Allen Dulles Research Articles

From the Psychoanalytic Personal to Cold War Psychwar: Martha Graham’s Modern Dance, Jungian Archetypes, and Allen Dulles’ Central Intelligence Agency

ABSTRACT For the choreographer Martha Graham, the personal became politicised because she used Jungian psychology and its archetypes to reveal and make ‘universal’ what she and Cold Warriors called ‘the soul of mankind’. Graham thereby became useful as pro-Western, and particularly pro-United States (US), propaganda as she and her company toured Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Post-World War II (WWII) networks shared a Jungian approach to psychology seeded by Carl Jung, the first president of the International Psychiatric Association in 1907. During WWII, the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Switzerland under Allen Dulles relied on Jung’s work. During the postwar period, Graham entered therapy with Jung’s American protégée, Frances Wickes. Dulles became the first civilian director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Because the post-WWII fight against the Soviet Union was ideological, and utilised psychwar strategies, ‘total warfare’ included the consistent US government deployment of psychwar and Martha Graham. Graham’s highly profound, personal works about the inner working of mankind through the Jungian use of archetypes became politicised when they were staged internationally by the US government between 1955 and 1987. The article uses Graham’s letters to Wickes to support the argument.

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War

The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War

Religion, Power, and the Life of John Foster Dulles

Religion, Power, and the Life of John Foster Dulles Benjamin E. Varat (bio) John D. Wilsey, God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021. xv + 253 pp. Notes and index. $21.99. John D. Wilsey, God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021. xv + 253 pp. Notes and index. $21.99. Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency in January 1961, yet actions he and his longtime Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, undertook still reverberate powerfully across the globe. They cast a shadow over our contemporary world. Studying these actions can illuminate what the year 1953 means for an Iranian, why newspaper articles about Guatemalan refugees mention 1954, and why Chinese students stay after class to discuss the Taiwan Strait in 1954–55. The long-term significance of what Eisenhower and Dulles wrought provides so much fodder for historians seeking to reveal the motivations and impulses that animated these two men. The first line of the preface to John D. Wilsey's God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles promises an exploration of Dulles's "worldview as informed by his religion." Dulles openly expressed his faith and made clear, at least rhetorically, that this faith animated his Manichaean vision of the Cold War as a battle between good and evil. Yet his fire-and-brimstone public persona was, to an uncertain extent, an act designed to rally public support for whatever policies he and Eisenhower put into practice. Recent studies by Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (2013), and Walter McDougall, The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy: How America's Civil Religion Betrayed the National Interest (2016), provide scholarly and provocative analyses of how religion informed the making of foreign policy in the Eisenhower administration (Kinzer) and more broadly in U.S. history (McDougall). These works and Wilsey's demonstrate that teasing out the actual effect Dulles's religious beliefs had on his practice of diplomacy and his input into Eisenhower's decision-making is a rich area for study. Early on, Wilsey states he is a Christian historian and his faith animates his scholarship. While faith by itself is an irrelevant qualification for historical analysis, a deep knowledge of Christian thought certainly could add significant color and shade to an examination of Dulles's public life, especially his years [End Page 576] as Secretary of State. In the end, though, little of this potential is realized, as the book suffers from four major shortcomings: a serious lack of secondary sources with a heavy reliance on a few outdated texts; a failure to identify any consistent worldview informed by Dulles's Christianity; a lack of engagement with Dulles's fully divergent reactions to fascism and communism; a shallow, poorly researched exploration of Dulles's long legal career and—most surprisingly in a book entitled God's Cold Warrior—his tenure as Secretary of State. The first and strongest chapter of the book is an extended look at Dulles's familial roots. Born in 1888, Dulles grew up in Watertown, New York, a wealthy manufacturing center on the shores of Lake Ontario. Wilsey, who refers to Dulles as Foster, discusses Dulles's father, the minister Allen Macy Dulles, at length, highlighting his descent from a long line of influential Presbyterian leaders. John Foster Dulles's mother, born Edith Foster, was the elder daughter of John Watson Foster, a prominent lawyer, longtime diplomat, and Secretary of State under Benjamin Harrison. Edith's younger sister, Eleanor, married Robert Lansing, Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of State from 1915 to 1920. Wilsey describes in great detail the outdoor activities Dulles and his siblings engaged in with their grandfather and uncle. From almost the beginning of his life, Dulles had access to the highest levels of diplomatic, political, and business circles in the United States. Wilsey argues that Dulles's religious outlook derived largely from his father, Allen Macy Dulles, especially his notion that there existed a religious duality within Christianity centered on a conflict between those...

Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control. by Stephen Kinzer, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019. 368 pp. $30.00.

<i>Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control</i>. by Stephen Kinzer, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2019. 368 pp. $30.00.

Editor's Note

May 01 2019 Editor's Note Author and Article Information Online Issn: 1531-3298 Print Issn: 1520-3972 © 2019 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology2019President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Cold War Studies (2019) 21 (2): 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_e_00874 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Editor's Note. Journal of Cold War Studies 2019; 21 (2): 1–2. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_e_00874 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsJournal of Cold War Studies Search Advanced Search This issue begins with an article by David M. Barrett discussing a peculiar aspect of the Kennedy administration's attempt to cope with the failure of the U.S.-sponsored intervention in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba in April 1961. On 24–25 April, barely a week after the operation had collapsed, high-ranking administration officials, including President John F. Kennedy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, spent two full days holding confidential, off-the-record briefings for more than 200 journalists. The briefings had been scheduled long before the Bay of Pigs operation occurred and were originally intended as general overviews, but the agenda was hastily adjusted to include coverage of the Bay of Pigs. The policymakers diverged in their views of what had gone wrong and sought to mitigate the public relations damage caused by the fiasco. Although the content of the briefings is interesting in itself, the... You do not currently have access to this content.

The secret life of Ian Fleming: spies, lies and social ties

ABSTRACT This article explores the fascinating interactions and experiences of James Bond creator, Ian Fleming, with the real world of intelligence. It has long been known that Fleming worked in Naval Intelligence during the Second World War. However, accounts of his time there tend to portray him as a lowly and slightly eccentric administrator. Drawing on newly discovered archival materials, plus memoirs and histories, it is argued here that Fleming was a respected and influential figure in the great game of espionage for some three decades. During the war, he was a central cog in the machinery of naval intelligence, planning operations, working with partners in American intelligence and liaising with secret Whitehall departments, including the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Before and after the war, he was involved in a range of intelligence networks, often using journalistic cover to hide his clandestine connections. Throughout his life, his social circle was a ‘who’s who’ of spies and saboteurs, including CIA Director Allen Dulles. In short, he straddled the state-private divide. Taken together, these dealings with real intelligence paved the way for and gave veracity to his fiction, which continues to shape public perceptions of intelligence to this day.

Sharp, Tony Stalin's American Spy: Noel Field, Allen Dulles and the East European Show Trials (review)

