The Colonel’s Corner Safe for Democracy Part 7

auto-scroll word highlight ▶ Rumble @ here

Transcript

0:00 Hey, I'm trying to get the video to play over on. It is running. Is it still running? The right video, yes. Okay, because it keeps freezing up on my end. No, it's running. The first couple of times it ran partially, but I can hear you also over on Rumble when you talk through the video. Okay, all right. All right, I silenced my mic. Did it freeze?

0:36 Nope, it's still running. Okay. It's on the Cubacoo. Cubacoo. Cubacoo. I don't know if you can hear it through my microphone. I can. Okay. I don't know why it's freezing off my hand. I know. I'll leave it open so I can hear it. Okay. Oh, no, Bridget. Bridget, there's too much stuff in the background there. All right.

1:15 Sorry about that. SR, can you throw a co-host to him? Yeah. All right. Let me know when it's over because mine's frozen up. I don't know why that is. Starling. U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. National Guard, and U.S. NATO. You're trying to get me in trouble. And said, are you getting a picture yet?

2:01 You're trying to get me in trouble. Speaking of trouble, remind me, Bridget, to say this at the end once we have everybody in here, because do you know that I just got a text? Tucker released a new podcast. It's about an hour and 45 minutes. I suggest you listen to the whole thing.

2:28 At about just around the one-hour mark, he invites Clayton Morris onto the show. Well, wait a minute. Let me just hold on just a second. Is it over yet, Bridget? It's in the very end. It's running through the queues through 2003. You're about five, ten seconds out. Let me know when it gets to the Colonel thing, because I want the people on Rumble to be able to hear it as well.

3:09 And that's a wrap. Okay. All right. So here's the deal. So Tucker just released a What's Going On in Iran segment. It's about an hour and 45 minutes. Unmute your mic on Rumble. Okay. Dadgummit. The recent Tucker video, if you go to about the one hour when he invites Clayton Morris onto the show,

3:42 Clayton Morris and him have a little bit of dialogue, but at the 102 mark, Clayton Morris mentions Operation Gladio, Strategy of Tension, and Colonel Towner Watkins. Oh, my God. That's awesome. Yes. Congratulations. That was a long... Yeah. So, just so that you guys know, we are making...

4:16 A difference. Our little group of the world is making a difference. And I want you all to know that it would not be possible without each and every one of you. Holy crap. And thanks to God's timing, our video is out there. Right? Just coincidentally, right? Yes. Just coincidentally.

4:48 Okay. Oh my gosh. All right. Now somehow I'm going to have to concentrate on this book. Okay. So I want to read a footnote that's on the bottom of page 82 in our book. We're still on covert legions and safer democracy because I think it's very interesting. Despite the psychological strategy board's lack of impact on America's secret wars or perhaps

5:20 perhaps to shield its very success at avoiding subordination to the National Security Council 10-5 system, the CIA has very jealously guarded the records of the Psychological Strategy Board. In December of 1988, after the author of this book wrote about the Psychological Strategy Board in a systematic way for the very first time,

5:48 The CIA sent a plane with a team of armed guards to Kansas City. The team went to the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, seized the Psychological Strategy Board's records and returned them to Washington. It became the first time in history that the National Archives, that a set of records processed under existing regulations and open to research,

6:19 had been withdrawn from public view. The CIA held on to the records for months, extracting several hundreds of documents from the set and then returned them to the Truman Library. It cannot have been the quality of the Psychological Strategy Board's planning for psychological warfare that accounted for this degree of concern by Langley.

6:48 That just needs to hang in the air for a minute. Returning to the text of the book, the Psychological Strategy Board had a second problem, just as big as the one we discussed the day before yesterday. In the nature of its task of evaluating and coordinating U.S. psychological war plans,

7:13 Gordon Gray's staff had orders to assemble overall regional country and subject plans that the board could review. Planning for propaganda and psychological warfare and later monitoring national efforts in this regard became the job of the Psychological Strategy Board staff office. In one typical case in August of 51, Director Gray suggested that the PSB meeting.

7:44 that the staff do an inventory paper surveying Cold War quote-unquote weapons ranging from private media to government agencies to public associations that could be utilized in political warfare. Then he set up an overall study with three panels to examine the policy basis.

8:15 the intelligence framework, and finally, the actual inventory. First, the intelligence component had to be dropped when it aroused the CIA's anger. The inventory panel's draft report finished that fall ran 100 pages long. Director Gray made the group cut a quarter of the content but found the State Department willing to read only a three-page

8:46 The CIA and the Pentagon restricted themselves to bland comments. Gray resorted to putting out the full paper before Christmas, labeling it simply for information, not action. More and more, the pattern became one of fierce bureaucratic warfare. The State Department proved the worst offender, objecting that master plans were not practical and infringed upon basic foreign policy.

9:15 Gordon Gray countered that he would take the issue to Truman. Statewood then went the other way, heaping work on the board to overwhelm it, sending mounds of papers, scheduling meetings, briefings, consultations with diplomats and returning ambassadors. They were overwhelming the system to break it. The board became so inundated.

9:43 that it could not think strategically, much less write long-range concept papers. Gray finally gave up and concentrated on his university work, a job he kept through 1955. The first comprehensive plan was for Germany, completed and sent to the PSB in the summer of 1952. Plans for other psychological operations aimed at reducing Communist Party electoral power in France and Italy.

10:13 And again, let me just reiterate what they were referring to as communist impact, in some cases boiled down to well-organized labor unions. They also discussed negotiations for a Korean ceasefire at creating a pro-American disposition among the Japanese, at carrying out doctrinal

10:48 ideological warfare against the Soviet Union. Some PSB planners felt the CIA did not know enough about the political differences among Soviet leaders for a sound psychological warfare plan. They weren't interested. The CIA's use of the Soviet Union was as a boogeyman. They considered requesting a special national intelligence estimate on the subject. The PSB wanted a psychological warfare.

11:19 plan to be implemented upon the death of Stalin. That turned into a huge fight. The plan would never be completed because again, they're not interested in actual foreign policy. They're interested in an agenda that allows them to go worldwide and steal resources. Every effort to look at what benefits America was thwarted.

