THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1897-1960
1953
- CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt concocts a plan to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran in order to protect British and American oil interests.
Mossadeq democracy in Iran
Author Stephen Kinzer writes, "The result of that coup was that the Shah was placed back on his throne. He ruled for 25 years in an increasingly brutal and repressive fashion. His tyranny resulted in an explosion of revolution in 1979 the event that we call the Islamic revolution. That brought to power a group of fanatically anti-Western clerics who turned Iran into a center for anti-Americanism and, in particular, anti-American terrorism. The Islamic regime in Iran also inspired religious fanatics in many other countries, including those who went on to form the Taliban in Afghanistan and give refuge to terrorists who went on to attack the United States. The anger against the United States that flooded out of Iran following the 1979 revolution has its roots in the American role in crushing Iranian democracy in 1953. Therefore, I think it's not an exaggeration to say that you can draw a line from the American sponsorship of the 1953 coup in Iran, through the Shah's repressive regime, to the Islamic revolution of 1979 and the spread of militant religious fundamentalism that produced waves of anti-Western terrorism." Roosevelt notes that both CIA chief Allen Dulles and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles were excited about the prospect of further governmental overthrows; the next year, the US would overthrow the government of Guatemala. That coup also resulted in the formation of a brutal military dictatorship in that country that would go on to slaughter hundreds of thousands of civilians. Kinzler says, "We have the power to [overthrow a government] very easily, but we do not have the power to shape long-term political processes in foreign countries. ...In the case of Iraq, we need to realize that not everybody sees us the way we see ourselves. We see ourselves as liberators and people who bring democracy and freedom to other countries. We need to place ourselves in the shoes of the people whose countries we are intervening in, and realize that unless we are ready to stay the course over a long period of time and be sure that the new systems we've put in place function well -- which is something we have a history of not doing -- we need to be very afraid of the long-term results of our foreign intervention." (Buzzflash)
Zapata Oil
- George H.W. Bush, after leaving Dresser Industries in 1951, and his oil partner John Overbey form Zapata Oil Company, a much more adventurous undertaking than the modest Bush-Overbey Oil Development Corp. they already operate.
George H.W. Bush
Again, Bush's uncle George Herbert Walker provides connections with lots of cash to ensure a successful startup, and Dresser steers clients to the fledgling oil company. Legislation is proposed in the US Congress that would federalize offshore resources, including oil, in order to raise revenue for government funding of education. Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, George H.W. Bush's father, leads the fight to defeat the legislation, which is not passed. The defeat of the bill ensured that Zapata Oil, among other companies, would be able to successfully enter into offshore oil drilling. By 1954, Zapata was a major player in the Texas oil industry, branching out to do deep-sea oil exploration; the same year, the CIA under Bush family friend Allen Dulles overthrows the leftist government of Guatemala. There is some evidence of a connection between Zapata Offshore and the Guatamalan coup. Bush and Overbey partner with veteran oilmen Hugh and William Liedtke; Hugh Liedtke becomes the de facto director of Zapata Oil, while Bush's main role is to use his family connections to raise more money for the firm. - Eventually Zapata will split, with the Liedtkes controlling Zapata Petroleum, and Bush and Walker controlling the new Zapata Offshore drilling company. Zapata Offshore's business structure is highly unusual and complex, with half a dozen subsidiaries funneling money from one to the other -- an ideal situation for handling covert funds. The Liedtkes and Zapata, which by 1972 had become Pennzoil, will become involved with the Mexican national oil industry Pemex in a CIA money-laundering chain that traces back to the Watergate break-in when some of the funds will be found in the possession of the Watergate burglars; five of the burglars, Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Virgilio Gonzalez, Bernard Barker, and Eugenio Martinez, had been involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. President Nixon will know that the CIA-Mexican funds had originally come from "the Texans," a group of GOP financiers that includes Bush family friends Robert Mosbacher and William Liedtke. Evidently George H.W. Bush will win the approval of high-level intelligence officials when he warns Nixon that shifting the blame for the Mexican slush fund to the CIA would wreck the intelligence community. (It's worth mentioning that Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman says that if such a connection were true, "the multiple layers of deception by the CIA are astounding" in light of the assumption that Nixon's presidency was fatally wounded by his request for the FBI to stop investigating the Mexican CIA funding; Haldeman implies that if this connection is true, that the CIA may have helped engineer Nixon's downfall, a conclusion that cannot be verified.)
- Other connections between Bush, Zapata Oil, the CIA, and Mexican oil industries with their own ties to the CIA exist. Zapata Oil has a coterie of British investors with connections to British intelligence who give Zapata "ins" to Kuwaiti officials, allowing Zapata to contract to perform Kuwait's first deep-sea oil explorations in 1961. George H.W. Bush may have lost in his bid to win a US Senate seat in 1964 when his Democratic opponent will blast his connections to the "sheikh of Kuwait and his four wives and 100 concubines," characterizing Bush as "a carpetbagger from Connecticut who is drilling oil for the sheikh of Kuwait to help keep that harem going." (Consortium News, Kevin Phillips)
- Columnist Joseph Alsop goes to the Philippines to cover an election,
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
at the request of the CIA, who desires a pro-US slant on the election coverage. Alsop is later proven to have cooperated with the CIA for years, and routinely slants his reporting to suit the CIA and the American government. - Reporter Carl Bernstein writes, "Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years [1952-1977] have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services -- from simple intelligencegathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America's leading news organizations. ...Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Pres International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc."
