Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune – Louis Terkel arrived here as a child from New York City and in Chicago found not only a new name but a place that perfectly matched–in its energy, its swagger, its charms, its heart–his own personality. They made a perfect and enduring pair.
Author-radio host-actor-activist and Chicago symbol Louis “Studs” Terkel died today at his Chicago home at age 96. . . A television institution for years, a radio staple for decades, a literary lion since 1967, when he wrote his first best-selling book at the age of 55, Louis Terkel was born in New York City on May 16, 1912. “I came up the year the Titanic went down,” he would often say.
He moved with his family when they purchased the Wells-Grand Hotel, a rooming house catering to a wide and colorful variety of people. He supplemented the life experiences there by visits to Bughouse Square, the park across the street from the Newberry Library that was at the time home to all manner of soap box orators. . .
He attended the University of Chicago, where he obtained a law degree and borrowed his nickname from the character in the ” Studs Lonigan” trilogy by Chicago writer James T. Farrell. He never practiced law. Instead, he took a job in a federally sponsored statistical project with the Federal Emergency Rehabilitation Administration, one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” agencies. Then he found a spot in a writers project with the Works Progress Administration, writing plays and developing his acting skills.
Terkel worked on radio soap operas, in stage plays, as a sportscaster and a disk jockey. His first radio program was called “The Wax Museum,” an eclectic gathering of whatever sort of music struck his fancy, including the first recordings of Mahalia Jackson, who would become a friend.
When television became a force in the American home in the early 1950s, Terkel created and hosted “Studs’ Place,” one of the major jewels in the legendary “Chicago school” of television that also spawned Dave Garroway and Kukla, Fran and Ollie.
It was on “Studs’ Place,” which was set in a tavern, that large numbers of people discovered what Terkel did best–talk and listen. Terkel, arms waving, words exploding in bursts, leaning close to his talking companions, didn’t merely conduct interviews. He engaged in conversations. He was interested in what he was talking about and who he was talking to.
But his TV career did not last. Terkel later complained that the commercialization of television forced his show, and the others in the “Chicago school,” from the air. Also, at that time, McCarthyism was a potent force and Terkel was outspoken politically, with a highly liberal tone. “I was blacklisted because I took certain positions on things and never retracted,” Terkel once said in an interview about those times. “I signed many petitions that were for unfashionable causes and never retracted.”
He had a hard time finding work, subsisting on small speaking fees and even smaller sums for writing book reviews. His wife, Ida, made enough to keep the family afloat.
He found a larger audience when he was hired at a new fine arts station, WFMT, where Terkel’s brand of chatter, jazz, folk music, and good conversation was a perfect fit. His political views were more tolerated on the station, and Terkel began his morning radio show in 1952.
In the mid-1960s, Terkel was in his mid-50s, a time when most people are beginning to plan the end of their careers. Terkel was about to start a new one. . .
“I think of myself as an old-time craftsman,” Terkel said. “I’ve been doing this five days a week, for more than 30 years. When I realize the work is slipping, I’ll quit. But I don’t think I’ve reached that point yet. I still have my enthusiasm. I still love what I do.”
The American Civil Liberties Union has released a set of detailed recommendations on steps that the new president should take to “clean house,” renew freedom, and restore the nation’s reputation. . .
On Day One, the next president should, by executive order, direct all agencies to prohibit the use of torture and abuse; direct the new Attorney General to appoint an outside special counsel to investigate, and, if warranted, prosecute any violations of federal criminal laws; close down Guantanamo and either charge and try detainees in criminal or traditional military courts or transfer them to countries where they won’t be tortured; and end the practice of extraordinary rendition.
In his first 100 days, the president should take actions to end illegal spying and surveillance, to protect Americans from privacy violations and discrimination, to end the federal death penalty, and to increase government transparency.
