Nikolai Yakovlev

Peace 1982

fighters demonstrate against nuclear death outside White House,

Progress Publishers Moscow

Translated from the Russian by Vic Schneierson Designed by Gennady Gubanov

CONTENTS

HHKOJ1AH HKOBJIEB THE AMERICAN POLITICAL CREED (A Sketch) ....

5

CH-ysru BamHHnoHa EPILOGUE TO AN ERA...............

24

Ha awuOcKOM we A Retired Artillery Colonel in the White House.....

25

A Bomb for the Russians..............

29

From the New Deal to a Fair Deal..........

49

Creating a ``Consensus''...............

55

A Dichotomy of Methods---the NSC, CIA, ``Containment'',

and so Forth..................

66

IN THE SHADOW OF ``DROPSHOT''..........

81

The Cold War C-in-C Is Chosen...........

89

First Cold War Battle Lost.............

97

``Dropshot", Nuclear Arms, and Directive NSC-68.....

109

The "Invasion of Apes"..............

119

``Cry Korea"..................

127

EISENHOWER'S MARK IN HISTORY.........

142

The Change of Guard...............

148

The Old "New Look"...............

154

Life Under Ike.................

168

The Intoxicating Effects of Psychological Warfare.....

1.80

Racing Against Time...............

187

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT..............

195

The CIA Again?.................

202

Here Come the Kennedys!.............

210

So What Was Behind Kennedy's Policy?.........

213

The End of Camelot: Truths and Untruths.......

229

The Policy of the Absurd..............

244

THE RISE AND FALL OF RICHARD NIXON......

260

_inoo The Nixon Doctrine: Theory and Practice........

271

© nojiHTH3AaT, 1983 Detente in Action. ...............

286

English translation of revised text © Progress Election Victory, Beginning of the Downfall.......

296

Publishers 1985

a ega e.....................

FAITH AMERICAN STYLE..............

321

Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ^^ ^^ ^ ^ ^^ ^^..........

^

The New Right On the March............

346

0804000000-651 ^ ... ^{A Few Words About Ronald Rea}§^an..........

~^^356^^

'^^7^^

THE AMERICAN POLITICAL CREED (A Sketch)

Those who laid the foundations of the United States of North America were most adept with word and pen. Conspicuously so in the 18th century. They proved themselves right in the War of Independence against Britain in 1775-1783. Not that this was difficult to do for it was a war fought across a vast ocean, hurting none but a handful of British merchants and industrialists engaged in colonial trading. For the rest of the world the affairs of far-away America mattered only in the field of ideas, where word and pen were the main tools.

The American creed as it exists to this day was conceived some two centuries ago. Its indispensable feature was the reference to the special propensities of the Founding Fathers. When the USA celebrated its bicentennial this was recalled by men respected as students of American history. And they continue to recall it: the jubilee is being marked from 1976 (the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence) to 1989 (the bicentennial of the entry into force of the US Constitution).

Speaking at a symposium on the War of Independence, Professor Henry Commager referred to Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia. He said: "How paradoxical, too, that from a society of three million . . . should come in one generation the most distinguished galaxy of statesmen to be found anywhere in that century or, perhaps, since .. . Jefferson . . . asserts with the straightest of faces that on the basis of population France should have eight Washingtons and eight Franklins. (Was it modesty that kept him from adding eight Jeffersons, too, or the realization that this would occur to all his readers?) And how astonishing, too. . . that the generation which presided over the birth of the Republic stayed on to direct its destinies for another 50 years!''^^1^^

~^^1^^ Henry Steele Commager, "America and the Enlightenment" in The Development of a Revolutionary Mentality, Library of Congress, Washington, 1972, p. 19.

The inner logic of this disquisition is that only ultimate truths resound from the peak of the US pyramid of power. And the prime truth in this American mythology is the claim that the governmental pattern of the United States and the concomitant way of life are, whatever anyone may say, the best of the best in all written and unwritten human history.

In 1973 it occurred to the House of Representatives to dissipate whatever doubts may have existed on this score. The substance of its idea is set forth in House Concurrent Resolution No. 185: "That a collection of inaugural addresses, from President George Washington to President Richard Nixon . . . be printed with illustrations as a House document.''^^1^^ Congress was determined to capitalize on the collective wisdom of all the presidents without exception or, if you like, to produce a handbook for dealing with current affairs. What is an inaugural address? An address in which the President sums up the state of affairs and sets forth his program for the next four years. Cumulatively, the inaugural addresses of all the presidents since Washington represent a survey of the US general line of march in the past 200 years as seen from the White House.

Certainly, each of the 40 presidents in question addressed himself to what, as he saw them, were the most crucial affairs of the day. The result was a mosaic of some diversity. But it was enclosed in the rigid framework of a common vision of the world distinguished by an impetuous faith in the superiority of the United States over all other countries and peoples.

George Washington, the first US president, who entered upon his office in 1789, ascribed the union of 13 British colonies into an independent state to a "providential agency", adding hereto that "the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, and finally, staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people". In 1801 Thomas Jefferson found that; the American way of

government was "the world's best hope". And in 1817, recalling that 40 years had passed since the War of Independence, James Monroe called on his countrymen "to felicitate ourselves in the excellence of our institutions". And that austere warrior, President Andrew Jackson, never tired of reminding Americans that "the eyes of all nations are fixed on our Republic" (1833). In 1837 Martin Van Buren picked up where Jackson left off. "The power and influence of the Republic," he declared, "have arisen to a height obvious to all mankind.''

To the mind of James A. Garfield (1881), the first centennial of the United States was crowned by "the triumph of liberty and law". Four years later, Grover Cleveland referred to "the genius of our institutions . . . the best form of government ever vouchsafed to man". At the turn of the 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that "upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare but as regards the welfare of mankind". And calling on his country to join the war, Professor Woodrow Wilson had this to say in 1917: "We shall be the more American if we but remain true to the principles in which we have been bred. They are not the principles of a province or of a single continent. We have known and boasted all along that they were the principles of a liberated mankind". And when the guns of the First World War fell silent, Warren G. Harding summed up (in 1921): "I must utter my belief in the divine inspiration of the founding fathers. Surely there must have been God's intent in the making of this new-world Republic''.

When the world entered the era of current history ushered in by the Socialist Revolution in Russia in 1917, US presidents began making comparisons. Calvin Coolidge, for example, expounded in 1925: "It is not necessary to claim that [oui system] has always worked perfectly. It is enough to know that nothing better has been devised." And in 1929, on the eve of the world's most devastating Great Depression, Herbert Hoover kept drumming into the heads of Americans that "in no nation are the institutions of progress more advanced. In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure. In no nation is the government more worthy of respect.''

Then, at the end of World War II in 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt saw fit to explain: "The Almighty God .. .has giv-

~^^1^^ Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States from George Washington 1789 to Richard Milhouse Nixon 1973, 93d Congress, 1st Session, House Document 93-208, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1974, p. 11.

en to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world." Whereupon Harry S. Truman, who picked up the presidency from FDR, amplified in 1949: "The peoples of the earth .. . look to the United States as never before to good will, strength, and wise leadership.''

In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed the opinion that "the American experiment has, for generations, fired the passion and the courage of millions elsewhere", and John F. Kennedy, who in 1961 laid down "the same solemn oath our forebears prescribed nearly a century and three quarters ago", added: "We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution . . . proud of our ancient heritage---and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing." Entering upon the presidency in 1969, Richard Nixon maintained: "No people has ever been so close to the achievement of a just and abundant society, or so possessed of the will to achieve it." In 1973 casting a glance at the past, he said reassuringly: "Let us be proud that our system has produced and provided more freedom and more abundance, more widely shared, than any other system in the history of the world." Scrutinizing the horizon, Nixon saw at the end of his presidency (he thought it would last until January 20, 1977) the bicentennial of the United States. Therefore he said: "Let us pledge together to make these next 4 years the best 4 years in America's history, so that on its 200th birthday America will be as young and as vital as when it began, and as bright a beacon of hope for all the world.''

Taking over on January 20, 1977, President Jimmy Carter declared: "Two centuries ago, our Nation's birth was a milestone in the long quest for freedom. But the bold and brilliant dream which excited the Founders of this Nation still awaits its consummation. I have no new dream to set forth today, but rather urge a fresh faith in the old dream.''^^1^^

There, in the briefest possible terms, you have the statesmanlike wisdom of the men who ruled the Republic. The material conditions in the world changed. Tremendous alterations occurred in the life of humanity. But America's symbol of faith,

as represented in the rhetoric of its presidents, did not lose luster. This being so, we would certainly like to know what miraculous alloy of ideas it is that has so audaciously withstood the corrosive effects of time.

Richard Hofstadter, one of the most distinguished US historians of the mid-twentieth century, has drawn a very clear conclusion about the American Political Tradition in a book with this title: "The major political traditions have shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition; they have accepted the economic virtues of capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man . . . [and] have been staple tenets of the central faith in American political ideologies; these conceptions have been shared in large part by men as diverse as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Cleveland, Bryan, Wilson, and Hoover. The business of politics---so the creed runs---is to protect this competitive world, to foster it on occasion, to patch up its incidental abuses, but not to cripple it with a plan for common collective action.''^^1^^

He could not have put it more clearly. Since the day the United States was founded and up to now (and for ever and anon₃ so the presidents say) the sacred institution of private property has been the summit of all progress. All other social systems are heresy.

This ideology has been probed to its depth, refined and polished to perfection, casting the essence of American democracy in bold relief. Its devotees extol pluralism and insist that other nations should practise it. But for them only one form of social organization, the American, based on private property and therefore inevitably marked by staggering proprietary inequalities, is reasonable and acceptable. It is portrayed as the only normal state of human society. More: since property, as conceived in America, is equivalent to the concept of liberty, safeguarding the latter is a bounden duty of the propertied.

To be sure, US mass propaganda explains the concept of lib-

~^^1^^ Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. 43, No. 9, February 15, 1977, p. 258.

~^^1^^ Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition. And the Men Who Made It, Vintage Books, New York, 1948, p. VIII.

berty differently. Its explanation dates to the Declaration of Independence, whose adoption on July 4, 1776, is considered as having inaugurated the United States. By the adroit pen of Jefferson the dry definition in John Locke's Laws of Nature, "life, liberty and property; acquired an immeasurably more exciting ring. Jefferson said man's inalienable right consisted in "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". Any thoughtful scholar will easily spot the consequences of replacing a term. To do so one need not at all disapprove of the ways that prevail in the United States. This has been conclusively proved by Professor Richard B. Morris, a most well-intentioned US historian standing at the head of the US practicians of historiography.

At that time Morris was 70 and had written 40 books. So he could not fail to know what great difficulties were involved in portraying the United States in the romantic spirit of the early proponents of diverse liberties. Morris composed the following reminder to his colleagues: "What makes it so complicated is that the American Dream has been tied over the course of time to individual enterprise and the capitalist system. So that anybody who favors some type of collectivism is apparently opposed to the American way and we associate that somehow with the American Revolution. . . Jefferson was very careful to leave the word `property' out of the Declaration of Independence. He didn't feel it was a romantic, enough ideal. The pursuit of happiness involved something more than property---- undoubtedly the right of acquisition, the right to pursue one's vocation, to go to one's own church and so forth. But he didn't actually say the capitalist system or private enterprise. So we might show a greater tolerance toward other systems which are not necessarily pursuing the same economic ends that we developed over the course of the 19th Century.''^^1^^

Morris has cushioned the rigid propaganda cliches as much as he could for, of course, they are an intellectual affront to the community of US historians who expect differentiated treatment. Yet specialists outside the USA know the true value of the propaganda truisms concerning liberty. Canadian Pro-

fessor Edgar Z. Friedenberg, who in the mid-seventies tackled the problem of "the disposal of liberty and other industrial wastes", came to the conclusion that "the modern concept of individual liberty is rooted in exploitation." That, indeed, is easy to see.

Friedenberg pointed out most accurately that "there could have been little doubt in the minds of the Founding Fathers that the possession of ample means made a successful pursuit of happiness far more likely. Liberty and property go well together, each enhances the value of the other". The professor went on to say: "The classical conception of freedom embodied in the Bill of Rights is itself, in fact, an instrument of bourgeois privilege and class bias, derived from the ideological premises of a rising capitalist order and, in its emphasis on the rights of the individual at the expense of the collective, hostile in principle and in effect to the aspirations of an industrial proletariat.

``Only a patrician class could have formulated the Bill of Rights, which conceives of liberty as freedom from, quite literally, unwarranted intrusion---a conception likely to occur to men of ample estates.. . Civil liberties are the fruits of privilege and more likely to appeal to the privileged palate and nourish the privileged psyche.''

Still, whatever the theoretical constructions "individual liberty" is an inescapable and predominant element in the portrait that Americans paint of themselves. To which Friedenberg says that "American effort to win majority support for civil liberty as a popular cause seems to me a little dishonest as well as fruitless. It is enough to maintain that it is a legitimate goal for a minority''.

Yet the professor's devastating criticism of the ideological pillars of the society in which he lives is not meant to uproot them. "I do not intend to suggest," he writes, "that there is some sort of government I would prefer to what we call democratic.''^^1^^ His aim is much less ambitious. All he wants is to probe to the bottom of official US rhetoric from a scientist's angle. Yet it does not stand up to scrutiny even in a deliberately blunted social analysis.

~^^1^^ Quoted from Margot Hornflower, "Revolution: Myths and Realities" in The Washington Post, July 6, 1975.

~^^1^^ Edgar Z. Friedenberg, "Thoughts on Liberty and Rancor" in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 250, No. 1501, June 1975, pp. 41-43, 46.

One more impressive example is the foray Professor Douglass Adair mounted into the sensitive domain of ``democracy''. The last thing he wanted was to undermine the notion of democracy obtaining in the United States. But in 1965 he delivered a lecture to a group of scholars in which he pointed to the inanities of the official definition of that precious concept. In his Clio Bemused, he ridiculed the "neat dialectic" which portrayed US history from the outset as a "growth of democracy", "rise of democracy", "progress of democracy", and so on. "The old building seems to stand," he warned, "mainly because historians repeat themselves.''

Upon studying the pile of US historical literature, Adair complained: "Our textbook treatment that makes our Revolution the first of an established aristocracy by a farmer-labor class just doesn't hold up after one looks at the evidence carefully. The 'spirit of '76' was not the midwife to the baby ' democracy'.''

Adair ascertained how the Founding Fathers understood `` democracy'' and discovered that they meant to construct an enduring state strong enough to curb any truly democratic popular movement. The system of government founded in the USA, as Adair sees it, is a synthesis of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy_; that is, of all the forms of government known at that time. "The founders", he wrote, "constructed the presidency to be the closest thing possible to an elective king---that seeming contradiction in terms---a democratical monarch. . . Jefferson came to stand in the nineteenth century as a symbol of the idea that 'the voice of the people is the voice of God', but in practice the Jeffersonian system was an attempt to use the democracy of the people's choice to translate the numerical quantitative majority into a qualitative intellectual elite---a 'natural aristocracy'.''

Touching upon "pure democracy", Adair stressed that the Founding Fathers thought it to be "like a child; it means well but has not the capacity, is too flitter-brained, is too unstable to be a safe form for liberty, security, and union. A key word applied to the people is that the public, the people, do not think and reason in politics but instead act out their feelings--- moreover they overreact". Does Adair apply all this to just America's early years? Not at all. He refers to the ``turn'' to-

ward cold war that occurred after 1945 and shows that this is not evidence of ``instability'' but of the overwhelming power of the media manipulating public opinion in our time. Adair makes this quite clear: "Ours is a government that was planned to regulate the citizen's conduct because human nature cannot be left to itself to produce an inevitable harmony without governance.''^^1^^

That is how the undivided rule of moneybags is rationalized in the political edifice of the United States. In the psychological climate artificially maintained in that country through the efforts of the ruling oligarchy for now 200 years, any impingement on property is seen as an impingement on ``liberty''. The men of property who rule the country know the source of their power perfectly well: it is money, which they are ready to put to use at any time to protect or augment their capital.

At the end of the 19th century, when William Jennings Bryan had every chance of being elected president, industrialist Marcus A. Hanna, who dabbled in politics, told an inquisitive newspaper reporter that a "damned lunatic" with ideas that smacked of egalitarianism would never be allowed to "get into the White House". Hanna exclaimed: "Never! You know you can hire half of the people of the United States to shoot down the other half if necessary, and we've got the money to hire them.''^^2^^

No, the man of property is not lacking in determination. He is ever ready to repulse any and all attacks on property whether from inside or outside the country. And by all possible means.

For dozens of years US scholars have been examining the bipartisan system, noting how it works in various phases, voicing conjectures and conclusions. They agree that no differences of substance exist between the two parties. And they are absolutely right. But there is one more question: do these parties exist at all? No idle question this, because non-American schol-

~^^1^^ Douglass Adair, Fame and the Founding Fathers, Essays, ed. by Trevor Colbourn. W.W. Norton and Co., New York, 1974, pp. 297-303.

^! Paolo E. Coletta, William Jennings Bryan, Vol. I, Political Evangelist 1860-1908, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1964, p. 195.

ars use the word in the sense in which it is used in their countries, as a concept associated with a program, an organizational structure, and so on.

In the past few years, however, a somewhat different view of the so-called bipartisan system is taking hold in the United States itself. The opinions of sociology professor Seymour M. Lipset and Robert J. Ringer, a writer, are indicative in this respect. They are at the opposite poles of the US political spectrum, and are both fairly representative. As a liberal sociologist, Lipset naturally examines the role of ideology first of all, and warns: "To understand the general role of ideology, or rather of different ideological groupings in American society, one must first recognize that if we use the word `party' in the sense in which people talk about parties in Europe, then the United States does not have a two-party system.''

Ringer, a conservative, voices more categorical judgements: "In reality, what the U.S. has is a one-party system---the Demopublican Party---masquerading as a two-party system ( Democrats and Republicans). No matter who you vote for, you are voting for the Demopublican Party. Again, if one were inclined to be impolite, he might go so far as to say that the socalled two-party system in this country is a sham and a hoax.

``When the lone U.S. political party feels threatened, it does not hesitate to reveal its totalitarian instincts. And it definitely feels threatened when a new party tries to get in on the action. . . When was the last time you saw a Demopublican presidential candidate debate a third-party candidate on television?

``Many new parties have tried hard to maneuver their way into the power game, usually without even making it to first base. And the few who have managed to slip one foot in the door have ended up limping away with a very swollen foot. The System itself is controlled by the power structure of the Demopublican Party, and so long as it can continue to perpetuate false beliefs about Majority Rule, it should be able to avoid the ugliness, expense and uncertainty that come with having to resort to violence to keep people in line.''

Ringer recalls that 37 per cent of the voters did not go to the polls in 1960, and 45 per cent, that is 70 million, in 1976. "It also means", he writes, "that Jimmy Carter was, at best, the choice of about one-fourth of the eligible voters.. . It is therefore

absurd for an elected official to claim that he has a 'mandate of the people'.''^^1^^

The conclusion is not novel. As far back as 1913, Charles A. Beard, that patriarch of US historians, estimated that at the end of the 18th century the US Constitution was adopted by 100,000 votes in country with a population of nearly four million. Or, if put differently, only one of six adult males voted for the US Constitution. "At all events", Beard observed, "the disfranchisement of the masses through property qualifications and ignorance and apathy contributed largely to the facility with which the personality-interest representatives carried the day. The latter were alert everywhere, for they knew, not as a matter of theory, but as a practical matter of dollars and cents, the value of the new Constitution.''^^2^^ And the United States has had this Constitution for something like 200 years.

The resources of the above system created by the man of property, as Ringer sees it, are beginning to run out. "The chief problem for men of power," he writes, "has been the same since the beginning of recorded history: What is the most practical way in which to maintain control over people? .. . Democracy, though it has many disadvantages for powerholders, seems to be the most practical way to maintain control, because it gives the illusion of consent. If people can be made to believe that they are free and that the government represents them, the energies of the ruling class do not have to be concentrated on policing measures. In addition, creating the illusion of consent has the advantage of rendering physical uprisings extremely unlikely. It would be unwise, however, to believe that even in a democracy people could be held in check indefinitely.''^^3^^

This close to academic view is fairly widespread in current US social and political literature. The conclusions drawn are diverse. Our purpose, however, is best served by the conclusions of those who hold power or serve it, that is, those who represent US statehood. More than ten years before Ringer the same topic was tackled by Zbigniew Brzezinski, director of the

~^^1^^ Robert J. Ringer, Restoring the American Dream, Fawcett Crest, New York, 1980, pp. 60, 58.

^! Charles A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, The Free Press, New York, 1965, pp. 250-251.

'Ringer, op. cit., p. 288.

Institute of Communist Affairs, Columbia University. In 1967 he came out with a slim pamphlet, entitled America in the Technetronic Age, where technetronic stood for the technological revolution (technics plus electronics). In what were the stormy sixties for the United States, Brzezinski sounded the alarm and suggested that matters should be run differently under capitalism. He wrote: "Men living in the developed world will undergo during the next several decades a mutation potentially as basic as that experienced through the slow process of evolution from animal to human experience. The difference, however, is that the process will be telescoped in time---and hence the shock effect of the change may be quite profound. Human conduct will become less spontaneous and less mysterious--- more predetermined and subject to deliberate `programing'." Brzezinski dealt with concepts current in the West and related to an ``industrial'' society that was quickly slipping into the past; he also dealt with the categories of the ``postindustrial'' society emerging in the course of the scientific-technical revolution.

As Brzezinksi saw it, "the ... masses are coordinated in the industrial society through trade unions and political parties, and integrated by relatively simple and somewhat ideological programs. Moreover, political attitudes are influenced by appeals to nationalist sentiments, communicated through the massive growth of newspapers, relying, naturally, on native tongues. In the technetronic society, the trend seems to be towards the aggregation of the individual support of millions of uncoordinated citizens, easily within the reach of magnetic and attractive personalities, effectively exploiting the latest communication techniques to manipulate emotions and control reason".^^1^^ All this would have sounded as a professor's abstract excercise in futurology if not for Brzezinski's place of prominence among the political elite of the United States.

Walter Bowart, a most conscientious US scholar, used Brzezinski's prediction of government in a technetronic society as an epigraph to his book, Operation Mind Control, in which

he summed up his long and difficult researches in this field. "Somewhere within the Unites States," he wrote in so many words, "the technology for the creation of the perfect slave state is being perfected." (Compare this with Ringer's observation that people live with the "illusion of consent".) Bowart tried to warn us against the new form of power that has already emerged in the United States and which he chose to describe as ``cryptocracy''. He wrote: "The cryptocracy controls he United States government. . . The cryptocracy has systematically manipulated the American consciousness. It is a degenerative disease of the body politic which has grown rampantly, spreading so invisibly that after nearly four decades its existence is known only to a handful of 'decision makers'.''^^1^^

A most vague reference to those at the summit of power, but a clear and precise reference to the methods of class rule and of safeguarding the interests of the rich and super-rich. Brzezinski called the system of the future a ``meritocracy''. Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute, which specializes in prognostication, picked up the term and clarified it: "In the transition to postindustrial society . , . one can imagine a trend over several centuries toward an essentially Confucian meritocratic social order dominated by self-serving and self-justifying---even if also communal and paternalistic---university-trained mandarins and bureaucracies.''^^2^^

At the junction of the Ford and Carter administrations, US analyst Sheldon Wolin, who examined Kissinger's ideological legacy, groped for the link between the outgoing and incoming presidential national security advisers. "If Kissinger has contributed his share to the deracination of the American consciousness," Wolin wrote, "his rumored successor has coined an apt name for the kind of politics that suits such a consciousness--- `technetronic'. It is no surprise that Jimmy Carter's most visible theorist should have a biography similar to Kissinger's."" A

~^^1^^ Walter Bowart, Operation Mind Control, Collins, Glasgow, 1978, pp. 284, 145-146.

* Herman Kahn, William Brown and Leon Martel, The Next 200 Years. A Scenario for America and the World, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1976, p. 199.

~^^1^^ Sheldon Wolin, "Consistent Kissinger" in The New York Review of Books, December 9, 1976, p. 31.

~^^1^^ Zbigniew Brzezinski., America in the Technetronic Age, School of International Affairs, Columbia University, New York, 1967, pp. 5, 10-11.

2---796

cautious way of putting it, but in this doctrine priority is ascribed to two "European minds" on American soil.

But unfairly so. They were no pioneers and built their concepts essentially with US material. It was not Brzezinski, say, who introduced the intolerance obligatory in a ``ciyptocracy''. He merely inserted it into the framework of ``technetronics'' No example can be more convincing about the foundation of the edifice built by Brzezinski than directive NSG-68 that Truman endorsed in 1950. Gaddis Smith, a reviewer of State Secretary Dean Acheson's memoirs, observed that "most commentators . . . have ignored the philosophical sections, which, although composed with Achesonian elegance, point as did McCarthy toward thought control and intolerance of dissent.''^^1^^

Directive NSC-68 laid down principles that Americans were meant to follow: the individual must exercise discrimination; while pursuing through free inquiry the search for truth he should know when to commit an act of faith; to distinguish between the necessity for tolerance and the necessity for just suppression. The individual as such is not to conceive the prescribed qualities by himself, because, "the initiative in this process lies with the government". For what purpose? The purpose of securing world leadership in the interests of the United States and by the strategy of cold war.^^2^^ What we have here, therefore, are no abstract constructions but what has been established, at least since 1950, as the official policy of the United States.

NSC-68, for what Brzezinski has been saying, and others as well: "When all policy areas are subjected to interrelated impact statements we would achieve an anticipatory democracy. In that world we would expect each of these areas to take on the same characteristics prominent at the height of the Cold War: secrecy, `cooperation' or deference to executive leadership, and an insistence 011 the moral authority of the president to make these (unending) crucial choices. A prophylactic presidency, in fact, could only succeed if it were invested with enormous faith, . . . for that is what is required to trust leadership when it acts to control dangers that cannot yet be observed.''

Scrutinizing the policy of the Carter administration, the authors maintain that in some of its aspects (e.g. the energy program) it already betrays the characteristics of "prophylactic presidency". Consequently, "secret and centralized policy-making, then demands for urgency and faith. .. Citizens are not allowed to decide for themselves what risks they will face. Individual judgement and choice are replaced by governmental action that automatically wards off evils before they manifest themselves. Yet if presidents act to avoid every imagined evil, where will their control end ... or begin?''^^1^^

Again an invitation to debate, but still in the old framework. Must we go through one more vicious circle? No, God forbid: suffice it to say that our generation is witnessing a substantive assault from above on the old methods of class domination by monopoly capital in the United States. In step with the rate of the scientific-technical revolution, the subjects of that `` democracy'' are being shown their place. Those elements of the American state machine which Jack London once described as "the iron heel" are surfacing for all to see. The October Revolution cut short the development of sinister processes in Russia. But they are still under way where capital is omnipotent, and most of all in the United States.

Socialism has shown in fact that the world can follow a different road. Socialism has become the shield which protects

US political thinking is in a crisis. How deep the crisis is may be measured by the height of the pyramid of books constructed by the intellectual slaves of the Man of Property. The same refrains over and over again. In 1979, a plump futurological volume appeared under Lipset's editorship which presented us with a new term: supreme power in the United States will inevitably acquire the qualities of a "prophylactic presidency." Thus, one more epithet for what is down in directive

~^^1^^ The New York Times Book Review, September 12, 1976, p. 7.

~^^2^^ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Vol. 1, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1977, pp. 254, 241-242.

~^^1^^ Sanford Weiner, Aaron Wildavsky,

``The Prophylactic Presidency" in The Third Century. America as

a Post-Industrial Society, ed. by Seymour Lipset, University of Chicago

Press, Chicago, 1979, pp. 139- 141.

the nations from the horrid fate that Big Capital has in store for them. The socialist example tends to inspire people to fight for their future. Hence the class hatred of the Man of Property centered on the Soviet Union with all the consequences that this entails. His hatred is deep-rooted. His state of mind is constant. But, of course, Washington's tactics change from time to time, depending on the state of affairs on the international scene.

able to estimate the weight of morality in US top-echelon politics, if only approximately.

In July 1975 the House Committee on International Relations formed a subcommittee to work out America's foreign policy for the next ten years. The subcommittee heard eminent politicians and distinguished scholars who endeavoured to rise to the summits of theory and look down at the past and into the future. Dean Rusk, State Secretary from 1961 to 1969 ( second only to Cordell Hull for his duration in office in the country's history), saying what he saw as the main objective of US foreign policy, cited Dean Acheson: "To try to create a world environment in which this great experiment in freedom of ours can survive and flourish.''^^1^^

According to US historian David Halberstam's evaluation of Rusk, the State Secretary had been reared on the system of trans-Atlantic values---a code which said you never turn the other cheek and that you were never soft or tolerant. In political terms, his formula sounded thus: "He [Rusk] believed in our morality, as opposed to the immorality of the Communist world, and he believed in the use of force, the primacy of the military.''^^2^^ With a mandate like that, one does not strike fair deals, one demands concessions and considers this the only legitimate approach. To be sure, this approach is no monopoly of Rusk's; it is the stock-in-trade of the US upper echelon of power.

Speaking before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in October 1974, George Meany, President of AFL-CIO, maintained that the Soviet Union did not "have our values". He amplified: "My point is that if we have got this great approach to detente with the Russian people, somebody's values have changed. But certainly theirs have not changed and I do not think that ours should change." This revelation of the labor leader delighted Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, who said: "I

Those who make the political climate in the United States have a most specific vision of the world. In the Old World, the practice hallowed by history is to judge politics by the universally accepted notions of morality. And if breaches are found between the two there are lamentations whose vehemence matches the width of the breach. While the political doctrine that reigns in the United States is in essence blatantly immoral.

It is entirely redundant to point to the abyss between Washington's words and deeds. We will do well to remember that the highly touted US pragmatism has expelled morality from the sphere of practical action. Here we deal with politicians who are guided by an entirely different set of values, though, probably, they take the cake for the frequency of their references to God, ethics, and the like. The attitude to external affairs is the universal indicator. Where are the more trustworthy and in their own way the most sincere US assessments of Washington's aims and policy? All but objective material appeared in the 1970s, reflecting various discussions in Congress and in congressional committees which of necessity stuck to the facts. They give us an ``inside'' look at US political practices.

It was as though Vietnam and Watergate had catapulted Congress back to where it constitutionally belongs in the US political pyramid. The 535 men and women comprising the Republic's supreme legislative body suddenly felt that they were directly involved in the shaping of policy. Much of what had previously been excluded from public hearings became common knowledge. As for the executive power, Watergate provided a rare opportunity to see how the White House functioned. What the nation saw shocked and perturbed it. And scholars were

~^^1^^ Reassessment of U.S. Foreign Policy. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Future Foreign Policy Research and Development of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 94th Congress, 1st Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1975, p. 74.

* David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Conn., 1973, pp. 385, 423.

want to express my thanks to Mr. Meany for the lack of ambiguity in your statement. In other words, it is on the line. . . I agree completely on the matter of dealing toughly on the political questions. I thoroughly agree with you. . . I do not believe that you can deal with the Russians by going around with a feather and saying that I love you dear country cousin. I do not believe that at all.''^^1^^

One cannot help asking why US statesmen who have made an absolute of pragmatism are eager for the other side to yield ground in the matter of "moral values" or ``ethics'', that is, in a field they across the ocean call ``ideology''? In early 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger calculated the parameters of morality before an audience that is accustomed to count and deal in tangible magnitudes only. "Soviet power continues to grow, partly as a result of their ideology, partly as a result of the evolution of industry and technology," he said to the Senate Committee on Finance.^^2^^

The priority which Kissinger accorded to ``ideology'' speaks for itself. The State Secretary and professor reminded the Senators that one must pay for the lack of principles in America, and that the price is high in the confrontation or competition with the Soviet Union. To put it differently, the talk that the other side must yield ideological ground means: renounce that which is the foundation of your strength, and do it voluntarily; then we can do business in terms familiar to the bourgeois world exclusively by main physical force sanctified by the verities of Americanism.

That was how Washington tried to simplify the intricacies of modern-day international relations in the presence of countries with different social systems, equating them with relations that prevail between countries of the socially same type. The right to survival is accorded to just those ``principles'' by which the United States must with an incomprehensible logic contrary

to common sense exercise "world leadership", and the like. That sort of doctrine is, of course, immoral.

And like silhouettes on a screen we observe a succession of US statesmen operating within the framework of this, here most briefly described, American political creed.

~^^1^^ Detente. Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 93rd Congress, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1975, pp. 395, 411.

~ Oversight Hearings on U.S. Foreign Trade Policy, Senate Committee on Finance, 94th Congress, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1976, p. 130.

EPILOGUE TO AN ERA

But that mattered as little as Truman's own vow of 1934 when he first ran for a seat in Senate: "If the Almighty God decides that I go there, I am going to pray as King Solomon did, for wisdom to do the job." And until 1945 he was one of the 96 Senators, and in addition a retired artillery colonel. "My whole political career," he would remark late in life, "is based upon my war service and war associates.''^^1^^

There would be none of this any longer---neither the dazzling smile nor the steel-rimmed glasses nor the patrician voice on the radio. On the 82nd day of the thirteenth year of his presidency, Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed away. On April 13, 1945 he was replaced by Vice-President Harry S. Truman. Who was this 33rd ruler of the United States? The photographs showed a pair of sharp eyes magnified by strong lenses on an oval-shaped face. The US press spoke of an outward resemblance with common or garden officials of which there were thousands upon thousands.

Pressmen recalled Roosevelt's recent 1944 campaign in which he asked to be elected the fourth time. Time magazine condescendingly explained that FDR's partner was a gray little junior Senator from Missouri. And John Bricker, who aspired to the vice-presidency on behalf of the Republicans, observed, "Who is he? Truman?" He scratched the back of his head and added, "I never can remember that name." He was probably making game of Truman: Harry was fairly well known on the Washington scene, though obscure on the scale of the country.

The consensus in April 1945 was best expressed by the Kansas City Star: "Harry Truman is no man to rock the boat", he will sit out FDR's fourth term and fade into oblivion, whence he surfaced after the death of the great president. How to argue against a paper published in the city where Truman had grown up. Time added that Truman's friends agreed almost unanimously he "would not be a great President". Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone, who swore Truman in, asked, "Have you brought the Bible?" Truman replied: "Er, you know---I didn't know." There was a quick whispered telephone conversation. A Bible was brought, and the Chief Justice began reading the oath, then stopped. What did the ``S'' after Harry stand for? Someone whispered in his ear, one of Truman's grandfathers had been Shippe and he was called Harry Shippe Truman.

A Retired Artillery Colonel in the White House

But why in the first place had Roosevelt picked Harry Truman as his partner in the 1944 elections? Professional politicians speak nothing but politics, even at a president's funeral. Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's closest associate, said: Truman's choice five months before was no accident; the late president had long since had his eye on the Senator who headed an important wartime committee. Truman, Hopkins added, was known on Capitol Hill, was popular (where?), and would be needed in Senate during the ratification of peace treaties. It was thought then that World War II would end like other wars by a rapid peace settlement.

Roosevelt's train of thought was clear enough. The prosperity that war had lavished on America blunted the problems which had harassed the New Deal government. Fighting the Axis powers had forged a certain amount of unity in the country. In any case, the Administration was seen by most as being faithful to the interests of the nation as a whole. Wartime propaganda had smoothed out some of the class antagonisms. There was the widespread opinion that ``practitioners'' should run the country. This jibed with Roosevelt's own outlook: in the postwar years he hoped to consolidate national unity "as every man's president". The wartime legacies convinced him that no social experimenting was needed in a country that had grown prosperous, at least none in the context of the New Deal which he was not planning to revive. And Truman was perfectly suit-

~^^1^^ Bert Gochran, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency, Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1973, pp. 69-70, 44.

ed for a policy of that sort. Roosevelt made no secret of the fact that if he went to the polls in tandem with Vice-President Henry Wallace with his outspoken liberalism, it would cost his party a million votes.^^1^^

Roosevelt picked Truman all by himself, in his usual style. Those who saw Roosevelt and Truman as antagonists---in 1944 the ailing president would, in their view, yield ground to party bosses Edward Kelly in Chicago and Frank Hague in Jersey City---simply did not know the facts. In the 1970s, the former chairman of the Democratic Party's National Committee revealed that the very opposite had happened: None other than the President had ordered these rumours to be spread. Margaret Truman, Harry Truman's daughter and biographer, added: "Roosevelt was also acutely conscious of the need to create the illusion, at least, of an open convention because the Republicans were trumpeting the charge of one-man rule".^^2^^

This is probably quite true, though the party bosses were guided by a thought which Roosevelt, if it had occurred to him, would have driven off: the vice-presidency was critically important for the political bosses because they suspected that the President would not live to the end of the fourth term. They wanted a man they could reach, a dependable man, a man capable of holding together the blend of diverse elements which the party had become. And Truman knew perfectly well why he was made Vice-President. Soon after the elections in November 1944, a Missouri businessman and Truman's friend spent a sleepless night with him discussing the future. Truman observed that Roosevelt's visage wore the stamp of death and that if he himself would be alive he would be President until the end of the term. He knew he would be President, and was terribly frightened of it.^^3^^ A practically analogous statement, though from a more specific angle, was made by General Douglas MacArthur. The latter had hated Roosevelt, and had also sensed "the stamp of death" on Roosevelt's face in 1944.

Speaking of Truman's human qualities, the most apt description would be that of an "office worker", a little man employed in the machinery of state. Not that he was born one. He had been reared to fit the description in the system of American ``democracy''. Until nearly 40 years of age, Truman was poverty-ridden in the fullest sense of the word. His efforts to break into the leading ranks of free enterprise failed ignominiously. In this respect he followed in his father's footsteps who had been an unsuccessful investor and farmer. Harry, born in 1884, had tried everything---farming, shopkeeping, oil prospecting, and the like. He lost every time; his farm was mortgaged and remortgaged; his poor eyesight put the lid on the ambition to become a professional soldier. Service in the Missouri National Guard in 1905, though it did appease his appetite for military romance, was, alter all, no more than a surrogate.

There had not been money enough for a university education. Reading was the next best thing. And he had been an avid reader to his dying day. When President, he read five or six books simultaneously, and once admitted that he was no scholar, that he knew he was reading the wrong books, but that he was reading so much that he also read good ones.

At the end of World War I, Captain Harry Truman had been in command of a battery of the US 35th Division in France. A knowledgeable artillery man, he, the book lover, once betrayed a facile knowledge of unprintable words when his crew turned tail under enemy fire.

Like other Americans, Truman had spent only several months fighting the war, but stayed in the army for two years and left it in 1919 as a major. Nostalgia for the army haunted him all his life: in the service he was getting his monthly allowance without fail or delay. From that time on he wore his jacket as a uniform, never took it off in front of people, and walked with a straight back at a steady 120 paces a minute. He dabbled in commerce, kept a hardware store, went out of business, and spent years paying his debts. At the end of 1922, he confessed to a garage owner in Independence, Missouri, that he was going to try politics. "I think you're crazy," his acquaintance said. "I got to eat," Truman replied.

From 1923 to 1934, Truman was judge in Jackson county,

~^^1^^ Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932-1945, New York, 1979, p. 482.

~^^2^^ Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, Morrow, New York, 1973, pp. 170-171.

' Charles Robbins, Last of His Kind. An Informal Portrait of Harry S. Truman, Morrow, New York, 1979, pp. 91, 95.

Missouri. His office has nothing in common with any juridical functions: he collected taxes, looked after the roads and houses, and attended to other state property. He did his job well and learned US politics from the inside. When Tom Pendergast, boss of the Kansas City party machine, made Truman a Senator in 1934, the new-baked legislator knew he had got the job, as Victor Lasky wrote, "with the help of 50,000 fraudulent votes from Tom Pendergast's Kansas City machine".^^1^^ An old friend of Truman's advised him to get rid of his inferiority complex before appearing in Senate. The first six months you'll wonder how you got in, he said, then you'll wonder how all the others got in.

Washington officials were surprised the first day Truman assumed the Presidency. Most of them expected to see a country bumpkin politician who had learned nothing in his ten years on Capitol Hill. And it was quite true that he knew little or nothing of current affairs. Roosevelt did not see fit to keep the Vice-President abreast of developments. FDR ruled on his own, and in matters of foreign policy, for example, Truman got all his information mainly from The Washington Post. What people failed to consider was that Truman could and wanted to learn for he was spurred by the thought as he watched Roosevelt that "being a President is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep on riding or be swallowed." He felt he could not let up for a single moment.

The top US generals were the first to discover this. The President grasped whatever he was told instantly. He did not have to be told twice. He knew all there was to know about the US and enemy troops, the names of ships, the intricate problems of logistics, and so on and so forth. Averell Harriman, US Ambassador to Moscow, hastened to Washington to brief the new President so he would not succumb to bad advice. "I had talked with Mr. Truman for only a few minutes," Harriman recalled, "when I began to realize that the man had a real grasp of the situation. What a surprise and a relief this was! He had read all the cables and reports that had passed between me and the State Department, going back for months. He knew

the facts and the sequence of events, and he had a keen understanding of what they meant.''^^1^^

But whence the enduring notion of a little gray man in the President's chair? This is a good example of how appearances are mistaken for the essence. Truman was deliberately modest. He always emphasized his democracy, the democracy of a citizen soldier. A veteran of the American Legion who had risen to the rank of artillery colonel (reserve), he used the jargon of an old soldier (which he was not). Truman's zestful but hardly printable expressions did reach the press. When Paul Hume, The Washington Post music critic, gave its due to the inglorious debut of the President's daughter Margaret as a singer, Truman lost no time to respond. He vilified the reviewer, promised to beat his face in, and said the old man would need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below. Sensational!

Reporters besieged Margaret. She said, "I am absolutely positive that my father wouldn't use language like that." She ran to him in tears. Truman confessed: "Sometimes the frailties of the human get the better of me." Hume began his next review with the words, "If I may venture to express an opinion. . .", while Richard Nixon, then new in Congress, commented: Presidents ought to behave with more dignity.

In questions of home policy, Truman was Roosevelt's faithful follower. His style, intellectually arrogant and therefore indifferent to material blessings, like his modesty, prompted by a sense of superiority over the mass of bureaucrats, were no subterfuge. They reflected the essence of the man. They were also a most useful political disguise for the typical ruler of a ``democratic'' country.

A Bomb for the Russians

Only one of Truman's utterances made before he moved into the White House had won notice in the United States. It was made on June 24, 1941. US Professor Adam Ulam, a Sovietologist, lamented: "The Soviet dossier on Truman contained

^^1^^ Cabell Phillips, The Truman Presidency. The History of a Triumphant Succession, Macmillan Co., New York, 1966, p. 79.

~^^1^^ Victor Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate, The Dial Press, New York, 1977, p. 122.

the frank hut undiplomatic outburst by the then senator from Missouri, who, in June 1941, had said it was an excellent thing for Germany and the USSR to be fighting each other and hoped that they finished each other off.^^1^^ In 1945 this was not mentioned, but during the long years of the cold war the Soviet reader of books and articles 011 American foreign policy would often be reminded of this scynical remark, which supposedly explained so much about American policy after 1945.''^^2^^

It certainly did, because it introduced us to the nightmare world of illusions in which Truman and his like felt so much at home for so many years.

They who were the spine of the US ruling elite had not expected the Red Army's victorious march of the spring of 1945, when it liberated the countries of East and Southeast Europe one after another, beating the remnants of the Wehrmacht to pulp with its sophisticated weaponry and skilled generalship. How come? The disgruntled Truman kept asking himself. Everything seemed to have been splendidly arranged: two were fighting, the third was looking on in glee. The old books the President read had taught him this adage. But something had gone wrong. The Reich was on its last legs, while the Soviet Union was emerging from the war the world's strongest military power.

American strategists could not understand how they had miscalculated, because they did not see that socialism as a system was able to crush the advanced Nazi military machine thanks to its superior principles of organizing society, the economy included, an economy converted to war needs and compounded with the traditional courage and tenacity of the Soviet people. The gigantic battles that marked the Soviet Union's Great Patriotic War against fascism saw the whole nation taking part. In this situation, the armorarium of Western "balance of power" politics---with two sides fighting and the third benefiting from it---simply did not work.

Though the 20th century barbarians inflicted terrible losses on the Soviet Union---the USSR lost 20 million lives, while the Americans, and we say this for comparison's sake, lost 405,000 ---it emerged the victor. Not only was the enemy driven out of the land; the victorious Soviet soldier protected the fragile sprouts of a new life budding that spring in the countries liberated from the fascists. These liberated countries had tit hist ceased to be a buffer between the West and the USSR. They gained effective independence, buttressed by good relations with their great Eastern neighbour. Millions upon millions of people saved from fascist enslavement or extermination saw the Soviet Union as the beacon of hope, and declared: With the USSR forever!

The emotions that the liberation of European countries by Soviet armies elicited in the US Embassy in Moscow, from where Washington received firsthand information as the basis foi US policy, were quite different. In the last few months of Roosevelt's life, Harriman bombarded the President with telegrams saying the US should "materially change [US] policy toward the Soviet Government. . . I am not going to propose any drastic action but a firm but friendly quid-pro-quo attitude."¹ What this attitude meant the 54-year-old ambassador did not specify, because the President did not ask for any explanations: he simply ignored the sentiment that ran so high at the embassy. For a most understandable reason: all people on earth felt deep respect and gratitude to the Soviet Union, which was in the act of wiping out the Nazis.

Roosevelt died. Truman succeeded him. And Harriman lost no time to go to Washington. He told the new President that the USA was facing a "barbarian invasion of Europe" and walked out of the White House deeply relieved as we have seen, with Truman's "real grasp of the situation". Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal was warned by the ambassador: "We might well have to face an ideological crusade just as vigorous and dangerous as Fascism or Nazism". He also explained to the top men in the State Department: "Russian plans for establish-

~^^1^^ On June 24, 1941, Truman said: "If we see that Germany is winning the war we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany and in that way let them kill as many as possible." (The New York Times, June 24, 1941).

* Adam Ularn, The Rivals. America and Russia Since World War H, Viking Press, New York, 1971, p. 63.

~^^1^^ Foreign Relations of the United States, Diplomatic Papers, 1944, Vol 4, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1966, pp. 989- 990.

ing satellite states are a threat to the world and us." The United States, he said, had "greater leverage" to counteract these plans through appropriate economic measures vis-a-vis the USSR.^^1^^

Admiral Leahy, Roosevelt's Chief of Staff, advised the new President to "take a strong American attitude toward the Soviet Union" if only because the very mention of communism caused the old man "pain and anger".^^2^^ Analogous recommendations came mainly from civilians, notably Joseph Grew, Undersecretary of State, and Nelson Rockefeller. The generals, however, were perturbed: how did the USA intend to finish the war with Japan (that the USSR would enter it had been agreed in Yalta)? The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, and Douglas MacArthur, who was with the troops, reckoned it would take another 18 months after V-Day in Europe to defeat Japan if the Soviet Union did not participate. Invasion of the Japanese islands was unavoidable and "the cost of such an operation, from beachhead to the heart of Tokyo, was reckoned at a million American casualties and perhaps half as many British".^^3^^ And Tokyo was not all of Japan!

The generals, therefore, suggested caution: the island-- hopping to break through Japan's external perimeter of defense had cost the USA 170,596 lives, and seizing the first beachhead on Honshu (the operation was planned for November 1, 1945) would claim 50,000. How to cope with the thousands of kamikaze planes hidden in the caves? How to attack Japanese fortifications in the country's interior without the usual support of naval guns? A multitude of questions without a definite answer, and the most difficult of all: what if the Japanese withdraw into the mountains and go over to guerrilla warfare? In that case, MacArthur warned, the war would take at least anothei ten years. He refused to give even a rough estimate of US losses.

The President heard out the generals coolly, and evidently decided that they did not see farther than the theatres of past

and future war operations. His vision was broader: the root of the matter lay in Europe. The Far East could wait. He was never a passive listener when he was being induced to action against the Soviet Union. He did not want to sit on his hands and look on while the cordon sanitaire was falling to pieces. He had already convinced himself that the Soviet Union had not objected in Yalta against restoring regimes hostile to the Russians along its Western frontiers. This, of course, was a monstrous perversion of the decisions taken by the Big Three, but Truman tried to superimpose his personal interpretations on them. Averell Harriman and State Secretary Edward Stettinius heard him say, "we could not, of course, expect to get 100 percent of what we wanted . . . [but] on important matters . . . we should be able to get 85 percent.''

In the afternoon of April 23 Truman called a conference of top US political and military officials. "Our agreements with the Soviet Union so far," he told them, "had been a one-way street and that could not continue: it was now or never." And if the Soviet Union did not wish to accept what, in substance, amounted to the restoration of the cordon sanitaire (now it was called ``democratization''), it "could go to hell". Formulated in these terms, the matter evoked a cheer from practically all those who attended. But General George C. Marshall and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who had the war against Japan on their minds, doubted the wisdom of breaking off relations with the Soviet Union at that junction. Even Admiral Leahy muttered: "The Yalta agreement is susceptible to two interpretations." The President sent the generals packing, and continued the pleasant talk with those who had agreed with him.

A few hours later, Harry Truman met V. M. Molotov, the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, who was passing through Washington on his way to the San Francisco Conference, and presented him with the US terms, which, in effect, amounted to an ultimatum.^^1^^ "The Soviet diplomat's reception at the White House," writes US historian John Lewis Gaddis, "was not warm, however: Truman lectured him in the manner of a World War I artillery captain.''^^2^^ Modern means of com-

~^^1^^ Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace. The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State, Houghton Mufflin Co., Boston, 1977, p. 77.

~^^2^^ William D. Leahy, / Was There, Victor Gollancz Ltd., London,

1950, p. 411.

~^^3^^ Phillips, The Truman Presidency. . ., p. 67.

^^1^^ Yergin, Shattered Peace, pp. 81-83.

^^2^^ John L. Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United Sta-

3---796

munication had brought the continents closer together, and on the following day Joseph Stalin commented in a message to Truman: "You are asking too much. To put it plainly, you want me to renounce the interests of the security of the Soviet Union; but 1 cannot proceed against the interests of my country.''^^1^^

But the Washington people welcomed Truman's foray. Charles E. Bohlen would reminisce: "How I enjoyed translating Truman's sentences! They were probably the first sharp words uttered during the war by an American President to a high Soviet official." Yet Bohlen deplored that "Truman's tough talk with Molotov could not be made public at the time because the war was still on, and it would have been a great shock to the Americans, as well as to others, if it appeared that the United States and the Soviet Union were having serious differences.''

Yes, the nations of the anti-Hitler coalition would hardly have commended the new US President for undermining Allied unity, the earnest of victory. This was clear even to Bohlen, that eloquent follower of Truman's undertaking. "Worried and irritated by the Soviet's general behavior, Harriman met with a number of American newsmen and, with circumspection, advanced the view that the goals of the Soviet Union and the United States were so opposed that any possibility of future cooperation was not realistic. So strong was pro-Russian sympathy in those days that some of the correspondents were outraged. If I remember correctly, Walter Lippmann walked out of the interview. Raymond Gram Swing, in a broadcast, stated that diplomats who lost their belief in the ultimate purpose of our diplomacy in relation to the Soviet Union were expendable.''^^2^^

Averell Harriman, multimillionaire, international banker, heir

to his father's fortune and member of the Board of Union Pacific Railroads when still attending college, took up politics after 50. In 1971, testifying before a House subcommittee studying the genesis of the cold war, he recalled it in the briefest of terms: "Our basic philosophies are irreconcilable. I said that in 1945---I was condemned for doing it---too unkind to our allies.''^^1^^ In 1945, indeed, it proved exceedingly difficult for US policy to chart a course hostile to the USSR. Washington busybodies shut their mouths for a while. Truman and some other top US leaders had additional reasons for doing so apart from the inconvenience of going against public opinion.

One day in the summer of 1944, Senator Truman, who was inquiring into the spending of public money in war contracts, sent investigators to plants in the western part of Tennessee for they were swallowing up hundreds of millions of dollars with absolutely no effect. Yet, an excited Secretary of War (Henry Stimson) came rushing to Truman's office: "Senator, I can't tell you what it is, but it is the greatest project in the history of the world," he said. "It is most top secret. Many of the people who are actually engaged in the work have no idea what it is, arid we who do would appreciate your not going into those plants." The understanding Truman called off the investigators.

He must have remembered that extraordinary talk at the end of April 1945, when the same Stimson put him in the know in the White House, that the development of the most dreadful weapon man had ever invented was approaching completion. How the two saw the future was reflected in Stimson's estimate that the experimental detonation scheduled in mid-July would be equivalent to that of 500 tons of TNT. When the door behind Stimson closed, Admiral Leahy, who remained in the President's study, muttered: "The damn thing will never go off, and I say that as an expert on explosives.''^^2^^ In fact, however, when the first atomic bomb did go off, the blast was equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT.

tes: an Interpretative History, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1978,

p. 169.

~^^1^^ Correspondence between the Chairman of the Council of Mi~ nisters of the USSR and the Presidents of the U.S.A. and the Prime Ministers of Great Britain during the Great Patriotic War of 1941- 1945, Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow, 1957,

p. 220.

* Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History, 1929-1969, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1973, pp. 213-215.

~^^1^^ The Cold War: Origins and Developments. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Europe of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, 92nd Congress, 1st Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1971, p. 81.

^! Phillips, op. cit., pp. 53-54.

But Leahy was not the only one who had doubts. At that time the atomic bomb was still a big question mark. Who could object to Leahy's saying before the trial blast that scientists had cheated the government out of 2,000 million dollars.^^1^^ Still, people were putting more and more credence in the opinion expressed by James Byrnes: "The bomb might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war.''^^2^^ A competent opinion, because Byrnes had come to the State Department from the post of Director of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, and consequently knew everything that pertained to the atomic bomb. And the end of the war in Europe was round the corner. Germany surrendered to the Western allies at Rheims on May 7, 1945, and the following day Truman cut off lend-lease aid to the Soviet Union. What he was not able to prevent was the signing of a general instrument of Germany's unconditional surrender to all the main victors, that is, first of all the USSR, which took place on May 8, 1945.

The logic of events imposed the need for an immediate conference of the three heads of government. Truman delayed its opening because he did not want to meet Stalin empty-handed, that is, without secure knowledge that the USA had the atomic bomb. As Stimson said to the President, it was "a terrible thing to gamble with such high stakes in diplomacy without having your master card in your hands .. . over [the] tangled wave of problems the S-l [atomic bomb] secret would be dominant". And he amplified: "There should be no revelation to Russia or anyone else of our work on S-l until the first bomb has been laid successfully on Japan.''^^3^^ Not that the matter centered on Japan. Later, in his memoirs, Stimson would say: "It was already apparent that the critical questions in American policy towards atomic energy would be directly connected with Soviet Russia.''^^4^^ Seen from this angle, embattled Japan was no

~^^1^^ Leahy, op. cit, pp. 513-514.

~^^2^^ Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 1, Years of Decisions, Signet Books, New York, 1955, p. 104.

^J Barton J. Bernstein, "Roosevelt, Truman, and the Atomic Bomb, 1941-1945: A Reinterpretation" in Political Science Quarterly, Spring 1975, pp. 40-41.

* Henry L. Stimson, McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War, Harper & Bros., New York, 1948, p. 636.

more than a site for the US atomic show of force. Convenient, and cynical: the extermination of hundreds of thousands of civilians could be written off as an unavoidable military necessity.

The set of problems that arose over the atomic bombing of Japan gave impulse to prolific literature in the West. The discussions continue to this day and their end is not in sight. But whatever the distinctions in approach, the main point remains as formulated, among others, by Prof. Christopher Thome: "The use of the weapon against Japan was connected, in the minds of some American officials, with the future pattern of relations with the Soviet Union. By this last point it is not intended to deny that, for many of those involved, probably the majority, the overriding consideration in the decision to use the bomb was to save American lives and hasten the defeat of Japan. Simply to take a single source, however, one finds recorded in the diary of Henry Stimson, who had a special responsibility in this matter, not only the belief that the successful development of the weapon would provide a 'master card' when it came to settling issues between the USA and the Soviet Union, but also the wish to see this new power displayed for all---including Moscow, of course---to see. On 6 June, for example, Stimson told Truman that he was 'a little fearful that before we could get ready the Air Force might have Japan so thoroughly bombed out that the new weapon would not have a fair background to show its strength.' The President, recorded Stimson, 'laughed and said he understood'.''^^1^^

The completion of the atomic project and Truman's departure to the Potsdam conference of the heads of government of the USSR, USA and UK were synchronized. Truman filled the interim with diplomatic manoeuvres. Harry Hopkins went off to Moscow at the end of May to negotiate with Stalin. The President told him "he could use diplomatic language or he could use a baseball bat if he thought that was the proper ap-

~^^1^^ Christopher Thorne, Allies of a Kind. The United States, Britain and the War against Japan, 1941-1945, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1978, p. 500.

proach to Mr. Stalin".^^1^^ In Moscow, Hopkins found that the Soviet Union wanted to continue cooperating with the USA, which he immediately reported to the President. But Truman was not impressed. On the way to Potsdam he confessed to his closest associates: "If it explodes, as I think it will, I'll certainly have a hammer on those boys (Russia as well as the Japs)."² Despite the inflated hopes that they pinned on the atomic bomb, neither Truman nor the other US leaders could afford to turn their back on the main thing---getting the Soviet Union to join the war against Japan. Whatever postdated conceptions may be circulated that US leaders of the time had suddenly lost interest in the matter, this remains a fact (of which Truman later wrote in his memoirs): "There were many reasons for my going to Potsdam, but the most urgent, to my mind, was to get from Stalin a personal reaffirmation of Russia's entry into the war against Japan, a matter which our military chiefs were most anxious to clinch.''^^3^^ And for obvious

reasons.

At the time of the Potsdam Conference the US and British military staffs thought as before that invading Japan would exact a heavy loss of life. Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, informed his American colleagues at the end of July 1945 that the Kwantung army was capable of "serious delaying actions".'^^1^^ The US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), too, warned at the time that the invasion would inevitably encounter massive use of kamikaze planes. Evaluations of the results of the battle for Okinawa were, indeed, most sinister: US losses were close to those of the Japanese.^^5^^

And so, as Stettinius summed up, "at both Yalta and Potsdam the military staffs were particularly concerned with the Japanese troops in Manchuria. Described as the cream of the Japanese Army, this self-contained force, with its own autonomous command and industrial base, was believed capable of prolonging the war even after the islands of Japan had been

subdued, unless Russia should enter the war and engage this army.

``With this belief, the President's military advisers urgently desired Russian entry into the war. Our casualties would be far smaller if the Japanese had to divert forces to meet the Russians in the north.''^^1^^

The Americans wanted the same in this theater as they had had in the war against the European Axis powers: that the brunt of the ground operations, with whatever losses this involved, should be borne by the Soviet Union.

The US generals used their own yardstick, that of the US campaigns against Japan in the Pacific Ocean, to measure the potential of the Japanese armed forces. The top Japanese command, however, was far more realistic about the prospects of armed resistance to the Soviet Union. Shortly before the USSR entered the war in the Far East, the Japanese generals made clear that they estimated "the strength of the Soviet Union overseas forces and air forces is far superior to US forces".² Tokyo had drawn the requisite lessons from the crushing defeat the Soviet Union had inflicted on Germany and its satellites, and had no illusions about the outcome of any clash with the Red Army.

The Potsdam Conference was the longest of the wartime `` summits'' held by the heads of government of the USSR, USA and UK: it lasted two and a half weeks. It attempted to sum up some of the results of the war in Europe and, on top of that, Truman obtained the Soviet Union's reaffirmation of its entry into the war against Japan.

Truman's posture at the conference was determined by what came off on July 16: a successful experimental blast of an atomic bomb. Five days after the conference opened, on July 21, a special courier brought Truman a detailed report on the test. Stimson visited Truman after seeing the report. "The President," he wrote, "was tremendously pepped up by it and spoke to me of it again and again when I saw him. He said it gave him an entirely new feeling of confidence." When Stimson read

^^1^^ Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, p. 252. ^^1^^ Political Science Quarterly, Spring 1975,p. 49. ^^3^^ Truman, Memoirs, Vol. 1, Year of Decision, p. 454. ' Thome, Allies of a Kind. . . , p. 526.

* Gabriel Kolco, The Politics of War, Random House, New York. 1968, pp. 555-556.

~^^1^^ Edward R. Stettinius, Roosevelt and the Russians, The Yalta Conference, Jonathan Cape, London, 1950, p. 96.

~^^2^^ Kolco, op. cit., p. 596.

the report to Churchill, the latter exclaimed: "Now I know what happened to Truman yesterday. I couldn't understand it. When he got to the meeting he was a changed man. He told the Russians just where they got on and off, and generally bossed the whole meeting.''^^1^^ But judging from the set of concerted decisions reached at Potsdam, Churchill was engaged in wishful thinking. Still, his utterance clearly reflected the mood of the two Anglo-Saxon leaders.

On July 24, 1945, in Potsdam, Truman issued orders to drop the first special bomb, weather permitting, some day after August 3 on one of the following targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata or Nagasaki. On August 6, "Enola Gay", a B-29 bomber piloted by Paul W. Tibbets and named after his mother, took off from Tinian Island. That morning at 8.15, over Hiroshima he pushed the button. Contrary to rumour, the bomb was dropped without a parachute. Its mechanism triggered the detonation as calculated, a minute after it was dropped. The result: a horrendous explosion registered at 8.16 a.m., four square miles of scorched earth where downtown Hiroshima had stood, and more than 90,000 killed and missing.

Sixteen hours later, in Washington, Truman declared: "It is a harnessing of the basic power of the Universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East." Did the people of Hiroshima really start the war? And a dry statement of accounts: "We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history---and won." On August 9, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, with another 46,000 people burning to death. In addition hundreds of thousands died of the consequences of the two blasts.

The United States maintained that the bombing was meant to hasten Japan's defeat. But was it a coincidence that on the day of the Nagasaki blast Truman addressed the country over the radio, reporting on the Potsdam Conference. He declared the United States would not reveal the atomic bomb secret until the world stopped being ``lawless'', and that Washington would maintain the military bases necessary "for the complete protection" of US interests. Referring to the future, Truman

said: "We must constitute ourselves trustees of this new force--- to prevent its misuse, and to turn it into the channels of service to mankind.''

In a direct reference to Washington's atomic monopoly, the President stressed that the Balkan countries must not be spheres of influence of any one power.

This was an undisguised threat to the Soviet Union, made on the day the Red Army mounted its operations in the Far East. The unheard-of force which hit the Kwantung Army brought the war against Japan to an end in a few weeks. The lightning Soviet campaign caused 677,000 casualties, including 84,000 dead. Soviet casualties totalled 32,000. Neither the enemy nor the allies had expected so swift a reckoning. The defeat in Manchuria broke the backbone of Japanese military power. General H. H. Arnold, Chief of the US Air Force, observed: "The abrupt surrender of Japan came more or less as a surprise.''^^1^^ This was not only his own opinion. On July 19, 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had pointed out that organized Japanese resistance could not be expected to end before November 15, 1946.^^2^^ On September 2, 1945, Japan signed the instrument of unconditional surrender. World War II was over. Its outcome in the West, and in the East as well, was determined by the Soviet Union.

The use of atomic bombs against Japan had been senseless. This is quite clear. As Patrick Blackett, the world-renowned British physicist, observed in 1949, the atomic bombing "was not so much the last military act of the Second World War as the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.''^^3^^ In the 1960s and 70s, this point was also made by the so-called revisionists in US historiography, notably Gar Alperovitz, William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolco, and others. As for Truman, one of his biographers notes that in later years he kept saying: "I never lost any sleep over my decision", "I would do it again", and "That was not any deci-

~^^1^^ H. H. Arnold, Clobal Mission, Harper and Bros., New York, 1949, p. 598.

' Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers. The Conference of Berlin (The Potsdam Conference), 1945, Vol. 2, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1960, p. 115.

~^^3^^ Patrick Blackett, Fear, War and the Bomb, Whittlesey House, New York, 1949, p. 138.

~^^1^^ Cochran, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency, p. 172.

sion that you had to worry about, nothing but an artillery weapon".^^1^^

In January 1953, shortly before Truman moved out of the White House, he was visited by Winston Churchill. During the dinner, in the presence of the top US leaders of that time, Churchill suddenly turned to Truman: "Mr. President, I hope you have your answer ready for that hour when you and I stand before Saint Peter and he says, 'I understand you two are responsible for putting off those atomic bombs. What have you got to say for yourselves?' "

The embarrassed silence was broken by the professional Washington wit, Undersecretary of State Robert Lovett, who countered Churchill with the following question: "Are you sure, Prime Minister, that you are going to be in the same place as the President for that interrogation?''

General laughter, a decision to call on the great for the verdict, a jury formed, with those attending calling themselves Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Socrates, Aristotle, and Washington. Voltaire was rejected for having been an atheist. Truman was made judge and Churchill the sole defendant, who was unanimously pronounced not guilty. The Prime Minister reminisced recalling that he had misjudged Truman badly when the latter replaced Roosevelt. "Since that time," Churchill added, "you more than any other man, have saved Western civilization.''^^2^^

Truman was never bothered by any sense of guilt. In one of his letters dated 1957, he wrote that when artillery had first been used in Italy, the gunners were hanged as beasts. Unfortunately, he added, a similar outlook existed now about the US efforts to use atomic energy. He, Truman, greatly deplored this view.^^3^^

Albert Einstein said: "If I had known that the Germans would not succeed in constructing the atom bomb, I would never have lifted a finger.''^^4^^ No, the great physicist could not reach down to the logic of the US politicians.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed Directive 1496/2, " Basis for the Formulation of a Military Policy", on September 18, 1945, and Directive 1518, "Strategic Concept and Plan for the Employment of United States Armed Forces" on October 9, 1945. They identified the enemy as the Soviet Union, against which war was to be waged. The authors of these documents pointed out that the war should be of a preventive nature. The idea of a "first blow" was inscribed in Directive 1496/2 because, as the minutes of the meeting said, "this point should be emphasized to make it clear that this is a new concept of policy, different than the American attitude toward war in the past''.

The Joint Intelligence Committee named the cause that would justify starting an atomic war against the Soviet Union. "In the contingency," it said, "that enemy industrial and scientific progress suggested a capability for an 'eventual attack against the United States or defense against our attack'." The Committee added that atomic bombing was relatively ineffective against conventional military forces and transportation systems. This, writes Michael S. Sherry, amounted to "an admission that the bomb really would be useful only for mass destruction of urban targets.''^^1^^

On November 3, 1945, the Joint Intelligence Committee submitted to the top command its assessment of Soviet targets subject to an atomic strike. In Report 329, which was declassified in 1980, the Committee listed 20 Soviet cities that were the first to be hit in an atomic attack: Moscow, Gorky, Kuibyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Perm, Tbilisi, Novokuznetsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, and Yaroslavl. "The cities," it explained, "have been selected on the basis of their general importance with respect to (1) industrial facilities---particularly aircraft and general ordnance, (2) governmental administrative facilities and (3) facilities for scientific research and development. . . Very little specific information is available concerning the locations and

~^^1^^ Cochran, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency, p. 175.

~^^2^^ Margaret Truman, Harry S. Truman, pp. 555-556. ~^^1^^ Robbins, Last of His Kind, pp. 25, 118-119.

* Robert C. Batchelder, The Irreversible Decision, 1939-1950, Macmillan, New York, 1965, p. 38.

~^^1^^ Michael S. Sherry, Preparing for the Next War. American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941-1945, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1977, p. 201, 213.

functions of the leading scientific research laboratories and institutes under the control and direction of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences (which has its headquarters in Moscow). These institutes, probably operated in conjunction with the leading universities, are the primary research centers. It is believed that a substantial part of such research facilities is located within the indicated target areas.''^^1^^ Let me add that the population of the listed 20 Soviet cities totalled 13 million people. According to the US tradition of genocide dating, let us say, to General Sherman, they were to be burnt to ashes.

The calculations had a basis to them. No few top American and British generals were straining at the leash in their eagerness to tackle the Soviet Union. George S. Patton was pleased to find that Henry M. Arnold's views about "the Mongols", as he called Russians, were the same as his own. Liddell Hart was told on May 22, 1945, that "both Patton and Montgomery had said in private that if there was a danger of war with Russia, it would be better to tackle that danger now than to postpone it: at present, the British and Americans had the air superiority, and the American forces were on the scene and fully mobilized''.

In August, Patton would put down in his diary: "I have no particular desire to understand them [the Russians---N.Y.] except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them.''^^2^^

.Starting in March 1945, the US Air Force carried out operations Casey Jones and Ground Hog. The former was the code name for aerial photography of 2,000,000 sq miles in Europe and Northern Africa west of the 20° longitude line. "About sixteen squadrons of U.S. and British heavy bombers modified for aerial photography," writes Anthony G. Brown in The Last Hero. Wild Bill Donovan, "were employed in the operations, which lasted through the spring, summer and autumn of 1945. . . The purpose of Casey Jones evidently did not escape the Russians ... for in one month alone one of the American units involved---the 305th Heavy Bombardment Group--- flew about 470 missions, taking 70,000 photographs of about

90,000 sq miles. Consequently, the unmistakable nature of aerial photographic flying provoked a sharp reaction of the Red Air Force.''

And small wonder. US planes flagrantly entered the air space over areas (e.g., the Soviet zone in Germany) where Soviet troops were stationed. The US authorities, moreover, turned a deaf ear to Soviet protests, because, as General Edwin L. Sibert, chief of intelligence to Eisenhower, put it, both Casey Jones and Ground Hog were "successful and put us in a good position with respect to any future campaign in Europe".^^3^^

In its directive 432/D, the Joint War Plans Gommitee stressed on December 14, 1945: "The only weapon which the United States can employ to obtain decisive effects in the heart of the USSR is the atomic bomb delivered by long-range aircraft. . . With 196 atomic bombs, the United States .. . would be capable of visiting such destruction upon the industrial sources of military power in the USSR that a decision could eventually be obtained.''^^2^^

So it was to be 196 bombs for 20 Soviet cities? But how had the United States managed to amass this number of atomic bombs in a matter of four months after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

William Manchester, a most competent US political writer, says the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan was adopted in the summer of 1945, because, among other things, "the Americans had no bombs to waste. Apart from the static apparatus to be exploded in the desert, there were just two, bearing the names 'The Thin Man' and 'The Fat Man'.''

After the atomic weapon was tested in July 1945, Manchester continues, General Groves, who was in charge of the project, said to his assistant: "The war's over. One or two of those things and Japan will be finished." The scientists standing around them said little, but one of them crossed his fingers, since "one or two" was all they had. The code name for the Los Alamos test had been Trinity, an allusion to the three gadgetsin-being. If Tokyo guessed the truth, America's position would

~^^1^^ New Times, No. 8, February 1980, p. 28.

~^^2^^ David Irving, The War Betiveen the Generals, Congdon and Lattes, New York, 1981, pp. 407-408.

~^^1^^ Brown, The Last Hero. Wild Bill Donovan, Time Books, New York, 1982, pp. 640-642.

~^^2^^ New Times, No 8, February 1980, p. 29.

be complicated. The better part of a year would pass before any other missile could be readied.^^1^^ As Cochran observed, "why did we drop two bombs?. . . Because we had two bombs in our arsenal. Had there been two, more available, we would have dropped them also, as Grove's directive to General Carl Spaatz provided".^^2^^ Spaatz had been given four Japanese cities to choose from as targets for the atomic bombing.

The world rejoiced, for the war was over, while the United States secretly started batch production of atomic bombs. There had been just two atomic bombs for Japan, and as many as 196 by the end of 1945 for the Soviet Union, a recent ally!

The staff officers who were planning an atomic aggression against the Soviet Union knew perfectly well that the United States alone would instigate the war. This was reflected in various relevant documents. It said in directive 432/D, for example, that "at the present time, the U.S.S.R. does not have the capability of inflicting similar damage on the United States industry. When the Soviets obtain a strategic air force with bombers with a range of 5,000 miles and the atomic bomb, they will be able to retaliate and the overwhelming advantage the United States now holds will be nullified''.

Why then did US bombers fail to take off with their atomic bombs 'against the Soviet cities selected? Then it would have been easy to compare the ambitious thinking of US staff planners with the experience of the recent war. Was 196 atomic bombs much or little? In 1949 William H. Hessler, a wellknown US publicist (who could not then have known the size of the US strategic stockpile) wrote: "It is probably a fruitless and misleading enterprise to try to calculate how many A-- bombs would be needed for a selected campaign of destruction. War planners must make such estimates; that is their business. But they are only making educated guesses, because they do not know how many bomb carriers will get through to target, how many bombs will fall near enough to predetermined targets to do substantial damage, or how the military efficiency of the

bombs will be modified by the terrain. One careful scientist, Dr. Philip Morrison, estimates that at least 1,000 atomic bombs would be needed to do the same damage to Russia as was inflicted by the Germans in the Stalingrad campaign alone.''^^1^^

That the atomic bombs of 1945 vintage did not stand for a revolution in warfare, is now a commonplace point made in Western histories. Mooney and Brown, a pair of British authors, say from the vantage point of the late seventies that "the nuclear myth was widely accepted but the reality was that Abombs were too few, too inaccurate, too small and too clumsy to enable the USA to dominate the USSR. In very crude terms, one 20 kiloton plutonium bomb with the explosive force of 20,000 tons of TNT did the damage of 2,000 tons of TNT. That being the case, it would have needed 300 atom bombs to approximate the 600,000 tons of bombs the allies rained on Germany in 1944, despite which German military production actually increased. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Americans had achieved a strategic effect with what, 15 years later, in the thermonuclear age, would only have been regarded as tactical or battlefield weapons.''^^2^^

It seemed to Truman that the United States had time to spare for changing the political climate. Experts told the government that the Soviet Union would take at least 20 years to learn to produce atomic arms. "During the war," wrote Michael Sherry, "the AAF believed that the Soviets could not create a large bomber force for at least twenty years. Fall [1945] estimates, however, pared that figure down to five to ten years."" Experts in atomic arms production also revised their estimates, reducing the time. All the same, politicians of the Truman breed decided they had time enough to create a "position from strength" to deal with the Soviet Union, a "position from strength" in the broadest possible sense of the term, including the inner political situation of the United States.

What politicians who had gone through World War II and

~^^1^^ See William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream. A Narrative History of America 1932-1972, Bantam Books, New York, 1978, pp. 376, 378.

" Cochran, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency, p. 174.

~^^1^^ William H. Hessler, Operation Survival. America's New Role in World Affairs, Prentice-Hall, New York, 1949, p. 146-147.

~^^2^^ Peter J. Mooney, Colin Brown, Truman to Carter. A Post-War History of the United States of America, Edward Arnold, London 1979, p. 34.

~^^1^^ Sherry, Preparing for the Next War. . ., p. 219.

who had seen the gigantic victories of the Soviet Union considered incontestable, is heresy, stupidity, improvidence in the eyes of the present generation of US statesmen. They are dogmatists who have espoused the US 19th-century military tradition. In 1979, Henry Kissinger began his memoirs with a brief survey of the history of his adopted motherland's foreign policy, saying in part: "In the immediate postwar period . . . the real strength of the Soviet Union was but a fraction of our own. The Soviet Union had been exhausted by four years of war and 20 million casualties. We had an atomic monopoly and for twenty years a vast nuclear superiority. Our relative strength was never greater than at the beginning of what soon came to be called the Cold War. . . That was the time to attempt a serious discussion on the future of Europe. We lost our opportunity. . . Unexpectedly we deferred serious negotiations until we had mobilized more of our potential strength. Thus we gave the Soviet Union time---the most precious commodity it needed--- to consolidate its conquests and to recover from the war.''

For backing Kissinger referred to Churchill's "much neglected speech in October 1948". Churchill had said: "No one in his senses can believe that we have a limitless period of time before us. We ought to bring matters to a head and make a final settlement . . . while they [the Western nations] have the atomic power and before the Russian communists had got it too." Kissinger deplores the fact that Churchill had said this "during his period out of office". But surely the left sentiment that swept the British Isles after the war had thrown Churchill out of office for such intentions, though his reputation as wartime leader remained unblemished.

``In a sence," Kissinger laments, "we were applying the precepts of our own New Deal, expecting political conflict to dissolve in economic progress.''^^1^^ This confession revealed the scholastical and dogmatic frame of Kissinger's mind, the mind a man whom Westerners figure to possess a gift for statesmanship. The contours of US foreign policy of the latter forties did faintly suggest an approach resembling the New Deal. But contrary to the ``masterminds'' of the Kissinger type, inside the Unit-

ed States the Truman administration knew perfectly well that in the competition with socialism on the heels of the war against fascism it had absolutely no other choice.

From the New Deal to a Fair Deal

Truman came to power in the shadow of the late President Roosevelt. At first glance, it appeared that he had great difficulty in competing with his predecessor. But he tried. . . Nearly everyone predicted that reconversion would pose problems of no smaller magnitude than those which the nation faced in 1932. As many as 16,400,000 had been inducted into the armed forces during the war. On the day peace came 12,100,000 were still in uniform, evoking a stark vision of crowds of hungry veterans, of barricades, of polarisation between rich and poor. H. G. Wells, the great romanticist, predicted from England that in the United States things were coming to a head. Some economists estimated there would be 15 million jobless.

The G. I. Bill of Rights, adopted back in 1944 and followed with granite perseverance by the Truman Administration, was designed to ensure a relatively tranquil adaptation to peacetime of millions of people who had learned to carry arms. Separated G. I.s were to get loans for housing, for setting up small businesses, and, in addition, a year's unemployment relief. Their education was paid for, depending on their length of service. By 1950, the Veterans Administration's annual expenditures had risen to 9 billion dollars.

But Truman's attempts to introduce universal conscription (with 18 months' servise for youths on reaching 18) did not pass Congress. US legislators, many 110 doubt with the same amazement as the President, discovered that the average American had the utmost revulsion to again donning a uniform. Was the war still on? In the early postwar months, thousands upon thousands of US servicemen in the former war theatres demonstrated their attitude to militarism in no uncertain ways. They held demonstrations, demanding immediate return home and separation from the army.

At the junction between 1945 and 1946 the US armed forces

~^^1^^ Henry Kissinger, White House Years, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1979, pp. 62-63, 61.

4-796

were on the edge of mutiny. Parisians gaped as files of American G.I.s marched along the streets, shouting: "Home!" In Frankfurt, 4,000 G. I.s mutinied under the same slogan. They came to their generals for explanations, and the generals promised apologetically they would soon send them home. In the Philippines such ``explanations'' had more unpleasant consequences. The New York Times had this headline on its front page: "20,000 Manila GI's Boo General: Urge Congress to Speed Sailings." Parades and demonstrations took place all over Tokyo under the slogans, "Service yea, but serfdom never" and "Japs go home, why not us?" At the peak of its power, the US military machine was disintegrating practically overnight, and nothing could be done about it. The people's will could

not be balked.

In Washington, Eisenhower enlightened Congress leaders. Since public hearings were out of the question, they gathered secretly in a dusty back room. Eisenhower complained that the armed forces had to have 1.5 million or a little more men, while barely 400,000 had volunteered. As always, the general was prudent and circumspect, and hence quoted the Chief of Staff of the US 8th Army in Japan: "It appears that subversive forces are deliberately at work, for obscure reasons, to undermine the morale of our army." And Eisenhower added that it might be necessary to let US influence in Europe "go by default" to "some other country".^^1^^ That was how the people of America disarmed US imperialism. In many ways, this restricted Washington's freedom of action. To carry forward a policy that the ruling elite clamoured for it was imperative to change the psychological climate in the country.

And this was done. With resort to a variety of refined and conflicting measures. The latter definition, to be sure, is right only on the surface. The general aim of the Truman Administration was crystal clear: begin preparing the rear.

Through the postwar period in the United States was none too prosperous, there were auguries of plenty in the predictable future. The man in the street knew: wages for a 48-hour week had nearly doubled---from 24 to 44 dollars. He was also aware of the ``buts'': the inevitable reduction of the working week to

40 hours, which would mean a reduction of earnings because the overtime was 50 per cent higher. Hence the war cry that wages for a 40-hour week should be the same as they were for' 48 hours, meaning a 30 per cent hike of the hourly wage. Labor called strikes headed by the now much stronger unions (instead of the 9 million members they had before the war, their membership was 15 million). The organized labor movement, indeed, set out to shape a better life for the working people.

Truman did not sit on his hands. On September 4, 1945, he convened a special session of Congress to which he submitted a 21-point programme. An amorphous document---nearly 100 typewritten pages about everything under the sun. Such messages had not been seen since Theodore Roosevelt's time. There were references to full employment and higher minimum hourly wages, promises of new social legislation, and of building 15 million homes in ten years, raising the salary of Congressmen, and so on and so forth. To carry out all these promises, the President wanted to retain the extraordinary economic powers he had had in wartime. The legislators objected. Unable to see the future, they operated with old formulas. Joseph Martin, minority leader in the House of Representatives, exclaimed: "President Roosevelt himself had not asked so much from one session of Congress. This is an undisguised attempt to outdo the New Deal.''

Yes, historian William E. Leuchtenburg, who knew Roosevelt well, agreed (even if with reservations): "Determined to carry on the New Deal tradition, [Truman] . . . appointed to office lackluster plodders who suffered by comparison with the New Deal luminaries. 'It is more important to have a connection with Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, than with Felix Frankfurter,'^^1^^ remarked one commentator. To FDR loyalists Truman never measured up. Each time he acted they would ask, 'What would Roosevelt have done if he were alive?' (At the outset of his tenure, Truman himself consulted his predecessor's widow, observed Joseph and Stewart Alsop, 'as he might have consulted a medium'.) As late as January 1947,

Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 410.

