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Recently, more or less by chance, I had the opportunity to read a speech given in April, 1959 by then Senator John F. Kennedy [1]to the National Civil Liberties Clearing House[2] Annual Convention in Washington DC. The speech is striking for several reasons, but mainly because the subject Kennedy chose to discuss that day was the importance of civil liberties and basic rights vs the need for national security—a subject as relevant today, perhaps more so, than it was the day Kennedy delivered it. For the times he was living in the perspective Kennedy reveals in this speech is a unique one: namely that, “Freedom and security are but opposite sides of the same coin.” In other words, JFK was saying that with our basic freedoms and civil liberties in place and functioning our nation is MORE secure and not less; a view that by 1959 could almost have been considered radical.

For those of you too young to remember, the decade of the 1950’s was a precarious time in our nation’s history. Since the late 1940’s the United States had been involved in the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union, which was considered by most Americans to be nothing less than a battle for survival of freedom and the American way of life and economics against the totalitarian, communist ways of the Soviet Union—and across most of the decade it appeared the Soviets were winning. At the close of World War II the U.S. was the only nation on the planet to possess a nuclear weapon, and was unquestionably the most powerful nation on earth. By the late 1940s the Soviets had developed and tested their own weapon,[3] however, and thus was launched the “arms race” for nuclear dominance, which continued across the 1950’s and which posed an obvious threat to every man, woman and child on the planet; regardless of which political system they supported. In addition, in 1949, after a successful revolution led by the communist Mao Zedong,[4] the huge nation of China was re-established under a communist regime; which in turn fed U.S. fears of a world-wide communist takeover.

It didn’t take long for the United States and communist China, along with its ally North Korea, to engage in the Cold War’s first limited “hot war”—the bloody Korean War (1950-53). Before that war ended in a stalemate in 1953 it claimed the lives of over 36,000 American soldiers and literally millions of Koreans and Chinese, by some estimates as many as 5 million. (There has never actually been a formal ending to the Korean conflict, and the present situation on the Korean peninsula is a classic example of how our past errors continue to haunt us today.)

This Cold War situation was compounded in 1957 with the successful Soviet launch of the world’s first satellite into orbit around the planet; a beach ball sized device called “sputnik.” With the Russian satellite launch the U.S. found itself in second place in what was being termed the “space race”; which, since there were only two countries in the race, was considered a national catastrophe in the Cold Warrior mentality of the times. The Soviets would maintain their lead in space into the early 1960s, when the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin[5] became the first human being to be successfully launched into orbit around Earth. To make things worse, a few months before this speech by JFK a Cuban left leaning revolutionary named Fidel Castro[6] successfully overthrew the corrupt regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista [7]and assumed power on that island nation 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Castro ultimately established a communist dictatorship of his own and both he and his country would be a thorn in the side of the U.S. for decades to come.

Add to all this the fact that in mid 1954 the U.S. virtually created a new country, officially called the Republic of Vietnam, but which was known by most Americans as simply South Vietnam[8]; and established as its anti-communist leader a man named Ngo Dinh Diem.[9] The new country was intended by the men in the U.S. government who planned its creation, chiefly Secretary of State John Foster Dulles[10] and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles,[11] as a bulwark against communist expansionism in Southeast Asia—their answer to what President Eisenhower [12] had termed the “Domino Theory”; which was simply the fear that if one Asian nation fell to communism, the rest of them would follow. Before U.S. involvement in Vietnam came to an end 20 years later in 1975, what became known as the Vietnam War had become an unmitigated disaster for our country. By 1959, around the time Kennedy gave this speech, the Vietnam War was on the verge of major escalation.

In response to all this perceived communist threat there developed in the United States across the decade of the 1950s something we today call the National Security State; which is fundamentally the same apparatus that President Eisenhower referred to in his 1961 farewell to the nation address (after eight years in office, 1953-61) as the “military industrial complex.” I think every American should take the time to watch Eisenhower’s address on You Tube and understand what he is saying; but for the purposes of this article I am quoting the most relevant part here:

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” 

