Fourth Reich Archaeology - Jerryworld 7: Money, Pt. 1

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Congressman Gerald R. Ford Jr. - once upon a time known as Leslie Lynch King, Jr. - is in the money. Not literally. Yet. But he’s moving major stacks for Uncle Sam. You see, with a maneuver of cunning and of sidling up to just the right power brokers, Jerry lands himself a seat on the much-coveted House Appropriations Committee in his first term in office. From rookie to MVP contender in the House. Not only that, but he’s also on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. This is another 2-parter; there’s just too much to cram into one ep. So, part 1 sets the stage and gives the context for Jerry’s rapid rise into the inner sanctum of power in the budding National Security State. The beating heart of the emerging US global empire spreading its reign over the rubble left in the wake of WWII.We catch up with some of our “Horsemen” of the Fourth Reich, tracking them from the (twice) failed Dewey campaigns into a secluded perch nestled between the State Department and the newborn CIA, with roots firmly planted in the private sector. Their top priority was to integrate the remnants of Hitler’s Eastern-front intelligence apparatus into the American CIA. You see, the CIA was busy in the postwar period claiming its place atop the pyramid of Western intelligence, edging out the Brits who had been the Yankees’ faithful mentors heretofore… But the boys from Foggy Bottom (before the Langley HQ had even opened) had a secret weapon to propel them to the top of the Cold War hierarchy. We’re talking about the secret love between the CIA and the Nazi Gehlen Organization. In this episode, we introduce the figure of Reinhard Gehlen and, with the help of some old Dave Emory tapes, situate his role in shaping the Cold-War world.While the horsemen and their boy Gehlen  had a foot in the door by way of Frank Wisner’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), the election of Eisenhower and Nixon in 1952 handed them the keys to the kingdom. Ike’s cabinet was like a who’s-who of corporate CEOs and high priests of capital. We touch on some of the all-stars in Ike’s lineup, with special focus on John Foster Dulles - Secretary of State and mind-melded brother to CIA director Allen Dulles. Foster put an American spin on Gehlen’s extremist and alarmist worldview as he led the US into a global conflict on behalf of the owners of capital against national liberation movements disguised as a global battle against Soviet communism.Things are getting dark, dear listener. So please put on your helmet flashlight, and let’s keep digging.

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. So it's one huge complex or combine. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic, the Warren Commission of the science.

I'll never apologize for the United States of America. ever. I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small law. For example, we're to CIA.

Now, he has a mild. He knows so long as I'm afraid of we never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. You get a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent?

This is a guy. This is a day. This is a model. This is forthrightish is coming. This is orthology, archaeology. This is fourth Reich archaeology. I'm Dick. I'm Don.

Welcome back. If you are a returning listener, thank you for your continued attention to our project. We're always thrilled to see that we're actually reaching people out there, and we are so pleased that you've chosen to tune in. If this is your first time tuning in, we'd suggest that you rewind all the way. way back to the beginning of the series, because it really is better taken in sequence. We'd also like to thank those of us who've subscribed to our Patreon. We really are hoping to dedicate more and more of our time to this project, and every new subscription

counts a great deal towards helping us achieve that goal and helping you achieve. the goal of more Fourth Reich archaeology content, because right now, I'll tell you, Dick and I are a couple of busy guys, and we have to carve out wee hours of the night in the early morning to bring this to you. Finally, we invite all of you to get in touch with us and follow our goings on on Twitter and Instagram at Fourth Reich Pod or reach out to us by email at forthrightepod at gmail.com. Last week, Jerry got on the carousel of Congress where he sparked up a friendship with two other fellas who'd likewise go on to occupy the White House.

Remember, there's Jack Kennedy, who was Jerry's office neighbor and walking buddy when they went to the floor. As Jerry set his sights on the top spot in the house, Jack lamented the junior congressman were just worms there. Dick Nixon, meanwhile, became Jerry's boy on day one. They started a boys club together, the chowder and marching club. They even had a Bro's Night Out, an epic adult sleepover in Grand Rapids when Nixon came to town to give a speech. Little did any of the three know that Jack would get capped, and Dick and Jerry would, willingly or not, get caught up in the cover-up. So once again, this episode will be a two-parter.

