul-kecskemeti/ Geo -- I do not think you should be ashamed of your uncle's work. There's is much to be understood and valued within the subject of what was undertaken with respect to Cold War theoretics and what its aims were. And from what I have read about Kecksemeti, it sounds as though he added a comparatively far-more more human understanding to the topic. "Herman Kahn, during a briefing with Strategic Air Command officers, famously blurted out that, “In a real sense you people don’t have war plans, you’ve got war-gasms.”" Remember the movie Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick. Remember it's alternate ending: "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove https://tnsr.org/2021/09/moral-choices-without-moral-language-1950s-political-military-wargaming-at-the-rand-corporation/ ... Ultimately, the MAD game was deemed an educational experience that did not yield any definitive scientific results about how decision-makers would act in the Cold War. Indeed, in spite of criticism from the SSD, Helmer believed that the MAD game had “raised our hope that a multi-person game can be used as the basic structure for a fruitful systems-analytical model of international politics,” although he was sure to add that “there was hardly any criticism of the multi-person game structure as such as a model for the cold war.”53 Paul Kecskemeti perhaps best summarized the SSD’s rejection of the quantitative supremacy epitomized by RAND’s MAD: “[I]n all social science, no matter how ‘quantified’ the correlations are that we establish among phenomena, the basic data themselves always involve interpretation and hence judgment.”54 The MAD game embodied everything that Cohn had criticized about the abstraction, technostrategic language, and willingness to casually discuss killing millions of people with no sense of horror, urgency, or engagement of emotion or ethical intuition. Ultimately, the game dehumanized not just the potential targets of nuclear weapons, but the nuclear strategists as well, by abstracting away their capacity to empathize with the human suffering that would result from using a nuclear weapon. The Social Scientific Cold War Game According to Bessner, the social scientists at RAND considered the MAD game’s “entire design ridiculous.” The social world was not made up of game theoreticians, rather, “Culture, psychology, politics, and emotions — all of which were unquantifiable, unformalizable, and unpredictable — were what mattered in international relations,” yet those factors were abstracted or ignored by the game designers. Consequently, Hans Speier, Herbert Goldhamer, Joseph Goldsen, and Victor Hunt in the SSD decided to make their own “Cold War Game” simulation, which they defiantly also abbreviated as COW. The SSD’s version would model international politics in explicitly qualitative terms, with the implication, according to Bessner, that the “SSD’s simulation would (or should) replace” MAD’s flawed design. This was, in essence, a reaction to the general privileging of quantification and formal modeling at RAND. The SSD’s wargame would rely on players’ “qualitative knowledge of a given nation’s politics, culture, and society, that is, on history. It would further emphasize judgment and insight” as opposed to abstraction and quantification.55 In order to account for unpredictable and “non-rational” behavior, the SSD pushed back on the quantitative notion that humans acted as if they were computers (as advocated by Helmer). Instead they preferred to examine the issues of psychology, culture, and international politics in qualitative terms. ... Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) On 2/17/2024 at 1:01 AM, Geo Kozma said: 2 so now I want to prove that in the CORVINA PRESS around my mom - working there - there was someone whose CODED letters to he West are proven in her own published letters to his BBC working son. And she did know my mom's Oval Office uncle. And they both knew Karl Mannheim - see Wiki on him) an LSE Prof, on best friend terms to Freud and T.S. Eliot and thru them to the Roosevelts . Mannheim was bro-in-law of my Uncle and was assigned to organize UNESCO by Roosevelt in 1940s - and so my Uncle got his job at the Oval Office by the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. (but he got invited by Carnap to teach at Harvard without any friendly push - he just wrote a good book on the Carnapian logical positivism. But to read that is beyonf my English level... ) Outstanding. Thank you, Geo. Thank you. