Fourth Reich Archaeology - The Warren Commission Decided 5 pt. 2: The Real McCloy (side B)

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

We are back to finish off our excavation into the life, times, and legacy of Reichsman extraordinaire, John J. McCloy. We last left off with McCloy’s service in WWII under Henry L. Stimson. We heard some of the real audio from the Nuremberg tribunal to get a sense of the theft, murder, kidnapping, and enslavement that the German industrialists committed during the Third Reich, well, John J. McCloy was about to undo a lot of the justice meted out unto those bastards. We pick up post-war with McCloy’s incredible career, leading up to his selection on the Warren Commission. We cover his exploits as World Bank President, High Commissioner for Germany during the US occupation, Chairman of Chase Bank, and Chairman of the Ford Foundation. We look beneath the titles to get a read on the man and his character. He left an indelible mark on each of the institutions he touched, and in turn, on the broader economy and society in which those institutions carried so much sway. Finally, it’s back to 1963, Kennedy’s dead, and McCloy springs into action as the “fixer,” cutting deals and mediating between opposing factions on the Warren Commission in the quest for unanimity.

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. where you were 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 on. 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 one. For example, we're the CIA. He has a mouse.

He knows so long as to die. Freedom can never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. insecure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. You get a lot of killers.

Why you think our country's so innocent? This is not going to see. I am. This is a model. And I'm going. In bed, fourth Reich is coming. Archaeology. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology.

I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Welcome back to Episode 5, Volume 2 of our series within a series, the Warren Commission decided. We're focusing on a fellow by the name of John McCloy. That's right. If you're listening to this, the chances are you're hearing us on our free feed, where we released just one half of our second.

part of our second volume of material on John J. McCloy. The full McCloy was released on our Patreon. And if you'd like to listen to the whole thing in one seamless two-hour block, well, go on over to Patreon and find us at Fourth Reich Archaeology and sign up today. If you are unwilling or unable to provide financial support at this time, that's okay. We still love you. And we ask you to please rate, review, subscribe, and spread the word about our little project that we have been undertaking now for, oh, the better part of five months now. So, without any further ado or recapping, let's just pick right up where we left off after World War II. So after the war, McCloy goes and is alongside the likes of Alan Dulles, Dean Atchison, Wild Bill Donovan, and other preeminent spooks and lawyers of the era.

in the secretive preparations for a post-war intelligence agency to carry on the operations of the OSS. And the relevance to his work on the Warren Commission is that this put McCloy directly at odds with the FBI and the person in charge, J. Edgar Hoover. Remember that the FBI, I wanted to absorb the OSS's foreign spying portfolio. And this sort of kicks off what's become sort of a fundamental dispute between the two agencies since the middle of the 20th century.

Even to this day, I think there is this tension between the FBI and the CIA. Yeah, the right-wing myopic view of a unified deep state as something that, that is entirely of a piece and is entirely secretive in its actions is just plain inaccurate. Totally. The two agencies, even though they overlap a good deal and they share the same ultimate goals, you've got to pay attention and account for internecing disputes. and McCloy and Hoover were some of the very first people that were having those disputes even before the CIA becomes the agency that it is.

So anyway, back to the Warren Commission, just to say that these early days, it wouldn't be the last time that McCloy and Hoover crossed swords. Also relevant to the Warren Commission. This post-war era is where McClure really learned a lot about U.S. covert operations, both from the OSS. and, you know, just from his own post-war experience. He was, for example, debriefed on Frank Wisner's covert work out of the Office of Policy Coordination, including propaganda efforts, election buying, and stay behind terror campaigns against the communists. Even before that, McCloy had been debriefed by his boss, Henry Stimson, about the Japanese and Nazi war loot that the Allies had secretly taken possession of, known as the Black Eagle Trust, which would go on to fund U.S. run black ops for decades.

So even though at this time, McCloy was not technically employed by the U.S. government, he effectively knew more state secrets than almost anyone who was. Yeah, and that would go on for much of his life, right? He was really only officially a government employee during the war. He resigns after its conclusion, goes back into the private sector, and his day jobs during the immediate post-war period are largely the same type of work that he had been doing before. It goes back into legal practice for a brief stint before taking a job in 1947 as president

of the World Bank. And the World Bank had been established just a few years earlier at, at Bretton Woods, I believe in 1944, to essentially administer development loans to the rest of the world. At Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, delegates from 44 Allied and Associate countries arrived for the opening of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. Invited by President Roosevelt to the first major world financial meeting since the London Conference of 1933, they will work in the seclusion of this White Mountain's resort. To be discussed are plans for the stabilization of world currencies. These meetings are designed to promote trade in the post-war world and to create a foundation