The ACLU’s 83-page document proposes actions across a wide variety of topics, including national security, human rights, women’s rights, civil rights, drug policy, the rights of LGBT Americans, immigrants and prisoners, privacy and free speech. REPORT
August 2, 2007 Massive ULF ‘Blast’ Detected In US Bridge Collapse Catastrophe http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1026.htm By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers Reports from Russia’s Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics located in Irkutsk are reporting today that their Siberian Solar Radio Telescope (SSRT) detected a ‘massive’ ultra low frequency (ULF) ‘blast’ emanating from Latitude: 45° 00′ North Longitude: 93° 15′ West at the ‘exact’ moment, and location, of a catastrophic collapse of a nearly 2,000 foot long bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota. To the horrific destruction of the Interstate 35W Bridge which spanned the Mississippi River we can read as reported by the Star Tribune News Service: “The 1,907-foot bridge fell into the Mississippi River and onto roadways below. The span was packed with rush hour traffic, and dozens of vehicles fell with the bridge leaving scores of dazed commuters scrambling for their lives. Nine people were confirmed dead as of 4 a.m. today. Sixty were taken to hospitals and 20 people were still missing this morning. Authorities said they expected the death toll to rise.” Russian Military reports state that the total collapse of such a massive bridge, and in the absence of evidence linking its destruction to terrorist activity, could only have been accomplished by an acoustic weapon, of which the United States Military is known to possess. These reports further state that one of the United States primary research organizations into acoustic weapons research is Augsburg College, and which is located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and most importantly less than 1 mile from the Interstate 35W Bridge collapse. To the exact reason of why, and what exactly happened in this catastrophe we can only speculate, but, with what is known about the United States past history of using sophisticated weapons on their own citizens for ‘research’ purposes it certainly lies in the realm of possibility that this horrific tragedy is rooted in the use of ULF weapons. To the past usage of these new types of weapons we can read even back into the 1980’s of the United States research into their use as reported by the CNN News Service: “Imagine the implications of a weapon with no visible trace — a weapon that could knock out tanks, ships, and planes as fast as the speed of light. The same technology, with modifications, could disorient and even tranquilize military personnel, rendering them virtually helpless in the battle zone. These are the new weapons of war we will examine in this series. For the past 40 years, the world has been riveted by the threat of nuclear war, and more recently by the prospect of space defenses using lasers and other modern technologies. Lightning is the most dramatic form of energy to be found in nature. Scientists have succeeded in creating limited types of artificial lightning. And some think that these could be the forerunners of a new type of directed-energy weapon, part of a family of weapons that operate within the radio frequency segment of the electromagnetic spectrum, and are thus referred to as radio frequency weapons.”
There is a WAR raging right now against YOUR health!
There are those among us who would control your body and the health well being and maintenance of it for profit and political reasons and agendas…. doesn’t that just sound like Soooo much fun? (YIKES!!)
How much torture and abuse must we endure before we stand up for ourselves?
Winning the Health Freedom War
Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III
(US Army, Ret)
President, Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
Through the not-for-profit Natural Solutions Foundation, Dr. Rima and I have been fighting to protect your Health and Health Freedom for quite a while now. In fact, we gave up a lucrative private medical practice to do so and have put about $500,000 of our own money into this fight. That, along with supporters’ donations and our joint fierce determination have gotten us this far. I do not engage in loosing campaigns and this IS a war we can win!
You’ve heard us refer to this struggle as a war. Recently, the other side escalated the struggle into a full-out war on freedom, not “just” health freedom. Your awareness and activism is the crucial factor which will win this war. Go to the action pages on our web site and take all of the following actions:1. The FDA is, once again, trying to remove your right to make your own health choices and treat your body the way you see fit. Public comment ends on April 30. If you value your ownership of your own body, do not delay. Go to http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/healthfreedomusa/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=7185
and submit your comments AT ONCE, then forward the link to everyone you know. 67 thousand comments have been submitted to the FDA to date through our comments page. We need approximately 5 million. You must forward this information to your entire circle of contacts, including professionals and companies so they can share it with their own lists.
