Robert Komer person
also: Robert Comer, Comer, Cromer, Blowtorch Bob, Robert William Comer, Omer, K-O-M-E-R, Bob Comer, court's chief
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Related entities (most co-mentioned)
Lyndon B. Johnsonperson · 24Vietnamcountry · 18CIAintelligence service · 16National Security Councilorganization · 14Phoenix Programoperation · 9Elliot Richardsonperson · 6Turkeycountry · 6William Colbyperson · 6William Porterperson · 5Ghanacountry · 5CORDSoperation · 5Kwame Nkrumahperson · 4Civil Operations and Rural Development Supportorganization · 4McGeorge Bundyperson · 4Richard M. Bissell Jr.person · 41966 Ghanaian coup d'étatevent · 4Richie Boysorganization · 4John P. Cabot Lodgeperson · 3USAIDorganization · 3David Galulaperson · 3RAND Corporationorganization · 3Viet Congorganization · 3Maxwell D. Taylorperson · 3South Vietnamplace · 3
Claims (36)
Robert Komer member_of
National Security Council documented
“ever let them see a tear. You never, ever let them see you sweat. These people are evil. On May 27, 1965, Robert Comer, K-O-M-E-R, a national security staffer, briefed his boss, George Bundy, President Johnson's Special Assistant for Nation…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Ghana 1966 @ 18:15
Robert Komer member_of
CIA documented
“who first joined the White House as a member of President Kennedy's NSC staff, had worked as a CIA analyst for 15 years, which means he's still a CIA asset. In 1967, Johnson tapped him to win the hearts and minds of Vietnam. Yeah, that didn…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Ghana 1966 @ 18:46
Robert Komer headed
Civil Operations and Rural Development Support documented
“A year later, President Johnson decided that a top-level Saigon command for pacification was needed, and he chose Comer for the job and promised him anything that he needed for the job to be done well. The Saigon unit was called CORDS, and …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Presidents’ Secret Wars, chapter 15 @ 43:08
Lyndon B. Johnson appointed
Robert Komer documented
“A year later, President Johnson decided that a top-level Saigon command for pacification was needed, and he chose Comer for the job and promised him anything that he needed for the job to be done well. The Saigon unit was called CORDS, and …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Presidents’ Secret Wars, chapter 15 @ 43:08
Robert Komer carried_out_attack
Phoenix Program host_asserted
“All of that nasty shit that we've talked about and spent the better part of a week on the Phoenix program and the murder, pacification, burning down of villages, creating another village, put a remote, checkpoints, all of those things. This…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 6:59
Robert Komer carried_out_attack
CORDS host_asserted
“And a lot of those was orchestrated out of the National Security Advisor's office during Lyndon B. Johnson's time. So this guy's basically hovering around all of this with his psychological operations background. So he becomes the guy in ch…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 8:52
Robert Komer recruited
William Colby host_asserted
“nexus of the phoenix program he he hires william colby basically as his deputy and we all know that william colby goes on to be the cia director um he it was william colby that also acknowledges that over 20 000 people died as a direct resu…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 9:52
Lyndon B. Johnson appointed
Robert Komer host_asserted
“President Lyndon Johnson had sent Comer to South Vietnam to provide an impetus to nation building efforts. Comer was known for his broke management style. I mean, he was a bully. That's the best way to say it, which endeared himself to the …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 11:21
Robert Komer appointed
Turkey host_asserted
“And after working briefly as a consultant to RAN, which, by the way, is a front for the CIA as well, he was appointed to be the ambassador of Turkey. Now, I want you to understand the significance of this. So the guy that is setting up the …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 18:39
Robert Komer member_of
RAND Corporation host_asserted
“And after working briefly as a consultant to RAN, which, by the way, is a front for the CIA as well, he was appointed to be the ambassador of Turkey. Now, I want you to understand the significance of this. So the guy that is setting up the …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 18:39
William Colby succeeded
Robert Komer host_asserted
“He's a CIA asset. He's a Rand employee. He's a vicious murderer of Vietnamese. And we just appoint him in 1968 to be the ambassador to Turkey. And it says that he was succeeded in the cords Vietnam operation by William Colby, which I had al…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 19:41
Robert Komer member_of
RAND Corporation host_asserted
“in order to increase funding to perpetuate the Operation Gladio at an accelerated pace, that this was all a creation of their own. So after he's done in Turkey creating havoc, he returns to Rand in 1970 doing quote-unquote defense studies. …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 25:35
