Fringe: The Strange and Terrible History of the Far Right and High Weirdness Part III

Welcome to the third installment in my examination of the murky netherworld of the far right and high weirdness. In this context I am using the phrase "high weirdness" as a stand-in for a host of fringe topics including UFOs, psi, psychedelics, human potential and so on. As for the far right, I am using a serious of think tanks and other such organizations to outline this network.

One of these organization was the original Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) Mach I. As was noted in the prior installment, the CPD was the first true lobby group for the military-industrial complex and featured many of the key architects of the national security state. This included the clique surrounding Secretary of War Henry Stimson in the War Department and the host of technocrats that served under Vannevar Bush in the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).

The CPD was not the far right, however. Its membership was primarily drawn from the ranks of Wall Street and the Ivy League. While more than a few of the original CPD members would find themselves aligned with the far right by the 1970s when the Committee on the Present Danger Mach II was established, during the so-called "Great Debate" they very much found themselves at odds with the far right, which in the wake of WWII had rallied behind the figure of three time US presidential candidate Robert A. Taft.

Asia and The Pipe

At this point in time the far right largely considered themselves "isolationists," who stood in opposition of the "internationalism" of the original CPD. In reality, however, the isolationism of the far right (much like the storied historic isolationism of these United States) was rather relative and by 1950 was rapidly giving way to an imperialism of their own.

"The Republican right wing and its business supporters had, since the close of the American frontier in the 1890s, looked to Asia as the land of opportunity, the natural Lebensraum for American expansion – economic, political, and cultural – just as the Establishment viewed Europe as the key nexus of global power. It took a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to convince the right wing that the United States should become involved in World War II. After the war they opposed the European-oriented thrust of containment and what they saw as the other side of that policy – the abandonment of Asia. The Marshall Plan and 'the loss of China' came to symbolize the Democratic era to the Republican right, frustrated even more because the Eastern wing of its party had joined the Democrats in the bipartisan display of consensus.

"The conservative right was moving haltingly towards an imperialism of its own, but oriented towards Asia not Europe. This is apparent from the statements issued by the spokesman of the so-called isolationist current in the opening round of The Great Debate. Both ex-president Herbert Hoover and presidential hopeful Robert Taft called for rearmament, but of Asia not Europe. Hoover argued, 'We should give Japan her independence and aid her in arms to defend herself. We should stiffen the defenses of our Pacific frontier in Formosa and the Philippines. . . American eyes should now be opened to these hordes in Asia.' Taft too called for basing a Pacific defense on Japan and Formosa (Taiwan) even as he attacked involvement in Europe. The Ohio senator argued for naval and air support to back Chiang Kai-Shek's nationalist forces on Formosa, adding that he saw no reason why a state of war with Communist China should not be acknowledged, if only to 'untie the hands' of MacArthur in the Far East. Thus as the Truman administration moved to increase American commitment to Europe in the winter of 1950-51, its opposition on the Republican right countered by embracing a policy of rollback to just that extent in Asia. In so doing, they moved further away from prewar isolationism towards imperialism with a right wing twist, an evolution that would be completed during the MacArthur controversy in the volatile spring of 1951."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders, pgs. 80-81)

Robert A. Taft

General Douglas MacArthur, probably more than any other figure, was responsible for the Cold War transformation of the far right from "isolationists" to imperialists. Of course, "isolationism" in these United States largely consisted of forgoing involvement in European wars while vigorously supporting the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. The thrust toward Asia that began in earnest at the tail end of the nineteenth century was seen as the logical next step of Manifest Destiny.

This debate is of course still playing out to this day. Backers of Hillary Clinton were largely drawn from the ranks of the traditional conservative establishment (addressed in part one) based around groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). This faction has always been obsessed with Europe and seem more than willing at present to risk a war with Russia so as to preserve their stranglehold over the old country. By contrast Trump, who unabashedly idolizes MacArthur, has already begun the pivot to Asia. His cabinet is stacked with China hawks while his out reach to Taiwan is the most blatant contact a US president has had with the Apartheid nation since Carter if not Ford (the initial contact between Trump and the Taiwanese president was apparently spurred by American Security Council luminary Robert Dole). But back to the matter at hand.

the latest manifestation of the Europe vs. Asia debate

MacArthur was thus a vigorous "Asia-firster" like the rest of the "isolationists," but he largely embraced the standing national security state that fueled the CPD and their allies in the foreign policy establishment. To be sure MacArthur, like the rest of the military, had opposed this transformation in the early years, but this appears to have been largely driven by concerns over military independence than any real ideological objectives.

When the CPD and their ilk went about creating the national security state, they had set up the CIA to be the lead organization in this network. The upper hierarchy of the CIA was of course drawn from the ranks of the Ivy Leagues and Wall Street while powerful NGOs such as the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were tapped to play key roles in implementing the CIA's agenda. Part of the original purpose of the CIA then appears to have been to ensure that the Eastern Establishment remained in control of the national security state.

At least that was the theory, but increasingly the middle managers of the CIA found more and more common cause with their former rivals in the Pentagon as the years went on. But at the time of the Great Debate, the wounds the Pentagon had suffered with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 were still fresh. MacArthur himself despised the CIA, and had barred its predecessor, the OSS, from operating in the Pacific Theater of WWII. He had only grudgingly accepted the CIA into his domain in the Far East, and appears to have spent as much time keeping track of the Company as he did the Communists.

The Pipe

With the Far East largely being his own personal fiefdom from the end of WWII till his removal by Truman in 1951, MacArthur had become an extremely powerful figure in national security circles. The same was true of many of the military officers that had served under or with MacArthur in WWII and/or Korea.

