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
1954
- The
Vietnam War
US offers France nuclear weapons for use in fighting the rebellion against French colonial rule in Vietnam. The French refuse. (ZMag)
Guatamalan government overthrown by CIA
- An attempted overthrow of Guatamala's government,
US actions in Latin America
and the nationalization of a number of US companies in that country, results in the bloody oppression of the nationalist revolt by Guatamalan troops organized and overseen by the CIA. US bombers based in Nicaragua make devastating strikes on Guatamalan targets, and the threat of nuclear bombing is made. (ZMag)
Joseph McCarthy exposed as a fraud
- Senator Joe McCarthy clashes with Secretary of the Army Robert Stevens,
Downfall of Joe McCarthy
and launches a sweeping investigation of the Army for Communist infiltration. (McCarthy has already reaped headlines by claiming that both Roosevelt and Truman represent "twenty years of treason" by Democrats against their country.) By this time the government and the country is tiring of McCarthy's Red-baiting; with the help of President Eisenhower and the unedited broadcasts of journalist Edward R. Murrow, the hearings vindicate the Army and expose McCarthy for a fraud and a liar. (A number of more principled, or at least more moderate, Republicans, including Senator Prescott Bush, join in criticizing their colleague.) On June 9, during a heated exchange between McCarthy and Army attorney Joseph Welch, Welch blasts McCarthy with the famous phrase, "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" On December 2, the Senate votes to censure McCarthy for "conduct contrary to Senatorial tradition." McCarthy's career as a senator and an anti-Communist crusader is finished. - Of the entire ugly period, historian Derek Leebaert writes, "What finally made McCarthy 'McCarthyism'...was the contempt for common law and common decency. McCarthy married opposition to widely known Communist tactics with a Midwestern detestation of foreign policy, particularly of the snobs and homosexuals who, everyone (at least in Milwaukee) knew dominated the State Department. It was an attack initiated by outsiders against government; less so, as Acheson understood, a case of government itself on a rampage. Once the attackers got some official traction, however, the internal security bureaucracies performed with enthusiasm." (Lewis Lapham, HUAC Timeline, American Rhetoric (includes audio of the entire Welch-McCarthy exchange), Joe Conason, Derek Leebaert)
- The
Minority rights
last racially segregated unit of the US Armed Forces is abolished. (Michael Cooper) - The first meeting of the highly secretive "Bilderberg Group" takes place at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, Holland.
Bilderberg Group
The group is composed of politicians, industry leaders, academics, and other influential people, and is the subject of numerous conspiracy theories centering around "secret world governments." The first group is initiated by Polish emigre and political adviser Joseph Retinger, who, concerned about the growth of anti-Americanism in Western Europe, proposes an international conference at which opinion leaders from European countries and the US would be brought together with the aim of promoting understanding between the cultures as well as opposing Soviet expansion and the spread of Communism. The idea wins the support of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, a former SS officer who, along with Belgian prime minister Paul Van Zeeland, promotes the idea. The guest list is made up of two attendees from each nation, one each to represent conservative and liberal points of view. - The meeting is so successful that the organizers make it an annual event, with the permanent Steering Committee maintaining a register of attendee names and contact information, in order to create an informal network of powerful Europeans and Americans who can work with one another outside of the usual governmental and corporate channels. Retinger heads the committee until his death in 1960, when Dutch economist Ernst van der Beugel takes the reins. Bernhard continues to chair the group's annual meetings until 1976, when his involvement in the Lockheed scandal prompts the group to cancel their meeting. In 1977, meetings resume under the auspices of former British prime minister Alec Douglas-Home. He will be followed in turn by Walter Scheel, ex-President of Germany, Eric Roll, former head of SG Warburg and Lord Carrington, former Secretary-General of NATO. As the meetings involve the rich and powerful from both continents, conspiracy theories have sprung up, including Bilderberg as a front for one or another Illuminati group or Round Table, or perhaps having a linkage with the more public Trilateral Commission.