From his words it is clear that Eisenhower comprehended the threat to freedom and our basic rights embodied in the national security state. Indeed, he had seen much of it develop and grow, mostly with his complicity, during his time as President throughout the 1950s. Before that he had served as Commander in Chief of the Allied armies in Europe during World War II and had seen firsthand what had happened in another nation that had created an immense military establishment in conjunction with a large arms industry, that being Nazi Germany. If anyone in the 1950s was aware of the dangers such a combination presented it would have been, and should have been, Eisenhower. Nevertheless, he oversaw the expansion of the Central Intelligence Agency, which was formed in 1947 as a result of a law called the National Security Act[13], and which had the original purpose of being the quiet intelligence coordination arm of the President. By the mid 1950’s, under the control of Eisenhower’s appointed director Allen Dulles, the Agency was garnering more and more power to itself and was soon involved in covert operations all over the world in the name of anti-communism; subverting and overthrowing governments, fixing elections and even carrying out assassinations.

Another major element of the nascent security state came on the scene in 1952 when, as a result of a Presidential directive by Harry Truman, the National Security Agency was created within the Department of Defense. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “The NSA was created in part out of the belief that the importance and distinct character of communications intelligence warranted an organization distinct from both the armed forces and the other intelligence agencies. While it operates within the Department of Defense, the NSA also belongs to the Intelligence Community (a coalition of 17 intelligence agencies) and as such acts under the supervision of the director of national intelligence. The director of the NSA is a military officer of flag rank (i.e. a general or admiral) with a minimum of three stars. Not being a creation of Congress, the NSA often acts outside of congressional review; it is the most secret of all U.S. intelligence agencies.” 

One needn’t be a genius to perceive the potential threat to rights and freedoms that an organization with such a mandate represents. The recent revelations from Edward Snowden,[14] who until 2013 was an NSA computer security contractor, to the effect that the NSA had been monitoring and gathering information from the cell phones and computers of American citizens, demonstrate this.

Adding to these factors as part of the security apparatus in this country are the U.S. armed forces, comprised of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines; as well as an array of defense contractors, huge companies like Boeing, Lockheed, General Dynamics and many others that compete to build the aircraft, ships, weapons, tanks, missiles and other equipment needed by the military. The United States spends more money annually on defense and military costs than any other nation in the world, in 2018 alone over $800 billion; and with that kind of money at stake you can see the vested interest these huge defense contractors have in maintaining this military industrial complex. This often takes the form of former executives of these defense contractor corporations taking posts either in government or in the intelligence community, and vice versa, resulting in a network of allies with similar agendas that persist in power regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats are in vogue. In addition, there is the FBI and, since 2003, the Department of Homeland Security; an amalgamation of some 100 plus agencies and entities that includes FEMA[15], the various aspects of immigration, border and customs security, transportation security and the Secret Service.

Thus, we have in this nation what we are calling the National Security State, comprised of the elements described herein. By 1959, when JFK delivered the speech referred to at the top of this article, most Americans had no idea what was developing in their nation. They viewed their country out of the pre-World War II paradigm they were raised in and which existed in their youth; and which by the late 1950s was rapidly becoming a thing of the past. On the other hand, most Americans today have never known a country without a CIA, an NSA or these huge mega-defense contracting corporations; and so these comprise the paradigm they were raised in. They have never known a U.S. as described by Eisenhower in his farewell address, “Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well…” Because of these factors Americans in the 1950s were largely unaware of the developing threat to their rights and freedoms, and Americans today are largely unaware of the fact that things used to be different.

John F. Kennedy was another American who knew of the developing national security state in the 1950s and who was aware of the threat it posed to our rights and freedoms. Despite his relative youth (JFK was 42 in 1959) Kennedy had been a member of the Senate since 1953 and before that had served 6 years in the House as a representative from Massachusetts. By 1959 he was gearing up for what would be a successful run at the Presidency in 1960. In those days getting elected to any significant office required of the candidate a hard line, anti-communist stance, regardless of whether he was a Republican or a Democrat; and in this regard Kennedy was no different. Where he was different, however, was in the strategies he proposed to accomplish the goal of winning the “Cold War.”

An example of this can be seen in Kennedy’s views on colonialism, which in the late 1950s was a very hot issue. By that time nationalist movements and rebellions  had formed in colonial countries against their European masters, chiefly France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands, all across the African continent and Southeast Asia, including Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Algeria, Rhodesia, Gambia and the Congo among others. In Latin America, too, this seed of nationalism had taken root, though in the western hemisphere it often took the form of rebellions against repressive and corrupt dictators who were often supported by U.S. corporations such as United Fruit, Folgers and others. As noted above, the classic example of this was Fidel Castro and Cuba; and before that, the government of Jacobo Arbenz [16] in Guatemala, which was deposed by a CIA inspired coup in 1954.