But before getting to those officers, two points need to be made about MacArthur. The first is that he has long been the patron saint of the American far right. When clerical fascist Gerald L.K. Smith met briefly with MacArthur in 1954, he came away from the meeting in a state of grace. American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell took up smoking a corn cob pipe in honor of The Pipe. Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, who was saved by MacArthur during Korea, regularly had his "little angels" perform rituals to bless The Pipe. Eventually Moon bankrolled a box office flop called Inchon at great personal expense to celebrate MacArthur's command in Korea. More recently, as noted above, Trump has heaped praise upon MacArthur at every opportunity.

The phrase "cult of personality" is very apt for MacArthur's relationship to the far right. While MacArthur never publicly embraced the far right's fawning adoration of him, he certainly did nothing to discourage it either.

At to the second point, it is that MacArthur was one of the first high profile figures to publicly endorse the existence of UFOs. While his alleged 1955 "interplanetary war" comments appear to be a hoax, he did in fact make some revealing comments about UFOs during a 1962 speech at West Point:

"We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms of harnessing the cosmic energy, of making winds and tides work for us, of creating unheard of synthetic materials to supplement or even replace our old standard basics; to purify sea water for our drink; of mining ocean floors for new fields of wealth and food; of disease preventatives to expand life into the hundred of years; of controlling the weather for a more equitable distribution of heat and cold, of rain and shine; of spaceships to the moon; of the primary target in war, no longer limited to the armed forces of an enemy, but instead to include his civil populations; of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy; of such dreams and fantasies as to make life the most exciting of all times."

It is interesting to note that MacArthur made this comments as part of an acceptance speech for the Sylvanus Thayer Award. The man who presented MacArthur with this award was none other than General Leslie Groves., the most revered Army Corps of Engineers officer in the history of this nation. Groves of course oversaw the military aspects of the Manhattan Project while Vannevar Bush handled the civilian side. While the relationship between Bush and Groves was not always the warmest, they did work closely together for nearly half a decade. As was noted in the prior installment, many of the scientists and other personnel involved with the National Defense Research Committee and the Office of Scientific Research and Development ended up working on either ARTICHOKE or UFO-related projects by 1950.

General Leslie Groves

Groves has expressed great admiration for MacArthur over the years and appears to have been close to The Pipe towards the end of his life. Just how far back the relationship went is unknown to this research, but Groves may have been the key link between Bush's technocrats and the far right wing MacArthur boys that appear frequently in UFOlogy. Groves does not appear to have ever served under MacArthur, but The Pipe had a background in engineering and two men may have become acquainted with one another through the Army Corps of Engineers network. But let us now return to those right wing officers that did in fact serve under The Pipe.

As was noted before here, many of these military officers would play a key role in establishing the infamous American Security Council (ASC) in the mid-1950s and would dominate that organization for years afterwards. The ASC, while now a shadow of its former self, during its Cold War heyday turns up in many of the darkest intrigues of the deep state --state-sanctioned drug trafficking and terrorism, the Kennedy assassination (noted before here), Watergate (addressed here) and Iran-Contra, among many others.

While nominally a lobby group for the military-industrial complex (it was in fact the premier lobby group for said faction during the Cold War), the ASC had since its inception an intelligence function. Initially it was involved in blacklisting and by the late 1950s maintained millions of files on average American citizens that it routinely provided to corporate America. But from that point onward its vast private intelligence network would crop up in drug and arms trafficking, assassinations, terrorism and potentially even work on Project ARTICHOKE (noted before here and here).

The ASC was, in other words, at the absolute black heart of the deep state for decades. It should thus come as little surprise that more than a few of its members and numerous other military figures linked to Douglas MacArthur turn up frequently in the most notorious UFO incident of the twentieth century.

Roswell

It would appear that virtually all of the military brass linked to the Roswell cover-up had served under Douglas MacArthur during World War II. On the Washington end were allegedly Generals George Kenney and Clements McMullen. At the time Kenney was the head  of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and McMullen was his deputy. In 1948, General Curtis LeMay replaced Kenney as head of SAC. All three men were close and were members of the Order of the Daedalians. 

On the Roswell end, the man tasked with managing the cover-up was General Roger Ramey. Ramey had also served in the Pacific Theater, under Kenney. Later he would also work with LeMay. While never directly linked to Roswell, the highly controversial General Curtis Le May had strong ties to many of the major players, most notably the commanding officer of the base closest to the Roswell incident.

General Roger Ramey

It is now well known that the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) that initially investigated the alleged crash at Roswell was far more than a marginal outpost of the US Army. In point of fact, it was arguably the most important (and almost surely most classified) air base in the United States at the time. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP) notes the following concerning the base and its infamous commanding officer:

"Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) was not exactly as insignificant as it sounds. At the time it was where the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force was located. The 509th had just become part of Strategic Air Command's 11 founding bases and was the only bomb group in the country in the possession of nuclear weapons. Part of the above top secret Manhattan Project, the 509th dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The base commander at the time of the Roswell incident, Colonel William H. 'Butch' Blanchard, was tapped as the backup pilot for the Hiroshima bomb. This same Blanchard had been a protege of Air Force general Curtis LeMay since the spring of 1945, when Blanchard became LeMay's assistant chief of staff for operations in the strategic and wholesale thermite firebombing of Japanese cities. [30] Near the end of the war LeMay got Blanchard involved in the Manhattan Project."

