"NIGHTMARE: Post-WWII Prosperity becomes 1960s Assassinations and War": Part 1 of 5. Chapter 13 from "Our Country, Then and Now"

"Postwar Finance Merges with Covert Operations," "Creation of the CIA"

Serialization of selections from my book Our Country, Then and Now continues with the cooperation of my publisher, Clarity Press. Today we start with Chapter 13: "NIGHTMARE: Post-WWII Prosperity becomes 1960s Assassinations and War," with sections on “Postwar Finance Merges with Covert Operations” and “Creation of the CIA.”

With Germany and Japan obliterated and Great Britain and France vastly weakened, World War II launched the US on the vast era of prosperity taking place during the 1950s. Meanwhile, the Council on Foreign Relations had prevailed on the US government, even before it entered the war, to maintain as its war aim the achievement of global military dominance. But President Franklin Roosevelt’s close relations with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin opened the door for the Soviet Union to emerge as the controlling power over Eastern Europe and a rival to US financial hegemony established at Bretton Woods.

Thus emerged the Cold War, one feature of which was the virtual takeover of US society by what President Dwight D. Eisenhower later termed “the military-industrial complex.” Soon after Eisenhower was succeeded in office by President John F. Kennedy, the nation’s post-war prosperity and optimism collapsed into a nightmare of assassinations and war.

How and why did this happen?

Postwar Finance Merges with Covert Operations

With World War II ended and President Harry S. Truman now in office, US banking moved aggressively to control the devastated economies of Western Europe. The Marshall Plan, in force from 1948 to 1952, had not been a disinterested act of charity. The $15 billion provided to Europe through grants and loans was money then returned to the US through purchase of American products. The greatest beneficiary was the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil, which supplied Europe with huge quantities of petroleum at marked-up prices. [i]

The newly founded CIA received more than five percent of the funds allocated under the Marshall Plan, which it then used to establish “front” businesses in European countries. Another focus was to deflect elections in Italy away from leftist parties. [ii] Notably, the CIA at this early date tried but failed to create a fifth column of spies and saboteurs in Ukraine.

The Soviet Union had outraged the US government by refusing to sign the Bretton Woods agreements mandating the primacy of the US dollar. It has been argued that the main reason Truman nuked Japan, when the war against Japan had already been won, was to frighten the Soviets, whom the Rockefeller-controlled US establishment, along with the British, had designated the enemy of the future. It was war, first, last, and always for which the gods of money lusted. [Implementation of this intent was the determination foisted on the US by the Rockefeller-controlled Council on Foreign Relations that the primary war aim would be to gain complete global military dominance. Unfortunately, by war’s end it would be the Soviet Union that stood in the way.]

The term “Cold War” was first used by Bernard Baruch, Wall Street magnate and adviser to presidents, who said in a speech on April 16, 1947:

“Let us not be deceived. We are today in the midst of a Cold War. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success.” [iii]

Note inclusion of the words “at home.” A Red Scare was coming, with Senator Joe McCarthy doing the dirty work. But the Cold War was started by US financiers as part of their mission of global conquest.

The Soviets were still reeling from the war but did not remain idle as the world began to split into two armed camps. In 1948, a communist coup took place in Czechoslovakia. Faced with the Marshall Plan, the Soviet Union launched its own Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon) in 1949 followed by Cominform—the Communist Information Bureau. Cominform was meant to balance the longstanding British/American propaganda operation that would use psychological methods pioneered by the British Tavistock Institute, founded in 1947. As much as they were able, the Soviets also supported anti-colonialist movements around the world and opened their universities to students from Third World countries.

Meanwhile, the Rockefellers’ Chase National Bank had become the biggest US lender to Europe. In 1946, David Rockefeller, a son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., had joined the staff of Chase Bank in New York as assistant manager in the international division. Chase became the first US bank to establish branches in Germany and Japan. Chase was also the key lender to Latin American governments and was engaged in establishing as many branch banks as possible. David’s brother, Nelson Rockefeller, managed the family’s South American banking empire, forging alliances with the families of oligarchs and army generals in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Chile. It was Rockefeller money and credit that forged the backbone of South American fascism, later infamously known as Operation Condor.

And it was the CIA that would become the worldwide backstage enforcer of US financial hegemony—the “Jackals,” [iv] charged with overthrowing progressive governments and assassinating their leaders.

Creation of the CIA

The CIA was the successor agency to the World War II Office of Strategic Services (OSS) headed by “Wild Bill” Donovan. Prior to the OSS, the US did not have a secret intelligence service. Britain, of course, has had one for centuries, going back to Elizabethan days.

The OSS learned much of its craft from the British, which had formally institutionalized its intelligence in MI6, chartered in 1909. [v] In fact, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt named Donovan head of the predecessor to the OSS, the Office of the Coordinator of Information, he created the unit on the advice of Winston Churchill. Roosevelt authorized the unit on July 11, 1941, five months before Pearl Harbor.