~^^1^^ Felix Frankfurter---US Supreme Court Justice.

Fiorello La Guardia, the former mayor of New York, said of Roosevelt: 'How we miss him'.''^^1^^

In 1946 US organized labor gave up waiting for the outcome of the clash in Congress over Truman's 21 points and went on the offensive, demanding a higher hourly wage. As many as 116 million work-days were lost during strikes, involving 4.6 million workers. This was an all-time high in US history which, for understandable reasons, people in the United States were not proud of. If you take The World Almanac, advertised as the most up-to-date, the fullest and the most accurate reference book, you will find that the wartime figures for "man days idle" and "workers involved", namely 36 million and 6.7. million respectively, were followed by figures for 1947, when strikers totalled 2.1 million and man days idle 34.6 million. Tfie year 1946 is not given.^^2^^

By mid-May 1946 the railroad workers' strike threatened to paralyze the country's economy. Simultaneously, miners went on strike under the leadership of John L. Lewis, chief of their union. Truman summoned the railroad workers' union leaders to the White House. They would not budge. The President said icily: "If you think I am going to sit here and let you tie up this whole country, you're crazy as hell." He let the cabinet know of his plan: to pass a law under which the President can draft strikers to the army irrespective of age and family status. Attorney General Tom G. Clark tried to raise the legal side of the matter, but Truman cut him short: ``We'll draft 'em first and think about the law later." Truman decided he would speak over the radio before he faced Congress, and wrote his own radio speech. He would address the veterans, whose energy he hoped would restore order in the unions. Truman wanted to tell the veterans that while they had "faced bullets, bombs and disease", during the war, "every single one of the strikers and their demigog [sic] leaders have been living in luxury, working when they pleased and drawing from four to forty times the pay of a fighting soldier." He listed the union

leaders by name, leading off with John L. Lewis, and called on his listeners to ``eliminate'' them together with the Communists, as well as "the Russian Senators and Representatives and really make this a government of, by and for the people." Really? "Now I want you men who are my comrades in arms, you men who fought the battles to save the nation just as I did 25 years ago, to come with me," the President exhorted. "Let's put transportation and production back to work, hang a few traitors and make our own country safe for democracy. Come on boys, let's do the job!''^^1^^

It is hard to conceive what would have happened if Truman's impassioned call over the national network had reached the nation---the veterans and others. The president's advisers, notably Clark Clifford, prevailed on him to reduce the pressure. All the same, in his radio speech on May 24, the President declared: "This is a contest between a small group of men and their government." If the strikers failed to resume work by 4 o'clock the following day, he warned he would demand of Congress to draft all workers striking against their government into the army. When Truman appeared before the joint sitting of Congress at the fixed hour and began to speak, Clifford had a note passed to him: the strikers' leaders had surrendered. A smiling Truman exclaimed: "Gentlemen, the strike has been settled." The gentlemen applauded and voted 306 for and 13 against a bill allowing the President to draft workers into the army if a strike jeopardized "national security". But common sense triumphed in the Senate. More precisely, Republicans headed by Senator Robert A. Taft, though they appreciated the President's motives, rebelled against the unheard-of expansion of executive powers. The bill was not passed.

But what was the good of the railroad workers' returning to work. Sporadic miners' strikes continued. And in those days 95 per cent of the trains were drawn by steam engines. Fiftyfive per cent of industry worked on coal. So did 62 per cent of the power stations. John L. Lewis, whom the Roosevelt administration, too, had feared, and who was boss of the United Mineworkers' Union, was determined to fight on. On May 15 Truman took over the mine management. Lewis observed:

~^^1^^ William E. Leuchtcnburg, A Troubled I'east.

American Society

Since 1945, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1973, p.

12.

* The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1979,

Newspaper Enterprise Association, New York, 1979, p. 123.

^^1^^ Phillips, The Truman Presidency..., pp. 114-116.

``You can't mine coal with bayonets." Quite true. The government went to court, begging for an injunction that would forbid the union to break off its collective contract with the government. The legal arguments were shaky. The 1932 NorrisLa Guardia Act, and more, the 1935 Wagner Act (the greater gain of the labor movement under the New Deal), categorically forbade resort to this traditional procedure of smashing strikes. Government jurists, insisted that the prohibition referred to industrialists, not to the government which had taken over the

mines.

The militancy of the miners was well known, as was the irrepressible temper of John L. Lewis, a former miner himself. The country held its breath in anticipation of a dramatic clash in court. But nothing happened. On November 26 a New York district judge found the government's plea justified and ruled that the Union paid a fine of 3.5 million dollars for contempt of court, and Lewis himself 10,000 dollars.

The hero of the stormy strikes of the 1930s was about to protest, but evidently realized that a judge who had just imposed the biggest fine in US history may not shrink from imposing a prison term. Hence, Lewis kept his peace. The strike was over. So was Lewis's career as labor leader.

In 1947 Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which imposed limitations upon the unions. All union functionaries were to sign a pledge that they were not ``Communists''. If they refused, their union was dissolved. Strikes in government enterprises were outlawed. The government won the right to turn to the court for injunctions in strikes, and in serious cases the President was allowed to obtain a court injunction deferring the strike by 80 days. The finances of the unions came under government control. Political expenditures were outlawed. The ban on secondary boycotts and the closed shop, with the "union shop" question placed under the competence of the states, became a barrier to increasing union membership. The year 1947 witnessed the beginning of a relative drop in the percentage of organized workers among the gainfully employed.

Truman vetoed the act. He found that it would place too much responsibility on the government, would associate the government with the industrialists in labor conflicts, arid would thereby prejudice the government's image as an ``arbiter'' who

stood above labor and capital. Congress voted a second time, and squashed the veto. Thus the Taft-Hartley bill became law. Certainly, Truman approved of its political orientation wholeheartedly. The banishment of Communists and any other truly democratic personalities from the labor movement pleased him no end. Also, he was glad of the material gains augured by the political castration of the unions. What displeased him was the government's direct interference in settling labor conflicts. These methods were of little use in creating a `` consensus'', dampening class conflicts, and evolving unanimity in support of government policy.

Creating a "Consensus"

At the end of 1945 Truman told his trusted advisers he would have a splendid cabinet if he had a good Department of Labor and a good Department of State. He deliberately mentioned the two departments in one breath: without `` tranquillity'' within the country it was impossible for Washington to carry forward its foreign policy.

Elated over the political castration of the unions, Truman looked confidently to the future. In mid-1946, he told Bowles, Director of the Economic Stabilization Administration, that the union committments weren't worth the paper they were written on, that their leaders were unreliable and that he, the US President, would use all the powers vested in his office. It was hard to obtain a clear idea of how he saw the problem and its solution, Bowles attested, for he continuously used imprintable language.^^1^^ Seeing that the union leaders got cold feet, Truman saw no call for ceremony in the future.

It was quite different in that early postwar period in the field of foreign policy. Washington defined "national security" as the top principle in external affairs. This doctrine had crystallized during World War II and rationalized the US claims to world supremacy. Its essence was that inasmuch as US interests encompassed the entire world, any event contrary to the wishes of the US ruling elite was a ``threat'' to the

Yergin, Shattered Peace, pp. 157, 277.

nation and called for immediate retaliation---from diplomatic protest to use of force. The caliber of force was to correspond to the caliber of the ``challenge'' or, more precisely, to the `` gravity'' that US statesmen attached to it. The authors of the doctrine held that since the very existence of socialism was a ``threat'' to the United States, "national security" could be assured only by the final elimination of that ``threat''. Consequently, hostility towards the Soviet Union was not only inevitable, but also obligatory.

The premises of the doctrine, like the conclusions, were contrary to common sense. More, following the recent defeat of the Axis powers in cooperation with the Soviet Union, they constituted a self-evident absurdity. But Harry Truman's Administration mounted an ideological crusade in order to unite the nation under the banner of "national security", beginning with the upper echelons, where a few people were not yet ready to accept the President's ``ideas'' as an article of faith.

Even Secretary of State James Byrnes did not immediately grasp what was wanted of him. Anything but a friend of the Soviet Union, he tried to follow normal diplomatic practice in his relations with that country. And quickly earned the label of "Munich!te". Summoned to the White House, he was given a short course in "national security" a la Truman. The President said to him: "Unless Russia is faced with an iron fist and strong language another war is in the making. I do not think we should play compromise any longer. We should refuse to recognize Rumania and Bulgaria until they comply with our requirements; we should let our position on Iran be known in no uncertain terms and we should continue to insist on the internationalization of the Kiel Canal, the Rhine-- Danube waterway and the Black Sea Straits and we should maintain complete control of Japan and the Pacific. We should rehabilitate China and create a strong government there. We should do the same for Korea. Then we should insist on the return of our ships from Russia and force a settlement of the Lend-Lease debt of Russia. I am tired of babying the Soviets.''^^1^^

This was how the Secretaiy of State was pulled over the coals according to Truman. Byrnes denied this version, saying that if anyone had spoken to him in that way, he would have resigned immediately.^^1^^ And he is probably speaking the truth. But the episode shows there were obstacles to the unanimity the Administration wanted to forge. And what bothered the Trumanites most was that the obstacles were related to the public at large. In February 1946 Republican Senator Charles W. Tobey, for example, referred angrily to attempts at exciting public opinion against the Soviet Union. "I consider them dangerous and unreasonable," he thundered. "The main state interests of our countries do not come into conflict. There are still differences between us, and there will be others, but they will never be more important than our common interests and common goals." There were similar utterances and statements in the same vein. In mid-February Roosevelt's oldtime associate, Harold L. Ickes, was compelled to resign. Secretaiy of the Interior since 1933, he told Truman in no uncertain terms what he thought of him, and accused him of gathering "a nondescript band of political Lilliputians" to run the country.

That is probably why the Trumanites invited Winston Churchill, a political Gulliver, to announce their new symbol of faith. He came to the United States for a holiday in January 1946, and there, in association with Truman, Byrnes, and Leahy, produced a speech which he delivered on March 5, 1946 at the college in the little town of Fulton, Missouri. An "iron curtain" had been lowered over the countries of East and Southeast Europe, Churchill thundered, arid called for a military alliance based on atomic weapons between the United States and Britain. He alleged that a threat to "Christian civilization" emanated from the Soviet Union. He was most eloquent now that an opportunity presented itself to curse communism under benign gaze of Truman who presided at the meeting. The US President was elated.

Harry S. Truman, ed. by William Hillman, Farrar, Straus and Young, New York, 1952, p. 28.

~^^1^^ James F. Byrnes, All In One Lifetime, Harper & Bros., New York 1958, pp. 402-403.

~^^1^^ Harry S. Truman. Mr. President: The First Publication from the Personal Diaries, Private Letters, Papers and Revealing Interviews of

In the West, many think that Churchill's foray in Fulton was the beginning of the cold war. In an interview published throughout the world, Jozeph Stalin said: "In substance, Mr. Churchill and his friends in England and the USA are submitting something resembling an ultimatum to nations that do not speak English: acknowledge our supremacy of your own free will and everything will be fine; otherwise war is inevitable. .. I don't know if Mr. Churchill and his friends will succeed in organizing a new military campaign against 'Eastern Europe' after World War II. But if they do succeed ... it may safely be said that they will be defeated just as they were defeated in the past, 26 years ago.''

The war Churchill declared on common sense elicited many a negative response in the West as well, and Truman hastened to disavow any connection with that speech. He said he had not seen its text beforehand. Byrnes swore he had not been consulted. Dean Acheson, claiming pressure of business, did not attend Churchill's welcoming ceremony in New York. The last of Roosevelt's Cabinet members, Henry A. Wallace, Secretary of Commerce, called on Truman to begin economic negotiations with the Soviet Union. The President evaded the issue. On March 19, Wallace warned in a public statement that the United States would win nothing and lose everything if they beat the drums of war against Russia.

The words of the distinguished statesman were instantly drowned by the beating of drums. An anti-Soviet campaign was gaining momentum. Any equal negotiations with the Soviet Union were tabbed as ``appeasement''. A cunning argument was put into circulation: those who wanted negotiations were nothing short of Munichites. Accordingly, Wallace was dubbed a Munichite who had taken over the role of Neville Chamberlain.^^1^^ Admiral Leahy stuck this label to the entire State Department, hinting that it had been taken over by ``appeasers'' lock, stock and barrel. In the early half of June an article by John Foster Dulles, "Thoughts on Soviet Foreign Policy and What To Do About It", appeared in two is-

sues of Life. He accused the Soviet Union of expansionism and said it should be resisted everywhere. He recommended his readers to go to church more often. Henry Luce, publisher of Life, congratulated him: "I can think of no articles in my experience in journalism which so definitely accomplished a job. . . For a great many people, directly and indirectly, your article ended all doubts as to the inescapable reality of the Russian-Communist problem.''^^1^^

Luce, who had long peddled the idea that the 20th century should be an American century, was simplifying matters. Robert Murphy, political adviser to Lucius Clay, Commanderin-Chief for Military Government in Germany, reported to Washington at about that time that he and his associates had never believed, nor did they believe now, that Soviet aggression was inevitable. He was convinced, he wrote, that any Russian he had met in Germany shrank from the very thought of a big war in the foreseeable future.

General George S. Patton, whom Americans, including Ronald Reagan, have not tired of extolling to this day, was military governor of Bavaria. His 3rd Army did not hurry to disarm the German Units. General Joseph T. McNarney, the deputy US military governor of Germany, told Patton that the Russians were complaining about it. "What do you care what those goddam bolshies think?" snapped Patton. ``We're going to have to fight them sooner or later. Why not now while our army is intact and we can kick the Red Army back into Russia? We can do it with my Germans . . . they hate those red bastards.''^^2^^ Patton wondered why they, the Americans, were making concessions and acting polite to "the descendants of Genghis Khan.''

``We let them dictate terms," he complained, "while we should obviously be the ones to dictate them.''

In a conversation with Murphy which the political advisernoted down, "he inquired, with a gleam in his eye, whether there was any chance of going on to Moscow, which he said

~^^1^^ Robert T. Elson, The World of Time. The Intimate History of a Publishing Enterprise, 1941-1960, Vol. 2, Atheneum, New York, 1973, pp. ()0-66.

^^1^^ Yergin, Shattered Peace, p. 174.

~^^2^^ John Loftus, The Belarus Secret, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1982, p. 47.

he could reach in thirty days".^^1^^ This loud talk was ascribed to the general's eccentricity, of which he took advantage to speak freely in public and to say, among other things, that "the Nazis are just like the Republicans and Democrats" in the United States. The loudmouthed general was dismissed and appointed war historian. Soon a car accident ended his life and career.

The Truman Administration preached left and right, and not by word alone. Though Byrnes feared that new atomic weapon tests might have a bad effect on the world situation, which was already alarming, the US Navy held such tests at Bikini atoll in July 1946.

The time had come to make all those who directly depended on the government---the public servants---march in step. The two million people in government service---the entire pyramid of power with its very broad base---was to be investigated and screened. Time would not wait. Republicans campaigned for seats in the 80th Congress under the slogan of clearing all government agencies of Communists and their fellow travellers.

What was this all about? Senator Frank Church's commission, which probed US political investigative agencies in 1975 and 1976, discovered that at the time under review the FBI had held no more than 100 government employees within its field of vision as ``potential'' Communists. But even in their regard the FBI lacked information that could be presented In court to prove they were members of the Communist Party.² Understandably so: the methodical persecution of the CPUSA was taking its toll. As for the legal side of the matter, back in 1939 the Hatch Act had already closed access to government jobs for all those who sought "the forcible overthrow" of the government (i.e., to Communists, according to the Washington vocabulary).

The political investigative agencies were more than enough to cope with the above ``threat''. There was the military

~^^1^^ Robert Murphy, Diplomat Among Warriors, Pyramid Books New York, 1965, pp. 329-330.

~^^2^^ See Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, US Senate, Book III, Washington, 1976, p. 436 (further referred to as Final Report...).

counter-intelligence, the secret service, a mass of other agencies, including the police, alongside the FBI. The Internal Revenue Service knew the financial status of persons under surveillance down to a cent, and the House Committee on Uri-American Activities could at any moment organize a public persecution of those whom it disapproved of. The anticommunist campaign, apart from its immediate aims, was an excellent excuse to ``discipline'' the US state machine from top to bottom. On March 21, 1947, Truman's Executive Order 9835 instituted a national loyalty review board for employees of the federal government. A ramified structure was erected: relevant departments subordinate to regional loyalty review boards were formed in all institutions. And things began to hum.

The FBI screened every government employee. The procedure was monstrous: charges were properly motivated if this did not run counter to the interests of "national security". It was impossible to find out what you were accused of, and the FBI would not give you the names of its secret agents or volunteer informers.

Fear clutched at the hearts of millions of people. "The real terror seldom reached newsprint, however, because it was so ordinary, like being jobless in 1932," writes Manchester in his The Glory and the Dream. "Apart from its other outrages, Executive Order 9835 encouraged Americans to snoop on colleagues, friends, neighbors, and even relatives... The mere opening of the full field investigation was often enough to humiliate a man and shame his family. Guilty in the eyes of many until innocence had been proven, he became suspect the day his loyalty check began. Neighbors questioned by security officers cut him on the street, ignored invitations from his wife, and forbade their children to play with his. His sons might be barred from the Cub Scouts. He couldn't even call upon civil service friends without putting them, too, in the shadow of the ax.''^^1^^ Some, who flinched in face of the persecutions, committed suicide. Thousands resigned from their civil service job while, they thought, the going was still good.

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 494-496.

In the approximately five years of the loyalty check program 6,600,000 people were screened, out of whom 25,750 came under "full field investigation" and 490 were fired for being ``disloyal''.^^1^^ Not a single case of espionage, the avowed motive of the loyalty review, was spotted. Was this a case of the mountain giving birth to a mouse? Certainly not. The screening of civil servants gave impulse to a snowballing process in which one and all were ``checked'' by countless inquisitors. The Department of Justice kept releasing lists of `` subversive'' organizations, to be a member of which or even a friend of one of its members could mean civic ostracism.

But Executive Order 9835 had deprived the House Committee on Un-American Activities of a juicy field of action--- the body of civil servants. So it looked frantically for hunting grounds that would yield it the desired publicity. One such hunting ground was Hollywood: it was easy enough to spot the sinister hand of Communists in any film that portrayed life in the USA truthfully. From the end of 1947 on (for all of nine years, with a few breaks), the Committee devoted itself to a study of how communism had ``penetrated'' Hollywood. Naturally, this attracted considerable attention, for many a film star was called upon to testify. J. Parnell Thomas, chairman of the Un-American Activities Committee, gave free rein to his sadistic tendencies---he yelled at witnesses, banged the desk with his hammer, ordered policemen to drag witnesses off the rostrum, and the like. And all this before the eyes of a mass of reporters.

Screen heroes curried favor with the formidable committee but, alas, turned out to be surprisingly inexpressive. Ginger Rogers was helped by her mother, who testified that she had prevented her daughter from appearing in films that gave a depressing view of life in the United States. She felt, she said, that such films served the purposes of the Communists. Not much more was obtained from Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor, Adolphe Menjou, and others. In their endeavor to clear themselves, to expose ``communism'', they talked absolute nonsense.

Then, Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, spoke out loud and clear: there was a group within the Screen Actors Guild, he declared, which had consistently opposed the policy of the Guild's administration and officers, an evidenced by the vote on various issues. That small clique, Reagan added, was suspected of more or less following Communist Party tactics.

The Committee seized on this and other revelations to tackle the Hollywood Ten---eight scriptwriters and two administrators. Absurd charges were raised against them. Scriptwriter John Howard Lawson retorted: "You are using the old technique, which was used in Hitler Germany, in order to create a scare here, in order to create an entirely false atmosphere in which this hearing is conducted, in order that you can then smear the motion-picture industry." The outcome: eight of the Hollywood Ten were sentenced to a year in jail for contempt of Congress and two to six months. All paid a thousand dollar fine. The producers drew on this lesson and hastened to list hundreds of scriptwriters and actors. Some of these, like Philip Loeb, committed suicide.

But Ronald Reagan had expected bigger dividends. In his autobiography he complains that "the most tragic thing [in the cinema world] was to be denied the chance to practice your profession when someone handing out the parts decides against you". This, he confessed, was something he had experienced.^^1^^ In the mid-60s, while governor of California, he was more explicit: his anti-communism had damaged his screen career.^^2^^ And a 1981 book about President Reagan summed up: "Reagan felt his anti-Communism had damaged his career and deprived him of movie roles just as it had Adolphe Menjou."^:! If we take Reagan and his biographers at their word, the inquisitors certainly had a tough job on their hands. . .

Spurred by the butchery he had visited on Hollywood, Parnell J. Thomas set out to liqudate the CPUSA. He formed a

~^^1^^ Ronald Reagan, Richard G. Hublcr, My Early Life, or Where's the Rest of Me?, Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1981, p. 301.

^! Lou Cannon, Ronnie and Jesse: A Political Odyssey, Doubleday, Garden City (New York), 1969, p. 39.

~^^3^^ Rowland Evans, Robert Novak, The Reagan Revolution, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1981, p. 25.

~^^1^^ Final Report.. ., Book III, pp. 431-435.

subcommittee to draw up a bill "to curb or control the Communist Party of the United States" and appointed Richard Nixon its chairman. Hearings were held in 1948 to consider the bills that had been produced: one that proposed to outlaw the Communist Party and the other requiring the CPUSA and its front groups to register with the government. The debate was hot, the speakers competed in showing their determination to wipe out communism. Hear Arthur Garfield Hays, that respectable lawyer, saying he had " a bill to provide means to eliminate the Communist nuisance.

``Whereas this was a happy land with no troubles until hordes of communists overran us, causing high prices, strikes, conspiracies and treason; and. . .

``Whereas experience during the late war proved conclusively that the FBI, the police, the military and all of our courts and laws are incapable of doing their jobs of apprehending traitors;. . . Therefore be it

``Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled:

``1. That we appropriate $ 10 billion to set up a commission to invent a mental reading machine which when applied will say `communist' when the individual is not a loyal citizen.

``2. Until such machine is fully developed, all communists must wear boots, red shirts, fur caps (both male and female) and grow beards (both male and female).''

When he finished, Hays cast his eyes upon the audience. He saw it digesting what he had said. Not a single exclamation or gesture of protest. He then announced sarcastically that it was all a hoax. He had ridiculed the very idea of codifying the struggle against communism. But members of the Un-- American Activities Committee censured him severely for his "lack of perception". The bill "requiring the party and its front groups to register with the government" was passed in the House of Representatives by a vote of 319 for and 58 against. It was pushed through by Nixon, who had taken on the organizational side and the explanations.^^1^^

The Un-American Activities Committee went out of busi-

ness for a while when its chairman, Parnell J. Thomas, was sent to jail in 1950 for appropriating funds allocated to the fight against ``communism''. It was one of life's little ironies that he served his sentence together with two of the Hollywood Ten.

The attack on Hollywood touched off persecutions of intellectuals in the rest of the country. Frequently, people were denounced by their rivals, usually less capable, who then took their acting, writing, or broadcasting jobs. Wild insinuations were spread, and the most astonishing of all was that not a single owner of a film studio, radio station or publishing house would stand up for the wrongfully accused. The usual justification for not taking sides was, "there's no smoke without fire". Many of the outrages were committed at a local level and never reached the public ear. Legislatures in 30 states passed acts requiring schoolteachers to swear their loyalty. And nearly all of them did. As many as 11,000 lecturers at California University took the humiliating oath, while the 157 who doubted that this was in keeping with "academic freedom" were thrown out of their jobs. Volunteer censors from such competent agencies as the American Legion and groups of housewives examined schoolbooks in search of sedition.

The revolting persecution of those who had a mind of their own was given impetus in the desired direction by the communist ``threat'', which was identified with the existence of the Soviet Union. According to the Gallup Institute in May 1946 fiftyeight per cent of all those questioned replied affirmatively when asked if "Russia is trying to build herself up to be the ruling power of the world" and only 29 per cent were of the opinion that Russia was "just building up protection against being attacked in another war". By October 1947 the percentages changed respectively to 76 and 18, and in late 1948 the Survey Research Center reported an "almost unanimous belief that Russia is an aggressive, expansion-minded nation".^^1^^

Whatever blame for this we may attach to the US mass media, notably the press and radio, this change of public think-

M. Dorman, Witch Hunt, pp. 95-97.

~^^1^^ Ralph B. Levering, The Public and American Foreign Policy, 1918- 1978, William Morrow and Co., New York, 1978, p. 97.

5-796

ing had an even more solid foundation---a foundation of fear, fear of being branded a dissenter, the least penalty for which was loss of one's livelihood.

ro,^^1^^ which portrays Wild Bill Donovan in action. Since author Brown had exclusive access to Donovan's private files, he sheds some light on OSS covert operations. Still, Thomas Powers in his review of the book was entirely justified to say that Brown might have given more space to "the still vexing question of what the OSS did to help win the war.''^^2^^

The bulky Mandate for Leadership, an official publication, refers to the experience of World War II to justify the allout buildup of the CIA. Here, in part, is what it says: "In the crucible of this conflict, the democracies of the West developed the capability to win not only the visible war of battles but also the invisible war of espionage, propaganda and sabotage. So awesomely effective did the Allies become in the mastery of both wars, that the immense advantages enjoyed by the Axis powers early in the war were decisively overcome.

``In large measure, the Great victories of the Allies in World War II were possible because the Allies dominated the secret war of intelligence and resistance. In winning this secret war, the United States developed a powerful and effective intelligence organization to learn the enemy's intentions and to orchestrate effective resistance among those the enemy had conquered. Perhaps it was foolish to assume that the end of World War II would somehow allow the Western democracies to forget the techniques of clandestine conflict, to uninvent the new weapons of war.''^^3^^

It is now clear that in the latter 1940s some of the men in Washington had not at first grasped the essence of the "new weapons of war" as clearly as they had the mechanics of atomic arms.

Truman, for example, had not initially understood the purpose of the OSS he had inherited from Roosevelt. Besides,

A Dichotomy of Methods---the NSC, CIA, ``Containment'' and so Forth

The semi-official history of the Central Intelligence Agency opens with an evaluation of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) formed by Roosevelt in 1941. The OSS had, largely by covert and mostly by political methods, helped the USA to go through World War II with the minimum cost. The workings of the OSS---its use of others, both enemies and allies, in Washington's interests---were probably known in whole only to FDR, who took the secrets with him to his grave. The book says: "The history of OSS, which is indistinguishable from the secret political history of the war, is marked by a preoccupation with Communism almost as intense as its commitment to victory against Germany. .. The focus of [Allen Dulles'] attention ... was beginning to shift from Germany to Russia as early as Stalingrad... The long debate over the origins of the Cold War would strike OSS veterans later as a silly exercise. In their experience the Cold War was a corollary of the shooting war from the beginning.''^^1^^ And not for them alone. In 1980 Richard Nixon made it known that "World War III began before World War II ended".^^2^^

Yet it was not until Ronald Reagan moved into the White House that their due was paid in the USA to the intelligence agencies of that war, without, of course, going into detail.

Many books were published with unwarranted haste, as evidenced by their lack of perception in regard to the nature of intelligence. Richard Dunlop, Thomas F. Troy, and Bradley F. Smith simply cite numerous facts and praise the OSS to the skies. The one exception is Antony Cave Brown's The Last He-

~^^1^^ Richard Dunlop, Donovan: America's Master Spy, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1982; Thomas Troy. Donovan and the CIA, University Publications of American, 1982; Bradley Smith, The Shadow Warriors: OSS and the Origins of the CIA, Basic Book Publishers, New York, 1982; Antony Brown, The Last Hero, Times Books, New York, 1982.

~^^2^^ The New York Review of Books, May 12, 1983, p. 35.

~^^3^^ Samuel T. Francis, "The Intelligence Community" in Mandate for Leadership. Policy Management in a Conservative Administration, ed. by Charles L. Heatherly, The Heritage Foundation, Washington, 1981, pp. 903-904.

~^^1^^ Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets. Richard Helms and the CIA, Washington Square Press, New York, 1981, p. 29.

~^^2^^ Richard Nixon, The Real War, Warner Books, New York, 1980, p. 17.

the OSS had a mass of rivals among the top Washington bureaucracy. Failing to realize that untoward aims required equally untoward tools superior to official political instruments, Truman dissolved the OSS. More precisely, he divided it up between the Department of State and the Department of Defense. The State Department, it is said, was shocked by the President's peculiar ``gift'', for it knew, if only from hearsay, that OSS operatives were adepts at subversion.

Maybe so. But the latest research shows that the State Department was itself involved in covert operations. "Between 1948 and 1950," writes Loftus in The Belarus Secret, "while the CIA was still being organized, the State Department systematically imported the leaders of nearly all the puppet regimes established by the Third Reich from the Baltic to the Black Sea." Of course, "outside of a handful of State Department officials, few even knew of their Nazi collaboration, fewer still realized their connection to Nazi intelligence operations"^^1^^

Meanwhile Truman was prevailed upon---in order to observe diplomatic propriety---to restore a centralized intelligence agency. On January 22, 1946, he constituted a central intelligence group. The ceremony he held in the White House to mark the occasion showed that he had not understood what the advocates of centralization were after. The President gave the intelligence chiefs black hats, black cloaks and wooden daggers, and stuck a black moustache over Admiral Leahy's lip. He thought all he was doing was backing up the cloak-and-dagger fraternity, a fraternity of mere spies.

The President was mistaken. And in the next eighteen months, during the reorganization of the country's top leadership, he was given to understand the substance of the matter. The dichotomy in the conduct of external and military affairs was not FDR's whim, but was necessitated by the objectives of the world's number one imperialist power. What was ascribed to FDR's notorious slovenliness (he was anything but slovenly), was put into proper order in the National Security Act which entered into force in July 1947. The Act endowed overt foreign policy and covert action against other countries with equal

rights. More, the "national security" doctrine did not differentiate between political and military measures.

That was how the National Security Council was instituted. Ferdinand Eberstadt described it in his report as "a complete realignment of our governmental organizations", as "an alert, smoothly-working and efficient machine" which was good for "waging peace, as well as war".^^1^^ The NSC, chaired by the President, consisted of the key Cabinet members and a few persons appointed by its chairman. The decisions were taken by the President personally, the other members of the Council being no more than advisers. Under the 1947 Act the Secretary of Defense was put over the secretaries of the three arms of the service. Some of the agencies concerned with military-economy matters and the newly instituted Central Intelligence Agency built on the principles once adopted by the OSS, came directly under the NSC. The main purpose of the CIA was to conduct psychological warfare or, plainly speaking, subversive activities aimed at overthrowing governments and regimes that went against Washington's grain. In the broader sense, the CIA was to contribute by covert methods to a remaking of the world to suit the "national security" doctrine that come into fashion in the USA.

The strategy with regard to the Soviet Union was being worked out in strict secrecy and based above all on OSS judgements made during the war. The main aim was obvious. Having looked through the OSS archive (within the permitted limits, of course), Professor John Gaddis observed: "The extent to which Soviet behaviour would be determined by Western attitudes was the most consistent single theme in wartime analyses of Soviet-American relations undertaken by the Office of Strategic Services.''

. The prime lever---promises of economic aid in return for political concessions. Hence the talk at the end of Roosevelt's and in the beginning of Truman's presidency that the United States would grant the Soviet Union a loan of something like ten billion dollars. Alas! Paraphrazing the judgements of the OSS, Gaddis stressed: "None of these attempts to apply leverage worked out as planned. The Russians were never depen-

~^^1^^ Loftus, The Belarus Secret, p. 84.

Yergin, Shattered Peace, p. 214.

dent enough on American economic aid to make substantial concessions to get it: intelligence reports had long indicated that such aid, if extended, would have speeded reconstruction by only a matter of months." The atomic bomb? "The Russians," Gaddis observes on this score, "dealt effectively with the atomic bomb by simply appearing to ignore it." Nor did the last of the ``levers'' that Washington had---an ideological offensive across the world that would make Moscow yield---hold any promise of success.

By and large, Gaddis concludes, "the major difficulty was simply the Soviet Union's imperviousness to external influ-

Soviet Union had become their buttress. Kennan offered an explanation which satisfied the US ruling elite, and what is more, produced a general picture of how imperialism can triumph over socialism.

The ``explanation'' was anything but novel: the democratic upswing was put at the Soviet Union's door as a bid to gain supremacy throughout the world. Pleasant and understandable reading for the top American leaders. The expert on Soviet affairs had put things in the proper perspective. Kennan's reports to the State Department had always been treated as relevant, but his name was made by the "long telegram" of February 22, 1946. About twently years later, writing his memoirs, he would declare: "Six months earlier this message would probably have been received in the Department of State with raised eyebrows and lips pursed in disapproval. Six months later, it would probably have sounded redundant, a sort of preaching to the convinced." But at that moment it was most timely.

Kennan also wrote in his memoirs: "I read it over today with a horrified amusement. Much of it reads exactly like one of those primers put out by alarmed congressional committees or by the Daughters of the American Revolution, designed to arouse the citizenry to the dangers of the Communist conspiracy." And he amplified: "With the receipt in Washington, on Washington's Birthday 1946, of this telegraphic dissertation from Moscow, my official lonelines came in fact to an end---at least for a period of two to three years. My reputation was made. My voice now carried.''^^1^^ A few passages from the "long telegram" will suffice to show why Kennan was so lightly commended by the powersthat-be:

``We have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with US there can be no permanent modus vivendi. .. Problem of how to cope wiht this force is undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face. It should be point of departure from which our political general staff work at present juncture should proceed. It should be approached with same thoroughness and care as solution of major strategic problem in war. ..

~^^1^^ George Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950, Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1967, pp. 294-295.

ences

And Bradley F. Smith adds in his study of the origins of the CIA: "In his memorandum to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson, Bohlen stated that the R. and A. (of the OSS) study's conclusion was solid enough to serve as a corrective to certain exaggerated opinions as to the degree of Soviet dependence on economic assistance from abroad in the postwar period as a possible means of political pressure.''^^2^^

Certainly, it was a huge, self-supporting state with an economy that had coped with a most serious war and was steadily increasing the rate of peaceful construction. These were the reasons why various ``leverage'' and ``linkage'' projects were consigned to the shelves of the OSS archive.

The dead end reached in US policy planning concerning the USSR was, as Washington saw it, eliminated by George F. Kennan, who was then counsellor at the US Embassy in Moscow. In 1946, 42-year-old Kennan did not stand out among other US career diplomats. In the micro-world of the State Department, for all that, he came to be known as an intellectual. Not a very flattering reputation as far as officials were concerned: eggheads were none too popular in the diplomatic service. His ideas were well received because in Washington everyone was perturbed by the powerful postwar growth of democratic forces in the world, and most deeply alarmed by the fact that the

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy, Oxford University Press, New York, 1982, pp. 19, 17, 18.

~^^2^^ Smith, The Shadow Warriors. OSS and the Origins of the C.I.A., p. 381.

``Our first step must be to apprehend, and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing", that is, accept what Kennan and others like him said as an article of faith. He wanted the US government to brainwash the nation accordingly, for it was up to Washington to unite the West. What of it if this meant deterioration of relations with the USSR? "We have here [in the USSR] no investments to guard, no actual trade to lose, virtually no citizens to protect, few cultural contacts to preserve," Kennan writes. "Our only stake lies in what we hope rather than what we have; and I am convinced we have better chance of realizing those hopes if our public is enlightened and if our dealings with Russians are placed entirely on realistic and matter-of-fact basis.''^^1^^

Kennan's analysis delighted James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy. He felt that at last good news had come from Moscow, and talked about it in the US capital. With the requisite pleas for secrecy, of course. It was decided to circulate copies of Kennan's telegram among the cabinet members, the top brass, the US embassies abroad, and so on. Some of the leading journalists, too, were told about its contents, which led later to a ``leak'' of information: Time magazine of April 1, 1946, wrote, "Russia wants power. Russia wants prestige. Russia regards the peace as an opportunity better than any of the Czars ever had." An attached map, entitled "Communist Contagion", showed Iran, Turkey and Manchuria as contaminated, and Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India as unprotected.

Kennan's ``dissertation'' came as a pleasant surprise for President Truman. He instructed his special counsel, Clark Clifford, to question the country's top officials and gather their opinion as to the policy the US should conduct vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. Admiral Chester Nimitz, Chief of Naval Operations, explained that the presence or appearance of a Soviet navy in the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Miditerranean, the Arctic Ocean, the Atlantic or the Pacific, was a "threat to US security". This was why, he said the US navy must be

strong, ready for combat, especially in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Robert Patterson, Secretary of War, maintained that the Soviet Union "was responsible" for the world's economic difficulties, the weakening of the colonial empires, and the growing nationalism. Russia, he said, was using its armed forces on a global scale, which was compelling the USA to prepare politically as well as militarily in the context of security. The State Department chiefs and the chiefs of other top agencies spouted similar tripe.

After a few months of assiduous effort, Clifford handed Truman his top secret report, "American Relations with the Soviet Union". In the attached note he quoted Kennan's "long telegram" prolifically, and made clear that all those he had spoken to were in favor of a "tough policy" towards the USSR. Military power was identified as the chief policy instrument. The United States was not to lose time and prepare to wage atomic and biological warfare, building highly mobile armed forces.

It said in the report that any discussion on the limitation of arms should be pursued slowly and carefully with the knowledge constantly in mind that proposals on outlawing atomic warfare and long-range offensive weapons would greatly limit United States strength.

A highly effective barrier to communism, Clifford said, was strong economic support. Trade agreements, loans and technical missions strengthen US ties with friendly nations and are effective demonstrations that capitalism is at least the equal of communism. Everything was to be done to buttress the internal structure of capitalist states as prescribed in the "long telegram". The Soviet government was to be shown that US strength sufficed to repel any attack and to defeat the Soviet Union decisively if a war should start.

But war was a thing of the future. For the time being it was essential to strive energetically to bring about a better understanding of the United States among influential Soviets and to counteract the anti-American propaganda which the Kremlin feeds to the Soviet people. To the greatest extent tolerated by the Soviet government, the report said, the US should distribute books, magazines, newspapers and movies among the Soviets, beam radio broadcasts to the USSR, and

~^^1^^ Foreign Relations of the United States. 1946, Vol. 6, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 19i69i, pp. 706-70?,

press for an exchange of tourists, students and educators. But with the reservation that the US would tolerate no communist infiltration under the guise of an exchange program.^^1^^ The report contained the contours of the subversive activities that were and are being conducted against the Soviet Union under cover of exchanges in the humanitarian field. What it did not say was which mode of action---war or subversion---had greater chances of success.

It took Truman nearly all night to read his round-up of his administration's collective wisdom. In the morning he asked Clifford how many copies of the report had been typed. Ten? Truman wanted all of them, and at once. They should be kept under lock and key, he explained after counting the copies. If their contents became public knowledge, he added, it would be impossible to maintain any sort of relationship with the Soviet Union. The President, as we see, was quickly bearing the dichotomy of methods in dealing with the USSR--- blending righteous public declarations with secret preparations for atomic and biological warfare.

George Kennan returned to Washington some time early in 1947. He was at the center of attention, lecturing all comers, of whom there were many, including George C. Marshall, the newly-appointed Secretary of State. The top-ranking US armchair strategist during the war, Marshall discarded his uniform of five-star general and took charge of US foreign policy. He wanted efficiency from his personnel, and had already found for Kennan the post of chief of the newly-- established Policy Planning Staff (PPS). Kennan was elated: "Within the State Department, the Policy Planning Staff possessed functions and responsibilities analogous to those of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the military establishment.''^^2^^ He learned that he had been offered the job at Forrestal's suggestion, and repaid his benefactor by sending him, "for personal edifiction", a long composition on how precisely the

USSR should be defeated. Forrestal was in ecstasies over the document and its author's intention to publish it under a penname for the enlightenment of American readers.

The July issue of Foreign Affairs did, indeed, carry an article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct", signed by a Mr. X. In his essay, the author naturally avoided all mention of the preparations for war against the USSR. Instead, he dealt with a subject that pleased the Washington pharisees in all respects: how to bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union by impelling destructive internal processes against the Soviet state. The article summed up many of the items which Kennan had already laid before the State Department in his secret reports.

In confidential lectures to top Pentagon officers Kennan preached that "the United States might be justified in considering a preventive war against the Soviet Union".^^1^^ He said this in so many words at the Air War College on April 10, 1947. Indeed, he told listeners at the National War College, "You have no idea . . . how much it contributes to the general politeness and pleasantness of diplomacy when you have a little quiet armed force in the background. . . The mere existence of such forces is probably the most important single instrumentality in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.''

Official Washington rhetoric claimed that the USA was for world peace. Kennan too spoke of peace---at least in public. But in his National War College lecture on June 18, 1947 he let the US brass know what he thought: "Perhaps the whole idea of world peace has been a premature, unworkable grandiose form of day-dreaming . . . 'Peace is possible insofar as it effects our interest.' ... I think we have to face the fact [that] there may be arrangements of peace less acceptable to the security of this country than isolated recurrences of violence. . . Violence somewhere in the world on a limited scale is more desirable than the alternatives, because those alternatives would be global wars in which we ourselves would be involved, in which no one would win.''^^2^^ What he said was,

~^^1^^ Arthur Krock, Memoirs, Sixty Years on the Firing Line, Funk & Wagnalls, New York, 1968, pp. 477-480, 482.

~^^2^^ Thomas H. Etzold, "American Organization for National Security, 1945-50", in Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1945-1950, ed. by Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis, Columbia University Press, New York, 1978, p. 17.

~^^1^^ C. Ben Wright, "Mr. `X' and Containment", in Slavic Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, March 1976, p. 19.

* Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. .., pp. 39:, 28-29t

do not take matters to the extreme, for this, considering the relation of strength after World War II, is fraught with fatal consequences for the United States.

While bearing in mind what Kennan said behind close doors, let us look at his article of that period in Foreign Affairs: "The war has added its tremendous toll of destruction, death and human exhaustion. In consequence of this, we have in Russia today a population which is physically and spiritually tired. . . Russia, as opposed to the Western world in general, is still by far the weaker party. . . Soviet society may well contain deficiencies which will eventually weaken its own total potential. This would of itself warrant the United States entering with reasonable confidence upon a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter-force." Why? What for? Kennan explains: "The possibilities for American policy are by no means limited to holding the line and hoping for the best. It is entirely possible for the United States to influence by its actions the internal developments, both within Russia and throughout the international Communist movement.''

In these several lines we see the definition of the notorious ``containment'' doctrine, of which so much was heard in the years that followed. Nor did Kennan conceal the end goal of ``containment'': "It would be an exaggeration to say that American behavior unassisted and alone could exercise a power of life and death over the Communist movement and bring about the early fall of Soviet power in Russia. But the United States has in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate . . . and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the break-up or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.''

In the same breath Kennan named the time it would take to reach this goal: "Ten to fifteen years.''^^1^^

For his pains, Kennan was elevated to the rank of major theorist. ``Containment'' became the granite foundation of US foreign policy. But when the downfall of the Soviet Union

did not follow in the time Kennan had so self-confidently named, the author of the doctrine announced that his superiors had misunderstood him and failed to use the weapon he had offered them. Today Kennan admits one thing at least: "A serious deficiency of the X-Article---perhaps the most serious of all---was the failure to make clear that what I was talking about when I mentioned the containment of Soviet power was not the containment by military means of a military threat, but the political containment of a political threat.. . Repeatedly, at that time and in ensuing years, I expressed in talks and lectures the view that there were only five regions of the world---the United States, the United Kingdom, the Rhine valley with adjacent industrial areas, the Soviet Union, and Japan-~where the sinews of modern military strength could be produced in quantity; I pointed out that only one of these was under Communist control; and I defined the main task of containment, accordingly, as one of seeing to it that none of the remaining ones fell under such control. Why this was not made clear in the X-Article is, again, a mystery. .. So egregious were these errors that I must confess to responsibility for the greatest and most unfortunate of the misunderstandings to which they led.''^^1^^

This sounds strange. The man speaks of a balance of power policy, a tested weapon of the United States throughout its history. "All in all," Kennan recommended at the end of 1947, "our policy must be directed toward restoring a balance of power in Europe and Asia.''^^2^^ Here he was preaching to the convinced: all US governmental agencies concerned with foreign affairs know that to achieve their aims with the hands of others is the supreme principle of the American bourgeoi-

sie.

As it says in the already mentioned semi-official history of the CIA, "To put the matter at its simplest, the CIA, like the government it serves, is fully committed to an international system that depends for its stability on a balance of power. .. The Agency is an integral part of what the social crit-

~^^1^^ Kennan, American Diplomacy 1900-1950, the New American Library, New York, 1960, pp. 100, 104-105.

~^^1^^ Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950, pp. 358-359.

~^^2^^ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. 1, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1973, p. 771.

ic Randolph Bourne once called 'the war system' and the fact that we don't know how to transcend it should not blind us to the very good chance it will eventually bring in the future what it has always brought in the past---war.''^^1^^ This confession that the balance of power policy leads inevitably to war, Kennan disavows by saying that he had been misunderstood.

No, he had been understood perfectly. None other than Kennan, lecturing behind closed doors at the National War College, declared in December 1948 that the USA must use "the hostile or undependable forces of the world: To put them where necessary one against the other; to see that they spend in conflict with each other . .. the violence which might otherwise be directed against us, that they are thus compelled to cancel each other out and exhaust themselves in internecine conflict in order that the constructive forces (meaning the USA---N.Y.) ... may continue to have the possibility of life.''^^2^^

Kennan's regrets refer, in substance, to something else: the United States had failed to achieve the desired goals in psychological warfare; and it failed, as he, Kennan, explained to the Frank Church Committee in 1975, because the subversive activity "did not work out at all the way I had conceived it".^^3^^

For many many years Kennan pondered on why subversion against the USSR and other socialist countries had not yielded the results expected in 1947. As the years went by he found the intrinsic weakness of his earlier constructions. In its bid to destroy communism, the United States had unfailingly opposed it with what it conceived as a better political and social system, that of capitalism, which it of course called ``democracy'' concerned with "human rights", and so on. At the end of the 1970s, Kennan came to the conclusion that this had been a mistake, and for the following reason: "Do we not also have to recognize, then, that there is no

reason to suppose, on the strength of observable historical phenomena, that democracy [read capitalism---N.Y.] is the natural form of government for most of mankind?---that, on the contrary, it is something arising from specific and quite unusual environmental conditions affecting only a small portion of humanity, primarily northwestern Europe and its offshoots in other continents? And if so, is not the effort to impose upon others our concepts of human rights not only unjustified but quixotic? And is there not always a punishment for the persistent pursuit of quixotic aims?''^^1^^

We should not expect any disagreement over the meaning of ``containment'' in the foreseeable future. In retrospect, at the end of the 70s, Professor Gaddis drew the following conclusion: "The Truman Administration failed to move, in practice, beyond the first stage of containment: restoration of a balance of power along the periphery of the Soviet Union. Not until the early 1970s would the United States begin sustained efforts to exploit fissures within the International communist movement.. . There is much irony in the fact that these initiatives occurred during the administration of a president who, in his early career, had vigorously condemned containment. The diplomacy of Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger can with some justification be regarded, therefore, not as a new departure but as a return, whether intentional or not, to the unimplemented concept of containment George F. Kennan had put forward a quarter of a century before.''^^2^^

But why did they fail as well? In 1981, Kennan tried to enumerate the reasons: "The susceptibility of the political establishment to the emotions and vagaries of public opinion, particularly in this day of confusing interaction between the public and commercialized mass media; the inordinate influence exercised over foreign policy by individual lobbies and other organized minorities; the extraordinary difficulty a democratic society has in taking a balanced view of any other

~^^1^^ Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, p. XII-XIII. ' Gaddis, Strategies of Containment..., p. 29. ^J Final Report. . ., Book IV, p. 31.

~^^1^^ Kennan, "Ethics and Foreign Policy: An Approach to the Problem", in Foreign Policy and Morality, New York, 1979, p. 44.

' Gaddis "The Strategy of Containment", in Containment..., p. 37.

IN THE SHADOW OF "DROPSHOT"

country that has acquired the image of military and political enemy.''^^1^^

In sum, was it a mistake of the Americans? Kennan had finally understood many things, but balked at the main one: he refused to acknowledge that the very concept of `` containment'' is evil and unworkable. . .

Yes, times has mellowed the judgements of the author of the ``containment'' doctrine. But in those days, in the latter half of the 1940s after Kennan and others had set forth their ideas, the US leaders conceived the future as clear and definite. They decided that they knew what they should do, and how to do it.

In the autumn of 1945 Air Force General James Doolittle, a US war hero, discoursed on what he termed "national security" at congressional hearings on unification. His listeners hung on the brave soldier's every word: early in grim 1942 the courageous airman had led a group of bombers to attack Tokyo. Beyond question, Doolittle knew his business. People believed him.

Grinning innocently, he said he would relieve his listeners of technical details. Fallacious theories, he said quietly, come from viewing the map of the world in its Mercator projection. "Now look at the polar projections," he said. "We don't know who our next enemy may be. We hope we will never have another enemy, but we have to accept the possibility that we may have an enemy. . . However we can eliminate certain areas and certain people as never being potential enemies of America." The polar projection yielded the answer: the Soviet Union was next door to the United States. Henceforth, Doolittle said, the frontier of the United States is "an air frontier". He said America had to "catch up" its potential enemy in air power. And he added: "The only defense is a sound attack. Much thinking about that word `defense' has been foggy." The general's excursus into geography was rendered by US historian D. Yergin, who thereupon complained: "What was odd about this campaign was that there was no one to catch up with. The Air Force's private intelligence estimates left no question that the Russians were many years behind the Americans in [strategic] air power.''

But the campaign kept gaining momentum. America was being overwhelmed by tidings of Soviet air superiority. Just one example: on April 2, 1947, Aviation Week declared in an editorial: In the Soviet Union the "operational air force" was "more than twice that of the U.S.. .. Congress, wake up!" In 1946, Warren Austin, a fairly prominent Senator, who

~^^1^^ Kennan, "Cease This Madness', in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 247, No., 1, January, 1981, p. 25.

6---796

would represent the United States in the United Nations, insisted with a straight face that the Soviet army numbered 10 million, and the like.^^1^^ Before our eyes, with the utmost of haste, the myth of a Soviet war threat was being put together. The basic purpose of this provocative act, pursued throughout US postwar history, is apparent: the myth sanctifies the frantic and insane arms race. In those days, however, inspiring fear of the Soviet Union also had urgent political aims: to rationalize the strengthening of capitalism in a Europe stunned by the just ended war, and to proclaim, with the drums beating out the ``threat'' from the East, that US interference in Europe's affairs was in Europe's own interests and therefore entirely justified.

The peoples of Western Europe, who had experienced the horrors of Nazi occupation, were looking forward to a better future. Capitalism plunged them into endless troubles. Precisely here, at the center of Europe, was where the past war had broken out. Before their eyes was a good example. The ousting of capitalism from the countries of East and Southeast Europe was as just as it could be: those who had plunged millions upon millions of people into unheard-of suffering had borne the full measure of responsibility for it. Social change was on the order of the day also in the West of the European continent, and presaging such change were Communists in the governments of Paris, Rome and Brussels. They had won acceptance by their selfless struggle during the Hitler occupation.

The massive base which the Communist parties had in Western Europe was expanding rapidly. Those who voted for Communists saw society's reorganization along socialist lines as the only way to end the economic chaos. They viewed the benefactions from across the ocean with the utmost suspicion. The anti-Americanism that had struck deep root in Western Europe in the 1920s and 30s, was not forgotten. All talk that deliverance from mass disasters would come from the United States instantly evoked vivid associations with US policy in Europe between the wars. Their memory was especially alive in France, for had not the United States seen to Ger-

many's recovery while it made its World War I allies repay their war debt. Again they heard what was said in those days^^1^^. "It is unjust to lend money for coats for our soldiers, and then make us repay, and with interest, the price of the coats in which they died!''

``To what extent such an image of America corresponded to American reality," wrote Alfred Grosser, a French researcher, "is not really consequential here. What is decisive is that, especially in France but also in Italy, it left a profound impression on men who would play a leading role in the political and intellectual life after 1945. . . Americans will never truly understand the force which even after 1945 emanated from this current of the 1930s." More, if before the war the United States was, after all, far away (as described in such books as America the Menace, 1930; America Conquers Britain, 1930; and The American Cancer, 1932), now Europeans saw the victorious Americans at touching distance. "In an order of the day in early 1946," Grosser goes on to say, "General McNarney saw himself obliged to denounce the chief evils from which the army under his command suffered: extensive black market activity, absence without leave, automobile accidents, venereal disease, neglect of appearance. Discipline improved somewhat after 1946, but the black market became more widespread: it was too tempting to trade cigarettes for Leicas.''^^1^^

European civilization ran head on into American civilization. "Anti-Americanism had spread," writes William Manchester. "An Army chaplain noted that in continental eyes US soldiers were pathetic young men who had no idea why they had fought or what victory meant. . . 'There he stands in his bulging clothes,' the Reverend Renwick C. Kennedy wrote of the typical US occupation soldier, 'fat, overfed, lonely, a bit wistful, seeing little, understanding less---the Conqueror, with a chocolate bar in one pocket and a package of cigarettes in the other. . . The chocolate bar and the cigarettes are about all that he, the Conqueror, has to give the conquered.'

``The transmittal of this mood to Capitol Hill raised congressional hackles, and for the first time since the 1930s legis-

~^^1^^ Alfred Grosser, The Western Alliance. European-American Relations Since 1945, The Macmillan Press, 1980, pp. 9, 47.

6*

83

~^^1^^ Yergin, Shattered Peace, pp. 210-211, 454, 269-270.

lators began muttering about Europe's failure to repay its debts.''^^1^^ '

As the Truman administration saw it, those on Capitol Hill saw no further than their noses. It was high time to save capitalism in Western Europe, while those in Congress were thinking of settling accounts. The United States had already begun to ``aid'' the West European countries in order to stabilize the existing regimes, but only on a bilateral basis. In 1946, Britain had been granted a loan of 3,750 million dollars, but when it was approved in Congress someone recalled that the British had not yet paid their World War I debt. And the same in the case of France and Italy. Under the head of "Government and Relief in Occupied Areas", Western Germany was given 2,000 million dollars, which, Grosser noted, in practice "became a virtually unconditional subsidy, a fact which German government circles and newspapers do not often mention.''^^2^^

At that time Washington used many ex-Nazis in the hope of getting information on how to go about crushing the USSR. Among the experts were SS Major Friedrich Buchardt, commanding officer of a Nazi Einsatzgruppe in World War II, and SS Brigadier General Franz Alfred Six. What did Buchardt and Six trade for their freedom? Documents released by the US Army show that Buchardt gave the chief of staff of Army intelligence an exhaustive 300-page analysis of where the invading Nazis had gone wrong. . . . Six gave the US and British intelligence services the fruits of the research he had done on the Kremlin and the identity of the Communist leaders he had been ordered to seize if the Nazis entered Moscow as they had expected.^^3^^

Many German generals were never tried as war criminals because they were busy advising the US military on how to tight the Soviet Army. Among them Heinz Guderian, Heinz Rheinefarth, and Ernst Rode.

Poland and the Soviet Union asked repeatedly for their extradition but were invariably refused. The reasons may be found in a secret State Department cable from Berlin to Washing-

ton: "Guderian... is currently working on the eastern front project. Rheinefarth ... has worked on the eastern project. Rode ... is working on a study of anti-partisan warfare in Russia.''^^1^^ US officials expected these ``experts'' to help them win in the struggle against the USSR.

The myth of a Soviet war threat enabled the Truman administration to begin subsidizing capitalism in Europe in the framework of a single purpose-oriented program. All that remained was to find a region where the Soviet Union could be said to ``threaten'' the West directly, and thereupon portray Washington's interference in the affairs of the pertinent countries as a continuation of the cause for which (the United States had fought in World War II. This was a psychological attempt to profit from the anti-fascist sentiment of postwar Europe. By that time the Western propaganda machine was gaining momentum and manufacturing the specious "totalitarian model" of socialism.

At the end of February 1947, London informed Washington that Britain was no longer able to maintain its positions in the eastern part of the Mediterranean. The burden of intervening in the civil war in Greece had become too much for Britain. The US mission sent to reconnoiter the situation in Greece, reported gloomily: the regime is corrupt, economic chaos is rampant, the partisans are backed by the people, their victory is not far distant. Obviously, an internal Greek affair, but the mission, falling back on the "national security" doctrine, drew the conclusion that "if Greece falls to communism, the whole Near East and part of North Africa as well are certain to pass under Soviet influence.''^^2^^ US propaganda dramatized the internal struggle in Greece, portraying the conflict in global terms as being one in which capitalism was pitted against communism.

On behalf of the military establishment, General Dwight D. Eisenhower suggested American military ``aid'' should be extended to all countries that US strategists thought needed it. A bit too much! In those days this would betray Washington's

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and The Dream, p. 435.

~^^2^^ Grosser, The Western Alliance, p. 35.

~^^3^^ The Washington Post, November 4, 1982.

~^^1^^ The Washington Post, March 29, 1983.

* Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. 5, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1971, p. 17,

intentions. Hence, for the time being, it restricted itself to the region concerned. The difficulty was in convincing Congress leaders that the ``threat'' was real. No simple task at that time.

Dean Acheson, then Undersecretary of State, recollected: "When we convened the next morning in the White House to open the subject with our congressional masters, I knew we were met at Armageddon. . .

``My distinguished chief [George C. Marshall], most unusually and unhappily, flubbed his opening statement. In desperation I whispered to him a request to speak. This was my crisis. For a week I had nurtured it. These congressmen had no conception of what challenged them; it was my task to bring it home. . . Never have I spoken under such a pressing sense that the issue was up to me alone. No time was left for measured appraisal. In the past eighteen months, I said, Soviet pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to Soviet penetration. Like apples in a barrel infected by one rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and all to the east. In would also carry infection to Africa through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic Communist parties in Western Europe.''^^1^^

The softening of the brains that the virus of anti-communism causes was effective. Acheson's sanctimonious eloquence convinced the leaders of Congress. On March 12, 1947, the " Truman doctrine" envisaging immediate ``aid'' to Greece and Turkey to the tune of 400 million dollars and the dispatch of US military and other missions there, came up for discussion in Congress. Truman paid tribute to New Deal rhetoric by declaring that "poverty and need" bred ``totalitarianism''. But, contrary to the FDR tradition, he said armed struggle was the chief method of combating them. "The United States," he said, "contributed $ 341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace. The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey

amounts to little more than one-tenth of 1 percent of this investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment, and make sure that it was not in vain. At the present moment nearly every nation must choose between the alternative ways of life.''^^1^^

Despite the tricky propaganda of the Truman Doctrine, it was quite easy to see that the President was calling on Americans to launch an anti-Communist crusade. An unprecedented phenomenon began in world history---a war without war, a cold war. The genesis of the term was a verbal escalation of hostility towards the Soviet Union. "The phrase was minted by Herbert Bayard Swope, publicist, three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and occasional speech-writer for elder statesman Bernard Baruch," we read in The New Language of Politics edited by William Safire. "In 1946, about the time Churchill was speaking of an 'iron curtain', Swope used 'cold war' in a draft speech for Baruch to describe US-Soviet relations (as contrasted to the recent `hot' or `shooting' war). Baruch felt it was too strong, but used it one year later in a speech at Columbia, South Carolina: 'Let us not be deceived---today we are in the midst of a 'cold war'.''^^2^^ Baruch spoke on April 13. 1947, exactly a month after Truman had proclaimed his `` doctrine''.

The coinage was picked up by Walter Lippmann, a veteran of US journalism, in a series of articles for The Washington Post, which he thereupon published between separate covers that same year, 1947, under the title The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy. A faithful servant of the Establishment, Lippmann did not object to the general trend of Truman's undertaking. God forbid. But he was strongly against the suggested methods. In the free-wheeling formulas of the Truman Doctrine he divined the elegant style of the author of the `` containment'' doctrine whom he politely named Mr. X (Kennan was in no hurry to throw off his disguise). "My criticism of the policy of containment, or the so-called Truman Doctrine,"

~^^1^^ Congressional Record, 80th Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 93, No. 47, March 12, 1947, p. 2000.

* The New Language of Politics, ed. by William Safire, Collier s, New York, 1972, p. 117.

~^^1^^ Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation. My Years in the State Department, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1969, p. 219,

Lippmann wrote, "is that it commits this country to a struggle which has for its objective nothing more substantial than the hope that in ten or fifteen years the Soviet power will, as the result of long frustration, 'break up' or `mellow'. .. Do we dare to assume, as we enter the arena and get set to run the race, that the Soviet Union will break its leg while the United States grows a pair of wings to speed it on its way?''

As for the implementation of the so-called containment, Lippmann found it hard to understand how Mr. X could have recommended such a strategic monstrosity. . . The United States cannot have ready 'unalterable counterforce' consisting of American troops. Therefore, the counterforces which Mr. X requires have to be composed of Chinese, Afghans, Iranians, Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Greeks, Italians, Austrians, or anti-- Soviet Poles, Czechoslovaks, Bulgars, Yugoslavs, Albanians, Hungarians, Finns and Germans. This policy can be implemented only by recruiting, subsidizing and supporting a heterogenous array of satellites, clients, dependents and puppets. The instrument of the policy of containment is therefore a coalition of disorganized, disunited, feeble or disorderly nations, tribes and factions around the perimeter of the Soviet Union.''^^1^^ To crush the Soviet Union more refined methods were needed, Lippmann felt, than the obtusely blunt Truman Doctrine.

Kennan took Lippmann's reproof very close to heart. He wrote the famous columnist, accepting "the blame for misleading him" with his ``containment'' treatise by Mr. X. He wanted to exonerate himself, to explain. Lippmann proceeded from what the Truman administration had officially proclaimed, that is, that the USA is opposed to the ``threat'' coming from the USSR, to Soviet ``expansion''. In the letter Kennan drafted for Lippmann, he came into the open: "The Russians don't want ... to invade anyone. . . They dont' want war of any kind. . . They far prefer to do the job politically. .. Note well: when I say politically, that does not mean without violence. But it means that the violence is nominally domestic, not international, violence. . . The policy of containment related to the effort to encourage other peoples to resist this type of

violence.''^^1^^ But the letter was never mailed. Kennan tucked it away in his files. Why?

Because it said much too plainly that Washington knew there was no such thing as a Soviet ``threat''.

In 1972, Senator James W. Fulbright summed matters up as follows: "More by far than any other factor, the anticommunism of the Truman Doctrine has been the guiding spirit of American foreign policy since the Second World War.''^^2^^

The Cold War C-in-C Is Chosen

In mid-1947 the industrial output index for Western Europe was 86 (1938=100). Rehabilitation wasn't quick enough. The Soviet Union had attained prewar output in 1947, as did the People's Democracies. A most impressive comparison of the potentialities of socialism and capitalism. Doubly so, since the war had caused immeasurably greater ravages in the East. West European capitalism was a poor second in comparison with socialism.

But by the perverted logic of the US leadership, the blame for the economic difficulties in Western Europe lay with the Soviet Union. In a public speech on April 18, 1947, Dean Acheson said: "We must use to an increasing extent our .. . economic power, in order to call an effective halt to the Soviet Union's expansionism and political infiltration, and to create a basis for political stability and economic well-being." And exPresident Herbert Hoover, an old hand at anti-communist actions, who had by then toured Western Europe, announced that if the chaos continued, social upheaval would be inevitable. In Vatican, speaking to the Pope, he said, "Catholicism in Europe was in the gravest danger from the Communist invasion, the gates of which would be wide open from starvation.''^^3^^

Scrutinizing the problem, Washington saw the United States could not offer help in rehabilitating Europe without also aiding the Soviet Union, the country that had made the deci-

~^^1^^ Kennan, Memoirs 1925-1950, pp. 360-363.

~^^2^^ Containment and the Cold War, ed. by Thomas G. Paterson, Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading (Massachusetts), 1973, p. 212.

' Yergin, Shattered Peace, pp. 308, 305.

~^^1^^ Walter Lippmann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy, Harper, New York, 1947, pp. 35, 13, 33.

sive contribution to the victory over the Axis powers. If the USSR were denied aid, the schemes of the Truman administration would be exposed for all to see---to divide Europe, rallying its western part to the side of the USA in the interests of the fight against the USSR and the international communist movement. So transparent hypocrisy was resorted to. In a speech on June 5, 1947, at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed that all European countries should jointly discuss their needs and address themselves to the USA for assistance. He said: "The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so." Nobly, generously, showing goodwill, the United States instituted a European Recovery Program which became known as the Marshall Plan. But:

First, the Joint Strategic Survey Committee pointed out in a report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Aphil 29, 1947, that "the primary rule governing assistance by the United States should be that the USSR and every country now under her control should be specifically excluded from assistance".^^1^^ This reflected the considered judgement of the top Washington echelon.

Second, as Acheson pointed out, "the statement of purpose was designed to win over the critics of the Truman Doctrine both at home and abroad, who deprecated its stress on the confrontation with the Soviet Union strategically and ideologically".^^2^^ Among his intimates Truman referred to his own doctrine and the Marshall Plan as "two halves of the same walnut".''

Third, the man who wrote Marshall's speech, Charles Bohlen, stressed: "The plan also had a considerable political impact. I had written in the original draft that our policy was not directed against any country, ideology, or political party, and specifically not against Communism. It was directed against hunger, poverty, and chaos. Marshall dropped the specific mention of Communism and added `desperation' to the list of tar-

gets. This passage automatically placed the Communists, once they opposed the plan, in the position of partisans of hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. From a propaganda point of view, these words were worth a great deal in countries with large Communist parties.''^^1^^ From Bohlen's point of view, of course.

Fourth, as evidenced by analysis of the essentially not yet published American documents, "Kennan's original proposal called for extending aid to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as well, but this was a tactic for straining the relationship between Moscow and its satellites, not a serious plan to undertake the rehabilitation of those areas. . . The objective here was to do one of two things: to place responsibility for the division of Europe squarely on the Russians if, as expected, they rejected the offer, or, alternatively, in the unlikely event that they did not, to use aid as a means of forcing the East Europeans to 'abandon the near-exclusive Soviet orientation of their economies'. There was in this latter alternative the implied possibility of aiding some communist regimes in order to contain others.''^^2^^

A recommendation in the spirit of psychological warfare.

The Soviet Union admitted that war-ravaged Europe needed aid. But the procedure as conceived by Washington---- supervision of the recipient country's economy under guise of control over the distribution of aid, and countless US missions to the recipient country---was unacceptable. The Soviet Union and the countries that had embarked on socialist construction refused to take part in the Marshall Plan.

Throughout the latter half of 1947 and the early part of 1948, the sixteen European countries that wished to participate in the Marshall Plan were engaged in bargaining with the United States. Finally, they came to terms: 17 billion dollars over four years. The US administration's undertaking came under fire from many quarters: the Marshallised countries would be helpless in face of the invasion of US capital, the USA would get rid of junk, inflation would reduce the physical volume of deliveries, etc. And much of what was said came true.

~^^1^^ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. 1, p. 739. ' Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 233.

~^^3^^ Joseph M. Jones, The Fifteen Weeks, February 21-June 5, 1947, Harcourt, Brace and World, New York, 1964, p. 233,

9Q

~^^1^^ Bohlen, Witness to History, p. 265.

^! Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, pp. 38, 66-67.

The Marshall Plan was the cutting edge of America's imperialist penetration of Western Europe. Meanwhile, strident cries came from those in the USA who did not want dollars to be spent on Europeans already up to their ears in debt.

At this time, the efforts to push through the Marshall Plan added to world tensions. The reactionary foray in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, which culminated in abject failure, was blown up out of all proportion in the West. Truman was a generator of alarmist sentiment. As his biographer Cochran said, "Truman had to scare hell out of the country again before Congress---its mind on the 1948 election---would vote the immense fuhds. The Marshall Plan was adopted in an atmosphere of quasiwar crisis, thickened by the hysteria over the Czech coup, made ominious by the President's frantic call for universal military training and resumption of the draft. The managers were not immune to the frenzy they were trying to induce. On March 5, General Clay sent an alarmist telegram from Germany that war might come with dramatic suddenness---a warning, as he admitted, that could not be supported 'with any data or outward evidence', but was based on a ' feeling' he had. This was sufficient to send the intelligence services into a whirligig of activities, and on March 16, the CIA, having pondered over the omens---employing undoubtedly the sure techniques devised long ago by the Oracles at Delphi and Delos---made its pronouncement: A war was not probable within sixty days.''^^1^^

The Marshall Plan was set in motion in April 1948. In four years, the United States granted 16 European countries comething like 13 billion dollars in various goods and credits. An analogous sum, in national currencies, was spent by the participants in the plan for purposes specified by the US administration and chiefly of military significance. Some of the `` bottlenecks'' in the European economy were eliminated, some production processes were modernized, notably in West Germany. In the social field, the plan pursued aims that resembled the New Deal of the 1930s in the USA, and yielded similar results: though slowly and unsteadily, capitalism became stabilized. The beginnings of European ``integration'', which culminated in the

establishment of the Common Market in the late fifties, is, indeed, traceable to the time of the Marshall Plan.

Behind the fagade of European economic reconstruction, the US intelligence agencies came to grips with the democratic forces, first of all the Communists, seeking to hold down their influence. Apart from building a base for war production, Washington considered this the supreme purpose of the European Recovery Program. Years were to pass before this was openly admitted. Addressing a House subcommittee in 1975, Averall Harriman recalled this time---what he referred to as one of the best periods in US foreign policy.

In those splendid times, Harriman recollected, he was engaged in constructive work with the CIA. He was responsible for the Marshall Plan in Europe, and the CIA backed him up. Aid went to non-Communist trade unions, for example, sometimes through AFL-CIO channels. It also went to non-- communist newspapers, chiefly in the force of newsprint, which was then in short supply.

Let us interrupt Harriman's recollections. Though they disclaimed it, Harriman and the CIA had a deep interest in, and orchestrated, what the bought press wrote. The stakes were high. The 1948 elections were around the corner. In his official capacity of chief policy planner, Kennan said: "As far as Europe is concerned, Italy is obviously key point. If Communists were to win the election there our whole position in the Mediterranean, and possibly in Western Europe as well, would probably be undermined.''^^1^^ If this should happen, Kennan recommended an overt US military intervention. In fact, the Italian army was already getting US-made arms and various ``aid''.

Speaking of the things that Harriman portrayed in subdued, pastel shades, we find that T. Powers, who looked into the history of the CIA, provides revealing supplementary materials: "Truman and the Italian government alike were not prepared to accept an election defeat as final, and more than one source has suggested that an anti-communist coup would have followed a failure at the polls.

``Threats of this sort are a heavy-handed form of psycholog-

~^^1^^ Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies and Scholars. Blueprint of the Essential CIA, Acropolis Books, Washington, 1976, p. 102.

~^^1^^ Cochran, Harry Truman and the Crisis Presidency, p. 197.

ical warfare... Much of their effort involved traditional propaganda---posters, pamphlets, stories planted in newspapers, and the like---but the SPG [Special Procedures Group] did not stop here. All the arcana of disinformation was used as well, such as forged documents and letters purporting to have come from the Communist party.''^^1^^

Harriman summed it up thus: "There was very strong Communist pressure in Europe immediately after the war. . . That was stopped by the Marshall plan." Congressmen showered him with questions (Lester L. Wolff: "Should we institute a new Marshall plan?" Jonathan B. Bingham: "You would not rule out covert activities of a positive nature by the CIA?" And so on). In his reply, Harriman again extolled the Marshall Plan and the CIA. "I wouldn't rule that [covert activities] out at all. . . But it is sometimes difficult to draw the line between what can be done openly and what should be done covertly."² In Italy of the time of the Marshall Plan, William Colby confirmed in 1978, the CIA was running "what was by far the CIA's largest covert political-action program undertaken until then", demonstrating, as he put it, "that secret aid could help our friends and frustrate our foes without the use of force or violence".^^3^^

In the meantime, the 1948 presidential election campaign was getting off to a start in the United States. Harry Truman and Republican Thomas Dewey, beaten by Roosevelt in 1944, were running from their respective parties. The Republican strategists were confident of victory: the adversary was in a state of confusion, with both wings of the Democratic Party in open mutiny. Henry Wallace also laid claim to the White House. He ran from the Progressive Party consisting of intellectuals bothered by the threat of atomic war, of a segment of CIO trade unionists, and of Communists. Wallace called on the nation to prevent the slide to war and deterioration of relations with the Soviet Union. Preliminary estimates show that Wallace could have had anything between five and ten million votes. But he had missed the bus for in 1948 the leaden clouds of

anti-communism were already densely piled in the political skies. The Progressive Party came under massive public attack. Meanwhile, in some of the Southern states Democratic Party right-wingers, headed by South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, joined hands and nominated him for the presidency. The Dixiecrats (as the newspapers called the States Rights Democrats) condemned Truman's championing of civil rights for Blacks.

Face to face with Dewey and attacked from left and right, Truman campaigned as "candidate of the nation". On July 26, he convened an extraordinary session of Congress and proposed that it vote for an impressive social program: inflation controls, a higher minimum hourly wage, expanded social security and state-financed housebuilding. The session turned down practically all of Truman's proposals. Truman pointed out that life in the United States had become better, that there was none of the postwar mass unemployment people had expected, and complained to his electorate that the Republicans obstructed progress by voting against his social bills. He made this complaint at countless meetings all over the country, covering nearly 50,000 kilometers by train and addressing some six million people---a clear record in those times! Bess Truman accompanied him, and found the crowds thrilling. She explained to a friend, "Harry is so sure he is right, so sure he is right, so sure that the people will know he is right, that I hope he wins"^^1^^.

No, Dewey could not keep up with his lightfooted adversary. He either called for a crusade---for US unity---or cleanliness in the literal sense of the word: better purification of potable water and greater faith in God.

To win the election, Truman referred to news from the cold war fronts. In the summer of 1948, Western occupation authorities instituted a separate money reform and provoked what has gone down in history as the Berlin Crisis. The introduction of a new currency in Berlin's western sector augured chaos in the Soviet zone. So, at the end of June 1948, the Soviet military administration introduced temporary restrictions on Western deliveries to Berlin. At the same time, the USSR Council of Ministers allocated food supplies for the city's population. US

~^^1^^ Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, p. 36. - Reassessment of U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 12-18.

~^^3^^ William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men. My Life in the CIA, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1978, p. 109.

~^^1^^ The Washington Post, October 19, 1982.

propaganda reacted by blaming the Soviet Union for `` blockading'' Berlin. The USA started an air lift to Berlin's western sector. The US propaganda outcry overlooked a "mere trifle": the Berlin Crisis was provoked by the Western powers which did not allow food supplies from the Soviet zone to be shipped into their own zones.

Truman was extolled as saviour of the ``starving'' Berliners. More, he was eulogized as a President who did not shrink from countering the Soviet ``threat''. When the air lift began, US bombers (B-29s known as carriers of atomic bombs) returned to bases on the British Isles.

These developments abroad maintained the alarmist tenor of the election campaign, and its feverish pitch helped, in turn, to carry out what were mildly speaking highly dubious actions in the sphere of foreign affairs. In a different situation they would certainly not have won unanimous backing in the United States. A large section of voters was strongly influenced by Zionist quarters. "On direct orders of President Truman," writes C. Phillips in his account of the Truman presidency, "United States recognition was extended to Israel eleven minutes after it proclaimed itself a government on May 14, 1948.'^ Golda Meir was probably one of the few people who did not link US recognition to the election campaign: "I think," she wrote in her memoirs, "that like most miracles this one was probably triggered by two very simple things: Harry Truman understood and respected our drive for independence because he was the sort of man who, under different circumstances, might well have been one of us himself; and the profound impression made upon him by Chaim Weizmann, whom he had received in Washington and who had pleaded our cause and explained our situation in a way that no one had ever done in the White House before.''^^2^^

Leaving aside matters of foreign policy over which Republicans and Democrats had no differences, the former did not notice that Truman was capitalizing on Roosevelt's legacy, proclaiming himself as its keeper. The methods he used to maintain

his position were a different story. The Republicans were shocked by the bad taste of his campaign, and therefore gave him no quarter. Their leaders did not even heed their more cautious brethren, who advised them to go along with some of Truman's proposals at the extraordinary session of Congress and thereby weaken his position. "No, we are not going to give this fellow anything," said influential Senator Robert Taft.^^1^^ As a result, it was the Republicans who got nothing.

Truman won with 49.5 per cent of the electorate behind him against Dewey's 45.1 per cent. Wallace and Thurmond were backed by just a little over a million voters each. The 1948 election brought to Senate two men---Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey---who soon made a mark on the American scene.

First Cold War Battle Lost

A prominent US diplomat, Charles Bohlen, addressing himself to the origins of the cold war, pointed out that though "it is -natural to look for an event to mark the beginning of an era" there was "no precise moment" for the cold war. Here is what he went on to say: "There is no doubt from the American view that by the time of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan our dispute with the Soviet Union had hardened into the cold war.

``What caused the cold war? My view is quite simple. The cold war can be traced to the seizure of power by the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1917. ..

``The cold war was turned against America as a part of the basic and unwavering hostility which the Bolsheviks have always displayed against capitalist countries. The United States were selected as target number one simply because it was the chief source of power left in the non-Communist world after the war. . .

``I am surprised and somewhat disturbed to see the ready acceptance of the thesis by certain historians that the cold war

~^^1^^ Phillips, The Truman Presidency..,, p. 198.

^! Golda Meir, My Life. The Autobiography of Golda Meir, Futura Publications, London, 1978, p. 188.

~^^1^^ Irwin Ross, The Loneliest Campaign. The Truman Victory oj 1948, Signet, New York, 1968, p. 137.

7---796

was really started by the United States. I can think of no historical untruth leading to more damaging consequences.''^^1^^

Be that as it may. And it is immaterial whether the cold war originated in 1917 as Bohlen suggests or whether it is seen as an era ushered in by World War II. Capitalism always opposed main force to socialist ideas. After 1945, aggressive US quarters were determined to settle the historical debate between the two systems by war and wipe the Soviet Union off the face of the earth in an atomic attack.

Washington military planners held at the time that assurances of success were at hand: the United States had the atomic arms monopoly. And as US atomic arsenals grew, so did the scale of the planned aggression. US staff planners assumed that the strategic strikes of their air force would be so crushing that massive conventional armed forces would not be needed to defeat the USSR. That, in fact, was the basic assumption of the early atomic planning against the Soviet Union---1945 to 1949 ---as specified in plan Totality, drawn up in 1945 under the guidance of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe, and in Charioteer, a plan drawn up by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1948, as well as in its later variants, such as Cogwheel, Gunpowder, Doublestar, ABC 101, Dualism, and Fleetwood (to list just a few).

The strategic concept as it gradually crystallized was appallingly simple: to deliver a massive atomic strike against the Soviet Union and thus bring it to its knees. The various action plans were reduced to dropping 133 atomic bombs on the USSR in the first month of the war (eight of them on Moscow and seven on Leningrad). This was to destroy 30 to 40 per cent of the Soviet industrial potential, and eliminate 6 or 7 million Soviet citizens. Should the Soviet Union refuse to surrender as these bombings proceeded, another 200 atomic bombs and 250,000 tons of conventional bombs were to be dropped in the next two years.^^2^^

However tempting these prospects may have looked to the

empty-headed airmen, closer scrutiny of the matter revealed one difficulty after another. The top US military staffs representing all arms of the service concluded that responding to the aggression, the Red Army would in a matter of weeks cross all Western Europe and reach the Atlantic shore. And Soviet troops would act in similar manner in the Middle and Far East. Were the British Isles an unsinkable aircraft carrier? No. The US planners were sorry to conclude that in two months at most, the Soviet air force would wipe out the US bases in Britain, whereas the B-29 and B-50 bombers, considering their action radius at the time, could hit Moscow only from Britain. The US generals came to the conclusion that the US strategic air force would suffer untenable losses in the attack against the USSR. War games at headquarters estimated a loss of 55 aircraft out of every hundred taking part in the raids, and the commanders, who knew their personnel well, were certain that nothing in the world would make the surviving crews continue their combat missions.

While the staffs were busy arguing in deep secrecy (by February 1, 1949, they had seen to it that the armed forces should get 1:1,000,000 scaled navigational maps for the atomic bombing of 70 Soviet cities), the top US leadership lost no time to stoke up military tensions and give impulse to an abrupt build-up of military power not only in the United States but in the West as a whole. Though the unpublicized top-level military discussions were still in full swing, politicians in Washington evidently concluded that confronting the Soviet Union oneto-one was sheer madness.

Truman appointed the Finletter Commission in mid-1947 to ascertain the air power of the USA.

James Forrestal, Defense Secretary, told the Commission: " 'You cannot talk about American security without talking [about] Europe, the Middle East, the freedom and security of the sea-lanes. . . It would do us no good to be a Sparta in this particular hemisphere and have chaos prevailing elsewhere in the world. We could survive for some time, but I do not think we could continue what we call our way of life.'

`` 'It would have helped Athens a little if she had been stronger, would it not?' asked Chairman Finletter.

`` 'Had Athens. .. a little less philosophy, and. .. a few more

'*

99

~^^1^^ Bohlen, Witness to History 1929-1969, pp. 271-273.

