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Two Bullets
And it's a whole different world.
Consider, please, what happened when Archduke Ferdinand got killed at that hairpin turn in Sarajevo. Not predicting anything, but just warning about unintended consequences of military action in Syria and the greater Middle East.
From Eyewitness to History
The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, 1914:
Two bullets fired on a Sarajevo street on a sunny June morning in 1914 set in motion a series of events that shaped the world we live in today. World War One, World War Two, the Cold War and its conclusion all trace their origins to the gunshots that interrupted that summer day.
The victims, Archduke Franz Ferdinand - heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie, were in the Bosnian city in conjunction with Austrian troop exercises nearby. The couple was returning from an official visit to City Hall. The assassin, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip burned with the fire of Slavic nationalism. He envisioned the death of the Archduke as the key that would unlock the shackles binding his people to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
SNIP...
The road to the maneuvers was shaped like the letter V, making a sharp turn at the bridge over the River Nilgacka (Miljacka). Francis Ferdinand's car could go fast enough until it reached this spot but here it was forced to slow down for the turn. Here Princip had taken his stand.
Hairpin turns. History. Hmm. Sounds familiar, for some reason. Back to the present day...
Once I would have written, "Before We the People allow our elected leaders to rush into war on Syria." Now, I have to write, "Before our elected leaders rush into war on Syria" because they have not shown the least concern with the will of We the People for a long time now.
Nevertheless, I have to write and ask DU and all who read this: Do you really want to see the United States start something that could quickly devolve into World War III?
24 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
From the If You Have to Ask "How much?" You Can't Afford It Department:
The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles
The stinking rich are planning billion-dollar luxury liners that keep the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance.
AlterNet / By Mark Ames
June 1, 2010
What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn't a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?
The first such floating castle has been christened the " Utopia"--the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale- -which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot "estates." The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million.
SNIP...
Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy--last year, Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, "Democracy is not the answer." Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules. It's probably better for everyone if Milton Friedman's grandson and Peter Thiel leave us forever for their libertarian ocean lair--Thiel believes that America went down the tubes ever since it gave women the right to vote, and he was outed as the sponsor of accused felon James O'Keefe's smear videos that brought ACORN to ruin.
SNIP...
While neither Bush nor the Bin Ladens are principals in the Frontier Group, its founding director, Frank Carlucci, is a name they know well, and you should too. Carlucci ran the Carlyle Group as its chairman from 1989 through 2005, right around the time that the wars started going undeniably bad, and floating castles started to look like a viable plan. But Carlucci's past is much weirder and scarier than most of us care to know: whether it's his strangely timed appearances in some of the ugliest assassinations and coups in modern history, or serving as Carter's number two man in the CIA, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank"
is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.
I'll get into Carlucci's partners in the Frontier Group in a moment, but first, let's reacquaint ourselves with Frank Carlucci. From an early age, Carlucci learned the importance of getting to know the right people in the right places. He studied at Princeton in the mid-1950s, where as luck should have it, Carlucci roomed with Donald Rumsfeld. Both Carlucci and Rumsfeld shared a passion for Greco-Roman wrestling at Princeton, and both went on to serve in the Navy after Princeton. Their paths would split and merge several times over the next few decades, even as they remained close personal friends throughout their lives. In the late 1950s, Carlucci briefly served as an executive at a lingerie manufacturer, Jantzen (the Victoria's Secret of its day), but quickly left to join the State Department.
CONTINUED...
http://www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles
As the world's billions feast on whatever remains to cannibalize on land during the post-war upheavals, rest assured that America's best people -- the "Have-Mores" -- won't have to settle for anything less than the finest in accommodations, thanks to the BFEE.
If Isreal starts fighting back... as you said... all bets are off.
Many American entrepreneurs did take advantage of the business opportunity presented by war, including one famous political dynasty.
Western imperialism lovers that is
They think as long as it's 'over there' it's fine, they think as long as it's just those vaguely un-white, un-christian, impoverished people clamoring for resources that BeLOnGs 2 US !! - it's okay
DURec
PLUSH: THE DINING FACILITIES ON BOARD SAUDI PRINCE AL-WALEED BIN TALAL’S PRIVATE BOEING 747
The Prince: Meet the Man Who Co-Opted Democracy in the Middle East
by Robert Scheer
Published on Tuesday, August 27, 2013 by TruthDig.com
Now that the Arab Spring has been turned into a totally owned subsidiary of the Saudi royal family, it is time to honor Prince Bandar bin Sultan as the most effective Machiavellian politician of the modern era. How slick for this head of the Saudi Intelligence Agency to finance the Egyptian military’s crushing of that nation’s first-ever democratic election while being the main source of arms for pro-al-Qaida insurgents in Syria.
