But, just as in Algeria, the counterinsurgency programme had its own logic that led to torture and murder.
The aim of the protected villages and all the incentives was to separate the population from the insurgents. The next objective was to destroy the insurgents - and to do this the CIA set up what they called The Phoenix Programme.
One of the men in charge was another RAND theorist called Robert Komer. He knew David Galula and had read his books, but he took a rather tougher approach which was summarised by his nick name - "Blowtorch Bob".
Komer was one of the "Jedburghs" (according to Douglas Valentine's Phoenix book)
Operation Jedburgh was a clandestine operation during World War II, in which personnel of the British Special Operations Executive, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, the Free French Bureau Central de Renseignements et d'Action ("Intelligence and operations central bureau") and the Dutch and Belgian Armies were dropped by parachute into Nazi-occupied France, Holland and Belgium to conduct sabotage and guerilla warfare, and to lead the local resistance forces in actions against the Germans.
[...]
Jedburgh teams, or parties organised on a similar basis, also operated in the South East Asia Command (SEAC) in 1945, including Japanese-occupied French Indochina, where sixty French Jedburghs joined the newly created C.L.I. fighting the Japanese occupation in French Indochina. In Burma, Jedburgh teams were used in operations 'Billet' and 'Character'. Operation Billet was the plan to raise Burman resistance to the Japanese, primarily through the largely communist Anti Fascist Organisation (AFO). Operation 'Character' was the scheme to raise the Karens in the Karen Hills between the Sittang and Salween Rivers. The first Jeds to go on Character operations were flown into Burma in February 1945 with Lt/Col Peacock's Special Groups.
France and the United States would both use similar operations a few years later in Vietnam.
Aftermath
Many of the surviving American "Jeds" later held various positions of great responsibility in the US Army or the CIA. Examples include William Colby, who became director of the CIA, Lucien Conein, who was a key CIA officer in Vietnam, General John Singlaub and Colonel Aaron Bank (founder of United States Army Special Forces).
Among French Jedburghs were Paul Aussaresses, later founder of the SDECE's 11e RPC, and counter-insurgency expert in French Algeria; Jean Sassi, another who later served in the 11e RPC, who pioneered conventional guerrilla commandos GCMA with Roger Trinquier during the First Indochina War; Guy Le Borgne, commander of the 8e Choc Parachute Battalion in Indochina, the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment in Algeria and 11th Parachute Division.
One of the very few references to the group on this forum is here:
*edit* Oops; I just realized that my statement above about Robert Komer was mistaken. It was actually Evan Parker, the first head of the Phoenix program based in Saigon, that was part of Operation Jedburgh with Colby and company. "Blowtorch Bob" Komer was Parker's boss in Vietnam.
Many of the surviving American "Jeds" later held various positions of great responsibility in the US Army or the CIA. Examples include William Colby, who became director of the CIA, Lucien Conein, who was a key CIA officer in Vietnam, General John Singlaub and Colonel Aaron Bank (founder of United States Army Special Forces).
Among French Jedburghs were Paul Aussaresses, later founder of the SDECE's 11e RPC, and counter-insurgency expert in French Algeria; Jean Sassi, another who later served in the 11e RPC, who pioneered conventional guerrilla commandos GCMA with Roger Trinquier during the First Indochina War; Guy Le Borgne, commander of the 8e Choc Parachute Battalion in Indochina, the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment in Algeria and 11th Parachute Division.
No, the commonality wasn't Bob Woodward, but the anecdote about Casey believing Sterling's Global Terror Network thesis, which, let's bear in mind, was basically a 1:1 map of the current activities of Gladio, as revealed by subsequent historical work. This ups the bleak humor quotient considerably...
William Casey, the new head of the CIA also read and believed Sterling's book.
The only problem was the no-one else took it seriously.
Many of those running the Reagan administration knew that the Soviet Union was supporting and arming liberation movements in the developing world, but they didn't believe in the Global Terror Network.
Casey met with his CIA analysts. He told them that the book - The Terror Network - "has told me more than you bastards whom I pay $50,000 a year."
His analysts then patiently explained to him that much of Claire Sterling's evidence was composed of Black Propaganda they themselves had invented and spread around Europe to discredit to Soviets.
Even Reagan - for all his anti-communism - didn't take it seriously.
But then - on 13th of May 1981 - Mehmet Ali Agca tried to kill the Pope in Rome.
The accounting Curtis gives there is, cough cough, remarkably similar to that Woodward passage you quoted previously.