~^^2^^ Dropshot. The United States Plan for War With the Soviet Union in 1957, ed. by Anthony Cave Brown, The Dial Press, New York, 1978, pp. 6-7.

shields, it might have been a good combination/ Forrestal replied.''

Averell Harriman amplified: " 'There is only one thing which the leaders of the Soviet Union fear, and that is the American air force.' "

The hearings were given extensive publicity, and in early 1948 it was decided to triple the US air force. Fifty-four pei cent of the 1949 military budget went into aviation. Forrestal prophesied: " 'American air power soon could exert the dominant influence in the world once wielded by the British Navy.''^^1^^

Forrestal revived the old nationalist notion that the USA was the 20th-century Rome which Providence had willed to rule the world. The generals turned a deaf ear to what Forrestal, Finletter and Co., none too conversant with history, said of Athens and Sparta. For them this was pure rhetoric. What they found much more important were the enormous air force allocations, which meant new bombers that would greatly simplify the debate over the USAF's ability to deliver a crushing atomic strike against the Soviet Union. Forrestal, a most eloquent advocate of arming, was well briefed on the content of the discussions. He resembles his generals even outwardly. "There is a quite, animal quality about his apparent physical perfection," wrote his contemporary Jonathan Daniels. "He has the carriage which movies gave dramatically to better gangsters, swift, easy, with the suggestion of possible violence and the surface of perfectly contained restraint.''^^2^^

But in the end Forrestal's nerves betrayed him. The cannibalist discussions that professionals digested without emotion, had a frightening effect on the corporation lawyer. The generals spoke of an enemy poised to pounce on the USA, and the Defense Secretary fell for their tale hook, line and sinker.

People saw him running down the street, howling: "The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. They're right around. I've seen Russian soldiers.''^^3^^ In March 1949 he was compelled to turn over his office to Louis Arthur Johnson, and to

move into a ward at Bethesda Hospital. There, at the dawn of a day in May, Forrestal tied one end of the waistband of his gown to the radiator and the other round his neck. He opened the 16th-floor window and jumped. The waistband held up his drop only for a moment.

This caused some confusion among Washington's warmongers. But only for a short time. They closed their ranks and carried on with what Forrestal had begun. At the time when the government first noticed Forrestal's mental condition, in the latter half of 1948, policy planners submitted an extensive report he had ordered from them, which was endorsed as NSC 20/1. Neither Kennan and his aides, who had drawn up the report, nor Truman and the NSC had any doubt as to the validity of a report ordered by a suicidal maniac.

The treatise produced by Kennan and his aides, NSC 20/1, was entitled, "U.S. Objectives with Respect to Russia". The general state of relations with the USSR was described in the directive as one of "political war" in which Washington was determined to inflict a crushing defeat on the adversary.

The strategy outlined in NSC 20/1 envisaged attainment of the ultimate objective both by resort to arms and in a peaceful setting. How the Soviet Union was to be crushed by force was not dealt with in specific terms (for that was the prerogative of the top brass). Still, measures were set forth to root out socialism in the USSR after the US victory. The authors of NSC 20/1 put all their hearts into the relevant projects. AntiSoviet emigres were to be shipped to the USSR after it was smashed to form a ruling ``authority''. True, the authors of the plan anticipated communist-led resistance to the occupation forces.

But no matter. "The problem of dealing with it [the resistance---N.Y.] would be a relatively simple one; for we would need only to give the necessary arms and military support to whatever non-communist Russian authority might control the area and permit that authority to deal with the communist bands through the traditionally thorough procedures of Russian civil war. A more difficult problem would be presented by minor communist party members or officials who might be uncovered and apprehended, or who might throw themselves on the mercy of our forces or of whatever Russian authority exist-

~^^1^^ Yergin, Shattered Peace, pp. 340-341, 360.

^^2^^ J.Daniels, Frontier on the Potomac, Macmillan, New York, 1946, p. 223.

~^^1^^ Arnold A. Rogow, Victim of Duty: A Study of James Forrestal, Hat-Davis, London, 1966, p. 228.

ed in the territory. Here, again, we should refrain from taking upon ourselves the responsibility of disposing of these people. .. This must remain a problem for whatever Russian authority may take the place of the communist regime. We may be sure that such an authority will be more capable than we ourselves would be to judge the danger which ex-communists would present to the security of the new regime, and to dispose of them in such ways as to prevent their being harmful in the future.. . We must always remember that to be the subject of persecution at the hands of a foreign government inevitably wakes local martyrs.''

Take a closer look at these provisions, endorsed by Truman on August 18, 1948, as the basic guideline of US policy with respect to the Soviet Union. You will see that it amounted clearly to politically motivated genocide. All Communists and all civil servants, that is millions upon millions of people, were to be physically exterminated. That the mass killing of Communists and government employees was to be entrusted to what were called "the Russian authorities" altered nothing. They would be doing what the Americans bid them.

Though at that time NSC 20/1 was most strictly classified, the mood of its authors did not take long to surface. In the second volume of his memoirs, Kennan wrote: "An entire issue of Collier's magazine [1951] was devoted to imagined accounts of our future war with Russia. I can recall glancing with horror, at the time, at the cover of that issue; and I heard from others, with even greater horror, that it contained a suggestion of our celebrating our victory over the Soviet Union by staging Guys and Dolls in the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. I had visions, of course, of a Collier's editor conceiving this to be the acme of America's triumph: showing the benighted Russians what such a great operatic and ballet stage ought really to be used for.

``Research succeeded in unearthing from the depths of a warehouse library-depository a copy of the Collier's issue in question, which I confess I had never previously read---I could not bring myself to do so at the time. To my consternation, it became apparent that the idea of Guys and Dolls at the Bolshoi came not from a Collier's editor but from the eminent British playwright and novelist J. B. Priestly, and the entire issue turned

out to have been an attempt to meet my demand that we think ahead and try to picture realistically what a war with Russia might mean. This issue of the now-defunct magazine, despite the fact that a number of worthy people contributed to it, was a fantastic gaucherie. I continue to regard it with embarrassed distaste.''^^1^^

To be sure, it is one thing to write top secret directives, and quite another to see them brought to the public's notice in a widely read magazine. And one more point: the volume of memoirs appeared in 1972, whereas NSC 20/1 was declassified in 1978.

Apart from being a ``glance'' into the future, NSC 20/1 was a guideline for immediate execution: redoubling the psychological warfare against the Soviet Union. Not straightforwardly, but by the most refined of methods, maintaining the utmost secrecy.

``We are faced here with no rigid periodicity . . . which would enable us to conclude that we must achieve our peacetime objectives by a given date," it says in the report. "We are aiming at the creation of circumstances and situations which would be difficult for the present Soviet leaders to stomach, and which they would not like. It is possible that they might not be able, in the face of these circumstances and situations, to retain their power in Russia. . . This is of course primarily a question of keeping the Soviet Union politically, militarily, psychologically weak in comparison with the international forces outside of its control.''^^2^^

This was the categorical, though sensitive, objective of US policy with regard to the Soviet Union, entrusted first and foremost to the CIA. For obvious reasons it could not be openly assigned to the Department of State. Inevitably, the CIA was to be converted into a political arm charged with functions that went much farther than mere intelligence, which was the Agency's officially defined function.

It was hardly desirable to brag about this activity publicly, and already on July 18, 1948, a secret directive NSC 10/2 is-

~^^1^^ Kennan, Memoirs, 1950-1963, Vol. II, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1972, pp. 100-101.

• Containment. ... pp. 180, 190, 189.

sued for the information of the CIA leadership explaining the type of methods to be employed in the drive for the set objective, namely:

``As used in this directive, 'covert operations' are understood to be all activities (except as noted herein) which are conducted or sponsored by this government against hostile foreign states or groups or in support of friendly foreign states or groups but which are so planned and conducted that any US Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the US Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them. Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, antisabotage, demolition, and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups, and support of indigenous anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free [read capitalist---N.Y.] world.''

A top secret Office of Policy Coordination was set up in the CIA framework, headed by Frank Wisner, formerly Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Areas and an OSS veteran. The table of ranks and responsibilities in the OPC (quickly dubbed the dirty tricks department) emphasized that psychological warfare had been elevated to the status of US governmental policy. Its chief was appointed by the Secretary of State, to whom and to the Secretary of Defense he was subordinated. The funding, however, came out of the uncontrolled moneys of the CIA. NSC 10/2 was top secret, with one copy stored in Frank Wisner's strongbox for the eyes of the chosen.^^1^^ And it is safe to assume that only a few of the many thousands of employees of the dirty tricks department were then given a glimpse of the document which equated terrorism, acts of sabotage, and the like, with official Washington policy.

Psychological warfare operations were entrusted to the most dependable, who, of course, belonged to the upper crust of US society: CIA administrators were picked from among the scions of America's wealthiest families. They joined the CIA, as they had joined the OSS, for ``ideological'' reasons, eager to crush

the class enemy, the Soviet Union, as quickly as possible. As Allen Dulles, who fathered the CIA, once said, "The ideological volunteer, if he is sincere, is a man whose loyalty you need rarely question, as you must always question the loyalties of people who work chiefly for money or out of a desire for adventure and intrigue.''^^1^^ Yes, those whom Dulles described as ``sincere'' volunteers served the CIA by virtue of their convictions. Men of wealth, they could afford to scorn money. For them serving with the CIA was tantamount to protecting their fat bank accounts. In the mid-seventies, when US Congress began probing the functions of the CIA, perspicacious publicist Gary Wills wrote: "The elite spirit of the OSS extended even more forcibly to the early CIA. . . Those who renewed their service in the later agency could have wealth and position in society; but they chose obscure, dangerous, and ill-paid service to their country. What little credit they got must come from their peers. Today we hear veterans of that regiment lament the unsung heroes, whose very decorations from the government were of a secret sort to begin with and could not be worn or displayed. . . They were a king's secret army. Their leader had immediate access to the highest authority in the land, to the most secret budget and wildest research, to knowledge very embarrassing to one's country if the employee should turn out to be not entirely trustworthy. . .

``The CIA was FBI for gentlemen, one led by higher types than J. Edgar Hoover. It policed unenlightened policemen, a regiment of white knights riding invisible through history's back alleys. . . [It] makes us understand the loyalty that made Tom Braden call a dinner in honor of Richard Helms when Congress had `forced' him to apparent perjury. Toasts were made by Robert McNamara and Averell Harriman, and drunk by Henry Kissinger. . . [It] shows just how overriding are ties with the Agency when competing moral claims come into play.''^^2^^

US high society does, indeed, refer to the CIA as a " gentlemen's club" or club "for higher types". And fabulously wealthy

~^^1^^ Allen Dulles, The Craft of Intelligence, Harper and Row, New York, 1963, p. 183.

^^1^^ Gary Wills, "The CIA from Beginning to End" in The New York Review of Books, Vol. 22, No. 21/22, 1976, p. 26.

~^^1^^ Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, pp. 37-39,

Frank Wisner was the rule rather than the exception among the Agency's top administrators. All the same, the gentlemen did no more than direct the operations, while the execution of technical objectives (among them also assassinations) was left to experienced professionals. The latter were probably flattered to be serving side by side with America's true masters. That, at least, was what William Harvey felt when he was transferred from the FBI to the CIA. He must have been deeply flattered when he was taken to the White House and introduced to President Kennedy---possibly with the thought of showing the head of state that the USA did have its James Bonds. "The President," says a brief biography of William Harvey, "left no record of his reaction to the sight of his American Bond. . . Harvey's deep, gruff voice must have restored the President's faith in 007." As for the cloak-and-dagger artist, he felt that "the CIA was a tonier set than Harvey had known at the FBI---he was stepping from the world of ex-cops and small-town lawyers into an organization of Ivy League bluebloods and Wall Street attorneys. Many of the men he met were heirs to considerable fortunes. . . Compared with his better-bred colleagues, the lumpen spy from the Big Ten who collected firearms and delighted in the simplest duty, honor and empire themes of Rudyard Kipling, fairly reeked of gaucherie and naivete".^^1^^

What the CIA roster shows is that heirs to America's biggest fortunes have taken up the business of protecting their class interests and are prepared to fight for them to the finish with resort to the foulest of means.

Readying the armed forces, elevating the CIA to the status of a political agency, and many other things of the same kind, were meant to mobilize US resources. In the meantime, the spotlight was focussed on uniting the West upon an anti-Soviet foundation under US leadership. For nearly a year, from the summer of 1948 to May 1949, US planes were engaged in the Berlin ``airlift''. The roar of their engines was made many times louder by Western propaganda, rising to a truly deafening pitch: an aircraft landed in West Berlin every ninety seconds, the feat being crowned in April 1949 by a record of 1,398 flights

in 24 hours. And this to feed the "poor Berliners". US Ambassador to Moscow Walter Bedell Smith wrote sarcastically to the State Department at the time: "From the political point of view, Berlin has become the important symbol it now is largely because we ourselves had made it so.. . Our present hysterical outbursts of humanitarian feelings about the Germans keeps reminding me that just 3^^1^^/₂ years ago, I would have been considered a hero if I had succeeded in exterminating those same Germans with bombs.''^^1^^

General .Smith, chief of reconnaissance on General Eisenhower's wartime staff, knew what he was talking about. A longtime military intelligence officer whom the cold war had cast in the shape of a US diplomat in Moscow, he understood the underlying reasons for the airlift perfectly well. The Truman administration rejected all Soviet proposals to settle the Westinspired conflict and to the accompaniment of a deafening howl against the USSR tackled what it thought were urgent objectives. The Western propaganda campaign paved the way to the establishment of an aggressive pact, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and to the remilitarization of Western Germany.

What Washington constructed round the airlift will go down in history as blatant example of malignant misinformation, with the effect of implanting anti-communist stereotypes in the minds of many gullible Westerners. On April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Pact was signed in Washington. The need for the expensive airlift to West Berlin dropped away. The situation with the roads leading to the city from the West was soon normalized---already in May 1949.

What had been or was being built under the Marshall Plan became part of NATO's military structure. The aggressive bloc gave flesh and blood to the balance of power doctrine. The United States was contracting mercenaries for the contemplated war against the Soviet Union. The Senate and Senate committee discussions of the treaty brought out the fact that under the North Atlantic Pact the United States was not obliged to enter any war automatically if any of the other signatories were subjected to ``attack''. Certainly, this was an arbitrary in-

~^^1^^ D. Martin, "The American James Bond: A True Story", in Playboy, April 1980, pp. 132, 198.

~^^1^^ Yergin, Shattered Peace, pp. 387, 395, 383.

terpretation of the text, but who of the signatories would remonstrate if that was how the boss, the USA, wanted it? Truman was convinced that the US military budget should have a ceiling of some 15 million dollars, and let the NSC and the Joint Chiefs of Staff know about it. Instead of increasing US military expenditures and thus complicating the economic situation at home, he deemed it wiser to dispense more aid to America's allies, prompting them to upgrade their military outlays.

Dean Acheson, who was made Secretary of State in January 1949, extolled his baby, the North Atlantic Treaty (he and not the President had signed the Treaty, on Truman's insistence), at the Senate hearings leading up to its ratification. Asked if the USA would ship a "substantial number of troops" to the allied countries, Acheson replied, "The answer to that question ... is clear and absolute `No'." Twenty years later, in his memoirs, Acheson would comment: "Even as a short-range prediction this answer was deplorably wrong. It was almost equally stupid. But it was not intended to deceive. This exchange occurred a year before the united command was thought of, at a time when our troops were regarded as occupation forces for Germany and not part of a defense force for Europe.''^^1^^

Washington figured at the time that things were shaping out beautifully: the USA would contribute atomic arms to the war against the USSR (which was why Truman thought US military spending should be kept down), while its allies would supply the armies of many millions of men. Everything, it appeared, had been taken care of. It was now merely a question of time: once the anti-Soviet coalition was properly armed, sound the battle cry!

But 25 years later, Prof. John L. Gaddis, a student of US foreign policy, will write: "Early in September 1949 American intelligence discovered that the Russians had exploded their first atomic bomb. Truman received this information calmly, for he had never expected the American nuclear monopoly to last indefinitely. Still, the Soviet explosion had come three years earlier than government experts had anticipated. News of it shattered one of the most cherished assumptions of the

1947-1949 period---that even if the war with Russia came, the physical security of the United States would not be at stake."¹ This knocked the ground from under the basic tenet of the US balance of power doctrine: to have others fight the war for the United States. The Soviet atomic bomb test gave the start to a political chain reaction in the USA. Not towards reason, however, but towards insane nuclear arming.

``Dropshot'', Nuclear Arms, and Directive NSC-68

It is reasonably certain that at the junction of the 1940s and 50s the USA set in motion an extraordinary procedure for taking extraordinary decisions. A sinister structure of running affairs of state came into being alongside, apart from, and behind the constitutional machinery. The historian has only individual facts to go by, but the existence of such a structure (whether it is called an "invisible government" or, in a broader sense, the establishment) is indisputable.

US publicist Walter Bowart produced the term `` cryptocracy'' to describe the state of affairs that has obtained in the United States ever since those days. Here is what he writes: "The Gold War was a `secret' war in more ways than one. The psychological war, originally waged only against `enemy' countries, was nevertheless created at home... Although the Central Intelligence Agency has long been the convenient symbol for all those who have committed atrocities in the name of national security, the secret bureaucracy, the cryptocracy, does not consist solely of the CIA. It is as well a vast network of alliances between individuals in a number of government agencies normally thought to be outside the intelligence field. . . The cryptocracy is a brotherhood reminiscent of the ancient secret societies, with rites of initiation and indoctrination programs to develop in its loyal membership the special understanding of its

~^^1^^ Gaddis, "Harry S. Truman and the Origins of Containment" in Makers of American Diplomacy: From Benjamin Franklin to Henry Kissinger, ed. by Frank J. Merli and Theodore A. Wilson, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1974, p. 515.

~^^1^^ Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 285.

mysteries. It has secret codes and oaths of silence which reinforce the sense of elitism necessary for the maintenance of its strict loyalty. . . Its members are anonymous. Its funds are secret. Its operational history is secret. Even its goals are secret. . . Figureheads have been changed, but the organization and the National Security Act which has bred this cancer remain in essence unchanged. The cryptocracy serves big business. . . [It] has justified its own totalitarianism by convincing key politicians that fire must be fought with fire. The practices of the cryptocracy, once officially sanctioned only in operations outside the U.S., have become internalized. Those practices have included spying, . . . blackmail, and murder, even within the borders of the country it is supposed to protect and defend. . . Since World War II the cryptocracy has used electronic technology to manipulate foreign peoples as well as the American people through a campaign of carefully planned misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. The cryptocracy's existence depends upon such manipulation of public belief. Since it cannot openly argue its cause, it relies upon persuasion and indocrination to accomplish its goals and win support for its ends. The existence of the cryptocracy also depends upon absolute secrecy. Without it they are powerless.''^^1^^

The facts, though fragmentary, show clearly enough that the cryptocracy (or establishment) was minded to cross the fatal line from peace to war when the United States lost its atomic monopoly. The most impressive of all the existing evidence is plan Dropshot.

When Washington learned in the early autumn of 1949 that the USSR had atomic weapons, it immediately weighted the chances of a ``preventive'' war. Under plan Trojan it intended to drop some 300 atomic bombs on 100 Soviet cities, beginning on January 1, 1950. Closer scrutiny, however, showed there was no chance of victory. And for the same reasons as were already looked into when we presented the earlier US plans of attacking the Soviet Union.

So, in the autumn of 1949, on Truman's orders, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up plan Dropshot, which aligned the political justification for war with NSC 20/1, and contained the

following theoretical excursus: "Never before have the intentions and strategic objectives of an aggressor nation been so clearly defined. For a hundred years, victory in the class struggle of the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie has been identified as the means by which Communism would dominate the world.''

A coalition war was being planned, with the NATO countries joined by an arbitrary array of other states. The war would be a class war, its planners said in so many words, with the capitalist world bearing down on the socialist USSR and its allies. It was estimated that an army of some 20 million would be sent into the field against the Soviet Union. According to the balance of power theory, the USA would contribute chiefly its strategic air arm, which would put out of action 85 per cent of Soviet industry with 300 atomic bombs and 250,000 tons of conventional bombs in the opening period of the war. Though defeated by the armies of the coalition, as Dropshot envisaged, the Soviet Union would be occupied by US troops.

Two US divisions would be stationed in Moscow and one each in Leningrad, Minsk, Murmansk, Gorky, Kuibyshev, Kiev, Kharkov, Odessa, Sevastopol, Rostov-on-Don, Novorossiisk, Batumi, Baku, Sverdlovsk, Cheliabinsk, Tashkent, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok---23 divisions in all. The opening shot was to be fired on January 1, 1957.

The outbreak of war was to be preceded by an intensification of the psychological warfare that the United States had already begun. It said in plan Dropshot: "Psychological warfare . . . can be an extremely important weapon in promoting dissension and defection among the Soviet people, undermining their morale, and creating confusion and disorganization within the country. . .

``A major undertaking of the United States will be the conduct of an extensive psychological-warfare campaign whose basic objective will be to destroy the support accorded by the people of the USSR and her satellites [meaning the East European Socialist countries---N.Y.] to their present systems of government. .. Effective resistance or uprisings could be expected to occur only when the Western Allies are able to give material support and leadership and assure the dissident elements early liberation.''

~^^1^^ Bowart, Operation Mind Control, pp. 144-147.

The Dropshot planners were certain that the United States and none other would deliver the opening blow. Here is what they wrote: "For the present, it is improbable that the USSR will wage war with military weapons against the United States." But did they consider war inevitable? In principle, yes. It would not be unleashed in just two cases---1) if the Soviet system collapsed in the course of the psychological war, and 2) if "nationalistic deviations" seriously weakened the socialist community. "Such a weakness," it said in the Plan, "is susceptible to exploitation by the United States. If the United States military position is strong enough to deter the USSR from attack, as an opening wedge the United States might, by undermining Soviet prestige, be able to develop a group of anti-Moscow Communist nations.''^^1^^

It was not part of the military strategists' job to study this aspect of psychological warfare. This was still the prerogative of the State Department's policy planning body. Plan Dropshot encompassed NSC directive 58 (approved by the President on September 14, 1949) entitled, "United States Policy Toward the Soviet Satellite States in Eastern Europe". It showed how to achieve "the elimination of dominant Soviet influence" in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. The preferred modus operandi was described as follows: "Our ultimate aim must, of course, be the appearance in Eastern Europe of non-totalitarian administrations willing to accommodate themselves to, and participate in, the free world community. Strong tactical considerations, however, argue against setting up this goal as an immediate objective. . . The more feasible immediate course, then, is to foster a heretical drifting-away process on the part of the satellite states. However weak they may now appear, grounds do exist for heretical schisms. We can contribute to the widening of these rifts without assuming responsibility. And when the final breaks occur, we would not be directly involved in engaging Soviet prestige; the quarrel would be between the Kremlin and the Communist Reformation.''

If this policy succeeded, NSC-58 stressed, the USA would apply a tested weapon, setting in motion the balance of power

mechanism inside the communist world. The methods? Hard to say, because, for "security reasons", some of them were dropped from the NSC-58 text declassified in 1978. But the general line was clear: "The offensive should be maintained not only on the overt but also the covert plane. A course of encouraging schisms within the Communist world cannot be pursued without reserve because such a course is a tactical expediency which, however necessary, must never be permitted to obscure our basic long-term objectives. . . The problem is to facilitate the development of heretical Communism without at the same time seriously impairing our chances for ultimately replacing this intermediate totalitarianism with tolerant regimes congenial to the Western World. Nor must we slacken, rather we should increase, the support and refuge which we may be able to offei to leaders and groups in these countries who are westernminded.''^^1^^

The chiefs of US embassies and missions in the socialist countries of East and Southeast Europe, who met at a conference in London at the end of October 1949, arrived at the common conclusion that "any and all movements within world communism which tend to weaken and disrupt the Kremlin's control within the communist world represent forces which are operating in the interests of the West and therefore should be encouraged and assisted.''^^2^^ But this only secretly. The policy planning body of 1949 had it down in its resolutions that "proposed operations ... must not exceed in provocative effect what is calculated suitable in the given situation". Meanwhile Kennan called for caution: "We have no need to make a gratuitous contribution to the Soviet propaganda effort by assuming responsibility for a process of disintegration.''^^3^^

While these and other plans and directives were being devised and carried into effect, Truman decided to regain the US monopoly on mass destruction weapons---this time on an immeasurably higher level. On January 31, 1950, he ordered the development of the thermonuclear bomb. Simultaneously, he

Ite.

~^^1^^ Containment.. ., pp. 212, 219-222.

^^2^^ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1949, Vol. 5, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1976, p. 31.

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . ., pp. 46, 47.

~^^1^^ Dropshot. The United States Plan for War with the Soviet Union in 1957, pp. 73, 241, 74-75, 62, 20.

8-796

authorized the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense "to undertake a reexamination of our objectives in peace and war and of the effect of these objectives on our strategic plans, in the light of the probable fission bomb capability and possible thermonuclear bomb capability of the Soviet Union.''^^1^^

Truman's decision shocked those in the USA who were able to visualize the consequences that the introduction of new weapons would have. Twelve leading US physicists, with Hans Bethe at their head, declared: "The bomb is no longei a weapon of war but a means of extermination of whole population. Its use would be betrayal of all standards of morality and of Christian civilization itself." Bethe and a few others refrained from participation in nuclear arms development, at least for a time.

We also learn from the unpublished papers of Harold Ickes stored in the Library of Congress that this prominent member of the Roosevelt administration wrote to Truman on January 31, 1950, expressing deep concern over the President's decision. Truman wasted no time to reply. He wrote to Ickes on the following day, February 1: "As you know I had to make a decision as to whether to go ahead and make the regular bombs like the ones that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I also had to decide on the demonstration at Bikini.

``The original program inaugurated by President Roosevelt was intended to create the so-called Hydrogen Bomb. There wasn't any reason for all the conversation and foolishness that went on publicly about it, as the machinery had been set in motion to arrive at that conclusion in 1943.''^^2^^

Though the ill-informed reacted promisingly, with the Gallup Poll showing that four of every five Americans favoured the development of thermonuclear weapons,^^3^^ the government meant to make assurance doubly sure and to stamp out any objections of those who were in the know, that is, those belonging to the

Upper crust of society. This mission was assigned to Dean Acheson, who toured the country and delivered innumerable speeches. "No Trojan dove from the Communist movement will help to resolve our mutual problems," he kept declaiming. Some may think, he went on to say, that it is enough for Truman and Stalin to "get their feet under the same table" and the negotiations will get on. But it wasn't a question of where they had their feet, he said, because what mattered were their thoughts. Another of Acheson's typical pronouncements reads: "The times in which we live must be painted in the sombre values of Rembrandt. The background is dark, the shadows deep. Outlines are obscure. The central point, however, glows with light; and, though it often brings out the glint of steel, it touches colors of unimaginable beauty. For us, that central point is the growing unity," and so forth.

Quite obviously, these speeches are not addressed to the mob but to the select who had read Homer and admired the paintings of Rembrandt.

In its cloistered seclusion, the State Department's Office of Policy Coordination, now headed by Paul Nitze instead of George Kennan, set about fulfilling the President's order and drawing up guidelines for the conduct of foreign affairs in the nuclear age. The participants in the project were old hands who had no compunctions about discussing megadeaths and drawing up cannibal plans for the sake of defeating the USSR. Their superficial gloss of intellectuality, and this applies notably to Acheson himself, altered nothing in the loathsome undertaking. After nearly three months of hard work, in which Pentagon people also took part, Acheson invited Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson to the State Department to discuss the draft of the document, which was subject to approval by the NSC. The Defense Secretary made his appearance with a sparkling covey of generals in his wake, and among them the redoubtable Omar Bradley. Acheson reminisced:

``After apparently friendly greetings all around, I asked Nitze to outline the paper and its conclusions. . . Johnson listened, chair tilted back, gazing at the ceiling, seemingly calm and attentive. Suddenly he lunged forward with a crash of chair legs on the floor and fist on the table, scaring me out of my shoes. No one, he shouted, was going to make arrange-

~^^1^^ David E. Lilienthal, The Journals of David E. Lilienthal, Vol. II; The Atomic Energy Years 1945-1950, Harper & Row, New York, 1964, p. 624.

* Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Papers of Harold L. Ickes, General Correspondence.

' Levering, The Public and American Foreign Policy, 1918-1978, p. 96.

8*

tnents for him to meet with another Cabinet officer and a roomful of people and be told what he was going to report to the President. Who authorized these meetings contrary to his orders? What was this paper, which he had never seen? Trying to calm him down, I told him that we were working under President's orders to him and me and through his designated channel, General Burns. As for the paper, he had had it for a week. But he would have none of it and, gathering General Bradley and other Defense people, stalked out of the room. The rest of us were left in shocked disbelief. General Burns, who had stayed behind, put his head in his hands and wept in shame. I was then summoned into my own office, where Louis Johnson began again to storm at me that he had been insulted. This was too much. I told him since he had started to leave, to get on with it and the State Department would complete the report alone and explain why.. .

``Within the hour the President telephoned me, expressing his outrage and telling me to carry on exactly as we had been doing. At the slightest sign of obstruction or foot-dragging in the Pentagon I was to report to him. From this time on until the President felt it necessary in September to ask for Johnson's resignation, evidence accumulated to convince me that Louis Johnson was mentally ill. His conduct became too outrageous to be explained by mere cussedness. It did not surprise me when some years later he underwent a brain operation.''^^1^^

That was how things stood according to the cold-blooded Acheson. It is down in history that Forrestal's successor, too, lost his mind. Not surprising at all, considering the insane policy which was then being planned. The contents of the document (known as NSC-68) bear this out.

I have noted in the introduction what NSC-68 augured for the people of the United States: a forcibly imposed conformism. And all for the sake of salvation, for matters hinged on "the fulfilment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself". NSC-68 elaborated on the provisions of NSC-20/1 with due allowances for nuclear weapons. It stressed that "if the U.S. develops a thermonuclear weapon ahead of the U.S.S.R., the U.S. should for the time being be able

to bring increased pressure to bear on the U.S.S.R." Time and again, the document stated unequivocally that in the event of war the USA would resort to atomic arms, and that under no circumstances should Washington ever pledge non-use of such arms.

The compilers of NSC-68 examined the Soviet-American balance of power from various angles and arrived at the conclusion that the equilibrium that had emerged as a result of the war did exist. Which did not suit them in the least. They set the goal of securing Western superiority over the Soviet Union. Hence the need for US and allied rearmament and armament programs. The recommendations of the document were drawn up as a triad:

1) All-round strengthening of the USA, including internal ``consensus'' from top to bottom;

2) US leadership of the capitalist world in the same spirit and with the same purpose in mind;

3) "Our policy and actions must be such," the document read, "as to foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system, a change toward which the frustration of the [Kremlin] design in the first and perhaps the most important step. Clearly it will not only be less costly but more effective if this change occurs to a maximum extent as a result of internal forces in Soviet society.''

It defined escalation of psychological warfare and attempts at subverting the Soviet system as the immediate objective. Why not war? The authors of the document admitted that considering the balance of power, the USA had "no such freedom of choice, and least all in the use of force... Practical and ideological considerations therefore both impel us to the conclusion that we have no choice but to demonstrate the superiority of the idea of freedom by its constructive application, and to attempt to change the world situation by means short of war in such a way as to frustrate the Kremlin design and hasten the decay of the Soviet system." More precisely this meant waging "overt psychological warfare calculated to encourage mass defections from Soviet allegiance and to frustrate the Kremlin design in other ways; intensification of affirmative and timely measures and operations by covert means in the fields of economic warfare and political and psychological warfare with a

Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 373-374.

view to fomenting and supporting unrest and revolt in selected strategic satellite countries.''

Then the final conclusion: "The only sure victory lies in the frustration of the Kremlin design by the steady development of the moral and material strength of the free world and its projection into the Soviet world in such a way as to bring about an internal change in the Soviet system.''

Such were the general contors of the plan drawn up under Dean Acheson's supervision, compounding aggression, subversion, demagoguery, perfidy, totalitarian ambition, anti-- democratism, and fear of the future. Those who authored it ventured to maintain with truly Jesuitic logic that "the integrity of our system will not be jeopardized by any measures, covert or overt, violent or non-violent, which serve the purposes of frustrating the Kremlin design, nor does the necessity for conducting ourselves so as to affirm our values in actions as well as words forbid such measures.''^^1^^

NSC-68 deliberately omitted estimates of what its implementation would cost the United States. Truman asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff for precise figures. Military expenditures, the reply was, would mount to 50 billion dollars a year. The President took note. Thereupon, Acheson writes in his memoirs, "the paper was discussed with the President in the National Security Council on April 25 [1950] and became national policy, known as NSC-68." He amplified: "The purpose of NSC-68 was to so bludgeon the mass mind of 'top government' that not only could the President make a decision but that the decision could be carried out. Even so, it is doubtful whether anything like what happened in the next few years could have been done had not the Russians been stupid enough to have instigated the attack against South Korea and opened the 'hate America' campaign.''^^2^^

There you have psychological warfare at its ugliest. The policy of eroding and eventually destroying socialism worldwide was justified, among other things, by references to the American aggression in Korea, the blame for which was blandly shift-

ed onto the USSR, while Soviet exposures of US imperialism were portrayed as a "hate America" campaign. NSC-68, the then supreme act of US political thinking since World War II, completed the intellectual rearmament of the United States. One thing, however, its initiators did not foresee. It gave impulse to what Acheson himself admitted to have been an " invasion of apes". The functional purpose of that invasion, from the point of view of the cryptocracy, was to insure the NSC-68 line against all possible interference. What resulted was something that politically almost assassinated Acheson and his followers.

The "Invasion of Apes"

The US punitive machine was gathering momentum, with the Communist Party as its main target. The charge: violation of the 1940 Smith Act which made it criminal to advocate violent overthrow of the US government, with ``violent'' connoting anything that diverged from the official standpoint. Court proceedings against eleven leaders of the US Communist Party dragged out from January to October 1949 in New York. Witnesses for the prosecution were furtive FBI informers or renegades. The corpus delicti was illustrated by court readings of passages from the Communist Manifesto, The State and Revolution, and other works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin.

To impress the public, a Black lady was named head of the jury, and she was the one who pronounced the defendants guilty. With Eugene Dennis among them, they were sentenced to five years in jail and a fine of 10,000 dollars each. Six of the lawyers for the defense were given prison sentences of up to six months for "contempt of court". Till 1956, as many as 145 people were tried under the Smith Act, their sentences totalling 418 years of imprisonment, and the fines 435,500 dollars. In the meantime, the FBI drew up new lists of potential victims. In an emergency, 11,982 people were to be detained under the security index, 17,783 under the communist index, and another more than 200,000 as a menace to national security.^^1^^

~^^1^^ final Report..., Book III, pp. 442-447,

~^^1^^ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, Vol. 1, pp. 238, 267, 241, 243, 244, 285, 291.

^^1^^ Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 374

With the anti-communist campaign at its height, the UnAmerican Activities Committee set about persecuting civil servants. Demagogues and careerists saw their chance. Persons speaking before Congress committees were relieved of criminal responsibility for slander. Some Communist Party renegades made the most of this opportunity. And a few personalities, including Richard Nixon, made use of the renegades' testimony in subsequent ``investigations'' for their own ends. The renegades gave a few dozen names, mostly picked at random, of those who they claimed had been Communists in the 1930s. This did not apply exclusively to ``card-carrying'' members of the Party, but also to those who supported the anti-fascist New Deal policy. In those days, with World War II looming ahead, the best people in US society favored that policy. Now, owing to base informers, most of the progressive intelligentsia was at the mercy of character assassins and inquisitors.

The inquisitors' object of faith could not have been simpler: the enemy, i.e., the Soviet Union, had recovered much too quickly after the war; the socialist economy was growing, and the country had its own atomic weapons. The West was racked by contradictions, while the socialist community was going from strength to strength. They refused to believe that this was the result of the socialist approach and were convinced it was the consequence of a monstrous ``conspiracy'' in the United States. ``Communist'' agents were passing US secrets (the atomic bomb!) to the Russians and, indeed, shaping US policy so as to the benefit of the Soviet Union. Their lasting hatred of late President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a spicy touch to these paranoic fantasies. William Manchester recalled with annihilating sarcasm that "the man in the street lacked sufficient scientific sophistication to appreciate what had happened. Gaseous diffusion processes would have made poor campaign issues. Furthermore, none of the guilty persons could be identified with any party except the Communist party. What the Republicans needed was a ring of full-fledged New Dealers, or at least one of them, who had turned U.S. secrets over to the USSR.''^^1^^

Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were arrested on ``espionage'' charges. In 1948, eleven State Department officials were dis-

missed on evidence submitted by informers and renegades. Diplomat Laurence Duggan committed suicide, leaping to his death from a 16th floor window. Former Assistant Secretary of State Harry Dexter White, against whom ``charges'' were being drawn up, died of heart failure. William Remington was imprisoned for ``perjury'', and killed in jail. Finally, the witch hunters found someone who could serve as a lesson for all lawabiding Americans: Alger Hiss was attacked from every possible angle.

An eminent lawyer and diplomat, Hiss was an avowed New Dealer. He was on the US delegation at the Yalta Conference, Secretary General of the UN inaugural conference at San Francisco in 1945, and had held a number of other important posts. The Un-American Activities Committee appointed a subcommittee chaired by Richard Nixon to expose Hiss. It worked for 18 months on the strength of evidence provided by just one informer, and finally concocted a ``case'' against Alger Hiss. He was put on trial, the charge of ``espionage'' collapsed, but in January 1950, tried a second time, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for ``perjury''. Nixon was triumphant. He had won all-American fame. Herbert Hoover cabled his congratulations: "The conviction of Alger Hiss was due to your patience and persistence alone.''

Richard Nixon commented in his memoirs: "While there is no doubt that my reputation from the Hiss case launched me on the road to the vice presidency, it also turned me from a relatively popular young congressman, enjoying a good but limited press, into one of the most controversial figures in Washington, bitterly opposed by the most respected and influential liberal journalists and opinion leaders of the time." In 1952, Nixon wrote, his "anti-Communist credentials from the Hiss case were what most tilted the decision to me", meaning his nomination as Vice-President. Eisenhower said to him: "I want you to know that I put you on the top of my list in Chicago because you had gotten Hiss.''^^1^^

Dean Acheson, and Truman to some extent, held that the Hiss case had been concocted for political ends. On the heels of

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 501.

~^^1^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, Grosset and Dunlap, New York, 1978, pp. 69, 71, 88, 146.

Hiss's conviction, Acheson announced at a press conference that he did not intend to turn his back on Alger Hiss. And Acheson died with the conviction that the Hiss story was a ``mystery'', and that Harry White, too, was innocent. And for many years, Alger Hiss (born in 1904) continued to maintain that his case had been fabricated.

Whittaker Chambers, the chief informer against him, died in 1961. Louis J. Russell, the operator who supplied Nixon with the ``documents'' on which the latter based his charges, died under mysterious circumstances after the Watergate burglary in which he had taken part. Hiss's request for a ruling on his death was turned down. In any case, the Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts restored Hiss's licence to practice law, of which he had been stripped in 1950.

Hiss and his friends are still trying to find out how the case against him had been fabricated. The investigation of the 1950 ``investigation'' is continuing.^^1^^

In 1984, Ronald Reagan made his own, very special contribution to the investigation. He posthumously awarded a Medal of Freedom to Whittaker Chambers, whom he described as "a man of courage and wisdom".^^2^^

``No matter which view is correct," observes US journalist Michael Dorman, "it remains obvious that the Hiss case played a major role in the history of American witch hunts. . . Fresh waves of political hysteria swept across the country. Amid such turmoil, the nation became ripe for the era of McCarthyism.''^^3^^

The Hiss case and many other less known excesses reflected the political climate of that period: the demand created a supply. The stakes were much higher than just the personal fate of the people concerned. The government was being angrily asked how and why the United States ``lost'' China, and who was the guilty party in Washington.

The problem of relations with the victorious Chinese people was dealt with exclusively in terms of force. The attempts of such US experts as John Davies and John Service, who were

backed by John Carter Vincent, Chief of the State Department's Office of Far Eastern Affairs, to open the government's eyes and to urge political rather than military methods, failed. They were driven out of the State Department and subjected to a close investigation as communist sympathizers. Yet Davies and Service, as Washington observers noted later, knew Asian affairs as consummately as Kennan knew those of Europe, and could by the 1960s have risen to top posts in the State Department. This was doubtless the reason why Dean Acheson took no pride in their dismissal, and did not mention them in his memoirs.^^1^^

Since the alternative China policy was viewed as something next to treason, the United States stuck it out to the end with the Chiang Kai-shek regime that had lost its footing in the country. When it became obvious that its collapse was imminent, the State Department put out a 1054-page White Book on US policy in China (August 5, 1949). In the foreword, Acheson admitted: "The ominous results of the civil war in China . .. was the product of internal Chinese forces, forces which this country tried to influence but could not. A decision was arrived at within China.''^^2^^

In 1952, Truman tried to explain to publicist Arthur Krock that "Chiang Kai-shek's downfall was his own doing. His field Generals surrendered the equipment we gave him to the Commies and used his own arms and ammunition to overthrow him. Only an American Army of 2,000,000 men could have saved him and that would have been World War III.''^^3^^ The President filed away this most revealing letter instead of mailing it to whom it was addressed.

Understandably so. No rational argument would have worked in the irrational climate that was shaping then in the United States. The Republicans were out to make the " Communist threat" an issue in the electoral campaign. Taking the cue from Richard Nixon, they labelled the Democrats a treason

~^^1^^ Jim Hougan, Spooks, The Haunting of America---The Private Use of Secret Agents, Bantam Books, New York, 1980, pp. 282-285.

^^1^^ Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 6, 1984, p. 314.

~^^3^^ Dorman, Witch Hunt, p. 131,

~^^1^^ Halberstarn, The Best and the Brightest, pp. 139-142.

^^2^^ United States Relations with China. With Special Reference to the Period 1944-1949, Department of State, Division of Publications, Washington, 1949, p. XVI.

~^^3^^ Off the Record. The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, ed. by Robert H. Ferrell, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1980, p. 271.

party. Congressman Harold Velde announced that "spies were infesting the entire country". His colleague Robert Rich maintained that Acheson was paid by Moscow. Senator William E. Jenner called General Marshall "a front man for traitors" and a "living lie" acting hand in hand "with this criminal crowd of traitors and Communist appeasers who, under the continuing influence of Mr. Truman and Mr. Acheson, are still selling America down the river''.

Those who made these statements were Republicans and knew what they were after: they wanted their party back in the saddle. Young Congressman John F. Kennedy was a Democrat, but he, too, saw that anti-communism was the best springboard for a political career. In 1945 at Yalta, he told the House of Representatives, a ``sick'' Roosevelt, on the advice of General Marshall and other Chiefs of Staff, ``gave'' the Kuriles and other strategic points to the USSR. As for the Truman administration, he said, it "had tried to force Chiang into a coalition with Mao. . . The State Department had squandered America's wartime gains". And Kennedy concluded, "What our young men saved, our diplomats and our President have frittered away.''^^1^^

It fell to the lot of Senator Joe McCarthy to bring together all the charges raised against the administration. At that time, in 1950, the 41-year-old Senator was assailed by sombre thoughts: the next election was two years away, yet the most conspicuous entry in his record was that Washington journalists had picked him the ``worst'' member of Senate. The description was well earned, because the road that had led him to Capitol Hill was, mildly speaking, dubious: before the war he had been elected to various offices in his home state of Wisconsin, and each time the election was tainted by some scandal. During the war he had been an intelligence officer in the Marine Corps---a safe staff job debriefing pilots back from combat missions, a few flights in the tail gunner's cabin, and a fractured leg, the result of a drinking bout aboard a military transport. After the war, McCarthy strained his imagination to describe the staff job as a life-and-death encounter with the enemy. In early January 1950, McCarthy and his cronies discus-

sed anti-communism as a subject that might bring them fame. McCarthy asked the Republican party leaders to find him a suitable audience for Abraham Lincoln's birthday in February. The Senator was assigned to address a Republican women's organization in Wheeling, a small town in the West Virginian wilderness. Though the Senator posed as someone who knew what he was talking about and did not take the trouble to prepare his speech, he merely produced one more run-of-the-mill disquisition against Communism. But there was a passage in it that made McCarthy known to all the United States:

``While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department who have been named as members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring, I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were 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.''

For McCarthy, figures were something to juggle with. A few days later the 205 names shrank to 81. On various occasions he named different figures. But the substance was the same: his ``mathematics'' affirmed the idea that the United States had ``lost'' China owing to evil behind-the-scenes manipulations. He followed in Nixon's footsteps, maintaing that US policy was shaped by ``Communists''.

In Wheeling, McCarthy said: "One thing to remember in discussing the Communists in our Government is that we are not dealing with spies who get 30 pieces of silver to steal the blue-print of a new weapon. We are dealing with a far more sinister type of activity, because it permits the enemy to guide and shape our policy." This staggering declaration was no more than a repetition of what Richard Nixon had said in the House on January 26, 1950, namely: "The great lesson which should be learned from the Alger Hiss case is that we are not just dealing with espionage agents who get 30 pieces of silver to obtain the blueprint of a new weapon . . . but this is a far more sinister type of activity, because it permits the enemy to guide and shape our policy.''

Nixon and Co., who circulated this rubbish, were at pains to win power. Hence, they welcomed McCarthy to their midst. He gave the Republicans, the party of Big Business, the desired

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 491, 492.

populist touch. He was a ''man of the people", which showed that the party strategists were heeding the voice of the masses. He spoke with the intonations, and often in the jargon, of the Boston scum or the inhabitants of Chicago's southern outskirts. Stocky, broad-shouldered, shifty-eyed, an incorrigible liar and congenital rogue, he basked in the rays of fame and hastened to ``expose'' the intellectuals he hated. Whether they were professors or people employed by the State Department made no difference. Only a few knew that McCarthy was an admirer of Hitler and fond of reading Mein Kampf. And, of course, no one knew at that time what is known today: "FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover provided much of the information Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy (R. Wis.) used in his anti-Communist crusade of the 1950s. The files show that Hoover and McCarthy, who are both dead, exchanged derogatory information about prominent people, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower.''^^1^^

US political life was shot through with anti-intellectualism. Persecuting intellectuals was the most common pursuit. Speaking in the Senate on February 20, 1950, McCarthy declared in all earnest, "I think a group of twisted-thinking intellectuals has taken over the Democratic Party." Countless volunteers hastened to supply the demagogue with requisite ``information''. By the time the Tydings committee was set up on March 8 to examine his charges, McCarthy was armed to the teeth. Millard E. Tydings, who had sat in Senate for 24 years, was the epitome of respectability. He had no chance against the thug who had gained national notoriety. McCarthy assaulted US ambassador-at-large Philip C. Jessup, professor of international law, and Prof. Owen Lattimore, an expert on the Far East whom he called "the top Russian espionage agent in the United States". Summoned to the committee, the two scholars disproved the charges as absurd. Lattimore introduced the term McCarthyism. McCarthy's other insinuations also burst like a bubble of soap.

But he did not desist. On the contrary, conscious of being supported, he promised new ``revelations''. A paradoxical situation: an obvious fraud and demogogue was portrayed as the

``saviour" of the United States. The Gallup Poll reflected ail astonishing picture: 50 per cent of those questioned spoke favorably of the Senator, 21 per cent had no opinion, and only 29 per cent were against him. The results of later polls were not affected by the findings of the Tydings commitee. Tydings himself branded McCarthy "a fraud and a hoax".^^1^^ But Robert A. Taft, eminent Republican Senator, maintained that "the only way to get rid of Communists in the State Department is to change the head of government". He also said that "the proCommunist policies of the State Department fully justify Joe McCarthy in his demand for an investigation". He then said to McCarthy, "If one case doesn't work, try another." And McCarthy kept trying. Goaded by McCarthy, a House subcommittee investigated the intimate lives of State Department woman employees.^^2^^

Members of Truman's Cabinet complained then, and later in their memoirs, that McCarthyism denied them freedom of action. Objectively, however, the "invasion of apes" had helped the ``cryptocracy'' to carry out the extensive war preparations that had been planned and agreed upon by the top echelon in Washington. The climate McCarthy created produced the desired consensus.

But the McCarthyites dealt essentially in demagogy, while the Truman administration used far weightier means. What we saw was a division of labor: the ``apes'' howled about a " Soviet threat", while the government shipped US soldiers abroad to repulse a fake danger. Young Americans were sent to Korea to make war far away from United States shores.

"Cry Korea"

The Armed clash in Korea which developed into a threeyear war that caused indescribable suffering to the people of that country had been carefully planned in Washington, though events followed a course that diverged from the US strategists' scenario. It amounted to a gigantic act of provocation perpe-

~^^1^^ The Washington Post, December 22, 1983.

~^^1^^ Dorman, Witch Hunt, pp. 160-164.

'- Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 493, 527.

trated by US imperialism to give the US leadership the freedom of action that it needed to carry out directive NSG-68.

The men in Washington knew of the explosive situation in Korea along the 38th parallel. The country was on the edge of a civil war. Seoul was nursing plans of a "march to the North" which the South Korean regime hoped to win with US aid. US statesmen, on the other hand, suddenly began saying that affairs on the peninsula no longer affected US national security.

On August 15, 1948, Douglas MacArthur, commander of US occupation troops in Japan, had said: "I will defend Korea as I would my own country, just as I would California.''^^1^^ Yet about half a year later McCarthy declared: "Now the Pacific has become an Anglo-Saxon lake and our line of defense runs through the chain of islands fringing the coast of Asia. It starts from the Philippines and continues through the Ryukyu Archipelago, which includes its main bastion, Okinawa. Then it bends back through Japan and the Aleutian Island chain to Alaska." Korea and Taiwan, as we see, were left out of this "line of defense''.

On January 12, 1950, Dean Acheson delivered a policy speech, entitled, "Crisis in China---An Examination of United States Policy". He repeated what McCarthy had said, with the sole difference that he worked from north to south: "The defensive perimeter runs along the Aleutians to Japan and then goes to the Ryukyus . . . [and] from the Ryukyus to the Philippine Islands.''^^3^^ One could not help thinking that now the United States were relinquishing control over developments not only in Korea, but also in Taiwan. But . . .

Korea was not an aim in itself. By provoking a conflict there, Washington no doubt wanted to break the impasse in its relations with China. On December 30, 1949, after lengthy debates in the National Security Council, Truman signed NSC-48/2, which said among other things: "The United States should exploit, through appropriate political, psychological and economic means, any rifts between the Chinese Communists and the USSR . . . while scrupulously avoiding the appearance

of intervention. Where appropriate, covert as well as overt means should be utilized to achieve these objectives.''^^1^^

Dean Acheson's pronouncement on March 29, 1950, at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings was a muted echo of the then top secret directive: "What we are concerned with in China is that whoever runs China, even if the devil himself runs China, that he is an independent devil.''^^2^^

As we will see, the top US leaders hoped that the aggression in Korea would impair relations between the USSR and the People's Republic of China. There was more than enough combustible material to blow them up skyhigh. At least that was what Washington thought. Joseph Collins, US army Chief ol Staff, wrote 19 years later that the 8th Army stationed in Japan and the deployment of the 7th Fleet in Japanese waters meant that "nowhere else abroad did we have such forces of all arms immediately available for employment".^^3^^

US military historian Russell F. Weigley wrote some 20 years later: "Hardly another place on the boundary between the Communist and non-Communist worlds could have been so well selected as a setting for the frustration of a Communist military venture by the military resources of the United States. Korea is a peninsula which at the narrowest point of the Strait of Tsushima is little more than a hundred miles from Japan. Therefore Korea lay within ready reach of the largest concentration of American troops outside the United States, the four divisions of General Douglas MacArthur's army of occupation in Japan, and within ready reach also of American sea power.''^^4^^

Since at least the latter half of 1949, when the situation in Korea began to deteriorate, US military power was being built up to the accompaniment of public declarations that the United States had no interest in what was happening on that remote peninsula. Yet intrigues were hatched to create an "in-

~^^1^^ Foreign Relations of the United States. 1949, Vol. 7, Part 2, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1976, p. 1219.

* Review of the World Situation, U.S. Government Printing Office. Washington, 1950, p. 273.

' J. Lawton Collins, War in Peacetime. The History and Lessons of Korea, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1969, p. 4.

* Russell Weigley, The American Way of War. A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, Macmillan, New York, 1973, p. 383.

~^^1^^ Manchester, American Caesar. Douglas MacArthur 1880-196*, Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1978, p. 639.

~^^2^^ Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 357.

9---796

cident" which would give Washington cause to yell about a "Communist threat". Washington resorted to all sorts of " credible negations", a necessary attribute of psychological warfare. But the swift US involvement in the Korean conflict, and America's assuming the main burden of the aggression, shows incontestably that the action had been planned beforehand. All US propaganda media portrayed the brazen aggression as `` legitimate'' defense.

The hostilities along the 38th parallel broke out at dawn on June 25, 1950. A few days before, General William Roberts, head of the Korean Military Advisory Group, said in an interview to Time that his outfit was "the best damn Army outside the United States". But Syngman Rhee and his regime did not live up to expectations. Rhee's troops turned and ran. John Foster Dulles, who was then in Tokyo, said it would be best if Syngman Rhee coped with the situation by himself. He added, however, that if the South Koreans could not manage on their own, "United States forces should be used even though this risks Russian counter moves".^^1^^

Though it had ordered the US Air Force and Navy to join in the fighting on the very first day of the hostilities, the Truman administration was eager to conceal the aggression behind the UN flag. On June 25 the United States had the UN Security Council pass a resulution that named the Democratic People's Republic of Korea an ``aggressor'', and on June 27 a recommendation that UN members should assist the Syngman Rhee regime. At the same time, Truman increased US aid to France, which was then fighting its dirty war in Vietnam, sent a military mission to the Philippines, and had the US Navy patrol the waters round Taiwan where Chiang Kai-shek and his people had found refuge after being expelled from the Chinese mainland. All this was done in the name of the struggle against the Soviet Union, though it was the Soviet Union which had from the first days of the Korean conflict applied all its energy to stop the fighting.

Some decades later, US behavior in Korea was analysed by American historians in the light of partly declassified docu-

ments. When one considers the consequences of the decisions made by the Truman administration, within hours of the outbreak of the Korean war, to neutralize the Taiwan Strait and to step up aid to French forces in Indochina, Prof. Gaddis concluded, it will become evident that its actions were directed "more against the Russians than the Chinese Communists: concern over Taiwan reflected fears of what might happen if Mao should grant the Russians air and naval bases there, while support. . . in Indochina had been decided upon, even before Korea, as a means of facilitating a more substantial French contribution to NATO.''

Washington had evidently decided to start the aggression in Korea because the "hopes for driving a wedge between Moscow and Peking never totally disappeared in Washington---as late as May 1951, a National Security Council paper [NSC-48/5 ---N.Y.] could still list this as a major objective of United States Far Eastern policy".^^1^^ The obdurate attempts to attain this abjective left a distinct mark on US strategy in Korea, and largely explained MacArthur's operational designs, which may on the face of it have looked so unrealistic.

Not a week had passed since the opening salvoes of the Korean war that the Truman administration dispatched its ground troops to Korea. The decisions to do so had been anything but unanimous. Barton J. Bernstein notes that the recently declassified record refutes Truman's 1955 claim that the cabinet and the JCS had agreed "that whatever had to be done to meet this aggression had to be done". It will be only proper to add to Bernstein's findings that the top American brass were not engaged in repulsing any ``aggression'', but in planning strikes of their own.

General Omar Bradley, Chief of the JCS, said, "Russia is not yet ready for war. The Korean situation offered as good an occasion for action in drawing the line as anywhere else.''

Admiral Forrest Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, declared, "The Russians do not want war now.. . The present situation in Korea offers a valuable opportunity for us to act.''

And General Hoyt Vandenberg, Air Force Chief of Staff,

~^^1^^ See Courtney Whitney, MacArthur: His Rendezvous with History, Knopf, New York, 1956, p. 322.

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States, pp. 202- 203.

9*

when asked by Truman whether the United States could knock out Soviet air bases in the Far East, replied that "this might take some time ... it could be done if we used A-bombs".^^1^^

The airman merely repeated the standpoint of the Strategic Air Command as recorded in various operational plans. He could not know that for the Truman administration the Korean war was important only for starting up the arms race mechanism. In the climate of alarm bordering on panic the administration, zealously supported by Congress, succeeded in raising the military allocations from 13 billion dollars in 1950 to 22.3, 44, and 50.4 billion dollars in the next three years. Those who had protested against the development of thermonuclear weapons were now, under the impact of the Korean war, eager to work round the clock so as to act the bomb into production. Weigley observed too, that "the Korean War rescued NSC-68 from oblivion and made it the foundation of American strategy after all".^^2^^

In July 1950, two US infantry divisions shipped in from Japan went into action in Korea. When they came under fire, they took flight. General William F. Dean, commander of 24th Division, was taken prisoner and explained that he had expected nothing better from occupation troops: the soldiers, he said, were accustomed to "Japanese girlfriends, plenty of beer, and servants to shine their boots''.

Air support, in which the US military had deep faith, did not help. The carrier-based aviation, the best of the best, failed dismally. Hundreds of sorties were flown daily from aircraft-carriers Valley Forge, Philippine Sea, Bedeng Strait and Sicily which cruised close to the Korean shore. The pilots bombed and strafed everything they saw and quickly earned the reputation of killers of civilians. But nothing helped. By August, the American and South Korean troops had been pushed back to port Fusan in the south-east of the Korean peninsula.

Reinforcements shipped in from Japan and the United States, and the arrival of the first contingents of 15 allied armies, shored up the front. Urgently, 600,000 young men were drafted

in the United States, and more reinforcements were promised. But a spirit of defeat hovered over the Fusan battlefield. An American Dunkirk appeared inevitable. Morale hit a new low. Papers in the United States printed what a sergeant from Chicago, huddled in a foxhole near Fusan, had said: "I am ready to fight for my country, but I'll be damned if I see why I have to fight here?''

The Chicago sergeant's field of vision was restricted to the red, napalm-scorched earth he saw from his foxhole. But in the snow-white edifice on Capitol Hill political visibility was not appreciably better. Truman covered up the shipment of US troops to Korea with choice anti-communist rhetoric. Though Senator Taft preferred not to contradict him, he called attention to the fact that the administration had by leaving Korea out of the sphere of US "national security" evidently thus deliberately ``invited'' the North to wage war south of the 38th parallel. Now that matters had come to a head, he said, he would stand behind the President, but by opening hostilities without a vote in Senate the President had created a dangerous precedent and had "usurped the powers of Congress". For obvious reasons, Senate refrained from discussing the issue, and was satisfied with Truman's formula that the whole thing was not a war but a "police action". It was pointed out, however, that the President would not be within his rights to pursue the Korean forces north of the 38th parallel (Senator Ralph Flanders). Senator Scott W. Lucas said he agreed wholeheartedly.^^1^^

MacArthur was not minded to argue. He demanded that Washington urgently send him the five divisions which the Joint Chiefs of Staff had refused him by referring to NATO's needs. MacArthur angrily recalled World War II, when the Pacific Ocean and the Far East were, in his opinion, unjustifiably neglected for the benefit of the European war theater. He seized upon Chiang Kai-shek's proposals to dispatch 33,000 Kuomintang soldiers to Korea and to organize raids from Taiwan into mainland China. Washington let him know at once that Chiang's offers were unacceptable. All the same, at the end of July,

~^^1^^ Barton J. Bernstein, "The Week We Went to War: American Intervention in the Korean Civil War", in Foreign Service Journal, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 1977, p. 34.

^! Weigley, The American Way of War, p. 398.

~^^1^^ Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision. June 24-30, 1950, The Free Press, New York, 1968, pp. 217, 219.

the General went to Taiwan and entered into lively negotiations with Chiang Kai-shek. Truman was in a quandary. Though MacArthur assured him that he would not overstep instructions, the general's willfulness was well known.

On August 6, Averell Harriman flew urgently to Tokyo to bring MacArthur to his senses. He repeated the strict order not to use Chiang's troops. Yet details of the talks, like all matters related to the Chinese aspect of the Korean war, are obscure. After the conversations, Harriman reported to Truman that the general had "accepted the President's position and will act accordingly, but without full conviction. He has a strange idea that we should back anybody who will fight Communism, even though he could not give an argument why the Generalissimo's fighting Communists would be a contribution towards the effective dealing with the Communists in China".^^1^^ In short, General MacArthur was shown his place---to fight the war and stop his amateur dabbling in politics.

Washington wanted to seize all Korea. For some reason it thought that this would help the United States to effect a rapprochement with China. "His [Acheson's] analysis of China's actions," Bernstein writes, "was a curious combination of hopeful assumptions producing unwarranted conclusions. . . For Acheson, the great threat to China was Russian imperialism, as he told the Chinese. 'It would be sheer madness,' he confidently announced on September 10, 'for China to enter the war to save Soviet interests.' The Chinese would antagonize 'the free nations who are inherently their friends ... as against [Soviet] imperialism'. Ten days earlier, Truman had publicly offered the same analysis while trying to assure Mao about American intentions: 'We hope . . . that China . . . will not be misled or forced into fighting against the American people, who . . . are their friends.' "^^2^^

The avalanche of similar statements in Washington reflected Truman's pattern of thought. The immediate purpose was to raise a political screen for MacArthur's bid to overrun all Ko-

rea. On September 15, an armada of 261 ships approached Inchhon on the western shore of Korea. The huge landing party was headed by the First Marines from California. This was the pick of the US armed forces, consisting of Guadalcanal and Okinawa veterans. Making the most of their tremendous superiority of arms, the US aggressors relieved the siege of Fusan and moved North. Having learnt their lesson in previous battles, the invaders moved cautiously, relying on air and artillery support.

The ruins of the town of londok, witnesses said, looked like Nagasaki after the atomic bombing. American correspondents were in no hurry to extol the abominable exploits of their countrymen. This was done by others. In his book, Cry Korea, English journalist Reginald Thompson described the strategy and tactics of mass annihilation "born of immense productive and material might". It is certain, the author wrote, that the US army "kills civilian men, women and children, indiscriminately and in great number, and destroys all they have".^^1^^ The British Armed Forces Yearbook for 1951 stated: "The war was fought without regard for the South Koreans, and their unfortunate country was regarded as an arena rather than a country to be liberated. As a consequence, fighting was quite ruthless, and it is no exaggeration to state that South Korea no longer exists as a country. Its towns have been destroyed, much of its means of livelihood eradicated, and its people reduced to a sullen mass dependent upon charity.''^^2^^ This was written by military observers, not by emotional journalists.

On October 1, the intervention force crossed the 38th parallel, and moved inexorably northward, in the direction of the Soviet and Chinese frontiers. A dangerous situation took shape. The Soviet Union suggested that all foreign troops be immediately withdrawn from Korea, letting the people of Korea decide their own future. Washington turned a deaf ear to this reasonable proposal. The US government urged MacArthur to capture all Korea. They were of a single mind in this respect, though many things are still unclear, for after Mac-

~^^1^^ Manchester, American Caesar, p. 674.

~^^2^^ Bernstein, "The Policy of Risk: Crossing the 38th Parallel and Marching to the Yalu", in Foreign Service Journal, Vol. 54, No. 3, March 1977, p. 17.

~^^1^^ Reginald Thompson, Cry Korea, Macdonald, London, 1951 pp 54 143.

* Quoted from I.F. Stone, The Hidden History of the Korean War, Turnstile Press Ltd., London, 1952, p. 313.

Arthur's drive to the Yalu fell through, Washington wrote off the failure, blaming it on the self-willed general. Still, Bernstein found that according to one scholar who saw the still classified minutes, the discussion between the State Department and the Pentagon had an air of ``unreality'', because Washington wanted to negotiate with China "following MacArthur's success", so that America could conduct the talks from a position of strength.

What was there to negotiate? US sources are silent on this point or, more precisely, those that say anything are still classified. One thing is clear, Bernstein noted: "Far from revealing great anxiety or trepidation about MacArthur's advance to the Yalu, Acheson . . . shared the prevailing confidence that MacArthur could accomplish his mission.''^^1^^ Any attempt at analyzing the political aspects of MacArthur's offensive keeps raising new riddles. On October 15, Truman met MacArthur on Wake Island. It is common knowledge that the General assured the President that the operation would be over by New Year's and the 8th Army would return to Japan. Keen-sighted journalists noted MacArthur's arrogance and the President's embarrassment. Truman remarked on the general's appearance (the unbuttoned collar and the old, crumpled cap) that "if he'd been a lieutenant in my outfit going around dressed like that, I'd have busted him so fast he wouldn't have known what happened to him".^^2^^

This about a five-star general. There were other colorful details. But what about the substance of the case? Why did Truman fly so far? For a two-hour talk with MacArthur? It would be absurd to think that the exchange of opinions could not have been effected through dependable communication channels that existed between Washington and Tokyo.

``In all respects an odd affair" was what historians said about Truman's rendezvous on Wake Island.^^3^^ William Manches-

ter, too, asserted that it was "mysterious then and is still puzzling". Even after his dismissal, though hating Truman, MacArthur refused to answer questions in Senate in 1951 about what he had discussed with the President on Wake: "I would not feel at liberty to reveal what was discussed.''^^1^^ In their memoirs, both Truman and MacArthur made do with banalities, especially the latter. "The sole purpose," he wrote, "was to create good will and beneficial results to the country.''^^2^^ Though the two exchanged insults at every suitable opportunity, they took the secret of Wake Island with them to their graves. And since this is so, we can only rely on the logic of historical research.

MacArthur's army was approching the Chinese and Soviet frontiers. In those critical days, we read in the Russian-language History of USSR Foreign Policy. 1945-1980 (Moscow 1981, Vol. 2, p. 161), the Soviet government had, at the request of the Peking government, deployed several Soviet air force divisions to the north-eastern provinces of the People's Republic of China. Soviet pilots shot down tens of US planes in air battles and shielded China's North-East against air raids. Experienced Soviet fliers took part in the fighting. The Soviet Union held five divisions ready for shipment to aid the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in repulsing the US aggression if the situation should deteriorate.

The above must have been known in Washington. The author of MacArthur's biography says: "Russia, not China, was regarded as North Korea's closest ally, and the U.S. government feared Stalin far more than Mao.''^^3^^ A Soviet air shield had already been put up over Manchuria. Whatever the longterm designs that Peking had with regard to the United States, the Chinese people who had only recently triumphed in the civil war, would not suffer an American threat along their frontiers. Chinese revolutionaries repulsed the invaders. Volunteers from China came to the aid of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. They were confident of success, for by their

~^^1^^ Bernstein, "The Policy of Risk. . .", in Foreign Service Journal, March 1974, p. 21.

~^^2^^ Merle Miller, Plain Speaking. An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman, Berkley Publishing Corp., New York, 1974, p. 294.

~^^3^^ Richard H. Revere, Arthur M. Schlesinger, The General and the President and the Future of American Foreign Policy, Random House, New York, 1951, p. 130.

13<5

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 702, 705. ^! Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences, Heinemann, London, 1965, p. 364.

~^^3^^ Manchester, American Caesar, p. 703

side stood the Soviet Union. Hence the high degree of efficiency which they displayed.

To the horror of the Truman administration, the invaders' arrival at the northern frontier of Korea did not bring about the expected talks with the PRG from positions of strength. It triggered a counter-offensive. South Korean and American troops took to their heels. A Turkish brigade tried to stem the assault with sabres, and was routed. British units attempted to counter-attack, and turned tail. On November 30, speaking at a press conference, Truman hinted vaguely that the United States may use atomic weapons. This was followed by an urgent visit to Washington of British Prime Minister Clement Attlee. He protested vehemently. Truman assured him that any atomic bomb decisions was the President's prerogative, not MacArthur's. All the same, Attlee returned home in low spirits: the US capital was in hysteria. The allies of the USA were also affected. MacArthur demanded recognition of a "state of war". He demanded dropping 30 to 50 atomic bombs on air bases and other strategic targets in Manchuria. He demanded that 500,000 Kuomintang troops be shipped into Korea from Taiwan, and once Korea was seized to create a radioactive cobalt zone along its northern frontier.^^1^^ Above all, MacArthur was eager to lock horns with China, which was not at all what -the Truman administration wanted.

By the beginning of 1951, the interventionist force had been flung back across the 38th parallel. Washington had reconciled itself with the thought that Korea would have to be abandoned, that US troops would have to be evacuated. The ambitious plan of ``uniting'' Korea was jettisoned. The US leaders found that the requisite dividends from the war had already been gained: the arms race had gathered momentum, NATO military power was on the ascendant, Eisenhower had gone off to Europe to assume command of the aggressive bloc's armed forces. Any expansion of the war in the Far East would inevitably divert much of the resources that were needed to build up NATp. It was time to put an end to the war. But; how? Washington, which had only recently haughtily rejected any

and all armistice proposals, was looking for a way to peace. Acheson put it thus, "We therefore cast about like a pack of hounds searching for a scent.''^^1^^

While the "pack of hounds" was engaged in its search, MacArthur was necessarily issued vague instructions and the clear order to refrain from making any public statements. The front lines became stabilized close to the 38th parallel, but as before, MacArthur wanted to win the war. Despite the government's order to make no public statements, he told the world as much in no uncertain terms.

In early April 1951, House minority speaker Joseph Martin made public MacArthur's letter attacking the government, which contained this final phrase: "We must win. There is no substitute for victory.''^^2^^ The government was in a rage. On April 11, MacArthur was relieved of his command. People reminded Truman that just six months before, on Wake Island, he had pinned a decoration on MacArthur's chest and spoken words of praise. Did he now repent? To which Truman replied that he only repented he had not dismissed the general two years before.

In the summer of 1951, cease-fire negotiations began in Korea. Washington was immersed in arguments and quarrels. The reason was clear, at least to Truman. In April 1954, already in retirement, Truman produced his version of the events: "I have often thought of the situation when the Chinese marched into Korea in late 1950.. . The Great General was not the same man he was at Wake. . . After he was relieved he spent some time discussing the fact that the President of the United States and his Commander in Chief would not allow him to carry on a war in Manchuria. General Mark Clark in his book 'From the Danube to the Yalu' implies that the ' police action' in Korea could have been a victorious `war' in the Far East if he and his predecessors had been given a free hand to bomb Manchuria. These able field Generals see only the front they work to hold and win. . .

``Now suppose, for speculative purposes, the C in C had yielded to his locally minded and in most cases locally misin-

~^^1^^ Robert Smith, MacArthur in Korea. The Naked Emperor, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1982, pp. 191-192.

Acheson, Present at the Creation, p. 532. MacArthur, Reminiscences, p. 386.

formed field Generals. What would have happened? The Gerterals say that a few bombs on airfields in Manchuria would have caused a Korean victory on the Yalu.

``To have been effective Peking, Shanghai, Canton, Mukden, Dairen, Vladivostok and Central Siberia at Ulan-Ude on Lake Baikal would have had to be destroyed. It would have been a unilateral action by the USA. On the European side of the Soviet Empire the Russians would have marched to the North Sea and the Channel. . . They could not have been stopped. On the east we would have wiped out those great Chinese cities and have killed some 25,000,000 innocent women, children and noncombatants.

``We'd have had World War III on our hands and no allies. All Central Europe and perhaps Turkey, Greece, Italy and North Africa with the great Near East oil field would have been under Russian control. . . I just could not make the order for a Third World War. I know I was right"^^1^^

Truman's prudence, as put on display in the volume of his private papers in 1980, satisfied neither MacArthur nor some of the US leaders of later days. Henry Kissinger, for example, .commented thus: "It is possible to doubt the premises that time was on our side or that we had more to lose from an all-out war than the Soviet Union." And Kissinger went on to outline an alternative:

``Our perception of power and diplomacy as distinct and successive phases of foreign policy prevented us from negotiating to settle the Korean War after the landing at Inchhon when we were in the strongest military position; it tempted us to escalate our aims. A year later it also caused us to stop military operations except of a purely defensive nature the moment negotiations got under way.. . Treating force and diplomacy as discrete phenomena caused our power to lack purpose and our negotiations to lack force.

``The result was domestic convulsion that represented the first breach in the new national consensus on foreign policy: the conflict between General Douglas MacArthur and the civilian and military leadership in Washington.''^^2^^

~^^1^^ Off the Record, The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, pp. 303- 304.

* Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 63-64.

J40

Kissinger's pretentious statement could not have been more controversial. What is beyond controversy, however, is that the Truman administration's "police action" caused considerable confusion in the United States. To be sure, law-abiding Americans did not go into the streets, but more and more of them did (for various reasons) begin to think of how to settle scores with the establishment in the next election without undermining the pillars of peace and order.

EISENHOWER'S MARK IN HISTORY

general produced a heart-rending saga of what torment a soldier suffered under the yoke of politicians. He put on a good sihow. Raising his arms, he implored, "Why, oh why, did we relinquish our advantages in the battle field?" Lowering his voice to a dramatic whisper, he replied, "I have no answer to that." He told Congress there was "no substitute for victory" and begged that his proposals, amounting to open warfare against the People's Republic of China, be adopted. The General said he had worn his uniform for 52 years, and recalled the refrain of a barrack-room ballad, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.''

Like the old soldier he was, he said, he was now closing his military career and just fading away, "an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.''

Who could have guessed that thereby the old warrior had used up all his cliches. The phrase, "no substitute for victory" was taken from his message years ago to the West Point football team. And "old soldiers never die" was what he liked to write in his letters to aged and ailing generals. Watching the proceedings on a TV screen Truman commented, "Nothing but a bunch of damn bullshit." The imposing MacArthur, meanwhile, vanished from Congress; no, not into the bleak waste of retirement. He reappeared at a conference of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The 6,000 ladies who had voted that none should keep on her hat (for nothing was to obtrude on their view of their idol) were amply rewarded. At 71, MacArthur had lost none of his good looks. Truman commented: "Our great bald-headed General, with the dyed hair.''^^1^^ Yet the ladies had their eyes on the General, who was saying to them, "In this hour of crisis, all patriots look to you. I have long sought personally to pay you the tribute that is in my heart.''^^2^^

Nothing, indeed, prevented the general from pouring out his heart. In response, mobs burned or hanged Truman's and Acheson's effigies. When MacArthur came to New York, where he was invited to stay free of charge in a fashionable

General Douglas MacArthur departed from the United States in 1935 owing to differences with President Roosevelt to take up the job of US proconsul in the Pacific and the Far East. Not until 1951 did he return home this time owing to differences with President Truman. He came back a wronged man, feeling that he had been unjustifiably injured.

The Gallup Poll showed that 69 per cent of those questioned were for him., only 29 for Truman. Senator William Ezra Jenner maintained in Congress that now the country had fallen to a secret clique run by Soviet agents, and that the only salvation was to put President Truman on trial.

Richard Nixon thought he saw which way the wind was blowing, and declared that "the happiest group in the country will be the Communists and their stooges. . . The President has given them what they have always wanted---MacArthur's scalp . . . [the General] had been fired simply because he had the good sense and patriotism to ask that the hands of our fighting men in Korea be united.''^^1^^ Nixon called on the Senate to condemn Truman and demand MacArthur's reinstatement.

MacArthur loathed the method of the ``apes'', but his fury against the "politicians was so great that he outdid McCarthy. He flew home from Tokyo a hero basking in glory: 100,000 gathered to greet him during his stopover in Hawaii University conferred upon him an honorary doctorate; 500,000 greeted him in San Francisco, where he was honored by a 21- gun salute, and another 500,000 in Washington.

On April 19, MacArthur faced Congress and 30 million TV viewers, including Truman and his cabinet. He spoke for 34 minutes. Applause interrupted his speech thirty times. The

~^^1^^ W. Costello, "The MacArthur Affair" in New Republic, December 14, 1959.

~^^1^^ Off the Record. The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, p. 324.

~^^2^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 563-564.

hotel, he received a hero's welcome. It took him seven hours to travel 35km through a crowd of what the New York police estimated to be 7.5 million New Yorkers lining the streets to catch a glimpse of their idol. That day the city came to a standstill. Streamers flew everywhere, some with inscriptions such as "God save us from Acheson", and so on. Union leaders Reuther and Curran sent greetings. After MacArthur's cortege finally reached its destination, the city garbage disposal service cleared away an estimated 2,859 tons of waste paper (confetti, and the like).

On May 3 MacArthur faced 25-man Senate committee. For the first three days he presented his tale of woe. The hearings lasted until June 25, with the committee questioning 13 top officials of the defense and diplomatic establishments. It worked behind closed doors, and the press was fed extensive but censored releases. The five volumes published on the heels of the hearings showed that for reasons of "national security" the government had refused the committee access to important documents. However ardently MacArthur hated the administration, he had the good sense to remember that he was in government service, and did not object.

As a result, the gab fest was nothing more than a gab fest. MacArthur implored that the Senators should call for the capture of all the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, thus ``unifying'' the country, and that China's ability to make war should also be undermined or eliminated. Asked if the United States was to go it alone, the brave general pointed out that 90 per cent of the force fighting in Korea was American anyway, and added: "Alone, if necessary. If the other nations of the world haven't got enough sense to see where appeasement leads after the appeasement which led to the Second World War in Europe, if they can't see exactly the road that they are following in Asia, why then we had better protect ourselves and go it alone.''^^1^^

MacArthur's uncompromising anti-communism was com-

parable only to his complete disdain for the canons of the balance of power policy. And the Senators were quick to notice this.

The general was asked to say how the policy he was suggesting would work itself into the pattern of Washington's global strategy. Senator Brian McMahon asked, "Do you think we are ready to withstand the Russian attack in Western Europe today?" The intrepid soldier replied: "Senator, I have asked you several times not to involve me in anything except my own area.''

The committee members were perturbed. Truman commented from his office: "We are right now in the midst of a big debate on foreign policy. A lot of people are looking at this debate as if it were just a political fight. But ... the thing that is at stake in this debate may be atomic war. . . It is a matter of life or death.''

In a way, Truman thereby spanked the bellicose general. As for the problems related to Korea, MacArthur and other generals kept saying one and the same thing. General Albert G. Wedemeyer: "a third team [is] opposing our first team" which consisted of 80 per cent of America's military strength, and Omar N. Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "it's a wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy".^^1^^

That was the note on which the hearings ended. The committee turned over its findings to the Senate without a word of comment. The general's image wilted. The government had managed to prove that MacArthur's strategy was fraught with most disastrous consequences for the United States. But when the show was over, the general, no longer hamstrung by procedural restraints, ventured into pure politics and told an American Legion convention that he had frustrated the government's "secret plan" of surrendering Taiwan to the People's Republic of China in return for an armistice in Korea, and also to grant it a seat in the UN. Truman thundered back: the general was lying, and knew it.

The Chinese aspect of Washington's policy did not come to light. In the decades that followed, the 1951 Senate arguments

~^^1^^ Military Situation in the Far East. Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate. 82nd Congress, 1st Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1951, p. 111.

~^^1^^ Manchester, American Caesar, pp. 801, 803, 804, 730. 10---796

were repeatedly exploited. What battling for the presidential nomination in 1976, for example, Ronald Reagan maintained: "General Douglas MacArthur was relieved of his command for insisting upon winning a war. Korea was our first `no-win' war. We drafted our boys and told them that it was all right to fight and die, but not to fight and die and win, because that might start another war. . . Nobody has paid much attention to what General MacArthur said about Korea after he was fired. Everyone remembers the line about 'old soldiers never die', but they've forgotten what he prophesied about the effects of our Korean policy. .. We seem to want to worship our heroes without believing them.''^^1^^

The war in Korea was destined to drag out for another two years and more after the sensational Capitol Hill debate US losses added up to 54,246 men. Though the outbreak of that war had helped the Truman administration to put the USA and its allies on a military footing, the political usefulness of the aggression thousands of kilometers distant from the United States was quickly waning. Truman was aware of this. Though he had been the first to spurn MacArthur's specious reasoning, he was often burdened by strange thoughts. The President's diary, excerpts from which were first published in 1980, contains items such as these (dated January 27 and May 18, 1952): send Moscow a 10-day ultimatum notifying it that the USA intends to blockade the China coast from the Korean border to Indochina; to destroy all military targets in Manchuria, including submarine bases, with all means at its disposal, and, if the interference did not end, to destroy all ports and cities that obstructed a "peaceful settlement". This, the President confided to his diary, stood for total war for it meant that Moscow, St Petersburg, Mukden, Vladivostok, Peking, Shanghai, Port Arthur, Dairen, Odessa, Stalingrad, and all industrial enterprises in China and the Soviet Union were subject to demolition.

It may safely be said that these ideas reflected what were stages in the preparations for another world war (in line, say, with the Dropshot scenario) which the President had no

doubt personally supervised. For understandable reasons, however, they could not be made public, and did not therefore help to extend the Democratic Party's tenure in power. By the early 1950s, Americans, who had ample opportunities to see McCarthy in action, appreciated the advantages of conformism and the price one paid for dissidence. In August 1950, Congress had passed the Internal Security Act, which required progressive organizations to register as "agents of a foreign power", the penalty for evasion being 10 years' imprisonment and a fine. A Subversive Activities Control Board was set up to enforce the Act, and six large concentration camps were built and held ready to receive "suspected saboteurs" in an emergency. Nixon was elated. He had initiated the passage of the Act, and had been backed in Congress by none other than John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. And in 1952, the Internal Security Act was followed up with the McCarran-- Walter Immigration Act, which denied admission to the United States for all persons "advocating violent overthrow of the government''.

