The tangled story of American intelligence
Intelligence miscalculations are many and varied. Allen Dulles, one of the largest US intelligence specialists and director of the CIA (1953 – 1961), once said with humor about them: “It’s often harder to use information than to get it. Recipients of intelligence information basically begin by denying any message as false or fabricated. Then, when they overcome these doubts, they reject the message because they don’t like it and they don’t believe it. Finally, when they get a message that they believe and that they like, they don’t know what to do with it. ”LEFT HAND ROUND
The portrait of Allen Dulles, this recognized master of the secret operations of the Cold War period, is very faithfully drawn in David Talbot’s recently published US book “Devil Chess: Allen Dulles, CIA and the rise of America’s secret government” (The Devil's Chessboard: Rise of America's Secret Government). Allen Dulles was one of the most sophisticated secret service masters who ever existed in America. According to Talbot, the most ambitious efforts of Dulles through the special services were directed not against hostile governments, but against their own.
While in office with many presidential administrations, he learned to manipulate and even overthrow them.
From its first days on Wall Street, where the brothers John and Allen Dulles had the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, the country's most powerful company in corporate law, they were always boundlessly attached to an exquisite circle of privileged people whom they considered real power. in America. And although the Dulles brothers themselves did not come from the same rich families who sat in this elite club, their ingenuity, practicality, missionary work and connections put them among the top managers in this particular world of big money.
The Dulles brothers were not afraid of elected presidents. When Franklin Roosevelt began his “New Deal” aimed at limiting flourishing flourishes of greed and speculation that brought the country into economic chaos, John Foster Dulles simply gathered his clientele at his office on Wall Street and urged them to ignore the president . “Do not obey,” he said. “Resist his laws with all the power of your power, and soon everything will be fine.” Indeed, since Roosevelt’s measures restricted the freedom of entrepreneurship, the US Supreme Court recognized its policies as unconstitutional, and in 1934, most New Deal events were banned.
John Foster Dulles grew up to be the chief attorney of American power, who discussed face-to-face big politics with kings, prime ministers, and dictators. He loved to represent himself as the chess grandmaster of the free world. According to D. Talbot, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State in the Eisenhower Administration, “brought into his work the gloom of a priest who was preoccupied with the last days of mankind, while this was augmented by curses against the communists and threats of nuclear annihilation.” As the notorious Kim Philby once said: “John Foster Dulles needed communism, just as sin was necessary for the Puritans.” With the face of a man who "buried all his relatives at once," and with an indispensable hat-hat on his head, "John Dulles, it seemed, was always on the verge of closing all hopes of humanity for happiness and a happy life."
His younger brother became even more powerful - "a wandering knight who imposed the imperial will of America." As director of the CIA, Allen Dulles liked to imagine that he was the hand of the king, and his left hand, the sinister hand. He was a master of covert operations that empires needed.
From his point of view, democracy was the tool that was supposed to be in the hands of the “right guys”, it could not be left at the mercy of elected official figures in the form of a social contract.
During World War II, Allen Dulles openly ignored Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender to Germany and pursued his own line of secret negotiations with the Nazis. The terrific sacrifices that the Soviet Union suffered in the war against Hitler meant little to Dulles. He was more interested in the possibility of using the Third Reich security apparatus against the USSR, which he had always considered to be the real enemy of America. After the war, Dulles helped a number of notorious war criminals escape "rat paths" from Germany to Italy and then to asylums in Latin America, the Middle East, and even the United States.
Allen Dulles outplayed and survived Franklin Roosevelt. He shook Harry Truman, who signed a decree on the creation of the CIA in 1947, by turning this organization into a Cold War colossus, much more powerful and deadly than Truman could have imagined. Eisenhower, having begun to pursue his national security policy under the pretentious name of “New Look,” gave Dulles broad powers to wage a secret war against communism, but at the end of his presidency he found that Dulles had deprived him of his stories as a “peacemaker”, and left him at the back of the trough.
Sometimes, of course, did not do without anecdotal situations when Dulles had to sacrifice his ideological convictions. In March, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy, initiated a series of investigations into potential communist infiltration of the CIA. It would seem that he should have found an ally in the matter in the person of Dulles. However, despite all his anti-communism, Dulles was primarily a pragmatist, and at his request, President Truman demanded that McCarthy stop calling CIA employees for a hearing in Congress. According to Dulles, such hearings could damage not only the reputation of management, but also the safety of secret information. But in addition to appealing to the president, Dulles took his own measures. In 2004, the documents were declassified according to which, by his order, the CIA officers hacked the office of McCarthy in the Senate of the US Congress and slipped him to the disreputable disinformation to stop the investigation of "communist infiltration" in the CIA.
