Is what we are seeing today, under George W. Bush, the appearance of a rogue element within government, or is it another manifestation of the very same 'forces within our government' that Garrison identifed over thirty years ago?

What, exactly, is the relationship between the neocon forces within the Bush administration and the forces within government that Garrison was talking about? The movie JFK portrayed a version of the story that has Kennedy swearing to break the CIA up into little pieces. Others tell a somewhat different tale:

The Kennedy brothers had . . . preserved a long-lasting association with Allen Dulles, then CIA Director. Letters in both the Kennedy and Dulles collections reflect that John and Robert Kennedy maintained correspondence with both Dulles brothers from at least 1955. Traveling in the same social sphere, Allen Dulles and John Kennedy were "comfortable with one another and there was a lot of mutual respect," Richard Bissell said in an interview. In fact, Kennedy was known to regard Dulles as a legendary figure. [3]

One of Lyndon Johnson's foreign policy advisors was John J. McCloy, a principal architect of the Cold War [see James Forrestal]. In 1951, McCloy "controversially ordered the release from prison of German industrialists such as Alfried Krupp and Friedrich Flick who had been convicted of serious war crimes at Nuremberg."[nz] Krupp's property, "valued at around 45 million, and his numerous companies were also restored to him". [kp].

In addition to becoming foreign policy advisor to Lyndon B. Johnson, McCloy would later perform the same service for Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. [mc]. From reviews of "The Chairman: John J. McCloy the Making of the American Establishment":

McCloy began life in Philadelphia, literally on the wrong side of the tracks. He died in 1989, an honored, seemingly ubiquitous elder statesman of the establishment. Along the way he served corporate America as a Wall Street lawyer, guided the World Bank through its early days, and chaired Chase Manhattan Bank [1953-60] at its peak. As an assistant secretary of war during World War II he participated in the decision to intern Japanese Americans. As high commissioner of occupied Germany in the 1950s, McCloy played a major role in the postwar recovery of Europe. Later, he helped John Kennedy negotiate an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis and served on the Warren Commission. Bird's lively account is both the first complete treatment of this remarkable career and a valuable insight into the workings of the American elite. Recommended for all general collections.

[McCloy was] chairman of the World Bank [1947-49]; Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations; Chairman and CEO of Chase; Chair of President's Disarmament Committee; helped negotiate the Cuban Missile Crisis; served on the Warren Commission; knew every President personally from FDR to [George HW] Bush.

[McCloy was also chairman of the Ford Foundation (1958-65)]. [bk]]

Frances Stonor Saunders, in The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, tells us how every aspect of culture was covertly orchestrated to inoculate the so-called free world against any thoughts which might lead to a restructuring of the philosophical or legal base that was the foundation of current wealth and power:

Whether they liked it or not, whether they knew it or not, there were few writers, poets, artists, historians, scientists or critics in post-war Europe whose names were not in some way linked to this covert enterprise.... Defining the Cold War as a ‘‘battle for mens’ minds’’ it stockpiled a vast arsenal of cultural weapons: journals, books, conferences, seminars, art exhibitions, concerts, awards.... Endorsed and subsidized by powerful institutions, this non-Communist group became as much a cartel in the intellectual life of the West as Communism had been a few years earlier (and [since it was the intellectual left that was being targeted for control through the establishment of a Non-Communist left] it included many of the same people).... It spied on tens of thousands of Americans, harassed democratically elected governments abroad, plotted assassinations, denied these activities to Congress, and, in the process, elevated the art of lying to new heights

...The CIA’s strategy-of-tension to create fear so citizens would support the militarization of America was for their wordsmiths to create thousands of editorials to be sent to newspapers around the world for the editors to restructure and use as their own. Think-tanks and institutes were created, some associated with universities and some independent; which were funded and staffed with ideologically pure editors to further polarize Americans with fear. All this was done in the name of protecting peace, freedom, justice, and human rights.