- Though the relationships between American journalists and American intelligence begins during World War II, with many journalists cooperating with the Office of Strategic Services, the CIA's first director, Allen Dulles, is instrumental in recruiting journalists and, more often, management officials to work with intelligence agents. "Let's not pick on some poor reporters, for God's sake," CIA director William Colby will testify before the Senate in 1977. "Let's go to the managements. They were witting" A CIA official says in 1977, "Many journalists didn't give a second thought to associating with the Agency. But there was a point when the ethical issues which most people had submerged finally surfaced. Today, a lot of these guys vehemently deny that they had any relationship with the Agency." In 1973, CIA director Colby will begin publicly scaling back the agency's use of journalists, but in reality Colby will protect the most useful journalistic assets behind a wall of secrecy. When George W. Bush becomes CIA director in 1976, the CIA announces that it will no longer employ journalists as intelligence operatives, but will continue to accept the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists. (Rolling Stone/University of Idaho, Rolling Stone/What Really Happened)
- Former Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan,
Ronald Reagan
battling severe financial problems with the IRS and other claimants, has a deal made for him by MCA for the mob-controlled Last Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas to host a song-and-dance revue for two weeks and receive enough money to pay off his tax debts. After the Las Vegas stint, Reagan is hired to host MCA's flagship television show, "The General Electric Theater," for the then-princely sum of $125,000 a year. He makes additional money by producing some episodes. In direct violation of SAG laws, he remains on SAG's board even after becoming a producer. In 1959, when Reagan runs again for the presidency of SAG, the issue is raised by his opponents, and Reagan responds by denying that he had ever produced the show -- a blatant lie. (Dan Moldea) - Early 1953: The British colonial authorities begin setting up "screening centers" throughout Kenya to interrogate suspected Mau Mau members and sympathizers.
Kikuyu, or Mau Mau, rebellion
Even today, the word "screening" evokes powerful emotions among the Kikuyu of Kenya. Interrogations, and the attempts to enforce confessions of Mau Mau affiliations, often turn bloody. "No Kikuyu -- man, woman, or child -- was safe from the screening teams," writes historian Caroline Elkins. "Every Kikuyu was a suspect." One survivor will tell Elkins in 1999, "One thing I will never forget is screening. Those British were never satisfied; they just wanted more information from me but I didn't have any. They just beat me and beat me in the police station, in detention, and in the village. Screening was hell." When the initial interrogation techniques didn't work on a suspect, torture was the accepted next step. This often included electric shock to the most sensitive areas of the body; broken bottles, snakes, gun barrels, knives, vermin, and hot eggs shoved up rectums or vaginas; breasts and testicles squeezed with pliers; whippings; burnings; shootings; and mutilation. Some suspects were tied to the back of trucks and pulled along until they "died in pieces." - One victim remembers a settler who set up his own quasiofficial screening camp, known as "Dr. Bunny" and "the Josef Mengele of Kenya," who specialized in burning the skin off of live Mau Mau suspects and forcing them to eat their own castrated testicles. Much of the violence against Kikuyu suspects is carried out by loyalist Kikuyu, who in return receive gifts of land, trading licenses, tax exemptions, and carte blanche to settle old scores. Even tribesmen from other areas participate in the Kikuyu reserves, including a young Ugandan named Idi Amin, who fought Mau Mau rebels in the King's African Rifles company. Throughout the year, British and loyalist forces will mount dozens of assaults on Mau Mau enclaves, killing hundreds and capturing thousands for "screening" and imprisonment. In response, more and more Kikuyu join the Mau Mau, many explaining later that they fought for their land and their freedom. One woman member later says, "We could see that we were being oppressed, because when something belonging to you had been taken by someone else and then you are treated like slaves on the land that once was yours, you're bound to feel angry about it, aren't you?" Records also prove that British forces used techniques similar to those used by the Chinese to "brainwash" Mau Mau sympathizers in an attempt to convert them to a pro-British mindset, stemming from Britain's successful efforts in Malaysia. (Caroline Elkins)
- January - April: Kenya's colonial governor, Evelyn Baring, issues dozens of "Emergency Regulations,"
Kikuyu, or Mau Mau, rebellion
including provisions for communal punishment, curfews, control of individual and mass movement of natives, confiscation of property and land, imposition of draconian taxes upon natives, issuance of special documentation and passes, censorship, the disbanding of all Kenyan political organizations, control and disposition of labor, suspension of due process, and detention without trial. Emergency legislation extends to the control of African markets, shops, hotels, and all transport. Baring also issues orders establishing detention camps throughout Kenya. (Caroline Elkins)
Eisenhower becomes president
- January 20: Former five-star Army general Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II, is inaugurated as the 34th US president.