Dick, you want to tell him what's coming up in part one? Sure thing. In part one of this episode, we will be taking a macro view of the political and social landscape of the post-World War II era, with a particular focus on the fledgling U.S. intelligence apparatus. To that end, part one will be built around two of the ideological godfathers of the Fourth Reich, Reinhardt Galen, and John Foster Dulles. we are going to follow the early days of the U.S. intelligence apparatus in the eastern front and show how Galen essentially had that market cornered. That's right, yeah, whereas in part one, we're really going to situate the initial foundation of the Fourth Reich, namely follow that great collaboration that we've been tracing through.

throughout Fourth Reich archaeology between the remnants of the Nazi regime and this class of elite interests in the U.S. that helped to finance Hitler's rise and that profiteered off of all sides in all wars, really, not even limited to the world wars. and the reason why we're going to set that stage is because part two of this episode will follow us into the early stages of Jerry's career and just like the U.S. Congress where Jerry got his career started just like U.S. foreign policy that would become Jerry's specialty this episode, and I mean both parts of it, is all about that money.

At the very young age of 37, before he had even completed his first term, he's appointed to the powerful House Appropriations Committee. That's where Congress handles the purse strings and divvies up the nation's lute. This is a very sought-after committee to be part of. Right. And it's pretty unusual that somebody so junior in their career would get named to it. But not only did Jerry meet that milestone, he also got the best subcommittee assignments within appropriations. So, for example, money, money, money, always sunny in the rich man's world. So, for example, he was named very early on to the defense subcommittee in which capacity he'd have a hand in distributing the funds to the various branches of the military. And a few years after that, in 1956, Jerry gets a sort of skull and bone-style tap on the shoulder

to join the super-secret intelligence subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee. In fact, he was hand-selected after thorough vetting by top-ranking, CIA officials for this role. It was only after he was deemed one of us that he was considered safe as a member of that powerful and crepuscular subcommittee. Right. And it's the 1950s. This closed-door old boys club was essentially a rubber stamp verb.

Alan Dulles' CIA. They kept no minutes or records of their meetings. In other words, folks, in the early 1950s, all that wholesome Jerry Ford content that you've been enjoying, it's about to get much darker. And we'll have a lot more to say about Jerry's work in the inner sanctum of the American Empire as the episode progresses. For now, grab your shovels, and let's get digging. It's a rich man's one.

It's a rich man's one. So as we previewed in our last episode, and I'm sure you know yourselves, in 1952, there was a presidential election in which General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was elected president. Dick Nixon was elected VP.

And the election was a pretty big landslide. Ike won 39 states, or 55.2% of the popular vote. Yeah, in the electoral college, it was 442 votes. votes for Ike to just 89 for his opponent, Adly Stevenson. Right. And Stevenson only carried nine states, and those were all in the southeast. So it's really interesting that in this political climate, the Dixiecrats were the only reliable Democratic vote.

So with all that juice that Ike had sort of created from winning that great war, he had developed this sort of hero status, and it wasn't even a contest. This sort of tracked with the overall sense of the country, which was going towards this conservative platform, Republicans took majorities in both houses of Congress, and with Ike in the White House, Republicans pretty much had a mandate. That's right. And Ike was this kind of politically neutral figure. I mean, we talk about a shift to a Republican mandate, but it wasn't highly partisan, right?

In the Republican primary in 1952, Ike defeated the more partisan candidate, which once again was Robert Taft, losing it once again. and Ike was this sort of unifying figure. He just happened to be a Republican, and he had very long coat tails that other Republicans could ride into office. But his hero status really shored up this postpartisan almost or extra partisan American national identity as a real. uniter. It's much more a myth now when you look back and think about the 1950s as this real golden age in American history where everybody liked Ike. The rhyme just puts a cherry on the Sunday. Of course, before running for president, Ike did not have a political. career. No, he was too busy as supreme commander of the Allied forces. That's right. Yeah. And

after the war ended, he was in charge of NATO. So once again, not only a unifying figure to Americans, but a unifying figure to the whole world, right? He was kind of the Western world's leader in many respects, or at least that's how he postured himself, how the media that was inflating this myth in real time postured him, and how we remember him today, right? Not someone who sought political power, but rather someone who rose to the call of his countrymen in need. And interestingly, Jerry Ford was one of 19 Republican congressmen who initially reached out to Ike in February of 1952, writing a joint letter to the general, then stationed abroad in Europe with NATO, and asked him, essentially, essentially, to run for president.