General Curtis LeMay, who had served under MacArthur in the Pacific Theater of World War II, was one of the most fanatical right wing officers in the history of these United States (which was something of an accomplishment in itself). As was noted before here, it is this researcher's belief that LeMay was one of two principal inspirations for General Jack D. Ripper in the Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove. Certainly LeMay had a thirst for nuclear war that only his fictional counterpart could have possibly understood. Of this obsession, ISGP remarks:

"After World War II, LeMay became famous for building up Strategic Air Command (SAC) in a highly-efficient nuclear strike force aimed against the Soviet Union. As described in ISGP's American Security Council article, during his period as SAC commander LeMay became somewhat notorious for trying to instigate a war with the Soviet Union in order to finish it off permanently with a full nuclear strike. That is, if it were to resist a peaceful surrender to U.S. authority. This strategy, also known as 'Project Control', remained popular in Air Force circles until the Soviet Union developed a nuclear weapons arsenal of its own, followed by effective delivery systems. From 1957 to 1961 LeMay was vice chief of staff of the Air Force, followed by the position of chief of staff from 1961 to 1965. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he arose as a notorious opponent of Kennedy's diplomatic efforts, instead preferring to invade Cuba. After his retirement, LeMay joined the national strategy committee of the ultra-right American Security Council and continued to push for hardline policies, along with top CIA, FBI and Pentagon officials and Wackenhut executives. General Thomas Power, LeMay's deputy and the person who succeeded him as SAC commander, later also joined the national strategy committee of the ASC."

Curtis LeMay (top) and the character of Jack D. Ripper (bottom)

LeMay appears to have broken with the ASC in the late 1960s, when he opted to run as George Wallace's veep in 1968. This led to LeMay being dropped from the ASC, but whether this was due to his radicalism or the fact that he would run against ASC-darling Richard Nixon is unknown. Regardless, LeMay was about as hardline as they come.

LeMay has been long linked to the UFO question as well. In a 1965 biography he expressed his belief that UFOs were real, while his friend and fellow ASC luminary Barry Goldwater linked LeMay to UFO research. LeMay was also a co-founder of the RAND Corporation, which has long been linked to UFO research as well.

And Blanchard was apparently very close to both LeMay and the above-mentioned General Thomas Power, who also signed up with the ASC after his retirement. Both Powers and Blanchard, along with another ASC luminary who shall be addressed in a moment, were dispatched to the Soviet Union in 1956 to asses the Soviet defense build up. A noted above, Blanchard also worked on the Manhattan Project during the winding down of WWII, a prospect that UFOlogist should have been all over years ago.

General William H. Blanchard

As was noted in the prior installment, the Manhattan Project felt under the control of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). Both of these institutions were directed by Vannever Bush and staffed with a host of figures that would later turn up in either UFOlogy or CIA/Pentagon behavior modification experiments, if not both. Blanchard thus seems to have had ties to both the MacArthur clique as well as Bush's technocrats, both of which appear frequently in UFOlogy during the early years.

It should thus hardly come as a surprise that Blanchard appears to have been well on his way to a senior role in the Air Force at the time of his death in 1966. ISGP reports:

"... Blanchard rose through the ranks of the Air Force at a very fast pace, even faster than Twining and LeMay. He died in his office at the Pentagon in 1966 at the age of 50, but already at this point was a four-star general and vice chief of staff of the Air Force. Almost certainly he would have become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after which he would have moved to private industry and quite possibly the American Security Council, the same path Twining and LeMay took."

And yet when Blanchard is considered by mainstream historians he is often depicted as a rather buffoonish figure in no small part due to a press release he issued in the wake of the Roswell crash proclaiming the recovery of a flying saucer.

 "... Blanchard notified the Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort Worth and ordered Marcel to go there with the debris and meet with Gen. Roger Ramey. At this point both Marcel and Blanchard believed they had obtained pieces of the mysterious flying discs. At around noon, Blanchard ordered Public Information Officer Lt. Walter Haut to issue a press release stating this. Haut gave the release to Frank Joyce at radio station KGFL, sent it to Western Union, radio stations, newspapers. It reached the AP wire by 2:26 P.M.; at that point, all hell broke loose throughout Roswell and, we may assume, up the military chain of command. The Roswell Daily Record, an evening paper, carried three stories about the crash, on the front page. The main statement: 'The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Force announced at noon today the field has come into possession of a flying saucer."

(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pgs. 22-23)

Let's pause now and consider these developments for a moment now. Blanchard is a fast rising star in the Army (and later the Air Force) who was involved with the highly secretive Hiroshima bomb run and later the Manhattan Project. These projects were of course highly classified, indicating that Blanchard knew how to keep his mouth shut. And yet, shortly after recovering the debris, he would announce to the world via the mass media that a flying saucer had been recovered at Roswell, apparently without the full approval of the military hierarchy. And despite this apparent slip up, he would continue to rise rapidly threw the ranks, holding the rank of four star general when he suddenly died in the Pentagon of an apparent heart attack at the age of 50.

It probably goes without saying, but something is wrong with this picture.

When Blanchard initiated the press release, he was certainly following orders. But what was the purpose of this order? A cover-up? Disinformation? Or, was this perhaps some kind of message?

Other MacArthur Ties to Roswell

And then of course there is General Nathan Twining. Like Kenney, McMullen, Ramey and Le May, Twining had served in the Pacific Theater of World War II with MacArthur, specifically in the Solomon Island campaign before Twining was transferred to the European theater. A reputed member of Majestic 12, Twining has long been linked to the UFO question by researchers. While the Majestic 12 documents are not especially credible, there can be little doubt that Twining had an interest in the UFO question and had mobilized military resources towards investigating it. 

The most implicit linkage of Twining to UFOs is the so-called "Twining memo."

"... On September 23, 1947, Twining wrote a classified, now famous, letter regarding the flying discs. He noted that the discs were 'real and not visionary or fictitious.' They may possibly be natural phenomena, he wrote, such as meteors. But:

the reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered invasive when sighted... lend belief to the possibility that some of these objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely... 

