The Colonel’s Corner The Devil’s Chessboard Part 19

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Transcript

0:00 How are you today, SR? I'm doing fine, Colonel. Hopefully you're doing well. I am. Weather getting a little chillier for you? I saw you wearing that sweater yesterday. Yeah, it was cold overnight. We actually had frost on the grass. My St. Augustine grass does not like frost. I'm just saying. So anyway, I can't complain.

0:30 It's sunny and beautiful out there right now. So I'm not having to traipse through snow or anything else. So anyway, count my blessings where I have them. Let me get us live over here with sound on Rumble. And I don't know, I don't see Bridget in the crowd yet, but.

1:01 We're going to go ahead and go. You can just interrupt me, SR, when she pops in so I can bring her up. Okay, so we were talking about the one of many over 30 coups of Charles de Gaulle, thanks to Operation Gladio. And they're trained assassins when we left yesterday. So we're going to pick up there. The coup, as you guys remember, had...

1:32 started with the senior, several senior officials in the military in France. By the second day of the coup, a dark foreboding had settled over Paris. I'm surprised that you are still alive, said the president of the French National Assembly bluntly to Charles de Gaulle that morning. If I was Shali,

2:02 I would have already swooped down on Paris. The army here will move out of the way rather than shoot. If I were in the position he put himself in, as soon as I burst in, I would have executed with a bullet in the back here in the stairwell and say you were trying to flee. De Gaulle himself realized that if Chali did airlift his troops from Algiers to France, there wouldn't be much to stop him.

2:34 But at eight o'clock that evening, a defiant de Gaulle went on the air as nearly all of France gathered around their TV and rallied his nation with the most inspiring address of his public career. He looked exhausted, but he had put on his full dress soldier's uniform for the occasion. De Gaulle began by denouncing the rebellious generals. The nation had been betrayed, quote, by men whose duty honor.

3:05 It was to serve and to obey, unquote. Now it was the duty of every French citizen to protect the nation from these military traitors. De Gaulle shouted, in the name of France, I order that all means, and I mean all means, be employed to block the road everywhere to these men. De Gaulle's final words were a battle cry. All over France, millions of people did rush into the aid of their nation.

3:36 The following day, a general strike was organized to protest the coup, led primarily by the left. And by the left, they mean labor unions. The mass protests won broad political support. Over 10 million people joined the nationwide demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of Paris, carrying banners saying peace in Algeria, shouting fascism will not pass.

4:05 Even police officer associations expressed complete solidarity with the protest, as did the Roman Catholic Confederation, which denounced criminal acts of the coup leaders, warning that they were threatened to plunge the country into a civil war. Hundreds of people rushed to the nation's airfields and prepared to block the runway so no planes could land. Others gathered outside government ministries in Paris to guard them against attack.

4:34 Meanwhile, at the large Renault factory on the outskirts of Paris, workers took control of the sprawling complex and formed militias demanding weapons from the government so they could fend off rebels. In many ways, France, and particularly Paris, relived its revolutionary days from Sunday night through Monday. De Gaulle's ringing address to the nation and the massive public response had a sobering effect on the French military.

5:05 Chali's support quickly began to melt away, humiliating within the ranks of his own military branch, the Air Force. Pilots flew their planes out of Algeria and others framed mechanical troubles, depriving Chali's troops of the air transport they needed to descend on Paris. Meanwhile, de Gaulle moved quickly to arrest military officers in France who had been involved in the coup.

5:33 Police swooped down on the Paris apartment of an army captain who had been plotting riots. And de Gaulle's minister of the interior seized the general in charge of the rebel forces that were gathering in the forest outside of Paris. Deprived of their leader, the insurrectionary units began to disperse. By Tuesday night, de Gaulle knew that the coup had failed. The next day, he surrendered. Excuse me.

6:03 Sholly knew his coup had failed. He surrendered and flew to Paris. Sholly emerged from the plane carrying his own suitcase looking crumpled and insignificant. He stumbled at the foot of the landing stairs and fell down. It was an embarrassing homecoming for the man who had been fully believed that the U.S. supported and he was supposed to replace Charles de Gaulle.

6:33 Chali expected to face a firing squad, but de Gaulle's military tribunal proved surprisingly merciful, sentencing the 45-year-old general to 15 years in prison. After the failed coup, de Gaulle launched a new purge of his security forces. He ousted General Paul Grossen, the powerful chief of the SDECE, the French Secret Service, who were in bed with the CIA.

7:03 and he shut down its armed unit, the Shock Battalion, the 11th Shock Battalion, which he suspected as being a breeding ground for the coup, and he was correct. Grossen, who was closely aligned with the CIA, had told Frank Wisner over lunch that the return of de Gaulle to power was the equivalent of the communists taking over Paris. The 11th Shock Battalion

7:32 had grown into a dangerously unhinged killing unit. They were also trained by Otto Skorzeny, targeting representatives of the Algerian independence movement and their European supporters, even on the streets of France. Those branded enemy of the French empire were gunned down, blown up, or poisoned by the SDECE's action arm. Aided by ex-Nazi Reinhard Galen's organization,

8:02 which of course included Skorzeny. The 11th Shock Battalion assassination campaign reached the point where liquidations were almost a daily routine, according to one veteran of the SDECE, who served as a liaison to that organization for the CIA. Shortly after pushing out Grossen, de Gaulle also jettisoned his security advisor, Melnick, who,

8:34 was Dulles' ally. Late in his life, Melnick continued to insist the CIA was always a friend to de Gaulle, which would have come as a surprise to the French president. Writing in his 1999 memoirs, Politically Incorrect, Melnick flatly declared, quote, I can testify that despite suspicious yelping by the Gaullist camp followers, the CIA always was a faithful ally.

9:03 of General Charles de Gaulle, even of his often torturous Algerian policies, unquote, which is a flat out lie. After de Gaulle dumped Melnick, Dulles, who by that time had already been fired, immediately offered to hire him for a new private intelligence agency he was planning to conduct operations in the third world. Melnick declined.

9:35 For the rest of his 10-year presidency, which ended with his retirement in 1969, de Gaulle continued to take strong countermeasures against forces he viewed as seditious threats. In 1962, he expelled CIA Station Chief Alfred Ulmer, who was a veteran of Dulles' Cold War battlegrounds. In 1967,

10:00 De Gaulle evicted NATO from France to regain full sovereignty over French territory after discovering the military alliance was encouraging Western European secret services to interfere with France's domestic policies. They were behind many of the coups. De Gaulle remained an assassination target, particularly during explosive months before and after he finally recognized Algeria.

10:29 as an independent country in 1962. The most dramatic attempt on his life was staged the next month by the OAS, again, that's Gladio, when an ambush was made of which they made a movie called The Day of the Jackal. As Charles de Gaulle's black car sped along

10:53 The road with the president and his wife in the rear seat, a dozen OAS snipers opened fire on the vehicle. Two of the president's motorcycle bodyguards were killed, and the bullet-ridden car skidded sharply. But de Gaulle was fortunate to have a skilled and loyal security team, and his chauffeur was able to pull the car out of the spin and speed to safety, despite having all four tires shot out.

11:22 The president and his wife, who kept their heads down throughout the affair, escaped unharmed. The French president demonstrated that he was willing to fight fire with fire. De Gaulle loyalists in the SDECE even recruited their own secret assassins, including a particularly violent group of Vietnamese exiles. That's kind of fighting fire with fire. They blew up cafes in Algeria.

11:52 Frequented by enemies of de Gaulle, they kidnapped, tortured, and murdered other OAS combatants deemed a threat to the president. Democracy in France in the early 1960s was sustained as a result of a vicious underground war that the old French general was willing to fight with equal ferocity. Because of the severe security measures he took, Charles de Gaulle survived his presidency. He died of a heart attack the year after he left office, just short of his 80th birthday.

12:23 President Kennedy met only once with de Gaulle on a state visit in May of 1961, a month after the failed coup. The president and first lady were at a banquet at the palace. The general was dazzled by Jackie. During the three-day visit, the two heads of state discussed many pressing issues from Laos to Berlin to Cuba. But Kennedy and de Gaulle never broached the subject of the coup, much less the CIA's involvement in it.

12:53 The French journalist later observed why wake up old demons who had barely fallen asleep. Kennedy knew that he would have to resume wrestling with those demons as soon as he returned home. He would have to decide how to deeply purge his own security agencies, as de Gaulle had already begun to do in France. Kennedy knew there would be steep political costs involved in taking the CIA and the Pentagon to task.

13:21 But as Walter Lippmann told Schlesinger, Kennedy will not begin to be president until he starts to break with Eisenhower. Continuity in Washington was no longer the new president's concern. Shaken by the traumatic events in Cuba and France, JFK was ready to remake his government. A few weeks after the Bay of Pigs and the foiled French coup, JFK asked Jackie to invite Dulles for drinks at the White House.

13:51 Charlie Reitzman and his wife were also dropping by and Kennedy wanted to make a point. The Florida tycoon had self-righteously told the Kennedys that he was not going to be seeing his old friend Dulles during his trip to Washington. It was his way of snubbing the spymaster for bungling the job in Cuba. That pissed off JFK. He thought it was being disloyal. So he invited them both to the same event.

14:25 By now, enough time had elapsed since the disasters of April with the Dulles on his way out. Kennedy was feeling magnanimous and basically was in his own way trying to prove that he was in control. Kind of like the way Dulles used to do when he would call people in. Jane and Charlie, rights men, he wanted them to sit around in the Oval Office.

14:55 just to show Charlie what he thought of Alan Dulles. And I mean it. It made all the difference to Alan Dulles. I was with him about five or 10 minutes before Jack got there. He just looked like, I don't know, you know, just a shell of what he had been. And Jack came and talked, put his arm around him. Well, wasn't that nice? It was just to show Charlie Reitzman.

15:28 but it shows something about JFK. I mean, he knew Dulles had obviously botched everything up, but you know, he supposedly had some, he wanted, I think he wanted to humiliate him, but the book says that he had a tenderness for him. So we'll leave it at that, but I don't think that's what it was at all. Jackie Kennedy would later say, poor Alan Dulles. He was unlikely, he was likely untouched by the president's gesture.

16:00 The CIA's director resentment of Kennedy was growing by the day as his fingers slowly lost their grip on power. Filling the young man's arm wrap around him would have chilled him, not warmed him. The spymaster had served every president since Woodrow Wilson, and now he was being comforted by what he viewed as a weak pretty boy in the company of someone he had basically used to get close to him.

