It was in the period between 1945 and 1950 that the 'Cold War' was created, the CIA formed, and the 'arms race' with the Soviet Union begun. The Department of Defense was born and Truman's cabinet was re-organized accordingly. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) came into being in 1949, in the Defense Department. [1]

It is to these years that the architects of what has come to be called 'Cold War II' were trying to roll back U.S. foreign policy in the Reagan/Bush era. And it is the spirit of these years that PNAC is now revisiting, yet again. Why? To recreate the material and psychological conditions that fostered a 'permanent war' economy and psychology in the 1940s - which led to a severe attack on civil liberties, massive military buildup, and the public 'will' to utilize extreme military measures for the purpose of achieving U.S. imperialist objectives in the name of 'national security.'

For more on how the Cold War was created, see the passage below by Howard Zinn. Also see the pages at this site on the four Defense Secretaries under Truman: James Forrestal, Louis Johnson, George Marshall and Robert Lovett. Reinhardt Gehlen, chief of Nazi intelligence in WWI, played a key role in the birth of the CIA and the Cold War; for more on that, see: [2] In 1950, Paul Nitze - the quintessential Washington 'insider' whose career spanned 9 presidential adminstrations - drafted the National Security Council memorandum (NSC-68) that led to the creation of the 'Committee on the Present Danger' (CPD-I) - below. This group, a 'private citizens lobby,' was comprised of wealthy foreign policy elite who were Cold War hardliners. The committee was resurrected in 1976 (CPD-II) for the purpose of fashioning Cold War II, under Reagan. The CPD was the prototype for PNAC. In fact, a number of the key figures in the formation of CPD-II, would later become PNAC members - Midge Decter, Norman Podhoretz and Jeane Kirkpatrick, for example. For more on these individuals, see: Signatory Facts.

On October 22, 1945, Secretary of War Robert Patterson created the Lovett Committee, chaired by Robert A. Lovett [Secretary of Defense under Truman], to advise the government on the post-World War II organization of U.S. intelligence activities... The new agency would 'consult' with the armed forces, but it must be the sole collecting agency in the field of foreign espionage and counterespionage. The new agency should have an independent budget, and its appropriations should be granted by Congress without public hearings. Lovett appeared before the Secretaries of State, War, and Navy on November 14, 1945.... Lovett pressed for a virtual resumption of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS).

...The CIA was established in 1947 according to the prescription of Robert Lovett, from Jupiter Island... [3]

The committee generated these follow-up activities:

The task of assimilating OSS into the War Department fell to Assistant Secretary McCloy, who had long promoted an improved national intelligence capability, according to his biographer Kai Bird. The War Department could have assimilated OSS' remaining personnel and files into its own intelligence organization, the G-2, but McCloy, in consultation with Donald Stone, ensured that that did not happen. McCloy ordered Brig. Gen. John Magruder of OSS to preserve SI and X-2 "as a going operation," which the Assistant Secretary dubbed the "Strategic Services Unit" (SSU) and hoped could be handed intact to a new peacetime intelligence organization. Secretary of War Robert Patterson confirmed this directive just before the formal dissolution of OSS on 1 October 1945, ordering Magruder to "preserve as a unit such of these functions and facilities as are valuable for permanent peacetime purposes." [4]

[5] Amendments to the Act gave the Secretary of Defense greater powers and a larger staff, in an organization renamed the Department of Defense .[6]

Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, an early director of the CIA, later explained the need for covert operations to an investigative committee appointed by Kennedy:

When you are at war, Cold War if you like, you must have an amoral agency which can operate secretly and which does not have to give press conferences...I think that so much publicity has been given to CIA that the covert work might have to be put under another roof... It's time we take the bucket of slop and put another cover over it (Operation Zapata, Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1981, pp. 276-277 [7]

The ubiquitous Nitze has been a force to contend with through nine presidential administrations spanning a period of forty years, a record of durability that even the politburo must envy. Nitze in fact masterminded a major shift in the doctrine of containment in 1950. Outlined in a secret policy paper known as NSC-68 [National Security Council Memorandum 68], his world view served as American's official Cold War Manifesto until the political fallout over its implementation in Vietnam. - Peddlers of Crisis, page 9-10.