The post that has so far received the greatest amount of comments so far, The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Operation Gladio and the Assassination of JFK, certainly deserves a follow-up post, my thanks to everyone who contributed. Research by Mae Brussell was brought to my attention by Patrick Oomens indicating that there might be a more direct JFK assassination link to the DIA through the intelligence career of Lee Harvey Oswald himself! Through the link Patrick provided, I was able to make a rough transcript of Brussell's research as provided in the 4-3-1972 broadcast with Paul Cogan for Dialogue. My transcription starts about 20 minutes into the broadcast:
MAE BRUSSELL: "Now in Volume 23 of the Commission hearings are some exhibits from the Marines sent to the Warren Commission that are published, these volumes I bought from the government printing office, and there's a long history of Lee Harvey Oswald's service in the Marines. The subject they say is 'in accordance with the request of your memorandum of May 1964, "The Warren Commission: Wanted Information," that covers three categories. A: the description of advanced or formal training which Oswald received while a member of the Marine Corp. Now remember, when he wanted to be at 16, he wasn't accepted, so he went home and memorized the entire Marine manual, and when he was 17 he went back in. Oswald attended Aviation Fundamental School, Naval Air Technical Training Center Naval Air stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, and during this period his course of instruction consisted essentially of the following: security of classified matter, US Marine Corp organization admissions and systems, Navy plotting, symbols and lectures, practical application of above, basic radar theory, equipment and safety measures, communication search and rescue procedures, air traffic procedures, map reading, weather aircraft recognition and combat information centers. In May 1957 to June 1957, he went to Aircraft Control and Warning Operator Course at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and his course of instruction was radar familiarization, operation of radar indicators, aircraft warning indicators, aircraft control and warning systems, electronic countermeasures, operation of aircraft, warning installations and familiarization courses in the organization of Marine aviation, Marine air support and control systems. In 1957, he went to the Aviation Electronic School in Memphis, Tennessee, where he became incorporated in the Division Five of the FBI, the group that was responsible for the political assassinations; now this is one of the most...
PHIL COGAN: (interrupting) Now, now wait a minute, Mae.
BRUSSELL: OK. Volume...
COGAN: Now I've got to say something. In 1957...
BRUSSELL: Aviation Electronic School in Memphis, Tennessee. This has been one of the most secret training periods that he's gone into and I have documents for the southwest; you'll find this in Volume 23, 797, and anybody who's in Navy Intelligence can look up what the Aviation Electronic School consisted of in Memphis, Tennessee, in July 1957 that Oswald attended.
COGAN: What did it consist of?
BRUSSELL: This was a special department of Navy Intelligence. Division Five of the FBI. This was...
COGAN: (interrupting) Now the FBI is tied in with Navy Intelligence there?
BRUSSELL: Yes, but in the assassination the FBI used agents from Navy Intelligence. And if you look up this very, see, when you talk about Lee Harvey Oswald in the Warren Report, there's no mention of any of these skills that he learned. And he is stationed at Atsugi Base, later where the U2 flights get their training and he's in Russia at the same time Gary Powers is flying over there. Oswald went to the Soviet Union and his cover story was that he didn't like America and that he would give them all the information on our radar systems, and we routinely check them when he went there, but he had the mental capacity, which I'm going to show you, to understand, and the training to understand these systems. You see, he's made out to look like a really sick boob floating around with no friends, no meaningful relationships, you see, his handwriting shows you that he's this loner, or egotistical; to say that Lee Harvey Oswald had no accomplices because he has those characteristics is so wrong. And what I want to do is show his training.
COGAN: I'm still interested in Division Five of the FBI. Where's the documentation behind that?
BRUSSELL: I'll bring the documentation of that. I have a whole book on that that came from lawyers in the southwest. This is the group that ties in with the space agencies and the political assassinations. I can bring that in and do one whole show on that, if you like.
COGAN: Well, that's kind of a heavy statement to make. This school, the Aviation Electronics School in Memphis, Tennessee involved with Navy Intelligence is also directly tied in with Division Five of the FBI, what is Division Five of the FBI?
BRUSSELL: Well, Division Five comes under Defense Intelligence Agency. It's different than the CIA, and it's larger than the CIA and nobody is aware or talks about the Defense Intelligence Agency. It began in screening people who are employed in space agencies or rocket factories or missiles, everybody employed in all these agencies has to be screened out and the intelligence apparatus of this particular Defense Intelligence Agency has more funds, more men and more power than the CIA. And there are some books on the Defense Intelligence Agency; we hear a lot about watchdogs for the CIA and nobody's gone into this particular agency.