As with Franklin Roosevelt before him, JFK was strongly anti-colonial, as he had made known in a number of speeches. In late 1951, after returning from a visit to Vietnam with his brother Robert, he gave a speech decrying the French subjugation of that country; stating that in allying itself with France in Southeast Asia the U.S. had joined forces with a colonial regime that had no real support from the people of those nations; and he called for American support of independence and self determination for the Indochinese people. Later, in 1957, he gave another speech on the floor of the Senate, in which he called for the independence of the French colony of Algeria in north Africa, which at the time was in the middle of a rebellion against French rule. Kennedy understood that the effort to contain communism in the lesser developed nations of the world depended upon understanding and acknowledging the natural desire of the people in these nations for freedom and the right to determine their own governance. By failing to do this, and by instead supporting the European colonial powers in their efforts to enforce their rule, the U.S. was actually playing into the hands of the Soviets. In supporting the colonial powers, the United States, Kennedy asserted, was abdicating its rightful role as the example of freedom for all nations, thus opening the door for the Soviet Union and communism to make that claim; in which view I believe he was absolutely correct.

Compared to the standard Cold War rhetoric of the day, Kennedy’s stance on colonialism as described above was a significant departure. The NATO U.S./European alliance, the purpose of which was to provide a check to Soviet expansion in Europe, included all of these colonial master nations as part of it. By coming down on the side of these European nations in their struggles with their colonies, out of a misguided NATO based loyalty, the U.S. made a massive foreign policy mistake; a mistake that JFK was one of the few to recognize as it was happening.

Kennedy’s views on the necessity of civil liberties and our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, even in the face of significant national security threats, illustrate another major difference between his thinking and the standard Cold War mentality of the day. The speech referenced at the top of this article may well provide the best example of this; and since I cannot make JFK’s points any clearer or more eloquently than he can, I am taking this opportunity to quote liberally from the speech itself. With that in mind, here is John F. Kennedy on civil liberties vs. national security, from his speech delivered to the National Civil Liberties Clearing House Annual Conference on April 16, 1959:

“Faced with the severest test this nation has ever known, the test of survival itself, it is high time we examine the role of civil liberties in helping us meet this test. The fundamental truths upon which our constitutional structure of civil liberties are based are not very complicated or very subtle. On the contrary, our Founding Fathers held ‘these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.’

“In short, although our civil liberties also serve important private purposes—above all they were considered essential to the republican form of government. Such a government required that the consent of the governed be given freely, thoughtfully, and intelligently.

“The authors of the Constitution made clear their own belief that self-government on the one hand, and the truth on the other hand, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, are in fact two sides of the same coin. It is up to the American people, said (Alexander)Hamilton[17] in the first Federalist Paper,[18] ‘by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice…’

“The basic question confronting us today is whether these fundamentals still hold true, whether we really believe in this idea of a republic, whether today the American people would ratify the Constitution and adopt the Bill of Rights—or whether the dangers of external attack and internal subversion, promoted by a foe more sinister and more powerful than any the Founding Fathers knew, have so altered our world and our beliefs as to make these fundamental truths no longer applicable…

“All of us in this room have in recent years expressed our concern over this problem. We are concerned about those who dismiss the safeguards of the Bill of Rights as legal technicalities which should not be available in times of danger. We are concerned about those who regard the promise of equal protection of the laws—and the goal of full, first-class citizenship for all Americans—as expendable. We are concerned about the erosion of our rights in times of clear and present danger. We insist—or at least some insist—that individual rights must come before national security.

“It seems to me, when we go back to fundamentals, that this is a mistake—that the case for civil liberties will always be a losing one as long as it is couched in these terms. I am willing to predict bluntly that so long as the Bill of Rights is weighed in a scale against the interests of national security, most of the people and their representatives will choose national security, the Supreme Court to the contrary notwithstanding. As Hamilton observed in the eighth Federalist Paper, ‘Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will after a time give way to its dictates.’

