28. Nixon, Dulles & the CIA | The Devil's Chessboard - David Talbot Pt. 1

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Um, Dan, I'm, I, whoa, we're finally doing it. We'll get into that in a second. Um, I'm stoked. I'm finally stoked. Um, I don't know, I don't know what look. We got any banner we want to do before we jump into this? What do we want to talk about? My potatoes finally sprouted. That's pretty good. Yeah, exactly. Very exciting. I think that's what they are. I went back today and, um, uh, some of the leaves were like kind of starting to like fall off and die and I was like, oh, it must be too cold. So I had to cover them up today. I covered them with a little blanket. Hopefully they'll survive because it's, tell you what's still cold here. Damn. My potatoes, they're finally here. But oh goodness, God speed and God bless. God's feeding. God bless you. Uh, the common potato, the best food perhaps. You know what I was thinking actually today, which I feel like you'd appreciate this. Um, you know what's making or running for possibly the best food? Hummus. It's getting up there. Nice. Hummus is pretty damn good. Yeah. I'm a fun, I'm a fun. I found myself being like, whenever I make meals, I'm like, what can I make to just put hummus on? Can I just put hummus on a potato? I don't know. Can I put it on spinach? Sure, why not? It's the other way around. It's not, you make a meal and then consider whether you could. Exactly. Like, can I put hummus on Wheaties? I don't know. Does that make sense? Um, yeah, mashed potato. Wow, that sounds good. Oh, interesting. Hummus and mashed potato, you say? Interesting. Do you remember, do you remember that time that my mind was blown about the fact that you could use garbanzo bean juice as like an egg white substitute? And I was like, really excited and I told you and you're like, wow, Jack, I had no idea. It's like, oh yeah, okay. Yeah, I remember trying to affect some level of sarcasm. I'm not quite sure whether, whether it was on quite the level that you've just demonstrated. It was a bit of an exaggeration. That's, uh, that's, that's the vegan, uh, that's like day one. They tell you that, um, you can do what with what? And I thought there was just water.

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Um, anyway, anyway, I don't think this banter is going in. I don't think it's going anywhere. We haven't got it. We haven't got the energy. We can't, like, feign excitement in the sort of mundanity of our sort of chat sometimes. Like, the, the pre-podcast banter is designed to sort of like soften people up, but then we're gonna hit them with all the sort of boring. Like, but like, I don't know, I think, I think there's nothing boring in this episode. Whoa, there is not. Just one big hit after another. Okay, we're hyped and we can't, like, yeah, okay. I'm close to standing up. I'm close to standing up. Long-time listeners will know, uh, old heads, one might say, that, uh, uh, Dan and I, since a very early episode, have been teasing a book called, "The Book." Um, and when I say Dan and I, it's mainly just really. I read this book, uh, last summer, kind of on a whim. I saw it in a local book bookshop and I was like, I'll pick that up. That looks interesting. The book is "The Devil's Chessboard," which is kind of a lame name, I'll be honest. Um, and it's written by a guy named David Talbot. Um, and it is ostensibly, at least the bit that we're reading right now, we're not reading all of it because there's just too much in it. But ostensibly, it's a history of the CIA. But I think kind of what it winds up being is a biography of Allen Dulles. Yeah, I keep calling it a biography of the CIA. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. It's, it's that story of like, maybe like the organizations that would go on to become the CIA up to, I don't know, 1963, maybe we'll just use that as an ending. Maybe like November, I don't know. Um, but so, yeah, early CIA years and how that famed institution has gone on to become, um, one of the worst, I suppose, and, and its role in world history. Um, but really, this book just serves as like a collection of nuggets that are just blow your mind. And that's why I love it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really wonderful and it sort of like develops all of these. It's just developing a sort of meta-narrative whilst also introducing these cast of scoundrels. Yes. And then sort of drip-feeding to you, um, nuggets of their biographies which reveal them to themselves to be, yeah, the most, the most duplicitous, the most deranged in some cases, the most psychopathic. Yes. The most amoral, um, preach, just collection of the people you could ever, yeah, theater to encounter. Yes. Yes. Not good dudes, I think we can say. Um, I mean, yeah, wow. How do we start? I've been wanting to talk about this book for a long time and I finally forced Dan to read it. Um, what we're gonna do is we're going to read up until we're going to talk about up until the chapter I believe