Fourth Reich Archaeology - The Warren Commission Decided 5 (Vol. 1): McCloy

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

If anyone has a resumé befitting a Horseman of the Fourth Reich, it’s the subject of this episode–John J. McCloy. Just look at some of these highlights: Boarding school for high school; Harvard Law; Multiple Wall Street firms (Cadwalader; Cravath; Milbank); U.S. Department of War under Henry L. Stimson; President of the World Bank; U.S. High Commissioner for Germany; Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations; Chairman of the Ford Foundation; Chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank; Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation; Bilderberg attendee; Bohemian Grove member; And, the reason why he’s got his own series-within-a-series-within-a-series:  Member of the Warren Commission.Without further examination, McCloy’s curriculum vitae makes his service on the Warren Commission seem like a foregone conclusion. Remember, McCloy was one of the Commission’s two “private citizen” members, the other being Dulles, so it would be easy to assume without more than the above info that McCloy was just another cleanup man. But this is Fourth Reich Archaeology, and you already know that we had to dig deeper on the guy. Donning (and dicking) our patented 4RA lenses, hard-hats, and shovels, we introduce you to the real McCloy. The man was so much more than what initially meets the eye. We start our McCloy excavation in 1963 and learn that in fact, he was the driving force behind transforming the Warren Commission from a toothless review committee meant to rubber-stamp the FBI’s report into a real investigative body. For example, McCloy is the reason the Warren Commission was given subpoena powers, and with it, the authority to conduct its own investigation. He also lobbied to hire a staff of lawyers to work under the Commissioners. Now, to be clear, we aren’t saying that the Commission used that power effectively; we’re just pointing out that–at least at the outset–McCloy was more of a squeaky wheel than a rubber stamp. But that changes sometime in Spring 1964, and we’ll discuss why we think that is. Not for nothing did McCloy enjoy a sterling relation among the power elite as a master strategist, a straight shooter, and THE man to call in a national crisis. We then turn back the clocks to McCloy’s childhood and early years, and follow him as he goes from “the wrong side of the tracks” in North Philadelphia, to Amherst college, where he spent his free time as any young patriot would, participating in voluntary military preparedness drills as tensions in Europe flared in the lead-up to WWI. He spent two summers in a Teddy Roosevelt-endorsed summer bootcamp in Plattsburgh, NY, where he learned lessons from Teddy’s rough riders and met other members of the patriotic elite at what became known as the “millionaire’s camp.” Throughout all of these educational experiences, McCloy is rubbing elbows with the rich kids, not because he is one himself, but because his mom is their mom’s hairdresser. Then WWI breaks out, and McCloy answers the call. And, like any true ascending Reichsman, McCloy was on that grindset tip, and caught the eye of his commander, Brigadier General Guy H. Preston, who picked McCloy to be his aide de camp. And this is where we will leave off, but not without painting what may well be one of the funniest factual vignettes to date. Sit back, relax, and put on that PPE–because this dig qualifies for hazard pay. McCloy’s story is a long one, and so it is going to be a two parter - STAY TUNED FOR PART 2!!

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 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 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. We've got a lot of killers.

Why you think our country's so innocent? This is the CIA. And I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Welcome back to this. this, our fifth episode of the series within a series, The Warren Commission decided. Once again, we will very quickly, because we've got a full episode for you today, just remind you to please reach out to us via email at forthrightepod at gmail.com,

and follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Fourth Reichpod. Meanwhile, if you haven't already, please rate, review, subscribe, and tell your friends and family about the pod. Okay, we're going to do things a little differently this week, and in lieu of a lengthy recap, just going to say now to all our listeners, please just go back and listen to our previous episodes. We're really proud of what we've put together so far. We are so pleased with how the Warren Commission decided mini-series is coming together. And if you're going to spend the time to hear about the subject of this episode, Mr. John J. McCloy, you're going to want to hear the rest of the series, Trust Us. Now, this week's episode is actually going to be another two-parter.

when we started recording this one we quickly realized that there's just so much to say about john j mccloy so for this week what we're going to do is we're going to start off sort of in media race in 1963 and then dial the clock back to mccloy's early years and cover his upbringing all the way through college and his time in World War I. Now this is a critical point in history in our view and it's often overlooked as it really is the genesis of this Fourth Reich vision. Right. It's where the idea for control and dominate grows from the mere confines of the North American continent, or perhaps the Western hemisphere, into a global project.

And listener, please excuse us for taking two weeks to do this, but in our defense, you will not find John J. McCloy content like this. anywhere else and so you know this is a fourth rike archaeology exclusive i promise you you will not be disappointed now by way of a very quick recap for those of you who are already caught up we are four episodes deep into this series so far we've covered how the idea for a commission was really thrust upon L.B.J. by what we've called a cabal of Georgetown-situated CIA-adjacent Cold War Benny Jesserite. You'll all stop. It goes to do one, seven-one.

Just let me make one suggestion, because I think this covers, I think, I think this bridges the gap, which I believe, and Dean Atchison believes, still exist. Dean and Bill Myers are the only people I've talked to about him. And Friendly is going to come out tomorrow morning with a big thing about a, a, um, a, uh, a, uh, a, uh, uh, a, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, the Department of lawyers who are carrying on this, just things happen to sort, thought of a lot of people and you've thought of more of the details than anyone else. I know what line, because we had no way to do. Uh, 217 lines.