16:30 Though Dulles himself kept his fury carefully concealed, his most loyal aides and political allies freely vented their feelings against the Kennedy White House. Howard Hunt, who worked at the CIA's political liaison with the volatile Cuban exile community, called Dulles and Bissell scapegoats. Hunt, whose anti-communist passions equaled those of his militant Cuban compadres,

17:00 was deeply moved by the way his boss comported himself during this slow fade out at the CIA. As a member of Dulles' staff, Hunt said, I lunched in the director's mess, seeing him return from each Taylor committee session where he looked worse every day. But on taking his place at the head of the table, Dulles would then be cheerful because he was in charge.

17:31 The summer following the Bay of Pigs, Prescott Bush, the CIA's man in the Senate, and his wife, Dorothy, invited Dulles to dinner at their Washington home. The spymaster showed up with John McCone, the Republican businessman and former Atomic Energy Commission chairman. Kennedy had just privately tapped as Dulles' replacement. Bush, who was still unaware that Dulles had been fired,

18:02 was surprised to see McComb, whom he would later recall in a letter, we had not thought of as a particular friend of Allen's. But Allen broke the eyes promptly and said that he wanted Bush to meet his successor. The announcement came the next day. The dinner conversation around the Bush family table that night was awkward. We tried to make pleasant evening of it, Bush wrote, but I was rather sick and angry.

18:33 for it was the Kennedys that brought on this fiasco. And here they were making Allen seem to be a goat, which he wasn't and didn't deserve. I have never forgiven them. So now you know why his son, George H.W. Bush, was involved. On November 28th, 1961, Dulles was given his formal send-off at a CIA ceremony at the new headquarters that he would never work at.

19:03 It was a gleaming new puzzle palace that Dulles had commissioned. He would never occupy the director's suite. Another jab, in my opinion. President Kennedy said gracious remarks. Quote, I regard Alan Dulles, and I want you guys to actually listen to this. I regard Alan Dulles as an almost unique figure.

19:32 in our country. He was definitely unique because he was the devil. And in the audience was Eleanor Dulles, as well as General Lemitsker and J. Edgar Hoover. Kennedy went on, I know of no man who brings a greater sense of personal commitment to his work, who has less pride in office than he does. He was a very prideful person and he was very committed to his job. As Kennedy knew well, because

20:11 There were few men in the administration brimming with such self-admiration as Alan Dulles. The departing CIA director had made sure that invitations to his ceremony were sent out to the who's who's list of the Fortune 500 executives. Pay attention. This part's important. Including who he invited. General Electric, CEO. General Motors.

20:44 Ford, DuPont, Coca-Cola, Chase Manhattan, U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, IBM, CBS, and Time Life. He kept copies of all the flattering returns from people all over the world, including letters from 20th Century Fox owner and

21:15 J. Peter Grace, who Warhamster and I just covered. It was an almost unbelievable list of people. Dulles looked a bit lost and forlorn as he waved to Kennedy's departing helicopter from the front steps of the headquarters he would never occupy. The following day was even more melancholy for Dulles as JFK sworn in McCone at the old CIA building. Clover, because he no longer has a driver.

21:50 had to drop him off. And Dulles was overheard saying he'd just take a taxi home. But of course, one of his buddies that was there decided they'd take him home. Retired at home in Georgetown, the old spymasters' mood did not lift as Kennedy proceeded to rid his administration of remnants of Dulles' dynasty. First to go were Dulles' deputies, Dick Bissell, Richard Bissell, and Charles Cabal.

22:19 Then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, his brothers, tracked down Eleanor Dulles at the State Department and fired her. Well, he got Rusk to do it, who was the Secretary of State, and basically told Rusk they didn't want any more Dulleses around. She, of course, made a big deal out of it, saying, I don't know why they fired me, because you were in on it. That's why. Over at the Pentagon, JFK.

22:50 already begun to purge Dulles' cold warriors like Arleigh Burke, who was drummed out of the Navy in August. Next to go was Lyman Lemitsker. Unfortunately, they put him in NATO, and that decision would come back to haunt JFK, which nobody ever talks about because nobody knows about Operation Gladio. The CIA would no longer be allowed to run wild, he thought.

23:23 He placed overseas agents under the control of U.S. ambassadors, and they were just as bad. He just didn't know it. They were all in on all the coups too. He shifted responsibility for paramilitary operations like the Bay of Pigs to the Pentagon, but it didn't do him any good because the Gladio operators were outside the purview of the military. It was the Kennedy's brothers, not the Dulles brothers, who was going to run Washington.

23:53 Or so he thought. But it soon became clear that the Dulles dynasty was not entirely dismantled. In truth, the Kennedy purge had left the ranks of Dulles loyalists at the CIA largely untouched, like Angleton and Helms. They continued to call on him routinely at his Georgetown house. Angleton would show up two or three times a week. They consulted with him on everything, as if he was still the DCI, not John McComb.

24:24 They collaborated with him on plans for books and projects. They continued to kneel before Alan Dulles as their commander and kiss his ring. Dulles began to emerge from his refuge ready for action. By mid-January of 62, the retired, in air quotes, spymaster was writing an old comrade. Quote, as you know, I am not much of a believer in either retirement or long vacations, unquote.

24:55 His house on Q Street had already became the headquarters for a government in exile, just like he set up when his coups didn't work. By the evening of June 16, 1962, author Schlesinger Jr. went tumbling fully closed into a swimming pool at a party at Robert and Ethel Kennedy's estate. They had parties there routinely.

25:26 That was their version of the Georgetown set. Senator Edward Kennedy, the president's baby brother, had emerged from his own swimming pool baptism at that place. The Kennedy Circle unrestrained merrymaking was now regarded as unseemly. They were having way too much fun. Drew Pearson noted in his column,

25:55 that Southern congressmen were especially interested in the fact that Ethel Kennedy, sister-in-law of the president, twisted with Harry Belafonte. You know, because he was black. You're not allowed to do that. Henry Taylor, a syndicated newspaper columnist, led the press campaign against Schlesinger, taking advantage of the embarrassing publicity over the parties.

26:24 Taylor accused Schlesinger of violating White House code of ethics by moonlighting as a freelance writer, churning out political essays for publication in the New York Times and Saturday Evening Post. It turned out that the White House had no such ban against outside freelancing and the Kennedys was an ardent movie lover and enjoyed Schlesinger's movie reviews.

26:52 attack on Schlesinger, in which he had warned of the liberal historian's influence on Kennedy policy, spread to other media outlets like Time Magazine, like they're running a hit job on him. They poked fun at Schlesinger over his participation at the parties. He also questioned whether he really did much of anything as a special assistant. Thomas Tommy the Cork Corcoran

27:22 FDR's legendary advisor and longtime Washington power broker didn't like the beating that Schlesinger was getting in the press. He phoned him at the White House and Corcoran said, I sense a manhunt. The play they had given that swimming pool story was a tip-off. They're out to get you. The court warned Schlesinger.

27:53 that he had heard Republicans were spreading vicious stories, that they had found someone claiming to be an old Harvest classmate of Schlesinger's, and he will swear that you knew then that you were a member of the Communist Party. Come on. It's always the communists. In the midst of all of this, Schlesinger felt tempted to offer Kennedy his resignation. Late one afternoon when Schlesinger went to see the president,

28:24 On a different matter, JFK asked him how he was holding up. He said, it's been a bad couple of days. JFK said, don't worry about it. Everyone knows that Henry Taylor is a jerk. All they're doing is shooting at me through you. The media attack on Schlesinger bore the fingerprints of Dulles. Though he had been out of office for half a year, Dulles' influence over the press was still huge, especially with loose publications like Time.

28:54 Henry Taylor, too, had ties to the Dulles brothers, having served in John Foster's diplomatic corps as ambassador to Switzerland. Huh, no kidding. On first glance, Schlesinger seemed like an unlikely target for the Dulles network, since he, too, had enjoyed friendly relationships with the intelligence chief dating back to World War II. But no one is outside of the shotgun range of Alan Dulles.

29:27 As an OSS analyst, Schlesinger had been stationed in the London and Paris office. He held strong anti-communist views. After the war, Schlesinger became the leading architect of the Cold War liberalism, joining the anti-Soviet propaganda campaign that was secretly funded by the CIA and endorsing efforts to root out Communist Party influence in labor units. So he was one of them, and it doesn't matter.

29:57 If you're in the way, they will run you over. Schlesinger was a passionate believer in New Deal liberalism, which he saw as the only way to civilize capitalism. He was an equally ardent anti-communist, viewing it as a plague. Schlesinger believed that it was vital to purge the Communist Party influence out of everything in the United States.

30:28 effort by Loose Life magazine, which the young Pulitzer Prize winning historian sometimes wrote for, to develop a blacklist of celebrities that the magazine believed belonged to the Communist Party. And of course, all of them, like Albert Einstein, Arthur Miller, Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, the Life magazine blacklist.

30:58 had his stamp of approval calling it a convenient way of checking on the communist-controlled groups. Though Schlesinger was an avid New Dealer, he was also pampered by American elite. The son of an esteemed Harvard historian, Arthur Schlesinger Sr., a graduate of Phillips Academy at 15,

31:26 Warhamster and I have talked about that. That is one of the grooming schools. And a graduate of Harvard at 20, at 27, he had already won a Pulitzer Prize. Schlesinger had been coddled by the East Coast establishment and subsidized by CIA front groups. And Russia was not merely seeking a protective buffer when it took control of Eastern Europe.

31:56 Following the epic destruction of World War II, Schlesinger insisted, in his view, the Soviet Union was a messianic state whose ideology compelled a steady expansion of communist power. Even after the collapse of Stalin's regime, Schlesinger saw no significant modification to that expansionism. Not surprisingly, Schlesinger maintained friendly, if not

32:25 remote relations with Dulles throughout the 1950s. Schlesinger counted a number of top CIA officials as his friends, including Helms, Wisner, and Bissell. He had been part of the Georgetown cocktail circuit. Schlesinger had his differences with the CIA crowd going back to his OSS days. He had been offended by the notion of American spooks like Dulles and Wisner.

32:54 cheerfully consorting with people like Reinhard Galen. There was something wrong with consorting with Nazis who had recently been killing us, whose sacrifices had made the Allied victory and against the Russians who had made the Allied victory possible. During the Eisenhower-Dulles years, Schlesinger found much more of that displeasing.

33:23 about the Republican reign. The Dulles brothers were self-righteous and egomaniacs. By the time Kennedy took office, Marion Schlesinger, the product of the same Cambridge background as her husband, regarded Alan Dulles in not a good light either. Schlesinger was willing to make his own political compromises, even with men like Alan Dulles.

