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The tag 'Sullivan and Cromwell' is associated with 43 posts.

Nuremberg Redux: The Deep Political Context of the Texas Court of Inquiry

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ June 18, 2019 ⋅ Post a comment

In Miscellaneous Archive Show M31, we examined the military inquiry into the killing of Wehrmacht Corporal Johannes Kunze, whose anti-Nazi sentiments were punished by his fellow prisoners with murder. In the inquest, it became clear that American officers had permitted their German POW counterparts to screen the mail of their fellow prisoners, which provided them the means to identify and kill corporal Kunze. The military prosecutor in the case–future Watergate and Koreagate “Special Prosecutor” Leon Jaworski–exercised what was politely termed judicial restraint, and did not investigate the U.S. officers whose conduct led directly to the murder of Kunze. Jaworski later participated in trials of Third Reich alumni accused of war crimes, including the trial of Dachau medical personnel. “. . . . Col. Leon Jaworski, who will be in charge of the trial, estimates that at least 5,000 Jews died at Dachau from ordinary mistreatment and torture, while anywhere between 1,000 and 3,000 died as a result of medical experiments performed upon them. . . .” The gruesome Dachau medical experiments: 1) Were performed by five doctors who were on the Project Paperclip payroll by the time Jaworski again manifested judicial restraint: ” . . . . Five doctors working at the center starting in the fall of 1945 were on the list: Theodor Benzinger, Siegried Ruff, Konrad Schafer, Hermann Becker-Freyseng, and Oskar Schroder. Instead of firing these physicians suspected of heinous war crimes, the center kept the doctors in its employ and the list was classified. . . .” 2) Involved trials by four of the Paperclip recruits of two processes aimed at purifying seawater for drinking, with gruesome results for the Dachau “Untermenschen”: “. . . . Dr. Oskar Schroder, head of the Luftwaffe Medical Corps, was thrilled. Konrad Schafer had ‘developed a process which actually precipitated the salts from the sea water,’ Schroder later testified. . . . The effectiveness of both the Schafer process and the Berka method would be tested on the Untermenschen at Dachau. A Luftwaffe physician named Hermann Becker-Freyseng was assigned to assist Dr. Schafer, and to coauthor with him a paper documenting the results of the contest. The senior doctor advising Becker-Freyseng and Schafer in their work was Dr. Siegfried Ruff. . . .” 3) Were filmed and screened for SS chief Heinrich Himmler by the fifth Paperclip recruit, Dr. Theodor Benzinger: ” . . . .This was the same Dr. Benzinger who had overseen for Himmler the film screening at the Reich Air Ministry, in Berlin, of Dachau prisoners being murdered in medical experiments. . . .” 4) Became part of an experimental continuum, in which the Nazi research on Aeromedical Medicine performed at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute proceeded uninterrupted under U.S. Army Air Force command: ” . . . . The Army Air Forces Aero Medical Center in Heidelberg . . . only a few months prior . . . had been the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research, a bastion of Nazi science where chemists and physicists worked on projects for the Reich’s war machine. At its front entrance, the Reich’s flag came down and the U.S. Flag went up. Photographs of Hitler were pulled from the walls and replaced by framed photographs of Army Air Forces generals in military pose. Most of the furniture stayed the same. In the dining room, German waiters in white servers’ coats provided table service at mealtimes. A single 5” X 8” requisition receipt, dated September 14, 1945, made the transition official: ‘This property is needed by U.S. Forces, and the requisition is in proportion to the resources of the country.’ Again, then Colonel Jaworski apparently exercised “judicial restraint.” Following President Kennedy’s assassination, Jaworski became both a Warren Commission counsel and, with Judge Robert Storey, headed the Texas Court of Inquiry, the Texas judicial body charged with investigating JFK’s murder. As discussed in the linked Guns of November, Part 3, Jaworski sat on the board of directors of the M.D. Anderson Fund, a documented CIA domestic funding conduit. In an earlier professional incarnation, Storey–as Colonel Robert Storey (above, right)–passed along the word that the de-Nazification edict was to be “relaxed” during the Nuremberg trials. ” . . . . Colonel Robert Storey, the U.S. executive trial counsel at the International Military Tribunal and a senior aide to Robert Jackson, has ‘passed the word down that the denazification directive was to be relaxed,’ . . . .” It seems probable that the selection of the composition of both the Warren Commission and the Texas Court of Inquiry was shaped, in part, by the perceived necessity of concealing the many Nazis under the American bed.

David Sarnoff’s Axis Connection: Background to NBC and the Walter Sheridan Broadcast

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ May 27, 2019 ⋅ Post a comment

In our long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his masterwork “Destiny Betrayed,” we highlighted veteran intelligence officer Walter Sheridan’s broadcast hatchet job on New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison’s investigation of the JFK assassination. The TV hit piece was broadcast on the NBC network. In our discussion of the Sheridan broadcast, we noted the efforts of RCA chief David Sarnoff in resurrecting the Nazi Radio France station and presiding over its conversion to Radio Free Europe. (RCA is the parent company of NBC, which aired the Sheridan broadcast.) In resurrecting Radio France and midwiving its conversion to Radio Free Europe, Sarnoff, who is Jewish, was building on profound and treasonous Axis connections he maintained during the war. In “Trading with the Enemy,” Charles Higham chronicled the deep involvement of David Sarnoff with the Transradio Consortium, which joined the Axis nations with the Western Allies in a telecommunications cartel that provided vital–and lethal–intelligence to the Axis during the war. Key points of analysis and discussion include: 1.–David Sarnoff’s successful efforts to restore and expand the Nazi Radio France Station and re-brand it as “Radio Free Europe.” ” . . . . In 1944, Sarnoff worked for the complete restoration of the Nazi destroyed Radio France station in Paris until its signal was able to reach throughout Europe. It was then retitled Radio Free Europe. He later lobbied the White House to expand the range and reach of Radio Free Europe. At about this point, Radio Free Europe became a pet project of Allen Dulles. Sarnoff’s company, Radio Corporation of America, became a large part of the technological core of the NSA. . . . Robert was president of RCA, NBC’s parent company, at the time Sheridan’s special aired. David was chairman. . . .” 2.–Sarnoff’s RCA was part of the Transradio Consortium, something of a broadcast cartel melding Axis and Western Allied broadcast establishments: ” . . . . RCA was in partnership before and after Pearl Harbor with British Cable and Wireless; with Telefunken, the Nazi company; with Italcable, wholly owned by the Mussolini government; and with Vichy’s Compagnie Generale, in an organization known as the Transradio Consortium, with General Robert C. Davis, head of the New York Chapter of the American Red Cross, as its chairman. In turn, RCA, British Cable and Wireless, and the German and Italian companies had a share with ITT in TTP (Telegrafica y Telefonica del Plata), an Axis-controlled company providing telegraph and telephone service between Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Nazis in Montevideo could telephone Buenos Aires through TTP without coming under the control of either the state-owned system in Uruguay or the ITT system in Argentina. Messages, often dangerous to American security, were transmitted directly to Berlin and Rome by Transradio. Another shareholder was ITT’s German “rival,” Siemens, which linked cables and networks with Behn south of Panama. . . .” 3.–Transradio Consortium was the vehicle for lethally treasonous communications during the war: ” . . . . But the public, which thought of Sarnoff as a pillar of patriotism, would have been astonished to learn of his partnership with the enemy through Transradio and TTP. The British public, beleaguered and bombed, would have been equally shocked to learn that British Cable and Wireless, 10 percent owned by the British government, and under virtual government control in wartime, was in fact also in partnership with the Germans and Italians through the same companies and proxies. . . . Simultaneously, the Transradio stations, according to State Department reports with the full knowledge of David Sarnoff, kept up a direct line to Berlin. The amount of intelligence passed along the lines can scarcely be calculated. The London office was in constant touch with New York throughout the war, sifting through reports from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile and sending company reports to the Italian and German interests. . . .”