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/117143/1/final_draft_LSE.pdf 1. German sociological inheritance Edward Shils was born in Springfield (Massachusetts) as the second of two sons of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. According to the CV, which he sent to the LSE in April 1946, he had been an undergraduate student of Romanic Languages, Literature and Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania from 1927 to 1931, and a graduate student majoring in Sociology at the University of Chicago from 1933 to 1937. In Chicago, he had also been hired by Louis Wirth and worked with him on the English translation of Karl Mannheim’s Ideologie und Utopie (first published in 1929) and the 1931 encyclopedia entry on Wissenssoziologie. Building upon previous work of Paul Kecskemeti (Mannheim to Wirth, 26 July 1933), the translation was completed in a relatively short period of time – although some last-minute anxieties from the side of Mannheim delayed the publication process. But “translated from the German by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (University of Chicago)”, and with a preface by Wirth, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge was eventually published in 1936 by Harcourt, Brace & Co.3 The translation of Mannheim’s work was the first publication to which Shils contributed. Shils saw more opportunities in this regard. At the end of 1934, but without Wirth, he contacted Mannheim to undertake the English translation of the German chapters of Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus as well. “The fact that I have been assisting Professor Louis Wirth in the translation of your ‘Ideologie und Utopie’ and ‘Wissenssoziologie’, and have followed your work with the greatest interest for the past few years, may offer some slight guarantee of my competence for the work. Needless to say, I would expect no remuneration other than for the small charges involved in typing, etc.” (Shils to Mannheim, 31 Dec 1934). Having fled Hitler’s Nazi regime and its anti-Semitic politics, Mannheim lived at that time already in Britain, where he had become lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science under a program to assist academic exiles. “Translated from the German by Edward Shils”, but also “revised and considerably enlarged by the Author”, Mannheim’s Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction first appeared in 1940 in London. __ Chapter 5. The Making of a Defense Intellectual De Gruyter https://www.degruyter.com › document › doi › html ... Kecskemeti, Harold Lasswell, Nathan Leites, and Edward Shils, with employ-ment or research support that helped solidify networks whose seeds had been ... __ Truth and Ideology: Reflections on Mannheim's Paradox JSTOR https://www.jstor.org › stable by WA Mullins · 1979 · Cited by 35 — ideology. 1. Recall that Karl Marx, not Raymond Aron, Edward Shils, or Daniel Bell, was the first to ... Paul Kecskemeti (London, 1952), 27-29. __ Karl Mannheim's Sociology of Knowledge. by A. P. Simonds JSTOR https://www.jstor.org › stable by C Camic · 1980 · Cited by 1 — address the compelling case (put forward by Lewis Coser, Paul Kecskemeti,. Robert Merton, and Edward Shils) that situates Mannheim at the junction of __ https://www.amazon.com/Torment-Secrecy-Background-Consequences-American/dp/156663105X Edward Shils's The Torment of Secrecy is one of the few minor classics to emerge from the cold war years of anticommunism and McCarthyism in the United States. Mr. Shils's "torment" is not only that of the individual caught up in loyalty and security procedures; it is also the torment of the accuser and judge. This essay in sociological analysis and political philosophy considers the cold war preoccupation with espionage, sabotage, and subversion at home, assessing the magnitude of such threats and contrasting it to the agitation―by lawmakers, investigators, and administrators―so wildly directed against the "enemy." Mr. Shils's examination of a recurring American characteristic is as timely as ever. "Brief...lucid... brilliant."―American Political Science Review. "A fine, sophisticated analysis of American social metabolism."―New Republic. "An excitingly lucid and intelligent work on a subject of staggering importance...the social preconditions of political democracy."―Social Forces. https://sgp.fas.org/library/moynihan/foreword.html " CHAIRMAN'S FOREWORD The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Senator from New York It is a half century since the foreign intelligence system of the United States was established by the National Security Act of 1947. It is 80 years since the Espionage Act of 1917 established the present legal regime dealing with subversive activities within the United States itself. This has been a time of war and rumors of war without cease, global ideological conflict, and, with the onset of the atomic age, the possibility, at times even the prospect, that the human race might destroy itself in one climactic armagedonnic convulsion. This age is in large measure past. Major conflict is no longer a prospect; ours is the only nation capable of waging a global war, and we have no such design. The ideological conflicts that arose in 19th century Europe are now largely spent; the totalitarian challenge is no more. (Totalitarian regimes persist, but make no ideological claim on the future.) Atomic peril has begun to recede, although the matter of stable controls in Russia is by no means resolved, and proto-nuclear powers proliferate. On the other hand, credible international regimes have begun to address matters such as chemical warfare. The world, if not at peace, nor likely to be, is even so not in imminent peril. In this setting, it is reasonable and responsible to consider just how appropriate the security arrangements of that earlier age are to the one we have now entered. It is to be insisted that