2. If you are a Citizen of the US, sign our (Citizens Petition
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=184). This is a legal action against the US Government as authorized by the US Constitution. It holds the US Government accountable for violating US law regarding supplements and its intent to “HARMonize” with Codex in violation of 3 separate US laws. The Citizens Petition is the first step in legal proceedings against the US Government. Citizens may join this action by signing their names to the Citizens Petition. Make sure you inform everyone you know that they can join it, too, and how to do it. We already have well over 40,000 people in this campaign for the rule of law.3. Contact every talk radio station you know of and tell your favorite hosts to study www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and inform themselves and their audiences about the Codex battle. Send them a copy of this letter and give them our contact address: healthfreedom@optonline.net.
Dr. Rima and I regularly appear on talk shows to let audiences know what is in store for them if they let the other side win. Let your radio host know that we are available for their show, too.4. Fill the war chest. Your tax deductible (donation http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php?page_id=189 ) is urgently needed. Armies don’t run on air. The other side has more money than Croesus. We need your support. Now!
The Day They Escalated the War
The day they escalated the war started normally enough. We had an early morning meeting that was postponed until later, and then postponed until tomorrow. Frustrating, but not out of the ordinary when you are meeting with high level decision makers with frantic schedules. Then came the real shocker: back at the email corral, a supporter and good friend wrote to let us know that the website for the Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedimUSA.org, was off line.
A little investigation showed us that it had been blocked by 1and1.com, our hosting company. Emails telling us that the web site was down began flooding in. Our webmaster told us that we were the object of a type of attack in which a bank of computers (including yours if computing power has been hijacked) was focused on our site and, by sending out huge numbers of access requests, was crashing it.
When our webmaster put up a temporary site telling people what was happening (using our address, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org ) HIS server, and all the sites he hosts, were taken down by the same kind of attack (known in the trade as DDOS or Distributed Denial of Service). When he took our temporary site off his server, the DDOS attack stopped at once. His sites and server came back on line within minutes. When a DDOS occurs, the system simply cannot handle it and crashes.
Hosting companies try to protect the rest of their system by blocking the individual site under attack. Our hosting company, however, did not come clean with us and tell us the real story. Instead, they tried to give us a cock and bull story about a problem with our credit card and would not restore service until we got nasty. All of the credit card verification process and the DDOS learning curve process took valuable time and energy BUT it also, started “Maggie’s Drawers” waving wildly (“Maggie’s Drawers” refers to the waving red flag used on the rifle range to alert the person firing that he/she has, not only failed to score points, but also has missed the target altogether). Our alert posture just went from orange to bright RED with Maggie’s Drawers waving.
Speaking Truth to Power
Why was the Natural Solutions Foundation site attacked? For Speaking Truth to Power. The day before the attack was made to censor and silence us, we had distributed a really important email laying out the genocidal agendas not just of organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, the US Government, etc. but also asking whether the astonishingly profitable and deadly pharmaceuticals which kill more people than any other cause, any disease, in every industrialized country in the world might not be part of a plan to reduce population, too.
Some one, some entity, some organization does not want you to have this information and has turned to preemptive means to keep us silent. Previously they thought that smear tactics and disinformation spread on the internet about Natural Solutions Foundation and about Dr. Rima and me personally were enough. This escalation is an attack not just on our speech, but on your rights! And this attack on your rights is not just about your right to clean food and high potency nutrients. It is clearly an attack on your personal FREEDOM OF SPEECH and ours.
Whatever Happened to That Musty Old Hemp Parchment?
Whatever happened to that simple piece of hemp parchment called “The Constitution of these united States”? What happened to the First Amendment, and its guarantees of Free Speech? What happened to “Democracy”? Make no mistake: I devoted 32 years of service to my Country, in both peace and war, devoted to the defense of the Constitution. That meant defending every one of our rights.
We have written about our flights around the US. On every one our tickets are marked with a special electronic code, “SSSS” which singles Dr. Rima and me out for extensive and highly invasive screenings at airport security. Every single time we fly in the US! For speaking truth as we understand it.
Our email communications have been systematically censored and impeded so that for many months every email we sent to critical people in our circle of support went astray. A filter critical to telephone and internet service went missing from a telephone pole near our remote home during a 2 month trip last year (a “We know where you live” message). Our computers have been hacked, documents removed electronically (!) from them, etc., etc. What has happened to us as leading edge spokespersons can just as easily happen to you. The attack is not on the Natural Solutions Foundation. The attack is on Freedom.