Most Americans had nothing to say in protest. The 1950s saw the emergence in the USA of what was popularly called the "silent generation". This politically ignorant lot had lost no illusions for the simple reason that it had never had any. Wrote Manchester:

``Protest was clearly alien to [it]. For professors, hostility to McCarthyism was the great passion of the time, but students weren's much interested. The senator won few recruits on campuses, but he didn't stir up much resentment, either; most undergraduates found the issue boring. . .

``Convinced that all great discoveries had been made, all great dreams realized, and all great fortunes amassed, the Toms of the 1950s were content to tinker with techniques and technicalities from nine to five, five days a week, while devoting the bulk of their energies to non-vocational interests---the church, civic activities, 'getting to know' the kids, golf, Little Leagues, leading a rewarding life with Betsy and laying pipe with her. . .

``Graduating seniors were prepared to embrace---and if need be, to defend---the status quo; they would obey the law, pay taxes, fulfill their military obligations, and vote, though thereafter politics would be none of their concern. They would con-

~^^1^^ Ronald Reagan, Charles D. Hobbs, Ronald Reagan's Call to Action, Warner Books, New York, 1976, pp. 38-39.

10*

form to the dictates of society in their dress, speech , worship, choice of friends, length of hair, and above all, in their thought. In exchange they would receive all the rights and privileges of the good life; viz., economic security. .. [They] accepted General Eisenhower's definition of an intellectual: '-a man who takes more words than is necessary to say more than he knows.' 'ⁿ They did not see, nor could they suspect, that ``consensus'' was being cultivated for purposes known to just the initiated few of the ruling elite, that cannon fodder was being reared for the coming world war. Since scores were to be settled with the Soviet Union somewhere in the latter half of the 1950s, dissidence could not be suffered, let alone permitted to flourish. The thinking was to be left to those in the saddle, and certainly not to the privates of the impending war. Those who had their own opinion and, worse still, the temerity to voice it in public, were looked upon as outcasts. Thus, alongside anti-- communism there reigned an anti-intellectualism that was part and parcel of the cold war ideology.

The Republicans did not try to impress the nation with their brainpower. The Democrats discovered to their grief, on the other hand, that their candidate, Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, was the very epitome of ``egghead'' even in appearance. And when he opened his mouth to speak you had it---he was a typical intellectual. He spoke correct English, he spoke calmly, he deplored the spiritual backwardness that he detected among millions of his countrymen. "Sure," Joseph Alsop, the columnist, exclaimed, "all the eggheads love Stevenson. But how many eggheads do you think there are?" What was worse, Stevenson dissociated himself from the reigning administration for what he saw as a most justifiable reason: towards the end of Truman's presidency, a number of top-ranking officials had stuffed their pockets with ill-gotten gains. About a dozen landed in jail, including Truman's secretary Matthew J. Connelly (pardoned by President Kennedy in 1962), and chief of the Justice Department's tax division Theron Lamar Caudle (pardoned by President Johnson in 1965). The papers were full of stories of how nefarious deals were concluded with the Pentagon for 5 percent commissions, and how the wives of the bribe-takers strutted about in mink coats.

The mutual charges, directed essentially against a party that had by American standards held power for too long (the Democrats had been in the saddle for 20 years), turned the election campaign into a disgusting spectacle. Though Stevenson's people had not asked him, Truman hastened to the aid of his party. He went on a tour of the country, speaking of the dangers that were sure to arise if generals came to power. He accused General Eisenhower of abandoning his friend George C. Marshall when the latter, attacked by McCarthy, needed his help most of all. "He [Eisenhower]," Truman announced, "has had an attack of moral blindness, for today he is willing to accept the very practices that identified the so-called ' master race', although he took a leading part in liberating Europe from their domination.''^^1^^ Truman endeavored to link Eisenhower with the McCarthyites, for his creed could easily be twist to suit theirs.

The Change of Guard

General Dwight D. Eisenhower breathed easily in this climate of ``consensus'', in which he was considered the natural successor to the presidency.

No man's fool by any standards, he liked to pose as an antiintellectual. When the Republicans called him to their colors (for until 1952 Eisenhower belonged to no party), he let the audience at one of his meetings know that long words weren't for him: "'coarse, I'm not supposed to be the educated candidate". This time, indeed, the Republicans chose their candidates from among the `plainer'', none too wealthy, people: professional soldier Eisenhower for president and Richard Nixon, who even complained on television that he was in reduced circumstances, for vice-president. All your troubles, the campaigners told Americans, came from intellectuals. An assortment of deleterious epithets was put into circulation, such as `` highbrows'', ``do-gooders'', "bleeding hearts", ``long-hairs'', and so on. The one that stuck was ``eggheads''.

' Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 578-580.

~^^1^^ Merlo J. Pusey, Eisenhower, the President, MacMillan, New York 1956, p. 37.

Though it was quite true that Einsenhower had failed to rush to the defense of General Marshall, Harry Truman had obviously gone too far. Certainly, the presidential candidate did not attack the notorious demagogue McCarthy directly. More, he deemed fit to stress that McCarthy and he had the same end in view. "I want to make one thing very clear," he declared. "The purposes that he and I have of ridding this government of the incompetents, the dishonest, and above all the subversives and the disloyal are one and the same. Our differences, therefore, have nothing to do with the result we are seeking. The differences apply to the method.''^^1^^ Nor could Eisenhower have put it differently, for was he not himself urging restraint and moderation in the political debate? Yet Nixon could not care less, and struck out at the Democratic candidate: "Mr. Stevenson was a character witness or should I say a witness for the reputation, and the good reputation of Alger Hiss for veracity. . . It was voluntary on Mr. Stevenson's part.''^^2^^

In a speech on October 27, 1952, shortly before the presidential election, making the most of a theme he had exploited for some years, Nixon put Truman, Acheson and Stevenson in one and the same category, and pronounced them " traitors to the high principles in which many of the nation's Democrats believe. . . Real Democrats [are] outraged by the Truman-Acheson-Stevenson gang's toleration and defense of communism in high places." Later, Nixon always emphatically denied that he had ever spoken these words. But Truman remembered them. In 1956 Leonard Hall, chairman of the Republican Party's national committee, offered 1,000 dollars to anyone who would prove that Nixon had called Truman and others ``traitors''. Ex-President Truman recalled the speech ol October 27, 1952, but Hall would not pay up.^^3^^ The 1952 campaign left a lasting, evil-smelling trace. But in 1952 everything that was later attributed to campaign needs, did not discom-

mode General Einsenhower. Even in his memoirs he saw fit to declare that Nixon's political philosophy generally coincided with his own.^^1^^

The Republicans' three Cs slogan (Korea, Communism, Corruption)---with the latter two serving as a sort of garnish to the main dish---questioned the need and usefulness of the Korean war. The war was not examined as a thing in itself but as an episode in the global fight against `` communism'', which above all connoted the Soviet Union. The fight over this issue was so intense that it embossed itself on the memories of the chief scrimmagers, who kept returning to it again and again for dozens of years in their memoirs.

Dean Acheson wrote in retrospect:

``General Eisenhower began discussing foreign policy in terms surprising for him. The great chain of events begun under his benefactor, General Marshall, he called a 'purgatory of improvisation'. In the same speech, relating what he termed some 'plain facts' about the period leading up to the attack on South Korea, the General grossly distorted my Press Club speech [of January 12, 1950---N.Y.] . . . and, when I publicly set the record straight, severed all relations with me. It appears to be true that one who unjustly injures another must in justification become his enemy. During the eight years of his Presidency I was never invited into the White House or to the State Department or consulted in any way. However, this involved no invidious discrimination, since my chief, President Truman, was treated the same way.

``To return to General Einsenhower's Cincinnati speech, he revived the Taft charge that I had, in effect, invited the attack on Korea. . .

``Since interest in this old canard has long ceased---except, curiously, among college students---I shall not rehash the argument.''^^2^^

As we see, Acheson relieved Washington of all responsibility for provoking the bloodshed in Korea.

Acheson wrote this in 1969, and in 1978, looking back at

~^^1^^ Joe McCarthy, Hurricane! American Heritage Press, New York 1969, pp. 182-183.

' Earl Mazo, Richard Nixon. A Political and Personal Portrait, Harper, New York, 1959, pp. 66-67.

~^^1^^ Off the Record, The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, pp. 339- 340.

~^^1^^ Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Changes. 1953-1956, Signet Books, New York, 1965, p. 77.

~^^2^^ Acheson, Present at the Creation, pp. 690-691

the pertinent events, Nixon, strangely, made his peace with the then deceased ex-Secretary of State.

``In 1952 I also criticized Secretary of State Dean Acheson," Nixon wrote in his memoirs, "whose policies toward international Communism, I said, had cost us China, much of Eastern Europe, and had invited the Communists to begin the Korean War. I used a phrase that caught the public's attention---and the commentators' wrath---when I charged that Stevenson was a graduate of Acheson's 'Cowardly College of Communist Containment'.

``Many years later, when I was President, Acheson and I became friends, and he was one of my most valued and trusted unofficial advisers. In this campaign, however, his clipped moustache, his British tweeds, and his haughty manner made him the perfect foil for my attacks on the snobbish kind of foreign service personality and mentality that had been taken in hook, line, and sinker by the Communists. Today I regret the intensity of those attacks.''^^1^^

If we were to reduce the many declarations of the Republican strategists and General Eisenhower to a common denominator, we would find that what they were after was to at last set in motion the balance of power mechanism. The United States should not be going it alone against the adversary, as was the case during the blundering Truman administration which had thoughtlessly consigned the flower of the US armed forces to fighting all but single-handed in far away Korea.

Again and again, the Eisenhower people attacked Truman's ``containment'' policy. Writing in Life of May 19, 1952, John Foster Dulles, sounded "the call for `liberation' of the captive peoples". Presumptiously, he entitled his article, "A Policy of Boldness". Years later, Harry Rositzke, a prominent CIA operative, wrote that "during the 1952 Republican campaign General Eisenhower promised to 'peacefully bring about freedom for the captive nations'. Dulles repeated the promise, omitting `peaceful'.''^^2^^

~^^1^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 110.

~^^2^^ Harry Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations. Espionage, Counterespionage and Covert Action, Reader's Digest Press, New York, 1978, pp. 154-155.

Though in the USA election promises are hardly ever kept, this time the Republicans were true to their 1952 platform as expressed by John Foster Dulles. In word and deed, they condemned Truman's "negative, useless and immoral policy of `containment''.

But what the average American singled out in the Republican platform was doubtless Eisenhower's promise to end the war in Korea. This meant a lot to millions of American families, for the Pentagon had put nearly five million Americans through the Korean mill. The generals kept replacing units, chiefly to train their men in real combat conditions, but the folks at home worried for perfectly valid reasons as to what would become of their sons.

Nothing could change this public mood. Not even the ominous first test of the thermonuclear weapon arranged for by Truman on the eve of the elections. At the end of October a 65-ton thermonuclear device was installed on the tiny islet of Elugelab in the lagoon of Eniwetok atoll. It was detonated at dawn on November 1. The fireball rose 8 kilometers high, and the column of smoke nearly 40 km. The islet vanished. Later, divers found a canyon a kilometer and a half long and 60 meters deep on the floor of the ocean. This was the finale of Truman's presidency.

Three days later, Americans went to the polls. Thirty-four million cast their ballots for Eisenhower, and a bit over 27 million for Stevenson. A victory of sorts for the general, but inconclusive. In the House, the Republicans had a majority of a mere 10 seats, and in the Senate of just one seat. Americans had voted for the man, Eisenhower, not the party.

Eisenhower kept his election promise. Even before entering upon his duties, he visited Korea. There he saw that continued hostilities would consume resources the USA could ill afford to spend, because the NATO build-up was swallowing more and more of the available funds. In the heat of the moment, an attempt was made to make the allies of the USA assume a bigger share of the burden. But that did not work. And the gesture in relation to the Chiang Kai-shek regime---- Eisenhower's cabinet announced the ``deneutralization'' of Taiwan in January 1953---created a panic in the allied capitals and discontent among the ruling elite in the USA. Was Eisenhower

going to follow in MacArthur's footsteps and involve himself in a war with the People's Republic of China? Charles E. Wilson, the new Secretary of Defense, observed casually at a cabinet meeting: "Is there any possibility for a package deal? Maybe we could recognize Red China and get the Far East issues settled?''^^1^^ This was greeted by an embarrassed silence. The newcomer did not know that, in effect, the USA had gone to war in order to push a rapprochement with the USA down Peking's throat by force of arms, though this was never admitted. And since the bid failed it was high time to call off the dogs of war. An armistice was signed in Korea on July 27, 1953.

The Old "New Look"

Those who made up Eisenhower's cabinet of eight millionaires and a plumber (Secretary of Labor Martin Durkin soon retired, thus ending the anomaly), treated their duties with a deep sense of responsibility. Douglas McKay, Secretary of the Interior, was pleased to state that under Eisenhower they had an administration that represented business and industry. Charles E. Wilson, Secretary of Defense, who had earlier been chairman of the General Motors board, declared, "What was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa."² A most fitting introduction to the philosophy of government as practised by the new administration.

This philosophy, however, included fervent adherence to Christian dogmas as conceived by members of the cabinet, notably the President. All sittings opened with a short prayer read by Ezra Benson, Secretary of Agriculture, who was one of the Council of Twelve Apostles of the Mormon Church.

Eisenhower made one important personal change when he became President: he joined a church because he believed it important for the President to be affiliated with an organized faith. He chose Mamie's religion, the Presbyterian church.^^3^^

John Foster Dulles, no sooner confirmed in office by the

~^^1^^ Emmet J. Hughes, The Ordeal of Power. A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years, Atheneum, New York, 1963, pp. 134-135.

° Charles E. Alexander, Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1961, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1975, pp. 32-33.

~^^3^^ R. Alton Lee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Soldier and Statesman, Nelson-Hall Publishers, Chicago, 1981, p. 171.

Senate, asked the FBI to subject him to a "loyalty check". In the spring of 1953, when McCarthyites raised a commotion in the Senate trying to foil Charles Bohlen's appointment as ambassador to the USSR (they charged he was `` undependable'' because someone who claimed he "possessed a sixth sense which could detect the presence of moral turpitude in individuals" had said Bohlen "had a tendency toward immorality". Dulles would not drive to Capitol Hill in the same car with him, much less let press photographers snap them together. "Dulles was thinking of the possibility that I might be turned down by the Senate," Bohlen recalled years later, "and he did not wish to be associated, even in a picture, with so reprehensible a character as I.''^^1^^ Such, we see, are the morals that reign in US "high society''.

The highly educated John Foster Dulles liked to discourse about the conceptions of British historian Arnold Toynbee. In select society he stood out as a man of wit and knowledge. But since the Eisenhower administration had won the presidential race on the wave of anti-intellectualism, Dulles saw fit to adjust himself accordingly. When he spoke to a mass audience, writes a historian, "he was careful to avoid complex language and even cleansed his speech drafts of foreign words and phrases, particularly those in Latin. He felt they tended to reduce the impact of his message and would make vast segments of his audience doubt his sincerity. So while the nation's intellectuals sneered, Dulles found compensation in the glowing responses from the hinterlands.''

It was thought then that the trio of John Foster Dulles, his younger brother Allen Dulles who took command of the CIA in February 1953, and their sister who was in charge of the German office in the State Department, was the maker of US foreign policy. Indeed, John Foster Dulles's critics regarded him as Eisenhower's Rasputin.^^2^^ Probably because of their appearance, comparing Eisenhower's good-natured, smiling visage to that of the sombre, close-lipped Secretary of State. For Eisenhower was not the kind of man who would do anyone else's bidding, not even that of Dulles. Having risen from the ranks,

~^^1^^ Bohlen, Witness to History, pp. 329, 324.

^^2^^ H. Parment, "Power and Reality: John Foster Dulles and Political Diplomacy" in Makers of American Diplomacy, pp. 597, 589.

the general had the highest regard for his new post and comported himself as desired by the masters of the country, with whom the President maintained the best of relations. He knew the rules of the game and postured before the public as a benign old man who had been compelled, much against his will, to take on the affairs of state. The notorious secrecy that was the lifeblood of military order, helped him play his role brilliantly. To this day, the fifties in America are associated with Ike's bright smile.

George Kennan, who had ample opportunities to observe Ike at close distance, commented in his memoirs:

``Dwight Eisenhower, endowed with personal qualities that were in many respects almost the exact opposite of those of his Secretary of State, was a more difficult man to understand. He was in fact, and remains in the light of history, one of the most enigmatic figures of American public life.. .

``There was a tendency in some quarters to view Dwight Eisenhower as an intellectually and politically superficial person. . . The impression was quite erroneous. He was actually a man of keen political intelligence and penetration, particularly when it came to foreign affairs. Whether he used this understanding effectively is another question; but he had it. When he spoke of such matters seriously and in a protected official circle, insights of a high order flashed out time after time through the curious military gobbledygook in which he was accustomed both to expressing and to concealing his thoughts. In grasp of world realities he was clearly head and shoulders (this required, admittedly, no very great elevation) above the other members of his cabinet and official circle, with the possible exception of Foster Dalles, and even here he was in no wise inferior.''^^1^^

Today, the American academic community has gained fresh insight. In 1981, looking back at Eisenhower's presidency, Time magazine reported: " 'He merely has to smile at you,' admitted crusty Field Marshal Montgomery, 'and you trust him at once. . .' Behind the aging Huckleberry Finn face was as shrewd and calculating a mind as has ever won a war or run a country. Dwight David Eisenhower . . . could have given a few lessons in statecraft to Machiavelli.''^^2^^

~^^1^^ Kennan, Memoirs, Vol. II, pp. 185-186. * Time, August 3, 1981, p. 22.

And the year before, Princeton political scientist Fred Greenstein described Eisenhower's methods of government as " hidden-hand leadership",^^1^^ which enabled Ike to observe the rules of polite behavior and frigid impartiality in the drive for the earliest possible worldwide elimination of communism.

The Eisenhower administration, in fact, stepped up the cold war. Nor did it make any secret of this. On the contrary, it swelled with pride. That was how it happened that "while John Foster Dulles was running the State Department, and therefore dealing with friendly governments, his brother Allen was running the CIA, which he once described as a State Department for dealing with unfriendly governments.''^^2^^ Looking back at the euphoria which accompanied the bid to "roll back" communism, English historians barely suppressed a sneer. "Before taking office [Dulles] said: 'We can be confident that within two, five or ten years substantial parts of the present captive world can peacefully regain national independence'," wrote Mooney and Brown. "Such optimism from such an authoritative source was bound to have an impact in Eastern Europe and the USSR, especially when Dulles talked about `liberalism' after the 1952 elections. Early in 1953 he declared on TV: 'To all those suffering under communist slavery . . . you can count on us.' "^^3^^

Whence all this optimism? Dulles regarded socialism as the negation of human nature (as, of course, conceived by a Wall Street lawyer). To politically blind men, of whom he was one, it seemed that the ``captive'' nations thought as they did. They were sure that the moment the "captive nations" saw the Good that was the USA, they would seize upon Dulles's gospel. For Dulles the doctrine of ``liberation'' or "rolling back commuriism" was wholly manageable, and he was certain therefore that the objectives set by Washington could be attained chiefly through the efforts of the ``captive'' nations, and, of course, the CIA. This paranoia concept fed on the systematic misinformation dispensed by the American intelligence agencies. Knowing what their bosses most wanted to hear, CIA operatives

~^^1^^ L. Morrow, "Dreams of the Eisenhower Years" in Time, July 28, 1980, p. 77.

^! Bowart, Operation Mind Control, p. 139.

~^^1^^ Mooney, Brown, From Truman to Carter, p. 75.

made the wish father to the thought and dutifully reported allround disaffection in the socialist countries.

The danger of this delusion could not be ignored, for on its strength Washington was producing plans that were each foolhardier than the next. The Soviet Union and its allies were compelled to acquaint the project-makers with the true state of affairs. One such affair was the WIN case. Beginning in 1947, the CIA was busy setting up an underground in Poland. It supported an organization that called itself WIN, supplying it with large batches of arms, radio appliances, money, and so on. In fact, however, WIN was the brainchild of competent Polish government agencies. A CIA historian informs us that the Soviets had decided "to teach the CIA a lesson in caution". He amplified: "The demands of WIN inside grew steadily, and the CIA attempted to meet them, balking only at a request for an air drop of an American general, who, WIN claimed, would galvanize the growing Polish resistance. .. The plan worked. So well, in fact, that the entire operation had been financed with American gold; the Soviets may even have come out of the deal with a cash profit. The lesson was bitter and well learned.''^^1^^

It was certainly a bitter lesson, for on December 27 and 28, 1952 Radio Warsaw announced the end of the operation, and did so with a sparkling display of humor. Harry Rositzke surmises in his book, "It is also possible that the Russians were concerned that President Eisenhower might overestimate the armed potential of the satellite countries in his professed policy of `liberation'.''

The 100,000-strong "rebel army" in Poland, which the US had been supplying through WIN, had to be written off as a dead loss. But this did not persuade the chiefs of the psychological war to abandon the struggle.

The Polish fiasco only redoubled their subversive energies, though the accents were slightly altered. From early 1953 on, the broadcasts of CIA radio station Free Europe and Liberation (later renamed Radio Liberty) took on a distinctly incendiary tone. Rositzke writes: "The early themes were designed to intensify the passive resistance of the peoples, to undermine

the Eastern regimes by weakening the control of the Communist parties, and to hold out the hope for ultimate liberation. Secretary of State Dulles expressed the American purpose most succinctly during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: '. . .We shall never have a secure peace or a happy world so long as Soviet communism dominates one third of all the peoples. . . If our only policy is to stay where we are, we will be driven back. It is only by keeping alive the hope of liberation. .. that will end this terrible peril. . . But all of this can be done and must be done in ways which will not provoke a general war. . . Those who do not believe that results can be accomplished by moral pressures, by the weight of propaganda, just do not know what they are talking about.'^IJ1

The Eisenhower cabinet set about forging the "deadly weapon" that would dispose of communism, that is, composing a Congress resolution on the ``captive'' nations. Their sense of humor must have failed them then or they were simply incapable of seeing themselves from the side. Eisenhower summoned Congress leaders to the White House several times to discuss the document. A few diehard Republicans wanted it to include a denunciation of Roosevelt's and Truman's ``betrayal'', and examined the text closely for any trace of the "Trojan horse of containment". Minority leader Senator Lyndon Johnson said on behalf of his Democrat colleagues that they, too, ``grieved'' over the plight of the ``captive'' nations but would not tolerate censure of their party's policy. So, the champions of ``liberation'' became involved in a squabble the outcome of which no one could predict.

On March 5, 1953, Stalin died. John Foster Dulles summoned Charles Bohlen, the US ambassador in Moscow, and said, among other things, that he expected "a bloody struggle for power that might lead to the overthrow of the Soviet regime". The astonished ambassador said he saw no indication of this. Dulles, so Bohlen later related, took Stalin's Problems of Leninism which lay open on his desk, and read passages he had marked off. Bohlen shrugged his shoulders, but Dulles would not budge.^^2^^ At about the same time, George Kennan timidl)

~^^1^^ Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations, p. 171, 156, 157. ^! Bohleu, Witness to History, p. 356.

~^^1^^ Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, pp. 51-52.

ridiculed the rosy hopes of ``liberation''. Dulles suggested that he take a job with the CIA. When Kennan refused, he was fired from the diplomatic service.

At his June 17, 1953 press-conference, Eisenhower severely queried the assembled journalists: "Why shouldn't we, today, know what is going on?. . . How many of you have read Stalin's Problems of Leninism? How many of you have really studied Karl Marx and looked at the evolution of Marxian theory down to the present application?''

The newsmen had no reply. At another press conference, on November 11, 1953, Eisenhower chided them: "Anyone who doesn't recognize that the great struggle of our time is an ideological one . . . [is] not looking this generation squarely in the face.''^^1^^

John Foster Dulles made clear that he was well informed. ``I've done a great deal of reading on communist ideology," he boasted. "This resulted in my understanding of the aims of international communism and produced a steadfast American policy in meeting that threat.''^^2^^ And this, naturally, in pursuance of what the President had planned in the context of psychological warfare, "from the singing of a beautiful hymn up to the most extraordinary kind of physical sabotage".^^3^^ I cannot honestly recall any hymns, but as to physical sabotage, the examples of that are many.

Dulles's first action took place in June 1953, when US intelligence agencies provoked disorders in Berlin. G. D. Jackson, an OSS veteran whom Eisenhower had appointed special presidential aide on psychological warfare, said: "the Berlin riots were a God-given opportunity, .... and if a lot of people had been killed as a result, well ... so what? 'The blood of martyrs' . . .would be the very thing to discredit the Soviets around the world."' The CIA's Berlin chief, Henry Heckscher, asked Allen Dulles for permission to distribute arms to the rioters. This wasn't done because the rioters took to their heels the moment law-enforcement units appeared on the scene.

~^^1^^ Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1960, pp. 431, 432, 760.

^^1^^ Andrew H. Berding, Dulles on Diplomacy, Van Nostrand, Princeton (New Jersey), 1965, pp. 30-31.

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . . , p. 155.

' Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, p. 56.

In the autumn of 1953 a White House palaver summed up the none too impressive first results of ``liberation''. But the discussion led to the resolve of continuing in the same spirit---- fomenting political troubles in Soviet territory, resorting to economic sanctions, blockading the Black Sea, and so on. Nelson Rockefeller, who had become one of the President's intimates, backed the psychological warfare actions to the hilt. He said he was sure splendid results would accrue. But the professionals, especially those who had served with the OSS, did not conceal their skepticism. By and large, however, the palaver ended on an optimistic note: it was all a question of time. By creating snags in the building of socialism, subversive activity would sooner or later nullify the power of attraction of socialist ideas.

But the chosen mode of operations would succeed only if the rival system, capitalism, demonstrated its viability. Eisenhower felt that his predecessor had gone too far in the country's militarization. A professional soldier, he knew perfectly well that there was no Soviet war threat. Not the USSR but the USA was preparing for war, and Washington could therefore easily determine the requisite resources, while also shifting part of the burden to its allies. Eisenhower believed that excessive military spending in peacetime was likely to erode United States power, which consisted not only of armed force. It appears likely that this was not exclusively his own thinking but the collective opinion of the millionaires' cabinet. Possibly, his contribution was confined to backing this concept by military arguments which, of course, none would question.

The concept reposed on a general assessment of the prospects of the struggle against the USSR, and roughly amounted to the following:

``The leaders of the Eisenhower administration perceived a danger to American security in the very plans of the Truman administration to go on enhancing American military superiority. The leaders of the new Republican administration were largely fiscally conservative businessmen, whose economic acumen the new President admired and whose cautious attitudes toward federal spending and indebtedness he shared. These leaders believed that the American contest with Communism was as much an economic as a military and diplomatic one.

11---796

They believed that it was part of the Communist design that if America could not be conquered in war, the United States should be driven to strain its economy to eventual collapse by being goaded into excessive military spending over an indefinite period of time. They feared in particular the inflation which accompanied Korean War military spending as a dangerous symptom of the economic overstrain which the military contest with the Soviets might induce.''^^1^^

President Eisenhower knew this and determined the rate and extent of the US arms buildup. Nor did he encounter much opposition in the beginning. No one dared challenge America's Number One soldier. In any case, the generals and admirals, who no doubt muttered under their breaths, made no public statements during Ike's first presidency. They did not dare attack the government's political line nor question its primacy in military affairs. Eisenhower was deeply pleased with this seeming unanimity. He even wrote of this to Everett Hazlett, his lifetime friend, in August 1956:

``I patiently explain over and over again that American strength is a combination of its economic, moral and military force. If we demand too much in taxes in order to build planes and ships, we will tend to dry up the accumulations of capital that are necessary to provide jobs for the million or more new workers that we must absorb each year. Behind each worker there is an average of about $15,000 in invested capital. His job depends upon this investment at a yearly rate of no less than fifteen to twenty billions. If taxes become so burdensome that investment loses its attractiveness for capital, there will finally be nobody but the government to build the facilities. This is one form of Socialism.''

Having so bragged to his friend about his ability to contain the excessive financial demands of his military commanders, Eisenhower added: "some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could

happen to this country. . .''^^1^^ The dots that Eisenhower put after that last sentence stand for a thought which, seen a quarter of a century later, may well be described as prophetic.

Many a superficial person branded Eisenhower an `` appeaser'' because, in pursuance of the afore-mentioned concept, he often spoke out in favor of peace. To be sure, he never referred to what was then still considered an unmentionable topic: the extension of covert psychological warfare operations. The President's ``peaceful'' declarations were an element of the general goal of inflicting defeat on the Soviet Union. The strategic concept of Eisenhower's cabinet, therefore, had a carefully concealed "second bottom". The escalation of psychological warfare in the bid to erode the socialist countries was accompanied by efforts to invigorate the social and economic structure of the United States and the West. The United States was leading with the left, and held its right cocked to deliver a knock-out. Seeking to catch the adversary off balance, it hoped it could land a devastating blow with the left, but was also ready to settle the issue with the right, US military power.

In Eisenhower's time, war preparations were confined to building up enough power for crushing the Soviet Union. The "massive retaliation" doctrine of that time meant that the United States was keeping its nuclear potential and delivery vehicles (strategic aviation) ready for action, while hoping that ground armies would be supplied by America's allies. This doctrine was consonant with "balance of power" principles and provided for the maximum fire power at tolerable outlays that would not affect the "American life style". The armaments of America's NATO allies kept growing too. The Federal Republic of Germany and Japan were rearming. Conventional US armed forces were slightly reduced. We don't need so many bottle washers and table waiters, was how Eisenhower referred to the inflated army staffs.

The President saw the enhanced US nuclear force as the means for fighting a preventive war against the USSR. On September 8, 1953, he wrote to John Foster Dulles: "We would have to be constantly ready, on an instantaneous basis, to inflict greater loss upon the enemy that he could reasonably hope

~^^1^^ Weigley, The American Way of War, p. 400.

Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, pp. 714-715.

11*

to inflict upon us. This would be a deterrent---but if the contest to maintain this relative position should have to continue indefinitely, the cost would either drive us to war---or into some form of dictatorial government. In such circumstances, we would be forced to consider whether or not our duty to future generations did not require us to initiate war at the most propitious moment that we could designate.''^^1^^

Yet for your information, ``Ike'' Eisenhower said at a pressconference a year hence that "a preventive war ... is an impossibility today. . . Frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.''

On October 30, 1953, Eisenhower confirmed NSC-162/2, a directive which rejected the idea that even a conflict on the scale of the Korean war could be waged without resort to nuclear weapons. From then on, the criterion for the use of nuclear weapons was military necessity. Addressing military industrialists in New York, General Alfred M. Gruenther, NATO Supreme Commander, said on September 29, 1954 that "simply because atomic bombs do create casualties---and very heavy casualties against women and children---is no reason why we should become sentimental over . . . what weapons must be used".^^2^^ The US arsenal was reinforced with ``tactical'' nuclear weapons, that is, nuclear warheads for large-caliber artillery shells.^^3^^

The main instrument of "massive retaliation" was America's strategic aviation. Out of the 137 USAF air wings, 54 were strategic bomber wings. In the latter half of 1953, B-52 bombers had been put into serial production. The rearming of the US strategic air force went on at crash rates, for in August 1953 the Soviet Union had developed the thermonuclear bomb. This new, brilliant breakthrough of Soviet science and technology came as a bolt out of the blue for the United States.

America was not ahead. Who was to blame? On November 7, 1953, the FBI received a letter from William Borden, former executive secretary of the Joint Congressional Committee on

Atomic Energy, who wrote, "more probably than not J. Robert Oppenheimer is an agent of the Soviet Union". The FBI file on Oppenheimer was by then 4 feet 6 inches high. The Bureau knew perfectly well that like any honest intellectual who had lived through the 1930s and the war, Oppenheimer had witnessed the growth and elimination of the fascist threat, and was bound to have democratic or, if you like, left, convictions. During the war, indeed, he expressed sympathy for communism, and had close friends among members of the Communist Party. But the fact remained that Oppenheimer had stood at the head of the Los Alamos laboratories where the atomic bomb was created in 1945. The FBI had no evidence against the physicist to charge him with passing on military secrets. All the same the denunciation had its effect. At the end of 1953, Eisenhower withdrew Dr. Oppenheimer's security clearance, and motivated this by saying that the physicist had "worked tirelessly ... to retard the United States H-bomb program''.

Oppenheimer demanded an inquiry.

On April 13, 1954, he faced a government commission which questioned him in a most impertinent manner. The commission sat behind closed doors, and its report of nearly 1,000 pages was strictly censored before being published. The `` espionage'' charge was naturally dropped. But Oppenheimer refused to dissociate himself from friends who were thought to be `` suspicious''. Whereupon the commission confirmed the withdrawal of his security clearance for, it said, "we find his conduct in the hydrogen bomb program sufficiently disturbing as to raise a doubt as to whether his future participation, if characterized by the same attitudes . . . would be clearly consistent with the best interests of security".^^1^^ The physicist's attempts to challenge this ruling yielded no results.

The Oppenheimer case was part of the victory of those who were determined to wage war with multi-megaton bombs, and therefore insisted on the unrestricted development of thermonuclear weapons. The plans were nursed chiefly in the Livermore Radiation Laboratory, where physicist Edward Teller was cock of the walk. He and his followers vilified Oppenheimer

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment.. ., pp. 148, 149. * The Department of State Bulletin, October 18, 1954, p. 564. ~^^3^^ Glen Herald Snyder, Deterrence and Defense. Toward a Theory of National Security, Princeton University Press, 1961, pp. 436-440.

* Robert J. Donovan, Eisenhower: The Inside Story, Harper, New York, 1956, pp. 294, 295, 296.

who had once, recalling Hiroshima, said bitterly: "We did the devil's work.''^^1^^ That their line was a crash course to disaster for all humanity did not worry the Tellerites in the least. Why should it? They were backed by both the White House and the Pentagon, and for the understandable reason that their labors over the "devil's work", the H-bomb, were shifting the " massive retaliation" strategy from dreamland to the realm of thermonuclear war preparations.

The classic definition of "massive retaliation" belongs to John Foster Dulles. Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on January 12, 1954 he said: "This 'long time' factor is of critical importance. The Soviet Communists are planning for what they call 'an entire historical era', and we should do the same. They seek, through many types of maneuvers, gradually to divide and weaken the free nations by overextending them in efforts which are 'beyond their strength, so that they came to practical bankruptcy'. Then . . . 'our victory is assured.' . . .The total cost of our security efforts, at home and abroad, was over $50 billion per annum, and involved, for 1953, a projected budgetary deficit of $9 billion; and $11 billion for 1954. This was on top of taxes comparable to wartime taxes; and the dollar was depreciating in effective value. . . This could not be continued for long without grave budgetary, economic, and social consequences.''

John Foster Dulles referred to the aims of the new strategy (evidently on behalf of the President and his advisers, as represented by the National Security Council): "The basic decision was to depend primarily upon a great capacity to retaliate, instantly, by means and at places of our choosing. Now the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff can shape our military establishment to fit what is our policy, instead of having to try to be ready to meet the enemy's many choices. That permits of a selection of military means instead of a multiplication of means. As a result, it is now possible to get, and share, more basic security at less cost.''^^2^^

A truly touching tale. The poor men in Washington had had to, with heavy hearts, bring military strategy ``up-to-date'' because, however unwillingly, the United States was compelled to defend itself by means of thermonuclear bombs. And the earnest that the strategy of "massive retaliation" was purely defensive, the earnest of the New Look, was the administration's concern for the survival of the American "way of life". True, military expenditures did decline: instead of the annual 50 billion dollars under Truman, they went down to 40.3 billion in 1954, to 35.5 billion in 1955, and 35.8 billion in 1956.

These figures were cited as proof of Eisenhower's and, indeed, the whole Republican Party's peaceable designs. Very impressive. No less so than the figures showing that from 1900 until Eisenhower's assumption of office there were 1,628,000 American war casualties in the 28 years that the Democrats were in power and none in the 24 years that the Republicans ruled the country. The party's reputation thus gave the " massive retaliation" doctrine an abstract complexion. Certainly, it stood for Armageddon. But would Armageddon ever come? In any case, it was easy enough to portray the Republican's New Look as an approach to averting nuclear war. And the Eisenhower administration did so consistently. Many people believed it. In fact, it was a big lie.

When the doctrine of "massive retaliation" collapsed at the end of the 1950s for reasons beyond Washington's control, it fell to the lot of Bernard Brodie, an astute American theorist, to explain its essential meaning. As far back as 1941, with a book entitled Sea Power in the Machine Age, he earned the reputation of a man of keen insight. He examined current problems in the historical context, and did so most vividly in a 1946 book, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order. Associated with the Rand Corporation, which is closely connected with the US Air Force, Brodie must certainly have had some relation to the development of US military strategy.

In his Strategy in the Missile Age, which he wrote in 1959, Brodie explained that the "massive retaliation" strategy was nothing but a rehash of the old preventive war concept. The logic of its authors, Brodie found, was that in response to some hypothetical action of the ``enemy'' somewhere on the periphery where that action did not imperil US "national interests",

~^^1^^ Robert Jungk, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns; A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, Harcourt Brace, New York, 1958, p. 324.

~^^1^^ The Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 761, January 25, 1954, pp. 107-108.

Washington would hit back, would launch a preventive war. The only difference, Brodie stressed, was that now the US was waiting for an excuse, .a provocation. "If we were really bent on preventive war," Brodie wrote, "it would probably be better, at least much safer, to do it at a time entirely of our own choosing, if we could, so that our preparations could lie perfected with a view to achieving the absolutely essential surprise.''

That this was so, is proved by Albert J. Wohlstetter, who showed that the "preparations and concepts for the use of our retaliatory force seem always to be geared to the tacit assumption that that force will be essentially intact and unimpaired at the moment it goes into action. This situation can reflect nothing other than an abiding conviction that the enemy will not really succeed in surprising us---that it is we who will get the jump on him, and not the other way around.''^^1^^

This conclusion was reached at the height of a discussion among US strategists, not in some popular treatise. Veteran researcher Brodie recalled the faults of the past and urged the present-day novices to spot the same old aggressive ploys in the New Look policy. He was no moralist. He merely voiced his pessimism as to the future of the world.

to participate in a foul psychological warfare operation. A campaign in defense of the victims of a monstrous provocation was under way all over the world. More than 200,000 letters were received by the White House in the first six months of 1953 demanding clemency for the Rosenbergs. Pope Pius XII, too, pleaded for their lives. But Eisenhower would not budge.

The ``apes'' were in ecstasies. They concluded that the general was one of them. Bonfires were lit of books they did not like, and some McCarthyites even thought they were doing it to glorify Eisenhower. On June 14 he came to Dartmouth College to receive an honorary degree. The college president extolled him as a "great leader". Eisenhower thanked him for the honors he had been accorded, and said: ``Don't join the bookburners. Don't think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they have ever existed. Don't be afraid to go to the library and read every book, as long as that document does not offend our own ideas of decency---that should be the only censorship. How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, and why it has such an appeal for men.''^^1^^

Five days after the President spoke these words, on June 19, 1953, the Rosenbergs were electrocuted. That day young thugs, elated over this miscarriage of justice, attacked demonstrators protesting the executions outside the White House.

By Executive Order 10 450 Eisenhower introduced a new loyalty check program. Henceforth, civil servants would retain their jobs only if this "clearly conformed with the interests of national security". The criteria established under Truman had been more narrow. By mid-1954, as many as 6,926 people were fired, with only a few of them being qualified as ``subversives''. Chiefly, they were people who had a mind of their own. VicePresident Nixon, of course, thought differently: "Thousands of Communists, fellow travellers, and security risks have been thrown out," he cackled.^^2^^ Altogether some ten million people were put through the "security clearance" wringer. And, oh, how many personal tragedies this figure concealed!

Though it did not seem that the massive "security risks" persecution launched by the Eisenhower administration could be

Life Under Ike

Eisenhower wrote: "On my desk, when I took office, lay a document which was to lead to much controversy throughout the spring of 1953. Submitted to the Department of Justice but not acted upon in the final weeks of the Truman administration, it was an appeal for executive clemency in the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who, convicted of espionage against the United States, were under sentence of death.''^^2^^

Passed nearly two years before, the sentence had not been carried into effect because the US secret services had not lost the hope of inducing the Rosenbergs to buy life by agreeing

~^^1^^ Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, Princeton University Press, 1965, pp. 20, 257.

^! Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-1956, p. 279.

Pusey, Eisenhower, the President, p. 266. Alexander, Holding the Line. . ., p. 52.

rivalled, McCarthy did the impossible. Put at the head of a Senate subcommittee, he turned it into a tribunal of the inquisition. To be on McCarthy's team the elite considered a great honor. The ambitious Joseph Kennedy, multimillionaire and father, wanted to see his sons at the head of the United States. One of them, John F. Kennedy, was already launched on a political career, having been elected to the Senate in 1952. Twenty-seven-year-old Robert Kennedy, his brother, was now due to start on a career of his own. His father, who took part in financing McCarthy's re-election to the Senate, reminded the latter of services rendered and asked him to find Robert a job on his subcommittee. John Kennedy was against this, but, as Theodore C. Sorensen writes in his book "his reasons were political, not ideological".^^1^^ McCarthy asked his aides to see how much the Kennedys had contributed to his campaign. As a result, Robert Kennedy had to be content with the job of aide to Roy Cohn, chief counsel of the subcommittee.

In mid-1953 he resigned, but reappeared on the subcommittee six months later as counsel for the Democratic minority. Understandably so, because McCarthy's sinister star was rising, and he was described as the second man in the United States after the President. In January 1954, when Robert returned to the subcommittee, the Gallup Poll showed that fewer than three of every ten Americans disapproved of McCarthy. This reflected the mood of the man in the street, notoriously ignorant in matters of politics. But what about McCarthy's colleagues in the Senate? They thought themselves no worse than the President. But all of them, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and with the sole exception of J. William Fulbright, curried favor with McCarthy and voted obediently for allocations to his subcommittee.

In 1953 and until the middle of 1954 McCarthy held 17 public ``investigations''. Those at whom his finger was pointed lost their jobs, were persecuted. Even John Foster Dulles bowed to his wishes and dismissed members of the diplomatic service he proscribed. McCarthy suffered his first setback when

he and his cronies attacked the CIA. McCarthy anticipated good hunting: ex-operatives dismissed for various reasons informed McCarthyites that the CIA, which supported left organizations (to infiltrate them) was inundated by Communists. Allen Dulles learned that the files of McCarthy's subcommittee bulged with material deleterious to his agency. He told Eisenhower the CIA would not submit to any public investigation. According to one version, which is probably true, the President replied: "Fine, but rely on yourself." Allen Dulles summoned 600 CIA executives and ordered them to ignore McCarthy's subcommittee. He promised the CIA would protect all its operatives against McCarthy's dirty tricks, and would dismiss anyone who paid the least obeisance to the McCarthyites. He then saw McCarthy and warned him to keep his hands off. True, in his ranting speeches McCarthy continued to stigmatize the CIA, but did it less often, and steered clear of any `` investigation''. The CIA was the only major US agency that was too big for McCarthy to demoralize.

Repulsed by the CIA, McCarthy did not lay down his arms. He attacked the Pentagon, evidently on the advice of his aides, Cohn and Schine. The two upstarts---both 26 years old at the time---had already inspired fear among Washington bureaucrats. especially in the State Department. Cohn, at least, was a lawyer, while Schine, the scion of a multimillionaire, was Chief Counsel of the Senate subcommittee on psychological warfare purely by reason of his fortune. And since he worked for McCarthy without drawing any pay, his idealism was never questioned. This ranting duo of Cohn and Schine felt they were invulnerable and combined their safaris against ``reds'' with unsavory escapades and drinking bouts. One day, however, Schine was pulled up in his tracks by the Pentagon, probably unintentionally: he was one of 300,000 young men who were being drafted that year.

The draftee said he was willing to serve his country in the capacity of an officer, but the army let him know that commissions had to be earned. A row ensued, with Cohn stepping into the fray on the side of his friend. In the end, however, the army won: Schine was made a private. Despite the privileges that were accorded to Schine (for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defense Secretary took an interest in his case), Cohn

~^^1^^ Theodore C. Sorensen, The Kennedy Legacy, Macmillan, New York, 1969, p. 41.

decided to avenge his friend and called in McCarthy. It did not take long to find a pretext: Irving Peress, a dentist who had been drafted in 1952, had once been a member of one of the organizations listed as subversive by the Department oi Justice. Eighteen months later the man had left the service in the rank of major. Who had promoted Peress? Why had he not been tried? Those were the questions McCarthy asked the Pentagon.

One investigation followed another. Some Senate committee chairmen raised their arms in horror. The time had come to look into McCarthy's record. Lyndon Johnson, who had his own irons in the fire, saw to it that the hearings would be public. They were witnessed by 20 million televiewers. From April 22 till June 17, McCarthy postured before the cameras, condemning Communists who had gathered under the banners of the valorous US Army. Passions ran high. Cohn and Robert Kennedy practically came to blows, but were pulled apart. In a 34-page memo, the Pentagon listed the misdeeds of private Schine, who spurned military discipline. The 7,400 pages of the ``hearings'' were filled with positive twaddle. In the end, the subcommittee unanimously voted against McCarthy. McCarthy and Cohn resigned.

Joe McCarthy paid a high price for his antics before the TV cameras: only 36 per cent stayed with him in the Gallup Poll taken in August. Flanders sumbitted a resolution to the Senate condemning McCarthy's behavior. The debate continued, but the 1954 elections to Congress ended in a setback for the Republicans: the Democrats won a majority in both the House and the Senate. That McCarthy had contributed to this outcome was more than clear. On December 2, 1954, the Senate censured him with 67 against 22 votes for vilifying Senators. Not a word was said in the resolution of the substance of the case. McCarthy drank himself to death, breathing his last on May 2, 1957. Certainly, he had gone too far. But dead he was still useful, and was the first Senator after William E. Borah (who died in 1940) to be given a state funeral.

Jacob K. Javits declared: "The death of so young a Senator of such strong convictions... is truly sad. It should be our hope and aim that in the national interest the warnings of Communist subtlety and duplicity uttered by Senator McCarthy will

long survive the controversy about his methods of investigation.''

Robert Kennedy, who had spoken to McCarthy a few days before his death, made the following entry in his diary: "Very upsetting for me ... I dismissed the office for the day. It was all very difficult for me as I feel that I have lost an important part of my life---even though it is in the past.''^^1^^

Ten years later, asked what he could have had in common with McCarthy, Robert Kennedy said he had been under the misapprehension that there was a serious internal threat to the USA and McCarthy had been the only one who was doing anything about it.^^2^^

Those on Capitol Hill had nearly all been under the same ``misapprehension'' in the early half of the 1950s. Dwight Macdonald, one of the more level-headed American publicists, had these caustic words to say about McCarthy: "Like Gogol's Chichikov, McCarthy is a dealer in dead souls. .. His targets are not actual, living breathing Communists but rather people who once were or may have been but were not but may be made to appear to have possibly once been Communists oi sympathizers or at any rate suspiciously `soft' on the question.''^^3^^

McCarthyism, once everything is said and done, was a preventive measure designed to write off the ideological and any other legacy of those great years of struggle against fascism and reaction, and was also, of course, meant to preclude dissidence, especially over foreign affairs. Like a steam-roller, McCarthyism crushed the shoots of the democracy that had risen during the anti-fascist struggle. And what resulted was a lifeless and bleak ``consensus'' legislatively entrenched as anticommunism by people who thought and said they were political antipodes of McCarthy.

Senator Hubert Humphrey, 43 years old, ran for a second Senate term in 1954. His master's thesis, entitled "The Political

~^^1^^ Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times, Ballantine Books, New York, 1978, p. 186.

^^1^^ American Journey: The Times of Robert Kennedy, Interviews by Jean Stein, ed. by George Plimpton, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1970, p. 50.

' Leuchtenburg, A Troubled Feast, p. 37.

Philosophy of the New Deal", says a recent biographical handbook, "was a glowing tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt's response to the Depression". He gained national attention, the handbook goes on to say, at the 1948 Democratic National Convention "with a stirring oration in favor of a strong civil rights plank, one of the most memorable convention speeches of modern times". Humphrey quickly moved into the vanguard of the Senate's liberal minority, author Manchester writes, by promoting a wide variety of social welfare, civil rights, tax reform and prolabor legislation.^^1^^

In 1954, this enlightened liberal Senator submitted a communist control bill, which was unanimously passed by the Senate, and with only two votes against. The Humphrey-Butler Act, formally an amendment to the 1950 McCarran Act, denied the CPUSA all the rights, privileges and immunities due to a political party, requiring all its members to register as " subversive elements". Attorney General Herbert Brownell recoiled in horror: the anti-constitutional act was, in effect, inapplicable, for the ``registration'' automatically implied criminal guilt. So it was not archreactionary McCarthy but ``liberal'' Humphrey who broke all records in absurdity.^^2^^ In 1956, the maximum penalty under the 1940 Smith Act was doubled to 20 years' imprisonment.

In 1955, J. Edgar Hoover warned Congress that "for each of 22,000 plus communists, there were a further ten or more fellow-travellers", and in 1957 Francis Walter, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, said there were 200,000 Communists in the USA, "the equivalent of twenty combat divisions of enemy troops".^^3^^ But the investigative agencies knew the truth. Shying clear of public attacks, the FBI started a secret war against US progressives, a war that abided by no rules or laws. While Humphrey and his colleagues thundered threats from Capitol Hill, the Federal Bureau of Investigation---as R. Cotter, a veteran political investigator, wrote more than 20 years later---launched its COINTELPRO (Co-

unter-Intelligence Program) specifically against the Communist Party and its leaders. It sent unsigned letters, spread rumors, and used other methods to implant hostility, suspicion and rivalry between various factions of the Party and its leaders. It had ways of torpedoing party meetings and conventions. The COINTELPRO activities, Cotter sums up, did much damage to the Communist Party.^^1^^

It is now an established fact that COINTELPRO contributed to the revisionism that afflicted the CPUSA in 1956 and 1957. As William Foster wrote, "Never before has any Communist Party so suicidally torn itself apart." The FBI recorded with satisfaction that by 1960 the Party's membership had dropped to a mere 5,000.

Though the CPUSA was still in the focus of the US punitive agencies, the FBI lost no time to extend COINTELPRO to other organizations and individuals that had earned official displeasure. A special study by a group of American authors says:

``The FBI COINTELPRO against the Communist Party and related organizations transformed McCarthyism into an underground operation. Under COINTELPRO, however, the FBI had even more leeway to disrupt the political activity of citizens and organizations for it could conduct its war in secret, unhindered by the Law. The FBI used press contacts to conduct campaigns to expose, discredit, and humiliate selected citizens ... to have `subversives' fired from their jobs. The bureau also recruited other organizations, such as the American Legion, to launch similar actions. The bureau brought pressure on universities and schools to have professors and teachers fired. . . Other forms of official harassment included the FBI's encouragement of local police to arrest `subversives' on any pretext. . . The FBI infiltrated organizations and disrupted them from within. Informers were instructed to fan hostilities between members and upset plans and activities. The bureau planted so-called 'snitch jackets' (false documents indicating cooperation with police) on loyal members to make it appear that they were police informers. . . The FBI conducted COINTELPRO

~^^1^^ Profiles of an Era. The Nixon jFord Years, ed. by Eleonora W. Schoenebaum, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1979, pp. 314-315. ' See Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 670. ~^^3^^ Mooney, Brown, From Truman to Carter, p. 56.

~^^1^^ R. Cotter, "Notes Toward a Definition of National Security" in The Washington Monthly, December 1975, pp. 13-14.

by breaking the laws of the United States in addition to violating its own `charter', which gave it no authority to take such actions.''^^1^^

The thousands upon thousands of FBI victims never knew where the blow that felled them came from, bringing some an untimely death from mental stress or suicide. Who to complain to, and against whom? Indulgences dispensed by the Department of Justice and benign Supreme Court rulings reflected the cryptocracy's satisfaction with the results of GOINTELPRO and similar programs. From 1955 on, the Department of Justice stopped adding to the list of ``subversive'' organizations.

In 1956-1957 the Supreme Court limited persecution under the Smith Act. Trials for "communist activity" ceased. Some of the condemned were released from prison. It is only logical to assume, however, that the country's rulers were not upset by the establishment of the John Birch Society, a league of fanatical anti-communists, in 1958. Wasn't that additional proof of the political pluralism?

All that remained was to consolidate the frontiers that McCarthy had conquered in the spiritual domain, including his doctrine of 100 per cent Americanism. His contribution to it was incontestable. "An aura of general suspicion---from which no man or woman was safe---was spread throughout the nation," writes M. Dorman, author of Witch Hunt. "All of this did not end when McCarthy died. Despite the fact that he had been personally discredited in his latter years, the era of McCarthyism continued---long after he had passed from the scene.''^^2^^ A frightened America, its rulers figured, would be happy to accept the benefits of ``consensus''. What this consensus meant for each individual was examined by US historians, sociologists and philosophers of the Eisenhower era.

Those who did well received the best of publicity in the mass media. It was discovered at the end of the 1960s, for example, that many organizations and many intellectuals were paid agents of the CIA. Who could have known?

The lofty aim of buttressing the ``consensus'' prompted Eisenhower to follow in home affairs some of the principles forged and applied in Roosevelt's time, though the Republicans never muted their criticism of "creeping socialism" (which was their name for state-sponsored social programs). The millionaire businessmen in the cabinet tried to put punch into their activity, hurling curses at the ``politicians'' of the Roosevelt and Truman eras for their lack of character. For the first time in forty years a new Department was instituted, that of Health, Education, and Welfare. It took the place of a number of administrations and agencies which had received their allocations under 67 heads. Eisenhower proudly commented that the government "was on its way to becoming a far more disciplined and efficient servant of the ever-- increasing number of American people".^^1^^ By the end of his presidency, up to 90 per cent of the population came under one or another of the many welfare laws. In 1956, the minimum hourly wage was raised from 75 cents to $1.00. Eisenhower commented: "The banishing of destitution and cushioning the shock of personal disaster on the individual are proper concern of all levels of government.''^^2^^

But certainly not for all individuals. By 1960, as many as 40 million lived below the established poverty line (annual earnings of $3,000 for a family of four), and another 39 million on the edge of that line. This amounted to 40 per cent of the country's population. The Afro-Americans' situation belied all propaganda cliches. The US elite was aware that racial discrimination in the United States was doing it untold harm in the developing countries. In 1954, the Supreme Court desegregated public schools, but the enforcement of the ruling called for a long struggle in the southern states. In fact, the struggle augured lots of trouble, making Eisenhower confess to one of his aides: "I personally think the decision was wrong.''^^3^^

The court, the President assumed, had been in too much of

~^^1^^ Morton H. Halperin, Jerry J. Berman, Robert L. Borosage, Christine M. Harwich, The Lawless State, Penguin Books, New York, 1976, pp. 113-114.

' Dorman, Witch Hunt, p. 217.

~^^1^^ Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, 1953-1956, p. 178.

~^^2^^ Christine Bolt, A History of the U.S.A., Macmillan, New York, 1974, p. 498.

~^^1^^ Arthur Larson, Eisenhower: The President Nobody Knew, Leslie Frewin, New York, 1968, pp. 137-138.

12-796

a hurry. The American blacks, on the other hand, were angry because the authorities had taken too long. They rose up against the racists, were attacked and beaten, and were jailed. In 1956, a 25-year-old black minister, Martin Luther King, headed an 11-month boycott of a bus company in Montgomery, Alabama, for its segregation policy. A follower of Mahatma Gandhi, King came out for ``non-violence'' in the struggle for civil rights. He won, but along with dozens of his supporters landed in jail.

To use Walt Rostow's expression, the United States was becoming a "consumer society". With an annual 2.9 per cent increase of the gross national product (twice interrupted by crises) in the 1950s, the ten-year increase amounted to 51 per cent. At the source of this process were the military orders in pursuance of directive NSG-68, originally for the conduct of the Korean war. The Pentagon opened up the market for the electronic industry, large aircraft plants were built on the West Coast, and so on. The decline in military expenditure after 1953 was compensated by the rising needs of the "consumer society", with everyone rushing to buy consumer durables, often on the installment plan. The removal of the well-to-do to suburbia, which increased abruptly in the fifties (of the 13 million homes built in the ten years before 1958, 85 per cent were built there), created a stable demand. Vacuum cleaners, washing machines and other power-driven domestic appliances tripled power consumption within ten years. Meanwhile, the poor remained in the cities, the tax revenue of the municipalities declined, and a "city crisis" loomed on the horizon.

The average figures yielded a staggering picture: in 1929 the upper 10 per cent of the population accounted for 39 per cent of total incomes, the next 40 per cent for an equal amount, while the remaining half of the country's population pocketed as little as 22 per cent. In 1945 this relationship was 29, 49, and 22 per cent! By 1959, after all the talk about a "welfare society", the relation was 29, 48, and 23 per cent! What US society had achieved under Franklin Delano Roosevelt was securely tied down. "The redistribution of wealth, then, such as it was," writes Godfrey Hodgson referring to the study of US historian Gabriel Kolko, "seems to have been

Over by 1945. And it was a redistribution not from the rich to the poor, but from the very best off to the next best off. The second and third tenths of the income scale at that time would have included some executives, managers, professionals, some higher-paid clerical workers, and the very best-paid craft and industrial workers in the strongest unions. A shift of 10 per cent of the national income in their direction scarcely constituted either the abolition of the proletariat or the coming of the universal middle class. Yet, by a kind of intellectual parallax error, that was how it was seen. . .

``Confident to the verge of complacency about the perfectibility of American society, anxious to the point of paranoia about the threat of communism---those were the two faces of the consensus mood.''^^1^^

In 1956, the United States crossed a frontier: the number of "white collars" topped that of "blue collars". And among those listed as "white collars", John Galbraith pointed out, it was "unquestionably more rewarding, in purely pecuniary terms, to be a speculator or a prostitute than a teacher, preacher or policeman". Edmund Wilson, a philosophy-minded publicist, amplified: "Production, consumption and profit have come to play the role that religion played in our grandfather's generation." The irate Walter Lippmann cursed them as "new barbarians". But Galbraith summed the thing up as follows: "These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability.''^^2^^ The Americans of the 1950s, those who had attained ``prosperity'' and those still looking forward to it, came to believe that there was no end to it and that life was subject exclusively to quantitative changes, and this, too, in terms of more commodities and more services.

And so, by words and deeds, humanity was being invited to follow the example of the United States (best of all, bearing jeans irrespective of nationality and sex), to imitate the American "way of life", and above all the ``consensus''.

~^^1^^ Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time, Vintage Books, New York, 1978, pp. 85-86, 75.

' Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 776-777.

12*

The Intoxicating Effects of Psychological Warfare

Those cloudless and irretrievable "unforgettable fifties" were lit up by Ike's happy smile. Eisenhower recalled them warmly in his memoirs, backing up a beautiful legend. True, for the sake of harmony some nations had had to eliminate bad men who had no business being in power. Indeed, if we are to believe the ever smiling President, this was the case, among others, in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). The Mossadegh government in Iran and the Arbenz government in Guatemala had the temerity of nationalizing foreign property, including US. Eisenhower had no doubt that ``Communists'' stood behind both of them. Hence, in Iran, he wrote: " suddenly and dramatically, the opposition to Mossadegh and the Communists---by those loyal to the Shah---began to work. The Iranian Army turned against officers whom Mossadegh had installed. .. The next day Mossadegh. . . surrendered. . . Throughout this crisis the United States government had done everything it possibly could to back up the Shah. Indeed, some reports from observers on the spot in Teheran, during the critical days sounded more like a dime novel than historical fact. On the Shah's triumphant return, I cabled him ... my congratulations.''

In Guatemala, on the other hand, as Eisenhower pointed out, "The major factor in the successful outcome was the disaffection of the Guatemalan armed forces and the population as a whole with the tyrannical regime of Arbenz... It gave the regular armed forces an excuse to take action in their own hands to throw out Arbenz. . . 'Now the future of Guatemala,' Foster Dulles said in a nationwide broadcast on June 30, 'lies at the disposal of the Guatemalan people themselves.' ^)I:l

The President was keeping a state secret. It was not his fault that what he wrote in his memoirs for future generations was refuted by evidence that was later made public in furtherance of that old Eisenhower vehicle, the psychological war. In the 70s, buttressing the seemingly shaken faith in the

usefulness of CIA interference in foreign affairs, that Agency referred to what had happened in Iran and Guatemala in 1953 and 1954 as two of its greatest achievements in the psychological war.

Since Mossadegh was jeopardizing the profits of the oil concerns, a CIA operative, Kermit Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt's grandson, had been promptly dispatched to Iran. He built up a ramified network of agents in Teheran, and advised the Shah to leave the country for a while. To create the impression that the United States had no hand in the developments, the US Ambassador, too, left the country. In the meantime, "the August 1953 coup, directed by a small group of CIA operators working out of a basement in Teheran, was preceded by a propaganda campaign with a simple theme: If Mossadeq's antishah regime remains in power, the Soviet Union and the Iranian Communists (the then powerful Tudeh Party) will take over the country. The fight was won in the streets. The demonstrations by supporters of Mossadeq and the Tudeh Party against the impending coup were countered by hiring Iranians to lead the anti-Mossadeq mobs, and the U.S. Military Mission in Teheran supplied the antiMossadeq army with American equipment that helped turn the tide of street fighting.''^^1^^

All those involved in the putsch were pleased. The CIA rewarded Kermit Roosevelt, and the British and American monopolies renewed their plunder of Iran's oil wealth. The Shah was back on the throne, shedding his countrymen's blood as before, while Mossadegh was put behind bars. Operation Ajax---keeping the Shah in power at the minimum cost to the USA (Roosevelt's grandson bragged that he had spent a mere one million dollars), was an inspiration to the CIA. Now it was the turn of Guatemala.

Arbenz's democratic government had nationalized 100,000 hectares of uncultivated Innd belonging to the US-owned United Fruit Company. John Foster Dulles's firm of lawyers had drawn up the agreement with the Guatemalan government before World War II. Allen Dulles was a member of the board of directors of United Fruit. John Cabot, Assistant Sec-

~^^1^^ Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, pp. 211-212, 511.

~^^1^^ Rpsitzke, The CIA's Secret Operations, p. 188.

retary of State for Latin American Affairs., held a large block of United Fruit shares. Neither United Fruit nor any of these people were satisfied with the compensation offered them for the nationalized land. They wanted 25 times more.^^1^^ So the CIA was instructed to overthrow the Arbenz government. The world had progressed from the days when the Dulles brothers were young and the United States made Latin American history with the bayonets of its Marines. Nowadays, the services of intelligence agencies were cheaper, and that counted for the tight-fisted Eisenhower administration.

The CIA was allowed to spend 20 million dollars for the Guatemala operation, picked Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas as leader of the uprising, and set up a subversive radio station (Radio Liberty) in Honduras which claimed to be broadcasting from the Guatemalan jungle.

Propaganda compounded with the activity of CIA agents was so effective that when Armas's ``army'' of 150 men in trucks crossed the border into Guatemala on June 18, the confusion and disorganization that reigned in the country helped it win. The government sought justice in the UN Security Council, but Denmark and New Zealand, allies of the USA, blocked its appeal. On June 27 it resigned. The jubilant Eisenhower invited the CIA chiefs responsible for the operation to the White House. Allen Dulles became aware that the President was behind the CIA when a State Department official carrying three legal volumes came to Eisenhower on the eve of the ``uprising'', and tried to explain that the CIA was breaching international law. The President shook the hands of the CIA people, however, and thanked them for what they had done. Beside him, smiling radiantly, stood his wife and a few select members of his cabinet.

The world was in a fury over Guatemala. The Department of State replied, first, that it was no more concerned with the United Fruit Company than with any other United States interest in a foreign country and, second, that it was not intervening in the internal affairs of Guatemala but was merely trying to check the aims of the Soviet Union in this hemi-

sphere.^^1^^ United Fruit took charge of the nationalized land, and a repressive regime took charge of Guatemala. Castillo Armas and two of the Guatemalans who had operated Radio Liberty were killed in 1957. The change of puppets altered nothing. The bloody deeds of those who were put in power by the United States, continued for years and years.

Iran and Guatemala. . . An introduction to an unfinished chapter about the Eisenhower administration. Small wonder that all CIA veterans, barring none, yearn for those ``glorious'' fifties. "Under President Eisenhower," Rositzke recalls in his memoirs, "covert action entered its heyday, and the fifties were the decade of a broad-ranging covert action program.''^^2^^

Oh, those fifties! The men who will expose the CIA twenty years later will say that probably the best description of policy in the early period of the cold war was given in the report of the Hoover Committee (the second Hoover committee appointed by Eisenhower to reorganize the apparatus of state ---N.Y.).

It was clear, Hoover wrote, that the US was faced with a formidable enemy who had set out to gain world supremacy by all possible means and at any price. It was a fight without rules, he added, and the heretofore accepted standards of behavior were no longer applicable: to survive, the USA had to review the old-time concept of justice. The US had to have effective espionage and counter-intelligence services, and should learn to conduct subversion and sabotage, and to destroy its enemies by more refined and more effective methods than those that were being used against it. It might one day be necessary to inform the American people about it, Hoover added, and for the nation to understand and support this essentially revolting philosophy.^^3^^

Officials, in effect, merely paraphrased Eisenhower's own instructions on this score.

In a confidential document of that time, Eisenhower wrote: "I have come to the conclusion that some of our tradition-

~^^1^^ See Donald Marquand Dozer, Are We Good Neighbours?, University of Florida Press, 1959, p. 342.

'^! Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations, p. 154.

~^^3^^ Ph. Agee, L. Wolf, Dirty World. The CIA in Western Europe, Englewood Cliffs, 1979, p. 259.

~^^1^^ Mooney, Brown, Truman to Carter, p. 77.

al ideas of international sportsmanship are scarcely applicable. .. Truth, honour, justice, consideration for others. . . we must not confuse these values with mere procedures [ meaning CIA covert action---N.Y.].''

In its conduct of foreign affairs, the Eisenhower-Dulles administration followed many a crooked path. It was extolled by extreme anti-communists in the US for its hostility to the People's Republic of China. But in a moment of truth John Foster Dulles explained the tactic to his intimates: The United States was supporting Chiang Kai-shek because there were "some 400,000 Communist Chinese stationed opposite Formosa guarding against invasion. . . This was another of the measures we liked to pursue on the theory of exerting maximum strain causing the Chinese Communists to demand more from Russia and thereby placing additional stress on RussianChinese relations.''^^1^^

In a fit of malignant euphoria about the capability of the CIA, Washington plunged with extraordinary courage into the affairs of Southeast Asia where France had been fighting a dirty war against the people of Vietnam since 1946. Indeed, the United States was already paying some 75 per cent of what that war cost France. Eisenhower had secured an allocation of another 800 million dollars in aid to that country in 1954. At the end of November 1953, the French command airlifted 15,000 men to Dien Bien Phu, some 350 km west of Hanoi. By capturing this point (whose name, thanslated into English, was Big Administrative Seat on the Border), it hoped to reverse the fortunes of war. But in fact it turned out to be the Waterloo of French colonialism. The Vietnamese kept the French garrison in a ring of fire, and in late spring of 1954 its plight became desperate. Paris begged the United States to send help---at least the air force---for had not Eisenhower said at his press conference on April 7, 1954: "You have a row of dominoes set up, and you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.''^^2^^ What Eisenhower

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . ., pp. 159, 194. * Sherman Adams, Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration, Harper, Ne\v York, 1961, p. J2Q,

meant by the first domino was Vietnam, but he hoped to retain it for the West in a manner different from that of the French colonialists.

The President enriched US political science with his " dominoes theory", but refused to send troops to Southeast Asia or even help the beleaguered garrison with a few aircraft. Nixon was disappointed. He had declared himself publicly in favor of using US troops in Indochina. No less disappointed were the Joint Chiefs of Staff. True, recalling Korea, the generals agreed with the President that it would be insane to send ground troops. But Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saw no harm in dropping a few nuclear bombs on the Vietnamese who were besieging Dien Bien Phu. US aircraft carriers carrying nuclear weapons were, after all, already cruising about in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The Western press wrote with false rhetoric about the heroism of those who were laying down their lives for colonialism in Dien Bien Phu. In the meantime, Washington was poised to replace bankrupt France in Southeast Asia. It would not do so with nuclear bombs, ground troops, and so on, it would not do so in alliance with France. It would go in on its own, employing psychological warfare. A capital study of CIA history by Fletcher Prouty says: "The French were heavily engaged in a losing battle in Indochina. The CIA was operating there in both the north and south of Vietnam during that time. . . The actual flights to Indochina, culminating in heavy airdrops at Dien Bien Phu, were made by these civilian CIA-- contracted pilots. Even at this early date the CIA was well inside the door of Indochina.''^^1^^

On May 7, 1954, the survivors in Dien Bien Phu laid down their arms. The Western world shuddered. In July, the Geneva agreements recorded Vietnam's division by a temporary demarcation line along the 17th parallel. Foreign troops were to be withdrawn and general elections held within two years with the object of reunifying the country. The United States would not sign the accords, thus retaining freedom of action.

~^^1^^ Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team. The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United Stales and the World, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (New Jersey), 1973, p. 232.

The Eisenhower government hoped that the puppet clique of Ngo Dinh Diem, which it had installed in Saigon, would in collaboration with the US secret services alter the political mood in South Vietnam or, to put it more explicitly, physically exterminate those who disagreed. How many were there? Eisenhower wrote: "I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting [i.e. prior to the summer of 1954---N.Y.], possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader.''^^1^^

On October 25, 1954, Eisenhower offered Ngo Dinh Diem American aid "in developing and maintaining a strong viable state".^^2^^ Later, when the US intervention was in full gear, President Lyndon Johnson referred to this letter as a US `` commitment'' to fight in Southeast Asia. In 1965, Eisenhower recalled that he contemplated economic and political support, but certainly no military intervention.^^3^^ As in 1954 so also in 1965, Eisenhower preferred psychological warfare in combating the national liberation movement.

But it was not a question of either the armed forces or exclusively the CIA. All means at Washington's disposal were set in motion, with different priorities at different times.

During the period 1954-1959, the CIA was top dog in Vietnam, seeking to utilize the psychological warfare theories of its strategists. All possible ploys were put into effect to reshape that part of the country into what Washington wanted to see it. The Geneva accords were not honored. No elections were held. The Ngo Dinh Diem clique, hand in hand with the Americans, turned the territory under its rule into something next to a concentration camp. At the end of the 1960s, thanks to differences and controversies within the United States, the world learned what the CIA had done in those five years. "But documented activities," wrote a Vietnamese author, "represent only an infinitesimal proportion of the real extent of CIA opera-

tions in Vietnam. The reason for this fact is that CIA covert activities in Vietnam have been leaked little as compared to those in other countries. Too many high CIA agents have risen through the ranks because of Vietnam. It is not likely that they would allow their careers to be jeopardized by disclosure of their activities there.''^^1^^

Only crumbs of information reached the outside world. But the people of South Vietnam came face to face with the CIA. Hundreds of thousands were killed. Hundreds of thousands were jailed. All in the five years that the CIA operated against Vietnam, inflicting the greatest losses of any period in Vietnam's long fight for national salvation. No further extermination of Vietnamese at that rate was tolerable. It was a question of physical survival, and the nation took up arms. At the end of 1959 large areas of the Mekong delta and the southern part of Central Vietnam became the scene of an uprising. The armed nation rose against the CIA. The operations in South Vietnam initiated by US special services foretokened a big war.

Racing Against Time

The men in Washington of that time were frenziedly persuading the world to turn against the Soviet Union. The Eisenhower-Dulles policy was later described as ``pactomania'', with SEATO being launched in 1954 and CENTO in 1957 to back up NATO and ANZUS. The inclusion of the Federal Republic of Germany in NATO in 1955 and its remilitarization closed the ring round the Soviet Union in the West. By the end of the fifties, the US had obtained "military commitments" from 42 countries. In 1956, John Foster Dulles declared, " Except under very exceptional circumstances, neutrality is an immoral and short-sighted conception.''^^2^^ The United States was picking its allies and satellites according to the class principle.

~^^1^^ Einsenhower, Mandate for Change, p. 449. ^! Larson, Eisenhower. . ., p. 201.

~^^3^^ Schlesinger, The Bitter Heritage. Vietnam and American Diplomacy 1941-1966, Andre Deutsch, London, 1967, p. 20.

~^^1^^ Ngo Vinh Long, "The CIA and the Vietnam Debacle" in Uncloaking the CIA, ed. by Howard Frazier, The Free Press, New York, 1978, p. 71.

~^^2^^ Peter Lyons, Neutralism, Leicester University Press, London, 1963. p. 107.

``For us," Dulles proclaimed, "there are two sorts of people in the world: there are those who are Christians and support free enterprise and there are the others.''^^1^^ He could not have put it more clearly.

The ``pactomania'' marked a most dangerous twist in world affairs. The Soviet Union went to all political lengths to prevent the slide toward the abyss, making one disarmament proposal after another. It also made proposals to normalize the situation in Europe, to expand international commerce, to generally improve the world situation. But everything it suggested was turned down out of hand. What was more, each time the Soviet Union agreed to some compromise, the United States immediately withdrew it's own proposal.

On May 14, 1955, the socialist countries concluded a defensive treaty in Warsaw. Washington was perturbed, and the Eisenhower administration finally accepted the Soviet proposal for holding a conference of the heads of government of the USSR, the USA, Britain and France. The conference gathered in Geneva in July 1955. Its task, as the Soviet Union saw it was to ease international tensions and help build confidence between states.

John Foster Dulles insisted that the US should not go to Geneva without preliminary Soviet concessions. What concessions? he was asked at a cabinet meeting. Withdrawal of Soviet troops from countries in Eastern Europe at the very least, or general elections in the USSR itself under UN control. Most unrealistic, he was told. Eisenhower seized on an "open skies" plan hatched by psychological warfare experts under Nelson Rockefeller. Under this plan, the USA and the USSR would allow each other's reconnaissance planes in their air space.

Eisenhower thought the "open skies" demand would yield the US huge propaganda dividends. The near hysterical and unanimous acclamation that resounded in the American and West European press confirmed the President in his view that he had come out the victor in a "propaganda duel". Besides, he was risking nothing. For the Pentagon, the whole affair was

a display by Washington of its "peaceable nature". Yet the scheme, as William Manchester describes it, "was impossible.. . The Pentagon was not paranoid, but it did have a great many hoops through which anyone must jump before he could look at classified material. A government that withheld data from J. Robert Oppenheimer wasn't going to turn it over to the NKVD. This was still the McCarthy era. The senator might be discredited, .. . but that was a far cry from filling the sky over Los Alamos with MIGs.''^^1^^

Smiling politely, Western negotiators turned down all Soviet proposals. And that was that.

But it had been much more than a propaganda trick for Eisenhower to seek "open skies" over the USSR. The US strategic air force had grown muscle. It had a large B-52 bomber contingent. It was jockeying for a position to deliver a strike. It wanted to finalize the list of targets in the Soviet Union for its nuclear bombs. When Eisenhower raised the "open skies" issue, he knew that a high-altitude spy plane, the U-2, was about to come off the production line. It began sneak flights to within Soviet borders the following year, 1956.

Nor were these incursions a CIA invention. Paul Carell, a British author, assumes that study of the secret aerial reconnaissance documents of Luftwaffe Lieutenant-Colonel Rowehl shortly before Nazi Germany's attack on the USSR in 1941 induced the Americans to experiment with their U-2s in Soviet skies.^^2^^ British professor John Erickson, a World War II historian, retorted angrily that even the Germans had not been the first. There had been an earlier British ``exploit''. "The Germans," Erickson writes, "may have been prompted by earlier British success: in March 1940, a British Lockheed flying from Habbaniya photographed Baku and in April Batum (where the plane was fired on). These photographs, plus detailed interpretation were handed over to the French; undestroyed, they fell into German hands when Paris was occupied.''^^3^^

Operations of that sort are usually a close forerunner of war.

~^^1^^ Roger Morgan, The United States and West Germany 1945-1973. A Study in Alliance Politics, Oxford University Press, London, 1976, p. 54.

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 751.

^s Paul Carell, Hitler Moves East. 1941-1943, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1964, p. 60.

~^^3^^ John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad. Stalin's War with Germany, Vol. 1, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1975, p. 47.

The USA was priming for it. Washington avoided wasting resources on other undertakings. There was too little time. The final preparations for plan Dropshot or whatever it was called at that time, were in train. The year 1957, fixed as the year for starting the war, was approaching. Yet the international situation deteriorated abruptly, which, evidently, did not enter into Washington's plans at that moment. It became frighteningly clear to the White House that world events were not subject to Washington's sole will, and that psychological warfare had its own momentum and could create unexpected problems for the US government. By delegating certain foreign-policy functions to the CIA, Eisenhower was reaping bitter fruit. Excessive CIA zeal caused a commotion which, paradoxically, paralyzed US actions on the international scene.

Jacob D. Beam, then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Soviet and East European Affairs, recollects: "I had come into contact with the president by attending various White House meetings in a subordinate capacity and was amused by his utter and profane detestation of the organization I worked for, which he frequently referred to as 'that goddamned State Department'. . . He was in a towering rage the morning I called on him, greeting me with 'Do you know what your goddamned State Department has done?'^!!1 This permits us to assume that the President's sympathies lay with the CIA. From the spring of 1956 on, the US intelligence agencies and "that goddamned State Department" were working hand in hand in the psychological war to capitalize on the condemnation of the cult of the individual by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The craziest and wildest of plans were devised. And the State Department, as Jacob Beam reports with a hint of superiority over the CIA, was involved in them up to its ears. "My office in the State Department, in cooperation with our intelligence agencies," Beam writes, referring to the 1956 events in Poland, "kept close watch on the satellite countries [that was how Beam maliciously referred to the socialist countries.---

N.Y.] and their relations with the USSR." Having established secret contacts with dissenters who opposed the legitimate people's government in Poland (whom Beam calls ``liberals'' or ``reformers''), the State Department collected their "reports, which were played back to Poland by radio from abroad, helped disseminate the reformers' views. . . We in the State Department kept... furnishing public encouragement to the liberal movement through official press statements and radio scripts. If the CIA had done no more than to further this cause by providing the facilities of Radio Free Europe (which it then secretly financed) it would have justified its existence.''^^1^^

True, the efforts of the knights of psychological warfare did not then lead to any serious consequences in Poland. But in Hungary the results were more painful. The CIA's long hand is clearly visible in the counter-revolutionary revolt that erupted there at the end of October and in early November 1956, claiming a considerable toll in lives. The mutineers went into the streets because they counted on immediate US aid, promised them over the years by US propagandists of the ``liberation'' doctrine. No sooner had the first shots rung out in Budapest than John Foster Dulles sounded off in the USA on October 29, 1956 that the East European countries should be immediately given "governments of their own free choosing". Eisenhower must have liked Dulles's speech, for nearly ten years later he included it in his memoirs.^^2^^ A CIA historian amplified: "In November 1956 there were still caches of sterilized arms waiting throughout Europe, and the emigre Hungarians who had volunteered to fight under CIA direction in the event of war began calling up their CIA case officers.''^^3^^ Yes, most of them hastened to the Hungarian border, and were only waiting for the signal. Which did not come, and for many reasons.

The main one was that an invasion of Hungary on the scale envisaged by the plotters in the US intelligence agencies would inevitably have led to the involvement of NATO troops. And that meant war at a time when the USA and the West had not

~^^1^^ Jacob D. Beam, The Multiple Exposure. An American Ambassador's Unique Perspective on East-West Issues, W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1978, p. 80.

~^^1^^ Beam, The Multiple Exposure, pp. 57, 59.

' Eisenhower, Waging Peace. 1956-1961, Doubleday and Co., Garden City (New York), 1965, p. 71.

^^1^^ Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets, p. 94.

yet completed their preparations for it. That is why support of the rioting was confined to the psychological warfare framework. And though the chances of the rioters were nil, the USA spurred them to more bloodshed. "I recall a meeting at which CIA Director Allen Dulles was present when the question was asked whether it would not be wise for us to try to cool down the rioters," Beam writes. "The almost irrefutable answer was that it did not behoove the United States to take a position of seeming to discourage protests in the name of freedom.''^^1^^

Let the bloodshed continue. But the people of Hungary, assisted by the Soviet Union, which lived up to its internationalist duty, quelled the counter-revolutionary foray.

The bandits who had run amuck in Budapest fled to the West. On the border they were met by Nixon and Wiesner. The United States allocated $20 million to them; and Eisenhower saw to it that 21,500 Hungarian emigres should be allowed to enter the United States. Jobs were found for them. But Wiesner and his gang were displeased. Indeed, Wiesner, chief of the CIA's dirty tricks department, lost his mind. His speech became incoherent, his orders insane. The finale---he was carted off from his office in a straitjacket. A few years later he committed suicide.

Washington's hands were tied during the counter-- revolutionary rioting in Hungary for one more reason: the Budapest events coincided in time with a crisis in America's relations with Britain and France. London and Paris had set out to recover international imperialism's lost positions in the Middle East. Gamal Abdel Nasser had nationalized the Suez. Canal and ventured to fortify Egypt's ties with the Soviet Union. This earned the Arab leader the hatred of the Western rulers. The US leadership came to the conclusion that he should be combated by covert means, because public attacks on him would displease the Arab world. John Foster Dulles told his brother to put an end to the problem. And Allen Dulles hastened to let;his subordinates, who were conspiring in Egypt, know that "if that colonel of yours pushes us too far we will break him in half!''^^2^^ This

was said to Miles Copeland, a CIA agent who was then adviser to the Egyptian security service.

