0:00

Hmm, we're

0:03

bad. By

0:05

the time we get to the third part of this, I just have nothing.

0:08

It's either a tonal screeching or just

0:10

what you got, which is ship And I'm

0:12

ashamed. But what are you? What

0:14

are you gonna do? You're gonna go to another podcast? You're gonna

0:17

listen to the fucking Cometown. No, you're

0:19

not. You're gonna listen to the third part of the Dullest

0:21

Brothers episode. You

0:23

you worms, you

0:26

Brian Shrimp. I'm sorry,

0:28

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what I'm

0:30

doing here. My guest again for part

0:33

three, who is my guest in the episode?

0:35

Not my guest in emotionally abusing

0:37

my audience for no reason is Jason

0:39

Pargeon. Part of it is that this

0:42

is a big subject, I guess, not

0:44

just that it's a seventeen

0:46

hour long marathon of podcasts.

0:48

It's a it's a big subject

0:50

to try to explain, to try to condense,

0:53

to try to convey, and

0:55

it's big. It's like we're

0:57

trying to explain why the world

1:00

is the way it is now and has been for

1:02

the last half century. It's difficult

1:04

to get it across. It would be one thing, like

1:06

if you're just doing a very long podcast

1:08

on say the O. J. Simpson trial,

1:11

which is one singular subject with a certain

1:13

number of players, this subject the

1:15

Dullest Brothers in the Cold War. It's

1:18

so expansive and there's

1:20

so many side roads you could

1:22

get off on that it is mentally

1:25

taxing to even think about it.

1:27

It's fucking exhausting. Um.

1:30

And it's you know, I was just saying the other like,

1:32

there's a there is a set of left

1:34

wing conspiracy theories. You think that I'm

1:36

a CIA operative, And I'm sure

1:39

those people um who sometimes

1:41

listen to the podcast for reasons that

1:43

that escaped me um

1:45

will be like, Oh, he didn't bring this up, and it's

1:47

because he doesn't want people to say, or he didn't bring this up and

1:50

because he doesn't want people thinking about it. No, it's because

1:52

there's too much. Like we're barely

1:54

going to talk about m k Ultra, which

1:56

Alan Dulls masterminded in a lot

1:58

of ways, and which was the cia A drugging thousands

2:01

of random people with acid. We're not even

2:03

gonna really get into it today because there's

2:05

just too much to cover. We're gonna do a whole two partter

2:07

on M K. L. Drew Don't don't, don't worry about

2:09

that. There's a lot to talk about here, but

2:12

like there's just you can't unless

2:14

you're gonna be talking for fifty hours about

2:17

the Dullest Brothers and what they did, You're going

2:19

to leave shit out. It's just too

2:21

big a subject. And then there's a question of like

2:23

how much time do you devote to what they did, and how much

2:25

time do you devote to the influence of what they

2:27

did and how it shook out in history and

2:29

the context of why they did why,

2:31

Which is why I find this interesting myself,

2:34

as like what goes through the mind

2:36

of someone like that. But for example, one

2:39

of the two brothers, he is just now

2:41

about to become the head of CIA,

2:44

just trying to convey to the average

2:46

person what all the CIA does,

2:50

because it's not just a bunch of spies. Every

2:53

country's got that the

2:55

CIA. You will ultimately here like

2:58

they seem to have their own army,

3:01

couple of them, and can organize and can

3:03

invade countries. It's like, well, now, wait a

3:05

second, how does that tie into what we know about

3:07

Like a James Bond type characters like, the

3:10

CIA is more than what you think

3:12

it is. The reason conspiracy people can

3:14

think that they've got their fingers in a

3:17

podcast host is

3:20

because there's almost no

3:22

limit on what they can do as

3:25

long as the President wants

3:27

it done. Which is where

3:29

the last episode left off, is that they basically

3:31

have this mission statement is like whatever

3:34

whatever it takes, that's

3:36

it. That's the end of the sentence. It's whatever.

3:39

Part of like what the CIA like.

3:41

Why the CIA like work the way it did is you

3:43

have you you have a bunch of different

3:45

ways that you're going to be shotgunning money out to people

3:47

and shotgunning arms out to people, and you use

3:50

you establish all these different agencies

3:52

and all these different you have these little different

3:54

rat lines through other government agencies

3:57

that do other stuff too, but that you're also

3:59

able to shotgun money through or have operatives

4:01

in because again there's no limit to what the

4:04

CIA can do if the President tells them

4:06

to or if they're pretty sure the President would

4:08

have told them too, but they didn't want to bother him about it, so they

4:10

just did it anyway, which is also something the

4:12

CIA does. Cool dudes, Yeah,

4:17

as John Krasinski said, we should be

4:19

thankful for them every day. Jason,

4:23

did you catch when John Krasinski got into a Twitter

4:25

fight with Cody over that? No?

4:28

I didn't. Oh yeah,

4:30

Well, there's there was an account that kept

4:33

really dragging Cody for Cody dragging

4:35

John Krasinski for talking about how great the CIA

4:38

is, and people started to think that maybe

4:40

it was John Krasinski. And then there's a thing you

4:42

can do where you can see some of the letters

4:44

in uh, somebody's email address

4:47

if you try to get their password on Facebook

4:49

and it seems to match with John Krasinski's

4:51

email. It

4:55

was a good time. We all had a fun week um

4:58

with John Krasinski and Cody arguing. Cody

5:01

Johnston friend of the pod um.

5:03

Anyway, all right, I'm sorry,

5:06

let's let's just get into this episode.

5:08

So from the beginning, the more

5:11

intelligent members of the federal government

5:13

had their reservations about the CIA.

5:15

The United States has never before had

5:17

an international intelligence agency outside

5:20

of wartime, let alone one with the purview as

5:22

wide as whatever the president says. Um

5:25

Dean Atchison, President Truman's foreign

5:27

policy adviser and an eventual Secretary

5:29

of State expressed quote gravest

5:31

forebodings about the CIA when

5:33

it was established. He warned the President

5:36

that quote, neither he, nor the National

5:38

Security Council, nor anyone else would be in

5:40

a position to know what it was doing or to control

5:42

it. Harry Truman himself leader

5:44

wrote, it was not intended to be a cloak

5:47

and dagger outfit. It was intended

5:49

merely as a center for keeping the President

5:51

informed on what was going on in the world.

5:53

Now, it's debatable as to whether or not

5:55

Harry Truman's being honest here right like

5:58

did was that really your intent? Or

6:00

did you just see what happened and want to distance

6:03

yourself from it? That can be argued.

6:05

But if Truman's goal from

6:07

the beginning was for it to be very different than

6:09

what it became, he and didn't

6:12

really fight hard to stop it from a changing.

6:14

Six months after the CIA's creation,

6:16

communists in Czechoslovakia carried

6:18

out what is often referred to as a constitutional

6:21

coup. Now, the history here is complex,

6:23

but in brief, at the end of World War Two, the Czech Communist

6:26

Party was super popular due to the fact

6:28

that they fought against the Nazis and the fact

6:30

that the USSR had liberated Czechoslovakia

6:33

from the Nazis. Communism was pretty popular

6:35

at the end of the war um the party grew

6:37

from about fifty thousand members of nineteen forty

6:40

five to well over a million by nineteen forty

6:42

eight. It swept the nineteen forty

6:44

six elections, winning thirty eight percent of

6:46

the vote, which is still the best ever

6:49

performance of a European communist

6:51

party in a free election. Now,

6:53

since Czechoslovakia was a parliamentary

6:55

democracy, the Communists didn't take

6:57

complete power because they'd won. They just were

6:59

like the dominant block and government. You know, that's

7:01

how parliaments work. But they quickly

7:04

alienated voters and fractured the broad

7:06

left wing alliance they've been a part of, you know,

7:08

understandable reasons. Once you take power, you're never

7:10

as popular as you are when you're trying to get

7:12

it. It became clear that the next

7:14

set of elections were going to go worse for the Communists,

7:17

and so they used their control of the police

7:19

and a network of trade union militious to

7:21

seize total power. This set off

7:24

alarm bells across the West and led to

7:26

a sort of paranoia that other European

7:28

communist parties were just biding their time.

7:30

Until they could carry out the same kind of coup.

7:33

So the CIA used this in as an excuse

7:35

to start pouring money into operations

7:37

aimed at countering other European communist

7:40

parties, namely in Italy and France. In

7:42

Italy, they funded a Christian nationalist

7:44

party that was seen as pro us, and

7:47

they recruited Catholic officials to preach against

7:49

communism. They drowned the nation

7:51

in a wave of propaganda. Alan

7:53

Doles was not yet a regular employee

7:55

of the CIA, but he took a leave of absence

7:58

from his lawyering to kind of pro bono

8:00

help organize CIA efforts in Italy,

8:02

because again he missed the fun of being a

8:04

spy. Now, the fact that

8:06

Alan Dullis had traveled to Italy to help the

8:09

CIA did not go unnoticed. Again,

8:11

he's a bad spy. The Boston Globe

8:13

ran an article with the headline Dullas

8:16

masterminds new Cold War plan

8:18

under secret agents. So really

8:22

bad at being a secret agent. I just

8:24

can't emphasize this enough. Kind

8:26

of the way that James Bond catched his

8:28

catch phrases him telling people his name,

8:31

Yeah, if

8:34

you're if you're a famous spy,

8:36

that's bad. But he was a

8:38

famous spy. Yeah,

8:40

he was a famous spy, which you

8:42

shouldn't be so at this

8:44

stage of things, the CIA's aide in Italy,

8:46

Will Aid, is a weird that what this? You know, the

8:49

ship the CIA is doing in Italy was entirely

8:51

focused around propaganda and providing

8:54

funds to sympathetic politicians are mostly

8:56

focused. But even at this early stage,

8:58

Alan and his colleagues were just discussing the

9:00

possibility of organizing mass violence

9:03

as a way to achieve their ends. They

9:05

reached out to several officers in the Italian

9:07

military with the aim of organizing

9:09

a couta ta if the Communists won. From

9:12

right up by the Wilson Center quote, they

9:15

viewed the project as possessing an extremely

9:17

grave implications, carrying with it the probability

9:20

of plunging Italy into a bloody civil

9:22

war and seriously hazarding the start

9:24

of World War Three. But since the

9:26

scheme represented a final, though

9:28

thorough desperate action to hold Italy

9:30

for the Western Bloc, they did not want

9:32

to discard it and recommended immediate

9:35

exploration. So they

9:37

decide, like, okay, Italy might go Communists,

9:39

we have to set up a network capable

9:41

of carrying out a coup if the Communist went an election,

9:44

we have to like get all these guys in the army

9:46

to help, to be willing to overthrow the government.

9:48

Even though if that happens it might start World

9:51

War three and end all life and hume on Earth,

9:53

the fact that it would stop Italy from going communist

9:56

is a worthy risk. Like that's the cost

9:58

been, Like we have them in writing making that cost

10:00

benefit analysis basics. Once you have

10:03

an enemy that you've decided as an

10:05

existential threat to everything,

10:08

and as we mentioned in the last episode, that became

10:10

the habit of making sure we always

10:12

had one of those ye, you

10:15

will have a blank check to do

10:17

absolutely anything in

10:20

anything, including exterminating

10:23

life on Earth. We

10:25

were and are fully prepared

10:28

to render the species extinct

10:31

rather than let it continue

10:33

on under communism.

10:36

If you sit back and think about that, that's kind of

10:38

weird. Yeah, it's it's a little odd

10:40

because like, I'm not a I'm not a state

10:42

communist, but I think life, even

10:45

with all the critiques I have of the U. S s R,

10:48

still better than death. But

10:51

once that template was established

10:54

after World War Two, it

10:56

would always be so and we mentioned last

10:58

episode that after Nino and then like Islam

11:01

and the encroaching, like the fear

11:03

of you had, you had small towns in America

11:05

passing laws saying that they

11:08

could not be ruled by Sharia law. Yeah,

11:10

yeah, exactly. There's some small town

11:13

in Nebraska afraid that it any day

11:15

now the Muslims are going to come

11:17

take over that small town. And

11:19

because that's our only way we can think

11:21

about problems. So if you have

11:24

that in mind that at any moment, Islam

11:26

is going to utterly take over the world and depose

11:28

capitalism. Capitalism

11:31

the most unkillable idea

11:33

in the history of civilization,

11:37

like almost impossibly

11:39

durable ideology. Yeah, yeah,

11:42

the idea. Once you've sold the idea that civilization

11:45

and freedom and free markets

11:47

and capitalism are utterly fragile

11:49

and at any moment can be toppled by the next

11:52

threat on the horizon, whether it's communism,

11:54

whether it's the Muslims. What are the next thing is going to

11:56

be? And we must

11:58

do anything, anything,

12:01

anything is morally justified, and

12:03

stopping it, you're

12:05

doomed. You have set yourself down a dark

12:08

road because there's no checks

12:10

in that direction. The moment anyone

12:12

says, hey, you went too far, it's

12:14

like, oh, so you're a secret comy.