FTR #1058, FTR #1059 and FTR #1060 The Christian West, Parts 1, 2 and 3: Contextual Foundation of the Jim DiEugenio Interviews

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ March 6, 2019 ⋅ One comment

Reviewing past material in order to refresh and reinforce understanding of the historical context and foundation of the recent Jim DiEugenio interviews, this program reviews information relevant to the concept of the Christian West. “The Christian West” is explained in the description for AFA #37: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeated, it opened secret negotiations with representatives from the Western Allies. Representatives on both sides belonged to the transatlantic financial and industrial fraternity that had actively supported fascism. The thrust of these negotiations was the establishment of The Christian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehicle for surviving military defeat, ‘The Christian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich joining with the U.S., Britain, France and other European nations in a transatlantic, pan-European anti-Soviet alliance. In fact, The Christian West became a reality only after the cessation of hostilities. The de-Nazification of Germany was aborted. Although a few of the more obvious and obnoxious elements of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to power at virtually every level and in almost every capacity in the Federal Republic of Germany. . . .”

Against the background of Allen and John Foster Dulles’ long, overlapping careers as lawyers for Sullivan & Cromwell, as well as government operatives, we note the decisive role of cartels in precipitating fascism and the position in the political and macro-economic landscape of the events stemming from that.

Program Highlights Include: American recruitment of Nazi Eastern Front intelligence officers in August of 1944 (far earlier than generally supposed); The Gehlen “Org”‘s incorporation into the CIA with the consent of a Nazi chain of command that was still in existence; the role in the Gehlen Org of Eastern European fascist organizations including the OUN/B, the Romanian Iron Guard, the Croatian Ustachi, the Bulgarian National Front and the SS Baltic Legion; the incorporation of those same Gehlen-controlled Eastern European fascists into the GOP via the Crusade For Freedom (CFF); the pivotal role of Gehlen/Nazi/CFF personnel in the postwar GOP (Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush); the re-institution of Nazis in the “New” Federal Republic of Germany; the control of the “New” Federal Republic of Germany by an underground Nazi fuehringsring and a command center in Madrid; the role of Canadian nickel interests in John Foster Dulles’ cobbling together of I.G. Farben; Garrison investigative target Clay Shaw’s networking with Canadian nickel interests; the role of both Dulles brothers in frustrating the interdiction of the Bormann flight capital program; the [apparently successful] negotiations between OSS chief William Donovan, his aide Allen Dulles and representative of the SS to realize the Christian West concept; the role of Crusade For Freedom personnel in the assassination of President Kennedy; Garrison investigative target Clay Shaw’s friendship with Nazi Finance Minister Hjalmar Schacht; Foster Dulles’ professional intimacy with Schacht; Shaw’s links to Permindex and the SS-linked Schroeder banking empire; the decisive role of Allen Dulles, George Herbert Walker (W’s great grandfather and the grandfather of George H.W. Bush), Prescott Bush, Sr. (the father of George H.W. Bush and the grandfather of W) in laundering U.S. capital investment in Nazi Germany and the return of those Nazi monies to the U.S.; Nazi steel magnate Fritz Thyssen’s close relationship to: Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush, Martin Bormann and the Schroeder banking interests; Allen Dulles’ “go-to” relationship with Senator Prescott Bush (senior) while serving as head of the CIA.

FTR #1043 Interview #12 with Jim DiEugenio About Destiny Betrayed

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ December 28, 2018 ⋅ Post a comment

CIA’s Expert on the JFK Assassination Ray Rocca: ” . . . . Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. . . .”

House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”

This is the twelfth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.

In this program, we continue with analysis of Clay Shaw’s intelligence connection, beginning with review of his work for the Domestic Operations Division.

A fascinating intelligence involvement of Shaw’s is his work with Permindex.

. . . . The next step in the CIA ladder after his high-level overseas informant service was his work with the strange company called Permindex. When the announcement for Permindex was first made in Switzerland in late 1956, its principal backing was to come from a local banker named Hans Seligman. But as more investigation by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Henry Schroder Corporation. This information was quite revealing. Schroder’s had been closely associated with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s connections to the Schroder banking family went back to the thirties when his law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, first began representing them through him. Later, Dulles was the bank’s General Counsel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA director, Schroder’s was a repository for a fifty million dollar contingency fund that Dulles personally controlled. Schroder’s was a welcome conduit because the bank benefited from previous CIA overthrows in Guatemala and Iran. Another reason that there began to be a furor over Permindex in Switzerland was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was associated with the Third Reich, specifically Heinrich Himmler. The project now became stalled in Switzerland. It now moved to Rome. In a September 1069 interview Shaw did for Penthouse Magazine, he told James Phelan that he only grew interested in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in October 1958. Yet a State Department cable dated April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great interest in Permindex from the outset.