Out of NSC-68 was born the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD):

The legitimacy of the entire NSC-68 program came down to this one question: Did the Soviet Union harbor plans for global conquest by military force or not? This was the central issue of foreign policy debated first in elite circles in the spring of 1950, and then in the wider realm of mass politics by the winter of 1950-51, when the Committee on the Present Danger [CDP] came into being.

"We must have a much vaster propaganda machine to tell our story at home and abroad," said Robert Lovett. The CPD was the answer to his prayer. They would play the key role in promoting, as a "concerned and bipartisan .... group of 'distinguished private citizens'," the "same quintessential Cold War themes [articulated in NSC-68]".

Lovett, an investment banker, was foreign policy adviser to Truman and would eventually become his Secretary of Defense, after Acheson and Nitze had succeeded in highjacking Truman foreign policy and turning it in the direction the hardliners wanted it to go. Lovett would later become the man whom Kennedy would consult in choosing his cabinet, after declining Kennedy's invitation to act as Defense Secretary in his administration. [See Lovett.] ]

The themes underwriting the Cold War would be revisited in the Reagan years. With it would come the revival of the by-then defunct Committee on the Present Danger. [Follow thread1 through the Carter and Reagan years.] Not only were the assumptions and policies of CPD-I and CPD-II nearly indistinguishable, some of the members of CPD-I later showed up as members of CPD-II. Nitze, for example.

The present-day 'Project for a New American Century' (PNAC) closely resembles both incarnations of the CPD. Not only with respect to the foreign policies put forward, but also the role that the organization would play, as a 'quasi-governmental' unit comprised of 'elite foreign policy experts', in the selling and implementation of those policies. Also, very much like what had happened when CPD-II was re-created out of the ashes of CPD-I, some members of PNAC are recognizable as former members of CPD-II. [Follow thread1 through the George W. Bush years.]

As it turned out, the CPD would prove itself most effective in preparing the ground for alarmist statements such as the following one, which Truman delivered to a nationwide radio audience:

Our homes, our nation, all the things we believe in are in great danger. This danger has been created by the rulers of the Soviet Union. - Jerry Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis: The Committee on the Present Danger and the Politics of Containment (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1983), p. 55

That 1992 document not only foreshadowed what was to come once a Republican - in the person of George W Bush, as it happened - was to regain control over the Executive branch. It was also a document that was more than likely produced with the intention of putting the same kind of pressure on the upcoming Clinton administration that George HW Bush, as Director of the CIA under Ford, had sucessfully applied to get Carter to adopt a more bellicose Cold War posture, using the report authored by a group of 'foreign policy experts' that he had put together, a group that was to become known as Team B. A key member of Team B was none-other-than Paul Wolfowitz. He had worked with Rumsfeld and his assistant, Richard Cheney, in the Nixon administration, and when they spearheaded the 'transition' to Ford after Nixon resigned Wolfowitz followed them into the new administration, where George HW Bush would be appointed head of the CIA and eventually call on his services as a member of Team B. [For more on the Team B report, see: Carter Administration and Ford Administration]

This strategy - which Jerry Sanders describes as having a 'pincer-like' effect on presidents, because it combines pressure from the inside (brought to bear by the foreign policy elite) with pressure from the outside (public opinion stirred up by documents leaked by them to the press for this purpose) - was pioneered in the Truman years, and it worked. Truman's foreign policy was successfully hijacked by Acheson and Nitze, pushing out Defense Secretary Louis Johnson. The same strategy later caused a radical transformation in Carter's foreign policy.

The same scheme as described above was apparently also used on Clinton [see Clinton Administration], judging by how the pronouncements of his Defense Secretaries started to echo the talking-points of Wolfowitz's 1992 paper. All of this leads one to speculate that the same strategy will more than likely be tried again with any other democrat who is fortunate enough to be elected president.

James F Byrnes, Secretary of State under Truman, had previously been FDR's right-hand man. This was the man who FDR referred to as his 'assistant president'. It was he who ...

