This is about where the total eclipse of the heart of Democracy creeps into JFK's remarks. But we'll hold off on the saddening phases of that front for a moment. Kennedy's speech on his urgent call for the Press to take heed in its reporting of "national security" and the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" all around us --even at our doorstep. The message was well-received by the conservative Press corps (Kennedy called them the "one party press" and he didn't mean they leant Democratic) and would seem prophetic when the globe-threatening Cuban Missile Crisis hit home in October 1962, when American deployments of missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of similar ballistic missiles in Cuba, and scared the skirts off Americans like nothing else until 9/11. It's at least very ironic that the conspiracy theory era began in earnest not with JFK's assassination but with his paranoic take on intended Soviet aggression, resulting in American first-move aggression.
Out of this fear and paranoia that developed after JFK's death, new permanent hegemonic American aggression began. As detailed in a recent book I reviewed, The American Way: Stories of Invasion (Comma Press, 2021), though the incursions to exert control over other threatening (i.e., leaning too far Left) sovereign nations had begun in the '60s, after Kennedy we took off the incursion gloves and sought out enemies and demanded control against the enemy: Communists (or Socialists (or autocracy (or Shiites)))), resulting in what a chronology that looks like this: The stories are conveniently presented in chronological order: Iran, 1953; Congo, 1961; Cuba, 1961; South Africa, 1962; Canada, 1963; Vietnam, 1967; Italy, 1969; Turkey, 1971; Chile, 1973; El Salvador, 1981; Guatemala, 1982; Grenada, 1983; Nicaragua, 1986; Kurdistan, 1999; Afghanistan, 2001-2021; Colombia, 2002; Iraq, 2004; Gaza, 2007; Libya, 2011; and, Pakistan, 2008-16. The CIA became the Enforcer for aggressive Foreign Policy.
Few CIA operatives were as keened to the paranoiac need for maintaining "national security" overseas (and at home) than rightwing stalwart Duane Clarridge, who was willing to take out any one who didn't want to "lump" American hegemony. Commies could not be tolerated in the world -- from Latin America to Middle East (Iran) to Australia (Gough Whitlam) to Asia, it was, Look out, here come da Judge.
South/Central America
In his memoir, A Spy For All Seasons (1995), Clarridge badmouths the Democratic presidential fuckups that had messed up the CIA's mission and made his job as head of the Latin America division hell, at first:
The Latin America Division was snakebit. The CIA had been battered across the board by the Church/Pike investigations, but the Latin America Division had been hit the hardest. In 1970, an avowed Communist, Salvador Allende, was elected president of Chile. The Latin America Division, acting in response to a directive from then-President Nixon, had tried to foment a military coup to prevent him from taking office. The Chilean military did overthrow him and Allende was killed...Then... came the revelations about the idiotic attempts to assassinate Cuban dictator Castro at the Kennedys' behest. The Carter years, with their generally anti-CIA attitude, hadn't helped; the entire division was still faltering and reluctant to take the initiative. In a way, who could blame them?
Duane had America's back though, "and don't you forget it," he said to anyone who would listen. John Pilger listened.
In the documentary, The War Against Democracy (2007), John Pilger lays bare the murderous American foreign policy initiatives in South/Central America over the past few decades. As the IMDB blurb sums it up: "Venezuela, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, Salvador, Bolivia: people's struggle for democracy versus US imperialism in Latin America since the 1950s, backing coups and supporting dictatorships." As head of the Latin American division of the CIA, Clarridge was in the thick of the carnage and indifference to human misery caused by US power moves. Referencing Richard Nixon and his desire to control South/Central in the '70s, Pilger quotes Nixon as "not giving a sh*t" about people south of the border. In a now often-replayed interview with Duane Clarridge and his role in destroying Chile, the CIA henchman thumbs his nose at Pilger and those concerned with human rights. Check it out:
National Security. "We'll intervene wherever we feel like it," says Clarridge. "And if you don't like it: lump it. Get used to it, world; we're not going to put up with any nonsense." American foreign policy for the last 50 years.
Middle East
If Clarridge had only kept his policy-making activities limited to Latin America, Monroe Doctrine territory, we might have found a way out of "our" morass and back onto the road to Moral Compassville. But Clarridge, looking to undermine another Democratic president, thought it meet to weigh in on Obama's Middle East policy, specifically his nuke deal with Iran In an interview with the Fox network's David Asman, Clarridge took a potshot at the Obama administration, while also shockingly revealing that the Saudis had several nuclear weapons. The dialogue goes like this:
David Asman: Well, specifically where a lot of people, Mr. Claridge, have talked about Saudi Arabia, they certainly have more money than anybody in the Middle East. Are you concerned about the possibility they may get a nuclear bomb?
Duane Clarridge: Saudis already have the bomb, but people fail to remember.
Asman: Hold on a second, Mr Clarridge. Let me just emphasize that point, because that's an important point. You say Saudi Arabia already has a nuclear bomb?
Clarridge: Oh, several.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