One can see why. The board of directors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fascist governments, people who worked the Jewish refugee racket during World War II, a former member of Mussolini’s cabinet, and the son-in-law of Hjalmar Schacht, the economic wizard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These people would all appeal to the conservative Shaw. There were at least four international newspapers that exposed the bizarre activities of Permindex when it was in Rome. One problem was the mysterious source of funding: no one knew where it was coming from. Another was that its activities reportedly included assassination attempts on French Premier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the founding member of Permindex, Ferenc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of former French officers who broke with De Gaulle over his Algerian policy. They later made several attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mysterious source of funding, plus the rightwing, neo-Fascist directors created another wave of controversy. One newspaper wrote that the organization may have been “a creature of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the transfer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal political-espionage activities.” The Schroder connection would certainly suggest that. . . .

His involvement with Permindex places him in the transnational corporate milieu that spawned fascism and Nazism. Key observations about Permindex and Shaw’s participation in it:

1.–Shaw was part of the deep political orbit of the Dulles brothers and Sullivan & Cromwell.
2.–The Permindex operational link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himmler Kreis, the industrialists and financiers who financed the workings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, who became the finance minister of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles brothers.
4.–Permindex was apparently involved with the OAS efforts to assassinate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a network including: Banister investigator Maurice Brooks Gatlin, who boasted of having transferred money to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS operative who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assassination of JFK.
5.–As discussed in FTR #’s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an early critic of the French policy in Algeria, criticizing it on the floor of the Senate in 1957.

The conclusion of the broadcast focuses largely on the CIA’s intense interest in the Garrison investigation. This interest was manifested through an agency conclave informally named “The Garrison Group.”

. . . . Helms wanted the group to “consider the possible implications for the Agency” of what Garrison was doing in “New Orleans before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw. It is crucial to keep in mind the phrase: before, during, and after. As we will see, the effective administrator Helms was thinking not just of some short term fix, but of formulating a strategy for the long haul. According to the very sketchy memo about this meeting, [CIA General Counsel Lawrence] Houston discussed his dealings with the Justice Department and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA directly. [Ray] Rocca then said something quite ominous. He said that he felt “that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meeting. Since everyone must have known that Rocca had developed, by bar, the largest database on Garrison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .

We note that House Select Committee on Assassinations assistant counsel Jonathan Blackmer wrote the following:

. . . . “We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.” . . . .

The program concludes with analysis of Clay Shaw’s close relationship to the Stern family of WDSU. In addition to carrying staged interviews between Oswald and Carlos Bringuier, the broadcast outlet pilloried Jim Garrison and his trial of Clay Shaw.

FTR #1038 Interview #8 with Jim DiEugenio About “Destiny Betrayed”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ December 5, 2018 ⋅ Post a comment

The eighth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues analysis of the development of the legend (intelligence cover) of Lee Harvey Oswald.

(Listeners can order Destiny Betrayed and Jim’s other books, as well as supplementing those volumes with articles about this country’s political assassinations at his website Kennedys and King. Jim is also a regular guest and expert commentator on Black Op Radio.)

The discussion begins with review of the deep state intelligence connections of Ruth and Michael Paine, who took over the handling of the Oswalds from George De Mohrenschildt:

1. Michael Paine was a Cabot and drew from trust funds bequeathed by both the Cabot and Forbes families, both members of the “Boston Brahmins.” His mother was Ruth Forbes Young.
2. Michael’s cousin Thomas Cabot was a director United Fruit.
3. Thomas’s brother John was–like Thomas–a State Department veteran, who was exchanging information with Guy Banister employee Maurice Brooks Gatlin about the impending CIA overthrow of Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz, who was pursuing policies detrimental to United Fruit’s feudal monopoly in that unfortunate nation.
4. During the early sixties, Thomas was president of the Gibraltar Steamship Company, a Honduran-based front that owned no ships but operated Radio Swan, a CIA radio station used in the Bay of Pigs, among other operations.
5. Before relocating to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, Michael Paine had worked for the Franklin Institute, a CIA conduit.
6. Michael Paine also was apparently posing as a leftist to infiltrate and catalog, Castro sympathizers, not unlike the work Guy Banister was doing in New Orleans in conjunction with, among others, Lee Harvey Oswald.
7. His step father was Arthur Young, married to Ruth Forbes Young. Arthur Young was a devotee of “The Nine” and became a major figure at Bell Helicopter. Arthur got Michael a job at Bell.
8. Ruth Forbes Young was best friend with Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles’s subordinate and long-time mistress while he worked for OSS, America’s World War II intelligence service.
9. Ruth Paine’s father was William Avery Hyde, an insurance executive who had worked for the OSS in World War II and later went to work for the Agency for International Development, a frequent CIA cover.
10. Ruth’s father, like George De Mohrenschildt, worked for the International Cooperative Alliance.
11. In the summer of 1963, Ruth traveled cross-country and visited her sister Sylvia Hyde Hoke, who was a CIA psychologist.
12. Sylvia’s husband John Hoke also worked for the Agency for International Development.
13. In the 1980s, Ruth Paine was apparently infiltrating and cataloging anti-“Contra” activists with regard to the attempts at overthrowing the Sandinista forces in Nicaragua.
The Paines–Ruth in particular–played a decisive role in the shaping of the circumstances leading to Lee being framed for the JFK assassination.

Among the operations performed by the Paines:

1. Ruth separated Lee and Marina, bringing a pregnant Marina back to Dallas while Lee was in New Orleans and then facilitating Lee’s stay at a rooming house after he returned to Dallas.
2. Ruth got Lee his job at the Texas School Book Depository, despite the fact that Lee had actually received a better job offer. It was Lee’s employment at the TBSD that was the foundation for framing him for the assassination.
3. Ruth may well have been the person who got the phone call communicating the better-paying job offer to Lee. It does not appear that she told Lee about the offer.

The disinformation used to frame Oswald for the assassination stemmed in considerable measure from what we might call “Ruth Paine’s garage sale.”