we are at the outset of a new era, for this fact is anything but plain. Wars used to end with homecoming parades and demobilization. Nothing so unambiguous happened after the Cold War, and so it requires an effort to think anew. ... Of course, we did no such thing. In 1956, Edward A. Shils captured the aftermath in his fine, small study, The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Consequences of American Security Policy. "The American visage began to cloud over," Shils wrote. "Secrets were to become our chief reliance just when it was becoming more and more evident that the Soviet Union had long maintained an active apparatus for espionage in the United States. For a country which had never previously thought of itself as an object of systematic espionage by foreign powers, it was unsettling." The larger society, Shils continued, was "facing an unprecedented threat to its continuance." In these circumstances, "The phantasies of apocalyptic visionaries now claimed the respectability of being a reasonable interpretation of the real situation."20 A culture of secrecy took hold within American Government, while a hugely divisive debate raged in the Congress and the press. That was then, and it was a long time back. The public today is not the least concerned about the infiltration of the Government by ideological enemies of the United States. To the contrary, the Government itself is increasingly the object of the "phantasies of apocalyptic visionaries." It is time to change." Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 One last from here, you'll all be pleased to read. I think i've gotten what was needed. But here's an excerpt from a lecture on the subject by one who knew it all. It's worth anyone's time to decode. The Science of Secrecy: Daniel Patrick Moynihan The Science of Secrecy Daniel Patrick Moynihan Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science Delivered at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 29, 1999. ... Almost half a century ago, in 1956, Edward Shils, recently described as “the most learned man in the social sciences” of his time, published The Torment of Secrecy, an impassioned yet rigorous account of the turmoil of what we recall as the McCarthy era of the 1950s.[4] If the turmoil was just then subsiding, Shils wrote, “A great society should not allow its partial recovery from a humiliating and unjustifiable lapse from decent conduct to diminish the necessity for the conscientious scrutiny of that lapse.”[5] Seymour Martin Lipset, fearless as ever, observed that at the height of anti-Communist fervor, loyalty oaths and the like, a person could get in more trouble on the principal American campuses by supporting McCarthy rather than opposing him. But that would scarcely have included Shils. In the 1930s he had made clear his contempt for fellow travelers: “the rush of the Gadarene intellectuals” to embrace Communism. Wartime service in the Office of Strategic Services only strengthened his disdain, adding an element of concern. In Torment he writes: The Communist Party of the United States is and has been malevolent in intent. Its impotence as an effective conspiratorial revolutionary body does not mean that it is entirely harmless. Given the interest of the Soviet Union in penetrating such information on American resources and intentions as are kept secret, and given the subservience of the Communist Party to the Soviet Union, there have been ample grounds for care in dealing with Communists or persons under their influence.[6] He was, however, a co-founder of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He continued: The scientists, who had worked on the bomb and knew its monstrous powers, felt perhaps more than a little guilty over their role in having produced this necessary tool of destruction and they also knew enough about the inner nature of science and scientists to foresee that the American monopoly of the scientific and technological knowledge which went into the making of the bomb could not be indefinitely maintained.[7] They hoped for some mode of international control. But before anything could be achieved the Soviet Union detonated its own bomb and the Cold War was on. Soon came some evidence and many charges that they had stolen the secret. Again, Shils: The American visage began to cloud over. Secrets were to become our chief reliance just when it was becoming more and more evident that the Soviet Union had long maintained an active apparatus for espionage in the United States. For country which had never previously thought of itself as an object of systematic espionage by foreign powers, it was unsettling. The atomic bomb was a bridge over which the phantasies ordinarily confined to restricted sections of the population–hole-and-corner nativist radicalism, religious fundamentalism, and revolutionary populism– entered the larger society which was facing an unprecedented threat to its continuance. The phantasies of apocalyptic visionaries now claimed the respectability of being a reasonable interpretation of the real situation.[8] Shils called for a “functional secrecy” that would protect the society from “genuine external danger.”