'For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment.'

[Octafish]

That's what former President Harry S Truman wrote
a month after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.



President Truman pins a Distinguished Service Medal on
Adm. Sydney Souers, first Director of Central Intelligence.

I wonder if people today see the same problems regarding CIA as President Truman?

Limit CIA Role to Intelligence

By Harry S Truman
The Washington Post
December 22, 1963 - page A11

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

SNIP...

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

CONTINUED...

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:GbaMp3cYbFUJ:www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%2520Truman%27s%2520CIA%2520article.html+Truman+limit-cia-role-to-intelligence&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

In the article, President Truman called Allen Dulles and the other directors
"men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity."

I wonder if he knew that Dulles and others in the CIA leadership evidently lied to him
about a lot of things and a lot of people?

[ControlledDemolition]

1. K&R. Truman vouching for Dulles proves he was a lousy judge of character. n/t

[Octafish]

2. It seems he was out of the loop regarding the NAZI war criminals coming in under PAPERCLIP.

Operation PAPERCLIP Casefile, courtesy of Third World Traveler.

Oh, yeah. He misjudged. You know how slick New York lawyers can be toward us rubes.

[ControlledDemolition]

4. Do you think Truman knew what really happened to JFK? n/t

[Octafish]

15. My guess is he tried and heard the Soviets and Cuban connections to Oswald.

That's what the "evidentiary trail" was supposed to show any government investigation.
Of course, there was covert elements to the story:

Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City, likely under the direction of David Atlee Phillips.

Oswald's "defection" to the Soviet Union likely was under the direction of James Angleton.

Oswald]s time in Dallas was under the, at least, surveillance of George de Mohrenschildt.

Trumman would hear what Richard Helms and his bosses up the food chain wanted him to hear.
Truman almost certainly did not hear that that the son of one of the plotters against FDR was connected to all three gentlemen.

[ControlledDemolition]

19. Are you aware of the 'Defence Intelligence Security Comand'?

Or Divison Five of the FBI?

[DCKit]

24. I saw some footage on the Kennedy assassination a couple of years ago....

and the way Mamie Eisenhower apologized, the words she used, sent chills up and down my spine. To me it sounded like "sorry, but you know it had to be done." Freaked my shit out.

[MicaelS]

35. What program was that? n/t

[DCKit]

38. Don't remember, it was well over a year ago.

However, what I do remember was that it seemed to be news footage and it very well may have been at the swearing-in ceremony.

And it was Lady Bird, in case I mis-spoke.

[ControlledDemolition]

6. Great link, thank you. Light bulb on... an earlier attempt to turn the USA towards fascism...

... in the early '30s. Smedley... Butler?

[Octafish]

12. Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler is as great an American as ever lived.

General Smedley Darlington Butler, USMC-awarded two Medals of Honor, a DU thread from the great DUer bobthedrummer.

[ControlledDemolition]

13. Why aren't there more who stepped up like he did?

JFK's murder proved that 'they' simply did not give up their dark and sinister agenda.

[Selatius]

16. Maybe they did step up and failed.

Most of the people who have been resisting the corporate powers have largely been defeated. Otherwise, our country would not resemble what it is today. These people were driven out of their jobs, were discredited by the interests arrayed against them, or were quite possibly killed off. For most whistle blowers, they do not have the protection of fame to protect them from destruction unlike somebody such as Smedley Butler.

[ControlledDemolition]

18. Great feedback. Let's look at what's happening to Don Siegelman.

Seriously, I think JFK Jnr's death was way too convenient. What I consider to be 'evil' is running amok.

[opihimoimoi]

3. K&R :o)

[Octafish]

9. The Eyes and Ears

These sick turds cost us the future.

The Eyes and Ears

excerpted from the book

Blowback

America's recruitment of Nazis,
and its disastrous effect on our domestic and foreign policy

by Christopher Simpson
Collier / Macmillan, 1988

p52
Of all the networks of former Nazis and collaborators employed by the United States after World War II, it is Gehlen's organization that has left the most substantial imprint on the United States. Gehlen's analysis of the forces that guide Soviet behavior, which were forged in part by his personal defeat at the hands of the Russians during World War II, became widely accepted in U.S. intelligence circles and remain so to this day.

p53
Gehlen's impact on the course of the cold war was subtle, but l real. Self-avowed pragmatists in the U.S. intelligence services have consistently argued that the otherwise questionable employment of Gehlen and even of unrepentant Nazis through the Org was justified by their significant contributions to fighting a powerful and ruthless rival: the Soviet Union. "He's on our side," CIA Director Allen Dulles later said of Gehlen, "and that's all that matters."

p53
During the first years of the CIA under Rear Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter's administration, according to a retired executive of the CIA's Office of National Estimates, Gehlen's reports and analyses were sometimes simply retyped onto CIA stationery and presented to President Truman without further comment in the agency's morning intelligence summaries. Gehlen's organization "shaped what we knew about the Soviets in Eastern Europe and particularly about East Germany," he continued. Heinz Hohne, an internationally recognized historian and senior editor at Der Spiegel magazine, asserts that "seventy percent of all the U.S. government's information on Soviet forces and armaments came from the Gehlen organization" during the early cold war. While any such precise number is bound to be arbitrary, the thrust of Hohne's comment is certainly accurate.