33:50 whose Wall Street republicanism and bullying foreign interventionism represented everything the historian opposed. Schlesinger made an effort to maintain cordial relationships with the CIA chief. Schlesinger wrote a favorable review of Germany's Underground, Dulles' 1947 book on anti-Hitler wartime intrigue.

34:16 Nobody in Washington was better positioned than author Schlesinger Jr. to observe the growing split in the Kennedy government. But they wanted a Cold War consensus, but that consensus began to shatter early in the Kennedy presidency. And Schlesinger found himself maintaining a delicate balancing act with one foot on each side. In the months following the Bay of Pigs, the cracks continued to lace their way through the administration.

34:48 JFK resisted the belligerent advice of his national security advisors and tried to maneuver his way through the minefields that they had set up, like Cuba, Laos, Berlin, and Vietnam. Kennedy knew that this was making them all mad, including his warlords like Lemonsker and Curtis LeMay, whom JFK considered mentally unbalanced.

35:16 talking about Curtis LeMay. He's the guy that wanted to use tactical nuclear weapons everywhere. He dismissed their persistent pleading for nuclear confrontation and instead pursued a test pan treaty aimed at slowing down the race. That's bad news for them. Schlesinger found his relations with the CIA crowd strained, but he still was invited to dinner parties because, of course, they wanted to pick his brain.

35:48 ray klein and cord meyer continued to keep him appraised of the agency's mood meanwhile kennedy despite his occasional bemusement at schlesinger's ivy tower liberalism increasingly drew the historian into his inner circle schlesinger had earned points with jfk not only by giving him the correct advice on the bay of pigs a great mistake

36:14 but by resisting the temptation to crow about his wisdom in the press. Kennedy soon began seeking his advice on other things. One of the liberal critics was Alfred Kazin, K-A-Z-I-N. When Kazin arrived at the White House, JFK was at his best, offering fascinating insights into everyone from Khrushchev to other foreign leaders.

36:48 but he still fell short with the scholar, who later described the president as devoid of vision. When Schlesinger reminded him that the left-wing intellectuals said the same thing about FDR, Krasin replied that he was one of those who did, and I still believe that today. Kennedy embraced Schlesinger's role as court chronicler. The president encouraged Schlesinger to begin taking notes at meetings.

37:20 You can be damn sure the CIA has their own notes and the Joint Chiefs theirs. We better make sure we have our own, JFK told him. It provided an invaluable look inside the increasingly very obvious civil war that was tearing Kennedy's government apart. Schlesinger took a particular strong blast from the left when C. Wright Mills

37:49 denouncing Kennedy and company for returning to barbarism and singling out JFK's in-house historian, whom Mills charged was disgraced us all intellectually and morally. But critics like Mills were not privy to the internal battles raging inside the Kennedy administration. In reality, Kennedy and trusted advisors like Schlesinger were determined to check the forces of barbarism, not succumb to them.

38:18 and their efforts set off a powerful backlash among the bureaucracy. The struggle fought between JFK and the national security elite as Kennedy attempted to lead the country out of the Cold War was largely invisible to the American people, nor was it fully understood by observers like Mills, who shortly thereafter died of a heart attack in 1962 before the Kennedy court drama reached its climax.

38:49 Schlesinger himself did not entirely grasp the forces at play either. The relationship between Kennedy and Schlesinger took a back and forth course as the two men began to reevaluate the Cold War policies. Sometimes it was the president who was thinking boldest. Other times it was his advisor. The president's subtle grasp of the U.S.-Soviet dynamics had the effect of making Schlesinger's own Cold War philosophically less rigid and more sophisticated.

39:21 By 1963, Kennedy had come to the conclusion that the hardliners in the Soviet Union and the U.S. fed on each other. Let that sink in for just a second. The deep state in both countries were feeding on each other. This was an amazing and very insightful conclusion because it was true. Kennedy liked to surround himself with intelligent men, but he was usually the most perceptive man in the room.

39:55 He had a way of raising the thinking of even the best and brightest. When it came to domestic policies, JFK was a shrewd strategist. And he thrashed out decisions by reviewing them with longtime political confidence. And like his brother and special assistant, Kenny O'Donnell. But Kennedy also realized that his political pragmatism could sometimes compromise his vision. He liked Schlesinger to be his voice of conscience.

40:26 Schlesinger urged Kennedy to replace Dean Rusk, who was a bland mouthpiece at the CFR and basically was acting out their wisdom, or lack thereof, and that he needed a new Secretary of State. Kennedy glanced up at his advisor from a sheet of paper on his desk and said, that's a great idea, author. JFK turned to O'Donnell, who had been quietly taking...

40:58 taking in the conversation. And JFK says, author has a lot of good ideas. Schlesinger himself sometimes questioned his relevance within the Kennedy administration. He would later tell someone that he thought Kennedy discounted his views a lot.

41:26 But by 1963, the president himself was telling his brother in Phil Graham that he was seriously considering replacing Rusk with Robert McNamara, who had proven to be a smart ally in Kennedy's battles with the Pentagon warlords. Yeah, he turned out to be shit too. Schlesinger's most intrepid moment in the Kennedy presidency would come after the Bay of Pigs when he boldly schemed to bring

41:53 CIA under the presidential control, which neither Truman nor Eisenhower had been able to do. It took courage for Schlesinger to confront his old friends at the spy agency, some of whom denounced him as a traitor. The battle to take over the CIA had become one of the most fateful dramas of the Kennedy's presidency. Schlesinger began lobbying Kennedy to play a big role in reorganizing the CIA even before the smoke had cleared from Cuba. He wanted to make sure that

42:23 current tempest over the agency did not simply fade away, resulting once again in another oversight committee controlled by Dulles' stooges, as he put it. So on April 21, 1961, there was a memo to the president from Schlesinger, quote, it is important in my judgment to take CIA away from the club.

42:47 Schlesinger was not enthusiastic about Kennedy's choice of General Taylor to oversee the Bay of Pigs post-mortem, regarding the general as very pleasant, a man of limited interest and imagination. Nor was Taylor the sort of crusading official who would follow through on Kennedy's angry impulse to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces. The general, Schlesinger wrote, is quite cautious and does not seem disposed.

43:19 toward drastic reorganization of the intelligence services. But it was Schlesinger whom Kennedy tapped to develop an ambitious CIA reorganization plan, while Taylor was limited to the Bay of Pigs inquest. The historian was able to convince JFK of his qualifications by reminding him that he had served in the OSS and that I have been a CIA consultant for a good deal of the period since.

43:46 While I am far from a professional in the field, I am definitely an experienced amateur. Schlesinger threw himself into the CIA study with scholarly dedication, amassing a thick file that contained critiques of the organization by Washington's liberals and whistleblowers, one of which wrote the CIA agency is sick. Schlesinger.

44:11 compiled essays and investigative features about Dulles' reign from the liberal press. The White House advisor completed his memo for revamping the CIA on June 30th. He acknowledged that his proposal implies a fairly drastic rearrangement of the present intelligence setup. The basic problem with the CIA, as Schlesinger saw it, was that it was out of control. Do you think?

44:42 Under this plan, all future covert operations would be closely supervised by a joint intelligence board composed of representatives from the White House and State Department. In addition, the CIA would be divided up into two separate organizations, one for clandestine operations and the other for collecting intelligence. Furthermore, the agency's name, a tainted reminder of the Dulles age, would be replaced with something.

45:12 blameless, like National Information Service. Kennedy had already made it clear that he was a strong favor of the last recommendation. If he couldn't destroy the dullest mausoleum, as he called it, he would at least give it a new name. No stranger to Washington politicking.

45:36 Schlesinger attempted to rally support for his plan by submitting it to the president, sending copies to people like Clark Clifford, big mistake, veteran diplomat Chip Bolin, and JFK's trusted speechwriter Ted Sorensen. By the time the final draft was sent to Kennedy, it was more complicated and too big of a document that Schlesinger had originally intended.

46:04 when the Dulles forces, including Taylor himself and the CIA congressional allies, immediately mounted a stubborn resistance to the new plan. Kennedy realized that overhauling the U.S. intelligence complex was going to be much trickier than he had hoped. Taylor argued forcibly against Schlesinger's plan, telling JFK this is not the time for surgery so far as the CIA is concerned. It would damage the morale of the employees too much.

46:32 Taylor also opposed changing the agency's name for the same reason. Who gives a shit? On the morning of July 15th, Bobby took Schlesinger aside at the White House and told him that the CIA reorganization was on hold until a replacement for Dulles was found. Undismayed, Schlesinger leaped immediately into the hunt for a new director. The president had briefly considered Bobby for the job, but realized his abrasive younger brother was too politically charged.

47:03 Besides, RFK was already beginning each morning by dropping by the CIA headquarters in Langley on his way to work so that he could keep an eye on him. JFK even raised the possibility of putting Schlesinger in Dulles' chair. I imagine that the president was joking, he would later say. Fowler Hamilton soon emerged as a leading candidate for the CIA post.

47:28 Hamilton had solid credentials as a successful Wall Street lawyer, bad choice, former prosecutor, and bombing analyst in the Army Air Force during World War II. Schlesinger gave his blessing, telling JFK that Hamilton was a sober intelligence, hard-headed lawyer. You have to check and see who his clients are because these people all continue to represent him. But there was something about Hamilton that set off Dallas crowd.

47:58 Dulles crowd. Perhaps it was simply because he was not one of them, or it might have connected to the fact that Hamilton had run the war frauds unit for FDR and knew too much about the Dulles brothers. Oh, that's bad. In any case, CIA opposition to Hamilton was so strong that Kennedy decided to abandon him. So they get to pick who's their boss. That's the whole reason why he should have hired him. So.

48:30 He picks John McComb, who was awful. Now it was Schlesinger's time to erupt. Putting an Eisenhower retread in charge of the CIA would be a disastrous move, he warned Kennedy. It would send the wrong signal at exact moment when the agency needed to be turned upside down. McComb, for all of his administrative qualities, is a crude man with undiscriminating political views.

48:57 He sees the world in terms of a set of emotionally charged stereotypes, Schlesinger said. Schlesinger tried to cheer himself up, but without much success. The possibly consoling thought is that president has a habit of designating liberals to do conservative things and vice versa. I am sure JFK knows what he's doing, Schlesinger wrote in his notebook.

49:26 and possibly my concern will turn out to be unwarranted. But it didn't. In October, still puzzling over McCone's selection, Schlesinger brought up the subject again with Kennedy in the Oval Office. He asked the president if he knew him well. Kennedy admitted that he was not very familiar with him, but he had seemed undisturbed by the prospect of working with him. Kennedy then began to vent about his outgoing CIA chief.