REVIEWS 387 hands. If that’s true — and also if it is not true — there is an interesting story to be told, but in order for that to happen a difficult history needs to be excavated. University of Chicago Michael Geyer Sharp, Tony. Stalin’s American Spy: Noel Field, Allen Dulles and the East European Show Trials. Hurst & Company, London, 2014. xiii + 410 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £25.00. Noel Field was an unlikely player in a real-life spy drama. As a half-American Quaker and a self-proclaimed ‘pacifist idealist’ (p. 29), he was regarded as an outsider in the State Department, and yet he quickly developed into a ‘perfect bureaucrat’ in the eyes of his colleagues (p. 26). The ambitious, workaholic Harvard graduate became an acknowledged expert on disarmament and the League of Nations. Although his Communist sympathies excited suspicion, Noel’s profile and personality scarcely fitted the image of a Soviet agent, much less the reverse role of an ‘American master-spy’ in which he was cast by Stalin (p. 147). As the German Communist Paul Merker observed about the youthful Noel, ‘He was the sort of uncomplicated, middle-class American, who from a religiously motivated outlook and morality […] took the side of the weak and needy in society’ (p. 100). By 1949, however, Noel held the dubious distinction of being investigated as a traitor and a spy by both the Americans and the Soviets at one and the same time. Arguably, it was only a quirk of fate that he was kidnapped and arrested by the Czechoslovak and Hungarian secret services, and that he did not stand trial in the United States. Whilst the disappearance of Robert Vogeler, another American accused of espionage, prompted a torrent of protest from the United States Legation in Budapest, the vanishing of a former State Department employee — and subsequently of his wife, brother and foster daughter — barely caused a stir. After all, Noel had already been named by defectors as a covert Communist Party member who previously worked as a Soviet agent. Ironically, the Fields had travelled to Eastern Europe as a precaution, hoping to evade the Western intelligence services. When Noel went missing in Prague in May 1949, his wife assumed he had been seized by the Americans. She had no notion that her husband was languishing in Hungarian custody. Despite his pre-war record in Soviet foreign intelligence, and his wartime assistance of Communist refugees in Switzerland, Noel’s status changed overnight from Stalin’s spy to Stalin’s victim. This dramatic reversal is covered in minute detail by Tony Sharp, who documents how the capture of Noel was followed by that of his wife, Herta, his brother, Hermann and his foster daughter, Erica, all of SEER, 95, 2, APRIL 2017 388 whom ended up in Communist captivity. In addition, most of those who were helped by the Field brothers during the war came to rue the connection, faring badly at the hands of the East German, Polish, Czechoslovak, Hungarian and Soviet secret services. Whether or not the Fields’ associates received what they deserved,theyareportrayedinthisbookwithadegree ofcompassion,ashapless creatures caught in a spider’s web. Sharp relates many tales of human suffering and betrayal, without passing judgement on the individuals concerned. By contrast, in a recent Hungarian study on the trial of László Rajk and his fellow accused (‘A nagy politikai affér’ a Rajk-Brankov-ügy, 2 vols, Budapest, 2013–14), Tibor Zinner harps on the culpability of the Communist victims. Sharp’s more balancedapproachisto humanizethepersecuted,to‘treatthem withsympathy’, whilst suspending ‘empathy with their motives’ (p. 6). His canvas is at once broad and narrow: he effectively links the whole chain of East European show trials to the ordeal of one unfortunate American family. One might argue that Sharp devotes too much attention to some of the East European investigations and purges that had no bearing on the plight of the Fields. He also leaves unanswered some important questions about the anti-American purposes of the Rajk case. Why was Noel picked as the first American victim of Stalinist ‘justice’ in Budapest, and why was he not eventually tried in a Hungarian court, as Vogeler was...

Kati Marton, True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spy. New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 2016. 289 pp. $27.00

Kati Marton, <i>True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spy</i>. New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 2016. 289 pp. $27.00

Death in the Congo: Murdering Patrice Lumumba, by Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick

Reviewed by: Robert Waters, Ohio Northern University, rawatersjr@yahoo.com or r-waters@onu.eduPatrice Lumumba's assassination has been the subject of many studies. Economic determinism has been their authors' preferred analytical approach; morality tale has provided their tone. Death in the Congo is not more of the same. It is a model of scholarship, featuring subtle portraiture, historical empathy, and skilled use of social science. Emmanuel Gerard and Bruce Kuklick are also outstanding historical detectives. They mine Belgian materials, along with the recent Foreign Relations of the United States volume on the Congo, and do an impressive job squeezing the last ounce of information out of the US Senate investigation of CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders. Their meticulous research enables them to track sometimes minute events that broaden and deepen the story of Lumumba's precipitous rise and fall. Of particular note is the authors' focus on the international dimension of domestic politics in Belgium, the United States, and the Congo, as well as the goals and pretensions of United Nations leaders. The result is a persuasive account including many surprising revisionist conclusions.For example, Gerard and Kuklick lay the groundwork for a strong case that Joseph Mobutu (Mobutu Sese Seko) was--briefly--the first of sub-Saharan Africa's reformer military men. They show that he did not begin life as a corrupt Machiavellian on America's payroll. His first coup came at a time of radical political dysfunction, which he sought to repair by creating a College of Commissioners: young university students and graduates to whom he gave real power. In this first iteration, Mobutu vacillated and hedged, often terrified by his alternatives, even at times seeming to lean toward Lumumba.In like fashion, the authors show that Katanga's Moise Tshombe and other secessionist leaders were not colonialist lackeys; they represented peoples who sought a decentralized state under local control based on tribe and tradition, maintaining close Belgian ties to prevent political and economic collapse. Here, the authors would have done well to consult and possibly confront the work of journalists Arnaud de Borchgrave and Smith Hempstone. De Borchgrave, Newsweek magazine's chief foreign reporter and the American immigrant son of Belgian aristocracy, was the most connected foreign journalist of his time, especially in the Congo. Hempstone's Rebels, Mercenaries and Dividends: The Story (New York: Praeger, 1962) argued that was the sort of multi-racial, capitalist, and comparatively free society that the West purported to support for Africa. Hempstone also covered the US role played by influential senator Thomas Dodd and America's Katanga Lobby, neither of which the authors mention.Gerard and Kuklick also demolish former CIA station chief Larry Devlin's effort to portray himself as the moral exemplar who prevented the United States from killing Lumumba. In a situation where nobody in Washington knew much about the Congo, Devlin's shrill warnings energized the US government against Lumumba. That the United States did not kill Lumumba, the authors surprisingly suggest, was thanks to CIA director Allen Dulles, whom they suggest opposed assassination as US government policy. The authors argue that by 1960 Dulles was a loud but complacent empire builder primarily interested in expanding his bureaucratic power and the CIA's budget. They make a strong case that Dulles amplified Devlin's cries of wolf within the Eisenhower administration, then was surprised by Eisenhower's order to kill Lumumba. …