12:17

And that was that was the atmosphere

12:19

the Dulles Is established and would

12:22

establish, and that we've lived under until

12:24

now. You can still scare. You can win elections

12:26

today with the red scare. People

12:29

are still just as afraid of Communism

12:31

as they were, which is bizarre.

12:34

Like the idea that Donald Trump can talk about

12:36

encroaching Marxism in America,

12:40

It's like, what power do Marxists

12:43

have in this country? But it doesn't

12:45

matter that fear run is

12:47

now etched into our d n A and

12:50

you can thank the Dullest Brothers for that to

12:52

a very large extent, you

12:54

really can um.

12:57

It's bleak um. It's I

13:01

really it would be nice to

13:03

be able to have because it, you know, it leads

13:05

to this, It leads to this, this kind of

13:08

same thing on the other end of things, where because

13:10

of this the way that kind of these tensions around

13:12

communism when I get ratcheted because just that's

13:15

the way we go when we talk about enemies

13:17

and our culture right that it's existential,

13:20

you get It's led to this complete

13:23

death of nuance on all sides. So now

13:25

if you're if you're on the far left, you

13:28

can't be like, you can't analyze geopolitics

13:30

by saying like, okay, well who's the right and who's in the

13:32

wrong. There's a lot of people who just be like, well, whoever

13:34

is not the United States is in the right, and

13:37

that leads them to back Bashar al Assad or

13:39

whatever um or, or back Russia,

13:41

or think that that China is is

13:44

this perfect um embodiment

13:46

of the socialism they want. It's it

13:49

all. It infects everything.

13:51

I guess the fact that everyone has

13:53

to be at this level of every

13:55

threat as an existential threat, every

13:57

threat ends an extermination. I

14:00

I think it just it has got it. It's so

14:02

deep into our culture that it affects everything,

14:05

and that's probably bad. It's

14:09

it's extremely important to understand that mindset,

14:11

though, because this is this is what we'll

14:13

govern, the way they're going to do business

14:17

for the rest of the time they're in power, that the

14:19

Dulleses are in power, which is about to start

14:22

very soon, because everything we've discussed, when these

14:24

guys should have ruined their career as many times

14:26

over, they will both be rewarded by

14:28

becoming two of the most powerful people

14:30

on earth in the history that

14:33

we've laid out is going to get them elevated

14:35

to about as high as you can go without being

14:38

president. And I in ways more powerful

14:40

than presidents some presidents they both served

14:42

longer. Yeah, so definitely

14:45

they're both more powerful than Jimmy Carter was.

14:47

I think we can all agree on that. So

14:51

yeah. In France, the CIA

14:53

intervened to crush a Communist led strike

14:56

of duck dock workers in Marseille. They

14:58

developed an ongoing relationship with several clans

15:00

of Corsican gangsters who they hired

15:03

and used to violently crushed the labor

15:05

movement in Marseilles in nine and

15:08

again in nineteen fifty. And I think this is kind of the

15:10

first example of the CIA basically

15:12

bringing in a mercenary force to do violence

15:14

against their political enemies. And it's

15:17

I don't I don't know that anyone dies, and they

15:19

might have happened. I haven't found a lot of detail on this,

15:21

but this is kind of the very beginning.

15:24

Now, while Alan Dulas was helping his colleagues

15:26

in the Agency explore the boundaries of their

15:28

new powers, Foster Dulas was

15:30

still a lawyer for Sullivan and Cromwell.

15:32

He continued to dip his toes into politics,

15:35

growing deeper woven into the upper strata

15:37

of the Republican Party as the nineteen

15:39

fifties took off. His attitude about international

15:42

orders started to shift. Before

15:44

and during World War Two. As we talked about last episode,

15:46

he believed the root of conflict was the failure

15:49

of national leaders to cooperate. Right,

15:52

that's why you know, you want to spread all this business

15:54

around because it creates these these inner connections

15:56

that can bring peace. Now, Foster's

15:58

view shifted as the Cold War kicked off.

16:01

He came to believe that all global instability

16:03

had its roots in the action of a single

16:06

nation, the Soviet Union. Now,

16:08

this was a period in which, and I guess you can say

16:11

that's kind of consistent to his earlier view, because the Soviet

16:13

Union doesn't ostensibly accept

16:15

you know, business interests and stuff. So I don't know,

16:17

maybe that's how he justified it in his head. This

16:20

was a period though, in which labor movements

16:22

and anti colonial movements were taking off in

16:24

Africa and Indo China and in Latin America

16:27

just to name a few places. Um

16:29

Foster viewed all of this as not

16:32

the results of decades of oppression, of poverty,

16:34

of exploitation, but as the result

16:36

of Soviet meddling. From

16:38

the Brothers quote, he began reading

16:41

and rereading Problems of Leninism, a

16:43

collection of Stalin's essays and speeches. By

16:45

one account, he owned six or more pencil

16:47

marked copies and kept each in one of his workplaces.

16:50

He considered it a blueprint for world

16:52

conquest and came to believe that the October

16:55

Revolution had basically been the seed of an

16:57

inevitable process that, if left unchecked,

16:59

would end the very existence of world capitalism.

17:02

Now, Foster believed that Soviet

17:04

Communism was doing to the West

17:06

into the Christian world what Islam had done

17:09

hundreds of years earlier, and a lot of his writings

17:11

he would draw a direct connection between what

17:13

Islam did during like the time that's kind of

17:15

the Muslim empires were expanding, and then what

17:17

we call the medieval period um

17:20

and he would draw a line between that and Soviet

17:22

communism, which I find interesting because

17:24

in the you know, the twenty one century,

17:27

a lot of conservatives drew

17:29

back to kind of Soviet like

17:31

the kind of the way we talked about the Soviet Union

17:33

to talk about the problems of radical Islam. It's

17:36

just interesting that Foster recognized.

17:38

I guess that connection too in a way both because

17:40

they're there are both is He sought threats to

17:42

the Christian Western order. Um, and

17:44

if you want to see the perfect intersection of those

17:46

saying, watched the movie Rambo three. Yes,

17:52

like not a joke, Um,

17:54

it's all in there. So Foster

17:57

was willing to admit, it's interesting to me that

17:59

that Auster sees Soviet

18:02

Communism as this kind of existential

18:04

threat in a way that he didn't see Nazism.

18:07

He was willing later on to admit

18:09

that the Nazis had committed terrible crimes, and

18:11

even that those crimes had had their roots to night

18:14

Nazi ideology, but he accepted

18:16

Nazism as essentially Western

18:19

Communism, he thought was

18:21

an ultimate evil and impossible

18:23

to compromise with. You can compromise with Nazis,

18:26

Foster believed you can't compromise

18:28

with Communists, which

18:30

is ironic in part because both the Nazis

18:33

and Communists compromise with each other on

18:35

a number of occasions. But that's

18:39

aside the point now. In his columns

18:41

and speeches, Dulas insisted that the United

18:43

States was in a struggle to the death with Communism.

18:46

Defeat would mean the end of humanity.

18:49

Quote, we are the only great nation whose

18:51

people have not been drained physically or spiritually.

18:53

It devolves upon us to give leadership

18:55

and restoring principle as a guide

18:57

to conduct. If we do not do that, the world

19:00

will not be worth living in. Indeed,

19:02

it probably will be a world in which

19:04

human beings cannot live again.

19:07

The victory of communism is the extermination

19:10

of the human race. That's the only way this ends.

19:13

Um. Yeah.

19:15

Now, it's worth noting that Foster

19:18

Dulus was not unopposed in his views. One

19:20

man who argued against him was Reinhold Neiber,

19:22

who he'd served with in the Just Endurable

19:25

Peace Commission after the war. Neiber

19:27

weren't warned that the great danger to the

19:29

West was not Communism but the

19:31

American ego, writing quote,

19:34

if we should perish, the ruthlessness

19:36

of the foe would only be the secondary cause

19:38

of the disaster. The primary cause

19:40

would be that the strength of a great nation

19:43

was directed by eyes too blind to

19:45

see all the hazards of the struggle, and

19:47

the blindness would be induced not by some

19:50

accident of nature or history, but

19:52

by hatred and vain glory, which

19:55

I think is accurate both then and

19:57

now. Like you

19:59

can s the same thing about our response

20:01

to nine eleven. In a lot of ways,

20:04

Um, the danger is not what

20:07

actual attacks the enemy carries out.

20:09

It's about how our egos lead us

20:11

to react to them. That's extremely

20:14

key here, because the entire

20:16

purpose of doing this series and why it's

20:19

relevant and why it's interesting lies

20:21

in my opinion, and that the reason

20:23

the Dulles doesn't matter is because

20:25

this ideology that

20:28

everything stopping

20:31

communism justifies anything and everything.

20:35

That's what they brought to the world or helped

20:37

cement in the world, because that's what

20:39

that quote that you you know, you read

20:41

off there about that like surrendering,

20:44

surrendering to communism means extinction of the

20:46

human race, as if communism is a cancer

20:49

that's growing in the body

20:51

of humanity. That sounds

20:53

like the ranting of an

20:56

extremist, crazy person at

20:58

a rally, that that would bayly

21:00

become the de facto American belief

21:02

for the next half century. Everything

21:05

about the way we behaved and everything

21:08

that the CIA did, it all comes

21:10

back to that and the fact that

21:12

that was so easy to abuse.

21:16

Because once you've established that any

21:18

pro labor movement is secretly

21:21

communist, you

21:23

now have justification to to intervene

21:26

anywhere labor rights spring

21:29

up in the name of stamping out

21:31

the seeds of communism. Because of that

21:33

slippery slope fallacy,

21:36

where anywhere you have workers taking to the

21:38

streets and demanding better conditions,

21:40

are demanding whatever things that otherwise

21:42

would seem distinctly American, you

21:45

can now justify intervention in

21:47

any in all sorts of underhand

21:50

ways, based

21:52

on, well, this is fighting

21:54

the cancer, this is fighting the knife

21:57

at the throat of humanity that is

21:59

communist. Someome where there's some

22:01

alternate reality where the capitalists

22:03

simply says, hey, will outcompete

22:06

them, will show them the capitalism is better,

22:08

will you know, will lead by example,

22:11

will become so strong with our economy that

22:13

we will prove that communism doesn't work,

22:15

that that is not the path they took.

22:18

Nope, And it's you

22:20

know, there's an interesting similarity

22:22

to me when we talk about the

22:25

way the rhetoric works and where it leads

22:27

people to something I see kind of

22:29

in the I'm seeing increasingly

22:31

become common on on both the kind

22:33

of extremist libertarian and the extremist

22:36

right wing um with groups

22:38

like the Proud Boys and groups like the Boogaloo Boys, where

22:40

they walk around the shirts that are that say shoot

22:42

your local pedophile, and

22:44

they're not. Their problem is

22:46

not actually with pedophiles. What they are

22:49

doing is equatings

22:51

basically saying this thing, this thing that comes

22:53

up again and again in conspiratorial culture where

22:55

all of your enemies are secretly pedophiles,

22:58

And the reason you would want to do

23:00

that is because you can do anything to a pedophile.

23:03

It's the ultimate evil. So I

23:05

wear these shirts that harry these signs that same opposing

23:07

pedophiles, and whoever I'm beating up

23:10

is a pedophile, right, Like, that's that's it's

23:12

this, it's the same. I know it's not the same

23:15

kind of logic, but it's an extension of that logic

23:17

of if the enemy is ultimate,

23:20

then all remedies

23:22

are on the table, you know, yeah,

23:25

because there can be because at that point, any

23:27

nuance is weakness. Any

23:30

nuance and how you approach like, oh, so you want

23:32

nuance, and how you approach pedophile as well,

23:34

we know what you are. It's because

23:36

they want to shut down any

23:38

discussion of what they're doing, and

23:41

that lets you go as far as you

23:43

want, because if you can just tag your enemies

23:46

as whatever, this trump card, this trump

23:48

card of evil that you

23:50

know at this point, there's nothing that even needs to be

23:52

discussed. Look, there

23:55

will be people possibly who listen to

23:57

this episode or these series and say,

24:00

oh, so you prefer a world and

24:02

wish everyone's living under the flag

24:05

of the Soviet Union or in

24:07

which these countries fall under. It's like

24:10

that's a child's thinking that

24:13

that the foreign policy is black

24:15

and white, and this battle between good and evil.