Eisenhower administration
In his inaugural address, Eisenhower talks about freedom conferring "a common dignity upon the French soldier who dies in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the American life given in Korea." Eisenhower implictly accepts the European argument that the US must back the colonial forces in Asia as if these efforts were synonymous with American efforts in Korea. What neither Eisenhower nor the Europeans realize is that the fleeting US successes in Korea, Iran, and Guatemala, among others, will lay the groundwork for America's biggest Cold War disasters. During his term, Eisenhower will greatly increase US military aid to the French in Vietnam to prevent a Communist victory. US military advisors will continue to accompany American supplies sent to Vietnam. To justify America's financial commitment, Eisenhower will cite a "Domino Theory" in which a Communist victory in Vietnam would result in surrounding countries falling one after another like a "falling row of dominoes." - The Domino Theory will be used by a succession of presidents and their advisors to justify ever-deepening US involvement in Vietnam. Philip Taubman observes that Eisenhower also will set the direction for future administrations by turning over management of new spy projects to the CIA rather than to the Pentagon, "figuring the Pentagon was too cumbersome to handle [them] and too porous to keep it secret." CIA director Allen Dulles, though not technologically minded himself, was not slow to take on the responsibilities of developing and implementing the new spy technologies, and Richard Bissell, deputy director of the CIA from 1959 through 1962, though better remembered for spearheading the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, provided critical leadership in shepherding the development of the U-2 and A-12 spy planes and the Corona spy satellite system. Taubman characterizes Eisenhower as "a visionary leader with a high tolerance for risk" in the areas of military and intelligence technology. Eisenhower did not bend to the stodgy, conventional wisdom proffered by so many civilian and Pentagon officials of the time, instead preferring to rely on cutting-edge scientific and technological advice. "The result was a formidable array of new spy systems and weapons, including exotic spy planes and satellites, nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads compact enough to fit atop missiles. All in all, it was a time of landmark advances in defense, a record unequaled by nine subsequent presidents." (Vietnam War Timeline, Philip Taubman)
- Philip Taubman writes that at the height of the Cold War, during the early and mid-1950s,
Cold War
the US "...knew little about the exact dimensions of the Soviet threat, and feared the worst. Unable to see how many warplanes and missiles the Kremlin was building, we assumed the numbers were great and growing larger every day. The only way to answer such an unfathomable threat, it seemed, was to devote the national treasure to building ever greater and more expensive defenses, even at the risk of damaging the American economy and creating what Dwight Eisenhower described as a garrison state. That debilitating path was largely skirted, due in no small measure to the ingenuity and industry of the architects of the new espionage technologies." (Philip Taubman) - Eisenhower comes into power with the reputation of a conciliator, a figure out of America's "simple past," who apparently takes delight in being found muddle-headed.
Eisenhower administration
In reality, Eisenhower is an "extremely able, indeed extremely shrewd master of deadly practicalities," in the words of historian Derek Leebaert; he will find the confusion over his capabilities useful, as "clever people celebrated their intellectural superiority to him, while thrusting people stressed their greater decisiveness. What counted to Eisenhower was that he was in command." Eisenhower will be far more active in making ground-breaking decisions that affect US intelligence and surveillance capacities than he will let on to the public. Publicly he dismisses any assertions that the USSR might be catching up in any fashion to US military and/or surveillance capabilities, in order to assuage public fears of Soviet threats and prevent needless military spending. Critics of Eisenhower will say that he was blase about the possibility of Soviet threats to the point of disconnection. In private, however, Eisenhower will be extremely active, especially in pushing for new intelligence-gathering technologies such as spy planes and satellites. While critics slam Eisenhower for supposedly letting the USSR catch up to the US in military and surveillance matters, in reality, Eisenhower is a key element in the development of new weapons and intelligence systems. Philip Taubman writes, "These technological breakthroughs laid the basis for American military might through the remainder of the twentieth century. No modern president other than Franklin Roosevelt, who authorized the development of atomic weapons, so dramatically altered the nature of military power." - Like the supercorporations that Eisenhower routinely farms for appointees to government positions, he brings a "managerial calmness...[a] teachable, rational, reassuring, consolidating, and fundamentally predictable" approach to American governance. He will name as head of the Defense Department the eminently capable Charles "Engine Charlie" Wilson, a former electrical engineer, labor union member, and current president of General Motors, who will open the bitterly fought campaign to get a "bigger bang for the buck" from the Pentagon's lavish expenditures. "We believe Uncle Sam's big old pocketbook has been open just too wide," he will insist, as Eisenhower oversees the dismantling of the industrial planning apparatus imposed at the beginning of the Korean War and braces for Democratic criticism about defense cuts. By 1960, defense spending would fall 25% to consume "only" 59% of the federal budget. A million troops would be returned to civil life, half after the Korean armistice. In addition, taxes will be cut, and Truman's wage and price freezes will be lifted.
- The running joke throughout the Eisenhower administration is that the US is run by a junta -- General Motors, General Electric, and General Eisenhower. The joke is more than appropriate. Aside from the president of GM being named Defense Secretary, a number of corporate officers and gentlemen are named to high positions in the Eisenhower administration. (Philip Taubman, Derek Leebaert)
- February 21: Britain scraps the national ID card program, instituted during World War II. Many citizens resent being asked for their ID to prove their identity by the police. (BBC)
- March: British colonial officer Tony Cross, posted at a police station in Nyeri, Kenya,
Kikuyu, or Mau Mau, rebellion
writes a letter bragging about what he calls the "Gestapo stuff" going on in the ranks of the colonial police and the Home Guard. Cross's account of brutality and murder makes the left-wing press, and other police officers confirm and extend Cross's account. Tales of horrific brutality and torture begin to make the rounds of the British press; some Labour politicians begin calling for inquiries (Labour has a history of opposing colonialism). In response, the Conservative (Tory) government in both Britain and Kenya begin a systematic and effective propaganda campaign to paint the Mau Mau rebels as savage, subhuman murderers who can only be handled with extreme violence. Records of torture and murder among the various detention camps are later purged. One lawyer who spent years trying to defend Mau Mau rebels in the Kenyan courts terms the British efforts to eradicate Mau Mau as "ethnic cleansing." (Caroline Elkins) - March 5: Soviet leader Josef Stalin dies.