The Incubus of Intervention: Conflicting Indonesia Strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles by Greg Poulgrain

The Incubus of Intervention: Conflicting Indonesia Strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles by Greg Poulgrain

The Burgeoning Fissures of Dissent: Allen Dulles and the Selling of the CIA in the Aftermath of the Bay of Pigs

AbstractThis article documents the efforts of Allen Dulles, upon his forced retirement from the Central Intelligence Agency in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, to promote his former agency in the face of mounting public criticism of its activities. It argues that the first wave of critical press regarding the CIA in the early 1960s was an early indication of the breakdown of the Cold War consensus – a phenomenon usually identified as occurring later in the decade in response to the escalation of the Vietnam War. Dulles, who as head of the CIA for most of the 1950s relied upon a compliant media to maintain the CIA's anonymity in public life, was confronted by an increasingly recalcitrant American media in the following decade that were beginning to question the logics of government secrecy, CIA covert action and US foreign policy more generally. In this respect the Bay of Pigs and the media scrutiny of the CIA and US foreign policy that it inspired can be regarded as an early precursor to the later emergence of adversarial journalism and a post‐consensus American culture that contested the Vietnam War and America's conduct in the Cold War more generally.

Ian Fleming and the Public Profile of the CIA

This article represents the first major analysis of the appearance of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the James Bond novels of British spy fiction writer Ian Fleming. The article shows that Fleming was remarkably influential during the early Cold War in establishing the public profile of the CIA. The novels, which include manifold references to the agency and its staff, were published at a time when the CIA kept out of the public limelight and when other cultural forms, including Hollywood, refrained from making too much fanfare about intelligence matters. Drawing on recently declassified material, including the papers of fabled CIA Director Allen Dulles, the article demonstrates that the agency took a keen interest in Bond, even drawing inspiration from his adventures and the novels' depictions of technology.

