On Edwin Kaiser and Related Topics

[Cliff Varnell]

In which David Talbot peddles a fiction wholly endorsed by Jim DiEugenio.

Devil's Chessboard, David Talbot, pg 560:

Emphasis added to the bullshit in the text.

Over the final months of JFK's presidency, a clear consensus took shape within America's deep state: Kennedy was a
national security threat. For the good of the country, he must be removed. And Dulles was the only man with the
stature, connections, and decisive will to make something of this enormity happen. He had already assembled a killing
machine to operate overseas. Now he prepared to bring it home to Dallas.

Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: "On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge's own military assistant."

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate "with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy." By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running "Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general."

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, "Kenny O'Donnell (JFK's appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman."

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Sagon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, "John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters," although Dunn's role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for "special operations," could act without hindrance.

On December 15, 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev landed in Washington DC on the first stop of a two week tour
of the States.

The next day he showed up at W. Averell Harriman's pad in Manhattan.

From Spanning the Century The Life of W. Averell Harriman, by Rudy Abramson, pg. 575

In his second-floor drawing room, Harriman gathered leaders from mining, manfacturing, oil, chemicals, banking,
and insurance industries, including John D. Rockefeller III; General David Sarnoff, chairman of RCA; Frank Pace,
chairman of General Dynamics Corporation; W. Alton Jones, chairman of Cities Service Corporation; and John J. McCloy,
chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. By his estimate, scribbled on a yellow legal pad before Khrushchev arrived, they
represented assets of some $38 billion. Among them, as witnesses to history, were a few men of ordinary means,
former ambassadors, educators, and, notably, Rockefeller Foundation president Dean Rusk, and Harvard economist
John Kenneth Galbraith, the latter having invited himself as a "representative of the proletariat."

Surround by Picassos and Derains, their voices muffled by Persian carpets, the capitalist Titans greeted the Communist
chieftain one by one, then sat in a semi-circle savoring caviar and sipping champagne and New York wine as Averell
conducted his exposition of capitalism, war profits, and American politics. No one present, nor any of their friends,
he and the others assured the guest of honor, favored world tensions. The assembled war profiteers, said the host, were
men who'd champion disarmament the moment it became safe for the United States. There was not a hint, however, that
mingling with the millionaires did anything except reinforce Khrushchev's belief that he was then in the presence of the
men who controlled America far more than Eisenhower and the members of Congrss he had met in Washington.

One testimonial to free eterprise followed another. And when the Soviet leader reasserted his stubborn belief that the
men present composed the country's ruling circle, Galbraith later tattled, "Somebody demurred, but in perfunctory fashion.
After it was over, Harriman insisted that the Soviet leader had gained insights of "real importance."