called, is it "Scoundrel Time"? Yeah, well, maybe we'll do "Scoundrel Time." I read a little bit further after that, but yeah, it's basically up until sort of like, uh, 52, with the sort of like, uh, electoral victory of Eisenhower, that Eisenhower-Nixon, yeah, um, ticket, ticket. I love that. The chapter on Nixon is just simply called "Scoundrel Time." I think that's so good. Okay, don't get too ahead of ourselves. I've been trying to figure out how to come at this, all right? Because it is a bit of like a book when you're like, hey, I'm reading a book on CIA history. Some, you know, maybe some alarm bells go off, especially in part three, which we're not gonna talk about. We're not gonna talk about part three yet. We'll talk about that when we get to it. But I think Dan and I have actually had some conversations on how to approach this book, why we're reading it, um, et cetera, et cetera. And I think a couple things become apparent. I mean, I actually think the thing that this pair is best with that we've read so far is the Mike Davis. And we'll talk about why in a bit, because you can definitely do a bit of a class analysis with this book, or just about class interests. But also, I think we're interesting and interested in kind of going after the question of like, what is a conspiracy theory? Because you hear a lot of libs kind of clump everything under the sun is a conspiracy theory if it's not the official narrative, right? And I mean, like Dan and I are obviously not QAnon people. We're not like, Sandy Hook was fake news people. But we do kind of want to maybe separate the wheat from the chaff a bit when it comes to, um, our lovely CIA, beautiful boys. Um, and so I think we're going to do our best to treat this as a history and see what we come away with.

You're quite right to set it up in that manner. Um, one could certainly look at this book, in this history, um, particularly the way this book is written, to sensationalized to some extent, to to draw out or to to highlight some of the types of stories that it highlights, kind of thing. And the kind of narratives it's attempting to weave, certainly does, um, is designed to appeal to sort of like a conspiracy narrative to some extent. And, yeah, but, um, I know, and we are going to go there. So, and also, bear with us and, um, give us, give us, I guess, give us a bit of space in the sense of like, yeah, as Jack says, we don't quite know. We, we'd like to stop sort of, we'd like to spend some time passing out what is and isn't a conspiracy theory, how they function, and sort of how we intend to regard them, I suppose. Yeah. Um, but also, we're going to have some fun. We're going to have some goddamn fights, that's for sure. Sort of third eyes wide open, kind of like, um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny, right? Because I mean, there is also a section of the left that just is basically like, everything is CIA. And I think that it is the FBI. Yeah, the FBI, CIA. I mean, I think that I'm half joking. Um, I think that this book could use an analysis that is a little bit more, I dare say it, Dan, maybe Marxist. Um, I'll let you know when I find some people who can do that, but we'll do our best. Um, okay, so no further ado. We just, should we just both jump in? So this book, we're not going to start with the introduction. We're not going to go there yet because introduction, it's part three, and we don't wanna go there quite yet. Um, let's start off by talking about this fella, Allen Dulles. Every blue-blooded American has at least heard of or flown in and out of Dulles International Airport at least once. That's DC. I think I've been there, but I don't remember if it's DC. Uh, whatever it is. Is it named, fool? It is not named after Allen. Dominus, actually. It is named after his brother, John Foster Dulles. Um, so these fellas, these lovable fellas, Dan, they, I suppose that we should begin to frame this conversation as their corporate lawyers, right? They work for a law firm called Sullivan & Cromwell. Um, in between the two World Wars, okay? Um, John Foster Dulles is a bit more of a statesman. He's kind of remembered as being like behind the scenes. He was, um, was he Secretary of State? I believe Secretary of State for Eisenhower. Yeah, yeah. But also just like, sort of like Republican grandee. Yeah. With a specialization in foreign affairs. Heavy anti-communism. He was like the anti-communist dude. Um, eventually, although perhaps overshadowed by one person. Yeah. Think of one or two notable people who, yeah, yeah. One, yeah, one deranged anti-communist, one very dramatic. Yeah. Well, one very drunk anti-communist. But I'm thinking, no, I'm thinking of Allen Dulles was the first to really start, um, sounding a slightly deranged warning horn for, yes, um, fear of the Soviet Union, fear of the Soviet Union, dominant theory of, [ __ ] communist influence inside Florida, but also across Western Europe. Exactly. Um, a bug which was caught by his brother, John Foster, and then the