WASHINGTON REPORT: Are We Any Different?:

...One such occurred during the testimony of Richard Bissell, then the CIA Deputy Director of Plans (Covert Operations), before the Committee...

...But advanced men (and governments) came to acknowledge the priority of ethical principles over force...

...steps backward...

...What then happened is that "plausible denial" was extended to conceal, for example, the involvement of the President and/or his senior advisers in a secret operation-e.g., the removal by force and violence of a head of state regarded as hostile...

...SISYPHUS...

...The doctoral dissertations in international affairs now seemed unreal, naive or superficial-and were put aside in favor of more topical, gamier accounts...

...And, at least one or two infrequent dastardly deeds done without the law from time to time...

...Even intelligence-agency types, literary and retired, began to write novels...

...I did, at that time in May, brief the Attorney General, and I think General Taylor to the effect that the Agency (CIA) had been using-I don't know whether (Sam) Giancana was mentioned by name, but in effect, the underworld against the Castro regime...

...The, CIA's Near East Division, apparently successfully, asked permission to establish a "Health Alteration Committee...

...But, as the Committee report points out, in discussing such an act within the high reaches of a presidential administration "failing to call dirty business by its rightful name may have increased the risk of dirty business being done...

...SISYPHUSt nightmare...

...Question: But you had information, didn't you, that you were, in fact, trying to kill him (Castro...

...Senator Mathias of Maryland, a Committee member, included separate comments of his own in the 347-page report...

...The Committee report noted that there is no presidential order in the NSC minutes for Lumumba's assassination (which did occur ultimately), but the President focused on Lumumba and was willing to war with the Soviets over him...

...Question: Mr...

...Question: That's incredible...

...The National Security Council (NSC) minutes of a meeting on August 18, 1960, include these of acting Secretary of State Dillon's remarks: "The President (Eisenhower, attending) said that the possibility that the UN would be forced out was simply inconceivable...

...Assassination, he noted, has been an instrument to transfer or terminate political power...

...But he needs lots more company than he has now...

...John Kennedy had hardly hoisted himself into the presidency before he made public his first reappointments-J...

...we were talking of one man forcing us out of the Congo...

...Bissell: I think that is a way of using these people against him...

...Seemed very logical to do, somehow, as the historians described the proceedings, all the time giving the goings-on a most civilized atmosphere...

...using the underworld...

...WASHINGTON REPORT ARE WE ANY DIFFERENT...

...He is asked if he discussed pre-Bay-of-Pigs plots against Castro in the course of a conversation with Attorney-General Robert Kennedy in May, 1961: Bissell...

...These are to be understood, not by reading newspaper or magazine accounts of the report, but by reading the testimony of witnesses who appeared before the Committee...

...Euphemisms cloak discussions as to whether (and how) to assassinate Premier Castro...

...Take your pick...

...There is no record that the CIA sought to establish for Castro's benefit what it desired in order to "incapacitate" an Iraqi Colonel believed to be pro-Soviet...

...of Lumumba supported by the Soviets...

...The thinking of high men in high places is exposed on several occasions by the Committee...

...The Senate Committee's interim report-if it's widely read-should put an end to the High Holiness tone of the town's daily newspapers in their reportage of G-men who are paid to think nasty thoughts and order subordinates to do, or be prepared to do, nasty things, both here and abroad...

...It became agreed that "out there" in the strategic watering-holes of the world it was most difficult-and in the back alleys and basements of Great Power rivalries quite brutal...

...the President stated...

...In sum, the Committee finds reasoning both in favor of and against direct presidential assent in efforts to remove from office those five men...

...However, from now on, let these men and their deeds be seen as they are...

...Another End to Innocence in America: Some, if not all these G-men may be needed...

...And, if all could not, certainly those back here in Washington, D.C...

...director, and Allen Dulles, CIA director, whose agencies have generated the current nightmare...