Three groups of assassins were commandeered to kill Nasser. All three failed. Years later, the (Senate) Frank Church Committee asked (in 1975) if the CIA had tried to assassinate Nasser. The reply, as reported in The Washington Post ( February 12, 1976), was: "This agency has no records that any teams or individuals have ever been sent to Egypt for the purpose of attempting to assassinate Nasser." Yet it is common knowledge that CIA cloak-and-dagger fraternity had had a hand in the erection of a tower in Cairo with an explosive charge in its foundation that was to be detonated by a radio signal from a ship in the Mediterranean. Presumably, Nasser was to be killed by the blast. When the Suez Canal was nationalized Dulles ordered the signal to be given. But no explosion occurred. The Egyptians had discovered the infernal machine and rendered it harmless.^^1^^

While the USA acted covertly, Britain and France took Israel into their team and attacked Egypt like old-fashioned imperialists on land, sea and in the air on October 30-31, 1956. Eisenhower, who preferred psychological warfare, could not conceal his fury. "Israel and barium make quite a combination,"² he exclaimed (in hospital, where he was being X-rayed and had had to swallow barium meal). Washington let Britain and France know what it thought of their course of action. Paris responded resentfully, London was mortally offended. "I still feel," wrote Kennan in 1972, "that the state of Anglo-American relations at the time of Suez, aside from being veritably tragic in the paralysis it inflicted on Western policy toward the Hungarian rebellion, represented a low point in the entire development of American policy in the postwar period.''^^3^^ The aggression against Egypt was not stopped by the family quarrel within NATO, but by the firm stand of the Soviet Union.

Moscow sternly warned the West and Israel. The British government, for example, was told on November 5; "What would

~^^1^^ Beam, The Multiple Exposure, p. 73.

^! Miles Copeland, The Game of Nations. The Amorality of Power Politics, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969, p. 202.

Copeland, Beyond Cloak and Dagger: Inside the CIA, Pinnacle Books, New York, 1975, p. 66.

^^2^^ Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, p. 212.

~^^3^^ Kennan, Memoirs, Vol. 2, p. 184.

1J-79S

Britain's plight be if it were attacked by stronger states possessing all types of up-to-date destructive weaponry? These days, the countries in question would not have to send their navies or air forces to Britain's shores, and could use other means, such, say, as missiles . . . We are determined to resort to force and crush the aggressors, and restore peace in the East." Paris was cautioned in similar terms. Soviet reservists, veterans of World War II, asked for permission to fight in Egypt as volunteers and help expel the aggressors from Egyptian soil.^^1^^ In the meantime, the armed rebel gangs in Hungary were being crushed one by one.

Less than 24 hours after the Soviet ambassadors in London and Paris had handed in Moscow's warnings, the aggressors terminated hostilities against Egypt. And with most UN members demanding their withdrawal, they soon retired from territories they had over-run.

If we are to believe Richard Nixon, "years later Einsenhower was to reflect that the U. S. restraint of Britain, France, and Israel when they were trying to protect their interests in Suez was a tragic mistake".^^2^^ He himself, of course, said, "In retrospect I believe that our actions were a serious mistake.''^^3^^ To explain America's course of action, he wrote that Hungary and Egypt coincided with the presidential elections in the USA. On November 6, 1956, Eisenhower, who ran under the slogan of peace and prosperity, defeated Adlai Stevenson a second time. He was elected President, but his party was in the minority in both Senate and the House.

All Eisenhowers explanations were produced long after the events. At that time, in the autumn of 1956, the West was pulled up in its tracks by the mention of missiles in the Soviet notes.

Crime and Punishment

The thing was mentioned in whispers at secret conferences, and referred to with an air of mystery in the presence of the uninitiated. The first photographs brought home by U-2 spy planes were examined with undisguised disbelief. The aerial surveys began landing on the desks of analysts somewhere at the junction of 1956 and 1957. The question they were to answer was this: what is the Soviet Union's strategic capability and had the USA under Eisenhower done right to rely on the "massive retaliation" doctrine? The discussion broke through the barriers of censorship, but the public discussion of US strategy toward the end of the fifties failed to yield a complete picture of the reassessment that was underway in, say, the Pentagon. And above all because, for many reasons, the dichotomy of US foreign policy methods (people simply did not know about or did not understand it) escaped the field of vision of the disputing parties. What they discussed mainly, as a result, was the assortment of military means of attaining political aims, which led to a militarization of strategic thinking.

It is quite easy to name the year when the "massive retaliation" doctrine was first placed in doubt by those who were initiated in the top military secrets. It was 1955. Soviet strategic bombers took part in the May Day parade in Moscow. The USA responded hysterically by complaining of having "fallen behind". This was speedily worked into the myth of a "Soviet war threat". The top US brass knew, of course, that that was just one more big lie. "The Americans had deliberately exaggerated the number of Soviet bombers three to four times over," we read in Whence the Threat to Peace (2nd ed., Military Publishing House, Moscow, 1982, p. 6). They also knew perfectly well that the Soviet Union was pursuing exclusively defensive aims. What the US powerholders were shocked at was the dawning knowledge that America would not be invulnerable to retaliation if it started a nuclear aggression against the USSR. Yet the rationale of the "massive retaliation" doctrine was whol-

~^^1^^ See History of USSR Foreign Policy. 1945-1980, Vol. 2, p. 260 (in Russian).

* Richard Nixon, The Real War, p. 79. ^^3^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 179.

ly based on US invulnerability. The "all or nothing" slogan gained a most ominous ring, and an understanding had begun to shape that power was powerless.

No, the US brass were in no mood to renounce use of force, that is, performance of what they saw as their professional duty. Generals Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor, successive US Army chiefs of staff (1953-1957), figured it was wrong to rely preponderantly on thermonuclear war, and advised fighting "limited wars". In anticipation of such wars they recommended a steep build-up of conventional arms. Both presented their views to the government, and were ordered to shut their mouths. Attempts to speak out in public were cut short by the censors, and the embittered generals went into retirement in protest. In retirement they each wrote a book, setting forth their beliefs. Both were fighting generals and won their rank and decorations in combat, but both expressed their opinion with great reserve. After all, they were placing in question the precious plan of finishing off the Soviet Union at one blow. And in expressing their view they were not at all moved by any love of peace or humanism, but by the compelling need for preventing their country from committing suicide.

Ridgway wrote: if the West resorts to thermonuclear weapons against the USSR a counter-strike is bound to follow. "In the light of this major possibility for the future," he added, "it is at least debatable whether the United States really has the freedom to rely preponderantly on nuclear weapons to exert its military power.''^^1^^

Taylor: massive retaliation "could offer our leaders only two choices, the initiation of general nuclear war or compromise and retreat.''^^2^^ How to make war, the general complained, if US strategy was like the uncertain trumpet referred to by Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians (14:8): "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?''

One more fighting general, James M. Gavin, who resigned from the post of chief of armaments and was therefore doubtless competent in the latest weaponry, wrote:

'Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier: The Memoirs of Matthew B. Ridgway, Harper & Bros., New York, 1956, p. 324.

' Maxwell D. Taylor, Uncertain Trumpet, Harper, New York, 1960, p. 5.

``From a technological point of view, the real tragedy of Korea was that this great nation, with its scientific resources and tremendous industrial potential, had to accept combat on the terms laid down by a rather primitive Asiatic army . . .

``If in the past ten years we had spent even a small part of what we have spent in readying our forces for a one-strategy war, in developing and procuring the means of dealing with limited war, we could have settled Korea and Dien Bien Phu quickly in our favor . . .

``I do not believe that the Free World can endure many more `Hungarys'. . .

``We should have sufficient forces in being to enable the West... to move into such a situation . . . We were critically lacking the type of military force that would have been required to support action in Hungary''.

And the culminating conclusion: the system in the United States should be "neither static nor passive. And in order to continue to serve, it must be aggressive and assert itself.''^^1^^

No, the critics in their general's uniforms simply would not see Eisenhower's designs. He figured in terms of higher politics, in terms of psychological warfare, while they saw brute force and armed struggle. Nor did the then 37-year-old Henry Kissinger see farther than the generals. His career was furthered chiefly by his part-time engagements---service in military counterintelligence and favors to the CIA and FBI, where he displayed his many endowments. From 1954 on, Kissinger was chief of a research group in the Foreign Relations Council looking for an alternative to the "massive retaliation" doctrine. Since it was founded in 1922, the Council, consisting of America's richest men, produced from its midst top US leaders, especially for the diplomatic service. The Rockefeller brothers, who were highly influential in it, looked with much favor on Kissinger. The fairly voluminous report produced by the research group was, at their bidding, published as a book ostensibly authored by Kissinger. It appeared in 1957 under the title, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, and "brought him fame and fortune, influence and prestige, and ultimately entree into the White

~^^1^^ James M. Gavin, War and Peace in the Space Age, Hutchinson, London, 1959, pp. 124, 128, 200-201, 198.

House. His entire reputation as an authority on nuclear strategy and foreign relations was based on and grew out of that single book.''^^1^^

As a scholarly piece of research, and that was what Kissinger claimed it to be, the book perturbed the scientific community. There were academic standards, after all, and conclusions should flow from the exposition. Kissinger's book was "heavily criticized by authorities in the field as derivative or badly grounded in facts or poorly argued in history".^^2^^ The criticism was well earned: the book "drew little but harshly negative comment from influential specialists in the arms field. Much of the criticism was well taken; after all, many of Kissinger's assertions were quite dangerous".^^3^^

That was it. Kissinger's functional role at the time was to give ``scientific'' backing to a candidly aggressive course against the Soviet Union, to reconcile the nation with the prospect of using nuclear weapons not in an extremity, as Eisenhower had planned, but for everyday political ends.

Kissinger maintained that it was the "basic strategic problem of the nuclear age" whether "it is possible to find intermediate applications for our military strength, whether our strategic thinking can develop concepts of war which bring power into balance with the willingness to use it". He scornfully described "massive retaliation" as "a doctrine which left no room for intermediate positions between total peace and total war", and promoted the idea of "limited war" involving use of nuclear arms. "Nevertheless," Kissinger wrote, "a strategic doctrine which renounces the imposition of unconditional surrender should not be confused with the acceptance of stalemate." Nuclear blackmail could be a useful thing, the theorist maintained, to divide the socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

The moment tactical nuclear weapons are brought into the picture in NATO's strategy, Kissinger asserted, this will pro-

vide an escape from "the impasse which has been the bane of our coalition policy: the gap between the belief of our allies that they are already protected by our thermonuclear capacity to which they do not feel they have a contribution to make, and their terror of its consequences which makes them reluctant to invoke it as a strategy for fighting a war".^^1^^

Those were the terms in which Henry Kissinger reflected and promoted the views of the Rockefellers, hoping to bring about a conclusive defeat of the Soviet Union by means of "limited wars" fought by other countries phase by phase and short of an all-out, global, thermonuclear conflagration.

The discussion and all Kissinger's recommendations, barring none, were based on the assumption that the USA held superiority in strategic arms. The generals, retired and not retired, were poised for action. But action was deferred.

On October 4, 1957, the world's first artificial earth satellite was launched in the USSR. The Soviet breakthrough into outer space turned all the academic talk of "limited wars" into a delusion. The United States was gripped by panic. The illusion of US scientific and technological superiority evaporated. The roar of monster-like bombers in the sky was no more than a reminder that the last word no longer belonged to the USA. Socialism had made more effective use of its resources. The United States, which had been building up its fleet of piloted bombers, was itself not invulnerable to a counter-strike.

The militarization of political thinking in the USA was bearing evil fruit: people discussed nothing but the military aspect of the Soviet space achievement. The term "missile lag" was put into wide circulation. It was as though any minute now a shower of Soviet missiles would drop on the USA. The committee appointed by Eisenhower to evaluate the nation's state of defense readiness chaired by businessman H. Rowan Gaither, which had been examining bomb shelter designs, changed its tack and issued an alarmist report. Though its text is still classified, one of the recommendations won notoriety: to boost military expenditures to 46-48 billion dollars by 1961.^^2^^ This was

~^^1^^ Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, Harper and Row, New York, 1957, pp. 26, 29, 48-49, 244-245.

^^2^^ Morton Halperin, "The Gaither Committee and the Policy Process" in World Politics, Vol. 13, No. 3, April 1961, pp. 378-384.

~^^1^^ Phyllis Schlafly, Chester Ward, Kissinger on the Couch, Arlington House Publishers, New Rochclle (New York), 1975, p. 137.

~ Bruce Mazlish, Kissinger. The European Mind in American Pol' icy, Basic Books, New York, 1976, p. 108.

~^^3^^ David Landau, Kissinger. The Uses of Power, Thomas Y. Crowell Co., New York, 1974, p. 75.

followed in January 1958 by a Rockefeller Foundation report drawn up in the same spirit. US military expenditures began climbing, and by the end of the fifties reached the 40-billion-- dollar mark. The missile buildup was given priority. Theorists who had been urging war with or without cause shut their mouths. Henry Kissinger turned his back on the concept that "limited wars" should be fought with nuclear weapons.

Realistic publicists called for peaceful relations with Russia "before it is too late". Senator Henry Jackson demanded of the President that he proclaim "a week of shame and danger". Lyndon Johnson, then a Senator, said: "The Roman Empire controlled the world, because it could build roads. Later---when men moved to sea---the British Empire was dominant because it had ships. Now the Communists have established a foothold in outer space. It is not very reassuring to be told that next year we will put a `better' satellite into the air. Perhaps it will even have chrome trim---and automatic windshield wipers."¹ The Senator's sarcasm reflected a sudden awakening: it had turned out that in key areas of progress socialism was a more effective system. The values of the "consumer society" lost some of their luster.

Socialism was well set on its way to win the historic contest with capitalism. Unless urgent measures were taken. Such was the verdict of the intellectual elite ... By and large, this and the resulting ideas made up the content of Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith's book, The Affluent Society, in a way a manifesto of state-monopoly capitalism. The author, it is true, had not expected his economic treatise to become a bestseller. In the preface to its second edition, he wrote:

``Then, in the autumn of 1957 the Soviets sent up the first Sputnik. No action was ever so admirably timed. Had I been younger and less formed in my political views, I would have been carried away by my gratitude and found a final resting place beneath the Kremlin Wall. I knew my book was home." The main idea in the book was that US society was wasting its resources on private needs and forgot that progress was possible only if resources were concentrated in the hands of the state, and that the intellect was the motor of progress. He put it as

follows: "The care and refreshment of the mind, in contrast with the stomach, was principally in the public domain. Our colleges and universities were severely overcrowded and underprovided, and the same was true of the mental hospitals.''^^1^^

Galbraith urged reinforcing state-monopoly capitalism, which would find ways of redistributing resources from the private to the ``public'' sector.

The road to outer space begins at the school desk. Prominent Americans began comparing the US and Soviet systems of education. They produced a frightening picture for their countrymen. In his Inside Russia Today, John Gunther informed his readers that in Soviet schools "the main emphasis is on science and technology, for both boys and girls, and herein lies the greatest challenge to our system. In addition to ten solid years of mathematics, every child must take four years of chemistry, five of physics, six of biology. By contrast, only about half of American high schools have any physics, and only 64 percent have any chemistry. An American authority told me that the average Soviet boy or girl graduating from the tenth grade (our twelfth) has a better scientific education---particularly in mathematics---than most American college graduates!''

The severity of the criticism of the US system of education was directly proportional to capitalism's stake in survival. ExPresident Herbert Hoover referred contemptuously to US schools which allow "a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old kid to choose most of his studies", while in the Soviet Union they "are turning out twice or possibly three times as many scientists as the U.S.". Edward Teller (as William Manchester reports) gloomily wrote: "Ten years ago there was no question where the best scientists in the world could be found---here in the U. S.. . Ten years from now the best scientists in the world will be found in Russia.''

`` 'In the Soviet Union', Teller pointed out, 'science was almost a religion; its ablest men were singled out and treated as a privileged class while their underpaid American colleagues lacked status in their society and could offer few incentives to

~^^1^^ Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, p. 247.

~^^1^^ John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society, New American Library, New York, 1959, p. 199.

bright proteges.' " "His appeal for respect for the dignity of scientific inquiry was well taken," Manchester commented. "The number of cartoons about mad scientists dropped sharply. There were also fewer jokes about them. And it was extraordinary how quickly the word egghead dropped out of the language."' Vexed and discomfitted by the Sputnik, those who held power in the USA turned for opinions and advice to intellectuals.

year education was 2,530 dollars in 1956 and 4,434 dollars in 1970, while those with five years of college earned 9,178 and 15,732 dollars respectively. As of 1970 each additional year of education over and above eight yielded an average annual increment of 1,000 dollars. Allocations to secondary education rose from 10.9 billion dollars in 1956 to 40.7 billion in 1970, and to higher education from 3.5 billion to 21 billion. The number of colleges and universities, which had been somewhere in the vicinity of 1,800 between 1936 and 1956, topped 2,500 by 1970.^^1^^

The United States was being fortified all down the line. Washington paid meticulous attention to the organized labor movement. Communists had already been driven out of the unions in the late forties. In 1955, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations fused under George Meany. Unions were run by fanatical anti-communists, but in return for their political ``conformism'' they expected a certain measure of independence. The AFL-CIO, for example, announced that it was going to expand its membership, which was in all cases distasteful to Big Business because it augured more resolute labor-capital clashes, if only over wages.

In 1956, the unions in the United States had 17,490,000 members (of whom 16,904,000 in the AFL-CIO), amounting to 25.2 per cent of all gainfully employed or 33.4 per cent of those employed other than in agriculture. This was the highest mark ever reached. In the decades that followed the unions grew negligibly with total membership rising to 19,634,000 in 1976 (of whom 16,699,000 were in the AFL-CIO), while the relative figure dropped visibly to 20.3 per cent of gainfully employed or 24.5 per cent of those employed other than in agriculture.^^2^^ Those were the results of the process set in motion during Eisenhower's presidency by the Sputnik.

These processes were of a distinctly bi-partisan nature. The US ruling elite was eager to improve the image of the United States, especially in the developing countries. Since the Sputnik had dealt a death blow to ``consumerism'', the window was be-

~^^1^^ The Statistical History of the United Slates, U.S. Bureau of the Census, New York, 1976, p. 373.

^! Statistical Abstract of the United States. 1979, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, 1979, p. 427.

The CIA Again!

When at the close of the Eisenhower era US intellectuals were found useful and dispensed bitter verities to the ruling elite, their judgements merely illustrated but did not change life. As Gabriel Kolko said in his book, "Social theory, muckrakers, and intellectuals did not and do not influence important businessmen, who have never aspired to have reforming crusaders regulate arid direct their affairs.''^^2^^ The resulting decision at the top of the pyramid of power was, however, to give the intellectual more of a role, but only an executive role to promote plans made higher up.

The National Defense Education Act passed within six months of the Sputnik, opened with the following preamble: "The Congress hereby finds and declares that the security of the Nation requires the fullest development of the mental resources and technical skills of its young men and women.''^^3^^

Federal allocations were provided for improving scientific training, and instruction in mathematics and foreign languages. In 1956 there were 2,918,000 students (347,000 in two-year colleges and 2,751,000 in four-year higher schools). By 1970 the figure jumped to 7,920,000 (1,630,000 and 6,290,000 respectively). The percentage of students in the 18 to 24 age group rose from 19.5 to 32.1. The differentiation in wages and salaries according to the educational standard remained roughly the same. The average annual income of a male over 25 with less than an eight-

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 791-793.

* Kolko, The Roots of American Foreign Policy, Beacon Press, Boston, 1969, p. 10.

^^3^^ James L. Sundquist, Politics and Policy. The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years, the Brookings Institution, Washington, 1968, p. 179.

ing quickly dressed, advertising education, enlightenment, and decency in the country that was laying claim to world leadership. The Supreme Court ruling abolishing segregation in government-run schools was being put into effect, sometimes by most drastic means. And in 1957, for the first time in 82 years, a civil rights act was passed, with the term applying chiefly to the black population. Barriers put up for Afro-Americans on the road to the ballot box were removed.

Since efforts of this sort were being applied on the home scene, foreign policy was for understandable reasons increasingly concentrated on psychological warfare. The Sputnik, however, hampered covert operations. Jacob Beam, then US ambassador to Poland, wrote with something akin to despair:

``There occurred an event which had a deep effect on the country's political orientation---the launching of the Soviet Sputnik on October 4, 1957. It seems as if everything conspired to exaggerate its effects to the detriment of American prestige---the somewhat frightening science-fiction setting, the skillful play of Soviet propaganda, and, most effectively of all, the angry accusations of stupidity and incompetence which were raised against the Eisenhower administration by its domestic critics and which were purveyed by the international press.''^^1^^

So much for Beam's despair. For those who set the tune in the CIA---the scions of America's moneyed families---the Sputnik was a kind of bracer. In the next few years they wholly vindicated the fears expressed about the CIA by the highly secret Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, a gathering of elderly multimillionaires formed on Eisenhower's instructions. The aged dignitaries (in Robert Lovett's and David Bruce's report) berated "the increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being . .. Busy, moneyed and privileged, [the CIA] likes its 'King Making' responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating---considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from ' successes'---no charge is made for `failures'---and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!)''.

Joseph Kennedy, also a member of the Board, carped: "I know that outfit. . . and I wouldn't pay them a hundred bucks a week".^^1^^

But there is the old adage that truth is stranger than fiction, and, however hard it may be to believe, the ever so shrewd businessmen evidently fell for Allen Dulles's sincerity and the line from John (8:32) which he scrawled across the lobby of CIA headquarters, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free".^^2^^ Though it wasn't the truth that the CIA was after.

In 1957, the CIA suggested assassinating Fidel Castro. In 1958 it wanted a military putsch to overthrow the government in Indonesia. John Moore Allison, the US ambassador in Djakarta, was firmly opposed to the idea. Whereupon, a CIA official reminisced, "we handled this problem by getting Allen Dulles to have his brother relieve Allison of his post.''^^3^^

In May 1958, the CIA-armed putschists were caught red-- handed. Eisenhower, who knew every detail of the abortive operation, declared that it was American policy "not to be taking sides where it is none of our business". The Board of Consultants was upset. It let the President know that the putsch had been organized "ten thousand miles away from the scene of operation". Its line-up of worldwise old men asked the President to scrap the programs "which find us involved covertly in the internal affairs of practically every country to which we have access.''^^1^^

But with no results. Eisenhower was young in heart, and looked into the details of the new CIA undertaking with the greatest of interest: the dirty-tricks artists were bent on showing how to cope with revolutions. They were preparing an invasion of Freedom Island by Cuban counter-revolutionaries. They promised to overthrow Castro's government. It was assumed that with the disaffection that allegedly gripped Cuba, the mercenaries would have no trouble rallying the Cubans.

John Foster Dulles died in 1959. Eisenhower lost a valuable

~^^1^^ Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, pp. 490, 491.

~^^2^^ Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, p. 472.

~^^5^^ Joseph Burkholdcr Smith, Portrait oj a Cold Warrior, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1976, p. 230.

~^^4^^ Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 492.

~^^1^^ Beam, The Multiple Exposure, p. 87.

adviser, and was now running the psychological warfare operations on his own. The endless White House discussions of the situation in Cuba had evidently prompted Eisenhower to proclaim a resolution on "captive nations", which Congress had been adopting annually since 1950. Congress called on the peoples of the socialist countries to rise against their governments. After the Sputnik, chiefly due to impotence, the US war planners had had to put off their intentions of wiping out the Soviet Union in one fell nuclear swoop.

In July 1959, Eisenhower published the proclamation envisaged in the resolution, requiring Americans to "study the plight of the Soviet-dominated nations and to recommit themselves to the support of the just aspirations of the peoples of those captive nations". "This resolution", as George Kennan wrote, " committed the United States, insofar as Congress had the power to do so, to the `liberation' of twenty-two `nations', two ol which had never had any real existence.''

Was it madness or impertinence? Both, of course, but, as Kennan put it, it was a thing of "primarily native American provenance", meaning that many influential Americans "urged that American policy should be one of purely political attack on the various Communist regimes, aimed at their overthrow by a combination of American propaganda and the action of local anti-Communist groups, the outcome being conceived as the `liberation' of the Soviet peoples generally, including the Russian people. The theory was that this, given proper zeal and persistence on our part, could be accomplished without war. This concept commended itself greatly to certain conservative Republican figures, for it enabled them at one and the same time to deny that they were advocating war and yet to play up to the extreme anti-Communist right wing of American opinion." As Kennan saw it, these views contained the seeds of disaster.^^1^^

A week after the resolution was made public, US Vice-- President Richard Nixon went off on a visit to Moscow to attend the US exhibition there. According to his lights, the equipment of an American kitchen would have special attractions for Soviet viewers, and he explained its advantages right there at the exhibition.

Nixon's Moscow visit was part of a massive, worldwide propaganda offensive. Washington had naively decided that its top officials would be well received everywhere for the simple reason that they were in charge of "God's own country''.

But Nixon's rhetoric only added to the anti-American mood running high in the developing countries, which quite rightly saw the reason for their economic plight in the monstrous exploitation to which they were subjected by Yankee imperialism.

Nixon's propaganda tour of Latin America was a total flop. Anti-American demonstrations greeted him everywhere, and in Venezuela, which he visited last, he was literally spat upon and spent hours in the US embassy waiting for the siege to end. Eisenhower sent naval ships to Venezuelan shores, while paratroopers were poised to land in Caracas. In the late fifties, on something like forty occassions, angered demonstrators gathered outside US embassies and missions---in Asia, Latin America, and in Europe. This was when Eisenhower decided to capitalize on his big smile. From early 1959 to mid-1960 he covered more than 100,000 kilometres outside the United States, visiting various countries.

This was Eisenhower's personal diplomacy. Yet there were problems awaiting solution. The Soviet Union had made proposals aimed at completing the German peace settlement and improving the international situation. A summit meeting was scheduled in Paris in May 1960, to be followed by Eisenhower's visit to the Soviet Union. Ike was planning to make deepfelt orations in the USSR, to describe the benefits of mutual trust within the family of nations, to call for a more solid peace ---while CIA technicians were already fitting secret appliances to the presidential plane to photograph the regions of the Soviet Union the US good-will ambassador would fly over. Nothing came of it. On May 1, 1960, a U-2 spy plane launched by the CIA on the eve of the summit meeting was shot down near Sverdlovsk.

After some confusion and humiliating official US lies, Eisenhower publicly assumed personal responsibility for the U-2 flights, announced they would be stopped, but refused to apologize. This was done by Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot, at the open court hearing in Moscow. When he returned to the United States in early 1962, he said he was no longer free,

~^^1^^ Kennan, Memoirs, Vol. II, pp. 99, 100.

for though he had been released by the Russians he was a de facto captive of the CIA. Powers referred to this in a book which he did not receive permision to publish until 1970.^l On returning home, he was interrogated for a long time, and then faced fact-finding committee which blamed him for not committing suicide when his plane was shot down. Like all U-2 pilots, Powers had had a needle with a deadly poison. He saw that the interrogators were all but disappointed to learn that he had not been pumped full of drugs, and the like, when under arrest in the USSR. When Powers was finally given his freedom, he barely scraped up a living and must surely have been embittered against the CIA. In August 1977, piloting a Los Angeles TV company helicopter, Francis Gary Powers crashed to his death.

The covert operations of the Eisenhower era have not faded from people's memories. It was discovered in 1976, for example, that Frank Olsen, a scientist, had been a CIA guinea pig for deadly potions, and died therefrom in 1953. William Colby, Director of the CIA, wrote that "President Ford extended his and the nation's regret and instructed that recompense be made. I made a particular point of contacting the family and extending the CIA's very sincere apologies for the tragedy and did everything I could to push through the appropriate and acceptable recompense. But one of the most difficult assignments I have ever had was to meet with his wife and his now-grown children to discuss how to give them the CIA records and thus open up and overcome a twenty-year secret.''^^2^^

Certainly, Eisenhower, who had approved the very dirtiest of operations until the final months of his presidency, could not have foreseen this. Robert H. Johnson, a notetaker at NSC sessions, testified before the Church Committee in 1975: " President Eisenhower said something---I can no longer remember his words---that came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba.. . There was no discussion: the meeting simply moved on.''^^3^^ The details of the operation were worked out by

~^^1^^ Francis Gary Powers, Curt Gentry, Operation Overflight: The U-2 Spy Pilot Tells His Story for the First Time, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York, 1970, pp. 86-97.

* Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, p. 426.

~^^3^^ Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate, Dial Press, New York, 1977, p. 102.

Allen Dulles who "okayed the CIA attempts to poison Patrice Lumumba.''^^1^^ In the long run, in 1961, Lumumba was killed in a different way. The US authorities denied CIA involvement in his assassination.

At that time all this had been secret. Some 20-odd years later times changed and that which was not subject to publication in the fifties became next of an object of pride for Washington. When Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, an avalanche of books appeared, portraying the "Eisenhower era" in an entirely new light. Reviewing six books about Eisenhower which appeared in late 1981, Ronald Steel, the publicist, wrote:

``To see what Ike was doing behind the scenes one turns to Stephen Ambrose's revealing and engagingly written Ike's Spies. . . The story he tells is one of some very low deeds done in the name of high moral principles. He leaves no doubt about the arrogance and clumsiness of CIA chief Allen Dulles. ..

``In Eisenhower Declassified Blanche Cook . . . attempts to reinterpret the Eisenhower presidency as a study in counterrevolution. In her view it was a concerted effort to 'destabilize communism worldwide, eradicate New Deal ``socialism'' domestically, and globalize American business and American values.' Ike's success, she charges, 'cannot be measured except in terms of repression and reaction' ''.

Summing up the latest revelations, Steel commented: "The more intriguing part of Eisenhower's foreign policy is not the flirtation with intervention at Dien Bien Phu, the confusion over Suez, the farcical landing in Lebanon, or the embarrassment of the U-2. Rather it is the covert activities carried on during his administration by the CIA and other government agencies in what we today label the third world. This is the aspect of Ike one would never glimpse from the diaries (first published in 1981---N. Y.), which contain not a single entry on such escapades as the CIA-orchestrated invasion of Guatemala in 1954 or the coup in 1953 that restored the Shah of Iran to his throne. Nor does Robert Ferrell, who edited the diaries, draw our attention to the fact that Ike makes no mention of these activi-

~^^1^^ Fawn M. Brodie, Richard Nixon. The Shaping of His Character, W. W. Norton and Co., New York, 1981, p. 401.

14---796

ties. Ferrell is content to let Eisenhower speak for himself and to keep silent when Ike prefers not to speak of embarrassing matters.''^^1^^

That is something else again, taking us back to the Eisenhower presidency, when secrecy of psychological warfare was an imperative.

office in the history of the world. Not one of the great Oriental potentates, Roman Emperors, French Kings, Napoleon, Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Jenghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Mogul Emperors, the Great Caliph of Baghdad had half the power and influence that the President of the United States now has.''^^1^^

The Kennedys, whom Truman so disliked, would have readily signed the above. It had become a habit with the Kennedy family to consider themselves 20th-century Romans. John F. Kennedy was wont to refer to the principles of Ancient Rome, drawing for wisdom on Gibbon's classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. From it he gleaned and propagated the maxim that "the Romans maintained the peace by a constant preparation for war.''^^2^^ Robert Kennedy, too, though he put things in simpler terms, looked back to the Romans: "If we fail, the fault as with Julius Caesar's Romans will be 'not in our stars but in ourselves'.''^^3^^

Descending from the summits of classic literature, John F. Kennedy explained what was ``threatening'' the United States: Soviet successes in all fields, the visible advantages of socialism over capitalism. "Our greatest threat is not of nuclear attack," he wrote. "The hard truth of the matter is that we stand in greater danger of losing out in our titanic competition with the Russians without a single missile ever being fired." Kennedy observed that the Soviet Union would outstrip the United States in the key fields of science and technology because, as he put it, "Soviet economic growth continues to progress at a faster pace than ours." At the root of it all, Kennedy stressed, was the state of science and education. "It is no exaggeration to say," he pointed out, "that the struggle in which we are now engaged may well be won or lost in the classrooms of America.''

Falling back on statistics, Kennedy summed up: "It is estimated that [the Russians] will soon have three times as many scientists, technicians, and engineers as We do. They are already graduating more. And their brilliant scienti-

Here Come the Kennedys!

At the height of this most purposeful activity, a routine presidential election campaign must have seemed a bothersome occupation to the managers of psychological warfare. Why should Vice-President Richard Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy, both aspiring to the White House, argue? Harry Truman found that both the political duellers weren't grown to the job they were trying to get. Commenting on the Democratic Convention which nominated Kennedy, Truman wrote in a letter to Dean Acheson: "It was a travesty on National Conventions. Ed Pauley organized it and then Kennedy's pa kicked him out!... So, I'm taking the immature Democrat as the best of the two. Nixon is impossible. So, there we are.''

Ex-President Truman was most deeply annoyed that the 1960 campaign little resembled political struggle as he conceived it.

What was at stake, in Truman's opinion, we read in his diary: "We now have the greatest Republic in the history of the world. We must keep it just that. I'm spending the short remainder of my life trying to give the rising generation a clear idea of what they have and what they have to do to keep it.

``When Roman citizens began to buy their way out of service to the Republic, when they became fat and lazy and depended on slaves to do what the citizen should do---along came Caesar, Pompey and the great Augustus---the Roman Republic was at an end . ..

``We are their successors. What can we de to prevent our fate from going down the same road?''

His reply was simple: choose the right man for the "greatest

^^1^^ Off the Record. The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, pp. 390, 384, 256.

~^^2^^ John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, Harper & Row, New York, 1960, p. 45.

~^^1^^ Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 88.

~^^1^^ Ronald Steel, "Two Cheers for Ike" in The New York Review of Books, Vol. 28, No. 4, September 24, 1981, p. 56.

14*

fie achievements are not only aimed at capturing headlines--- they are aimed at capturing the hearts and minds of men . . . And as a result, the burdens that will face the next Administration will be tremendous. The gaps between ourselves and the Soviet Union will be many---and dangerous---and still growing. 'If they succeed and we fail,' CIA Chief Allen Dulles has warned, 'it will only be because of our complacency'.''^^1^^

Barely inaugurated as President, John F. Kennedy came to worship at the CIA altar, seeing Allen Dulles as an authority that needs heeding. Kennedy demanded that the United States at once tackle science and education.

The Democratic Party leadership accused the Eisenhowei government of having created a "missile lag", and loosened the "Soviet war threat" scare. Senator Lyndon Johnson, who was Kennedy's running-mate for the vice-presidency, took charge of a Senate sub-committee and went out of his way to play it up. The amazing thing is that both Kennedy and Nixon knew perfectly well that it was a big lie. But why did Eisenhower keep his lips sealed? They say nowadays that he did not want to compromise the source of his information, the U-2 spy missions. Though the U-2 information was meagre,^^2^^ Time magazine (which first published U-2 photographs of those days in 1980) recalled: "U. S. strategic planners concluded that the missile gap did not exist either. The photograph of the Soviet's North Sea submarine fleet showed that it was largely a defensive force."^:

Kennedy's charge that the administration wasn't taking due measures against Cuba was a punch below the belt. He simulated outrage over the administration's "allowing Communism to come to flourish 'eight jet minutes from the coast of Florida' ". The New York Times ran this headline on its front page: " Kennedy Asks Aid for Cuban Rebels to Defeat Castro". Nixon was infuriated. He knew the CIA had briefed Kennedy on preparations to attack Freedom Island, and complained to his cronies that he felt "like a fighter with one arm tied behind his back". Before millions of televiewers he said to Kennedy: "This was the most shockingly reckless proposal ever made ... by a presi-

~^^1^^ Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, pp. 166-167, 173, 167, 195, 198.

* Philip J. Klass, Secret Sentries: in Space, Random House, New York, 1971, pp. 47-48, 50-51, 71.

* Time, April 7, 1980, p. 49.

dential candidate".^^1^^ In his memoirs he amplified: "This was the most uncomfortable and ironic duty I have had to perform in any political campaign. . . Kennedy conveyed the image---to 60 million people---that he was tougher on Castro and Communsm than I was.''^^2^^

More than enough cause for resentment, wasn't it? Nixon not only wholeheartedly approved the CIA plans of invading Cuba, but was also in the know about the plan to ``remove'' the Cuban leaders during that opertion. ``Removal'' was CIA jargon for ``assassination''.^^3^^

In the course of the election campaign both sides spurned the rules of decency. Republican burglars broke into the offices of physicians who treated John F. Kennedy. They tried to find facts about Kennedy's health they could use in the political struggle. Each side tapped the telephones of the other. The Kennedy clan, however, proved more powerful. Professor John P. Roche pointed out years later that at that time the late Joseph P. Kennedy had an intelligence network that dwarfed the FBI. The multimillionaire, who wanted his son in the White House, did not spare the dollars. At the elections on November 8, 1960, John F. Kennedy won by a nose.

So What Was Behind Kennedy's Policy!

During the short transitional period before the new President took over, Eisenhower tried to impress him and all Americans with what is important and what is bad for the United States. Since the Western world continued to ruminate over the consequences of the Sputnik (the Tokyo Yomiuri wrote, "A Pearl Harbor for American science", and the London Daily Express coined the word ``Kaputnik''), Ike wanted the Committee of Scientists to produce recommendations for a space program. In December 1960, at a White House conference, the Committee reported: "The first really big achievement of the man-in-space

~^^1^^ Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs. The Untold Story, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979, pp. 66, 67.

- The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 221. ^^3^^ Brodie, Richard Nixon, p. 400.

program would be a lunar landing", at an estimated cost of 26 to 38 billion dollars. The enterprise was compared to Columbus's voyage, to finance which Queen Isabella is said to have pawned her jewels. President Eisenhower retorted that he was "not about to hock his jewels".^^1^^

This exchange of opinions evidently persuaded Eisenhower that basic policy had to be safeguarded against deformations suiting localist interests. While the idea of a "lunar landing" merely involved a tremendous sum of money, the scribbling of various military and civilian strategists about "limited wars" could have much graver consequences. A professional soldier, Eisenhower saw clearly that plans which looked fine on paper would in the end lead to_ a total nuclear war on terms that would not be of America's choosing. He also saw clearly who it was that promoted these concepts for reasons only remotely connected with "national security"---the death merchants, the arms monopolies, out to line their pockets with profit from the inevitable outlays for more conventional arms without which the "limited wars" doctrine would collapse like a house of cards. All these projects, as Eisenhower saw it, would weaken rather than strengthen the United States.

In his final address to the nation on January 17, 1961, Eisenhower said: "This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence---economic, political, even spiritual---is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. . . In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. . . We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals.''^^2^^

The address was viewed from many different angles. Remarkably, Eisenhower's own interpretation of it at his leavetaking press conference was usually omitted: for what he was

referring to, as he said, was not wilful abuse of power but "an almost insidious penetration of our minds that the only thing this country is engaged in is weaponry and missiles---and I'll tell you we can't afford that".^^1^^

Those were Dwight D. Eisenhower's parting words. But what could the United States afford? This he explained to his successor John F. Kennedy in a confidential talk at the White House, a few hours before his departure. Seated at the head of the table, the 70-year-old five-star general told the 43-- yearold lieutenant (USNR) seated on his left to cherish that precious legacy, the CIA, like the apple of his eye, and not to depart from the dichotomy of foreign-policy methods. Specifically, he passed on to Kennedy the anti-Castro operation, saying it was the policy of the US government to help the guerrilla forces opposed to Castro . .. to the utmost.

``At the present time," he said, "we are helping train antiCastro forces in Guatemala." It was his recommendation, writes Schlesinger, that this effort be continued and accelerated.^^2^^ Eisenhower made it clear, according to Cleark Clifford, the notetaker at the confidential talk, "that the project was going very well and that it was the new administration's ' responsibility' to do 'whatever is necessary' to bring it to a successful conclusion". There you have the doctrine of the possible, as handed down by the eldest outgoing inmate of the White House to the youngest ingoing one. According to Kirkpatrick, Inspector-General of the CIA, the doctrine that sprang from "the successes in overturning governments in places like Guatemala . . .insinuated the notion into the heads of policymakers, even the genial Ike, that the CIA could secretly perform 'with baling wire' what generals could no longer be allowed to do openly with armies, not if a nation wanted to maintain international respect.''^^3^^

To be sure, John F. Kennedy did not mention these injunctions when, at the inauguration on January 20, 1961, he made his bold speech, a heady cocktail of what he had been preparing and building in the course of his many months of campaign-

~^^1^^ Daniel J. Boorstin. The Americans. The Democratic Experience, Random House, New York, 1973, pp. 592-593. ' Eisenhower, Waging Peace, p. 616.

The New Language of Politics, p. 390.

Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 478.

Wyden, Bay of Pigs, pp. 88, 324-325.

ing. At the convention in Los Angeles he had reviled consumer values. The New Frontiers slogan, he explained, "sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook". During the television debate, Kennedy chided Nixon for saying to the Russians they were ahead in missiles but the US was ahead in color TV. Now, on the threshold of the White House, he declared: "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans---born in this country, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage." His concluding words were: "Ask not what your country can do for you---ask what you can do for your country.''

He reviewed the uniformed men who marched past standing erect and proud as he had stood on the bridge of his PT-109 mosquito boat in the Solomon Islands back in 1943. The friendly press described in detail how he held the helm during the war and said nothing of the fact that the torpedo boat under John F. Kennedy's command was the only one of all the torpedo boats in the belligerent navies to have been rammed. Foes ventured to recall that General Douglas MacArthur, who was then in command of the theatre, wanted the hapless commander to face a court-martial for losing his boat. MacArthur denied it.^^1^^ It would not do to cast aspersions at the man who now held the helm of state.

To get the country off the ground, Kennedy picked a young team of cabinet members---average age 47, over 10 years younger than the preceding administration. Among those who got the 200 key posts in the government there were three times as many university graduates than in Eisenhower's time. People recalled the recent attacks on intellectuals as a nightmare (Eisenhower's Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield had bragged, for example, about "progress in rooting out eggheads", while Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson defined fundamental research as an occupation "when you don't know what you are doing").^^2^^ Things had changed. The now Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, the Commissioner of the Inter-

nal Revenue Service, the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, and three US ambassadors had all been university professors. Secretary of State Dean Rusk ranked first among the 15 leading statesmen for number of honorary academic degrees. Plus four professional historians in other higher government posts. The cabinet now had "the best, and the cleverest". But one of the first things Kennedy did on assuming the Presidency was to confirm Allen Dulles and J. Edgar Hoover in office.

Barely three weeks of the new presidency had passed before Allen Dulles held a party for ten CIA executives and 12 of the President's closest associates. They gathered at the Aliby Club, of whose existence most people in Washington were not even aware. Here they got to know each other, and discussed the Cuban invasion in an informal setting. Kennedy was pleased with Richard Mervin Bissell, who headed the operation, and said he belonged among the four or five brightest men in the administration.

While the brigades of Cuban counter-revolutionaries were completing their training in secret camps and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were weighing the chances of success from the military angle at Kennedy's request, Bissell decided to assassinate Castro and behead Cuba. The assassination was assigned to Sam Giancana, Chicago's gangland boss, and his chum Johnny Rosselli. The gangsters told the CIA it was best to use poison. It was picked, a few monkeys were poisoned to verify its effects, and it was then passed on to Giancana and Rosselli. The CIA valued the operation at 50,000 dollars, and the sum of 10,000 was turned over in Bissell's office as an advance payment. Castro would die two or three days after consuming the food to which the CIA ``liquid'' was added, and there would be no trace left of the poisoning. Bissell and Co. were absolutely sure of succeding, and took relevant action. A special CIA unit was activated called Executive Action ZR/RIFLE "for disabling foreign leaders, including assassination 'as a last resort'.''

But the attempt on Castro's life failed.

In June 1975 Giancana and Rossclli were called before the Church Committee. A few days before he was due to testify, seven pointblank shots at his home wiped out Giancana. Ros-

Lasky, /. F. K. The Man and the Myth, p. Leuchtenburg, A Troubled Feast, p. 109.

84.

selli revealed a few things, such as the ``liquid'' which, he said, ``couldn't be used in boiling soups and things like that". Soon Rosselli vanished. In August 1976 fishermen pulled out a barrel with the cut up body of Rosselli near the Florida shore. It was weighed down with heavy chains. The assassins in both the killings were not identified.^^1^^

All this occurred later. In mid-Appril 1961, the conspirators against Cuba were in high spirits. A call from the White House to Bissell: "Begin!" In the evening of April 14, the brigade went aboard a ship in a Nicaraguan port. Dictator Somoza, who came to see it off said: "Bring me a couple of hairs from Castro's beard.''^^2^^ Radio pirate Phillips, as in Guatemala in 1954, filled the air with mysterious phrases: "Look well at the rainbow. The fish will rise very soon. The sky is blue.. . The fish is red.''

It was a call to the non-existent underground to take up arms. Bulletin No.l concocted by E. Howard Hunt at the CIA was brought to the Cuban Revolutionary Council set up in the USA for signing. It opened with the words, "At dawn Cuban patriots in the towns and mountains began the fight to liberate their country from Fidel Castro.''

At UN headquarters in New York Adlai Stevenson of the USA had to assure the world that the Cuban air force had mutinied. Proof? A plane with Cuban markings had landed in Florida. But before that plane (naturally sent by the CIA), a damaged bomber, one of the eight that had taken off from Nicaragua to bomb Cuban airfields, made a forced landing on the same airfield. The thing was quickly unravelled, but not before Stevenson had read the CIA-produced statement. Most embarrassing! Adlai Stevenson, the pride of all US liberals, branded a liar at international level.

``Liberators" armed to the teeth landed in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba at dawn on April 17. They had even taken along a flag they were going to hoist in Habana. But their ``war'' did not last long, just two days and nights and a bit. One hundred and fourteen were killed. The remaining 1,189 surrendered.

In Washington, Allen Dulles came running to Nixon, bringing tidings of failure. On the next day, Kennedy summoned his recent political adversary to the White House and asked him, "What would you do now in Cuba?''

``I would find proper legal cover, and I would go in," said Nixon. The former Vice President, author Wyden reports, cited what he considered legal justifiication for "armed intervention by U.S. forces". Kennedy replied, "I just don't think we can take the risk", because there was a chance of the USSR taking counter-measures in, say, Berlin.^^1^^ He did not say that some US experts who had questioned the CIA's reliance on popular ``support'', saw the failure as a confirmation of their opinion that US armed interference would lead to a long struggle in Cuba, converting "the conflict into another Spanish Civil War".^^2^^

There was nothing left to do but accept the humiliating setback. At the end of 1962, the captured counter-- revolutionaries were exchanged for US goods to the tune of 53 million dollars. On December 28, 1962, the President and his wife, their little boy by their side reviewed a parade of the released mercenaries on US soil. Forty thousand saw Kennedy accept the flag of the brigade, and heard him promise, "I assure you, this flag will be returned to the brigade in a free Habana." Jacqueline Kennedy made a short speech in Spanish.

At the time Cuban soldiers and militia were rounding up US mercenaries in the dirt of the Bay of Pigs, the world hailed one more great Soviet breakthrough on April 12, 1961, when Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made mankind's first spaceflight. US historian Daniel J. Boorstin observed: "It was clear to the world that the Bay of Pigs was a disaster for the United States. Never was American self-esteem or the American reputation abroad more in need of a lift. Now the President felt under special pressure, as the President's Science Adviser explained, 'to get something else in the foreground'. The President could use a 'space spectacular'.''^^3^^ Such was the genesis

~^^1^^ Wyden, The Bay of Pigs, pp. 109-110.

~^^2^^ Schlesinger, A Thousand Days. John F. Kennedy in the White House, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1965, p. 269.

~^^1^^ Wyden, Bay of Pigs, p. 294.

~^^5^^ Schlesinger, A Thousand Days. Jolm F. Kennedy in the White House, p. 254.

~^^3^^ Boorstin, The Americans. The Democratic Experience, p. 595.

of the program for manned flights to the Moon, which Kennedy announced in his Congress speech, "Urgent National Needs", on May 25, 1961. In contrast to the Soviet Union's systematic exploration of outer space, the US program pursued primarily propaganda aims. John F. Kennedy became an adept in astropolitics.

The swift US advanses in space research totally destroyed the myth of America's "missile lag" which, however, had helped Kennedy to move into the White House. The worth of that myth (the Soviet "missile threat" had been exaggerated fifteen to twenty times over^^1^^) was well known to those associated with the President, though none was in any hurry to let the mass media know. At first with humor, then with some irritation, the President and his trusted aides responded negatively to attempts at prolonging the life of that myth through Kissinger, for it was no longer needed in practical politics. The Rockefeller Foundation, meanwhile, had timed the publication of another one of its reports, once more presented as a book by Kissinger (The Necessity for Choice. Prospects of American Foreign Policy) to coincide with Kennedy's inauguration as President. It warned against optimism in AmericanSoviet relations. Repeating the election rhetorics, Kissinger maintained that "the missile gap in the period 1961-1965 is now unavoidable.''^^2^^

Kissinger's post, for Nelson Rockefeller had him taken on as NSC adviser, attached the ring of official approval to this viewpoint.

The appearance of the spry ``theorist'' so close to the upper echelon of power in Washington was a bit perturbing. The ``style'' of the new presidency, much unlike that of the previous one, had already made itself felt. The court of John F. Kennedy became known half in joke as ``Camelot'' (the title of a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, adapted from Terence White's book, The Once and Future King). In the constellation of the moneyed and the intellectual, with John and Jacqueline Kennedy at its centre, everyone knew each

other, everyone represented old dynasties of politicians and Big Business. Though not all by far were intellectuals, all valued intellectualism and, of course, knew a fraud when they saw one. And Kissinger began lecturing monotonously on how to pursue politics, addressing those who by the grace of blood and fortune were the country's masters.

The first to lose his temper was Professor McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the President for national security. Scion of a family close to the uppermost military and diplomatic circles (his father was assistant to Henry L. Stimson when the latter was Secretary of War, and his brother, Dean Acheson's sonin-law), Bundy had not turned thirty when be became coauthor of Stimson's memoirs in 1947, a professor at 34 and Dean of the Department of Arts and Sciences in Harvard. He had met Kissinger there and had not been impressed. When, during a visit to India, Kissinger, then a mere NSC staffer, began speaking on behalf of the United States, McGeorge Bundy's telegram caught up with him, saying, "Keep your mouth shut.''^^1^^

At that time, the Kennedy administration tried to make up for the Cuban setback by redoubling subversive activities against the European socialist countries. The members of the Warsaw Treaty nipped its efforts in the bud. On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic established strict control over the borders with West Berlin, which had become a center of psychological warfare. Washington drew the due conclusions and confined itself to oral tirades. But not Kissinger. Having gained a superficial knowledge of subversion, the holy of holies of US foreign relations, he arrived at the conclusion that since US policy revolved on anti-communism no holds were barred. He advised Kennedy to break down the Berlin ``wall'' by force. This, compounded with other recommendations that illustrated his incomprehension of the dichotomy of US foreign policy, led to his dismissal from the NSC staff in February 1962.

Kissinger grieved that he had not found a common language with Kennedy, that he lost the "golden chance" to rise to

~^^1^^ Sec Whence the Threat to Peace, 2nd ed., p. 6.

~^^2^^ Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice. Prospects of American Foreign Policy, Harper and Bros., New York, 1961, p. 26.

~^^1^^ Marvin Kalb, Bernard Kalb, Kissinger, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1974, p. 64.

the top. Expelled from the corridors of power, he found that the policy of the Kennedy administration was "pretty puerile", that Kennedy himself was ``light'' and, after the President was killed, told his colleagues of the academic community that the loss was bearable because Kennedy had been "leading the country to disaster".^^1^^

Yet John F. Kennedy's administration was anything but puerile. It knew perfectly well what Kissinger's recommendations could lead to. The thinking in the White House was quite clear: "Suppose a shooting war began in East Berlin? Suppose, then, that the United States resorted to small nuclear weapons 'to stop a battle and prevent a breakthrough'? The consequences could be endless.''^^2^^ There could be an all-out nuclear war---something Kennedy, who acknowledged Soviet-American strategic parity, could not allow to happen. The basic conditions for such a war, as Kennedy saw it, would be to gain strategic superiority over the Soviet Union. Thus, US nuclear missile power continued to be built up under Kennedy. On the whole, during the 1,036 days of Kennedy's presidency, the United States spent 167 billion dollars for military purposes, as compared with the 315 billion in the eight years of Eisenhower's presidency.

In October 1961, Roswell Gilpatric, Assistant Secretary of Defense, declared publicly with the approval of higher instances that there was no missile ``lag''. All the same, historian Gaddis observed, "public admissions that the 'missile gap' did not exist never equaled in frequency or intensity Kennedy's earlier assertions that it did".^^3^^

In June 1962, speaking at Ann Arbor, Mich., Defense Secretary McNamara gave currency to NATO's ``counterforce'' concept: "The principal military objectives, in the event of a nuclear war .. . should be the destruction of the enemy's military forces, not of his civilian population. The very strength and nature of the alliance forces make it possible for us to retain, even in the face of a massive surprise attack, sufficient reserve striking power to destroy an enemy society.''^^4^^

The ``counterforce'' doctrine added to the world's uncertainty of the future. One could not help thinking of it in terms of Gilpatric's speech, and Gilpatric had "ripped away the facade, leaving the Soviet Union in an embarrassingly exposed strategic position, a condition made all the more alarming by the Kennedy administration's careful refusal to rule out, under certain circumstances, the possibility of initiating a nuclear exchange".^^1^^ What else, indeed, could the frantic buildup of the US strategic arms mean? In 1963, none other than Kennedy himself proudly reported that "in less than three years, we have increased by 50% the number of Polaris submarines, increased by 70% the proportion of our strategic bombers on 15 minute alert, increased by 100% the total number of nuclear weapons in our strategic alert forces [and] increased by 60% the tactical nuclear forces displayed in Western Europe.''^^2^^

So why debate whether or not there was any fundamental difference between Eisenhower and Kennedy if both of them, "under certain circumstances", were prepared to initiate a thermonuclear war?

In that respect, at least, the continuity of US foreign policy was more than apparent. Kennedy also followed in Eisenhower's footsteps as regarded psychological warfare. The Kennedy administration's contribution to US strategy in world affairs, known as "flexible response", saw the dichotomy of methods become what may be described as a triad. To psychological warfare and all-out nuclear war was added "limited war" aimed above all against national liberation movements wherecer these might arise. To be sure, "limited wars" were not ruled out against countries of the socialist community either, but this in the long term, not before Washington tilted SovietAmerican strategic parity in its favor.

``Limited wars", the Kennedy administration hoped, would reverse the worldwide revolutionary process and prevent power from passing to the people in any more countries. Preparations for such wars saw a steep rise in military expenditures. Under Kennedy, the number of US divisions was increased 45 per

~^^1^^ Mazlish, Kissinger. . ., p. 122.

^! Landau, Kissinger, p. 71.

~^^3^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . ., p. 233.

' The Department of State Bulletin, July 9, 1962, p. 67.

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States, p. 235.

^^1^^ Seymon Brown, The Faces of Power. Consistency and Change in U.S. Foreign Policy from Truman to Johnson, Columbia University Press, New York, 1968, p. 196.

cent, conventional armaments and equipment 100 per

cent, and special purpose forces (the notorious Green Berets) 600 per cent. The ``counter-insurgency'' Green Berets were to be the advance guard of aggression before and during "limited wars". By the summer of 1963, they numbered 12,000 men, with another 112,000 US and 7,000 allied officers receiveing " counter-insurgency training''.

The emphasis on "limited wars" changed the competence of the CIA. After the Bay of Pigs debacle it was no longer allowed to conduct military operations. This became a strictly Pentagon responsibility. Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell were removed. John Kennedy urged his brother Robert to take charge. But Robert was smart enough to refuse. He became the behindthe-scenes curator of the Agency, while John. A. McCone, a businessman Republican, was appointed its director, with Richard Helms replacing Bissel'l as his deputy.

One of Kennedy's advisers was Professor Walt Rostow, bright light on the academic horizon. The ambitious inventor of the "stages of growth" theory, he used it to explain the genesis of revolutions in the modern world. By the professor's books it could not be simpler: communism was nothing more than "a disease of transition to modernization". And guerrilla war, as he described the national liberation movement, was a means whereby "scavengers of the modernization process" exploited the revolutionary aspirations of the people. Counter-insurgency action was the shield to protect the modernization process. Behind it the developing countries would acquire "social strength". And at the sight of this impressive spectacle, Rostow maintained, Moscow would desist from backing national liberation movements, and international capitalism would flourish.^^1^^

Another professor, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said: "If the ' middle-class revolution' failed, then the 'workers-and-peasants revolution' would become inevitable.''^^2^^ Robert Kennedy, seduced by the pronouncements of the two professors, picked up his pen and said he would write of political strategy.

``A military answer is the failure of counterinsurgency", he

~^^1^^ Rostow, "Guerilla War in Underdeveloped Areas" in The Guerilla---and How to Fight Him, ed. by T. Green, New York, 1962, pp. 55-58.

~^^2^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . ., p. 224.

The 1964 Republican Convention nominates Barry Goldwafer as its presidential candidate

Murder of Lee Oswald, said io have assassinated President John Kennedy

John and Robert Kennedy anticipating victory in Senate elections, 1956

Civil rights fighters attacked in Birmingham, 1963

One more US sky pirate shot down in Vietnam

Funeral of Martin Luther King

For women's equality, mid-1960s

Nixon reachers for power, 1968

Malcolm X, leader of Afro-American freedom figters, addressing followers

Police opens fire on students in Kent, 1970

expounded. "Insurgency aims not at the conquest of territory but at the allegiance of men .. . That allegiance can be won only by positive programs: by land reform, by schools, by honest administration, by roads and clinics and labor unions and evenhanded justice, and a share for all men in the decisions that shape their lives. Gounterinsurgency might best be described as social reform under pressure.''^^1^^

A most interesting exposition. But why, when matters came to the point of practice there was turmoil, crime, terrorism and genocide instead? The CIA was again coming into power, and was poised to carry out the orders of its superiors, subjecting the United States and the rest of the world to most dangerous undertakings.

Washington's hatred of revolutionary Cuba became an obsession. On November 30, 1961, John Kennedy directed the CIA and other related agencies to use all possible covert means for overthrowing the Cuban government. The same old story over again: attempts to assassinate Castro, to smuggle in agents, and so on and so forth. And also the same old confusion: agents did what they were bid with tails between their legs, hired gangsters lied, etc. Even Professor Schlesinger, a faithful associate of the Kennedy brothers, could not conceal his sarcasm. Gamal Abdel Nasser had rebuked the President in a letter for the US government's part in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Schlesinger reported: " 'Political assassination,' Kennedy replied, while his own CIA was hustling the mob to poison Castro, 'should be ... vigorously investigated and condemned.' "^^2^^

Preparations for Plan B---a rebellion in Cuba in the summer of 1962---reached their concluding stage. In the circumstances, an incursion by US troops to support the ``rebels'' could not be ruled out. To counter the threat, the Soviet Union and Cuba came to terms in the summer of 1962 to station defensive weapons on the island, including medium-range missiles.

When the United States discovered this in mid-October 1962 by means of U-2 spy planes, Washington had no choice but to

~^^1^^ Robert F. Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World, Bantam Books, New York, 1967, p. 112.

* Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, pp. 527-528.

Reagan receives Begin in Washington

take its policy toward Cuba out of the cloak-and-dagger realm, but did so in a way that brought the world to the edge of the thermonuclear abyss. True, this was unintentional on the Kennedy brothers' part, and occurred due to an accumulation of various, partly unpredicted, circumstances in Washington. Noting that John F. Kennedy's conduct at that time had "come under considerable criticism" historian Gaddis points out that "the president has been charged with having exaggerated the strategic significance of the Soviet deployment; critics are fond of quoting Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's observation, made at the time, that 'it makes no great difference whether you are killed by a missile fired from the Soviet Union or from Cuba'. It has also been argued that Kennedy made no effort to resolve the crisis through diplomatic means but instead welcomed a public confrontation with the Russians; the implication is that he had forthcoming Congressional elections much in mind. Finally, it has been asserted that the episode was not the finely orchestrated exercise in crisis management it is often pictured as having been; that what brought about its favorable resolution was not skill but simply, in Dean Acheson's words, 'plain dumb luck'.''^^1^^

The listed reasons, which originated mainly with US `` revisionist'' historians, are more or less accurate. The 13 days of the Cuban crisis are to be deplored because they show with appalling clarity what the consequences are of the years of war hysteria, especially at sittings of the NSC executive, and the reaction of the Pentagon and CIA leaderships. In those two organisations very many favored a massive air strike against Cuba followed by an invasion. They would not see farther than the noisy beginning: by McNamara's estimates, the US invasion force would suffer 40,000 to 50,000 casualities. On October 22, Kennedy announced the blockade of Cuba and called it a ``quarantine''. US armed forces were being massed closer to the Caribbean, those in Europe were put on an emergency footing. Defensive countenneasures followed on the part of the Soviet Union. The USA had created a most explosive situation.

In the end, the Kennedy brothers turned out to be doves. Why? Of the insistence to resort to force without further ado John F, Kennedy said: "These brass hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we ... do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong."¹ And replying to an offer to take cover in a bomb shelter if there is war in the air, ihis brother Robert Kennedy replied: "I am not going. If it comes to that, there'll be sixty million Americans killed and as many Russians or more. I'll be at Hickory Hill (the family residence).''^^2^^ Hence the realism of President John F. Kennedy, who responded to the Soviet proposals for settling the Caribbean crisis.

The missiles were taken off Cuba. The United States, for its part, promised never to attack Freedom Island and, besides, to restrain its allies from so doing. On October 30, the CIA received orders to stop its acts of diversion and terrorism on Cuba. CIA agent William Harvey and General Edward G. Lansdale, who had been planning an attempt on Castro's life, were removed. The former drank himself to death, the latter retired." But new people came, and new attempts on Castro were planned.. .

Whatever the legends told in the United States about John Kennedy's actions in those critical 13 days, "new evidence---- recently declassified minutes, some staff reports, key diplomatic cables, and some published parts of Robert Kennedy's still closed papers.. .---reveals," Barton J. Bernstein wrote in 1980, "that the president and some advisers, from the early days of the crisis, were privately more flexible than memoirists or critics acknowledged.''

In April 1963 Kennedy carried out the Soviet demand, withdrawing the Jupiter missiles trained on the USSR from Turkey and Italy. Naturally, Washington officials categorically denied that this was the price for ending the crisis in the Caribbean. But John Kennedy was what he was, Bernstein concludes in his special study of the issue, and "the administration quietly

~^^1^^ Kenneth P. O' Donnell, David 1''. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, Henry Holt, Boston, 1972, p. 318.

~^^2^^ E. Guthman, We Band of Brothers, New York, 1976, p. 126.

^^3^^ Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 575.

~^^1^^ Gaddis, pp. 237-238.

Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States,

is*

withdrew the Jtipiters from Turkey [though] it did send a Polaris submarine to this area.''^^1^^

It is said, and probably on good grounds, that October 1962 changed the Kennedy brothers, their tactics toward the Soviet Union. The motivations behind Kennedy's policy in the year that was left him, as presented by Theodore Sorensen, special counsel to the President, warrant close attention. "Kennedy... was [now] ready to negotiate---to apply, as Dean Rusk put it, the lessons of World War III before it could occur because it will be too late to apply them afterward," Sorensen wrote.^^2^^ In the preface to Sorensen's book, which appeared in 1963, John Kennedy sadly confessed: "Every President must endure a gap between what he would like and what is possible.''^^3^^

Was that a great discovery? In another book, Sorensen disclosed: "This view was not peculiar to Kennedy. Franklin Roosevelt termed Lincoln 'a sad man because he couldn't get it all at once. And nobody can'. Truman shed crocodile tears over the day that Eisenhower would discover that in his new post he could give few effective commands. But Johnson and Nixon became bitter over the frustrations of the office.''^^4^^

Yet no American president discovered his impotence in such dramatic circumstances as did Kennedy. The consequences came swiftly. No one knows precisely why but the President's most important speech on American-Soviet relations was prepared not by the State Department but by a group of men under McGeorge Bundy. On June 10, 1963, Kennedy addressed the students of American University, whom he reminded that "no nation in the history of battle . . . ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War." If war broke out, he said, "all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first twenty four hours". He also said that the United States and the Soviet Union had a "mutually deep in-

terest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race". And he added as the realist he was that "if we cannot end now all our differences at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.''^^1^^

Kennedy sent Averell Harriman to Moscow to conclude the talks on outlawing nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, outer space and underwater. It had at last become clear that rich man and beggar man were equally endangered by radioactive fallout. For a moment Harriman was sory that US missiles had already been shipped out of Turkey and Italy. He lamented the loss of bargaining counters. But Kennedy could not be moved: he put physical survival above doctrinaire ruses. His instructions were categorical, and the treaty was signed in Moscow on August 5, 1963. The ``father'' of the H-bomb, Edward Teller, turned to the Senate in despair: "If you ratify this treaty", he said "you will have given away the future safety of this country." Men of his stripe supported him, but these were only 19; 80 Senators voted for ratification.

To use Halberstam's expression, the treaty "was the first break in the almost glacial quality of the Cold War.''^^2^^ John Kennedy was inordinately proud. He told friends that he had made the test ban the "keystone of his foreign poky" and was ready to sacrifice victory in the 1964 elections for the sake of the treaty.

The End of Camelot: Truths and Untruths

The Kennedy administration seemed to be working against time, as though the very devil was after it.

Paradoxical as this may sound, its diverse activity was motivated by the achievements of socialism. Education and again education, Kennedy said, sending Congress annual messages, one more resolute than the other, with recommendations for improving it. In one-third of Kennedy's legislative proposals

~^^1^^ Barton J. Bernstein, "The Cuban Missile Crisis: Trading the Jupiters in Turkey?" in Political Science Quarterly, Spring 1080, pp. 98, 124.

^^2^^ Sorensen, Kennedy, Bantam Books, New York, 1966, p. 818.

~^^1^^ Sorensen, Decision-Making in the White House. The Olive Branch or the Arrows, Columbia University Press, New York, 1963, p. XII.

* Sorensen, Watchmen in the Night. Presidential Accountability after Watergate, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1975, p. 29.

~^^1^^ Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, pp. 901, 902. * Halbcrstam, The Bast and the Brightest, p. 358.

education held the most conspicuous place. "Our progress as a nation," he would say, "can be no swifter than our progress in education. The human mind is our fundamental resource.''^^1^^ The programs were carried -5ut---to one extent or another. But the government's zeal, its assumption of ever new functions, created blind disaffection in highly influential quarters. John Kennedy was tackling things much too vigorously. The administration was making enemies. Schlesinger, who was the President's close adviser, wrote Jim F. Heath, "drew heavy fire from critics because of his remarks in a debate with the conservative William F. Buckley. Schlesinger, defining a welfare state as one that provided citizens with basic elements of life, such as food, clothing, (shelter, education and opportunity called it the best defense against communism. Senator Strom Thurmond (Democrat. South Carolina) attacked the historian's statements sharply, charging that communism and welfare statism were in essence the same; an annoyed Republican congressman implored 'God save the President and the nation from some of his socialist friends'. The legislators' criticism' mirrored business distrust of intellectuals.''

These men were definitely behind the times, and treated what was known as the drive for "new frontiers" without the due understanding. What they could not see at all was that socialism is the future of all mankind.

For many reasons, and his origins not least of all (his father's fortune reposed on stock exchange speculation), Kennedy shied clear of ideological debate. Striving to make the economic growth rates rise to at least an annual 5 per cent, he said in his muchtalked-of speech at Yale University in 1962: "What is at stake in our economic decisions today is not some grand warfare of [ rival ideologies which will sweep the country with passion, but the practical management of a modern economy. What we need is not labels and cliches but more basic discussion of the sophisticated and technical questions involved in keeping a great economic machinery moving ahead.''^^2^^

Increasing the state interference in economic affairs, the Kennedy administration secured a rise in gross national product growth rate to an annual 5.6 per cent or twice that of Eisenhower's time.

John Kennedy got the country to move. When the consequences of his measures, especially the budget deficit and the tax reform, began to tell, incomes before taxes increased 50 per cent and after taxes 70 per cent from 1961 to 1965. The President kept saying he meant to meet public's ``expectations''. Wall Street's expectations had quite definitely come true, but of the unpropertied there were only 1 per cent fewer by the autumn of 1963 than in 1957. In 1966, however, unemployment dropped to 4 per cent, with more than 5.5 million finding jobs since 1961.' Kennedy insisted on a ``controlled'' movement of the economy, and did not hesitate to threaten resolute action against the steel monopolies when they tried to raise prices in April 1962 (which would have impelled inflation). Indeed, the Kennedy brothers gave the steel barons the fright of their lives, making them capitulate 72 hours later. The triumphant President said his father had always told him businessmen were sons of bitches, but he had not believed it until that day. Still, his firmness did not add to his popularity in certain Big Business quarters.

The logic of the growing state-monopoly capitalism inevitably pushed Robert Kennedy, who controlled the punitive machinery, to the forefront of the political scene. He had a chance to display firmness literally at every step, and declared war on organized crime, waging it with impressive consistency. Ninety-six major criminals were convicted in 1961; 101 in 1962; 373 in 1963, and 677 in 1964.

True, Robert Kennedy's devotions soon split: while continuing his fight against organized crime, he also tried to use the investigative agencies for purely political purposes, and was highly insistent in this respect.

In due course, the Kennedy brothers discovered that the FBI and CIA were not enough for their needs, and, of course, for those of the country. In any case, it was their feeling that they

~^^1^^ Sorenscn, Kennedy, p. 401.

Jim F. Heath, John F. Kennedy and the Business Community, University of Chicago Press, 1969, pp. 7, 129.

~^^1^^ Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1966, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, 1966, pp. 496, 218.

were not getting the due understanding from J. Edgar Hoover. The official FBI tourist guidebook said for example, until Robert Kennedy found out about it, that Mr. Hoover became Director of the Bureau in 1924 or a year before the birth of the Attorney General. The top officials of the two agencies were little inclined to loyalty: presidents come and go_; the FBI and CIA remain. The Kennedy clan which saw it all too well, found a way out. A peculiar system of relationships began shaping in the country's political life. Kennedy was not content with his constitutional office (as though there was anything higher) and set about erecting a dependable structure of personal power.

British historians who examined the forms of dependence that existed between seigneurs and their vassals in the late Middle Ages, noticed that on the British Isles from the 14th century on "they began to choose as their patron the man who could do them the most good, and, with a cynicism that would do credit to a twentieth-century public-relations man, they called their boss not by the plain and ancient name of `lord', but by a new piece of cant: they called him their 'good lord' ''.

The researchers who wrote this were absolutely right to add that "historical analogies, like old wheelbarrows, are apt to collapse if they are pushed too far". But they were also absolutely right that an analogy existed: "There is a startling resemblance between this late medieval prince, surrounded by his vast but indefinite mass of councillors, retainers, and servants, tailing off into those believed to be well-wishers, and Robert Kennedy as he debated whether to raise the standard of rebellion with his friends, relations, employees, and political allies." The parallel, the historians write, occurred to the well-read Eugene McCarthy. "One of the things I object to about the Kennedys" he told one of them, "is that they are trying to turn the Presidency into the Wars of the Roses." The old, automatic allegiances of American politics, the writers point out, based on geography and ethnic identification, were largely replaced by a new kind of loyalty very much like "bastard feudalism". And they amplify:

``No longer does a clever and idealistic young man gravitate automatically into the sphere of a local leader such as William Jennings Bryan or Robert La Follette. He can join 'the Ken-

nedys', or he can attach himself to the retinue of some other 'good lord' who can promise high adventure and reward. In the 'loosely-knit and shamelessly competitive society of contemporary America, just as in England of Chaucer's day, the straightest road to fortune for a 'thrusting young gentleman' lies not in self-help, but in joining the retinue of a great man and hoping to rise with his 'good lord`s' fortunes.''^^1^^

To my mind, it was the mentality that prevails in the higher echelons of US society, its habitual modus operandi, and not the ``diabolical'' scheming of the brothers Kennedy, that brought these new elements into the methods of government. The Kennedy clan hoped to entrench itself at the top of the pyramid of power for a long time to come: John would be followed by Robert, and Robert by Edward. That meant they were planning to hang on the presidency for at least 24 years---from 1960 to 1984 (three presidents with two terms each). And to suit this big goal, they began digging in, as it were, starting at the foundations, that is, with personal political intelligence apparatuses.

The researcher, of course, can gather only a few grains of information about this family enterprise. Even the keenest research into the personal secret services maintained by the richest men in America yields only scrappy evidence. But the overall trend is clear. J. Hougan's book, Spooks, contains the judgement of a lawyer associated with the Senate who, to preserve himself, asked for his name to be withheld. "Bobby," the lawyer said, "created I-don't-know-how-many proprietaries, including a couple of detective agencies, basing them in big cities down South and in the Midwest. Places like Milwaukee and Detroit. Anyway, they were the Kennedy's babies, and they did what they were told; sometimes they worked against Hoffa or organized crime, and other times they did political stuff. Actually, they're supposed to have been set up with discretionary funds from the White House, but there's no way to be sure. You had a unique situation back in 'sixty and 'sixty-one. You had one brother controlling the Presidency, and the other brother, Bobby, wearing a

~^^1^^ Lewis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, Bruce Page, An American Melodrama. The Presidential Campaign of 1968, Dell Books, New York, 1969, pp. 232-233.

couple of hats. He was Attorney General, sure, but he was also overseeing the CIA: I mean he ran it. What I never understood was all that stuff about Jack's supposedly wanting 'to smash the CIA into a thousand pieces'. Hell, it was his brother's operation! Anyhow, they had a thing called 'the Five Eyes' or 'the Three Eyes'---I swear it was owned lock, stock, and barrel by the CIA. And it was a Kennedy enterprise---not legally, but in fact. They got their orders from Bobby, and they carried them out.''^^1^^

All these ``proprietaries'', both official and unofficial, had their hands full. When the Kennedys got the country ``moving'', they gave impulse to processes that no one in Washington could have predicted. Since it came to light and was repeatedly reaffirmed that the USA was ``lagging'', a few of the only recently unassailable values of capitalism were put in question. The ideals of the "consumer society" were discredited, leading to the gradual disintegration of the ``consensus'' that had been hammered together with so much effort in the fifties. Having expanded the framework of the contest with socialism, laying the accent on science, education, and the like, John F. Kennedy thereby prompted Americans to put on their thinking caps. And no sooner they did so than green sprouts of thought quite distinct from the gospel of US ``democracy'' began pushing upward from beneath the oppressive rock of ``consensus''. To the President's calls for change inside the country people began to refer as to mere rhetoric, which they indeed were.

Those who felt they were being robbed of something, tried to improve their lot by themselves. Things got moving, and what got moving first was what lay on the surface: racial dis- ' crimination. On May 4, 1961, seven Blacks and six whites set out in a bus from Washington, D.C., to tour the southern states ! and to protest against segregation in public places. "From j the administration's point of view," writes William Manchester, "the timing was dreadful. Not only had the Russians just won the race for the first manned space flight to encircle the earth; the week after that the Cuban brigade had been overwhelmed I on the beach. . . The new President needed a victory or, if that f

was impossible, the absence of a fresh defeat. The last thing he wanted was an ugly racial incident.''^^1^^

So the government saw to the protection of the "freedom riders" as the daring civil rights fighters called themselves. But passions flared.

In January 1962, John Kennedy announced that he would back Black civil rights only in a framework that maintained concord on a national scale. Black activists extended the limits of that framework. The "freedom riders" tour paved the way for the implementation of the 1956 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in public facilities. The "For Whites" and "For Blacks" notices in public buses disappeared. The Department of Justice combated local resistance, repealing ordinances that had existed for years. The autumn of 1962 was marked by an outbreak of violence. For the first time in US history, James Meredith, a Black, was enrolled in Mississippi State University, with backing from the federal authorities. The price: two dead, nearly 400 wounded. Egged on by the state governor, racists raved and ranted outside the university gates. Meredith was guarded by 400 court deputies and men of the federal army. A hundred and sixty-six deputies were wounded beside the university building, 28 of them by snipers' bullets. In those days, as distinct from the latter sixties, they were under White House orders not to fire back.

The Students for a Democratic Society organization was formed in the summer of 1962. Its program was more than moderate: to combat two of the greatest dangers, that of racism and the determining factor of the cold war symbolized by the Bomb. The students planned exclusively non-violent action. But these initial signs of organization by the left infuriated the right.

The John Birch Society claimed a membership of more than 100,000. A variety of other rightist organizations sprang up all over the country. Many of them, like Fred Schwarz's Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, propagated the Bible as the sole salvation. At the same time, they acquired arms. They made no secret of their intention to resort to violence if nothing else helped. In 1963, four Black girls were killed by a bomb blast

Hougan, Spooks, p. 109.

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 935.

in a church, and Black activist Medgar Evers was shot dead in Mississippi. At their endless rallies, rightists reviled the Kennedy brothers and the Supreme Court.

In June 1963, John F. Kennedy submitted a Civil Rights Bill to Congress, which got bogged down in committees. Meanwhile, the wave of Black protests rose higher and higher. Before the year was out, more than 800 towns witnessed racial rioting. In August 1963, 250,000 took part in a civil rights march to Washington. Dramatic consequences were expected, but the Kennedy brothers turned it skilfully into an ordinary Washington protest. Addressing demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King revealed his most cherished dream that "one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.''

Not all Blacks followed Martin Luther King. Malcolm Little (known to Black Muslims as Malcolm X) soon declared he wasn't going to sit at this table and look on how they ate. while his plate was empty. "It is incorrect," he said, "to classify the revolt of the negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against the white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.''^^1^^ He was not fated to carry on in the same spirit for long. In February 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated.

While the racists had dug to the bottom of the barrel for invective against the President, John F. Kennedy entrusted dealings with Martin Luther King, that tireless civil rights crusader, to the punitive agencies. He and his brother had repeatedly warned King that he should restrict his activities. At a confidential meeting with him, John F. Kennedy wrily observed that Martin Luther King, as he assumed, was aware that he was being most watchfully shadowed. King's speech before the 250,000 Washington marchers had been duly recorded by the FBI. King spoke of the dream he had, and the FBI classified it as demagogy: he was head and shoulders above all the other Black leaders in influencing the mass of Negroes. Henceforth, he was singled out as the most dangerous Black for the coun-

try's future from the standpoint of communism, Blacks, and national security.^^1^^

With White House and Department of Justice blessings, the COINTELPRO was extended to include Martin Luther King's movement, supplemented by the COMINFIL (a program combating "communist infiltration") and the latter's bag of dirty tricks. On October 10 and 21, 1963, Robert Kennedy instructed the FBI to instal eavesdropping equipment to keep tabs on Martin Luther King.

To control events in the United States and those parts of the world to which the US had access had evidently become the Kennedy administration's working doctrine. Though the policy was spearheaded against the world revolutionary process, it was also concornitantly aimed against obstacles from the ``right'' liable to discredit the ``liberal'' image of the USA. Rafael Trujillo, the blood-stained dictator of the Dominican Republic, was killed in May 1961, with arms supplied by the CIA. In sum, the s.o.b. was removed, though, to use FDR's phrase, "he was a [US] s.o.b.''

John F. Kennedy was in a hurry. The battlefield he chose against the advancing tide was Southeast Asia. "Now we have a problem in trying to make our power credible," he said, "and Vietnam looks like the place.''^^2^^ He was following in Eisenhower's footsteps, determined to block what his predecessor had described as the "falling domino" theory.^^3^^ The young President was convinced in what he was doing, though he had been sternly warned by someone who knew better--- Douglas MacArthur. The general was well received at Gamelot; Kennedy even had a gold medal coined in his honour, inscribed, "Protector of Australia; Liberator of the Philippines; Conqueror of Japan; Defender of Korea". MacArthur had spoken the requisite words of thanks, and in an eyeball-to-- eyeball conversation repeated his longtime warning: "Anyone wanting to commit American ground forces to the [Asian] mainland should have his head examined.''

~^^1^^ Final Report. . ., Book 3, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Case Study, pp. 97, 107-108, 115.

~^^2^^ Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, p. 97.

' L. Gelb, "Politics and the Tragedy of Vietnam" in Foreign Policy, No. 3, Summer 1971, p. 142.

~^^1^^ Malcolm X Speaks, Grove Press, New York, 1966, p. 217.