An excerpt from the memorandum:

... it is desired that we should develop as strong and persuasive a case as possible to demonstrate to the world the degree to which the Viet Cong is controlled, sustained and supplied from Hanoi, through Laos and other channels. In short, we need a more contemporary version of the Jorden Report [first White Paper on Vietnam], as powerful and complete as possible. [JP]

In a follow-up memo from Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Maxwell Taylor to Defense Secretary McNamara, Taylor interprets NSAM 273, and recommends a course of action:

National Security Action Memorandum No. 273 makes clear the resolve of the President to ensure victory over the externally directed and supported communist insurgency in South Vietnam. In order to achieve that victory, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are of the opinion that the United States must be prepared to put aside many of the self-imposed restrictions which now limit our efforts, and to undertake bolder actions which may embody greater risks. [x]

In the Kennedy Administration Forrestal was a member of the NSC staff identified as one of Kennedy's major advisers during the 1961-1963 period, directly involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis [see [x]. Forrestal is mentioned in the same breath as Harriman in this memo: "Averell Harriman, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, and Michael V. Forrestal, a centrally influential NSC staff member and Harriman protege" [x] In 1963 he was Deputy Director, Far Eastern Division, Directorate of Plans, Central Intelligence Agency (under Colby), at Saigon. [x]

Michael Forrestal will later become president of the Trade Council from 1978 to 1980 [during the Carter Administration]. Upon his death in 1989, the following was written:

Mr. Forrestal, a senior partner at the Shearman & Sterling law firm in New York and a former member of the senior staff of the National Security Council, died in 1989. Even today, the firm continues to benefit from the relationship, as one of Kazakhstan's principal legal advisers on oil and gas development deals.[x]

Is Michael Forrestal he related to James Forrestal, first U.S. Secretary of Defense? - search. He is James Forrestal's son. [#].

From a (January 1963) memorandum from Forrestal on Vietnam:

Many of the individuals and agencies in the U.S. Mission- are doing an outstanding job. But some of the criticisms of the Vietnamese also apply to the Americans, the following in particular:

1. There is no overall planning effort that effectively ties together the civilian and military efforts.
2. There is little or no long-range thinking about the kind of country that should come out of victory and about what we do now to contribute to this longer-range goal. [p]

Prouty on Dulles's indoctrination of JFK through Robert Kennedy:

"I began to notice who the men were that they were calling. Some of them had not worked on the Bay of Pigs; they were old-time Dulles implants from years back who might have had some peripheral assignment with the Cuban Brigade, but not basically. What Allen Dulles and the Agency were doing was using this opportunity to sit there every day with Bobby Kennedy, and every day with Maxwell Taylor to do some basic orientation.

It was heavy; and it paid off in some important ways. When you read sections of their Report to the President you'll realize that this type of indoctrination went all the way back to Dulles' old Dulles-Jackson-Correa philosophy. Dulles had a very willing hand in Maxwell Taylor, who had gotten out of the Government in a 'huff' during his Eisenhower years. Now, with this new Kennedy group immersed in the Bay of Pigs problem, it was Taylor's opportunity to move in, and he did just that. He got friendly with Bobby -- in fact one of Bobby's children is named Maxwell Taylor Kennedy. Bobby was very influenced by Taylor, and Dulles was influencing Taylor from his side. [t]

It explained the role of the Kennedys, and it explained the role of Maxwell Taylor. It explained how they intended to move into this area of the Cold War without an Allen Dulles and without the CIA. Remember what we said: "There was no law that said the CIA should be in covert operations!"

The NSAM 56 and the NSAM 57 that accompanied this (but were properly distributed to the Secretary of Defense and the DCI and all the rest) were very powerful documents as well. It wasn't just the one document that came down; it was a whole family of documents. They were all familiar to Taylor, they moved Taylor into being the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I believe that if Kennedy had not been killed, all of them would have been implemented while Maxwell Taylor was Chairman of the JCS. The arguments over these things, the policy developments over how this would be done, carried on well in to and through the year 1962. And by 1963, when you might have expected these things to become operative, the President was killed. Then during the Johnson administration, no one ever mentioned this subject any more.