11:48 It's a solid indication that the theory we came up with years ago is in fact true. Every effort to coordinate what's in America's best interest is fought from the system inside. Instead, when Joseph Stalin died in March of 53, the American response was cobbled together. Again, you would think if you have intelligence, an intelligence agency,

12:22 that that would be their number one thing of the boogeyman, that Stalin's eventually going to die. Why were they not contemplating that? Because they want the chaos. They want the Soviet Union, until they can come up with another boogeyman, to exist. All the high-level interest, the encouragement of President Truman, and the advice of psychological warfare experts like Paul.

12:53 Linebarger never moved psychological warfare techniques beyond a crude level. Linebarger, something of a guru in the field, had written a standard text on the subject and had been a top consultant to Wisner's Far East Division. He ran an orientation course to introduce new staff to the arena.

13:21 which the board ordered officials to attend and which the CIA hosted through its six iterations. The agency's support for this endeavor constituted service it could trade on when the Psychological Strategy Board tried to clamp down on it. We're participating. Not that any of the training mattered. A plan for a psychological offensive against Russia, for example, is studied.

13:50 with moralistic rhetoric that sounds like a collection of homilies and themes. The three objectives in this plan were to emphasize to Soviet rulers and peoples the reckless nature of their policy to establish goodwill between the people of the two nations and to widen a schism thought to exist between the Soviet people and the rulers. The propaganda campaign.

14:20 suggested to each the following. This is a quote. The attempts of all tyrants to conquer the world have always failed. Truth, mercy, pity, charity, love of family, hospitality are some of the basic values which have always been dear to the Soviet people and are held in common with the people of the free world, but in contempt by the Soviet rulers. The U.S. is now...

14:50 You guys need to be sitting down, probably with seatbelts on. This is a quote. The U.S. is peace-loving and honors the sovereignty and integrity of peoples and nations, while by contrast, Soviet statements of possibilities of peaceful coexistence have been made only for the purpose of deceiving Soviet and other peoples. It goes on, in Russia, first...

15:22 Freedom of speech was lost. Now, freedom of silence, unquote. I just, I put in the margins of my book, ha ha ha. In Truman's era alone, the Psychological Strategy Board accumulated more than 33,000 pages of records. Much of them were minutiae, and most of that of about the same sophistication, or lack thereof. Henry Kissinger, an early

15:55 PSB consultant, compiled an advisory report on Germany used in developing the psychological war plan in Germany. From Italy to Thailand, from Sweden to Southeast Asia, from the potential role of wealthy individuals in foreign countries to, quote, moral rearmament events around the world, to

16:23 Another subject, forest problems in Africa, Near East and Southeast Asia. That was just the name of a few of them. The PSB tried to build global influence. Plan Torrential concerned psychological operations during the nuclear war, as if it would matter. Plan Takeoff tried to predetermine the spin to put on any possible collapse of truce talks.

16:52 to end the Korean War. Another stuffed file concerned, quote, doctrinal warfare, unquote. There was a project called Engross, which specified educating escapees from behind the Iron Curtain, while at the same time, the PSB crafted a plan to discredit Russian brainwashing. The plans were usually written by ad hoc committees brought together for a

17:23 particular purpose. For example, the contingency paper for spinning the Korean truce negotiations involved a group of seven, three people from state, one from CIA, and one from the military. Several of these people had temporary duties assignments to the PSB. The others simply went to meetings. Perhaps it's not surprising that more than a year after state originally asked for the study, it had yet to be completed. Through mid-1953,

17:53 the Psychological Strategy Board set up 36 of these panels to draft 44 different plans. When approached by groups like geographically aligned groups, there were all, this part here is talking about the overwhelming, basically there was an edict that was put out by State Department that just said overwhelm this board.

18:26 Somehow, the psychological warfare specialist failed in translating America's sincere message into a compelling message. And the United States cheapened the coin of its appeal by conducting covert operations while all of this was going on. Those covert operations obviously did not represent America's words emphasizing democratic solutions.

19:01 At home, the stagnant civil rights, the loyalty investigations, and McCarthyism of the 1950s, like the red baiting of the left in later decades, offered America's adversaries targets to create their own propaganda. Presidents employing the CIA as a Cold War agency, sending the spooks out to make the world, quote unquote, safe for democracy, as the book title indicates.

19:29 Were to use a baseball analogy, putting a batter in the box who already had one strike against him. As for the State Department, Paul Nitz, N-I-T-Z-E, now chief of policy planning staff, told Gordon Gray, quote, look, you just forget about policy. That's not your business. We'll make the policy and then you can put it in your damn radio, unquote. Others had hoped to have an easier time of it.

20:01 namely the military experts on unconventional warfare, for whom Gordon Gray had toiled while still at the Pentagon. In the early post-war years, there was little support for these methods in the armed forces. Army Ranger units and Merrill's marauders in Burma had been disbanded, kinda. Psychological warfare capabilities existed only residually within the intelligence staffs of the various services.

20:30 President Eisenhower, of Army Chief of Staff until 1948, remembered his successes with psychological warfare. The deceptions used the unconventional warfare that had helped the D-Day invasion and tried to preserve those capabilities. Major General Robert McClure, who had been Ike's psychological warfare expert, did his best to crusade for this capability.

20:57 Some senior officers believe that covert psychological warfare operations could not be accepted by American people. The advocates of military psychological warfare were helped by the appearance of NSC 4-A, which demonstrated presidential interest in the area of psychological warfare. The Army began a staff study in January of 1948 that led to the adoption that fall of a plan.

21:26 that led to the adoption for establishing standardized psychological warfare units plus staffs at different echelons of command. Army proponents also tried to carve out a larger role for themselves. General Wiedemeyer, chief of the Army's Plans and Operations Division, thought the assignment of all black propaganda to the CIA was unsound.

21:52 General McClure argued the Army possessed a greater capability in the form of outlets and audience than even the State Department. A couple of years earlier, with the occupation forces in Germany, McClure had reported that his staff controlled a full array of media. Listen to this. This is the military. They controlled media, several dozen newspapers, six radio stations, more than 100 magazines.

22:24 every theater and movie screen, which amounted to almost a thousand, and literally every one of the thousands of books, magazines, and newspaper kiosks in the country talking about Germany in the aftermath. And that's to be expected to some extent, but understand that the army controlling these as they're trying to reconstitute West Germany.

22:53 during the aftermath of World War II somewhat is understandable, but the CIA continued doing exactly that in countries that we had never been at war with. Okay, such a degree of penetration offered U.S. psychological warriors dominance as great as anything enjoyed by America's ideological enemies.