“What we should be saying, it seems to me, is that there is no such conflict and no such choice to make. Freedom and security are but opposite sides of the same coin—and free expression of ideas is not more expendable but far more essential in a period of challenge and crisis. I am not so much concerned with the right of everyone to say anything he pleases as I am about our need as a self-governing people to hear everything relevant. If our people are to choose between political parties, between a balanced budget and a progressive America, between more bombs or fewer (nuclear bomb) tests—if we are to know how we really stand in the eyes of the world—then we need to know all the available facts…

“Only in this way can we as a self-governing people choose wisely and thoughtfully in our task of self-government. And it is only in this way that we can demonstrate once again that freedom is the hand-maiden of security—and that the truth will make us free.”

Nearly 60 years have passed since John Kennedy uttered the words quoted above. In that time we have witnessed the end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, only to be supplanted as a national security threat by the rise of international terrorism, the most stark example of which are the 9/11 attacks in 2001 that took the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans; and which led to the most recent massive expansion of the national security state. Because of these factors, with the elements of the national security apparatus more entrenched by far than in Kennedy’s time, our vigilance with regard to preserving our civil liberties and rights has never been more essential. We all must realize, as JFK stated above, that “freedom and security are but opposite sides of the same coin,” and do all we can to prevent national security concerns from intruding on our basic freedoms; for with these freedoms intact we as a nation are truly more secure, and not less.

This is the challenge of our times; and if the United States is to continue into the future as a free nation, and as the best example of such to the world, then we as a people must be equal to the task. And if we are, we will be doing all we can to live up to President Eisenhower’s words in his 1961 Farewell to the Nation address, when he said: “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

I don’t believe the old general ever said anything more true.

 

Copyright © 2018

By Mark Arnold

All Rights Reserved

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[1] John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) was the 35th President of the United States, serving from January 1961 until his assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963. A lifelong Democrat, prior to being elected to the Presidency in 1960 JFK served in the Senate (7 years) and House of Representatives (6 years) for his home state of Massachusetts. He also served in the Navy in the South Pacific during World War II and became a bonafide war hero when, on August 2^nd, 1943, the PT boat he was commanding (PT 109) was rammed and split in two by a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands. Though he had an injured back (that would bother him for the rest of his life) Kennedy led his 10 surviving men to safety (2 were killed in the collision) by swimming 3.5 miles to a nearby island while towing a badly burned crewman behind him. Six days later, after several more long swims to find food and water, Kennedy and his men were finally rescued. JFK’s political career and Presidency are controversial to this day, with a debate amongst historians still raging as to whether he as President would have prosecuted the Vietnam War, as President Johnson did, or if he would have gotten the U.S. out of Vietnam completely. In addition, the issue of whether his assassination was the result of a conspiracy or the act of a lone, crazed gunman (Lee Harvey Oswald) is still the subject of intense speculation.  

[2] Though I have given it a good search I have not been able to find a description of the National Civil Liberties Clearing House anywhere. When and if I do I will update this post.

[3] Four years after the U.S. used atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the close of World War II (August, 1945) the Soviet Union conducted its first successful test of a nuclear bomb on August 29^th, 1949.

[4] Mao Zedong (1893-1976) was one of the most influential leaders in world history and there is not enough room in this footnote to describe him adequately. To summarize, somewhere around 1920 he became a founding member of the Communist Party of China and ultimately led the communists in a civil war to gain control of the country that was interrupted by the fight against the Japanese in World War II. With the defeat of the Japanese the civil war resumed and in 1949 Mao’s forces defeated the Nationalist Chinese government which in turn withdrew to Taiwan. On October 1^st, 1949 Mao proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Across the next 25 years he would continue as the philosophical and political head of China, during which time he initiated a number of reforms with the aim of rapidly industrializing the nation, which had been primarily agrarian, while consolidating communist rule. As a result of famines caused by Mao’s reforms it is estimated that over 45 million people died in China between 1958 and 1962. Mao Zedong died in 1976 after a series of heart attacks. He was 82 years old.

[5] Yuri Gagarin (1934-1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who, on 12 April 1961, went down in history as the first human being to be launched into space and to also complete an orbit of the planet. Gagarin’s voyage aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft was his only trip into space, and for it he was awarded his nation’s highest honor, Hero of the Soviet Union. Yuri Gagarin died in 1968 when the MIG 15 jet he was flying crashed.