for lasting peace. And its mandate in those very early years was in flux. So you had a contingent like the famous British-Eaucer. economist John Maynard Keynes, who advocated for using the World Bank as a global stabilizing force and even a redistributive force to help spur economic growth in areas that needed it, even if that came at the expense of profiteering by those financial interests that were already high on the hog. But under McCloy's leadership,

the sort of Keynesian vision, which he characterized as trying to use the bank as a charity organization, went by the wayside. Yeah. He said, I have a better idea. Why don't we destabilize these developing economies while we also exploit their people

and natural resources? Yeah, and and guess what? We can even use loans to force political positions onto the beneficiaries of these loans. Like one of McCloy's early moves was to condition a loan to France on the expulsion of communists from the government. And that pattern is something that plays out. through the World Bank and the IMF, the so-called Washington Consensus institutions, even today. In fact, perhaps even more so today. Well, McCloy's two-year term as president of the bank was instrumental in solidifying its identity

as a profit-driven enterprise where profitability is of a piece. with conformity to Western capitalist values. Although, to be fair, it's also true that McCloy was less of a political extremist in the administration of the bank than some of the other even more virulent anti-communists. Like, he was not the most exacting on the political demands for him. And, you know, this is a part of his identity that I think we can't overlook, but he did believe that there could be a peaceful coexistence between the West and non-capitalist countries. He was not a guy that, like John Foster Dulles, for example, premised his worldview on the eradication of communism and socialism. from the world political arena.

He was a pragmatist. Okay, so should we talk about his real starred turn? America's top command in Germany passes into civilian hands as John J. McCloy resigns as head of the World Bank for the lower paying job of High Commissioner for Germany, succeeding General Clay. In 1949, McCloy is appointed as High Commissioner for Germany. And what this does is give him essentially dictatorial powers over the American occupied zone.

Importantly, this included the power over the disposition of industrial assets, the administration of reparation payments, and the supervision of industrial quotas imposed, as they have been after the Versailles conference that ended. World War I. This was all to prevent German rearmament. Unsurprisingly, once again, McCloy conceived of the U.S. national interest through the lens of the private interest of his Wall Street clientele. And now, we should be clear here. This didn't always mean that he was just rubber stamping and rehabilitating the Nazis. And it's important to tease this out, to sort of work through the nuance, to avoid

some sort of super villain reductionism that we were talking about on the early end of the last episode, right? So I wonder, Don, if you could help us... Yeah, it's more of the pragmatism. Right. It's another example of his pragmatism. sort of assess a little bit of this and tease it out for us. Sure.

So one of McCloy's spectacular gestures early on in his appointment to the High Commissioner role was to reverse course on the U.S. advocacy for payouts to Jewish victims. of the Holocaust. He prioritized a reparations bill and pushed it through. And this established a compensation fund for victims to access some sort of restitution. Obviously, the victims were pretty few and far between in Germany at this time, right? And indeed, many of them represented the higher. social echelons of German society already, but nevertheless, it was viewed as a strong

move against Germany on behalf of the vanquished. And when he was describing this maneuver, he said, quote, So far as I am concerned, I cannot forget the Auschwitz's and the Dachauz, and I do not want the German people to forget them either. If they do, they will start their new German state in an atmosphere of moral degeneration and degradation. Germany gets another chance at democracy. Truth in the words of Commissioner McCloy that never before have conquerors treated a former enemy with such true goodwill. Exclusively for Warner Pathay News cameras, Mr. McCloy adds,

45 million Germans will shortly commence the task of governing themselves. The world will watch with the greatest interest how the Germans use this freedom after 16 years of dictatorial suppression. Two world wars have proven that the future peace of Europe depends upon Germany. it ought not require further violence to convince the Germans that their bid for European and world domination is forever over yeah so I mean he was very intent to prevent a repeat of the Third Reich

for example in 1950 when he addressed a meeting of industrialists in Dostledorf and it was probably not a different group of guys then the group Hitler famously addressed in his 1932 fundraising pitch. At this point in the 50s, these guys were complaining about reparations and quotas and any other conditions imposed on them by the occupation regime, and he angrily reproached them. Should I read this one? Yeah.

In the McCloy voice. Yeah, yeah. Don't forget that America's high taxes are the reasons. of German aggression. Don't forget who started this war. Whether or not you gentlemen here are responsible personally for it, remember the war and all the misery that followed it, including your own, was born and bred in German soil,

and you must accept the responsibility. Don't weep in your beer. Damn. Bringing down the hammer. the hammer. What's amazing, though, is the audience reception, right? Yeah, yeah. Right.