Cold War
The outspoken Nikita Khrushchev succeeds him. At the time of Stalin's death, the US believes that the Soviet arsenal is far larger than it actually is. The US believes that the USSR has over 150 atomic bombs ready for deployment; in reality, the USSR possesses fewer than 10, none deployed. (Khruschev will say, with dark humor, in 1974 that "I remember President Kennedy once stated...that the United States had the nuclear missile capacity to wipe out the Soviet Union two times over, while the Soviet Union had enough atomic weapons to wipe out the Unites States only once.... When journalists asked me to comment...I said jokingly, 'Yes, I know what Kennedy claims, and he's quite right. But I'm not complaining.... We're satisfied to be able to finish off the United States first time round. Once is quite enough. What good does it do to annihilate a country twice? We're not a bloodthirsty people.") (Vietnam War Timeline, Nuclear Weapons Archive, Derek Leebaert) - April 15: Analysts at RAND,
Cold War
the Air Force research center, release a classified report that suggests US Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases are vulnerable to a massive Soviet air strike, potentially leaving the US open to a devastating nuclear attack with little possibility of retaliation. The report sends shock waves through the Eisenhower administration and the military, best exemplified by the response of Trevor Gardner, a senior official for the Air Force's research and development efforts. Gardner tells Lee DuBridge, head of Eisenhower's Scientific Advisory Committee, "You're abnegating your responsibility to science and the country, sitting on your dead *sses in fancy offices in Washington, wasting your time and the taxpayers' money going through a lot of g*ddamn motions on a lot of low-level, sh*tty exercises -- all in the name of science." Gardner demands an immediate study of the threat of surprise attack and the US ability to meet it: "the true story, not the sh*t Washington is feeding the American people." Taubman observes, "Gardner's language may have been intemperate, but his analysis was correct. The Soviet Union appeared to be gaining on the United States, and Washington was misleading the American people with confident assurances about the nation's military and scientific superiority. Americans were only dimly aware that traditional concepts of war and defense were rapidly being overtaken by new technologies." (Philip Taubman) - April 16: A month after Stalin's death,
Cold War
President Eisenhower gives a grim accounting of the threats posed in the years ahead, and the costs dealing with such threats will entail, in a speech designed to offer a subtle, indirect olive branch to the USSR and emphasize stability and American values over state management and crisis-driven spending. He says in part, "The worst to be feared and the best to be expected can be simply stated. The worst is atomic war. The best would be this: a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American or the Soviet system or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two finely equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Three million pamphlets featuring Eisenhower's powerful "Cross of Iron" speech are distributed throughout Western Europe and Latin America; 100,000 handbills in eight languages are distributed in New Delhi. The text is sent to over 900 German newspapers and magazines. It is broadcast hourly over Radio Free Europe. The effect of Eisenhower's eloquence is difficult to measure. (Philip Taubman, Derek Leebaert) - May 5:
NATO
West Germany joins NATO. (CBS News, NATO and UN History) - June 2: Queen Elizabeth II is coronated in London. Her coronation draws millions of TV and radio viewers from around the world. (BBC)
- June 19: Convicted Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed for passing nuclear weapons secrets to the USSR.
Cold War
The evidence against them has always been controversial, with many believing that both were either innocent of the charges, or dupes of Soviet intelligence. The Venona transmissions, released to the public in 1995, gives a certain proof that Julius, at least, was involved in espionage. Both were openly members of the American Communist Party, though both denied to their deaths that they were Soviet agents. Julius was recruited in September 1942 by KGB agent Semyon Semenov, who ran him until his departure for the USSR in 1944, when his duties were taken over by Alexander Feklisov. Feklisov will call Julius Rosenberg his most productive agent, though Julius never transmitted any major nuclear secrets. Rosenberg, an employee of Emerson Radio, passed thousands of classified documents to the USSR through Semenov and Feklisov, including information on a proximity fuse that will be used in a Soviet missile design that eventually is responsible for shooting down the U2 flight of Francis Gary Powers. Rosenberg recruited several other Americans for Soviet service, including his brother-in-law David Greenglass, then working on the nuclear project at Los Alamos. When he and another spy, Harry Gold, were caught and confessed, their testimony implicated both Rosenbergs. - The trial was an American media sensation. Greenglass was the star witness against his sister and brother-in-law; the prosecution was unable to use the then-classified Venona transmission evidence in the trial, but used the information to guide their questioning. The prosecution apparently chooses to charge Ethel with the same capital offenses as her husband in an attempt to force Julius to name other spies; the effort fails. The prosecutor, Communist "witch hunter" Roy Cohn, has been widely criticized for his actions during the trial, including exerting undue influence in selecting a favorable judge, and pushing harder than the evidence allows for the death penalty, especially for Ethel. Defense lawyer Emanuel Bloch also makes some egregrious errors, including failing to cross-examine Gold, who will prove in later trials to be highly unreliable; most legal observers believe that Bloch was either incompetent or unable to handle such a high-profile trial. In his sentencing of both to death, Judge Irving Kaufman angrily, and incorrectly, blames the Rosenbergs for the deaths of American servicemen in Korea: "I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb...has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason." Many believe that the imposition of the death penalty is far too harsh, considering that the Rosenbergs spied for the USSR during World War II, when the US and USSR were putative allies. Kaufman, Cohn, and most Americans view the trial through the filter of the Cold War, and not in context of World War II. A large grass-roots campaign to save the Rosenbergs from the electric chair falls short, and even a plea from Pope Pius XII to Eisenhower to let the couple live meets with failure.