In 1964, on his deathbed, MacArthur enjoined Lyndon Johnson not to do it. "The time might be dangerously near", he said, "when many Americans might not have the will to fight for their country".^^1^^

In vain. Kennedy dispatched US troops to Vietnam. In December 1960 there had been just 733 US ``advisers'' there; by the end of 1963 their number had risen to 16,500. It had clearly escaped Washington's vision that escalation is bound to trigger counter-escalation. Gradually, the USA began to sink deeper and deeper into the bog of the war it had itself started. Later, the culprits argued as to how it had all happened. Richard Nixon laid much of the guilt on General Maxwell Taylor, who had in those times been both US ambassador in Saigon, and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Nixon saw it, "that disastrous failure [in the Bay of Pigs] prompted President John F. Kennedy to order a postmortem, and General Maxwell Taylor was chosen to conduct it. He concluded that the CIA was not equipped to handle large-scale paramilitary operations and decided that the American effort in Vietnam fit into this category. He therefore recommended that control of it be handed over to the Pentagon, a decision that proved to have enormous consequences. The political sophistication and on-the-spot `feel' for local conditions that the CIA possessed went out the window, as people who saw the world through technological lenses took over the main operational responsibility for the war.''^^2^^

But whatever Nixon thought, he was wrong. Kennedy did not abandon the dichotomy of US foreign-policy methods. Yes, it is true the Pentagon was given formal control over the war in Vietnam, but it operated hand-in-hand with the CIA under rigid White House political control. As Theodore Sorensen, a witness we can trust in the matter, observed in one of his books, "Kennedy looked more to the White House aide McGeorge Bundy than to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and to a greater extent than any predecessor refused to regard the Cabinet collectively as a consultative body.''^^3^^ It was, indeed,

under Kennedy that the President's national security aide Professor Bundy and his immediate staff moved into the West Wing of the White House, and began chairing conferences of the NSC staff. And all this enables us to take the measure of the Pentagon's responsibility for the war in Vietnam.

William Colby, who was made CIA director in reward for his doings in South Vietnam, says in so many word in his memoirs: "The CIA could not have had a better friend in a President than John F. Kennedy. He understood the Agency and used it effectively, exploiting its intellectual abilities to help him analyze a complex world and its paramilitary and covert political talents to react to it in a low key. It is, of course, pointless to speculate on what Kennedy might have done in Vietnam had he lived. But I am convinced that he would, at the very least, have recognized the futility of a massive military buildup there as the way to fight a guerrilla war. Despite his vacillation between his conflicting advisers over Diem, I remain satisfied to this day that, given his preference for political action and his appreciation of, and fascination with, counterinsurgency, we would have focused sooner and more effectively on the village-level, people's war had Kennedy been in the Oval Office during those crusial years from 1964 to 1968. Whether we would have won or lost, we would at least not have had a half-million American soldiers involved, nor experienced the casualties they suffered and inflicted by their operations.''^^1^^

Whence this faith in the hypothetical course of action that Kennedy would have followed? Colby had seen the beginning: the short work made of Ngo Dinh Diem, who had outserved his purpose. The initiators of his ``removal'' had been Roger Hilsman, director of the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research, arid Michael Vincent Forrestal, presidential adviser on Vietnam. Knowing their way about in Washington's bureaucratic labyrinth, they overcame the resistance of the CIA director (whose objection was that they wouldn't find a better man), incited the CIA Saigon agents' wish to get rid of the dictator and in August 1963 ordered US ambassador in South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge to rend-

~^^1^^ Manchester, American Caesar, pp. 831, 832, 833.

'~ Nixon, The Real War, p. 100.

* Sorensen, Watchmen in the Night, p. 92.

~^^1^^ Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, p. 221.

er all assistance to the putsch. The cable was signed by George Ball, Undersecretary of State.

The Saigon conspirators were in a blue funk, the CIA agents on the spot kept spurring them to action, while Paul D. Harkins, head of the US Military Assistance Command in Vietnam, who knew nothing of the plot, reassured the worried Ngo Dinh Diem that he could always rely on the USA. Finally, on November 1, 1963, the mutiny broke out.

The dictator instantly phoned Lodge. A refined gentleman, scion of one of New England's first families, the ambassador was nothing less than polite. He said he had no knowledge of a plot, though he had just received detailed instructions from Bundy on how to reply if Ngo turned to him for help: to express ``concern'' for his personal safety. Understandably so, for when Ngo and his brother were seized by the putschists, they were instantly shot to death. The dictator's spouse happened to be in Washington. The Tiger Lady, as she was known, wondered why she was being cold-shouldered. On hearing of her husband's assassination, she exclaimed: "If you have the Kennedy administration for an ally, you don't need any enemy."<sup>1</sup> Now the wheels were turning. Camelot galvanized the old plan of overthrowing the people's government in Cuba. After the failure of the 1961 invasion, the CIA was nursing a plan to start the ball rolling from ``inside''. In November 1963, the Agency was completing its negotiations with the agent of a conspirators' group in Cuba known by the code name of Amlash. The mystery man wanted to meet Robert Kennedy in person and obtain serious guarantees of US support. Contacts were maintained with him on Robert Kennedy's behalf by a prominent Washington lawyer, Desmond Fitzgerald---in his other guise the secret head of the CIA's special affairs staff (effectively the Agency's Cuba desk at that time). What was said between them, is, of course, unknown. But on November 18, John F. Kennedy, speaking in Miami (where Cuban emigres had made their nest), reviled the Cuban government as a "small band of conspirators" whose removal was sure to win US support of "progressive goals" in Cuba. Fitzgerald it is said, had a hand in writing that speech, which the CIA con-

~^^1^^ Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate, p. 98. 240

sidered art assurance to the Cuban underground that the USA was with them. On November 22, Fitzgerald and a CIA officer met Amlash and gave him a ballpoint pen, the tool for Castro's murder "rigged with a hypodermic needle so fine that its victim would not notice its insertion". They also promised to grant Amlash's other requests, such as supplying rifles and telescopic sights, and explosives.^^1^^ Pleased with the results, they departed from the secret meeting only to hear radio and TV reports of US President John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas.

The circumstances of Kennedy's killing are all too well known. Herbert S. Parmet is probably right when he says that "it was hard to accept the senseless death of one who had come to symbolize youthful leadership. Moreover, it was the first of that decade of political murders, and a president had not been killed for over a half century".^^2^^

Many theories were framed. Many books were written. They address themselves from different angles to the Warren Commission's official version, which concluded in 1964, that "the shots which killed President Kennedy . . . were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. . . The Commission has found no evidence that. . . Lee Harvey Oswald . . . was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy. . . All of the evidence before the Commission established that there was nothing to support the speculation that Oswald was an agent, employee, or informant of the FBI, the CIA, or any other governmental agency. . . Oswald acted alone.''^^11^^

The seven-man Warren Commission included future president Gerald Ford and Allen Dulles. It has been reliably established by now that, operating in haste, many substantive points had escaped its field of vision. Reluctantly, Schlessinger admitted that Allen Dulles "withheld from the Warren Commission all information [the CIA had---N.Y.] regading the as-

~^^1^^ The Assassinations. Dallas and Beyond. A Guide to Coverups and Investigations, ed. by P. Scott, Penguin Books, New York, 1978,

pp. 18-42.

~^^2^^ Parmet, /. F.K. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, Penguin Books, New York, 1984, p. 349.

^^1^^ Report of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Bantam Books, New York, 1964, pp. 39, 41-42.

16---796

sassination plots. One obvious reason might have been his fear that, if Robert Kennedy now learned about the extent of the plots, he might hold the CIA responsible for his brother's death.''^^1^^

The ever mounting pile of books appearing in the USA and the West about the Kennedy killing has by implication emasculated the Warren Commission's findings of all common sense. A special House committee re-examined the case in 1979, adding 12 volumes of its ``hearings'' to the 26 volumes of the Warren Commission. The crucial point made by the House committee was that by the evidence of acoustics experts there had been not three but four shots in Dallas on the fateful day of November 22, 1963. Consequently, Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy", while the gathered evidence "demands a re-examination of all that was thought to be true in the past".^^2^^ To be sure, no action followed, while the published report was treated as just one more exercise related to the Kennedy assassination.

In the autumn of 1980 the FBI handed the Department of Justice a thin 22-page report maintaining that the technicians concerned had mishandled the sophisticated acoustical procedures and their evidence "must be considered invalid". There was some to and fro about the stand of the FBI. G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of the committee, observed that the FBI's technicians had no experience in the sophisticated statistical and acoustical procedures employed by the committee's scientists. Besides, he added, "the FBI apparently is still unwilling to admit that it failed to conduct an adequate investigation of the president's murder in the first place". On this the FBI refused to comment.^^3^^

British journalist Anthony Summers, who put out a plump book of his own, Conspiracy. Who Killed President Kennedy, in 1980, encountered astonishing things in his dealings with the US mass media.

Insisting, naturally, that his and only his version was right

~^^1^^ Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 536.

^^1^^ Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Congress, 2nd Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1979, pp. 1, 180.

~^^3^^ The Washington Post, July 7, 1981.

(that there had been a conspiracy!), Summers wrote: "As this book was being completed, one indefatigable American reporter found that his carefully researched stories on the Kennedy case were not getting into print. On appealing to his editor, he received a memorandum regretting that he was still 'posing questions that are unanswerable'. He s'hould instead, wrote the editor, 'carefully point out that the Assassination Committee's demise (in 1979---N.Y.) is reflective of the general public's feelings for the moment---'Let it rest'.. . Time, Newsweek^ and the New York Times delivered their verdicts. They gave space to articles ranging from the caustic to the openly sarcastic. One distinguished commentator 'declined to accept' the acoustics evidence that two gunmen were at work in Dealey Plaza, yet it was clear from his comments that he had not studied the vital detail of that evidence. One reporter sneered at those he dubbed 'conspiracy junkies', and another gloomily foresaw that now 'wackier and wackier the theories will grow'.^^1^^

The latest theory, contained in David Lifton's book, Best, Evidence, of more than 700 pages (published in early 1981), says that when Kennedy's body was being removed from Dallas to Washington, splinters of the bullet from a rifle other than Oswald's were surreptitiously extracted from the deceased President's skull. Time magazine commented: "Lifton's novel theory, both grim and fascinating as a mystery story, is all but impossible to accept as reality.''^^2^^ But the magazine devoted two of its pages to a review of Lifton's book.

An overabundance of information is just as ineffectual as a shortage of it, especially if the data are tied to a motley variety of interpretations. In October 1981 the authorities even went to the length of disinterring Oswald's body. Autopsists reaffirmed that the exhumed body was in fact Oswald's. One more fantastic version burst like a bubble. Yet there is something about the November 22, 1963 tragedy in Dallas that nobody knows. Shortly before his death in 1973, ex-President Lyndon Johnson said in a confidential talk with his former aide Janos, that on assuming office in 1963 he discovered "we had been

~^^1^^ Anthony Summers, Conspiracy. Who Killed President Kennedy, Fontana Paperbacks, Glasgow, 1980, p. 518. ~^^1^^ Time, No. 3, January 19, 1981 p. 33.

16*

Operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean".^^1^^ And on June 3, 1968, addressing a group of San Fernando Valley State College students, Robert Kennedy said, "I now fully realize that only the powers of the Presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother's death.''^^2^^

Two days later, Robert himself was killed.

In any case, he would hardly have succeeded in banishing the shades of Jack Kennedy even if he had tried. He managed just one thing: refusing to let Robert Kennedy run as his Vice President in the 1964 elections, and picking Hubert Humphrey instead. Robert Kennedy left the office of Attorney General, and was elected Senator from New York State. Lyndon Johnson's aide and biographer Eric F. Goldman was altogether right when he wrote: "Lyndon Johnson. . . entered and he departed with a Kennedy uppermost in the national thinking and emotions, and perhaps he had not been much elsewhere during his five years in the White House.''^^1^^

Whatever Johnson happened to do, it was at once compared with what Jack Kennedy would have done, though the two men were as unlike each other as anybody could be.

The Kennedy people called Johnson the "corn pone character". Born in 1908 in Texas, his beginnings were entirely different from those of his predecessor. Worker, schoolteacher, Congress employee, then Congressman (from 1938), Senator (from 1948), and Senate majority leader (from 1954), he was proud of being a self-made man, and was grown to the intrigues on Capitol Hill which he confused with politics. He was a hard worker, and pushed his associates .as hard as he pushed himself. And he tried very hard to prove that he would not be the worst President in spite of never going to Harvard.

A heretofore unknown side of Johnson's character came to light in 1981: he had been piling millions of dollars atop those he had made before. We learn this from Robert Caro, author of a three-volume Johnson biography. "More significant than the dollar total of Lyndon Johnson's fortune," Caro writes, "are the methods he employed to accumulate it. .. A detailed examination of such methods is an instructive lesson in the means by which in 20th century America, a position of public power can be used to accumulate private wealth.''

In the Oval Office, President Johnson installed telephones of different color to communicate with his agents in the Texas business world. "During the entire five years of his presidency," Caro informs us, "Johnson personally directed his business affairs, down to the most minute details... In his direction of

~^^1^^ Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson, Macdonald. London, 1969, p. 530.

The Policy of the Absurd

In the afternoon of November 22, 1963, aboard the presidential Boeing-707 Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President. The plane was filled with frightened Kennedy associates. Nearby stood Jacqueline Kennedy in a dress with her late husband's bloodstains. After the brief ceremony, the plane took off, carrying the new President to the nation's capital.

In the United States, politicians turn to the Bible.at every junction, drawing wisdom from it for all possible and impossible occasions. And Lyndon Johnson was no exception. He saw the whole trick of government in a phrase from Isaiah: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." (1:18) Did that stand for collective government? Johnson, who inherited the court of Camelot, later cursed it. In the autumn of 1972, in Johnson's last few months, he was visited by his favourite general, William C. Westmoreland, under whose generalship the USA lost the Vietnam war. "If I could relive the period of my presidency," Johnson said to him, "I would replace at the outset all the senior people I inherited from Jack Kennedy---except Dean Rusk.""

This was a post-mortem made nearly ten years later. He had not dared touch J. Edgar Hoover, for example, and for a very good reason. "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out," he is known to have said, "than outside pissing

in.

~^^1^^ Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate, p. 89.

~^^2^^ Summers, Conspiracy. . . , p. 522.

' William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1976, p. 509.

' Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, p. 529. 244

his business affairs, he did not hesitate to use the power of the presidency itself, and to use it with utter ruthlessness.''^^1^^

What were the origins of Johnson's wealth? According to Robert Garo, "he entered the Oval Office perhaps the richest man ever to occupy it''.

The Johnson fortune in 1963, as officially announced, was $3,484,000. Yet Caro demonstrated persuasively in his book that Johnson had been inordinately tightfisted ever since a young man and therefore really had as much as 25 million dollars when entering upon the presidency. It all began when he bought a radio station in Austin, Texas, for $17,500 in 1942. The radio and television empire that it had grown into was worth $7,000,000 by 1963. Summing up, Caro writes: " During the twenty-one years following the purchase of the Johnson radio station---twenty-one years during which Lyndon Johnson continually held public office---the Johnson fortune increased at a rate of close to a million dollars per year." How much Johnson as President added to the afore-mentioned 25 million dollars is unclear as yet, but the biographer's slightly disturbed tone is understandable: American mythology would have it that public office and business do not mix.

Money was the muscle behind Johnson's public service which elevated him to the post of President. He had a good name among the rich and ultra-rich in America's South-West. "Money," Garo writes, "was the basic source of Johnson's power on Capitol Hill. Lyndon Johnson has been described as a legislative genius, a reader of men, a leader of men---countless articles described how he could grasp men's lapels, peer into their eyes, and talk them around, how he could create consensus out of disparity. Lyndon Johnson was all these things but his genius would have had far less impact without the money to back it up, without the knowledge on the part of the legislator being approached that the man grasping his lapel possessed the power to advance his political career or---by aiding his opponent---to end it.''^^2^^

Yet in public L.B.J. paraded as a bearer of good will.

~^^1^^ The Washington Post, September 21, 1981.

~^^2^^ Robert A. Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson. The Path to Power, Vintage Books, New York, p. xxii, 788, xxi.

In the 1964 elections he demonstrated his way of doing things. He promised the nation a Great Society, a place where "we can open the doors of learning, of fruitful labor and rewarding leisure, not just to the privileged few, but we can open them to everyone. These goals cannot be measured by the size of our bank balance. They can only be measured in the quality of the lives our people lead.''^^1^^ He assured the nation, "We are going to finish the work that Jack Kennedy left us", thereupon, he confessed in his memoirs, "At the heart of it, I thought of the Great Society as an extension of the Bill of Rights". So that was it: in his mind's eye he saw himself on the same plane with the Founding Fathers.

An unusual program and a most unusual election. For the first time in years, the rightists mustered their stength, and nominated 55-year-old Senator Barry Goldwater Republican candidate. Owner of a string of large stores in Arizona, Goldwater personified all the diehard and all the latest bourgeois virtues---• he was a respectable businessman, he was an indisputable patriot, he was a former Air Force general, he had piloted jet aircraft, his hobbies were photography and radio. In a personal letter to Johnson he expressed a "numb feeling of despair" for, as he put it, it was "incredible to try to understand how you are going to try to embrace the socialist platform of your party". The substance of the debate, as Johnson saw it, was "that the Goldwater effort was not going to be a traditional centrist campaign. The political theory underlying the Goldwater strategy assumed that a 'hidden majority' of frustrated, conservative Americans had for decades stayed away from the polls in protest against the moderating influence of the twoparty system. These people, according to the theory, would emerge as a decisive force in Presidential politics if only the Republican party would turn its back on `me-tooism' and offer them a genuine choice. . .

``We were now engaged in a colossal debate over the very principles of our system of government. Would we cast aside thirty years of progress and reform and return to the days of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, or would we strengthen, and build on the programs of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman,

~^^1^^ Hugh Sidey, A Very Personal Presidency. Lyndon Johnson in the White House, Andre Deutsch, London, 1968, p. 123.

and John Kennedy? Goldwater allowed no middle ground, and I accepted that challenge.''^^1^^

He met the challenge. For the simple reason that Goldwater called for a balanced budget, tax reductions (for the rich first of all), cutbacks on social spending, and, as the concomitant, for work, work, work, which Lyndon Johnson parried with topheavy primises of a better deal especially for the poor. Goldwater, of course, never tired of calling for resolute struggle against communism, for a bigger and better US army, and, in a speech in Hartford, informed his public that if the NATO commanders are given permission to use tactical nuclear weapons in an eventual conflict, the US military presence abroad could be cut by a third.

He, Barry Goldwater, had himself introduced the topic of nuclear weapons in the campaign, and paid for it. This and his other utterances were interpreted by Democrats as a call to drop the atomic bomb in Vietnam, risk a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union, and so forth.

The Democrats, Johnson declared, ``don't want our American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys" (September 25); "In Vietnam ... we have lost 190 American lives. . . I often wake up in the night and think about how many I could lose if I made a misstep" (September 28); "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves" (October 21); "There can be and will be, as long as I am President, peace for all Americans" (October 27).

A year later, the following bitter joke was making the rounds in America: A naive girl says, "I was told if I voted for Goldwater we would be at war in six months. I did---and we were."¹ Johnson scored an overwhelming victory, polling 43.1 million votes (61.1 per cent) against 27.1 million (38.5 per cent) for Goldwater. The edge of 15,951,083 votes was the biggest in US history. In both houses of Congress Democrats had a majority they had not had since 1937. Rightfully, they celebrated their rare success, but the defeated did not lose heart eith-

~^^1^^ Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point. Perspectives of the Presidency 1963-1969, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1971, pp. 102-104.

~^^2^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 1031,

er. Breaking down party lines, they managed to seize control of a large mass of the people. The tactic of forming countless rightist organizations that had no rigid party affiliation was paying dividends. It turned out that there was a specific sort of immunity in the United States, for not all by far were affected by George Meany's colorful phrase. " [There is] a parallel between Senator Barry Goldwater and Adolph Hitler", and California Governor Edmund G. (Pat) Brown's warning, "I smell the stench of Nazism. I hear the march of storm troopers." The 1964 campaign turned out to be an important milestone in the making of a coalition that got to be known over the years as the New Right. Its modern day ideologue, Richard A. Viguerie, observes: "Our debt to Barry Goldwater is .. .great. The Presidential campaign of 1964 was the first major political experience for most of us in the New Right... His words came back to haunt Americans in the aftermath of Vietnam, Agnew, Watergate, Nixon, and Carter.''^^1^^

As for the Democrats, the 1964 election vested them with broad powers to operate as they saw fit. And they used these powers to the utmost. At the end of 1963 the US had mounted an operation code named 34A: infiltration of armed gangs into North Vietnam with the aim of starting an ``uprising''. The moving spirits behind the operation, Robert McNamara and, of course, the CIA, had not invented anything new; they were simply intent on carrying out the ``counter-insurgency'' project that had been worked into the framework of psychological warfare. The gangs, as was only to be expected, were quickly caught and rendered harmless, and ambitious Operation 34A collapsed. Infuriated Washington responded with what was an unmitigated provocation, saying that two US destroyers had been ``attacked'' in international waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. Johnson sent a resolution to Congress that had long since been drawn up by Bundy's staff delegating to the President the powers to wage war against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. Not a word was said to Congress about Operation 34A. On August 7, 1964, Senate passed the disgraceful Tonkin Gulf Resolution by 88 votes to 2, as did the House of Repre-

~^^1^^ Richard A. Viguerie, The New Right---We're Ready to Lead, Viguerie Co., New York, 1980, pp. 10, 4g.

sentatives unanimously. In pursuance of that resolution the US Air Force bombed DRV ports.

But Washington was apprehensive of the possible reaction of the People's Republic of China: the US aggression was unfolding too close to the Chinese border. At a September 15, 1964 conference, however, Johnson, Rusk, McNamara and McCone found that strains had appeared in Sino-Soviet relations. If so, the PRC's buildup of its nuclear potential could hardly leave the USSR indifferent. And at once, the conferees formed a plan that was put down in the official minutes: "We believe that there are many possibilities for joint action with the Soviet Government if that Government is interested."¹ What wishful thinking! Setting out on an aggression in Southeast Asia, Johnson thought he could make it a safe job with Soviet help. Indescribable cynicism.

But what was the US after in its war against the DRV? From a 1965 secret memorandum on US war aims by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton we learn that they were 70 per cent to prevent a humiliating US defeat (and America's reputation as guarantor), 20 per cent to prevent South Vietnam and adjacent territories from falling into China's hands, and 10 per cent to let the people of South Vietnam have a better and freer life.^^2^^ Officially, Washington kept saying it was ``protecting'' South Vietnam against "Asian Communism". In fact, however, the Johnson administration had (the above-mentioned chimerical project notwithstanding) gradually ceased to fear that an escalation of the Vietnam war would lead to a clash with the PRC, and in April 1965 mounted its first undisguised large-scale combat operation in South Vietnam.

By early 1969, an army of 549,500 Americans, nearly 2 million soldiers of the South Vietnam puppet regime, and 68,800 ``allied'' troops were fighting in Vietnam. The ``allied'' troops had come from Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines, and South Korea. Their strength topped that of the ``allied'' contingents which had fought under MacArthur in Korea in 1950-1953. The Chiang Kaishek regime offered cannon fodder from Taiwan, but though the US command in Viet-

~^^1^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . ., p. 210. ^^1^^ Book World, January 31, 1982, p. 6.

nam complained of a shortage of men, it agreed with the State Department that it was better to have nothing to do with the Taiwanese. In March 1966, Rusk informed Congress that the US was continuing its "efforts to reassure Peking that the United States does not intend to attack mainland China. . . The Chinese Communists have acted with caution when they foresaw a collision with the United States. We are acting with constraint and care. . . I hope they will realize this and guide their actions accordingly.''^^1^^ That was what the Washington politicians were banking on.

In their heroic struggle for freedom the people of Vietnam had a loyal ally and friend. During the visit of a Soviet government delegation to the DRV in February 1965, the USSR declared it would provide all requisite aid and support. The 23rd Congress of the Soviet Communist Party said everything would be done to end the US aggression in Vietnam and secure the withdrawal of all foreign troops from South Vietnam. "The aggressors will have to face the ever increasing support of Vietnam by the Soviet Union and other socialist friends and brothers," the Congress stated. "The people of Vietnam will become master of all its land. And no one will ever succeed in extinguishing the torch of socialism raised aloft by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.''

The Soviet Union and the other signatories of the Warsaw Treaty did, indeed, render every possible aid to the DRV. Soviet armaments were used most effectively in combat against the US aggressors. Vietnamese soldiers learned to use them with consummate skill, and inflicted defeat upon defeat on the aggressor.

Soviet aid and the resolute stand of the USSR prevented the aggressor from crossing the fatal line and resorting to nuclear weapons against Vietnam.

General Westmoreland, in command of US forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, saw this as the reason for America's defeat. Here is what he wrote in 1976:

``Early in the fight President Johnson telephoned General Wheeler [Chairman of the J.C.S.---N.Y.] to ask if there might be a chance he would have to make such a decision [on the

~^^1^^ Mooney, Brown, Truman to Carter, p. 160.

use of tactical nuclear weapons]... I recognized the controversial nature of the subject and that employing tactival nuclear weapons would be a political question. . . If Washington officials were so intent on 'sending a message' to Hanoi, surely small tactical nuclear weapons would be a way to tell Hanoi something, just as two atomic bombs had spoken convincingly to Japanese officials during World War II.. . It could be that use of a few small tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam---or even the threat of them---might have quickly brought the war there to an end. No one could say so with certainty, of course, but surely a detailed consideration of the possibility was warranted. Although I established a small secret group to study the subject, Washington so feared that some word of it might reach the press that I was told to desist. I felt at the time and even more so now that to fail to consider this alternative was a mistake''.

But Washington's hands were tied, for, as Westmoreland himself observes, influencing many of the major US decisions on Vietnam was what he describes as "an almost paranoid fear of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union.''^^1^^

Though, of course, the fear was not paranoid, as Westmoreland would have us believe. Soviet power had, indeed, set rigid limits for the armed venture of the United States in Southeast Asia. It made the aggressor wage the war on terms that were bound to bring about his defeat. "What he tries to do in his book is called among soliders 'covering your ass'," writes a reviewer of Westmoreland's memoirs.^^2^^ Certainly there are those in America who grieve that the USA had failed in Vietnam. One of them is Ronald Reagan, who writes: "Kennedy sent in the first troops, and I don't criticize him for that, because I don't know what information he had that the rest of us didn't. . . But what I do criticize is what followed from that decision. Having committed combat troops to the field, and having escalated our forces to over half a million soldiers, as Johnson did, we had no moral right to do anythnig less than defeat the enemy and win the war. Our goal should have been a victory march down the streets of Hanoi.''^^3^^

~^^1^^ Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, pp. 444-445, 543.

* The New York Review of Books, May 13, 1976, p. 29.

~^^3^^ R. Reagan, Ch. Hobbs, Ronald Reagan's Call to Action, p. 41.

It is alright inventing projects after the date. In those days, in the latter half of the sixties, Johnson's "wonder boys" were in a quandary. They had recommended that he escalate the war, and in the end admitted that they had been wrong. Relying for aid on the Soviet Union and other fraternal socialist countries, on the support of all progressives, the people of Vietnam only inflicted more and more telling defeats on the Americans. The first to resign was McGeorge Bundy ( December 1965). His place of special assistant to the President for national security was filled by his deputy, another professor, Walt Rostow. Johnson was delighted. ``I'm getting Walt Rostow as my intellectual", he said. "He's not your intellectual. He's not Bundy's intellectual. He's not Galbraith's intellectual. He's not Schlesinger's intellectual. He's going to be my goddamn intellectual.''

Very soon, John F. Kennedy's opinion of Rostow was proved true: he had lots of ideas but nine out of ten led to disaster.

He did not waste time cancelling out the emphasis on brute force. The psychological warfare in Vietnam was stepped up. "We are faced with a classic revolutionary situation---like. .. St. Petersburg in 1917," Rostow declared. He chided Russian counter-revolutionaries for not having been resolute enough. And if the US would hesitate, he warned, "this is about what would happen in Saigon". To prevent it from happening, there had to be massive terror against South Vietnam's civilian population, coupled with an escalation of military operations. For Johnson, as one of his aides observed ruefully, Rostow was "like Rasputin to a tsar under siege".^^1^^

In the meantime, Johnson was building up US strategic power. Back in January 1964, calling for new arms allocations, McNamara said their purpose was to create a strike force "large enough to ensure the destruction, singly or in combination of the Soviet Union, Communist China and the Communist satellites as national societies. . . and in addition to destroy their war-making capacity so as to limit, to the extent practicable, damage to this country and its allies.''

In 1967, McNamara reported with glee that the USA had the "ability even after absorbing a well-coordinated first strike

~^^1^^ Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, pp. 761-763.

to inflict unacceptable damage on the attacker.. . In the case of the Soviet Union, I would judge that a capability on our part to destroy say one fifth to one quarter of her population, and half of her industry would serve as an effective deterrent.''^^1^^

The reference to the US "absorbing a ... first strike" was so much Washington eyewash. Who would believe it when people in so many countries saw US B-52 bombers (each with four 1.5-megaton nuclear bombs) in the air near Soviet borders practically round the clock.

Where this course was leading the country was no secret to the surviving ``intellectuals'' of Camelot, whom Johnson hated so implacably. Arthur Schlesinger wrote in 1979: "One day in the late spring Galbraith, Goodwin and I lunched in New York. 'It would be terrible', Goodwin said, 'if, when the nuclear bombs begin to drop on Peking or Washington, we had to reflect that all we did in the summer of 1966 was to rest comfortably on one or another beach.' "^^2^^ They decided to write a book against Johnson, and did so. In 1981 Galbraith recalled the same episode: "In the spring of 1967, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Goodwin and I lunched together one day at Quo Vadis in New York. .. It was of the war we talked. Schlesinger said this was the time of testing; in that last millisecond before the ultimate holocaust we should not be forced to remember that we had spent the summer on a beach. We agreed that we chould devote ourselves.. . to qpposing the war.''^^3^^

Under the impact of the Tet (lunar New Year) offensive in South Vietnam in February 1968, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was forced to resign. A vacuum formed round Johnson, but he obdurately continued to direct the war in Vietnam. Westmoreland asked for another 206,000 men. This shocked Washington. It had no troops to spare. As it was, US troops in Europe had been reduced from 366,000 to 300,000 between 1965 and 1967. Johnson told his aides the anti-war protests were inspired by "two or three intellectuals" who had produced all the doubt. "And it spread and it spread", he com-

~^^1^^ Mooney, Brown, Truman to Carter, p. 158.

' Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, p. 797.

~^^3^^ The Washington Post Magazine, March 29, 1981, p. 23.

plained. "Then Bobby [Robert Kennedy---N. Y.] began taking it up as his cause and with Martin Luther King on his payroll he went around stirring up the Negroes. . . Then the Communists stepped in. They control the three networks, you know, and the forty major outlets of communication. It's all in the FBI reports. . . Isn't it funny that I always received a piece of advice from my top advisers right after each of them had been in contact with someone on the Communist world? And isn't it funny that you could always find Dobrynin's^^1^^ car in front of Reston's house the night before Reston delivered a blast on Vietnam?''^^2^^

All pure fantasy. But from the mouth of the US President!

In 1970, Lyndon Johnson told his lady love, scholar Doris Keams, of his difficulties. "I knew from the start," he said, "that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved---the Great Society---in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home.. .

``For this time there would be Robert Kennedy out in front leading the fight against me, telling everyone that I had betrayed John Kennedy's commitment to South Vietnam. That I had let a democracy fall into the hands of the Communists. That I was a coward. An unmanly man. A man without a spine. Oh, I could see it coming all right. Every night when I fell asleep I would seen myself tied to the ground in the middle of a long, open space. In the distance, I could hear the voices of thousands of people. They were all shouting at me and running toward me: 'Coward! Traitor! Weakling!' "^^3^^

The time of awakening was no better. Often, before dawn, the sombre figure of the round-shouldered President in gown and slippers would appear in the operational center in the White House basement to see how his instructions were being carried out.

Though as many as 2,594,000 US servicement had seen action in Vietnam, even Westmoreland attested that "some have

~^^1^^ USSR Ambassador in the United States.

~^^1^^ Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1976, pp. 316-317. ~^^1^^ Ibid., pp. 251, 253.

called Vietnam the 'working man's war' ", referring indirectly to draft deferments for students. "If a man had the money and could maintain his grades," the general wrote, "he could defer service until he finished college and even graduate school, or could hire legal help to exploit other loopholes in the law and avoid service. Conversely, the man without funds for or interest in college filled the ranks in Vietnam.''

Westmoreland admitted this "was wrong and indirectly was a reversion to the inequities of the Civil War when a man could buy a substitute. .. It had serious effects for the United States Army. . . A higher percentage of men served and died from states with generally lower incomes. . . Some complained that a greater percentage of blacks served in combat units. If that was so, it reflected chance and the effects of a man's technical skills rather than any conscious policy. The percentage of black soldiers killed was 13 per cent of all deaths, approximately the same ratio as there were blacks in the services.''^^1^^

For all that, Westmoreland claimed that US soldiers in Vietnam had fought gallantly. For the interests of US imperialism? This was placed in doubt in the reviews of his book in the United States itself, though the doubt was veiled in most cautious language. The reviewers had themselves been in Vietnam.

It was evident from the book, one reviewer wrote, that its writer "did not himself understand what the American role was meant to be: he did not see the war as essentially a political struggle.''^^2^^ Another reviewer cited David Cartright's study of the US soldiers' morale:

``In a very real sense, the American Army was fighting on two fronts, one against the Vietnamese guerrillas in the jungles and the other against embittered militants within its own ranks. . . The consequences of open defiance could be extremely harsh, and most GIs thus normally expressed their loathing for the military through more subtle means. Vast numbers of Vietnam-era servicemen participated in countless minor acts of sabotage and obstruction designed to clog the gears of the 'Green Machine'. Every unit had its examples of intentionally

~^^1^^ Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, pp. 390-392.

^^2^^ The New York Times Book Review, February 1, 1976, p. 5.

bungled repair or paperwork, of unexplained minor damage to equipment, of constant squabbling between certain GIs and the `lifers', of mysteriously appearing peace signs, etc." The reviewer then adds:

``US military forces were still able to crater the landscape and kill Indochinese quite effectively until they were pulled out. Many infantrymen resented being sent on dangerous missions whose only purpose was more glory and promotions for ambitious officers. Still most orders to go on patrol were obeyed. But it remains true that the fear that growing dissent among GI would spread was one of the main reasons why US forces withdrew from Vietnam.''^^1^^

A mass army is part of the people. Soldiers who protested against the war despite the pressure of discipline, reflected processes that were unfolding vehemently in the United States at the time. The movement against the Vietnam war was at first dwarfed by the general civil rights struggle, though already in the latter half of 1965 students on campuses had begun shouting, "Hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Still, the country's attention was focused as yet on the struggle of the Blacks marked by bloodshed in the ghettos. Its peak was reached in 1965 to 1968 in the successive "long, hot summers''.

In August 1965 there was turmoil in Watts, a Los Angeles suburb peopled by Blacks. Thirty-four were killed, 899 wounded, and 4,000 imprisoned. Property losses amounted to 45 million dollars. At the end of 1966 appeared the Black Panthers. They wore black berets and leather jackets, and called for armed struggle against whites. Not all welcomed Martin Luther King when he toured Watts, for he was still in favor of moderation while the torch of struggle was passing to the Black Panthers. "We want black power," they declaimed.

In 1966, unrest hit 42 cities, and in 1967 as many as 114 The biggest upheaval was witnessed in Detroit, where 18 blocks and a nearly 5-kilometre-long avenue were burned to the ground, with 43 killed, many hundreds wounded, and 7,200 arrested.

Altogether the disturbances and demonstrations of 1963-1968 claimed a toll of 220 lives. Certainly this was a high degree of

~^^1^^ The New York Review of Books, May 13, 1976, p. 30. 17-796

257

violence, and especially of destruction. What we should remember, however, is the specific mentality in the country with its terrible record of crime. In 1968, with a population of 200 million, 6,500 were murdered with firearms (for anything but political reasons). Discussing violence in America, Schlesinger wrote, "Among these 214 million [in England, Japan and West Germany], there are 135 gun murders a year. Among the 200 million people of the United States there are 6,500 gun murders a year---about forty-eight times as many." In Philadelphia, a city of "brotherly love" with a population of 2,000,000, there were as many murders a year as there were in England with a population of 52,000,000.^^1^^

Yet by 1968 it was quite clear that the movement against the war in Vietnam was outstripping the civil rights movement and winning mass support. Students stood in its front ranks. The growth of higher education saw tens of thousands of young men and women living in student hostels. Once upon a time, the concentration of the proletariat, with the growth of large-scale industry, led to working-class solidarity. Now, joint living in student hostels created unity of the youth. In 1967, 'news that the National Association of Students was being financed by the CIA undermined its prestige and nullified its efforts to keep student hostels under control. In October 1967, more than 50,000 demonstrated outside the Pentagon against the draft. Draftees publicly destroyed their cards, captured and destroyed papers at draft centres. Young people quit the United States to dodge the draft. Some 10,000 Americans who did not want to be drafted settled in Canada alone.

Various polls and estimates of that time showed that only 7 per cent of college students sided with the Students for a Democratic Society, and that only 12.5 per cent held `` revolutionary'' or ``radical'' views. Seventy-two per cent took no part in public protests. But the polls also showed that the situation was explosive: 81 per cent expressed discontent over how colleges and universities were run, and more than 50 per cent said they had grave doubts about the home and foreign policy of the United States. The discontents called themselves the New Left, a term that brought together people of motley views, all

~^^1^^ Schlesinger, The Crisis of Confidence. Ideas, Power and Violence in America, Andre Deutsch, London, 1969, p. 20.

dissatisfied with the prevailing state of affairs, and first of all, with the war in Vietnam. There could be no question of `` consensus'' any longer: words like ``left'', ``subversive'', and `` radical'' were no longer cuss words.

As 1967 turned into 1968, important decisions were seemingly being adopted in Washington to stabili/e a situation that was going out of control. In addition to the FBI, the CIA and the other secret services, military counter-intelligence was deployed for covert action against dissidents, serving as the vanguard of the US armed forces poised for action against their own nation. On Johnson's orders, Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance studied the site of the disturbances in Detroit and outlined measures involving the US Army in his detailed report to the cabinet. Washington commended the 82nd and 101st paratroop divisions for their heavy-handed action against theii countrymen. Though they had won no laurels in Vietnam, they were most effective in the street fighting at home. What had once been the job of the National Guard, was now entrusted to federal troops. Exhaustive directives were circulated among units of how to fight inside US borders.

The basic reason for all this was Vietnam. In March 1968, Johnson summoned all those who had been shaping US policy since World War II---Dean Acheson, Clark Clifford, Omar Bradley, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Henry Cabot Lodge, Averell Harriman, Matthew Ridgway, Maxwell Taylor, Cyrus Vance, and others. All of them had at one time stood for the war in Vietnam, but now said as one man that the nation should seek negotiations. They held the United States needed a breathing space and should get out of Southeast Asia. On March 31, Lyndon Johnson let it be known that the US government would negotiate with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and ordered a partial suspension of the bombing of North Vietnam. He also announced that he would not run in the 1968 presidential elections.

On April 3, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam announced its consent to negotiate, and on April 6 the Soviet government backed its move.

The aggression in Southeast Asia had failed. For the first time since World War II, Washington agreed to negotiate with a socialist country.

17*

THE RISE AND FALL OF RICHARD NIXON

The highly organized American state machine bucked improvisation and prevented sudden changes of course. All movements were closely watched by political investigative agencies, who informed those who own and run the United States, including the White House, of everything that was going on. A slovenly President like Johnson was evidently heartened to learn of various personal faults among his opponents, above all those who opposed the war in Vietnam. He had his trusted aide Max Watson start an investigation service in the White House. Watson told the FBI and CIA whom to put under surveillance among the top people in US society. The telephones of senators and congressmen, journalists and civil servants were bugged. Those found to be disloyal to the President were persecuted. Richard Nixon and Robert Kennedy, for example, knew they were being shadowed.

Every step made by Martin Luther King was watched by informers. At least 5,000 of his conversations with hundreds of people were bugged. The President himself (who blandly described electronic surveillance as "the worst thing in our society") listened attentively to the tapes.

On August 15, 1967, on Johnson's orders, the CIA formed a special agency to carry out Operation Chaos---surveillance and discreditation of Vietnam war protesters. The operation concerned more than 10,000 Americans.

This was done in secret, and only a few facts surfaced in the mid-seventies. Joseph Galifano, the President's special assistant, who handled the mass protests in the sixties, exclaimed in amazement: "I had to ask myself . . . were there two White Houses in 1967?" The character of Attorney General Ramsey Clark, reputedly a liberal, came to light when Johnson said, "If Stokely Carmichael was knocking at the White House door with a Bowie knife in one hand and a pistol in the other, Ramsey Clark wouldn't arrest him." Yes, in the 1968 presidential campaign, Republicans reviled Clark for being ``soft'', and so on. Yet, "the other, perhaps the more real, Clark was Attorney General when domestic spying was escalated to an enormous operation, aimed at Black Community leaders, antiwar activists, New Left radicals.''^^1^^ This aspect of Johnson's presidency, however, was soon to be eclipsed by Watergate.

Those who say the result of presidential elections leads to no radical change on the American political scene, say nothing new. But an election campaign gives ample scope for the expression of opinions and promises, the price of most of which is well known---after the elections the victor consigns his promises to oblivion, while the loser collects more promises for the next election. That, indeed, US scholars find, constitues what they term the remarkable continuity of the country's political life. But all the above falls short of the truth with regard to the 1968 election, which took place at a most crucial junction in US history.

British journalist Henry Brandon, who had for a score of years represented the prestigious Sunday Times in the United States, found that by 1968 four different revolutionary trends seriously endangered the stability of the United States: racial revolution; rebellion of the young against the life style and values of their elders; opposition both on the right and the left against the prevailing two-party system, and a visible shift of the political point of gravity from the eastern seaboard, with its liberal traditions, to the more conservative mid-Western and Western American tradition. "No other country," Brandon wrote, "would have been able to withstand and sustain the internal rebellions that were trying to break down the stockades erected by the old order. . . But it is also part of the strength of American society [so Brandon thinks] that it is not rigid, and that . . . safety valves open up to prevent total social upheaval.''^^1^^

Quite true, Americans are given a chance to speak up, even to cry out. Then there is a change of guard in government offices. Yes, a score of years in the United States is more than enough to lose one's journalistic intuition and not see how matters really proceeded.

~^^1^^ Henry Brandon, The Retreat of American Power, Doll Publishing' Co., New York, 1973, pp. 8-9.

~^^1^^ Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate, pp. 196, 211.

When the investigative and punitive agencies set their sights on persons who had accumulated and expressed the mood of protest, these people became a target for extremists. In April 1968, Martin Luther King came to Memphis, Georgia, to back up the garbagemen's strike. By that time he had linked the fight against the Vietnam war with civil rights. On April 4, he was shot dead on the balcony of his hotel suite. "Get your gun," Carmichael told Blacks. There were disturbances in 168 cities, 2,600 fires, 39 killed, 21,270 wounded, and 2,600 arrested. Property losses came to 30 million dollars. In Washington alone, there were 711 fires, black smoke over the Potomac, ransacking of shops three blocks away from the White House, and machineguns on the steps leading to the Capitol. On Johnson's orders, the army was readied for the worst: contingents of up to 10,000 were ready to occupy 24 cities, and another 30,000 to occupy the capital. On April 10 came the announcement that- General Westmoreland was returning to the United States as Army Chief of Staff. The US armed forces, having won no laurels in Vietnam, were about to show their bravery at home.

By and large, the alarm was exaggerated. The "war in the streets" which had been expected by Nixon, among others, failed to break out. The discontent among Blacks in the spring and summer of 1968 was the epilogue of a long struggle. And for a number of reasons. For one, the more radical leaders were behind bars or in hiding. The Black Panthers were unmanned by the official persecution. "The blacks had realized," wrote historian Manchester, "they themselves were the chief victims of the riots. Their stores were looted, their cars were destroyed, their homes burned, and their children endangered.''^^1^^

The threat of Malcolm X's followers to mark the third anniversary of his death by hitting whites proved empty. Nor did anything follow Hugh Newman's condemnation for killing a policeman. Black runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who had won gold medals at the Olympic Games in Mexico, demonstrated their support of the Black Panthers when the US national anthem was played, arid angered Black writer James Baldwin called the USA the "Fourth Reich" and wrote the word America with a ``k'' in the German fashion.

In the meantime, the FBI tracked down Martin Luther King's killer in London. He was 40-year-old James Earl Ray, who had broken out of prison a year before. To escape a sentence of death, he pleaded guilty and was condemned to 99 years' imprisonment in 1969. The verdict said he had acted alone. Where he got the money for profligate living before and after killing King (he bought a car, made a plastic operation, and so on) was not determined. In prison he bragged that on leaving jail he would have a "pile of money" for certain people had offered 100,000 dollars for killing King. In 1978 and 1979 a House committee re-examined the crime. Ramsey Clark made clear that the investigation had been handled by the FBI without Department of Justice control, and Arthur Murtaugh, a former FBI agent, testified: "It just defies reason that the same people who have engaged in a 10-year vendetta against Dr. King should investigate his murder . . . The Bureau decided 24 hours after King was killed that it was not a conspiracy.''

The mysterious circumstances of Ray's escape from prison a year before King's murder, and many other things, came to light. Ray was brought before the committee under guard. The emaciated 50-year-old prisoner created a frightening impression. He said he had not killed King, and that his participation amounted to just buying the rifle on instructions from a man named Raoul. The committee did not believe him and reaffirmed the court sentence, though it did say in its report that there was a chance that the murder had been the result of a conspiracy.^^1^^

King's 1968 speeches had no specific political address. He spoke in general terms. It was different with Senator Robert Kennedy. He ran for President and campaigned most energetically, outstripping his two main Democratic rivals---^Vice-- President Hubert Humphrey and Senator Eugene McCarthy---in a few weeks. His ideological armorarium consisted of the memory of John Kennedy, his brother, and a small book he wrote for the campaign, To Seek a Newer World. In that book he wrote: " 'If Athens shall appear great to you,' said Pericles, 'consid-

~^^1^^ See Andrew Tully, Inside the FBI. From the Files of the FBI and Independent Sources, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1980, pp. 182, 192-194, 199-201.

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, pp. 1128, 1150.

er then that glories were purchased by valiant men, and by men who learned their duty.' That is the source of all greatness in all societies, and it is the key to progress in our time . .. But if there was one thing President Kennedy stood for that touched the most profound feelings of the people across the world, it was the belief that idealism, high aspirations, and deep convictions are not incompatible with the most practical and efficient of programs".^^1^^

It followed from this and his other statements that Robert Kennedy considered himself a man who would lead the US to greatness. And since he thought in antique images, he knew perfectly well how the ``great'' of those times achieved success. They promised (and sometimes gave) bread to the people. Robert Kennedy, indeed, addressed himself to those who were cheated of their full share. To his advisers, he said: "We have to write off the unions and the South now, and replace them with Negroes, blue-collar whites, and the kids . . . We have to convince the Negroes and poor whites that they have common interests. If we can reconcile those two hostile groups, and then add the kids, you can really turn this country around.''

Under a strong government, of course. In election speeches Robert Kennedy put the above in the following terms: "It's our society, not just our government, that spends twice as much on pets as on the poverty program. It's the poor who carry the major burden in Vietnam." And he said again and again, "I don't find that satisfactory.''^^2^^

In the primaries, Robert Kennedy scored victory after victory. In early June 1968, he won the primaries in California. Richard Nixon, who was then seeking the Republican candidacy, recollected in his memoirs: "I saw no way a Kennedy juggernaut could be stopped once it had acquired the momentum of a California victory. As I went to bed, I said, 'It sure looks like we'll be going against Bobby.' "'. But it didn't come to that: a killer's bullet stopped Kennedy in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968.

Robert Kennedy's assassination, which has not been satisfacto-

rily explained to date, eased Richard Nixon's progress in the resulting political vacuum. As a young man, Nixon liked amateur dramatics and had a flair for acting. He was proud of it, and remarked one day in 1968, "Reagan's an actor, but I'd like to see him do that.''^^1^^ In an hour of truth, Nixon told a young politician: "You don't know how to lie. If you can't lie you'll never go anywhere.''^^2^^

By the mid-sixties, Nixon himself had travelled many a mile along various political roads. His enforced idleness and reflections coincided with the time when Johnson's bustling activity pushed the divided United States up the steep ladder of war escalation in Vietnam. Though no prophet, least of all Nixon, could have predicted where the escalation would take the USA, the essence of Johnson's policy, as everyone saw, amounted to a most primitive anti-communism.

Washington closely followed developments across the world. In 1967, Johnson continued to say, "Over this war---and all Asia---is another reality: the deepening shadow of Communist China.''^^3^^

Nixon, too, had in his day paid tribute to anti-communism, often on a scale that was out of all proportion, which, naturally, yielded him high office in 1952, But by 1965 he came to see that ideological considerations, when raised to the rank of official policy, spelled trouble for America. Long before the 1968 presidential elections, Nixon saw fit to remind the country that a man in a lawyer's office in New York was thinking not only of prohibition but also of the country's problems. In the summer of 1965 he spoke at Rochester University, showing the intellectual audience his new face---not that of a ranting anti-- communist but of a reasonable man who had all the makings of a statesman. In short, Nixon warned against anti-communist excesses in a sphere which was closest to the hearts of the gathering---the academic world that produced the political recommendations to the government.

~^^1^^ William Safire, Before the Fall. An Inside View of the Pre-- Watergate White House, Doubleday and Co., Garden City (New York), 1975, p. 55.

^^1^^ David Abrahamsen, Nixon vs. Nixon---An Emotional Tragedy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1977, p. 195.

~^^3^^ Stephen E. Ambrose, Rise to Globalism. American Foreign Policy Since 1938, Allen Lane, Penguin Press, London, 1971, p. 321.

~^^1^^ Robert Kennedy, To Seek a Newer World, New York, 1968, p. 233. ^! Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, pp. 956-957, 948, 952. ~^^1^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 305.

The elderly Eisenhower, who was given the text of Nixon's speech, was so astonished that he wrote "dear Dick" a letter. The ex-President and retired general let Nixon, whose daughter was married to Ike's grandson, know that the specific statement "you [Nixon] make near the bottom of page 4---'academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate ... communism'---creates in me a considerable doubt.''

And Eisenhower amplified: "Communism is a very special sort of doctrine in that it openly advocates destruction of the form of government by violence, if necessary, that protects all the freedoms we enjoy. I personally disagree with the Su-' preme Court decision of some years back that released a lot of Communists convicted under the Smith Act from prison on the theory that it is all right to advocate Communism as long as the individual did not take any overt action to destroy our form of government. Take for example Tom Paine and George Washington. Obviously Tom Paine had far more to do in bringing about the revolt against Britain than did George Washington, yet under the Supreme Court doctrine of today, Paine would have gone scot-free in the event the revolt failed, while Washington would have been hanged. This is the only statement in your paper with which I disagree.''^^1^^

Eisenhower's reaction convinced Nixon that he was on the right track. Before his mind's eye was the lesson he had learned from combating revolution: that the ideas embodied in the building of communism cannot be fought by main force. The answer had to be found on the domestic scene through reforms, through building a still more American America, and in foreign affairs through drawing a distinct line between ideology and politics and re-creating the political parameters that had obtained prior to 1917 when states of just one social-economic type had existed in the world. In other words, what Nixon meant was the tested "balance of power" arsenal.

US President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) was Nixon's idol. When still Vice President, Nixon sat at what was once Wilson's desk, and when he became President had the desk moved to the Oval Office in the White House. True, it turned out later that Wilson had never used the desk; yet the portrait which

Nixon had in his office was unmistakably Woodrow Wilson's.

Both Wilson and Nixon said that the United States wanted nothing but the exercise of lofty principles in the service of ``democracy''. Unfortunately, this was not mere rhetoric. "It is no wonder, then," wrote publicist Garry Wills, "that Nixon--- identifying so with Woodrow Wilson---should blunder as Wilson did,. . . preaching democracy with well-meant napalm, instructing (as we obliterate) children with our bombs. We believe we can literally 'kill them with kindness', moving our guns forward in a seizure of ... charity. It is when America is in the most altruistic mood that other nations better get behind their bunkers.''^^1^^

If it was Wilson whom Nixon imitated, then Wilson must have been the source of the strong and clear idea Nixon advanced in the 1968 campaign: the war critics who so brilliantly, but unjustifiably, complained of Americacentrism, had nothing to counter it with. Nixon expressed himself simply on the most crucial issue of the times -the question of the Vietnam war. He called for its ``de-Americanization''. Here is what he said:

``This new kind of war is not primarily a military struggle in the conventional sense. It is primarily a political struggle . . . The real measure of progress is not the body-count of enemy killed, but the number of South Vietnamese won to the building and defense of their own country . . .

``In the future if something comes up like Vietnam ... the United States will not do as we did in Korea and in Vietnam, shoulder the burden not only of furnishing the arms and the money but most of the men .. .

``When . . . friendly nations [are] threatened by aggression, we must help them with our money and help them with our arms; but we let them fight the war and don't fight the war for them. This should be the goal of a new diplomacy for America.''

In place of the "era of confrontation" Nixon promised an "era of negotiation." He argued the need for this in the following terms: "Twenty years ago the superiority of the United States was unquestioned. We had a monopoly on nuclear weap-

~^^1^^ Safire, Before the Fall.. ., p. 25-26.

~^^1^^ Garry Wills, Nixon Agonises. The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston 1970, p. 432, 433.

ons... We find today that the balance of power in the world had shifted. We are probably equal [to the USSR] in terms of deliverable capability ... Some experts believe that within a matter of two years the Soviet Union will catch us and pass us if we do not change our policies ... I disagree with the McNamara theory that parity with the Soviet Union is enough. . . The United States. . . must be sure that it always negotiates from strength and never from weakness. That's why I believe the United States should attempt to maintain an edge.''

He also noted that "communist China, within six years to seven years, at the very least, will have a significant nuclear capability . . . Therefore, whoever is elected President has to be thinking now as to how we develop the power around the perimeter of China which will convince the Communist Chinese leaders that they will not gain---as a matter of fact that they will run very great risks---in the event that they attempt to expand through the area of the Pacific." To achieve this, Nixon estimated, would take "the two terms of the next President.''^^1^^

In the disorderly 1968 campaign marked by considerable violence, the "new Nixon" certainly looked the more reasonable politician. It did not give him much trouble to leap the barrier within his own party, brushing aside Ronald Reagan ( California governor since 1966) and Nelson Rockefeller. Reagan acted energetically, working on the face of it for the common good of all Republicans. He was a tireless speaker, who read his texts, containing the usual varnish of wisecracks, without fault. (On President Johnson: "We can't really blame the President alone for the mess we're in. A mess like that takes teamwork." On crime and inflation: "You have to admire the administration's anticrime program. They're making the money so cheap it's not worth stealing.")

British journalists who saw Reagan on the national scene for the first time, concluded: "He cannot be explained as a primitive, or a cynic, or a smart aleck. He is less sinister, but much more dangerous, than any of these. .. Reagan is totally devoid of any concept of objective morality. In short, he has no imag-

ination. And so, to ask whether Reagan is good or bad is, in a sense, an irrelevant question. He is a force---whether for good or ill depending entirely on which direction he is pointed in and who is at the controls.''^^1^^

In 1968 his time had not come. At the Republican convention, Reagan with 182 votes bowed to Nixon's 692. In a country as confused as the United States was then, Reagan's utterances only augured further complications. Nixon, on the other hand, was offering a way out with his "de-Americanization of the Vietnam war". (Reagan clung to his 1965 pronouncement on Vietnam: "We can pave the whole country, line up the parking spaces, and get the troops home by Christmas,") Those who might have followed Reagan, preferred the American Independent Party organized for the election by Alabama governor George Wallace, who sought the presidency, and General Curtis E. LeMay, former C-in-C of the Strategic Air Command, who wanted the vice presidency. Goldwater's followers of 1964 advised the new party "not to touch the question of the bomb". But General LeMay would not be gagged. He said he favored bombing North Vietnam "back to the Stone Age" and complained that the United States seemed "to have a phobia about nuclear weapons".^^2^^

Though a party with these intentions won nearly ten million votes in the election, the "conservative alternative" could not win that year. The debate continued within the two-party framework. How that framework was protected was seen at the Democratic convention in Chicago where Hubert Humphrey was chosen presidential candidate. The city was turned into an armed camp: 11,500 police and 5,500 National Guards, and 7,500 federal troops. They faced some 10,000 unarmed young people who had come to Chicago from all parts of the country---most of them whites from anything but poor families. They made camp with their guitars in the city park, sang songs, chanted slogans, and showed no inclination toward violence--- apart from bringing along an average-sized pig and announcing they would nominate it for president. Against these young

~^^1^^ Nixon on the Issues, Nixon-Agnew Campaign Committee, New York, 1968, pp. 9, 1-2, 14-15, 13, 58.

~^^1^^ Chester, Hodgson, Page, An American Melodrama. The Presidential Campaign of 1968, Dell Books, New York, 1969, pp. 220, 216. * Leuchtenburg, A Troubled Feast, p. 214.

people, who had no wish of attacking the system and were merely protesting within its framework, the convention built a tall barbed wire fence and summoned guards, but though the convention had been timed to coincide with Johnson's sixtieth birthday, he, fearing for his safety, did not come to Chicago.

For nearly a week, the Chicago police systematically beat up the young people, attacking them with tear gas, and arresting the wounded. Journalists and innocent bystanders, too, were given a taste of police violence. And all before the eyes of 89 million TV-viewers. Senator Abraham Ribicoff commented: "Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago." The police violence did not contribute to the good name of the Democratic party. Yet what could be expected of a party that had dragged the United States into the war in Vietnam?

It was this party, the Democrats, that Nixon was out to defeat on the assumption that he was performing God's will. He maintained that he had taken his final decision to run for President after a long talk with evangelist Billy Graham. The preacher, a long-time friend of Nixon's, read the Bible to him and especially Apostle Paul's epistles. He said to Nixon: "I think it is your destiny to be President.''^^1^^ To be sure, when still Vice President, Nixon, who was not a Catholic, gave voice to his dream of becoming the Pope. "Nixon proceeded on a twentyminute deadly serious monologue," a witness reported, "on what a great Pope he would have been, how well he would have run the Vatican.''^^2^^

Whatever Hubert Humphrey may have said, Nixon spokf from the summits of morality. Again and again, he repeated what he had said at the Republican convention in the summer of 1968: "Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth--- to see it like it is and to tell it like it is---to find the truth, to speak the truth and to live the truth." How he intended to put these fine principles into effect, Nixon, then still a candidate, told his intimates off the record: ``We'll kick their toes off", and especially "kick the weirdos and beardos on the college campuses.''^^3^^ In public, however, he was respectability itself.

~^^1^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 293.

^^1^^ Halberstam, The Powers That Be, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1979, p. 333.

~^^1^^ Brodie, Richard Nixon, pp. 26, 45.

In the elections 43.4 per cent voted for Nixon, 42.7 for Humphrey, and 13.5 for Wallace. It was a victory by a majority of 0.7 per cent. In 1968 it took Nixon 2.3 million votes less to win than in 1960 to lose. The ten million who voted for Wallace and LeMay made all the difference. The chief result of the election was that the renter in US politics had survived. At least, that was how the new President conceived his mandate.

The Nixon Doctrine: Theory and Practice

Having scaled the summit of power, Richard Nixon set out to become an imperial president. He said: ``I've always thought this country could run itself domestically without a President... All you need is a competent Cabinet to run the country at home. You need a President for foreign policy.''^^1^^ And that was how Nixon shaped the nation's leadership: cabinet members were all white, all prosperous, all Republicans. William P. Rogers, who had been Attorney General under Eisenhower, became Secretary of State. But the determining word in foreign policy belonged to Henry Kissinger, appointed the President's national security adviser. He sat atop the foreign affairs pyramid that dealt in psychological warfare. Nixon considered this normal. And Rogers cited Kissinger to explain US foreign policy at press conferences.

Why such secrecy? Officially, Nixon spoke of consolidating peace and of recasting the system of international relations for this end. In fact, however, he was merely reminding the world that the "balance of power" doctrine was respectable and proper.

On July 6, 1971, President Nixon told the mass media: "What we see as we look ahead 5 years, 10 years, perhaps it is 15, but in any event, within our time, we see five great economic super powers: the United States, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Mainland China, and, of course, Japan. . . These are the five that will determine the economic future and, because economic power will be the key to other kinds of power, the

~^^1^^ Evans, Novak, Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power, Random House, New York, 1971, p. 11.

future of the world in other ways in the last third of this century.''

In a Time interview (January 3, 1972) Nixon said: "We must remember the only time in the history of the world that we have had any extended period of peace is when there has been balance of power. It is when one nation becomes infinitely more powerful in relation to its potential competitor that the danger of war arises. So I believe in a world in which the United States is powerful. I think it will be a safer world and a better world if we have a strong, healthy United States, Europe, Soviet Union, China, Japan, each balancing the other, not playing one against the other, an even balance.''^^1^^

These utterances of Nixon's often quoted in the United States, sum up his theoretical resources in the field of international relations. They were instantly attacked as unrealistic, as a historical anachronism. The voices of Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Ball sounded the loudest in the enemy camp. They grieved that the President had fallen for Kissinger's charm and was losing sight of anti-communism as the ideological centerpiece. Nixon and Kissinger must have chuckled on the sly. They felt they were the only ones who could see in a country of blind men.

We learn from Henry Kissinger's memoirs what was behind it all: "Liberals in those days .. . tended to believe either that the Soviets had already mellowed and it was left to diplomacy only to sweep up the cobwebs left over from an already transcended Cold War, or at worst that the few remaining authentic causes of tension could be ended by the strenuous exercise of goodwill on our part. Conservatives, uneasy at summitry, on the whole preferred to sound the trumpets of anti-Communism, as if rhetoric would crumble the walls of the Soviet empire. They did not explain how we could sustain such a course domestically amid the Vietnam hysteria. We had a somewhat different perspective from either liberals or conservatives. On Soviet motives I leaned toward the conservative analysis; in tactics I sought to incorporate some of the liberal views.''^^2^^

That was how Kissinger explained years later what Nixon had advocated in the early seventies as a wish to create "a safer and better world" by means of a "balance of power''.

At the end of July 1969, Nixon set out on a tour abroad. His first stop was in the Pacific Ocean. Aboard aircraft carrier Hornet he welcomed the crew of Apollo-11, just back from the Moon. Anticipating the political dividends he would reap therefrom, Nixon exclaimed, "This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation." A minister who stood nearby made a long face, and a few days later evangelist Billy Graham took the President to task. "I think you may have been a little excessive," he said to Nixon. But the raptures continued. On Guam, addressing officers on July 25, Nixon spoke of the future of US policy. He referred to the sorry experience of Korea and Vietnam, and promised that "from now on ... we would furnish only the materiel and the military and economic assistance to those nations willing to accept the responsibility of supplying the manpower to defend themselves".^^1^^

This hastily constructed pronouncement came to be known at first as the Guam Doctrine, and later as the Nixon Doctrine. The President promised to economize on US lives, but to continue interfering in the affairs of other countries.

Arthur Schlesinger jumped at the opportunity to comment: "Nixon's view of the world recalls that of the Romans." He quoted historian Joseph Schumpeter, who had said: "There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were .not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the tallies would be invented.''^^2^^

The "balance of power" policy calls for diverse, deeply echeloned camouflage. The methods Washington had produced for psychological warfare were most fitting. They had merely to be coordinated with official US foreign policy, and Henry Kissinger became the chief coordinator. Nixon's closest aide and chief of the White House staff, Harry Haldeman, observed:

``From the first, Henry [Kissinger] demonstrated what a great

~^^1^^ Osgood, "The Nixon Doctrine and Strategy" in Retreat from Empire? Baltimore, 1973, p. 6.

^^2^^ Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1203.

~^^1^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, pp. 429-430, 395.

~^^2^^ William Shawcross, Sideshow, Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, Fontana Paperbacks, London, 1980, p. 148.

18---796

diplomat he was in a fashion known only to those of us inside the White House. We knew Henry as the 'hawk of hawks' in the Oval Office. But in the evenings, a magical transformation took place. Touching glasses at a party with his liberal friends, the belligerent Kissinger would suddenly become a dove---- according to the reports that reached Nixon.

``And the press, beguiled by Henry's charm and humour, bought it. They just couldn't believe that the intellectual, smiling, humorous 'Henry the K' was a hawk.''^^1^^

The charming ``intellectual'' gained much power. He chaired the committee studying defense programs (gearing military spending to foreign policy objectives), the 40-man committee which endorsed covert operations, the intelligence committee which issued directives to the CIA and all the other intelligence agencies, the operational group in Washington (planning in crises and emergencies), and others. Referring to his main job, that of presidential national security assistant, authors M. and B. Kalb observed that he "had far greater power than Bundy or Rostow ever had".^^2^^

The admiring biographers attributed this chiefly to Kissinger's personal ability. Hardly so, however. It looks much more like Nixon's deciding to put foreign policy in order once and for all, and assigning a man for the job who was unscrupulous and not finicky. The last thing Nixon wanted was to have to complain as Lyndon Johnson did that policy making is like milking a fat cow. You see the milk coming out, you press more and the milk bubbles and flows, and just as the bucket is full, the cow with its tail whips the bucket and all is spilled. That's what CIA does to policy making.''^^3^^

The "balance of power" concept was adopted, the machinery oiled to work smoothly, and the executive picked to carry it into effect. But the whole thing could not be set in motion without ending the war in Vietnam. The situation inside the country depended on this, and so did freedom of action in foreign affairs. This was theoretically clear to Nixon & Co. from the first, but

in practice it took four years to achieve. The United States called a halt only after it had used up all the means at its disposal in a bid to defeat the people of Vietnam. US losses in Vietnam totalled something like 57,000 dead, of whom 24,000 before Nixon became President. From 1961 to 1968 the United States had dropped 2.8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam, and 4.6 million from 1969 to 1973. During Nixon's presidency the United States had inflicted the greatest damage on the peoples of Southeast Asia. Was this bloodshed ``rationalized' in theory? Certainly! "I call it the Madman Theory," Nixon said to Haldeman, "I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communists. We can's restrain him when he's angry---and he has his hand on the nuclear button'---and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.''^^1^^

The tactics of General Creighton W. Abrams, the new US commander in Vietnam, fitted the above doctrine perfectly. He had Washington's orders to kill as many Vietnamese as possible with minimum US losses. No large operations were carried out heretofore, and something like a thousand patrols were sent into the field each day with one purpose only: to find and to kill. At the same time, the United States did everything it could to make the army of the South Vietnamese puppet regime fight. This, indeed, was what Vietnamization was all about.

Nixon, who admired "the unconventional brilliance of Patton and MacArthur", "was convinced that if a little more freedom was given to the generals, who had been "abused for years by civilian leadership", they would show their mettle. One day the President said to the top command, "I always feel a little embarrassed when an admiral comes up to me and says, `sir'. I think it should be the other way round.''^^2^^

The military had a field day. War crimes became commonplace. What also became commonplace was that Washington covered up. In April 1969 a veteran who had returned from Vietnam let the world know of a monstrous crime: on March 16,

~^^1^^ Harry Haldeman, The Ends of Power, Dell Publishing Co., New York, 1978, p. 135.

^! M. Kalb, B. Kalb, Kissinger, p. 86.

^! Brandon, The Retreat of American Power, p. 103.

~^^1^^ Haldeman, The Ends of Power, p. 122. ' Brodie, Richard Nixon, p. 162.

1968, Lt. William L. Galley's platoon, brought in by helicopters, burst into My Lai village, assembled its peaceful inhabitants in the village square, and mowed them down. Some were made to line a ditch, where they were shot, others were locked in their homes and blown up with grenades. As many as 567 old men, women and children were killed, with 109 killed at the hands of Galley himself. A Buddhist priest with a child in his arms tried to appeal to him. The lieutenant smashed his face in with the butt of his submachinegun, then fired at pointblank range. He snatched the child out of the dead man's hands, threw it in a ditch, and shot it. During this slaughter, the Americans had one casualty---a soldier who shot himself in the leg because he refused to participate in it.

The crime became public knowledge. Galley faced a tribunal. On March 29. 1970, a court-martial found him guilty of killing 22 Vietnamese and sentenced him to life imprisonment. This infuriated official America. Among the protesters were governors Jimmy Carter and George Wallace. Nixon intervened. Galley's sentence was at first reduced to 20 years, then to 10, and in April 1974 the Pentagon announced that Nixon had himself reviewed Galley's case and found it inappropriate to punish him. Galley was released. None of those who had carried out Galley's orders were put on trial. Indeed, Galley was the only US serviceman in the Vietnam war who was condemned for committing a war crime.

The US government's protection of war criminals shocked many Americans. Telford Taylor, professor of law at Columbia University, recalled the Nuremberg Trial and observed that if the same standards were applied to the My Lai trial as had been applied in the trial of General Tomoyuki Yamashita, "there would be a very strong possibility that they [meaning General Westmoreland and members of the cabinet---N. Y.] would come to the same end as he did".^^1^^ Westmoreland was outraged. Doubly so because the professor took the trouble to write a book about the crimes in Vietnam, entitled Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy (1970). The general retorted that prior to being an officer in the United States Army, Galley had been bellboy, dishwasher and railroad switchman. "Judging from

the events in My Lai," Westmoreland concluded, "being an officer in the United States Army exceeded Lieutenant Galley's abilities. Had it not been for educational draft deferments, which prevented the Army from drawing upon the intellectual segment of society for its junior officers, Galley probably never would have been an officer. . . In reducing standards for officers, both the United States Army and the House Armed Services Committee, which originated the policy of deferment for college students, must bear the blame.''^^1^^

My Lai type operations, however, were fitted into the redoubled psychological warfare pattern in South Vietnam while negotiations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam were underway in Paris. The US government still hoped to win the minds of the South Vietnamese for US imperialism---a job it entrusted to the CIA. Vietnamization saw the police force in South Vietnam swell to 122,000 men under CIA supervision by the midseventies. All South Vietnamese of 15 years and over carried identification cards with fingerprints and description. Copies were fed into a huge computer connected by teletype with local police stations. Something like 180,000 people went through the prisons each year, where they were treated inhumanly. William Colby, CIA chief in South Vietnam, started the Phoenix program for the extermination of expendables. He himself set the quota---an average of 2,000 killings a month.

In 1971, a Congress committee asked Colby how the Phoenix program was getting on. The executioner launched into a fairly long explanation, which, however, failed to reveal the CIA's motives for killing thousands upon thousands of men and women. Fred Branfman, an American who studied the GIA terrorism in South Vietnam, arrived at the following staggering conclusion: "Colby thus admitted in sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress, that despite the fact that the Phoenix program had killed or rounded up 49,565 persons in the past three years, no records had been kept to indicate who these persons were, what offenses they had been accused of, what evidence had been presented against them, or what had happened to them.''^^2^^

It is quite clear that the GIA assumed each South Vietnamese

~^^1^^ Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports, pp. 498-499.

~^^2^^ Fred Branfman, "South Vietnam's Police and Prison System: The U.S. Connection" in Uncloaking the CIA, pp. 118-119.

The New York Times, January 9, 1971.

``guilty" because practically the entire population was opposed to the US occupation forces and their mercenaries. That was why the CIA detained people indiscriminately. The killings were usually preceded by bestial torture. The Phoenix program has put a stigma of disgrace on the USA and earned Colby the post of CIA director.

Looking back in his memoirs at his activity in South Vietnam, Colby, like Westmoreland, looked for excuses. Under the Phoenix program, he wrote, the CIA was involved in "murdering some 20,000 people, many of them innocents". To vindicate himself, however, he added that as early as 1969 he had "issued a directive on the subject of assassination and other equally repugnant activities". He was prompted to do so, he wrote, when he learned that an American CORDS officer, who had been assigned to Phoenix, "applied for transfer because he feared that the program was immoral". Yet Colby's directive was no more than an adaptation to South Vietnam of the sinister 1948 NSC-20/1 directive on actions against the Soviet Union. Here, indeed, is what Colby's directive said: "U.S. personnel.. . are specifically not authorized to engage in assassinations or other violations of the rules of land warfare, but they are entitled to use such reasonable military force as is necessary to obtain the goals of rallying, capturing or eliminating the VCI in RVN. If US personnel come in contact with activities conducted by Vietnamese which do not meet the standards of land warfare, they are certainly not to participate further in the activity.''

This is nothing but a paraphrase of NSC-20/1 on wiping out ``Communists''. It was to be done by US mercenaries, and the concern for the moral health of the executioners seems to date back to the nazi death squads: "There are individuals," the program said, "who find normal police or even military operations repugnant to them personally ... If an individual finds the police-type activities of the Phoenix program repugnant to him, on his application, he can be reassigned from the program without prejudice.''^^1^^

The world will never know whether any CIA operatives ever used the opportunity Colby offered them to apply for reassignment, or if they at least followed the example of Brigadier-Gen-

eral Francis G. Brink, the first commander of US troops in Vietnam, who committed suicide in the late 50s.

The top men in Nixon's administration, to be sure, had no illusions about the methods of psychological warfare that were being used against the people of Vietnam. In the final analysis, however, they relied on superior US firing power. But where and how to use it? Washington professed to want to de-escalate the war. It began withdrawing troops from Vietnam. But beginning in March 1969, B-52s bombed an area in Cambodia adjacent to South Vietnam. This was done in secret. Nixon and Kissinger knew that if this expansion of the war in Southeast Asia reached the public, they would face a storm in the US.

For 14 months, from March 1969 to May 1970, the giant bombers taking off from Guam or Okinawa, showered thousands upon thousands of bombs on peaceful civilians in Cambodia. The bombing was furtive, done at night," in the hope that the crime would not be spotted. The B-52s are estimated to have made 3,630 sorties. What nobody bothered to estimate was how many Kampuchean peasants were killed in the raids.

Only a few people in Washington knew of the bombing which went under the code name of ``Menu''. Nixon did not inform either the Secretary of Defense or the C-in-C of the USAF. The fliers were briefed on what targets they were to hit in South Vietnam, then privately warned that land stations would give them instructions during flight where to drop the bombs. Dual accounts were kept. Pentagon received false information concerning anti-guerrilla operations in South Vietnam, while true reports were sent to the White House.

On May 19, 1969, journalist William Beecher reported the bombings in The New York Times. But his report passed virtually unnoticed, buried in the stream of information about the Vietnam war. What did it matter to people that someone somewhere was being bombed heavily if up to three hundred Americans were brought home weekly from Vietnam in metal reusable coffins. Halfheartedly, the White House denied Beecher's report, but it created near hysterics among the Nixon-Kissinger retinue. Kissinger ordered FBI director Hoover to find out who had leaked the information. Hoover put the order in writing: "Dr. Kissinger said he appreciated this very much and he hoped I would follow it up as far as we can take it, and they will

Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, pp. 270, 271.

destroy whoever did this if we can find him, no matter where he is.''

Kissinger hoped to pin the leak on the "Harvard clique" and ordered his deputy, General Alexander Haig, who was making a quick career on the NSC team, to discuss the details with Hoover. The FBI placed some White House and NSC personnel, a few State Department people and a few Washington journalists under close surveillance---seventeen people in all.^^1^^ This was probably the first step to what finally became known as Watergate.

Their collaboration in matters such as this brought Nixon, Kissinger and Haig very close together. They studied FBI reports with tense attention. But 18 months of surveillance had yielded nothing except that its organizers got to know each other. "Haig . . .had spent hundreds of hours in conversation with Kissinger that turned, directly or indirectly, on the Nixon personality," wrote Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their book The Final Days.

``Kissinger was intimately familiar with what he considered the vulgar strands of the Nixon psyche," they observed. "Nixon tried to fool even those closest to him, even Kissinger. He kept things from him. He was isolated, secretive, paranoid, Kissinger had always told Haig.

``Haig was never sure whether Kissinger was describing himself or Nixon. The general had disliked living in Kissinger's shadow, and Nixon had noticed that and made use of it. The President had reached over Kissinger to Haig many times during his first administration . . .

``Nixon liked Haig's tough talk about `pinkos' and `peaceniks' and those queer, soft, left-leaning eggheads who went to Harvard and couldn't be counted on to storm the trenches in Asia. The President made derogatory comments about Kissinger to Haig, complaining about 'The Professor`s' paranoia and his excessive concern with his own image. Privately he had requested that Haig report on Kissinger's work, and the general had complied.''^^2^^

That was how the cronies conducted affairs of state. Haldeman adds: "Henry, whose anger at leaks really started the 1969

~^^1^^ See Shawcross, Sideshow . . ., pp. 35, 106-107.

* Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, The Final Days, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1976, p. 36.

FBI national security wiretapping, was constantly worried that his own telephone was tapped. Time and again he would pass me in the hall and say, 'What do your taps tell you about me today, Haldeman?' "'

Those were the concerns that preoccupied the high priests of the Nixon administration while mass demonstrations supervised by the Vietnam Moratorium Committee rolled across the country. Tens of thousands of people went into the streets with black armbands and lighted candles. They protested against the war. Never before in history had the country seen such huge demonstrations. On October 15, 1969, a quarter of a million people gathered in Washington, and 40,000 of them marched in mourning from Arlington Cemetery to Capitol Hill, each carrying a tablet with the name of an American killed in Vietnam or the name of a destroyed Vietnamese village. The tablets were put into a large coffin at the foot of Capitol Hill. Attorney General John N. Mitchell found "that the peace marchers reminded him of Russian revolutionaries". No disturbances occurred, but to be on the safe side 9,000 soldiers had been brought to the capital to reinforce the Washington police. Nixon meanwhile was busy watching footbal on TV.^^2^^

Still, President Nixon was withdrawing troops from Vietnam. In the spring of 1969, Secretary of State Rogers had estimated that some 50,000 men would have to be brought home to allay the disaffection in the United States. Nixon brought home 65,000. Washington appeared to be sure that `` Vietnamization'' was proceeding nicely and that Saigon mercenaries would replace the evacuated US troops. The soldiers coming home, compounded with reprisals, would quel the fury at home. In mid-April 1970, the Vietnam Moratorium Committee did, indeed, close down its Washington headquarters. It announced that "the age of the large-scale peace rally was at an end"." On April 20, Nixon let it be known that another 150,000 troops would be withdrawn during the year, and thereupon the rest without much delay. On the face of it, reason had triumphed. But nothing could be further from the truth.

As many times before, Washington had overestimated the

* Haldeman, The Ends of Power, p. 139.

~^^1^^ Manchester, The Glory and the Dream, p. 1228.

~^^1^^ Leuchtenburg, A Troubled Feast, p. 244.

results of its current psychological warfare operation. On March 18, 1970, with CIA help, the pro-American Lon Nol clique captured power in Cambodia. The elated Kissinger joked at a press conference: Lon Nol and his friends "had sent in a request for enough stuff to equip an army of 200,000. We asked them to take it back and reconsider, and then they came back with a request for enough stuff to equip an army of 400,000". The Americans provided arms and supplies for an army of 220,000, but the appearance of one more client did not add to the strength of US imperialism in Southeast Asia. "The period involved much tension," Kissinger would write later. ^ul did not believe that either Cambodia or South Vietnam could survive unless we react to the Communist offensive.''^^1^^ He suggested escalating the war by invading Cambodia. And Nixon did not have to be told twice. Learning of this, William Watts, a member of the NSC apparatus, protested. Kissinger shouted him down. And Watts stalked off to write his resignation. In the White House operational center he ran into Haig, who was rubbing his hands in glee. Haig barked at Watts that he could not resign. Watts said, "I just did.''

Even the coolheaded William Safire asked if the invasion of Cambodia did not breach the Nixon Doctrine, and Kissinger replied, "We wrote the goddam doctrine, we can change it.''

On April 29, US troops invaded long-suffering Cambodia, its land already ploughed up by US bombs. On the following day, Nixon appeared on TV.

``Ignoring Menu," wrote British publicist William Schawcross, "Nixon began with the lie that the United States had ' scrupulously respected' Cambodia's neutrality... More important than the specific falsehoods are the illusions upon which Nixon's speech was based. Underlying it was the notion that there is always some unknown but awaited threat, in anticipation of which current actions must be formed.''^^2^^

Nixon equated the attack on Cambodia to the "great decisions" Woodrow Wilson made to enter World War I and Franklin Roosevelt to enter World War II; he equated it to Eisenhower's actions in Korea and John F. Kennedy's against

Cuba during the Caribbean crisis. But the public response was one of fury. Every third US university and college was gripped by stormy protests. The revitalized Vietnam Moratorium Committee called for action. Many in Washington were perplexed. Nixon went berserk. If you've picked up the sword, he shouted to a group of Senators, there's no way but to fight! To the Chiefs-of-Staff and Kissigner he said: ``We'll kill them all in Southeast Asia; if there aren't enough men, we'll call in troops from Europe!''

Demonstrations followed in close succession. As many as 450 universities and colleges suspended lectures. Twenty-one campuses were occupied by federal troops. On May 4, 1970, the National Guard opened fire at Kent State University, Ohio. The President wrote letters of condolence to the parents of the four killed students (ten more were wounded), and somberly advised Kissinger: "Henry, remember Lot's wife. Never turn back. Don't waste time rehashing things we can't do anything about.''^^1^^ US statesmen, as we see, are ever ready to fall back on the Bible---the Old or New Testament, as the case may be.

Something like 100,000 people converged on Washington to protest. Haig revealed to a journalist inadvertently that there were soldiers in the White House basement, poised to repulse an attack. The government thought it wiser not to line them up in the street. At dawn on May 9, Nixon appeared before a group of students who had stayed up in a night vigil outside the White House. Pathetically, the President exclaimed, "I know you think we are a bunch of so-and-so's." But all they wanted was peace. But his talk fell flat.

Following the Kent events, the punitive agencies lay low for a while. There were others who performed their function. On May 7 and 8 building workers were incited to attack student demonstrators on Wall Street. On May 20, a war demonstration was staged in New York. At its head marched the hardhats of the bloody attack on the students. Nixon invited them to the White House: there were photographs with the President and photographs of the construction workers' helmets neatly stacked on his desk.