And Jerry's early recognition of Ike's political potential would not go unrecognized once Ike came into the presidency. In fact, he kept that letter from those Republican congressmen framed on his desk in the Oval Office throughout his entire eight-year term. Yeah, and just as we're talking about the executive office, don't forget that Dick Nixon, Jerry's Day 1 homie,

is now the VP. And so it gets Jerry way closer. That's right. But more important, I guess, than the horse race stats. I think what we should do now is sort of check in with our fourth, Reich Horseman, you know, that contingent of ultra-wealthy industrialists and financiers, and see what those fellows are up to. Yeah, sure. I mean, Prescott Bushman. Yeah, sure. I mean, Prescott Bush at this

point in time is in the Senate, right? He had been very active at Brown Brothers Harriman financing Nazis via the Union Banking Corporation, which was even recognized as having violated the Training with the Enemy's Act and dissolved as a result. But Prescott Bush obviously was unscathed and escaped any sort of accountability for his role in those transactions. Got elected to the Senate and was without really any practical governing experience in the upper circles of Republican power brokers. he became buddies with Ike and like most of Ike's buddies was known to hit the links with the old general and informally advised him on the golf course when they gave us everything a bend in the mind and we cleaned out their pockets and the track of the line so love we're to the fish so don't get left behind And Prescott Bush and the Bush's is not the only family that we're talking about in this sort of old boys contingent of American deep state practitioners.

We're also talking about guys like the Dulles brothers, right, who had been likewise involved in making deals for their clients when they were practicing law. at Sullivan and Cromwell, with the Nazi regime and Nazi industries such as IG Farben, and they would also jump right into the driver's seat when Eisenhower got elected. Right. John Foster Dulles becoming Secretary of State, of course, and his brother Allen, heading the CIA we probably shouldn't forget about the publishing giant Henry Luce who at the time owned the Time Life Media Empire

and was tight with the same crowd I mean you can imagine these you can imagine these guys having drinks on the veranda that's right in one of the Dulles brothers's homes yeah yeah they were

in addition to being colleagues, right? All these people socialized with one another. They shared class identity with one another. They had similar experiences. You know, during the war, certainly the Dulles brothers and Henry Luce were all very close with or involved

in the Office of Strategic Services. the predecessor agency to the CIA. Dulles is really in Europe and Luce more focused on the Asia side of the equation, himself actually, interestingly, having been born to Christian missionary parents in China. Right. And another one in that group was John J. McCloy, who we mentioned a little bit and who will mention a lot more as a another member, along with both Alan Dulles and Jerry Ford, of the Warren Commission. And McCloy worked very closely with friend of the show Henry L. Stimson during World War II

and went on to head up the World Bank after the war ended. So all these guys had really been biding their time, right? They're all Republicans by party affiliation. But obviously the Republican Party until Eisenhower's triumphant victory in 52 was out of power in the White House. And so, you know, this group, this trust of like-minded individuals had supported the twice unsuccessful presidential campaigns of Thomas Dewey against Harris. Harry Truman in 44 and 48. And it's funny because Dewey, you compare Dewey to Ike, right? Dewey was sort of one of these guys.

He was one of the club, Manhattan guy, you know, a big money New Yorker. And it's not really hard to see why somebody like that would not have nearly the same political cachet. and the same electoral appeal as a war hero like Ike, or as, you know, a strong commander-in-chief like Harry Truman, who was viewed favorably as having ended World War II. But these guys were not, they weren't totally out of government, though. Were they, Dick? No, they weren't totally out of government.