With the OSS, US foreign policy took its first steps toward permanent linkage to covert violence. Obviously, the fact that the OSS was extended in peacetime as the CIA meant that covert violence would continue. Given the regular turnover of US presidential administrations, political oversight and control of the “spooks” became impossible. This was a major step toward today’s ubiquitous “Deep State.”

But the CIA almost didn’t happen. Truman had issued an executive order on September 20, 1945, terminating the OSS. He and his advisers were aware that US wartime intelligence had been built on cryptologic success, not covert subversion, and there are suggestions that Truman feared that a peacetime agency operating without tight executive branch control would be a potential menace to Americans citizens. [vi] Truman had also received a report originally written for President Roosevelt by Col. Richard Park, Jr., stating that the OSS had “all the earmarks of a Gestapo system.” [vii]

Truman and his advisers saw no need for a continuation of covert activities, as intelligence gathering could be handled by the military services and the State Department. And with no war, against whom would a covert action agency be fighting?

At least in this instance, Truman had good instincts. But now John J. McCloy stepped into the breach. McCloy was a long-time Wall Street lawyer and Rockefeller associate later to become one of the main US figures in rebuilding Western Europe as a market for US bank loans. [During the 1930s, he advised various German corporations, including I.G. Farben, later the manufacturer of Zyklon B gas.] In 1941, McCloy was named Assistant Secretary of War.

After World War II ended, McCloy was instrumental in keeping some of the key elements of the OSS intact, including, with ominous portents for the future, the 101^st Detachment in Burma and Southeast Asia and the Jedburgh operation in Burma in charge of covert action against the Japanese and later the Chinese. These units continued to be active in Burma, Laos, and Vietnam, where the CIA became instrumental in guiding the US into the war in Vietnam and where it oversaw opium production by Laotian army officials.

These OSS/CIA units were never disbanded and were the origin of CIA involvement in the international drug trade that later branched out into South and Central America, Afghanistan, US cities, and elsewhere.

Truman caved in to McCloy’s pressure. In a presidential directive of January 22, 1946, Truman created the Central Intelligence Group headed by a Director of Central Intelligence. The first DCI was Rear Admiral Sidney Souers, Assistant Chief of Naval Intelligence. Souers had an installment ceremony of sorts. The diary of President Truman’s chief military adviser, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, records the event of January 24, 1946:

“At lunch today in the White House, with only members of the Staff present, RAdm. Sidney Souers and I were presented [by President Truman] with black cloaks, black hats, and wooden daggers, and the President read an amusing directive to us outlining some of our duties in the Central Intelligence Agency ‘Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers.’” [viii]

This amusing skit marked the start of almost eight decades of CIA global mayhem, still ongoing.

The National Security Act of 1947 changed the name of the Central Intelligence Group to the Central Intelligence Agency, and in 1952 Truman approved the National Security Agency “for special intelligence gathering.” As stated in Chapter 12, the Act specified that mass propaganda, paramilitary operations, and lethal force could be carried out against anyone deemed a threat.

CIA secrecy was codified in the Central Intelligence Act of 1949 that exempted the CIA from disclosing the functions, names, titles, salaries, and even the number of its employees. It was also given the power to spend money “without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of government funds.” [ix]

[The fall of the US Republic that had commenced with the global war policy installed by the Council on Foreign Relations now proceeded at breakneck speed.]

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[i] F. William Engdahl, Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century, Edition.Engdahl, 2009, p.225.

[ii] “Marshall Plan,” June 5, 2020, by History.com Editors.

[iii] Andrew Glass, “Bernard Baruch Coins Term ‘Cold War,’ April 16, 1947,” Politico, April 16, 2010.

[iv] So-called by John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

[v] MI6 stands for “Military Intelligence Section Six.” MI5, on the other hand, is the British equivalent of the FBI.

[vi] Richard Dunlop, Donovan: America’s Master Spy, Rand McNally, Chicago, 1982, pp. 467-468.

[vii] Michael Warner, “The Creation of the Central Intelligence Group,” Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1996, p. 112.

[viii] Ibid, p. 111.

[ix] Ambrose and Brinkley, p. 168. If the US had a genuine Supreme Court, legislation such as this by which Congress effectively committed suicide with respect to its responsibilities would be declared unconstitutional. It is ironic that some figures engaged in antiwar protest regard Congress as a potential ally, given the requirement to achieve Congressional approval for US wars.

This ends Part 1 of 5.

Richard C. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst with extensive experience across various government agencies, including the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he exposed the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Space Shuttle, documenting his story in the book “Challenger Revealed.” After serving at Treasury, he became a vocal critic of the private finance-controlled monetary system, detailing his concerns in “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” He served as an adviser to the American Monetary Institute and worked with Congressman Dennis Kucinich to advocate for replacing the Federal Reserve with a genuine national currency. See his new book, Our Country, Then and Now, Clarity Press, 2023. He has recently been named a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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