"Twining recommended that Air Force Headquarters 'issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and code name for a detailed study of this matter.' He also ordered that the best UFO reports be sent to the following places: the Joint Research and Development Board; the Office of Scientific Research and Development; the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics; and the Atomic Energy Commission. Each of these offices had strong links with Vannevar Bush...

"Twining did state that UFOs were not secret American craft. This came as a surprise to Schulgen, who expected the reply that there was nothing to the affair, that everything was under control. Instead, Twining wrote that the phenomenon was unexplained and warranted further study. Again, one might ask whether he was hiding the fact that UFOs really were U.S. experimental craft. Fifty years later, the answer is clearly no. The U.S. had no craft in 1947, experimental or otherwise, that could duplicate the reported maneuvers of flying saucers. When Twining wrote his letter, Chuck Yeager had yet broken the sound barrier (he did it the next month at Muroc Field). Why would Twining tell Schukgen to keep studying flying saucers if they were simply classified American aircraft? If there were good reasons for doing so, none have emerged. 

"Twining's letter, a crucial document in UFO policy, received no official acknowledgment for twenty years. Yet, because of it, the air force soon created its first formal UFO investigatory body, Project Sign."

(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pgs. 43-44)

General Nathan Twining

Twining then initiated the US Air Force's first official investigation into the UFO phenomenon. Project Sign would be succeeded by projects such as Grudge, Twinkle, and eventually Blue Book. These operations remain highly controversial, with numerous officials who worked on them revealing that crucial data had been suppressed.

Even more compelling is the fact that the Twining letter suggested that UFO reports be passed on to a host of agencies, most notably the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), linked to Vannevar Bush. As was noted before here, many of Bush's former subordinates from the were involved in the CIA/Pentagon-sponsored Project ARTICHOKE as well as CIA investigations into the UFO question.

The Twining memo is thus one of the first compelling documents linking Bush's technocrats and the far right. And General Nathan Twining was very far right indeed. He was a longstanding member of the American Security Council, apparently signing up with the ASC shortly after his retirement from the Air Force in 1960 and remained on the National Strategy Committee until at least the 1970s. At one point he was the co-chairman of said committee. He was also a member of the Order of Daedalians along with Kenney, McMullen and LeMay. Twining also visited the Soviet Union with Colonel William Blanchard (of Roswell fame) and Thomas Powers (also of the ASC) in 1956, as noted above.

Order of the Daedalians courtesy of ISGP; Kenny is on the far left, McMullen the center-left, LeMay is in the middle and Twining is on the far right (har har) 

With such associates, it should hardly come as a surprise that Twining has long been linked to the Roswell incident as well.  This linkage revolves around a sudden trip he took at the time the debris were allegedly being recovered.

"On Monday, July 7, Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining, commander of Air Material Command (AMC), flew unexpectedly to Alamogordo Army Air Field, New Mexico, then made a side trip to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque. He remained in the area until July 11, although reporters initially had been told that Twining was 'probably' in Washington, D.C...

"Regarding the Twining visit, it should be noted that a declassified document from June 5, 1947, stated that Twining, Gen. Benjamin Chidlaw, and a few other high-level brass were scheduled to attend a three-day temporary duty status at Sandia Base in Albuquerque for a Bomb Commanders Course. This took place between July 8 and July 11. Visitor logs and security calendars indicate that this group did take the course. But Twining was also scheduled for a trip to Boeing at this time, which he had to cancel. In a July 17 letter to a Boeing executive, Twining referred to a 'very important and sudden matter that developed here.' Since Twining had not received confirmation of his clearance to attend the conference at Sandia until July 3, it is possible that this is what he was referring to. Is also likely, however, that the Roswell crash received his immediate attention."

(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pgs. 21-22)

Twining was thus in the region when the Roswell incident was allegedly playing out. And at least one military officer with extensive ties to the far right has alleged that Twining played a crucial role in managing the Roswell incident and in developments related to it. In the next installment we shall consider the claims of this officer as well as what actually happened at Roswell and more ties between the ASC and UFOlogy. Stay tuned dear reader.

Fringe: The Strange and Terrible History of the Far Right and High Weirdness Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the ties between the far right and high weirdness from the Cold War era till present. In this context, I am using the phrase "high weirdness" as a catch-all for a host of fringe and arcane topics --UFOs, psi , psychedelics and so forth --that are far more interrelated than is generally assumed. As for far right, this will be elaborated upon over the course of this series.

With the first installment I outlined the curious killing spree of one Wade Michael Page and the possible deep political implications behind it as was well as the high weirdness that reared its head during the 2016 presidential contest. Having teased about the modern manifestations of the far right and high weirdness, I would now like to turn back to the onset of the Cold War so that I can better examine this peculiar history.

A good place to start would be with the rise of the military-industrial complex, which has long served as the backbone of the American far right. The emergence of the military-industrial complex is also crucial to the divide between the American ruling factions, which largely consists of the traditional conservatives long associated with longtime conspiratorial bugaboos such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg group and the far right and their own network of think tanks. During the Cold War the most powerful of these were the American Security Council (addressed at length here), the World Anti-Communist League (addressed at length here) and Le Cercle (noted before here). While Le Cercle remains a major power the ASC and WACL have largely been surpassed by next generation groups such as the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Security Policy and the Council for National Policy.

