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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums“Every president has been manipulated by national security officials”
Every president has been manipulated by national security officials: David Talbot exposes Americas deep state
http://www.salon.com/2015/10/15/every_president_has_been_manipulated_national_security_officials_david_talbot_investigates_americas_deep_state/
This years best spy thriller isnt fiction its history. David Talbots previous book, the bestseller Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years explored Robert F. Kennedys search for the truth following his brothers murder. His new work, The Devils Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Americas Secret Government, zooms out from JFKs murder to investigate the rise of the shadowy network that Talbot holds ultimately responsible for the presidents assassination.
This isnt merely a whodunit story, though. Talbots ultimate goal is exploring how the rise of the deep state has impacted the trajectory of America, and given our nations vast influence, the rest of the planet. To thoroughly and honestly analyze [former CIA director] Allen Dulless legacy is to analyze the current state of national security in America and how it undermines democracy, Talbot told Salon. To really grapple with what is in my book is not just to grapple with history. It is to grapple with our current problems.
Just as Americas current national security apparatus has used terrorism as a justification for spying on American citizens, torture, and the annihilation of innocent civilians as collateral damage, Talbot places these justifications in a Cold War context, by showing how spymaster Allen Dulles shrugged off countless atrocities using the threat of communism. For readers unfamiliar with Dulles history, the first few chapters are like being splashed in the face with a bucket of ice water. Talbots assertion that Dulles is a psychopath is hard to dismiss after the intelligence agent is shown covering up the Holocaust prior to Americas intervention into World War II by keeping crucial information exposing the horrors of concentration camps from reaching President Roosevelt. Allen Dulles and his fellow Cold Warriors saw Russia, a U.S. ally during World War II not Nazi Germany as the real enemy.
Jumping from geopolitical strategy to the psychological realm, Talbot details how it was not only enemies who had reason to fear Dulles, but his own friends and family, as well. The book veers into a dark, terrifying investigation of the MKUltra Project, a hideous mind control program developed by the CIA during Dulles reign as director, that dosed unsuspecting people with LSD, pushed the limits of sleep deprivation and engaged in other deeply unethical experiments. The program has been exposed, bit by bit, over decades, thanks to lawsuits and previous investigative reporting, but Talbot sheds light on how Dulles subjected his own son and attempted to enroll his wife in these hideous therapies.
Looks like a must-read--
blm
(112,919 posts)Will keep kicked.
villager
(26,001 posts)Though I wonder if Bernie would be more resilient in that regard than Hillary?
Of course, they'd probably arrange it so that Bernie never actually got elected, if push came to shove for them.
On an added note -- given all that we know about Dulles, grimly hilarious that so many here at the "Underground" gladly take him at his word about how certain historical events went down....
grasswire
(50,130 posts)....are the de facto descendants of Dulles' mindset.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)From one scholarly review:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-devils-chessboard-allen-dulles-the-cia-and-the-rise-of-americas-secret-government/5484565
Dulles (and Prescott Bush and Richard Nixon) helped create this modern world where secret government and secret agents help capital accrue in the pockets of the very, very few at the expense of the nation, Constitution and planet.
librechik
(30,663 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Hosted by the Wecht Institute, it was about the first generation JFK assassination researchers passing the baton to a new generation, of which wise Ms. Pease is a major participant.
I'm a nobody, but I am so proud to have been there.
librechik
(30,663 posts)as it were. I'll look into Ms. Pease
leveymg
(36,418 posts)That provides a layer of built-in plausible deniability and ready patsies when "our" terrorism operations go awry, like they did on 9/11. I was surprised to read a while ago that CIA has had a CounterTerrorism Center going back decades, long before anyone heard of bin Laden.
blm
(112,919 posts).
Scuba
(53,475 posts)hifiguy
(33,688 posts)that Dulles was ultimately responsible for JFK's death, for which it is nearly impossible to avoid concluding he gave the final approval, though he apparently draws the line straight to his door.
Xolodno
(6,330 posts)...how can they not be?
By the time an elected President gets in office with a goal, (i.e. end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), the public appetite for such things have already waned, thus, those advisers already know they have to change policies and strategies.
And as for everything else, the advisers probably tell the president certain operations are already in full swing. To cut them would cost money, lose spies of the target country (and maybe their families), lack credibility in future endeavors, even if failure were to occur (America abandons you and then you and your family are dead is a lot more "dangerous" than America stays with you to the end).
So quite often, their hands are tied. The CIA is an agency that really isn't beholden to anyone.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)which he envisioned to be an otherwise powerless agency analyzing data to present to the president, into n unchecked and uncheckable monster with its own priorities, as his greatest failure.
Harry shouldn't have been so hard on himself. Allen Dulles, not any Truman appointee, was the man responsible for turning the CIA into a rogue state-within-a-state, and Dulles painted his "masterpiece" on 11.22.1963, two years after he had theoretically been relieved of control of the CIA (in reality, he was still very much in control of large parts of it, as Talbot proves) by John F. Kennedy, who paid the ultimate price for defying Dulles and the CIA.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)And may I also recommend Michael Glennon's slender yet absolutely terrifying "National Security and Double Government." That is a book that can scare the hair off of a gorilla and it explains SO much.