COGAN: Is Division Five of the FBI referred to in any publications?
BRUSSELL: (interrupting) Common knowledge? The people that have done the research, who have pinpointed the political assassination, refer to Division Five, the researchers point to it all the time. But the way the intelligence system breaks down, if I say, 'Oswald was an agent of Navy Intelligence' you know, if you're in the service, how complicated the network is and which particular branch or vein or artery that he came from has to be pinpointed by the researchers eventually down to the modus operandi. To just say, 'He's an agent' isn't enough, so I'm pinpointing him to this particular division.
COGAN: Is this the first evidence that you have of Oswald's connection with a government intelligence agency?
BRUSSELL: What do you mean?
COGAN: Well, is this tie-in between Oswald, the Aviation Electronics School, and Division Five of the FBI, has he been associated with an intelligence operation before this time in July of '57?
BRUSSELL: Well, the whole training that he got the minute he came into the Marines going off to Jacksonville, Florida, then Mississippi, and then down to Memphis indicates that he was always to be in intelligence."
While Brussell does have a tendency in her speaking style to stumble over some specifics, the content of her research is quite shocking. But is it true? I wanted to make sure, as I have not read that Oswald was an agent of ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) in any books on the JFK assassination, and I've read over a dozen. As I mentioned in the comments section of the earlier JFK/DIA post, if Oswald worked for Naval Intelligence prior to 1961, that means the DIA definitely should have known of Oswald's intel activities before November 22, 1963. That's because after 1961, ONI would fall under the purview of the DIA. I find this possibility extremely intriguing, especially considering Guy Banister's connections with ONI.
However, it appears that the "whole book on that that came from lawyers in the southwest" Brussell is using as documentation is Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal by one man claiming to be a lawyer from the southwest, William Torbitt. I read a couple chapters through online links, including one elaborating on how Oswald's recruitment into Division Five of the FBI was originally through David Ferrie in 1956. While trying to verify the validity of Torbitt's research from others in the JFK assassination research community, I came across this entry:
William Torbitt is the pseudonymous author of Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal (1970). When the book was published the author claimed he was a lawyer working in the southwestern part of the United States.
During the Second World War he served in the United States Navy. After completing a law degree from the University of Texas he worked as a prosecuting attorney (1949-51). He admits that his clients includes people involved in committing political murder. He claims he has also represented people involved in the "financial dealings of organized crime in Texas".
In Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal Torbitt claims that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a "fascist cabal... who planned to lay the blame on honest right-wing conservatives, if their first ploy, to lay the blame on Oswald and the Communists, was not bought."
Torbitt argues that a Swiss Corporation named Permindex engineered the assassination. Also involved included Defense Industrial Security Command, organized by J. Edgar Hoover and William Sullivan. Torbitt claims that DISC agents included Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby with Louis M. Bloomfield of Montreal, Canada in charge.
According to the author Permindex was comprised of:
(1) Solidarists, an Eastern European exile organization.
(2) American Council of Christian Churches led by Haroldson L. Hunt.
(3) Free Cuba Committee headed by Carlos Prio Socarras.
(4) The Syndicate headed by Clifford Jones, ex-lieutenant governor of Nevada. This group also included Bobby Baker, George Smathers, Roy Cohn, Fred Black and Lewis McWillie.
(5) Security Division of NASA headed by Wernher von Braun.
According to Torbitt, others involved in the assassination included Lyndon Johnson, Walter Jenkins, Fred Korth, John Connolly, William Seymour, Robert McKeown, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Lee Harvey Oswald, Ruth Paine, Micael Paine, Gordon Novel, and Clint Murchison. For example, he claims that Seymour impersonated Oswald in the School Book Depository and killed J. D. Tippit.
Torbitt adds that the "anti-Castro Cuban part of the plan was to tie the Castro regime into the murder of Kennedy and thus to have the U. S. military give all service to the overthrow of Castro".
In his book Who Shot JFK? (2002) Robin Ramsay argues that Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal was an attempt by the Central Intelligence Agency to link the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. "Torbitt took Garrison's inquiry into the ClA's links to the assassination and converted them into a story about the FBI's responsibility for the assassination. (This, in my view, tells us that the author/s of Torbitt were working for the CIA, trying to diminish the 'Garrison effect.')" (emphasis added)
Torbitt also argues that J. Edgar Hoover and Louis M. Bloomfield planned the execution of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. He names Albert Osborne as the man who organized these two assassinations.