Contrary to the accepted wisdom, however, U.S. dependence on Gehlen's organization for intelligence on the Soviet military was quite likely a blunder from a strictly practical point of view. For one thing, enlisting Gehlen was in itself a substantial escalation of the cold war that undermined what little hope was possible for EastWest cooperation during the pivotal years of 1945 to 1948. Once on board, Gehlen's Nazi-tainted operatives often gave the Soviets an easy target for denunciations of war criminals being sheltered by the West. This has since become a highly successful Soviet propaganda theme-in part because there is some truth to it-that is replayed regularly to this day as a means of undermining U.S. and West German relations with Eastern Europe. Financing Gehlen's organization also appears to have made infiltration of Western intelligence by Soviet spies easier, not more difficult, as will be seen. Most important, Gehlen's operatives and analysts strongly reinforced U.S. intelligence's existing predilection toward paranoia about communism and the USSR, contributing significantly to the creation of a body of widely believed misinformation about Soviet behavior.

"Gehlen had to make his money by creating a threat that we were afraid of," says Victor Marchetti, formerly the CIA's chief analyst of Soviet strategic war plans and capabilities, "so we would give him more money to tell us about it." He continues: "In my opinion, the Gehlen Organization provided nothing worthwhile for understanding or estimating Soviet military or political capabilities in Eastern Europe or anywhere else." Employing Gehlen was "a waste of time, money, and effort, except that maybe he had some CI value, because practically everybody in his organization was sucking off both tits." In other words, Gehlen did not produce the reliable information for which he was employed, but careful monitoring of the Org might have produced some clues to Soviet espionage activity because the group had been deeply penetrated by double agents, thus giving the United States a vastly expensive and not very efficient means of keeping up with Soviet spies.
"The Gehlen Organization was the one group that did have networks inside Eastern Europe, and that is why we hired them," international affairs expert Arthur Macy Cox says. " hiring Gehlen was the biggest mistake the U.S. ever made. Our allies said, 'You are putting Nazis at the senior levels of your intelligence,' and they were right. It discredited the United States." According to Cox, the Gehlen Organization was the primary source of intelligence that claimed that "the Soviets were about to attack Germany.... the biggest bunch of baloney then, and it is still a bunch of baloney today."

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Fascism/EyesEars_B_CS.html

In keeping the Cold War going, these NAZI enablers got rich and powerful -- thanks to their CIA Wall Street Big Oil KKK Mafia NAZI friends.

Shanti, Broder.

[opihimoimoi]

21. I am hoping for justice to eventually prevail....should I hold breath?

[dbonds]

33. If it is to prevail you have to be involved.

It won't happen by itself.

[opihimoimoi]

40. Yes, we are involved...at least I am.....

[sabrina 1]

36. Octafish, I always love your threads

I've been reading them for years. I wish we had a real press working for us rather than the MIC. I think the PTB have learned that it's okay to let the people complain, so long as they control the press they have nothing to worry about.

I agree with the commenter who said that there probably have been many Americans who either tried to reveal these things and failed and/or were discredited or even disappeared.

I wonder how far they have to go to get the attention of the American people. It was a shock to me to realize that the revelations of US torture programs, barely raised a ripple in this so-called democracy and that we actually ended up witnessing leaders of this country rationalizing it and getting support. The deaths of over a million Iraqis, has made hardly any impression on the general public.

The years of the entertainment industry glorifying the CIA, tolerating such atrocities on American soil as the School of the Americas, exporting terror to third world nations, supporting every dictator they could find, combined with the nationalism pushing the notion that the US is the greatest country on earth, and to say otherwise or criticize it in any way, is treason. All this has produced a society that like so many other failed nations, believes that THEIR country can do no wrong. In a state of complete denial too many Americans truly believe that if we torture people it is justified, but if others do it is criminal.

I don't see it changing at all. The last eight years revealed a lot about the American people who voted twice, out of fear, for one of the worst administrations ever, and they cannot claim the information was not available, it was.

I hope it doesn't get to the point where an intervention from outside becomes necessary, but if we continue to wage wars, killing and torturing innocent people around the globe, sooner or later something will have to happen to stop it.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[troubledamerican]

5. Look into the story of how Wallace got dumped as FDR's VP in favor of Truman... n/t

[ControlledDemolition]

7. How GHWB bcame Reagan's VP is also a good read! n/t

[Wednesdays]

8. K&R

:kick:

[Octafish]

11. Why'd they name the CIA building after this guy?

The first head of America's secret intelligence agencies to serve as president.