Robert Komer member_of
Jimmy Carter host_asserted
“It says that Comer would later work for Jimmy Carter's administration as well. And in the 80s, he became a vocal critic of basically building up our Navy. And he died in, let's see, when did he die? He died in 2000, but not before he was gi…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 27:10
Robert Komer member_of
National Security Council book_quoted
“during and after this particular episode. So it says that this view had prevailed and now it was up to Comer to carry out the president's commitment in the face of the bureaucratic resistance from the civilian agencies. So Comer is basicall…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 36:45
Lyndon B. Johnson appointed
Robert Komer book_quoted
“during and after this particular episode. So it says that this view had prevailed and now it was up to Comer to carry out the president's commitment in the face of the bureaucratic resistance from the civilian agencies. So Comer is basicall…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 36:45
Robert Komer recruited
Richard Holbrooke book_quoted
“many, many times in the future as a corrupt SOB working inside the White House of various administrations, who had worked for him in Saigon. Holbrooke, in turn, recommended that Comer hire Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Montague. Montague h…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 43:54
Robert Komer recruited
Robert Montague book_quoted
“many, many times in the future as a corrupt SOB working inside the White House of various administrations, who had worked for him in Saigon. Holbrooke, in turn, recommended that Comer hire Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Montague. Montague h…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 43:54
Robert Komer recruited
RAND Corporation book_quoted
“Westmoreland staff at the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam. Comer added two RANDCorp employees, keep in mind those are CIA assets, a Bureau of Budget employee to control agency allocations of funding for pacification activities, …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 44:22
Robert Komer member_of
CORDS book_quoted
“on Robert Comer, whose nickname was Blowtorch. He's the CIA guy that was in charge of the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support, CORDS, that we talked about in our last book, which was a multi-agency pacification program that gave …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner-Strange Tales of the Parapolitical Part 14 Final @ 30:36
Robert Komer trained
Paul Aussaresses book_quoted
“Aziz Aras during the 1960s and was largely influenced by both of their counterinsurgency work. It was the French military officer who had not served in Vietnam that would have the most influence on Phoenix, and his name was David Galula, G-…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner-Strange Tales of the Parapolitical Part 14 Final @ 31:09
Robert Komer headed
Civil Operations and Rural Development Support book_quoted
“on Robert Comer, whose nickname was Blowtorch. He's the CIA guy that was in charge of the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support, CORDS, that we talked about in our last book, which was a multi-agency pacification program that gave …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner-Drugs Oil and War by Peter Dale Scott Part 1 @ 30:36
Robert Komer founded
Phoenix Program documented
“Helms, who had known nothing about the court's chief request, apologetically told Colby that he had been overridden and he was going to Vietnam. The court's error led to one of the most controversial pacification programs in the Vietnam War…”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner Presidents’ Secret Wars, chapter 15 @ 44:31
Robert Komer suggested_language_for
Richard M. Bissell Jr. documented
“which is basically CIA sheep dipped into the Pentagon. Closely watched at the White House, Bissell's study became almost his swan song at the CIA. In contrast to pre-Cuba days, he now listened hard to what the White House had to say. From t…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Chap 24 (25) @ 41:54
Robert Komer recommended
Maxwell D. Taylor documented
“Bissell suddenly spoke of regaining public confidence in the CIA's covert action by revealing the existence of the special group, much as Eisenhower had once revealed the Killian board. At another point, Bob Comer did a summary of Bissell's…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Chap 24 (25) @ 42:53
Robert Komer reported_to
McGeorge Bundy documented
“which his assistant, John Bross, distributed in November of 21, or on the 21st. Although Comer assured Bissell that his summary changes changed nothing in the paper, he told his boss, McGeorge Bundy, quote, I took advantage of Walt's immine…”
▶ The Colonel's Corner Safe for Democracy Chap 24 (25) @ 43:22
Lyndon B. Johnson appointed
Robert Komer host_asserted