On the Dewey point, the other thing to keep in mind, I think, at least for me, is the Great Depression was still very much in people's minds. So they were very distrusting, I think, still of the New York big money type. But during this time, our boys, the horsemen of the Fourth Reich, had infiltrated the Truman administration. and they were operating out of the State Department and the Office of Policy Coordination, which was first headed up by Alan Dulles himself and then by Frank Wisner. Here they used covert funds and operated largely off the books to lay the groundwork for the American century that they were.

would build in their image. That's right. Yeah, we talked about this in my interview with Matt Farwell, a good deal. And, of course, just to help the listener keep track of all of the Alphabet Soup agencies and sub-agencies, the Office of Policy Coordination, or OPC, once it is sort of fully absorbed into the CIA, that becomes known as the Directorate of Plans. In other words, it's the covert operations wing of the CIA. But before that happens, it's sort of an agency unto its own in some ways.

It's really outside of the purview of the administration because Truman entrusts the Cold War godfather George Kenan to oversee all of these covert destabilizing operations that are running right in the wake of the Second World War. And we're going to talk a lot about that in future episodes because it's pretty much the heart of the Fourth Reich Archaeology project. It's the moment when the U.S. nascent empire merges together with what's left of the Third Reich. And if you can't wait to hear more about it from us, we'd recommend a excellent book on this period. It's also not too long, and it's very accessible. It's Christopher Simpson's classic Blowback, subtitled The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Disasterous Effect on Our Domestic and Foreign Policy. And like I said, we'll get a little. lot into that in future episodes, but for the purposes of this episode, in order to contextualize

this era for our accompaniment of Jerry Ford in his early congressional career and his political trajectory, we think a few highlights bear mentioning now. I was wondering how you were going to bring it back, and you did. So these horsemen of the Fourth Reich, a big part of their work at the time was sort of merging the Nazi intelligence apparatus, which was basically at that point, the Galen organization, and sort of taking that and merging it into American intelligence. And since Fourth Reich archaeology is not about reinventing anything. wheels, but rather digging up stuff that's already out there, we'll get a little help in our exposition from Dave Emery. Reminder that all of his life's work can be found at spitfire list.com.

General Reinhard Galen, last name is spelled G.E.H. L.E.N. was Hitler's Chief of Intelligence for the Eastern Front during World War II. That is to say, the warfare against Soviet Russia during World War II. Essentially, the Gaelan organization becomes the only real intelligence, the only source the U.S. has to gain intelligence about the Soviet Union. Once I had a secret love. Now, Galen's organization, Hitler's Eastern Front Intelligence Organization, was known as Foreign Armies East or Frimdehara Ost in the original German.

That's right, yeah. I mean, it started out with Galen. Oh, too soon my secret love. And a few of his colleagues, they had squirled themselves and their files away in the Bavarian Alps in the waning days of World War II. and waited to surrender themselves and all of their troves upon troves of documents to the American military with hopes that they could persuade the victorious Americans to adopt them essentially and use them against their enemy, the Soviet Union.

Right. Three months after V.E. Day in Europe, Galen jumped. basically Galen was flown into the United States in the uniform of a four-star general. And as I said, then Galen, along with his entire organization, which was complete and intact at the end of World War II, were grafted on to the fledgling CIA formed in 1947, although they worked for U.S. intelligence between 45 and 47, and they became, for all intents and purposes, the CIA's Department of Russian and Eastern European Affairs. Now, this is Hitler's Eastern Front Intelligence Organization, complete and intact, from World War II.

And it may have started out small, but it quickly grew under the auspices, first of the U.S. Counterintelligence Corps under the U.S. Army, and later under the OPC, which worked with Reinhart-Galen, to recruit Nazi intelligence officials to to fill their ranks and to gather all their leftover intelligence files on the Soviets in order to help the Americans. But that being said,

Galen had his own agenda that didn't always intersect or didn't always line up with the American agenda. Two very important details to remember about Galen. Number one is the fact that the Galen organization paved the way for more than 4,000 SS and Gestapo men to move up into the U.S. intelligence system where many of them remain to this day. The second fact to remember is the fact that Reinhard Galen not only set up many of these guerrilla groups

which waged war until the early 50s in the Ukraine and Poland and Eastern Europe, but Galen and his CIA sponsors were shipping weapons and liaison officers. to these guerrilla groups while they were fighting against our wartime allies, the Soviet Union. So that basically the Eastern Front guerrillas simply jumped to the United States with Galen. In essence, they continued to wage war throughout the closing days of the Third Reich and simply jumped uniforms. Basically, we picked up Hitler's tab in Eastern Europe. And my secret loves no secret anymore.