- Currently the group is chaired by Belgian politician and businessman Etienne Davignon; current (2005) members include British prime minister Tony Blair, German prime minister Angela Merkin, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands; former and current Bush administration members Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, and Paul Wolfowitz; James Wolfensohn, Wolfowitz's predecessor as head of the World Bank; former US ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke; former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; Labour party potentates Denis Healey and Peter Mandelson; media billionaire Conrad Black; Irish businessman Peter Sutherland, the chairman of Goldman Sachs and BP, as well as a number of other corporate heads and a raft of former and current EU Commissioners. Guests include former US senators John Edwards and John Kerry, financier David Rockefeller, Melinda Gates (wife of Bill Gates of Microsoft), Bill Clinton, and former Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan, among many others. A number of the world's largest corporations, including Nokia, Xerox, Heinz, Fiat, Barclays, and SmithKline Beecham, are recognized as "Bilderberg-friendly."
- "To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated but not wholly unfair," says one group member. "Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing. ...Bilderberg is a way of bringing together politicians, industrialists, financiers, and journalists. Politics should involve people who aren't politicians. We make a point of getting along younger politicians who are obviously rising, to bring them together with financiers and industrialists who offer them wise words. It increases the chance of having a sensible global policy."
- As noted, the conspiracy theories swirling around Bilderberg are many, often contradictory, and for the most part unproven. Nazi sympathizer and conspiracy theorist Jim Tucker claims that both the Persian Gulf War of 1999 and the resignation of Britain's Margaret Thatcher were orchestrated by Bilderberg; a Bilderberg steering committee member tells satirical journalist Jon Ronson that it was at a 1973 meeting that Thatcher made such an impression on the US's Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller. And former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic blames Bilderberg for starting the NATO and UN war against his rule. The member also says that after a fiery speech by Britain's David Owen to a Bilderberg meeting during the Falklands War, the membership was able to impel the UN to impose sanctions on Argentina. After joining Tucker in a somewhat successful attempt to spy on a 2002 Bilderberg meeting in Portugal, Ronson writes, "Thank God I don't believe in the secret rulers of the world. Imagine what the secret rulers of the world might do to me if I did!" The Bilderberg member who spoke with Ronson said that, far from being fed up with hearing wild conspiracy theories about themselves, many of them actually enjoy it. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia, Jon Ronson)
Nasser coup in Egypt
- February 25:
Middle East unrest
In Egypt, the monarchy is overthrown by a band of socialists led by Gamal Abdel Nasser, after a coup attempt that began in 1952; Nasser is proclaimed premier of Egypt . Nasser will become one of the most powerful voices for Arab unification in the world. British troops subsequently leave Egypt. (Gamel Abdel-Nasser Biography, ZNet) - April 24: British forces launch "Operation Anvil,"
Kikuyu, or Mau Mau, rebellion
a systematic effort to "purge" the Kenyan capital of Nairobi of virtually all Kikuyu natives, using a plan similar to the British effort to "clean up" the city of Tel Aviv of Palestinians before World War II. 25,000 security force members employ "Gestapo-like" tactics to sweep up African residents, who are taken to barbed-wire enclosures. Many are "screened" on the spot and then delivered to detention camps based mostly on ethnicity. Within two weeks, virtually no Kikuyu are left in Nairobi. Many are forced to labor in "work camps" whose conditions violate international law. Many Christian missionaries cooperate with the British in detaining, working, and torturing Kikuyu detainees. (Caroline Elkins)
Kenyan prisoners awaiting trial
Partitioning of Vietnam into North and South
- May 8: The Geneva Conference on Indochina begins,
Vietnam War
attended by the US, Britain, China, the Soviet Union, France, Vietnam (both Viet Minh and representatives of the puppet Bao Dai regime in the South), Cambodia and Laos, all meeting to negotiate a solution for Southeast Asia. (The CIA will establish a military mission in Saigon in June.) By late July, an agreement is reached at the conference, dividing Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with Ho Chi Minh ruling a Communist government in the north and Bao Dai ruling in the South. A "demilitarized zone" will divide the two. The accords also provide for elections to be held in all of Vietnam within two years to reunify the country. The US opposes the unifying elections, fearing a likely victory by Ho Chi Minh; the elections will ultimately not be held. Ho formally returns to Hanoi after eight years of hiding in the jungle and takes over the North Vietnamese government. In the South, Bao Dai's prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem predicts another, more deadly war will soon erupt in Vietnam. Diem, a Roman Catholic in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, encourages Vietnamese Catholics living in Communist North Vietnam to flee south. Nearly one million leave. At the same time, some 90,000 Communists in the south go north, although nearly 10,000 Viet Minh fighters are instructed by Hanoi to quietly remain behind. (Vietnam War Timeline, Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations)
Brown v. Board of Education decision
- May 17: The US Supreme Court issues its long-awaited decision in the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case.