“So it kind of was like a dual hat, have one of the civilian NGO kind of people here and then the commander up top. Although the civilians continued to object, Johnson wanted quick results, the kind the military could provide. And therefore,…”
▶ Operation Gladio-Vietnam Part 8 Phoenix Program @ 51:33
Robert Komer recruited
Bureau of the Budget book_quoted
“Westmoreland staff at the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam. Comer added two RANDCorp employees, keep in mind those are CIA assets, a Bureau of Budget employee to control agency allocations of funding for pacification activities, …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 44:22
Robert Komer member_of
Richie Boys host_asserted
“group from all of this crap we're doing so I'm keeping it light on the research level but I've been looking into several of Cartwright's Richie Boys and one of them that gives you the ability to look at what research we've already accomplis…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 0:39
Robert Komer member_of
National Security Council host_asserted
“So it said he served on the staff of the National Security Council under McGeorge Bundy. And understanding who McGeorge Bundy is, you have to know that he was president of the Ford Foundation, i.e. a CIA front. And he also was part of the C…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 5:37
Robert Komer appointed
National Security Council host_asserted
“part of the executive branch problem that we've had in the past. He's definitely part of the international syndicate. All right. So it says after Bundy's departure, Comer briefly served as the national security advisor before he was then re…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 6:35
Robert Komer member_of
CIA host_asserted
“And he later joined the CIA. And he also joined the precursor to the CIA because he was in it before the official act of creating the CIA was. So he joined in 1947. The CIA technically wasn't created until 1948. So he joined when it was cal…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 5:07
Robert Komer member_of
CIA book_quoted
“on Robert Comer, whose nickname was Blowtorch. He's the CIA guy that was in charge of the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support, CORDS, that we talked about in our last book, which was a multi-agency pacification program that gave …”
▶ The Colonel’s Corner-Drugs Oil and War by Peter Dale Scott Part 1 @ 30:36
Robert Komer funded
Vietnam book_quoted
“So basically, Comer was creating his own job description. Comer understood his mandate as a management problem subject to analysis, input-output models, concepts that he had learned at the Harvard Business School. Synchronize existing U.S. …”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 38:41
George Carver spied_on
Robert Komer book_quoted
“who ran basically the Vietnam desk, had sent a memorandum to Richard Helms, who was the CIA director at the time, after Comer's second visit, and he accused Comer of fundamental misconceptions about the nature of the war in Vietnam. He felt…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 54:14
Robert Komer carried_out_attack
Operation Gladio host_asserted
“And just horrific retribution under a supposed attack that didn't even happen the way they portended it to have happened. And overseeing all of this is this Comer dude. He's right smack in the middle of it. Okay, so it says that he left a s…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 24:01
Operation Gladio carried_out_attack
Robert Komer host_asserted
“His car was set on fire in the Middle East Technical University by a group of students. They say that they're Marxist-Leninists, but we don't know what they were actually. And they did it under the banner of an organization that aligned wit…”
▶ Operation Gladio - Relook at Robert Komer (Phoenix) as a Ritchie Boy @ 24:34
Mentions (85)
▶ 18:15
ever let them see a tear. You never, ever let them see you sweat. These people are evil. On May 27, 1965, Robert Comer, K-O-M-E-R, a national security staffer, briefed his boss, George Bundy, President Johnson's Special Assistant for Nation…
▶ 18:46
who first joined the White House as a member of President Kennedy's NSC staff, had worked as a CIA analyst for 15 years, which means he's still a CIA asset. In 1967, Johnson tapped him to win the hearts and minds of Vietnam. Yeah, that didn…
▶ 19:13
interagency sanctioned by the White House and supervised by the State Department CIA, but also intergovernmental, meaning that they were using other NATO countries to orchestrate the coup. FYI, he advised, we may have a pro-Western coup in …
▶ 19:41
economic conditions may provide the spark because that's the entire intent. Every single one of these coups has been preceded by economic blackmail. They go hand in hand. The plotters are keeping us brief, he noted, and that the State Depar…
▶ 20:11
countries, including France, have been helping to set up the situation by ignoring Kruma's pleas for economic aid. Comer's reference to not being told if the U.S. was directly involved in the coup is revealing, and quite likely, a nod to hi…
▶ 20:36
