JFK (7 page)

This man was Thomas Malthus, who, in 1805, postulated the idea that humanity is multiplying its numbers at a geometric rate while increasing its life-support capability at only an arithmetic rate. As a result, it has been universally concluded by the power elite that only a relatively few humans are destined to survive successfully in generations to come. The Malthusian theory thus provides a rationalization for the necessity of somehow getting rid of large numbers of people, any people, in any way—even genocide. With the Malthusian theory as the power elite’s philosophical guide, this becomes an acceptable objective, because, they believe, Earth will never be able to support the progeny of so many anyhow. From this point of view, genocide—then as now—is accepted as all but inevitable. Who cares and why be concerned?

The third theory fortifies this approach further. Darwin persuades them to believe that because they survive, at no matter what cost to others and to Earth, they must therefore be—by definition—the fittest; and conversely, because they know they are the chosen, that is, the fittest, they are Earth’s assured survivors, fulfilling the prophecy of Armageddon.

The fourth, Heisenberg’s nuclear age theory, provides an excuse for their errors and confusion. Certainly, if physical science is found to be indeterminate, economics can be, and so can everything else. Let God throw the dice, and we’ll take it from there. The one caution, the power elite later reasoned, was that new scientific discoveries and new technology must never be permitted to overwhelm the status quo as precipitously as the hydrogen bomb had done.

Each of these concepts has been conveniently contrived to fit the occasion; each became the type of theory that is useful at certain times and in certain cases, but can never be proved and in most cases can easily be superseded by a more modern technology, a development of the science involved, or an awareness of the human rights that have been abrogated by the application of these rules of the powerful.

From this point of view, warfare, and the preparation for war, is an absolute necessity for the welfare of the state and for control of population masses, as has been so ably documented in that remarkable novel by Leonard Lewin
¹
Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace
and attributed by Lewin to “the Special Study Group in 1966,” an organization whose existence was so highly classified that there is no record, to this day, of who the men in the group were or with what sectors of the government or private life they were connected.

This report, as presented in the novel, avers that war is necessary to sustain society, the nation, and national sovereignty, a view that has existed for millennia. Through the ages, totally uncontrolled warfare—the only kind of “real” war—got bigger and “better” as time and technology churned on, finally culminating in World War II with the introduction of atomic bombs.

Not long after that great war, the world leaders were faced suddenly with the reality of a great dilemma. At the root of this dilemma was the new fission-fusion-fission H-bomb. Is it some uncontrollable Manichean device, or is it truly a weapon of war?

These leaders have realized now that use of the thermonuclear, fission-fusion-fission type of megaton-plus bomb will destroy mankind, nature, and Earth. Therefore, they have asked, must they abandon the historic madness of all-out uncontrolled warfare, or, in its stead, can they discover and create some alternative to war that will perpetuate nationalism and maintain national sovereignty?

Since the dawn of that first realization, after the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, the H-bomb has emerged from the laboratories and has been used to atomize whole islands in the Pacific and whole chunks of the landmass of arctic peninsulas. It can be placed in the nose cone of a rocket-powered intercontinental ballistic missile and delivered, in minutes, to any place on Earth. Or, perhaps even more dangerously, it can be fitted into the trunk of an automobile and parked in an underground garage in any city in the world. A simple telephone beeper rigged to the bomb’s initiator will activate that nuclear explosive and pulverize any city of any size and any location.

Such knowledge is sufficient. The dilemma is now fact. There can no longer be a classic or traditional war, at least not the all-out, go-for-broke-type warfare there has been down through the ages, a war that leads to a meaningful victory for one side and abject defeat for the other. Witness what has been called warfare in Korea, and Vietnam, and the later, more limited experiment with new weaponry called the Gulf War in Iraq.

In his remarkable book
Counsel to the President,
Clark Clifford, former secretary of defense under President Lyndon Johnson, very frankly stated the problem that handicapped the military forces in Vietnam: “What was our objective in Vietnam?”

Earlier, in a quandary about what President Johnson himself had meant in his speech of March 31, 1968, Secretary Clifford asked in the book: “What had he intended? Had he deliberately sacrificed his political career in order to seek an end to the war, or had he put forward a series of half measures designed to shore up domestic support, at a lower cost, without changing our objective in Vietnam? Did he know what his objective was?”

These are absolutely alarming questions, coming as they do from a man who had been an adviser to presidents from Truman to Johnson during the most challenging years of the Cold War. He knew that we had been in a war in Vietnam since 1945; yet at the very time that he was the secretary of defense, in 1968, and when American forces in Vietnam had been increased to 550,000 men, he writes that neither he, the President, nor any member of the administration knew what the objective of this country or its military forces was in Vietnam. No army can win any war without a valid and tangible objective.

Then, during a meeting in the White House on May 21, 1968, of the President; Secretary of State Dean Rusk; the military adviser to the President, Walt Rostow; the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Earle Wheeler; and himself, Clark Clifford made this amazing statement: “With the limitations now placed on our military—no invasion of the north, no mining of the harbors, no invasion of the sanctuaries—we have no real plans or chance to win the war.”

There are, in the academic terms of a Clausewitz or other scholars of the evolution of warfare, nine principles of warfare; and paramount among these is that of the “objective.” What possible chance is there for victory when generals have not been given a clear description of the national objective for which they and their men must fight and die and in its place are given a list of incredible limitations?