Many of Oswald’s effects were stored in Ruth Paine’s garage after his return to Dallas from New Orleans. Ruth Paine’s garage eventually yielded:

1. The ludicrous picture of “Oswald” posing with two Communist magazines and the weapons he supposedly used to kill JFK and Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippitt. The shadows under “Oswald’s” chin and behind his body go in different directions, indicating that Oswald’s head had been superimposed on the body posed for the picture. In addition, “Oswald’s” body tilts in a ludicrous fashion. (See the photo at right.) This photo did much to convince a naive public that Oswald had been the assassin.
2. The cameras found in Ruth Paine’s garage were not consistent with the film used to take the “Leaning Tower of Oswald” photograph.
3. Ruth Paine’s garage sale yielded the “evidence” that Oswald–who supposedly killed a liberal President–had also tried to kill the right-wing General Walker. This included an apparently forged note incriminating Oswald, which had neither Lee’s nor Marina’s fingerprints on it.. This was spun in such a way as to neuter any notion that Oswald was a politically motivated killer. In this program, Jim recapitulates some of the facts that negate the hypothesis that Oswald fired at Walker, including eyewitness accounts of two men firing and driving away (Oswald didn’t drive), the fact that the marksmanship required to hit a seated Walker would have been far less difficult than the matchless firing skill required to have done what Oswald had allegedly done in Dallas and discrepancies in the ballistics and munition evidence in the Walker shooting.
4. A silver bracelet supposedly purchased by Oswald in Mexico City which provides supporting “physical evidence” of Oswald’s alleged presence in the important Mexico City visit.
5. There was a package found in Ruth Paine’s garage, addressed to Oswald and from George Bouhe, one of the White Russians involved with the handling of the Oswalds in the Dallas area. There was an address sticker pasted on the package, and yet the FBI made no effort to determine the address under the sticker. Why? Furthermore, the package contained wrapping paper consistent with the paper the Warren Commission said Oswald used to bring the Mannlicher/Carchano into the Texas School Book Depository. Had Oswald opened the picture and handled the paper, he would have left fingerprints which would have corroborated the official cover-up.
6. In the context of the previous item, it is noteworthy that George Bouhe lived next door to, and shared a swimming pool with, Jack Ruby!
Next, the program pivots to New Orleans DA Jim Garrison and his investigation of the JFK assassination.

One of the calumnies used to discredit Garrison is the allegation that he engaged in his investigation of David Ferrie, Clay Shaw et al in order to further his career–that he was ambitious. And yet, as Jim notes, Garrison TURNED DOWN opportunities to become Lieutenant Governor (of Louisiana), Attorney General, a Senator and also to acquire lucrative banking interests. All of those goals were forsaken so that Garrison could pursue his investigative career, including and especially the JFK assassination.

Another lie that has been used to discredit Garrison is the allegation that he highlighted the CIA’s role in the JFK assassination in order to eclipse the Mafia’s role in it and, in so doing, protect what are said to be his Mob associates.
Destiny Betrayed destroys that allegation as well, chronicling the fact that Garrison vigorously prosecuted organized crime figures in New Orleans and was known to have factored Mob participation in the JFK assassination in his investigation.
Mr. Emory read into the record a passage which not only refutes the Mafia smearing of Jim Garrison, but provides an interesting peek into the account of the trial to come. After noting racketeer influence on judges who had obstructed Jim Garrison’s activities, Jim writes:

. . . . The insinuation about racketeer influences had some underpinning. Two of Garrison’s assistants had drinks with one of the judges, Judge Haggerty, who would preside over the Clay Shaw trial. Haggerty introduced them to Francis Giordano. Giordano was a Carlos Marcello associate. He complained to them that when Dowling took away their illegal gaming machines, he returned them. Garrison did not. “How Come,” Giordano asked? . . . .

FTR #1037 Interview #7 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ December 4, 2018 ⋅ Post a comment

The seventh of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues analysis of the development of the legend (intelligence cover) of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The program begins with review and further development of some of “Communist traitor” Lee Harvey Oswald’s curious associations upon his (apparently unobstructed) return to the United States.

Having threatened to commit treason by disclosing classified information about U.S. air operations, (the U-2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Secretary General of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. Originally called the Committee of Subjugated Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an integral part of the Reinhard Gehlen spy outfit, a key element of the former World Anti-Communist League, and an important part of the Republican Party. It is unthinkable that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intelligence and the FBI.

In fact, Jim mentioned in our previous interview that a former CIA officer Donald Deneselya told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that the CIA did, in all likelihood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, however, sought to distance itself from the JFK assassination fall guy.

When the supposed Marxist traitor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the virulently anti-Communist White Russian community in the Dallas/Fort Worth, themselves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.

Among the people with which the Oswalds networked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his wife, the former Princess Sherbatov, a member of the Romanov Royal family!
2. Peter Gregory.
3. Paul Raigorodsky.
4. George Bouhe.
5. George DeMohrenschildt. DeMohrenschildt was part of the family that managed the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Konstantin Maydell, in charge of Abwehr operations in the United States for a time (Abwehr was German military intelligence); was a suspected Nazi spy in World War II; was an associate of George H.W. Bush; was a longtime CIA asset; was a petroleum geologist.

DeMohrenschildt implemented the Oswalds’ introduction to the White Russian milieu in Dallas. Of particular significance for our purpose is the fact that he made contact with the couple at the suggestion of J. Walton Moore, who was the primary CIA officer in the Dallas area!

The White Russians appeared to be working to separate Marina and Lee, and were involved in handling Marina after the assassination.

A long-standing CIA asset, DeMohrenschildt had worked with the agency on numerous projects in Yugoslavia, Haiti and elsewhere. Suspected of having spied on the Aransas Pass Coast Guard Station (in Texas) for the Third Reich, DeMohrenschildt was the cousin of Baron Kontantin Maydell, who oversaw Abwehr operations in the U.S. for a time. (The Abwehr was German military intelligence.)

As discussed in FTR #712, we highlighted DeMohrenschildt’s links to former CIA director George H.W. Bush, for whom CIA headquarters is named. In that same program, we covered Bush’s involvement in the JFK assassination. Like DeMohrenschildt and many of the White Russians who associated with the Oswalds in the Dallas area, Bush had roots in the petroleum industry.

Noteworthy in the context of Oswald’s presence in Dallas, is that this alleged traitor was employed by Jaggars, Chiles and Stovall, a firm that did classified work for the military, including projects associated with the U-2 spy plane! That the “traitor” Oswald, who offered to disclose classified information about the U-2 and U.S. aviation operations to the Soviets could be employed by such a firm is unthinkable, IF we are to take the official version of Oswald at face value.

Ultimately, DeMohrenschildt handed the Oswalds–Lee and Marina–off to the “Quaker liberals” Michael and Ruth Paine.

In Destiny Betrayed, Jim details the remarkable pedigree of both Michael and Ruth Paine and their deep heritage at the heart of the power elite and the derivative intelligence establishment:

FTR #1034 Interview #4 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ November 26, 2018 ⋅ One comment

The fourth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues with discussion of the cast of characters that figure in Garrison’s investigation and their relationship to anti-Castro Cuban intrigue.