Among the most deeply ingrained aspects of intelligence tradecraft and culture is plausible deniability, the habit of mind and practice designed to insulate the U.S., particularly the president, while they're doing covert operations. Comer …
▶ 21:06
It would be unreasonable to argue that the U.S. was not directly involved in the creation and increasing hostile conditions that favored a coup. You just weren't allowed to say it out loud. As it turned out, the coup did not occur for anoth…
▶ 21:34
His assessment that Kruma and his successors was telling, quote, the coup in Ghana is another example of fortuitous windfall. Kruma was doing more to undermine our interests than any other black African. And in a reaction to his strongly pr…
▶ 56:32
the PR propaganda campaign to convince America that we needed to go to war with Iraq after 9-11. And this Richie Boy guy is responsible for the basic creation of Wolfowitz and Pearl. So that's crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. All right, moving o…
▶ 57:06
Comer, K-O-M-E-R, was accepted into the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington. There he studied and took overseas trips to places like Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, India, Libya, Lebanon, and Egypt. You know, all of the places that Is…
▶ 57:35
Comer was promoted and became the assistant of the chief of staff and eventually became the chief of O slash N E. And then he talks about his attendance at National War College. And he wrote a paper called Toward a New Rationale for Foreign…
▶ 58:07
That's nice. Just another theft of the American wealth. Just coming up with reasons why they need to spend all of our money. Comer's performance at National War College impressed Vice Admiral Woldred, who penned a letter to then CIA Alan Du…
▶ 1:08
primarily from the Vietnam segment in the Phoenix program. But to go back, and we talked about this guy that we're going to talk about today, Robert Comer, during our Vietnam segment. But I think it makes it more relative. And you guys reme…
▶ 3:08
a post that he had made a while back. And in the post, there's several people that he featured in it, but Robert Comer was one of them. And so I thought, let me just go look, knowing now what I know, the fact that he was a Richie boy. Okay,…
▶ 3:34
is to pull him up on Wikipedia just so that you can get your mind wrapped around what his background is. Oh, they're kicking Bridget out, too. They must not want us to talk about this guy, so he must be really good. Okay, so we come across …
▶ 4:06
So his name is Robert William Comer, and his nickname was Blowtorch Bob. And he also, of course, spent some time in the National Security Advisor's office, which we know is the White House Executive Agency for Covert Operations, liaisons wi…
▶ 4:35
and in some cases, doing their own covert operations right out of the National Security Advisor's office, like back during the day of Ronald Reagan. So it says he was born in Chicago, he was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and he went to Har…
▶ 6:35
part of the executive branch problem that we've had in the past. He's definitely part of the international syndicate. All right. So it says after Bundy's departure, Comer briefly served as the national security advisor before he was then re…
▶ 6:59
All of that nasty shit that we've talked about and spent the better part of a week on the Phoenix program and the murder, pacification, burning down of villages, creating another village, put a remote, checkpoints, all of those things. This…
▶ 7:28
He was involved in the negotiations with Israel's prime minister to create an MOU about Israeli nuclear capabilities. This was back in 1965 after JFK had demanded they not have one. So it's also, it says dated March 10th, 1965, the MOU vari…
▶ 8:24
It was worded in a way that allowed Israel to do whatever they wanted. So Comer then shows up in 1967 in South Vietnam. Now, keep in mind, there are so many of these stories that we've uncovered, so much of history, I should say, that pivot…
▶ 8:52
And a lot of those was orchestrated out of the National Security Advisor's office during Lyndon B. Johnson's time. So this guy's basically hovering around all of this with his psychological operations background. So he becomes the guy in ch…
▶ 9:52
nexus of the phoenix program he he hires william colby basically as his deputy and we all know that william colby goes on to be the cia director um he it was william colby that also acknowledges that over 20 000 people died as a direct resu…
▶ 11:21
President Lyndon Johnson had sent Comer to South Vietnam to provide an impetus to nation building efforts. Comer was known for his broke management style. I mean, he was a bully. That's the best way to say it, which endeared himself to the …
▶ 16:27
to F with everybody as far as the big boogie man of the USSR and Cuba in our theater. So this is monumental. And so anyway, I'm going to go back to talking about Robert Comer. And so you can kind of see where…
▶ 17:22
clearly see, and I pointed them out to you, the parallels between the Phoenix program and the Homeland Security Office. There is a direct correlation at every level. So that's why it's so important to look into these types of things. So the…