Uh-huh. A commission of seven or nine people. Maybe Nixon, I don't know. Right. Uh, to look into the whole affair of the murder of the president. Good. Now, I've got a party here. We've been pursuing the policy, you know, that people need to come together at this time.

because world opinion and American opinion is just now so shaken by the behavior of the Dallas police, that they're not believing in him. I've got a party here for you. I know, well, we've got the FBI doing anything that, if there's any question about Texas operation, they've got an FBI that's going to the bottom of it and direct with the Attorney General. Now, I know that some of the lawyers, they thought of the Brewing Commission first to justice. and we just can't have them lobbying against the president when he makes these decisions. Nobody lobbied me. I lay awake all night.

Oh, that you, they lobbied me last night. I spent today on him. And I'm sure you're right, except there's one missing piece. I suggest that you announce that as you do not want the Attorney General to have the painful responsibility of reporting on his own brother's assassination. The White House must not, the President must not, inject himself in the local killing. I agree with that, but in this case, it does have to be the killing of the President. Right.

And the thing is, I'm not suggesting... Mind you, mind you, Mr. President. I'm not talking about an investigative body. I am talking about a body which was taking... which will take all the evidence that the FBI has amassed when they have completed their inquiry and produce a public report. We talked about how LBJ, likely with the input of this cabal,

came up with a list of names for the Warren Commission. And that list was calibrated to two objectives. One was to prevent any truly independent investigation of the assassination. We've called those the defensive picks. It would be very bad to have a rash of investigations. Well, the only way we could stop on this is probably to a point a high level and to evaluate your report. Yeah. And put somebody that's pretty good on it that I could select.

And the other objective was the Convoire. objective, to control the narrative affirmatively, and to ensure that the lone nut theory prevailed while tamping out any perception of a conspiracy, whether a communist conspiracy that could spark a World War III or a right-wing conspiracy that the discovery of which could collapse the U.S. government. the arena where they testified in Cuchamp and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour. We're now in the midst of a trio of deep dives on three commissioners with the closest and most interesting positions straddling the transition from the third to fourth Reich. Last week, we kicked this off by covering Senator John Sherman Cooper, a Republican from Kentucky.

Now, his sort of country, no frills, good nature attitude, people really gravitated towards. And two of those people, a young couple by the name of John and Jackie Kennedy, became close friends with John Sherman Cooper and his lady Lorraine. And so in our last episode, what we were really telling you was this love story between a man who is in a much more senior position

and his connection with a younger idealist. That made the third act of our episode all the more interesting because John Sherman Cooper went along with the conclusions of the Warren Commission and he did so even though he was close friends with Kennedy. He did so even though he also held private doubts that Oswald was the lone gunman. Yeah, there's this other great irony about Cooper where he was fondly known by those close to him, including the Kennedys, as Judge Cooper. Because recall that his first job, one of his first jobs out of law school, or after taking the bar, remember, he dropped out of law school, was as a county judge in Pulaski, County, Kentucky.

And the great irony of the John Sherman Cooper story is that, when he was called upon to judge the murderers of his friend he punted the ball and he just went along with the preordained conclusions of the Warren Commission we speculated in our last episode that Cooper was acting out of a sincere fear of this global conflagration this nuclear holocaust that appeared at the time a very real prospect and Cooper after witnessing the scale of destruction at Buchemwald concentration camp during his service in World War II was loathe to set the United States on the path towards anything resembling the total war that devastated Europe

in World War II. However, that fear combined with his close personal friendships in this Georgetown set with a great swath of the CIA's top brass, talking Frank Wisner, Jim Angleton was a friend of the Cooper's, Alan Dulles, and the list goes on. Well, those friendships lower. Cooper's moral guard against the creep of American imperialist hubris on the world stage and domestically. So even though Cooper supported Kennedy's dream of peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union and with Cuba,

he condoned as a senator the U.S.-backed coups and black ops that his CIA, friends convinced him were necessary to stave off that threat of global communist expansion, even though, as we talked about way back in, I think it was Jerry World Seven, when we talked about Reinhardt Galen, that threat was really never existent in the way that the CIA made it out to be. And in fact, Galen and the ex-Nazis that were brought on to the CIA, payroll played an outsized role in inflating the fears of communist imperialism. And so that's sort of the internal dynamic that we painted for you, the listener, within the

mind of John Sherman Cooper that brought him on board with the single bullet theory and more broadly with the rise of the Fourth Reich. We described this as a sort of a right-hand, left-hand approach to imperial foreign policy in the Cold War. So on the right hand, you have the diplomatic efforts, the carrot of development aid, political patronage, military protection, collective security. And meanwhile, that left hand is busy,

They're behind the scenes, lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering to make sure that the target will keep taking that carrot or else. It's taking a step back and looking at the big picture of our project, of what it is we're doing here, of the message that we're trying to get out to the people. This is the quintessential dynamic of the Fourth Reich. this right-hand, left-hand approach, right? And it's what distinguishes the modern hellscape that we live in today from the hellscape that was the Third Reich. So unlike the Third Reich, which was all force, all violence, with little regard for anything resembling consent,

the Fourth Reich sort of actively courts the consent of the government or at least purports to superficially, right? Both in the internal Imperial Corps and abroad by putting out things just as you said, Don, right? Development aid, patronage, culture, something we've discussed at length, right? putting out things ideals right democracy freedom justice but what it does the

fourth right does is it's sort of the way I look at it is like they become these terms but they're like defined terms that you would find in a contract or whatever so it's like democracy terms of art terms of art exactly and so it creates these notions of these values and to establish this appearance of civility, of inclusiveness. And by doing this, it's able to lull the masses. And it no longer needs to crush its opponents or its dissidents, like the Nazi regime in the middle of the 20th century. people just willingly go along yes yes and i mean if you want an example of how just listen to our last