[ControlledDemolition]

14. Because he was in Dallas on 11/22/63! n/t

[Gregorian]

10. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

What I see happening is programs designed to keep us safe. Being informed was Truman's way of keeping us safe. Although a lot less shrill than the Homeland Security hubbub. But my point is, there are always choices in which course to pursue. Which path in which to take this nation. I argue that the paths chosen, that have been the result of fear, have lead us to stray and potentially much more dangerous places than would have been the case had we chosen to be strong and brave and honest and adult-like. But now there are keen interests that are driving these choices. I suppose there were always sinister reasons behind choices to create and use our government. But not in the case of the CIA, as discussed by the very man who created it. But take something as benign as the drug war. Americans bought into it as they felt they should. It was around the same time as seatbelt laws. And everyone knows you're safer with seat belts. But that was as sinister as they get. I'm not sure I've made my point clear. When we operate out of fear and safety, what we get is neither, in the long run. And I see this all over the board. It's hard to put a finger on it, it's so pervasive. Safety is just an accepted part of our lives now. Everything has safety as a bottom line. And that's just what the CIA was initially created to provide. And part of the reason why I think it doesn't work is because the very initial context of it is divisive. We put Americans in places where they don't belong in order to get information for the president, as if other humans in other countries were our enemies. And they are, you might say. But I say it's time to stop pretending we don't live on this nearly infinitesimal speck of dust in a universe so massive it defies all imagination. We most certainly are not enemies, and in fact are all alone and dependent upon each other.

It's time for humans to stop pretending that imaginary lines, and real ones, separate us. No wall on the Mexican border. No wall in Israel. No wall in Germany. It's not a dream. It's a reality. When our tax dollars are spent on this counterproductive activity, you spend time each day at work literally working for the government to do this in your name. Is that how you want to spend your time? Sending agents around doing deeds that divide us all? To create munitions that are ultimately destructive. We're working against our own interests.

Truman would not believe his eyes if he were alive today. And it's a shame that people don't live forever. Because then our collective memory would never fade. But as it stands, our societal wisdom is pathetic.

[ControlledDemolition]

17. 'The Rise of the Fourth Reich' by Jim Marrs... fear is justified but amplified by inaction. n/t

[Octafish]

42. Glad you mentioned the War on Drugs and the human soul...

Our good friends at MotherJones have done a bang-up job explaining what five decades of New Prohibition have meant for us and our neighbors.

Totally Wasted -- Just Who Is Winning the War on Drugs?

Regarding Truman: No. He wouldn't believe what America has turned into. He certainly would raise hell about it, too.

PS: I also agree wholeheartedly in your analysis concerning the walls that divide us, Gregorian. We are all sparks in the imagination of the Creator. A visualization exercise I apply when explaining:



Imagine a plastic soap dish -- the kind of soap holder that has a flat oval base from which spring a thousand plastic spikes. Each spike represents an individual human being. We appear to one another as different, distinct. The reality, however, is that we are each attached to the base, which connects us and makes us one.

[rschop]

20. So why did they intentionally allow the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11?

So why did they intentionally allow the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11?

There is now iron clad proof that the CIA working with groups inside of FBI HQ deliberately, knowingly, and intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11. They not only withheld information on the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting from the FBI criminal investigators on the Cole bombing in a massive criminal conspiracy, but then shut down all FBI investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US just prior to the attacks on 9/11. They not only knew the names of these terrorists who had actually been at the Kuala Lumpur al Qaeda planning meeting, planning both the Cole bombing and also the attacks on the WTC Towers, but even knew they were inside of the US in order to prepare for a massive attack on a target in the US.

They did this knowing that as a direct result of their actions thousands of Americans were going to perish in the al Qaeda attacks they had many warnings about. The US governments own documents from US official source and webs site in fact now are now the absolute proof of this.

People inside of our own government intentionally allowed the al Qaeda terrorists to murder 3000 people on 9/11.

There are now web sites that even have the actual US government documents that prove all of this.

[Octafish]

22. F'r example, the last time they had a G-8 summit in Italy?

From government records to independent journalists, the evidence is clear.

Why would Osama bin Laden want to kill Dubya, his former business partner?

By James Hatfield

Editor's note: In light of last week's horrific events and the Bush administration's reaction to them, we are reprising the following from the last column Jim Hatfield wrote for Online Journal prior to his tragic death on July 18:

July 3, 2001—There may be fireworks in Genoa, Italy, this month, too.