Review: Washington Rules America's Path to Permanent War

WASHINGTON RULES America's Path Permanent War Andrew J. Bacevich New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2010. 286 pp, US$25.00 cloth. ISBN 978-0-8050-9141-0Among leading American foreign policy intellectuals who have emerged during the decade since 9/11, Andrew Bacevich occupies a distinctive niche. Anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, and a trenchant critic of the policies of George W Bush and Barack Obama alike, Bacevich is today a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. position gives him a platform write works of high-level popularization combining scholarship and polemic for a general audience. But what gives Bacevich his peculiar public authority, finally, is his unique background: Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich, United States army (retired), spent his first career in the military service of his country. His son, following in his footsteps, recently gave his life in the line of duty in Iraq. So even the Sunday talk-show warriors in cannot dismiss Bacevich out of hand. Nor could the likes of Sarah Palin in Republican Party ranks dare say, as she famously did in a low blow against Obama, that has no cojones.In his most recent trade book, Bacevich argues that there is a Washington about foreign and military policy akin the Washington undergirding the policies of the international financial institutions based in that city. In the mindset of the plutocracy - and this has been true for most of the period since the late 1940s - there is a set of assumptions about America's proper role in the world, i.e., empire, just as there is a set of assumptions about the right kind of international political economy, i.e., the free market. Not only do these assumptions underlie the ebb and flow of particular policies and the periodic rotation of governing parties in congress and the White House, but any attempt by intellectually honest senior officials question or challenge those assumptions is quickly and if need be ruthlessly suppressed. This book aims take stock of conventional wisdom in its most influential and enduring form, Bacevich writes, namely the package of assumptions, habits, and precepts that have defined the tradition of statecraft which the United States has adhered since the end of World War II (12).These Washington centre on the necessity of a permanent standing army and other military forces held in a permanent state of mobilization, ready be deployed globally, and the inherent right intervene anywhere in the world in order perpetuate American hegemony or advance the righteous cause of the pax Americana. Nor are the rules and their assumptions confined only the blighted imagination and self-serving interests of the grandees of the Capitol beltway. The rules - and the policy consensus they constitute - are accepted as well, formally or informally, among the hangers-on of the governing class: big banks and other financial institutions, defense contractors and major corporations, television networks and elite publications like the New York Times, even quasi-academic entities like the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (15). Bacevich's purpose is shine a little light on those rules and thus to argue for readmitting of disreputable (or 'radical') views our national security debate, in effect legitimating alternatives the status quo (16).With telling invective that rarely misses its mark, Bacevich, who is in private life a prominent liberal Catholic layman, writes with the zeal of a highly informed apostate. In five brisk chapters he dispatches Allen Dulles and the CIA, General Curtis LeMay and the strategic air command, the Kennedy brothers and their assassination plots, the unspeakable Nixon, Reagan and his Contras, Bush the elder and the scandalous Clinton set (Bacevich is notably unforgiving of Madeleine Albright), and finally Bush the younger and his commitment global war without end against radical political Islam. …

U.S. Intelligence, the Holocaust, and the Nuremberg Trials: Seeking Accountability for Genocide and Cultural Plunder, Michael Salter (Leiden and Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2009), vol. 1, xii + 308 pp.; vol. 2, x + 462 pp., cloth, $288.00

A legal scholar at Lancashire Law School, Michael Salter has written a number of works concerning the Office of Strategic Services (the OSS) and postwar justice. The studies rely mainly on recently declassified OSS files and related war-crimes trial records. Salter's latest work aims to revise the prevalent notion that for the OSS, collecting information on the Holocaust was entirely incidental to the gathering of operational or political intelligence related to defeating Nazi Germany. Salter argues that OSS officials, from Director William Donovan to intelligence field officers such as Allen Dulles, recognized the Holocaust as qualitatively different from other Nazi crimes. They collected evidence consciously, tracked plundered property, carried out rescue operations when feasible, and helped prepare the trials of Nazi perpetrators. Salter does not seek full revision; that is, he does not argue that the OSS made the Holocaust a top priority. As he has written elsewhere, Dulles helped Heinrich Himmler's chief of staff, Karl Wolff, escape justice. But he does add a great deal of nuance. Moreover, his thorough reading of OSS records and his careful citations provide important signposts for scholars conducting research in this area.

The Pragmatic Face of the Covert Idealist: The Role of Allen Dulles in US Policy Discussions on Latin America, 1953–61

Assessments of the CIA's role in Latin America during the 1950s have tended to focus predominantly on the twin case studies of Guatemala and Cuba. Consequently, the Agency's role – and, more broadly, that of its head Allen Dulles – has come to be seen as one obsessed with covert action and relatively unimportant in terms of policy discussions. Dulles, in fact, has been portrayed as an unwilling and disinterested participant in policy discussions. The present article will challenge those assertions by suggesting that, by examining Dulles's role in the Eisenhower administration's discussions on Latin America, a different picture emerges – one that paints Dulles as an active and rational participant, and which raises important questions for our understanding of the CIA's role during the Eisenhower era.

The Bay of Pigs (review)