23:24 Instead of the occupation, gradually lifted controls on the German media and the U.S. military steadily dismantled the PSYOPs units. Soon the subject was scarcely even taught in service schools. In 1950, there were only seven officers in the U.S. Army who specialized in it. As Assistant Secretary of the Army, Gordon Gray encouraged the development of this psychological warfare capability and made good use of studies.

23:52 by consultants like Paul Leinbarger that argued for better articulation of capabilities. Appeals for help from Frank Wisner at the CIA also had their uses within the Army hierarchy. Gray went further, knocking heads together, demanding progress reports from the Army, from General Lawton Collins. All of this predated Gray's duty at the Psychological Strategy Board.

24:22 There is also the issue of unconventional warfare capabilities, or as they are known today, special operation forces. At first, paramilitary operations were considered part of this psychological warfare function. The province of the Army's intelligence G2 staff, the paramilitary side, had been viewed with distaste by Gray's predecessor, Army Secretary Kenneth Royal, who told

24:50 a June 1948 meeting that he wanted his service to have nothing to do with covert operations. Prodded by Gray and others, Royal soon allowed participation in overt and even covert propaganda. By March of 49, Gray could tell his boss that we are actually participating in Europe, the army. We're now four years post-war.

25:17 They're conducting psychological operations in Europe, which of course we know they were doing because they did it, the CIA did it, but in concert with the military in 1948 Italian election. Meanwhile, the army staff acquired a special warfare section within its psychological warfare area, manned by veterans of Merrill's Maruders, former OSS staff, and guerrilla commanders.

25:49 In the Philippines, the Special Warfare Section laid down contingency plans for paramilitary actions, including in the event of war in Europe. One, to obstruct movement of Soviet reinforcements by activating partisan force in Eastern Europe, which of course is Gladio. A Joint Chiefs paper in August 1948

26:16 recommended the U.S. support guerrilla warfare under the policy direction of the National Security Council, envisioning the Army acquiring means to carry out the plans. As already noted, Truman's policy provided the CIA to have primary responsibility for covert operations during peacetime and the military in war. This dovetails directly into the Detachment A that we discovered.

26:42 and them digging up all of the weapon caches throughout Europe and replacing them with NATO weapons. What they're describing here is the advent of Operation Gladio. Carrying out covert operations naturally meant real units and troops. The Joint Chiefs recommended against any sort of special warfare corps. Instead, favoring individual training within the services, specialists would be on call to lead NATO guerrilla operations.

27:13 Again, this harkens back to Operation Gladio. So they're creating these resistance units that will go on to do domestic terrorism, but they're advocating in the army that they are going to train officers to command these guerrilla units. The army consulted with former OSS commander Colonel Ray Pierce on the formation of a ranger group.

27:41 planned in early 1949 to include about 115 officers and 135 enlisted. These airborne reconnaissance agents would be sent to theaters, army groups, and armies for specified missions. This was a step towards Special Warfare Corps, not away from it. Elsewhere, the Korean War provided huge impetus.

28:10 Troops in the field tried to run psychological warfare campaigns against North Koreans and then the communist Chinese. Army commanders soon found inadequate the use of Air Force's occasional transport planes diverted from other missions. After some Washington infighting, the Air Force moved ahead with the first annual special warfare units. They were called ARC wings.

28:40 We've talked about them. ARC Wings was used in Korea. ARC Wings was used in Taiwan, out of the Philippines, to supply Operation Gladio-type capability. Three of these units were formed. Weirdly enough, they were stationed in Great Britain, Libya, Okinawa, and Clark. Clark being in the Philippines.

29:12 that the ARC units were basically tasked by the CIA. They were intimately involved in the ferrying of, not that they were actually flying them on military aircraft, I'm not saying that. I don't have any evidence of that, but of course it wouldn't surprise me either, to do with the control of opium from Southeast Asia. The one in Libya, of course, was used for

29:42 things in the Mediterranean and operations in Africa. A base in Alaska was planned but never activated. The ARC wings operated a wide variety of transport aircraft, exactly the same fashion as wartime air commandos or later on proprietary airlines that the CIA brought in like civil air transport because that's what they were being used for.

30:13 They engaged in disaster relief, conventional transport operations, and training flights to disguise their real covert purposes. For example, when the Air Force began flying a regular passenger cargo route from Clark in the Philippines to French Indonesia, i.e. Vietnam, in 1952, some of the missions went to the air resupply.

30:43 and communications wing, ARC. Similarly, plans of the 380th wing flying from Wilis, which is in Libya, in the mid-1950s, ferried critical fuel and chemical supplies to Turkey for the CIA's U-2 mission. And you're going to find a direct correlation to where these are, like Okinawa in Japan and the U-2 deployment.

31:13 The ARC is basically functioning as a logistical support element of the fielding of the U2 program and soon to be the SR71 program. But you find very little literature that actually connects the two. They are directly connected.

31:41 581st Wing provides an excellent example of the relationship between ARC and the CIA. Activated in July of 1951, after 11 months of training in Idaho, about 1,000 airmen moved to Clark Field, commanded by Colonel John Arnold, Jr. The 581st flew six different types of aircraft and helicopters, including

32:07 Black painted B-29 bombers in a model configured for long-range airdrops. Not long after reaching the Philippines, Colonel Arnold found himself summoned to the Far East Air Force headquarters in Tokyo. Officers briefed Arnold on his unit's role in psychological warfare, dropping leaflets over the border into Korea and China. Two CIA men added authenticity to the scene.

32:36 One of the CIA officers told the colonel, you're a marked man now. The CIA contributed to the cost of running the ARC wing. Colonel Darby, director of operations for the 581st, accompanied a CIA officer who made regular cash deliveries to the unit's finance section. Some airmen were actually CIA contacts or officers undercover. They were literally wearing military uniforms, but they were

33:05 technically CIA, revealing themselves to comrades only many years later. So no one knew they weren't actual, just regular military people. Colonel Arnold knew who the CIA people were in his unit, but made no effort to find out anything more. Arnold's trust turned out to be, he basically didn't tell anybody else in the unit.