49:56 He was very critical of Dulles, Schlesinger wrote, and implied after Dulles, anybody would be better. If Kennedy thought he was getting in McComb a respectable Republican front man who would readily do his bidding at the CIA, he was sorely disappointed. In May of 62, Schlesinger fell into conversation at a French embassy party with his friend.

50:25 banker diplomat W. Averill Harriman, an old Democrat Party wise man who had served as FDR's ambassador to Moscow and who was now serving JFK as a globetrotting ambassador at large. Harriman gave Schlesinger an evaluation of the new McComb regime, which he saw as little change from Dulles.

50:51 This was clear, Harriman confided, from looking at the policy maneuvers around Laos, the Southeast Asian sideshow in which Kennedy was determined not to get involved. JFK's policy of neutrality was being systematically sabotaged by both the military and the CIA, Harriman said. McCone and the people in the CIA want the president to have a setback. They want to justify intervention on...

51:20 the CIA took five years ago. They want to prove that a neutral solution is possible, is not possible, and that the only course is to turn Laos into a new war zone. Harriman, a veteran of Washington infighting, then advised Schlesinger how the White House should handle the CIA and military seditionists.

51:47 General George Marshall once told me that when you change a policy, you must change the men too. The CIA has the same men on the same desk in the same fields who were responsible for all of the disasters of the past. And naturally, they do the same thing today. Every big thing the CIA has tried in the Far East has been catastrophic. And the men responsible for these catastrophes are still there. Kennedy's purge of the CIA, Harriman made clear,

52:18 was not sweeping enough. The president had lopped off the head of the top three men, but all of his deputies were still there. And McCone, a CIA outsider who largely shared the former regime's views, was not going to change anything. McCone had no business in the New Frontier Group, according to Harriman. Dulles' successor doesn't believe in the administration, Harriman said, and they're full of

52:50 mischievous ideas and projects. Two years into McCone's tenure as CIA director, syndicated newspaper columnist Henry Taylor published a surprisingly critical piece of the intelligence agency calling it a sick elephant and urging it to quit stalking through foreign political back rooms and building its own empire. A few days later, Dulles wrote his colleague a letter letting Taylor know that he

53:18 viewed his column, now he's not in the CIA anymore, as a personal betrayal and a direct attack on Allen Dulles. Taylor quickly replied with a groveling telegram, pleading that nothing he had written or ever would write was critical of the spy agency under Dulles' leadership. But he had.

53:47 Quote, certainly you must know that any attack on you by me is inconceivable. No one has served this country with greater distinction or selflessness and success than you. This is supposedly an independent reporter basically kissing Alan Dulles' butt. Dulles made it clear to Taylor that he was still running the show at the CIA and that there was nothing changed. So it was in fact an attack on Dulles.

54:18 Because McCone wasn't running the CIA, Dulles was. This is precisely what Schlesinger was afraid of when McCone took over the CIA in November of 1961, that the Dulles era would continue undisturbed. That month, as Kennedy's special assistant contemplated the new administration's progress, he could not help falling into a glum mood. Okay, Schlesinger grew anxious.

54:51 Whenever he began to sense that the old Eisenhower-Dulles continuities were beginning to reassert themselves. By 1962, President Kennedy was challenging the bastions of American power on several fronts, including the corporate elite control of the economy. The steel industry crisis had erupted that spring, laid bare the growing contentions between JFK and the Fortune 500 circle.

55:18 His presidency sounds so much like Trump's, it's eerie. On September 6th, after a year-long negotiation between the steel companies and unions, which involved the personal participation of the president himself, a deal was announced that prevented the rise of steel prices. The steel agreement, which was based on labor concessions that Kennedy administration officials had helped wring from the union, was a major victory for JFK.

55:47 temporarily. The three-way pack hammered out by the industry, labor, and government ensured stability throughout the economy since the rising prices in the core industry had been a big inflationary factor. Every time steel prices jump, your pocketbooks jump with pain, one senator said. But just four days, four days.

56:15 After Kennedy's engineered steel pack was signed, guess what U.S. Steel Chairman Roger Blow did? He scheduled a meeting at the White House and told the president that he was announcing a 3.5% price increase anyway. But he had locked in labor at a lower rate. Kennedy was furious. He was double-crossed.

56:53 He saw this as a challenge to his ability to control the economy. My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of a bitches, JFK said, but I never believed it until now. That was a remark that he was happy to have leaked to Newsweek. While the president saw Blow as a backstabber, Luce's Fortune magazine regarded the still mogul as a capitalist hero, declaring him.

57:25 the business statesman, who was fighting not just for his own company, but on behalf of the entire corporate sector by defying the president's authority. His company occupied a central position in the country's corporate pantheon, which was reflected in the U.S. Steel Board of Directors. Blow himself was well connected to the power elite, including Dulles, with whom he served in organizations like the Council of Foreign Relations, the Lafayette Fellowship Foundation,

57:58 which was part of the Ford Foundation. Kennedy understood that if U.S. Steel and other colluding steel executives prevailed, his leadership would be severely undermined, not only at home, but abroad. He had staked his reputation with organized labor and American consumers on the deal. And now he was faced with the most painful, embarrassing predicament of his career.

58:25 Determined to protect his presidency over the next three days, JFK unleashed the full power of the federal government in an all-out effort to crush the steel industry rebellion. Attorney General Bobby Kennedy announced a grand jury probe into steel price fixing, which he followed by issuing subpoenas for the personal and corporate records of steel executives and by sending FBI agents to raid their offices. We were going for broke.

58:54 Their expense accounts and where they had been and what they'd been doing was going to be reviewed. I picked up all of the records and I told the FBI to interview all of them. March into their office the next day. We weren't going to go slow. All of the Steele executives were hit with meetings the next morning by FBI agents.

59:16 Robert McNamara's Defense Department announced that it was reviewing steel purchasing practices, making it clear that it would favor companies that did not follow U.S. Steel's price hike. Kennedy's strong-arm tactics produced quick results. On April 12th, Inland Steel, a smaller but still significant company, caved under the pressure, announcing that it wasn't going to raise prices. Bethlehem Steel soon followed, and the next day, U.S. Steel waved the white flag.

59:45 In victory, JFK adopted a magnanimous posture. Over dinner at the White House on May 3rd, Schlesinger asked Kennedy what he had said to Blow when the U.S. steel chairman surrendered. I told him that his men could keep their horses for the summer plowing, JFK smiled. But the resentment from the steel showdown never faded. Corporate executives continued to snipe at the president.

1:00:13 Spreading the word that his administration had destroyed business confidence by bringing the steel industry to heel. No, he just made them keep his word. Senator Barry Goldwater, the voice of the rising Republican right, escalated the rhetoric, calling Kennedy's bare-knuckle tactics against steel barons a display of naked political power never seen before in this nation. We have passed within the shadow of a police state, he said. Yeah.

1:00:43 No, he just made them keep their word. Chatting with Schlesinger in the Oval Office, Kennedy said, I understand better every day why Roosevelt, who started out as such a mellow fellow, was so anti-business at the end. JFK vowed that he was not going to appease big business critics by taking what O'Donnell described as an ass-kissing posture.

1:01:11 To counter the corporate assault on his presidency, Kennedy said, we have to put out the picture of a small group of men turning against the government and the economy because the government would not surrender to them. That's the real issue, as JFK saw it. Schlesinger discovered that some of the corporate sniping against the president came from within his own administration, while dining with Joe Alsop, the reporter that was one of Dulles' best friends.

1:01:44 The White House advisor was disgusted to hear McCone talk against Kennedy's economic policy, which the former industrialist regarded as too pro-labor. I quote, I have rarely seen a man more completely out of sympathy with the administration's economic direction.

1:02:10 The CIA's director's formula for economic stimulus, wrote Schlesinger, is to kick labor in the teeth. As he continued to wrestle with the disgruntled corporate community, Kennedy longed to make the battle over the economy the centerpiece of his presidency, telling Schlesinger that he only wished there was no Cold War so he could debate the future of America with businessmen. This is a remarkable and all but overlooked statement indicating, once again,

1:02:38 Kennedy was a visionary. A year after the April 62 steel blow up, Kennedy tried to make light of the controversy as he addressed a Democrat fundraising at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Told that the steel industry was presenting former President Eisenhower with an annual public service in another banquet down the hall at the same hotel, JFK grinned and said, I was their man of the year last year.

1:03:07 He told the Democrat crowd, they wanted to come down to the White House to give me this award, but the Secret Service wouldn't let them in. And everybody laughed. But there was still rising tension in his government. Kennedy would bring up the awkward subject of assassination from time to time. In public, as on this occasion, he used it as a comedic device. But in private, with old friends like Red Fay, he mused about it more somberly.

1:03:38 The climate of conflict surrounding Kennedy's presidency had a way of evoking this grim topic. Outraged by the president's strong stand against the steel industry, Henry Luce invoked the fate of Julius Caesar in a harsh editorial in Fortune magazine. You know, like a threat. He warned JFK that he should beware of the Ides of April.

1:04:06 But Kennedy never backed down from his ongoing duel with the steel industry. In October 1963, just weeks before his assassination, JFK's Justice Department filed price-fixing charges against U.S. Steel and other steel companies based on Bobby's earlier grand jury probe of the industry. To the end of his life, Kennedy made it clear that there was no ass-kissing for the corporate powers to try to undermine his presidency. Wow. So, he...

1:04:38 like Trump, took on big business. It didn't bode well for him. So we're going to stop right there today. We'll finish up this chapter tomorrow. Anybody got anything? I guess Bridget never made it. I hope everything's okay. I have not seen Bridget at all, Colonel. But thank everyone for being here on Rumble and on...

1:05:14 on spaces. I am just talk about, wow, you're absolutely right. That, that, that was a closer when I look at what's really going on here and what he did. And now we're seeing all of the things that JFK did during his presidency that really torqued a lot of people off in my mind. So, so we know the press to shame and blame corporations.

1:05:43 That's something you don't see. So to me, what's the interesting part of this is we know, based on our research, that when companies get pissed off at governments like ITT and Anaconda Copper Mining got ticked off at Salvador Allende for ruining their good deal, they assassinate them.

1:06:13 You get the feeling that as JFK was taking on all of these fights, there's a growing sense of peeing in all of these people's rice bowls. And they had a tool named Alan Dulles that was an expert on getting rid of heads of state that did exactly that.

1:06:44 Alicia, go ahead. Hi. This chapter really hit home to me in a way that I did not expect. Without the risk of doxing myself or family or anything like that, my great-grandfather was very high up in the corporate world and intermingled in a lot of these similar circles with some of these people. We passed way back in the early aughts when I was like,

1:07:16 you know, elementary school age. But he wrote a textbook back in the 80s or so, and that was used in some major colleges for a while. It's since been obviously way past retired, but when I was in college, I got a copy of it because I was in business school.

