COL 49 and the information wars

[J Tracy]

I’m mostly reading nonfiction these days: Carbon, Paul Hawken; Is a River Alive?, Robert Macfarlane; And The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government,  David Talbot . 

The Devil’s Chessboard is essentially a look at about 30 years of US  history up to the JFK assassination, but all seen through the life of Allen Dulles and to a lesser degree J Foster Dulles. Talbot has delved deep into Dulles’s upper class east coast social circles, his business connections, his close, friendly, and supportive  ties to Nazis and upper class supporters of fascist Germany, and his insatiable thirst for power and violence on behalf of the rich.  That last part of the sentence( on behalf of the rich) seems like it my be  my personal opinion of Dulles, but it is clearly the best attempt by the author to explain what he was ail about. Dulles and most of his associates hated the idea of a democratic social contract involving the consent of the governed, equality before the law, or a reasonably just balance of power. He personally enjoyed the luxuries of the class he identified with, along with the  intriguing games  and risks of power it offered in the creation of a US based global secret police . He loved the ruthless savagery, and deceptive  mind games  it made possible as much as the wealth, dalliances, and prestige, and  Dulles had far more in common with the philosophies and aggressiveness of the Nazis than with people like Franklin Roosevelt who he regularly undermined as he recruited and protected nazis. Dulles , more than anyone else orchestrated the making of a secretive deep state that is above scrutiny or lawful accountability.  Talbot presents this through preserved documents and personal accounts of those who knew him, family, wife, business and political acquaintances, Nazis he worked with, and anyone who was close enough to see how he operated, but mostly through what he directly did in the OSS, CIA, Sullivan and Cromwell, and in his US political relations with FDR, Nixon, Eisenhower and Kennedy. 

There are many ways in which this book and the life of Alan Dulles connect to inform an understanding of the Crying of Lot 49  and the intensity of  warfare among Imperial powers to control the public narrative with fear, lies  and violence.  Also,   if anybody had the motive,  mindset, power and connections to arrange to  assassinate JFK, it was Dulles. 

Other key figures in the book: Nixon, Ike, John Foster Dulles, Karl Wolf, Conrad Gehlen,  James J Angleton,  Jacobo Arbenz,  Mohammad Mosaddegh, John Kennedy