Ramsay is not the only author who considers Torbitt a suspicious source. So does Jim DiEugenio and Seamus Coogan of Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination (CTKA), who consider the "Torbitt document" CIA disinformation. So does the author of Crossfire, Jim Marrs, who verified Torbitt's real name as David Copeland. I don't blame Brussell for believing the source at the time, much of what is written runs parallel to information uncovered through the Garrison investigation. But as there is no other source for corroboration of the Division Five/DIA angle, this revelation is unverifiable.
Now there are elements in Brussell's account that are verifiable. Where she quotes from Volume 23 in the Warren Commission Exhibits, we are getting a documented account of Oswald's training that, in Brussell's words, "indicates that he was always to be in intelligence." Could Oswald have been working for multiple intelligence agencies? As David Krall commented in the previous JFK/DIA post, "hi-level assassinations...are NEVER (!)the result of the planning of or from one segment/element or from one dept. of an agency." According to Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much, not only was Oswald an informant for the FBI, but was also an INS customs agent, in addition to his intelligence work for the CIA corroborated by Richard Case Nagell.
But what of Volume 23's documentation of Oswald's training at Aviation Electronics School in Memphis in July 1957? Does this prove Oswald was an ONI agent? Well, that depends on which Oswald you're talking about. While I haven't read the entire book (I certainly hope to soon), I read an excerpt from The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X that indicates the phenomenon of Oswald doubles that I have written about it earlier posts may have started at the beginning of Oswald's military career. From page 109:
After boot camp and ITR (Infantry Training Regiment), "Lee Oswald" left for Jacksonville, Florida. According to the Warren Commission, Lee attended Aviation Fundamentals School. But Allen Felde (WC Exhibit 1962) said he and Oswald attended an A & P School in Jacksonville, which is a mechanics school, quite different from a beginning course in Aviation Fundamentals. Again, two different Oswalds: "Lee" attended Aviation Fundamentals School; "Harvey" attended A & P School with Allen Felde in the spring of 1957. Oswald's Marine records show his attendance at Aviation Fundamentals School but fail to note anything about A & P School.
"Lee Oswald" attended Radar School in Biloxi, Mississippi in June 1957, transferred to El Toro, California in July and left for Japan in August. During this time - June and July 1957 - Allen Felde and "Harvey Oswald" attended an Aviation Electronics School in Memphis, Tennessee. Felde remembered Oswald constantly discussing politics and Communism (once again, "Harvey" is promoting Communism). Marine records show "Lee Oswald's" attendance at Radar School in Biloxi, but contain no reference to Aviation Electronics school or any assignment in Memphis. "Harvey" was last seen by Felde in September 1957, a time when "Lee Oswald" was already in Japan.
Sounds like another case of truth being stranger than fiction. In the case of "William Torbitt", it is fiction in the clever disguise of fiction. It's a textbook example of disinformation at its finest: incorporate as much truth as possible into a narrative that ultimately misdirects attention from the real guilty party. It is the most toxic strain of disinformation because while it may reveal amazing new facts, once the source is discredited, anything associated with it has the appearance of being tainted.
Speaking of toxic strains...
Philip Seymour Hoffman 1967-2014
Just want to shift topics for a moment to say how stunned I was to hear about Philip Seymour Hoffman's tragic death at age 46. It truly was a jaw-dropping moment to read the news about his overdose. More details are coming out now that there were 70 bags of heroin found in his apartment, including five used bags, presumably of heroin. The latest report is that the police believe the heroin Hoffman used was not a toxic strain mixed with fentanyl that was responsible for a number of deaths on the East Coast. But we won't know for certain until we get the official autopsy results.
There are conspiracy rumors (I won't call them theories as it's all hypothetical speculation at this point) around his death that Scientologists are responsible. This is due to his role in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, where he plays a character loosely based on L. Ron Hubbard in a portrayal that is not very flattering where cult leaders are concerned, as shown in this scene:
What is fueling the conspiracy speculation is that the actor playing John More in the scene above, Christopher Evan Welch, died two months ago at age 48. Now, my intuition is telling me this is probably just a coincidence, that like the recent tragic death of Paul Walker, any conspiracy rumors will wither away due to lack of evidence. After all, Welch's death was due to lung cancer. Then again, that's how Jack Ruby died, and he believed he had been injected with cancer cells.