1:07:40 I was curious to learn what my great-grandfather had to teach because he was so involved in the corporate world. And I'd seen some probably topics that y'all have talked about in other spaces up close and personal and ran in similar circles as people that had been brought up here and there. And he was probably the sharpest man I've ever known, but not the most warm, if you will.

1:08:10 And, you know, I was young to understand it when I was, you know, back then. But I knew he was smart. I knew he was, you know, and I knew he had lived a life. When I read the book the first time, you know, I took it as like a, you know, a good, you know, some interesting takeaways. But there were always some comments, especially his conclusion that never tracked for me because it.

1:08:38 didn't sound like him. Like a very stern man, very much like, you know, as a child, he expected every one of us grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be, you know, model behavior at, you know, the whole nine yards, like no nonsense. And I just hearing, learning that what I've learned, you know, since, you know, falling on with Project Gladio and putting pieces together and

1:09:06 And listening to this, especially today, and some of the conclusions and takeaways, and just, you know, it prompted me to pick out his book off the shelf. If y'all wouldn't mind just, you know, letting me do this for one second, reading the conclusion. Go ahead. I find it very, very enlightening after hearing what I heard today.

1:09:36 Go ahead. So the conclusion of his book, which is about regulatory. I mean, it's a very dry book about like regulatory, you know, regulation of American business and industry. You know, I was a member of a corporate team for more than 40 years. Although I am retired, I still consider myself a part of the corporate establishment. I have known hundreds of corporate managers over those years, not only in the corporations in which I have served as counsel, officer or director.

1:10:05 but in those with whom I have done business or have known through professional associations or social contracts. By and large, with very few exceptions, I have known them to be honest, untrustworthy, and responsible. I have seen mistakes made in business. I have seen losses incurred, penalties and civil liabilities inflicted, adverse public reaction to corporate policy. I know that the law is complex and sometimes confusing. I know that people with the best intentions can go awry. I know that people...

1:10:33 that public reaction cannot always be prophesied. Almost any corporate manager will acknowledge mistakes, a few things that he or she has done in the past and would like to be able to do over again and do them right. Commenting on the position of the corporation and society, Henry Ford II acknowledged the failures of corporate managers, including himself when he said, in recent decades, we businessmen have neglected many genuine problems and turned a blind eye to conditions that should have caught our attention.

1:11:03 Often we have simply been stupid. We have refused to confront some of the crucial issues of our time. And as a result, we have played directly into the hands of our critics and helped to make matters worse. Today, the great majority of capitalism's problems reflect the failure of businessmen to take politics and new social movements as seriously as they should have. Often businessmen have refused to respond to what's valid in the critics' cases.

1:11:30 At the same time, many businessmen have also been inept in dealing with those charges and criticisms that aren't valid. And there are many of these. We capitalists were smart enough to make America the richest and most powerful nation the world has ever known. But in responding to our critics, we have often preferred bombast to serious public policy analysis. Ford's criticism of himself and his fellow corporate managers and one of the strongest by a corporate chief executive that can be found. It goes directly.

1:11:59 However, to the root of the problem, corporations are not perfect. Corporate managers are not perfect. Corporate critics are not perfect. Government officials are not perfect. No one is perfect. But our affections as corporate managers and as citizens, we have an obligation to our corporations and to our country to be ever alert to the requirements of the law, to the changing social scene, the demands of society. We must try to anticipate as best we can the changes in society.

1:12:28 that we can calmly and objectively consider such changes and evaluate them to determine their impact upon our operations, and if necessary, adjust to accommodate. We must do this not in the spirit of surrender to forces we do not believe in, but in the spirit of understanding the complexity of society and of understanding that those who recognize and can adjust to the change are those who will be best able to survive and prosper.

1:12:55 Innumerable laws dealing with social issues have imposed severe obligations upon corporations and their managers. As the Congress addresses other situations, it is not unreasonable to expect that bills will be introduced and perhaps passed to rectify whatever wrong the Congress may define. Or if a law already exists, but the Congress determines that it is not being properly obeyed, it may amend legislation to tighten the procedures.

1:13:20 for enforcement or to increase the penalties as it did in the case of antitrust laws in 1974. Every regulatory state that the Congress has passed has been a response to a reaction that there is an evil that needs to be corrected. The actions of corporate managers who have somehow failed to realize their responsibility for customer or employee safety, for responsible labor relations, for open and free competition, for many of the other questionable business practices have caused the enactment of laws that have not only sought to remedy the alleged evils,

1:13:49 but also typically have gone too far and have placed unreasonable burdens upon businesses. Corporate managers must therefore be conscious in the performance in the public sector. It's not sufficient that they really seek the most profitable opportunities, although they should not forget profit is a prime objective, but they must also try to anticipate what the public expects of them. This does not mean that they should surrender to every suggestion by every far-out activist, but they must try to understand what substantial segments of the public expect of them.

1:14:17 The very minimum that a corporate manager can do to demonstrate social responsibility is to make reasonable efforts to comply with the law. Alicia, do you have very much more? It's almost done. I'm almost done. I'll get to the meat of it. Basically, there's no promise that any of that will work. There's no guarantee that laws will result to good.

1:14:48 good things. The corporate managers have been among the finest people. They work hard. They're imaginative and innovative. They want to do the right thing. While the pitfalls are many and there are many ways to guard against them, I am an incurable optimist. I believe that most corporate managers are conscious of their responsibilities and that they will survive and lead America to greater heights of well-being in the future. The positivity in him and just the hope and the

1:15:18 I don't know. It's, that was very unlike him. Very, you know, just the very bare, like that was him bearing his heart, like as far as I could tell. And it always struck me weird. But now thinking through everything with Gladio, it's, he was witnessing this and trying to come to terms with it. And so it's interesting. I just, I'm trying to grapple with that right now. So let me give you an alternative view of that.

1:15:49 corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders, and that's it. They don't have a responsibility to social issues or any of that other stuff. But they also have a responsibility to bargain in honesty. And what we saw is they went into negotiations, they used JFK.

1:16:16 as part of that negotiation strategy and then turned right around and stabbed everybody in the back. That's bullshit. And a lot of these, just let me finish. A lot of these corporations have, their CEOs, the corporations, they create foundations like the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and they can do a lot of good.

1:16:45 on the social issues with those foundations, but they don't. They use those foundations as fronts for CIA nefarious shit, both here and abroad. So I also want to say that so many of these people that are high up in government, just like Eisenhower's famous last speech,

1:17:10 was warning people about the military industrial complex that he actually created. They all have this benevolent, in hindsight, nice rhetoric because they don't have to do it anymore. And I don't see any of it as genuine reflection as to remorse because they no longer are in a position

1:17:40 to put that, they can say anything they want after they're out of that business. What really matters is what they did when they were in the business. And it says, let me finish, it says in there about that corporations are inept. Corporations are not inept. If they're inept, they go broke. They're not inept in not seeing social changes.

1:18:09 They're very involved through their foundations in culminating or thwarting social changes. And last, he makes the comment about Congress correcting evil or doing regulations. These businessmen,

1:18:38 Pay Congress to write the laws. Congress isn't fixing evil. Congress is evil because they're part of this entire process. These businessmen wine and dine these congressmen. They send them on junkets over to countries that they have investments in so that they will pass favorable foreign aid for those countries that at the end of the day goes into the coffers of these countries. Congress has never been the answer to any of this.

1:19:07 The businesses could do better. They just choose not to. But it is not the responsibility of a corporation to address social issues. Their responsibility is to their shareholders. They can do that with their own private money or in the case of these foundations through that mechanism. But as we found out in the Reese Commission in the 1950s illustrated, those foundations are used for evil too.

1:19:36 Well, and I agree with that all completely. What I'm getting across with this is that, so I read this book before, the majority of it is very dry, very what you would expect if you're someone trying to learn about someone who had to operate in that world, right? Yeah, I have an MBA. I know how dry they are. Yeah, but what I mean is that last section always...

1:20:01 weirded me out because it came out of nowhere. He published this before corporate social responsibility was even coined. And he was not the kind that was believing in charity. He was not that kind of person. That's why it always struck me weird. But now, I almost am seeing it as if it's his...

1:20:26 his right wrongs of his own doing yeah or his realization and hope for the future or that like that things would get better i don't know i i'm much more cynical than you are but it's your relative i understand that and like i was young when he died and they're trucking i wish i wish i could get in a time machine yeah and go ask him a bunch of questions yeah you know

1:20:52 um i would love to ask my grandmother but i don't think she she doesn't she would like to talk about him so um but it's i don't know it's that always it always got me weird because i it that that whole that last conclusion comes out of nowhere it lines with nothing else in the book um which goes over a lot of the you know the evils that have been that haven't done in like the 50s 60s and 70s um

1:21:18 I don't know. It just it never clicked for me until just now that like, oh, oh. Yeah. OK. Thank you for sharing that all along. Go ahead. Yeah. Colonel related to, you know, the steel crisis of JFK. You probably know that our beloved Fortune magazine, which, you know, was an offshoot of Time Incorporated.

1:21:48 I was surprised to learn it was even before Life magazine. I believe it was found in 1931, and I know it was led by C.D. Jackson, the future guy who gained control of the Zapruder film, and who at that time was literally the world's leading authority on psychological warfare. Yep. Oh, what a coinkydinky.

1:22:13 So, yeah, there was an editorial on the steel crisis in Fortune magazine called The Ides of April. And I put it in the pill and people should really check that out. It's it's it's got an either to analogy going there with maybe some other folks who were assassinated. Yeah. Seriously, you got to read this one. It's in the pill. Thank you. Yeah. And also.

1:22:43 I mean, I just I kind of get your, Colonel, your point about, you know, these comments by Eisenhower. And, you know, we see it again with Truman in December 22nd, 1963, with his op ed in The Washington Post. Yeah. I mean, there is a sense in which these guys are like kind of like, well, the horses left the barn and now I'm going to try to wash my hands like. Yeah, we get to that in a later chapter.

1:23:12 Yeah, and yet I still, I think that there is, you know, especially with the Truman comment, to me, I'm not ready to completely dismiss it as historically irrelevant, you know, simply as a guy who's trying to, you know, from the moral perspective, we might see it that way. But nevertheless, he's saying some things there that are like, you got to wonder why that op-ed by...

1:23:40 Truman was removed from the Washington Post, I believe after the Bulldog edition, you know. Well, we're going to get to it in the book. There's a lot of context around that. Yeah. And so, you know, to some extent, these comments might, you know, be seen as from a moral perspective one way, but as a kind of in terms of the incremental development of the national security state, they still might be kind of significant markers. Yeah, possibly. I agree.

