The power of US Intelligence.

The US Intelligence has turned  out to be the single most powerful political organ in the United States, because it has had, in over half a century, plenty of time to corrupt the entire political process.

Consider the case of Allen Dulles.

As documented by Christopher Simpson, Allen Dulles was one of the main architects of the creation of the CIA out of a multitude of Nazis. But then the April 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco happened: a disastrous CIA operation to invade Cuba using Cuban exiles trained by the US Special Forces, which, as Simpson documents, were full of Nazis that US Intelligence had brought over and given US citizenship to.

It is not imposible that the Bay of Pigs experience forced Kennedy to reconsider the adventurous policies of the US 'national security' establishment. According to an article that appeared later in the New York Times, "President Kenndy, as the enormity of the Bay of Pigs disaster came home to him, said to one of the highest officials of his Administration that he wanted to 'splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.'" In September of 1961 Kennedy fired Allen Dulles and his personal staff.

In November of 1963 Kennedy was assassinated in the city of Dallas, Texas, in circumstances so mysterious they continue to fascinate. The government of Lyndon B. Johnson, the next president, created the Warren Commission to investigate the murder and produce a report, which commission consisted, at the top, of seven senior members. These were:

CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN, Chairman
SENATOR RICHARD B. RUSSELL
SENATOR JOHN SHERMAN COOPER
REPRESENTATIVE HALE BOGGS
REPRESENTATIVE GERALD R. FORD
MR. ALLEN W. DULLES
MR. JOHN J. MCCLOY

Do you perceive a conflict of interest when a professional liar and veteran of political assassinations is put in charge of investigating the assassination of the President who fired him after a tremendous fiasco? I do.

Famously, the Warren Commission's report, which defends a 'lone gunman' theory stating that nobody in the entire world had anything whatsoever to do with Kennedy's assassination but private citizen Lee Harvey Oswald, has convinced almost nobody. Is it not possible that the CIA perceived a threat in Kennedy's direction after Bay of Pigs and removed him? It is possible. This hypothesis is quite popular among those who study the Kennedy assassination, mostly amateur buffs because professional historians avoid the topic like the plague.

It is problematic for this hypothesis that -- despite what the New York Times reported about Kennedy's reaction to the Bay of Pigs operation -- he did not develop an immediate aversion to CIA clandestine operations. On the contrary. For example, right after the Bay of Pigs disaster Kennedy approved Operation Mongoose: "the largest operation that the CIA had ever undertaken." And the point of Mongoose? Replace Castro! But Mongoose was another disaster, for the activities surrounding its preparation, in addition to other anti-Cuban activities of the United States, worried Castro so much that he asked the Soviets to place nuclear missiles on the Island, leading to the famous Cuban Missile Crisis. (Kennedy has been much celebrated for handling that crisis in such a way that it did not become an atomic war; perhaps it would be more reasonable to criticize him for producing the crisis in the first place).

But this coin has another side, too. The hypothesis so many Kennedy assassination buffs like may not be so bad.

In March 1962 Operation Northwoods was presented for consideration. This was a plan of sabotage and terror against the United States -- which even contemplated murdering US citizens -- in order to blame it on Cuba and thus justify another attempted invasion. Where did such ideas come from? The CIA was full of Nazis that Allen Dulles had helped absorb, and Nazi sympathizers such as Allen Dulles; as mentioned earlier, the Nazis had staged a simulated Polish attack on Germany to justify their invasion of Poland.

What was Kennedy's reaction to Northwoods? He rejected it. It is not impossible that a president who much enjoyed clandestine warfare against other countries could have been offended by a plan to murder US citizens. And if he was offended, US intelligence leaders may have grown uncomfortable, especially after Operation Mongoose led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which took place in October 1962 and which probably did affect Kennedy's opinion of US Intelligence, for it almost destroyed him -- and his country. From that point onwards US Intelligence leaders may have grown worried about what their president might do. That feeling would have tended to gel in loyalty towards the dismissed former CIA director Allen Dulles. It remains terribly suspicious that Dulles should have overseen the investigation into the president's murder and that the report of this investigation should be so strange. That investigation had been ordered by Lyndon B. Johnson, and the impression it leaves is that he had not the slightest intention of producing an honest inquiry into the possible role of US Intelligence in the murder: he would behave.

An obvious historical parallel here is to the Roman Empire. This empire was created by the Roman aristocrat Augustus Caesar (born Octavian), who at the same time created a mercenary force under his personal control called the Praetorian Guard.

“The praetorian guard consisted of nine cohorts with 1000 or possibly 500 men in each, and was stationed in Italian towns in the vicinity of Rome… These soldiers, though armed, did not appear in dress uniform.”

The Praetorian Guard is often called the ‘emperor’s bodyguard,’ but that’s not what it was. The people in charge of preventing Augustus Caesar from being assassinated were the speculatores of Caesar, a small detachment from within the Praetorian Guard. This makes sense: one does not protect an emperor from assassination by stationing thousands of men under arms in several towns, distributing them all around the cities in plainclothes. The Praetorian Guard was obviously there to protect the imperial regime.

The Praetorians were the real power in Rome. Consider that,

“[Gaius Caesar, also known as] Caligula, was assassinated because he had made a mockery of the military and alienated the leaders of the Guard. The Praetorians soon became the most powerful body in the state, and…frequently deposed and elevated emperors according to their pleasure.”

For example, Gaius’ successor, Claudius Caesar,

“…was conveyed to the praetorian barracks where he negotiated for the crucial support of the guardsmen… Claudius addressed the praetorians, promised a donative, and was saluted as imperator. At a second meeting [with Claudius] the senate now acquiesced in a situation that it could not change… The donative [Claudius] paid was enormous, probably 15,000 sesterces each.”

If you wanted to be emperor and stay emperor, you had to make the Praetorian Guard happy, because they were the real power in Rome. This is not a 'conspiracy theory'; it is history. There is certainly nothing outrageous in such historical events: they make perfect sense. The Praetorian Guard had the power to crown and remove emperors, so it did. The same argument applies: the CIA has the power to crown and remove presidents. Is it outrageous to suggest that it does precisely this? I would submit that a US president has to keep the CIA happy, because the CIA is the real power in Washington. I like the following hypothesis: after the CIA made an example of Kennedy, every occupant of the White House has followed Johnson's example and behaved.

Now, if the CIA is the real power in Washington, then the apparent alternation in power between the Democratic and Republican parties should not affect the conduct of US foreign policy in the least, and we should find, upon examination, that this policy is always identical, regardless of which party is in office. Much of the work on this website has documented precisely this. For example, HIR’s series to understand Bush Jr.’s war on Iraq has documented that US foreign policy towards Iran and Iraq has been the same for many years: pro-Islamist. It matters not who sits in the White House.

This sort of thing agrees nicely with the manner in which the CIA was created because fanatical Islamist terrorism is in many ways structurally and functionally quite similar to Nazi ideology, though the Nazis did not invoke the authority of All

US foreign policy towards the Jewish state has also been perfectly consistent: it has been consistently and radically anti-Israel regardless of who is president, as another HIR investigation has demonstrated:

This again agrees nicely with the fact that the CIA was created out of tens of thousands of Nazis.