Continuing discussion from FTR #1033, the program highlights activities of Bay of Pigs and Watergate participant E. Howard Hunt. One of the primary CIA officers in the abortive Bay of Pigs, Hunt loathed Kennedy, helped ghost-write the Charles Murphy apologia for Allen Dulles & Company in Fortune magazine (see FTR #1032), and may have been involved with the JFK assassination.

E. Howard Hunt was also present in Dallas, Texas on 11/22/1963, as revealed in a memo crafted by James Angleton.

A subject that will be discussed at greater length in future conversations with Jim is the manifestations of Kerry Thornley:

1.–One of the Marine Corps buddies of Oswald the Marxist Marine.
2.–Reinforced the Oswald the Commie meme.
3.–Was involved with Oswald’s alleged pro-Castro leafleting originating from Guy Banister’s office.
4.–Was apparently involved with most of Oswald’s associates in the New Orleans area.
5.–Wrote two contradictory books about Oswald decades apart.
6.–Supplementing discussion of Gordon Novel from FTR #1033, the program foreshadows future discussion of infiltrators into Garrison’s investigation. An electronics expert involved with CIA and the Bay of Pigs operation, Novel was involved with infiltrating Garrison’s office and supplying information to Garrison’s enemies.

Also carrying over from FTR #1033, the program highlights Guy Banister’s so-called “detective agency,” from which Oswald operated his one-man New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee. Sam Newman–the owner of the Newman building which housed that operation, was evasive about Oswald operating from an office there. Newman’s statements in that regard are contradictory. Oswald’s presence there has been substantively confirmed.

Of significance is the fact that Corliss Lamont of the pro-Castro FPCC authored a pamphlet for the organization in 1961, while Oswald was in the Soviet Union. It was the 1961 edition of the pamphlet that Oswald was handing out when he had his altercation with Carlos Bringuier. This suggests that Oswald got his edition of the pamphlet from the CIA. (Recall that David Phillips and James McCord headed the CIA’s anti-FPCC effort.)

Program Highlights Include:

1.–Review of JFK’s stripping of Charles Murphy of his Air Force Reserve commission and Murphy’s statement that he didn’t mind because his real allegiance was to Dulles.
2.–Discussion of Guy Banister’s detective agency as a far right/fascist intelligence service, infiltrating liberal and leftist political milieux.
3.–Richard Nixon’s presence in Dallas on 11/22/1963 and the profound connections between Watergate and the JFK assassination.

FTR #1033 Interview #3 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ November 21, 2018 ⋅ Post a comment

The third of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program continues with discussion of Cuba and JFK’s policy with regard to Castro.

After reviewing discussion from FTR #1032, the program highlights the Cuban Missile Crisis. The best known of JFK’s actions with regard to Cuba, the “Thirteen Days” exemplifies how Kennedy stood against the Cold War political establishment and what President Eisenhower called “The Military-Industrial Complex,” earning the hatred of key players on the U.S. political stage at the time.

Once it became clear that the Soviets had placed offensive intermediate range ballistic missiles in Cuba, plans were drawn up for both air strikes to take out the missiles and a military invasion of Cuba as a whole. Kennedy was excoriated for taking a more thoughtful tack.

. . . . On October 9, Kennedy had a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy got into a back and forth with the hawkish Air Force General Curtis LeMay. . . . LeMay frowned upon the blockade option. . . . “If we don’t do anything in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run.” LeMay, who was never one to mince words, then went even further. To show his utter disdain for the blockade concept, the World War II veteran actually brought up something rather bizarre. He said, “The blockade and political action, I see leading into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.” LeMay was now comparing Kennedy’s preference for the blockade with Neville Chamberlain’s giving away the Sudetenland to the Nazis, which encouraged Hitler to invade Poland. Although not expressing themselves in such extreme figures of speech, the rest of the chiefs of staff agreed with LeMay. . . .

Thinking that the Soviet buildup may have been a gambit to oblige the U.S. to forgo support for West Berlin in exchange for withdrawal of the nuclear forces in Cuba, Kennedy sought other alternatives. (Younger listeners should bear in mind that West Berlin was the Western-aligned half of Berlin, which was itself located deep in East Germany.)

Ultimately, Kennedy and Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev drew down hostilities, after Kennedy instituted a naval blockade of Soviet maritime shipments of military materiel to Cuba. Jim presents the altogether formidable order of battle in Cuba, indicating the strong possibility that, had the more aggressive U.S. contingency plans been implemented, it would have led to a Third World War and the end of our civilization.

As the elder Von Moltke observed: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Something would not have gone according to plan in the proposed military adventures against the Soviet presence in Cuba. When that happened, there would have been World War III.

. . . . The deployment included 40 land based ballistic launchers, including 60 missiles in five missile regiments. The medium range missiles had a range of 1,200 miles, the long-range ones, 2,400 miles. In addition, there were to be 140 air-defense missile launchers to protect the sites. Accompanying then would be a Russian army of 45,000 men with four motorized rifle regiments and over 250 units of armor. There would also be a wing of MIG-21 fighters, with 40 nuclear armed IL-28 bombers. Finally, there was to be a submarine missile base with an initial deployment of eleven submarines, seven of them capable of launching one megaton nuclear warheads. In addition, there were low-yield tactical nuclear weapons for coastal defense in case of an invasion. . . .

Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy sought to woo Castro away from the Soviet Union with a diplomatic rapprochement between Cuba and the U.S.

Using U.S. diplomat William Atwood, French journalist Jean Daniel and American journalist Lisa Howard as intermediaries, JFK was seeking to normalize U.S./Cuban relations.

The CIA and its anti-Castro Cuban contingent learned of the negotiations, and undertook a number of covert operations, such as the Pawley/Bayo/Martino raid to break up the negotiations.