Reviewed by: The Bay of Pigs James Holeman Howard Jones . The Bay of Pigs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Howard Jones's The Bay of Pigs (2008) provides a thought-provoking synthesis of a complex topic: the failed Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro exiles in April 1961. Several works, including those by Peter Wyden, Peter Kornbluh, Haynes Johnson, and Trumbull Higgins, exhaustively cover the operational failures at the Bay of Pigs. Jones departs from those accounts by showcasing the Bay of Pigs fiasco as "the first United States sponsored regime change that relied on a combination of military force and assassination" (3). He maintains that three presidents, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, all "found it critical to mesh assassination with military action" to topple Fidel Castro's regime between 1959 and 1965 (6). Jones links the development of Eisenhower administration planning to overthrow Castro between late 1959 and early 1961 with a CIA program to use mafia figures to assassinate Castro. Richard Bissell, CIA deputy director of plans, who oversaw both programs, believed that the director of central intelligence, Allen Dulles, and hence Eisenhower, authorized assassination indirectly through "circumlocutious" wording to maintain plausible deniability. The CIA assassination planning proceeded in tandem with infiltration planning and would theoretically facilitate the formation of a rebel force in the Escambray Mountains and lead to a popular anti-Castro uprising. Bissell and the CIA officer Sheffield Edwards agreed that the Mafia represented the perfect organization, in terms of motive and ability, for the assassination track, which Bissell and other CIA officers considered integral to the invasion planning. Bissell and [End Page 247] Edwards briefed Dulles and Cabell on the "gangster-type operation" in euphemistic terminology, which the director of central intelligence understood and approved. Jones asserts that Kennedy authorized continued paramilitary planning and CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Castro. He concedes that the Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger claimed that Kennedy did not know about the assassination plots and that CIA officers believed that they had had permanent authorization to assassinate Castro since 1960. Nevertheless, Jones posits, on the basis of two conversations Bissell claimed to have had with Kennedy's national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, that Kennedy not only knew about the ongoing assassination operations against Castro but also authorized the CIA to establish an executive action capability to be used to frustrate the effectiveness of recalcitrant foreign leaders, with assassination as a last resort. Jones argues that Kennedy interpreted the failed assassination attempt on Castro on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion as a failed first step in the invasion plan. He claims that the president went forward with the operation, but the failed assassination attempt diminished the operation's chances for success and probably influenced Kennedy to reduce the preinvasion air strikes and cancel the D-Day airstrikes in an attempt to further conceal the U.S. role. The president continued to operate under the assumption that the invasion force could retreat into the mountains and conduct guerilla operations without realizing the impossibility of that option, given the swampy and isolated terrain at the Bay of Pigs. Jones finds Bissell responsible for not taking a more forceful position on the air strikes with the president and the secretary of state, but he lays the lion's share of the blame for the operation's failure on the lack of clearly defined planning responsibilities within the defense establishment. Jones stresses that the Kennedy administration and the CIA's internal inquiries into the operation's failure did not temper the crusade to remove Castro. Instead, the administration sought to impose greater control over the CIA and gravitated toward a direct U.S. military invasion of Cuba. Simultaneously, the CIA revived the Mafia plots to assassinate Castro. Relying on the testimony of the CIA officers Bissell, Sheffield Edwards, and Richard Helms, Jones claims that Robert Kennedy, and hence the president, knew about the CIA-Mafia plots. Jones concludes that denials of the administration's knowledge of ongoing plots to assassinate Castro, both before and after the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis, represented the efforts of administration loyalists to protect the president with...

Stealing the Monopoly of Knowledge?: Soviet Reactions to U.S. Cold War Broadcasting