[9] What he feared was secrecy that was not functional but symbolic. [P]art of the war of fantasy which the pure and good conduct incessantly with corruption and evil until the Last Judgment. The secrecy demanded by ideological extremism in the United States and in Soviet Russia, in Soviet China and in the Soviet satellites is not connected with national security except by the occasion which crises provide for fanatics to focus their excited fantasies. ... https://politicalanthro.wordpress.com/the-science-of-secrecy-daniel-patrick-moynihan/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Cloud Posted February 28 Author Share Posted February 28 (edited) On 2/19/2024 at 6:17 PM, Paul Jolliffe said: Four years ago, in response to the late John Butler's throwaway comment about Louis Budenz, I raised the possibility that the mysterious women caller was Elizabeth Bentley. (John Butler then followed up my post and discussed it, but he never seriously developed it.) Here is what I thought then and now believe more strongly: Elizabeth Bentley was very probably the mysterious woman caller to the Tippit house in Connecticut on 11/30/63. 1. The caller feared publicity - "they" could identify her if "they" knew she was a woman. She was known entity to the press - she had a quasi-public persona. She was not some anonymous neighbor of the Gardos/Blair/Weinstock crowd. 2. The caller claimed to be calling from New Haven, Connecticut 3. The caller was a "mature" woman. (Not old, but "mature"). 4. The caller believed (like everyone else in America at that moment) that our "Oswald" really had shot the president, and she believed she had inside information on just how connected he was to some dangerous communist group. 5. The caller referenced Emil Gardos, Fred Blair (albeit not by name) and Louis Weinstock. These men were certainly well known to the FBI and HUAC, but not to the general public. 6. The caller mentioned an area of NYC (Yorkville) which really did abound with Hungarians and was home to (at least some) Communists. 7. The caller believed her inside information ("Oswald" did it as part of a nefarious commie plot - this group wants to take over the government! They've got charts and maps!) was likely to be ignored or corrupted by the FBI 8. The caller spoke in an accent, apparently, although neither Mr. nor Mrs. Tippit agreed as to what it was. OK. So why Elizabeth Bentley? 1. She was absolutely a known entity and had spent most of her life in and around New York and Connecticut. She was born in New Milford, Connecticut, went to Vassar College as an undergraduate (Poughkeepsie, NY), Columbia University (NYC) as a graduate student, and got her first job spying for the CPUSA at the Italian Library of Information (a front for Fascist Italy) in NYC. She rose in rank and importance in the communist world as a spy, eventually earning the nickname "Unmitsa" ("clever girl") for her work running two different communist spy rings in the U.S. She spent most of her life between 1935 and 1945 in and around NYC. However, a combination of personal problems, fear and the resentment that her male handlers were cutting her out eventually turned Bentley into a professional anti-communist for the FBI in 1945. (No less than J. Edgar Hoover himself ordered that her defection to the American side be held in the strictest secrecy - the FBI still wanted to use her as a double agent.) To maximize political damage to communist fronts and communist agents in the USA, Hoover decided to have Bentley go public. She gave a series of interviews and appeared before HUAC in 1948. Her testimony exposed the extent to which the American state was riddled with communist-sympathizers (or worse) and was politically explosive for the Truman Administration. in short, for awhile, Elizabeth Bentley absolutely was a public figure. 2.Like the anonymous caller claimed, Elizabeth Bentley really was in New Haven, Connecticut on November 30, 1963. She was there to prepare for abdominal-cancer surgery which would kill her just three days later. 3. Elizabeth Bentley was 55 years old in 1963. Not "old", but "mature". 4. Until 1948, Elizabeth Bentley had spent all of her adult life either working for or against communist groups, much of it in an undercover capacity. Just as the anonymous caller believed (wrongly) her insights into "Oswald's" communist connections could explain the assassination, Bentley believed her insights into the nature of the communist conspiracy in America could explain how Washington worked. 