election episode where we talked about this flipping of the switch right just turn on kamala from a joke to a serious presidential contender the levels of manipulation and brainwashing are such in the Fourth Reich that dissent, to call it even marginal, is an overstatement. It's essentially non-existent other than in the safe spaces of the internet and podcasting and what have you. And to that effect, you know, when it does actually start to strike out in real life, it's important to shine. of light there and we want to give a quick raised fist of solidarity to the anti-genocide protesters from James Madison University, read about them the other day, being targeted by the feds,

having their doors busted down in suburban Virginia over nothing more than alleged involvement in mere graffiti on a college campus against an ongoing. genocide. So there you have it. You know, this Fourth Reich, it tolerates dissent. It, in fact, creates spectacle out of dissent. But whenever that dissent becomes impalatable for the powers that be, you could expect your fucking door kicked down by a jack-booted G-man. We live in the Fourth Reich. That is a bad thing and we're making this podcast to try and understand how we got here because ultimately what we want to do is get out and today's episode is a prime example it's like what we were

talking about don much of what we do is examine individuals these people in history our take is an analysis of characters. Characters in networks. Characters in context, right? I think that's the name of the game. Of course. I think my point is that we, whereas others sort of focus on, for example, on the subject of the Kennedy assassination, they focus on the sort of the forensics and the evidence and

the medical evidence and all of that stuff. We are sort of examiners of people. And as part of that, it's, of course, they're networks because it's just networks of people. But my point being that no better a person than John J. McCloy to show you, listener, how exactly the forthright came to be. Yeah, I mean, there's nary.

a soul, I think, who has as many fingerprints on what the Fourth Reich today is than John J. McCloy. And I was so excited to do this episode and really get deep on McLeoy because I was kind of conceived of McCloy as sort of a demonic figure just by reference to his to his CV right you look at the guy's list of employers and of accomplishments and it's like he was the high commissioner for Germany who freed a shitload of Nazis right he was one of the early and influential leaders of the world bank so instrumental in imposing Western financial dominance over the third world. He was the head of Chase Manhattan Bank, for God's sakes, and he was the longtime chairman of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the Ford

Foundation. And that's just the top back of the envelope, real quick version of it. So to any noided Marxist, right, the guy glows radioactive. And his presence on the Warren Commission seems serendipitous in a very similar way to Alan Dulles' presence on the commission, right? Definitely an offensive pick by the looks of it, an inside man, and a guy who you might surmise just as likely as not had foreknowledge of the CIA's involvement in the assassination and could therefore be counted on to steer any prying eyes on the commission away from the agency and away from CIA-connected mobsters and Cuban exiles right but you know we could just end the episode right there and

And that's about the level of analysis that most JFK conspiracy sources will give you on John J. McCloy. But this is Fourth Reich archaeology. There's so much more, both to the man and to his involvement in the Warren Commission, that merits a discussion at length. And before we start, I'll drop a main source for this episode. That is Kai Bird's biography of McCloy, entitled The Chairman. Of course, also consulted many of the old noided books, but we better strap in, listener, because this is a wild one. So pop on that hard hat.

let's get dig it they sentence me to 20 years of boredom for trying to change the system from within I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them

first we take Manhattan Then we take Berlin I'm looking back from Europe, Mr. McCoy, where much of the talk is about the possibility of a Hungary-type explosion in each Germany. From your background of experience with the Germans, what would you say was the likelihood of such a thing? Well, I haven't been in Germany for some time, at least in Germany, there's such a degree that I could really sense a thing like that. like that. I'm guided by the beauty of our weapon.

I can realize the possibility of a thing of this character developing. Then we take Berlin. Do you think that might serve our bargaining purpose or any other purpose of national interests to threaten to encourage a revolt in Eastern Europe? No, I wouldn't think that that would be. That would tend to improve matters. Why? Because it's too dangerous?

Yes, and I don't believe in this threatening business. I think the situation is too serious. I think statesmen have to approach this in a statesman-like manner, and it's important that we remove the air from threats. I deplore every threat, whether it's in connection with 100 million TNT bomb or whether it would be something in the nature of... I love me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win

You know the way to stop me But you don't have the discipline How many nights I prayed for this To let my work begin First we take Manhattan Then we take the limb Okay, so this week we will buck chronological order

and cover the trajectory of McCloy's participation in the Warren Commission first. So we are in 1963, and McCloy was apparently suggested to Johnson by his friend and lawyer, Abe Fortis. Abe was a powerful Washington attorney whom Johnson would eventually, and rather disastrously, appoint to the Supreme Court.

Yeah, to the listener, you might recognize the name of the law firm, Arnold and Porter, that used to be Arnold, Porter, and Fortis, just to situate Abe Fortis in the larger scheme of things. His name was taken off the letterhead when he was nominated for the Supreme Court. That's right.