33:34 On January 12, 1953, the wing commander and a crew of 13 flew one of their B-29s to Yokota, another Air Force base, where they picked up leaflets to drop over North Korea. These would be the 581st first PSYOPs mission into the war. Stardust 4-0 became the radio call sign. It should have taken less than half an hour. The B-29 would return to Yokota.

34:06 and reach Clark the following morning. Everything went fine over the first targets, but at the last, near Korea's border with China, fighter jets intercepted them and damaged the plane so badly they had to bail out. At 11 p.m., Stardust 4-0 radioed Mayday, the nearby city of Angdong on the Yalu River.

34:34 was the location of the 64th Air Defense Corps, the main Russian unit participating in the war, which for several months had assigned some of its fighters to night duty. The Chinese are not known to have had night fighters, but it's impossible to discover who actually shot down the B-29. The Russians regarded their participation in the war as secret, just as secret as the CIA's arc wings.

35:03 The incident provided a windfall for communist propaganda. The shooting down enabled Beijing to claim the U.S. forces were intruding into China. Interrogation of the prisoners promised plentiful information. At least seven of the crew were captured by Chinese troops. Although three, and by the way, there's no verification that Russia had anything to do with this.

35:32 because chinese was involved in everything they're going on an assumption that chinese did not have night flying fighters interrogation of prisoners um let's see three of arnold's men remained unaccounted for comrades believe they saw that one of them in chinese prisons the airmen could detail the operation of highly classified our wings colonel arnold

36:03 Might know more, as might Major William Balmer, the ops officer for the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, who had hitched a ride to see for himself what was going on. Balmer had definitely picked the wrong flight. After the Cold War, it was found that there were messages sent and that China had granted

36:37 Russian intelligence help on interrogation of the U.S. airmen. Later reporting that Moscow had received transcripts of the interrogation. Again, no confirmation that Russia was involved, but there were translated interrogation files found in the Soviet Union that were later declassified.

37:04 The American airmen were moved by train and kept there for two weeks, then taken to Beijing. Chinese security kept the whole affair under wraps until November of 1954, when Beijing decided to score a propaganda coup, holding a show trial for Arnold's crew and other CIA agents captured earlier. In his statement, no doubt made under duress, Colonel Arnold admitted that they had been

37:35 let's see, that they had been tasked besides psychological warfare missions and were supply, resupply, evacuation, and recovery of underground personnel. Colonel Arnold was sentenced to 10 years in prison, major bomber to eight, and other airmen to shorter periods. Now, what's very interesting about the terminology is that he specifically said,

38:06 that they were resupplying underground personnel, basically acknowledging that there were stay-behind units in the northern area of Korea. That's one of their missions. In fact, China released the Americans in the summer of 55 when they were taken to a railway station near Hong Kong and handed over to a U.S. team of Air Force intelligence officers. One of those officers, Delk Simpson,

38:41 CIA officers were right behind the Air Force. The CIA people were principals in the debriefing of the returned airmen in Japan. Colonel Arnold was later sent to CIA headquarters to repeat his story. John Gittinger, a CIA psychologist, observed the interviews in Japan, determining how these Americans had borne up under captivity.

39:08 Because we want to use them and their experience in order to further covert operations. Meanwhile, John Arnold's mission had outlasted his unit. For the Air Force had deactivated his arc wing soon after the truce that ended the fighting in Korea. Korea brought about not only a massive expansion of CIA activity, its budget doubled from 1951 to 1952.

39:37 Which you might imagine is kind of weird because every time one of these things happens, the CIA grows bigger. And as we've indicated, the CIA causes most of them. Indeed, for a time, the latter military operations and psychological warfare was soaking up three-fourths of the CIA's budget.

40:06 Then Frank Wisner retained his deep commitment to psychological warfare. Wisner's foot dragging where the Psychological Strategy Board was concerned aimed specifically at protecting his own turf. Secret or black propaganda as well as partially attributable gray projects were the particular province of Frank Wisner by order of the president.

40:33 The same support Wisner had lent to the Committee for a Free Europe. The balloon leaflet effort and other projects now extended to Asia. The Committee for a Free Asia originated in 1951. And by the way, it's another CIA front. A similar Radio Free Europe was set up in Taiwan to beam propaganda into mainland China. Radio Free Asia went on the air.

41:03 in May of 1951, using leased facilities to broadcast into China. Unfortunately, the agency soon discovered through surveys that for the most part, only Mao had radios. The CIA began aiming more at overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. There is evidence of CIA subsidizing publications, labor movements,

41:34 youth, and public interest groups, including Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Communist China to the UN. That's all one title. The propaganda effort was nothing if not global. In Europe, the agency began funding all manners of cultural and political publishing activities. Again, this is a CIA front.

42:02 They created certain overlaps between the CIA projects and Tom Braden. For example, Braden instructed two CIA officers in Paris working for the Congress for Cultural Freedom to keep their efforts from other agency staff, stovepipes. That way, Thomas Thayer, who headed the Wisner's branch for France, remained unaware of this activity, one of which was called...

42:34 Project Opera. As the Directorate of Operations emerged full-blown from its fusion, the International Organizations Division under Braden held center field. These activities became more transparent when they merged. One propaganda coup was mostly the product of Frank Wisner. That was a movie version of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Wisner moved Howard Hunt,

43:03 into cultural operations after his Albanian Psyops War assignment, that completely failed. Hunt managed to secure film rights to Animal Farm from Orwell's widow, Carlson Alsop. Or excuse me, from his widow, period. Carlson Alsop, one of their favorite buddies to work with in the media, a Hollywood

43:35 producer and agent, and Finis Farr, F-A-R-R, a script writer, both of them now with Frank Wisner's PSYOP. So you actually have a Hollywood producer on the payroll of the CIA. The CIA then financed the animation and filming, which began in 1951, ensuring its script ended with a more pointed allusion to communist totalitarianism. In other words,

44:07 They edited it. Midway through this process, the Psychological Strategy Board took over, having become the U.S. lead authority in this field. The PSB encouraged the CIA to seek film rights to another Orwell novel, 1984. Again, one with Cold War propaganda potential if spun the right way. Changes to the storyline of the film version of 1984 contravened Orwell's specific instructions.

44:37 The movies were not ready for distribution until 1956, by which time Wisner and the PSB had passed from the scene. Well, his former office, Wisner's still there. Much of the work in the cultural field revolved around floating of ideas where they might have intellectual and political impact. The strategic positioning of stories to attract the most.