24:18

That's the stuff of blockbuster movies.

24:20

That's not how the real world works.

24:24

But it's not. And but again

24:26

it's so pervasive because you get this attitude

24:28

on the other side and the people who read who know a lot

24:30

of this stuff that we're saying about the dullest and who

24:32

it radicalizes them. But part

24:34

of what they take out of it as well, then

24:37

everything I've heard bad about the Soviet Union

24:39

must be a lie. And that's complicated by the fact

24:41

that we did tell a lot of lies about the Soviet

24:43

Union. But that doesn't mean it was a good

24:45

government. Like it. For one thing, it like

24:47

it didn't work out in the long run. Um,

24:50

but you you get this, you

24:52

can't. I don't know. There's there's no room for

24:54

nuance. Um. If you decide one side

24:56

is bad, then whoever they're in opposition to has

24:59

to be good and your friends and it can't

25:02

ever be complicated

25:04

because again, if it's complicated, if it's nuanced,

25:07

then for one thing, the level of the

25:09

number of options you have and sort of confronting

25:12

it are are reduced, and

25:14

you don't get to necessarily feel great about

25:17

what you did or

25:20

whatever. But movies

25:22

give you a black and white version of reality

25:24

because it is a fantasy

25:28

that that the pure morality, where the bad

25:30

guys literally refer to themselves

25:32

as the dark side. It's

25:35

that's that's a fantasy. That's not how

25:37

it exists. And so you can have

25:40

people in the name of fighting something

25:42

that is truly bad, such as child

25:46

predators, and using

25:48

that as justification to do unrelated

25:50

terrible things, and that doesn't

25:53

make them heroes. It's

25:55

the world is messy like

25:57

that. This is why, for those of you who

25:59

have been listening through this whole series, the very first

26:02

thing I asked was do you think

26:05

the dulles Is were true believers? Do you

26:07

think they believed in what they were doing, that they

26:09

were actually saving the world. And

26:11

the answer to that is difficult

26:14

to decipher

26:16

even as individuals, because

26:19

the two brothers approached this from very different

26:21

directions, and we need see the decisions they

26:23

made and the

26:25

and then the position they took later in life

26:28

is very different where they started. Even

26:30

in this case of two people, it's hard

26:32

to discern did they actually

26:35

think they were fighting on behalf of good

26:37

or were they just using it as cover

26:40

to do things on behalf of their former clients

26:43

from that law firm. And it's also

26:45

I think sometimes it's a mix of things. UM.

26:48

I'll compare this. I'll compare this to

26:50

some some of the kids in Portland who do UM,

26:53

do some of the rioting. UM.

26:55

I think there are people who believe

26:58

strongly that because of how bad these

27:00

issues with policing are, because of how and just capitalism

27:02

is, and because of how ineffective peaceful

27:04

protests has seemed to be in their in

27:06

their lives, the best thing they can do is

27:09

to go out and cause damage

27:12

right to to businesses, UM

27:14

to to police infrastructure. Because

27:17

that gets attention, that brings people,

27:19

makes people care about the issue, and that that accomplishes

27:22

you know, they'll point to like the burning of the Third Precinct in

27:24

Minneapolis and the impact that had on getting

27:26

some variant of justice for George Floyd.

27:29

UM. And they're there there, and and that's

27:31

logically consistent. I believe that they do believe

27:34

that when they go out and they light a fire, some

27:36

of those other people will also during that, you

27:38

know, loot from an apple store. And

27:40

I think that taking stuff from the apple

27:43

store. Not that I'm equating that

27:45

morally with overthrowing governments, but there's

27:48

a mix of I believe in this thing, but also here's an opportunity

27:50

for me, you know, like, oh, I can get a free thing to

27:53

write like it's it's it's an opportunity. It's

27:55

a mix of belief and opportunity.

27:57

And I think you see that. I think you see that in everybody,

27:59

right. And I think sometimes we've

28:01

tried to find justifications for things that are

28:04

our opportunities for us, UM

28:06

when we're also doing things we believe in.

28:08

I think it kind of everybody does that.

28:10

These guys are just doing it at a much bigger

28:13

scale. But I think it is a mix of I

28:15

believe, at least for Foster, I believe

28:18

these things about the world. I believe in

28:20

this struggle. I believe that the stakes are

28:22

this high. Oh, but also I can help this

28:24

guy that you know is paying me,

28:27

I can help him out too while furthering

28:29

the struggle. I I do think it. You

28:31

know, it's a mix of things.

28:34

And you have factions within the government, within

28:36

the business community where they may have some other

28:38

motivation for seeing a government overthrown.

28:41

They may have been they may have run into opposition

28:43

and trying to build a factory there, or

28:45

a rubber factory or whatever. And

28:47

so then it's very easy say, well,

28:50

you know, he's secretly friendly

28:52

with communists or whatever. Same way as

28:54

with the Red scare in the United States, if you

28:56

had a beef with somebody and he wanted

28:58

to get them rejected from the industry, it was you could

29:01

drum up that, well, you know, he attended a

29:03

meeting of communists last month. I can

29:05

prove it. And that even

29:07

though you personally have no concern

29:09

about communism where anything whatsoever,

29:12

it becomes a convenient opportunity to

29:14

jump on board and use that as an

29:16

excuse all of the stuff.

29:18

This is not off the subject. This is this is this

29:20

is the this is explaining. Yeah,

29:23

why America was the way it was

29:25

because you did have a combination of true believers,

29:27

but then you had a lot of people who saw opportunity

29:30

to jump to jump in. Yes,

29:32

that is exactly what we're what we're going

29:35

to be talking about all day today. First,

29:37

take an AD break, though, Yeah,

29:40

Sophie, you know what, why don't you take an AD break?

29:42

Huh? I would love to. I would Okay,

29:44

Well go do it, Sophie.

29:49

We'll be back soon. We're

29:55

back. So if he just took an AD break,

29:58

it was lovely, great time. Thank you, complain,

30:00

I'm glad. In April of

30:03

ninety eight, while the Secretary of State

30:05

was in Bogata for a conference, one of

30:07

Columbia's elected leaders was assassinated.

30:10

This sparked riots and mass violence

30:12

that killed thousands, and eventually this kind

30:14

of We've talked about violencia

30:16

in Colombia a couple of times on this podcast,

30:18

including during the Protocols episodes. This

30:20

this kind of fed into that hundreds of thousands

30:22

of people died by the time it was all over. In

30:25

short, what happened, the assassination

30:27

of this leader in Colombia and the violence that

30:29

followed it was the result of

30:31

a number of things. Growing conspiracism,

30:33

you know, we've talked about that in the Protocols

30:36

episode, violent rhetoric among the right

30:38

wing, the linguer, results of economic depression,

30:40

severe inequality, a bunch of

30:42

stuff contributed to the fact that left

30:45

and right in Columbia started massacring each

30:47

other. For years um but American

30:49

leaders paid had paid zero attention

30:52

to Colombian politics. None of them knew any

30:54

of the history, none of them had paid attention to why

30:57

this was happening, and so they just

30:59

kind of assumed that the violence had come out of

31:01

nowhere. And Foster Dulles

31:03

decided this meant that the violence was

31:05

the fault of Moscow, that, oh,

31:08

this seemed to come out of nowhere because I haven't been paying

31:10

attention to Columbia. It must be the Soviets

31:12

fault, right, they're trying to destabilize

31:14

our backyard. The seizure

31:16

of power by Czech communists and the violence

31:18

in Columbia we're seeing as proof that the Soviet

31:21

Union was orchestrating a grand global

31:23

plan to destroy the United States. A

31:25

Senate report later claimed US leaders

31:27

were in a state of quote near hysteria

31:30

by June of nineteen. So like

31:33

they're actually freaked out about this, right, this is

31:35

not a bunch of cold calculating you

31:37

know, capitalists plotting to destroy

31:39

this. So these are these are got a lot of people, a

31:42

lot of the people who are necessary

31:44

in order for the crimes we were about to talk about to

31:46

happen. Believe truly that

31:48

like the they're staring down the barrel

31:50

of a Soviet rifle, so to speak. That

31:53

same month, June of the National

31:55

Security Council issued Directive n

31:57

SC tende Slash two secret

32:00

order approved by President Truman that increased

32:02

the CIA's power. The directive

32:05

stated that the U s SR had launched a vicious

32:07

campaign against the US, and in return,

32:09

the CIA had to carry out propaganda,

32:12

economic warfare, preventative direct

32:14

action, including sabotage, anti sabotage,

32:17

demolition and evacuation measures,

32:19

and subversion against hostile states, including

32:22

assistance to underground resistance movement

32:24

guerrillas and refugee liberation groups.

32:27

These operations were to be quote so

32:29

planned and executed that any U s Government

32:31

responsibility for them is not evident

32:33

to unauthorized persons, and that if

32:35

uncovered, the U. S. Government can plausibly disclaim

32:38

any responsibility for them.

32:40

Now, the fact that this was being pushed

32:43

and had been done by Truman caused

32:46

an uproar. It actually sparked something of a civil

32:48

war in the Republican Party between

32:50

isolationist and internationalist

32:52

conservatives and the Dullest

32:54

brothers are in a nationalist right because

32:56

they think that the U. S Should intervene internationally

32:59

to protect cap um.

33:01

That said, during this big debate within the Republican

33:03

Party, they were mostly on the outside

33:06

looking in. They still spent the vast

33:08

majority of their time working for Sullivan and Cromwell.

33:10

Alan Dullis is not a CIA employee.

33:13

He's kind of contracted with them a few times,

33:15

but he's not a full time employee, and Fosters

33:17

still doing law stuff. Um

33:20

Foster did help in the negotiations

33:22

that led to the creation of NATO um

33:24

Alan during this period mostly obsessed

33:27

over trying to make the CIA a bigger

33:29

and bigger thing, because again he really missed

33:31

the fun ship he'd done during the war. His

33:34

quest was helped along in June of nineteen

33:36

fifty when North Korea invaded South

33:38

Korea. We now know that Stalin

33:41

and the uss are were not behind this

33:43

invasion, and in fact, a lot of

33:45

folks within the Soviet Union didn't think

33:47

it was a good idea at all. It was it was it

33:49

was really not their call. It was a thing that

33:52

North Korea decided to do. But America,

33:54

the Americans assumed that this was part

33:56

of this vast secret war the Soviets were carrying

33:59

out that like everyone was happening in Colombia, what

34:01

had happened in Czechoslovakia and North Korea. These

34:03

are all again, these are all like pieces

34:06

on a chessboard that the Soviets are playing

34:08

um in order to wipe out Christian capitalist

34:11

civilization. The unexpectedness

34:13

of the attack convinced many that the United

34:15

States needed to put more money and invest more

34:17

power into the CIA so that future

34:20

attacks wouldn't come as a surprise. In

34:22

autumn, the Director of the CIA hired

34:24

Alan Dullas for a six week consultants

34:27

contract. At the end of the contract,

34:29

he was offered the job of Deputy Director

34:31

of Operations. This gave Alan

34:33

Dullas control over all covert operations

34:36

carried out by the US overseas. One

34:39

of his first acts was to convince Congress to

34:41

approve a hundred million dollars for the

34:43

CIA to arm paramilitary groups

34:46

exiled from various Communist nations.

34:48

Dullas sent agents across the world to

34:50

launch attacks and foment rebellions.

34:53

Many of these guys were caught immediately.

34:55

Alan Dulas actually sent thousands

34:57

of people to death in the first couple of years

35:00

he was had this position in the CIA, and

35:02

he felt no guilt about any of this, saying,

35:05

quote, at least we're getting experience

35:07

for the next war. Yeah,

35:11

that's the kind of guy who gets this job. He doesn't

35:13

see these people as people now. Allen's

35:16

first major success would come in nineteen

35:18

fifty two when Republican Dwight Eisenhower

35:21

and Democrat Adela Stevenson fought

35:23

over who would get to be the president. Alan.

35:25

While this was happening, turned his eyes towards

35:27

the lovely nation of Guatemala.

35:30

Then and now, Guatemala was a very poor

35:32

country and the largest landowner was

35:34

the United Fruit Company, a longtime

35:36

client of Sullivan and Cromwell. Foster

35:39

Dullus had done work for them in the past. The

35:41

Devil's chessboard gives a pretty good

35:44

overview of the situation in Guatemala. By

35:46

the late nineteen forties. Quote, the

35:48

giant company, whose operations sprawled

35:50

throughout the Caribbean, ran Guatemala less

35:52

like a banana republic than a banana colony.

