TRUMAN'S MISGIVINGS OVER CIA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000700550006-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 10, 2004
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: April 1, 1967
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Approved For Release 2004/12/15: CIA-RDP75-
is to encourage further escalation. The
amendment lauded the President as a
peacemaker even as he committed the
country ever more deeply to the con-
flirt that Mansfield once described as
an "open-ended" war. The White
House, the State Department, and the
Pentagon were quick to interpret . the
amendment as the most generous
blank check handed over to them for
military purposes in Vietnam since the
Senate's Tonkin Gulf resolution of
1964.
The two Senate doves who stood
fast and voted their convictions on this
historic occasion-which was given only
a fraction of the attention it deserved
by any objective news standard-made
their position as clear as words could
make it. "I am voting against the sup-
plemental authorization," Senator. Nel-
son stated, "in order to express my op-
position to past escalation of the con-
flict and the future escalation that is
certain to follow. Furthermore, I am
voting against it to express my deep
regret that we have failed to explore
adequately the possibility of reaching
the negotiating table by the cessation
of bombing for a sufficient time to
test the real intent of Hanoi." Senator
Morse decared: "These successive mili-
tary fundh , ; bills for the war do not
relate so much to supporting the boys
and giving them what they need as
they provide funds for new expanded
forces to be sent."
In the House approval of the ap-
propriation came by voice vote after
it had defeated, 372 to eighteen, an
amendment by Representative George
Brown of California which was similar
to the Clark anti-bombing amendment.
In a later statement-' expressive of the
views of the eighteen Democrats, in-
'cluding himself, who voted for the
Brown amendment -- Representative
Robert Kastenmeier of Wisconsin said
lie had voted "no" in the voice vote
on the appropriation because he could
"not support a measure that promises
only to continue the present course
which will send still more troops to
Vietnam, widen the land war in South-
east Asia, and further increase Ameri-
can casualties."
House members who voted for the
Brown amendment in addition to the
author and Kastenmeier were :
Jonathan B. Bingham, Leonard
Farbstein, Benjamin S. Rosenthal, Wil-
liam F. Ryan, and James H. Scheuer,
all of New York; Phillip Burton, Don
Edwards, Thomas M. Rees, and Ed-
ward R. Roybal of California; John
Conyers, Jr., and Charles C. Diggs, Jr.,
of Michigan; Donald M. Fraser of
Minnesota; Edith Green ,of Oregon;
Truman's Misgivings over CIA
Former President Harry Truman'; who created the Central Intel-
ligence Agency, soon afterward developed the "gravest misgivings"
about it, Smith Simpson, a former State Department oficial, re-
minds us in his forthcoming book, Anatomy of the State Department.
Simpson recalls that Mr. Truman wrote in a syndicated newspaper
article in late 1953:
"With all the nonsense put on by Communist propaganda ... 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 subncrting in-
fluence in the affairs of other people... .
"There are now some searching questions that need to be answered.
I ... would like to see the CIA restored to its original assignment as
the intelligence arm of the President, and whatever else it can prop-
erly perform in that special field-and that its operational duties be
terminated or properly used elsewhere.
"We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions
and for our ability to maintain. a, free and open society. There is some-
thing about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting,a
shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it."
2(
H elstos i/of New Jersey; Patsy
T. Mink of Hawaii; and Sidney R.
Yates of Illinois.
One out of four Americans wants the
bombing of North Vietnam stopped.
Although this is a minority, it does
embrace millions of voters. Except for
Senators Nelson and Morse in the
Senate and eighteen members of the
House, these millions had no Congres-
sional voices courageous enough to
cast clear-cut votes against the bombing.
and other escalation measures which
block the road to peace. Once again
events have demonstrated that when
it comes to making undeclared war-
and widening it when it suits him-
President Johnson has Congress in the
hollow of his hand.
Democracy Betrayed
If two years. from now our Govern-
ment-with tltc tacit and sometimes
outspoken approval of sonic segments
of the Establishment-is still employ-
ing force, deceit, and corruption as
tools of U.S. policy, then it will be
quite appropriate to celebrate 1969
throughout the land as the 500th anni-
versary of the birth of Nicole di Ber-
nardo Machiavelli. For the Florentine'
statesman and political writer, in his
work The Prince, sought to justify
the use of violence, dishonesty, and
corruption in statecraft. His contetit-
porary and model, Cesare Borgia, built
his power on such principles, the prin-
ciples we now practice in modern
fashion in Vietnam ' and in other
countries.
The practice of a Machiavellian na-
tional policy has been clearly exposed
to public view by the latest series of
revelations. on the Central Intelligence
Agency's penetration, over two decades,
of nearly every type of free institution
operating in this country and abroad.
The pumping of many millions of dol-
lars in CIA funds into the nation's
academic, cultural, labor, church, and
journalistic fields has been so compre-
hensive that it is becoming increasingly
difficult to find,' organizations com-
pletely, free of any taint of CIA,
subsidy.