country. Uh-huh. Quite. Yeah. So I think, yeah, I think it's important to frame this. I mean, when Allen Dulles kind of enters the historical narrative in some kind of meaningful ways after World War I, vogue time is actually already kind of old, right? And as I say, he's working for this Wall Street corporate law firm called, um, Sullivan & Cromwell. Sullivan would go on to represent some of the most reprehensible activities known to man. But I think before we get to that, I've got to set it up just a little bit more, all right? So, a little bit, a little bit of a history lesson, Dan. And oh, my, I might go off here a little bit. I might have to go off. You have my blessing. God bless. So, as we all know, we've all seen the photos after World War I of, um, German, uh, families, um, you know, you've seen photos of like, little kids building doll houses out of like stacks of Deutsche Marks, right? And we've seen photos of people, like, the Deutsche Mark was so useless because of inflation, inflation, that, you know, people would like using it to like, as wallpaper in their houses, right? Using it for insulation. People's whole life savings were gone, just to basically like pay for some food, pay for a meal. And the reason that that happened is because of a little thing, Dan, known as the Treaty of Versailles, all right? In the Treaty of Versailles, I found out about this the other day, and this blew my mind. There's something called the War Guilt Clause, all right? That is Article 231. And this is kind of infamous. And I mean, like, at least in American schools, you learn a little bit about this, um, because it was something that was kind of put in, a little bit, maybe not last minute, but it's a bit of a, maybe an afterthought. And what it did was it said that Germany, it's just a couple sentences, and it said that Germany was responsible for all of the assets lost by the Allies during the entire war. And they would go on to basically like put a number on this, which was astronomical, completely baffling, right? It was like a number, I think probably if you did it in today's money, would probably be like in the billions of dollars, right? It was something that like Germany probably wasn't about to be able to repay. So this opened up, quite a bit of business opportunities for Americans, right? Because German investors were freaking out because their investments just were worth absolutely nothing because they had to pay back this absolutely astronomical sum. I think actually at one point, our good friend of the podcast, uh, John Maynard Keynes, basically saw that and was like, whoa, okay, this is impossible. Why are we making Germany pay back this much money? To say nothing of like, whose fault the war was. Not to say that wasn't Germany's, but like, it was kind of everybody's, bit of an imperial war. Um, but American robber barons had a bit of a plan, Dan. And these were like old-school robber barons, right? These were like the Morgans, the, uh, you know, the ghouls, maybe not the ghouls, but like people like that, right? People who actually use the phrase robber barons. People who would, this is like the last generation of people who in America would just straight up send Pinkertons in to just like murder union guys when they were striking, right? They didn't think. How did that roll off to, uh, official state agents? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Um, they had a plan, Dan. And I'm gonna actually let David Talbot explain what this was, because he explains this plan from the point of view of Sullivan & Cromwell, who are representing a lot of these corporate interests. Okay, so he says, Dulles, and here he means Allen Dulles, knew many of the central players in the secret of Swiss financial milieu because he and his brother had worked with them as clients or business partners before the war. Sullivan & Cromwell, the Dulles brothers' Wall Street law firm, was at the center of an intricate international network of banks, investment firms, and industrial conglomerates that rebuilt Germany after World War I. And when he says rebuilt, here what he basically means is like stealing these investments for pennies and then basically, you know, profiting off of that. Helping to rebuild. Foster, the law firm's top executive, grew skilled at structuring the complex merry-go-round of transactions that funneled massive U.S. investments into German industrial giants like IG Farben, chemical conglomerate, and Krupp Steel. Anybody knows anything about World War II knows that IG Farben, they were, uh, the people who made Zyklon B, among other things, which is the gas that was used in the concentration camps. And Krupp Steel, of course, built basically all of the, um, you know, Panzers and things like that, all the war materials. The profits generated by these investments then flow to France and Britain in the form of war reparations, and then back to the United States to pay off war loans. So I think that's that basically sets up all of this story because what's basically