1:24:09 SR and then Illini. SR? Thank you, Colonel. Sure. I'm sorry. What I was thinking about, did I hear you correctly? I got two things going here. Did I hear you correctly that Dulles was sitting at a dinner with Bush and Bush did not know he had been fired? Prescott Bush. Yes, that's correct. Prescott Bush. That's not Bush. Okay.

1:24:42 Well, it's Bush's dad, Prescott Bush. It's Bush's dad. Yes. I'm sorry. I should have qualified. Yeah. I find that very troubling that he wouldn't have known. Prescott Bush was a senator. Why would he know? I sort of took that as, okay, when there's changes in the administration, obviously.

1:25:07 The House and Senate know what's going on. No, no, they don't. McCone had not been nominated. The announcement had not been made until the following day. There we go. Okay, now I get it. Now I understand. Okay. Secondly, you made the comment, and I agree with you 100% how this tracks with what Trump has been doing and what they're doing to Trump.

1:25:36 this whole time yep and i'm sitting here to hope and like hell nobody's reading jfk's war book okay that's what i got yeah align i go ahead hey colonel one of my um mccone comes up in the book um a decent amount um and and one of my favorites

1:26:06 stories you know that's part of operation gladio um is as kind of a a low-level introduction to it is the dita beard affair um where where i mean what's not mentioned in um devil's chess board is that mccone leaves the cia and he goes on to become the chairman of itnt corporation it actually gets to that um but go ahead yeah go ahead okay go ahead

1:26:35 Yeah, no, that's fascinating. You know, seven years later, what's going on is McCone is the chairman of IT&T, and William Merriman is having lunches with the quote-unquote McLean agency, i.e. the CIA, and discussing what do we do about this Allende guy? Yes. How do we get rid of him? Yes.

1:27:00 And and they're basically, you know, conspiring is part of this this coup plot. It winds up the all these internal IT&T memos, which are supposed to wind up in the shred bin, instead wind up on Jack Anderson's desk. And he publishes them on the front page of The Washington Post.

1:27:24 It's one of those stories where you can basically, it's an easy way to say, hey, Trump had nothing to do with this. This isn't like Russian propaganda. This is Jack Anderson. He's the guy who gave the Washington Post his name for investigative journalism. But the point is, is McCone was part of the oligarchy. Yeah. He leaves the CIA. I mean, he was one of Dulles' friends. He winds up leaving the CIA. He winds up.

1:27:54 Going off to Palacu in Chile when Allende tries to take over his assets, his telecommunications assets inside the country. And then, of course, he works alongside Bank of America and a number of other institutions to try and make business life.

1:28:14 more difficult there. I don't have an issue with that. I have an issue with him working with the CIA to plot a coup and interfere inside the country's politics. And offering to pay for it. Yes, offering to pay for it. Ultimately, the funniest part of all, I mean, this should have been the scandal that brought down the Nixon presidency. This is what they should have impeached him over.

1:28:37 Yeah. In particular, the hey, a big, you know, a big U.S. corporation gave you a million, gave you a bag full of hundred dollar bills. Yeah. A million dollars that he gave it, I think, to Mitchell or Kleindienst, the attorney general.

1:29:00 And as part of that, they were going to do two things. Number one, the Department of Justice was going to call off its antitrust lawsuit against IT&T. And number two, we're going to do this coup in Chile. Another fascinating tidbit that I just looked up, Dita Beard, who was at the center of all this, she was a lobbyist for a couple of other tidbits.

1:29:24 Dita Beard worked on Nixon's campaign in 1960. She was also with the Red Cross in the Korean War. And that's piece number one. And piece number two, I didn't realize this. IT&T tried to buy out the American Broadcasting Corporation in 1967.

1:29:44 they tried to do a merger with them that, interestingly, got blocked by the Department of Justice by Lyndon Johnson's administration. It is kind of interesting, though, how this big conglomerate is trying to stick all of its fingers in all these different pies, and you've got John McCone running it, and it's this big octopus that's doing everything for bribing Nixon to...

1:30:12 To try to run coups in Chile, and it's a fascinating tidbit. Yeah, and there's a book called The Profiteers, Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World. And in that book, the author, Sally Denton, mentions that he also helped found the Committee on the Present Danger. And for those of you who don't know, I've come across that.

1:30:42 It did basically the same thing that the International Institute of Peace did or the Institute of Peace that was just shut down by Trump. They provide quote unquote scholars to write papers so that the CIA can then use those papers.

1:31:05 as part of their intelligence gathering that always support the CIA going doing covert shit. And McCone is supposedly behind the founding of that as well, which I found fascinating. Who's next? Why are you so mad? Go ahead. Great space today, Colonel. Thank you. Very eye-opening.

1:31:38 I'm going to point it out as like SR did and you did a couple of times. The parallels of what Kennedy tried to accomplish and what Trump is accomplishing is absolutely eye opening and it should be eye opening to everybody. It's very clear the path that Donald Trump has taken to dismantle.

1:32:06 The international corrupt cabal. And it's it. And I don't know who mentioned it, but every time I hear American Red Cross, I don't know. Dollar signs flash in my eyes for some reason. But that's that's that's neither here nor there. I just I'm going to point it out so much that the parallels are very clear. Absolutely amazing.

1:32:35 And to see it finally getting done. And I don't know how many assassination attempts there have been on Donald Trump. I'm sure there's so much more than we're even aware of. But it's got to be divine for him to be where he's at. And I'm going to I am so glad to be alive during this period of time. It's been fantastic. Thank you.

1:33:03 Great, great work for you and Bridget. I mean, keep going. You're active duty whether you want to know it or not. Yeah. So I also failed to mention the reason why that book that that lady wrote about Bechtel is so important. McComb happened to help create Bechtel. Bechtel is like one of the world's largest.

1:33:30 military industrial complex benefactors. McComb was part of the creation of Bechtel, which is why he's featured in that book. So I thought I'd add that along. All along, go ahead. Yeah, just picking up on the point made by Illini regarding the ABC. I didn't know that about ABC in 1967, but, you know,

1:34:01 ABC has a very interesting connection with Rupert Murdoch coming out of Australia. I don't really quite understand all the permutations, but there's some weird permutations. To a large extent, Rupert Murdoch was very influential. I'm pretty sure it's like some sort of...

1:34:29 Like he had some ties to going on with CIA in Australia in like the early 50s. But it's kind of shady. And, you know, he was influential in the early history of CIA. And then, you know, we all know about its relationship with, you know, ABC and Capital Cities in like around 1984 with Reagan's, you know, the Burma boy. What's his name? Casey, William Casey. And then so it's very interesting to see.

1:34:57 Learn this 1967 connects to ITT. I think if that could be kind of fleshed out in a timeline, I think it would be very interesting because, you know, ABC was seen as kind of like sort of the new kid on the block, challenging the more established networks, NBC and CBS. That could be very interesting to look at. But also I wanted to point out your point, Colonel, about the committee on the.

1:35:26 present danger, you know, that's a key kind of like breadcrumb on our trail to, you know, the neocons of today. And it's like, you know, Israel, the Zionist genocide folks over in chosen Israel are going to, you know, be the sledgehammer, but, you know, of this greater regional project by, you know, the CIA and the international cartels.

1:35:56 And it's just, it's kind of interesting to see, to trace that development of the neocons up through the, you know, with Scoop Jackson and the Committee of the Present Danger and these, you know, these ties to these international, you know, companies. You mentioned Bechtel. And of course, the other really core neocon is Dick Cheney.

1:36:23 who, you know, work with Halliburton. Right. You know, so these are two companies that are kind of very similar building, you know, really big stuff. Right. And they're also connected as kind of breadcrumbs on the way to our current situation where, you know, we're just in hell led by these neocon CIA, you know, scum as far as I'm concerned. Yeah.

1:36:52 I can't disagree with you. Illini, go ahead. Colonel, are you entertaining questions about current events today? Sure, go ahead. The lady who gave, I'm not sure everybody's following what's going on with Fulton County, Georgia right now, but there was this lady who gave, she was wearing a Michael Jackson jacket is kind of the best way of describing it.

1:37:20 blue with all these gold things across it. Her name is Moe Ivory. And she basically says, you know, once the ballots are out of our hands, you know, we can't control it. And, you know, Donald Trump's Justice Department is evil and all this other stuff. I looked up her background. So she's a Fulton County...

1:37:45 Elections commissioner, but she was also a MSNBC commentator. Okay, that's not the interesting part. The interesting part is that she worked as the chief of staff to the executive vice president of artist contracting at Warner Music.

1:38:08 So the executive vice president isn't the person who signed the contracts. It's really the chief of staff who's running it, and she's a lawyer with all of that. So she's working on all these documents. She's also – if there's an issue that comes up, she's on the legal team too, and she can have a privileged conversation with all these different executives there. So I don't know.

1:38:36 I know that Warner Music was loosely affiliated with at least one or two artists out of Laurel Canyon. I checked. It wasn't affiliated with P. Diddy. But the point is that chief of staff is kind of the fix. If there were ever a legal issue, that job would almost sort of be the fixer role for relations with artists.

1:39:06 kicking people out because they said something stupid to the media about how the CIA wasn't so great or something like that. She would all kind of be associated with all of that. I don't know if you're familiar with anything more detailed about Warner Records. This would have been like the late aughts. Not a lot, but that is a good string to pull. I might have to check into that.

1:39:36 Jeff, go ahead. Jeff, go ahead. There's a great, great conversation about Bechtel. They have been a contractor for the government to build a nuclear power plant. I was watching a documentary about a week and a half ago about Three Mile Island, how they were called in to clean the whole mess up. And so they're big operators. But with a central intelligence agency.

1:40:18 the food and drug administration and their control of the drugs in particular one one of them that really really gets to me is high fructose corn syrup and how connected the intelligence agency is to the food and drug administration and as we've discussed in just about all of your great shows about how the the drug business and the intelligence business is intertwined but yeah

1:40:47 It's another great story, another great story about Kennedy. And, you know, Joseph Kennedy did take the money from the unions. And I think that the steel company was just another example of another reason why they didn't want the Kennedys around. But it's a great story, great connection. Thank you. I just tend to really, really take a disagreement that high fructose corn syrup is so...

1:41:17 so bad for our population that those agencies protect them. I'll yield with that. Thank you, Colonel. SR, go ahead. Thank you, Colonel. Sort of on the same lines as Eli and I here. I've been thinking concerning the entertainment industry and what's been going on here of late. If you notice, all of a sudden we have all of these famous actors and actresses coming out and...