▶ 17:53
In a revealing discussion with military historians, Comer said, quote, everybody and nobody, unquote, was responsible for counterinsurgency against the, quote, unquote, communist Viet Cong guerrillas.…
▶ 18:10
He said it, quote, fell between stools, which accounted for the prolonged failure to push things on a large scale, even though many correctly analyzed the need, unquote. Comer focused his work on the expansion of village militias loyal to t…
▶ 18:39
And after working briefly as a consultant to RAN, which, by the way, is a front for the CIA as well, he was appointed to be the ambassador of Turkey. Now, I want you to understand the significance of this. So the guy that is setting up the …
▶ 19:10
Do you see where we're going with this? And as soon as they know that Vietnam is going to fall and the opium focus is going to be transferred to northern Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan, lo and behold, Robert Comer shows up as the ambassador …
▶ 19:41
He's a CIA asset. He's a Rand employee. He's a vicious murderer of Vietnamese. And we just appoint him in 1968 to be the ambassador to Turkey. And it says that he was succeeded in the cords Vietnam operation by William Colby, which I had al…
▶ 20:11
It goes on to say that Ambassador Comer, known for his success in garnering support in a hostile environment like Vietnam, tried to calm down the relations in the Turkish population, which let me tell you 100% is bullshit because we know fr…
▶ 20:34
All of this crap in Wikipedia, while it gives you a good skeleton to look at, you have to know what the hell's going on if you're going to actually use Wikipedia. Because who had the biggest NATO stay-behind trained Gladio program in the en…
▶ 24:01
And just horrific retribution under a supposed attack that didn't even happen the way they portended it to have happened. And overseeing all of this is this Comer dude. He's right smack in the middle of it. Okay, so it says that he left a s…
▶ 26:39
in Vietnam. And it says that during that time, he went back in 1970 to South Vietnam for a two-week tour. On his return to the U.S., he reported that the U.S. and South Vietnam had beaten the Viet Cong insurgency and controlled most of the …
▶ 27:10
It says that Comer would later work for Jimmy Carter's administration as well. And in the 80s, he became a vocal critic of basically building up our Navy. And he died in, let's see, when did he die? He died in 2000, but not before he was gi…
▶ 30:26
I'm going to read just a little bit of it. At 44 years old, Robert Comer felt the tug of the string of memories appointed by Johnson as the interim National Security Advisor when McGeorge Bundy left for a few weeks before to head the Ford F…
▶ 36:45
during and after this particular episode. So it says that this view had prevailed and now it was up to Comer to carry out the president's commitment in the face of the bureaucratic resistance from the civilian agencies. So Comer is basicall…
▶ 37:15
into Vietnam doing the bidding of the president. And keep in mind, that is the model that was used in the Iran-Contra only out of the VP's office when they had Felix Rodriguez and those guys being ran out of Vice President Bush's office dir…
▶ 37:43
With terrier-like determination, he had a reputation among Washington insiders for being prickly, abrasive, brash, impatient, and intolerant of bureaucratic foot dragging. As a longtime central intelligence analyst and NSC staff member, he …
▶ 38:13
that he was to manage and supervise an authority Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wanted included would have to be in writing for a bureaucrat to believe. Even then, the bureaucrats would challenge Comer's authority and cooperation may …
▶ 38:41
So basically, Comer was creating his own job description. Comer understood his mandate as a management problem subject to analysis, input-output models, concepts that he had learned at the Harvard Business School. Synchronize existing U.S. …
▶ 39:07
and developing new programs to eliminate those problems as, quote, it was the president's determination that the program be speeded up, given priority over military operations, and conducted in a wartime urgency, unquote. So basically, John…
▶ 39:37
in Saigon and not Washington in order to implement the direction. There were two approaches to take. The more direct approach, and Comer always preferred the direct approach, was to work with the ambassador at the time. And the ambassador, …
▶ 40:12
Porter had been designated to improve the management of the U.S. support of the pacification efforts as Comer's counterpart in Saigon, and together they would use the authority of the president over the resistance in the bureaucrats that th…
▶ 40:44
officials in Washington by having these officials instruct their field agencies to comply with Porter or his guidance. One aspect was certain. Comer was not going to waste valuable time working through interagency committees in Washington. …
▶ 41:04