- Post-execution information, including the declassified Venona transmissions, give ammunition to both the Rosenbergs' defenders and critics. Statements from Feklisov as well as information revealed by Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union shows that Julius Rosenberg undoubtedly passed along information to the USSR, though mostly of little value; the evidence of Ethel's involvement is almost nil, though it is fairly clear that she at least knew of her husband's activities. David Greenglass, who escaped the death penalty by testifying against the two, in late 2000 will state that he lied under oath about his sister's involvement under pressure from Cohn and to protect his wife and children. The Rosenbergs' two children, Robert and Michael, will not be adopted by any relatives for fear of ostracism; they will finally be adopted by a husband-and-wife team of songwriters, will produce two books about their parents, and Robert founds the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a fund to assist the children of left-wing activists involved in court cases. The 1971 novel The Book of Daniel, by E.L. Doctorow, is loosely based on the Rosenberg case, as is the 1983 movie based on the book, entitled simply Daniel. Other books, plays, and movies will use the case as a springboard for their own statements. (Wikipedia)
Armistice ends Korean War
- July 27: The US, North Korea, and China sign an armistice officially ending the Korean War,
Korean War
leaving the country divided along almost the exact lines where the fighting had begun three years before. The armistice is seen by many in the international community as a potential model for resolving the ongoing conflict in Vietnam. The armistice avoids the likely use of "tactical" nuclear bombs against the North Koreans -- in fact, the NSC had advocated using atomic weapons against the Chinese "from Shanghai all the way north," and Eisenhower helped bring about the armistice about by quietly warning the Chinese of the US plans to use nukes if an armistice wasn't quickly concluded. Eisenhower made his point by having a number of critical dams bombed, causing catastrophic flooding throughout the peninsula. - Interestingly enough, it proves quite difficult to get an accurate count of American casualties in the Korean conflict. A patently false figure of 54,246 dead GIs will be used until the turn of the century, and on the war's fiftieth anniversary, the New York Times will note "an estimated...30,000 dead." By correcting the figure to remove noncombatant fatalities outside the Korean theater, the Pentagon will then issue a figure of 36,516. Even worse is the failure to calculate the number of POWs and MIAs. Of 8,177 prisoners taken by North Korean and Chinese captors, only 4,482 are returned. No serious efforts to ever locate, much less rescue, these putative 3,600+ American prisoners is ever undertaken.
- Unfortunately, in part because of Eisenhower's success in forcing an armistice with a nuclear threat, many now believe that America can be defended perfectly well by the threat of nuclear retaliation, to the point where America's armed forces can be drastically reduced or even eliminated. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey opines that US military spending is now virtually a waste that adds nothing to the country: if, in fact, US nuclear striking power is what "kept peace in the world," he concludes, "all the rest of those soldiers and sailors and submarines and everything else...could drop in the ocean, and it wouldn't make too much difference." The limitations of nuclear weapons, not the least of which is the heavy and indiscriminate radioactive fallout from their detonation, is not yet figured into the finances of nuclear deterrence. Meanwhile, Democratic liberals are the strongest voices for continued spending on the traditional military; those Democrats are the prime ones calling for the development of strategic bombers and missiles that can deliver payloads on the USSR from a long way away, while Republicans are urging Eisenhower to bring Americans stationed in Europe home, a recommendation Eisenhower spurns as one that would cripple "European morale." Eisenhower's vision of a trimmed-down military bolstered by a readily used nuclear arsenal becomes known as the "New Look" for the military, a paradigm attacked repeatedly by Democratic presidential hopeful Adlai Stevenson and many others. Leebaert says that the big question, how can the US handle flare-ups of "little wars" if it relies too heavily on nuclear weapons to solve its military problems, is glibly dismissed by Eisenhower, who says if the US can win a big war (WWII), it certainly can handle a little one. In reality, the "New Look" is hardly new, but is largely a return to the nuclear-centric pre-Korean War defense strategy of the Truman administration, although somewhat more reliant on US allies. (Korean War, Vietnam War Timeline, Derek Leebaert)
- August 12: The USSR tests its first hydrogen, or thermonuclear, bomb, years before the US believed it would be capable of such a feat.