They were shocked, right? I would be too, right? This guy, they were sort of like they were slapped or something. And his voice was described as quivering with anger. I might not have even done it hard enough. But, like, after a moment of silence, the place breaks out in a applause. And then McCloy goes on to promise to make Germany great again, promising that the Roar Valley industrialists would again be big and strong if they got behind the project to democratize

Germany in the American mold and integrated into the world economy and most importantly the anti-communist camp that's right and mccloy made good on his promise to the dusseldorf industrial club and he emptied a big bag of carrots for the germans after waving that stick at them in hopes that they would join the western block nations in combating global communism so to that end he established a clemency panel to review the sentences of all Germans who had been convicted of war crimes at Nuremberg and even many Germans that were convicted in the German denazification courts that sprung up in the wake of Nuremberg for I guess lesser offenses. Right. So the victims of the dastardly deeds of the Nazis got their day in court and at Nuremberg and then afterwards

McCloy gets his little piece of the thigh by basically forgiving everyone and then bringing them under his wing. Hey, it was ancient history. Yeah. We're talking 1951. The Nazi crimes were six years in the past. Everyone deserves a second chance. These trials are not to be confused with the United Nations International Tribunal, which will concern itself exclusively with major war criminals. Yeah, I mean, he did, this was like, we're talking about some bad guys, right? Crimes are so all embracing that they cannot be assigned to any one geographical area. He wanted maybe take it away for, give us a tour.

The ringleaders who conceived and engineered the Nazi master plan of world domination. Yeah. So the first group, the first bucket of war crimes defendants that were poised to receive McCloy's mercy were the industrialists. And McCloy actually freed, according to Christopher Simpson, every single industrialist who had been sentenced at Nuremberg. And this included the likes of Alphi. And Krupp is a guy that Program to Chill listeners will be very familiar with.

And if you haven't, definitely, definitely check out the Program to Chill series on Krupp, which dedicates an entire episode to Alfred. But for now, suffice it to say that Alfred Krupp ran the massive Krupp, Steele, and Armaments Empire. He was an early and a generous supporter of the Nazis and of the SS in particular and a profiteer off of the slave labor of tens of thousands of Jews and other prisoners whom many tens of thousands were worked to death on Kroop's watch. And so McCloy took a extremely generous view towards the real heinous crimes of Krupp and his other top executives who had been sentenced at Nuremberg, issuing pardons and ordering full restitution of all properties that had been seized, which is maybe even more important than the man. and's freedom itself, because it put the keys back in the hands of these extremely right-wing industrialists from Germany's Rour Valley, and it put them right back in the driver's seat to lead what was one of the most powerful industrial empires in Europe at the time.

Emperor of German iron and steel was Alfred Krupp. He was captured by us and handed over to the American. authorities in 1946 for trial at Nuremberg. Twelve years imprisonment and confiscation of property was the sentence. But the American High Commissioner reconsidered the case and decided that it was unfair for Krupp to be the only war criminal to have his property confiscated. The order was revoked and Alfred Krupp served a reduced sentence of six years and compelled to sell his securities.

This will bring him 30 million pounds. Hare Krupp has the last laugh. And it wasn't just the industrialist, right? He also helped out his boys in the financial sector and the bankers, namely our friend, long-time friend of the pod, Yalmar Schacht, that motherfucker who, I would say held the purse strings, right? Oh, yeah. So obviously saying friend of the pod ingest, fuck that guy.

It's even rumored that he helped to write. and or edit, mind comf. But McCloy figured he's not all that bad. He's got some interesting ideas, but not going to hold it against him. And actually, you know, Schacht wasn't, he was acquitted at Nuremberg, but he was convicted in a German denazification court.

So. Yeah, I think he served overall something like a year and before McCloy opened the door. And one of the bases on which McCloy reduced all these guys' sentences was that there were others out there with equal or greater involvement in Nazi crimes who had escaped prosecution. And so it wouldn't really be fair to punish these guys when others had gotten off the hook. and the big kind of elephant in the room among those others who had gotten off the hook is a guy who I'm sure will become a character in the podcast going forward,

but a name will introduce right now, and that is Halman-Obs, A-B-S. And Obs had been head of the Deutsche Bank during the Nazi regime. And not only was he head of the Deutsche Bank, he was also the board member of IG Farben and most, if not all, other major German industrial concerns. He was like the Warren Buffett of Nazi Germany. Yeah. Or Jamie Diamond or something. So the headline here, folks, is that.