But Dulles never acted rashly, he was always driven by cold calculation. As the head of the US intelligence services, he never started overly risky operations if he did not feel the support of the main members of his “team” - influential people in Washington and on Wall Street who secretly controlled the decision-making process in the country.
According to D. Talbot, much of what still provokes attacks of historical and psychological introspection in the United States is connected with the activities of Dulles as the head of the Central Intelligence of the United States. Mind control experiments, torture, political assassinations, the so-called emergency extradition of prisoners to secret CIA prisons, massive surveillance of US citizens and foreign allies — all this was widely used in the days of Dulles. Special mention deserves the initiative Mockingbird initiated by Dulles to establish CIA control over the American and foreign media, which marked the beginning of an ominous merging of American intelligence with international information and propaganda clans.
Dulles vs Kennedy
Having received free hand under President Eisenhower to "restore order in the world" and fight any threats of uprisings against US domination, the CIA under Dulles overthrew governments in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East and even aimed at the "restless", from his point of view, politicians in the allied US countries of Europe. Dulles called himself "the secretary of state for unfriendly states" - and if you look at the events of that time, then an ominous number of countries that have undergone "sanitization" will line up.
A misfire in this “victorious march” was Cuba.
When Kennedy, in the wake of new hopes, came to power in 1961, he decided to leave Allen Dulles as director of the CIA, despite the apparent differences in their worldview. While still a young senator, Kennedy decided to move away from the notorious Eisenhower-Dulles doctrine of “balancing on the verge of nuclear war” - a dangerous game that he believed was leading to a catastrophe. Kennedy also stated his desire to drastically change America’s hostile relations with developing countries, expressing his sympathy for the national liberation movements in Algeria, Congo, Vietnam and everywhere, where, he believed, it was historically inevitable.
Of course, under Kennedy, active US military intervention began in Vietnam — the number of US military advisers and special forces increased from 12 thousand in 1962 to 16 thousand by the end of 1963. He clearly did not want to widely use American troops in Vietnam, in contrast to President Lyndon Johnson, in which the number of American troops in Vietnam increased to 536 thousand in 1968 year. According to the then US Secretary of Defense McNamara, Kennedy seriously considered the possibility of withdrawing troops from Vietnam after re-election of the 1964 of the year, which Johnson sharply objected to.
President Eisenhower viewed the growth of the anti-colonial movement as a “destructive hurricane”, and Kennedy was confident that this hurricane has a future.
Dulles served in the Kennedy administration for less than a year, but even such a brief interweaving of their biographies had gigantic consequences. At first, the recognized head of the special services actually “routed” Kennedy and retracted his adventure in the Bay of Pigs, but the young president turned out to be a capable student who quickly figured out the Washington political games. He became the first and only president who dared to deprive Dulles of his extensive powers.
Theodore Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger, who worked together with Kennedy, argued that intelligence advisers had tricked Kennedy into a failed Cuban adventure. As D. Talbot writes, Dulles intended to write an article in which he wanted to fight back these "doubtful crackers" and "Castro fans" from Kennedy's entourage, but eventually abandoned this plan. There is only a manuscript of several hundred pages with coffee stains on them, which is now stored in the Princeton Library along with the Dulles archive and sheds light on his painful relationship with the young president. This manuscript between the angry attacks on Kennedy and his associates in the White House reveals the many ways that the CIA under Dulles actually plotted to involve the young president in a Cuban trap.
When the operation in the Bay of Pigs was under development and “the stakes were made,” as Dulles wrote, he was confident that Kennedy would be forced to do the “right” and send the US military might to rescue the invasion. These were ordinary CIA games: it fooled the White House and played on its concerns, and the president began to play by his rules. But this time the president, despite his youth, and the fact that he was frightened by gray-haired national security assistants, took a firm stand. Kennedy said no to expanding the operation, which he considered “dirty” from the very beginning. And that was the end of Allen Dulles' long reign. As Dulles said: "It was the darkest day of my life."17 April 1961 Cuban counterrevolutionaries, united by CIA instructors in the 2056 Brigade, landed in the Bay of Pigs, on the southwest coast of Cuba. However, contrary to the promises of the CIA director Dulles to the American president, the Cuban people did not support the rebels. For three days, Fidel Castro's supporters defeated the invading CIA mercenaries, whose plans were known to Cuban intelligence. The adventure has failed.