Just consider that a mere 12 years ago, this same Bandar was a beleaguered Saudi ambassador in Washington, a post he held from 1983 to 2005, attempting to explain his nation’s connection to 15 Saudi nationals who had somehow secured legal documents to enter the U.S. and succeeded in hijacking planes that blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. How awkward given that the Saudi ambassador had been advocating that U.S. officials go easy on the Taliban government in Afghanistan, where those attacks incubated.
The ties between Saudi Arabia and the alleged al-Qaida terrorist attacks were manifest. The terrorists were followers of the Saudi-financed branch of Wahhabi Islam and their top leader, Osama bin Laden, was a scion of one of the most powerful families in the Saudi kingdom, which, along with the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, had been the only three nations in the world to recognize the legitimacy of the Taliban government in Afghanistan that provided sanctuary to al-Qaida. Yet Bandar had no difficulty arranging safe passage out of Washington for many Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family that U.S. intelligence agents might have wanted to interrogate instead of escorting them to safety back in the kingdom.
But the U.S. war on terror quickly took a marvelous turn from the point of view of the Saudi monarchy. Instead of focusing on those who attacked us and their religious and financial ties to the Saudi royal family, the U.S. began a mad hunt to destroy those who had absolutely nothing to do with the assaults of 9/11.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/27
BFEE got a lot of medals and bling and stuff after both Gulf Wars.
The Prince: Meet the Man Who Co-Opted Democracy in the Middle East
by Robert Scheer
Published on Tuesday, August 27, 2013 by TruthDig.com
Now that the Arab Spring has been turned into a totally owned subsidiary of the Saudi royal family, it is time to honor Prince Bandar bin Sultan as the most effective Machiavellian politician of the modern era. How slick for this head of the Saudi Intelligence Agency to finance the Egyptian military’s crushing of that nation’s first-ever democratic election while being the main source of arms for pro-al-Qaida insurgents in Syria.
Just consider that a mere 12 years ago, this same Bandar was a beleaguered Saudi ambassador in Washington, a post he held from 1983 to 2005, attempting to explain his nation’s connection to 15 Saudi nationals who had somehow secured legal documents to enter the U.S. and succeeded in hijacking planes that blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. How awkward given that the Saudi ambassador had been advocating that U.S. officials go easy on the Taliban government in Afghanistan, where those attacks incubated.
The ties between Saudi Arabia and the alleged al-Qaida terrorist attacks were manifest. The terrorists were followers of the Saudi-financed branch of Wahhabi Islam and their top leader, Osama bin Laden, was a scion of one of the most powerful families in the Saudi kingdom, which, along with the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, had been the only three nations in the world to recognize the legitimacy of the Taliban government in Afghanistan that provided sanctuary to al-Qaida. Yet Bandar had no difficulty arranging safe passage out of Washington for many Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family that U.S. intelligence agents might have wanted to interrogate instead of escorting them to safety back in the kingdom.
But the U.S. war on terror quickly took a marvelous turn from the point of view of the Saudi monarchy. Instead of focusing on those who attacked us and their religious and financial ties to the Saudi royal family, the U.S. began a mad hunt to destroy those who had absolutely nothing to do with the assaults of 9/11.
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/08/27
BFEE got a lot of medals and bling and stuff after both Gulf Wars.
In April 1966, Michigan State University’s campus was hardly awash in radical thought. The football team had won a share of the national title the previous fall, and students were looking forward to chanting “Kill Bubba Kill” next football season. President John Hannah got his first taste of the future when a panty raid and food fights in Brody Complex erupted into a full-fledged student riot.
The times, they were a changin’, and a slick, counterculture publication called Ramparts was right in the middle of the mix. The magazine’s April 1966 cover featured a rendering of Madame Nhu, sisterin-law to assassinated Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem and de facto first lady, outfitted with a faux MSU cheerleading outfit and pennant. The headline blared, “The University on the Make or how MSU helped arm Madame Nhu.”...
http://www.cia-on-campus.org/msu.edu/msu.html
Tick me off. So, the guy started his own web portal, TruthDig.com, which is BETTER than the the LA Times:
The Good Germans in Government
Posted on Jun 25, 2013
By Robert Scheer
What a disgrace. The U.S. government, cheered on by much of the media, launches an international manhunt to capture a young American whose crime is that he dared challenge the excess of state power. Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation.
Yes, Snowden has admitted that he violated the terms of his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton, which has the power to grant security clearances as well as profiting mightily from spying on the American taxpayers who pay to be spied on without ever being told that is where their tax dollars are going. Snowden violated the law in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when, as a RAND Corporation employee, he leaked the damning Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War that the taxpayers had paid for but were not allowed to read.