Minority rights
By a 9-0 vote, the Court declares that segregation of US public schools is illegal and destructive, and must end "with all deliberate speed." Chief Justice Earl Warren worked tirelessly to bring even the most conservative justices on board with the decision, feeling that the issue was important enough for the Court to present a unified front to the American people. The Court is not sure exactly how to mandate implementation of their ruling, and puts it off for a year. A firestorm of complaint and opposition to the ruling erupts throughout the country, and many states, particularly in the South, deliberately slow down the process of desegregation in their schools. Ten years later, only 1% of Southern black children will attend school with their white classmates. (Fireside and Fuller) - June 6: The first volume of the epic fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings, later titled The Fellowship of the Rings, is published in Britain. Author J.R.R. Tolkien is said, erroneously, to have written the books at least as a partial allegory of Nazism, atomic bombs, and industrialization. (BBC)
- Summer: In an attempt to convince Britain to reverse its decision to abandon the Suez Canal (and thus remove a moderating force on Egypt's Nasser),
Middle East unrest
Israeli intelligence decides to use terrorist methods inside Egypt, and misdirect investigators into believing the terrorist strikes were Arab in origin. Israel's head of military intelligence, Colonel Benyamin Gibli, initiated what was then code-named "Operation Suzannah." A number of Egyptian Jews and other Israeli intelligence operatives, all part of the top-secret Unit 131, began firebombing targets in Cairo and Alexandria. The bombs did little damage, and after one 131 member, Robert Dassa, was captured when his bomb ignited prematurely in his pocket, Egyptian intelligence and law enforcement were hot on the trail of the firebombers. A number of suspected Israeli agents were tried for various crimes relating to the firebombings; two were convicted and later executed, two were acquitted, two committed suicide in prison, one escaped and fled the country, and the rest served long jail terms. (Israel maintained for a time that it had nothing to do with the operation, and condemned the entire proceedings as anti-Semitic.) Many observers complained that the proceedings were merely show trials, and that many of the captives were tortured to extract confessions. In 1967, the Israeli agents still in jail were freed as part of a secret POW deal. - There is far more to the story than what is written above. Soon after the trial, Mossad chief Isser Harel privately expressed his belief that Avri Elad, the agent who escaped, was in fact an Egyptian spy. In 1956, Elad was caught trying to sell classified information to the Egyptians. At his trial, Harel provided evidence showing that Elad had worked for the Egyptians well before Operation Suzannah was conceived. If so, then Egyptian intelligence must have known about the operation before it was ever put into effect.
- The Israeli government will divide over the issue, with defense minister Pinhas Lavon denying any knowledge of the affair and Gibli publicly contradicting Lavon. An inquiry headed by Supreme Court justice Isaac Olshan and the first chief of staff of Israel's Defense Forces, Yaakov Dori, was unable to find conclusive evidence that Lavon had authorized the opertation. Lavon tried to pin the blame on the secretary-general of defense, Shimon Peres, and Gibli; Prime Minister Moshe Sharett sides with Peres and Gibli, and Lavon resigns. Former prime minister David Ben-Gurion comes out of retirement to succeed Lavon and restore confidence in the government.
- In April of 1960, a review of minutes from the inquiry will find inconsistencies and possibly a fraudulent document in Gilbi's original testimony that seemed to support Lavon's account of events. During this time, it also comes to light that the Israeli agent running Operation Suzannah in Egypt had committed perjury during the original inquiry. The agent was also suspected of betraying the group to Egyptian authorities; though the charges were never proven, he was eventually sentenced to a jail term of 10 years. Ben-Gurion scheduled closed hearings with a new board of inquiry chaired by Chaim Cohen, a supreme court justice. The inquiry found that perjury had indeed been committed, and that Lavon had nothing to do with the operation. Ben-Gurion eventually resigns over the entire ordeal, and the Israeli government is forced to call new elections which fundamentally restructure the political structure in that country.