Despite the failure of the CIA in the Bay of Pigs, Washington did not abandon plans to overthrow the F. Castro regime. Conducting a new operation to overthrow the regime of F. Castro in Cuba was apparently discussed at the White House at the end of April 1961, that is, immediately after the failure of the CIA. In November 1961, John F. Kennedy signed a directive on the preparation and conduct of a new covert operation against Castro, which was commissioned to organize the CIA. Assistance to intelligence was to be provided by the Ministry of Defense and the State Department. In the CIA, this operation received the code name "Mongoose".
At the same time, Kennedy took advantage of the CIA's failure to resign Dulles. In public, Kennedy took responsibility for the fiasco and made a number of kind remarks against Dulles, preparing to put him out of the door after his 50-year government service with eight US presidents. But Dulles' forced resignation after November 1961 did not last long. Instead of relaxing in the twilight of years, Dulles continued to act as if he was still the chief of American intelligence, setting the target of a president who put an end to his illustrious career. Privately, there was a real war between the Kennedy and Dulles camps, in which both of them and their representatives used the media not so much to write about the invasion as about the past and future of US foreign policy. As D. Talbot writes, this underground struggle between two symbols of power is nothing less than the story of the battle for American democracy.
However, the battle for democracy did not cancel the plans of invasion of Cuba, which, according to Robert Kennedy, who took the most tough stance against Cuba, “cannot spare any money, time or effort”.
According to Colonel General F.I. Ladygin, head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in 1992 – 1997, the plan of Operation Mongoose consisted of two stages. The first (August – September 1962 of the year) was the preparation and initiation of the anti-Castro “rebel” movement in Cuba. The second (October 1962 of the year) - the organization of the uprising in Cuba, its support by the United States of America and the overthrow of F. Castro's government. The operation was to be completed in October – November 1962. On the eve of the next congressional elections in November 1962, such an action should have intensified voters, brought victory to the Democratic Party, which would have strengthened the position of John F. Kennedy in the American system of government.
But "Mongoose" was not destined to come true. She came across the Soviet "Anadyr." The political leadership of the USSR 18 in May 1962 of the year decided to provide military assistance to the F. Castro government. According to F.I. Ladigin, already on May 24, a plan was developed for the transfer of the 51 division of the Strategic Missile Forces. She was instructed to be in readiness in the event of a war, only by a signal from Moscow to strike at the most important objects in the territory of the United States. To accomplish this task, it was planned to deploy three regiments of P-12 RSD (24 launchers) and two regiments of P-14 missiles (16 launchers) in Cuba. Total 40 rocket launchers with missile ranges from 2,5 to 4,5 thousand. Km.
On September 9, the first six missiles arrived in Cuba, and the delivery of nuclear ammunition began on September 16. In total, about 8 thousand people arrived in Cuba as a part of the division. The division was brought to combat readiness for 48 days from the moment of the arrival of the first ship and October 27 was able to strike from all starting positions.
American intelligence did not immediately detect the transfer of missiles to Cuba. In September 1962, CIA Director John McCone reported to President Kennedy: “... After extensive discussion and research, American intelligence came to the conclusion that the Soviet Union did not intend to turn Cuba into a strategic base ... because it knows that the risk of repressive measures from the United States is too great ... "The US military considered the superiority of the US over the USSR in military power indisputable, and Cuba, according to the CIA, did not have the strength to hinder the implementation of the plan of Operation Mongoose.
According to F.I. Ladygin, the Americans almost daily made reconnaissance flights over Cuba. But more than a month passed before they were able to identify the launch positions of the missiles. Only 14 of October, that is, almost a month after the arrival of rocket regiments, formations and units of air defense, air force, navy and land forces on the island, the aerial reconnaissance of the USA managed to detect signs of Soviet troops in Cuba.
After the 16 of October images of Soviet missiles were shown to Kennedy, an emergency meeting of the National Security Council was gathered, in which more than a third of its members spoke in favor of holding an air attack on missile positions without a declaration. Especially active was the military lobby, which believed that the United States could afford to go on a decisive clash with the USSR. However, by a vote of the majority of members of the National Security Council, Kennedy decided to declare a naval blockade of Cuba.After the successful resolution of the missile crisis, according to the official American version, the perception of a rational US approach to defending one’s interests has improved significantly, both domestically and internationally, and trust in the president has increased. Kennedy's popularity rating increased from 66 to 77%.
But not in the eyes of Allen Dulles, who turned his house in Georgetown into the center of the opposition Kennedy government in exile. Over time, Dulles and his entourage were no longer satisfied with Kennedy’s foreign policy, which, in their opinion, made concessions to the Communists. Dulles was growing bolder. He met with the highly controversial Cuban leader in exile Paulino Sierra Martinez, the former minion of the deposed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Sierra, whose activity against Castro was based on deals with the mafia and US corporations that promised him all sorts of bonuses, if the insurgency in Cuba succeeds, later came under suspicion of the US Secret Service as a participant in the conspiracy against President Kennedy. It remains a mystery why Sierra met with Dulles in April 1963.