1:41:50 and hollering and screaming about everything. And I'm beginning to wonder how these certain actors and actresses are picked. Who are you going to pick to come out and say a damn word about it? Well, just recently we had one come out, some lady come out that I believe was Ringwald or whoever. They came out and made a comment. And all I could think about is, gee.

1:42:20 You're not a bad actress. I mean, come on. Beetlejuice was fun. But let's get over it. Nobody's going to listen to you. Yet they put these people on anyway. So there are, unfortunately, people that listen to them. But you need to view Hollywood, both in the movie part of it and the people that participate in as the paid actors.

1:42:49 that the CIA ties to the movie industry we've talked about throughout this whole journey. So when they need a PR person, they're already on the payroll. So they just give them a script for them to make a post, do a video or whatever. They're just continuing the contract that they already have.

1:43:18 That's why every single thing that comes out of their mouth needs to be disregarded as irrelevant. They are paid spokesmen of an industry that the CIA has controlled for a very long time. Travis, go ahead. I just wanted to, the guy that Alpha Warrior brought up on his podcast the other day, his first name is Sergi.

1:43:53 The Azog guy that was at my van inside J6, inside the Capitol at J6. And then three months after J6, him and his partner blew up some railroad tracks in Alberta. The partner was caught, but all paperwork disappeared. An MI6 agent.

1:44:22 that I positively identified, came and picked him up. All paperwork disappeared. The following day, the Canadian Mountie that arrested him committed suicide. Wow. But he was, he was, he, he, Sergey is a Gladio 100%. Started out Gladio Ukraine, and now they're using him pretty much everywhere.

1:44:53 Sounds like it. Wow. Last I know of, he was captain in Gladio. Okay. I have no idea where he is now. I bet the CIA knows. Oh, yeah. But I just wanted to... Thank you. I'll pass that on to... Because I know Alpha's tracking him. I'll pass that on to Alpha.

1:45:24 Thank you for bringing that up. Actually, that's why I brought it up, because I wanted you to. I definitely will. Forward that to Alfred. His first name is Fergie. Kind of a short guy, round face, hair around the edges, bald on top. Got it. Thank you. All along, go ahead. Yeah, Colonel, regarding the musicians brought up.

1:45:56 by a couple of folks here in in the cultural figures like as you mentioned the way these movie stars entertainment figures and musicians are just you know they are so tied in to intelligence and communications industry right because that's kind of how the CIA sees it they see a singer endorsing like a Bruce Springsteen endorsing an Obama as

1:46:27 oh, well, this is, you know, we can have this, whatever imagery is associated with Bruce Springsteen, you know, with this kind of working class for, you know, not that it was really true or not, but you kind of need that when you have an Obama being more George Bush than George Bush could have gotten away with to some degree, you know what I mean? And they, as the politicians themselves, as their rhetoric has gotten so weak,

1:46:55 And so meaningless. And so like no one can even give a speech anymore. You know, I mean, think about what these kids are hearing in high school. They're being inspired by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by Senator Gillibrand. It's, you know, we cannot overstate the degree of decline. There's no public rhetoric anymore. It's just player piano. And so.

1:47:24 As the role of political speech has gone into the toilet, they increasingly rely on other means of psychological influencing, like these actors who have, you know, associations with this, that, or the other based on their image. And they're clearly using these figures to buttress these weak politicians in a way that's perhaps even more illusory than the CIA politicians themselves.

1:47:53 It's a level of totalitarianism that's nuts. We know it's, to some extent, it's not new because, I mean, look at Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the CIA and those connections. The CIA has realized that entertainment industry is essentially political in that we're going to control it so that no dissenting information can ever get out ever again. And we'll just play it like player piano.

1:48:20 And it's really kind of, it's profoundly disturbing in my opinion. And the other thing is I kind of have noticed a pattern where some of what I would call media Jim Crow, okay, what I call a media Jim Crow media ecology or whereby certain kind of connections that maybe politicians used to have more of a base.

1:48:51 you know, to some extent more class, like as in working class, black and white, middle class, black and white, whatever. But now it's almost, it's almost become only race for the, I want to be careful here because the point I'm trying to make is that it's used in a kind of Jim Crow way by the wealthy corporations to use race as a substitute for like.

1:49:20 Wait, who's really benefiting from this policy, whether it be a foreign policy or an economic policy? And it's just it's profoundly dangerous and sick the way that this entertainment and kind of media Jim Crow has been used just almost more so as the politicians themselves grow weaker vis-a-vis the intelligence agencies who are just running everything. Right. Yeah, I agree.

1:49:51 I agree. Okay. I don't see any more hands. I'm going to go grab some dinner. I appreciate you guys all being here with us. And I will be on tonight at 8 o'clock. Let me bring that up real quick. Let's see. With Justice Cometh on his podcast. And that's on Rumble if you guys are looking for it.

1:50:21 I think he streams it over to X as well. But anyway, that's at eight o'clock tonight. And then Warhamster canceled tomorrow at noon. He had something come up, so we will not be doing it tomorrow at noon. And I'll be back at four o'clock tomorrow. So thanks for hanging out with us today. And I appreciate all of the conversation at the end. You guys are amazing. All right.

1:50:51 Thanks, everybody. See you tomorrow or tonight. Bye.

Entities here

CIA61 Allen Dulles48 Arthur Schlesinger Jr.26 United States25 John F. Kennedy25 Charles de Gaulle24 John McCone23 France16 U.S. Steel15 1961 French coup attempt10 Paris10 1962 Steel Crisis9 Bay of Pigs9 Trump administration7 Washington, D.C.7 Algeria7 Henry Taylor7 RAND Corporation7 Averell Harriman6 Operation Gladio6 Soviet Union6 Cuba6 Fortune 5005 Belgian Communist Party5 Prescott Bush4 Robert F. Kennedy4 Laos4 Time-Life4 Sergei (J6 suspect)4 Roger Blough4 Richard Nixon4 Bechtel4 The Washington Post4 Committee on Present Danger4 SDECE4 Raoul Salan4 C. Wright Mills3 Harry S. Truman3 Lyman Lemnitzer3 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis3

Claims made here

Raoul Salan attempted_coup_against Charles de Gaulle host_asserted ▶ 1:32

“started with the senior, several senior officials in the military in France. By the second day of the coup, a dark foreboding had settled over Paris. I'm surprised that you are still alive, said the p…”

Paul Aussaresses spied_on CIA host_asserted ▶ 6:33

“Chali expected to face a firing squad, but de Gaulle's military tribunal proved surprisingly merciful, sentencing the 45-year-old general to 15 years in prison. After the failed coup, de Gaulle launch…”

Paul Aussaresses member_of SDECE host_asserted ▶ 6:33

Charles de Gaulle removed_from_power Paul Aussaresses host_asserted ▶ 6:33

Paul Aussaresses spied_on Frank Wisner host_asserted ▶ 7:03

“and he shut down its armed unit, the Shock Battalion, the 11th Shock Battalion, which he suspected as being a breeding ground for the coup, and he was correct. Grossen, who was closely aligned with th…”

Reinhard Gehlen member_of 11th Shock Battalion host_asserted ▶ 7:32

“had grown into a dangerously unhinged killing unit. They were also trained by Otto Skorzeny, targeting representatives of the Algerian independence movement and their European supporters, even on the …”

11th Shock Battalion trained Otto Skorzeny host_asserted ▶ 7:32

11th Shock Battalion assassinated Algeria host_asserted ▶ 7:32

Charles de Gaulle removed_from_power Michel Debré host_asserted ▶ 8:02

“which of course included Skorzeny. The 11th Shock Battalion assassination campaign reached the point where liquidations were almost a daily routine, according to one veteran of the SDECE, who served a…”

Michel Debré spied_on Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 8:34

“was Dulles' ally. Late in his life, Melnick continued to insist the CIA was always a friend to de Gaulle, which would have come as a surprise to the French president. Writing in his 1999 memoirs, Poli…”

Allen Dulles recruited Michel Debré host_asserted ▶ 9:03

“of General Charles de Gaulle, even of his often torturous Algerian policies, unquote, which is a flat out lie. After de Gaulle dumped Melnick, Dulles, who by that time had already been fired, immediat…”

Charles de Gaulle removed_from_power Alfred Ulmer host_asserted ▶ 9:35

“For the rest of his 10-year presidency, which ended with his retirement in 1969, de Gaulle continued to take strong countermeasures against forces he viewed as seditious threats. In 1962, he expelled …”

Charles de Gaulle removed_from_power NATO host_asserted ▶ 10:00

“De Gaulle evicted NATO from France to regain full sovereignty over French territory after discovering the military alliance was encouraging Western European secret services to interfere with France's …”

John F. Kennedy spied_on Charles de Gaulle host_asserted ▶ 12:23

“President Kennedy met only once with de Gaulle on a state visit in May of 1961, a month after the failed coup. The president and first lady were at a banquet at the palace. The general was dazzled by …”

John F. Kennedy removed_from_power Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 12:53

“The French journalist later observed why wake up old demons who had barely fallen asleep. Kennedy knew that he would have to resume wrestling with those demons as soon as he returned home. He would ha…”

John F. Kennedy recruited John McCone host_asserted ▶ 17:31

“The summer following the Bay of Pigs, Prescott Bush, the CIA's man in the Senate, and his wife, Dorothy, invited Dulles to dinner at their Washington home. The spymaster showed up with John McCone, th…”

John F. Kennedy removed_from_power Richard M. Bissell Jr. host_asserted ▶ 21:50

“had to drop him off. And Dulles was overheard saying he'd just take a taxi home. But of course, one of his buddies that was there decided they'd take him home. Retired at home in Georgetown, the old s…”

Robert F. Kennedy removed_from_power Eleanor Dulles host_asserted ▶ 22:19

“Then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, his brothers, tracked down Eleanor Dulles at the State Department and fired her. Well, he got Rusk to do it, who was the Secretary of State, and basically told Rus…”

Lyman Lemnitzer member_of NATO host_asserted ▶ 22:50

“already begun to purge Dulles' cold warriors like Arleigh Burke, who was drummed out of the Navy in August. Next to go was Lyman Lemitsker. Unfortunately, they put him in NATO, and that decision would…”

John F. Kennedy removed_from_power Arleigh Burke host_asserted ▶ 22:50

John F. Kennedy reassigned Lyman Lemnitzer host_asserted ▶ 22:50

Richard Helms spied_on Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 23:53

“Or so he thought. But it soon became clear that the Dulles dynasty was not entirely dismantled. In truth, the Kennedy purge had left the ranks of Dulles loyalists at the CIA largely untouched, like An…”

