From the Shadows of the Cold War: the Rise of the CIA
December 28, 2015
From the Shadows of the Cold War: the Rise of the CIA
by Ben Terrall
. . .
In Talbot’s words, “The Cold War in the West was, to an unsettling extent, a joint operation between the Dulles regime and that of Reinhard Gehlen. The German spy chief’s pathological hatred of Russia, which had its roots in Hitler’s Third Reich, meshed smoothly with the Dulles Brothers’ anti-Soviet absolutism. In fact, the Dulles policy of massive nuclear retaliation bore a disturbing resemblance to the Nazis’ exterminationist philosophy…” Thanks to Dulles and his colleagues, other prominent Nazi officials wound up providing their services to such stalwart U.S. allies as Franco in Spain and Pinochet in Chile.
. . .
In Talbot’s words, “The Cold War in the West was, to an unsettling extent, a joint operation between the Dulles regime and that of Reinhard Gehlen. The German spy chief’s pathological hatred of Russia, which had its roots in Hitler’s Third Reich, meshed smoothly with the Dulles Brothers’ anti-Soviet absolutism. In fact, the Dulles policy of massive nuclear retaliation bore a disturbing resemblance to the Nazis’ exterminationist philosophy…” Thanks to Dulles and his colleagues, other prominent Nazi officials wound up providing their services to such stalwart U.S. allies as Franco in Spain and Pinochet in Chile.
. . .
Dulles was nothing if not industrious, and the book provides plenty of page-turning narrative focusing on some of the coups that Dulles was involved with. Starting with the overthrow of the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz (a bete noir of the Dulles-connected multinational United Fruit for his focus on land and labor reforms), Dulles’s operations moved from one country to another, destabilizing governments and coordinating the assassination or exile of any leader that threatened U.S. corporate interests. In addition to Guatemala, the book lays out the history of CIA actions in Iran, Congo, and Vietnam.
The Devil’s Chessboard also shows that one of the first cases of “extraordinary rendition” took place under Dulles’s watch. On March 12, 1956, Jesus de Galindez, a lecturer in Spanish and Government at Columbia University, was snatched off the streets of New York. Friends and colleagues never saw him again. Galindez’s crime was being an outspoken critic of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, whose friends in the CIA made sure Galindez was delivered to the Dominican Republic. Galindez was tortured to death by Trujillo underlings.
The New Republic printed a letter about the abduction in which one of Galindez’s students, Marina Joy, stated, “There is no hope … Everybody who has some sense of responsibility and a feeling for democracy and freedom should be concerned.” (Presciently, in 1955 Galindez told an FBI informant that “since John Foster Dulles entered into the picture, the United States has started to write the blackest pages of its international relations. Never before in the history of the world has one single Government more efficiently supported dictatorial powers in free nations.”)
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/28/from-the-shadows-of-the-cold-war-the-rise-of-the-cia/
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