This frightful and frightening policy
the Government pursues-- that the end
6 THE PROGRESSIVE
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 Approved For Release 2004/12/15 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000700550006-2
justifies the means-has boomeranged.
Our credibility in the eyes of other
countries and peoples has been severely
damaged by the CIA's infiltration of
our institutions. More than ever be-
fore, American delegates-whether stu-
dents, professors, labor leaders, lawyers,
or cinirchnrcr, to international con-
ferences will he viewed with suspicion
as possible hirelings of the U.S. espio-
nas' ' apparatus.
The damage (lone to free institutions
in this country may he even, greater.,
The CIA web of propaganda and in-
trigue-spun with the generalized ap-
proval of four Presidents, the blank
check endorsement of Congress, the
acceptance and sometimes connivance
have been caught cheating, and it is
in the cheating and not the exposure
of it that we betray our ideals. The
country has a choice between the
philosophy of the Machiavellians and
the beliefs of those deeply concerned
citizens who know that if we continue
to justify ruthless means because of
our professed ends, eventually democ-
racy will be destroyed. Destroyed not
by Communism but by the witless and
reckless policies of the Government
itself and the acquiescence of the un-
informed and the unconcerned.
Negroes and Jews
headed by eminently respectable
Eleven out of one hundred Ameri-
PeI'sor-s--demonstrates how cold war Herblock in The Washington Post cans are Negroes and about three out
values threaten to transform a country The of one hundred are Jews. In his sttug-
founded in liberty into an authoritar- Student Prince g-
gle for civil rights and equality of op-
ian state. portunity the minority Negro often
There is "an alarming trend in this curbed. has had the support of the minority
country toward the use of police-state (See box on Page 6.)
tint
tactics," Senator Gaylord Nelson, Wis- President Johnson, it is reported, Jew. have worked together,
cons in an end to secret subsidies by rights and and
hundreds in Democrat, told his colleagues. CIA y civil ri ts advocates, in hundreds of
Ile cited CIA subsidies, wiretapping the Cto private organizations-
n
es citiignedzensto give the Ne eg
and eavesdropping by Government after Ramparts' recent revelations re- the first class c firstn cdesigned
agencies, and the financing of sup- garcding the' National Student Associa- citizenship he has been
poscdly legitimate books by the U.S. tion hit the headlines. A next logical so long denied.
Information Agency among examples step would be for the President and There has been some friction, at
of "un Congress to initiate a A of openly times, between Negroes and Jews. Oc-
-Amcri'can practices. polic y casionally this has broken into the
If there is to be a halt to the process declared and openly administered aid open but more frequently it has
by which the Government and some of to U.S. groups and individuals repro- seethed below the surface.
our institutions are being subverted to seating democratic ideals overseas. Pri
vat, foundations should be encouraged Jews, e or among between Negroes
practices which mirror the Communist and d Jews, or among other elements of
tactics we condcurn
to provide their own funds for si
the first st
il
,
m
ep must
ar
be a thorough-going Congressional in- activities and to make full disclosure
quiry into the CIA's activities and the of these activities.
relationship of the executive and legis- ' Apart from the question of morality
lative branches to this dangerously involved in the secret practices that
powerful agency. To press for such an have been disclosed, the Government,
inquiry may be futile in view of the and many cooperating members of the
disposition of the Administration and Establishment, have demonstrated an
many Congressional leaders to white- abysmal lack of common sense. They
4va;;h the CIA. But the citizen who should have foreseen that their secret
truly cares about the survival of the operations inevitably would be ex.
American venture in demo
osed t
h
ld
ld
id
cracy s
o wor
p
-w
ou
e condemnation. Ellis and published last year, charged
demand of his Congressman, his Sena- We cannot play international
ames
th
t N
g
,
a
egroes in Harlem were exploited
tor, and the White House that the said Walter Lippmann, as if we were by merchants and landlords; most of
inquiry be initiated. a totalitarian society. "The American' the exploiters, the author wrote, were'
What would follow such an explora- way of life," he added, "does not pre- Jewish. He also claimed 'that "Zion-
tion, it is hoped, is new legislation pare our people for continual decep- ists" dominated Negro colleges and
specifically limiting the 'CIA to the' tion. We had better make up our Negro organizations' and manipulated
gathering and evaluation of intelli- minds to play the game from the the civil rights movement.
gence. President Truman, under whose American strength and not from Author James Baldwin and actor
Administration the CIA was estab- 'American weakness, and to stamp out and playwright Ossie Davis, both Ne-
lished, warned after he left office that lying as a public policy." groes, have now resigned from' Liber-
the agency's growing power must be In the struggle for men's minds we ator's advisory board in protest against
April, 967
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our pluralistic society,. are best brought
out into the open and discussed. For
that reason, the disagreement that has
developed over a series of articles ap-
pearing in Liberator, a Negro month-
ly, could prove to have positive value.
It may help clear the air of some of
the misunderstandings that have been
developing between Negroes and Jews.
The Liberator series, "Semitism in
the Black Ghetto," written by Eddie