What infringement of what right is next? Is Alex Jones correct? Do we now live on a Prison Planet? What happened to all those years in the service for my country when I believed I was defending ALL of our Constitutionally given FREEDOMS? Is this censorship and intimidation what I fought for? Is it what you want for expressing your opinions?
Is This a War?
You tell me: is this a war? To me as a soldier, a tactician and a strategist, it certainly feels like an assault, smells like an assault, sounds like an assault and looks very much like an act of WAR. Oh, by the way, in my last command, I was responsible for the Army’s strategic intelligence and security AND for its counterintelligence so I am not ignorant of the means through which this is done. When I was on active duty, our resources were all focused on the enemy. Has the Natural Solutions Foundation suddenly become an enemy? Are Dr. Rima and I enemies of the State? No, we are loyal supporters of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We are also loyal proponents of your right to own your body and treat it in the ways that you believe are right.
Let us assume for a moment that the electronic and other indicators and events I listed above are neither benign nor benevolent. Let’s assume that the real intentions rest on shutting the Natural Solutions Foundation down so that we are effectively shut up. That’s an act of aggression. It is an act of war, for speaking truths that some folks in high places do not want known publicly. It is not only an act of war directed just against us and the Natural Solutions Foundation but also an act of war against you and our own US Constitution.
Remember Civics 101? In it you learned that the core document in the United States is called the Constitution. Appended to it are 10 amendments collectively called the “Bill Of Rights”. The first of those amendments guarantees us FREEDOM OF SPEECH.
A War Against Humanity?
What if the war is not just against the US Constitution? What if, as we suggested in our email outlining the intentional genocidal agenda, it is a war against humanity?
The mind recoils. This possibility raises thoughts, questions, observations, possibilities and actions which do not fit our known reality. None of the questions raised are benign. Possible answers are scary and foreboding, forcing us to look at horrific scenarios.
This is where the military training, the exercises, the planning processes, the preparation of Estimates of Situations, the operations in an actual combat zone stands us in good stead.
Assume for a moment that our worst fears are accurate, that powerful forces wielding immense impact do, in fact, intend to cull the earth of its “useless eaters” in the ways that our recent email made documented and made clear. Then we are at WAR with an enemy committed to our destruction, an enemy we have been conditioned to see as benign, to trust and admire. That enemy includes high level elements of industries and organizations we have never questioned the intent of. After you finish this email, take a look at NUTRICIDE: THE KILLING CAMPS OF CODEX ALIMENTARIUS
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/index.php/?p=322 and watch Dr. Rima’s lecture on the topic (on our home page) for more information. The propaganda war has been in progress for decades and most of us did not even notice it. (
Living in Hell Requires
New Thought Patterns
WAR is HELL so, by its very nature it requires a whole different set of thought processes from ordinary reality. First and foremost, war is not a game. The best way to make sure you have plenty of casualties is to view war as a casual process — witness the First Gulf War and now Iraq for starters. The implementation and exploitation of both of these wars were taken lightly and the non-casual nature of both was sadly underestimated. Witness the casualties of Gulf War Syndrome, the deaths and war injuries imposed upon the under manned, under equipped and casually/hastily deployed army sent into harm’s way in Iraq to implement political, not military aims.
Second, many people would have you believe that war is played with the gloves off and there are no rules. However, I would challenge the hypothesis of “No Rules”. If you want to fight a loosing war, fight it without rules. A winning war ALWAYS follows the rules. As Sun Tzu, the amazing 3rd or 4th century Chinese author of “The Art of War” (the military bible that lays out those rules) wrote “The Art of War, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in ones deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions pertaining in the field.
1. Moral Law
2. Heaven
3. Earth
4. The Commander
5. Methods and Discipline
As a Cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point I was fascinated with our studies in Military Art, the study of the Science of War. We studied the “Great Captains”, the “Leaders”, the “Generals”, the “Heroes” and the “Failures” of wars throughout the centuries. Genghis Khan, Hannibal, Alexander The Great, Caesar, Napoleon, Rommel, Lee, Sherman, Patton, Macarthur, Hitler are just a microcosm of the leaders and failures, their campaigns and the wars we studied. I resonated with the Science of War so much that I asked to come back as an instructor in Military Art and Engineering. Alas, fate was simultaneously kind and unkind. I did return to teach at West Point as a Professor, but in another favorite subject (Chemistry) not Military Art.