45:03 Attention and further circulation, the careful placement of people, whether cultural figures or leaders, align with CIA to maximize their ability to act. The intensive preparation for conferences of youth and students, labor unions, and entities like Congress for Cultural Freedom.

45:32 the historian of the CIA's cultural Cold War, recounts the story with great detail, at least as it concerns art and literature. It has been officially confirmed that the CIA funded the journal Encounter and subsidized many publications as well as over a thousand books before the end of 1967. A quarter of them were in English. Some involved direct collaboration.

46:02 between the authors and the CIA. And more than one agency division was involved in these operations. The story of the CIA's relation with labor centers, more on Jay Lovestone's former boss of the American Communist Party, who became an agency asset as a labor activist. Like Alan Dulles, Lovestone ran

46:30 with an elite group who periodically lunched with Frank Wisner. Overseen by agency's counterintelligence guru, James Jesus Angleton, Lovestone provided data that guided the entire category of the CIA effort. At the moment of the inception of OPC, Frank Wisner's unit, Lovestone had become an executive secretary to the Free Trade Union Committee.

47:00 a quote-unquote quasi-independent part of the American Federation of Labor and an obvious candidate for CIA recruitment. Indications are that by 1950, Lovestone's committee had almost quadrupled its previous annual spending thanks to CIA money that was flooding in. The funds were used for anti-communist labor activities all over the world.

47:28 One example being the International Center for Free Trade Unions in exile based in Paris. It was a labor initiative with assorted liberation fronts that the CIA supported in the Balkans and East Europe. Lovestone's committee contributed on other fronts as well, such as funding for the founding conference of the Congress for Cultural Freedom in 1950.

47:58 which again was completely a CIA front. An intense period in the relationship came at the end of 1950. On November 24th, Walter Bedell Smith, Frank Wisner, and Carmel Offey met with Jay Lovestone and other union officials, including George Meany, the AFL president. The director of intelligence, Smith, incredibly thought the cash CIA channeled to Lovestone didn't constitute a subsidy.

48:29 to labor, had officially been put on Lovestone's payroll a few months earlier. The CIA continued to pay Lovestone's salary. Lovestone also thought the CIA had been pinching pennies and behaving as if his committee was merely an agency propriety, because it was. He thought that Wisner's office spent too much money on Italian unions and not enough on him.

49:01 1950 meeting, Lovestone complained about the funding level and Wisner countered by citing the amount the agency had actually given that year, $250,000. This is 1950. Just a few months later, Lovestone submitted even more ambitious proposals. The CIA should give him a larger amount pertaining to multi-year programs. By then, Allen Dulles was pressing for Carmel Offey.

49:34 whom he suspected of leaking CIA data to Lovestone to be put on the shelf. Activating a new channel, who eventually became James Jesus Angleton, Lovestone met Director Smith and senior officials again in April 51. Carmel Offey left the Lovestone committee two months later. The CIA subsidies to the Fair Trade Unions Committee dried up, but not before the agency had handed out.

50:04 almost half a million dollars. Levstone began to speak of the CIA as Frizzland and his officers as Frizzheads, but he continued reporting and from time to time seeking cash from the CIA. With regards to the CIA and journalism, there is no single avenue. Instead, a multifaceted association developed. Not only were journalist positions valuable to the CIA,

50:35 for undercover agency officers, but the media remained a principal resource for psychological operations to plant stories and ideas. Project KM Forget was the code name for a secret effort to insert stories into the media in one country, then resurface them elsewhere, which we've talked about a lot. You have a story.

51:01 put in the paper in Europe, and then you use that as your source for reporting it here. There were many more like it. The CIA grew ever more useful of the media as a font for background information for journalists and broadcasters. The relationship quickly became symbiotic. So entwined were the two sides. There would be virtual agency slots at media corporations.

51:31 For its part, the CIA assigned officers as liaisons to specific outlets. For example, through the 1950s, Alfred Clark at the agency's New York office was the CIA's link to the New York Times. His predecessor had been James Hunt, who opened a New York office for the prior version of the CIA, CIG, as early as December 1946.

52:00 In the 1950s, J.B. Love Reese, a CIA liaison for other New York major media, was identified as meeting a variety of executives of broadcasting corporations and magazines, to include CBS. Carl Bernstein, who gained fame with Bob Woodward at the Washington Post, revealing the Watergate conspiracy, later wrote an expose of the CIA and media, which exerted

52:29 The agency had used more than 400 journalists as assets. The detailed investigation of the U.S. intelligence by the Senate committee at the time supplied the number as 50, while the CIA director openly admitted at least 36. The New York Times, in a series of articles in December of 77, found that more than 30, but possibly as many as over 100 newsmen,

52:59 had worked as salaried CIA while reporting the news, quote unquote news, that at least had refused CIA recruitment officers offers, and that at least a dozen CIA officers had worked abroad using journalism as their cover. Hold on just a second. There we go.

53:38 The Senate investigation confirmed that more than a dozen U.S. news organizations and publishing houses had provided cover for CIA officers. A typical charge of CIA involvement had been leveled at the New York Times reporter Sidney Grusin. But the agency itself held a different view. At the time of the CIA operation in Guatemala, the agency convinced itself that Grusin's stories aided its enemies.

54:08 efforts to get rid of gruesome went as high as Alan Dulles. The question of penetration in the media, not simply the U.S., but globally, is central to any assessment of the CIA psychological operations. The Times reports just cited found that allegations of CIA connections involved more than 20 major media organizations, that at times the agency

54:39 had as many as 800 propagandist assets on the payroll and that the CIA had infiltrated a dozen foreign news organizations and actually owned many more while subsidizing even more, including newspapers, press agencies, other communication entities, you know, like ITT, agencies and entities or

55:11 Close relations, according to the Times, included Forum World Features, Continental Press Service, Editors Press Service, and Center for International Studies at MIT. The CIA owned printing companies in India, Italy, and Japan. The newspaper Daily American in Rome, in which it held the controlling interest, plus others.

55:45 It can be stated confidently that the CIA, through its clandestine covert operations, was controlling much of the international news cycle. Another project Tom Braden was involved in, in his international organizations division, was funding the National Student Association. We've talked about this a lot.

