{"id":88395,"date":"2017-11-04T09:07:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T13:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=88395"},"modified":"2017-11-04T09:07:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T13:07:56","slug":"jfk-assassination-former-c-i-a-director-allen-dulles-1-suspect-video-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=88395","title":{"rendered":"JFK Assassination: Former C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles #1 Suspect (Video 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>The Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government: The Deadly Legacy of Ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles Pt. 2<\/h2>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/embed\/story\/2015\/10\/14\/the_rise_of_america_s_secret\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div class=\"story_summary\">\n<div class=\"text\">\n<p>DemocracyNow.org<\/p>\n<p>Extended web-only interview with David Talbot, author of \u201cThe Devil\u2019s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>, and the Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government,\u201d about how Dulles\u2019 time at the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>helped shape the current national security state. Talbot discusses Dulles\u2019 close ties to The New York Times, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hr class=\"hidden-xs\" \/>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"transcript\" class=\"mobile_anchor_target\">\n<h3 class=\"transcript\">Transcript<\/h3>\n<div class=\"grey_description fine_print\">This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.<\/div>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0This is\u00a0<em>Democracy Now!<\/em>, democracynow.org,\u00a0<em>The War and Peace Report<\/em>. I\u2019m Amy Goodman. Our guest is David Talbot. His book is\u00a0<em>The Devil\u2019s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>, and the Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government<\/em>. He\u2019s the founder and former\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CEO<\/span>\u00a0and editor-in-chief of\u00a0<em>Salon<\/em>. Let\u2019s start with the title,\u00a0<em>The Devil\u2019s Chessboard<\/em>. Why did you call it that, David?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0<em>The Devil\u2019s Chessboard<\/em>\u00a0refers to the fact that the Dulles brothers\u2014John Foster Dulles, who\u2019s secretary of state under Eisenhower, and his brother, Allen Dulles, who I focus on, head of the CIA\u2014they loved to play chess with each other. They would go at it for hours, even when Allen Dulles was about to be married. He kept his wife-to-be waiting around while the two brothers went at it. And they tended to look at the world as their chessboard. People were pawns to be manipulated. So I felt that was a\u2014you know, an apt metaphor.<\/p>\n<p>But, Amy, I wanted to go back to what you were talking about\u2014alternative media\u2014before this. I think\u2014I just want to underline what you were saying about how essential it is to have countervoices. They are the lifeblood of democracy. And shows like yours and public radio are just essential. You know, my book is having a hard time getting through the media gatekeepers. They don\u2019t want to hear about this, and in part because the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>, particularly under Allen Dulles, but even today, are masters at manipulating the media. I\u2019ve been on shows and been bumped. I was scheduled to be on shows at the last minute, strangely. I was supposed to write something for\u00a0<em>Politico<\/em>\u00a0magazine. Someone there called the book a \u201cmasterpiece.\u201d They wanted the book to be, you know, showcased there. Instead, I was bumped from\u00a0<em>Politico<\/em>. And an\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/magazine\/story\/2015\/10\/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197\">article<\/a>\u00a0based on recently leaked\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0documents\u2014conveniently leaked\u2014was written by a former\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reporter, Phil Shenon, and what he did was to basically accuse Fidel Castro of assassinating President Kennedy. This has been a\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0disinformation line for years. So the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0is still manipulating the media, and it\u2019s essential that independent media exists, like this.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Can you talk about the relationship between\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, and Allen Dulles?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, the Sulzberger family had a long relationship with Dulles. When he was inaugurated as\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0director, one of the Sulzbergers wrote to him, saying, \u201cThis is the best news I\u2019ve heard in years.\u201d In another letter, he calls him affectionately \u201cAlly.\u201d They were on a first name basis. They belonged to the same clubs. They were masters at\u2014the Dulles brothers, particularly Allen\u2014at manipulating the media. After the Warren Report comes out, the official investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the top editors at\u00a0<em>Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0writes to Allen Dulles. And I\u2019m getting all this from Allen Dulles\u2019s own files; he was very proud of the fact that he could\u2014he had the media in the palm of his hand. But this\u00a0<em>Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0editor writes to him, \u201cThank you so much for basically directing our coverage of the Warren Report. We couldn\u2019t have done it without you.