The Principles of War
However, the seeds of my fascination with the Science of War were sown as a West Point Cadet. I continued to study and apply the lessons learned from the “Great Campaigns” and from current events. When I was in “Nam” as the G-2 (Intelligence Officer) of the 25th Infantry Division, I kept Sun Tzu’s small book (“The Art of War”) on my desk. Sun Tzu was a Chinese General in either the 3rd or 4th century BC. We are not exactly sure when he lived, but we are sure of the wisdom he spoke. It is a phenomenal bible for every military leader. From it, armies the world over derive the “Principles of War” that their militaries teach, preach and (when they win wars) follow today. These Principles vary slightly from country to country, but their essence remains the same. If one plans around and pays attention to the “Principles” the probability of success in a war goes up. Way up! It is not a guarantee, but it sure helps in analyzing the problem and then developing solutions. If one ignores the “Principles of War” you court serious dangers and likely defeat.
What about the war that has appeared on our doorstep? Let’s talk about that and why we honestly believe that two ordinary people can actually overcome the mammoth display of powers arrayed against us. Let’s talk about the “Principles of War” for a moment.
OBJECTIVE
The first, and perhaps most important, Principle of War is the “Objective”. In any campaign the Goal/ Mission/ Direction must be clear, absolute, carefully articulated and then meticulously followed. The Goal/Objective of the Natural Solutions Foundation is simple and direct “Protect all of our Health Freedoms”. This means, for instance, if you choose to use vitamins and minerals instead of antibiotics then that should be your choice. If you choose to flip flop that last choice and prefer the antibiotics over the vitamins and minerals, then that is also your choice. Clean foods free of genetically modified components (GMOs) with clear and accurate labeling should be available so you can choose to eat them or not. That information must not be withheld from you by a paternalistic federal regulatory agency “to prevent you from making the wrong choice” “for your own good”.
Health Choices Belong to You,
Not the State
The choices, however, must be yours to make, not someone else’s. Worse yet, those choices must not be made for you by some entity that would prefer you to be sick (or dead) in order to extend corporate greed and other longer term, more sinister agendas. Your health freedom, however, extends far beyond just food and vitamins and minerals. It includes other Health Freedom issues such as:
Vaccines and the right to choose to vaccinate or not rather than mandatory vaccination
Compulsory “screening” and drugging for supposed “mental illness
Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) admixed with your food and intentionally unlabeled
Antibiotics and Growth Hormones in your food without labeling
Fluoride in water and foods
Artificial pandemics like Bird Flu and measures to control them – and you
• Use of natural medicine procedures, including, but not limited to, your choice of herbs, vitamins and minerals
Natural (bioidentical) hormones in preference to synthetic ones.
• Refusing to be microchipped or have one’s animals microchipped.
Health is complex and so is freedom. Without a doubt, there will be other Health Freedom issues that will arise along the way. When they do, the Natural Solutions Foundation will sound the new drum(s) as they appear and alert the troops. Right now, however, our main focus remains on CODEX which we believe to be the greatest single threat to your health and, through the regulatory structure in place in the US and elsewhere, to your freedom of choice as a consumer, patient and citizen which we have ever faced.
Osama Bin Who?
Let’s go back to Objective/Goal. Shortly after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center our stated National “Objective” was to “get Bin Laden”. Despite immediate statements by the powers that be that Iraq was in no way involved, our objective shifted rapidly from Bin Laden, the purported perpetrator, to Saddam Hussein and Iraq.