Program Highlights Include:

The roles of many of the “Dramatis Personae” who figure in Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination in anti-Castro Cuban intrigue, including:

1.–David Ferrie’s work as a paramilitary trainer at camps used to train anti-Castro guerrillas and as a pilot on various “ops” against Castro.
2.–Clay Shaw’s work organizing CIA anti-Castro Cuban activities, particularly in the New Orleans area.
3.–Guy Banister’s “detective agency,” which served as a front for paramilitary operations against Castro’s Cuba and also as a cover for Lee Harvey Oswald’s role as a faux Castro supporter and Fair Play For Cuba member.
4.–Bernardo de Torres’ participation in the Bay of Pigs and subsequent anti-Castro activities, as well as his work with silenced weapons developer Mitchell WerBell and as an infiltrator into Garrison’s office.
5.–Eladio Del Valle’s work with David Ferrie, among others, and his brutal murder.
6.-Sergio Arcacha Smith’s role as a key official of the CIA front organization CRC and his links to many other figures in Garrison’s investigation.
7.–CIA officer David Atlee Phillips and his work against Castro, as well as against the U.S. Castro support group Fair Play For Cuba. In a 1988 conversation with his estranged brother shortly before his death, Phillips admitted having been in Dallas when Kennedy was killed.
8.–Future Watergate burglar James McCord’s work with Phillips against the FPCC.
9.–Antonio Veciana’s work with Alpha 66, arguably the most militant of the anti-Castro exile groups and his mysterious control officer “Maurice Bishop,” who appears to have been David Atlee Phillips.
10.–Future Watergate Burglar E. Howard Hunt’s collaboration with Allen Dulles and Charles Murphy on the anti-Kennedy Fortune Magazine article, as well as his work on the Bay of Pigs operation.

FTR #1032 Interview #2 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ November 17, 2018 ⋅ Post a comment

The second of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program begins with discussion of President Kennedy’s precocious political vision. Possessed of a deep understanding of how the struggle for, and desire for, national independence by colonial possessions of America’s World War II allies undercut the casting of these nations’ affairs in a stark “East vs. West” Cold War context, Kennedy put his political vision into play in many instances. It was his attempts at realizing his political vision through concrete policy that precipitated his murder.

When the United States reneged on its commitment to pursue independence for the colonial territories of its European allies at the end of the Second World War, the stage was set for those nations’ desire for freedom to be cast as incipient Marxists/Communists. This development was the foundation for epic bloodshed and calamity.

The program concludes with review of Kennedy’s stance on Algeria. A French colony in North Africa, Algerian independence forces waged a fierce guerrilla war in an attempt at becoming free from France. Once again, Kennedy opposed the Western consensus on Algeria, which sought to retain that property as a French possession.

. . . . On July 2, 1957, Senator Kennedy rose to speak in the Senate chamber and delivered what the New York Times was to call the next day, “the most comprehensive and outspoken arraignment of Western policy toward Algeria yet presented by an American in public office.” As historian Alan Nevins later wrote, “No speech on foreign affairs by Mr. Kennedy attracted more attention at home and abroad.” It was the mature fruition of all the ideas that Kennedy had been collecting and refining since his 1951 trip into the nooks and corners of Saigon, It was passionate yet sophisticated, hard-hitting but controlled, idealistic yet, in a fresh and unique way, also pragmatic. Kennedy assailed the administration, especially John Foster Dulles and Nixon, for not urging France into negotiations, and therefore not being its true friend. He began the speech by saying that the most powerful force international affairs at the time was not the H-bomb, but the desire for independence from imperialism. He then said it was a test of American foreign policy to meet the challenge of imperialism. If not, America would lose the trust of millions in Asia and Africa. . . . He later added that, “The time has come for the United States to face the harsh realities of the situation and to fulfill its responsibilities as leader of the free world . . . in shaping a course toward political independence for Algeria.” He concluded by saying that America could not win in the Third World by simply doling out foreign aid dollars, or selling free enterprise, or describing the evils of communism, or limiting its approach to military pacts. . . .”

The French people were divided over the Algerian struggle, and those divisions led to the fall of the Fourth Republic and the rise of Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle granted Algeria its independence and then faced down the lethal opposition of the OAS, a group of military officers grounded in the fascist collaborationist politics of Vichy France. De Gaulle survived several assassination attempts against him and there are a number of evidentiary tributaries leading between those attempts and the forces that killed Kennedy.

Maurice Brooks Gatlin–one of Guy Banister’s investigators–boasted of having transferred a large sum of money from the CIA to the OAS officers plotting against De Gaulle. In addition, Rene Souetre–a French OAS-linked assassin was in the Dallas Fort Worth area on 11/22/1963.

After discussion of Algeria, the program begins analysis of Cuba, a major focal point of Jim’s book and one of the decisive factors in precipitating JFK’s assassination and one of the principal investigative elements in Jim Garrison’s prosecution of the murder.

A former Spanish colony, Cuba was drawn into the American sphere of influence after the Spanish-American war. Cuba bore the yoke of a succession of dictators in the 1920’s and 1930’s, ultimately giving way to the dictatorial reigns of Fulgencio Batista. As Batista cemented his dominion over the island nation, he institutionalized the suppression of pro-labor and pro-democracy forces, as well as creating the BRAC, an explicitly anti-communist secret police–a Cuban gestapo if you will.

Of particular significance is Batista’s role as a corporate satrap for U.S. commercial interests. Cuba’s agricultural wealth, coffee, tobacco and sugar in particular, as well as the country’s mineral resources were dominated by American corporate interests, who enjoyed what was, in essence, a corporate state under Batista. For all intents and purposes, Cuba was free of any substantive impediments to U.S. investment. In turn, Battista profited enormously from his role as point man for U.S. corporate development of Cuba.

In addition, American organized crime interests were deeply involved in Cuba, deriving great wealth from domination of the country’s gambling, hotel and prostitution industries. Ultimately, both corporate interests, manifesting through the CIA and the Mafia would join forces in an effort to oust Fidel Castro.

Interestingly, as Batista’s dictatorship was toppling amidst growing criticism from U.S. politicians and the forces supportive of Fidel Castro’s guerrillas, CIA officer and eventual Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt was among those who attempted to ease him from power.

. . . . In the face of this obstinacy, the CIA began to devise desperate tactics to save off a Castro victory. One alternative was to arrange a meeting between wealthy U.S. industrialist William Pawley and Batista. The goal, with Howard Hunt as the mediator, was to release from jail a former Batista opponent, General Ramon Barquin, in hopes that he could displace Batista and provide a viable popular alternative to Castro. Neither of these tactics came off as planned. After Ambassador Smith informed him that the U.S. could no longer support his government, Batista decided to leave the country on New Year’s Eve, 1958. No one knows how much money Batista embezzled and took with him. But estimates range well into the nine figures. On January 8, 1959, Castro and Che Guevara rolled their army into a jubilant Havana. . . .