[6] Fidel Castro (1926-2016) was the leader of the island nation of Cuba from 1959 until 2006 when he turned his responsibilities over to his brother Raoul. There is no Latin American leader who has had a greater impact on the history and policies of the United States than Castro. Through the late 1950’s he led a successful revolution against the U.S. supported corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista, finally deposing him on Dec 31^st, 1958 when Batista fled Cuba and went into exile. Initially the U.S. did not quite know what to make of the new Cuban leader but it wasn’t long before Castro resolved any uncertainty through a series of actions he took, nationalizing U.S. owned businesses and initiating land reforms that took land from wealthy land owners and re-distributed it to peasants. Though initially he denied he was a communist, the regime he was forming in Cuba was clearly leaning in that direction. The U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in early January, 1961, right before JFK became President. By then a huge CIA “covert” operation, which had been authorized by President Eisenhower in 1960, to train and equip 1500 or so anti-Castro Cubans to invade Cuba and re-take the island from Castro, was well underway. When Kennedy assumed office he inherited this “covert op” and authorized it to continue, based on the information provided to him by the CIA. It was a decision he would soon come to regret, as the invasion, which took place on 17 April, 1961 at the Bay of Pigs on the southern shore of Cuba, was a colossal failure and a huge embarrassment to the new President. Following the Bay of Pigs Castro’s well-founded fear that the U.S. would continue to try and subvert his government led directly to his request that the Soviet Union install nuclear missiles in Cuba and, ultimately, to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous 2 week period in world history. Castro survived all the CIA sponsored attempts at deposing him, which included using the Mafia to try and kill him, as well as equipping and supporting a number of anti-Castro Cuban groups to do the same and also to wreak havoc in the nation to foment rebellion. The Cuban leader defied them all, finally passing away in 2016 at the age of 90.

[7] Fulgencio Batista (1901-1973) was the Cuban dictator in power from 1952, when he led a coup that deposed President Carlos Prias Soccarras, until the end of 1959 when he fled Cuba just as Castro’s rebellion was closing in on Havanna and was on the verge of victory. Batista received financial and military support from the U.S. Government and also cut lucrative deals with Mafia kingpins Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano on their gambling and prostitution operations in Havanna, as well as with U.S. corporations that controlled the sugar, oil, mining and banking industries in Cuba, among others. Across the ‘50s Batista’s regime became more and more repressive, utilizing secret police, torture and censorship as methods to retain his control, thus exacerbating the conditions that made Cuba ripe for revolution. When Batista fled Cuba he took with him an estimated $300 million amassed from the payoffs and graft he collected as President. He died of a heart attack in Spain on August 6^th, 1973.

[8] For the full story of how the United States created South Vietnam, a country that did not exist before 1954, and why, please see the series of articles in the archives of this blog entitled “JFK And The Road To Dallas: Ramping Up The Vietnam War,” parts I-V

[9] Ngo Dinh Diem (1901-1963) was a Catholic Vietnamese national who after 4 years of exile from Vietnam (1950-1954) in the U.S. and Europe returned to his country in 1954 following the French defeat by the Viet Minh forces of Ho Chi Minh at the climactic battle of Dien Bien Phu in Northern Vietnam. With the defeat of the French the Geneva Conference of 1954 mandated that the country of Vietnam be split at the 17^th parallel for a period of 2 years after which a nationwide election would be held to determine the type of government the country would have and who its leaders would be. It was specifically noted in the agreement that this division was temporary and that the 17^th parallel was not to be a border, but a demarcation line only. During this two-year period the CIA and other elements of the U.S. government manipulated things so that the called for election never occurred and South Vietnam emerged as its own country, the Republic of Vietnam, with Diem as its President. Across the next 7 years, through the late ‘50s and into the early 60s, with North Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh’s leadership still dedicated to the goal of a single Vietnam nation, the South became subject to increasing infiltration and guerilla warfare against Diem’s government from the North. By the late 50’s the U.S, was becoming increasingly involved in this conflict through military and economic support as well as military advisors in country training and assisting the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) During this time Diem became more and more autocratic, employing censorship, torture and imprisonment as means to exert his control and maintain his power. He was particularly harsh on the Buddhist population in South Vietnam, alienating them severely with his policies. By 1963, due largely to Diem’s repressiveness and intractability, he became the target of a coup by several ARVN generals and their allies in the CIA and U.S. government. As a result, Ngo Dinh Diem, at the age of 62, was murdered on 2 November, 1963 in Saigon, just 3 weeks before JFK himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.