Stimson and the Boys

The military-industrial complex had its origins with the traditional conservatives, however. The CFR in particular was a crucial driving force behind it. The impetus behind the military-industrial complex and the national security state that emerged was largely driven by two-time Secretary of War Henry Stimson and several key officials who served under him in the War Department during WWII. Here are some more details:

"... On June 19, President Roosevelt appointed Republican Wall Street lawyer and Theodore Roosevelt protégé Henry L. Stimson to the post of Secretary of War. Named as his assistant was another Republican corporate lawyer of similar standing, Robert P Patterson. Both Stimson and Patterson were leading members of the Council on Foreign Relations. A decade later, Patterson would become one of the founders of the CPD. Richard Barnet pinpoints Roosevelt's decision as the origin of the foreign policy establishment. He writes that Stimson was steeped in the worldview of Theodore Roosevelt and,

... Within six months of FDR's call Stimson had put together an impressive staff of like-minded people who also were imbued with TR's values – struggle, honored, and glory... After 1940, the national security managers, working with the military, began to redefine the national interest. 

"Huntington agrees with Barnet's assessment of their importance but disagrees on their impact, referring to them admirably as 'neo-Hamiltonians' who turned America away from its traditional isolationist tendencies towards world leadership. If Barnett and Huntington differ on the end result of the Establishment's rise to power, each agrees that this exclusive group is critical in the formation of American policy throughout the war and into the post-war period. Stimson's and Patterson's principal assistants in the War Department included John J. McCloy, Robert Lovett, and Harvey Bundy. Like their mentors, each of these men were active members of the Eastern financial and political establishment. McCloy, who served as Stimson's personal chief, recalled: 'Whenever we needed a man we thumbed through the role of the Council (On Foreign Relations) members and put through a call to New York.'...

"After the war, Stimson's recruits and their colleagues in Roosevelt's wartime government stayed on as the key architects of postwar national security and foreign policy. Upon Stimson's retirement in 1945, Patterson took over as Secretary of War. Barnet describes the impact of the war department graduates as follows:

It was Stimson and Forrestal's (Secretary of the Navy who would become the first Secretary of Defense) recruits, plus a few others of similar backgrounds, including Dean Acheson, Will Clayton, and Averell Harriman who, after Roosevelt's sudden death, formed the collective picture of the world adopted by the uninformed and ill-prepared Harry Truman.

"Summoned from the worlds of corporate law and high finance with little or no experience in government they soon took over the reins of foreign policy from career diplomats in the State Department..."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders, pgs. 70-71)

Henry Stimson

There's a lot to take in here. The first crucial point to consider here is the social status of these men. While all of these men --Stimson, Patterson, McCloy, Lovett, Bundy and Forrestal --were all very much a part of the Eastern Establishment, they did not come from fabulously wealthy backgrounds. On the whole, all of these men (with the exception of Lovett) came from upper middle class backgrounds that they were able to parlay into access to the Ivy Leagues, and from there, Wall Street. With the exceptions of Lovett and Forrestal, all of these men had attended Harvard Law School and had worked primarily as attorneys before entering government in the early 1940s. Forrestal had been a journalist, and later a bond salesman. Only Lovett, who had become a partner at Brown Brothers Harriman by the 1930s, had reached the upper echelons of finance.

It is also interesting to note the presence of so many Bonesmen among this emerging "foreign policy establishment." Stimson himself was a Skull and Bones initiate as was Bundy and Lovett. Robert Lovett (along with non-Bonesman John McCloy) was also a member the "Wise Men" whom many mainstream historians credit with the creation of much of the US's post-WWII foreign policy. Dean Acheson and Averell Harriman, two other Wise Men, were also Bonesmen and worked closely with the Stimson clique. Skull and Bones has curious ties to the far right, as was noted before here. But back to the matter at hand.

So, while on the whole Stimson and the clique surrounding him were a part of the Eastern Establishment, they more accurately should be classified as middle managers of said establishment. These were the men tasked with overseeing the vast financial empires of the American aristocracy such as the Morgan, Rockefeller and Mellon families. And ultimately they were the ones responsible for selling the military-industrial complex to such families.

"While the vision of a Pax Americana constructed upon the foundation of militarism was accepted within the foreign policy establishment – with the notable exception of a few dissidents like George Keenan and Charles Bohlen who were soon drummed out of the club – as well as within presidential councils once Louis Johnson departed from the Administration, it was not so extensively held outside those rarefied circles. The wider business community and the wider political community would still have to be persuaded of the wisdom of tripling military expenditures, bankrolling Europe's rearmament, and garrisoning American troops abroad to ensure the success of such an ambitious undertaking. Business leaders could be reached through the ordinary channels of communication that existed with the president, the foreign policy establishment, the corporate elite, and where necessary through extraordinary private briefings and seminars like the 'Citizen's Council' of September, 1950.

"As had been the case with governmental initiatives dating from the New Deal through the Marshall Plan, business was reluctant to endorse higher levels of government spending. But there was increasing common ground between international business and the foreign policy establishment. What they shared was the belief that Western Europe was the linchpin of the global order favorable to the expansion of profits as well as power. Thus the representatives of corporate capitalism clustered on the eastern seaboard had little trouble grasping the logic of the new internationalism once it was explained to them by the 'best and brightest' from their own ranks who had gone on to become national security managers – men like Acheson, McCloy, Lovett, and Nitze, who assured the corporate elite that the economy could not only accommodate the military Keynesian programs outlined in NSC-68 but could actually benefit from such spending."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders, pg. 78)

This did not ultimately prove to be the case. The rise of the military-industrial complex led to a massive shift of wealth and power away from Wall Street and the Anglo-American establishment that controlled it. Increasingly Silicon Valley and the national security apparatus have been the ones to fill the void.