What’s wrong with this picture? The “Objective”, as articulated by the decision makers, never changed. It is certainly clear that Bin Laden is not and was not then in Iraq. One must then ask the all important question: “What are we doing in Iraq if Bin Laden is not in Iraq”? If our national Objective was to insure the capture or demise of Bin Laden, but all of our intelligence information indicated that Bin Laden was elsewhere then we either had the wrong Objective or we lost connection with our Objective and started down a very wrong and very slippery slope. The point is simple. Your “Objective provides the focus and then keeps you pointed and moving in the right direction. Ignore it and you wander down wrong alleys with serious consequences (i.e. more than 3,000 American soldiers Killed In Action and more than 21,000 Wounded In Action — to say nothing about the vast numbers of Iraqi dead and wounded).
The Object Is Victory,
Not Battles
Sun Tzu put it perfectly when he said: “In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns”. We are already into a lengthy and costly campaign in Iraq and, at least theoretically, we are still looking for Bin Laden.
My “Objective” in writing this communiqué brings the focus once more to the serious attack on our web site intended to silence it and intimidate the Natural Solutions Foundation. A sophisticated attack like a DDOS is clearly a weapon designed to curtail our ability to speak. It is an attack on our Freedom of Speech. It’s an attack on your Freedom of Speech, too.
Check out this link to information about action that is underway against spammers and email-harvesters. HEH. A friend told me this was gonna happen… (thanks to him BTW..you called that one a long time ago bro!..) http://www.projecthoneypot.org/5days_thursday.php
WOW! Now are the really stupid cops gonna think it’s okay to beat people up again, because they think they can’t be videotaped? This is an interesting issue, because the cops are usually videotaping from their vehicle when they make a stop… What gives them permission to do so? Are we as citizens under a duty to make certain that the criminals masquerading as cops are not able to take over the infrastructure and start pimping it out for their own agenda? This is defintely and interesting debate…
I just finished listening on C-SPAN to Tim Weiner being interviewed by David Ignatius re his new book on the CIA. Weiner is remarkably misleading about the CIA’s record, especially in relation to the Kennedys. This is not surprising, however, since Weiner has been a favored reporter of the CIA’s for years now.
Weiner’s point he most wants to convey is that — far from being the “rogue elephant” that Frank Church called it — the CIA has always been ultraresponsive to Presidents. But that is provable untrue.
I’m shocked he would open with a quote from Richard Helms, and then return to him on the subject of Kennedy’s assassination, given Helms’ willingness to lie under oath (he was charged with perjury for denying the CIA’s role in the Chilean operations).
Let’s look at how “responsive” the CIA has been to the president over the years:
Truman wanted an information agency. The CIA essentially blackmailed itself into existence (see CIA officer Miles Copeland’s veiled account of this in his book “The Real CIA.”) So right off the bat, the CIA was doing something Truman didn’t want. After Kennedy’s assassination, Truman wrote a letter that was published in the Washington Post, in which he stated:
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.
With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda … the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people. …
But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field-and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
The CIA was clearly not created to serve only the President. It was created to serve the interests of Wall Street, and if you follow their pattern of covert action around the globe, you’ll see who benefitted. The Guatemalan coup in 1954 benefitted the United Fruit Company. The Iranian coup in the early fifties benefitted the oil barons (access to oil was listed as the first explicit goal of the coup in the summary of that operation.) The CIA was created from the OSS, itself a creation not of the government so much as of Wall Street. The top officers all came from children of lawyers, bankers, and other money men. The OSS’s nickname was “Oh So Social” due to its high profile roster.
The CIA has often run an agenda counter to what the president wished. This is easy to document in the Kennedy administration – they were at odds at nearly every turn. But it wasn’t only the Kennedy adminstration that had difficulty with the CIA.
Under the Eisenhower administration, for example, Eisenhower was set to meet with Khrushchev to discuss a mutual reduction in arms. The CIA didn’t want to see any such accommodation. So in express defiance of Eisenhower’s request that no such flights be made, the CIA flew the U2 over the Soviet Union. As the “official” story goes, the Soviets shot it down. As people close to those events have said in print and elsewhere, there’s good evidence that the flight was deliberately sabotaged by the CIA so that it would crash over the Soviet Union, preventing a peace treaty. Even CIA director Allen Dulles stated the plane was not shot down. As Dulles testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 31, 1960:
“We believe that it was not shot down at its operating altitude of around 70,000 feet by the Russians. We believe that it was initially forced down to a much lower altitude by some as yet undetermined mechanical malfunction.” ? “It is obvious to us that the plane was not hit. If the plane had been hit by a ground-to-air missile, in our belief, it would have disintegrated.”