- The ramifications of the so-called "Lavon Affair" are grim. The Egyptian government will use the trial as a pretext for a series of efforts to punish Egyptian Jews, culminating in 1956 when, following the Suez Crisis, 25,000 Jews are expelled by Egypt and at least 1,000 end up in prisons and detention camps. Israel will lose significant standing and credibility in its relations with the United Kingdom and the United States that would take years to repair. The tactics of the operation will lead to deep-seated suspicion of Israeli intelligence methods, such as agent provocateurs and false flag operations. Lastly, the political aftermath will cause considerable political turmoil in Israel that will affect the influence of its government. (Wikipedia, What Really Happened)
U-2 spy plane developed; Groom Lake (Area 51) secret testing facility built in Nevada
- Mid-July: The prototype of the CL-282 spyplane is delivered to the new Groom Lake facility for testing.
US military
The Air Force redesignates the plane as a "utility aircraft" to maintain its secret status as a spy plane; since the Air Force already has two utility aircraft designated the U-1 and the U-3, the plane is redesignated the U-2. The Groom Lake facility in Nevada will eventually become better known as "Area 51." (Philip Taubman) - July 21: At a summit of the US, British, French, and Soviet leaders in Geneva,
Cold War
Eisenhower makes a dramatic proposal for Washington and Moscow to permit each other to make aerial reconnaissance flights over their respective military installations. Though Eisenhower does not reveal the existence of the U-2, the new spy plane's existence is a key element of his proposal. He tells his aides that if the USSR refuses to accept his proposal, called the "Open Skies" initiative, that he will allow U-2 flights over the Soviet Union. Although Soviet delegation leader Nikolai Bulganin is responsive to Eisenhower's proposal, Soviet premier Khruschev quickly scotches the idea, and informs Bulganin that he considers the entire idea a transparent espionage plot. He will later tell his son Sergei that he believes the proposal was part of a plan for the US to refine its targeting plans for a nuclear strike against the USSR. As a result of the Soviet refusal to accept the "Open Skies" proposal, Eisenhower clears the way for the U-2 to begin operations. (Philip Taubman) - Fall: Opposition to the British government's forced detention and torture of suspected Mau Mau rebels and sympathizers coalesces within Britain's Labour party and other left-wing and human rights groups.
Kikuyu, or Mau Mau, rebellion
Labour MP Barbara Castle declares her party's intention to fight the suppression and torture of Kenyans in a September 30 article printed on the front page of the Tribune. The late 1954 resignation of Arthur Young as Kenya's commissioner of police, and his outraged testimony about the conditions of the British concentration camps in Kenya, further outrages Labour members, who continue to demand inquiries without success. Conservatives in Britain's government counterattack with unsubstantiated allegations that Castle and other Labour politicians are secretly aligned with Communist elements. (Caroline Elkins)
Faulk lawsuit successfully challenges Hollywood blacklisting
- September: At the height of the entertainment and broadcasting industry's "blacklist,"
Attack on civil liberties
Texas comedian and television personality John Henry Faulk, along with several other industry colleagues, wins an American Federation of Radio/Television Artists union election on an anti-blacklisting campaign (in the process defeating union magnates such as Bud Collyer and Ed Sullivan, both of whom have routinely flogged the anti-communist horse for their own ends -- Sullivan is fond of making his entertainers rehearse for hours without pay, and slams them as "Reds" if they protest). Unsurprisingly, Faulk is almost immediately cited as a "known Communist" by the private outfit AWARE, an investigative organization on permanent retainer to several networks, ad agencies, and big corporate sponsors. AWARE cites Faulk seven times in its so-called "Red Channels." (AWARE is hugely fraudulent. According to the terms of its contract, AWARE only makes money when it "successfully" outs Communists, so it is very much in its financial interests to find and expose Commies in the entertainment industry. AWARE's head, Vincent Hartnett, has a deal with his pal Laurence Johnson, a grocery store magnate from upstate New York, for Johnson to publicly yank a sponsor's products from his stores' shelves if that company wasn't quick enough to fire or punish the "Commies" on its payroll outed by Hartnett. Faulk later writes of the pressure, "A nice, big-jowled Republican gentleman would say, 'Good God, tell us what to do to stop it.'") Johnson, along with his pals on the House Un-American Activities Committee, put tremendous pressure on corporate sponsors to drop his show from CBS's lineup, which it did despite the fact that Faulk's ratings were excellent (CBS will eventually fire Faulk while Faulk is out of town on vacation). Faulk, unlike so many others, refuses to take all of this lying down. Faulk files a lawsuit against Hartnett, Johnson and AWARE that, after over six years of legal wrangling, brought down the edifice of legal blacklisting and wins Faulk the biggest judgment for damages ever awarded by a civil jury. In the process, Faulk's entertainment career will be destroyed. - On the topic of blacklisting, authors Ruth and Bud Schultz write, "The underhanded coercion of the blacklist so violated democratic principles that superpatriots could not endorse it openly. Ronald Reagan said, on behalf of the Screen Actors Guild, over which he presided, 'We will not be party to a blacklist.' Then the guild banned from membership both Communists and anyone who had been an unfriendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. 