happening here is American private investors, old-school robber baron guys, are going, oh, we can make a killing off of this if we buy this investment for really, really cheap, invest heavily in Germany, and then, um, allow those profits to be sent back to France and Britain in the form of war reparations. And then basically, because the United States, uh, loaned money to the UK and France and everybody, that money would then be sent back to the United States to pay off war loans. So I think that's something that's really, really important to note. And something that I think that Talbot doesn't get into here is the idea of like, um, perhaps there is a second reason why these, uh, corporate robber barons were doing this, why these American people are doing this. And Dan, I hate to say it, but I think it might have been to stop communism. I think, I think a lot of these people knew which way the winds were blowing. Um, and they perhaps, you know, there was a bit of a red scare going on in the United States at the time. Everybody was kind of like, whoa. This is in the '30s, you mean? Kind of right after World War I, the '20s and the '30s. Oh, yes. Um, so I mean, I kind of tend to see this as obviously just a way to make an insane amount of money. But through directly investing in companies like Krupp and IG Farben, it becomes pretty apparent that there was also the aim of building up an authoritarian state, more or less, to stop communism. Because there was really, like, that was the way that it was going to have to happen. And that obviously, you know, that kind of happened. It kind of didn't. Obviously, the Soviets would be the ones to defeat the Nazis, but like, at the same time, didn't spread past East Germany. Um, so I think that's just like a long-winded way of saying that, uh, well, I suppose I should also say that none of this stopped during the war. These people were all still playing both sides. And if you'd like me to rattle off a quick list, actually, of U.S. companies that were involved with Sullivan & Cromwell that Dulles helped, um, that actually worked directly with the Nazis during World War II, and Dan, let me know if you know anybody. Let me know if you recognize any of these names. Let me just say, I doubt any of these are still around. There's no way they could be. There's no way they should have. Whether they got what was coming to them, right? Like, all of this was revealed, of course, yeah, as soon as the full extent of the Nazi crimes was discovered and they, you know, they sort of great purge and they popped open the hoods of the Nazi, uh, trucks and the tanks and they saw Ford sitting there and they're like, that must be a different Ford. Okay. So, yeah, I just said Ford was one of these people that was working with the Nazis. Uh, uh, to build up directly. He was working directly with Hitler. Henry Ford, you know, you mean? Actually, before it, actually hadn't been. And Ford Motor Company produced military vehicles for the Nazis and also, uh, used forced concentration camp labor. They wouldn't be the only ones. There was also Chase Bank, who sold war bonds to the Germans. There was IBM. And I find this one particularly disgusting. They created the punch cards and the computing software that the Nazis used for their ethnic censuses to send people to concentration camps. Coca-Cola. This one's actually kind of particularly funny. They, before the war, were creating and just right after the beginning of the war, I didn't know about this. They were creating or they were just, you know, selling, um, Coca-Cola to the Nazi army. And then the American government was like, please don't do that. We keep finding Coke cans in these goddamn German camps. And so they just made Fanta to be their like German wing to keep selling [ __ ] soft drinks to the Nazis. I had no idea about that. That blew my mind. I mean, it's gross to think that I, a soft drinks company, could be central to like, um, American global capitalist reach, but it also makes total sense. Yeah. It's also like, of course. Um, there was also GM, who gave raw materials to the Nazi war effort. There was Kodak, who not only was making film, but also they're making like detonators and things like that in their, um, factories. There was Dow Chemical, who straight up was just, let me tell you something, Dan. I've never been to Germany, but I don't picture it as a very oil-rich nation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think they had enough oil to just do what they, coal, maybe, but yeah, exactly. Um, Dow gave the Nazis, uh, the technology to refine oil to make it into gasoline. And then when they found out that they couldn't just do that, uh, uh, they basically started just working directly with IG Farben and other people like that. Um, there was Standard Oil, who for the entire war, was supplying something called tetraethyl lead, which is, uh, vital to the operation of the engines in all of the planes in the Luftwaffe. And without it, they, uh, wouldn't have been able to have an air