McCloy leaves a legacy of extreme clemency towards Nazi war criminals, especially on the economic side. He was very lenient to these genocidal maniacs. And now, to his credit, I guess if you want to give him credit, he did end up carrying out five of the 16 executions that were still pending from the Nuremberg trials. when he took over, but, you know, that means he commuted the other 11. And, you know, there was pressure at the time from German society for more leniency. So that could partly explain what was going on because, you know, McCloy's family did apparently receive death threats from the Philo Nazis. But the massive get-out-of-jail-free card, McCloy bestowed, onto hundreds of Nazis during his stint as high commissioner.

It by no means was this a political necessity. Yeah, that's especially the case for some of the other guys that we didn't mention, but who were much more operational war criminals. People like Alfred Zeke's spelled S-I-X, who was responsible for inventing the, mobile murder machines used by the Einzatzgruppen on the German rear guard, right? These were like trucks that would round up Jews from

Eastern European villages in the path of conquest and put them in the back of trucks and then route the exhaust from the vehicle into the trucks to kill everybody on board and then bury them in mass graves. And the innovative mind that came up with that was pardoned by McCloy. It's horrifying. Yeah, I mean, the list goes on and on and on. You know, Klaus Barbie, another guy we've mentioned, the butcher of Lyon, who was responsible for deporting thousands of French Jews to the concentration camps.

He was not pardoned by McCloy, but he was protected by McCloy who refused to extradite. him to France to face justice and of course was whisked away by the CIA to South America where he would work for the CIA in propping up fascist coups in the likes of Bolivia. And the list goes on and on and on. McCloy was also in the know about the Galen organization, and he signed off on the whitewashing and sort of fabrication of new identities for thousands more Nazi war criminals that never were brought to a tribunal. And so, you know, if you want to try and estimate the volume or the degree,

of Nazism that McCloy midwifed into the post-war world, it is immeasurable. Immeasurable. I'd sell you hard to the trunk, man, baby, for a buck, for a buck. If you're looking for some one to put you out of that ditch, you're out of luck, you're out of luck, share with the... Yeah, but I think we should be clear. Like, it's not to say that it was McCloy himself that was solely responsible for the power behind the whole thing, right? Like, this was a whole, it was a machine.

Who were the brains that we kept in charge, killers, thieves, and a boyers, got so great, got so great, got so great on business, business. That was going into full force at the time. Cloy was just the guy that was able to competently steer the ship. It's a job, it's a job. Money mood rising with the plague and the front, doing the bob, join the mob. It's all over. It's all over. A hundred percent.

Yeah, remember, I mean, I think a pattern has emerged from the way where, describing all these stories, any given individual personality is not responsible for all of these actions, but is put into the position of power where they undertake these actions thanks to their alignment with the larger social forces that are really in control. And so McCloy having come up under Henry Stimson, right? He is a trustworthy representative and a competent person to be in the role to represent these U.S. national corporate interests. And I think that's a great segue to start talking about what McCloy was doing

once he came back home after his term in Germany in 1952 ended, and between, you know, before his time when he was appointed to the Warren Commission in 1963, you know, what was he up to when he returned to the private sector, so to speak? The short of it is, a lot. But in the interest of time, why don't you spring us through just a couple of the highlights, Don? Sure. So first up, he became chairman of Chase Bank. No shit. Yep. That same bank that he once ratted out to the FBI handed him the keys when he showed them that...

He's got their best interest in mind. That's right. That's right. And remember, listener, Chase Bank, even though it doesn't bear the family name, it was the Rockefeller's Bank. right this was the financial empire that was created to administer the massive massive war chest of john d rockefeller and his standard oil empire right and so this is and and also remember that john j mccloy had been the sailing instruct to the Rockefeller boys that had come into their own as adults in between their summers in Bar Harbor back in the 19-teens up until the 1950s, right? And so now it's this generation of Nelson Rockefeller, of David Rockefeller, Lawrence Rockefeller,

all of these bros that bring McCloy in to be a, uh, real promotion from sailing coach to head of the bank yeah mccloy's like hey guys if you think i'm sick with this tennis racket wait until you see me in the fucking board room i'll be slicing and dyson motherfuckers and i guess you could say that as chairman of the bank he did uh rush the net so to being hell yeah soon after taking over he innovated the art

of bank mergers which is something that we are certainly living in the shadow of that innovation today where you know the vast vast majority of

capital in banks is in the hands of a tiny number of too big to fail institutions. Well, a lot of that got its start when John J. McCloy led the charge to merge Chase with First Manhattan Bank in 1955. So he pulled this off that nobody thought he could do it. But as soon as he did, you know, that's when Citibank merges with First National Bank and creates National City Bank and so on and so forth.