Soviet nuclear program
The Russian and American advances in nuclear weapons technology escalates the Cold War to unparalled heights. US intelligence gathering methods are exposed as much weaker and more ineffective than previously thought. "There was an extraordinary absence of knowledge," recalls Richard Helms, then a rising young CIA officer and later the head of the CIA. "It was totally frustrating trying to learn anything, no matter how hard we tried or how imaginative we were. Eisenhower was sorely pressed to know what his enemy was about." Even if an attack never came, however, the fear of one, fueled by the absence of hard information, was potentially debilitating. The US had little choice than to do everything possible to defend itself against Soviet threats, but without precise information about Soviet military and nuclear capabilities, there was a strong risk that the US would waste time and resources building defenses and weapons that did not match the threat, or invest in military programs that were unnecessary. The drain could seriously impact the entire American economy. Edwin Land, the inventor of instant photography who would become a key element in the development of US spy technologies, said, "We cannot afford to defend against all possible threats. We must know accurately where the threat is coming from and concentrate our resources in that direction. Only by doing so can we survive the cold war." (Philip Taubman)
Mossadaq government in Iran is overthrown by the US
- August 19: The Mossadaq government of Iran is overthrown by Iranian rebels and the CIA in a coup nicknamed Operation Ajax.
Mossadeq democracy in Iran
The CIA promptly reinstates Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi on the throne. The Shah's secret police, SAVAK, trained by the CIA and Israel's Mossad, are as brutal and terrifying as the Gestapo. Resistance against the US's interference in Arab affairs builds throughout the Middle East. British oil interests, partially nationalized under previous governments, are returned to British control. American oil interests are retained by 8 private oil companies, who are awarded 40% of the Iranian oil industry. US General Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. helps the Shah develop the fearsome SAVAK secret police. (ZNet, History Lesson: Middle East Timeline, Global Policy Forum, Guardian, A Timeline of Oil and Violence) - Late August: The New York Times' chief of staff John Swinton says during a farewell banquet in his honor,
Media manipulation and marketing by GOP
"There is no such thing, at this date, of the world's history, in America, as an independent press.... The business of the journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and the vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." (Lewis Lapham) - September 8: Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry Vinson dies suddenly.
Supreme Court
Eisenhower replaces him with moderate Republican Earl Warren, the governor of California and the vice-presidential nominee in 1948. Eisenhower is surprised by Warren's unexpected liberalism and activism. Warren is best remembered for leading the Court in obtaining a unanimous decision to end school segregation in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, though the Court had been wrestling with the case for ten months before Warren joined the bench. (Earl Warren, Fireside and Fuller, Vincent Bugliosi) - October: In reprisal for the murder by Arabs of a young Israeli mother and her two children,
Israel-Palestinian conflict
an Israeli commando force destroy part of the Palestinian village of Kibya, killing 69 Palestinians, mostly women and children. The leader of the commando unit is Ariel Sharon; the leader of the Israeli terror group called the Stern Gang is Yitzhak Shamir; the leader of another Israeli terror group, the Irgun, is Menachem Begin. All three are future prime ministers of Israel. Pat Buchanan writes, "In both storied uprisings of the twentieth century, the Irish and Israeli wars of independence, terrorism was used, and those who used it are today national heroes in the pantheons of their people." (Pat Buchanan) - October: Communist witch-hunter Joseph McCarthy begins investigation supposed communist infiltration in the US Army, focusing particularly on Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens.
McCarthyism
An infuriated Eisenhower realizes that it is time to rein McCarthy in. Army sources pass information about McCarthy to Drew Pearson and other investigative journalists, including information about McCarthy and his legal associate Roy Cohn abusing Congressional privilege in trying to prevent David Schine from being drafted and later trying to force the Army into granting Schine special privileges. Other media figures, including writers I.F. Stone and George Seldes and cartoonists Herbert Block (Herblock) and Daniel Fitzpatrick, who have been working against McCarthy for a long time, find themselves joined by new allies in opposition to McCarthy, most notably Edward R. Murrow and Walter Lippman. As detailed below, by December 1954, McCarthy will be rendered irrelevant, with one newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, writing that "[i]n this long, degrading travesty of the democratic process, McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice." One journalist says that after this, no one of any stature in the media pays any attention to anything else McCarthy has to say: "Most reporters just refused to file McCarthy stories. And most papers would not have printed them anyway." (HUAC Timeline, Spartacus Educational, Lewis Lapham)
French lose battle of Dien Bien Phu
- November 20 1953 - May 7 1954: One of the most critical battles of the Vietnam War takes place when French forces begin fortifying a small air base, Dien Bien Phu, in northwest Vietnam.
Vietnam War
The French underestimate the forces Giap will bring to bear against their position. On March 13, Giap, outnumbering the French 5-to-1, launches a huge assault against the French. After destroying French supply lines to the airbase, Giap begins large-scale tunnelling and trench-digging operations, having his troops surround the French. The airbase is besieged on March 30, a siege which stretches through April. The French quickly run out of fresh water and medical suppiles, and make an urgent appeal to Washington for aid. After heated debate among US military and civilian leaders, Eisenhower decides that none of his three options (sending in combat troops, launching B-29 airstrikes, or using tactical nuclear weapons) are feasible. The US does nothing to help the French. On May 7, the French surrender. France decides to cut its losses after Dien Bien Phu and withdraw completely from Vietnam. (Vietnam War Timeline) - November 28: Army biowarfare expert Dr. Frank Olson plunges to his death from a New York City hotel, a death that for decades is passed off as either an accident or a suicide.