force. So it's cool to know that Standard Oil could have stopped the war whenever they wanted, but they didn't, of course, because they're making a [ __ ] ton of money on both sides. Um, and I should also mention that there was one, I don't really understand what these companies do. Like when you're in New York and you just see like a large building and it just has several names on the front, I guess it's a law firm. I guess it does a bunch of things. There was something called Brown Brothers Harriman, all right, Dan. Um, and this was the American front company for a guy named Fritz Thyssen. This, I don't know, I wrote it down, I can't even read my handwriting. This in Thyssen, um, he was known as the Nazis, uh, financier. He funded Hitler's right to power. He was the basically the money guy. And Brown Bear, this Harryman was the American front for that company that set up front companies so that Americans could donate money to the Nazis. Um, all those companies, obviously still around. Brown Brothers Harriman, as well. You might not know about them, but they're still hanging about. So I guess that's, that's the first part of the story, right? Is American involvement with the Nazis. And when you think about World War II, as, you know, someone like Howard Zinn did, where he's like, goddamn, but I'm going to go fight some fascists. I hesitate to maybe not call him a comedy, but he was cally adjacent. And he was someone who's like, I'm going to go kill some goddamn fascists in the name of the United States. Planes he was flying, the cars he was driving, the cars that his German counterparts were flying, whatever you do with a car, may drive a car. Planes that were flying, all being made by American companies or released with technology by American companies. And Allen Dulles was at the center of it with Sullivan & Cromwell. So that's the first bit of my spiel. Let me just wrap it up for you real quick, Dan. That War Guilt Clause that I mentioned, I'll give you two guesses, Dan, as to who wrote that clause. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you, Dan, it was not Allen Dulles. Who's your second guess? Was it one John Foster? It was [ __ ] John Foster Dulles. The guy who would go on to become the Secretary of State for Eisenhower was at the center of all of this money moving around and funding the Nazi war effort and specifically wrote the War Guilt Clause to open up Germany to American investment. I read that, my mind was just, my third eye just like burst from my head. I was like, are you [ __ ] kidding me?

Yeah, I think one thing we're gonna learn, um, through this book is that whenever there's something dustedly going on, you just have to have a look under the nearest rock and there will be a Dulles. There will be a Dulles or there will be a [ __ ] Brown Brother representative of the Dulles, one of their agents of some sort of other. Yeah. Probably a future president. Yes. Hanging around somewhere nearby. That's the one thing that I discovered from this. I mean, it should have been totally obvious to me, but as an outsider to American politics, like, I know some of these names of people who have some period of time where their actions are connected with some degree of infamy, sure. But really, if you look at the biography of these people, like, it's infamy all the way down. It is just like that at any point in their career, it's just the same kind of like, um, lack of just dastardly activity. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's funny, right? Because I think that one of the things that we're also looking at in this is like, well, what use is all of this to some kind of left? Right? What use is this history to the left? Um, I'm of the mind, obviously, that it's of quite a lot of use. We can kind of talk about that later once we get more of the story. But I mean, like, if you're to be exposed to all of this in an apolitical way, you're gonna wind up at best, I think. Well, at best, you're gonna become a communist. But that's not a lot of people. You're gonna become one of these like, um, kind of like, one percent is bad people, because you kind of look at this and you go, oh my god, it was just all the same people. Allen Dulles's reign went from like the end of World War I all the way up until like the '60s. And you, it's really easy to just go, this isn't a function of the system. This isn't the system operating as it should. This is an anomaly. Right? And so I think that like, one of the important things that we need to keep in mind and when we're looking at this is like, really kind of trying to shape the narrative for what it is, is this is the system operating exactly as it should. And that after World War I, which was maybe you could say the last kind of gasp of like an imperial royalist or maybe just aristocratic thing, that the Bush-Wys came in and they were like, [ __ ] wait a minute, World War I, if we did that again, we could all make a ton of money. And they did. And they were playing both sides. And it worked like a dream.