In both instances, violating a government order was mandated by the principle that the United States trumpeted before the world in the Nuremberg war crime trials of German officers and officials. As Principle IV of what came to be known as the Nuremberg Code states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
That is a heavy obligation, and the question we should be asking is not why do folks like Ellsberg, Snowden and Bradley Manning do the right thing, but rather why aren’t we bringing charges against the many others with access to such damning data of government malfeasance who remain silent? ..................(more)
CONTINUED...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_good_germans_in_government_20130625/
Some backstory for those wondering how a tiny magazine in 1966 should've been a wake-up call for America's "Free" press:
Vietnam Withdrawal Plans
The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.
The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?
At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?
The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.
But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.
CONTINUED with very important IMFO links:
http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm
Important, yet little-reported, history about President Kennedy and Vietnam, courtesy of The Education Forum operated by the great DUer John Simkin :
'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE
'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam
Richard Starnes
The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3
SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.
Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.
In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.
This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.
It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.
Others Critical, Too
Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.
"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.
("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)
CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.
An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.
Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."
Few Know CIA Strength
Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.
Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.
A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.
"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.
"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.
Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.
The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).
Hand Over Millions
Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.
Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.
Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)
Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.
It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.
And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.
A Typical Example
For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.
One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.
Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.
There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.
SOURCE:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534&mode=threaded
ADDENDUM from Education Forum writer:
“The most important consequence of the Cold War remains the least discussed. How and why American democracy died lies beyond the scope of this introductory essay. It is enough to note that the CIA revolt against the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the single event which did more than any other to hasten its end – was, quite contrary to over forty years of censorship and deceit, both publicly anticipated and publicly opposed.
No American journalist worked more bravely to thwart the anticipated revolt than Scripps-Howard’s Richard Starnes. His ‘reward’ was effectively to become a non-person, not just in the work of mainstream fellow-journalists and historians, but also that of nominally oppositional Kennedy assassination writers. It could have been worse: John J. McCone, Director of Central Intelligence, sought his instant dismissal; while others within the agency doubtless had more drastic punishment in mind, almost certainly of the kind meted out to CBS’ George Polk fifteen years earlier.
This time, shrewder agency minds prevailed. Senator Dodd was given a speech to read by the CIA denouncing Starnes in everything but name. William F. Buckley, Jr., suddenly occupied an adjacent column. In short, Starnes was allowed to live, even as his Scripps-Howard career was put under overt and intense CIA scrutiny - and quietly, systematically, withered on the Mockingbird vine.”
From “Light on a Dry Shadow,” the preface to ‘Arrogant’ CIA: The Selected Scripps-Howard Journalism of Richard T. Starnes, 1960-1965 (provisionally scheduled for self-publication in November 2006).
As far as I am aware, the remarkable example (above) of what Claud Cockburn called “preventative journalism” has never appeared in its entirety anywhere on the internet. Instead, readers have had to make do with the next-day riposte of the NYT’s Arthur Krock. The latter, it should be noted, was a veteran CIA-mouthpiece and messenger boy.
Dick Starnes was 85 on July 4, 2006. He remains, in bucolic retirement, a wonderfully fluent and witty writer; and as good a friend as any Englishman could wish for.
I dedicate the despatch’s web debut to Judy Mann, in affectionate remembrance.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534
--------------------
The Education Forum is an outstanding resource for those interested in President Kennedy, his administration, and his assassination.
From what we've learned in the last few years is that Lodge also was disregarding orders -- from President Kennedy.
The Good Germans in Government
Posted on Jun 25, 2013
By Robert Scheer
What a disgrace. The U.S. government, cheered on by much of the media, launches an international manhunt to capture a young American whose crime is that he dared challenge the excess of state power. Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation.
Yes, Snowden has admitted that he violated the terms of his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton, which has the power to grant security clearances as well as profiting mightily from spying on the American taxpayers who pay to be spied on without ever being told that is where their tax dollars are going. Snowden violated the law in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when, as a RAND Corporation employee, he leaked the damning Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War that the taxpayers had paid for but were not allowed to read.
In both instances, violating a government order was mandated by the principle that the United States trumpeted before the world in the Nuremberg war crime trials of German officers and officials. As Principle IV of what came to be known as the Nuremberg Code states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
That is a heavy obligation, and the question we should be asking is not why do folks like Ellsberg, Snowden and Bradley Manning do the right thing, but rather why aren’t we bringing charges against the many others with access to such damning data of government malfeasance who remain silent? ..................(more)
CONTINUED...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_good_germans_in_government_20130625/
Some backstory for those wondering how a tiny magazine in 1966 should've been a wake-up call for America's "Free" press:
Vietnam Withdrawal Plans
The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.