[10] No understanding of the Cold War United States would be complete without an understanding of the role played by John Foster Dulles (1888-1959), who was President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State from 1953 until Dulles’s death in 1959. An ardent anti-communist, from his post Dulles concentrated his efforts on building the alliances he felt were necessary to combat international communism, principally the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a bit later the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). Along the way he and his brother Allen, who was Director of CIA at the same time John Foster was Secretary of State, were the two primary U.S. government officials who engineered the creation of South Vietnam in 1954, and who started the U.S. off on its long and tragic involvement in that Southeast Asian country. Prior to his political career Dulles was a partner in the New York international law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. In that capacity, across the 1930s he was heavily involved in assisting to arrange deals, mergers and loans between S and C’s U.S. corporate clients and businesses in Nazi Germany, thus playing a significant role in assisting in the German re-armament program prior to World War II.

[11] Allen Welsh Dulles (1893-1969) was the younger brother of John Foster Dulles and, as noted in the earlier footnote, was Director of CIA while John Foster was Secretary of State under President Eisenhower in the 1950s. A graduate of Princeton University, in his early career he was in the diplomatic service, which was followed, like his brother, by a stint with the international law firm Sullivan and Cromwell, during which time he was also involved in the international business dealings between U.S. corporations and businesses in Nazi Germany, With the coming of World War II he entered the fledgling intelligence service started by President Roosevelt, the Office of Strategic Services, and served as the Bern, Switzerland station chief during the war. During this time Dulles established many more contacts within Nazi Germany, and at the end of the war was instrumental in helping many Nazi scientists, engineers and intelligence people escape prosecution and relocate to the West. As CIA Director from 1953 to 1961 he oversaw the expansion of the Agency during its most critical growth period. Under his watchful eye and direction and using the justification of fighting communism, the CIA became involved in covert operations all over the globe, violating the sovereignty of other nations, fixing elections, overthrowing governments and even assassination. Dulles was fired by JFK in 1961 after the failed Bay of Pigs operation, thus putting to an end his intelligence career. A few years later he served on the Warren Commission, appointed by President Johnson to investigate JFK’s assassination, a move considered controversial by many because Kennedy had fired Dulles from his cherished CIA. After contracting pneumonia, Allen Dulles died in 1969.

[12] Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969) was a General in the United States Army who during World War II became the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and in that capacity oversaw Operation Overlord (the invasion of France on D Day, June 6^th 1944, by the Allied Forces) as well as the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi Germany. Following the war he served as military governor of the American occupied zone in Germany followed by becoming Chief of Staff if the United States Army. In 1948 he became the president of Columbia University and in 1952 accepted the nomination for President of the United States by the Republican Party. After winning the election, he became President in 1953. He appointed John Foster Dulles as his Secretary of State and Allen Dulles as Director of CIA, and it was under Eisenhower’s watch that the CIA achieved its most major expansion and that the National Security State took firm root in the U.S., though it is likely that had more to do with the Dulles brothers than Eisenhower. It was the Dulles brothers who, in 1954, engineered the creation of South Vietnam and America’s entry into the Vietnam War. Likely Eisenhower, by the end of his Presidency, was grasping what was happening to his country and did his best to alert the American people in his Farewell address; but for the most part it was too late. After JFK was assassinated in 1963, with Lyndon Johnson as President, the Vietnam War underwent massive escalation which became a source of huge divisiveness in our country, from which it has yet to recover.

[13] The National Security Act of 1947 mandated a major reorganization of the foreign policy and military establishments of the U.S. Government. The act created the National Security Council (NSC) (composed of the President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and Director of CIA as well as necessary administrative staff), the purpose of which was to discuss and advise on long term problems as well as short term security crises. The act also established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which grew out of World War II era Office of Strategic Services and small post-war intelligence organizations. The CIA served as the primary civilian intelligence-gathering organization in the government. Later, the Defense Intelligence Agency became the main military intelligence body. The 1947 law also caused far-reaching changes in the military establishment. The War Department and Navy Department merged into a single Department of Defense under the Secretary of Defense, who also directed the newly created Department of the Air Force. However, each of the three branches maintained their own service secretaries. In 1949 the act was amended to give the Secretary of Defense more power over the individual services and their secretaries.

