#1134 – Jim DiEugenio, James Johnston

 

 

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#1133 – Col. Fletcher Prouty

 

  • UNDERSTANDING SPECIAL OPERATIONS (Ratcliffe 1999), CHAPTER 1
  • I came on duty before the beginning of WWII, an ROTC cavalry unit
  • Active duty with the 4th Armored Division July 10th 1941
  • I reported to Creighton W. Abrams from my own home town
  • I began flight training in Maxwell Field in Alabama about May of 1942
  • In February of 1943 I was in Africa with the Air Transport Command
  • We flew General Smith into Saudi Arabia to meet representatives of Standard Oil
  • That’s the first clandestine exercise I was ever involved in
  • We established an operating base during the Cairo Conference
  • In Teheran, Churchill had no ID, the Russians weren’t going to let him through
  • Success at Teheran enabled Chiang Kai-shek to put more pressure on the Japanese
  • American generals supported Ho Chi Minh against the Japanese
  • A few miles below the Turkish Syrian border, 750 American former prisoners of war
  • I realized that some of my passengers were Nazi intelligence officers
  • This group did contain men who had been selected by Frank Wisner of the OSS
  • I never saw devastation equal to what I saw in the Soviet Union
  • January of ’45 I began flying the Pacific, four-engine transport work
  • The atom bomb had been used, this was mid-August, the Japanese had quit
  • We flew up to Tokyo on September 1st, 1945
  • At Atsugi air base, here were our enemies, they came over and helped us
  • Equipment for 500,000 men going to Hanoi in Indochina
  • Hiroshima, I flew very low over the area and had a good look at it
  • The decision had been made to establish an Air Force ROTC
  • I taught a very interesting course called “The Evolution of Warfare”
  • I visited Werner Von Braun to write about rockets and missiles
  • The Korean War broke out in June of 1950
  • I was one of five officers selected to initiate a new Air Defense Command
  • A difficult period, because of the enormous devastation power of the atom bomb
  • Spring of ’52, I was the Military Manager of Tokyo International Airport
  • Out of Tokyo we ran a regularly scheduled Embassy Run
  • Civil Air Transport, were delivering supplies to the French, fighting Ho Chi Minh
  • I met Colonel Lansdale and his organization in Vietnam
  • I was selected to attend the Armed Forces Staff College, in Norfolk, Virginia
  • One of the courses was a hypothetical NATO confrontation through Europe
  • It just shocked the whole group, the impact of what nuclear weapons could do
  • The hydrogen bomb would wipe out any city, you cannot fight war with that
  • I went to the Pentagon from that schoo, to the Air Force Plans Office, in July of 1955
  • General Thomas White told me NSC had published Directive Directive 5412, in 1954
  • The Department of Defense would provide support for clandestine operations
  • “Military Support of the Clandestine Operations of the United States Government”
  • I was the “Chief of Team B,” in charge of clandestine operations, for the Air Force
  • The Economy Act of 1932 became the heart of the covert program
  • We created literally hundreds of false military organizations
  • The 1234 Logistics Squadron really belongs to CIA
  • This clandestine system we established, we called “Tab-6”
  • Mr. Dulles sent me around the world to many of his stations
  • In Athens there was a camp for people we call, “mechanics” (hit men, gunmen)
  • Thousands of ex-Nazis were being brought to the US for their various skills
  • We could paratroop people in following a massive nuclear attack
  • “Special Forces” were created for that post-strike purpose
  • Hitler’s chief of intelligence, Reinhardt Gehlen, became a U.S. Army general
  • European command began looking on CIA as a “Fourth Force” in nuclear warfare
  • From 1945 until 1965, CIA was the operating command for military forces in Vietnam
  • CIA had quite an air force, operated and maintained under “Air America”
  • New Year’s Eve of 1958-59, I waited for CIA orders to go into Cuba
  • Senator Kennedy understood events going on in Vietnam and Laos and in Cuba
  • President Kennedy was briefed, 3,000 instead of 300 and an invasion was planned
  • The first objective for the program: they must destroy the aircraft
  • Three B-26 bombers destroyed all but three of Castro’s combat-capable aircraft
  • McGeorge Bundy reversed the President’s decision and said, “no air strike tomorrow.”
  • We didn’t need air cover, those Cuban jets were supposed to be rubble by sunrise
  • We had to cover Vietnam with helicopter maintenance people
  • A great number of those were cover military; they were involved with the CIA
  • By the summer of ’63 Kennedy had made up his mind to get out of Vietnam
  • NSAM 263, otherwise known as the Taylor/McNamara Trip Report of October ’63
  • By the end of 1965 all U.S. personnel will be out of Vietnam
  • President Diem was killed in Vietnam
  • Ed Lansdale came to me one day, “Fletch, how would you like to go to the South Pole?”
  • I was out of Washington from, I think, the 10th of November until November 28th
  • That time, unequaled in history, Vietnam War, the death of Kennedy, other strange events
  • The Secretary of Defense established an office called the Office of Special Operations
  • Providing for Department of Defense support in connection with special operations activities
  • We had to work with Treasury, with FAA, with Customs, we had to have cleared people
  • As intricate as anything we did in the days was handling money
  • NSA is eyes and ears, a purely technical or mechanical job
  • Communications channels exist all over the world, floating around, all vibrating away
  • CIA activities are much different from the NSA activities
  • Lansdale was a good operator, but not the man to be the boss
  • Ed Lansdale in Dealey Plaza Video