The situation came to a head in the late 1960s when the CFR became divided between the "traders" and the "Prussians." The traders, led by David Rockefeller, eventually formed the Trilateral Commission to further their objectives of free trade and economic integration while the Prussians, personified by Paul Nitze, would form the Committee on the Present Danger Mach II. This largely put them in the same camp as the far right by the 1970s.

David Rockefeller (top) and Paul Nitze (bottom)

That many of these robber barons would put so much stalk in the "best and brightest" assembled  largely by Secretary of War Henry Stimson is quite curious, to say the least. While nominally an "internationalist," Stimson had cut his political teeth working for Presidents Theodore Roosevelt (whom he greatly admired) and William Howard Taft. The Taft family on the whole would became among the fiercest opponents of internationalism by WWII with William Howard's son, Robert, effectively emerging as the de-facto leader of the "isolationist" wing of the Republican Party by the 1930s.

And then there's Theodore Roosevelt, whom Stimson and many of his appointments idolized. Roosevelt was an early proponent of American imperialism and had paved the way for Standard Oil, the basis of the Rockefeller fortune, to be broken up under anti-trust regulations. Despite being the scion of a wealthy East Coast family, Roosevelt does not seem to have been especially taken with the great families of the region.

Theodore Roosevelt

Many of Roosevelt's descendants would express strong anti-Eastern Establishment views while spending much of their lives working in the national security apparatus. His son, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., was a co-founder of the American Legion (an organization that would become closely linked with the American Security Council, for years the premier think tank of the military-industrial complex, by the 1950s) and in some accounts is alleged to have plotted a coup against FDR (a distant relative from the Hyde Park branch of the family) with several other wealthy business interests and military men.

Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Another of Teddy Roosevelt's sons, Archibald, was an active member of the John Birch Society, the Infowars of its day. Archibald's daughter, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, was a journalist who frequently denounced the United Nations, the Rockefellers, the Council on Foreign Relations and many other longtime bugaboos of the conspiratorial right in her columns.

On the other hand, Archibald Roosevelt Jr., a top level CIA officer, would later work closely with David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan. And many of the latter day Roosevelts are extremely active in the environmental movement, a major obsession of the traditional conservative camp. Like the Mellon family (chronicled before here), appears to have been starkly divided at times. with more than a few family members seemingly having an ax to grind with the traditional conservative camp.

Why then would Stimson's acolytes be entrusted with so much power by their corporate overlords? Surely they could see the foreign policy they promoted was far closer to the militant internationalism of Theodore Roosevelt rather than the trade-dominated variety they had long pursued. Was there something more going on behind the scenes?

The Technocrats

To answer this question, we must turn to the original Committee on the Present Danger (CPD), the first true lobby group for the military-industrial complex. The CPD brought together many of Stimson's War Department lackeys along with the emerging class of technocrats from academia. One particular technocrat would play an enormous role in selling the military-industrial complex to both the elite and the American public at large. This individual was none other than Vannevar Bush.

Bush is of course well-known among UFOs buffs as a reputed member of Majestic 12, but on the whole is generally depicted by mainstream historians as a brilliant scientist than had limited influence on national policy. This could not be further from the truth. In point of fact, Bush was at the center of some of the darkest corners of the early national security state and played a crucial role in merging academia with the emerging military-industrial complex.

"If Roosevelt's appointment of Stimson and Patterson opened the avenue through which the corporate elite entered the institutions of foreign-policy formation, an equally important event occurred that same summer when the technocratic connection to the national security bureaucracy was established. Vannevar Bush and James Conant had together been discussing how scientists could assist in hastening the preparation for entrance into World War II at a meeting of scientists and educators. Shortly thereafter Bush gained access to President Roosevelt through Harry Hopkins, the President's close adviser and confidant, and persuaded Roosevelt to establish a National Defense Research Committee. The National Defense Research Committee was to operate in the executive branch under the chairmanship of Bush, who was at the time serving as president of the Carnegie Institution. Conant writes that aside from the applications of scientific technology to weapons development 'the committee marked the beginning of a revolution' in another sense. Here Conant was referring to the link between university laboratories and research and development of weapons which would become a routine feature the Cold War era.

"The National Defense Research Committee was quickly subsumed under a new agency – the Office of Scientific Research and Development, located in the Office of Emergency Management within the Executive. The powerful bureau, which Bush headed from 1941 to 1946, dealt directly with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President. When Bush moved to the directorship of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, Conant replaced him as the National Defense Research Committee while at the same time serving as Bush's assistant at Scientific Research and Development. One of their associates James Phinney Baxter III, won a Pulitzer Prize for his tale of the agency's work called Scientists Against Time. By 1950 Baxter was president of Smith College and joined Bush and Conant on the membership rolls of the CPD. Another prominent college president who also served in the Office of Scientific Research and Development during the war and later on the executive committee of the CPD was Robert G. Sproul of the University of California, whose name had appeared along with Conant's in the NSC-68 deliberations concerning formation of a 'vast propaganda machine' under the direction of influential national opinion leaders.

"The primary work of the Office of Scientific Research and Development was production of the atomic bomb. It was Bush in fact, who in October 1941, won White House sanction for a full-scale effort to explore the possibilities for an atomic weapons program. When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945, the decision to target Japanese cities was recommended to Truman by Secretary of War Stimson based upon the opinion of an Interim Committee under his direction. On this committee of eight civilians charged with responsibility for the monstrous decision were three who would become members of the CPD. They were Assistant Secretary of State Clayton, Bush, and Conant. The Interim Committee recommended unanimously 'that the bomb be used against the enemy as soon as it could be done... without specific warning and against a target that would clearly show its devastating strength.' In fact, according to more than one account, it was Conant who suggested that the only target meeting such criteria was a population center, ideally 'a war plant employing a large number of workers closely surrounded by workers; houses.' "

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders, pgs. 72-73) 

Vannevar Bush

There's a lot to take in here. On the whole, the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) were two of the most mysterious components of the war effort. When mainstream historians considers these two institutions, virtually all of the focus is on their role in developing the atomic bomb. But the even more mysterious Division 19, a part of the OSRD, was involved in even stranger pursuits.