A new era in international relations dawned after World War II: the Cold War was not a conventional war, but it was definitely not the peace people had been waiting for. It was a war that was waged in several arenas as the role of armed forces diminished and the battlefields moved elsewhere: to the United Nations, to the economic sphere, to sports events and concert halls, and to a great extent to international media. Indeed, the media played a decisive role in the development of the Cold War, and they significantly affected policies. The media also played an important role in bringing the Cold War to a relatively peaceful end. With the help of Western radio and television broadcasts, people under communist rule developed a certain image of the West, which arguably contributed to the fact that they did not defend their regimes at crucial moments in 1989-91. Although the media are commonly believed to have played an important part in the Cold War, the more than 40 years of foreign broadcasting after World War II remain a poorly researched area, despite the growing interest in the cultural side of the Cold War in general. The present study is part of the growing literature dealing with the cultural Cold War and addressing the impact of foreign radio broadcasting on the Soviet Union. (1) The United States' radio broadcasting to the Soviet Union had a background that is anything but straightforward. Immediately after World War II, U.S. authorities found themselves with very little information about conditions in the USSR. The United States, therefore, tried to reach across the Iron Curtain to increase its knowledge while avoiding direct military conflict and making an effort to cultivate indirect methods of getting at its adversary. Men like Allen Dulles, George Kennan, and General Lucius Clay were prone to believe that the communist system was vulnerable to aggressive forms of psychological warfare. It was in this context that Radio Free Europe in 1950 and Radio Liberation in 1953 (later known as Radio Liberty [RL]) came into existence. (2) RL not only broadcast to the Soviet Union in Russian, but by 1954 it was using an arsenal of 17 Soviet languages in an attempt to appeal to non-Russian minorities. From the beginning, the ultimate objective of RL was to promote the collapse of the Soviet totalitarian government. It was an integral part of the U.S. Cold War strategy. Subversive international broadcasting as such was not a new phenomenon. The Soviet Union had been a master of radio propaganda ever since the early 1920s. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Soviet leaders hardly expected to be seriously challenged by international propaganda, and especially not in their own territory. From the beginning to the end of the Cold War, however, Soviet leaders had to cope with hostile propaganda directed at Soviet citizens. Although Western broadcasting frequently violated international law, strong protests would have forced the Soviets to alter their own activities abroad. U.S. activities did not, however, merely follow the Soviet model; World War II in particular had given birth to several models for future subversive radio stations. Now, when there was no direct military confrontation with the target countries, these techniques were developed to a previously unprecedented level. This is especially well illustrated by the case of RL, a project designed primarily to influence the Soviet Union. I use it here as a case to illustrate the reactions and effects that followed the increase in foreign broadcasting to the USSR. The main objective of this article is to assess the impact of foreign broadcasting on the Soviet Union during the first decades of the Cold War. I propose that as a consequence of Western broadcasting, the Soviet authorities were forced to reorganize and rethink their own domestic propaganda policies, as the scope of foreign broadcasting activity turned out to be more extensive than they had previously anticipated. …

Rapprochement Between Vietnam and the United States: A Response

Vietnam is perhaps the only country in the world to have engaged in so many intensive and marathon negotiations with the US over the past few decades. These include the Paris peace talks of 1968-73, negotiations on the normalization of bilateral diplomatic ties (1992-95), the Bilateral Trade Agreement (BTA) (1996-2000) and on Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) (2003-06) which paved the way for Vietnam's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) on 1 January 2007. These negotiations underscored the complexity of the relationship, yet were also instrumental in helping Vietnam and the US to better understand each other. It is difficult to appreciate how far and how quickly the Vietnamese-US relationship has evolved without having a good grasp of the difficulties bilateral ties have experienced over the years. In his article, Professor Brown presents a detailed and comprehensive account of the decades-long rapprochement process in which the national interests--including strategic interests--of both the US and Vietnam influenced the nature and intensity of negotiations. In assessing the history of this rapprochement, it is important to understand Vietnam's perspectives. Geopolitics and the Rapprochement from a Vietnamese Perspective The Vietnamese-US rapprochement should be viewed and analysed from a historical perspective rather than simply looking at developments in bilateral relations since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Vietnam and the US have had a long history of engagement that can be traced back to the late nineteenth century when Bui Vien, an emissary of the Nguyen Dynasty, was sent to Washington D.C. in 1873, but failed to secure a meeting with President Ulysses S. Grant to request diplomatic recognition. During the Second World War, the Viet Minh, the predecessor of the Vietnamese Communist Party, and the Office of Foreign Service (OSS), the predecessor of the CIA, joined forces to fight the Japanese. Such cooperation lasted until the end of the war, and though short-lived, the positive experience of cooperation encouraged President Ho Chi Mirth to write a letter to President Harry S. Truman asking for US help to secure Vietnam's independence from France. The letter was intercepted by Allen Dulles, then Director of OSS, and never reached President Truman. Not long after taking power, the Truman administration had decided to support France's reacquisition of its colonies in Southeast Asia in exchange for Paris' support for American policies in postwar Europe. There is still much debate over the question of whether Vietnam and the US would have been able to avoid conflict had President Truman received the letter from President Ho Chi Minh. However, for Vietnam, the lesson was clear: Washington was willing to sacrifice its ideals and push aside the interests of small-sized countries, including Vietnam, in pursuit of its national interests. These initial interactions slowly planted the seeds of suspicion in the minds of Vietnamese leaders regarding US intentions towards Vietnam. Direct intervention by the US in South Vietnam following France's defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 was aimed at halting Beijing-inspired communist expansion in Southeast Asia and preventing the fall of the pro-American regime in Saigon. Ultimately this proved to be a grave mistake by US policy-makers as they fundamentally misunderstood Vietnamese nationalism and the strained history of Sino-Vietnamese relations. As mentioned in Professor Brown's article, there was a missed opportunity for normalizing bilateral ties during 1977-78. On the Vietnamese side of the equation, two factors played an important role: first, Vietnam's lack of understanding of US politics, which led Vietnamese leaders to assume that the Congress would bow to requests made by President Richard M. Nixon on reconstruction aid for Vietnam; and second, their assumption that Southeast Asia was still a leading priority in US foreign policy even after the Vietnam War had ended. …