Comer had completed and cleared with the relevant civilian agencies a presidential directive designed to centralize the management of the pacification program in Washington under his direction. The State Department had put up a fight, but p…
▶ 41:31
convinced the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, to yield. President Johnson signed this directive, which later came out as National Security Action Memorandum 343, and created a special assistance for peaceful construction in Vietnam. Another …
▶ 42:32
The directive spilled out clearly Comer's mandate to carry the responsibility for the direction, coordination, and supervision in Washington of the U.S. non-military programs for peaceful construction relating to Vietnam. The document also …
▶ 43:00
would assure that the civilian pacification efforts were coordinated with military operations. Further, he would support the U.S. mission in Saigon on matters under his purview. Comer administered a White House bureaucratic coup d'etat as w…
▶ 43:25
And he would not report to the president's national security advisor. He was going to report directly to the president. Comer had then created an office with a small select staff to assist him. Leonhardt, as noted, was going to be his deput…
▶ 43:54
many, many times in the future as a corrupt SOB working inside the White House of various administrations, who had worked for him in Saigon. Holbrooke, in turn, recommended that Comer hire Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Montague. Montague h…
▶ 44:22
Westmoreland staff at the U.S. Military Assistance Command in Vietnam. Comer added two RANDCorp employees, keep in mind those are CIA assets, a Bureau of Budget employee to control agency allocations of funding for pacification activities, …
▶ 44:53
It was the first of more than a dozen trips that he would take over the next year from his perch in Washington, D.C. He sent his official trip report by message to LBJ Ranch in Texas. It began with a self-deprecatory statement that his view…
▶ 45:22
Nonetheless, Comer's views were generally positive. He had established a close working relationship with Lodge, Porter, and Westmoreland. He also was confident that the U.S. government could build an effective non-military effort to complem…
▶ 45:51
lagging significantly behind the military effort. Comer understood that military requirements had priorities but cited a number of problems that were causing economic instability for South Vietnam. These issues needed immediate attention. T…
▶ 47:37
They are talking about taking over the ports for the control of the drug trade. So just want to throw that in. A month later in a cable to Johnson, Comer apologized to the president for the long period in which he had not provided him an up…
▶ 48:07
anguished screams will attest, unquote. In other words, he's ringing people's neck in order to get things going. His moniker blowtorch from Ambassador Lodge was assigned and Lodge had likened Comer's demand for progress to having a blowtorc…
▶ 48:36
providing a frank assessment to Johnson. The civil side was a mess. Again, he pointed out that the military dominance in Saigon, the weak and apathetic South Vietnamese government, the inability of the U.S. civilian agencies to operate at t…
▶ 50:04
That's not doing anything. Not the CIA's completely laying waste to entire villages. The problem is having military people walking around in military uniforms. That's a problem, according to Comer. Comer offered several recommendations that…
▶ 50:34
such as in-country airlift for moving USAID supplies to rural areas and helping with the port congestion. Comer believed that eliminating the Viet Cong influence in the countryside and limiting inflation were the highest priorities. He urge…
▶ 51:03
The president acted as Comer requested when Lodge returned to Washington for consultations. Comer reiterated his concern at a National Security Council meeting a few days later, going as far as to say that the pacification has been outrun b…
▶ 51:33
So it kind of was like a dual hat, have one of the civilian NGO kind of people here and then the commander up top. Although the civilians continued to object, Johnson wanted quick results, the kind the military could provide. And therefore,…
▶ 56:03
You know, does he support the stooge that you just installed as a president? So according to this guy, what was needed was cooperation. But turf battles between the CIA and military was basically obstructing still even after they've had thi…
▶ 56:33
that basically the military was going to take it over and the civilian agencies, because they were not privy to all of the meeting, when he gets in theater, they're like shocked. Neither the Agency for International Development nor the CIA …
▶ 16:28
so that you basically became a hostage in your own country. Geography suggested that the possibility of sealing South Vietnamese borders and preventing infiltration was a challenge. The border control approach was being touted early in May …
▶ 30:36
on Robert Comer, whose nickname was Blowtorch. He's the CIA guy that was in charge of the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support, CORDS, that we talked about in our last book, which was a multi-agency pacification program that gave …