\u201d So, you know, this was the kind of cozy relationship that existed between the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0and the media in those years.\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CBS<\/span>,\u00a0<em>Newsweek<\/em>,\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0<em>The Washington Post<\/em>, they were all in the palm of the CIA\u2019s hands. They all lived together in Georgetown. They had cocktail parties together. It was a very cozy set.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0You know, in Guatemala today, there has been a popular uprising. It has been quite astounding. Otto P\u00e9rez Molina,\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">OPM<\/span>, the president, was thrown out, is in jail right now. I wanted to go to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2015\/8\/27\/uprising_in_guatemala_could_anti_corruption\">Allan Nairn<\/a>, longtime investigative reporter, who was in Guatemala during this period. And this also goes back to 1954. But Allan Nairn has been covering Guatemala since the 1980s.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span class=\"caps\">ALLAN<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">NAIRN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0This is an oligarchy in Guatemala which kills its own unionists, which kills peasants who try to organize the plantations, which works hand in glove with Washington and is now trying to hold onto their power, because, for the first time, it\u2019s under threat. I mean, this is a historic moment. It all began in 1954, when the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0invaded Guatemala, overthrew a democratically elected government and put the army in power. And now, the people have risen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0So, that\u2019s Allan Nairn talking about this most recent uprising. But, David Talbot, can you go back to 1954, where we left off in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2015\/10\/13\/the_rise_of_americas_secret_government\">Part 1<\/a>\u00a0of our conversation, and talk about what actually happened? Who was Allen Dulles, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0director, and his brother, John Foster Dulles, the state\u2014the secretary of state, working for?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, of course, their original power goes back to Sullivan &amp; Cromwell, this very powerful Wall Street law firm that John Foster Dulles ran and where Allen Dulles worked. And among their clients was United Fruit. United Fruit, of course, was this colossus, this corporate colossus, that ruled much of Latin America, owned, you know, vast acreage in Guatemala and many other countries. They weren\u2019t just a banana company. They were a multinational real estate company. They owned often the utilities. And they owned the local political elites in those countries.<\/p>\n<p>In the early &#8217;50s, Jacobo \u00c1rbenz, this young military officer, a reform officer, starts to emerge as a potential leader. He runs for president and is elected by his people on a reform campaign. And one of the first things he does, of course, in this country that&#8217;s basically a medieval country ruled by land barons, is to begin to nationalize some of the land, that\u2019s not being even used by United [Fruit], and give it to the people themselves, the farmers, to work. And this provokes a major backlash from United Fruit, from the local political elites, the oligarchs, and from the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>. Allen Dulles, working for Eisenhower as\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0director, portrays Jacobo \u00c1rbenz as a dangerous communist\u2014he wasn\u2019t\u2014and prepares to overthrow him in a military coup, which does occur.<\/p>\n<p>What I tell the story of, mostly I focus on, is the tragic aftermath of that coup, because not only for the \u00c1rbenz family, which, in some ways, were the Kennedys of Guatemala\u2014glamorous, young couple, Jacobo and Mar\u00eda \u00c1rbenz, their children, very good-looking, wealthy, but very committed to uplifting the poor in that country. And after the coup, they\u2019re sent into a terrible exile. No country will touch them, because\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0pressure. The\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0and the State Department pressure every country, from Mexico throughout Latin America, not to take the \u00c1rbenz family in. They\u2019re finally forced to go behind the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia to seek exile. They\u2019re not happy there. They finally end up back in Mexico, but they\u2019re under tight supervision. The family is haunted. It\u2019s stalked wherever it goes. One of his daughters commits suicide. And Jacobo \u00c1rbenz himself ends up dead under mysterious circumstances\u2014scalded to death in a bathtub in a Mexico City hotel. His family today believes that he was assassinated. And given the fact that the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0had a death list of left-wing figures, journalists, political leaders, after the coup that were to be eliminated, that, you know, is a distinct possibility.<\/p>\n<p>So, these ripples of tragedy, after these coups, go on and on. You know, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0and Allen Dulles told Eisenhower after the Guatemala coup, \u201cOh, it was a clean coup. You know, hardly anyone died.\u201d But the fact is, tens of thousands of people died in the killing fields of Guatemala as a result of that coup, and that violence continues today.