So Fortis powerful DC attorney suggests McCloy. And at this point, in 1963, McCloy's name is not a surprising pick. And in fact, it's not a surprising pick, and that makes his enigmatic performance on the Warren Commission all the more curious. and one of the things we're going to try and decipher in this episode. But by all accounts, it seems that McCoy was frequently, constantly tapped to serve whenever the country faced a sensitive situation. And so the assassination of the president, that was just old hat. You know, for McCloy, it was like he was, he was,

expecting the call, because of his position among the elites in law, in finance, at the highest levels of government, you think about what you commonly call like the revolving door phenomenon of today. I mean, this guy was revolving. He installed the fucking revolving door. Right. So it was just like it was sort of a foregone. yeah and and it should also be noted mccloy actually cabled he sent a telegram to johnson on november 22nd right after he learned that jfk had been capped incidentally he learned of it right after a casual breakfast with his friend dwight d eisenhower uh and he he cabled Johnson and said, you know, look, I'm very sorry about this. Please let me know if there's anything

that I can do. And to LBJ, who remember, you know, he was the vice president. He was actually in fear of getting bumped off the ticket in 1964. He did not get along with JFK. He had spent the last two and a half years kind of in JFK's shadow. And so he's easing his way very suddenly and somewhat uncertainly into the role of the presidency and into the West Wing. And so he feels a very strong need to cover all of his flanks. And I think that's come through in our previous episodes. But part of that sort of ass covering process

involves bringing in the so-called wise men of the nation, which were represented and personified by John J. McCloy. But not everybody was excited about McCloy's pick, right, Dick? No, to Jay Edgar Hoover, he was not pleased. What do you think about John McCloy? I'm not as enthusiastic about McCloy. I knew him back in the Patterson, when Patterson's down here, Secretary of the thing. He's a good man, but I'm not so certain as to the matter of the publicity that he might seek on it.

Hoover, much like Secretary of State Foster Dulles, lived in a world of black and white morality, where any position short of a mannequian call for the elimination of communism from the face of the earth was viewed as potentially red and automatically suss. That's right. And that contrasts with the world that John McCloy inhabited. McCloy's world was full technicolor. He, as a businessman, was interested in accounting for reality, the real diversity of human opinions and modes.

of social organization as long as it didn't affect the bottom line he was okay with that diversity and he indeed sought through his exploits to take advantage of each demographic and interest group for a profit and that gave him this reputation in Washington which would have certainly been known to LBJ as a straight shooter, a guy who calls him like he sees him, and a guy whose primary objective in life is market stability above all else. And at this point, it's also interesting to note that the economy was not in great shape. And so in addition to wanting to stave off a World War III, LBJ also did not want the president's assassination to derail the economy even further because the next year, right, we're at the end of 63, 64 is an election year.

And you need that economy to be spinning along. And so in many ways, I think McCloy makes sense from that perspective as well. Now, amidst all the motives floating around among the, powerful Americans to kill JFK and cover up the hit, we should never lose sight of the will of those in power to hold onto that power. And that fairly describes the primary subjective motivation in this affair of LBJ and probably Hoover for that matter more than is credited. So anyway, McCloy gets tapped for the commission And he immediately starts in on his lawyerly fact-finding tip

Almost single-handedly, he blows up LBJ's conception of the commission as a mere rubber stamp for the FBI report. Remember, on November 29, when he... conveys to Hoover the decision to form a commission, he echoes Alsop's suggestion. That was Joe Alsop, the Washington Post columnist, that the commission would not be an investigative body. It would just polish up whatever the FBI came up with, just to lend it more credibility. Right. Well, it wasn't going to be a rubber stamp for the FBI, not if John McCloy had anything to say about it. So like you said, Dick, McCloy comes in

and immediately upon receiving the FBI's provisional report in December of 1963, now we're talking just a question of mere weeks after the assassination, and yet already the FBI is trying to close the case, right? They're trying to make this open and shut. But McCloy, lawyer that he is, a guy whose legal career was built around the phrase of getting one's ducks all lined up in a row. He saw that FBI report and realized that it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. It was sloppy as hail. a garbage report for example you want to tell some of these examples it's it's hilarious yeah i was going to say like not like it's not like too terribly astute lordly work right he's just reading the

documents and the documents show a garbage report like according to the FBI the first bullet that entered Kennedy's back did not transit his body so the FBI report leaves out mention of the fact that John Connolly, Governor John Connolly was shot so just leaves out mention of his wounds all together so like I was saying it's not like you necessarily have to be like sharpest lawyer in the in the room to just figure that out right Right. So in their executive session, McCloy pretty immediately, and it's hard to speak against him for any of the other commissioners here, says, look, you know, we need subpoena power. We need to interview witnesses and we need to actually resolve some of these inconsistencies and gaps in the FBI's report. We don't have enough here to achieve. our objective, which is ultimately to convey a reliable conclusion about the assassination to the American people and to the world.

Yeah, I mean, it would look terrible. If it got leaked to the public that, like, the FBI was a bunch of numbsculls that couldn't put together a report. Like, what does that mean? Right? Like, Americans would feel unsafe. They'd retreat into fear. Worse yet, maybe it would embolden certain Americans to rise up.

right like they definitely don't need that to get out it would also create instability globally right our allies would figure out that their imperial benefactor was some rinky dink operation some slapstick bunch of slapstick good-for-nothing knit wits that couldn't put together a decent cover-up you know yeah exactly he says we can't look like a banana republic exactly but the story of mccloy is the story of like the dog who finally catches up to the car he's been chasing right like he gets more than he bargained for when he helped sort of expand the investigation expand the powers of the commission right and one of the consequences of extending the investigation out in time

is you get these interlopers who start to look over the commission's collective shoulder and try to expose inconvenient evidence that perhaps the commission is overlooking. One such person who got on the case right away that may be familiar to our listeners is the gadfly New York attorney Mark Lane. And Mark Lane, we won't get into his background here, but suffice it to say, he launched a very public campaign, oftentimes accompanied by Lee Oswald's mother, Marguerite Oswald, and he got in front of the cameras and sought the ability to represent the interests of the deceased Lee Oswald. He wanted to get in front of the commission. He wanted to put their findings and their allegations to the test of some adversarial process, as would have been the case, had Oswald survived and gone to court.