35:55

United Fruit not only owned huge plantations,

35:57

but almost every mile of railroad track

35:59

in the count tree, the only major Atlantic

36:01

port, and the telephone system, and the

36:03

capital rulers came and went at the whim

36:06

of the company. Now.

36:08

One of these rulers was Jorge

36:10

Ubiko, who considered the peasants

36:13

of Guatemala to be beasts of

36:15

burden, fit only to labor

36:17

for the rich. Under his reign

36:19

in the early nineteen forties, guatemal

36:21

and farm workers were roped together like

36:23

animals and delivered by the army

36:26

to United Fruit plantations, where

36:28

they were forced to work in debt slavery

36:30

to the country, to the company or

36:32

to other landowners like this was

36:35

like our bananas were made by slave

36:37

labor. They were chaining men

36:39

together to force them to pick fruit.

36:42

Sevent of Guatemala's land

36:44

was owned by two percent of the population,

36:46

and a number of folks in Guatemala

36:49

thought this was fucked up. Some of those

36:51

folks were the members of the Guatemalan Communist

36:53

Party who started agitating and organizing

36:55

for reform. Now, not

36:59

only come Juanists were doing this, not only communists

37:01

thought this was wrong. One non communist

37:03

person who realized how fucked up the

37:05

situation was was a guy named Jacobo

37:08

Arbez. Now, Arbez was again

37:10

not a Communist. He was actually a young, rich

37:12

kid, the son of a Swiss immigrant father in

37:15

a mixed raised Ladina mother. Despite

37:17

his wealth and privilege, his upbringing was rough

37:19

to in part to his father's suicide. As

37:22

a young man, Arbez joined the Guatemalan

37:24

Army and became an officer. He married

37:26

the daughter of an El Salvadorian coffee

37:29

plantation owner in ninety eight. Now

37:31

his wife, Maria, had been educated at a Catholic

37:33

woman's college in California. She

37:35

had also grown up wealthy, but she was

37:38

uncomfortable with the fact that her father had gotten

37:40

rich off the backs of poor workers. Jacobo

37:43

had been raised by an indigenous

37:45

Maya nanny, and his relationship with

37:47

her made him sensitive to the plight of the

37:49

indigenous people of Guatemala. Over

37:51

the course of many long conversations, Jacobo

37:54

and Maria decided to become reformers

37:56

and to try to make Guatemala a more equitable

37:58

country. They open to their home to activists,

38:01

including a number of communists. This

38:03

made them ostracized by the local aristocracy.

38:07

Maria later said, but what did we

38:09

care? They were parasites like in El

38:11

Salvador. I wanted to broaden my horizons.

38:14

I hadn't come to Guatemala to be a socialite

38:16

or pray, play bridge or golf. So,

38:19

spurred on by his wife, Jacobo Arbist

38:21

entered politics, and in nineteen forty four

38:24

he helped to lead a coup that overthrew

38:26

Jorge Ubiko. In the years that

38:28

followed guatemala transition to a full

38:30

democracy. In nineteen fifty

38:32

Yacobo decided to run for president on

38:34

a campaign of a grarian reform.

38:37

He was elected, and in June of nineteen fifty

38:39

two he succeeded in pushing through a massive

38:41

land reform bill. Under

38:43

the bill, a huge amount of private land

38:45

was handed over to poor peasants, including

38:48

a significant amount of United fruit

38:50

land. Now, the

38:52

communists would have considered this kind

38:54

of a fucked up compromise right, he did not

38:56

go nearly as far as a lot of people on the left

38:59

wanted. This was actually a pretty moderate bill.

39:01

One of the things he ensured was that the land he took

39:03

from United Fruit and other companies was

39:06

only land that was not under cultivation.

39:08

So he basically said, I'm not gonna funk with your

39:10

ongoing financial operations, but

39:13

you own all this land that you're not doing

39:15

anything with, just to own it, and

39:17

I'm going to give that back to the people. Like

39:19

that's what our Bez does. But of course

39:21

the elite in Guatemala did not see his reform

39:24

as a compromise necessary to build a healthier

39:26

society. United Fruits started

39:28

crying foul. Paid propagandists

39:30

in the United States put out a series of red

39:32

baiting articles with titles like Red

39:35

Front Titans grip on Guatemala,

39:37

United Fruit becomes victim of Guatemala's

39:40

Awakening. Shortly after

39:42

our Beza's land reform bill passed, the dictator

39:44

of not Nicaragua, Anastasio Somazo

39:47

uh so Maza, visited d C and

39:49

told the CIA that if they gave him weapons,

39:51

he would quote clean up Guatemala

39:54

for you. In no time. Stephen

39:56

Kinser goes on to write Alan

39:58

liked the idea. With j. Royal Smith's

40:00

approval and by some accounts, with indirect

40:02

encouragement from the White House, he established

40:04

a small team of CIA operatives that conceived

40:07

a plot aimed at setting off a coup in Guatemala.

40:10

On the afternoon of October eight, CIA

40:13

officers presented this plot, called

40:15

Operation Fortune, to their counterparts

40:17

in the State Department. Frank Wissner

40:19

said that the CIA was seeking approval to provide

40:22

certain hardware to a group of people planning

40:24

violence against a certain government. Another

40:26

officer asserted that the operation was necessary

40:29

because a large American company

40:31

must be protected. State Department

40:33

officials at the meeting, according to one account, hit

40:35

the ceiling. One of them, David Bruce,

40:38

Allen's old OSS comrade, told

40:40

him that the State Department disapproves of

40:42

the entire ordeal. So

40:45

this is not immediately popular people.

40:48

This is not something that everyone like agrees

40:50

as a good idea. There are folks in the State Department

40:52

who are like, seems kind of sucked up

40:55

to um overthrow

40:57

the government of this country to

40:59

help a fruit company. You know, it's

41:01

the kind of thing that you would almost

41:04

think the voters should have a say in because

41:08

you're you're wanting to you

41:11

know, once upon a time, a

41:13

long long time ago, only

41:15

Congress could declare war, and

41:18

when we went to war, it was like an

41:20

official thing rather

41:22

than as became the policy later, we

41:26

just kind of stumbled into conflicts

41:29

where one day you'll just hear that we've launched

41:31

cruise missiles at some

41:33

country, picked your country,

41:36

and there was no it was never

41:38

put to a vote or anything.

41:41

It's just something we're doing. I

41:43

sitting here right now, can I tell you

41:45

how many countries we are doing drone strikes

41:47

in? I don't know. That's

41:50

just we just take that for granted now that

41:52

well, somewhere we're probably launching a drone

41:55

strike at a wedding somewhere, but it's probably,

41:57

you know, to take out of terrorists or something. The

42:00

beginning of this that we

42:03

now consider kind of normal, really,

42:06

as far as I know, comes back here where

42:09

it's like, oh, this government is

42:12

turning red, let's

42:14

just sneak in under

42:16

the table and just knock

42:19

it over. Not with an official

42:21

declaration of war. We're not a war with Guatemala,

42:23

like why would we be? But

42:26

this might drive up the prices of bananas

42:29

or whatever. So it's like, all

42:31

right, uh, and

42:34

this became standard operating procedure. This

42:36

is not I don't even know what to say

42:38

about it, because because if you're looking at

42:40

it like propaganda from the time, they would have like

42:42

a picture of a map and the map is slowly all

42:44

turning red as the Russia, like the commies,

42:47

bleed out and take over one country after

42:49

another after another after another. And

42:52

you heard how long it took Robert to explain

42:55

the complexities of what

42:57

was actually going on there. And

42:59

that was a very brief, very

43:02

overview of an incredibly

43:05

complicated situation. And

43:09

when you boil that down to oh, this

43:11

is just stopping the evil communists,

43:15

you have no concept of what's actually

43:17

going on. Like you were, it would be better

43:19

for you to have never heard of the country than

43:22

to boil it down in your mind where

43:24

it's like, oh, these people were

43:26

soldiers of the Soviet Union and

43:28

this is just another front in our war. Like

43:31

that is an objectively insane way

43:33

to look at it. It's

43:35

great that that's just how everything

43:38

worked for decades. Um.

43:41

Yeah, in part because like you know, if they had framed

43:43

it as like, well, these people are taking

43:45

land that our corporations owned but don't

43:48

use, so that they can live lives of

43:50

slightly less unfathomable

43:52

desperation. Um that

43:56

that that doesn't sound

43:59

as good as they're they're trying

44:01

to destroy christendom um

44:03

and we have to stop them in Guatemala

44:05

or they will be in pow Keepsie,

44:08

you know, next week, which

44:10

is you know how a lot of it was framed. But

44:12

you you don't have to be a crazy person with

44:15

like with like news clippings and

44:17

red yarn on your wall drawing connections

44:19

to say, wait a second, So the

44:21

law firm that represented

44:23

that fruit company employed

44:28

the future Secretary of State and

44:30

and uh or the director's

44:32

head of CIA, Like, it's not. You

44:35

don't have to dig define the connections. It's

44:38

not a conspiracy theory. It's pretty out

44:40

in the open. It was a company

44:42

that they had done work on behalf

44:45

of them, and they were doing them a favor

44:47

under the guise of stopping communism.

44:49

Like, it's not, this is not a conspiracy

44:52

theory. I realized that most of the time on

44:54

the Internet, when people bring up the CIA, it's

44:56

accusing them of things that may be improbable

44:59

or hiding aliens or whatever. You

45:01

have to understand the real things the CIA

45:04

did. They were absolutely

45:06

real. It's you don't need the fantasy.

45:08

It's yeah, you don't, it's

45:10

there's there's there's enough to fill

45:12

a lifetime of work trying to understand

45:15

the stuff that they absolutely did. Um

45:19

So, as I said, like

45:21

Alan Dullas kind of brings to the

45:23

State Department this plan to a

45:26

symbole a bunch of CIA operatives and overthrow

45:28

the government of Guatemala, and they get shot down

45:30

by the State Department. But that's in early

45:32

nineteen fifty two. Now, in November

45:34

of that year, the election happens and

45:36

Dwight D. Eisenhower wins. Truman

45:39

had acted as depending on who you trust, kind

45:41

of a restraining hand on the CIA. He

45:44

was cautious about them. He didn't let them

45:46

do all the things that Alan Dullas wanted to do.

45:48

Eisenhower had no desire to restrain

45:51

the CIA, and of course in nineteen

45:53

fifty three he made Alan Dullis

45:55

head of the CIA, which was not

45:58

a great call. Now, as a lawyer

46:00

for Sullivan and Cromwell, Alan had been the legal

46:03

envoy of the company to Guatemala.

46:05

He had actually visited so often during

46:07

his time with the company that he started taking

46:09

his wife on trips with him, and he did not like

46:11

his wife, so that meant something.

46:14

Eisenhower made Foster Dulas in

46:16

the same year United In fifty three his secretary

46:18

of State. Now this was the result

46:20

of years of politicking and ass kissing by Foster,

46:22

which finally paid off now that a Republican

46:25

was in office again. Foster two had

46:27

his connections in Guatemala Before

46:29

World War One. Foster Dulas had visited

46:31

the country as a Sullivan and Cromwell lawyer.

46:34

His job had been to monitor labor unrest

46:36

and communist activity in Guatemala.

46:39

Both brothers lobbied extensively for intervention

46:42

against Our Beez, and they were not alone. United

46:44

Fruit was extremely well connected

46:46

to the Eisenhower administration. The Under

46:48

Secretary of State, Walter Beatle

46:51

Smith, was a close friend of the president,

46:53

and he also happened to be applying for a high

46:55

placed position with United Fruit after

46:57

the coup. He was named to the company's board after

47:00

Rectors Henry Cabot Lodge, Eisenhower's

47:02

un ambassador, had a number of family

47:04

investments in the United Fruit. John

47:07

Morris Cabot in Church, in charge

47:09

of Latin American affairs of the State Department,

47:11

was the brother of United Fruits former CEO.

47:14

The husband of the President's personal secretary,

47:17

was the head of pr for United Fruits.

47:19

So this is not just the c I a

47:21

thing right. They are deeply embedded with

47:23

the Eisenhower administration. Now,

47:26

Eisenhower's administration labeled Guatemala

47:29

a Soviet beachhead in the Hemisphere,

47:31

even though Arbez again was not at all a

47:33

communist. Secretary Foster Dullas

47:35

declared that he was forcing a communist

47:37

type reign of terror on the country.

47:40

The US ambassador to Guatemala, working

47:42

under the CIA's direction, tried to bribe

47:44

Arbez with two million dollars to cancel

47:47

his land reforms are best, said no,

47:49

so the ambassador threatened to have him murdered.