Allen Dulles, the Nazi-sympathizing managing partners of their era's most powerful corporate law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, and later CIA Director and SoS in the Eisenhower years, were the Founding Fathers of the Deep State, originated in the immediate postwar era with the help and assistance of numerous "ex" Nazis Allen Dulles made sure got out of Germany. The Deep State of the US is the proof that the Nazis did NOT lose the war; quite to the contrary, they won rather decisively in this country, and the last 65 years proves it.
librechik
(30,663 posts)and mention it as often as I can here
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)though it is one of the most deeply frightening and troubling pieces of history I have read in a lifetime of reading post-WW II US history.
librechik
(30,663 posts)only thing that has saved me from suicide over it is the realization that there really really is nothing we can do about it. So sit back and enjoy the dystopic future.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)librechik
(30,663 posts)DAVID TALBOT: Well, thank God, I was saying earlier, for alternative media, like this, Amy, because there is resistance to this book. First of all, I call out the mainstream media. I say that New York Times, CBS, Washington Post, Newsweek, they were all under his thumb. They did his bidding.
AMY GOODMAN: Whose thumb?
DAVID TALBOT: Allen Dulless thumb. So, when the Warren Report came out, I was saying that one of the editors, top editors, at Newsweek wrote to him and said, "Thank you so much, Mr. Dulles, for helping shape our coverage of the Warren Report." Well, of course, Allen Dulles was on the Warren Commission. In fact, some people thought it should have been called the Dulles Commission, because he dominated it so much. So, you know, its way too cozy, the relationship between Washington power and the media. And
AMY GOODMAN: What was the relationship between Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, and Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA?
DAVID TALBOT: Well, they were social friends, not just him, but other members of the Sulzberger family. I found, you know, cozy correspondence between them, congratulating him when he was inaugurated, Dulles, as CIA director. They called him "Ally," one of the Sulzberger families, in one letter. They would get together, you know, every year. Dulles would hold these media sort of drink fests for New Years. And these were, you know, top reporters, top editors, would get together with the CIA guys and rub elbows and get a little drunk. And, you know, when Allen Dulles didnt want a reporter, because he felt he was being overly aggressive, covering, say, GuatemalaSydney Gruson, the reporterin the run-up to the coup there in 1954, he hadhe made a call to The New York Times and had him removed. That was because of his relationship with Sulzberger, the publisher. So, that was the kind of pull that Allen Dulles had.
what is most frightening is how the same group of "shadowy people" i.e., dedicated Right Wing Imperialists, Dulles used for his operation have carried out many similar exploits through the years, even after Dulles died. He was able to put his psychotic and paranoid stamp on that institutional culture to the detriment of the entire CIA, if not the US.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Allen Dulles and his murderous henchmen have done so much damage to the nation, one needs a computer to keep track.
Historian and political science guru Larry J. Sabato, author of "The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy," reported what Prescott Bush wrote to Clover Dulles in April 1969:
SOURCE p. 368 online:
Clearly shows how the players, like the aspens, look like a forest of individual trees above ground, but really are connected by their roots underground, sight unseen.
mrdmk
(2,943 posts)Link: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/10/14/the_rise_of_america_s_secret
<snip>
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Im Amy Goodman. Our guest is David Talbot. His book is The Devils Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of Americas Secret Government. Hes the founder and former CEO and editor-in-chief of Salon. Lets start with the title, The Devils Chessboard. Why did you call it that, David?
DAVID TALBOT: The Devils Chessboard refers to the fact that the Dulles brothersJohn Foster Dulles, whos secretary of state under Eisenhower, and his brother, Allen Dulles, who I focus on, head of the CIAthey loved to play chess with each other. They would go at it for hours, even when Allen Dulles was about to be married. He kept his wife-to-be waiting around while the two brothers went at it. And they tended to look at the world as their chessboard. People were pawns to be manipulated. So I felt that was ayou know, an apt metaphor.
But, Amy, I wanted to go back to what you were talking aboutalternative mediabefore this. I thinkI just want to underline what you were saying about how essential it is to have countervoices. They are the lifeblood of democracy. And shows like yours and public radio are just essential. You know, my book is having a hard time getting through the media gatekeepers. They dont want to hear about this, and in part because the CIA, particularly under Allen Dulles, but even today, are masters at manipulating the media. Ive been on shows and been bumped. I was scheduled to be on shows at the last minute, strangely. I was supposed to write something for Politico magazine. Someone there called the book a "masterpiece." They wanted the book to be, you know, showcased there. Instead, I was bumped from Politico. And an article based on recently leaked CIA documentsconveniently leakedwas written by a former New York Times reporter, Phil Shenon, and what he did was to basically accuse Fidel Castro of assassinating President Kennedy. This has been a CIA disinformation line for years. So the CIA is still manipulating the media, and its essential that independent media exists, like this.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the relationship between The New York Times publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and Allen Dulles?
DAVID TALBOT: Well, the Sulzberger family had a long relationship with Dulles. When he was inaugurated as CIA director, one of the Sulzbergers wrote to him, saying, "This is the best news Ive heard in years." In another letter, he calls him affectionately "Ally." They were on a first name basis. They belonged to the same clubs. They were masters atthe Dulles brothers, particularly Allenat manipulating the media. After the Warren Report comes out, the official investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the top editors at Newsweek writes to Allen Dulles. And Im getting all this from Allen Dulless own files; he was very proud of the fact that he couldhe had the media in the palm of his hand. But this Newsweek editor writes to him, "Thank you so much for basically directing our coverage of the Warren Report. We couldnt have done it without you." So, you know, this was the kind of cozy relationship that existed between the CIA and the media in those years. CBS, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, they were all in the palm of the CIAs hands. They all lived together in Georgetown. They had cocktail parties together. It was a very cozy set.
<end of snip>
Author David Talbot makes the connections of the past years to today's international problems. Very Interesting. Would like see the citations Talbot uses. May need to buy the book for that.
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