As was noted before here, there is compelling evidence that Division 19 played a key role in OSS assassination plots, potentially even working directly with Mafia figures towards this end of the war. One particular member of the NDRC was Boris Pash, who was the military leader of the Alsos Mission, an Allied operation to determine the extent of the Axis nuclear program and other weapons research. Vannever Bush had personally green lighted this mission.

Division 19 also became involved in the early OSS "truth drug" experiments that would serve as the basis for later research conducted by the CIA and Pentagon as part of programs such as ARTICHOKE, MK-ULTRA and MK-OFTEN. The head of Division 19 was H. Marshall Chadwell, a likely associate of Bush's who would have worked closely with him throughout the war. Chadwell would go on to head the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). The OSI would briefly head ARTICHOKE during Chadwell's tenure and would continue to be heavily involved in the project after control reverted back to the Office of Security (which had numerous ties to the far right, most notably the American Security Council, a close alley of the Committee on the Present Danger Mach II by the late 1970s).

To recap, then:

• Vannevar Bush headed both the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD)
• the NDRC and OSRD were deeply involved in the development of the atomic bomb, which Bush and his close colleague James Conant had been vigorous proponents of
• Bush seemingly played a role in urging Truman, via Secretary of Wart Stimson, to deliberately target Japanese civilians by nuking their cities; Bush had the ear of Stimson via his close aide William Bundy, who was Stimson's personal liaison to Bush
• While all of this was going on, the NDRC and OSRD were also involved in research, via Division 19, to apply science to assassinations as well as developing a "truth serum"
• This "research" was later taken up by the CIA and Pentagon in programs such as BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE, which featured crucial participation from Bush subordinates like Boris Pash and H. Marshall Chadwell
• While Chadwell and his merry band were revving up ARTICHOKE, Bush became a key member of the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) along with several of his other NDRC/OSRD subordinates and Strimson's War Department clique 
• the CPD Mach I was the first lobby group for the military-industrial complex and played a crucial role in enacting the national security state, the foundation of which was laid by the 1947 National Security Act, but which was not fully initiated until the approval of NSC-68

Bush was an unabashed cheerleader for the national security state, even appearing regularly on radio broadcasts to pimp it:

"At this point the CPD decided to step up its offensive by institutionalizing the Conant-style national radio broadcast in the form of a weekly series. The broadcasts would be aired on Sunday evenings over the Mutual Broadcasting System, which had 550 affiliates throughout the country. The first of these addresses was presented March 4, 1951, by Vannevar Bush. The points he made were lifted right from NSC-68. The renowned nuclear scientist said that while the atomic bomb had been a sufficient deterrent in the past, the U.S. could no longer count on strategic bombing as the only means of 'inhibiting Soviet aggression.' Only a combination of ground forces and continued development of atomic weapons could avert the Russian advance. This in turn called for a commitment of U.S. troops to Europe to see the proposed remilitarization through. Finally he asserted, universal military service was the vehicle that would allow the U.S. to fulfill its commitment."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders, pgs. 92-93)

Thus, the arms race and the draft are two more aspects of Bush's legacy. Yet another aspect, as indicated above, was his militarization of academia. Bush played a key role in opening up universities to Federal grants for defense research. This also laid the foundation for the ARTICHOKE, MK-ULTRA and OFTEN experiments that made ample use of the nation's leading universities for their experiments.

Bush then was far from the marginal player mainstream historians often depict him as being. In point of fact, he appears to a key architect of the national security state. The military-industrial complex is as much his legacy as anyone's.

The Plot Thickens

But how did this scientist, as a brilliant as he may have been, end up dictating the post-war order to the business class that sponsored him? Bush, along with the Stimson-clique, played an absolutely crucial role in convincing the robber barons of embarking upon this uncertain road. Just consider some of the individuals who attended the above-mentioned 1950 "Citizen's Conference" geared toward convincing the corporate elite of this path:

"From the beginning, university educators played a prominent role both within the CPD itself and in support of CPD proposals and their professional organizations and activities. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the so-called 'Citizen's Conference,' sponsored by seven college presidents – among them Wriston – to expand their views on universal military service and its link to an adequate defense posture. General Eisenhower, then president of Columbia University, was slated to give the keynote address. Conant was unable to attend but prepared a statement that was read by the Dean of the Harvard Business School, Donald K. David. In the words of the organizers of the 'Citizen's Conference' it was attended by,

fifty industrialists, heads of many communication services – press, radio, newspaper, and magazines – financiers, educators, heads of farm organizations, life insurance and railroad presidents.

"Some of those attending included financier Bernard Baruch, Winthrop Aldrich of the Chase Manhattan Bank, Julius Ochs Adler of the New York Times – who would soon become a member of the CPD – Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors, George Whitney of the J. P. Morgan investment firm, and magnates John Hay Whitney, and John D. Rockefeller. Tracy Voorhees was also there. The confidential report of this high-level meeting reveals that it was strictly a briefing for Establishment consumption: 'It was agreed that no public record would be made of the views expressed at the conference; hence this memorandum is to be strictly confidential,' wrote Harry Bullis, CPD member and president of General Mills."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders, pgs. 64-65)

Winthrop Aldrich (top), Alfred P. Sloan (middle) and John D. ROckefeller Jr. (bottom)

Aldrich. Sloan. Whitney. Rockefeller. This is a literal who's who of the ruling business establishment and it was Stimson's War Department clique (i.e Tracy Voorhees) and Bush's technocratic network that was brought to bear to convince these titans of capital to bankroll the military-industrial complex. They succeeded and the world has never been the same.