...who had sent them there were themselves quite proper tweedy chaps, who did the theater (occasionally without explanation leaving in response to a message during the third act) and played tennis well-but not ill-manneredly so Our chaps, of course-not theirs...

...I have no idea of the wording...

...In its conclusion, the Committee said there is enough documentation to permit a "reasonable inference" that President Eisenhower authorized an assassination plot against Lumumba...

...Yes, quite brutal...

...Accounts of rooms full of Met-ternichs who over the centuries gathered to resew the pieces after each war...

...I think it might quite possibly have been left in the more general terms of using the underworld against the Castro regime, or the leadership of the Castro regime...

...And in the reading, readers may remember that biography is history, as Carlyle said...

...The Committee also instructively places before us an Orwellian term, "plausible denial," the concept of which is essential to an understanding of some of the muddy testimony...

...The concept of "plausible denial" was originally intended to hide our involvement in secret actions should these actions come to light, as in the case of our U-2 flights over the Soviet Union and the Bay of Pigs disaster on the Cuban shore...

...Bissell, given the state of your knowledge at that time, wouldn't that have been deliberately misleading information...

...Question: Then, it's your belief that you communicated to the Attorney General that you were, in fact, trying to kill Castro...

...The Senate Committee, under Senator Church of Idaho, its chairman, has included in its report some persuasive evidences of improper doings in high places...

...He wrote as if his words were a laying-on of hands on the report...

...He remembers those foreign-policy documents of early times that he was obliged to study in order to obtain his degree...

...In part, because retiring statesmen went directly from their foreign offices to the publishers' offices in order to defend their conduct and policies against their adversaries...

...But the street-wise spies could get back in from the cold-at least a few could...

...Will Night fall...

...Four of them were assassinated...

...Bissel: Now you can surmise and I can surmise as to just what the Attorney General would have read into that phrase (i.e...

...There was no indication, the President stated, that the Congolese did not want UN support and the maintenance of order...

...To coin a phrase, power abuses and absolute power abuses absolutely...

...The torturer who was once an adjunct of the courts themselves is today an international outlaw," Mathias observed...

...Military officers, likewise...

...However, contemporary times, particularly with the beginning of World War II, reflect a somewhat more realistic atmosphere in accountings of international relations...

...Mathias makes sense...

...As if in a low, but purposeful voice, Mathias said the assassination plots discussed are unsettling because they are...

...Or has Night fallen already on the nation, a usually calm associate asks...

...Those documents with their starchy, antiseptic high-flown language...

...We should do so even if such action was used by the Soviets as the basis for starting a fight...

...Bissell: I have no idea whether I did...

...Assassination against a foreign leader is an "act of war," he said...

...Question: Did you tell them-them being the Attorney General and General Taylor-that this use included actual attempts to assassinate Mr...

...Attorney General, we are trying to kill him...

...Castro survives...

...Bissell: I thought it signaled just exactly that to the Attorney General, I'm sure...

...Bissell: I don't think it would have been...

...We should keep the UN in the Congo even if we had to ask for European troops to do it...

...Specific acts come to be performed on the basis of general approval of broad strategies, the report continues-"get rid of" Lumumba or Castro or Diem or Trujillo or Chilean General Schneider or...

...Edgar Hoover, F.B.I...

...The Committee report, he said, is intended not to injure anyone's reputation or damage the intelligence-gathering service, but rather "to stop the erosion of society's values caused by excessive secrecy and unchecked Executive power by making the factual record as accurate and clear as possible...

...On the other hand, the Committee even-handedly points out, there is "enough countervailing testimony" by Eisenhower administration officials and "enough ambiguity and lack of clarity" in the records of high-level policy meetings to preclude the Committee from making a finding that "the President intended an assassination effort against Lumumba...

...The bedside tables of the country could each use a copy of the Committee report...

...You're saying that in briefing the Attorney General you are telling him you are using the underworld against Castro, and you intended that to mean, Mr...

...Moving boundaries around . . . people, too, sometimes...

...Castro...