So the most important aspect of Galen's individual and discreet interests for our purposes today was to basically sound the alarm on Soviet military strength. And the reason why Galen had an interest in inflating the degree to which the Soviet Union threatened the safety and security of the West was obvious, right? He wanted the U.S. to give him a blank check. He wanted to have authorization from America to free whoever he wanted, from the doc, including war criminals, including members of the Vofan SS, right? He basically wanted to carve out an entire fiefdom for himself within the Western intelligence

apparatus, the combined Western intelligence apparatus. And to do that, you know, since he was the only guy with any info on the Soviets, This is in the 1940s, he said, Soviets are eight feet tall and they're ready to come at you with a lust for blood unlike anything you've ever seen before. Now, give me all your money so that I can help you to keep them at bay. I mean, that's some serious job security to stake off that course. corner of the market for the U.S. at that time. Hell yeah. And be the sole source of the Soviet boogeyman.

Oh, and by the way, Galen also said, right, and it was just intuitively obvious to his OPC handlers that you guys better not tell anybody about what we're up to because the American public that has by now seen the atrocities of the Nazi Holocaust that spent years fighting the Nazis as what Americans were told was the most evil dictatorial regime the world has ever known, you're not going to want it to get out that you're working with us. So the OPC did whatever,

it took to keep their operations with the Galen organization completely secret. It's the sort of the den of spies. The organized market and economy is non-existent. Everything is getting traded in the black market. And all of these operations that the OPC is running are off the books, right? They're being funded by squirled away Nazi loot and profits from illicit trade rings. So these guys are not yet asking for any congressional appropriations. Yeah. And by contrast, later on, right, The window shade will be cracked open for different select individuals to peek through. Yeah.

But at the very beginning, right, there's no visibility. Right. Another thing about Galen is like functionally, what he does doesn't really change, right? He's still going after the communists, just like he was under the Nazis. So if he had any sort of personal vendetta against the Soviets, this was the ideal avenue for him to get some get back. What's interesting is this idea that there's like a field agent who's out and delivering sort of inflated stories about what the threat is back to the headquarters.

and he's just making it up. And as a result, the HQ sort of keeps him there and keeps funding his project. Meanwhile, though, this operation was getting off the ground over in Europe, but that wasn't all that the OPC was doing with. Nazi veterans. They were also concerned with importing Nazis and their allies into the United States, into Canada, into Latin American countries, and elsewhere that could be of strategic value to the U.S., through a little operation known as Bloodstone. And, I'm not so. And I'm

Operation Bloodstone was essentially a way to forge documentation, whitewash people's histories, or do whatever else was necessary to bring in key people, primarily for propaganda purposes, right? A lot of these people went on to hold positions in the propaganda apparatus within the U.S., like at radio stations, in churches, kind of wherever information is diffused. And in order to do that, there was some need for interaction with members of Congress.

And that was kept to a minimal, though, right? It was a handful of very select, very few members of Congress that were let in on the Bloodstone Secret. And very interestingly, one of those was Jerry's mentor, Senator Arthur Vandenberg. And another was Sam Rayburn, who reportedly emphasized the need to keep the list of those in the know to people who wouldn't raise a stink. So this is a real mask-off moment for U.S. democracy where the so-called people's house, right, the U.S. House of Representatives that is meant to represent the people, the voters of the United States and to make sure that the policies being carried out reflect the will of the people.

people is actually kind of a pyramid structure where the oversight of the most secret and really most consequential actions taken by these unelected bureaucrats like the OPC are entrusted to an inner sanctum, right, the top of the pyramid. and you only get to the top of the pyramid if you prove up your bona fides as somebody that's on board with the program, somebody who will not expose the program or oppose the program. And the program in this case, let us be clear, is incorporating Nazi war criminals into the United States, national security state, and the U.S. media and propaganda apparatus. So if you're on board with that, then you're cool.