'As long as I live,' vowed producer Eric Johnston in October 1947, 'I will never be party to anything as un-American as a blacklist.' In November of that year, the Association of Motion Picture Producers, led by the same Eric Johnston, resolved to dismiss the Hollywood Ten, to never knowingly employ a Communist, and to seek the assistance of the Hollywood guilds to eliminate 'subversives' in the film industry. 'No right-thinking person believes in blacklists,' wrote Roy Brewer in the American Legion magazine. But he and the Legion were as deep in the business of blacklisting on the West Coast as Vincent Hartnett was on the East Coast." Hartnett and his American Legion co-blacklisters didn't bother to accuse their victims of actual crimes. Attending a rally, signing a petition, marching in a parade, even being seen in public with the "wrong" person -- all of which are perfectly legal activities -- is often enough to bring denunciation and blacklisting down on a person. Most of the industry studios and other concerns had an agreement not to hire people on the blacklist -- many writers, entertainers, and technicians never worked in the US film industry again once their names were on the blacklist. Some, like actress Myrna Loy, were brave enough to face down the accusations and lucky enough to have a career afterwards. Many, like actress Kim Hunter, publicly apologized for their "errant" Communist affiliations, or at least made sham apologies, and continued to work. Some, like actor Robert Taylor, actively cooperated with the persecutors.
- Faulk, a legal naif, asks Louis Nizer, the finest trial lawyer of the day, to represent him; AWARE will eventualloy hire McCarthy aide Roy Cohn. Faulk had no idea that Nizer would charge an enormous retainer to take the case. Nizer agreed to take the case for the modest sum of $10,000, but that was far more than Faulk had; Faulk managed to raise $2500 from family and friends before receiving a fateful call from CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow. Faulk later recalls, "As...I was sitting at my desk at CBS, racing my mind for someone to call and borrow money from, Edward R. Murrow called me from his office upstairs. He said he was terribly glad that I had filed the suit and that Carl Sandburg had sent word, 'Whatever's wrong with America, Johnny ain't." Faulk laid out his financial difficulties before Murrow who said, "Tell Lou Nizer, Johnny, that he will have his money tomorrow." Faulk exploded, not wanting to be indebted to Murrow, especially when his own financial future was so grim. Faulk recalls saying, "'Look, Ed, I can't borrow $7,500 from you. Hell, I might lose my job. And even if I win the suit, there may be no money to repay such a sum as that.' Ed looked at me evenly and said, 'Let's get this straight, Johnny. I am not making a personal loan to you of this money. I am investing in America. Louis Nizer must try this case. These people must be brought into court. This blacklisting must be exposed.'" Faulk later learns Murrow had mortgaged his house in order to pay Nizer. Murrow also tells Faulk, "Of course, this will destroy you. You know that. This will be a battle unto death. Their roots run right into the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee." Faulk's reply? "I think they got the wrong sow by the ear when they got me."
- During the pre-trial hearings, just before Hartnett is to testify, Faulk is subpoenaed by HUAC in an obvious attempt at intimidation. Neither Faulk nor Nizer are moved. Nizer informs HUAC's legal counsel, "if I have to turn Washington upside down you're not going to call John Henry Faulk now. If you force me to, I'll expose your complete unconstitutional pattern of behavior, that the House Un-American Activities Committee is leaking material to AWARE and to the FBI. We will charge that you're doing it as an accommodation to the defendants. We have sufficient evidence in our files right now to establish this." HUAC postpones the subpoena; when Hartnett finds out that Faulk will not be dragged into Congress to testify, he collapses completely, admits that he had been fed a barrel of lies about Faulk, and offers to make any public apologies Faulk might require. Shortly thereafter, McCarthy henchman Cohn becomes the lead attorney for the defense, and forces one lengthy delay after another. Faulk writes of his commitment over the six years of ignominy, debt, and legal wrangling: "In 1787, the founding fathers gathered in Philadelphia to frame their ideals into a constitution and pass them on to us. They spent all summer long slapping mosquitoes, swatting flies, and framing a charter of government that had never seen the light of day before. Then they said: We need a Bill of Rights to make sure these ideals and principles are never violated. These great rights of the people -- freedom of conscience, speech, press, and the right of the people to peacefully assemble -- must never be touched. It still makes a lump come to my throat. This is who we are. This is our strength. You get an enormous sense of well-being and security once you understand how our society began and you know you're on the beam with it. That knowledge is what sustained me through my case. And it was the asininity of these jackanapes and scoundrels -- those who pronounced those basic freedoms that were created and nailed into our Constitution as being somehow Communist-inspired -- that showed how desperately far we'd come from our ideals."