... formulated the recommendation that 'the bomb should be used against Japan as soon as possible; that it be used on a war plant surrounded by workers' homes; and that it be used without prior warning.' It was Byrnes who quashed Marshall's ideas of a demonstration on a military installation and of inviting the Russians to see the test".[10]

... Truman would not relent, and the Potsdam conference agreed to insist on 'unconditional surrender.' This ensured that the bombs would fall on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It seems that the United States government was determined to drop those bombs.

But why? Gar Alperovitz, whose research on that question is unmatched (The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, Knopf, 1995), concluded, based on the papers of Truman, his chief adviser James Byrnes, and others, that the bomb was seen as a diplomatic weapon against the Soviet Union. Byrnes advised Truman that the bomb "could let us dictate the terms of ending the war." The British scientist P.M.S. Blackett, one of Churchill's advisers, wrote after the war that dropping the atomic bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia ."

There is also evidence that domestic politics played an important role in the decision. In his recent book, Freedom From Fear: The United States, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999), David Kennedy quotes Secretary of State Cordell Hull advising Byrnes, before the Potsdam conference, that "terrible political repercussions would follow in the U.S." if the unconditional surrender principle would be abandoned. The President would be "crucified" if he did that, Byrnes said. Kennedy reports that "Byrnes accordingly repudiated the suggestions of Leahy, McCloy, Grew, and Stimson," all of whom were willing to relax the "unconditional surrender" demand just enough to permit the Japanese their face-saving requirement for ending the war.

Can we believe that our political leaders would consign hundreds of thousands of people to death or lifelong suffering because of "political repercussions" at home? The idea is horrifying, yet we can see in history a pattern of Presidential behavior that placed personal ambition high above human life. [11]

In 1970, the film "Patton" appeared. Nixon loved it, the public was told, and watched it numerous times. It was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, and co-authored the man who had been, in the Truman years, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - Omar N. Bradley[12]

Howard Zinn on the relationship between war and cold war:

It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control. Charles E. Wilson[Defense Secretary under Eisenhower], the president of General Electric Corporation, was so happy about the wartime situation that he suggested a continuing alliance between business and the military for "a permanent war economy."

It is Wilson's policy that Seymour Melman alludes to when he writes 'Now, at the start of the twenty- first century, every major aspect of American life is being shaped by our Permanent War Economy,' in In the Grip of a Permanent War Economy" (3/15/2003). George W. Bush and the PNAC crowd whose policies he religiously implements have catapulted us into a period of endless war. One can easily imagine Dick Cheney defending this approach with a paraphrase of Wilson's infamous slogan: "What is good for Halliburton is good for the country".

That is what happened.

When, right after the war, the American public, war-weary, seemed to favor demobilization and disarmament, the Truman administration (Roosevelt had died in April 1945) worked to create an atmosphere of crisis and cold war.

True, the rivalry with the Soviet Union was real--that country had come out of the war with its economy wrecked and 20 million people dead, but was making an astounding comeback, rebuilding its industry, regaining military strength.

The Truman administration, however, presented the Soviet Union as not just a rival but an immediate threat. In a series of moves abroad and at home, it established a climate of fear -- a hysteria about Communism -- which would steeply escalate the military budget and stimulate the economy with war-related orders. This combination of policies would permit more aggressive actions abroad, more repressive actions at home. [13]

In the election of 1952, during the Truman Administration, Patrick Hurley (Secretary of War in the Hoover Administration) would attempt to unseat U.S. Senator Dennis Chavez. Chavez, the first hispanic congressman, served from 1931-1962. Chavez sponsored the anti-discrimination Fair Employment Practices Bill in 1946, forerunner to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He argued that "if the Constitution is worth anything, if the Declaration of Independence is worth anything, if the boys who died on the field of battle did not die in vain, fair employment practices are correct and necessary." Strom Thurmond made opposition to FEPA the cornerstone of his 1948 presidential campaign - a race which he lost, to Trent Lott's chagrin.[14]

Chavez was also one of the first to denounce the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy. On the Senate Floor, on May 12, 1950, he said:

I should like to be remembered as the man who raised a voice and I devoutly hope not a voice in the wilderness at a time in the history of this body when we seem bent upon placing limitations on the freedom of the individual. I would consider all of the legislation which I have supported meaningless if I were to sit idly by, silent, during a period which may go down in history as an era when we permitted the curtailment of our liberties, a period when we quietly shackled the growth of men's minds.