You know, today, obviously, Chase has merged with J.P. Morgan, which was actually a merger that McCloy explored but didn't bear fruit back in the 50s. Well, at least his wish finally came true even if it was after his death. But as chairman of the bank, right, he was a natural pick to serve on these interlocking corporate boards of the biggest companies in the U.S. and thereby in the world. So he was on the board of AT&T. He was on the board of Metropolitan Life Insurance, MetLife, right? He was on the board of Westinghouse, which was the longtime parent company of CBS.

So he's got his 10 fingers and his 10 toes. They're all in pies of dividends. different flavors. They're all in pies and he's on fire and the Rockefellas are like, this motherfucker is spitting. He's good with the numbers. He's good with finance. Let's sick him on foreign policy. Yeah. More than good with the numbers, I would say even more than good with the numbers, he was maybe the original artist of The Deal. Yeah, and so stepping away from Wall Street and finance and business, he takes the chairmanship of the Rockefeller family's famous foreign policy think tank,

the Council on Foreign Relations, a position which he'd hold until the 1970s. And this kept McCloy in a position where he had his foot planted firmly in U.S. foreign policy at all times. He was regularly consulted by President Eisenhower. He was kept apprised of the latest goings on and was often recruited to help raise funds and support among Wall Street elites for CIA initiatives like the Congress for Cultural Freedom. and the Committee for a Free Europe. And I think much like the sort of clash between McCloy and Hoover, we want to note here that McCloy's views were often also at odds with Foster Dulles' crusade against communism.

So whereas Dulles built U.S. foreign policy around the assumption that America would stop at nothing to beat back the Reds, McCloy, ever the pragmatist, opposed adventurism and the saber-rattling, preferring a realistic approach that would be good for business and not too disruptive to the markets. Yeah, he was actually apparently a favorite for Secretary of State for Eisenhower before Dulles got the nod. and even as Dulles was experiencing some health complications during his term as Secretary of State, McCloy was kind of in the background there as a potential replacement. He never took that role, obviously, and in part, I think, because he preferred to exert his influence from the outside. Yeah.

And in part because, you know, after Dulles had already left his mark on the office, it would have been too drastic of a shift in foreign policy that Ike thought would have been destabilizing later on in the 50s. You want to talk about the Ford Foundation? Oh, do I? In 1958, McCloy became the chairman of the Ford Foundation. All these activities are directed toward one goal, the internal strength of America. By making the American system work so that we can preserve free enterprise, maintain our freedom, and meet effectively our responsibilities as a world leader. And remember, we've discussed the Ford Foundation a few times, particularly in connection

with our discussion of the CIA's cultural Cold War. Note that emphasis on free enterprise. Way back in Cherry World, talked about Martha Graham. Well, a lot of the groundwork for the Ford Foundation's role as a CIA conduit had already been laid by the time McCloy came into power there in 1958, but it nevertheless put him back into this CIA. circle, well, he never left, but it put him back into a very operational role. When the foundation's assets increased so greatly, we felt that the public interest should be the dominant

force in Foundation Affairs. We therefore sought the leadership of outstanding public-minded men from many walks of life for our board. I think you should know who these men are. John J. McCloy, attorney, is chairman of the Chase National Bank of New York. Perhaps he is better known to the public for his government service, which was climaxed by several years as United States High Commissioner for Occupied Germany. This, again, brings up this sort of tension between the liberal anti-communism embodied by the CIA and by the Georgetown set, the more sophisticated type of anti-communism, which the Ford Foundation also embodied supporting even socialist literature and art, for example, versus the more anti-communism of the likes of J. Edgar Hoover, John Foster Dulles, and even more extreme, Senator Joseph McCarthy. So to Hoover and to McCarthy, McCloy probably looked pink.

Operating in the countries on the border of the communist world has its rests. These are the sectors where the communists and democratic ideas are in conflict every day. The foundation will not work in communist countries. We do not try to buy people's friendship or allegiance. We would withdraw our support from the country the minute a communist takeover appeared in evidence. But we are willing to enter the fight to spread democracy and to help any country that wants democracy to achieve it. We're willing to do this, even though at times the tide seems to be running against us. Even though he had been a fourth Reichsman all the way down to his bones,

he hated the bull-headed zealotry of Joseph McCarthy, and he joined forces with his fellow Warren Commissioner Alan Dulles on the opposite side of McCarthyism. Even before Dulles had spoken out against McCarthy, as early as January 1953, McCloy gave speeches against, you know, the abuse of investigative powers. And he was speaking on that in defense of the likes of Dean Acheson, you know, of the likes of these liberal cold warriors who had come into McCarthy's sights notwithstanding the fact that, as far as McCloy saw it,

and I agree with McCloy, these guys were not traitors to America. They were just going about it in a smarter way. They were going about it in a Fourth Reich way, whereas McCarthy would have preferred something more akin to the Third Reich approach, right? Even though a country acting as our host does not do everything exactly to our life.