By October 1963, Dulles felt confident enough to publicly oppose Kennedy's foreign policy, ignoring Washington's political etiquette, according to which it was considered indecent to criticize the president, in whose administration you recently worked. Dulles said that the Kennedy presidency suffered from "the desire to earn the love of the rest of the world." According to Dulles, this "weakness" should not be inherent in the power of the global level. "I would much more prefer people to respect us than to try to make them love us."
According to D. Talbot, a few weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy 22 in November 1963, the number of meetings at Dulles at home increased. Among the CIA officers who came to him were some who later came under investigation by the Special Committee to investigate the assassination of the House of Representatives in connection with their possible involvement in the assassination of the president. Immediately after the murder, Dulles disappeared for unexplained reasons at a secret CIA facility in northern Virginia, known as the “Farm”, despite the fact that he was fired from intelligence two years ago. Such was the violent activity that surrounded the "retired".
After the assassination of Kennedy Dulles again came to the fore in Washington, seeking the appointment of President Lyndon Johnson to the E. Warren Commission. Dulles was so actively involved in the official investigation of the Kennedy assassination that one of the observers noticed that she should be called the "Dulles Commission." He worked cautiously behind the scenes with his former management colleagues to divert the investigation away from the CIA and lead him to the lone gunner, Lee Harvey Oswald.
How could it happen that the worst political enemy of President Kennedy was in the lead in the official investigation into the circumstances of his death? This was another of the secrets of his life, full of mysterious turns and somersaults. No less mysterious is the fact that the American press never bothered to investigate this intriguing question.
After more than half a century, many questions concerning the killing of Kennedy, in the words of his biographer James Douglas, remain “inaudible,” at least in the carefully controlled sphere of activity of the Western media. It is all the more unthinkable in these circles to investigate the suspicion that Allen Dulles himself, the “pillar of the American establishment,” could play any role in the crime against American democracy that took place in Dallas. It is also curious that, according to Washington ProFile, three-quarters of Americans surveyed opposed an additional investigation of this crime. Americans care about their past.
WHEN TAIL WILES DOG
Good intelligence is important to any government. But the benefits of intelligence lies in the tasks that are set for it. If the task is to knock out additional funds for the military budget or to demonize your opponent, then this distorts the entire intelligence process and leads to a misunderstanding of what is actually happening. The secret armies that the CIA created to fight pro-communist regimes forced these regimes to build up military forces to prepare for a rebuff to the invasion, and the CIA presented these preparations to the leadership as proof of preparations for exporting the revolution. So it was in Nicaragua in the 1970-ies, when the CIA actively formed Nicaraguan “contras” detachments and at the same time attracted the Argentine junta to the struggle against the “communist threat” in Central America. In addition, covert operations have their own logic of self-justification and self-maintenance: they begin to play the role of the tail, wagging the dog, that is, to manage the decision-making process, because the participants of these operations begin to consider everyone who can prevent them from performing as a person who is best kept in ignorance .
The double meaning concluded in the seemingly humorous words of Allen Dulles is that politicians do not really need to give real intelligence information, but rather to keep them on hungry information rations, sending them through metered informational messages, which on the one hand, they like it, and on the other, make them adapt to the policy that intelligence leaders consider optimal and profitable.
Question: profitable for whom? In his book, The Brothers John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles and Their Secret World War, published in 2013, the famous American journalist Stephen Kinzer answers this question: for clients of the Dulles brothers law firm, and in fact for the private interests of ruling elites using corrupt Western governments to concentrate all profits and wealth "in the greedy hands of a small number of people."
However, this leads to the fact that intelligence information becomes unreliable and is rejected as such, despite its importance and timeliness. Public opinion, in turn, begins to be suspicious of the practiced information leaks, because it considers them a means of engaging in the CIA global misinformation games. According to Paul Craig Roberts, the world has too often witnessed these games in the past: the Gulf of Tonkin, “weapon mass destruction of Saddam Hussein ”,“ Iranian nuclear weapons ”,“ Assad chemical weapons ”,“ Russian invasion of Ukraine ”.
As acknowledged by American experts, to create a law-abiding and strictly independent political affiliation intelligence organization that does not allow failures and setbacks that have characterized the CIA throughout its history, the main task is to restore confidence in intelligence. You can not build your activities on fiction, deliberately presented as real facts, even if politicians like it. If politicians are told only what they want to hear, the CIA risks finding itself in a situation where the truth may be the first and the least serious of losses.
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