I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about “Yankee imperialism,” “exploitive capitalism,” “war-mongering,” “monopolists,” in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.

aged like milk

Interesting timing for the release of this particular op-ed 🤔

release where?

for anyone else too blazed or uncaffeinated, JFK's assassination had just happened

Henry A Wallace was FDR's VP for his third term and he was like FDR but more explicitly anti racist. The party hated him. They forced him off the ticket for FDR's fourth term. FDR was too sick to defend his pick at the convention and died very early in his fourth term. They left us with this piece of shit that nuked Japan for no reason, started the cold war, and gave us the CIA. I'll give him credit for vetoing Taft-Hartley which was unfortunately overridden anyway. Truman is when the New Deal really turned to shit and the defense industry got entrenched. If Wallace had been VP, no Korean War, maybe no cold war, probably no Vietnam War, maybe the USA doesn't waste so much on defense, maybe the USSR doesn't waste so much on defense either. On the other hand, an anti racist democratic party may have lost the south and become unelectable by the late 50s and we'd be 20 years further into neoliberal hell.