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And wasn\u2019t it also a precursor to what happened with the Bay of Pigs? Move forward like, what, six years, and explain what happened.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Right. Well, emboldened by how easy it was to do a regime change in Guatemala, yes, when Fidel Castro comes to power in Cuba, he again antagonizes the same corporate interests that the Dulles brothers represent\u2014oil companies, like the Rockefeller-owned Standard Oil, and others, agribusiness firms. So they believe that Fidel has to be eliminated, and they begin plotting, under the Eisenhower administration, with Eisenhower\u2019s approval, to kill, to assassinate Fidel Castro. And, in fact, at one point, Fidel Castro, who was beloved in this country after the revolution\u2014he had overthrown a thug, a Mafia-backed thug, Batista, a very corrupt and violent dictatorship. He was seen as the future, and very glamorous, he and Che Guevara and so on. They would come to New York and would be mobbed by people in the streets. When they came to New York for a U.N. meeting in 1960, though, the Eisenhower administration was already pushing back, and no hotel would take them. Finally, a hotel in Midtown did take them, but there was\u2014they asked for so much money as security, they were basically blackmailing Fidel. He was outraged, and he ended up staying in a hotel in Harlem that took him in.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Hotel Theresa.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Hotel Theresa. And they stood up to this Washington pressure, the manager of that hotel, who was African-American. He had grown up in Jim Crow South. And he said, \u201cYou know, I know what it\u2019s like to be denied a roof over your head. This Cuban delegation can stay here.\u201d So it was a very\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Did he meet Malcolm X there?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0He did. It was a very dramatic moment. Malcolm X makes a visit to the Hotel Theresa. He squeezes into his suite, where there\u2019s dozens of people crammed. They have a very interesting encounter, Fidel and Malcolm. And it really changed their lives and had a big impact on both of those men for years afterwards. In fact, Malcolm said he was one of the few white men that he learned to respect and appreciate. And, by the way, there was an\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FBI<\/span>\u00a0guy taking notes the whole time in that hotel room, so we know some of what happened there and the dialogue, because of the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FBI<\/span>\u00a0report on this.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Who was it?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, his name was not revealed, but there was an agent surveilling him. But meanwhile, while Fidel is there, meeting with Khrushchev from the Soviet Union and Nasser from Egypt and the world leaders and embarrassing the Eisenhower administration, because here he\u2019s gone to Harlem, and, you know, no one else would take him in, in Midtown Manhattan\u2014meanwhile, the Mafia is meeting with\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0agents at the Plaza Hotel, just blocks away, plotting his assassination. So, a lot of intrigue in 1960 going on in New York. And then, to make it even more interesting, a young\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">JFK<\/span>, who\u2019s campaigning for president, after Fidel has left, shows up at the Hotel Theresa and basically says, \u201cThis is revolutionary ground I\u2019m standing on. And we should welcome the winds of change and the revolution, the future. We shouldn\u2019t be afraid of it.\u201d So, very end\u2014and begins to talk about the mortality rate of black infants in Harlem and many of the issues that are still current.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And yet, look at what President Kennedy, then President Kennedy, did, when it came to Cuba\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014what happened under his reign, from the Bay of Pigs to the endless assassination attempts of Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Kennedy did do a flip-flop, to an extent, after that. He came in as president. He was young. He was untested, under a lot of pressure from the national security people in his administration. He inherited the Bay of Pigs operation, the plans for that. He was basically told, \u201cLook, if you pull the plug on this thing, it\u2019s so far along now, there will be a major political backlash against you.\u201d So he was kind of sandbagged by the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>. He did go through with it, but he had no intention of widening it into an all-out U.S. military assault on the island, on Cuba. But that\u2019s what the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0had in mind. They knew that this motley crew of Cuban exiles they put together to invade the island wasn\u2019t sufficient to unseat Castro. But what they hoped and what they planned was that a young President Kennedy, as this invasion was bogged down on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs, would be forced then to send in the Marines and the U.S. Air Force to topple Castro.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And then, of course, the Cuban missile crisis, the closest we ever came to a nuclear war.