While Eisenhower later claimed responsibility for the overflight, the evidence is strong that he was surprised, and upset, that the CIA would risk upsetting the all-important peace conference. I believe that incident is part of the reason Eisenhower gave us that famous warning as he prepared to leave office:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
(Looks like we failed that call.)
I’m especially upset to hear Weiner repeat the old canard that RFK ordered the killing of Castro. RFK did NOT order the CIA to kill Castro. EVER. There is NO such tape. NO such testimony. The closest you get are comments made NOT under oath by Richard Helms, which he refused to confirm when finally skewered on this point UNDER oath. Helms had his deputy, Sam Halpern, run around and tell people this was so, even though Helms knew this to be false. It’s not clear if Halpern knew this to be false, it’s only clear (now, with released records and additional comments from all the intimates of RFK still alive) that RFK would never have approved any murder plot. As RFK said to Dick Goodwin, he’s the guy who tried to SAVE Castro.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA’s Bill Harvey sent 10 commando teams into Cuba with the goal of killing Castro. When RFK found out, he was as furious as anyone had ever seen him. He demanded Harvey stop and Harvey said he couldn’t call the teams back. RFK gave Harvey “five minutes” to explain what the hell he was thinking, doing this. Harvey tried to blame it on the Pentagon but RFK had already received believable assurances from the Pentagon that that was baloney. Five minutes later, with Harvey still talking, RFK walked. RFK then demanded the CIA fire Harvey. The ever compliant (not) CIA instead transferred Harvey to Rome to hide him from RFK, but Harvey returned stateside in 1963.
In fact, the accusation of RFK’s role in the Castro plots never even surfaced until the right wing and the CIA were both suffering severe scrutiny in the wake of the Watergate episode. The right wingers in the CIA wanted to use the occasion to smear Democrats as well, in the hopes of deterring a deeper investigation and possibly with the additional goal of deterring people from caring about who killed JFK and why.
Meanwhile, however, a document written by the CIA’s own Inspector General, not released until LONG after the Church and Pike committee investigations had already disappeared into history, asked and answered this question explicitly, asking, can the CIA claim it had executive authority for these plots, and answering its own question, “Not in this case”:
Can CIA state or imply that it was merely an instrument of policy?
Not in this case. While it is true that Phase Two was carried out in an atmosphere of intense Kennedy administration1 pressure to do something about Castro,2 such is not true of the earlier phase. Phase One was initiated in August 1960 under the Eisenhower adminstration. Phase Two is associated in [Bill] Harvey’s mind with the Executive Action Capability [assassination capability], which reportedly was developed in response to White House urgings. Again, Phase One had been started and abandoned months before the Executive Action Capability appeared on the scene.
When Robert Kennedy was briefed on Phase One in May 1962, he strongly admonished Houston and Edwards to check with the Attorney General in advance of any future intended use of U.S. criminal elements. This was not done with respect to Phase Two, which was already well under way at the time Kennedy was briefed.3 [Emphasis added.]
I added three notes to clarify:
1. The “Kennedy administration” does not mean the Kennedy’s. See Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett’s excellent book “Thy Will Be Done” and their chapter on the “Rockefeller Administration.” The Kennedys knew political operatives, but ended up relying on so many men from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund that his administration could more appriately called “the Rockefeller administration.” Indeed, David Talbot shows in his recent book “Brothers” just how isolated the Kennedys became during their term, at war with nearly everyone at a high level in their administration. The Kennedys did not want a Pax Americana. The Rockefeller people did. There were several in Kennedy’s administration who wanted Castro dead. But JFK and RFK were not among them.
2. There was indeed intense pressure to “do something” about Castro. But Kennedy intimates have made clear, as does the available record from credible sources, that the Kennedys wanted to foment a domestic revolution inside Cuba. They did not want to kill Castro. And every time the CIA pressured them to do exactly that (at the Bay of Pigs, and again during the Cuban missile crisis), the Kennedy’s resisted that pressure.