He had some audience in the United States, but he also took his show on the road to Europe. And in Europe, especially, he captivated. wide audiences, audiences perhaps more receptive than the sort of provincial American, small-minded outlook that did make room in their worldview for the types of skullduggery that were behind the JFK assassination. And McCloy had a lot of friends in Europe. So he's getting calls. He's Seeing Lane on TV, he's starting to sweat that, oh boy, what have we gotten ourselves into? Everybody knows that the day's unloaded.

Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor The rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows

I am certain that if the case were tried Based upon the facts which were submitted to the public On November 24th by District Attorney of Dallas There could have been no conviction that clearly was not a case which indicated that Oswald was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt based upon everything that Mr. Wade said. Since that time, in reference to the investigation which I've conducted personally, which others have conducted in the Dallas area, none of those questions have been resolved or answered

and many new questions have been. Everybody knows that some of the shots, or at least one of the shots, that was fired, which struck the president, was fired from in front of the president, not from the rear. That particular view is the view expressed by three doctors in Dallas, who tried to save the president's life shortly after he was shot on November 22nd. I wish to make a direct appeal. appeal through a public statement to President Lyndon the justice.

Everybody knows that's how it goes. Dear Mr. President, I can now address you as such. I find myself the mother of the accused, Lee Harvey Oswald. Who was convicted within a few hours without benefit of trial or counsel? We bring the same free air, the right to think, and the right to question what we would consider any injustice against another human being. Everybody knows that it's now or never. Everybody knows that it's me or you. And then the final straw breaks the camel's back. Yeah, before we get into the final straw, I think it's like, point, it's worth pointing out,

like, you have this guy McCloy who is a fourth Reichman through and through, but he's also just on a personal level. He's the kind of guy who, like, actually takes his credibility seriously, right? Or, like, his, like, reputation is what really matters. And it's like, it's like an archetype of a law firm partner, right? It's like your credibility. That's all that matters. Like the place can burn down, but you maintain your credibility. There's been a number of suggestions that, well, that the commission, for example, was only motivated by a desire to put, to make things quiet, so to give comfort to the, to the administration or comfort to the people of the, of the country that there was nothing vicious about this. Well, that wasn't the attitude that we

had at all. But just think. how silly this charge is here we were seven men I think five of us were Republicans we weren't at beholden to to any administration besides that we we had our own integrity to think of there's a lot of people have said that you can rely upon the distinguished character of the Commission you don't need to rely on the distinguished character of the Commission maybe it was distinguished and maybe it wasn't but you can rely on common sense and you you know that seven men aren't going to get together and that character and concoct a conspiracy

with all of the members of the staff we had, with all of the investigative agencies. It would have been a conspiracy of a character, so mammoth and so vast, that it transcends and even some of the distorted charges of conspiracy on the part of Oswald. And so this is the kind of guy McCloy is, so he's not afraid to say, no we got to do this right you know right yeah and that's this it's causing problems because when you have one of the people sitting on the cloud one of these fourth Reichman folks who are elevated among above the masses saying wait a minute this doesn't seem right of course it's going to invite all sorts of unwanted attention right and before we get to

McCloy's sort of 180 degree turn just to hammer home how curious and how how involved he was in questioning the official narrative in the early days of the Warren Commission. I want to read this very iconic exchange that he has with Alan Dulles in one of the early executive sessions. Oh, yeah. So Dulles says, Or you would think if Connolly had been hit at the same time as Kennedy, he would have reacted in the same way and not reacted much later as these pictures show. That is right, says McCloy, because the wounds would have been inflicted, says Dulles.

That is what puzzles me, said McCloy. So he's got his doubts. as doubts that the magic bullet, right, could have pierced Kennedy and hit Connolly. And this was, this exchange took place right after the commissioners were first shown the blow-ups of the frames from the Zapruder film that show a marked delay between Kennedy's hands going up to his throat when he's hit by the first shot. and John Connolly reacting to being shot up in the front seat. Now, the official story, of course,

is that the bullet that pierced Kennedy's throat is the same bullet that hit Connolly. Of course, the Zapruder film was not available to the public until the mid-1970s. Of course. Shout out to Geraldo Rivera. I know what my attitude, when I first went down there, I was convinced there was something phony between the Ruby and the,

Oswald affair, the 48 hours after the assassination, here's this man shot in the police station. Well, I was pretty skeptical about that, but the time went on and we heard witnesses and weighed the witnesses. So, McCloy has to do something about his doubting Thomas attitude towards the official narrative. And the final straw comes in April or May, 1960. for, McCloy and Dulles take a trip to Dallas for an assassination tour. And according to McCloy, that trip was what convinced him that, oh yes, in fact, Oswald was the lone assassin, and he did fire all three shots.

And from that moment on, he is singing the tune of the official narrative. totally on board, and he only reserves any skepticism for his later arrangement or negotiation with those commissioners whose doubts ran even deeper, talking about Dick Russell, Hale Boggs, and John Sherman Cooper. And now, McCloy attributed his change of heart to seeing the crime scene. That's what did it for him. What did you do on those through the Sedanah? Well, we went there and walked over the Dealey Plaza, almost it seems to me, foot by foot. We went into the school book depository.

