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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
10. CIA and Secret Government largely a creation of the GOP
Mon Feb 23, 2015, 03:26 PM
Feb 2015

Which is, come to mention it, who most benefits from CIA Secret Government.

From Stephen Kinzer's The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulls, and Their Secret World War



(Allen Dulles's) ability to press his case (for the establishment of the CIA) improved sharply after the 1946 congressional elections, in which Republicans took control of both houses for the first time in sixteen years. The new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Arthur Vandenberg, named one of Allen's old OSS comrades, Lawrence Houston, to his staff. Houston had directed many covert operations and shared Allen's love of them. Together they drafted a bill that would create a National Security Council to advise the president on foreign policy, and a Central Intelligence Agency authorized to collect information and to act on it. "Wild Bill" Donovan, the widely admired former OSS director, lobbied for the bill in Congress but found some members reluctant. Several wanted State Department, not a secret new agencey, to oversee covert operations, but their case was weakened when Secretary of State Marshall announced that he did not want his department to be involved in such operations. The bill made its way through Congress in a matter of weeks. on July 26, 1947, Truman signed it into law.

[font color="green"]"There were strong objections to having a single agency with the authority both to collect secret intelligence and to process and evaluate it for the President," according to one history. "The objections were overruled, and CIA became a unique organization among Western intelligence services, which uniformly keep their secret operations separate from their overall intelligence activities."

The new National Security Act contained a tantalizing clause worded to allow endlessly elastic interpretation. It authorized the CIA to perform not only duties spelled out by law, but also "such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct." This gave it the legal right to take any action, anywhere in the world, as long as the president approved.[/font color]


"The fear generated by competition with a nation like the USSR, which had elevated control of every aspect of society to a science, encouraged the belief in the United States that it desparately needed military might and counterespionage by agencies that could outdo the Soviet spymasters," the historian Robert Dallek has written. "Dean Acheson (who would succeed Marshall as secretary of state) had the 'gravest forebodings' about the CDIA, and 'warned the President atht neither he nor the National Security Council nor anyone else would be in a poistition to know what it was doing or to control it.' But to resist the agency's creation seemed close to treason."

--Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulls, and Their Secret World War, pp. 88



The Dulles Brothers played a major role in getting us into Vietnam and bringing the BFEE -- the Buy-Partisan/War Party/Money Party -- to power for much of the 20th and 21st century.



Kirkus Reviews via Amazon:

A joint biography of John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, who led the United States into an unseen war that decisively shaped today’s world

During the 1950s, when the Cold War was at its peak, two immensely powerful brothers led the United States into a series of foreign adventures whose effects are still shaking the world.

John Foster Dulles was secretary of state while his brother, Allen Dulles, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In this book, Stephen Kinzer places their extraordinary lives against the background of American culture and history. He uses the framework of biography to ask: Why does the United States behave as it does in the world?

The Brothers explores hidden forces that shape the national psyche, from religious piety to Western movies—many of which are about a noble gunman who cleans up a lawless town by killing bad guys. This is how the Dulles brothers saw themselves, and how many Americans still see their country’s role in the world.

Propelled by a quintessentially American set of fears and delusions, the Dulles brothers launched violent campaigns against foreign leaders they saw as threats to the United States. These campaigns helped push countries from Guatemala to the Congo into long spirals of violence, led the United States into the Vietnam War, and laid the foundation for decades of hostility between the United States and countries from Cuba to Iran.

The story of the Dulles brothers is the story of America. It illuminates and helps explain the modern history of the United States and the world.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013



Terry Gross interviews Kinzer on the book:

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

Most importantly: Thank you, Ichingcarpenter.
great post as usual Ichingcarpenter Feb 2015 #1
CIA and Secret Government largely a creation of the GOP Octafish Feb 2015 #10
That is a book now at the top of my "must read" list. hifiguy Feb 2015 #17
Online sampler... Octafish Feb 2015 #20
ISIS ISIS ISIS Fear Fear Fear -- "They're everywhere" and "They are going to kill us all!" dissentient Feb 2015 #2
Fear. Why fear? Fear burns memory into our brains in a special way. Octafish Feb 2015 #3
The nationalism that is integral to the far-right's mentality is a danger as well. pampango Feb 2015 #4
Conservatives *loathe* fair competition Fumesucker Feb 2015 #6
True. They love nationalism, racism, sexism - any way to divide the world into smaller and smaller pampango Feb 2015 #9
Important points about the Invisible Hand and Globalism, pampango. Octafish Feb 2015 #12
I agree about how conservatives/corporatists operate. My point is that they can do that pampango Feb 2015 #13
I couldn't disagree with you more. Waiting For Everyman Feb 2015 #14
And I with you. pampango Feb 2015 #15
+ 7 billion. CJCRANE Feb 2015 #30
you left obama out of the picture. TPP anyone| nt msongs Feb 2015 #5
First graph under first grey quote box... Octafish Feb 2015 #11
Your mind hasn't yet reached the required softness for malleability whatchamacallit Feb 2015 #7
Plato said it's like Play-doh. Octafish Feb 2015 #16
I fear Girl Scouts more than weasels. OilemFirchen Feb 2015 #8
To the Greatest Page woo me with science Feb 2015 #18
Benito Mussolini summed up our situation today way back then. Octafish Feb 2015 #24
Recommend. Great post, thanks, Octafish. nt Zorra Feb 2015 #19
Poppy took charge when Reagan was prez. Octafish Feb 2015 #27
The globalists support and arm the terrorists (I see the Saudis in the background there) sabrina 1 Feb 2015 #21
Explosive Saudi 9/11 Evidence Still Ignored By Media Octafish Feb 2015 #22
Thanks for the thread Octafish. CanSocDem Feb 2015 #23
One begets the other. Recommended. mmonk Feb 2015 #25
Know your BFEE: Judge Laurence Silberman, Go-To Guy of the Military Industrial Complex Octafish Feb 2015 #28
Thank you. The pleasure is mine. mmonk Feb 2015 #29
Kicked for the fine display of players… MrMickeysMom Feb 2015 #26
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