On NSAM 57:

But we haven't addressed NSAM 57 which speaks of covert activities up to a certain size that may be assigned to CIA. Above that size they may be assigned to the military. They recognized in that era that there are only certain small operations that should be assigned to CIA. After that it's a military job. You might just as well hoist the flag and say, "Americans are coming." You can't deny it, and you can't hide it. And if you have to put up with this kind of action, which is a denial of the national sovereignty of your target country no matter who it is. Whether it's Iran or Peru or Indonesia, what you are really doing is denying the sovereignty of another nation. That's criminal among the family of nations. So this is an important consideration here, but in covert activities you try to live with that. [Y]

On the CIA infiltration of government agencies:

Sometimes these people were working in another agency so long we nearly forgot them. One man I know was in FAA and we needed his work to help us with FAA as a focal point there. He'd been there so long the FAA had him in a very big, very responsible job, where probably 90% of his duties were regular FAA work. A very effective individual. When we needed him to help us with some of our activities on the covert side of things, he was in a much better position to handle this than he had been originally.

A lot of these people worked right up into the White House. And there were these same assigned people even at the White House level that actually were working on this CIA covert work rather than the jobs that they seemed to hold, that the public understood was the job that they were working for. It's a much more effective system than people have thought it was.

In fact, one of the strongest of these papers -- the designation was NSC 10/2 -- was in my files early in the business back in 1955. And I remember that on the side of the paper -- written in pencil and in his own hand, President Eisenhower had written that any time a decision had been made for the Defense Department to support the agency with arms, equipment, money, people, bases, etc., that the equipment was to be limited to that one time only and afterwards withdrawn. He did not want the CIA to create a capability that was on-going. He was very specific about it.

That was 1955. Those things change with the times. And they got more powerful and more powerful. And because of that kind of growth, you don't have the legal structure, you don't have the approved structure to deal with it. It's an ad hoc creation. Probably the strongest ad hoc creation in our government today. [e] [f]

On the Dulles-Jackson-Correa philosophy:

The CIA has the authority, or at least it is given the authority by other Government agencies, to create cover organization within other parts of the Government. This is one of the key tasks that the old Jackson-Correa-Dulles report set out for the Agency. Having once created such units, the CIA is then able to use those units as though they were real elements of the covering organization and to do with them pretty much what it pleases. So if the CIA wants to use one hundred Army trucks, it may have one of its Air Force cover units (it could use an Army unit; but it is easier to use cross-service channels to conceal such a transaction) duly and properly requisition the trucks. In response to this order, the Army will furnish, and write off, the trucks to the Air Force. However, the Air Force won't really know that one of its units, a cover unit, has acquired these trucks; so the Air Force will not pick them up on its inventory. The trucks are then in a sort of never-never land. They are "owned" by an Air Force cover unit that the CIA has the authority to direct, and those trucks will be used as the CIA wishes and for as long as the CIA wishes. There have been cases where the CIA turned around and transferred such property to another country in a sort of a CIA-MAP project all of its own.

On an international network of CIA cells....

Question: From this I'd like you to please discuss this rise and growth of the logistical global network of the Support side of the CIA, and how the existence of this relatively unknown component of the Support section is fundamental to the CIA's ability to engage in clandestine operations.

Answer: This grew out of the natural war-planning function of the military. Right after World War II and on into the early fifties, we visualized that a war would begin with some attack, we'll say on the NATO lines, more or less like conventional World War II fighting. But that it would immediately elevate to the level of a nuclear exchange. It was planned that in that nuclear exchange, we would try to preserve certain areas in the target countries, say in the Soviet Union, that would not be hit and, judging by meteorological data, would not be covered by fallout which would be radioactive for years and years. And that in that area we would have the CIA create certain network agent functions and groups of Special Forces people that we could immediately send in by paradrop. This was the original Special Forces function, not the contrived one that grew out of the Vietnam War.

Trying to legitimize questionable actions that can no longer be kept secret:

By the time of the Bay of Pigs operation, the CIA was part of a greater team, which used the Agency and other parts of the Government to carry out almost any secret operation it wanted. By that time this organization had the equipment, the facilities, the men, and the funds to carry out clandestine operations that were so vast that even on the basis of simple definition they were no longer truly secret, nor could anyone hope that they might be

It is interesting, then, that in subsequent years the emphasis should shift toward psy-ops - as if to make acceptable that which CAN NOT LONGER BE HIDDEN.

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The Rest of the Iceberg