We talked to all of the police officers there. there, a number of the witnesses, visited the boarding house, the boarding houses that Oswald had lived in, retraced, step by step, his movements from the school book depository to the point at which he was apprehended in the theater. We chased ourselves up and down the stairs and timed ourselves. I sat in the window and held the very rifle with the four-power scope on it and sighted down across it. City must have been in the exact spot that whoever the assassin was sat

with the carton of boxes as a headrest, snapped the trigger many times, saw the, we had a car moving at the ledge rate. Well, I can go on, but I'm just trying to give you the impression of what was the fact that we did deciduously follow this evidence. work out as best we could, our own judgments in relation to it.

Listener, I've seen the crime scene, Dawn seen the crime scene. I'm sure many of you have seen the crime scene. I invite you to join me as I say that this sounds like some grade A, triple decker, top two. small batch artisan age to perfection bullshit

straight out of the Texas Longhorn yeah in fact we think the opposite is true right we it seems to us that in fact McCloy changed his tune precisely because subjectively he reached the conclusion

the inescapable conclusion that there's no doubt that there was a conspiracy and that most probably he concluded that the CIA was involved in that conspiracy so throughout his whole life McCloy had never once gotten on the wrong side of Uncle Sam and so he spent the rest of his days parroting the official conclusion and asserting his belief in its veracity. Maybe there's a general distrust of government and government agencies. I don't know. You can speculate Mr. Concrette as much as I can about it. What I do resist and what it irritates me is any suggestion that the commission were motivated other than by, and I'll leave myself out, there were competent people in that commission. People who, uh, who, who, who,

were experienced in investigation like the senators and the congressmen been through many types of investigation. They went at this thing and they came to this conclusion and there was nothing fraudulent about it, there was nothing sinister about it, either conscious or subconscious in my judgment

and I think that as I say that common sense would tell you that this must be the case. We may have heard somewhere along the line but so far I haven't seen any credible evidence, which dispels the soundness of the fundamental conclusions that we came. Okay, so we covered the ground floor. Let's turn back the clock. Let's look under the hood. Let's dig a little deeper on John J. McCloy.

So John J. McCloy was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, right around the turn of the 20th century. His father, and here's a callback to an earlier Jerry World episode, was an insurance man. And that fact alone, I think, really informed McCloy's outlook to some degree. Not because of paternal influence, his father died when McCloy was very young, but because his mother relied in some part on the support of his father's former colleagues and friends who were insurance men in their own right, or more importantly, were insurance lawyers like George Wharton Pepper. Yes, he bears the name, the same name of the Wharton family and the famous University of Pennsylvania

of Business School that our President Donald J. Trump allegedly attended as an undergrad. George Wharton Pepper would later become a U.S. Senator. He was kind of a godfather figure to the young John J. McCloy, who actually went by Jack most of his life. So despite the fact that his father was an insurance man, McCloy was by no means from wealthy stock, right? His father was kind of an ascendant middle manager type. He never reached that executive suite by any means, but he did display a solid work ethic,

and he prioritized passing that on to his children. Shout out to Gerald Ford Sr. Yes, yes. And in fact, it's legend that John McCle senior's final words on this earth where make sure jack learns greek okay but it okay it's a good thing that john had a mother with a strong backbone because she raised him largely on her own well she she did have a little help from friends or rather patrons you see anna mcclore was a hairdresser who coiffed Philly's elite heads.

In Jack McCloy's childhood, one of his formative experiences was to accompany his mother to Bar Harbor, Maine, which is kind of an elite resort town where many of the New England, rich and famous, would go and spend their summer vacations. And Anna McCloy, Jack's mother, would do hair for the society ladies and their daughters, who had gone up to beat the heat and eat lobster. And wherever she went, Jack was close by. So he made playmates as a young boy out of her client's children. And apparently even had the occasional dirty dancing style fling with a rich girl on holiday.

Young Jack being the attractive and mysterious underclass boy. Young Jack was a sporting young man. He was short and stout and athletic but not fat. like that bulldog build right his main sport was tennis and he was very good at tennis and also not to mention perfect sport for someone striving to come up the social ladder right much like golf tennis is a sport of a certain class of American totally even more than i mean even more than golf though golf like the working class boys that will caddy at a game of golf there's a much sharper class distinction and a much sharper

inequality between a boy who's carrying your bags while you hit the ball versus tennis where you know, your working class employee is a partner. Yeah. You know, he's hitting the balls with you. There's much more of an eye to eye that I think suited McCloy much more so than golf. He never became a golfer. And he would even, during the Eisenhower administration, he would sometimes just walk the course when Ike was playing golf with other guys.

No shit. That's how much fuck golf. That's baller. If you're John J. McCloy. Yeah. But as a tennis, as a tennis boy, I mean, he was hitting the balls. He was impressing everybody, the ladies, the children, and the men. He could go toe to toe.

And he wasn't afraid to rush the net for you tennis heads out there. Right. He becomes like a trainer and like a confidant to other tennis players who become his sort of students and he famously would train the rich kids that made up his mother's clientele's children right so his mother's clientele um you know their kids would go off and play tennis with with Jack and ultimately become friends with him, right? Yeah, he met through this means he became friends with the Warburg children, especially Freddie Warburg.