 

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#1132 – Russell Kent

 

 

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#1131 – Paul Abbott, Jim DiEugenio

 

 

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#1130 – Ray McGinnis, Jim DiEugenio

 

 

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#1129 – Jefferson Morley

 

 

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#1128 – Jeff Meek / Jim DiEugenio

 

 

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#1127 – Monika Wiesak

 

  • Book: America’s Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy by Monika Wiesak
  • Get the book here: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook, Scribd, Barnes & Noble
  • June 11 1963, JFK’s landmark Civil Rights Speech: Video, Text
  • How Monika got interested in the JFK presidency
  • Understanding the root causes vs. supressing the symptoms
  • The world JFK envisioned vs. the world we ended up with
  • The Bay of Pigs operation was Kennedy’s introduction to the world of intelligence
  • NSAM 55 (FRUS)
  • NSAMs 55, 56 and 57
  • Kennedy fired Allen Dulles, Richard Bissel and Charles Cabell from the CIA
  • Kennedy cut CIA’s budget by 20%
  • President Kennedy’s actions in the Congo
  • UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold’s death in a suspicious plane crash
  • Documentary: Cold Case Hammarskjold: Stream on Amazon, iTunes, Directv, Microsoft, Verizon, Vudu
  • Book: Who Killed Hammarskjold? by Susan Williams: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle
  • Edmund Gullion told JFK that Hammarskjold’s death was suspicious
  • In 2 years and 10 months, Kennedy personally met with 28 African heads of state
  • Whereas Eisenhower met with 8 African heads of state in 8 years
  • G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams was one of Kennedy’s first appointees
  • Kennedy supported “Africa for the Africans”
  • Kennedy supported Angola over Portugal and Algeria over France
  • Full text of JFK’s Algeria speech in the Senate, 1957
  • The Alliance for Progress
  • Jackie Kennedy said that JFK would have never done what LBJ did in the Dominican Republic and Brazil
  • Book: Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy
    (interviewed by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.): Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
  • FREE Borrowable Ebook: Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy
  • Philanthro capitalism or philantro imperialism
  • Video: President Kennedy calls out the steel companies (1962)
  • “My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it until now,”
    President Kennedy famously said when he felt steel executives had double-crossed him by raising prices
  • FREE Borrowable Ebook: Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson
  • Kennedy amended the rules to make sure that the FDA does both safety and efficacy studies
  • The FDA ended up removing 600 drugs from the market after they did retroactive efficacy studies
  • Thalidomide and the pharmaceutical industry
  • The four basic consumer rights: the right to safety, be informed, choose and be heard
  • JFK’s consumer rights speech (March 15, 1962)
  • World Consumer Rights Day is celebrated every year on March 15
  • Stockpile investigation
  • Military is the biggest pollutor on the planet
  • Kennedy chose peace over war repeatedly during his presidency
  • Kennedy was working towards ending the cold war
  • June 10 1963, JFK’s American University commencement address titled ‘A Strategy of Peace’: Audio, Video, Text
  • Kennedy hoped to visit the Soviet Union in his second term
  • JFK sought good relations with all Middle Eastern countries
  • “A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market
    is a nation that is afraid of its people” – John F. Kennedy
  • CIA document titled Countering Criticism of the Warren Report
  • Jim DiEugenio interviews Monika Wiesak: please listen to episode 1112

 

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#1126 – Pat Valentino

 

 

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#1125 – James Norwood, Jim DiEugenio

 

 

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