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, but Kennedy stood his ground, and he didn\u2019t do that. And that was the beginning of his break, at the Bay of Pigs, between the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0and Cuba\u2014and President Kennedy. And then, yes, that became even more severe with the Cuban missile crisis the following year. Again, the military in this country and the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0thought that we could take, you know, Castro out. During the Cuban missile crisis, they were prepared to go to a nuclear war to do that. President Kennedy thought people like Curtis LeMay, who was head of the Air Force, General Curtis LeMay, was half-mad. He said, \u201cI don\u2019t even see this man in my\u2014you know, in my sight,\u201d because he was pushing for a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. And even years later, Curtis LeMay, after years after Kennedy is dead, in an interview that I quote from in the book, bitterly complains that Kennedy didn\u2019t take this opportunity to go nuclear over Cuba. So, President Kennedy basically, I think, saved my life\u2014I was 12 years old at the time\u2014saved a lot of our lives, because he did stand his ground. He took a hard line against the national security people and said, \u201cNo, we\u2019re going to peacefully resolve the Cuban missile crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And then President Kennedy, on November 22nd, 1963, was assassinated.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s right.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re talking to David Talbot, who is author of\u00a0<em>The Devil\u2019s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>, and the Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government<\/em>. What did you find when it came to Kennedy\u2019s assassination?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, first of all, after Kennedy did fire Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs, Dulles didn\u2019t get the memo. He went home to Georgetown and continued to operate from his home as if he were still running the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>. His top deputies came on a regular basis to meet with him. He\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0You had notes of his wife and his mistress.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s right. I found his daybook, who he was meeting with. I read his\u2014the correspondence. I read his mistress\u2019s diaries and journals.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Who was his mistress?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0A woman named Mary Bancroft, a very interesting woman, related to the gentleman who started or was the top editor at\u00a0<em>The Wall Street Journal<\/em>. She had aspirations of her own. She became a spy for Allen Dulles in Switzerland during World War II when they started their affair. And curiously, then, when his wife shows up in Switzerland at the end of the war, Clover Dulles, the two women become friends. Clover Dulles figures out what\u2019s been going on. She kind of gives it a pass. And the two women then form a tight bond throughout the rest of their lives. And their correspondence is fascinating. They both were patients of Carl Jung, one of the founding fathers of psychiatry in Switzerland.<\/p>\n<p>And they called Allen Dulles \u201cThe Shark,\u201d these two women, because they both knew the kind of man they were dealing with\u2014full of surface charm and, you know, a very popular party guest on the Washington circuit, but underneath a very cold man, a man who was capable of sending people to their death with the blink of an eye, a man who was capable of putting his own child, Allen Jr., in the hands of an experimental doctor who was working for the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0in the notorious\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">MKULTRA<\/span>\u00a0program, which Naomi Klein and others have written about.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Explain it very briefly, and what happened to Allen Jr.?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">MKULTRA<\/span>\u00a0was\u2014they called it the Manhattan Project of the mind. It was an attempt by the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>, funding\u2014millions of dollars\u2014funding scientists and doctors around the country, major institutions, to see if we could program people for whatever purpose. It was a mind control program. His son, Allen Jr., came back from the war, Korean War, with a piece of shrapnel in his brain. He was brain-damaged, and the family had difficulty with him. He was trying to find his way. And at one point, Allen Dulles put him in the hands of this scientist here in New York who did unspeakable sort of experiments on him involving insulin overdose therapy, which is a very traumatic therapy\u2014convulsions, sometimes resulting in death. His sister was appalled\u2014Allen Dulles\u2019s daughter\u2014when she went to visit him in the hospital. And it was from her that I got this story.<\/p>\n<p>Joan Dulles is a very amazing woman\u2014Joan Talley, as she\u2019s known today, a retired Jungian therapist in New Mexico, drives a Prius with an Obama sticker on it. I\u2019m sure her father is spinning in his grave. But she, herself, like many of us, at the age of 90 when I interviewed her, was grappling with this dark legacy in America, that played out within her own family. You know, she\u2019s looking back on this now and is appalled, in some way, that she\u2014it was a part of her life. But she\u2019s reading the books\u2014and I hope she reads mine\u2014and is coming to some kind of determination about her father.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And explain what\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">MKULTRA<\/span>\u00a0was used for.