He eventually, I think he was a teenager by this time, but at his mother's insistence, he one day got the gumption to climb over the fence of the Rockefeller families recently, built estate in bar harbor and rang the doorbell and john d rockefeller junior answers the door and there's teenage jack mccloy offering his services to teach the rockefeller kids sports yeah to say that this guy worshipped the wealthy that would be an understatement right like and this is the way he gets in right this is is his avenue to the upper class is basically by being their servant

and benefiting from rich patrons essentially, right? Like, and being brought into the fold. Yeah, he eventually gets the gig for the Rockefellers, by the way. Not as a tennis instructor. Maybe the boys are too soft for that, but as a sailing instructor, A little more genteel for the Rockefeller boys. Remember that listener because later on he becomes really a Rockefeller henchman in his own right.

But let's move things forward a little bit more quickly. So outside of the summers, McCloy enrolls, thanks to his mother, Anna's, penny-pinching ways and his ability to generate a little income for himself in a boarding school. But it's not Groton, it's not Phillips Exeter, it's not even Phillips Andover, nor is it even Lawrenceville. No. He enrolls in the Petty School in New Jersey. And the Petty School... I haven't heard of that one.

Well, as the name suggests, it's more of a petty bourgeoisie. type of a boarding school. And, you know, he's very grateful because it does get him a better education than he would have had in North Philadelphia, that his, you know, his family is still living on the so-called wrong side of the tracks there. But importantly, it also has a chapter of this, apparently, I didn't even know this, but there are prep school fraternities, and McCloy joins one called Alpha Phi, which has chapters at 11 other New England boarding schools, including all of the real blue blood boarding schools

that I just listed off. So that brings him into real contact with this Hoy-Polloy, and, oh, Dick, you know what? We forgot to mention. that John J. McCloy, kind of like Gerald R. Ford Jr., well, John J. McCloy was actually not his birth name, was it? Oh, man. I can't believe we were about to just pass by this. It was not. Why don't we talk about it? John J. McCloy, first of all, what does J. stand for? Yeah, I think you said this in the end of the last episode. It's, it's Jay. Like Homer J. Simpson. Oh my god My middle name is right behind that troub

I'll finally know what Jay stands for From this moment forth I will be known as Homer Jay Simpson It's John Jay McCloy Okay but so his name wasn't John J. McCloy When he was born

Right His middle name was Snater So he's born John J. McCloy. Snater McCloy. Yeah, that was his mother's maiden name. But at his own initiative, he changed it to John J. McCloy. He told people that he was named for the New York Supreme Court Justice from the early Republic, John Jay. And he wanted to sound more aristocratic. And I wouldn't be surprised if he even pretended to be descended from John Jay. You know, he he strapped this name on to himself and he used it, always putting that

middle initial into his signature and as we know him today, right? We know him today as John Jay McCloy. Okay, so McCloy obviously is unabashedly with no shame trying to come up the ranks, right? He's paying for his way through a prep school. He graduates, of course, where does he go to college? Let me guess. Some place in New England. That's right. He goes to Amherst College. And this is a recurring theme in his young adulthood that he's encouraged to leave Philadelphia, Anna McCloy wants him to go to UPenn, which is also a very top-ranked Ivy League school with a deep tradition, right? But George Wharton Pepper is there to say, eh, you know,

if you go to Penn, you're going to be known as a kid from North Philly who lives at home. And you don't want that. You don't want that millstone around your neck. So why don't you get out of town and you can make your own legacy and be your own man. And that's exactly what McCloy does. Up there in Amherst, McCloy finds himself immediately geared towards the then-naccent American imperial ideology. So we're talking about 1914 or so that he first starts college? Well, in the summer of 1915, McCloy gloms on to what is then called the quote-unquote preparedness movement. And this was, in the lead up to World War I, folks in the U.S. arguing for greater military spending, greater conscription for the military, with,

the horizon of U.S. involvement in military conflagration abroad. And so he enrolls in 1915 in the summer at this so-called businessmen's camp for military preparedness in Plattsburgh, New York. And this is another little nugget that I just, I had never heard of this before, but it is so fascinating. And surprise, surprise, who hooks him up with the businessman's camp? It was George Wharton Pepper, the godfather. And it's an opportunity for him to not only mingle with the upper crust of American society.

It's also like this opportunity to sort of cultivate this rugged individualism. rugged individualist preparedness dogma right this idea of people going out and making their way right establishing wealth and um a dynasty right creating a great family through business through connections wheeling and dealing that sort of deal yeah i mean it's a transitional period And this informs the rise of the Fourth Reich more than gets credit for. But this is a transitional period in the early 20th century between an American imperialism that was broadly conceived as a sort of domestic type of imperialism, right? The manifest destiny spreading across the North American continent, then expanding

into the Southern Hemisphere, the Monroe Doctrine, getting involved in Latin America, the Spanish-American War, largely a Latin American war, but with the Philippine element as well. But all of these imperial adventures are not quite a part. Other than Manifest Destiny, the sort of overseas imperialism is not a part. of the American identity at the turn of the 20th century. It's incipient. It's growing. And the Plattsburgh Businessmen's Camp is a speed run.