▶ 32:34
At least one CIA officer deeply involved in Phoenix was influenced by this guy. That would be Nelson Brickham, B-R-I-C-K-H-A-M, who is generally credited with creating the infrastructure of Phoenix. Reportedly, Brickham was a staunch believ…
▶ 42:14
meaning the pacification. Johnson's interest owed much to a White House staff that had attention on the pacification issues, and in particular to a CIA officer that had been attached for duty inside the National Security Council, Robert Com…
▶ 42:41
thought so much of Comer's work that he was soon a White House troubleshooter working on a whole host of things. In 1966, Comer served for a few months as the actual acting National Security Council advisor. The CIA action officer was tempo…
▶ 43:08
A year later, President Johnson decided that a top-level Saigon command for pacification was needed, and he chose Comer for the job and promised him anything that he needed for the job to be done well. The Saigon unit was called CORDS, and …
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was working with Comer in Vietnam. Langley soon learned just how much of an influence Comer had in the White House. In late 1967, Richard Helms, the CIA director, felt that the time had came for a change in the plans area of the Far East Di…
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in the Soviet-Russian division. William Colby naturally accepted and was already getting his first briefings when Comer asked instead for Colby's assignment to Saigon as deputy chief of his cords program. At one of the president's regular T…
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Helms, who had known nothing about the court's chief request, apologetically told Colby that he had been overridden and he was going to Vietnam. The court's error led to one of the most controversial pacification programs in the Vietnam War…
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So it was basically just a major assassination program. And Comer was responsible for it. They created prisons on islands and they basically were mapped out. They basically were concentration camps. I don't even think you could call them a …
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which is basically CIA sheep dipped into the Pentagon. Closely watched at the White House, Bissell's study became almost his swan song at the CIA. In contrast to pre-Cuba days, he now listened hard to what the White House had to say. From t…
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Bissell suddenly spoke of regaining public confidence in the CIA's covert action by revealing the existence of the special group, much as Eisenhower had once revealed the Killian board. At another point, Bob Comer did a summary of Bissell's…
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which his assistant, John Bross, distributed in November of 21, or on the 21st. Although Comer assured Bissell that his summary changes changed nothing in the paper, he told his boss, McGeorge Bundy, quote, I took advantage of Walt's immine…
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It also met Robert Comer's agenda, saying that, quote, because of its responsibility in directly related fields and because the agencies chiefly concerned are already represented on it, expansion of the mandate of the NSC special group seem…
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who accurately foresaw that he would be replaced in a military junta within a year, and NSC staffer Robert Comer. And that summer, Karuma detected the coup plot and cashiered the general. The Ghana generals and their pathetic plot, more tha…
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hogwash if you read other accounts of it. Somebody wrote, Bob Comer wrote a memo that said the coup in Ghana is another example of a fortuitous windfall. Yeah, right. It's just coincidental, according to Walt Rostow, that the CIA knew and h…
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Colby succeeded to the top job when his boss, Robert Comer, became the U.S. ambassador to Turkey. Turkey, the one with the largest stay-behind unit. As a result, it would be Colby who presided over cords in the Phoenix program. Although muc…
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on Robert Comer, whose nickname was Blowtorch. He's the CIA guy that was in charge of the Civil Operations and Rural Development Support, CORDS, that we talked about in our last book, which was a multi-agency pacification program that gave …
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Aziz Aras during the 1960s and was largely influenced by both of their counterinsurgency work. It was the French military officer who had not served in Vietnam that would have the most influence on Phoenix, and his name was David Galula, G-…
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At least one CIA officer deeply involved in Phoenix was influenced by this guy. That would be Nelson Brickham, B-R-I-C-K-H-A-M, who is generally credited with creating the infrastructure of Phoenix. Reportedly, Brickham was a staunch believ…