But ultimately I included this story in this post because of how sad it is to lose, as one of my best friends put it, one of the best actors of his - or any - generation. R.I.P. Philip Seymour Hoffman, you will be missed.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security." -Jim Garrison 1967
Just a quick note to say thanks for this collection of first-rate stuff, keep it coming.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
It would be useful if lengthy posts might be accompanied by a brief synopsis. For those of use with brief attention spans or small increments of free time, you know.
Thanks!
The real issue is that there is extremely low likelihood that the speculations of the untrained, on a topic almost pathologically riddled by dynamic considerations and feedback effects, will offer anything new.
While doing research on Howard Hunt for my most recent JFK blog entry, I came across this piece that has some interest of note for this thread:
Thursday, December 9, 2010 The. Death of Mrs E. Howard Hunt On December 8, 1972, a United Airlines Flight carrying the wife of E. Howard Hunt crashed near Chicago’s Midway Airport . She had been flying around the country giving money to the families of the Watergate burgulars. She bought an extra first class seat for her luggage. It is not known what happened to it. Did it contain the $1, 900,000 in negotiables ands $10,000 in untraceable cash that CREEP paid to buy the silence of the Hunts ? All the investigators found was the $10,000. Some calculate that there was less, perhaps between $100,000 and $250,000. There is strong evidence, that CREEP was also buying silence about what Hunt could say about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The day after the crash, Nixon appointed his henchman Egil Krough to the National Transportation Safety Board, which looks into crashes. Within minutes of the crash there were 25 F.B.I. agents on the scenee as well as Defense Intelligence Agents.
DIA agents?! I've never heard of that happening before at a domestic plane crash site. I recall the NTSB as well as FBI agents showing up remarkably early to the scene of the Paul Wellstone crash. Has anyone else heard of this happening before? Any ideas why?
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security." -Jim Garrison 1967
OK, this is admittedly an extremely sketchy source, take Madsen with a large chunk of rocksalt. I include it here because of the OAS-Gladio connection and because I know some of the other information presented is valid, so it makes me wonder: is it plausible that the CIA could have had a presidential assassination plan in place prior to JFK?
By Wayne Madsen Posted on December 11, 2014 by Wayne Madsen
WMR has discovered buried deep within the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives a file on a proposed operation to be carried out by the CIA under Allen Dulles and right-wing members of France’s Gladio “stay behind” network. The operation was to assassinate President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and bring about an all-out war between the two nations.
Details of a secret White House National Security Council report on the plot were leaked to the French Communist Party newspaper, l’Humanité, which published a story on the conspiracy in its March 19, 1960, edition. Although White House Press Secretary James Hagerty called the report “communist propaganda,” the French government ordered all editions of l’Humanité seized before they went on sale. Moreover, the author of the report, General Andrew Goodpaster, was tipped by Eisenhower to be the next CIA director after Eisenhower fired Dulles for his involvement in what would have been a coup against the U.S. and Soviet governments. Eisenhower never did fire Dulles and replace him with Goodpaster. That task was left to Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, who sacked the CIA chief after the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Goodpaster would later become the supreme commander of NATO under President Richard Nixon.
The planned assassination of Ike and Khrushchev would not be the first time that America’s deep state would plan a false flag attack designed to trigger war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1962, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer proposed a series of false flag attacks on U.S. and foreign interests in the Caribbean designed to make it appear that Cuba was behind the incidents. Known as Operation Northwoods, the plan was composed of Operation Bingo, a plan to stage an attack on the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay and make it appear that Cuban troops had carried it out; Operation Dirty Trick, which would blame Cuba for electronically interfering with John Glenn’s Mercury launch had it been destroyed in an accident; and the hijacking of commercial planes and carrying out attacks on Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago and blaming it all on Cuba. The plan was never carried out. The Northwoods attacks would give the United States a reason to attack Cuba, an event that would have likely resulted in a wider world war.
The French rightist military elements were attached to Gladio units in France designed to carry out attacks against Warsaw Pact forces in the event of a Soviet-led invasion of Western Europe. These French units included La Rose des Vents, Arc-en-ciel (“Rainbow”), the Western Union Clandestine Committee that worked closely with the French External Documentation and Counter-Espionage Service (SDECE), and the 11th Choc parachutist regiment of the French Army. In 1961, many of these units formed the Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS) (Secret Army Organization), which was opposed to Algerian independence and tried to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle.
Contained in the Goodpaster report was a statement from a plot informant: “Obsessed by the idea that a carefully planned political assassination always leads to the necessary war, these officers always are constrained to think of all possible forms of a final action, of which the result could be the assassination by a fanatic of the Russian or American chief of state.”