- The case finally comes before a jury in the spring of 1962; Nizer's prosecution of the case is brilliant. He gathers a raft of information about the various people blacklisted by AWARE, how they were blacklisted, and the careers the organization had destroyed. Hollywood personages David Susskind, Tony Randall, Garry Moore, and Mark Goodson all testify in Faulk's behalf. Nizer and Faulk have more trouble finding someone who AWARE had victimized to testify, until Kim Hunter, the Acadamy-Award winning actress, agreed to testify. Hunter's career had been blighted by AWARE until she agreed to sign a series of affidavits in return for being removed from the blacklist. He had had her say that she had committed a grievous error by not realizing how sinister the Communist conspiracy was and that she hoped she would be forgiven. Hunter's testimony of AWARE's illegal pressure on her is, in Faulk's words, "scorching." Susskind testifies that he had tremendous trouble staffing a show he had created, "Appointment with Adventure," because AWARE kept labeling potential employees as "politically unreliable" -- even an 8-year old boy.
- One of the turning points in the trial is when Faulk catches Hartnett writing down names even when he is in the middle of testifying -- when Nizer calls him out later that day, asking, "Mr. Hartnett, whose names were you writing down? Were you writing down names of people who come into a public courtroom so you can blacklist them in the future?" the jury, in Faulk's words, "looked at Hartnett as if he had been caught publicly molesting a child." Hartnett's attempt to duck out of the embarrassing moment by smearing Faulk's wife as a Communist backfires when Hartnett identifies the wrong woman as Faulk's wife. Faulk writes, "The courtroom exploded. The jurors looked at each other and laughed. Hartnett looked like he'd just been stripped buck naked and was sitting up there absolutely nude. Nizer took another beat until it quieted again. He drew his hand back like he had a lance in it and was going to throw it all the way across the courtroom at poor Hartnett. He went up to the witness chair and said, 'Sir, is that the accuracy with which you have named your victims and drawn the noose of starvation around the necks of countless American citizens?'" Hartnett was crushed. When Nizer, in his summation, asks the jury for two million dollars in damages, Faulk thinks Nizer has gotten caught up in his own rhetoric. Instead, the jury foreman comes back to ask, "Can we give more than two million?" Faulk recalls, "Nizer looked like somebody had hit him between the eyes with a ballpeen hammer. Whatever mistakes he had made in the past, asking for too little was never one of them. I was just numbed by the whole thing." The jury awards Faulk an unprecedented $3.5 million judgment -- "I must say it has a therapeutic effect on your bruised feelings," Faulk quips.
- Naturally, legal wrangling causes Faulk to be forced to settle for far less than the stated amount. He spends the rest of his entertainment career scrambling to work where he could, mostly on the radio and giving an occasional lecture. He is inordinately grateful when, decades later, he lands a small part on the comedy show "Hee Haw." In 1977 Faulk obtains his FBI file, which is chock full of what he calls "a mishmash of gossip, distortion, and falsehood" going back to 1943. "There were some very interesting things in my file," Faulk notes. "There was a memo from one of Lyndon Johnson's assistants to J. Edgar Hoover: 'Can you give us any information on Faulk?' And J. Edgar Hoover turned over my whole file to him, all of this unauthorized claptrap. You see, in 1955, Lyndon Johnson had asked me to come work for him and then had suddenly lost all interest in me. He told me he was just dropping the whole project. But the dates were right there. Hoover's information had gone to Johnson on April 19. Johnson sent word to me on April 20 that he wasn't interested in carrying through the contract we had. There were two or three instances like that. The FBI furnished information to Roy Cohn, the attorney for the opposition at the trial. Then in 1964 -- two years after I had won the lawsuit against their buddy-buds in Aware -- there was an exchange of memos between the House Un-American Activities Committee and J. Edgar Hoover: 'We want to dig up some dirt on Faulk.' Dirt! It's the actual term they used. They asked, 'Will the director be cooperative?' And Hoover signed the memo, Yes.'"