~^^1^^ Kissinger, White House Years, p. 493. * Shawcross, Sideshow. . . , pp. 145-147.

~^^1^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 457.

The Gallup Poll reported: 65 per cent approved the President's course of action, 58 per cent blamed the Kent campus bloodshed on the students, only 11 per cent blamed the National Guard. Now come? Even the mayor of New York had the flag lowered over town hall, inviting ``meditation'' over the Kent killings.

A curfew was imposed at the place of the crime. For six days, wholesale searches were made on the Kent University campus where 21,000 students had their lodgings. The authorities were looking for arms. And found none.

The enraged police attacked and arrested students. The benighted average American betrayed some of his hidden qualities. Though scrupulous estimates showed that no more than 10 per cent of Kent State University students were involved in the protest, the man-in-the-street lusted for blood. As a certain Kent lawyer said, "The Guard did exactly what they are sent in to do: To keep law and order. Frankly, if I'd been faced with the same situation and had a submachine gun, there would not have been fourteen shot, there probably would have been 140 of them dead, and that's what they need.''

In the streets people said, "the score is four, and next time more." The lines rhymed. In a dramatic book about the Kent tragedy, James Michener noted: "Many hideous things were said in these first weeks. It became almost common for people to say, 'They should have shot most of the professors, too.' "'

The killers, who were not tried until 1975, were acquitted.

The Nixonites were at pains to crush the grassroots opposition prompted by pure antiwar motives. But reprisals could not remove the snowballing threat to Nixon in US Congress. Congress saw that the "balance of power" concept proclaimed by the Nixon-Kissinger duo as the cornerstone of US policy was being violated at every step and would, consequently, lead to the breakdown of the nation's foreign relations. Instead of winning a free hand for itself, as the administration had promised, the logic of the Vietnam war was increasingly reducing America's possibilities on the international scene. On May 13, Senators Frank Church and John S. Cooper proposed an amend-

ment to current legislation, forbidding the government to finance military operations in Cambodia as from June 30, 1970. That day, following seven weeks of exasperating debate, the amendment was adopted by 58 votes to 37. US troops left Cambodia. New amendments followed, blocking allocations to the war in Southeast Asia. The administration was still able to hold its ground, but the tendency was clear.

Though Creighton Abrams bragged about the losses inflicted on the adversary in Vietnam, Nixon's ill-wishers in Washington saw that the general's operations were undermining the military power of US imperialism. Little good could be said of soldiers who slung strings of ears cut off from killed civilians around their necks. Little good could be said of soldiers who gunned after Vietnamese women and children from helicopters.

My order is, kill, kill, kill! said George S. Patton III, worthy successor of his famous father. Kill indiscriminately. Wipe one more hamlet off the face of the earth. "We had to destroy it," the artillery crew sneered, "in order to save it." That was the reverse side of genocide: a steep drop in morale, drinking, drug addiction, insubordination, and ``fragging'' (attacks on officers by their own men). In 1971, McGeorge Bundy said, "Extrication from Vietnam is now the necessary precondition of the renewal of the U.S. Army as an institution.''^^1^^

The troops began coming home---many thousands every week. And they were either ignored or greeted by shouts of "Losers!", "Candy-ass losers!" or worse. People in the streets often asked them, "How many babies did you kill?''

In July 1981 Time magazine lamented the fate of the nearly three million Americans who had been through the mill in Vietnam. Many were suffering from mental disorders, drug addiction, alcoholism. Again and again, they returned mentally to that war.

``The big thing. . . was the body count. It put pressure on you to kill,' recalled veteran Larry Mitchell. "I was seerching one of the houses, when I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye. I just turned and fired a full clip. Then I looked.. . It was a woman, maybe eight months pregnant. The burst had

~^^1^^ James A. Michener, Kent State. What Happened and Why, Fawcett Crest Books, New York, 1971, pp. 401-402.

Hodgson, America in Our Time, pp. 354-356.

taken her right across the midline. The fetus was hanging out. .. I was so cold about it. When we were adding up the dead, 1 counted the fetus. It was a body.''

Another veteran, Richard Fulton, said: "I died in Viet Nam. . . I had a lot of allegiance to the Marine Corps. I had no more allegiance to America." He had done and seen too much killing in Vietnam. Nearly 100,000 war cripples, and 50,000 in dread of death from cancer among the US veterans. No few of them have died, and in great pain and the cause of their misery, it developed, was Agent Orange, used in the jungles as a defoliant.

Those who had fought in Vietnam were consigned to oblivion in the seventies because, among other things, as Time put it, they had been "cannon fodder [from] the lower-middle and lower classes . . . who went to shed blood, while their betters observed from society's good seats." Why was so little written about the war? Because, as Time observed, "the nation's best and brightest sat out the war under the protection of draft exemptions, the less literate men who went to do the fighting were incapable of producing a literature of the war.''

Was Time overcome by noble thoughts? Certainly not. The writers of the survey anticipated what would one day be done by the Reagan administration. "Unless Viet Nam veterans receive both practical help and symbolic acknowledgement of the sacrifice they made," they wrote, "younger Americans will be left with the inescapable impression that only suckers sign up---that service merely invites contempt.''

A memorial with the names of the 57,692 Americans who fell in Vietnam has been put up in Washington. Time commented: "It took the best part of a decade to get America to want that memorial.''^^1^^

And from 1981 on, the USA began to equate the veterans of that disgraceful and dirty war, which it had lost, to the veterans of World War II.

Detente in Action

While the Southeast Asian venture was increasingly exhausting United States material and moral resources, elementary log-

ic prompted Washington toward prudence in its relations with the Soviet Union. Even Lyndon Johnson had said that the first step he took as President was to try and improve East-West relations and to "insist that we avoid wherever possible the harsh name-calling of the Cold War era". Those exchanges of ideological rhetoric, he said, accomplished nothing except to stir up angry emotions on both sides. Throughout Johnson's administration, as he claimed, Washington avoided personal attacks on Soviet leaders and refrained from using such phrases as "captive nations" and "ruthless totalitarians".¹ The Johnson administration had coined the phrase, "peaceful engagement", connoting its relations with the socialist countries. The theoretical foundation was laid by Professor Brzezinski, who had at last made his mark in the USA toward the midsixties. It was, indeed, the first flicker of Brzezinski's later popularity.

As for Henry Kissinger, he believed in nothing but ``theories'' that could be applied in practice. Though he did not mention Brzezinski's name, he referred scornfully to his work. "The Johnson Administration," he wrote years later, "had announced a policy of 'peaceful engagement' seeking to promote trade and cultural relations with Eastern Europe but had not achieved much beyond enunciation of a clever theory." This scornful reference is understandable: the "peaceful engagement" doctrine did not reflect what the United States was still basically continuing to prepare for---a thermonuclear Armageddon. All the talk about building bridges between East and West was nothing but a red herring to conceal America's readiness to deliver a thermonuclear strike against all socialist countries and, first of all, the Soviet Union.

But here was the snag which infuriated Kissinger: in a nuclear exchange, no matter how it started, US casualties would run to tens of millions. "When we came to office in 1969," he wrote, "the estimate of casualties in the case of a Soviet second strike stood at over fifty million dead from immediate effects (not to mention later deaths from radiation).''

This was a logical culmination of the strategic concepts the Democratic Party had been toying with. What was the good

~^^1^^ "The Forgotten Warriors" in Time, July 13, 1981.

~^^1^^ Johnson, The Vantage Point, p. 463.

of a policy that led to such disastrous consequences for the USA in the event of an American first strike? So the objective was to put an end to socialism without endangering the USA. But how? By the rules of the "balance of power" and, consequently, chiefly with others pulling the chestnuts out of the fire; this compounded with the methods of psychological warfare.

The deliberate restraint in Washington's official references to the Soviet Union (while the blatant anti-communism of the ``independent'' mass media continued), witnessed in Johnson's time, was also displayed by the Nixon administration. In a circular dated February 4, 1969, Nixon ordered the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the CIA to keep "the tone of our public and private discourse about and with the Soviet Union . . . calm, courteous and non-polemical". And on December 18, 1969, Kissinger lectured the press: "We have no permanent enemies. We will judge other countries, including Communist countries, and specifically countries like Communist China, on the basis of their actions and not on the basis of their domestic ideology.''^^1^^ To this Nixon added in 1980 that the most effective way of dealing with the Soviet Union was "to speak softly but firmly, and keep the big stick ready".^^2^^

In addition to the armed forces of the United States and their allies of NATO and other aggressive blocs, the "big stick" Nixon meant was the leverage of the traditional American " balance of power" policy, a policy of using one country against another in the ``higher'' interests of US imperialism. In August 1970, following relevant analytical work in various US brain banks, Kissinger announced the latest discovery of those times. "The deepest international conflict in the world today is not between us and the Soviet Union, but between the Soviet Union and Communist China.''^^11^^

This being so, conditions should be devised to use China against the Soviet Union. The headmen of the Nixon administration decided with extraordinary arrogance that they could move peoples and enormous, formidable states. On learning of the latest intellectual achievement of the Nixon-Kissinger duo,

some US career diplomats were horrified. Llewellyn Thompson and Charles Bohlen, the two leading experts in Soviet affairs of that time, looked up Nixon on their own initiative and, as Kissinger reports, "warned the President against any attempt to `use' China against the Soviet Union. This could have nothing but dire consequences for US-Soviet relations and for world peace.''^^1^^

But their courageous act fell by the wayside. Nixon and Kissinger were not going to reverse what they had so enthusiastically begun to build: a diplomacy for the US, USSR and China triangle in the "balance of power" system. The military build-up concept dating to John Kennedy's time and connoting readiness to wage "2^^1^^/₂ wars" (against the USSR, China, and a ``lesser'' state in some other region) was replaced with the "P/₂ war" concept, which, however, did not mean that the arms race would slacken, for hopes were running high that it would ruin the USSR. American efforts were directed to setting China against the Soviet Union. Some time in 1973, Nixon and Kissinger invited Congress leaders to the White House, where Kissinger held forth about China:

``We calculate that by 1978 to 1980, China could be in a position to kill millions of Soviets in any exchange.''

The President interrupted him. "We believe," he said, "China would accept the loss of half their population.''^^2^^

This, roughly, was what the Nixon-Kissinger administration was scheming to achieve, though, naturally, it would not let the world know at the time. Only after retiring, both of them saw fit to explain what precisely they had on their minds when they were at the helm of power. Kissinger: Detente could never replace a balance of power.^^3^^ Nixon: The policy of containment was conceived against a monolithic Communist world. There can be no detente without containment. Containment without detente is dangerous, because the superpowers have increadible nuclear arsenals, and it would be foolish because it would deny the USA the opportunity of benefiting from the differences between the USSR and China.^^4^^

~^^1^^ Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 156, 84, 135, 192.

^^1^^ Nixon, The Real War, p. 293.

~^^1^^ Landau, Kissinger: The Uses of Power, p. 106.

Kissinger, White House Years, p. 189. Woodward, Bernstein, The Final Days, p. 237. See Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1143. See Nixon, The Real War, pp. 283, 286.

19---796

If so, it would not be amiss to see what goals the White House pursued. Speaking on January 31, 1980, Kissinger warned: "I do not like the distinction of the postwar period into a period of Cold War and a period of detente. The Cold War was not so terrible and detente was not so exalted.''^^1^^

A verbal smokescreen. But Professor J. L. Gaddis is quite clear as to what Nixon and Kissinger meant by detente. "They viewed it as yet another in a long series of attempts to ' contain' the power and influence of the Soviet Union," he wrote, "but one based on a new combination of pressures and inducements that would, if successful, convince the Russians that it was in their own best interests to be `contained'. The goal, as had been the case with Kennan two decades earlier, was nothing less than to change the Soviet Union's concept of international relations, to integrate it as a stable element into the existing world order.''

Gaddis discussed this interpretation with the elderly Kennan. The latter agreed, "Henry understands my views better than anyone at State ever has.''^^2^^

In the second volume of his memoirs, which came out in 1982, Kissinger saw fit to dot the i's. "It is ... important to recall," he wrote, "what detente was and what it was not. Richard Nixon came into office with the well-deserved reputation of a lifetime anti-Communist. He despised liberal intellectual who blamed the Cold War on the United States and who seemed to believe the Soviet system might be transformed through the strenous exercise of goodwill. Nixon profoundly distrusted Soviet motives; he was a firm believer in negotiations from positions of strength; he was, in short, the classic Cold Warrior. Yet after four tumultous years in office, it was this man, so unlike the conventional intellectual's notion of a peace-maker, who paradoxically was negotiating with the Soviets on the broadest agenda of East-West relations in twentyfive years.. .

``The paradox was more apparent than real. We did not consider a relaxation of tensions a concession to the Soviets.

We had our own reasons for it. We were not abandoning the ideological struggle, but simply trying---tall order as it was---to discipline it by precepts of national interest.''

As Kissinger said in those days in a heart-to-heart talk with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, "if I explained in detail what I am doing, I would win Mcany [archreactionary leader of the AFL-CIO.---N.Y.] but lose the Russians. I am carrying out the toughest policy that can be sustained over a long period.''^^1^^

The Nixon-Kissinger team was at pains to put Kennan's recommendations of influencing the USSR "from within" on a practical plane. Take the question of economic ties. That, as everybody knows, is a bilateral and mutually advantageous process. But by Kissinger's logic it meant something entirely different. In 1974, he said: "Over time, trade and investment may leaven the autarkic tendencies of the Soviet system, invite gradual association of the Soviet economy with the world economy, and foster a degree of interdependence.''^^2^^ What he wanted, in other words, was to forge levers of pressure against the Soviet Union through the economy.

Gaddis grasped the crux of the matter quite correctly. He pointed out that, "fully aware of the importance Moscow attached to this goal [of bolstering the economy], Nixon and Kissinger sought to extract two benefits from it: to integrate the Soviet economy with that of the West to such an extent that the Russians would have few motives for upsetting the international status quo, and, somewhat contradictorily, to induce Soviet political cooperation by extending economic concessions only as a reward for good behavior.''^^3^^

It stands to reason that this mode of operations was not widely advertised. Yet in his memoirs, Kissinger was anything but vague. He attested to "the White House's determination to have trade follow political progress and not precede it".^^4^^ The scheme was built on sand, which was why the most-- favourednation status promised by the United States, like the promised

~^^1^^ Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1982, pp. 236-237, 1030.

^^2^^ The Department of State Bulletin, October 14, 1974, p. 512.

~^^3^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . ., p. 314.

~^^4^^ Kissinger, White House Years, p. 1134.

~^^1^^ Kissinger, For the Record. Selected Statements 1977-1980. Little, Brown and Co., Boston, 1981, p. 262.

^! Gaddis, Strategies of Containment. . ., pp. 289, 283.

big credits of the Export-Import Bank, remained nothing but pie in the sky.

In the early 1970s, resort to the cliches of the cold war was acting as a brake on psychological warfare, the men in the White House believed. As Kissinger explained to a Senate committee, "a renewal of the Gold War will hardly encourage the Soviet Union to ... adopt a more benevolent attitude toward dissent.''^^1^^ In a February 1972 report to Congress, "U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970`s'', Nixon used vague and slippery formulations to redefine Washington's allegiance to psycological warfare. He said he would "take action to strengthen more positive tendencies [in the USSR]" because, as he claimed, his administration "sought to encourage those tendencies in Soviet policy which suggested a readiness to seek change through an evolutionary process".^^2^^ What he said was fairly indefinite, but the fog in the official document, timed to appear on the eve of Nixon's visits to Peking and Moscow, was cleared up by the revival of various renegades in the USSR at about this time.

To these artful stratagems the Soviet Union opposed its principled Leninist foreign policy. All the due conclusions were properly drawn.

And precisely at this time US secret services stepped up their subversive activity against the USSR and other socialist countries. Washington paid lip service to detente, while the subversive Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe broadcast incendiary material. They publicized the slanderous anti-Soviet statements of all sorts of renegades. The CIA went out of its way to create the impression that an ``opposition'' to the socialist system existed. Washington's official assurances of detente were, in substance, no more than a ploy to further this secret activity.

The Soviet Union was on its toes, however. It cut short the attempts of the psychological warfare strategists to exploit detente in interests that had nothing in common with the peace-

ful coexistence of states. This conformed with the principle of Soviet foreign policy ruling out interference in each other's internal affairs. At the same time, the Soviet Union was active in the ideological struggle, which is part and parcel of Lenin's doctrine of peaceful coexistence.

Moscow was also aware that the Nixon administration endeavoured to resort to "balance of power" methods in its policy toward socialist countries. It was an open secret that the US leaders hoped to create complications and strains between socialist countries. Washington's official rhetoric was assessed precisely as it was later characterized by Henry Kissinger himself. At that time, he confessed, the United States gave trite diplomatic reassurances that were meant to mislead and comfort.^^1^^

The Soviet Union was aware that the Nixon-Kissinger administration had repeatedly and publicly declared itself in favor of relieving international tensions. This was something that could not be passed up. "The decision to agree to Richard Nixon's visit to Moscow in the spring of 1972 (May 22-30---N.Y.) was not simple and easy for the Soviet leadership to take because at that moment there was yet another exacerbation of US military operations in Vietnam." Still, it seemed possible "to lessen the threat of another world war and to limit by political means the capacity of imperialist circles for aggressive action, and greatly advance the cause of international detente and of consolidating world peace".^^2^^

The Soviet Union succeeded. As we read in a volume collectively written by Soviet historians with an introduction by Andrei Gromyko, "the Moscow summit resulted in signing of the Basic Principles of Relations between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This document provided for cooperation on a lasting, long-term basis without prejudice to third countries. For the first time in the history of Soviet-American relations the US government recognized the principle of the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems in an international legal document. The

~^^1^^ Henry A. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1977, p. 173.

* U.S. Foreign Policy for the 1970's. A Report to the Congress by Richard Nixon, President of the United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1972, p. 18-19.

~^^1^^ Kissinger, White House Years, pp. 836-837.

^! htoriya vneshnei politiki SSSR (History of USSR Foreign Policy). Vol. 2, 1945-1980, p. 493,

sides pledged to 'proceed from the common determination that in the nuclear age there is no alternative to conducting their mutual relations on the basis of peaceful coexistence.' Thereby, they confirmed that in present conditions disputes of an international nature should not, nor could they, be settled with resort to force.

``A Soviet-American Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-- Ballistic Missile Systems was also signed, as was an Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. The former was signed without a limit in time, and the latter for a term of five years. These two accords set limits to the construction of anti-missile defences (according to a supplementary 1974 protocol to the Treaty, the sides may have one ABM system with 100 anti-missile weapons each) and to deploying land-based ICBMs and building submarine-launched missiles and nuclear-capable submarines. Both documents were based on the principle of the equal security of the USSR and the USA and precluded unilateral advantages.

``The Moscow negotiations showed clearly that while conducting a class-oriented, principled foreign policy, the Soviet Union combined firm rebuff to imperialism's aggressive intents with a constructive approach to key international problems, and irreconcilability in the ideological struggle with readiness to develop mutually beneficial relations with countries of the opposite social system on the basis of peaceful coexistence.''^^1^^

This was .a level-headed, serious approach, showing the Soviet Union's concern for peace and international security. The ' Soviet Union worked for the complete equality and security of the two great powers on the basis of equal strategic potentials. The American side, however, had somewhat different motives and looked upon the negotiations as just another epi- ' sode in its "power diplomacy''.

'

Though this approach was firmly repulsed, the US side re- \ sorted to many different ploys to have it prevail. In 1982, with the obvious intention of advertising his achievements, Kissing- ; er referred to the "administrative procedures of Nixon's first

term" as ``Byzantine''. As 'for his own activity, he said the demand was "for a show of hypocrisy". Referring to the negotiation tactics, Kissinger said of a certain document sent to Moscow that it would not "be recorded by historians as a model of precision".^^1^^

Washington's approach to the negotiations was, as Kissinger described it, reduced to the problem of "whether we will use them or they will use us".^^2^^ Not so that of the USSR. The Soviet Union always stood for equality.

During the subsequent negotiations nine new accords were signed concerning various aspects of Soviet-American cooperation, and among them the Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War. Thereupon, during Leonid Brezhnev's visit to the United States the two countries also signed a document, entitled Basic Principles of Negotiations on the Further Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms. All in all, more bilateral Soviet-American accords were concluded in 1972 and 1973 than in all the preceding years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Despite his inflated ambitions, Kissinger had understood by the time of the third Soviet-American summit in June-July 1974 that it was useless making exaggerated, unrealistic demands. On the eve of Nixon's departure for Moscow in June 1974, when the negotiating tactics were being discussed at the White House, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger advised the President to demand that the Soviet Union should limit its strategic arms on a unilateral basis, and said, "You can be very persuasive---you have great forensic skills." Kissinger commented, "Forensic skill could not achieve it; the task would have defeated Demosthenes. . . It would require a downright miracle.''

Miracles do not happen. And, having drawn their lesson, Nixon and Kissinger refrained from making absurd demands. Commenting years later, Kissinger wrote, "By all normal criteria, the summit had been a success.''^^3^^ But the comments of the US press were clear evidence that the enemies of peace and detente were squaring up for action.

~^^1^^ Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 7, 431, 272, 279. ^^1^^ Gaddis, Strategies of Containment.. ., p. 293. * Kissinger, Ywrs of Upheaval, pp. 1158, 1177,

~^^1^^ Vneshnaya politika Sovetskogo Soyuza (Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union), Moscow, 1978, p. 219.

Why so? Who were the people, what were the forces that wanted to prevent any normalization of Soviet-American relations? For the answer to that question we must go back to 1972.

year-old member of Kennedy's staff, lost her life. Coming to the police in the morning (by that time the car with the young woman's corpse had been found), Kennedy said he had dived several times to save Mary Jo, but had failed, and had not hurried to the police because he was in a depressed state of shock. He was given a suspended sentence of two months' jail. The Senate was tolerant ("Come in, Ted! You're right back where you belong," exclaimed Senate majority speaker, Mike Mansfield, when the embarrassed Kennedy appeared in the Senate a forthight after the tragedy.^^1^^), but the affair was not, in fact, consigned to oblivion.

With Edward Kennedy out of the running Senators Edmund Muskie, George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey, and Alabama governor George Wallace seized on the opportunity. The latter was something of a threat to Nixon, because he could win the votes of those who were right of center. But in May 1972 Wallace was paralyzed after having been badly wounded, and dropped out of the race. Humphrey's name was associated with Vietnam. Muskie, conscious of his negligible chances, withdrew. George McGovern, who was quickly nicknamed Goldwater of the Left, continued the race. He spoke of improving the lot of the poor (by expanding social maintenance), suggested reducing military expenditure by 37 per cent, withdrawing US troops from Europe, and amnestying those who had dodged the Vietnam draft (of whom there were 100,000 against the three million who had gone through the war in Southeast Asia). McGovern spent 28 million dollars on the election campaign.

The 58 million dollars spent for the same purpose by Nixon show how serious he was in his bid for a second term. Nixon's closest and most trusted advisers formed CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President), which was none too finicky over its choice of method. Under the benign patronage of former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, CREEP activists stretched the US electioneering ethic to the extreme. In June 1972, they finally managed to overstretch it: five burglars were apprehended in the Watergate complex in Washington on the pre-

Election Victory, Beginning of the Downfall

The motives of US foreign policy are naturally defined by the select, by those who have been screened by the FBI. There was this incontestable and impressive fact: toward the end of Nixon's first term, three or four instead of 300 coffins were being brought home from Vietnam each week. The withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam was nearing completion, while the negotiations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, as Kissinger repeatedly stressed, were approaching final success. The outcome of the summit in Moscow had, probably for the first time in postwar history, yielded promise of a normalization of Soviet-American relations. Linguists in the West could argue about the sense of the French verb detendre and the Russian term razriadka (the former means weakening of the bowstring after release of the arrow, while razriadka or detente has for millions of people come to signify the realistic way of relaxing international tension and, consequently, removing the danger of a nuclear world war).

In the United States all this was being associated with Nixon's name. Save for his incorrigible critics who did not believe in the "new Nixon", and, of course, save those leaders of the Democratic Party who lusted for power, the vast majority of Americans (and, consequently, of the electorate) were pleased with the results of his activity in the White House. In the circumstances, the Democrats' efforts to win the 1972 election were wasted, though, certainly, they tried their best. The main trouble was that they had no leader.

Senator Edward Kennedy, who could have run for President, was still unable to recover from something that had happened three years before. In the early hours of July 19, 1969, the Senator, as he testified, had lost control of his car and it plunged off a bridge into a canal, Mary Jo Kopechne, a 28-

~^^1^^ Jack Olsen, The Bridge of Chappaquiddick, Ace Book, New York, 1970, p. 251,

mises of the Democratic Party's national committee. Though there were two former fairly high-ranking White House employees among them, plus McCord, chief of the CREEP security service, the episode attracted little attention. McGovern included it among the many charges of abuse of power that he levelled at the government, and the spokesman of the administration referred to it as a ``third-rate'' burglary. That, at first, was all.

CREEP'S zeal was fired by Nixon's wish to be re-elected. He displayed next to pathological ardour to win the maximum of votes, and told his retinue that only his stay at the summit (as President of Law and Order) would prevent a return to the chaos of the 1960s. So the Nixonites stuck at nothing. In substance, the matter revolved on restoring the ``consensus'', lacking which there could be no question of success in the President's foreign policy. To recover the ``consensus'', Nixon and the White House staff resorted to many stratagems, apart from the Watergate burglary, to compromize the rival Democratic Party. And when the results of the election were announced, with Nixon winning 47.1 million votes against McGovern's 29.1 million, the CREEP people nibbed their hands in glee. For the first time in history a Republican president had had 521 votes in the primaries (McGovern had only 17!), while the 60.7 per cent of the votes polled by Nixon fell only a little short of Lyndon Johnson's 1964 record. The organizers of Nixon's triumph believed serenely that winners were not judged.

The 1972 elections, however, should have forewarned them. That year, under the 26th amendment to the Constitution which entered into force in 1971, voters' age was lowered from 21 to 18 years, resulting in 10.5 million new voters. Still, only 55.7 per cent of the electorate had gone to the polls. Who had the sympathy of those who had not voted? British historians Mooney and Brown are probably right when they say that "many of the 62 million non-voters may well have been both anti-McGovern and anti-Nixon and this does throw some question on the thesis that the American `centre' in 1972 was a ' Republican centre'. But newspapers like the Frankfurter Zeitung of West Germany in November 1972 spoke for many Europeans and Americans when in editorials they stressed that Nixon, with

a 'blank cheque' mandate and no third term, had a duty to history,'to achieve great things.''^^1^^

Nor did Nixon have to be told twice. He felt fate smiling at him. And for a start he decided to get rid of all the undesirables in the upper echelon.

He struck on the idea of letting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) loose on his political opponents. If any failure to pay taxes were discovered, the culprit could be put away. The President supplied the Department of Justice an ``enemies' list of 490". They were not dissidents of any sort. Most of them were influential people. George P. Shultz, then Secretary of the Treasury, was dumbfounded. The President's instructions were most unusual. He tried to protest. Anticipating success, however, Nixon said to his aides Haldeman and Dean that Shultz "did not get Secretary of the Treasury because he has nice blue eyes". Certainly not. " 'It was a goddam favor to him to get that job,'. . . Nixon went on to say, and added: 'I want the most comprehensive notes on all of those that have tried to do us in. . . They are asking for it and they are going to get it. We have not used the power in the first four years as you know. We have never used it. We have not used the Bureau and we have not used the Justice Department but things are going to change now. And they are either going to do it right or go.'

`` 'What an exciting prospect,' John Dean replied.''^^2^^

It appears that word of Nixon's intention to set the IRS against his political adversaries reached the latter's ears. In the United States everyone has to deal with the IRS at least once a year, when submitting tax returns. Indeed, the Service is probably the most feared, because its bloodhounds track those who have nothing to fear from the FBI or CIA. And since society in the USA worships the dollar, only few are prepared to pay their taxes to the last penny or to turn down dubious incomes. The propertied, those who hold power, took steps to protect themselves. This gave added impulse to the events that proved fateful for the triumphant President. The trite Water-

~^^1^^ Mooney, Brown, Truman to Carter, pp. 180, 182. ^s David Wise, The American Police State, Random House New York, 1976, p. 323.

gate story, which had at first passed nearly unnoticed, was brought back into the papers, this time to their front page, spilled over into the weeklies and monthlies, swelled into a book, and finally into a ``hearing'', yielding material for memoirs, and so on. A. publicist who was in the know lamented that it was impossible to read everything written by the Watergate and intelligence committees. "Believe me," he exclaimed, "you can't, unless you quit work and devote a year to it.''^^1^^

The gradually rising passions over Watergate left a painful imprint on US political life. Whatever the intentions of the administration after the 1972 election, Nixon, as Kissinger testified, was hardly in control all those 18 months of the Watergate scandal. The ground was cut from under his feet. He tried to divert attention with a new aggressive drive against the people of Vietnam. Toward the end of 1972, the United States deployed strategic B-52 bombers against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. The bombings caused enormous casualties among the civilian population, but also cost the USAF dearly: by US estimates 16 B-52s were shot down---an untenable figure, with each aircraft costing nine million dollars. The Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam signed in Paris on January 27, 1973, recorded the defeat of the US aggression in Southeast Asia. Under the agreement the withdrawal of US troops from South Vietnam would soon be completed: the last US soldier left Vietnam on March 18, 1973.

No triumph for Nixon. The edifice of his administration was crumbling. Temperamental Senator Samuel J. Ervin's committee (investigating Watergate) had been in the glare of TV cameras since January 1973, while District Court Judge John J. Sirica was examining the case of the ``seven'' who had broken into the National Committee to the Democratic Party. An experienced and thorough judge, Sirica managed to convince the defendants in the two months of the court investigation that he did not believe a word of what they said and that their tale of having broken into Watergate to reconnoitre the Democrats' plans of "creating disturbances" against the Republicans, was ridiculous. He let them know that they faced a possible 40 years in jail. On March 20, at last, one of the defendants re-

vealed that for a large sum of money the ``seven'' had been talked into confessing to the burglary in order to conceal the involvement of "other high-ranking persons". Sirica advised the defendants to cooperate with the Ervin committee. That started the ball rolling. John Dean, one of Nixon's aides, soon admitted that the President had been trying to deal with his adversaries by police methods. He was told to prepare detailed testimony. On April 30, Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, let alone Dean himself, were compelled to resign.

Nixonites rushed to the aid of their leader and benefactor. Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew announced in April that he had "full confidence in the integrity of President Nixon". He described the treatment Watergate got in the press as "a very short jump from McCarthyism", and said the Ervin committee "can hardly fail to muddy the waters of justice beyond repair".^^1^^ Some six months later, however, he paid heavily for these and other colorful expressions he had used to exonerate his chief. In the meantime, the attention of the investigators and of the press was concentrated on one thing only: was Nixon speaking the truth when he said the burglary was nothing more than an affair committed by over-zealous assistants. Nixon energetically denied knowing anything about Watergate or taking part in attempts to cover up the traces by bribing the culprits. The President made out that he was unmoved by the activity of the investigators. They scheduled a hearing of the main witness, John Dean, for June 18, 1973. That day the committee gathered on Capitol Hill with an air of extraordinary importance. Dean was feverishly paging through his testimony: he was to read (245 pages. Yet it was voted to postpone Dean's appearance for a week.^^2^^

On June 23, 1973. Dean began to testify before the Ervin committee. This took five days. He read all the 245 pages of his testimony, which exposed Nixon, and gave the committee 47 documents, including the list of the President's 490 enemies. In the fortnight that followed, other witnesses came out with sensational evidence. On July 16, finally, the whole thing blew up in Nixon's face: eager to make his mark in history, he had

~^^1^^ Profiles of an Era, p. 14.

^^1^^ Dean, Blind Ambition, p. 305.

The New York Times Book Review, January 9, 1977,

ordered in March 1971 to record on tape everything that was being said in the White House and Gamp David. The Ervin committee and Judge Sirica demanded the tapes. Nixon refused to surrender them, saying state secrets had to be kept.

The investigators objected to the President's refusal before the toj) legal instances, while the President's rapidly shrinking following was appalled at his having installed bugs all over the White House and, moreover, keeping the tapes. Nixon's wife was in a bad state: in the mornings White House servants saw her more and more often with a glass of whiskey in her hand. ''The tapes were like love letters," she kept saying. "They should have been burned or destroyed.''^^1^^ While waiting for the Supreme Court ruling, the investigators feared that Nixon would order the tapes to be destroyed. As Samuel Dash, chief counsel of the Ervin committee, recalled: "One question is asked everywhere, by everyone---university presidents and cab drivers---Why didn't they destroy the tapes?" If he had destroyed them, Dash wrote, Nixon would have served out his full term as President; John Dean's word alone could not have unseated him---or even convicted the top Watergate conspirators. "Why didn't he?" Samuel Dash asked. "Simply because in his arrogant perception of his powers, Nixon believed that no one could ever force him to release the tapes.''^^2^^

Nixon was sure he could cope with any adversary. Though the hostilities in Vietnam had ceased in January 1973, US strategic bombers continued to ravish Cambodia. That was a complicated undertaking---to give no peace to a war-ravaged country, to destabilize the situation there, to stoke up passions to white heat. Later, US statesmen, and Henry Kissinger first of all, would deny that this was their objective, and referred hypocritically to "war needs". Inasmuch as Henry the theorist dealt with the matter at great length in his memoirs, The Nation, in its review of the first volume, which appeared in 1979, took the bull by the horns in no uncertain fashion "It was Kissinger," it wrote, "who helped create the conditions that made it possible for the monstrous Pol Pot regime to seize control of

the country in 1975. Could this Frankenstein machine have come to life without the war that Kissinger's decision expanded and prolonged?''^^1^^

Evidently, the punch hurt. In the next volume of his memoirs, which appeared in 1982, Kissinger recalled that the invasion of Cambodia, as Nixon himself had put it, had followed "the Nixon doctrine in its purest form". In no way, however, did this relieve the United States of blame for what happened there any more than the selected ``documents'' given at the back of the book could convince anyone that Kissinger had nothing to do with the genocide in Cambodia.^^2^^

It is hardly possible that anyone on Capitol Hill had been apprized of the operation's secret goal---to put killers in charge of Cambodia and thereby discredit socialism. Congress feared something else: it feared that the bombings of Cambodia would revive the anti-war movement in the United States and impair the attempts to restore ``consensus'' on foreign affairs. The House cut off allocations for the operations in Cambodia. Nixon vetoed its decision. A second vote annulled the veto. As of August 15, 1973, the bombing ceased. More than 150,000 sorties had been flown, and more than 500,000 tons of bombs had been dropped on Cambodia. Henceforth, under a new act on military powers, the President would have to report to Congress 48 hours after ordering US troops abroad into action, letting it know all the relevant circumstances; hostilities would stop within 90 days unless Congress ruled otherwise. The President vetoed the bill, and a second vote passed it.

Whatever ambitious plans Nixon may have nursed, the events on Capitol Hill were a revelation. Truman had exercised the veto 250 times, with 12 annulled; Eisenhower 181, with two annulled; Kennedy 21, Johnson 30, while out of Nixon's 38 vetoes five were annulled.^^3^^ Evidently. Nixon did not see the symptoms of the serious disaffection. He took it to be the usual congressional obduracy over the war in Southeast Asia. He was probably even proud of the new achievements in psycho-

~^^1^^ Woodward, Bernstein, The Final Days, p. 166.

'- Samuel Dash, Chief Counsel: Inside the Ervin Committee---The Untold Story of Watergate, Random House, New York, 1976, p. 197.

~^^1^^ The Nation, November 24, 1979, p. 528.

* Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, pp. 339, 1212-1231.

~^^1^^ Milton C. Cummings, David Wise, Democracy Under Pressure; an Introduction to the American Political System, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1977., p. 348.

logical warfare which, as everybody knows, are hardly ever made public.

One more psychological warfare operation was approaching its culmination: the overthrow in Chile of Salvador Allende's democratic government by means of a CIA conspiracy. In 1970, Henry Kissinger had told the Committee of 40, which controlled the subversive activity of the CIA, that he did not see why the USA "need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people". As for Nixon, he had issued personal orders to destabilize the situation in Chile. ("Make the economy scream" he spouted.^^1^^) When Nixon allotted 10 million or more dollars to complete the operation, CIA director Richard Helms was more than pleased. "If I ever carried a marshal's baton in my knapsack out of the Oval Office," he said, "it was that day.''^^2^^ The coup d'etat came on September 11, 1973. Allende laid down his life in battle. The blood-stained Pinochet clique took over, engulfing the country in mass terrorism.

The United States hastened to announce that it had had no part in the matter. Like other US Presidents in analogous situations, Nixon resorted to the tactic of "plausible denial". Even years later he wrote in his memoirs that "after three years of inefficient administration, during which the Chilean economy suffered from a series of crippling strikes, Allende was overthrown by the Chilean military in September 1973, and according to conflicting reports, was either killed or committed suicide during the coup.''^^3^^

The above passage is a striking example of the "plausible denial" tactic.

On the heels of the bloody events in Chile, the report of the Church committee in 1976 contained what CIA veteran Rositzke described as "a gross misreading of the doctrine of plausible denial''.

``It suggests," Rositzke wrote, "that the President might be purposefully kept in ignorance of a covert operation in order

that he might honestly deny it. This is nonsense. No President can willfully choose ignorance in order to absolve himself from being responsible for the acts of his subordinates.''^^1^^

What appeared to be successes in psychological warfare, Nixon could not, however, turn in his favour in the Watergate affair. Doubly so, because their authorship was claimed by others, notably Kissinger and the CIA's leading operatives. Nixon's allegiance to the "plausible denial" doctrine did him a disservice. He simply could not reveal to the world his dedicated service to US imperialism on the international scene. To top this, in August 1973, Vice President Agnew was publicly accused of taking bribes. At first, the charges referred to just the period when Agnew was governor of Maryland. He decided to deny it. Since he did, matters quickly took a serious turn. Rumors were spread that Agnew had also accepted bribes as Vice President. Compromising documents appeared as if by magic. The judiciary posed as a champion of incorruptibility.

Agnew asked Nixon to protect him. The President refused. He advised Agnew to resign. It had been agreed with the Department of Justice that if he did, he would not be prosecuted. So he agreed, saying he would not contest one of the charges, that of evading taxes. On October 10 Agnew turned in his resignation, and on the same day he faced the court. Here he was told that a plea of nolo contendere meant an acknowledgement of guilt. The ex-Vice President was fined 10,000 dollars on the spot and given a suspended sentence of three years. In his book Go Quietly ... or Else (1980), Agnew said he resigned because he feared for his life; Nixon's aides were a triggerhappy lot. If there had been no such threat, he said, he would have fought for his office and would have been President after Nixon was ousted.^^2^^ The retribution for his attempt to cover up Watergate was not long in coming. In June 1981 there was a new trial and a new sentence: Agnew must return the. 248,735 dollars he had received as bribes when he was Vice President.

~^^1^^ Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1975, p. 33.

* Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1975, pp. 227-228.

~^^3^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 490.

Rositzke, The CIA's Secret Operations, p. 240. ~^^1^^ Time, June 9, 1980.

20---791*

Watergate!

Having relieved himself of Agnew, Nixon invited Gerald Ford, Republican leader in the House of Representatives, known for his addiction to sports and his claim to be clean in politics, to be Vice President, The new man had to be screened, and Ford later wrote that "the FBI investigation of me was the largest, most intensive probe that the Bureau had ever conducted into the background of a candidate for public office". Thereupon Ford revealed that "since October 13, some 350 special agents from 33 of the Bureau's field offices had interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses and compiled 1,700 pages of reports. (So thorough was this probe, I discovered later, that agents even interviewed a former football player from Union High School in Grand Rapids. More than forty years before, during a game between Union and South High, I had tackled the man after the whistle had blown and, as a consequence, had been ejected from the contest. The IRS looked into my tax returns; other government agencies conducted checks of their own''.

In the end, the FBI was satisfied. When taking the oath of office, Ford decided to buttress his position with a psalm from the Psalter, after consulting his family, he picked "May [God] answer you in time of trouble. . ." His eyes fixed on this psalm (with his wife holding the open Bible before him), Gerald Ford was sworn in on December 6, 1973,^^1^^ though at that time and in his memoirs he gave the wrong number of the psalm, saying it was the 20th while it was the 19th. What was important, however, was not the letter but the spirit of it: instead of Agnew, Nixon now had Ford at his side, a man reputed for his honesty.

Nixon fought on. On October 12 the Supreme Court supported Sirica's request, ruling that the President must submit the White House tapes. Confusion, turmoil, and outrage ensued. Ervin agreed to restricted access to the tapes but prosecutor Archibald Cox, appointed by Nixon some six months before specially to investigate Watergate, was against this. On November 19, Nixon instructed the Attorney General to dismiss

Cox. Instead, the Attorney General and his deputy resigned. Cox was thrown out anyway, but Leon Jaworski, who took his place, turned out to be still more insistent. Nixon delayed turning over the tapes, saying he could not reveal state secrets. In The Washington Post, meanwhile, journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward began exposing Nixon's behind-the-scenes efforts to shut the mouths of his accusers. The source of the information, they claimed, was a White House employee whom they code-named Deep Throat. The man literally spouted information from the secret files of the White House, the FBI, and the Department of Justice. A most unattractive picture: it turned out that Nixon had called in the FBI to prevent exposure of the true Watergate story. The informer called on Bernstein and Woodward, "Be---well, I'll say it---be cautious. .. Everyone's life is in danger.''^^1^^ Deep Throat's information enabled the Ervin committee to demand documents that confirmed the government's abuses.

On the face of it, especially on the pages of The Washington Post, it appeared as though a certain honest person disgusted with the dirt in the Nixon household, was letting newsmen know of what had incurred his indignation. But there was enough evidence, if you chose to look for it, that the attack on Nixon was deliberately organized. Haldeman did not beat about the bush. "Woodward is protecting the CIA in exchange for the information," he wrote. "And, in fact, an examination of Woodward and Bernstein's book, All the President's Men shows a remarkable coincidence. The CIA is barely mentioned, even though Woodward admits his first interest in the case came when he heard McCord (one of the Watergate burglars) at the precinct station, say he had been employed by the CIA. Strange.''^^2^^

McCord maintained that the failure of the burglary, which was deliberately clumsy in order to be ``discovered'', had been staged by the CIA with the purpose of discrediting Nixon.

An analogous version was put forward in the Ervin committee by Senator Howard H. Baker, who was its deputy chair-

^^1^^ Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, All the President's Men, Warner Paperback Library, New York, 1975, p. 348. ' Haldeman, The Ends of Power, p. 186.

Gerald R. Ford, A Time la Heal, pp. 106, 109.

so»

man, for reasons of his own. The committee's final report had Baker's particular opinion attached to it, saying the studied material "would appear to raise many unanswered questions as to the involvement of the CIA in matters outside its legislative parameters".^^1^^ Understandably so, Samuel Dash observed: ''They [Baker arid his aides---N.Y.] had become committed to the theory that Watergate was a CIA operation and I could not help feeling that they had resurrected the early cover-up 'game plan' that McGord had complained about. My own study of the CIA files and the reports Thompson prepared provided no support for what Thompson and Baker were doing. Senator Ervin, who took his own look at the material, agreed with me.''^^2^^

The Ervin committee's finding that the CIA was not involved in Watergate was broadly propagated both in the abovementioned book by Bernstein and Woodward and in the memoirs of John Dean, chief witness for the prosecution against Nixon. Simon and Schuster publishers earned a fabulous more than 30 million dollars on the sale of these two books, and paid extremely >high fees to their authors.^^3^^

Inasmuch as the involvement of the CIA in Watergate and its aftermaths was denied, the charges that piled up against Nixon concerned breaches of ethics in the conduct of government affairs and his lack of scruples: the Nixon administration had squashed charges against the ITT of violating anti-trust legislation when it received 400,000 dollars for the Republican Party convention; dairy companies had contributed two million dollars for the same purpose and were allowed, in return, to raise the price of milk; billionarie Howard Hughes had given the Nixon family 100,000 dollars as a gift, whereupon the Department of Justice remove restrictions on expanding his gambling houses in Las Vegas. The real estate that belonged to Nixon in San Clemente and in Key Biscayne had been rebuilt, improved and maintained on treasury funds. In an official 180-page report to the House of Representatives the money spent on Nixon's private property was calculated to the

penny, totalling nearly 17 million dollars. For comparison's sake it was shown that the maintenance of Lyndon Johnson's house had cost the state only 5.6 million dollars.^^1^^ It was also discovered that Nixon had evaded taxes on incomes totalling 467,000 dollars. All Nixon could say to these charges made under oath was, "I am not a crook." The proceedings were telecast to the country.^^2^^

Again and again Nixon was asked whether he had known that during the 1972 campaign his aides had organized the Watergate break-in. In due course, he worked out a standard reply: " '72 was a very biisy year for me. It was a year when we had the visit to China, it was a year when we had the visit to Moscow. .. Now, during that period of time, frankly, I didn't manage the campaign. I didn't run the campaign. People around me didn't bring things to me that they probably should have because I was frankly just too busy trying to do the Nation's business to run the politics.''^^3^^ He said this first at a press conference on November 17, 1973. But the investigators refused to follow Nixon into the sphere of external affairs, save for one exception, a most peculiar one.

They checked on rumours that Nixon had been ``brokering'' the office of US Ambassador. In a February 25, 1974 news conference, President Nixon denied most heatedly that his administration was involved in the practice of brokering ambassadorships. "Ambassadorships have not been for sale," he declared, "and I would not approve an ambassadorship unless the man or woman was qualified clearly apart from his contribution." On the very same day, the court found Herbert W. Kalmbach guilty of having taken upon himself the job of finding an ambassadorship in a European country for a certain J. Fife Symington, who had heretofore represented the USA on Trinidad and Tobago. In exchange, Symington had contributed 100,000 dollars to the Republican Party. Kalmbach submitt-

~^^1^^ Impounding of Funds. Government Expenditures on President Nixon's Private Property at San Clemente and Kay Biscayne, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1974, pp. 95, 179.

' Bernstein, Woodward, All the President's Men, p. 365.

~^^3^^ Presidential Statements on the Watergate Break-in and Its Investigation, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1974, p. 66.

~^^1^^ The Final Report. . . Washington, 1973, p. 1144.

^z Dash, Chief Counsel, pp. 213-214.

^^3^^ The Sunday Times, January 15, 1978.

ed this evidence after having been promised that he would not be prosecuted for analogous cases. US justice was satisfied, but the Ervin committee was still curious.

It turned out that many of the ambassadors appointed by Nixon had paid for their postings in cash. The Committee totted up that, all in all, they had paid 1.8 million dollars into the Republican Party's campaign fund, and that six persons who were expecting appointments when the Ervin committee began showing an interest in the practice, had donated another 3 million dollars. It was noted that European ambassadorships were especially popular, and usually cost not less than 100,000 dollars. Walter H. Annenberg had paid 250,000 for the London post, Arthur K. Watson 300,000 for the post in Paris, and Ruth Farkas the same sum for Luxembourg. Senator Clairborne Pell exclaimed: "Benelux seems to be the most expensive place on which to be appointed." As if this was not enough, the committee added that out of the 112 US ambassadors abroad, 34 had had no previous experience of diplomatic work. All the same, no conclusions were drawn concerning the rich men and women buying ambassadorships. The committee's request for White House documents containing reasons for the appointments was turned down, and no investigation was conducted into the connection between Ruth Farkas's 300,000 dollars and her Luxembourg ambassadorship. The prosecution objected.^^1^^ The spotlight that was turned on Nixon could not be dimmed, though he tried to screen himself off with important international business.

Under pressure of the Supreme Court, Nixon grudgingly began to give up the White House tapes. On April 29, 1974, however, he made an address to the nation. "We live in a time of very great challenge and great opportunity for America," he said. "We are at last in the process of fulfilling the hope of mankind for a limitation on nuclear arms---a process that will continue when I meet with the Soviet leaders in Moscow in a few weeks . . . Every day absorbed by Watergate is a day lost from the work that must be done---by your President and by your Congress---work that must be done in dealing with

the great problems that affect your prosperity, affect your security, that could affect your lives.''^^1^^

The 1,254-page transcript of the President's tapes, even after it had been edited by the White House staff, created a joyless impression. The approach to things was, of course, entirely different from what it was in the President's public pronouncements. But the White House had not surrendered all the tapes, and Jaworski demanded another 64. Again, court proceedings were initiated.

And again, Nixon tried to show that for him foreign policy was more important than Watergate. On June 10 he set out on a visit to the Middle East, and then Moscow. He headed an impressive delegation, including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He hoped, evidently, that his enemies in the USA would not dare attack the Nixonger team. But they did. And vehemently! When the President's plane stopped over in Salzburg, Austria, chief of the White House staff and Haldeman's successor Alexander Haig reported to the President that Kissinger was in a rage: a New York Times editorial recalled Kissinger's instruction to bug the phones of 17 of his staff. Haig said the Secretary of State meant to address the press about it. Nixon replied: "A Times editorial isn't a charge, Al . . . It's nothing more than a Times editorial, and that doesn't mean a goddamn thing. If he holds a press conference, he'll only play into their hands by giving them a Watergate lead for their first story from this trip.''^^2^^

And that is what Kissinger did. He called in the correspondents in Salzburg and declared melodramatically that he did not believe it was possible to conduct the foreign policy of the United States when the State Secretary's character and credibility were at issue. If the affair wasn't cleared up, he;added, he would resign. By so saying, he gave to understand that Nixon alone was culpable of the surveillance practiced in Washington. "This blatant disloyalty to the man who had given him unprecedented power, honour, and prestige," wrote authors Phyllis Schlafly and Chester Ward, "received no comment from the media."" In the United States, some 50 Senators came out

~^^1^^ The Final Report of the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, pp. 492-496.

~^^1^^ Presidential Statements on the Watergate Break-in ... p. 91.

^^1^^ The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 1009.

~^^1^^ Ph. Schlafly, Ch. Ward, Kissinger on the Couch, p. 775.

publicly in defense of Kissinger's ``integrity''. They supported him fully, they said, and thereby cut off Nixon from foreign policy./

Nixon could not understand it. One day, speaking to Kissinger on the phone, he referred thus to his inquisitors:

``What they care about is destruction. It brings me sometimes to feel like saying the hell with it. I would like to see them run this country and see what they do. . . The real tragedy is if I move out everything we have done will crumble. The Russians will look for other customers, the Chinese will lose confidence, the Europeans will---They just don't realize they are throwing everything out the window. I don't know what in the name of God.''^^1^^

On June 27, 1974, the Ervin committee gave the Senate its Final Report---1,250 pages of text, all about Nixon's various abuses and containing a set of recommendations on how to prevent their repetition by future presidents. Though Ervin and his six colleagues wore no togas they condemned the head of state with the severity of the ancient Romans. Veritably, the metal of solemn Latin resounded in Ervin's concluding words. "I find corroboration for my conclusion that lust for political power produced Watergate," he sadi, "in words uttered by the most eloquent and learned of all the Romans, Marcus Tullius Cicero, about 2100 years ago. He said: 'Most men, however, are inclined to forget justice altogether, when once the craving for military power or political honors and glory has taken possession of them.' Remember the saying of Ennius, 'When crowns.'are at stake, no friendship is sacred, no faith shall be kept.' " Nixon, as Ervin put it, had tried "to convert George Washington's America into Cains Caesar's Rome''.

Evidently, this appeared insufficient, and Ervin stigmatized Nixon and his accomplices as violators of Christian dogma. "They ignored these warnings of the King James version of the Bible: 'There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.' " The Senator took these lines from Matthew (10,26) or, perhaps, from Luke (12,2), adding a phrase from Apostle Paul's Epis-

tie to the Galatians (6,7). By referring to the King James version of the Bible (1611), Ervin betrayed his fundamentalist essence: he used a translation that the Pilgrim Fathers had used, and not the revised 1885 edition used in the USA these days. So there would be no more Watergates, Ervin demanded `` integrity'' from those entrusted with public office.^^1^^

Taking the cue from Ervin's committee, which called up the shades of the ancient greats, the House Judiciary Committee, whose business it was to translate emotions and indignation into law and initiate the President's impeachment, also appealed to the ancients. Its Chairman, Peter Rodino, addressed the other 37 members as they were to hand down the final verdict. "Throughout all of the painstaking proceedings of this committee," he said, "I as chairman have been guided by a simple principle, the principle that the law must deal fairly with every man ... It is almost fifteen centuries since the Emperor Justinian, from whose name the word `justice' is derived. established this principle for the free citizens of Rome.''^^2^^

To be sure, Justinian had ruled Byzantium, not Rome, but what difference does that make to the men in Washington who believe that today the United States holds a place equaling Rome's in the civilized world of its day.

Within a few weeks of Nixon's return from Moscow the banal affair ran out its course. The charges against Nixon were fitted into a framework that held no danger for the existing system. Fourteen impeachment resolutions were put before the House of Representatives, the first one by Congressman Robert F. Drinan, dated July 31, 1973: to impeach the President for bombing Cambodia. Its substance, as John Conyers, a member of the Judiciary Committee who picked up Drinan's initiative, explained, was simple: the President had on his own mounted wide-scale military operations against a sovereign country and had consistently denied the fact before Congress and the American people. But Rodino had the question of Cambodia erased from the impeachment as being ``classified'' information. Congressman John Seiberling referred to this "for

~^^1^^ The Final Report of the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, pp. 1102-1103.

~^^2^^ Woodward, Bernstein, The Final Days, p. 280.

~^^1^^ Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 581.

the record" when the hearings in the Judiciary Committee were running to a close, "And it is part of the same kind of pattern that we have been confronted with all through this material of trying to cover that information which can only be justified as remaining classified because some individuals would find it embarrassing to have made it public.''^^1^^

Not only matters of foreign policy^ but also the many facts concerning the financial offences of Nixon and his accomplices, mainly facts involving the biggest US monopolies, were suppressed. Understandably so. How, for example, could Nixon be accused of taking money from dairy companies if 16 members of the Judiciary Committee had also taken bribes from them. On July 27, the Judiciary Committee voted 27 to 11 for the first charge: the President had obstructed the course of justice; on July 29 it voted 28 toilO for the second charge--- abuse of power; and on July 30 it voted 21 to 17 that the President was subject to impeachment for failing to meet the Committee's demand and submit the material. Conyers tried to add a fourth item concerning the bombing of Cambodia, but this was voted down 26 to 12. Ten of the latter 12 attached their particular opinion to the impeachment. "By failing to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon for the deception of Congress and the American public," they wrote, "as to an issue as grave as the systematic bombing of a neutral country, we implicitly accept the argument that any ends---even those a President believes are legitimate---justify inconstitutional means.''^^2^^

The examination in the House of the charges on which the President was to be impeached would have taken a long time, for they were couched in vague language. The events in early August relieved the United States of a drawn-out constitutional crisis. In pursuance of the unanimous Supreme Court ruling of July 24, Nixon finally made public three of his talks

in the White House on June 23, 1972, that is, a week after the Watergate break-in. He did so on August 5. Though tEe press called this material a "smoking pistol", it revealed nothing of substance, save that Nixon had few to equal him in the use of unprintable language. US historians hold that on June 23, 1972, Nixon and Haldeman had decided to use the CIA against the FBI in order to prevent a Watergate investigation. From the few phrases in between the unprintable language it followed that Nixon was closely tied up with the intelligence agencies, notably the CIA and FBI. Though that day he called Dulles a son of a bitch and referred with contempt to Helms ("We protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things"), it was clear from what the two men (Nixon and Haldeman) said, that the CIA was deeply involved in Watergate. "Cray [FBI director---N.Y.] called Helms," Haldeman observed, "and said I think we've run into the middle of a CIA covert operation.''^^1^^

Somehow, this did not jibe with the viewpoint that all Nixon had to do was to issue orders to the CIA. In any case, the months-long discussion of the impeachment in the House of Representatives, and thereupon also in the Senate, could shed too much light on the intelligence agencies, which was contrary to the interests of the all-powerful ``cryptocracy''. So Nixon was virtually besieged by friends and associates, including Senator Barry Goldwater, who enjoined him, pleaded and demanded that he should resign and not let matters reach an impeachment. Nixon was in a quandry. Once, having drunk more than he should, he said to Haig, "You fellows, in your business, you [meaning the army---N. Y.] have a way of handling problems like this. Somebody leaves a pistol in the drawer." He looked at Haig querulously. Haig said nothing. On leaving the President, however, he forbade Nixon's doctors to give Nixon any medicines. His sleeping pills had already been removed, and there was someone on the spot all the time to see the President should not reach for the "black button" that would start a nuclear war. In the evening of August 7, Nixon summoned Kissinger. In his cups, the President told him he would resign. The painful conversation of the two men, each

~^^1^^ Impeachment Inquiry. Hearings before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 93rd Congress, 2nd Session, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1975, p. 2058.

~^^2^^ Impeachment oj Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States. Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 9'3lrd Congress, 2nd Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1974, pp. 327-328.

~^^1^^ Lasky, It Didn't Start with Watergate, pp. 406, 410.

holding a glass of whiskey, broke off when Nixon burst into tears. Huddled in his armchair, he wept aloud.

``Between sobs," Woodward and Bernstein write, "Nixon was plaintive. What had he done to the country and its people? He needed some explanation. How had it come to this? How had a simple burglary, a breaking and entering, done all this?''

Kissinger kept talking, trying to turn the conversation back to all the good things, all the accomplishments. Nixon wouldn't hear of it. He was hysterical. "Henry," he said, "you are not a very orthodox Jew, and I am not an orthodox Quaker, but we need to pray." Nixon got down on his knees. Kissinger felt he had no alternative but to kneel, too. The President prayed out loud, asking for help, rest, peace and love. How could a President and a country be torn apart by such small things?

Kissinger thought he had finished. But the President did not rise. He was weeping. And then, still sobbing, Nixon leaned over and struck his fist on the carpet, crying, "What have I done? What has happened?" It was with some difficulty that Kissinger raised the President from the carpet and led him to an armchair. Then he escaped. Soon Nixon got him on the phone again, and asked him to tell no one of his weakness. He could have spared the effort. The above scene, as recounted by its sole witness. Kissinger, went a long way to enliven the book of Woodward and Bernstein.^^1^^

Nixon's final act in power. Despite Haldeman's pleading, even threats, the President refused to pardon his Watergate accomplices. He knew in that case he would himself be tried after his resignation. On August 8, Richard Nixon announced his resignation.

The President now would be Gerald Ford. The mass media could not have been more pleased. Nor could Congress. Newsweek asked the Gallup Institute to have a special poll concerning the President's resignation. Its outcome: 22 per cent held that "his actions regarding Watergate were not serious enough to warrant his resignation". Another 33 per cent found that "Nixon's political enemies unfairly exaggerated his actions in order to force him out of office".^^2^^ And this after 18 months

~^^1^^ Woodward, Bernstein, The Final Days, pp. 403, 423. ^^1^^ Sorensen, Watchmen in the Night, p. 11.

of an unprecedentedly bitter campaign: Why, then, was Nixon found unfit and banished in disgrace?

The true motives behind the whole affair, the first such in US history, are not likely to become known to the present generation. And later ones, probably will not be interested, save for the historians. Still, they can be surmised if one establishes what Washington stopped doing. Not a week had passed since Nixon's departure when the House Committee on International Relations opened ``hearings'' on detente or, more precisely, the problem of "United States relations with Communist countries". On the first day, August 15, 1974, George F. Kennan, who was invited to testify, set the tone for the next two months' discussion. "First, about detente and relations with the Soviet Union," he said. "I have to say that I have never fully understood the use of the word `detente' in connection with these relations . . . The effort of the recent administration to promote a better relationship with the Soviet Union was therefore nothing really new; and no new word, so far as I can see, was necessary to describe it.''^^1^^

Approximately a year later, on July 15, 1975, the House Committee on International Relations asked Averell Harriman, "Do you feel that detente as we know it today is working or can work?" Harriman rebutted: "I don't like the word. I think we ought to forget the use of the word.''^^2^^ President Gerald Ford, forbade US government agencies to use the `` detente''. Why? "The greatest criticism of detente---if valid---it," wrote Mooney and Brown, "that it has robbed the West of the psychological tension necessary to ensure sufficient defence spending.''^^3^^ There is evidently a large share of truth in the judgement of these two English historians. Still, detente is not only a term but also a specific policy associated in the United States with the name of Henry Kissinger, who retained his post of Secretary of State under Gerald Ford. He was given time, evidently, to show Washington a few palpable results of detente in addition to the apparent ones.

Kissinger was highly active when Leonid Brezhnev and Ge-

Detcnte. Hearings . . ., p. 61. Reassessment of U. S. Foreign Policy, p. 6. Mooney, Brown, Truman to Carter, p. 252.

raid Ford had their meeting in the vicinity of Vladivostok on November 23 and 24, 1974, at which they agreed "the volume and character" of further joint steps concerning the limitation of strategic offensive arms. The Soviet-American contacts facilitated the holding of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in f975, where the United States displayed what was essentially a constructive approaoch.^^1^^ At that time, Kissinger spoke of new agreements soon to be reached with the USSR and a new Summit Meeting. But well-informed US newspapers observed that "the Secretary's public optimism, however, was not always reflected in private discussions with American officials.''^^2^^ One should remember something else--- until November 1975 Kissinger had also retained the post of presidential national security assistant, that is, patron of the CIA. When Ford replaced him, Kissinger, as he said himself, "resented the decision bitterly".^^3^^

By that time the major psycological warfare operation of the early seventies---the attempt of the US intelligence agencies to invigorate forces hostile to socialism within the socialist countries---had collapsed completely. This was followed by a frantic search for ``leaders'' in the USSR who would, with the covert but palpable support of the USA, assume headship. What befell them (such men as Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov) is common knowledge: the Soviet people rejected them angrily. In Nixon's time, official Washington had somewhat toned down the anti-Soviet, anti-communist propaganda. US imperialism donned the garb of Christian respectability and love of peace. The ``dissidents'' were being shown an ``ideal'' to strive for.

There was a snag with the other part of the Nixon-- Kissinger scheme, that of using China immediately.

In 1968, Nixon said publicly, "We have to realize . . . that Communist China, within six years to seven years, at the very

least, will have a significant nuclear capability.''^^1^^ Nixon and Kissinger were already counting the millions killed in the USSR and China by the nuclear conflict they thought was just around the corner.

The men of substance in the United States would not forgive Nixon, and then also Kissinger, that in the chase for a hypothetical goal they had gone to the length of normalizing US-Soviet relations, at least to a point. (When Ronald Reagan promised in 1976 that if elected, he would fire Henry Kissinger, he drew cheers from many audiences.^^2^^) More, in the light of their "balance of power" policy, Nixon and Kissinger had ignored the ideological aspects and had, to some extent, squandered the ideological arsenal of the United States or, more precisely, of capitalism. The principles of peaceful coexistence were taking the upper hand. To avert such an outcome, Nixon was put out of the way. But, of course, on pretexts other than this.

In the political sense, Nixon is probably a corpse. But had Watergate changed the modus operandi at summit level? According to a poll published in The Washington Post on June 17, 1982, 36 per cent held that one more scandal of the Watergate type "is very likely" and 39 per cent that it is " somewhat likely". Only 20 per cent said no, and five per cent had no opinion. Asked if Watergate had changed anything, Ron Ziegler, White House press officer under Nixon, said: " Nothing. Nothing. Except the people are a little more cautious.''

Those who got to be known as lovers of the truth, did not flourish. The elderly Sam J. Ervin, who retired, has written two books which no one wants to publish. "It's not the best time to sell a manuscript," Ervin said. John J. Sirica, still a judge, though not overloaded with cases, said, "I don't think all this damn---I shouldn't say damn---I don't think this publicity has changed me one bit." Alexander Butterfield, who had let the Senate Committee know of the eavesdropping, lost his fairly high office, that of administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, during the Ford Presidency. Though an experienced executive, he cannot find a suitable place in business

~^^1^^ See VncsHnaya polilika Sovelskogo Soyuza (Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union), Moscow, pp. 224-225.

^^2^^ The Vladivostok Accord: Implications to the U.S. Security, Arms Control and World Peace. Hearings before the Subcommittee on International Security Scientific Affairs oj the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 94th Congress, 1st Session, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1975, p. 182.

~^^1^^ Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 435.

~^^1^^ Nixon on the Issues, p. 13. Time, March 22, 1976.

and is being held down. He is still paying for having told the truth, he says. Frank Wills, the security guard at the Watergate Office Building, who discovered the break-in and raised the alarm, has been mostly unemployed during the past ten years. "I am just an average black man," he says, "trying to survive like every other black man in the United States.''^^1^^

FAITH AMERICAN STYLE

It fell to Gerald Ford's lot to begin restoring the ``consensus'' and reviving the American messianic spirit. He believed and insisted that the time had come to "heal the country" of Vietnam and Watergate. Lyndon Johnson had once referred to Ford as a man who had played football too long without a helmet, with all the consequences this entailed. Ford, of course, had a different opinion of himself. At a press conference on September 9, 1974, he confessed that on Sundays he watched sports on TV and concentrated on the heap of papers in front of him during the breaks in the action.

Gerald Ford's approach to affairs of state was pragmatic to the extreme. The question of questions was what he should do with Nixon. The Ford administration (in which Nelson Rockefeller was Vice President) found a way out. On September 8, 1974, the President granted pardon to Richard Nixon "for all offences he committed or may have committed" during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974. The press was perplexed. Those who had expected a thorough cleanup of US governmental structure were infuriated. The President's intimate, White House Press Secretary Jerald F. terHorst, spurned the quarter of a century he had worked with Ford and resigned. Before 1974 ended, terHorst put out a book about Ford, friendly in content but ending with these caustic words: "The advance pardoning of Richard Nixon.. . flew in the face of my own understanding of the Constitution and its credo of equal justice for rich and poor, strong and weak. I had had no choice but to resign.''^^1^^

A few years later, Ford would describe how he fretted before granting the pardon. "The [second] argument against the pardon," he wrote, "was that it would probably prevent the

~^^1^^ L. Meyer, "How Watergate Still Haunts Those Who Lived It" in The Washington Post Magazine, June 13, 1982.

~^^1^^ Jerald F. terHorst, Gerald Ford and the Future of the Presidency, Joseph Okpaku Publishing Co, New York, 1974, p. 240.

21---796

American people from learning the whole truth about Watergate.''^^1^^ He admitted that this was probably true. In a public opinion poll pardoning Nixon had cost Ford much of his popularity---it dropped from 71 per cent to 49. Yet in the eyes of certain people the injury that Ford caused himself was an inevitable sacrifice that he could not avoid. Ronald Reagan, for example, wrote at that time, "In the `Watergate' hysteria we see `business' attacked as the source of all evil.''^^2^^

The pardoning of Nixon drew a line through Watergate, and the 20-odd accomplices and performers of criminal orders condemned by the court got away with light sentences. Nearly all of them were amnestied. The last to regain freedom was Mitchell, a former Attorney General, who was released from jail in the spring of 1979, after serving 19 months of his sentence.

In 1975 and 1976 there were superficial investigations of the CIA and FBI by the Nelson Rockefeller, Frank Church (Senate) and Otis Pike (House of Representatives) committees. They condemned the excesses of the political investigative agencies and swore to prevent them in future. Journalists did some good work, within the limits set from above, for only the naive could believe that facts damaging to the US state machine were made public at the hearings. Professor Bertram Gross, not merely a scholar for he had once belonged to the top Washington bureaucracy, had this to say about the consequences of the deliberately narrow focus of various `` sensational'' investigations:

``Recent congressional investigations in this area have concentrated on the CIA and the FBI, giving very little attention to other agencies of the federal government, and none to the covert operations of state and local police forces or large corporations. Even within this narrow focus, the investigators could riot penetrate very far. Members of the investigatorial committees had reason to fear that if they went too far, they themselves---as objects of covert surveillance---would be subjected to retaliation.''

CIA and FBI operatives, as behooved loyal Americans, were

eager to defend their patriotic work from various busybody politicians, and lied without the least fear of committing perjury. Miles Copeland, a former CIA operative, wrote the following about the views of his colleagues on this score: " Almost all the [CIA] people I talked to assured me unashamedly, almost proudly, 'Of course, we are going to lie to the congressional committees'. Looking back on his own behavior, Walter Sullivan, former deputy director of the FBI, has been still franker: 'Never once did I hear anybody including myself, raise the question: is this course of action which we have agreed on lawful.. . We were just naturally pragmatic.'^>!1

True, a few FBI people were called into court, but their cases dragged out over several years. Toward the end of 1980, W. Mark Felt and Edward Miller, both highly-placed FBI officials in the early seventies, were sentenced to a mild fine of 8,500 dollars. On April 15, 1981, President Ronald Reagan pardoned the two cronies, saying they had "acted on high principle". The prosecutor who had handled the case against them, commented sadly: "It would be a distressing thing if this sets a precedent that the government can violate the Constitution and then forgive itself.''^^2^^

Such was the retribution for those who had for years spurned US rule of law.

It could not have been otherwise. And it isn't simply a case of the mountain giving birth to a mouse. What Ford had begun was not simply the rehabilitation of those who had stained the reputation of the USA. The stakes were much higher: to reideologize all Washington politics, notably foreign policy. The idea was to show that from now on the helm of the ship of state would be in honest hands. That was why so much emphasis was laid on Ford's personal integrity as a man said to be committed to protecting rule of law in the loftiest sense of the word. In 1976, when the United States celebrated its bicentennial, there came the chance of drawing on the US ideological arsenal and resorting to all types of ideological instruments. The instruments may have varied, but they all had one

~^^1^^ G. R. Ford, A Time to Heal, p. 168.

^^1^^ Helene von Damm, Sincerely, Ronald Reagan, Green Hill Publishers, Ottawa (Illinois), 1976, p. 77.

~^^1^^ Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism. The New Fate of Power in America, M. Evans and Co., New York, 1980, p. 306. ' U.S. News and World Report, April 27, 1981.

target: to portray the United States a buttress of progress, the lofty moral future of humanity. Even Henry Kissinger, who sensed the tide of the times, endeavored to speak a language wholly foreign to him.

Only recently he had uttered pronouncements of an obviously Bismarckian type, denying morality in politics. ("There are times," he is known to have said, "when the national interest is more important than the law.''^^1^^)

During the 1976 presidential campaign, which coincided in time with the bicentennial celebrations, the traditional American ideology broke to the surface. The organizers of the gab fest did not look for unexplored channels, and followed the guidelines that had long since been worked out by, among others, the then head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. The latter had declared in his opus magnum, published back in 1958 (on the heels of the world's first spuntnik!):

``In our reawakening, we Americans can learn a great deal from the fight against communism. . . The communists emphasize ideological study . . . Suppose every American spent a little time each day, less than the time demanded by the communists, in studying the Bible and the basic documents of American history, government, and culture? The result would be a new America, vigilant, strong, but ever humble in the service of God. . . A strictly negative attitude or the philosophy of just staying afloat---all too common today---will never meet the impact of the communits challenge.''^^2^^

In anticipation of the elections, Ronald Reagan spoke out loud and clear in the ruling Republican Party. He declared himself energetically on all current problems, deviating not an inch from the above concept of ``Americanism''. His philosophy was set forth in a book that was offered Americans that year. As usual, he opened with a reference to ancient times:

``The Cynics of ancient Rome challenged every Roman value, derided every standard as middle-class prejudice, and led their students down the path of total rejection and disbelief.

They were very successful, as witness the decline and fall ot the Roman Empire." Well, and what about the spiritual heirs of ancient Rome in the USA?

``There is a hunger today for spiritual values. Our people yearn to believe in their country and in themselves. Let that be our cause." First and above all comes faith, the benign effects of which Reagan illustrated by his own example.

``I could not bear this job for a day if I did not have an abiding faith in God and if I did not feel I could call upon Him for help.''

What abiding faith? Here is how Reagan describes it:

``It has always seemed to me that Christ in His own words gave us reason to accept literally the miracle of His birth and resurrection. He said, 'I am the Son of God.' Indeed, He said so many things that we have a very simple choice: either we believe Him, or we must assume He was the greatest liar who ever lived. If we believe the latter, then we have to ask, could such a charlatan have had the impact on the world for two thousand years that this man has had.' "*

A Fundamentalist of the purest water!

Having scaled the above heights of theory, he descended back to earth to attack America's day-to-day reality, and his offensive was most methodical. By now he has reformulated the long since known credo of the Republican Party in easily comprehensible terms. A certain caustic critic of Reagan's observed, "The core of Reaganaut social theology is to leave everything alone, for God so made the world that it will be a horn of plenty unto all of us as long as you don't let the bureaucrats urinate in the Garden of Eden. So Darwin is yanked out of biology and put back into sociology. Leave it alone, leave people alone so that the best can make it through to become producer-heroes, and the rest shall perish quietly offstage in the local branch of a national nursing home chain whose shares are traded on the New York Stock Exchange,"^^2^^

The first to feel the impact of Reagan's offensive was Gerald Ford, who had every intention of retaining the presiden-

~^^1^^ L. Gelb, "The Kissinger Legacy" in The New York Times Magazine, October 31, 1976.

~^^2^^ J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit, The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It, Pocket Books, Inc., New York, 1958, pp. 310-313.

~^^1^^ Damm, Sincerely, Ronald Reagan, pp. 88, 77, 83. ^: N. Hoffman, "Know Thy President" in The New York Review of Books, June 15, 1981.

cy. Reagan's methods were not to his taste. 'My low standing among Republicans had less to do with any personal antipathy they might have felt toward me than with the emotions that Reagan aroused in their hearts," he complained. "He would go from place to place and deliver variations on The Speech. He would talk about the New Jersey man who stopped receiving veteran's benefits because the Veterans Administration had notified him that he was dead, the 'welfare queen' in Chicago who was ripping off $150,000 a year from the taxpayers, the subsidized housing project in New York City that had a doorman and a parking garage. Reporters looked into his allegations and found them to be exaggerations, but Reagan kept on telling the same tales. And he made some ridiculous new charges. . .^!I1

Running ahead of events and thinking himself a presidential candidate, Reagan also turned to those who favored the Democrats. He seemed to be determined to break across party lines and to form a broad coalition. Referring to election sta- j tictics, he maintained that "traditionally the American polit- | ical system had been a two-party system. Recently it has moved • toward a no-party system, as the registration in both major I parties declines and more and more people come to consider i themselves `independents'. . . The object lesson for Republicans ' is to stop whimpering `me-too' after every statement by the Democrats, even to stop trying to sell Republicanism, and concentrate on stating their beliefs simply and clearly.''

The basic slogan, evidently prompted by Reagan's abiding faith in God, as he put it, was the following (and in Reagan's belief dear to the hearts of his countrymen irrespective of their party allegiance): "Liberty and property have always been connected in the minds of Americans. The U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed in 1972 that: 'A fundamental interdependence exists between the personal right to liberty and the personal right to property. Neither could have meaning without the other."² Need I add that the US Supreme Court is as God-fearing as Reagan.

When the Republican convention came around, Reagan pulled a trick that literally demoralized Ford. The latter's administration still believed, evidently, that the resources of the "balance of power" policy, in its classical shape (which requires shutting up one's mouth about the aims of the balancing power) were still sufficient, whereas Reagan saw them as a threat to brinkmanship. Like every American leader since the founding of the USA, Reagan, adept at the "balance of power" policy, expounded it in a form which could hardly yield success, in the opinion of Ford and Kissinger. "A President of the United States," as Reagan sees it, "can really and practically no longer pursue the policy of peripheral containment of communism. American public opinion will no longer tolerate wars of the Vietnam type, because they no longer feel a threat, thanks to the liberal press, from communism, and they cannot interpret those wars as being really in the defense of freedom and our own country. Russia is still enemy number one.''^^1^^ Russia was an enemy whom the United States should fight itself, and should enlist other powers to fight. So Reagan held.

All this Reagan garnished with undisguised anti-Sovietism which obfuscated the contours of the "balance of power" and led to a US confrontation with the Soviet Union. Here is what resulted, according to Ford: "He [Reagan] suggested incorporating a 'Morality in Foreign Policy' plank into the Republican platform. Among other things, it commended Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn for his 'human courage and morality', characterized the Helsinki Agreement as 'taking from those who do not have freedom the hope of one day getting it' and, finally, committed the Republicans to a foreign policy 'in which secret agreements, hidden from our people, will have no part". When I read the plank, I was furious. It added up to nothing less than a slick denunciation of Administration foreign policy. Kissinger wanted me to take on the Reaganites. They were trying to humiliate us publicly, he said, and we wouldn't let them get away with it. . . If we fell into their trap, accepted their challenge and then lost the vote, that could mean the nomination.''^^2^^

~^^1^^ Damm, Sincerely, Ronald Reagan, p. 75. "• Ford, A Time to Heal, p. 385.

~^^1^^ Ford, A Time to Heal, pp. 334-335.

" Ronald Reagan, Charles Hobbs, Ronald Reagan's Call to Action, pp. 135, 131.

Ford evaded the ``trap''. Reagan's suggestions were accepted but Ford barely polled enough votes to become the presidential candidate. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller had no faith in Ford's chances, however, and refused to run. Ford J:ook Senator Robert Dole as team-mate, and went into battle. And must at once have been deeply annoyed, for, having with so much difficulty shaken off a Fundamentalist in his own party, he had to cross swords with a zealous evangelist---Jimmy Carter. Did the rivals go up into the stratosphere of theology, and come to grips there? Certainly not. Theology was, in their case, an applied science associated with current problems.

Leslie Wheeler, granddaughter of Senator Burton K. Wheeler well known in the 1930s, lacking like her grandfather a clarity of outlook, produced a book about Carter for the elections, praising him and settling religious and scholastic problems in so doing. She let the world know that the specific content of Carter's religious beliefs meant that he was not a Fundamentalist. "His social activism," she wrote, "distinguishes him from the Fundamentalists and their doctrine of ' premillennial dispensationalism'. That doctrine states simply that there is no point in trying to do anything to better the world before Christ's imminent return. Also, Carter does not share the complete certainty of the Fundamentalists." (Compare this, indeed, to Reagan's pronouncement: "It fills me with terror to think of seminaries turning out class after class of clergymen who, apparently, are more social worker than minister, and to read of an entire denomination teaching young people to approach the Bible with their own beliefs as to what they should and should not accept.''^^1^^)

Historian Richard Hofstadter sees Evangelism as an anti-- intellectual current. Journalist Hunter S. Thompson maintains he had never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus or any other deity, because they are usually none too bright; maybe ``stupid'' is a better description, he added. Yet Thompson describes Carter as one of the most intelligent politicians he had ever met. "There are certainly others who would concur in this judgement", Leslie Wheeler adds.

``Carter manages to combine the sharp intelligence of a nuclear engineer with a deep religious faith.''^^1^^

An engineer's sharp intelligence---possibly the legacy of Carter's service in the US submarine fleet from 1948 to 1953---was not espied at the 1976 election, while his deep religious faith was certainly given more than enough publicity. It became known that Baptist Carter, governor of Georgia since 1970, had a prayer room beside his office, and that he preached in church three or four times a week. He was also a man who was known "to pray daily, sometimes more than twenty times, who reads his Bible nightly".^^2^^ When he was in the Navy, he conducted Christmas service in the submarine's torpedo room. During the election campaign he made a late-evening speech at a synagogue. " 'Governor,' called a woman from the back, `we've all read, and may I say with great disappointment, about the--- the, uh---the indiscretions in the White House when Jack Kennedy was, uh, living there. When he was President, you know. You see what I'm talking about?' Carter nodded. "Well," she continued, `I'd just like to ask you what you think about all that.' Carter smiled down. 'The Bible says,' he began, 'that adultery and fornication are wrong. I believe in the Bible.' "^;!

Not surprisingly, Playboy was delighted with Carter's incursion into the magazine's professional domain, and managed to get an interview from him. Playboy's circulation of more than five million was certainly an inducement to Carter and his advisers. The crafty interviewers discovered that Carter prayed not twently but twenty-five times a day, and said they would like to ask him a blunt question: ``Isn't it just these views about what's `sinful' and what's `immoral'' that contribute to the feeling that you might get a call from God, or get inspired and push the wrong button?''

Carter replied: "Harry Truman was a Baptist. Some people get very abusive about the Baptist faith. If people want to

~^^1^^ Leslie Wheeler, Jimmy Who? An Examination of Presidential Candidate Jimmy Carter: The Man, His Career, His Stands on the Issues, Barren's, Woodbury (New York), 1976, pp. 140-141.

~^^2^^ Fred McMorrow, Jimmy. The Candidacy of Carter, A Strawberry Hill Book, New York, 1976, p. 41.

~^^1^^ James Woolen, Dasher. The Roots and the Rising of Jimmy Carter, Warner Books, New York, 1979, p. 351.

~^^1^^ Damm, Sincerely, Ronald Reagan, p. 83.

know it, they can read the New Testament. . . But as to some of the behavior you've mentioned, I can't change the teachings of Christ! I believe in them, and a lot of people in this country do as well. Jews believe in the Bible. They have the same Commandments.''

He managed to evade the explosive issue, but the worldwise interviewers reworded their question and finally got what they were after: the link between lofty morals and Garter's personal qualities came to light.