47:51

When that failed, the Dulless brothers decided

47:54

there was nothing to do but overthrow him.

47:57

They found an angry, disgraced colonel named

47:59

Carlos arma Us who was working as a furniture

48:01

salesman in Honduras. They hired a bunch

48:03

of mercenaries to be his revolutionary

48:06

army and The CIA provided him with

48:08

weapons, intelligence, and air cover. As

48:10

he invaded Guatemala, CIA

48:12

pilots bombed the capital, which panicked

48:15

the population. Dozens of officers

48:17

in Our Best's army were bribed to abandon

48:19

their president. In June of nineteen fifty

48:21

four, Yacobo decided he could not hold

48:24

out any longer. He fled the presidential

48:26

palace, sending out one last radio

48:28

address in which he accused the United

48:30

Fruit Company and its allies in quote

48:32

US ruling circles of reigning

48:35

fire and death upon Guatemala,

48:37

which they had done. Of course, the CIA

48:40

blocked the transmission from going out. I'm

48:43

gonna not gonna let not gonna let that guy get a

48:45

last word in the Arbez families

48:47

spent the rest of their lives fleeing from country

48:49

to country, never able to find comfort or

48:51

happiness. One of Yourcobo's daughters committed

48:53

suicide, and the former president himself

48:55

was harried and tracked and harassed

48:58

and threatened by the Sea i A until

49:00

the day he died. Like they didn't just

49:02

overthrow him. They anytime

49:05

someone said anything nice about him, anytime

49:08

he was on the verge of like rebuilding

49:10

something like they would go into like it

49:12

was personal. They wanted to ruin this

49:14

man's life. They were trying to drive him to suicide. To

49:16

be honest, Well, it's so strange

49:19

that he wasn't able to find a

49:21

home in Moscow since he

49:23

was clearly an agent of He

49:26

did live there for a while because they were willing

49:29

to take him in, but they didn't like him because

49:31

he wasn't a Communist and he didn't

49:33

like living there, so

49:36

he left UM. I think he wound

49:38

up in um somewhere in Latin America. Eventually

49:40

might have been Cuba. But like he he didn't

49:42

have a lot of options because the US would

49:45

threaten any country that offered to take him

49:47

in UM, So the only options

49:49

he had was the Soviet block, which then fed into

49:51

US. Probably. Look, he went running to Russia

49:53

because he loves communism. Well, you

49:56

threatened Mexico if they let him live

49:58

there, Like what it was? He where is he

50:00

supposed to go while he was supposed to kill

50:02

himself? Yep, good ship. So

50:05

Alan Dullas considered the overthrow

50:07

of Guatemala's democratically elected leader

50:09

to be among his greatest accomplishments.

50:11

Now, the operation had been code named

50:13

p B success and David

50:16

Talbot writes well about the celebration that

50:18

followed in d C quote. When

50:20

they filed into the East Wing Theater for their

50:22

Guatemala slide show, the PB success

50:24

team was at the height of its glory. The room

50:26

was filled with the administration's top dignitaries,

50:29

including the President himself, his cabinet,

50:31

and the Vice President. Afterward Eisenhower.

50:33

Ever, the soldier asked Dullas how many men

50:36

he had lost, just one, Dullas told

50:38

him. Incredible, exclaimed the President.

50:40

But the real body count and Guatemala started

50:43

after the invasion, when the CIA backed

50:45

regime of Castile Armas began to clean

50:47

the nation of political undesirables,

50:50

labor organizers, and peasants who

50:52

had too eagerly embraced Arbez's land

50:54

reforms. It was the beginning of a blood

50:56

soaked era that would transform Guatemala

50:58

into one of the twentieth injuries most infamous

51:01

killing fields. The stainless Coup,

51:03

as some of its CIA engineers like to call

51:05

it, would actually result in a type of gore

51:08

including assassinations, rampant torture

51:10

and executions, death squad mayhem,

51:12

and the massacres of entire villages. By

51:15

the time that the blood letting had ran its course

51:17

four decades later, over two hundred

51:19

and fifty thousand people had been killed in a nation

51:21

whose total population was less than

51:23

four million when the reign of terror began. That's

51:26

like five percent of the population thereabouts.

51:29

So that's good one

51:32

of the two. Now, when most people talk

51:34

about the early days of CIA coup's, they'll bring

51:36

up Guatemala and Iran. Both

51:38

stories have a number of similarities. For one thing,

51:41

Alan Dulas also had business interests in

51:43

Iran. In nine, working

51:45

for Sullivan and Cromwell, Dullas had flown

51:47

to Tehran and negotiated a lucrative

51:50

oil deal with the Shaw. Under

51:52

the deal, a consortium of U S engineering

51:54

firms would be paid six hundred and fifty million

51:56

dollars to modernize the nation. It was

51:58

at the time the largest foreign development

52:00

project in US history. Now

52:02

the Shaw and Dullus kept in contact. During

52:05

the same time, the royal ruler of Iran

52:07

was not popular. Developing

52:09

left wing and communist movements were agitating

52:12

for his overthrow, which deeply worried

52:14

both the British and the Americans, who had invested

52:16

heavily in Iran's oil industry. In at

52:20

a party hosted by Alan Dullas for the Council

52:22

of Foreign Relations, the Shah of Iran

52:24

promised, my government and people are

52:26

eager to welcome American capital to give

52:29

it all possible safeguards. He

52:31

promised not to nationalize the

52:33

oil industry, which is something that the communists

52:35

wanted and you can draw it's similar to like what Arbez

52:37

was doing in Guatemala right there.

52:40

Foreign powers have basically,

52:43

through working with corrupt leaders they put in

52:45

power, bought access,

52:47

exclusive access to our resources

52:50

for way too cheap. We want

52:52

those things because this is our country.

52:55

Um So that's kind of what the left is agitating for

52:57

in Iran. We don't want the British to profit off

52:59

our oil industr red that should be our money. It's our

53:01

fucking oil. And obviously the Shah

53:03

promises to his friends in the

53:05

CIA and in the Council Foreign Relations

53:08

that will never happen. But of course the show

53:10

was unpopular, not surprising. In

53:12

nineteen fifty one, he was forced to appoint a

53:14

reformer, Mohammed Massada, as

53:16

Prime minister after the Iranian parliament

53:19

nominated Massada by a vote of seventy

53:21

nine to twelve. So this is a popular

53:24

guy. Like, that's not a fucking close vote. Now,

53:28

Massada had founded a political party called

53:30

the National Front, which was a pro democracy

53:32

party that was kind of center left.

53:35

Again like Arbez, this guy's kind of center

53:37

left as opposed to being a radical. The

53:40

National well, they were, I mean, the National Front was kind

53:42

of radical for Iran at the time, but not

53:44

to the extent that the Communists were. The

53:46

National Front again, they were not communists. They wanted

53:49

a democratic system, They were not state communist.

53:51

They wanted a democratic system, and they agitated

53:53

in the streets for Iranian independence from foreign

53:56

economic domination. Now, right

53:58

around this time there was also a Shia religious

54:00

fundamentalist party that had carried out a wave

54:02

of assassinations. Um, and they

54:04

were, you know, they were they also all

54:07

of these kind of groups, the Shia, the Communists,

54:10

and the National Front are anti

54:12

you know, the foreign colonizers and broadly

54:14

speaking anti the Shah Um but

54:17

for different reasons, um.

54:19

And all of this kind of unrest means

54:21

that Iran is very unstable in this period,

54:23

and the main reason why the Shah appoints

54:26

Massada prime minister outside of the fact that

54:28

Parliament told him to was because he

54:30

was kind of afraid that not doing so would

54:32

lead to a revolution. Massada

54:34

immediately launched a series of sweeping

54:36

social reforms, unemployment compensation,

54:39

sick benefits for workers, an end to

54:42

forced labor for peasants, and a land reform

54:44

bill bill that forced landlords to give twenty

54:46

percent of their revenues to tenants.

54:48

Basically, they had to put a chunk of the revenues

54:51

they made his landlords into like public works projects,

54:53

so it would go back to the people. In

54:55

nineteen fifty two, Massada nationalized

54:58

the Anglo Iranian Oil Company,

55:00

a British business that had inked to deal with the shot

55:02

to control Iranian oil until nineteen

55:06

The British were furious, but Massada

55:08

argued that Iranians were rightful owners

55:10

of their oil. The British responded

55:13

by instituting an international

55:15

oil blockade of Iran. They actually

55:17

sent in ships to blockade the Persian

55:19

Gulf, so Iran can't sell the oil that is

55:22

Iran's. But you know again, they

55:24

would argue that, well, we bought access to it

55:26

for until nineteen ninety three, so

55:28

they have no right to take it from us um.

55:30

I guess it depends on how much you like the

55:33

British. Uh. This all created

55:35

Iran's economy, which led to massive domestic

55:37

unrest, but Massada still remained broadly

55:40

popular. The British appealed to the

55:42

Americans for help, or, depending on who you believe,

55:44

the Eisenhower administration was worried

55:46

that all the unrest would embolden the Communists

55:49

and lead them and lead to a revolution

55:51

that would send their oil over to the

55:53

Soviets. So the CIA

55:55

had been active in Iran since nineteen forty

55:57

eight. They were actually led there by Teddy Roosevelt

56:00

Son Kermit. So a big part

56:02

of this story is a dude named Kermit, which

56:04

I can't over emphasize. Now,

56:07

the main thing the CIA had been doing in Iran

56:10

was fighting the Two dep Party, which was Iran's

56:12

communist party, and they had mostly

56:14

been focused on setting up what they called a stay

56:17

behind network. This is a group of

56:19

militants who could act as an insurgency

56:21

if the Communists win power. The CIA

56:24

was doing this all over the place. They did this in

56:26

Europe, like they were setting up stay behind networks

56:29

in Italy and stuff. There's this whole thing called Operation

56:31

Gladioli that will cover at some point

56:33

in a separate episode. But like, this is the thing

56:35

the CIA is doing all over the damn world anywhere

56:38

there's a single leftist trying

56:40

to run for political office, They're setting up networks

56:42

of you know, assassins and terrorists

56:45

in case those people get too much power. Now,

56:48

Britain was expelled entirely from Iran

56:50

in nineteen fifty two. They tried to convince the US

56:52

to overthrow the government by arguing that, like Mossada's

56:55

successment, that the Communists were about to take

56:58

over. Eisenhower was actually hesitant

57:00

to believe them, um, but the dullest

57:02

brothers were, of course very bullish on the idea.

57:05

Cooler heads pointed out that none of the conservative

57:08

politicians in Iran had the popularity to replace

57:10

Massada, and so if he was forced out, the

57:12

only popular alternatives would be Shea

57:15

hardliners, which weren't any friendlier to

57:17

the West. So at first the British

57:19

were rebuffed. You know, the Eisenhower administration

57:21

comes up with some very good reasons why they don't

57:23

think overthrowing Massada is going to

57:25

be a good idea. Eisenhower

57:28

suggested stabilizing the Massada government

57:30

with a one million dollar loan to

57:32

help them through the blockade period. It was basically

57:34

like, well, okay, maybe

57:36

they have the right to to not let

57:39

the English have their oil. Let's give them cash

57:41

so that their society doesn't collapse in the communists

57:43

can't take power, which seems like a

57:45

pretty good solution to me, actually,

57:48

um, but of course this is not what

57:51

they do. He was actually convinced, in part

57:53

by the Dullest brothers not to do this, and

57:55

so instead he tried fruitlessly to negotiate

57:57

with Massada to allow the British

57:59

to take back control of the oil company

58:01

he nationalized. Masada refused,

58:04

saying that the history of his nation's leadership

58:06

was filled with corrupt cowards who had bowed to Western

58:08

money, and he wasn't going to add to

58:11

that legacy. In March of

58:13

nineteen fifty three, Alan Dulas attended

58:15

a National Security Council meeting with

58:17

seven pages of talking points in his hand,

58:19

aimed at convincing the rest of the Eisenhower

58:21

administration to overthrow Massada

58:25

from the devil's chessboard. Quote Iran

58:27

was confronted with a maturing revolutionary

58:30

set up, Dulus warned, and if the country

58:32

fell into communist hands, sixtent

58:35

of the Free world's oil would be controlled by

58:37

Moscow. Oil and gasoline would

58:39

have to be rationed at home, and US military

58:41

operations would have to be curtailed. In

58:43

truth, the global crisis over Iran

58:46

was not a Cold War conflict, but a struggle quote

58:48

between imperialism and nationalism, between

58:51

first and third worlds, between North and

58:53

South, between developed industrial economies

58:55

and underdeveloped countries dependent on exporting

58:58

raw materials. Dullus made sought

59:00

out to be a stooge of the communists,

59:02

but he was far from it. So

59:05

the the Iranian communists. Again, Massada

59:07

is kind of like Arbez. He's not a communist,

59:10

and the communists, you know, respect

59:12

some of the things he's doing, but they don't like him

59:14

all that much. Um. He was not

59:17

friendly to Moscow. And the Soviets

59:19

actually didn't want to get involved in Iran

59:21

because they're not dumb. They understand

59:24

sixty percent of the free world, whatever

59:26

you about six of the US oil

59:28

supply, that's a thing will go

59:30

to war over like, That's not a thing

59:33

Russia wanted to funk with. In this period

59:35

of time, but of course nobody in the Eisenhower

59:37

administration was listening to reason. Once the Dullis

59:39

brothers got their propaganda machine chearning.