To pull out on this kind of a provocation would simply leave the battlefield of communism. Right, pull in the China shop. We know that if we do our job well, every conscientious citizens will find inspiration in the Ford Foundation. We know this because of what it stands for. The Foundation seeks to promote peace because peace is indispensable to progress. Indeed, the survival of man. It promotes the allegiance to and the strengthening of our democratic institutions because they are fundamental to any fruitful concept of human welfare. It recognizes that economic strength is essential to progress.

It believes education is vital to a free society, and it believes a more scientific understanding of man will speed his advancement. These then are the ways in which the Ford Foundation pursues the idea. Elevich's founders, the advancement of human wealth. Thank you very much. So what is also going on is so McCloy is gaining this air about him of being a guy who is no nonsense, he's pragmatic. And this liberal anti-communist bend of his, it gives him the bona fides to be. become an appealing subject across the aisle.

And he enjoys at this point a bipartisan appeal. In fact, JFK wanted McCloy to serve as his Secretary of Defense or Secretary of the Treasury, but McCloy declined, instead taking on an informal role as disarmament advisor to the president. So it's like, you know, JFK is like, hey, come work for me in my administration. And McCloy's like, no, I'm good. I'll just stack this paper in the private sector and I'll advise you. How about that? Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny. Even before Kamala Harris was born, we have a Democrat president looking to appoint Republicans to his cabinet. Time is a flat circle. Oh, yeah. Folks. Yeah. Kennedy really was interested in having that bipartisan. partisan support. He didn't want to be seen as an Adelai Stevenson, who had so alienated the voters in his

two failed presidential campaigns against Eisenhower that by the time Kennedy gets in there, he is actively seeking. And he asks, in fact, Dean Atchison, once again, for advice on some good Republicans. And McCloy's name is top of the list. Right. And he serves when called upon, right? McCloy was around for the Cuban Missile Crisis, serving as a negotiator for the president. He would certainly have become aware of the extent of U.S. covert operations in Cuba in this role, including the CIA's repeated attempts to kill Castro in Operation Mongoose. And for all of his service over the decades, JFK actually was scheduled to award McCloy the Freedom Medal at a ceremony on December 6th,

1963. That, of course, never happened. Yeah, I think to sum it all up, right, we can quote the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who was once asked, you know, talking about this Eastern establishment, he was asked, who's the head of the establishment, and perhaps with tongue and cheek, but after giving it some thought, he named John J. McCloy. And that brings us to November 22, 1963. Jack gets capped, McCloy, after enjoying a leisurely breakfast,

with his friend Dwight Eisenhower learns of the assassination and immediately cables LBJ to offer up his services if there is anything that he can do. And of course, there was. Right. At this point, I see McCloy sort of as like

the wolf in Pulp Fiction. How much the wolf? I saw problems. Harvey Taitel's character, right? He's like this fast-talking guy who comes in and is the fiction. totally if you do what I say when I say it should be plenty now you got a corpse in a car minus a head in a garage I think fast I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you want to

get out of this so pretty please with sugar on top clean the fucking car and another fictional character that McCloy reminds me of too is Tom Hagan from the godfather definitely he's likable and he gets along with everybody and he never appeared to be an extremist. But he's holding the bag for like the worst of the worst. Yeah. Right.

I actually like that blend between Hagen and the wolf, you know, Keitel's character, because Keitel's character is very much like no nonsense, fast talking. I'm here to, you know,

fix things in an ostensibly objective way that's best for everyone. So, yeah, maybe there's something there but back to LBJ and the decision at hand the outward facing reasons for picking McCloy for both LBJ and that Benny Jesteret we keep bringing up it's pretty straightforward right like once again the nation is in crisis and they you know they they they call upon the

folks on their bench and McCloy he was the go-to fixer for every president since FDR. He knew the country's secrets. He knew how to act discreetly. He knew how to put a lid on controversy to protect the markets. He was an offensive pick through and through. This is like a foregone conclusion in our view, right? It's surely supported by the evidence. And he was getting a lot of support at the time. One of his supporters was McCloy's longtime friend and Harvard Law classmate, Dean Atchison. Yeah, we also talked about Abe Fortis, who was Georgetown set adjacent, right? This powerful attorney.