It matters little if the Congress appropriates hundreds of millions of dollars to check the erosion of the soil if we permit the erosion of our civil liberties, free institutions, and the untrammeled pursuit of truth.

Mr. President, I am referring to the current attempt to establish tests and criteria for the patriotism of U.S. citizens, the attempt to evaluate Americans by the political beliefs they hold. And I am deeply concerned lest the consequences of these attempts lead to the control of our acts and of our thoughts, and ultimately to the destruction of our entire democratic way of life. [15]

Howard Zinn describes the political atmosphere in the U.S. in 1950:

It was a general wave of anti-imperialist insurrection in the world, which would require gigantic American effort to defeat: national unity for militarization of the budget, for the suppression of domestic opposition to such a foreign policy. Truman and the liberals in Congress proceeded to try to create a new national unity for the postwar years-with the executive order on loyalty oaths, Justice Department prosecutions, and anti-Communist legislation.

In this atmosphere, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin could go even further than Truman. Speaking to a Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, in early 1950, he held up some papers and shouted: "I have here in my hand a list of 205--a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department."

... [Yet] It was not McCarthy and the Republicans, but the liberal Democratic Truman administration, whose Justice Department initiated a series of prosecutions that intensified the nation's anti-Communist mood. [16]

... [Then, in the case of the Rosenbergs, in 1953] Justice William 0. Douglas granted a [last minute] stay of execution. Chief Justice Vinson sent out special jets to bring the vacationing justices back to Washington from various parts of the country. They canceled Douglas's stay in time for the Rosenbergs to be executed June 19, 1953. It was a demonstration to the people of the country, though very few could identify with the Rosenbergs, of what lay at the end of the line for those the government decided were traitors.

... Liberal intellectuals rode the anti-Communist bandwagon. Commentary magazine denounced the Rosenbergs and their supporters. One of Commentary's writers, Irving Kristol [father of PNAC signatory William Kristol], asked in March 1952: "Do we defend our rights by protecting Communists?" His answer: "No."

In an all-out attempt to unseat Chavez, the Republicans ran Patrick Hurley in the 1952 election. Chavez won the election by a very narrow margin. Republicans, however, parlayed their defeat into a victory of sorts - by warning that further attacks on McCarthy would lead to a challenge of the election results.

In the year 2000, Wilson Hurley, who had represented his father Patrick Hurley in the contested election of 1952, argued against permitting Al Gore a recount.[17]

• as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, 1943-46, and to Great Britain, Apr - Oct 1946;
• as Secretary of Commerce, Oct. 1946 - Apr. 1948;
• as U.S. representative in Europe under the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948, with rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and
• as Plenipotentiary, 1948-50;
• as special assistant to the President, 1950-51;
• and as American representative on North Atlantic Treaty Organization Committee to study Western defense plans, 1951; and director of the Mutual Security Agency, 1951-53.

Here is what Harriman had to say on the subject of Secretary of State James F Byrnes and Henry A. Wallace: [18].

It was Forrestal - and Byrnes, a strong advocate for the use of the atom bomb (see above) - who got Henry Wallace fired as Secretary of Commerce, to be replaced by Averell Harriman. For more on this see the pages at this site on James Forrestal and the Harding Administration. Had FDR chosen Byrnes as his vice president instead of Truman - which he had considered doing - Byrnes would have become president in 1945, after the death of FDR. But had Henry A. Wallace remained Vice President in FDR's third term, the presidency would have fallen to him.

[For more on Byrnes, see Clark Clifford, the Defense Secretary in the Lyndon Johnson Administration. Clifford first served in the Truman Administration, as it turns out - as Special Counsel to the President - and was a protege of Harriman's. He professes to having had a 'very close relationship' with Robert Lovett, James Forrestal [who would both become Secretaries of Defense] and with Robert Patterson, who created the Lovett Committee, out of which the Cold War and the CIA came.