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well,\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">MKULTRA<\/span>, among other things, they were seeing if they could program a Manchurian candidate, assassins who would act in a robotic-like fashion to kill on\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0command. They were also using it as enhanced interrogation, as we call it today. Soviet prisoners who would fall into our hands, they were\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And the drug is actually?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, many different drugs, psychedelic\u2014LSD was one of the drugs. They subjected\u2014there was a particular place in Canada at the Allan Institute and McGill University in Canada, where one of these doctors, Dr. Ewen Cameron, he operated something called the sleep room, where women, many\u2014mostly women, and patients of his would be put. These were people who were suffering from common neurotic disorders, postpartum depression and so on. And they were put in this sleep room and, through massive doses of various psychedelic drugs, were put into a sleep state, and then tape loops were played over and over again in an attempt to erase their bad patterns of thinking, and often wiping out their memory. They would come out of these experiments not knowing their family, who they were. In one case, a woman was reduced to an infantile state. She couldn\u2019t use a toilet. And this was the wife of a Canadian\u2014a member of the Canadian Parliament. So this was all\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>-funded research during the Cold War, and it was, you know, basically the most inhumane sort of methods being used on people.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0We\u2019re talking to David Talbot, and we digressed from the assassination of John F. Kennedy.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Talk about what you learned in writing\u00a0<em>The Devil\u2019s Chessboard<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, as I was saying, after he was fired by Kennedy, Dulles went to his home. He continued\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And why was he fired?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, he was fired after the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy realized he shouldn\u2019t have kept Dulles on from the Eisenhower years. They were philosophically too different. And the Bay of Pigs was the final straw for him. So he was pushed out after that.<\/p>\n<p>And\u2014but Dulles, as I say, continued to sort of set up an anti-Kennedy government in exile in his home in Georgetown. Many of the people he was meeting with, several of the people, including Howard Hunt and others, later became figures of suspicion during the House Select Committee on Assassination hearings in Washington in the 1970s. You know, most Americans don\u2019t know that that was the last official statement, the last official report, on the Kennedy assassination, not the Warren Report back in 1964. But the Congress reopened the investigation into John Kennedy\u2019s assassination, and they did determine he was killed as the result of a conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>So a number of the people who came up during this investigation by Congress were figures of interest who were meeting with Allen Dulles. They had no, you know, obvious reason to be meeting with a \u201cretired\u201d\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0official. The weekend of Kennedy\u2019s assassination, Allen Dulles is not at home watching television like the rest of America. He\u2019s at a remote\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0facility, two years after being pushed out of the agency by Kennedy, called The Farm, in northern Virginia, that he used when he was director of the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0as a kind of an alternate command post. Well, he\u2019s there while Kennedy is killed, after Kennedy is killed, when Jack Ruby then kills Lee Harvey Oswald. That whole fateful weekend, he\u2019s hunkered down in a\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0command post. So, there are many odd circumstances like this.<\/p>\n<p>I also found out from interviewing the children of another former\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0official that one of the key figures of interest in the Kennedy assassination, a guy named William Harvey, who was head of the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>-Mafia plot against Castro and hated the Kennedys, thought that they were weak and so on, he was seen leaving his Rome station and flying to Dallas, by his own deputy, on an airplane early in November 1963. This is a remarkable sighting, because to place someone like William Harvey, the head of the CIA\u2019s assassination unit, put there by Allen Dulles, in Dallas in November of &#8217;63 before the assassination is a very important fact. The\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>, by the way, refuses, even at this late date, to release the travel vouchers for people like William Harvey. Under the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">JFK<\/span>\u00a0Records Act, that was passed back in the 1990s, they are compelled by federal law to release all documents related to the Kennedy assassination, but they&#8217;re still withholding over 1,100 of these documents, including\u2014and I\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Fifteen seconds.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0I used the Freedom of Information Act to try and get the travel vouchers for William Harvey. They\u2019re still holding onto them.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0How many calls are you getting in the mainstream media to do interviews?