Well, here's how Fortis described McCloy. Well, do you think about John McCloy instead of General Orchby? But I think that'd be great. It's a wonderful man, a very dear friend of mine, them devoted to him. As well as that Georgetown cabal. with whom McCloy was friendly, but not a member. Right. Well, McCloy, he lived in Georgetown during his time in the War Department,

but this was kind of before there was a Georgetown set. He preceded the Georgetown set. And by the time all those guys moved in, by the time of Joe Alsup's weekly Terrapin Soup dinner parties, McCloy was up in New York. And he was not around. But he's kind of, he was a name in the ether, right? I think his presence was still felt in the air because he'd been so tight with Atchison,

with Felix Frankfurter. He was in this group called The Wise Men. Right. And there's a whole book on it by that hack, Walter Isaacson, that it consists of McLeoy, Acheson, George Kennan, I think Chip Bolan, who had been ambassador to Russia, Avril Harriman, all of these old heads that comprised a brain trust in Washington. Yeah. That overlaps substantially with this Benny Jesserite behind the Warren Commission that we've been talking so much about.

Yeah, so it sort of predated it in some ways, but his sort of scene. I thought you were going to say there was some height requirement for the Georgetown set I didn't know about the event I bet a lot of the guys were short we should look into that that would be funny

Wisner was also a short bald guy yeah yeah so there you go but you know that's not the full story all of what we've been saying that's not the whole story right because as we discussed in part one McCloy

who was meant to be this guy who would perform perfectly for the role he did sort of start out as a squeaky wheel. He sort of lobbied for more investigative powers. And he wanted to identify and did identify weak points. And ultimately, you know, to the benefit of the Warren Commission, because once he does this, everybody sort of gets rattled and they're like, all right, McCloy, you've had your fun.

Now help us figure out how to cover this thing up, right? and so ultimately he does perform perfectly for the role that he was assigned but not without I don't think a little bit of a rough road in the beginning which you know to the credit of Alan Dulles he got his boy to turn right around and got him fully on board with the commission's ultimate conclusions yeah and you don't even have to read a deep-seated skepticism into McCloy's conduct on the commission in those early days? At the end of the day, like you said, it was to the benefit of the Warren report and its reliability. Because if the commission had just gone along and rubber-stamped the FBI's report, the chances are that the American public would have been

even more hostile to its conclusions than what ended up happening. Exactly. If they see this commission as just a rubber stamp job as something superficial, you know, that's not going to carry weight. And like you said in the last episode, McCloy's a guy who prizes his integrity and his reputation. And he's not going to want to put his name on something that is the object of ridicule and scorn. 100%. But the other, I think, sort of the unsung. or underrated role that he played on the Warren Commission was this role as a mediator between the majority of the commissioners who wanted to make a strong statement that Oswald

acted alone. You could mark Jerry Ford in that camp and probably led that camp. And then the dissenting camp, which was led by Dick Russell and joined to varying degrees by Hale Boggs and Cooper, Sherman Cooper, McCloy served as the mediator and helped bring the commission to consensus. Yeah, by way of a quick background, Dick Russell wanted to issue a whole dissenting report, like a minority report, that basically rejected the single bullet theory. Well, they were trying to prove it the same bullet that he didn't get any place for it. the one that hit Connolly, went to him, and through his hand, his bone, and into his leg. I don't know.

I was the only fellow there that didn't practically there's a guest in and changed whatever and what the staff got up. This staff business always scares me. I like to put my own views down. Well, what difference did make which bullet got Connolly? Well, it don't make much difference, but they said that the commission believe at the same bullet that hit, Kennedy hit Connolly. Well, I don't believe it.

I don't either. And so I couldn't sign it. And I said it's a governor contest by direct to the contrary, and I'm not going to approve of that. So I finally made them say there was a difference in the commission in that. A lot of them believed that that wasn't so. But that was unacceptable because, according to their marching orders, the commission had to reach a unanimous conclusion. and that was Earl Warren's bread and butter, right? This was the same dilemma that he faced in the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

It had to be unanimous or it wasn't worth doing at all. Unanimous? Yes, sir? I tried my best to get in a dish in, but they'd come around and trade me out there by giving me a little old thread of it too. And so in the name of unanimity, John McCloy brokers this middle ground. Do you want to describe the language choices, put on our lawyer caps here for a second?

Yeah. So, for example, there's that language we read in episode one of our series within a series. Hedging the single bullet theory came from a McCloy brokered agreement. Jerry Ford wanted to say the evidence was compelling for the theory. theory, while Russell wanted to say the softer credible, right? There's a difference between saying evidence is credible, which basically just means, you know, it warrants consideration because there isn't really anything tainting it. But there's a difference from saying that than saying compelling, which means it's basically moves you towards a certain conclusion, right?

