Lovett was Defense Secretary in the Truman Adiminstration from 1951 to 1953.
Robert A. Lovett was Assistant Secretary of War in the FDR Administration, 1941-45, and was chairman of the influential Lovett Committee (below) in 1946 - out of which the CIA and the Cold War were born. He is recognized as one of the six principle architects behind the Truman Doctrine, the Marshal Plan and the Cold War. [For more on the six individuals, see the page at this site on James Forrestal, Truman's first Defense Secretary.]
Lovett became the fourth Secretary of Defense in the Truman Administration, serving from 1951 to 53. In 1956 he presented the Bruce-Lovett Report on the CIA (below) to President Eisenhower.
Lovett was Prescott Bush's partner at Brown Brothers Harriman [1], and was married to one of the daughters of the Brown Brothers, a company with which his father, Robert Scott Lovett, was also associated:
Dick Cheney was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1941, then went to Yale for a time, and now he sits on the board of directors of Union Pacific (UP) Railroad, which is based in Omaha. Keep in mind that since the turn of the last century the UP Railroad was controlled by the Harriman family, the employers of George Bush's maternal grandfather [George Herbert Walker ] and his father [Prescott Bush]. It was George Herbert Walker who left St. Louis, where he had his own investment bank--G.H. Walker & Co., involved in the financing of railroads and the companies owned by those railroads--to relocate to set up Averell Harriman and Bunny Harriman's investment bank. The two Yalie friends of Walker's (actually Skull and Bones friends) were the sons of E.H. Harriman, the old railroad tycoon. To assist the Harriman family in running the Union Pacific, they had a lawyer from Texas named Robert Scott Lovett, who for years ran the railroad. Robert S. Lovett's son was Robert A. Lovett, a partner at Brown Brothers Harriman, who was actually married to the daughter of one of the Brown Brothers. [2] In 1898 the Union Pacific Railroad was sold to Edward Henry Harriman & his partner, Judge Robert Scott Lovett. In 1918, Robert Scott Lovett was elected president of Union Pacific. And Samuel Bush [Prescott's father] was appointed to the facilities division of the US War Industries Board chaired by Bernard Baruch & his assistant, Clarence Dillon.[1] In the postwar period, Prescott Bush was associated with Prudential Insurance, one of Lovett's intelligence channels to the British secret services. Prescott was listed by Prudential as a director of the company for about two years in the early 1950s. Their Strategic Bombing Survey failed to demonstrate any real military advantage accruing from such outrages as the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. But the Harrimanites nevertheless persisted in the advocacy of terror from the air. They glorified this as ' psychological warfare,' a part of the utopian military doctrine opposed to the views of military traditionalists such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Robert [A.] Lovett later advised President Lyndon Johnson to terror-bomb Vietnam. President George [HW] Bush revived the doctrine with the bombing of civilian areas in Panama, and the destruction of Baghdad. [Bush's son, George W. Bush used the same strategy in the 2003 'Shock and Awe' bombing campaign in Iraq, [2], similarly glorifying it as 'psychological' warfare.]
It was George Herbert Walker who left St. Louis, where he had his own investment bank--G.H. Walker & Co., involved in the financing of railroads and the companies owned by those railroads--to relocate to set up Averell Harriman and Bunny Harriman's investment bank. The two Yalie friends of Walker's (actually Skull and Bones friends) were the sons of E.H. Harriman, the old railroad tycoon.
To assist the Harriman family in running the Union Pacific, they had a lawyer from Texas named Robert Scott Lovett, who for years ran the railroad. Robert S. Lovett's son was Robert A. Lovett, a partner at Brown Brothers Harriman, who was actually married to the daughter of one of the Brown Brothers. [2]
Their Strategic Bombing Survey failed to demonstrate any real military advantage accruing from such outrages as the fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany. But the Harrimanites nevertheless persisted in the advocacy of terror from the air. They glorified this as ' psychological warfare,' a part of the utopian military doctrine opposed to the views of military traditionalists such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Robert [A.] Lovett later advised President Lyndon Johnson to terror-bomb Vietnam. President George [HW] Bush revived the doctrine with the bombing of civilian areas in Panama, and the destruction of Baghdad.
[Bush's son, George W. Bush used the same strategy in the 2003 'Shock and Awe' bombing campaign in Iraq, [2], similarly glorifying it as 'psychological' warfare.]
Robert A. Lovett was the chair of the 1946 'Lovett Committee', out of which the Cold War and CIA were born:
On Oct. 22, 1945, Secretary of War Robert Patterson created the Lovett Committee, chaired by Robert A. Lovett, to advise the government on the post-World War II organization of U.S. intelligence activities. The existence of this committee was unknown to the public until an official CIA history was released from secrecy in 1989. But the author (who was President Bush's prep school history teacher; see chapter 5) gives no real details of the Lovett Committee's functioning, claiming: 'The record of the testimony of the Lovett Committee, unfortunately, was not in the archives of the agency whenthis account was written'. [But] the CIA's self-history does inform us of the advice that Lovett provided to the Truman cabinet, as the official War Department intelligence proposal. Lovett decided that there should be a separate Central Intelligence Agency. 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. [3]
[But] the CIA's self-history does inform us of the advice that Lovett provided to the Truman cabinet, as the official War Department intelligence proposal. Lovett decided that there should be a separate Central Intelligence Agency. 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. [3]
Around the same time, George H.W. Bush was entering military service. He could not meet the standard requirements imposed by the Air Force and Lovett was instrumental in having the requirements waived. [4].
When Kennedy was elected president years later, he asked Lovett to be his Secretary of Defense. Lovett declined, recommending McNaramara for the post.[4] As it happened, Lovett also hand-picked Dean Rusk for the JFK's cabinet [5]. "Other Council on Foreign Relations members [who were Lovett associates] were also assured a prominent role in developing U.S. foreign policy during the Kennedy years".[6]
Lovett also sat in on ExComm, the special committee that Kennedy assembled to advise him during the Cuban Missile Crisis [see: Kennedy Administration] and was asked to testify before the Maxwell Taylor board of inquiry on the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. [7]
In 1956 the Bruce-Lovett report was issued. According to Peter Grose, author of "Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles":
... two American elder statesmen, David Bruce and Robert Lovett, prepared a report for President Dwight Eisenhower in the fall of 1956 that criticized CIA's alleged fascination with 'kingmaking' in the Third World and complained that a 'horde of CIA representatives' was mounting foreign political intrigues at the expense of gathering hard intelligence on the Soviet Union. [8]
The Bruce-Lovett report expressed concerns about the emphasis, in the Eisenhower years, on covert Third World operations, and about the undue influence the Dulles brothers had on foreign policy. Allen Dulles, who remained Director of the CIA in the Kennedy Administration, was eventually fired from that post by Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. [For more on the Bruce-Lovett report, see the Eisenhower Administration]