59:42

Over the course of several weeks, Alan and Foster

59:44

succeeded in convincing Eisenhower that Iran

59:47

was the next great battle of the Cold War, and

59:49

that if he didn't move quickly, it would become

59:52

North Korea, but with the world's largest

59:54

oil reserves. In June

59:56

of nineteen fifty three, Allan Dulas presented

59:58

the CIA's plan to his brother and a handful

1:00:01

of other key policymakers. The actual

1:00:03

coup plot had been drawn up by Kermit Roosevelt,

1:00:05

who had already been arming and organizing

1:00:08

an anti communist resistance in the country. The

1:00:10

plot started with the assassination of numerous

1:00:13

Iranian military and political leaders

1:00:15

loyal to Massada. One general was

1:00:17

found ripped apart by a roadside outside

1:00:19

of Tehran. Others had their throat slit.

1:00:22

Now, while all this was going down, unrest

1:00:24

was growing in Iran. The Shah was actually

1:00:27

forced to flee the country because a large band

1:00:29

of communists and democratic militants were

1:00:31

roaming the streets tearing down statues

1:00:33

of him. And destroying royal property. These

1:00:36

militants were loyal to Massada, while some

1:00:38

of them were some of them were communists. It was both groups

1:00:40

out in the street, and both broadly on the same

1:00:42

page as far as this goes. But on August

1:00:45

eighteenth, the U. S. Ambassador sat down

1:00:47

with the Prime Minister and claimed falsely

1:00:49

that Massada's supporters had threatened the U.

1:00:52

S. Embassy David Talbot writes

1:00:54

quote. He warned that if the Prime

1:00:56

Minister did not restore order, the United

1:00:58

States would have to avoid aculate all Americans

1:01:01

and withdraw recognition of Masada's government.

1:01:03

The gambit worked. Masada lost his

1:01:05

nerve, according to Henderson, and immediately

1:01:08

ordered his police chief to clear the streets. It

1:01:10

was the U. S. Diplomat later observed the

1:01:12

old man's feeble mistake. With

1:01:15

masada supporters off the streets, the CIA's

1:01:17

hired thugs were free to take their place,

1:01:19

backed by rebellious elements of the military.

1:01:22

On the morning of August nineteenth, as Mosada

1:01:24

huddled in his home with his advisers,

1:01:26

tanks driven by pro Shaw military officers,

1:01:29

and street gangs whose pockets were literally

1:01:31

stuffed with CIA cash converged

1:01:33

on the Prime Minister's residence Mosada

1:01:35

was of course overthrown and imprisoned. The

1:01:38

Shah, who had been shopping in France with his

1:01:40

wife, was brought back to govern the country.

1:01:43

He was not popular, and in order to keep

1:01:45

him in power, the CIA had to go to war

1:01:47

with the Iranian left wing, massacring

1:01:50

communists and pro democracy activists

1:01:52

wherever they found them. The chief

1:01:54

focus of their violence was the TUTA, the communist

1:01:57

party, and with CIA's helped,

1:01:59

the Shah's West trained security forces

1:02:01

tracked down four thousand two de party

1:02:03

members between nineteen fifty three and nineteen

1:02:05

fifty seven. These guys were basically

1:02:08

all tortured. They were whipped, they were beaten. Some

1:02:10

of them had chairs smashed on their heads, they

1:02:12

had their fingers broken. A

1:02:14

lot of them were subjected to something called capani,

1:02:16

which is a torture method where you're hung by hooks.

1:02:19

At least eleven people diet under torture

1:02:21

during this period, mostly from brain hemorrhages.

1:02:23

Dozens more were executed um

1:02:26

and of course, with the Shaw back in power, Iran's

1:02:29

oil was d nationalized, but under

1:02:31

the new arrangement of

1:02:33

Iran's oil profits went to US Oil

1:02:35

producers in d C. The overthrow

1:02:38

of Massada was hailed as a great success, as

1:02:41

had you know, was the later overthrow of our bez

1:02:43

An. Internal CIA report on the coup described

1:02:45

the party they held after the coup as

1:02:48

a day that should never have ended, for

1:02:50

it carried with it such a sense of excitement,

1:02:52

of satisfaction, and of jubilation

1:02:55

that it is doubtful whether any other can

1:02:57

come up to it. This did sound. It

1:02:59

was a good time. Everybody's having a good one. You

1:03:02

know what else will overthrow the government of Iran

1:03:04

in order to gain access to its vast oil

1:03:06

reserves. I don't

1:03:09

know about that products,

1:03:11

and I mean probably at least

1:03:13

one of them, right, I mean, statistically speaking,

1:03:15

statistically speaking, one of

1:03:17

our sponsors would happily overthrow the Iranian

1:03:20

government. So here's some ads. We're

1:03:27

back. So the shop

1:03:30

was of course eventually overthrown in nineteen

1:03:32

seventy nine, and part of why the

1:03:34

current government that exists in Iran was

1:03:36

able to take power this, this hardline

1:03:38

Shia fundamentalist regime, was because

1:03:41

the communists and left wing movements

1:03:43

in Iran had been utterly annihilated, right

1:03:46

Like, That's a big part of why the Ayatolas

1:03:49

are able to take power is that there's

1:03:51

no other anti government organized

1:03:53

anti government forces in Iran because they've been massacred

1:03:55

by the CIA, whereas the Shia

1:03:57

fundamentalists had kind of been allowed to

1:04:00

grow. Can I jump in here just a moment.

1:04:02

It's I feel like for a lot

1:04:04

of the listeners there has to has to feel like whiplash

1:04:07

at this point, because it wasn't that

1:04:09

long ago. In this series, we were describing

1:04:12

an American government that was did

1:04:15

not want to get involved in World War One

1:04:17

at all, and really hesitated

1:04:20

to get involved in World War Two because

1:04:22

like, oh, well, that's that's Europe's mess.

1:04:24

Like what business do we have deciding

1:04:28

whether or not Hitler owns France

1:04:31

or what It's like, you know, that's none of our business.

1:04:33

Like there was a sizeable faction of conservatives

1:04:37

saying, small government, keep

1:04:40

you mind our own business. That's what small government

1:04:42

is. Small government is not you build a military

1:04:45

that has to patrol the entire globe and

1:04:48

to go from that a decade

1:04:50

later or so too. Looking

1:04:53

at the mess you described in

1:04:56

Iran, the tangled mess

1:04:58

of factions and things

1:05:00

that get into oil rights and all

1:05:03

of this and deciding oh

1:05:05

no, that's we've got to be a

1:05:07

part of that, and having it spin

1:05:09

out of control, and exactly

1:05:12

the way the isolationists would

1:05:14

have warned you about that

1:05:16

you cannot control what happens

1:05:18

after that. This is not a video

1:05:21

game. You're not playing at

1:05:23

Risk or whatever where you can just flip

1:05:26

a switch and decide this country is not going to be

1:05:28

communist. You don't know

1:05:30

what's going to happen after that. Just as

1:05:33

you know, we celebrated when the

1:05:35

Soviets lost in Afghanistan, and

1:05:38

then not that many what

1:05:40

fifteen years later, you know, the

1:05:43

bullback from that arrives

1:05:45

on our shores. Like you

1:05:47

can't control what's going to happen. So

1:05:50

everything the isolationists have been saying

1:05:53

plays out here because you look at

1:05:55

like how this direct directly

1:05:57

led to the rise of radical Islam

1:05:59

and that region. And it's very

1:06:01

frustrating to me that the you

1:06:03

will hear people say today,

1:06:06

well, we shouldn't be in the Middle East. Those people

1:06:08

have been fighting with each other for thousands of years.

1:06:12

It's like, no, they haven't. These

1:06:14

were specific decisions that were made

1:06:17

by people in Washington who had

1:06:19

not been elected. These

1:06:22

are people who have been appointed to their positions

1:06:25

because they were born into the right family

1:06:28

and worked for the right law firm.

1:06:30

And the reason the geopolitical

1:06:33

map looks the way it does in one

1:06:36

is because of the decisions that the

1:06:39

row of dominoes they started

1:06:42

falling over back then. Yeah,

1:06:45

and then it's like it always does piss me

1:06:47

off when people talk about like, well it's always been

1:06:49

a mess over there. Number one, For a

1:06:51

long time, they were the dominant

1:06:53

power in the Western world. Um.

1:06:56

And for another thing, like a

1:06:58

lot of these countries didn't exist, Like live You wasn't

1:07:01

a country until it was made a country

1:07:03

by France and England, Like they just decided,

1:07:05

oh, that looks like a good countrys they were carving up

1:07:07

ship and like yeah, it's much more I think

1:07:10

direct with ship, like Iran, where it's like, well, no,

1:07:12

they had a government. They had

1:07:15

a pretty reasonable political movement

1:07:17

that was doing reasonable things to try

1:07:19

to improve things for the people of Iran,

1:07:22

and it was crushed and the reasonable

1:07:24

people were murdered. So the people

1:07:26

who took power when the CIA backed government

1:07:28

eventually failed were not reasonable,

1:07:31

Okay, And we could also talk about how like a

1:07:33

lot of why Iran is so the Ranian

1:07:35

government is so messed up. Is the horrible war

1:07:37

they had with Iraq that was directly incided

1:07:40

and encouraged and funded by the United

1:07:42

States who armed both sides. Like

1:07:45

yeah, it's you don't have to if

1:07:47

someone disagrees with us, you don't have to rebut

1:07:49

with the sins of the regime

1:07:52

that was overthrown, because

1:07:54

that's not the point. You can't

1:07:56

predict what's going to happen in a situation

1:07:58

like this, and when they had this

1:08:00

party like, well, look how easy that was.

1:08:03

You know, you have uh, you know, a government

1:08:05

that looks like it's leading the wrong direction. You're gonna

1:08:07

lose oil rights, and well, hey, if you think about

1:08:10

it, that's the national security issue, because if we don't

1:08:12

have oil that are whatever. It's

1:08:15

like, okay, if you could go back

1:08:17

to them and say, let me show you what

1:08:19

the next seventy years looks

1:08:22

like because of this, But they've

1:08:24

made a different decision. I don't know. I

1:08:26

don't know if they cared the

1:08:28

thought that that they boiled the

1:08:30

world down into such a simple equation.

1:08:33

It's like, well, as long as we blunt the encroachment

1:08:35

of the Soviets here, that's all that matters.

1:08:37

It's like, is it really because

1:08:41

you know that just because you repelled

1:08:43

the Soviets, it doesn't mean that that place suddenly

1:08:45

becomes a franchise

1:08:47

of the United States. It's like

1:08:49

everybody has this view of like

1:08:52

World War Two, where it's like, well, you you defeat

1:08:55

Germany and then you know, Germany becomes

1:08:57

a modern industrial democracy,

1:08:59

you like there are best friends. Now. It's

1:09:02

like, yeah, it's not that simple. It's

1:09:05

not. And the people still thought, like I heard

1:09:07

that during the Iraq War. It's like, well, you know,

1:09:09

once we get an American friendly regime in

1:09:11

there and we bring democracy to them, and

1:09:14

they will thank us, and they'll have their

1:09:16

fast food franchises and they'll have consumerism.

1:09:19

It's like, okay, do you know what

1:09:21

the different like ethnic groups are

1:09:24

in their region? Do you understand that the

1:09:26

borders were drawn not by the Iraqis

1:09:29

but by people who didn't live

1:09:31

there, Like, do you understand any of that? Do you understand

1:09:33

who the curds are? Do you understand what? There's

1:09:36

so much that even the people who went

1:09:38

to war I didn't

1:09:41

know or care about, they like

1:09:43

it to be you know that. I think George W.