56:16 That was the student organization at colleges. It's kind of like the old version of Turning Points, which should make everyone question Turning Points. And it was formed at the University of Wisconsin in 1947. And it goes on to talk about the CIA paid heed to the National Student Association.

56:45 they basically had created kind of an end there to it. So before, I'm not gonna go into it today because I wanna make that the start of the next show because I do think it's critically important that we think about that because even if Turning Points USA began as a legitimate organization, independent, they would have been targeted repeatedly.

57:13 buy intelligence assets because those types of organizations are not allowed to operate independent of the intelligence agencies, especially when they're not touting the appropriate line. So just keep that in mind and we'll pick up from there tomorrow. Bridget, SR? Yes, ma'am.

57:49 Thank you all for attending here on Spaces and on Rumble at noontime. That said, don't get used to it. We'll get back to four o'clock tomorrow. We'll get back to four o'clock. So just so you guys know, I mentioned at the beginning of the week, starting today, the Strawberry Festival is running the next 10 days in a town near where I live.

58:20 And my entire amount of concerts and activities relating to stuff like that is saved for the Strawberry Festival. And they're all concentrated in that 10 days. So we are going today to see Alabama and eat a lot of strawberry shortcake. So, all right, go ahead.

58:48 The other thing I wanted to add real quick here is I'm listening to this and we're going this far back in time, back to the 50s, to understand that our news reporters, magazines, and everything else had been compromised by the CIA. Yes.

59:17 You thought Walter Cronkite was absolutely the, in my time, I don't know about y'all's time, but in my time, Walter Cronkite was the absolute on truth. Not so much. Not so much, yes. Thank you, Colonel. Yeah, all along, go ahead. Yeah, Colonel, this, so, oh man, this chapter is just full of so much.

59:48 But it's almost like I'm going to control my mouth for the first time since late 1963 by keeping it short. The point you made about whether or not the Russians had also been involved in Korea at the start is a key point because it's almost like we're designed to lose track of the key point because it was very important for them to act and sell.

1:00:17 to the u.s population on their cia controlled media right this idea that all the communists were like a unified completely solid block when in fact anything anything could be anything else could be truer right right um but that key point that was essential for the domestic propagandizing yes the u.s population yes right that was much more

1:00:45 So often you have situations where the CIA is saying truer stuff inside there, but to the U.S. everything is monolithic because it's clearly a necessity. It's like the active ingredient of U.S. Cold War propaganda. If you couldn't use that as a club to hammer at any opposition, be it based on so-called ethical or budgetary, you've got to hammer that argument with a monolithic propaganda club, which was that.

1:01:15 But the other thing is, look, Noam Chomsky acted like he always made fun of the, I'm talking about the fake leftists that controlled, that made the left into CIA, you know, pieces of garbage. But while still criticizing the Democrats all the time, they're role players, you know, they're role players is all I'm saying. And so Noam Chomsky would always criticize like how similar the two parties was, which is, of course, as we know, true.

1:01:43 But there's only one point. He's like, especially they all vote the same on propaganda. And we were like, yes, Uncle Noam for 30. This is 30 years. This made the the administrative class in the United States of America and sadly at academia, too. Yeah, that was that took a while, but it did get there. The key moving when the New York Review of Books, ironically, first outed Encounter magazine as a CIA front. It was around the same time.

1:02:13 Because when you're talking this Saunders book, it's really a really good book to read, in my opinion, for everyone on account of it. Really, you know, because we have there's this idea of cultural propaganda. We all know it matters and we all know in some ways it's like causing shit. But on the other hand, it's it's kept fuzzy as to how that is done. And this book is truly incredible for everyone to read this.

1:02:43 book uh saunders book francis stoner saunders is her s-a-u-n-d-e-r-s it's page turner too and um but also you know so the other thing that jfk that noam chomsky said that the that all the quote liberals did he he used them all the same word for them all quote liberals and of course we were morally superior right because we are left of the liberals

1:03:11 therefore good liberals blah blah okay but the the big exception was so here jfk is in the 1956 i swear i'm about to shut my mouth i swear okay 1956 prime he's he's working for the stevenson campaign right and we know what we know what kind of a guy stevenson was he was an anti-populist right he was he was like a cia democrat anti-populist in 50s um

1:03:40 And so JFK criticizes the Vietnam policy while on the Stevenson campaign in 1956 and gets kicked off the Stevenson campaign. Right. So this is the most fundamental disagreement probably given the platform in the history. And yet all we hear about from the fake leftists and also the Democrat, the mainstream, because this is the critical place they overlap and the only place they overlap.

1:04:11 is how JFK was, quote, just another cold warrior. Right. This Noam Chomsky, it sounds like it influences not very many, but that was the only part of the left, so-called left, that everyone else agreed with. So they go, New York Times, well, even Noam Chomsky agrees that JFK was not getting out of Vietnam. Watch where they overlap because they're both lying. Right. And just for clarification, back to the original.

1:04:40 point about so we talked when we did that deep we spent almost a week on Korea the just like in Germany where they divided up the sectors under you know British control or U.S. control or whatever and the Soviet control in the immediate aftermath of the war they did the same thing on the Korean peninsula with the understanding that there was going to be one election

1:05:09 and Korea was going to be restored as Korea. The problem for the CIA was they didn't like who the populist and nationalist was because he was in the North. So they used the, and by the way, the two sectors that were set up in Korea, right along the line that it still exists today, was the Soviets were going to be

1:05:36 in the northern sector to repel out the rest of the Japanese. We took over the southern sector to only do one thing, and that was repel the rest of the Japanese out. We were not to have any influence on who became the next leader of Korea. We were not supposed to be doing anything. We used our time in the southern sector.

1:06:03 to basically annihilate all the nationalists that had been there fighting for years to get the Japanese out because Korea had been a Japanese colony. And we betrayed all of the nationalists that had been fighting for decades to get the Japanese out so that we could insert our own dictator in the aftermath. And so it's critically important to understand

1:06:32 that this mission, this Ark mission that was shot down, China was not involved in Korea at all until we started these long reach operations into Southern China. Because keep in mind, at the same time this is going on, we want Chiang Kai-shek to be in charge of China, not Mao.

1:07:01 And these operations in that area had a lot to do with that agenda and subsequently secondary to ensure that we controlled assets in Korea as well. So the destabilization of Southern Korea preceded the Korean War by a lot.