- Still, the lawsuit has a chilling effect on Hollywood, and is the first major step towards bringing blacklisting as an accepted practice to a long-overdue end. (Texas Observer, Ruth and Bud Schultz, Texas Legacy Project)
- October 24:
Vietnam War
Eisenhower pledges US military and economic aid to the government of South Vietnam. (Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations) - November 1: Algeria's National Liberation Front (FLN) launches attacks in various parts of Algeria against military installations, police posts, warehouses, communications facilities, and public utilities.
Algerian revolution against France
From Cairo, the FLN broadcasts a proclamation calling on Muslims in Algeria to join in a national struggle for the "restoration of the Algerian state, sovereign, democratic, and social, within the framework of the principles of Islam." The French minister of interior, Francois Mitterrand, responds that "the only possible negotiation is war." It is the reaction of Premier Pierre Mendes-France that sets the tone of French policy for the next five years: on November 12, he declares in the National Assembly that "One does not compromise when it comes to defending the internal peace of the nation, the unity and integrity of the Republic. The Algerian departments are part of the French Republic. They have been French for a long time, and they are irrevocably French.... Between them and metropolitan France there can be no conceivable secession." French Algerians and loyalists carry out vigilante hunts against suspected FLN members, and the guerrilla war for Algerian liberation from French rule escalates. UPI's Martin Walker writes that the FLN "fought French rule with a ruthless terror campaign, using Arab women dressed as fashionable young Frenchwomen, to place bombs in cafes, dancehalls, and cinemas. The French fought back ferociously, and in the Battle of Algiers, General Jacques Massu's battalion of paratroopers broke the FLN network in the casbah, or Arab quarter, with ruthless interrogations and the widespread use of torture." (OnWar) - November 26: The CIA's Richard Bissell becomes leader of the CL-282 spy plane project.
Cold War
Bissell's orders require his team to produce a radical new spy plane in less than eight months. In order to do so, Bissell and his team allows private corporations such as Lockeed and Pratt & Whitney, and civilians such as designer Kelly Johnson and photography expert Edwin Land, to operate with little or no government scrutiny. (Lockheed's secret advanced projects department, which helped develop the CL-282, would later become known as "skunk Works," and would become the source of a number of secret military technological developments.) The unprecedented amount of leeway allowed the private operators to develop what would later be designated the U-2 spy plane in record time; unfortunately, the precedent of virtually independent operations set by the program would be abused by corporations in later years, which would pocket millions of defense dollars in return for little or no production. The spy plane project operated behind a thick veil of secrecy, to the point that corporate engineers were not told what they were designing. In 1955, the project required a new jet fuel that would not boil off at 70,000 feet; Shell Oil developed such a fuel, which required the use of chemicals used in its popular pesticide Flit; consumers who wondered why they could no longer obtain Flit had no idea that the unavailability of the pesticide was due to the secret spy plane project. The plane itself was so light, primarily made of aluminum, that engineers joked that the plane was made of Reynolds Wrap. Pilot Bob Ericson later recalls that "You picked the wing up and it bent, and -- holy smokes -- you know, this thing is made out of toilet paper." (Philip Taubman) - Late 1954: After two years of largely ineffectual fighting between Mau Mau resistance groups and British military forces in Kenya (which include large numbers of loyalist Kenyans), the British take the upper hand by locking down the perimeters of the colonies.
Kikuyu, or Mau Mau, rebellion
Mau Mau who are captured alive are taken en masse to any of several "interrogation centers" where they are usually tortured and brutalized, and often killed outright. These centers will later become large detention camps. One of the first and most brutal of the British commanders of the Kenyan Criminal Investigation Department, Ian Henderson, who is credited with perfecting the torture techniques used against Mau Mau prisoners, will later be awarded the George Medal and sent to Bahrain, where for thirty years he will head that tiny protectorate's office of state security. (Caroline Elkins)