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, thank God, I was saying earlier, for alternative media, like this, Amy, because there is resistance to this book. First of all, I call out the mainstream media. I say that\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>,\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CBS<\/span>,\u00a0<em>Washington Post<\/em>,\u00a0<em>Newsweek<\/em>, they were all under his thumb. They did his bidding.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Whose thumb?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Allen Dulles\u2019s thumb. So, when the Warren Report came out, I was saying that one of the editors, top editors, at\u00a0<em>Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0wrote to him and said, \u201cThank you so much, Mr. Dulles, for helping shape our coverage of the Warren Report.\u201d Well, of course, Allen Dulles was on the Warren Commission. In fact, some people thought it should have been called the Dulles Commission, because he dominated it so much. So, you know, it\u2019s way too cozy, the relationship between Washington power and the media. And\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0What was the relationship between Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the publisher of\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>, and Allen Dulles, the head of the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, they were social friends, not just him, but other members of the Sulzberger family. I found, you know, cozy correspondence between them, congratulating him when he was inaugurated, Dulles, as\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0director. They called him \u201cAlly,\u201d one of the Sulzberger families, in one letter. They would get together, you know, every year. Dulles would hold these media sort of drink fests for New Year\u2019s. And these were, you know, top reporters, top editors, would get together with the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0guys and rub elbows and get a little drunk. And, you know, when Allen Dulles didn\u2019t want a reporter, because he felt he was being overly aggressive, covering, say, Guatemala\u2014Sydney Gruson, the reporter\u2014in the run-up to the coup there in 1954, he had\u2014he made a call to\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0and had him removed. That was because of his relationship with Sulzberger, the publisher. So, that was the kind of pull that Allen Dulles had.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0How did that work?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, they just took him out. They removed Gruson. They transferred him, I think to Mexico, at that point.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Can you compare Smedley Butler, the general, who was\u2014called himself, what? A racketeer for capitalism, when he was asked to overthrow countries and said no\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014to Allen Dulles?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, one\u2019s a hero, and one\u2019s a villain, to put it pure and simple. Smedley Darlington Butler, who I\u2019ve also written about\u2014I wrote an illustrated history, for readers of all ages, called\u00a0<em>Devil Dog<\/em>. Smedley was an American hero. He was a guy who joined the Marines at 16, didn\u2019t know any better, ran off all around the world fighting America\u2019s imperial wars from China to throughout Latin America, ended up in France during World War I. And by the time he was a middle-aged man, he had seen the kind of dirty work that was done by America\u2019s soldiers in the name of American business interests. And he said he was like Al Capone. He said, \u201cWe marines were like Al Capone, except that Al Capone couldn\u2019t even measure up to us, the kind of thuggery that we were capable of, that we committed in America\u2019s name throughout Latin America, particularly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And wasn\u2019t it just not through Latin America, like overthrowing \u00c1rbenz, but wasn\u2019t the Pitcairn family in the United States involved with attempting a coup against\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u00a0and wanted to recruit Smedley Butler to do it?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, that\u2019s what\u2014as I write in my book, that it was his great moment of heroism, because he was a hero to soldiers, to the rank and file. He had spoken to the famous Bonus Army March, where World War I veterans were demanding pay for the time they had lost when they were overseas. He spoke before them. It was a very controversial thing he did as a retired officer, retired general from the Marines. And so, because he was so popular with the rank and file, when a number of corporate families like the DuPonts and others became furious at\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u00a0for being a class traitor, as they called him, and pushing through these Wall Street reforms and other things that were infuriating them, they went to\u2014representatives of theirs went to Smedley Butler and said, \u201cWould you lead a march again, like the Bonus Army March on Washington? But this time we want them to be armed, the soldiers to be armed.\u201d Essentially, \u201cWill you lead a coup against Franklin Roosevelt?\u201d And instead of going along with this, he went before Congress and outed this plot.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0And who were the families? Who were the\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, DuPonts were one of them. The family that owned Remington, the arms factory, was also involved. A number of these people were clients of the Dulleses. Foster Dulles, by the way, John Foster Dulles, who later became secretary of state, ran the Wall Street firm Sullivan &amp; Cromwell. When\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u00a0starts to push through some of these reforms, like the Security Exchange Commission and others, Glass-Steagall, he convenes all his wealthy clients in his office on Wall Street and says, \u201cJust ignore this. We\u2019ll resist this. We won\u2019t go along with these reforms.