[14] Edward Snowden (1983 –   ) is a former CIA and NSA contract employee who, in 2013, leaked classified NSA documents revealing that the U.S. intelligence community and its partners, including the UK, Israeli and German spy agencies, are involved in warrantless mass surveillance of citizens both domestically and abroad. Numerous documents show that, beyond the espionage performed for counterterrorism purposes, the NSA and its partners carried out political and industrial espionage, including the bugging of European Union and UN buildings. Despite the many millions of people that the transnational surveillance systems affect, these have been constructed without the knowledge, authorization or scrutiny of the elected legislative bodies of the US and its partner countries – much less the public. Snowden felt that this important information should be democratized. Snowden’s revelations have led to numerous investigations into U.S. surveillance and violations of human rights to privacy and freedom of information.

[15] The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created in 1979 by presidential executive order for the purpose of coordinating disaster response in situations where the disaster has overwhelmed the available resources of local and state authorities to handle it. FEMA, which was assimilated into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003 in the wake of 9/11, in addition to disaster response, provides state and local governments with experts in specialized fields and funding for rebuilding efforts and training of response personnel.   

[16] Jacobo Arbenz (1913-1971) was the President of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954, when he was removed from post by a U.S. backed CIA inspired coup. While in office Arbenz instituted and carried forward a number of progressive reforms, which put him at odds with the Dulles brothers in the U.S. government. These included expanding the right to vote, allowing workers to organize and form unions, legitimizing political parties and allowing public debate. Most significant however, was his agrarian reform program, which mandated the expropriation of uncultivated portions of large landholdings and their redistribution to poverty-stricken agricultural workers and peasants. Much of this land was taken from the United Fruit Company, a U.S. corporation that at one point had been represented by the Dulles brothers when they were with Sullivan and Cromwell. United Fruit lobbied for Arbenz to be overthrown and thus the Dulles run CIA brought about the 1954 coup, after which Arbenz went into exile through several countries. Replacing him was a military dictator named Carlos Castillo Armas, who was followed by a series of military dictators, who, though they enjoyed the support of the U.S., were mostly disdained by the Guatemalan people. The result was a bloody decades long civil war during which it is estimated that 200,000 Guatemalans perished, mostly killed by government forces. The civil war ended in 1996 and in 2011 the Guatemalan government issued a formal apology for the 1954 coup that deposed Arbenz. The former Guatemalan president died in Mexico in 1971.

[17] Of all the founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton’s (1755?-1804) story is at once the most unusual and unlikely. Born out of wedlock on the Caribbean island of Nevis, most likely in 1755, and orphaned at a young age; he arose from an impoverished childhood with no prospects and bootstrapped himself to success on the back of a brilliant mind, hard work and luck. Sometime in late 1772 or early 1773 Hamilton left his Caribbean boyhood home in St. Croix never to return; and by early 1774 he was enrolled at King’s College in New York City. The advent of the American Revolution found him in the Continental Army where his brilliance and hard work brought him to the attention of none other than George Washington. Hamilton served as Washington’s aide de camp for most of the war. He was present at the climactic Battle of Yorktown, distinguishing himself in one of the final charges on British positions, becoming a famous war hero in the process. With the close of the war Hamilton returned to school intending to become a lawyer. He completed his education in record time, compressing three years of studies into nine months, and soon became one of the most sought after attorneys in the state of New York. Observing the situation in the country under the Articles of Confederation, he became active in politics as one of the young country’s staunchest advocates for a strong central government that could unify the nation and potentially get a handle on the economic problems besetting it; about which Hamilton had definite ideas. He would go on to become one of the main framers of the U.S. Constitution and also was the principle author of the Federalist Papers, (alluded to by JFK in his speech) a series of some 80 essays originally published under pseudonyms that explained the various features and attributes of the new form of government to popularize it and ensure its ratification by the states. Hamilton was also instrumental in convincing George Washington to become the first President and then became the first Secretary of the Treasury under Washington. In that capacity he was incredibly productive, accomplishing far too much to detail here; but some of the major elements were the establishment of the U.S. Mint, the creation of the country’s first National Bank, its first system of taxation and the establishment of the U.S. Coast Guard. He was also instrumental in the creation of what would become the New York Stock Exchange. Hamilton died in 1804 when he was shot and killed in a duel by Aaron Burr.

[18] For a brief description of the Federalist Papers please see the previous footnote on Alexander Hamilton.