3. The CIA states that they briefed Kennedy on the Phase One plots, but not the Phase Two plots. The wording is obtuse, but that is what they just said, right there in their own report. And they did not tell RFK they were using Mob people in the Phase Two plots either, despite RFK’s explicit request to be informed if the very people he had spent years trying to prosecute were suddenly going to get federal protection. Other sources make clear that Kennedy was reportedly livid at the discovery not just at the use of the Mob, but at the revelation that the CIA was trying to kill Castro.
Weiner makes a big deal of a CIA’s agents secret meeting with Rolando Cubela (not named by Weiner but it’s obviously him) and noted that the agent, Des Fitzgerald went to Cubela and SAID he was an emissary of Robert Kennedy.
What Weiner doesn’t tell you is that Helms had TOLD Fitzgerald to say that, even though Helms ALSO told Fitzgerald that RFK did not know. Helms told Fitzgerald not to talk to RFK about this, but to simply invoke his name with Cubela. That’s on the record, a record Weiner does not mention, even though that shows up in nearly all accounts of this meeting so he could hardly be ignorant of that.
Here are two examples of the CIA’s not following Kennedy’s orders that are not in Talbot’s book. In either 1962 or 1963 (I’m too lazy to go dig the article from my files), the CIA undertook to taint a large shipment of sugar leaving Cuba for the Soviet Union. Kennedy found out and went right to the press with it. Can you imagine the CIA’s fury at having been exposed by their own president? And can you imagine Kennedy’s fury, after the Bay of Pigs, to find the CIA was still willing to run its own operations without consulting him?
Another incident I learned about while browsing the Watergate hearings evidence, Volume 10. There’s a transcript of a secret conversation between Lucien Conein, longtime CIA agent who helped start the DIA (Kennedy’s replacement agency for the CIA, sadly staffed by the very people he would have wanted to stop if he knew who they were.) Hunt and Conein are discussing how Lodge, in Vietnam, was pushing for Diem’s assassination, and Robert Kennedy kept trying to stop the plot. They were laughing about how ineffective RFK was and how Lodge managed to get around him and give the plot a green light. I’d bet good money Weiner never read that interesting conversation, and doubt he’d have put it in his book even if he had.
[CORRECTION: The conversation is in vol. 9, not 10, and Conein was in the DEA, which was created by Nixon, not the DIA, which was created by Kennedy. And they are not recorded as laughing, but there’s a certain levity to the conversation, as I read it.]
I can’t believe Weiner’s near worship of Helms. People love to paint Helms as a solid bureaucrat, one of the “prudent professionals” as Stewart Alsop so lovingly called Helms, Angleton, and other right-wing nuts in the CIA. But this is the guy who, as a spy working under cover of UPI at the time, stole into Hitler’s personal quarters and took some of his stationary. He even wrote his son a letter on Hitler’s letterhead in later years, so enamored was he of his prize.
I’ve read every major history of the CIA to date. So far, it sounds like Weiner is just digging in the same trench. I have no intention of adding yet another book saying the same things to my collection. I have enough disinformation on my shelves already.
How I long to see a serious author do an honest history of the CIA. But then, it’s likely no major house would publish it. The Church and Pike committees found that the CIA controlled people at major publishing houses. Their inside people alerted them to books that might be harmful to the CIA, and got such books killed. James Angleton’s secretary used to be married to one of the big editors at Random House, Bob Loomis.
When the Bill Turner/Jonn Christian book on the RFK case snuck through, Random House, threatened with a lawsuit by a guy who may well have been connected to the CIA, recalled and burned the book. That’s our world.
That’s why I have to keep writing. SOMEONE who knows the truth has to stand up and tell it, since the shills get nearly all the airtime. I don’t know if Weiner is a shill or just someone who has fallen in love with his subject. I just know, from hearing him, that his representation is not an honest account of the full record of the CIA’s history. The REAL history of the CIA is far more interesting, and indeed, far more heartbreaking.