What then did Bush and the Stimson clique have that was so compelling? This is where the UFO question becomes so relevant. Had the military and these defense scientists discovered something that warranted a profound reorientation of American society, one of which that hasn't always been especially beneficial to the financial elites that green lighted (and paid for) much of the military-industrial complex?

There is certainly compelling evidence that Bush was deeply involved in UFO research by the time he signed up with the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I and became a spokesman for the budding military-industrial complex. Consider the so-called Smith memo:

"One of the most important documents on UFOs to be released in Canada is a hitherto top secret memorandum from Wilbert B. Smith, senior radio engineer with the Canadian government Department of Transport at the time and a highly respected scientist who had a master's degree in electrical engineering and several patents. The memo, dated 21 November 1950, was sent to the Controller of Telecommunications, and recommended that a research project be set up study the subject.

" 'We believe that we are on the track of something which may well prove to be the introduction to a new technology,' Smith wrote. 'The existence of a different technology is borne out by the investigations which are being carried on at the present time in relation to flying saucers.' Smith went on to state that through discreet inquiries made at the Canadian Embassy in Washington he had learned (from Dr. Robert Sarbacher) that: 

a.  The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.

b.  Flying saucers exist.

c.  Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.

d.  The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

"Here we have incontrovertible evidence for the high security classification attached to the subject. The reference to the 'small group' headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush is equally significant, since in 1947, following the retrieval of parts of a UFO near Roswell, New Mexico, a small, select group, code-named Majestic 12, was established to inform the president about UFO developments, and it was headed by Dr. Bush..."

(Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, pg. 183)

Wilbert B. Smith

There are any number of compelling reasons that at best Majestic 12 was a hoax, and at worst was an especially clever piece of disinformation that has managed to mislead UFO researchers for decades now. This researcher believes that the Majestic 12 documents were issued in response to the declassification of the Smith memo. Had Majestic 12 note provided UFO researcher with a host of names to research, they may have begun looking more closely at some of Bush's colleagues to ascertain the membership of this "small group." And had they done this, they would have made some rather shocking discoveries.

For one, Bush's former NDRC subordinate H. Marshall Chadwell had a keen interest in UFOs, one of which that bordered on the paranoid. As was noted before here, it was Chadwell during his time heading the Office of Scientific Intelligence that he seriously lobbied the CIA to investigate UFOs.

Chadwell also played a key role in the creation of the infamous Robertson Panel, in which a massive disinformation campaign involving the UFO subject was recommended. The panel's name sake, Howard P. Robertson, had also worked in the NDRC and the OSRD during WWII. By 1944 he was also a Technical Consultant to Stimson's War Department.

Howard P. Robertson

Naturally Chadwell was investigating UFOs and establishing the Robertson Panel at the same time he was deeply involved in ARTICHOKE. There is ample evidence that ARTICHOKE's objectives (noted before here) went far beyond 'special interrogation" methods and mind control and ventured deep into fringe and paranormal topics such as psi and divination. While there is no concrete evidence ARTICHOKE investigated UFOs, one of the project's scientists, Andrija Puharich, was involved in channeling what he believed where extraterrestrial intelligences during his time on ARTICHOKE (noted before here).

MK-ULTRA would also investigate the UFO phenomenon. Interestingly, Cornelius Van Schaack Roosevelt, a grandson of Teddy Roosevelt via Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (who, as noted above, co-founded the American Legion and may have involved in intrigues to stage a coup against his distant relative FDR), was the head of the Technical Services Staff (TSS) in the early 1960s. This was the CIA branch that oversaw MK-ULTRA, making Roosevelt Sidney Gottlieb's boss at that point. But back to the matter at hand.

Secretary of Defense James Forrestal's presence in these ranks is noteworthy as well. Forrestal was another reputed Majestic-12 member who allegedly committed suicide in 1949. Even at the time his death was regarded as highly suspicious and it has since been re-examined by a host of researchers. While there is nothing concrete to tie Forrestal to the UFO phenomenon aside from the highly dubious MJ-12 documents, Forrestal certainly seems to have been very close to the Stimson clique in the War Department (though he was not recruited by Stimson personally) as well as Bush and the technocrats.

James Forrestal

All of this tends to indicate that Bush and many of his subordinates in the National Defense Research Committee and the Office of Scientific Research and Development were knee deep in a host of fringe topics by the early 1950s that included UFOs, psychedelics, psi, human potential and so on. In this context, Bush's potential involvement in UFO research hardly seems controversial. Certainly many of his former colleagues were deeply immersed in such topics.

This researcher believes strongly that these fringe topics played a key role in the rise of the national security state. This ultimately makes far more sense that the Soviet threat, or lack therefore of, that the general public was fed. The Soviet Union was decimated by the end of World War II and would take over a decade to recover. Even after its recovery, it would be nearly impossible for the Soviet's to catch up with the American war machine.

Surely the corporate elites, many of whom looked ravenously upon the Russian markets and natural resources, were well aware of this. While Communism was surely a nuisance, it could not have seriously been considered a threat to the power of Wall Street.

But the prospect of an incredible new foreign technology, one of which that would fundamentally change American society and the world as a whole? Well, that may well constitute a vast national security state with the power to ultimately rival Wall Street. As this series advances, I shall consider one such technology that could have such an impact. But in the next installment we shall consider the final piece to the emergence of the national security state and the merger of the military-industrial complex and the far right in the American Security Council. Stay tuned dear reader.