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0The Nazis? Very quickly.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0The Nazis, well, they have a very tight relationship, many Nazi businessmen, with the Dulles brothers. And when Allen Dulles was in Switzerland, supposedly working for our side, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">OSS<\/span>, during the war, he was actually using that to meet with a lot of Nazis and to cut separate deals with them. He did indeed finally cut a separate peace deal with the Nazi forces in Italy against FDR\u2019s wishes.\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">FDR<\/span>\u00a0had a policy of unconditional surrender. Don\u2019t\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0This was Operation Paperclip?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0This was Operation Sunrise, was this deal that he made. And then he set up these rat-lines, so-called, where Nazis, leading Nazi war criminals, escaped after the war through the Alps in Switzerland, down into Italy and then overseas to Latin America and even in the United States. One of the key Nazis he saved was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler\u2019s former chief of intelligence, who he installed, Dulles, as head of West German intelligence after the war, a man who should have stood trial at Nuremberg.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Who turned you down?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0You know, well,\u00a0<em>Politico<\/em>\u00a0was one.\u00a0<em>Politico<\/em>, you know, one of the leading publications, online publications and a print publication, you know, had\u2014I was supposed to write something for them there. Instead, they went with a piece by, as I say, a former\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em>guy named Phil Shenon, based on leaked\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0documents that basically pin the Kennedy assassination on Fidel Castro. This is absurd. Fidel Castro, when he heard about Kennedy\u2019s assassination, crumpled. He knew that Kennedy was trying to open back channels with him to establish peace between Cuba and the United States, years before Obama finally did. In fact, Jean Daniel, who was a French reporter, was with Fidel, at Kennedy\u2019s behest, in Havana, basically carrying this olive branch to Fidel from Kennedy, when they got the terrible news from Dallas.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Who do you think killed John Kennedy?<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Well, I believe what Robert Kennedy believed. Robert Kennedy, as I showed in my book earlier,\u00a0<em>Brothers<\/em>, and in this book, looked immediately at the killing team that was put together by the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0to kill Fidel Castro. That\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0killing team, I think, was responsible for killing President Kennedy, as well. That team that was killing foreign leaders, that was targeting foreign leaders, that Dulles had assembled, including men like William Harvey, Howard Hunt, David Morales\u2014these were all key figures of suspicion by Congress during the House Assassinations Committee investigation in the \u201970s. That was the team that was brought to Dallas. I now identify those men. A couple of them admitted\u2014Howard Hunt, on his death bed, admitted that he was involved in the Kennedy assassination, and the mainstream media completely overlooked this shocking\u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0Howard Hunt, who was Watergate.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">DAVID<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">TALBOT<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0He was the leader of the Watergate break-in and a legendary\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>\u00a0action officer, and very close to Allen Dulles, revered Allen Dulles. On his death bed, he revealed that he was part of that plot. Again,\u00a0<em>60 Minutes<\/em>\u00a0looked at it and then walked away. I know a lot about this story. But the media has been, I think, shockingly remiss in not looking into this investigation. It\u2019s a taboo subject. But it\u2019s clear\u2014I think I present overwhelming evidence that Allen Dulles was complicit in this, in the assassination of the president. And he conveniently ran the investigation into the president\u2019s murder, because he strong-armed President Johnson into appointing him to the Warren Commission, where he became the dominant figure.<\/p>\n<p><strong><span class=\"caps\">AMY<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong>\u00a0David Talbot, author of the new book,\u00a0<em>The Devil\u2019s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the\u00a0<span class=\"caps\">CIA<\/span>, and the Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2015\/10\/14\/the_rise_of_america_s_secret\">http:\/\/www.democracynow.org\/2015\/10\/14\/the_rise_of_america_s_secret<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Rise of America\u2019s Secret Government: The Deadly Legacy of Ex-CIA Director Allen Dulles Pt. 2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=88395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=88395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=88395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=88395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}