A plot by Saudi master terrorist, Osama bin Laden, to assassinate Dubya during the July 20 economic summit of world leaders, was uncovered after dozens of suspected Islamic militants linked to bin Laden's international terror network were arrested in Frankfurt, Germany, and Milan, Italy, in April.

German intelligence services have stated that bin Laden is covertly financing neo-Nazi skinhead groups throughout Europe to launch another terrorist attack at a high-profile American target—his first since the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen last October.

According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, the attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives.

Why would Osama bi Laden want to kill, Dubya, his former business partner?

I knew that bombshell would whip your heads around. So here's the straight scoop, folks.

In June 1977, Dubya formed his own drilling company, Arbusto Energy ("arbusto" means "bush" in Spanish), in Midland, Texas. Like his father before him, Dubya founded his oil business with the financial backing of investors, including James R. Bath, a Houston businessman whom Dubya apparently first met when they were in the same Texas Air National Guard unit. (Interestingly, both Dubya and Bath were both suspended from flying in August and September 1972, respectively, for "failure to accomplish annual medical examination.")

Tax documents and other financial records show that Bath, an aircraft broker with controversial ties to Saudi Arabia sheiks, had invested $50,000 in Arbusto, granting him a 5 percent interest in two limited partnerships controlled by Dubya.

CONTINUED...

http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/Hatfield-R-091901/hatfield-r-091901.html

Here's my two cents, gathered from the documentary record and the contributions of many good DUers:

Know your BFEE: James R Bath – Bush – bin Laden Link

Know your BFEE: The Stench of Moussaoui Permeates the Octopus

Know your BFEE: Moussaoui Must Die for Bush and 'His' Government

Know your BFEE: Bush and bin Laden Clans Together in Bed

Know your BFEE: GW Bush Covers Up His Lying America Into War

Know your BFEE: Poppy Bush Armed Saddam

Know your BFEE: Money Trumps Peace. Always.

Know your BFEE: They kill good soldiers like Col. Ted Westhusing for profit.

Thank you for giving a damn, rschop. A belated but most hearty welcome to DU!

[rschop]

29. Thank you for giving a damn, rschop. A belated but most hearty welcome to DU!

Thank you Octafish. Check out my DU Journal and web site, it is all there as far as my interest in concerned, which is:

Why did the US intelligence agencies, the CIA and FBI HQ, allow the al Qaeda terrorists to carry out the attacks on 9/11, when they knew the names of several of these terrorists, and even knew they were inside of the US only in order to carry out the attacks that took place on 9/11?

They even knew when they were shutting down all FBI criminal investigations of al Qaeda terrorists found to be inside of the US that thousands of Americans would be killed as direct result of their actions.

[KansDem]

25. And, of course, that would explain why GW Bush sat and did nothing when told of the attacks

And why no member of the media ever asked him why he sat and did nothing...

[Soylent Brice]

23. amazing.

and the link to the info about Gehlen, wow.

thank you Octafish.

[Octafish]

32. Dulles also kept President Eisenhower in the dark.

His deputy Richard Helms really kept President Kennedy in the dark.
Later, Helms blamed JFK for the stuff he kept secret,
such as the plan hatched in 1960 to kill Castro --
just prior to the U.S. invasion of Cuba.

Debra Conway, a great DUer and co-founder of JFKLancer.com, does her usual excellent job explaining:

Three Phases of Assassination.

[indepat]

26. The CIA has existed primarily imo to destabilize/overthrow any/all governments

leaning even in the slightest to the left and thereby establish extreme RW regimes/agendas throughout all of mankind. Right Kermits of the world? :P

[AntiFascist]

27. K&R...

the goal of the CIA seems to be to advance the far right-wing agenda around the world. I believe this has been the agenda since the time of its inception. I recall seeing a CIA founding document that looked like a plan for aggressive Christian missionaries.

[Time for change]

28. Absolutely

A rogue governmental organization that thrives on secrecy and apparently has the capacity to ignore American and international law at will, without being held accountable to anyone, is certainly one fo the gravest threats to democracy that we are plagued with.

[mod mom]

30. The only thing more destructive is climate crisis. They need to obtain control

of needed assets (think water) & power for when the planet can no longer sustain itself. Anyway necessary.

[Horse with no Name]

31. Excellent as always.

I keep thinking that there has to be SOMEBODY that was involved who is in the process of growing old and dying that will step forward and tell the Americans the truth.
However, I guess the risk to their surviving relatives would be too harsh.:(

[Solly Mack]

34. K/R

[Politicalboi]

37. Because it gave

Poppy Bush a secure job.

[rschop]

39. K&R

[tanyev]

41. "assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history,

a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people...

Too bad Harry isn't around anymore to give us his thoughts on GWB or Sarah Palin.

[Ikonoklast]

43. The CIA is the Praetorian Guard of the Military-Industrial Complex.

You cross them at your peril.


Money Uber Alles.


Good thread.