And if you're not, then you're in the dark. And good luck finding out what the fuck is going on in the country that you were elected to govern. And we're entering a point where you have complete party unity in the House, in the Senate, in the executive. With Ike's election, you basically have a situation where these horsemen of the Fourth Reich are given the keys to the kingdom. Ike's presidency ushers in this paradigm shift with how the office is run and how it is perceived. They developed this empty sort of feel-good facade, right? You have Ike at the helm.

He is our savior, the hero, that won the war, not just for the United States, but for the free world. And behind that facade, the reality, of course, is, well, these are cold calculating corporate operators who are calling the shots. They really only have one motivator, and that is to essentially serve capital. Right. Yeah, we wanted to bring out a couple of other cabinet members to illustrate this lowering of the mask to reveal the real corporate agenda that the U.S. Empire is pursuing in the second half of the 20th century. You have John Foster Dulles, who's running secretary. Steve. The first thing I want to make clear is that my job is to work for the people of the United States.

I'm part of your government. You have hired me and you've paid me. That is going to be the spirit in which we approach our foreign problem. That's going to be the spirit of the entire State Department. entire State Department. You needn't be afraid that any of us are working against you and for others. So far as your government is concerned, you can be sure of two things. First, it will never start a war.

But the second thing you can be sure of is that it will never be intimidated. subverted our conquers. Our nation must stand as a solid rock in a storm-tossed world. To all those who are suffering under communist slavery, to the timid and to the intimidated, let us say this, you can count upon us. Foster, as he was known to his friends, really embodied the Reinhard-Galen mentality.

And I really wanted to read this passage from his confirmation hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. he said that communism, quote, was not only the gravest threat ever faced by the United States, but the gravest threat that has ever faced what we call Western civilization, or indeed any civilization which was dominated by a spiritual faith. We shall never have a secure peace or a happy world, so long as Soviet communism dominates one, third of all the peoples that there are, and is in the process of trying, at least, to extend its rule to many others. Therefore, a policy which only aims at containing Russia where it is

now is in itself an unsound policy. If our only policy is to stay where we are, we will be driven back. It is only by keeping alive the hope of liberation. by taking advantage of that wherever opportunity arises, that we will end this terrible peril which dominates the world. It's not just the Dulles Brothers. Then you also have George Humphrey, a treasurer. Right. So George McGoffin Humphrey, who, as you mentioned,

and Dick was appointed secretary of the treasury is another guy who comes right out of the corporate world. He was the longtime executive rising to the very top of the M.A. Hanna Corporation, which was an iron ore processing company, which supplied both the arms industry, right, the defense industry. You need a of iron ore to make tanks and planes and shells and all that stuff, as well as other heavy industries. In fact, M.A. Hanna Corporation and George Humphrey as an individual made it onto Ike's radar thanks to the fact that they were dealing with U.S. occupation forces in rebuilding Germany after the war. So this is yet another war profiteer right in charge of the U.S. Fisk and of fiscal policy.

And this is emblematic of this merger that we are describing. You know, on the one hand, there's the merger of the rest, the, the, leftovers of Nazi intelligence apparatus and U.S. intelligence that we spoke about with the Gaelan organization. And domestically, we see a merger in the Eisenhower administration even more than really there had been perhaps since the days of the teapot dome scandal between state power and corporate power in the U.S. And it's taking place on a global scale well beyond what, you know,

even previous generations of corrupt corporate stooges had been able to achieve through their control of the U.S. government. And even more emblematic of this merger was Putin, Charles Edwin Wilson, the president and CEO of General Motors, putting him up as Secretary of Defense. When asked whether he'd ever make a policy decision that conflicted with the interest of GM, Secretary Wilson said he couldn't imagine such a scenario because what's good for our country,

was good for General Motors, and vice versa. And here a little nuance for the listener, lest you should think that, you know, merging state and corporate power simply means maximum payouts to every upturned corporate palm from the government. Under Wilson, the defense budget, actually shrunk considerably. And this was maybe the last time that this even happened.

But we want to kind of contextualize that budget decrease because it wasn't so much reducing the U.S. armed forces as shifting the focus from antiquated, expensive, items that bloated defense budgets, and here we're even talking about stuff like the horse and mule budget, which was part of where cuts were made, right? And shifting to the modern means of waging war. And those are really three pillars, I think. One is aviation and air power. Two is nuclear weapons as a deterrent, and the third is something we hinted at, which is covert operations to achieve military objectives besides conventional warfare. And that would become the hallmark of American imperial militarism for really the whole of the back end of the 20th century and even to this day.