Castro reversed the corporatist dynamic that had obtained under Batista, with the nationalization of key industries (including American-owned corporate interests). Castro and Che Guevara also liquidated BARC, executing key operatives, including some who had been trained in the United States.

This precipitated the CIA’s well known attempts to remove him from power, the best known episode of which is the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Begun under the Eisenhower administration and with then Vice-President Richard Nixon in charge of the development of the operation, the evolving plans for the invasion were never to Kennedy’s liking. JFK’s attitude toward the plans was described as the attitude a parent might have to an adopted orphan.

The invasion plan went through a number of iterations, culminating in a blueprint that called for some 1,400 Cuban exile invaders to “go guerilla” by making their way to the hills where, supposedly, a significant portion of the Cuban populace would rise up to join them against Castro.

There were many fundamental and, ultimately, fatal, flaws in the operational plan, including:

1.–The invasion force would have had to cross 70 miles of swamp to make it to the mountains from which they were supposed to mount their victorious resistance.
2.–The bulk of the Cuban populace was supportive of Castro and would not have joined an attempt to oust him.
3.–The one Anti-Castro Cuban political element that had support among portions of the Cuban population were the backers of Manolo Ray. Favored by JFK, Ray was viewed with disdain by Allen Dulles and the Bay of Pigs planners, who marginalized Ray and may well have been preparing to assassinate his followers in Cuba had the invasion plan been successful.
4.–There was no way that the invasion force, as constituted, could have possibly defeated the Castro military and militia, who outnumbered the invaders by roughly 100 to 1.
5.–Any possible success for the invasion would have depended on authorization of the use of American air power by President Kennedy. Such authorization was not forthcoming and the blame for the operation’s failure was laid at Kennedy’s doorstep.

Bitterness over the failure of the Bay of Pigs operation contributed significantly to the animosity toward Kennedy on the part of CIA, their anti-Castro Cuban proteges and the American right. This animosity ultimately contributed to the momentum to kill Kennedy.

An analytical report on the invasion by General Maxwell Taylor highlighted the fundamental flaws in the invasion plan.

Following the Bay of Pigs disaster, JFK publicly took responsibility for the operation’s failure, while privately taking steps to fundamentally alter the covert operation operational template for the future.

This alteration crystallized in the form of three National Security Action Memoranda, NSAM’s 55, 56, and 57:

. . . . NSAM 55 was directly delivered to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Lyman Lemnitzer. JFK was angry that the Pentagon had not delivered a trenchant critique of the Dulles-Bissell invasion plan. So from here on in he wanted their input into military and paramilitary operations of the Cold War. As both John Newman and Fletcher Prouty have noted, this was a real cannon shot across the bow of the CIA. Allen Dulles had instituted these types of paramilitary operations previously, and the CIA had run them almost exclusively. As Newman describes it, NSAM 55 was “The opening shot in Kennedy’s campaign to curtail the CIA’s control over covert paramilitary operations.” The other two national security memoranda flowed form the first one. NSAM 56 was an order to make an inventory of paramilitary assets and equipment the Pentagon had on hand and then to measure that against the projected requirements across the world and make up any deficit. NSAM 57 stated that all paramilitary operations were to be presented to the Strategic Resources Group. that group would then assign a person and department to run it. The CIA was only to be involved in paramilitary operations “wholly covert or disavowable,” and then only within the Agency’s “normal capabilities.” . . . . The consequence of these presidential directives was the first significant chink in the CIA’s covert armor since its creation. . . .

In stark contrast to the Taylor report is a Fortune magazine article written by Charles Murphy, acting in tandem with Allen Dulles and future Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt. This piece laid the blame for the Bay of Pigs failure on JFK, feeding the virulent hatred of Kennedy in the corridors of power and the public at large.

. . . . Hunt went so far as to admit that he and Dulles reviewed the proofs of the above mentioned Fortune article by Charles Murphy on the Bay of Pigs before it was published. And further, that Hunt actually worked on the article for two days and furnished Murphy with classified background information for the piece. And what an article it was.

The Murphy/Hunt/Dulles piece begins by stating that Kennedy has been an ineffective president so far. The reason being because, unlike Eisenhower, he did not know how to manipulate the levers of power. Although the article is supposed to be about the Bay of Pigs, Murphy and his (secret) co-authors spend the first few pages discussing Laos. . . . The article now goes on to strike at two targets. First, quite naturally, it states that Kennedy reneged on the D-Day air strikes. . . .

. . . . The second target of the piece is the liberal coterie around Kennedy–Richard Goodwin, William Fulbright, Adlai Stevenson, and Arthur Schlesinger. In other words, the bunch that made Hunt swallow Manolo Ray. In fact, what the trio does here is insinuate that the original Dulles-Bissell plan was tactically sound and approved by the Pentagon. . . . . And at the very end, when they quote Kennedy saying that there were sobering lessons to be learned from the episode, they clearly insinuate that the president should not have let his “political advisers” influence operational decisions. Since Dulles later confessed that he never thought theop0eration could succeed on its own, but he thought Kennedy would save it when he saw it failing, this appears to be nothing but pure deception on his part, delivered his instruments Murphy and Hunt. . . .

After the Bay of Pigs, JFK fired Allen Dulles (who later served on the Warren Commission), Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell, whose brother Earl Cabell was the mayor of Dallas when Kennedy was killed and, as Jim reveals, a CIA asset.

FTR #1031 Interview #1 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Posted by Dave Emory ⋅ November 14, 2018 ⋅ Post a comment

The first of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing, this program begins with discussion of President Kennedy’s precocious political vision. Possessed of a deep understanding of how the struggle for, and desire for, national independence by colonial possessions of America’s World War II allies undercut the casting of these nations’ affairs in a stark “East vs. West” Cold War context, Kennedy put his political vision into play in many instances. It was his attempts at realizing his political vision through concrete policy that precipitated his murder.

Jim details then Congressman John F. Kennedy’s 1951 fact-finding trip to Saigon to gain an understanding of the French war to retain their colony of Indochina. (Vietnam was part of that colony.)

In speaking with career diplomat Edmund Gullion, Kennedy came to the realization that not only would the French lose the war, but that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh guerrillas enjoyed great popular support among the Vietnamese people.

This awareness guided JFK’s Vietnam policy, in which he not only resisted tremendous pressure to commit U.S. combat troops to Vietnam, but planned a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. (We have covered this in numerous programs over the decades, including–most recently–FTR #978.)