1:09:45

Bush even towards the end of his like

1:09:47

he never was totally clear that there

1:09:49

were different factions of Islam that

1:09:53

hated each other like more than they hate us.

1:09:56

The insistence on having this black and

1:09:58

white view of the world is so destructive.

1:10:01

But I swear to God, you see it come up again and again

1:10:03

and and these people have to know better again.

1:10:07

Just you had to race through

1:10:09

the situation in Iran to try to explain it

1:10:12

like that is the most surface level explanation.

1:10:14

It still took you a while to get through

1:10:16

it. I think some of the people making

1:10:18

decisions did not necessarily have even

1:10:21

that level of a grasp of

1:10:24

because I don't think they would have been as

1:10:27

enthused about sticking their their hands

1:10:29

into it if they did, because

1:10:32

they if you, if if so, you

1:10:34

would look at and say, oh, there's no way this ends

1:10:36

well, because you're not gonna be able

1:10:38

to babysit that situation unless you just

1:10:41

occupy the country. But we don't do that

1:10:43

because we're the good guys. No, we um

1:10:46

we do the good guy thing, which is

1:10:50

overthrowing the democratically elected

1:10:52

government, and then when a much worse government takes

1:10:54

power, um endlessly

1:10:56

saber rattling about their dangers um,

1:11:00

which also has the effect of breaking some people's

1:11:02

brains and making them defend the Iranian

1:11:04

government because clearly, if

1:11:07

it's just it all, it's just this this incredibly

1:11:10

frustrating feedback loop where

1:11:12

everything just is always accelerating

1:11:14

into less and less

1:11:16

reasonable and more and more dangerous things.

1:11:19

I don't know. This is why I

1:11:21

admire the rare person I run across

1:11:24

who says, oh, I don't

1:11:26

understand all that stuff is too confusing. It's

1:11:29

like, actually, you're more correct

1:11:32

the person the person on

1:11:35

Twitter who thinks and characters

1:11:37

and like a snarky

1:11:39

burn you can summarize

1:11:42

like what we should be doing over there

1:11:44

shouldn't be doing over there, because it's it's like,

1:11:46

man, I that's

1:11:49

the attitude that that got us into this

1:11:51

situation that it's it's like, well,

1:11:53

these people are bad, and so we'll we'll

1:11:56

just kick them over and then leave

1:11:58

and it'll all sort itself. Well no,

1:12:03

no, so yeah,

1:12:05

Jason, Um, you know, that's most

1:12:07

of what we're going to cover. In terms of the CIA's

1:12:09

FUCKERI in this period, I mean, there's so much. Over

1:12:11

the following years, Allen dulass Cia

1:12:14

would create the Republic of South Vietnam

1:12:16

almost out of whole cloth, which was pretty

1:12:18

horrible government. Um, and they

1:12:21

did it in order to challenge you know, the North. Uh.

1:12:23

They attempted to carry out a coup in Indonesia, which

1:12:25

failed. In nineteen sixty Allan

1:12:27

Dulas helped to mastermind the assassination

1:12:30

of Patrice Lamumba, a socialist

1:12:32

president of the Congo. Prior to Lamamba's

1:12:34

killing, Dullas wrote, quote, if Lamomba continues

1:12:37

to be in power, the result will be at best

1:12:39

chaos and at worst in eventual seizure of

1:12:41

power by the communists, with disastrous

1:12:43

consequences for the prestige of the u WIN and

1:12:46

the interests of the free world. His dismissal

1:12:48

must therefore be an urgent and priority objective.

1:12:51

Now, Lamamba's assassination led to a

1:12:54

horrible, violent war the

1:12:56

presidency of Joseph Mbutu, a brutal dictator

1:12:59

who robbed the nation lined and left

1:13:01

it and like what is still to this day

1:13:03

a perpetual state of multi civil

1:13:05

war. There's just I mean, the Congo has

1:13:07

been torn apart ever since. And obviously a

1:13:09

lot of that blame goes onto the Belgians too.

1:13:12

But it's just farcical

1:13:14

that that that Dullas

1:13:17

ever thought that, like, oh, if Lamombo gets

1:13:19

in power, then we'll have chaos and the congo

1:13:21

like nobody. And again, I don't know if

1:13:23

you were to tell him what had happened, if he

1:13:26

would have changed his actions. I don't think

1:13:28

so Um, I

1:13:30

just don't now. Alan Dulas

1:13:32

retired in nineteen sixty one. I think Foster

1:13:35

had been out for a while at that, but I mean he was only Secretary

1:13:37

of State for you know, four years or so

1:13:39

he passed away, I think, and then he passed by nineteen

1:13:42

fifty nine something like that. Am I wrong about Dullas

1:13:44

Foster? Yeah? I thought

1:13:46

he. I thought he left office nine nine

1:13:49

for health reasons. Yeah, nineteen fifty

1:13:51

nine, and he was in so Um

1:13:53

when he died. That's where

1:13:55

why we have Dullas Airport is it got named after

1:13:57

him. And I think it was actually J. F.

1:14:00

K who who inaugurated

1:14:02

Dullas Airport and given nice speech about,

1:14:04

you know, all of the wonderful things that that

1:14:07

Foster Dulas had done for the country.

1:14:09

It was not named after Alan Dullas

1:14:12

Um. There was a statue of Foster Dulas

1:14:14

that used to be in Dullas Airport that

1:14:17

is now has been moved out of

1:14:19

the public part of the airport, and it's now just kind

1:14:21

of like sitting awkwardly in a conference room.

1:14:23

Because about ten or so years

1:14:25

later, people started to get embarrassed with

1:14:27

Foster Dulas's legacy. Once

1:14:30

again, you don't hear about these guys anymore, you

1:14:32

know. Um, But yeah,

1:14:34

it happened pretty quickly, Like these

1:14:36

people went from being in

1:14:39

the news constantly too by

1:14:41

the time they were both out of politics in

1:14:43

nineteen sixty one, fading

1:14:45

really fast from

1:14:48

popular memory considering how

1:14:50

influential they were. Some of it, I

1:14:52

think some of it's probably that people started

1:14:55

to feel ashamed of what they've done, But I think more

1:14:57

of it was probably it wasn't in anybody's

1:14:59

best interests to help people remember, Like

1:15:02

I think everyone listening to this heard

1:15:04

about the Bay of Pigs in

1:15:06

school, didn't but don't

1:15:09

know the name Alan Dullas necessarily or don't

1:15:11

remember it. Yeah, like all

1:15:13

of these things that were just

1:15:16

part of the Cold War and helped

1:15:18

shape everything about the policy and

1:15:20

all those different parts of the world. That's

1:15:23

that was the dulless is all

1:15:26

of it either entirely them or partly

1:15:28

them. It's baffling how much they did.

1:15:30

And the best way the highlight that is by how much we're

1:15:32

leaving out. We're not talking about

1:15:34

the Bay of Pigs, which was Alan Dulas

1:15:36

Baby. We're not talking about the

1:15:38

fact that after World

1:15:40

War Two he was given the job of building

1:15:43

a new German intelligence agency to

1:15:45

combat the Soviets, and he hired

1:15:47

General Reinhard Galen, Hitler's

1:15:49

former head of intelligence. Galen

1:15:52

played a huge role in the Holocaust. But

1:15:54

dulla Is in the c I a kind of handwave

1:15:56

that um and allowed him to hire

1:15:59

other members of the Gestapo

1:16:01

to work with the CIA

1:16:03

in West Germany. There were complaints

1:16:06

within the CIA about all of the Nazis

1:16:08

they were having to work with. One of the guys

1:16:10

who got brought in to work with the CIA was

1:16:12

Conrad Fibig, who um

1:16:14

worked at the CIA through Galen and was later

1:16:17

charged with murdering eleven thousand

1:16:19

Jews in Belarus during the war. There

1:16:21

was a memo we have about this guy

1:16:23

wherein one CIA employee suggests

1:16:26

it might be smart to drop such types

1:16:28

from employment, like

1:16:32

and Dullis gets asked about this guy.

1:16:35

Uh, Dellas gets asked about Galen in general the

1:16:37

British, because the British are really unhappy

1:16:39

with the fact that we keep hiring all these Nazis.

1:16:43

Um and Dullis gets asked

1:16:45

about like Galen and all the Nazis hire Again.

1:16:47

Dallas's responses, I don't know if he's a rascal.

1:16:53

Rasco was not the allegation the

1:16:56

type of memo some of you in the listenership

1:16:59

have gotten about an inappropriate

1:17:01

term that they would like you to stop using an

1:17:03

emails or something like that. They

1:17:06

got that mimo about well maybe we should

1:17:08

not hire x Nazis

1:17:11

and was like, well, are you sure? Are

1:17:14

the dude who killed the Lefon fastened

1:17:17

people? Yeah, he's

1:17:19

problematic. Are you aware of these problematic

1:17:23

cancel culture comes for the SS.

1:17:28

Now. One of the things that's funny is he like

1:17:30

so so he says he gets asked about Galen,

1:17:32

he says, I don't know if he's a rascal. There are a few archbishops

1:17:35

and espionage. Besides, one needn't ask

1:17:37

him to one's club. Which is

1:17:39

funny because Alan DULs absolutely

1:17:42

invited Reinhard Galen to his club on numerous

1:17:44

occasions. He actually hosted parties for

1:17:47

the Nazi spy chief at the Chevy Chase Club

1:17:49

whenever he would visit DC. Um,

1:17:54

it's just good ship, it's

1:17:56

just good ship. Um. Now. Galen's

1:17:58

big influence on Alan Dullus was the

1:18:01

fact that Galen was a guy who believed that everything

1:18:03

was justified in combating the communist threat.

1:18:06

Um. He wrote at one point, in an

1:18:08

age in which war is the paramount activity

1:18:10

of man, the total annihilation

1:18:13

of the enemy is its primary aim, which is a very

1:18:15

fascist thing to say, and something both

1:18:17

of the Dullis brothers got on board with because

1:18:19

they were instrumental in pushing a policy

1:18:22

on the US government called massive

1:18:24

retaliation. John Foster

1:18:27

doulla Is actually laid out this idea in a

1:18:29

speech to the CFR when he insisted

1:18:31

the U s would protect its allies quote

1:18:34

through the deterrent of massive retaliatory

1:18:37

power. I'm gonna quote from a write up and history

1:18:39

dot Com here. Dullis began

1:18:41

his speech by examining the communist strategy

1:18:43

that he concluded has it had at its

1:18:45

goal the bankruptcy of the United States

1:18:48

through over extension of its military power,

1:18:50

but strategically and economically, the secretary

1:18:52

explained it was unwise to permanently

1:18:55

commit US land forces in Asia to

1:18:57

support permanently other countries, or to

1:18:59

become permanently committed to military

1:19:01

expenditure so that vast they lied

1:19:04

to lead to practical bankruptcy.

1:19:06

Instead, he believed a new policy of getting

1:19:08

maximum protection at a bearable

1:19:10

cost should be developed. Although Dollas

1:19:13

did not directly refer to nuclear weapons, it

1:19:15

was clear that the new policy was describing would

1:19:17

depend upon the massive retaliatory power

1:19:19

of such weapons. Which is interesting

1:19:21

because on a moral level, what he's saying here

1:19:23

is it's too expensive to go

1:19:25

to war all the times we would need to go

1:19:27

to war to counter the Soviets. You know what's

1:19:30

cheap is a fucking nuke. That's

1:19:35

good ship. And we could talk a lot about

1:19:37

massive retaliation and how that idea

1:19:39

played a big role in the escalation of the US commitment

1:19:42

to Vietnam in Nixon's bombing of

1:19:44

Cambodia. UM. But we're running

1:19:46

way too long as it is. UM.

1:19:49

I want to end by acknowledging mk

1:19:51

ultra Um, which is the part of Dolus's

1:19:53

legacy that I think people are probably most familiar with.

1:19:56

This is the CIA giving everybody LSD.

1:19:58

The idea behind this was that Alan

1:20:01

Dulas had become convinced that the Soviets

1:20:03

were carrying out mind control research and

1:20:05

we needed to do mind control research

1:20:08

to counter them, even though we actually

1:20:10

had information that they weren't really doing all

1:20:12

that much um. But that

1:20:14

was beside the point. Alan Dulas wanted thousands

1:20:16

of people to be dosed with LSD, and that's exactly

1:20:19

what happened. We'll do a whole two partter on

1:20:21

this someday. For right

1:20:23

now, I want to talk about the aspect of it that had

1:20:25

the biggest that says the most about

1:20:27

Alan Dulas as a human being, which is the

1:20:30

fact that he subjected his son to some

1:20:32

aspects of the mk Ultra program.