1:07:28 Then you have the instance that was talked about here in the shoot down and kind of the skirmish up near the Chinese border. And that's why that's so important a point as it relates to this and all the stuff that the Chinese was doing. Go ahead, Megan. Colonel, remember when I asked you a while back?

1:08:02 How do you dismantle the CIA? I don't, but go ahead. Okay. I think it's delicious. We have the collapse of print media. We have the collapse of mainstream media. We have the collapse of the drug infiltration.

1:08:27 Yeah, I mean, they're bringing down the entire thing. And if you understand how they've operated in the past, you see that. And now we see a lot of things going on around the planet that aren't successful at all. They are losing their grip on what's happening in the world. Yep. And I just, I love it. And I feel a whole lot better about our situation on the planet due to that fact.

1:08:57 USAID has collapsed. I mean, the NGOs are starting to collapse. Everything that has been funding them nefariously, now they have to account for their budget that they get allotted by Congress.

1:09:12 And that's where it's going to really put a kink in their freaking cross. It is. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. And we wouldn't realize any of that if we hadn't went back and learned our history. Our history is what allows us to see the tentacles, which is why it's been hidden from us. That, to me, is the most important part of it. SR, go ahead. There were two other things you mentioned in this session.

1:09:42 that caught my ear. One was believing China didn't have night flights. And the other was, it sounded to me as though the CIA was having money issues. That one hit me more than anything else when CIA couldn't fund stuff that was going on, even though we're talking about massive amounts of money during that time, we're talking all the drug running that was still going on.

1:10:15 So hold on a second. I didn't say the CIA didn't have any money. The Lovestone and those people wanted more money for themselves. The Korean War definitely increased the CIA's budget by a lot. And you're right to point out, but the CIA did not have complete control of the narcotic trafficking at this point. That was still divided up between the

1:10:45 because the French is still in Vietnam and Laos and those, and they are using their networks. That's where Lucien Koenig comes in. They were using those networks, taking the harvest into the Marseille labs, and they were basically dominating that at the time.

1:11:08 Now that eventually, because through the next few decades, we kind of eliminate the competition, especially when the French lose in Vietnam. So there's a gradual buildup. But at the same time, we're talking, this is still in the immediate aftermath of World War II within the next 10 years. The Marshall Fund and its covert element is still flooding the CIA with...

1:11:37 covert money that was designated for its operations to do these kinds of things. So I don't think it was talking about this. Well, I know it wasn't talking about the CIA, and I apologize if that came across as that. Basically, what I was talking about is the different competing factions that wanted to suck off that teat of the CIA cow.

1:12:03 Some of them did not have the funds that they would like to have. The CIA was spending like a drunken sailor all along. Go ahead. Yeah. Colonel, I also thought this guy, you know, Lovestone is a really key, important guy for the to understand because he's.

1:12:25 He's involved in both like overlapping of funding the corruption of the labor unions by the CIA and also the corruption of the artists by the CIA, because after all, they have to have a special union because they're artists. And so it's struck me as, again, a kind of 180 opposition for purposes of historical understanding. Of course, nobody's really like that, but it sure makes a good contrast.

1:12:55 um uaw president walter reuther you know the prior being like the cia infiltrator of unions but he's key with all the unions very early in the cold war yeah and was key on and notice how colonel notice how so often the the issue of the fake issue of anti-semitism was used to divide

1:13:20 The unions on behalf of the State Department. So their CIA man, George Meany, could get at the steering wheel. It's the same issue. It's the same way they're using that for U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. And at the same time, one can also say that Israel is a genocidal, psychotic nation because they're all brainwashed in the same way to a degree that other nations are not. And we're paying for it. And that really bites.

1:13:48 Yeah. So RFK, on the other hand, was uniting all of that. He was just the opposite of Lovestone. He was uniting MLK's labor union in sanitation workers, which, like UAW, had industrial unions like part of the CIO. And so in short, the CIO was getting was being activated again around the RFK assassination, which explains the three assassinations and why.

1:14:16 The fake left, which should be talking about this more than anyone else, is absolutely silent on it. Literally, I mean, as soon as I raise it with the armic leftists, I'm immediately blocked. As Oscar Wilde says, arguments are to be avoided. They are always vulgar and often convincing. Very, very well put. That's Oscar. Yeah. Megan, go ahead. I've got one last thing to say.

1:14:47 I'm looking here in the space and I am going to lovingly admonish everyone that is listening to this space. There are nine likes and nine repost. Come on, folks. Give the Colonel some freaking love already. She's always yapping about how much she's being throttled and everyone in this room.

1:15:17 You can help overcome that by getting this out to the masses. Thank you very much for your attention to this matter. Yeah, we don't do very good in and of ourselves in doing that promotion. So I appreciate that. I don't want to be seen as admonishing anyone here.

1:15:39 Because I value every single one of you guys that spend the time learning the real history with us. But thank you. That's why I said lovingly admonish. I know. I know. I appreciate it. Okay. So that's it for today. We will be back tomorrow. And I have a full schedule tomorrow.

1:16:07 Um, I'll be on with Warhamster, um, at noon and we'll be back here at four and I'll be on with, um, Nino at two. So, um, if you guys want to get your feel of, uh, information, um, that's where you'll be finding me, um, tomorrow and, um, that's it for today. So thanks everybody for tuning in. I appreciate it.

1:16:32 Take care. Don't eat too much of that strawberry shortcake, Colonel. Okay. Just to be very upfront, I don't eat the shortcake. I go to the one and only. There's like four major strawberry shortcake providers at the Strawberry Festival. And I go to the one that allows you to prepare your own. And I don't get any shortcake or biscuit. They offer both. And I just eat the strawberries.

1:17:02 I'm going to tell you, if I was down there right now, I'd look like the purple girl on Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, except I'd be all red. I will post, you guys can see if you're over on Rumble, my strawberry shortcake shirt. I have several of these made. They're all rhinestone-ed up, and I wear them during this period of time.

1:17:28 And I will repost the picture. I think it was taken last year at the Strawberry Festival of me and my strawberry shortcake with its big dollop of whipped cream on the top of it without the shortcake. All right, everybody take care. I will see you tomorrow.