5. I can't prove that Bentley personally knew the names "Gardos", "Blair" and "Weinstock", but as the head of communist spy rings in NYC before 1945 she had to have come across those names. (Who else could have?) 6. As a longtime resident of NYC, and as a spymistress herself, it is inconceivable that Bentley would not have known that Yorkville was home to a huge variety of Eastern European immigrants, many of communist leanings/sympathies (or more.) 7. Elizabeth Bentley had worked with the FBI at the highest levels since 1945. She knew how it worked - as long as she was useful, she was OK. But by 1963, she was an alcoholic Cold War relic from the 1940's, of little further use to Hoover's FBI. 8. Elizabeth Bentley had degrees in English, Italian and French. She was a smart, articulate woman who could converse in multiple languages (as a young woman, she spent time in Florence.) Could she have "faked" an ambiguous accent over the phone? Of course she could have. Did Elizabeth Bentley have any inside knowledge about the "Harvey Project"? I doubt it. But nor did the anonymous caller - she thought "Oswald" had done it as part of a giant commie plot. Here she is on NBC's "Meet The Press" on September12, 1948: For accuracy and completeness, Paul Joliffe DID acknowledge the Bentley death on Dec. 3, 1963 but perhaps not its potential significance in light of the timing and what was said on the phone-call. (Above, at his pt. 2.) I should note, accounts indicate that Bentley already lived in Connecticut for the last five years or so of her life, which brings some ambiguity into the caller's statement that she "had to come here to make the call to the Tippits." What does the "here" mean if she was already in CT, either because that's already where she lived in those years or because she was in CT to prepare for the surgery as Paul Jolliffe writes. Does "here" mean she had to come to Westport specifically to make the call -- perhaps from a pay-phone -- because she assumed or knew that her phone at home in Middlefield was tapped? "In the late 1950s, she largely faded into obscurity. Bentley returned to Connecticut, where she worked as a teacher, first in Hartford and then in Middletown, teaching English at the Long Lane School for Girls, a state correctional institution. She taught there for the final five years of her life, and lived in nearby Middlefield. Bentley died on Dec. 3, 1963, from abdominal cancer at Grace-New Haven Hospital." https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticutmagazine/news-people/article/CT-Files-The-Red-Spy-Queen-17042588.php I would also point out some comments by John Earl Haynes of the Library of Congress on research on Bentley being "dangerous." Haynes, too, sees the academic work on American Communism as heavily skewed to the left. Haynes has also made his career outside of mainstream academia, where he says you simply can't address the subject of Soviet espionage in a scholarly way. Over dinner, he elaborated the point. ''There's been a tendency to freeze consideration,'' he said. ''For example, let's take a look at Elizabeth Bentley.'' Bentley, a spy who turned herself in to the F.B.I. in 1945, was probably the government's most valuable defector from the American Communist Party. ''This was a major incident,'' Haynes continues. ''Do you know how many doctoral dissertations there are on Bentley? None. Because it's one of those, We shouldn't look at this -- this is dangerous. You're not going to be able to get a job if you write a dissertation about Elizabeth Bentley. If this was a field in which things were normal, there would be half a dozen Elizabeth Bentleys stretched over the last 20 or 30 years. But this is a field where young historians soon get the message: don't look at that area; it's dangerous.'' https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/28/magazine/cold-war-without-end.html Haynes I should point was at that time, and for years after, the "gatekeeper" you might say of the Moynihan papers at the LoC. Until, that is, they were transferred to NARA relatively recently. There they were under the protection of Mark A. Bradley. His bio from NARA: "Mr. Bradley also served as a CIA intelligence officer and as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's legislative assistant for foreign affairs and intelligence matters and as his last legislative director. He co-drafted the legislation that established the Public Interest Declassification Board." https://www.archives.gov/about/organization/senior-staff/director-isoo Bradley and I were colleagues together on Moynihan's staff, from '99, when he came on board, until 2001. He resigned from NARA more or less simultaneously with the "discovery" of classified docs at Biden Penn center. "Nov. 3, 2022--The director of the Information Security Oversight Office is planning to retire next summer, giving the head of the National Archives the chance to choose ISOO’s next leader amid a White House review of classification policies. Mark Bradley, a former CIA officer who has served as director of ISOO since December 2016, plans to retire on June 1, 2023. He made the announcement Wednesday during a meeting of the National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee (NISPPAC)." The ISOO director position is selected by the Archivist of the United States and approved by the president. President Joe Biden’s pick to be the next Archivist is facing headwinds to her confirmation in the Senate. “Whether we’re going to have a continuation of this administration or another one, I want to give the powers that be ample time to pick another director of ISOO, because I think the position is too important to languish,” Bradley said at the NISPPAC meeting." https://federalnewsnetwork.com/open-datatransparency/2022/11/isoo-director-to-step-down-next-summer/ Edited February 28 by Matt Cloud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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