1:20:35

So his kid, Alan Dulas Jr.

1:20:37

Or Sonny, was a brilliant young man with an

1:20:39

incredible academic record and a sharp mind.

1:20:41

His mom and his sisters all adored him,

1:20:43

but Alan Dulas Sr. Was kind

1:20:45

of incapable of taking any pride in his son,

1:20:48

and this kind of pushed his son to try to impress

1:20:50

him, and in order to do this, Sonny joined the

1:20:52

Marine Corps. He fought with incredible

1:20:54

courage in Korea and one commendations

1:20:57

for reckless bravery under fire until

1:20:59

he was hit by North Korean shell in nifty

1:21:02

two and his brain was permanently damaged.

1:21:05

When he came home, Sonny was unable to take

1:21:07

care of himself. Therapy did not seem to help.

1:21:09

He would get lost easily. He would launch into

1:21:11

angry rants where he called his father a Hitler

1:21:13

lover and a Nazi collaborator. His

1:21:16

family dubbed these paranoid, even though they were

1:21:18

pretty accurate. In desperation,

1:21:20

Alan Dulas sent his son to Dr Harold

1:21:23

Wolfe, who worked on the MK Ultra program.

1:21:25

We know something of what was done to Sonny thanks

1:21:28

to his sister Joan, who visited

1:21:30

him during this period. From the Devil's

1:21:32

Chessboard quote. Joan

1:21:35

has disturbing memories of visiting her brother

1:21:37

at a New York hospital where he was subjected

1:21:39

to excruciating insulin shock

1:21:41

therapy, one of the experimental procedures

1:21:43

employed on the CIA's human guinea

1:21:45

pigs, used primarily for the treatment

1:21:47

of schizophrenia. Insulin doses were meant

1:21:50

to jolt patients out of their madness.

1:21:52

The procedure resulted in coma and sometimes

1:21:54

violent convulsions. The most severe

1:21:57

risks included death and brain damage. The one

1:21:59

study at the time I claimed that this mental impairment

1:22:01

was actually beneficial because it reduced

1:22:03

patients tension and hostility.

1:22:06

Joan recalls that her brother kept begging

1:22:09

her when she visited him, can't you do something

1:22:11

for me? I'm going mad? He

1:22:14

showed no improvement from his treatment.

1:22:16

Um, and of course obviously he

1:22:18

wouldn't. Um. It just seems to have

1:22:20

done horrible damage. Eventually he just started

1:22:23

like stopped talking to his parents

1:22:26

and stopped, like like he just decided,

1:22:28

like I have to just pretend that I'm fine so

1:22:30

that they will stop torturing me this way.

1:22:33

UM, I don't know, it's

1:22:35

that's that's Alan fucking Dullus,

1:22:37

you know. I mean, of course he would like that's

1:22:39

how he solves his problems. And

1:22:41

and I don't know if you were about to cover this, but now

1:22:44

he was fired after the Bay

1:22:46

of Pigs. Correct then can be effectively

1:22:48

forced him to resigned. But

1:22:51

yeah, yeah, so I I

1:22:53

began this series by talking about

1:22:55

my first like exposure

1:22:58

to him in the realm of like ci

1:23:00

a conspiracy stuff was in Oliver

1:23:03

Stone GfK movie because

1:23:06

after Kennedy fired

1:23:08

Dullus, and then exactly

1:23:11

two years later or so, h Kennedy

1:23:14

would be assassinated right November

1:23:17

twenty seconds something like that. Uh.

1:23:20

And then when they would form the warrant commission

1:23:22

to try to find out who had

1:23:24

assassinated JFK, Alan

1:23:27

Dullas winds up on the commission who

1:23:30

JFK had fired for

1:23:33

doing for botching his

1:23:36

his behind the scenes uh

1:23:39

C I a stuff in

1:23:41

the form of the Bay of Pigs. So if

1:23:43

you're wondering why like

1:23:47

conspiracy theories and stuff persist

1:23:49

and why they have like

1:23:52

there's enough truth for them to go on to keep

1:23:54

them fueled, it's stuff

1:23:56

like this, Like

1:23:59

that's that's as shady

1:24:01

as can be. It would seem to

1:24:03

to my uh innocent eyes. Yeah,

1:24:06

it's incredibly shady. It's one of those reasons

1:24:08

where when I'm talking about conspiracy

1:24:11

theories, I don't put the JFK assassination

1:24:13

in the same realm as you know, hollow

1:24:16

earth stuff, because there's

1:24:18

reasons to have questions about

1:24:20

what went down, you know, not that I'm

1:24:23

you know, a magic bullet or like whatever,

1:24:25

like I I don't, I'm not, I have no, I'm

1:24:27

not convinced on that, but it's certainly

1:24:29

there's some sketchy ass ship that went down.

1:24:32

It would be weird if people weren't theorizing

1:24:35

about reasons why that

1:24:37

might have happened. I want to end Jason

1:24:40

because we've mostly talked about the Dullest Brothers

1:24:42

and the kind of men they were, how they came

1:24:44

about, and how that led them into

1:24:46

what they did, and how that led to the creation of the

1:24:49

CIA. I also want to quote

1:24:51

a passage from The Brothers by Stephen Kinzer

1:24:53

that lays out kind of the talent Alan

1:24:55

cultivated because he was he headed the CIA during

1:24:58

its formative years. This talks out

1:25:00

the kind of people he recruited, and I think this

1:25:02

is the note that I want to end on. Quote.

1:25:05

All were gregarious, intrigued by

1:25:07

possibilities, liked to do things,

1:25:09

had three bright ideas a day,

1:25:12

shared the optimism of stock market plungers,

1:25:14

and were convinced that every problem

1:25:16

had its handle and that the CIA should

1:25:19

find a way to reach it. The intelligence

1:25:21

historian Thomas Powers has written they

1:25:23

also tended to be white Anglo Saxon

1:25:26

patricians from old families with old

1:25:28

money, at least at the beginning and

1:25:30

they somehow inherited traditional British

1:25:32

attitudes towards the colored races of the

1:25:34

world, not the puka sahib arrogance

1:25:37

of the Indian Raj, but the mixed fascination

1:25:40

and condescension of men like T. E. Lawrence,

1:25:43

who were enthusiastic partisans of the

1:25:45

alien cultures into which they dipped

1:25:47

for a time, and rarely doubted their

1:25:49

ability to help until it was too late.

1:25:52

These were the best men who formed

1:25:54

the core of the early CIA. Most

1:25:57

came from privileged backgrounds that isolated

1:25:59

them from ordinary life, and had gone to the

1:26:01

right schools. During the war, they

1:26:04

had traded genteel lives for death defying

1:26:06

adventures. Upon returning home,

1:26:08

they found the quiet routines of peace

1:26:11

unfulfilling. Yep, it

1:26:13

is hard to overstate the

1:26:17

power of boredom world

1:26:20

events. And then when certain

1:26:22

wealthy people can decide, for example,

1:26:25

you know what, I think it would be funny if I

1:26:27

ran for president. Uh. Sometimes

1:26:32

sometimes people just want to find something

1:26:34

to do and decide. You know what, I

1:26:36

think that the uncivilized races

1:26:38

need me to come rescue them.

1:26:41

Yeah, it is it. It is fitting that

1:26:45

all of the people who kind of

1:26:47

form the background of the early c I are dull

1:26:49

list types. They are

1:26:52

rich kids from the aristocracy who

1:26:54

go to private schools, have

1:26:56

an exciting time in the war, and

1:26:58

come home bored. And

1:27:00

also I think with that kind of ego

1:27:03

that they know what's best for the

1:27:05

world. That has to be a factor. And then you've

1:27:07

got people like Alan DAAs, who

1:27:09

I fully believe a big chunk of

1:27:12

his motivation is that

1:27:14

nothing gets you laid like

1:27:16

saying you're a spy.

1:27:19

And yeah, you can overestimate

1:27:22

the impact of boredom or getting laid,

1:27:24

or his his ability to be able to say,

1:27:26

well, you know that revolution just happened.

1:27:28

That was me. It's like I was. I

1:27:31

barely escaped with my life like I had.

1:27:33

You know that that guy was assassinated.

1:27:35

I killed him myself with a poison dart

1:27:38

from my wrist. Watch. Why don't

1:27:40

we talk about this? I can't tell the story here

1:27:42

in the restaurant, but if we come up to my room

1:27:45

whereas to see you and me, I can tell you the story

1:27:47

in privacy with you and your twin sister,

1:27:50

the three of us. You know you do a great Alan

1:27:52

DUIs. So

1:27:55

yeah, there you go, everybody. I these

1:27:58

are two names. Everyone should know. These

1:28:00

are names when when we say

1:28:03

we have shorthand, like talk about this, that's McCarthy,

1:28:06

is um or that's whatever. The

1:28:08

names dullest should be among those

1:28:10

that everybody knows his shorthand and they're not.

1:28:12

So if we have helped some people

1:28:15

know these names and know what hand they had

1:28:17

in shaping the mess, that is a role today.

1:28:20

There you go, We've done a service. Yes,

1:28:22

that's all we ever tried to do service.

1:28:25

And if you don't know the names of the modern

1:28:28

versions of the dullest is find out m

1:28:30

hm Yes, John Krazinski,

1:28:33

Google John Krazinski. Jason

1:28:39

you got anything to um?

1:28:43

Yes? Since I yes. Since I abandoned

1:28:46

uh the online publishing

1:28:48

industry last year and left my job at

1:28:50

Crack and a full time author, I am

1:28:53

a New York Times bestselling author of

1:28:55

several increasingly stupid books.

1:28:58

The last one was called Zoe Punch is the

1:29:00

Future and the Dick. It is a book two

1:29:02

in a series. You do not have to have read the first

1:29:04

one. It is as good of a place to start as

1:29:06

any or you can go to Amazon,

1:29:08

or if you have a more ethical place you buy your

1:29:11

books from. You can prowse any

1:29:13

of them by looking up my name.

1:29:16

Um. Otherwise, I also have social media.

1:29:19

All the social media is except TikTok. Are

1:29:21

you on TikTok? Evans uh

1:29:24

no no. I

1:29:26

I am frightened and confused by anything

1:29:28

that the kids like. Okay, so for you

1:29:30

on TikTok. The

1:29:32

handful of TikTok videos that I've

1:29:35

seen segments of on Twitter have convinced

1:29:37

me that we need to do a reverse logans run.

1:29:39

I love TikTok. I'm just not like

1:29:42

posting on there. It's a great time. I've

1:29:44

learned so many helpful tips on organization

1:29:47

and like what products to buy

1:29:50

that actually work. It's

1:29:52

like it's like yelp but video,

1:29:54

Well, you can either do what Sophie.

1:29:57

There's also a lot of puppies. There's a lot of puppy

1:30:00

easy guys. I'm just

1:30:02

gonna say it again reverse Logan's

1:30:04

run. I said in the previous episode,

1:30:07

though, like it's easy for us to look back on

1:30:09

the past and condemn how casual they

1:30:11

were about Nazis and various

1:30:13

I think in the future they'll look back at how

1:30:15

we tolerated TikTok and

1:30:18

they'll say the same It's like, how could they not see

1:30:20

where that was going? Yeah? How

1:30:22

could they not tell that TikTok would

1:30:24

lead to the annihilation of

1:30:26

the dolphins in two? And

1:30:28

I saw it coming? But thanks for having

1:30:31

me on this

1:30:33

was this was a lot of information

1:30:35

to try to get through very quickly. We left

1:30:38

out so much. We love thought so many

1:30:40

stories that could have You're gonna

1:30:42

do an entire series on mk ultra, a

1:30:45

multi part series on mk ultra is

1:30:47

also going to wind up leaving out a

1:30:49

lot, a lot of a lot of wild

1:30:51

shit. It's just the

1:30:53

nature of it. If the best thing podcast

1:30:56

can do is encouraged people to go out and buy books

1:30:58

on the subject, and her susan further because

1:31:01

you you are not informed because you listen

1:31:03

to nine hours above podcast on

1:31:06

it, I know it listens like there was a lot to get through.

1:31:08

There's so much more and it's all just as

1:31:10

interesting it really is. And

1:31:14

if you want to learn more, buying

1:31:16

The Brothers, which is where I recommend starting

1:31:18

with Stephen kenzer Um and then The Devil's

1:31:20

Chessboard by David Talbot, will

1:31:23

will that that will actually

1:31:25

give you a pretty solid base of understanding

1:31:28

of these guys. And what they did. But of course there will

1:31:30

still be a lot more, all

1:31:34

right,