It's sort of an accelerationist project to inculcate a much more global imperialist ideology. and mindset into the nation's elite right so for example many of the featured speakers and the drill sergeants at the camp were picked directly from teddy roosevelt's rough riders group so you're taking these sort of namby pamby new england sissy boys and like t r himself uh inculcating them with this masculine model and ideal that, you know, conquest makes a man. Teddy Roosevelt himself gave a talk. Teddy Roosevelt's son Archie was one of the cadets at the camp. And it left an indelible mark on Jack McCloy. Right. It's this, you know, go out and grab the world by its nuts you know don't take any guff right right it's a merger between the conservatism of the

financial elite and the adventurism of the imperialist warrior cast and that forms the man that mccloy grows into in a major way he goes back to plattsburgh for the summer of 1916 you You know, he meets all of these, the list of the participants is a who's who of the American elite. You know, besides the Roosevelt's, it was called the Millionaire's Camp because of the representativeness of the Ivy League and the scions of the great American fortunes were all represented. And so this is McCloy's bread and butter. And it's here where we see this sense of equivalence that McCloy saw between what he considered this popular will of the people, the corporate interests, and military objectives. It's notable that he's internalizing this understanding at the outset of World War I, right?

the war that ultimately allowed the U.S. to begin to sort of leapfrog over the old imperial powers that were washed away by the middle of the 20th century. But, you know, after Amherst, McCloy goes on to Harvard Law, and he studies under the future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurt. a trusted figure in the political establishment who was one of the real intellectual architects of post-war internationalism and one of his classmates one of mccloy's classmates at harvard was the patrician dean atchison who had come to cambridge mass by way of grotton and Yale, a path that is now very familiar to you? Yeah, right. Remember when fellow grotty boy, Joe Alsup, told LBJ that the only other person that he had discussed the idea for the Warren Commission with was Dean Atchison. So he's in the cabal, guys. He's in the cabal. And here he is,

in class with Jack McCloy, but whereas Atchison, you know, confident and patrician and upper class is sitting in the front row and is sparring and chatting after class with the profs, McCloy, the striver that he was, took a seat in the back, watching, absorbing, observing, and biding his time before making his move. And his time to make the move came after the breakout of World War I. Yeah, and when war breaks out and the U.S. finally enters World War I, McCloy enlists. Remember back then, much of the military action was done on horseback.

Shout out to Jerry Ford, who did away with that military budget when he joined Congress. So McCloy had to ride a lot, and let's just say he lacked talent in this department. So he wasn't fit for riding, but he was strong-willed, and he, I'll just go out and say it. His effort was made plain one day when he was riding so hard that he was literally bleeding out of his asshole.

That sounds so painful. I know. Oh, man. But it was not without a silver lining because his commanding officer just happened to be riding up behind him. He saw those bloody pants, and he pulls McCloy aside, and he says to him that anyone who could swallow pain like that must be one hell of a good officer. And so Brigadier General, Guy H. Preston, makes McCloy his aide to camp. Wait, wait. Let's do just a little revisionist history. Actually, what Brigadier General Guy H. Preston did was he gave a speech.

He addressed the entire camp. And he said, now look here. By this time tomorrow, I want to see all of your assholes bloody. Just like my guy, McCloy. Because if this man can have a bloody asshole, then we should all have bloody assholes. That's how we'll win the war. One bloody asshole at a time. That's how, to know the crouts, you've got to think like them.

And you've got to know them to beat them. So let's see those assholes. But seriously, let's zoom out. Let's just zoom out. Okay, jokes aside, zoom out and just take stock of this quintessential fourth Reich picture we're painting here. You should note that General Pressen, had gotten his start fighting the Sioux on the Western Frontier.

That's the fact that always stuck with McCloy. I think I ought to record the fact that I've served in two world wars, and I served in World War I with a man who fought the Indians on the plains. How America was born out of a violent conquest just shortly before. the time he was coming up how short the span of american history really is but that connotes that particular fact that oh i'm a little long in the tooth uh the country has really got a very young life and it's great destinies are ahead of it and from there america would rise up to lead the entire world during his lifetime another

sort of fourth Reich aspect of McCloy's upbringing that we'd like to take stock of now is this degree of cognitive dissonance, right, between the notion of American ideals like freedom and democracy, on the one hand, and the genocidal campaign of westward expansion that ultimately pushed the limits of U.S. territory. The synthesis to resolve this contradiction is a simple one and one that became kind of a life's work for McCloy, namely the genocidal violence is necessary, a necessary evil, if you will, on the path towards spreading what McCloy like to call the quote unquote bill of rights viewpoint in other words the american way and it's really just an updated

version of rudyard kipling's white man's burden right the civilizing mission of british imperialism that was spread through the empire's propaganda mccloy is here on the ground floor when that propaganda is getting Americanized. That's sort of what we are trying to convey here that a lot of people, you know, will question whether the U.S. is really the Fourth Reich, or is it really just a continuation of the British Empire? And I think our answer is it's both.

100%. All right. And I think with that, it seems like a perfectly good spot to put a pin on the story of McCloy and leave you, dear listener, until next week, where we'll pick up with John McCloy as he is coming off of World War I and really getting into the mix of things in the post-19. World War I era.

Right. He's going to take all of that American, rah-rah imperialist ideology that he developed in Plattsburgh and in the European theater in World War I. And he's going to take that to Wall Street. For now, I'm Dick. And I'm Don saying farewell. And keep digging.

Indispose In disguise as no one knows Has the face lies the snake When the sun in my disgrace Boiling heat Summer stench Neat the black the sky looks dead Call my name through the cream

and I'll hear you scream again. Black old sun, won't you come? Wash away the rain. Black old sun, won't you come? Won't you come? Won't you come? Cold and dead Steal the warm wind tired friend

Times are gone for honest men Sometimes far too long for snakes In my shoes Walking sleep In my youth I pray to keep Heaven send hell away seems like you anymore

Black old sun Won't you come Wash away the rain Black old sun Won't you come Won't you come Oh Black old sun

Won't you come Wash away the rain, black old sun. Won't you come?