``I try not to commit a deliberate sin," Jimmy Carter said to them. "I recognize that I'm going to do it anyhow, because I'm human and I am tempted. And Christ set some almost impossible standards for us. Christ said, 'I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery'. I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do---and I have done it---and God forgives me for it.''^^1^^

Ford was delighted. Citing the interview he called it "good news". And explained why: "Throughout the campaign, Carter had talked about his religious convictions in a way that I found discomfiting. I have always felt a closeness to God and have looked to a higher being for guidance and support, but I didn't think it was appropriate to advertise my religious beliefs. Carter, I was sure, had made a serious mistake. The interview would hurt him all over the South.''^^2^^ He was wrong, Carter's religious ecstasies were appreciated, for according to various estimates from 35,000,000 to 50,000,000 Americans hold Evangelist views. The Playboy interview may have done him some harm, but who can tell? In any case, Carter had flaunted his tolerance.

Carter was aware that there had to be tolerance wherever religion is made to serve politics. He did not mince words in his memoirs to relate how his wife and he prepared his inaugural speech. "With Rosalynn I had discussed which of two Bible verses to cite," he recollects. "I had known them both

since childhood, and they were an integral part of our religious beliefs. At first I intended to use II Chronicles 7:14 ("If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land"), but after some second thoughts about how those who did not share my beliefs might misunderstand and react to the words `wicked' and `sin' I chose Micah

e^.''^^1^^

Ford had had to pay the bill for the "Nixon-Ford administration", as Carter deliberately called his adversary ( certainly, he wouldn't specially mention Watergate), and also the bill for Kissinger and Reagan. Evangelist Carter turned out to be astonishingly pragmatic. He came out with promise after primise. On foreign policy he said, "Balance of power politics may have worked in 1815, or even 1945, but it has a much less significant role in today's world." He solemnly promised, "We can reduce present defense expenditures by about $5 to $7 billion annually". This could not be otherwise because, he said, "I approve of the concept of detente".^^2^^

Both candidates knew perfectly well that this was mere rhetoric. Ford endeavored to show his statesmanship and, goaded by his rival, made what was, mildly speaking, an astonishing pronouncement on the aims of US policy toward the East European socialist countries. "The United States," he said "has never conceded---and never will concede---their domination to the Soviet Union. I admire the courage of the Polish people and have always supported the hopes of Polish-- Americans for freedom of their ancestral homeland. It is our policy to use every peaceful means to assist countries in Eastern Europe in their efforts to become less dependent on the Soviet Union and to establish closer and closer ties with the West and, of course, the United States of America.""

That was how the campaign ran off, enlivened by many a political wisecrack. The Republicans, for example, kept saying

~^^1^^ Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith. Memoirs of a President, Bantam Books, New York, 1982, p. 19.

^^1^^ Robert L. Turner, ``I'll Never Lie to You". Jimmy Carter in His Own Words, Ballantine Books, New York, 1976, pp. 119, 123, 125.

~^^1^^ Ford, A Time to Heal, p. 410.

~^^1^^ Jimmy Carter: "A Candid Conversation with the Democratic Candidate for the Presidency" in Playboy, October 1976. " Ford, A Time To Heal, p. 403,

about Carter, "In his heart of hearts he has committed adultery with your wife." The edge that Carter won over Ford was narrow: Carter polled 40.2 million votes, Ford 38.5 million. It was not much of a victory for Carter. His evangelism was not exactly what had welded his party together since RoosC' velt's time. Senator Gary Hart was close to the truth when he said, "He has no ideology, so there is no ideological block. He ran against the Democratic party and beat it. But he did not form any Carter coalition.''^^1^^

This happened at a time when Reagan's appearance on the national scene was a symptom of an abrupt reideologization of US political life.

In any case, he was eager to compete with Professor Woodrow Wilson's academism. About the role of the masses in history he had learned from Leo Tolstoy' War and Peace.

``Well," he said on this score at a mass meeting, "I went to the library and checked it out, and it was 1415 pages thick, I think, written by Tolstoy, as you know, about Napoleon's entry into Russia in the 1812-1815 era. He had never been defeated and he was sure he could win, but he underestimated the severity of the Russian winter and the peasants' love for their land.

``To make a long story short, the next spring he retreated in defeat. The course of history was changed; it probably affected our own lives.

``The point of the book is, and what Tolstoy points out in the epilogue is, that he didn't write the book about Napoleon or the czar of Russia or even the generals, except in a rare occasion. He wrote it about the students and the housewives and the barbers and the farmers and the privates of the Army. And the point of the book is that the course of human events, even the greatest historical events, is not determined by the leaders of a nation or a state, like presidents or governors or senators. They are controlled by the combined wisdom and courage and commitment and discernment and unselfishness and compassion and love and idealism of the common ordinary people. If that was true in the case of Russia where they had a czar or France where they had an emperor, how much more true is it in our own case where the Constitution charges us with a direct responsibility for determining what our government is and ought to be?''^^1^^

Yet what was the state of the country which this ardent devotee of egalitarianism took it upon himself to govern? Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty" was long since over. The situation had congealed. In 1966, some 14.7 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line, 12.1 per cent in 1969, and 11.6 per cent in 1977. In physical terms, however, the number of poor had grown slightly from 24.1 million in 1969 to 24.7 million in 1977. As for the distribution of incomes, the lower

Jimmy Carter in the White House

Certainly, the new President was not only God-fearing but also plain. He emphasized at every opportunity that he was of the people---a mere farmer, a man who grew peanuts. He had made himself by his own intelligence, his own hard work. He boasted of his wide-ranging knowledge. As in music, for example. "I knew every note of every Rachmaninoff concerto and every Wagner opera," he claimed. "I could even compare techniques.''^^2^^

Professor Brzezinski, National Security Adviser, watched the President with a measure of surprise. He tried to impress some political truths upon him. "On more than one occasion," he wrote in his memoirs, "I used with him the formula 'you first have to be a Truman before you are a Wilson' in arguing that our first priority must be to revive global respect for American power, after the debacles of Watergate and Vietnam, lest our pursuit of principle be confused with weakness. Carter agreed cerebrally, but emotionally he thirsted for the Wilsonian mantle.""

~^^1^^ The Guardian, June 24, 1977.

^! David Kucharsky, The Mind and Spirit of Jimmy Carter, Harper and Row Publishers, 1976, p. 18.

~^^1^^ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle. Memoirs of the National Security Adviser 1977-1981, Ferrar, Strauss, Giroux, New York, 1983, p. 520.

~^^1^^ Turner, ``I'll Never Lie to You". Jimmy Carter in His Own Words, op. cit., p. 19.

half of all families accounted for 26.1 per cent of all incomes and the upper third in the top half for 41.3 per cent.

The personal wealth of the top 1 per cent of the US population was still more indicative. At the end of Roosevelt's time it owned 23.3 per cent of all personal wealth and 20.7 per cent in 1972. But even within that 1 per cent there is obvious differentiation: 0.5 per cent of US families owned 20.4 per cent of all assets in 1972 against 21.7 per cent in 1958. That is what the Statistical Abstract of the United States says for 1979. So what redistribution of incomes has occurred? The rich are still rich, and cling to their property and the concomitant power.

Having scaled the summit of this social structure, Baptist Carter made a moralist approach the cornerstone of his foreign policy, launching the notorious "human rights" campaign. If he was championing human rights for all men, how are we to interpret the state of affairs in the United States itself? How to deny the figures that reflect inequality in that citadel of capitalism? How to deny the mass unemployment? How to deny the abuses of the judiciary and the punitive agencies? The pettyfoggers in Washington faced an insuperable barrier. An official House of Representatives document devoted to "human rights" was used lightheartedly to bridge the abyss between the handful of rich and ultrarich, on the one hand, and the working America, on the other. Plain statistical sophistry was used: "Income distribution figures for the United States (1970 estimates) by population groups of 20 per cent each (from `richest' to `poorest') are: richest 38.8; 2nd, 24.1; 3rd, 17.4, 4th, 13.0, and poorest, 6.7." They've evened up things leaving out the size of property and submerging the top half per cent in the upper group, to which they referred 20 per cent of the population. Nothing was said, too, of the highly touted equal opportunities in America which were becoming less and less

equal.

Thereupon, the congressmen added the following to their document: "The use of torture and politically inspired murders by the State or its agencies are unknown in the United States... No reports of torture or of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment imposed by Government have been made.''

Amazing! What ``reports'' are needed to corroborate such daily practices of US punitive agencies as the systematic beatings of detainees by the police, and the executions, usually by means of an electric chair or a gas chamber. To ``prove'' the peace and quiet that reigned in US prisons, they referred to the notorious Amnesty International, an offspring of Western secret services, first of all the CIA. It turned out, Amnesty International experts concluded, there is the suspicion "that many people may be `framed' on criminal charges because of their political activities.. . The number of adopted prisoners (cases) does not reflect the amount of time or the degree of attention given to (the U.S.) by the Amnesty.''^^1^^ By these quasi-truthful methods the House ``cleared'' the "Great Democracy", permitting Washington to tackle the campaign for "human rights" outside the United States with fresh vigor.

The campaign was officially entrusted to the Department of State, though the planning and fulfilment were, for understandable reasons, left to subversive agencies such as the CIA. As stressed by Undersecretary of State Hooding Carter (no relation of the President's) in February 1981, "God knows that the idea of human rights as an integral part of foreign policy had few advocates in high places in Washington, then or now. For Kissengerites, it was---is---a naive intrusion by the untutored upon the high designs of the practical world of Realpolitik. For other Foreign Service professionals, it is an obstacle to their usual way of doing business. . . As for human-rights concerns, there are those at State who believe that torture is not something that gentlemen discuss, publicly or privately. They fully expected that most of the new initiatives would soon be dropped.''^^2^^

The fastidiousness of US career diplomats is understandable. Carter tried to break down the taboos of Truman's foreign policy methods, pushing the State Department into the very center of the psychological war.

Even Cyrus Vance admitted in his memoirs that "in pur-

~^^1^^ Human Rights Conditions in Selected Countries and the U.S. Response, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1978, pp. 294- 295.

* Hooding Carter, "Life Inside the Carter State Department" in Playboy, February 1981, pp. 98, 212.

suing a human rights policy, we must also understand the limits of our power and wisdom. We could defeat our goals either through a rigid attempt to impose our values on others or a doctrinnaire plan or action.''^^1^^

The "human rights" campaign was impertinent interference in the internal affairs of other countries, and naturally, foreign observers tried to diagnose the extraordinary zeal of its champions across the ocean. British historians Mooney and Brown found that "the real purpose of the policy was: not so much the promotion of American values abroad ... as their reassertion at home. . . The purpose is unmistakeable: to revive America's strength at home and abroad, by restoring confidence in her institutions, her causes and her values, and, of course, to overcome some of the after-effects of Vietnam and Watergate by reminding Americans that they possessed a 'manifest destiny' denied to other nations.''^^2^^

Quite true, the campaign was to help restore the `` consensus'' inside the country. But that was an auxiliary aim. The Carter administration beat the drums for "human rights" in an attempt to test the latest weaponry of psychological warfare, specially developed and manufactured for use against the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries.

Matters were not confined to mere propaganda. Overt and covert ties in socialist countries were sought with those who, synchronously with the Garter Administration, would begin complaining of ``violations'' of human rights by the Soviet Union and its allies. The voices of these loners were multiplied by the powerful transmitters of subversive US-financed radio stations, which even announced the appearance of ``groups'' of such ``champions'' in the socialist countries. Yet all this bore the stamp of the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies. It was, indeed, part of the strategy of psychological warfare to try and make something out of nothing though at considerable expense, laying the foundation for parallel structures or, if you like for organizations serving as alternatives to the existing government. The ``cause'' of each such structure could

look quite harmless---championing human rights, religious groups, "free trade unions", societies of music lovers, and anything else, with the one obligatory condition of claiming independence inside the country.

The uninitiated were told that this was ``democracy'' as it functioned in the West, notably the United States, but were not told, of course, that in the United States the slightest attempt at creating parallel structures was swiftly and effectively squashed. And this also went for structures that had absolutely nothing to do with politics, such as pop festivals in the United States at the junction of the 60s and 70s. Hundreds of thousands of young people, some of them espousing this ``counter-culture'', learned from experience what consequences these gatherings had. No sooner did they choose a town or its environs to sing, recite poetry, or display their extravagant clothes, than the local court banned the festival. For ``sanitary'' reasons, among others.

Carter's "human rights" scheme was naturally welcomed by renegades in socialist countries. Speaking in a House subcommittee in 1978, Yan Nowak, former director of Polish Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe, said fawningly:

``The United States is my adopted country, but a long time before I became a U.S. citizen I had learned from my close association with Americans that foreign policy based on expediency and guided solely by power played in the old Metternich style would be totally alien to American traditions and ideals which gave birth to American democracy and statehood. By taking defense of human rights out of the shadow, President Carter helped to restore an image of the United States as a great power committed unequivocally to freedom and democracy. When a Polish dissident was asked recently by an American reporter in Warsaw what the policy on human rights means to her and her people, she answered simply: It brought back moral values into the policy and posture of the United States. In my view, the defense of human rights cannot be left to government only. Its full implementation calls for support, active participation, and the parallel effort of the American people.''^^1^^

~^^1^^ Institute for Human Rights and Freedom. Hearings and Markup before the Subcommittees on International Operations and on Inter-

~^^1^^ Cyrus Vance,

Hard Choices. Critical Years in American Foreign

Policy, Simon and

Schuster, New York, 1983, p. 436.

* P. J. Mooney,

C. Brown, Truman to Carter, p. 263.

22-796

The CIA operative certainly had big plans. The seditious campaign for "human rights" did, indeed, become one of the more visible elements that led up to the sad events in Poland.

But, clearly, psychological warfare is nothing without underlying military power. Consigning his election promise of reducing military expenditures to oblivion, Garter began intensifying the arms race. Though Senator Henry Jackson, rephrasing Carter's religious speeches saying he was ``born'' a second time, exclaimed happily that the President was a newborn hawk, the Carter administration was only suiting the needs of the psychological war as it intensified the arms drive. In 1977 to 1981 the big lie of a Soviet war threat was reborn. Washington plunged into insane military preparations. The endless talk about a Soviet threat was referred to an ``immaculate'' source---the ``discovery'' by the CIA in the latter 70s that the Soviet Union was spending twice as much on defense than US experts had thought.

That the CIA's statistical juggling did not reflect the true state of affairs---the rough parity in strategic armaments---did not worry the Carter administration in the least. As Arthur M. Cox, former CIA analyst, pointed out in an investigative article at the close of Garter's presidency, "For the past four years a misperception that there has been a great surge in Soviet defense spending has gone unconnected.. . The perception of Soviet military superiority is an illusion based, in large part, on a misunderstanding of the facts.''^^1^^ But this was followed by various displays of America's love of peace: in June 1977 Carter suspended the B-l bomber program, and in April 1978, under pressure of world opinion, halted manufacture of the neutron bomb.

But how did matters stand in reality? The planned 240 B-l bombers, costing some 90 million dollars each, would have been far less effective than cruise missiles, in whose favor Carter spoke as he ``leaped'' across the stage of manned aircraft.

As for the neutron bomb, development and manufacture of its components continued.

But the Carter administration was not operating in a vacuum. It was committed to continuing negotiations with the Soviet Union in pursuance of the 1972-1974 Soviet-American strategic arms limitation agreements. For very many reasons, not least of all the opposition to nuclear death all over the world, Washington was compelled to complete them. But it took seven years.

Later, Brzezinski described the Carter administration's approach to the Soviet Union in the following terms: " Competition between America and Russia was ordained by history, geography, and philosophy, while the imperative of cooperation is the consequence of nuclear weaponry. But such a formula, designed to make the press more sensitive to complexity, did not by itself provide a clear guideline for resolving om internal policy choices. These had to be made on the case-- bycase basis and it is here that subtle differences of nuance, emphasis and priority among Carter's advisers presented the President with a continuing dilemma.''^^1^^

On June 18, 1979, Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter signed a Strategic Offensive Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II) in Vienna. The Treaty took account of the interests of both sides and amounted to a sensible compromise. Its essence: quantitative limitation and restriction of qualitative improvements. The Treaty, once it enters into force, Pravda wrote on June 20, 1979, "will pave the way for SALT III, will stimulate ever more rapid progress at negotiations on other aspects of limiting competition in the military field''.

In July 1979, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations discussed the text of the Treaty and invited various professors to testify. The ``hawks'', especially professors Richard Pipes, Eugene Rostow, and Adam Ulam, attacked SALT II and opposed its ratification. Pipes insisted that the situation, "calls for ability to deliver a quick surgical preemptive strike designed to eliminate as much of the enemy's nuclear arsenal as possible". The hatred of the Soviet Union that Pipes manifested prompted the Senators to inquire, as people would, what lay

national Organizations of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives. 95th Congress, 2nd Stssion, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1978, p. 46.

~^^1^^ Arthur M. Cox, "Why the Kremlin `Doubled' Arms Outlay" in International Herald Tribune, August 21, 1980.

~^^1^^ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Powtr and Principle, p. 519.

S2*

at the bottom of his outlook. The professor explained that Russians were "different from us". Therefore, "as a Russian historian, I have to battle against the tendency of people to blur these differences all the time.''

Professor Rostow focused his attention on antique history, stating that in the conflict between the USSR and the USA "the point was never better put than by Thucydides about the causes of the Peloponnesian War, which destroyed Greek civilization. .. Romans used to say, if you want peace, prepare for war, and we say that in dealing with the Russians." The professor maintained that SALT II should be revised. The Senators were surprised. The following dialogue ensued:

"Senator Javits. My dear friend, you are talking about no treaty. What I am trying to get you to say, because that is what you do say, whether you are trying to avoid it or not, is, you are simply against the treaty. You want no treaty. Why do you give us this nonsense about renegotiation of a treaty with amendments when you know that you are taking the whole heart out of the treaty?.. . We are just playing with words.

"Mr. Rostow. Well, I haven't characterized the administration in this way, but yes, I think it is a fair characterization.

"Senator Javits. I am not saying it is the administration. I am saying it is you, not the administration.''

Professor Kissinger, also invited to testify before the Committee, evaded answering the question whether he would be in favor of SALT II if he were still Secretary of State. He spoke out for ratifying the treaty (with amendments, of course) and said he "would use this ratification to put the Soviets on notice that future negotiations will be affected, not by every little dispute we may have, but by the overall conduct, in terms of criteria that could be worked out by this committee or by this committee together with the administration." That is how, Kissinger added smugly, linkages should be created.

Despite the screams of the ``hawks'' and the strange appeals made by Kissinger and others, the committee recommended Senate to ratify SALT II. The Senators put more credence in the opinion of those who said ratification was in the interests of the Unites States. Professor Stanley Hoffmann stressed that the opponents of SALT II were distorting the substance of the case and that their utterances amounted to nothing but intim-

idation. He had come to the conclusion, he said, that the gravity of the situation in face of the Soviet Union was substantially exaggerated. He called attention to the fact that the United States had nearly always suffered failure not due to lack of material strength, but due to faults of political analysis. In other words, he added, not the muscle but the brain was to blame. Committee Chairman Frank Church exclaimed that Hoffmann's speech was the best. In his polemics with Pipes, Church as it were, summed up the discussion. He said referring to ratification, "Now, those may be the ultimate choices for this generation, and should that happen, should nuclear war happen, I think that those who survive will look back on the occasion and curse all of us for having failed to take the necessary steps to prevent it.''^^1^^ The Committee voted in favor of the Treaty. Now ratification depended on the administration and Senate.

But another anti-Soviet campaign began gaining momentum in the West since the autumn of 1979.

This was the time when Brzezinski found that the President lacked ardour, at least in his verbal assaults on the Soviet Union. That autumn, Brzezinski writes, there was a "turning point" in his relationship with the President. "Indeed," he writes, "this was the only time that I ever thought seriously of the possibility of resigning." What Brzezinski wanted was that Carter should seize on the current "phony issue" in AmericanSoviet relations and "should use the crisis (already a crisis!--- N.Y.) to establish his credentials as a tough-minded, Trumantype leader".^^2^^

This, as we know, did not occur, but inventions about Soviet policy were being spread. The Carter administration was suddenly disturbed over the ``security'' of Western Europe. How the United States has gone about ``buttressing'' it is well known. In the 1960s, 7,000 nuclear warheads were deployed at bases in Western Europe. James Goldsborough, a well-in-

~^^1^^ The SALT II TREATY. Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations. U.S. Senate. 96th Congress. 1st Session. July 1979, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1979, Part 2, pp. 51-52, 60; Part 3, pp. 12-13; Part 2, pp. 222-223; Part 3, pp. 293, 280, 282; Part 2, p. 57.

~^^8^^ Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle, pp. 351-52.

formed US publicist who had spent 15 years in Europe, announced in his book which appeared in 1982, that "from the American point of view, flexible response had an additional advantage: it transferred nuclear war from American to Western European soil. . . By transferring tactical nuclear weapons to Europe, the United States introduced the idea of limited nuclear war---limited, in this case, to Europe... A strategic nuclear war, one that affected the United States itself, was to be avoided, but a tactical nuclear war, affecting Western Europe only, became more plausible.''^^1^^

This outlook, if taken in its proper dimension, has never suited any West European leader. Among the reasons that had prompted France to withdraw from NATO's military organi. zation in 1966, this one must have figured most prominently. For nearly 20 years, behind a facade of Atlantic ``solidarity'', there lay hidden keen apprehensions concerning the US designs of using Western Europe as a lightning rod in a nuclear war. So the Garter administration set out to dispel the fears of its allies: an American plan for "modernizing nuclear forces" in the European theater was announced "in the supreme interests of security" in the autumn of 1979. Washington explained that West Europeans needed US medium-range missiles on their continent as much as they needed air to breathe.

In early September 1979 Henry Kissinger came to a NATO scientific conference in Brussels, and what he said there was meant to impress the allies of the United States that they had no choice but to accept the American plan:

``And therefore I would say---what I might not say in office," he spouted, "that our European allies should not keep asking us to multiply strategic assurances that we cannot possibly mean or if we do mean, we should not want to execute because if we execute, we risk the destruction of civilization." In other words, the lot of Western Europe and the lot of the United States in the event of a nuclear war was clearly different. And Kissinger added: "To be tactless---the secret dream of all Europeans was, of course, to avoid a nuclear war but... if there

had to be a nuclear war, to have it conducted over their heads by the strategic forces of the United States and the Soviet Union.''^^1^^

The secret dream had come to an end. After some quick arm-twisting, the NATO Council adopted a decision in December 1979 to station 572 new US nuclear missiles in Western Europe beginning in 1983 (198 Pershing II launchers and 464 ground-launched cruise missiles).

``The TNF [theater nuclear forces modernization] program was fraught with contradictions," observed James Goldsborough. "Backed officially in Washington as a means of countering the new Soviet medium-range SS-20 missiles ... TNF would provide, in the words of one American official, 'a direct link between the defense of Europe and the American strategic deterrent'. In defending it, Kissinger found himself approving a plan which purportedly would assure the very thing he denounced as impossible, for surely if solution A is rejected as incredible, then B, if it leads directly to A, is equally incredible.

``A few people spotted the contradictions," Goldsborough said, "McGeorge Bundy, who as security advisor under Kennedy had had a prime role in the fateful decisions of the 1960s, pointed out that the TNF `solution' actually was a step back toward massive retaliation.''^^2^^

US strategists hope that the deployment of 572 new US missiles will give NATO a more than 50 per cent advantage in medium-range nuclear delivery vehicles and a still bigger edge in nuclear warheads. They hope this will tilt the balance of strategic forces in favor of the United States, for the missiles in question are intended for ``preemptive'' strikes against Soviet ICBMs and are therefore strategic in effect. Pershing II missiles, which have a range of 2,500 kilometers, can reach targets in the Soviet Union 5 or 6 minutes after launching. In other words, US strategists hope to soften the impact of a retaliatory strike against the USA, if it attacks the Soviet Union.^^3^^

Naturally, Washington is trying to' justify the buildup of its

~^^1^^ H. Kissinger, For the Record, pp. 240-241.

^! James Goldsborough, Rebel Europe, p. 163.

~^^3^^ See Whence the Threat to Peace, 2nd ed., p. 78.

• ' James Oliver Goldsborough, Rebel Europe. How America Can Live with a Changing Continent, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1982, pp. 156-157.

strategic armaments by the old claim of a Soviet war threat. At the end of December 1979 it made the most of the Soviet help extended to friendly Afghanistan. Yet this help, given under Article 4 of the Soviet-Afghan treaty, was necessitated by US attempts to destabilize the situation in that country through the CIA, thereby placing in question the gains of the Afghan April Revolution. When the limited contingent of Soviet troops was brought into Afghanistan, the Carter administration announced various ``sanctions'' against the USSR. On January 4, 1980, Carter gave notice that the ratification of SALT II would be deferred.

After summing up the results achieved by the Carter administration in foreign affairs, Cyrus Vance dolefully observed: "More specifically, looking to the future we must recognize that we cannot afford an American policy that is hostage to the pressures of the moment.''^^1^^

The endless talk about a 'Soviet war threat' at summit level and even on Capitol Hill made people's heads go around.

When it became public knowledge that the US government had adopted Presidential Directive 59 on July 25, 1980, providing for "limited nuclear war", the Senate Foreign Relations Committee slated secret hearings on September 16, 1980, declassified (though with many deletions) on February 16, 1981, the directive creates a horrifying impression, raising the curtain, if only slightly, on the despondent psychological climate in which US politicians drag out their existence. Addressing Secretary of State Edmund Muskie and Defense Secretary Harold Brown, Committee Chairman Frank Church said:

``I would remind both Secretaries that a landmark national security study concluded that---and I quote here: 'The United States now faces the contingency that within the next 4 or 5 years the Soviet Union will possess the military capability of delivering a surprise attack of such great weight that the United States must have substantially increased general air, ground, and sea strength, atomic capabilities, and air and civilian defenses to deter war and to provide reasonable assurance, in the event of war, that it could survive the initial blow and go on to the eventual attainment of its objectives.'

``These words were written in 1950, not 1979. They come from the conclusion of a document that was known only as NSC-68, completed April 7, 1950. Both Secretaries might also note that the principal author was Paul H. Nitze . . . NSC-68 became an engine force for the major U.S. military buildup of the 1950s. These documents---from NSC-68 to PD-59---give direction, impetus and often an Old Testament certainty to military programs and budgets.''

But on having cited what NSC-68 had to say on ``deterrence'', Frank Church goes on to ask what Presidential Directive 59 was all about.

``Why have we made these changes in our strategic doctrine," he inquires. "What does it mean, what will be the cost---and, most important, will it lead us to believe that we can fight and win a limited nuclear war?''

Certainly, after the censor's heavy hand it is hard to establish how exactly the two Secretaries replied to this question. Harold Brown went so far as to mumble, "We have to be very careful how we describe it in public." Tfien he amplified: "First use of tactical nuclear weapons . . . has always been a NATO policy, NATO doctrine". Who knows what else was said, but here is an instructive little dialogue:

Senator Glenn. I get lost in what is credible and not credible. This whole thing gets so incredible when you consider wiping out whole nations. ..

Secretary Brown. That is why we sound a little crazy when we talk about it.

Senator Glenn. This is the best statement of the day ... I just feel that the thing most likely to deter the Soviet Union ... is not the thought that we are going to take out a couple of missile sites or some place out in Siberia, but they can expect to add many times over the 20 million they lost in World War II that they keep talking about in every speech . . . They have to think that the number of losses will be multiplied many times over and not that we plan just to take out missile sites in Siberia.''^^1^^

~^^1^^ Nuclear War Strategy. Hearing before the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate. 96th Congress. 2nd Session on Presidential Directive 59, US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1981, pp. 1-2, 13, 15, 22-23.

Cyrus Vance, Hard Choices, p. 414.

This is how they've made quite clear what exactly they euphemistically call "limited nuclear war". Limited? Shortly before the hearings there had been this figure in the Defense Secretary's annual report: 200 Soviet cities are subject to a nuclear strike.^^1^^

Retired US Rear-Admiral Gene Robert La Rocque who founded the Center for Defense Information in 1972 tried to appeal to reason. A professional seaman, he ridiculed the talk of a US ``lag'' in strategic armaments, illustrating his point with something he knows very well, the nuclear capability of the US submarine fleet.

``Each of our strategic submarines can destroy 160 Soviet cities. And each of our new Trident submarines will be able to destroy more than 240 Soviet cities," he pointed out in the summer of 1981. "The fact of the matter is that we in the United States Navy can keep firing nuclear weapons at the Soviet Union from our submarines for about three months. So even if the Soviets were able to move their people out of the cities... we would lob nuclear shells at the Soviet Union, thousands of them, for at least three months. We keep more than 3,000 nuclear weapons off their coast at all times.''

Dropshot was child's play compared with the capacity controlled by those who have their finger on the nuclear war button today.

jority, wants Uncle Sam to take over every facet of his life and work. I think that is the great lesson that we are learning today. For three and a half decades the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, all the liberal political movements have been offering Federal financing as the end-all answer---the panacea, if you will, for every problem that ever came up to confront the American people. Federal spending for housing, for health, for education, for civil rights, for equal employment opportunities, for urban renewal, for rebuilding cities, for revamping farms . . . Yet today we are confronted with a greater mass of domestic problems than any nation this world has ever seen, or heard of, before.''

Hence his insistent calls to reduce social spending since, as he put it, the "American system" would take care of these things by itself. Was this a reassertion of traditional Republican values? Not entirely. Even the book's title says Goldwater cut far across party lines, claiming to speak on behalf of the ``majoriy''. In utter conflict with his own disquisitions about the precious US ``individualism'', Goldwater insisted on expanding US military power and consolidating the state machine all along the line. "Nor should the inflated cost of military hardware become the overriding consideration in determining our level of defense expenditures," Goldwater declared.^^1^^ He maintained that the monumental edifice of state-monopoly capitalism had not erased the verity of laissez-faire. On the contrary, he said, the very pressure exercised by the present-day state was, in fact, vitalizing the principles that were dear to his heart. And, of course, the basic line running right through the book is a vicious anti-communism.

When Goldwater published the book in 1970, he was evidently in a state of euphoria about the capabilities of the Republicans under Nixon. In 1979 or nearly ten years later, he admitted that he had been wrong. "Nixon? I think it was the biggest shock of my life to suddenly realize in a flash, after knowing the guy like a brother, that he was a dishonest man all the way through," Goldwater lamented. Not Nixon alone, of course. By the end of the seventies, to use Goldwater's words,

~^^1^^ Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Majority, Prentice Hall, Englewood, Cliffs (New Jersey), 1970, pp. 13-14. 113.

The New Right On the March

In 1970 Barry Goldwater published a book, entitled The Conscience of a Majority. In substance, it was the third book of a trilogy in which he expanded upon what he had said in The Conscience of a Conservative (1960) and Why Not Victory? (1962). The first two books were written hastily in anticipation of the 1964 presidential campaign, while the latest is a considered symbol of faith for those who call themselves `` conservative''. Here is what Goldwater said: "I do not believe that the average American, the forgotten American, the silent ma-

~^^1^^ Annual Defense Department Report, Fiscal year 1978, Department of Defense, Washington, 1977, p, 68.

``Every time the President openes his mouth, whether he is Republican or Democrat, the average American says, 'Oh, bullshit'. That's it. And it shouldn't be.''

Why? Goldwater had answer, and evidently believed it. He said, "The country is more hungry for leadership today than it's ever been in my life. . . That's why I go back to old Harry Truman. As much as I disagreed with his politics, I had to admire this guy's willingness to stand up and say, 'Look, Mr. and Mrs. America, this is what's going to happen'.''

Goldwater expounded this view in a talk with publicist David S. Broder. The Senator's interviewer found, however, that "if the praise for Truman sounded strange coming from Goldwater, even more ironic was his singling out of that aggressive champion of presidential power as the model of national leadership. For almost three decades Goldwater had cast himself as a critic of the strong presidency." Yes, but the times had changed, because those for whom Goldwater yearned---• the young crop of conservatives---had come on the scene. The Senator assured Broder: "The younger conservatives are far more vociferous, but they are also far more willing to stop and study. Before anything, they know their ground . . . These kids are far superior to what we were.''^^1^^

The revelations and confidences of Goldwater and many others who pronounced themselves in the same spirit, made up the content of David S. Broder's big book, Changing of the Guard. Power and Leadership in America. The book's history is highly instructive. Simon and Schuster publishers gave Broder a $40,000 advance on the basis of an 8-page outline. The editors' immediate problem was that the book should be ready for the 1980 presidential elections.^^2^^ The publishers cleaned up, for the book of nearly 900 typewritten pages was swiftly written and swiftly published. Goldwater must have been pleased. He blamed his 1964 defeat on the mass media which, he said, had been "getting away with murder---political murder that is--- for much too long a time." He complained that the mass media had "very skillfully" managed to tie him up with "every

crackpot on the Far Right. .. In other words ... to wrap them all around the neck of a conservative presidential possibility and leave them there.''^^1^^

The book is an impressive illustration of how those who called themselves ``conservatives'', orchestrated a massive propaganda offensive in order to seize the summits of political power in the country---the White House and the Capitol---and did so with the apparent support of the electorate. They called themselves the New Right.

Richard A. Viguerie, one of the conspicuous figures of the New Right, defined their symbol of faith in most lucid terms: "Frankly, what we must do is stop socialism.. . To put it bluntly, we are locked in world-wide combat with Communism.''

Viguerie referred to Paul Weyrich as an apostle of the New Right because he "better symbolizes" the movement. Weyrich, Viguerie maintained, represented the political philosophy of the New Right, analogous to Douglas MacArthur's military outlook: "There is no substitute for victory." In effect, Weyrich maintained, the world was in a state of war. "It may not be with bullets," he conceded, "and it may not be with rockets and missiles, but it is a war nevertheless. It is a war of ideology, it's a war of ideas, it's a war about our way of life. And it has to be fought with the same intensity, I think, and dedication as you would fight a shooting war.''^^2^^

War? Against whom? Senator Jesse Helms, who is said to be the most influential politician in the United States today apart from the one installed in the White House, said in his life's work, a ``theoretical'' treatise of 122 pages, that "the only guarantor of freedom in the world has been the Christian faith . . . The devil is still at work today promising the whole panoply of material wealth to those nations that disavow their Christian heritage ... Satan has not neglected to tempt America. .. In the last quarter century . . . too many of our people . . .act as if there were no God. . . There is nothing to distiguish these people fundamentally from the most committed Communists who believe that evil is the consequence, not of sin, but of private property.''

~^^1^^ Goldwater, The Conscience of a Majority, pp. 187, 175.

^! Richard A. Viguerie, The New Right..., pp. 55, 140, 58-59.

~^^1^^ David S. Broder, Changing of the Guard, Power and Leadership in America, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1980, pp. 173-174. ^^1^^ Time, September 1, 1980.

The Senator is out to protect the sanctity of private property, to defend it against attack which, as the Senator is deeply convinced,is the work of the devil.

No less deeply is he convinced that those who favor social insurance and government welfare are allies of the devil. Referring to the Bible, Helms declares: "Nowhere at any time did Christ mention a government welfare program, let alone endorse one." Thereupon, in the same breath, he offers an example from antique times, sweet music to the ears of the propertied :

``About half a century before the birth of Christ, the great orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero, had some remarks to make before the Roman Senate. Ponder his words and measure them for yourself against the predicament of the United States in 1976.

`` 'We are taxed,' Cicero complained, 'in our bread and in our wine, in our incomes and our investments, on our land and on our property,. .. for base creatures who do not deserve the name of man ...'

``The Roman law code, like our own Constitution, contained a reference to the 'general welfare' of the people. Cicero warned the senators not to misinterpret the word welfare. Under that phrase, he told, them, 'all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us all slaves.' The politicians of Rome listened politely, ignored his advice, and then proceeded to use the treasury to buy the political support of the masses. The doom of Rome was sealed.''^^1^^

On Helms' heels, following the appearance of his `` theoretical'' opus in 1976, the notorious professor Richard Pipes, who claims to know Russia and the Soviet Union, pointed out in 1977 that "this entire middle-class, commercial, essentially Protestant ethos is absent from Soviet culture. . . The Communist revolution of 1917, by removing from positions of influence what there was of a Russian bourgeoisie (a class Lenin was prone to define as much by cultural as by socio-economic criteria), in effect installed in power the muzhik.''^^2^^

Thereupon, the enlightened professor explained in most vigorous terms that the US man of property could not deal with the ``muzhik'', and so on. This lucidly demonstrated the class implications of the conflict between capitalism and socialism on the international scene.

In the 1970s, especially in their latter half, pronouncements of this sort were widely circulated in the United States. The New Right ideology was being forged in high gear, amounting to a shameless repetition of old capitalist verities and much doctored Christian ethics. This took money and more money. And money flowed into the kitties of the various centers engaged in shaping the New Right ideology. Richard Mellon Scaife of Pittsburgh, a multimillionaire, alone contributed more than a hundred million dollars. This reached the public because the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette extolled the charitable contributor in a series of articles.^^1^^ Many other generous patrons stayed in the shadows.

In the 70s, such research centers as the American Enterprise Institute, the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, the University of Pennsylvania Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis (Cambridge, Mass.), and the Heritage Foundation in Washington gathered force.

The more than 1,000-page volume of reports and recommendations to the Reagan administration, published by the Heritage Foundation, pointed out that it was wrong to interpret the election results as "a victory for `pragmatism' over ' ideology'." On the contrary, the success of the New Right was due, first of all, to its allegiance to ideology. "A successful statesman," wrote the authors of the report, "is first of all a strategist with a vision; pragmatism is a wise mentor but a dangerous master. .. Political imagination and conservative philosophy are not 'strange bedfellows'.''^^2^^

Circulation of the New Right Ideology was undertaken by

~^^1^^ F. Clifton White, William J. Gill, Why Reagan Won. A Narrative History of the Conservative Movement 1964-1981, Regnery Gateway, Chicago, 1981, pp. 62-63.

~^^1^^ Mandate for Leadership, pp. VII-VIII.

~^^1^^ Jesse Helms, When Free Men Shall Stand, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids (Michigan), 1976, pp. 118-119, 79, 46-47.

~^^1^^ Richard Pipes, U. S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Detente. A Tragedy of Errors, Westview Press, Boulder (Colorado), 1981, p. 147.

the political quartet of Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Howard Phillips and Terry Dolan. They were about forty, and for this widely publicized reason did not come under the head of senile reactionaries. No, they knew what young people needed. These preachers of the New Right ideology were not concerned with ``enlightenment'' as much as they were with forming an organized movement irrespective of its members' party allegiance. (Republican or Democrat). Those who were on Viguerie's mailing list and received New Right material, numbered more than 20 million. As many as 4.5 million sent him money. The individual contributions may not have been large, but there were millions of them.

Terry Dolan organized a national conservative political action committee which collected 7.6 million dollars in the 1980 campaign to drive out ``liberal'' candidates from elections at all levels. Howard Phillips, who formed committees related to TV Evangelists, of whom there were many in the United States, boasted, 'I read the Bible every day." Jerry Falwell, a leading TV Evangelist considered founder of Moral Majority in 1979, said in his book Listen, America!, that God did not approve of equal rights for women, SALT II, detente, social security, liberalism, and the like. Falwell and the likes of him, entrenched on TV and radio, were heard weekly by 115 million and seen on TV by another 14 million.

Falwell was once asked by a Senator, when he would get out of the business of politics. He replied, when the Senator got out of the business of morals. What did that mean? The TV preacher replied: The Founding Fathers had not intended to separate God from the state, only the church from the state. Therefore, Falwell said, the Fundamentalists would stay on in politics. If 'there had been no campaign across the 50 states with FalwelPs participation, Howard Phillips once observed, "SALT II might have passed the US Senate in the summer of 1979.''^^1^^ That clarified fundamentalism's role in mundane affairs. Still, what did the New Right stand for?

It stood for US petty-bourgeois morality and ideology, which, as most people know, was liable to personify itself. It had only to be focused on the presidential candidate in the 1980 elec-

tions in order to gain national political relevan&j. On the US political scene, the more likely to succeed is a personable man with a big smile and clear enunciation.

Long before the elections, Ronald Reagan had spoken his mind on the entire range of problems dealt with by the Garter administration. To each such problem he applied the New Right yardstick.

And this paid off. After the Reagan victory, a Harris poll showed that Reagan had won "because the conservatives--- particularly the white Moral Majority---gave him such massive support". In 1976, Carter captured the votes of 56 per cent of the Baptists. This time the same 56 per cent voted for Reagan. Small wonder! Reagan delighted the Fundamentalists by disagreeing with the evolution theory and discovering that man was created by God just as it says in the Bible. Shades of the Scopes trial fifty-five years before in the then remote state of Tennessee! A photograph of a smiling Ronald Reagan beside Jerry Falwell was widely circulated. Beyond question, the Moral Majority and other Fundamentalists gave their hearts and votes to Ronald Reagan.^^1^^

John P. Sears, who ran Reagan's campaign in 1976 and was picked for the same job in 1980, observed that there was a generation gap between what Reagan thought he knew of the world, on the one hand, and reality, on the other. He lived in the world of 1952, Sears added, and saw everything in just black and white. For saying so, Sears was fired. Naturally. In a Chicago speech, Reagan said the war in Vietnam had been a noble business.^^2^^ As the authors of a book about Reagan noted, "During the campaign, for example, when European leaders were balking at President Carter's retaliatory grain embargo against the Russians, Reagan was complaining that the action was too mild. What the rhetorical Reagan advocated was a complete, across-the-board trade boycott, showing little comprehension that the Germans, French and other continental powers have little taste for confrontation with Moscow over

~^^1^^ Evans, Novak, The Reagan Revolution, pp. 215, 213, 208.

^^2^^ Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover, Blue Smoke and Mirrors. How Reagan Won and Why Carter Lost the Election of 1980, The Viking Press, New York, 1981, p. 210.

~^^1^^ Viguerie, The New Right. . ., p. 63.

23---796

Afghanistan because they have a far greater economic stake in detente than America.''

Instead, Reagan wanted arms and more arms to win military superiority over the Soviet Union. Already during the campaign it was estimated that he was figuring on spending at least 250,000 million dollars more for military purposes before 1985 than envisaged in the already inflated military budget of the Garter administration.^^1^^

One can't help asking how anyone could win with a plank like that? Whom had the new President seduced? Time magazine said of his followers: "The New Right is a confederation of disperate political and religious groups bound together by their hostility toward what they consider to be the excesses of the liberal left and the erosion of values in America.''^^2^^ They believe in and preach a "new American patriotism probably started with the Bicentennial ... A complicated impulse has stirred in Americans' thinking about their country and its place in the world. Patriotism has reappeared, along with its scruffy little half brothers, xenophobia and chauvinism.''^^3^^ People of that outlook certainly embraced the program of the nev\i US administration. ``Patriots'' brandished the national flag but knew what that would bring them in dollars and cents. The economic promises of the new President---lower taxes, first of all on capital, and cutbacks on social allocations---suited the greedy instincts of the American bourgeoisie. It was for that reason, among others, that Reagan had the support of the propertied class. He was one of them: in 1980 he had finally gone against what he called his "personal principle"---not to let anyone know his financial status, and let it be known that he had a fortune of three million dollars. Not much by American standards, but considerably more than Carter's 900,000. He ran his affairs most efficiently from the bourgeois point of view. Among the incomes of 1979, for example, was an item of 481 dollars, received as interest from his daughter on a sum he had lent her.^^4^^ A favorable impression on the propertied was

~^^1^^ Hedrick Smith, Adam Clymer, Leonard Silk, Robert Lindsey, Richard Burt, Reagan the Man, the President, Macmillan Publishing Co., New York, 1980, pp. 110, 121.

~^^2^^ Time, December 8, 1980.

~^^3^^ Time, March 10, 1980.

' Time, August 11, 1980.

also made by the long-drawn-out attempts of the Reagan couple to sell their villa in California. For a house they had bought for 27,000 dollars in 1956 and into which they had invested another 60,000 dollars, the Reagans asked---and received--- 1.9 million dollars in early 1982.

And since lances were being broken in the 1980 elections over the basic principles of modern day American statehood, Carter and Reagan summoned up the shades of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. ``I'm proud to be a Democrat," Carter kept saying. "I believe in the heritage and mission of Franklin D. Roosevelt. .. Every great advance, every single great advance in our nation, in the private lives of our citizens for the last half-century, from collective bargaining to the minimum wage, from Social Security to Medicare, every single one of them has been made possible by Democrats over the opposition, over the opposition of Republicans.''

It was hard to argue against what Carter said, for the Americans remember their past. But Reagan was not to be daunted. Here was how he interpreted Roosevelt's social policies from the angle of the New Right: "I said that the New Deal was patterned after Mussolini's. . . fascism, and long before fascism became a dirty word in the lexicon of the liberals---that this was true, that it was based on private ownership but state management and control.''

Reagan's groundless charge against Roosevelt, triggered a storm of protest.

``I remember a very distinguished historian from one of our Eastern universities," Reagan recalls, "a lone voice that rose to my rescue and confirmed [it] from his own studies, and at the same time said he was surprised that I had such a sophisticated knowledge of history, that it was true.''^^1^^

During the election campaign Reagan used Roosevelt's legacy in his own, most peculiar way. He often referred to Franklin Roosevelt, asking his audience to regard him, Reagan, as a leader of a new political revolution, as the father of a conservative regeneration which would radically alter the US concept of government, as Roosevelt had done with his New Deal.

~^^1^^ Germond and Witcover, Blue Smoke and Mirrors, pp. 301-302,

Reagan maintained that, like Roosevelt in 1932, he believed that government "costs too much" and that "we must abolish the useless offices". Yet, on assuming power, Reagan claimed, Roosevelt had changed his policy and expanded the government, which Reagan had opposed all the latter half of his life. Reagan's followers were intrigued: they wondered if he wouldn't become a conservative Republican version of Roosevelt.

Hardly. Roosevelt who regarded himself President "of the entire nation" had a broad-based support. As for Reagan, he was elected by the majority (51 per cent) of those who voted. Yet only 52.4 per cent of the voters had come to the polls. It follows that only 26.7 per cent of the US adult population was for Reagan. The bulk or the "silent majority", out of which 25 per cent usually vote Democrat, cast their ballots for Reagan. Jerry Falwell commented: "These Christian people came out of the pews into the polls and caused this avalanche.''^^1^^

Yet if we descend from the summits of theological rhetoric to the US political scene, we will see that the propertied class had voted for a President who represented it.

lest possible variant of his weekly half-hour monologue on television over eight years---from 1954 to 1962. In those days, under contract to General Electric, Reagan explained the advantages of capitalism on TV and, indeed, in his frequent speeches at the 135 General Electric factories across the United States. It has been estimated that a quarter of his time during those eight years Reagan had devoted to what may be described as ideological service to General Electric.

The authors of what is probably the best known book in the United States about Reagan relate: "GE chairman Ralph Cordiner was preaching a muscular defense of the capitalistic system to the company employees, and Reagan's services were highly valued. It was during this time that Reagan developed, honed and perfected The Speech, which was to play an incalculable part in his own and his nation's life. As first delivered to GE employees, The Speech hammered away at the growth of government and warned against communism.''^^1^^

No matter how pleased the directors of the giant corporation may have been, the straightforward defense of the attractions of capitalism put it in an unfavorable position. In 1962 the TV program had to be stopped. In 1964 Reagan was asked to speak for Goldwater. He did not save him from defeat, but managed to eclipse him as an ideologist.

Impressed by what Reagan had to say, a group of California millionaires asked him to run for state governor in 1966. Doubtfully, he asked professional politician Clifton White, "Do you run for Governor on the basis of a single speech?" White replied: "People have run on a whole lot less.''^^2^^ Later developments showed that White was right. The ideological charge in that one speech was enough to put Reagan in the White House. What did Reagan say in that speech, reprinted in the Washington Post on the day of his inauguration?

``You and I are told increasingly," he said, "we have to choose between a left or right. Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only up or down." As Reagan conceived it, ``up'' was to consolidate capitalism and ``down'' was to follow the socialist road. He said it was worth

~^^1^^ Evans, Novak, The Reagan Revolution, p. 26.

~^^2^^ While, Gill, Why Reagan Won, p. 27.

A Few Words About Ronald Reagan

On January 20, 1981, the day of the new President's inauguration, the Washington Post issued the following reminder: "It is not exaggeration to say that Ronald Reagan becomes president today because of a single dramatic event: a half-hour speech he delivered on national television on the night of Oct. 27, 1964, on behalf of the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater.''^^2^^ The paper reprinted the text of that speech under the title "Rendezvous with Destiny''.

When Reagan spoke of a rendezvous with destiny in 1964 (he took the title from F.D.R., who had promised to arrange such a rendezvous for the USA in 1936), he evidently formulated the program of the New Right in the most succinct terms. The speech had not been a sudden revelation, and was the ful-

~^^1^^ Time, November 17, 1980.

- The Washington Post, January 20, 1981.

sacrificing one's life that capitalism should live, and addressed himself to the following analogues: "Should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the Cross? Should the patriots at Concord bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world'. . . The martyrs of history were not fools.. . You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We'll preserve for our children this, the last hope of man on earth, or will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.''^^1^^

The same motives ran through President Reagan's inaugural speech of January 20, 1981. He ended it with a quotation from the diary of an American soldier killed in 1918 in France who swore he would fight bravely because "America must win this war".^^2^^ This is the creed that Reagan preaches tirelessly. By request, he wrote an article, "What July Fourth Means to Me" for the magazine Parade: ``I've come to think of that day as more than just the birthday of a nation. It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history. Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.''

Who had done this in Reagan's view? The 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence. Recounting their trades and professions---those of lawyer, merchant, businessman---Reagan was pleased to declare: "They were soft-spoken men of means and education, they were not an unwashed rabble.''^^3^^

It is in the footsteps of these 56 that Reagan calls on the United States of today to follow. Among the pilots and theorists who were blazing the trail the President extolled a man named George Gilder, considered an economist. His book, Wealth and Poverty, appeared in 1981. Brought up by the Rockefeller family, Gilder modestly explained what his contribution had been to science and to the practices of the Reagan administration:

``It [the book] put conservatism on the offensive. Rather

than apologizing for capitalism as maybe a pragmatic solution to the problem of production or calling for cuts in welfare benefits as desirable for fiscal reasons, this book maintains that capitalism is the most moral system as well as the most productive one, and that supposedly beneficial welfare programs are responsible for intensifying and perpetuating poverty.''

The book, which the business press christened the Capitalist Manifesto, goes on to say that "the crucial role of the rich in a capitalist economy is not to entertain and titillate the classes below, but to invest: to provide unencumbered and unbureaucratized cash. The broad class of rich does, in fact, perform this role. Only a small portion of their money is consumed. Most of it goes to productive facilities that employ labor and supply goods to consumers." As for the rest, "the poor must not only work; they must work harder than the classes above them.''^^1^^ Hence, taxes on the rich should be lowered, welfare benefits reduced and so on.

His shameless confidences prompted journalists to ask Gilder what he believed in. There is nothing to compare with his answer, "I believe in a free capitalist system in a large cosmic order, founded on absolute truth. I believe there are such things as absolute truths, and that society will necessarily reflect those truths all the time in its organization and behavior." He was asked to name the chief of the absolute truths, and here is his answer: "An absolute truth that I propound in Wealth and Poverty is 'Give and you will be given unto'. To the extent that people are willing to give of themselves, to devote themselves to pursuits beyond their own immediate calculations of selfinterest, they tend to be more successful, to contribute more to society and to receive more benefits themselves.''

With what was virtually a stroke of the pen this economist whom Book Digest describes as a favorite of the Reagan administration drew a line through the experience of current history, portraying capitalism in pastel, as it was last pictured not later than 1914. The Reagan administration, indeed, has declared a kind of concept, dubbed Reaganomics, and its allegiance to a "new federalism", and is trying as best it can to turn

~^^1^^ George Gilder, "Wealth and Poverty" in Book Digest, August 1981.

~^^1^^ The Washington Post, January 20, 1981. ' The Washington Post, January 21, 1981. ~^^3^^ Parade, June 28, 1981.

back the clock of history. Ronald Reagan himself discovered great political wisdom in the doings of President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929), to whose political rehabilitation Reagan contributed significantly by placing his portrait in the cabinet room.^^1^^ Yet it was the ``achievements'' of Goolidge and the multi-millionaire Secretary of the Treasury of the 1920s, Andrew W. Mellon, whom Coolidge (and now Reagan) so deeply admired, that helped send the USA hurtling into the maelstrom of the 1929-1933 economic crisis.

George Gilder's latest profundities and the practices of the Reagan administration---reduction or repeal of social insurance allowances, and tight-fistedness in respect of health and education---are taking the nation back to the twenties which turned out to be the prelude to economic crisis. In his annual State of the Union message on January 26, 1982, President Reagan admitted the USA was "in a time of recession". He attributed this to the legacy of the preceding decades---the policy dating to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. In those days the government responded to recessions by increasing its spending. His administration, Reagan declared, would act differently. It would "cut out more nonessential Government spending", that is, scale down allocations for social needs.^^2^^

This, the devotees of Reaganomics maintain, will have most beneficial results for the USA. Yet it was this theory and practice of his predecessors that brought F.D.R., who was theii bitter opponent, into the White House. On Franklin Roosevelt's 100th birthday, which fell in January 1982, Time magazine wrote: "Those Rooseveltian principles are under conservative attack today. . . Reagan is trying to dismantle the entire New Deal. Reagan denies that, but his explanation is slightly disingenious.''^^3^^ In any case, Reaganomics, is contrary to the policy followed in Roosevelt's time, to the social reforming that is meant to save and consolidate capitalism.

During Reagan's first term (1981-1984) the gross national product (with allowances for inflation) increased 10.3 per cent, and the consumer price index 26.1 per cent (during Carter's

presidency it rose 45.7 per cent), while unemployed at the end of Carter's term totalled 7.6 million, and as much as 8.5 million in September 1984. Under Garter 13 per cent of all Americans lived below the poverty line, whereas under Reagan in 1983 the percentage went up to 15.2.

The tax cut program yielded more benefits to the wealthy than to people of modest income. What this amounts to in hard figures is hard to say. Summing up the first four Reagan years, The New York Times observed: "Wealthy Americans, as well as the highly paid, appear to have gained ground in the Reagan tenure, but no one has consistently monitored the growth of wealth over the years.''^^1^^ And this in a country that boasts of top-rate statistics. No comment!

On the other hand, the statistics showed in precise figures the monstrous growth of the federal debt. When Garter's presidency ended it amounted to $914.3 billion. At the end of Reagan's first term it had grown to $1,575.6 billion.

Still, the champions of Reaganomics say they have won freedom of maneuver. But if we recall the basic trend of Reagan's policy, that of arming (no sooner 1.5 trillion dollars were mentioned for five years than voices were heard to say this sum would grow considerably), we immediately see the rigid limits of this ``freedom''. Surveying literature about Reagan, The New York Review of Books noted aptly: "Neither the president nor any of these books is able to answer or even articulate the central dilemma of the administration's kind of conservatism--- reconciling laisser-faire with a state of perpetual mobilization. War not only kicks up the taxes... it centralizes government power. . . The Reaganauts must come acropper because they have left themselves no way to ease out of their condition of permanent red alert. . . As long as our chief diplomat regards diplomacy as if not a treasonable activity at least one of sissified weakness, it is difficult to see how the administration can cut a deal that will lead to cutting war expenditures.''^^2^^

Yes, the frantic arms race will have the gravest consequences for the United States.

Washington intensified war preparations since 1981 in a bid

' The New York Times, October 9, 1984.

^^2^^ The New York Review of Books, June 25, 1981.

~^^1^^ Evans, Novak, The Reagan Revolution, p. 4. * The New York Times, January 27, 1982. ^^3^^ Time, February 1, 1982.

21---796

to gain ``superiority'' over the Soviet Union. It is preoccupied with its M-X missile program, the Trident II submarine-launched missile program, the cruise missile program, the B-l strategic bomber program, and so on. Aimed at upsetting the strategic parity, it is also intended to impose tough arms race terms on the USSR, to try and bankrupt the Soviet economy.

The followers of this line, aptly described in the journal Foreign Policy as the "anti-Soviet brigade"^^1^^, have, according to J. Goldsborough, produced this intellectual basis for Reagans's policy of increasing the American defense budget. And Goldsborough adds that the idea "is to push the Russians toward economic bankruptcy and internal disruption by outspending them on defense (that we may be bankrupt and disrupt ourselves is less important). . .

Most of these theories are intellectual exercises.. . The policy of the anti-Soviet brigade under its various guises really is a policy of despair.''^^2^^

Entirely right. The trouble is, however, that it appears true and undeniable to those who wield influence in the USA today. Initially, it was substantiated by ``theorists''. Now it is in the hands of practicians. Indicative here is the appointment of William Clark in January 1982 as the President's National Security Adviser. He is a man who is in no way qualifiable as the professor type previously associated with that office. "What Reagan seems to want," The Washington Post conjectured on January 6, 1982, "is not a conceptual formulator of policy in the Kissinger mold, but an administrator." What the National Security Council has set its sights on, as we see from an interview given with Clark's blessings by Richard Pipes, is that the USA and its allies "will have to help" to achieve the objectives of the policy described above.^:!

This means that psychological warfare is to be vitalized still more in the shadow of the insane arms race. The Intelligence and National Security Affairs Office, influential in Eisenhower's time, has been revived to coordinate all the special subversive activities of the US secret services. The new charter of the

CIA introduced by the President's executive order of December 4, 1981, lifts the restrictions on the Agency's activity in the USA and, what is more, vitalizes its work against those whom Washington considers its opponents. The new charter reaffirms the doctrine of "plausible denial", namely: "Special activities means activities conducted in support of national foreign policy objectives abroad which are planned and executed so that the role of the United States Government is not apparent or acknowledged publicly.''^^1^^

In May-June 1982, the Reagan administration declared a ``crusade'' against communism. Preliminary to Reagan's junket to Western Europe early in June to confer with NATO leaders, the government's guidance document concerning a new fiveyear defense plan was brought to the attention of the public (in abridged form, of course) along with a general outline for the rest of the eighties. The New York Times observed that the 125-page document had been set forth in William Clark's speech of May 21, 1982, "but the tone of his address was more restrained than the guidance document''.

The document makes "defeating the Soviet Union at any level of conflict from insurgencies to nuclear war" the basic objective of US policy. There is nothing fundamentally novel in this aggressive statement of intent. It merely repeats what Washington has been saying since Truman's presidency. In essence, the new guidance document is by and large a plagiarism of NSC-68 1950, with allowances for the changes in military technology. For understandable reasons, the men of the Truman brigade could not call for what Washington today is caling for, namely, exploiting outer space for American military needs.

The only novel thing is the extreme cynicism in defining the aims of US imperialism. It says in black and white in the document, The New York Times observes, that "policy planners went beyond President Carter's Presidential Directive 59, which focused American nuclear strategy on attacks on specific military and political targets. The new nuclear strategy calls on American forces to be able to 'render ineffective the total Soviet (and Soviet-allied) military and political structure'." If

~^^1^^ The New York Times, December 5, 1981.

~^^1^^ Samuel P. Huntington, "Trade, Technology and Leverage: Economic Diplomacy" in Foreign Policy, No. 37, Winter 1979-80. ^^1^^ Goldsborough, Rebel Europe, pp. 149-150. ~^^3^^ Time, March 1, 1982.

24*

need be, it says, the USA is prepared for "fighting a long nuclear war". Thus, with cannibalistic logic, the Reaganauts have settled the argument among military theorists that has been going on lor decades about the nature of a thermonuclear war if it ever breaks out.

This is the sort of war that the latest type of weapon, the neutron bomb, whose manufacture was announced on August 6, 1981, the anniversary of the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima, is best adapted for. The Reagan administration is, indeed, adapting the finest achievements of science and technology to military purposes. How else are we to assess the first launch of the Columbia space shuttle on April 12, 1981, the anniversary of the day when in 1961 Yuri Gagarin blazed man's trail into outer space?

The plagiarists of NSG-68 are naturally planning their strategy for both war and ``peacetime'', as has been Washington's habit since World War II. They beat all records of cynicism by inserting in the guidance document that "as a peacetime complement to military strategy . . . the United States and its allies should, in effect, declare economic and technical war on the Soviet Union". What they mean by this in specific terms is the following:

``The United States should develop weapons that 'are difficult for the Soviets to counter, impose disproportionate costs, open up new areas of major military competition and obsolesce previous Soviet investment'.''

A most lucid definition of the old arms race strategy of ``bankrupting'' socialism.

And, as the guidance document says in so many words, the Reaganauts want to step up the psychological war. Here is how this is put:

``We must revitalize and enhance special-operations forces to project United States power where the use of conventional forces would be premature, inappropriate or unfeasible, particularly in Eastern Europe.''

On citing this passage, The New York Times explained that "special operations is a euphemism for guerrillas, saboteurs, commandos and similar unconventional forces.''^^1^^ As though that needs explaining.

In early June, Reagan made his appearance in Western Europe to popularize that part of the guidance document which concerned the "peacetime complement", seeking allied support for the US economic blockade of the Soviet Union and aiming to mobilize them for psychological warfare. If the USA and its confederates in the rest of the capitalist world agreed to interfere in the internal affairs of the socialist countries (among others by methods provided for in the guidance document), "the march of freedom and democracy... will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history," was what Reagan said in his address at Parliament in London. He added that he expected people "to resist ... if necessary, by force" in the socialist countries.^^1^^ All this, to be sure, was nothing but advance camouflage for the "special operations" of the US secret services. More, it was incitement.

Back in the USA, on June 23, 1982, at CIA headquarters, Reagan signed an act throwing a veil of secrecy on the subversive activity of US spy services.

The act had been passed by 315 votes to 32 in the House and 81 to 4 in the Senate. Henceforth, anyone making public the identity of those who collaborated with the CIA was liable to 10 years' jail and a fine of 50,000 dollars "even if the information," as The Washington Post reported on June 24, 1982, "is obtained from public records.''

Reagan turned the signing of the act into a solemn ceremony. To begin with, he made a speech before the all-CIA audience that filled the 1,000-seat hall. On completing his secret speech, the elated Reagan appeared before the CIA building. A military band was playing marches and the tunes of jingoist songs. But the gathering was even more pleased with what the President said when the band stopped playing. Reagan spoke many an endearing word, calling the people gathered there "heroes of a grim twilight struggle".^^2^^ Spies, terrorists and saboteurs he declared members of the crusade for liberty, of the global campaign for human rights!

Once the accent is laid on psycological warfare, the methods of traditional diplomacy lend to become an obstacle. Reagnn

~^^1^^ U.S. News and World Report, June 21, 1982. * The Washington Post, June 24, 1982.

~^^1^^ The New York Times, May 30, 1982.

settled the inevitable conflict between the NSC system and the CIA & Co., on the one hand, and the Department of State, on the other, in favor of William Clark, while dismissing State Secretary Alexander Haig, who was deluding himself into thinking he was the one who ran the nation's foreign policy.

The Israeli aggression against Lebanon in the summer of 1982 was an instructive lesson of how the USA pulls the chestnuts out of the fire with other people's hands to further its imperialist policy, and does not shrink from encouraging genocide. The aggression illustrates Washington's efforts to control even the periphery of the oil-rich Mid-Eastern region.

In August and September 1982, US Marines landed in Lebanon. The pretext: ``peacekeeping''. The presence of the US Marines on Lebanese soil only augmented the passions in thai long-suffering country. In Beirut, where the Marines were billeted, as many as 63 of them were killed in a little over a year. And on October 23, 1983, a bomb explosion took the lives of another 241 US servicemen. One should think that the due lessons would be drawn, but on October 25, in the other hemisphere, the United States attacked and occupied tiny Grenada. Now, blood flows there as well. . . Not until February 7, 1984, did the United States withdraw its Marines from Lebanon.

In Central America the CIA is embroided in a secret war against Nicaragua to the accompaniment of speeches in Washington about a spurious threat to US interests coming from that region. Who is sending mercenaries there? Who is training them? Who is paying them? Only some of the facts filter through to the press. Ever since March 1981, the United States has been supplying the regime in El Salvador with advisers and arms. In March 1983, a hundred American advisers arrived in Honduras.

In the meantime, as its military potential expands, Washington is less and less reserved in stating its warlike intents. In a long speech on March 23, 1982, President Reagan held forth about the concept of "star wars". The United States served notice thereby that it intended to extend the arms race to outer space, which quite obviously betrayed its ultimate plan of upsetting the existing rough strategic arms equilibrium.

Preparations for a "star war" and the arms race in general

naturally require colossal funds. But the money can be obtained only in an environment of military alarm. And this alarm is being incited not only through Washingtonian rhetorics (with the Soviet Union being described 'the focus of evil in the modern-day world") but also the provocations of US intelligence agencies. One of the biggest was the South Korean spy plane's incursion into Soviet air space on September 1, 1983. The loss of that plane was exploited by the United States and its allies to escalate the anti-Soviet campaign. This should be viewed in the general context of Washington policy: despite protests all over the world, the United States began stationing Pershing II and cruise missiles in Western Europe at the end of 1983.

The Reagan administration's policy has aroused, as it was bound to, resistance at home and abroad. Especially disturbing is Washington's increased aggressiveness. Washington's cynicism as it ventures on measures that are bound to complicate the world situation, is a standing threat to international security. Initialling the treaty banning nuclear tests on land, in the air, and under water on August 5, 1963 roughly on the 18th anniversary of the Hiroshima blast, President Kennedy compared it with the first step along a road a thousand miles long. Eighteen years later, also on a Hiroshima anniversary, Reagan issued the order to begin manufacturing neutron bombs. Henry Steele Commager, a prominent US historian, commented with alarm on current US policy. The new administration, he said, was reviving the Cold War; Carter had turned his back on detente and SALT II, and the Reaganauts were about to jettison everything. Commager appealed for realism and, above all, for normal relations with the Soviet Union, reminding his countrymen of the futility of the threats hurled at the USSR in the past.^^1^^

The understanding that the future of the world depends above all on the relations that prevail between the USA and the USSR is spreading. The antiwar actions in the USA and other countries show that Washington's nuclear arms race policy is arousing strong protest. There is no acceptable alternative to peaceful coexistence. This has been underlined time

~^^1^^ World view, July 1981.

and again by Soviet leaders. Cold War and the arms race hold no promise, and a hot war is simply not winnable.

But some governments, like some people, are prone to forget 'the lessons of history. That is evidently happening to the Washington administration, which is prodding international developments toward the danger line. It should be clear to one and all that the USA will gain nothing along this path. But one is compelled to reckon with the fact that such policy is affecting the situation as a whole, and intensifying the danger of war. The only possible reply is greater vigilance and still more determined struggle for peace. Those are the objectives of Soviet foreign policy.

At the 2nd Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Disarmament in June 1982, the Soviet Union pledged no-first use of nuclear weapons, a step of cardinal importance. If the other nuclear powers follow suit, the threat of nuclear war will, in effect, be eliminated.

The concern felt all over the world over the implications of US foreign policy cast a reflection on the 1984 presidential race in the United States. On June 14, Ronald Reagan declared he was ready to negotiate with the Soviet Union at summit level "at any time".^^1^^ There were other pronouncements in the same vein. The Platform adopted at the Republican Convention on August 21, 1984 in Dallas, said, however, that "stable and peaceful relations with the Soviet Union are possible and desirable, but they depend upon the credibility of American strength and determination.''

The Platform, like the 1984 election campaign, was tangible evidence of the reideologization of US home and foreign policy. 'Private property," it says, "is the cornerstone of our liberty and the free enterprise system. The right of property safeguards for citizens all things of value: their land, merchandise and money, their religious convictions, their safety and liberty, and their right of contract to produce and sell goods and services. Republicans reaffirm this God-given and inalienable right.''

And that is what the United States must be ready to fight for to the hilt. "We Republicans," the Platform goes on to say,

``emphasize that there is a profound moral difference between the actions and ideals of Marxist-Leninist regimes and those of democratic governments." And it amplifies: "We pledge to do everything necessary so that, in case of conflict, the United States would clearly prevail.''

In the meantime, the Republicans said, they would enhance their capability to influence international affairs in support of the aims of US foreign policy,^^1^^ that is, enhance their capability to subvert countries that Washington regards as its opponents. And this is said for all to hear. It will not be amiss here, evidently, to recall the standard concluding line of Reagan's election speeches: "You ain't seen nothing yet!''

In an analytical survey, the Time Election Special pointed out: "Perhaps the deepest analysis of the campaign, indeed is also the simplest: nothing ever happened to shake the sunny optimism and patriotic feivor Reagan has spent four years inspiring. Democrats thundered about the dangers of deficits and a nuclear-arms race, but they never raised serious doubts about Reagan's leadership. The President did not even spell out a program for his second term: it was enough to assert that 'America is back, standing tall.' "^^2^^

But during the campaign, time and again, Republicans resorted to rhetoric which implied that God was imposing his will upon the nation through them. For several weeks questions of religion stood at the center of the campaign. One got the impression that the Republicans were out to destroy the historical principle of the church being separate from the state.

Speaking in Dallas on August 23, Ronald Reagan said that "religion and politics are necessarily related''.

This prompted Walter Mondale, Reagan's rival in the elections, to quip, "God is a Republican." At a press conference on September 7, Reagan was asked in so many words: "Do you think that God is a Republican, as Mondale charges?" The President replied: "No. I have no answer to any of those things."" On the following day, The New York Times speci-

~^^1^^ See Congressional Quarterly, August 25, 1984, pp. 2111, 2110, 2115,2117.

^! Time, November 19, 1984, p. 41.

~^^1^^ Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, September 10, 1984, p. 1243.

~^^1^^ Newsweek, August 27, 1984, p. 37.

fied: "Mr. Reagan apparently took his cue from Larry Speaks, the deputy White House press-secretary. . . On a tape recording made by ABC News, Mr. Speaks is heard to advise Mr. Reagan, 'Best don't answer that.' "^^1^^

Leaving aside the religious zeal that highlighted the 1984 elections, it is more than obvious that Reagan wants to carry forward the slogan he had brandished in Dallas, "We will be America's party.''^^2^^ On November 8, 1984, he won the votes of 525 electors, while Mondale won 13. Just 51.4 per cent of the electorate went to the polls in these elections, as compared with 52.6 per cent in 1980. Fifty-nine per cent of the voters chose Reagan and 41 per cent chose Mondale (With voters totalling nearly 90 million).

The Soviet Union has come forward with a program of phased nuclear disarmament, with proposals for the limitation and reduction of strategic arms and of nuclear arms in Europe.

The Soviet Union's steadfast fight for peace and international security is in the interests of all humanity. The Soviet Peace Program for the Eighties is based on the resolution of the 26th Congress of the CPSU to cut off all roads to the arms race. The Soviet proposals are immensely attractive because they are concrete whether they concern the banning and destruction of chemical weapons, or nuclear-free zones, or outlawing the stationing of any type of weapon in outer space, or limitation of naval activity, etc. The Soviet Union has given Washington a clear choice. And the future will show which way developments will turn.

The fight is indisputably hard. One must always remember the gaping abyss between Washington's words and deeds. Speaking in Eureka on May 9, 1982, President Reagan, like US statesmen before him, referred to antiquity. He cited Demosthenes, who said 2,000 years ago in Athens: "What sane man would let another man's words rather than his deeds proclaim who is at peace and who is at war with him?" A most fitting reminder, wholly applicable to the words and deeds of present-day Washington.

Afterword

Why did I choose to portray Washington silhouettes only? Was there not enough material to go beyond that? To be sure, there wasn't. And for obvious reasons. US publicist Jim Hougan opened his book, Spooks, which appeared at the junction of the 70s and 80s, with this, essentially correct, observation:

``It seems fitting that in a country where people aspire to two of everything---cars, kids, and homes---we should have two histories as well. And so we do: a public chronicle, or ' Disney version', so widely available as to be unavoidable . . . and a second one that remains secret, buried, and unnamed.''^^1^^

Hougan tried to tell us about the relation of property and power in the USA from a specific angle: by what methods the people at the top of the pyramid preserve and protect their privileged situation. And who are they, these true rulers of the United States? The ultra-rich! The Washington Post paraphrased the content of the .September 1982 issue of Forbes under the following title: "Listing the Rich, Richer, Richest 400 in the US". The journal (Forbes), which does not deny that it is "an arm of capitalism", spent a year drawing up the list. These days, it found, multimillionaires are most reticent when it comes to disclosing the size of their fortunes.

Here, according to the Washington Post, was what happened when Forbes interviewers approached the ultra-rich with their questions:

``Mars---the richest resident of the Washington area---is so fanatically reclusive that no picture of him has been published in Washington. That is typical of the megamillionaires on the Forbes 400 list, most of whom refused to cooperate with the maga/ine's survey. . . Richard Mellon Scaife, another Mellon heir . . . 'vigorously denies' Forbes' estimate of a $500 million fortune. . ." Yet we have had occasion to observe that in the 70s the selfsame Scaife forked out over 100 million dollars in

~^^1^^ The New York Times, September 8, 1984.

' Tom Wisker, "America's Party?", The New York Times, Ausmst 24, 1984.

Jim Hougan, Spooks, p. XI.

support of the New Right. His vigorous denial must therefore have some grounds, for would he have spent one-fifth of his fortune on presidents? It must be much greater than a mere half-billion.

Still, the magazine listed all these 400 megamillionaires by name. The list opened with Daniel Keith Ludwig (2,000 million dollars), and more than another dozen US billionaires. One of them, Nelson Bunker Hunt, at a Congressional hearing two years ago startled the committee by saying he didn't know how much money he had. The Washington Post quoted him as saying, "A fellow asked me that once, and I said 'I don't know', but I do know people who know how much they are worth generally aren't worth much.''^^1^^ Was this an eccentric billionaire's put-on? Certainly not.

US Professor Bertram Gross who tried to show the place megamillionaires occupy in the United States discovered the same thing: "If you ask how much a yacht costs, J. Pierpont Morgan once said, you're not rich enough to afford one. To this old principle, another may now be added: If you really know how much money you have, then you're not rich. The really rich cannot possibly calculate the present market value of their real estate, stocks, art or jewelry collections, bonds, trust funds, notes, or cash-surrender value of life insurance---and may even have trouble keeping track of many bank deposits in various countries. If a member of the Ultra-Rich is asked a question on total assets or net worth, as Nelson Rockefeller was asked in the congressional hearings before ascending (in reality, ``descending'') to the vice-presidency, he must use the services of experts on financial statements.''

When the exact size of the fortunes are concealed for reasons other than arrogance, the ultrarich, the dollar princes Gross calls them, "report no income whatsoever to the government, since they can escape U.S. income taxes by holding taxexempt bonds and various foreign investments. What is more, many of the rich pay no taxes at all---or little more taxes than the run-of-the-mill office worker whose taxes are deducted at the source. Yet of those who paid taxes on reported income 1,779 persons reported to the Internal Revenue Service in 1978

that during 1977 they received incomes of $1 million or more."¹ Still, there were 520,000 millionaires in the US in 1979 as compared with 121,000 in 1969 and 27,000 in 1953.

The ultrarich stand out among these ordinary millionaires. Economist Paul Samuelson (who has himself become a millionaire), lamented: "If we made an income pyramid out of a child's blocks, with each layer portraying $1,000 of income, the peak would be far higher than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us would be within a yard of the ground.''^^2^^ Those who have large fortunes know how to translate property into power. They are the ones who head the establishment that runs the United States.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines the word ``establishment'' as "an exclusive group of powerful people who rule a government or society by means of private agreements or decisions." Referring to this definition, Gross emphasizes that "the American Establishment is not just a network of State leaders. Nor is it merely a coalition of private governments. It is an interweaving of two structures---- policy and economy---that under industrial capitalism have never been independent of each other. It is the modern partnership of big business and big government.. . Private agreements and decisions---even well-protected secrecy---play a large role in its operations; this adds to the Establishment's inherent mystery. It is why people often refer to it as the 'invisible government'." While others, if you will, call it the ``cryptocracy''.

It is hard to say how many people make up the establishment. For understandable reasons all estimates are pure guesswork. Take the opinion of Robert Townsend, a man who headed an average company before it was swallowed up by the giant International Telephone and Telegraph. "America," he pointed out, "is run largely by and for about 5,000 people who are actively supported by 50,000 beavers eager to take their places. I arrive at this figure this way: maybe 2,500 megacorporation executives, 500 politicans, lobbyists and Congressional committee chairmen, 500 investment bankers, 500 part-

~^^1^^ Gross, Friendly Fascism, pp. 60, 62.

~^^2^^ Paul A. Samuelson, Economics, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1973, p. 309.

~^^1^^ The Washington Post, August 28, 1982.

ners in major accounting firms, 500 labor brokers. If you don't like my figures make up your own.''^^1^^

Bertram Gross did. He estimated the top of the establishment to consist of 4,000 to 6,000 people, but gave the total number of 224,000 to 336,000. Too much? Here is what Gross said: "Less than two-tenths of one percent of the U.S. population. .. It is less than one hundredth of 1 percent (.0001) of the Tree World' under the shared leadership of the United States. Seldom if ever has such a small number of people done so much to guide the destinies of so many over such vast expanses of the planet.''^^2^^

Whatever margin of error there may have been in the above figures, it will not alter the overall picture: the present political and social structure of the United States does not jibe in the least with the common notion of ``democracy'' said to exist in that country and the West in general.

Inside the establishment there is close association of its leaders along many channels and through various societies whose activity is shrouded in secrecy. Ron Rosenbaum, an editor of Esquire called attention to the Skull and Bones society in a sensational article at the end of the 1970s. It is said to have been founded at Yale University something like a hundred years ago. No few scions of the most privileged US families have been members of the society which calls itself masonic. Rosenbaum lists prominent US statesman of the 30s and 40s Henry Stimson, Henry Luce, and many others, among its members.

He insists that in recent decades Skull and Bones membership has been a kind of preparatory course for jobs with the CIA, and certainly not in rank-and-file capacities. "You could ask Bill Bundy or Bill Buckley, both of whom went into the G.I.A. after leaving Bones---or George Bush who ran the C.I.A.," Rosenbaum writes, "whether their Skull and Bones experience was useful training for the clandestine trade. (`Spook', the Yale slang word for secret society member, is, of course, Agency slang for spy)... But couldn't the Agency use old Bonesmen to recruit new ones?" and so on, and so forth.

Referring to his many years of study, Rosenbaum maintains that the Skull and Bones society, and it isn't the only one the US ruling class has, is functionally "a kind of ongoing informal establishment eugenics project bringing vigorous new genes into the bloodlines of Stimsonian elite". Members of the society are tied to each other for life by business and family links. Anyone joining the society knows he will be taken care of.

``You could ask J. Richardson Dilworth, the Bonesman who now manages the Rockefeller fortune," Rosenbaum says, "just how wealthy the Bones society is and whether it's time that each new initiative gets a no-strings gift of fifteen thousand dollars cash and guaranteed financial security for life.''^^1^^ He occupies a prominent place in business and politics, or wherever else, and a leading place without fail.

Mystery, mystery, mystery.

The New Right, or however else it may be called in the United States, has mounted an open offensive all down the line after the Reagan administration came to power. In 1982 an interesting book appeared in the United States delving into the background of the top 100 of Ronald Reagan's officials. The 750-odd pages of the volume contain more than enough proof that they are all, practically without exception, not simply wealthy but mostly very wealthy. In the foreword to the book. Ralph Nader writes: "This is unabashedly, a government of the wealthy." Certainly, it was not the President who picked the men one by one; it was what is described as "the kitchen Cabinet", a group of close-knit, wealthy friends of Mr. Reagan's who groomed him for the California governorship and the Presidency.^^2^^

The ``fathers'' have managed to raise a ``brood'' of successors. In the foreword to a book portraying the leaders of the New Right, Reagan said in so many words:

``Perhaps the most interesting thing about the conservative movement today is thnt many of its leaders---perhaps a majority of them---are members of a generation most frequently

~^^1^^ Ron Rosenbaum, "An Elegy for Mumbo Jumbo" in Esquire, September 1977.

~^^2^^ Ronald Brownsleiri and Nina Easton, Reagan's Ruling Class. Portraits of the President's Top One Hundred Officials, Pantheon Books New York, 1983, pp. XV-XVI.

~^^1^^ The New York Times Book Review, April 30, 1972.

~^^2^^ Gross, Friendly Fascism, pp. 55-58.

identified with violent antiwar demonstrations, the drug culture, Jane Fonda and . . . the high-water mark of radical leftist activism. But somehow, while others were burning flags and conducting sit-ins, they managed to get an education at colleges and universities where liberal and radical orthodoxy were taught with evangelical fervor. What's more, they emerged tempered by adversity on the campus and with a deep dedication to the values and institutions the radicals have sought to subvert.''^^1^^

True enough, these people are determined and resolute today they are hellbent on galvanizing capitalism. This leads to reaction in US domestic and foreign policy. Still what these people do in modern-day America must not make us give up our historical optimism. If only for the one reason that they will scarcely succeed in blocking the general line toward progress.

As we see from a political review in the Washington Post at the end of the summer of 1982, "Reagan is presumably familiar with the message of President Eisenhower, who wrote in his diary in November 1954 [Eisenhower's diaries were first published in 1981.---N.Y.] that, far from appeasing or reasoning with the dyed-in-the wool reactionary fringe, we should completely ingore it and when necessary repudiate it. . . Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security and eliminate labor and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our history.''^^2^^

Yet the Reagan administration is attempting all these things.

A siloed US intercontinental ballistic missile, 1982

~^^1^^ James C. Roberts, The Conservative Decade. Emerging Leaden of the 1980s, Arlington House, Westport, Conn., 1980, p. VIII. * The Washington Post, August 29, 1982.

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