The Goodpaster report also stated: “Army officers—those stationed in Algeria as well as those stationed in the south of France—involved with right-wing Algerian activists, constitute a sort of secret society that is very well hidden.”
Later on March 19, 1960, l’Humanité published a special edition but the article on the plot to assassinate Eisenhower and Khrushchev was deleted.
One member of the secret French army group that was to assassinate Eisenhower and Khrushchev was Jean Souetre, aka Michel Roux, and Michel Mertz, a Corsican assassin who was deported by the FBI from Dallas, Texas, within 48 hours of the November 22, 1963, assassination of President Kennedy. De Gaulle was certain of the “French connection” to Kennedy’s assassination.
The Washington Post, which originally reported on the Goodpaster report on March 20, 1960, never followed up on Souetre’s connection to the OAS and the hit team that was to assassinate Ike and Khrushchev.
Allen Dulles was named by President Lyndon Johnson as a member of the Warren Commission that allegedly fully investigated the assassination of President Kennedy.
Here's a link to the Spokane Daily Chronicle (AP) from March 19, 1960 which mentions the seizure of the paper and some elements of the plot.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security." -Jim Garrison 1967
Well, as someone who harbors no love in any language for Mr. Wayne Madsen, I do want to say that the scenario he presents there is perfectly plausible -- mostly since exercises like that are SOP for any civilized military.
It's not much different from War Plan Red, but that, at least, represented serious Operations Research work. Army brass were posing hard questions to young intelligence analysts being groomed for the meat separator of WWII -- what Madsen outlines here, though, reads more like something to keep assets busy (and inspired by new, illusory horizons!) while NATO brass continued to orchestrate and fine-tune their respective strategies of tension.
After all, from Geneva to Stockholm, the actual tactical "stay behind" plans that were the policy basis for all this lunacy was mostly just shelved, right? A nightmare example of function creep with a higher than typical body count. Contemplating: how much documentation got paper-shredded into the memory hole over the past 50 years? At least a flat 50%, innit?
Last edited by Wombaticus Rex on Tue Dec 23, 2014 9:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason:typos are the sound of gods laughter
Thanks for that analysis, Wombaticus. It's always good to learn new things and I had not heard of War Plan Red, which does have fascinating parallels. Thinking about the vast number of plans that were at one time "on file" that have now disappeared into the ether reminded me of the exchange between Robert Redford (Turner) and Cliff Robertson (Higgins) in Three Days of the Condor:
Turner (Robert Redford): Do we have plans to invade the Middle East? Higgins (Cliff Robertson): Are you crazy? Turner: Am I? Higgins: Look, Turner. .. Turner: Do we have plans? Higgins: No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do. Turner: Go on. So Atwood just took the game too seriously. He was really going to do it, wasn't he? Higgins: It was a renegade operation. Atwood knew 54-12 would never authorize it. There was no way, not with the heat on the Company. Turner: What if there hadn't been any heat? Supposing I hadn't stumbled on a plan? Say nobody had? Higgins: Different ball game. The fact is there was nothing wrong with the plan. Oh, the plan was all right. The plan would have worked. Turner: Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth? Higgjns: No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years -- food, plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then? Turner: Ask them. Higgins: Not now -- then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just warn us to get it for them.
Dulles took the game way too seriously where Gladio was concerned.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security." -Jim Garrison 1967
This is a remarkably good summation of the actual situation:
Turner: Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
Higgins: No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years -- food, plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Turner: Ask them.
Higgins: Not now -- then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just warn us to get it for them.
Since my latest blog post addresses a comment made at the link for the original post, I thought that rather than start a whole new JFK thread, it would be best to link my latest research here.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security." -Jim Garrison 1967
Koch’s Josef Stalin connection was the deal that got the Koch family fortune rolling downhill fast. Seemingly, Fred Koch came to the conclusion that ethics were optional when it came to the chase for the almighty ruble dollar, and a few short years later, the Bush family apparently made a similar calculation when they signed a business compact with Adolph Hitler.]
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started. They could still get him out of office. But instead, they want mass death. Don’t forget that.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Thanks for that. I knew about the Stalin origins of Koch money, but I had forgotten about Fred Koch's role in founding the John Birch Society. JBS seems like they were at least peripherally involved in the assassination. I think Joseph Milteer was JBS, though I may be thinking of someone else.
"Huey Long once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.” I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security." -Jim Garrison 1967