Because of this failure of leadership at the top, America sacrificed 58,000 men and spent no less than $220 billion. No wonder Clark Clifford and his associates were confounded by what they had inherited, from prior administrations, in the name of a “war” in faraway Indochina. This is one reason why it is so important to clarify that what was called a “war” during the first twenty years (1945–65) of this conflict was actually a massive series of paramilitary activities under the operational control of the CIA.

This is what the hydrogen bomb and the clandestine services have done to the art of war. Under these circumstances, no commander today can be given an objective such that if he begins to achieve it, and therefore appears to be on the road to victory, he will force his enemy to resort to that weapon of last resort, the hydrogen bomb.

Our six presidents of the Vietnam War era, 1945–75, were faced with this dilemma. None of them, or any member of their staffs, have expressed it better than Clark Clifford in his book, or Gen. Victor H. Krulak in
First to Fight,
his most important military book.

Today the power elite can see no assured survival for themselves and their class if hydrogen bombs are utilized in warfare. Up until the end of WWII, this power elite on both sides of the fray, who exist above the war, have always been assured of survival. In any war in the future in which there is an exchange of H-bombs, there can be no assured Armageddon-type survival for the chosen, for mankind, for all of nature, or for Earth itself.

Under such circumstances, since survival is the strongest drive in man, what form can war take, given that it is viewed as a necessity and that the men of this power elite have that final choice to make? This question has given rise to a concept of a controlled or limited type of warfare and has been widely discussed within such groups as Prince Bernhard’s “Bilderbergers” in Europe and by their NATO friends in SHAPE Headquarters (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe). As the hydrogen bomb has increased in power and been given a world-around capability by rocket-powered ICBMs, or worse still, been put in the hands of terrorists, even this contrived “limited war” concept has been dropped. As a result, the present strategy is based upon what has been known as the Cold War.

Faced with this dilemma and with their continuing belief in the contrived theories of Malthus, Darwin, and Heisenberg, world leaders turned—to some degree, even before the end of WWII—to an alternative, all-new type of invisible war to be waged under the cloak of propaganda, black budgets, and secrecy. They called it the Cold War. Before that contrivance ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it had already cost more than six trillion dollars and millions of lives. Perhaps, as Mao Tse-tung has said, “It is man’s last war, because it will never end or ever result in victory for anyone.” It will only assure the attrition of manpower and matériel, and it will dangerously pollute Earth, to a point that will be beyond the control of mankind and nature to reverse and control.

On the other hand, it was a very real killing war. Its battles loomed everywhere, and its dead were counted in the millions. More of the casualities were noncombatants than uniformed soldiers. It was the Secret War, the Invisible War. From the point of view of those in power, it was a welcome substitute. It consumed the population and the product of the munitions makers and was reasonably controllable on the side of the offense.

But the Cold War as an alternative to the real thing was a failure from a military point of view. For one thing, there were no clear-cut victories; nor could there have been any. We have witnessed the deterioration of the concept of national sovereignty because of it and for such other reasons as the existence of global communications, satellite networks, international finance, and the enormous power of transnational business enterprises. We have seen the rise of the strange, nonmilitary power of the small nations of the Third World. The whole scheme of warfare is being turned upside down by bands of terrorists who defy the great powers. They cannot be controlled with H-bombs and modem armies. Terrorism makes a mockery of “Star Wars.” If the tactics of terrorism were to be employed in strength, it would create a situation that no one could handle. The greater the potential victory, the closer the war would move to the nuclear threshold.

This is why the American military leaders in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf were not permitted to win. They were told only to “kill” and to run up the “body count,” but not to fight a real war, because the closer they got to an assured victory in Vietnam, the closer they would have been to the nuclear threshold. Our military leaders were never permitted to approach that barrier.
²

Gen. Douglas MacArthur had to accept that strategic fact on the south bank of the Yalu River in Korea. Gen. Creighton Abrams learned it when he proposed to President Johnson that he be authorized to capture Hanoi instead of maintaining a perimeter around the Cercle Sportif club in Saigon. And now the terrorists have learned it and use the knowledge to defy everyone, the big powers and their lesser neighbors alike.

This is why, even before the end of World War II, the newly structured bipolar confrontation between the world of Communism and the West resulted in the employment of enormous intelligence agencies that had the power, invisibly, to wage underground warfare, economic and well as military, anywhere—including methods of warfare never before imagined. These conflicts had to be tactically designed to remain short of the utilization of the H-bomb by either side. There can never be victories in such wars, but tremendous loss of life could occur, and there is the much-desired consumption and attrition of trillions of dollars’, and rubles’, worth of war equipment.

One objective of this book is to discuss these new forces. It will present an insider’s view of the CIA story and provide comparisons with the intelligence organizations—those invisible forces—of other countries. To be more realistic with the priorities of these agencies themselves, more will be said about operational matters than about actual intelligence gathering as a profession.

This subject cannot be explored fully without a discussion of assassination. Since WWII, there has been an epidemic of murders at the highest level in many countries. Without question the most dynamic of these assassinations was the murder of President John F. Kennedy, but JFK was just one of many in a long list that includes bankers, corporate leaders, newsmen, rising political spokesmen, and religious leaders. The ever-present threat of assassination seriously limits the number of men who would normally attempt to strive for positions of leadership, if for no other reason than that they could be singled out for murder at any time. This is not a new tactic, but it is one that has become increasingly utilized in pressure spots around the world.

It is essential to note that there are two principal categories of intelligence organizations and that their functions are determined generally by the characteristics of the type of government they serve—not by the citizens of the government, but by its leaders.