US intelligence
Olson runs the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick, Maryland, and has deep, covert ties to such US intelligence programs as Operation Paperclip and Operation Artichoke, the precursor to MK-ULTRA. (In 1978, former CIA director William Colby will reveal that Olson was not a civilian employee of the Army, as his family so long believed, but a CIA agent. His specialty was the development of aerosol-delivered anthrax.) After a relentless investigation by his son Eric, the US government produces a story that says Olson committed suicide nine days after being administered LSD without his knowledge during a secret CIA experiment, a story Eric Olson finds just as bogus as the original "accidental death" tale. Eric Olson, who was 9 when his father died, later says, "I'm not essentially conspiratorial in my world view. In my father's case, I just started turning over stones, and there was a snake under every one." - In 1975, after investigations had turned up evidence linking the CIA's LSD experiments to Olson's death, two of then-President Ford's aides, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, set up a meeting with Ford and the Olson family where Ford apologized for the cover-up. The goal of the meeting, according to a declassified White House memo, was to avert a lawsuit in which it "may become apparent that we are concealing evidence for national security reasons." The Olson family believes that the Ford meeting is itself part of a cover-up, a belief shared by, among others, Army intelligence veteran Norman Cournoyer, Olson's best friend at Fort Detrick. Cournoyer believes Olson was murdered "to shut him up. ...Frank was a talker. His concept of being a real American had changed. He wasn't sure we should be in germ warfare, at the end." William Walter, who supervised anthrax production at Detrick, says Olson's colleagues were divided about his death. "some say he jumped. Some say he had help," Walter says. "I'm one of the 'had-help' people." So is James Starrs, a George Washington University forensic pathologist who will examine Olson's exhumed corpse in 1994 and call the evidence "rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide." Based on Starrs's findings, the Manhattan DA's office opens a homicide investigation that comes to no conclusion, in part because of the untimely and questionable deaths of at least two potential witnesses. "We could never prove it was murder," says prosecutor Steve Saracco. But Saracco finds plenty to fuel his suspicions: a hotel room so cramped it was hard to imagine Olson vaulting through the closed window; motives to shut Olson up; an ambiguous autopsy; and a CIA assassination manual that perfectly delineates the methodology apparently used to murder Olson. "Whether the manual is a complete coincidence, I don't know," Saracco says. "But it was very disturbing to see that a CIA manual suggested the exact method of Frank Olson's death."
- Evidence also shows that Ford aides Cheney and Rumsfeld were placed in charge of helping the CIA keep the real story about Olson's death quiet, even from the family. At that time Rumsfeld was White House Chief of Staff to President Gerald Ford. Dick Cheney was a White House assistant. A memo from Cheney states, "Dr. Olson's job was so sensitive that it is highly unlikely that we would submit relevant evidence." The memo continues:"The Olson lawyers will seek to explore all the circumstances of Dr. Olson's employment, as well as those concerning his death. In any trial, it may become apparent that we are concealing evidence for national security reasons and any settlement or judgement reached thereafter could be perceived as money paid to cover up the activities of the CIA." Eric Olson says that the memo and other documents show Rumsfeld and Cheney "have questions to answer. ...The documents show the lengths to which the government was trying to cover up the truth."
- Olson was promoted to the acting directorship of the SOD in 1952, and was secretly working with Operation Artichoke, the CIA's hunt for new drugs to make enemy prisoners spill their secrets (a project apparently inspired by the Nazi experiments in Dachau and other concentration camps). But as time went on, Olson began to have more and more doubts about his work. A book by his mentor, Dr. Theodor Rosebury, titled In Peace or Pestilence: Biological Warfare and How To Avoid It, triggered a powerful ethical dilemma in Olson. He was even seen discussing the issues with the pacifists who protested outside Detrick's gates. "He was turning, no doubt about it," Cournoyer says. There is also evidence that he visited Britain in the summer of 1953 to confide in William Sargant, an expert in brainwashing techniques for British intelligence; he may have told Sargant about witnessing or participating in a "terminal experiment" on an "expendable" human being at a CIA facility in Germany. It is known that Sargant reported Olson to British intelligence as a security risk. Olson, a scientist by training, would have known that he was working for a government that had put Nazi scientists on trial at Nuremberg for immoral experiments on human beings. By the late summer of 1953, it is more than possible that Olson began to believe that his own government was doing the same thing. His son reasoned that if the CIA knew about Olson's state of mind, it would not be enough to hospitalize him, discredit him with lies about his mental condition and allow him to slip back into civilian life. It would be better to get rid of him altogether but make it look like suicide.
- The now-infamous LSD experiment that may have caused Olson's death occurred on November 19, 1953, at a rented cabin on Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland. Olson -- who had stepped down to deputy chief of Special Operations -- joined six Army colleagues and three CIA men led by Sidney Gottlieb, the eccentric and powerful CIA liaison to Detrick and the head of the mind-control program MK-ULTRA. By his own account, Gottlieb served Cointreau to seven of the men without telling them he had laced it with LSD, ostensibly to study the drug's effects. According to Olson's colleagues, the drug sent Olson into a near-psychosis. Olson's wife remembers her husband coming home in a depression, and telling her that he had made a "terrible mistake" and he intended to leave the Army and retrain as a dentist.