James Jesus Angleton spied_on Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 23:53

Henry Taylor spied_on Arthur Schlesinger Jr. host_asserted ▶ 25:55

“that Southern congressmen were especially interested in the fact that Ethel Kennedy, sister-in-law of the president, twisted with Harry Belafonte. You know, because he was black. You're not allowed to…”

Henry Taylor member_of Allen Dulles host_asserted ▶ 28:54

“Henry Taylor, too, had ties to the Dulles brothers, having served in John Foster's diplomatic corps as ambassador to Switzerland. Huh, no kidding. On first glance, Schlesinger seemed like an unlikely …”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. spied_on Belgian Communist Party host_asserted ▶ 29:27

“As an OSS analyst, Schlesinger had been stationed in the London and Paris office. He held strong anti-communist views. After the war, Schlesinger became the leading architect of the Cold War liberalis…”

Time Inc. spied_on Belgian Communist Party host_asserted ▶ 30:28

“effort by Loose Life magazine, which the young Pulitzer Prize winning historian sometimes wrote for, to develop a blacklist of celebrities that the magazine believed belonged to the Communist Party. A…”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. spied_on Time Inc. host_asserted ▶ 30:58

“had his stamp of approval calling it a convenient way of checking on the communist-controlled groups. Though Schlesinger was an avid New Dealer, he was also pampered by American elite. The son of an e…”

John F. Kennedy appointed Robert F. Kennedy documented ▶ 41:26

“But by 1963, the president himself was telling his brother in Phil Graham that he was seriously considering replacing Rusk with Robert McNamara, who had proven to be a smart ally in Kennedy's battles …”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. funded CIA host_asserted ▶ 41:53

“CIA under the presidential control, which neither Truman nor Eisenhower had been able to do. It took courage for Schlesinger to confront his old friends at the spy agency, some of whom denounced him a…”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. member_of CIA documented ▶ 43:19

“toward drastic reorganization of the intelligence services. But it was Schlesinger whom Kennedy tapped to develop an ambitious CIA reorganization plan, while Taylor was limited to the Bay of Pigs inqu…”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. proposed CIA documented ▶ 43:46

“While I am far from a professional in the field, I am definitely an experienced amateur. Schlesinger threw himself into the CIA study with scholarly dedication, amassing a thick file that contained cr…”

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. exposed CIA documented ▶ 44:11

“compiled essays and investigative features about Dulles' reign from the liberal press. The White House advisor completed his memo for revamping the CIA on June 30th. He acknowledged that his proposal …”

John F. Kennedy appointed John McCone documented ▶ 48:30

“He picks John McComb, who was awful. Now it was Schlesinger's time to erupt. Putting an Eisenhower retread in charge of the CIA would be a disastrous move, he warned Kennedy. It would send the wrong s…”

John F. Kennedy targeted_for_regime_change Laos guest_asserted ▶ 50:51

“This was clear, Harriman confided, from looking at the policy maneuvers around Laos, the Southeast Asian sideshow in which Kennedy was determined not to get involved. JFK's policy of neutrality was be…”

CIA targeted_for_regime_change Laos guest_asserted ▶ 50:51

Henry Taylor exposed CIA documented ▶ 52:50

“mischievous ideas and projects. Two years into McCone's tenure as CIA director, syndicated newspaper columnist Henry Taylor published a surprisingly critical piece of the intelligence agency calling i…”

Allen Dulles covered_up CIA host_asserted ▶ 53:47

“Quote, certainly you must know that any attack on you by me is inconceivable. No one has served this country with greater distinction or selflessness and success than you. This is supposedly an indepe…”

Allen Dulles member_of CFR documented ▶ 57:25

“the business statesman, who was fighting not just for his own company, but on behalf of the entire corporate sector by defying the president's authority. His company occupied a central position in the…”

Allen Dulles member_of Lafayette Fellowship Foundation documented ▶ 57:25

Roger Blough member_of Lafayette Fellowship Foundation documented ▶ 57:25

Roger Blough member_of CFR documented ▶ 57:25

John F. Kennedy ordered_assassination_of Roger Blough host_asserted ▶ 58:25

“Determined to protect his presidency over the next three days, JFK unleashed the full power of the federal government in an all-out effort to crush the steel industry rebellion. Attorney General Bobby…”

John F. Kennedy targeted_for_regime_change U.S. Steel documented ▶ 58:25

Henry Luce ordered_assassination_of John F. Kennedy host_asserted ▶ 1:03:38

“The climate of conflict surrounding Kennedy's presidency had a way of evoking this grim topic. Outraged by the president's strong stand against the steel industry, Henry Luce invoked the fate of Juliu…”

John F. Kennedy targeted_for_regime_change U.S. Steel host_asserted ▶ 1:04:06

“But Kennedy never backed down from his ongoing duel with the steel industry. In October 1963, just weeks before his assassination, JFK's Justice Department filed price-fixing charges against U.S. Stee…”

U.S. Department of Justice funded U.S. Steel documented ▶ 1:04:06

RAND Corporation assassinated Salvador Allende host_asserted ▶ 1:05:43

“That's something you don't see. So to me, what's the interesting part of this is we know, based on our research, that when companies get pissed off at governments like ITT and Anaconda Copper Mining g…”

Anaconda Mining assassinated Salvador Allende host_asserted ▶ 1:05:43

Allen Dulles carried_out_attack Salvador Allende host_asserted ▶ 1:06:13

“You get the feeling that as JFK was taking on all of these fights, there's a growing sense of peeing in all of these people's rice bowls. And they had a tool named Alan Dulles that was an expert on ge…”

C.D. Jackson headed Fortune magazine host_asserted ▶ 1:21:48

“I was surprised to learn it was even before Life magazine. I believe it was found in 1931, and I know it was led by C.D. Jackson, the future guy who gained control of the Zapruder film, and who at tha…”

John McCone headed RAND Corporation documented ▶ 1:26:06

“stories you know that's part of operation gladio um is as kind of a a low-level introduction to it is the dita beard affair um where where i mean what's not mentioned in um devil's chess board is that…”

William Merriman targeted_for_regime_change Salvador Allende documented ▶ 1:26:35

“Yeah, no, that's fascinating. You know, seven years later, what's going on is McCone is the chairman of IT&T, and William Merriman is having lunches with the quote-unquote McLean agency, i.e. the CIA,…”

CIA targeted_for_regime_change Salvador Allende documented ▶ 1:26:35

RAND Corporation targeted_for_regime_change Salvador Allende documented ▶ 1:27:00

“And and they're basically, you know, conspiring is part of this this coup plot. It winds up the all these internal IT&T memos, which are supposed to wind up in the shred bin, instead wind up on Jack A…”

Jack Anderson exposed RAND Corporation documented ▶ 1:27:00

John McCone member_of CIA documented ▶ 1:27:24

“It's one of those stories where you can basically, it's an easy way to say, hey, Trump had nothing to do with this. This isn't like Russian propaganda. This is Jack Anderson. He's the guy who gave the…”

Bank of America targeted_for_regime_change Salvador Allende host_asserted ▶ 1:27:54

“Going off to Palacu in Chile when Allende tries to take over his assets, his telecommunications assets inside the country. And then, of course, he works alongside Bank of America and a number of other…”

John McCone targeted_for_regime_change Salvador Allende host_asserted ▶ 1:27:54

RAND Corporation paid Richard Nixon host_asserted ▶ 1:28:37

“Yeah. In particular, the hey, a big, you know, a big U.S. corporation gave you a million, gave you a bag full of hundred dollar bills. Yeah. A million dollars that he gave it, I think, to Mitchell or …”

U.S. Department of Justice covered_up RAND Corporation host_asserted ▶ 1:29:00

“And as part of that, they were going to do two things. Number one, the Department of Justice was going to call off its antitrust lawsuit against IT&T. And number two, we're going to do this coup in Ch…”

Dita Beard member_of American Red Cross documented ▶ 1:29:24

“Dita Beard worked on Nixon's campaign in 1960. She was also with the Red Cross in the Korean War. And that's piece number one. And piece number two, I didn't realize this. IT&T tried to buy out the Am…”

RAND Corporation funded American Broadcasting Company documented ▶ 1:29:24

Lyndon B. Johnson covered_up RAND Corporation documented ▶ 1:29:44

“they tried to do a merger with them that, interestingly, got blocked by the Department of Justice by Lyndon Johnson's administration. It is kind of interesting, though, how this big conglomerate is tr…”

John McCone founded Committee on Present Danger book_quoted ▶ 1:31:05

“as part of their intelligence gathering that always support the CIA going doing covert shit. And McCone is supposedly behind the founding of that as well, which I found fascinating. Who's next? Why ar…”

John McCone founded Bechtel book_quoted ▶ 1:33:03

“Great, great work for you and Bridget. I mean, keep going. You're active duty whether you want to know it or not. Yeah. So I also failed to mention the reason why that book that that lady wrote about …”

Rupert Murdoch member_of CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:34:29

“Like he had some ties to going on with CIA in Australia in like the early 50s. But it's kind of shady. And, you know, he was influential in the early history of CIA. And then, you know, we all know ab…”

Henry Jackson member_of Committee on Present Danger host_asserted ▶ 1:35:56

“And it's just, it's kind of interesting to see, to trace that development of the neocons up through the, you know, with Scoop Jackson and the Committee of the Present Danger and these, you know, these…”

Dick Cheney member_of Halliburton host_asserted ▶ 1:35:56

CIA covered_up Bechtel host_asserted ▶ 1:40:18

“the food and drug administration and their control of the drugs in particular one one of them that really really gets to me is high fructose corn syrup and how connected the intelligence agency is to …”

Joseph Kennedy Sr. funded CIA host_asserted ▶ 1:40:47

“It's another great story, another great story about Kennedy. And, you know, Joseph Kennedy did take the money from the unions. And I think that the steel company was just another example of another re…”

Sergei (J6 suspect) member_of Operation Gladio caller_asserted ▶ 1:44:22

“that I positively identified, came and picked him up. All paperwork disappeared. The following day, the Canadian Mountie that arrested him committed suicide. Wow. But he was, he was, he, he, Sergey is…”

CIA funded Bruce Springsteen host_asserted ▶ 1:45:56

“by a couple of folks here in in the cultural figures like as you mentioned the way these movie stars entertainment figures and musicians are just you know they are so tied in to intelligence and commu…”

CIA funded Ronald Reagan host_asserted ▶ 1:47:53

“It's a level of totalitarianism that's nuts. We know it's, to some extent, it's not new because, I mean, look at Ronald Reagan, MCA, and the CIA and those connections. The CIA has realized that entert…”