And there were some guys in the cabinet on the nuclear side that again share this worldview, right, Dick? Yeah, so Ike's first commissioner of atomic energy was Louis Strauss. And this guy got rich as an investment banker with Cun and Loeb in the Roaring 20s. It's the Robert Downey Jr. character in Oppenheimer. He's the guy who was behind the security clearance revocation hearings of J. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1958, he was replaced by an even more corporate guy, John McCone. And McCone had previously been a senior executive at Bechtel, which is this sort of family-run company, but, and in that respect, it's always been a privately held company, right? again, Matt Farwell and I in our episode talked about the difference between being privately held and unaccountable to anyone versus a publicly traded company that has disclosure obligations with respect to investors and shareholders and the like.

I think like the good present day example of that for a lot of our listeners and sort of touches on what we were talking about with. Isaac is when you look at Twitter, right? That it goes from public to private at a time where its CEO is saying that it's all about freedom of speech and transparency. Yep, absolutely. The trend has gone from IPOs to go-private transactions, whereby previously publicly, publicly traded companies are concentrated into the hands of private equity or into the hands of your kind of evil billionaires like Elon Musk. Right. And part of it is you don't have to make public disclosures. You don't have to disclose,

unless there are certain limited exceptions, of course, but you don't have to disclose who your financiers are. That's right. And Bechtel, was really the blueprint for the privately held corporation, because Bechtel was one of the great war profiteers of the 20th century. I'd recommend the Sally Denton book, The Proleteers, which kind of traces a corporate biography of Bechtel and gives more information about McCone, but suffice it to say for our purposes that McCone was a real product of war profiteering. Not only was he an executive at Bechtel at a time when Bechtel was cleaning up on these reconstruction projects where there had been vast destruction by war. he was also an executive with international telephone and telegraph, another massive war profiteer.

McCone was also a part of the California Shipbuilding Corporation, a company so relentless and so shameless in its war profiteering that it was called out by the U.S. government for parlaying a $100,000 war time investment into a $44 million payday. So if you think about Ike composing this cabinet, he's really bringing into the room, a cartoon image comes into my mind of like all of these salivating wolves that are being called into the cabinet room and they're sitting around. like a freshly roasted beast that says the American taxpayers' money

and they're just ready to consume. Yeah, right. McCone, of course, would become famous later as JFK's selection to replace Alan Dulles as head of the CIA. So, you know, one more time for the, the Kennedy cultists out there, McCone was not a clean hands guy who had any prospect of cleaning things up. He was a product of this same corporate profiteering class that had been

brought into the government in the Eisenhower administration. And I wanted to say that, you know, the reason why I think Ike could get away with this in the way that he did, right? It is a slippage of the mask to some extent, but it's a slippage of the mask by a guy who has so much perceived legitimacy thanks to the way that he entered politics. And that will actually become important. because it's emulated by Jerry Ford down the road, right? Jerry Ford for swears having any presidential ambition. Right.

Even though we'll see, spoiler alert, but that might not be entirely true just based off the historical record, right? Absolutely, absolutely. And the same goes for other fellas. all of them incidentally republicans but i think of like ronald reagan who likewise would answer questions from reporters about why he was getting into the presidential race by saying you know he didn't want to be a presidential contender but the moment called for him and the same goes for Donald Trump as well, right? I don't need to be in politics. In fact, I'm so rich that this is a cramp in my style

to be the president. But you, the people, need me. And so I will answer your call. And in all of these cases, all across the board, you want to say the line, dick? Oh yeah, that sounds like some real that's that's the line is that not the line here at the mind and I think this is a good time as any to wrap things up for this week join us next week when we pick up on this two-parter with what our man Jerry

is doing on appropriations given the background we provided today for now I'm Dick and I'm Don saying farewell

and keep digging I'm a long way from home I cast me by the night I grabbed up my telephone you know something just that right is evil

hey No, this evil's going to wrong. Yes, it is, baby. You know, I'm wanting you, brothers. You better watch your happy home. Yes, I'm a long way from home.