Military-Industrial Complex during Eisenhower Administration

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AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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06 Nov 2013, 2:38 pm

Quote:
Ike's Bluff: President Eisenhower's Secret Battle To Save The World, Chapter 20 'Missile Gap,' Evan Thomas, Little, Brown and Company, 2012.

http://alturl.com/jsjby <-- short url to google books

page 315:

' . . . At the CIA, they called the U-2 "the angel."[17] Its godfather was [Richard] Bissell. His staff joked about the RBAF--Richard Bissell Air Force. Bissell moved the U-2 operation away from CIA headquarters and into an office building in a nondescript industrial space downtown. Of his staff of 225, 30 handled security. His communications were so secret that even Allen Dulles, Bissell later said, was unaware of most of them. (Dulles preferred human spies to technology; "you're taking all the fun out of intelligence," he told Bissell.)

'Ever bold, Bissell chafed at President Eisenhower's caution. In an extraordinary act of lese majesty he set up a separate line of authority through British intelligence and the Royal Air Force so he could fly U-2 missions with just the permission of the British government, not Washington. (He never got to use this runaround to fly over Russia; the Brits were careful not to cross Eisenhower.)[18]

'Bissell was part of a social set in Georgetown that sniffed at the president's circle. At the "Sunday Night Supper," a weekly, well-lubricated maids-night-out party, old Harvard and Yale classmates would argue and make fun of John Foster Dulles and talk of the Democrats' return to power. . . '




Quote:

page 316:

' . . . [Joe] Alsop and Dick Bissell were good friends, and had been since childhood. They had gone to Groton together, where they had overcome their lack of skill at games by showing how smart they were. Bissell regarded Alsop as his peer, not like other journalists. When he was writing his memoirs in the early 1990s, Bissell told Jonathan Lewis, who was helping him, that he disapproved of leaking to the press. Lewis asked about Alsop. "Oh, well," Bissell replied, "I did talk to Joe."[21]

'If Bissell was talking to Alsop, that raises an interesting question: why did he let Alsop write those scare stories about the Pentagon "shuddering" over the missile gap? Why didn't he steer him away from such hyperbolic, if not wrongheaded, journalism? Bissell, more than anyone in the United States government, knew that the missile gap was almost surely a fiction. It is hard not to conclude that Bissell wanted Alsop to raise alarms about a gap. Why? Because he knew that would keep the pressure on Eisenhower to allow the U-2 to fly, the risks be damned. Bissell wanted to keep flying the U-2 over Russia, and he was willing to do almost anything to get his way.'



The man is a cowboy. He is exceeding his orders and authority to a considerable extent, and even acting against orders.



Last edited by AardvarkGoodSwimmer on 08 Nov 2013, 2:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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06 Nov 2013, 4:12 pm

And here are the footnotes. Please note that one book is written by the same guy as this book.

Quote:

17. Dino A. Brugioni Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA, and Cold War Aerial Espionage. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institue Press, 2010. Page 271.

18. Evan Thomas (who is the same author as this book). The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. Pages 168-69.

President Dwight Eisenhower to Anthony Eden, May 17, 1956, Ann Whitman File in Eisenhower Library.

Chris Pocock. The U-2 Spyplane: Toward the Unknown: A New History of the Early Years. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 2000. Page 125.

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21. Evan Thomas. The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA. Page 105.



staremaster
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06 Nov 2013, 5:11 pm

Damned White House NSC armchair hawks..



AardvarkGoodSwimmer
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08 Nov 2013, 2:08 pm

I think avoiding embarrassment might be part of it, and people do bad things to avoid even the prospect of embarrassment.

Consider a school yard fight where someone is being pressured to fight. If the person is unsure, the risks of not fighting, being called "sissy" and worse words, are higher than the risks of going ahead and fighting, even when unsure. And I think some of this carries over to foreign policy.



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08 Nov 2013, 3:17 pm

Quote:
from Chapter 24 '"The Pilot's Alive"'

page 366:

' . . . Eisenhower was always sensitive to the shoe on the other foot: he reminded his aides that "nothing would make me request authority to declare war more quickly than violation of our air space by Soviet air craft."[5]

'The U-2 gave Ike fits.  After sleeping (or not sleeping) on a decision to fly the U-2 over Russian in April 1959, he had twice reversed himself the next day and denied permission.  Bissell's staffers, reflecting their boss, grew impatient; they began sardonically referring to the president as "Speedy Gonzales," after the cartoon character.[6] . . . '



Quote:

pages 368-369:

' . . . Soviet air defenses were improving by 1960.  On March 14, as Bissell was preparing to brief Eisenhower on Cuba, he was warned by the air force of a "high probability of a successful intercept" of the U-2 at its normal flying altitude of 70,000 feet.[11]  As author Philip Taubman has observed, "These bell-ringing findings should have ended the overflights on the spot."[12]  But Bissell brushed off the warning as bureaucratic timidity.  To Arthur Lundahl, his chief photo interpreter, he described the air force heads-up as the best "hands on your ass memo" he had ever received.[13]  He did not inform the White House of the warning.  Instead he pressed for more U-2 flights. . . '



