Tomorrow is 50th anniversary of Truman Dulles Clash over WaPost Op Ed. Help spread this Ray McGovern

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

article. Write an intro LINE so THAT THE CLEAR MEDIA CIA IMPLICATIONS ARE CLEAR FOR ALL PEOPLE NOT JUST JFK FOLK. People are generally REALLY interested in this CIA WaPost connection especially because it is written by Ray McGovern who has major credibility on the left. So it must be sent wide. Full spectrum.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/122909b.html

[Peter Lemkin]

If one has a copy of JFK & the Unspeakable at hand [and no one should be without one!!], do take a look at his few pages on the Truman editorial on the CIA - and its follow-up. This is a little known aspect of the post-assassination suspicions of the CIA, even within those who claim to be JFK researchers. There is more to the story than just that he wrote the op ed and that it only appeared in some of the newspaper's printing on Dec. 22, 1963. The more is discussed by Douglass in the text and notes.

[Paul Rigby]

If one has a copy of JFK & the Unspeakable at hand [and no one should be without one!!], do take a look at his few pages on the Truman editorial on the CIA - and its follow-up. This is a little known aspect of the post-assassination suspicions of the CIA, even within those who claim to be JFK researchers. There is more to the story than just that he wrote the op ed and that it only appeared in some of the newspaper's printing on Dec. 22, 1963. The more is discussed by Douglass in the text and notes.

The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Tuesday, 24 December 1963, p.13

Truman and the CIA

By Richard Starnes

The murmuring chorus of Americans who are deeply concerned with the growing power and headlong wilfulness of the Central Intelligence Agency has been joined by former President Truman.

Mr. Truman must be accounted an expert witness in this matter, because it was under his administration that the CIA came into being. In a copyrighted article he wrote recently that the CIA had strayed wide of the purposes for which he had organized it.

"It has," he wrote, "become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."

For writing substantially the same thing from South Viet Nam last fall, this reporter was (and still is) subjected to a calculated behind-the-scenes campaign of opprobrium at the hands of the CIA. So, indeed, has the United States' ambassador to Saigon been subjected to the same sort of behind-the-hand attack, on the theory that he was the source of my account of the CIA's heedless bureaucratic arrogance in Saigon.

Mr. Lodge, it is now charged by CIA apologists, destroyed the effectiveness of one of the CIA's most skilful agents. It is also charged that this reporter violated a gentleman's agreement in naming the agent.

Both charges are false, meaching and disingenuous.

The name of the agent, hurriedly summoned home from Saigon within 24 hours of my account of his stewardship of the huge spook operations, was John Richardson. In my several conversations with Ambassador Lodge, Richardson's name never passed between us.

It was, indeed, not necessary for any wayfaring journals to go to any such exalted figures to descry the activities of the CIA's station chief in Saigon. Richardson, a frequent visitor at the presidential palace and a close adviser to the devious and powerful Ngo Dinh Nhu, was widely known in the Vietnamese capital. Until Mr. Lodge replaced Frederick Nolting as ambassador, most knowledgeable Americans and sophisticated Vietnamese regarded Richardson as the most powerful foreigner in Viet Nam.

It is nonsense to say that Lodge destroyed Richardson's value as a CIA agent. In Saigon, Richardson was as clandestine as a calliope with a full head of steam. It is, moreover, a libel to allege (as high CIA officials have alleged) that this reporter violated an agreement to shield Richardson's identity. In all my assiduous inquiries about the man, never once was it suggested that there was an agreement to keep his identity secret. If there had been any such agreement, I would, of course, have respected it even though it would have been plainly absurd in view of Richardson's notoriety.

This is, unfortunately, more than a parochial dispute between a reporter and a writhing, unlovely bureaucracy. The President of the United States himself has been misled by the CIA mythology regarding just how and by whom Richardson's utility as chief resident spook was destroyed. Neither Lodge nor any journalist cast Richardson in his role in Saigon. If CIA chief John McCone really believes that his man in Saigon was compromised by my dispatches (and presumably he does believe this or he would not have planted and cultivated the tale as thoroughly as he has) then he does not know what is going on in the huge, bumbling apparatus he nominally leads.

Mr. Truman knows whereof he speaks. Wise in the ways of malignant bureaucracy, he knows that unfettered and unaccountable power such as is vested in the CIA is bound to feed upon itself until it poses a threat to the very free institutions it was founded to safeguard. No man alive knows the enormous power that is now vested in the CIA, nor the wealth it dispenses, nor the policy it makes. Most people in government would be appalled if they knew that already the CIA has overflowed its huge new headquarters building in McLean, Va., but it is fact that it has done.

There is far, far too much about the CIA that is unknown to far too many Americans. We will, occasionally and from time to time, twang this same sackbut. It is not a pretty tune it plays, but it is an important one.

[Paul Rigby]

New York World-Telegram & Sun, 23 December 1963, p.18

Editorial: AEC and CIA

In a report just released, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (of Congress) takes sharp issue with Defense Secretary McNamara's decision not to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

The point is not whether the committee or McNamara is right, but that a Congressional committee, with some authority behind it, is in a position to analyze the McNamara decision.

No committee of Congress is in position to perform a similar service with respect to our intelligence agencies.

The Central Intelligence Agency, for instance, operates in high secrecy and there is no watchdog group in Congress informed enough and close enough to the agency to do knowledgeably what the Joint Atomic Energy Committee has done.

Former President Truman, in his recent copyrighted comment, said he thinks the CIA has strayed far afield from the purposes for which it was created in his administration.

Some searching questions should be asked, he said. But there is no authoritative committee in Congress to ask them.

Whether the Atomic Energy Committee's size-up on the nuclear ship is right or not is not as important as the assurance that there is a bi-partisan, well-equipped committee in Congress to keep a constant check on these matters, for the guidance of the public and especially Congress.

The secret, vital intelligence field should be given the same treatment.

[Albert Doyle]

I'm pretty sure today is the anniversary of the article but Dulles' confrontation with Truman in Missouri came later according to DiEugenio in 'Destiny Betrayed'.


In today's national security safety state the article wouldn't get past the gate-keepers. Heck, none of the preselected, compliant presidents would even bother to write it.