John F. Kennedy Quotes

This covert project — PBSUCCESS — to destabilize Guatemala was exposed by the Guatemalan government. To minimize the embarrassment in the U. S., the PBSUCCESS CIA staff asked headquarters to fabricate sensational stories to keep newspapers and the fledgling TV news busy and distracted from covering the Guatemala story that the CIA was trying to destabilize the government in order to bring about regime change. The CIA was prohibited by law from doing this but the agency at that time ignored many laws. It is not known if the phony stories were actually planted at that time.

Actually the United States has a long history in interfering with foreign elections throughtout Latin American Countries, Europe, Asia,, and Africa. Russia also has been trying to tilt elections recently in Eastern Europe and befroe the COld War the International Communist Party was involved trying to swing elections since shortly after the Russin Revolution. Before that the Czars agents were involved in many foreign elections. But the United States and Russia historically are relative newcomers and rank amateurs in interering with foireign elections when compared with Germany and France and the Champion--Great Britain who controlled much of the world and very often promoting democratic values like elections throughtout the world and then workign to manipulate those elections. Japan and Chine did much less of this historically. Instead they just conquored other counties and placed their puppets in charge. What was new in teh 2016 Russian interference in the American Election was the fact that it was done by hacking computers. Putin had accused Hillary Clinton of Interfering with the Russian election when he last ran for President by funing Russian organziations that oppo

Ailes suggested plan was not implemented by President Nixon. However. Ailes, an arch conservative who has always believed the media was biased against conservatism, later implemented his idea very successfully. This idea was the intellectual forerunner" to Fox News, which Ailes launched as a "fair and balanced" news network in 1996. The Nixon Administration however, concerned about the extremes of many of his recommendations finally fired him, which turned out to be very positive for Ailes career thereafter.

Although it seems incredible to us today, thousands of people were arrested and prosecuted under the Espionage Act. The government particularly targeted leftists such as Eugene V. Debs, Bill Haywood, J. Philip Randolph, Victor Berger, John Reed, Max Eastman, and Emma Goldman. Debs was sentenced to 20 years in prison for criticizing the Act itself.

The 40 Committee was a secret committee of officials to deal with major national security covert operations possibilities. Chile had democratically elected Salvador Allende, a strong socialist, as President. He then, as he had promised in his campaign, begun to nationalize mining and other heavy industry and nationalized the very large farms. Kissinger and some others thought that Allende might probably transform Chile to communist state. The committee was discussing whether or not the United States should, via covert operations, try and destabilize or overthrow the Allende government. There was a strong minority aristocracy of the wealthy who would definitely support such an activity. Kissinger argued for intervention and some others observed that Allende had been fairly elected as a leftist by the people. Kissinger made this famous statement, and America covertly though the CIA worked with the Chilean right wing and fascists to overthrow Allende. The military, having been given the “green light” started attacking the Presidential Palace. Allende made a radio speech to the nation. A few hours later, the military seized the palace and reported that Allende had committed suicide.

Kissinger stating that the US should “correct” the election “mistakes” of other countries was of course Top Secret and the official US position was to support the right of any people to elect their preferred leaders. Normally, the public would never have seen the transcript of the meeting until many decades had passed but part of the transcript found their way to a manuscript of a book about the CIA. That agency went to the courts to block the publication and Kissinger’s statement. However, although the quote was removed from the book, enough people had now seen it, and the quote was leaked.

The quote is historically important for the real story of what really happened in Chile as General Pinochet who seized power turned out to be guilty of Crimes Against Humanity and Allende is today a national hero and martyr. In addition, it is a wonderful example of “overclassification”. After the action was completed, why should the American Public not know that its Secretary of State did not believe in democratic elections if the people would elect communists? --especially when the official stated policy he was presenting was just the opposite. The argument faded when the Watergate Scandal broke and consumed America’s attention.

This was the directive that gave the CIA authority for its many covert operations.

This quote is very interesting because it shows the Secretary of State complimenting the CIA for breaking Chilean law and interfering in the internal affairs of another nation.

Kellis was the first of the Central Intelligence Agency whistle blowers. The President acted promptly on the letter and appointed General Jimmy Doolittle to conduct an investigation which confirmed the Kellis letter.

This fact was one of the reasons that McCarthyism and HUAC were able to get traction. The Red Scare paranoids found something to really worry about. They overreacted, sensing the problem not as one of a large number of misguided and naïve people trying to help America do better, but as active spies controlled by the Kremlin who wanted to destroy the American way of life. There were two basic reasons these naïve officials acted that way. Many of them had not forgotten the devastation of the American people in the Great Depression and believed that capitalism had almost failed completely and the rough edge had to be taken off American capitalism by injecting some socialist principles such as stronger labor unions, ending racial and religious discrimination, controlling monopolies, and regulating critical industries. They also were mindful of the fact that the Russians were bearing the brunt of the WWII casualties—military and civilian—while killing more of the Germans and capturing more German occupied territory than the other allies together, yet they were not receiving the same level of assistance—technical, intelligence, economic and political as the British. They saw helping the Russians as saving American lives on the battlefield by making them more effective and keeping German soldiers and weapons away from the Western front and Americans. They also remembered that many in Congress were opposed to our entering WWII in Europe until Germany declared war on America. They had in many cases been apologists for Fascism and passionate enemies of communism. Some American industrialists like Henry Ford were anti-Semitic and overt admirers of Hitler. {586985} So these officials tried to redress the imbalance that existed while at the same time little was really known about Soviet Russia and the Stalin excesses that were as bad as some of Hitler’s. {634969} The only information Americans had were the terrible casualties the Russians were taking and the in kind that they were dishing out to the Germans. The number of Soviet spies in America were few and commensurate with the number of agents we had in Russia. But few Americans realized the difficulty the U. S. and the rest of the democratic world would have with Russia after the war was won.

See {637464} for the trigger for the FBI to write this report. It was the report that verified that the CIA had hired the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro which President Johnson had heard but the CIA never revealed it to Johnson or the Warren Commission investigations JFK’s assassination. The full document was kept secret and was not yet declassified in 2014 when this quotation was entered in the collection.

The U. S. Counterintelligence team identified several KGB agents who were stealing American technology in various forms. Gus W. Weiss of the National Security Staff devised a plan where instead of arresting the Russian agents, FBI agents posed as mid-level science and technology workers who could be bribed to turn over American technology. Then they provided technology that did not work which the Soviets then proceeded to engineer and fabricate the techniques which never worked correctly. By the time the Russians found out they had wasted much effort and money at spying and engineering.

This was a big factor that made the Red Scare so damaging.

The United States was opposed to elections at the beginning of the Vietnam war. The Viet Min, the Russian and Chinese recognized government of Ho Chi Min, was extremely well organized as a result of their cohesive organization and victory over the French Colonialists. At the urging of the French, we supported the previous Vietnam Emperor who the French had supported. However his popularity was limited to Saigon and French Colonial centers. The majority of the population saw him as the collaborator who was propped up by the hated French. There was no way that the Communist Viet Min would lose in an election. There had been no time for the people to see what peacetime living under the communists was like, and what they knew of the Emperor, they did not like. It was important to keep Vietnam from falling into the hands of the Communists. Once they won one election they would control the machinery of government to be sure that they won all subsequent elections even if the people wanted a change in government. The German newspaper thought that we should stick to our principles and allow a free election and live with the consequences. In retrospect, we would be where we ended up anyway with the Communist Viet Min in totalitarian control of the country and we would have saved many lives and much money.