Quote:

page 369:

' . . He [President Eisenhower] gave way, is what he did," recalled John [Eisenhower], who was in the U-2 meetings as Goodpaster's deputy.  "He had such an array—a unanimous array—of people he trusted, that he just gave in."[16]

'Soviet MiG fighters armed with heat-seeking missiles rose to challenge the U-2 flight on April 9, but they were too late and flew too low.  Soviet radar had picked up the U-2 almost the minute it crossed the border from Turkey.  Bissell did not detail this close call to the White House.  He subsequently reasoned that the threat to the U-2 did not appear grave: the MiGs could not fly high enough, and the guidance system on the Soviet surface-to-air missiles was poor above 60,000 feet.[17] . . . '



Quote:

page 371:

‘  .  .  .  Eisenhower deliberated for a few days, but on April 25 he granted Bissell’s request for one last flight, with the proviso that the window would close on May 1.[21]  Bissell code-named the flight Operation Grand Slam.  It would proceed over the ballistic missile lauchpads at Tyuratam and head north over Plesetsk before landing in Bodo, Norway, a journey of some 3,788 miles.  Operation Grand Slam would be the twenty-fourth and boldest U-2 flight over the Soviet Union.  Weather caused delays, but on the morning of May 1, 1961 [1960]*—May Day in Communist Russia—Francis Gary Powers, the CIA’s veteran U-2 pilot, said to be a cool hand, took off from Peshawar, Pakistan.  .  .  ’




* Francis Gary Powers was shot down on May 1, 1960.  It’s hard to get both big picture and details right.  Let’s try and cut the author a little slack if we can.

========================

Quote:

[5]  Andrew Goodpaster memorandum of conversation, February 12, 1959, Ann Whitman File in Eisenhower Library.

[6]  Chris Pocock,  The U-2 Spyplane.  Page 150.
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[11]  Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The CIA and the U-2 Program, Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1998.  Page 168.

Richard Bissell.  Oral History in Eisenhower Library.

[12]  Philip Taubman, Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage, New York: Simon and Scuster, 2004.  Page 290.

[13]  Dino Brugioni,  Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA, and Cold War Aerial Espionage.  Page 316.
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[16]  John Eisenhower interview by author.

[17]  The CIA and the U-2 Program.  Page 170.

Richard Bissell, Jr., Reflections of a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.  Page 123.

Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage.  Page 299.

Richard Bissell, Oral History in Eisenhower Library.
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[21] Andrew Goodpaster memorandum of conversation, April 25, 1960, Ann Whitman File in Eisenhower Library. 



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19 Nov 2013, 2:33 pm

Quote:
from "Epilogue Peace"

pages 405-406:

'Richard Bissell seduced the Kennedys, for a time. JFK was introduced to Bissell in August 1960, at a dinner party given by their mutual friend Joe Alsop at his house in Georgetown. Over brandy and cigars, Alsop praised the CIA man for his brilliance and toughness. After the election, a member of Kennedy's transition tem said to the president-elect, "There must be someone you really trust within the intelligence community. Who is that?" Kennedy answered, "Richard Bissell." In February, shortly after the inauguration, Allen Dulles put together a little dinner at the Alibi Club for the top men at the CIA and White House so they could get to know one another. Bissell was the star of the evening. "I'm your basic man-eating shark," said the CIA's chief of covert operations, with just the right mix of bravado and self-mockery to charm the New Frontiersmen.

'JFK regarding national security meetings as a "waste of time," and his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, slashed away at Eisenhower's cumbersome (but thorough) planning process. The Kennedys would be vigorous and "forward leaning," in a phrase of the day, not pokey and bureaucratic like the previous administration. With very little questioning or debate, Bissell was able to persuade Kennedy to sign off on a CIA-backed invasion of Cuba by an exile force in April.

'The Bay of Pigs was a disaster, in many ways worse than the U-2 shoot-down of the previous spring. More than a thousand of the invaders were killed or captured. The American role, at first denied, was soon exposed. As the invasion failed, the president was seen wandering the South Grounds of the White House at 4:00 a.m., head lowered, hands thrust in his pockets. When he awoke in his bed at dawn, he was weeping.[1]'




Quote:
page 409:

' . . . who had replaced Allen Dulles as CIA chief after the Bay of Pigs (Bissell was fired, too). . . '



Quote:
[1] Evan Thomas (same author as this book), The Very Best Men: The Daring Early Years of the CIA, Simon and Schuster, 2006. Pages 237-263.


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President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. This Friday is the fiftieth anniversity.

There was real hatred among many members of the Cuban exile community toward Kennedy, so this is one possibility. Other possibilities include the mob, rogue elements within the CIA, Castro, etc. I used to think that it was probably the case that Lee Harvey Oswald did act alone.

These days, I'm not so sure. And that's a scary conclusion.