In future discussion, we will analyze at greater length and in greater detail how Lyndon Baines Johnson reversed JFK’s Vietnam policy and authorized the enduring carnage that was to follow.

The fledgling nation of Laos was also part of French Indochina, and Jim notes how outgoing President Eisenhower coached President-Elect Kennedy on the necessity of committing U.S. combat forces to Laos.

The CIA was already backing the Hmong tribesmen and financing their guerrilla warfare by assisting in the marketing of their primary revenue-earning crop–opium. (We discussed this at considerable length in AFA #24, among other programs.)

Again, Kennedy refused to commit U.S. ground forces and engineered a policy of neutrality for Laos.

” . . . . At his first press conference, Kennedy said that he hoped to establish Laos as a “peaceful country–an independent country not dominated by either side.’ He appointed a task force to study the problem, was in regular communication with it and the Laotian ambassador, and decided by February that Laos must have a coalition government, the likes of which Eisenhower had rejected out of hand. Kennedy also had little interest in a military solution. He could not understand sending American troops to fight for a country whose people did not care to fight for themselves. . . . He therefore worked to get the Russians to push the Pathet Lao into a cease-fire agreement. This included a maneuver on Kennedy’s part to indicate military pressure if the Russians did not intervene strongly enough with the Pathet Lao. The maneuver worked, and in May of 1961, a truce was called. A few days later, a conference convened in Geneva to hammer out conditions for a neutral Laos. By July of 1962, a new government, which included the Pathet Lao, had been hammered out. . . . ”

A former Dutch colony, Indonesia was another emerging nation at the epicenter of the tug of war between East and West. Sukarno sought to remain a neutral, or non-aligned country, along with other leaders of what we call the Third World, such as India’s Nehru. Not seeking to align with the Soviet Union nor the West, Sukarno remained on good terms with the PKI, the large Indonesian communist party.

In 1955, Sukarno hosted a conference of non-aligned nations that formalized and concretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nationalism of some Dutch industrial properties, led the U.S. to try and overthrow Sukharno, which was attempted in 1958.

Kennedy understood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indonesia in 1964 to forge a more constructive relationship with Sukharno. Obviously, his murder in 1964 precluded the trip.

In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aided coup in which as many as a million people were killed.

Yet another area in which JFK’s policy outlook ran afoul of the prevailing wisdom of the Cold War was with regard to the Congo. A Belgian colony which was the victim of genocidal policies of King Leopold (estimates of the dead run as high as 8 million), the diamond and mineral-rich Congo gained a fragile independence.

In Africa, as well, Kennedy understood the struggle of emerging nations seeking freedom from colonial domination as falling outside of and transcending stereotyped Cold War dynamics.

In the Congo, the brutally administered Belgian rule had spawned a vigorous independence movement crystallized around the charismatic Patrice Lumumba. Understanding of, and sympathetic to Lumumba and the ideology and political forces embodied in him, Kennedy opposed the reactionary status quo favored by both European allies like the United Kingdom and Belgium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the United States.

“. . . . By 1960, a native revolutionary leader named Patrice Lumumba had galvanized the nationalist feeling of the country. Belgium decided to pull out. But they did so rapidly, knowing that tumult would ensue and they could return to colonize the country again. After Lumumba was appointed prime minister, tumult did ensue. The Belgians and the British backed a rival who had Lumumba dismissed. They then urged the breaking away of the Katanga province because of its enormous mineral wealth. Lumumba looked to the United Nations for help, and also the USA. The former decided to help, . The United States did not. In fact, when Lumumba visited Washington July of 1960, Eisenhower deliberately fled to Rhode Island. Rebuffed by Eisenhower, Lumumba now turned to the Russians for help in expelling the Belgians from Katanga. This sealed his fate in the eyes of Eisenhower and Allen Dulles. The president now authorized a series of assassination plots by the CIA to kill Lumumba. These plots finally succeeded on January 17, 1961, three days before Kennedy was inaugurated.

His first week in office, Kennedy requested a full review of the Eisenhower/Dulles policy in Congo. The American ambassador to that important African nation heard of this review and phoned Allen Dulles to alert him that President Kennedy was about to overturn previous policy there. Kennedy did overturn this policy on February 2, 1961. Unlike Eisenhower and Allen Dulles, Kennedy announced he would begin full cooperation with Secretary Dag Hammarskjold at the United Nations on this thorny issue in order to bring all the armies in that war-torn nation under control. He would also attempt top neutralize the country so there would be no East/West Cold War competition. Third, all political prisoners being held should be freed. Not knowing he was dead, this part was aimed at former prime minister Lumumba, who had been captured by his enemies. (There is evidence that, knowing Kennedy would favor Lumumba, Dulles had him killed before JFK was inaugurated.) Finally, Kennedy opposed the secession of mineral-rich Katanga province. . . . Thus began Kennedy’s nearly three year long struggle to see Congo not fall back under the claw of European imperialism. . . . ”

Finally, the program concludes with analysis of Kennedy’s stance on Algeria. A French colony in North Africa, Algerian independence forces waged a fierce guerrilla war in an attempt at becoming free from France. Once again, Kennedy opposed the Western consensus on Algeria, which sought to retain that property as a French possession.

“. . . . On July 2, 1957, Senator Kennedy rose to speak in the Senate chamber and delivered what the New York Times was to call the next day, “the most comprehensive and outspoken arraignment of Western policy toward Algeria yet presented by an American in public office.” As historian Alan Nevins later wrote, ‘No speech on foreign affairs by Mr. Kennedy attracted more attention at home and abroad.’ It was the mature fruition of all the ideas that Kennedy had been collecting and refining since his 1951 trip into the nooks and corners of Saigon, It was passionate yet sophisticated, hard-hitting but controlled, idealistic yet, in a fresh and unique way, also pragmatic. Kennedy assailed the administration, especially John Foster Dulles and Nixon, for not urging France into negotiations, and therefore not being its true friend. He began the speech by saying that the most powerful force international affairs at the time was not the H-bomb, but the desire for independence from imperialism. He then said it was a test of American foreign policy to meet the challenge of imperialism. If not, America would lose the trust of millions in Asia and Africa. . . . He later added that, ‘The time has come for the United States to face the harsh realities of the situation and to fulfill its responsibilities as leader of the free world . . . in shaping a course toward political independence for Algeria.’ He concluded by saying that America could not win in the Third World by simply doling out foreign aid dollars, or selling free enterprise, or describing the evils of communism, or limiting its approach to military pacts. . . .”