The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?
At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?
The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.
But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.
CONTINUED with very important IMFO links:
http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm
Important, yet little-reported, history about President Kennedy and Vietnam, courtesy of The Education Forum operated by the great DUer John Simkin :
'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE
'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam
Richard Starnes
The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3
SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.
Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.
In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.
This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.
It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.
Others Critical, Too
Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.
"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.
("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)
CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.
An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.
Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."
Few Know CIA Strength
Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.
Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.
A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.
"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.
"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.
Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.
The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).
Hand Over Millions
Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.
Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.
Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)
Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.
It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.
And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.
A Typical Example
For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.
One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.
Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.
There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.
SOURCE:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534&mode=threaded
ADDENDUM from Education Forum writer:
“The most important consequence of the Cold War remains the least discussed. How and why American democracy died lies beyond the scope of this introductory essay. It is enough to note that the CIA revolt against the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the single event which did more than any other to hasten its end – was, quite contrary to over forty years of censorship and deceit, both publicly anticipated and publicly opposed.
No American journalist worked more bravely to thwart the anticipated revolt than Scripps-Howard’s Richard Starnes. His ‘reward’ was effectively to become a non-person, not just in the work of mainstream fellow-journalists and historians, but also that of nominally oppositional Kennedy assassination writers. It could have been worse: John J. McCone, Director of Central Intelligence, sought his instant dismissal; while others within the agency doubtless had more drastic punishment in mind, almost certainly of the kind meted out to CBS’ George Polk fifteen years earlier.
This time, shrewder agency minds prevailed. Senator Dodd was given a speech to read by the CIA denouncing Starnes in everything but name. William F. Buckley, Jr., suddenly occupied an adjacent column. In short, Starnes was allowed to live, even as his Scripps-Howard career was put under overt and intense CIA scrutiny - and quietly, systematically, withered on the Mockingbird vine.”
From “Light on a Dry Shadow,” the preface to ‘Arrogant’ CIA: The Selected Scripps-Howard Journalism of Richard T. Starnes, 1960-1965 (provisionally scheduled for self-publication in November 2006).
As far as I am aware, the remarkable example (above) of what Claud Cockburn called “preventative journalism” has never appeared in its entirety anywhere on the internet. Instead, readers have had to make do with the next-day riposte of the NYT’s Arthur Krock. The latter, it should be noted, was a veteran CIA-mouthpiece and messenger boy.
Dick Starnes was 85 on July 4, 2006. He remains, in bucolic retirement, a wonderfully fluent and witty writer; and as good a friend as any Englishman could wish for.
I dedicate the despatch’s web debut to Judy Mann, in affectionate remembrance.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534
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The Education Forum is an outstanding resource for those interested in President Kennedy, his administration, and his assassination.
From what we've learned in the last few years is that Lodge also was disregarding orders -- from President Kennedy.
You have to wonder how different the world would be now.
Nor would Wall Street trump Main Street.
"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich"
-- Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy, Friday, January 20, 1961
So, in the short time he had, President Kennedy did what he could to balance the interests of concentrated wealth with the interests of the average American -- necessary for the good of the country.
Professor Donald Gibson detailed the issues in his 1994 book, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency.
From the book:
"What (J.F.K. tried) to do with everything from global investment patterns to tax breaks for individuals was to re-shape laws and policies so that the power of property and the search for profit would not end up destroying rather than creating economic prosperity for the country."
-- Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street. The Kennedy Presidency
More on the book, by two great Americans:
"Gibson captures what I believe to be the most essential and enduring aspect of the Kennedy presidency. He not only sets the historical record straight, but his work speaks volumes against today's burgeoning cynicism and in support of the vision, ideal, and practical reality embodied in the presidency of John F. Kennedy - that every one of us can make a difference." -- Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, Chair, House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs
"Professor Gibson has written a unique and important book. It is undoubtedly the most complete and profound analysis of the economic policies of President Kennedy. From here on in, anyone who states that Kennedy was timid or status quo or traditional in that field will immediately reveal himself ignorant of Battling Wall Street. It is that convincing." -- James DiEugenio, author, Destiny Betrayed. JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Had he lived to serve a second term, I'd bet on JFK over The Fed. And Don Siegelman would never have been railroaded by Bush Just-us.
If Octa is the OP, the BFEE always slips in!!! 
...you've written that before. While it certainly is true that I find a lot of our nation's worse moments in history tie directly to the Bushes -- multigenerational servants of the War Party and Have-Mores -- I believe that if you go through my journals on DU3 or DU2 you might find I do address other topics on occasion.