Entities here

CIA21 U.S. Army17 ARC Wings16 Psychological Strategy Board15 Jay Lovestone13 Frank Wisner11 Soviet Union10 Gordon Gray9 John Arnold Jr.9 U.S. State Department8 United States8 Korea8 France7 Operation Gladio6 Vietnam6 Harry S. Truman5 China5 Philippines5 West Germany4 Clark Field4 Labor Unions4 Korean War4 National Security Council3 Libya3 Robert McClure3 Paul Linebarger3 Joint Chiefs of Staff3 Yokota3 Italy3 Covert Legions: How the CIA Created Safe Democracy3 U.S. Air Force3 Allen Dulles3 Carmel Offey3 Kenneth Royal2 Tom Braden2 Washington, D.C.2 James Jesus Angleton2 Tucker Carlson2 Joseph Stalin2 William Barr2

Claims made here

Clayton Morris member_of Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 3:42

“Clayton Morris and him have a little bit of dialogue, but at the 102 mark, Clayton Morris mentions Operation Gladio, Strategy of Tension, and Colonel Towner Watkins. Oh, my God. That's awesome. Yes. C…”

CIA covered_up Psychological Strategy Board book_quoted ▶ 5:48

“The CIA sent a plane with a team of armed guards to Kansas City. The team went to the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, seized the Psychological Strategy Board's records and retur…”

Gordon Gray headed Psychological Strategy Board book_quoted ▶ 7:13

“Gordon Gray's staff had orders to assemble overall regional country and subject plans that the board could review. Planning for propaganda and psychological warfare and later monitoring national effor…”

Paul Linebarger member_of Far East Division book_quoted ▶ 12:53

“Linebarger never moved psychological warfare techniques beyond a crude level. Linebarger, something of a guru in the field, had written a standard text on the subject and had been a top consultant to …”

Henry Kissinger member_of Psychological Strategy Board book_quoted ▶ 15:55

“PSB consultant, compiled an advisory report on Germany used in developing the psychological war plan in Germany. From Italy to Thailand, from Sweden to Southeast Asia, from the potential role of wealt…”

Paul Nitze member_of U.S. State Department book_quoted ▶ 19:29

“Were to use a baseball analogy, putting a batter in the box who already had one strike against him. As for the State Department, Paul Nitz, N-I-T-Z-E, now chief of policy planning staff, told Gordon G…”

Robert McClure member_of U.S. Army book_quoted ▶ 20:30

“President Eisenhower, of Army Chief of Staff until 1948, remembered his successes with psychological warfare. The deceptions used the unconventional warfare that had helped the D-Day invasion and trie…”

General Wiedemeyer member_of Army's Plans and Operations Division book_quoted ▶ 21:26

“that led to the adoption for establishing standardized psychological warfare units plus staffs at different echelons of command. Army proponents also tried to carve out a larger role for themselves. G…”

Gordon Gray member_of U.S. Army book_quoted ▶ 23:24

“Instead of the occupation, gradually lifted controls on the German media and the U.S. military steadily dismantled the PSYOPs units. Soon the subject was scarcely even taught in service schools. In 19…”

Frank Wisner member_of CIA book_quoted ▶ 23:52

“by consultants like Paul Leinbarger that argued for better articulation of capabilities. Appeals for help from Frank Wisner at the CIA also had their uses within the Army hierarchy. Gray went further,…”

Lawton Collins member_of U.S. Army book_quoted ▶ 23:52

Kenneth Royal member_of U.S. Army book_quoted ▶ 24:22

“There is also the issue of unconventional warfare capabilities, or as they are known today, special operation forces. At first, paramilitary operations were considered part of this psychological warfa…”

U.S. Army founded Special Warfare Section book_quoted ▶ 25:17

“They're conducting psychological operations in Europe, which of course we know they were doing because they did it, the CIA did it, but in concert with the military in 1948 Italian election. Meanwhile…”

U.S. Army trained Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 25:49

“In the Philippines, the Special Warfare Section laid down contingency plans for paramilitary actions, including in the event of war in Europe. One, to obstruct movement of Soviet reinforcements by act…”

U.S. Army trained Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 27:13

“Again, this harkens back to Operation Gladio. So they're creating these resistance units that will go on to do domestic terrorism, but they're advocating in the army that they are going to train offic…”

ARC Wings supplied_arms_to Operation Gladio host_asserted ▶ 28:40

“We've talked about them. ARC Wings was used in Korea. ARC Wings was used in Taiwan, out of the Philippines, to supply Operation Gladio-type capability. Three of these units were formed. Weirdly enough…”

ARC Wings supplied_arms_to U-2 mission book_quoted ▶ 30:43

“and communications wing, ARC. Similarly, plans of the 380th wing flying from Wilis, which is in Libya, in the mid-1950s, ferried critical fuel and chemical supplies to Turkey for the CIA's U-2 mission…”

John Arnold Jr. headed ARC Wings book_quoted ▶ 31:41

“581st Wing provides an excellent example of the relationship between ARC and the CIA. Activated in July of 1951, after 11 months of training in Idaho, about 1,000 airmen moved to Clark Field, commande…”

CIA funded ARC Wings book_quoted ▶ 32:36

“One of the CIA officers told the colonel, you're a marked man now. The CIA contributed to the cost of running the ARC wing. Colonel Darby, director of operations for the 581st, accompanied a CIA offic…”

CIA recruited ARC Wings book_quoted ▶ 32:36

ARC Wings carried_out_attack Korean War book_quoted ▶ 33:34

“On January 12, 1953, the wing commander and a crew of 13 flew one of their B-29s to Yokota, another Air Force base, where they picked up leaflets to drop over North Korea. These would be the 581st fir…”

64th Air Defense Corps carried_out_attack ARC Wings book_quoted ▶ 34:06

“and reach Clark the following morning. Everything went fine over the first targets, but at the last, near Korea's border with China, fighter jets intercepted them and damaged the plane so badly they h…”

Frank Wisner moved E. Howard Hunt host_asserted ▶ 43:03

“into cultural operations after his Albanian Psyops War assignment, that completely failed. Hunt managed to secure film rights to Animal Farm from Orwell's widow, Carlson Alsop. Or excuse me, from his …”

Lucien Conein member_of France host_asserted ▶ 1:10:45

“because the French is still in Vietnam and Laos and those, and they are using their networks. That's where Lucien Koenig comes in. They were using those networks, taking the harvest into the Marseille…”

France trafficked Vietnam host_asserted ▶ 1:10:45