Kennedy, Castro, and Capos

Kennedy, Castro, and Capos Shane J. Maddock (bio) Howard Jones . The Bay of Pigs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. xvi + 237 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. 24.95. John F. Kennedy's policies toward Cuba and Vietnam have evinced steady attention from scholars for decades. Howard Jones, having written about Kennedy and Vietnam in Death of a Generation (2003), now intensely scrutinizes the failed attempt to remove Fidel Castro from power in April 1961. Jones argues that Kennedy's backing of this Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) scheme "set the tone" for his subsequent foreign policy and "provided a model for succeeding administrations" who confronted leaders deemed "threats to the Free World and hence to American security" (pp. 3–4). Jones begins his largely narrative account with Castro's successful revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista in January 1959, which initially inspired optimism in some quarters of the United States. The Eisenhower administration, however, soon worried that the new Cuban regime would inspire other nationalist movements in Latin America and threaten U.S. interests in the region. These fears mounted in December 1959 when CIA Director Allen Dulles warned that "Cuba was drifting toward Communism," and assassination plots and coup plans quickly began taking shape (p. 12). As Jones notes, Eisenhower had favored covert action since the early days of his presidency, using the CIA to topple governments in Iran (1953) and Guatemala (1954). While contemplating Castro's removal, moreover, he sought to eliminate Patrice Lumumba and his government in the Republic of the Congo. The power and trust he placed in the agency led some to dub his presidency the golden age of covert action. Much of the appeal of covert action rested in the concept of plausible deniability. While suspicions of U.S. culpability would always exist, a well-executed plan could not be traced directly back to the president. If, for some reason, CIA participation became apparent, the opportunity to scapegoat "rogue" elements in the agency still existed. All covert operations thus employed "cutouts," corporations or individuals who would act as intermediaries so that government personnel could keep their distance from questionable or even criminal activity. Jones details how in 1960 the CIA sponsored two intertwined [End Page 279] operations to topple Castro—invasion by anti-Castro Cubans and a Mafia-led assassination plot. The agency contacted former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Robert Maheu, who utilized his friendship with mobster Johnny Roselli to enlist fellow Mafia figures Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante in the scheme. The mob wanted revenge against Castro after he shuttered their profitable Cuban gambling and prostitution operations. Richard Bissell, CIA deputy director of plans, hoped that Castro's assassination would inspire a popular uprising that would topple the decapitated regime. Jones makes a convincing case that, despite all the euphemisms ("executive action" and "elimination" among others), Eisenhower knew that the agency sought to assassinate Castro. As Eisenhower left office in January 1961, he broke diplomatic relations with Cuba and bequeathed Kennedy the anti-Castro covert actions he had authorized. Jones offers evidence that Operation Trinidad, the code-name for the planned exile invasion, could no longer be accurately defined as covert in early 1961. Word of the plan had circulated widely in the Cuban exile community, and Castro's double agents had warned him of U.S. intentions. News reports had already circulated about the training camp for Cuban exiles that the CIA had established in Guatemala, and few gave credence to the standard denials from the U.S. and Guatemalan governments. Yet Kennedy plunged forward with both the invasion and assassination plots. He had blasted Eisenhower for allowing a hostile regime to emerge so close to American shores and vowed to take action if he became president. Jones details Kennedy's early embrace of the assassination plots and his quick approval of an expanded program dubbed ZR/RIFLE. Kennedy conversely feared that U.S. responsibility for the exile invasion would be blatantly obvious, and he worried about military assessments that the plan had only a fair chance of success. Still, he dreaded the consequences of cancelling it. Ending the exiles' training would allow them to return to the United States and publicly...

John W. F. Dulles (1913–2008)

John W. F. Dulles (1913–2008)