Almost undeniable. Right. And so what does McCloy do? He finds a common ground. says perhaps that we should use the term very persuasive and they're like oh yeah that you could imagine these assholes in one of their committee meetings or something and they're discussing the middle ground between compelling and credible and they all agree that very persuasive is right in the middle so the final language just as a reminder it ultimately says that while there are commissioners who do not believe the single bullet theory, there was very persuasive evidence suggesting that it was possible. Right.

So you could imagine that compelling evidence, well, at the end of the day, and we'll talk a little bit more about this next week with Alan Dulles, but the big mistake of the Warren Commission was publishing all of the evidence that it based its conclusions on because That permitted the reader to do their own analysis and decide if the evidence was compelling or credible or very persuasive. And in fact, it was none. Right. And then there was that other debate over whether to follow Jerry Ford's lead and say, no evidence of a conspiracy where our boy McCloy comes up with this delicious bit. of legalese because of the difficulty in providing a negative to a certainty the possibility of others

being involved with either oswald or ruby cannot be rejected categorically but if there is any such evidence it has been beyond the reach of all investigative agencies and resources of the united states and has not come to the attention of this commission Yeah I have never believed that Arthur planned that all together by himself I refused to sign the report until they put in the clause

I had drawn them much stronger but I finally agreed to sign if they would put a clause in there that we had exhausted all the evidence that was available to us and that any evidence it might disclose a conspiracy I was beyond the jurisdiction

of our police bodies, the FBI, and the Secret Service. So I think my big takeaway, having done this deep dive on McCloy, is that, one, there's certainly more to the man that meets the eye. Like, we won't deny that he was at every stage of his life part of the machine, the empire, whether in private practice or working for the government, but it would be a discredit to history if we didn't also acknowledge that McCloy as an individual was not just another fourth Reichsman.

You know, he came up and worked hard, kind of like our boy Jerry, and was very much, a individual who wanted to, you know, make sure things were done correctly. He wasn't always a rubber stamp. Looking at the Warren Commission, he was the guy that, I would say, fine-tuned the project and really polished it, made it ready for consumption. Right, and he's so frequently paired with Alan Dulles

because they're both guys that were selected as members of the public, we call. They're not, you know, in Congress and they're not on the Supreme Court. And they pair well together and complement each other because Dulles, if you know about Dulles, and we're going to cover him next time, but he was not a detail-oriented guy. He was an ideas man, right? is a vision man and a guy who could use his charisma to paper over the doubts of others. And if you don't believe us, just go out and look up all the different ways they tried to kill Fidel Castro.

Right. And those ways were all, you know, under Dulles' blessing, but by no means planned by him. So in the same way, on the Warren Commission, Dulles can provide these big picture insights, right? I don't know if we mentioned it in the last episode, but Dulles distributed a book about presidential assassinations in one of the early executive sessions to say, look, this assassination is just like all the other presidential assassinations in as much as it appears to have been done by a lone nut who wanted recognition and notoriety despite having a limited and a depressing life trajectory, right? And Dulles is saying this in one of the very first sessions before they've looked at any evidence at all. And so you can see he's bringing the vision. Well, McCloy is

detail-oriented. Remember, McCloy's legal career is summed up by his motto. You've got to have all of your ducks lined up in a row, right? So McCloy, you can see he's finessing the details. He's figuring out how to make the report more persuasive. He is figuring out how to address the elephants in the room like the single bullet theory. And he becomes a persuasive spokesman for the commission. mission report in the same way that he can kind of both sides his own record on things like the Nazis right what do you mean I'm pro-Nazi I'm the guy that ordered reparations for the Jews right right I'll go I'll do you one better and say he wasn't just persuasive he was very persuasive yeah and he's a guy who never lost his credit

and he never devolved into a monstrous personality. Notwithstanding that, you know, knowing him by his deeds, it is a dark, dark legacy indeed. Absolutely. Okay, so I think this is a good spot to leave you, dear listener. Next week we'll cover the man. the myth, the legend, Alan Dulles. Yeah, no, for Dulles, we will just briefly recap some of the most salient highlights

of his career and talk about the ways that he intervened in the Warren Commission and scrape up any leftover material from which to gather our final thoughts on what the composition of the Warren Commission tells us about the Fourth Reich. And for now, I'm Dick. And I'm done. Saying farewell. And keep digging.

It's the dawn of a bravely world. Another empire is rising from the airship. The cult of the illiterate. Walking, chalking, Autumn Tom In the legacy's eyes We're under corporate control And the worst atrocities

Don't phase us at all What's the furor? About the furor We're just sinking right back into it Every one of us is a neo-lopsy Living in a safe of democracy A new masquerace

Who steps into our heart Society is like Berlin before the fall