- The official CIA version of events has an increasingly unstable Olson becoming increasingly paranoid and despondent; five days after the alleged dosing, he was taken to a doctor, Harold Abramson, who had done work with LSD. (Abramson is an allergist whose sole contribution to Olson's well-being was a prescription of Nembutal and bourbon to help him sleep.) Three days later, after an apparent meeting with another CIA operative who tried to hypnotize Olson and a Thanksgiving with CIA officer Robert Lashbrook, he supposedly agreed to go to a psychiatric hospital. (His wife remembers him calling her to say he felt much better, and mentioning nothing about desiring to be institutionalized.) He and Lashbrook spent the night at the Statler hotel and head to the hospital the next day; Lashbrook says he awoke at 2:45 am to the sound of breaking glass. Olson had thrown himself through the closed shade and closed window, falling 170 feet to his death on the sidewalk below. This story would not surface until 1975, unearthed by the Rockefeller Commission report on CIA abuses, and along with a presidential apology, the family was given some CIA documentation on the case and $750,000 in compensation. It is worth noting that in 1953, even the CIA's general counsel was not happy with the LSD story, calling it "completely inconsistent" with the facts in the case. The trip to New York was highly unlikely to have been to help Olson avoid a psychotic breakdown; it was far more likely to assess what kind of risk he posed and then eliminate him if necessary. Housing a possibly deranged and desperate man in a hotel room high above Seventh Avenue was not a regrettable error of judgment. It was the prelude to murder. Eric Olson now believes that his father's request to Lashbrook to "just let me disappear" was a plea for his life, a plea which was to be denied. Narcotics agent and CIA stringer Ike Feldman later tells reporter Mary Fischer, "I heard that Frank Olson was talking to people he shouldn't have." Given the secret nature of MK-ULTRA, says Feldman, "It's very logical he was pushed."
- However, the family was still unconvinced, particularly son Eric. For one, Mrs. Olson remembers her husband as distraught but certainly not emotionally unglued; she says he spent the weekend wrestling with the ethical dilemma of continuing his work at Detrick or not before confronting his supervisor, Dr. Victor Ruwet, and demanding that he be allowed to resign. In 1975, the assistant night manager at the Statler Hotel in 1953 told the family that his phone operator had overheard a conversation between Lashbrook and Abramson immediately after Olson's fall. Instead of shocked and emotional voices, the operator had told Pastore, there was a brief and seemingly expected exchange. "He's gone," Lashbrook said. "That's too bad," Abramson reportedly answered. The impression of foul play was reinforced by a document provided to the family by the CIA, which tells of a CIA investigator surreptitiously listening to a conservation between Abramson and Lashbrook; Abramson said he was "worried as to whether or not the deal was in jeopardy" and thought "the whole operation was dangerous and the whole deal should be reanalyzed." In a report to the CIA on the death, Abramson wrote that the LSD experiment was designed "especially to trap [Olson]." This conflicted with Gottlieb's story and raised a troubling possibility: that the LSD experiment was actually designed to see whether Olson could still be trusted to keep the agency's dark secrets. Eric Olson had his father's body exhumed and autopsied in 1994. At the funeral in 1953, the coffin was shut because the family had been told that the body was broken up and that there were extensive cuts and lacerations to the face caused by the fall through the glass -- in reality, the body had been embalmed, and it was in nearly perfect condition. Starrs, the pathologist, found none of the facial cuts the original autopsy described, but he did find a contusion to the head that he thought was caused by a blow struck before the fall. The CIA assassination manual specifically recommends stunning a victim with a blow to the head before throwing him out of a window.
- The family feels particularly betrayed by Ruwet, Olson's former boss and a person they considered a family friend. Not only did Ruwet conceal the LSD-experiment information from the family for 22 years (and may have concealed more information for the rest of his life), Ruwet also did not divulge to the family that he was more than a family friend sharing the grief of the loss of Olson, but was ordered by CIA chief Allan Dulles to keep an eye on the family after the death.
- Eric is still unsure of the exact nature of his father's death; he has constructed a Web site for his father and the investigation into his death, The Frank Olson Project, that details his long and often frustrating search. He says he believes he knows what happened, even if he doesn't know details of perpetrators and motives. "You can see the truth through the fog," he says. "But you can't quite make out what it is." (San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times/Datafilter, London Sunday Express/Frank Olson Project, Gentlemen's Quarterly/Frank Olson Project)
Oppenheimer charged with Communist sympathies
- December 21: Eminent nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer, who helped build the atomic bomb during World War II and later repudiated his work as a matter of conscience,
Cold War
is charged with delaying the naming of a number of Soviet spies as well as blocking the development of the hydrogen bomb. Oppenheimer, who denies being a Communist but admits to belonging to several Communist front groups, is found not guilty, but his security clearance is revoked and his contract with the Atomic Energy Commission is revoked. (It is later learned that Oppenheimer was the victim of a personal vendetta by the AEC's Lewis Strauss, a grudge facilitated by the enthusiastic testimony against Oppenheimer by fellow nuclear scientist Edward Teller.) Oppenheimer will live out the rest of his life in semi-seclusion, but takes a post at Princeton University. He will die of throat cancer in 1967. Many of his fellow scientists believe Oppenheimer was "crucified" because he holds beliefs in opposition to that of the US government. (Nuclear Files, Derek Leebaert)