Yeah, you're quite right to highlight that, because we are really at risk of falling through the trap of becoming very fixated on a few names and a few actors. And one thing we should bear in mind is to always look for what is their class interest? What, what collection of capital do they represent? Because I'd say like, these are representatives of the sort of East Coast banking elite. Um, and we, I mean, we've discovered other factions of capitalism vying for power in, uh, in American politics in other readings that we've done. Absolutely. Um, so, yeah, it's always the question like, what is, what is, what is their, uh, what's the class basis of what's incentivizing them to take the actions that they're doing, basically? I mean, particularly, it's, it speaks to something that we, I mean, here I am suggesting that we should focus on the class interests and not the persons involved, and then I begin to speak about the people involved immediately, because it's a good story. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But what I was going to say was something about the character of these people is that they appear to represent, they, I mean, they will champion certain ideologies and certain political positions, but what stands behind that in most cases seems to be a strong amoral core. Yeah. Like, really, all they're interested in is their own interest and the financial interests that they represent. Um, any amount of sort of vociferous anti-communism, say, will turn around immediately and protect anybody who might at one point fall foul of, um, the sort of American witch hunt for communists in the '40s and '50s. Sure. And these characters will protect them because they have some kind of connection to them, some type of interest, blah, blah, blah, kind of thing. Um, and it's the same with like Dulles's actions. Well, here we are, prior to World War I, I'm sort of transitioning goes into World War I, I speak of Allen De Lucia, kind of thing. Like the degree to which he stifled the exposure of the true extent and scale of the Holocaust, the degree to which he hid that, wasn't motivated by some kind of like underlying narcissism. Not that he necessarily like disagreed. I'm sure he wasn't, uh, anti-Semite. There was one bit though, he was like, I did read an interesting book today called "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and I was just like, oh my god, I've forgotten about that. And I think I would imagine that you would like to hinge some amounts of, or to hang off of that, some amounts of anti-Semitism, perhaps. Yeah, perhaps. But, yeah, what seems to be the central part of their character is just like, just self-interest and class interest. Absolutely. And it's, it's, it's, it's funny, right? Because I've been trying to come up with a way of like, at this time period, designating the Eastern, like Wall Street banking establishment, well, I should say financial establishment. Um, and it, at that time, and we've seen this kind of fall apart when we, around the kind of like Reagan time, where Mike Davis talks about like the Sun Belt capitalists, the defense industry, all those new industries popping up to support him. This just seems like the biggest of the big bourgeoisie. And I know that that's kind of like crass to say, but it's like, I get the feeling that these, not only can you say that just because of the amount of money that they were producing, right? And that these were like the robber barons of the day, but like, I get the feeling that these people, this is where the charade of anti-communism stopped being anything other than that's a direct threat to my class interests. And they understood that. Maybe if you go down a couple rungs on the Bush-Wys, like, I don't like, you know, like, uh, someone who owns like maybe like the McDonald's guy, was, I don't know anything about him, but like, if he had any kind of anti-communist sympathies, it probably would have been more along the lines of like hysteria, like, oh my god, they're here to destroy our freedom. These people knew that that wasn't the case. They knew that it was purely just business interests. And we'll get to that kind of when we talk about, um, what Allen Dulles did to the entire planet. But, um, you know, these people knew what they were doing and they were acting directly in their class interests, very consciously, and spinning this myth of anti-communism has been bad. And, you know, it's all this horrible stuff. So I suppose that's kind of why I say the biggest of the big bourgeoisie, like these were like the grand, the big ass bourgeoisie, you know what I mean? So, yeah. Yeah.

There's one thing, I mean, I don't know where this is going to go necessarily. One thing I've sort of spoke to you in the week about, looking back to that episode that we did on Davis, what's it called? "The New Right's Road to Rise to Prototype." Um, when we were sort of juxtaposing the, uh, sort of Sun Belt capitalists in the '70s that would eventually, well, sort of '60s and '70s that would eventually result in the Reagan presidency, and them being a group who unseated this, the sort of Eastern establishment, as it was normally referred to. And from that reading, I got on the impression that the Eastern establishment was to some degree or rather, like, at least, um, mild defenders of the sort of FDR legacy and the New York legacy, kind of thing. What shocked me about this, and we'll get onto it later, I suppose, was the degree to which it was after '45, like, it was almost like an all-out pitch battle, absolutely, between the FDR legacy and this group that we're introducing now, kind of thing. The people sort of financially around the Dulleses, people that were associated with the sort of, with Eisenhower as well. Yes. We hear about they, they, I mean, I mean, they outplayed, they played the situation shockingly well. Yeah. Um, and so I'm really thoroughly, sort of, eviscerated any of the, any of the sort of like legacy, the lasting legacy of, but we'll get to that. Well, yeah, I mean, I, I think that's a good point, because I think that we hear the phrase "New Deal consensus" tossed around a lot. Yeah. But all that really was was popular support for the New Deal. And it's like, obviously there were New Dealers. Hard at New Dealers. Yeah. It would seem like any amount of New Deal consensus was basically a gradual unpicking rather than a sort of like, yeah, swift decapitation. Although it actually was quite significant. Yeah. It was, it was pretty quick, because certain characters, certain people, yeah, got swiftly, swiftly gotten rid of. I mean, perhaps that was the strategy, right? You get rid of certain influential people, and then you gradually erode the public's commitment to it after you've gotten rid of the sort of like, key advocates, I suppose. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, there were definitely anti-New Dealers who benefited from the New Deal as well. So I mean, you know, and like, better infrastructure is right, that's good for us. We, our trucks can go places, you know what I mean? Um, so it is, I mean, it's a bit of both, because it seems extremely quick. I mean, I think that the New Deal consensus, we build it up as something big because relatively recently in our history, yeah, but it's like from 1945 into what, Reagan, if that's where you want to end it, but like, really Nixon, like, uh, you know, although Nixon today, sadly, would be a pretty progressive Democrat in some respects. Yeah. So let's, let's talk more about that idea. I'm going to read again, um, from the Talbot. And this is to set this up a little bit. This is, um, Talbot trying to explain the degree to which, even as the New Deal was in place, even as FDR was in power, just how under attack it was, right? And so a fellow named Henry Morgenthau, who is a bit of a New Dealer, fella, wheeler and dealer, goes to go see FDR to basically say, um, some bad things are going to happen, maybe to you, but just to like, all of us New Dealers, if we don't do something about these people who are actively plotting against you, right? So Talbot says, in April 1945, Henry Morgenthau went down to the presidential retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, where FDR was convalescing, to urge him to directly confront the State Department cabal that seemed hell-bent on appeasing the country's German enemies and antagonizing its Soviet allies. Sitting down for cocktails with the president, Morgenthau was shaken by the president's quote, "very haggard appearance. His hands shook so that he started to knock the glasses over. I found his memory bad and he was constantly confusing names." End quote. After drinks and dinner, Roosevelt seemed to rally and asked, and he asked Morgenthau what he had in mind. The Treasury Secretary told him that it was time to quote, "break the State Department and replace the old guard with loyal New Dealers." End quote. FDR assured Morgenthau that he was with him 100%. The next afternoon, April 12th, Roosevelt died after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Hate to laugh at the guy, but like, oh, that sucks. Damn, we were that close. Let's, as we like to do, let's do a little alternative history. Is there any world where Morgenthau's plan would have been successful? Where it might have bought the New Deal some time? But I think that we really underestimate the degree that these, uh, big bourgeoisie fellas wanted FDR gone and wanted the New Deal gone. In 1945, like, we were still fighting the Nazis, and they're like, the Nazis, what have they done? You know what I mean? Um, I have a hard time believing that anything could differ, would have happened. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it didn't. And obviously, after I died, but like, that plan died with him. I mean, there are, there are, um, I suppose, errors in this book where it's hinted at that it could quite easily have been the Dulles group of, sort of, sure, this, this cabal of people who ended up on trial in the '40s as a result, the late '40s, as a result of their, um, I was going to say dealings with the Nazis, but I don't know whether I get more the impression it's kind of like a by-rights thing than an actual plausible series of events that could have come about, I suppose. Sure. Yeah. I mean, if we, if we take it as a systemic problem, the answer is no. It wouldn't. It would, FDR couldn't have just gone, we're gonna have a softer version of capitalism, baby, and then not expect people, you know, capitalists to not be like, uh, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it is, it was what shocked me looking over this period of time. One, I mean, I, I mean, it made good fodder for the sort of like, so socialistic, communist, well, the communist witch-hunts of the, the late '40s and early '50s. The fact that so many people who were sort of democratic politicians or, um, represent significant positions in the FDR administration were people who had connections to the Socialist Party, who had allowed sort of socialist connections, had like, I mean, by contemporary, uh, yeah, American standards, like had real legitimate left-wing credentials. I mean, the person I have in mind is Jerry Voorhis, right? Who is the person who will come onto in a little while, who, yeah, who's, uh, Nixon took from him in '46. Um, but he's, he's someone who was like advocating for sort of quite sweeping nationalizations, advocating for a minimum wage, yeah, I mean, as well as like seeking to expose some of these sort of like, what you've just described as treasonous activities, some of these Americans. Um, uh, someone who was a committed Democrat, but somebody who had been in the Socialist Party. And it's something to overlook when you look at contemporary America or the last half century of American history, I suppose, that there was this period of time where there was significant overlap between the Democrats and, um, sort of representatives of labor, I suppose. Sure. So to discuss, I guess, to discount that, at least as a political force that had some weight, um, would be premature, perhaps. But I mean, obviously, what the, what the, what the long-term alternate scenario may have been, I'm not sure. I mean, maybe, maybe the US might have ended up with a slightly more comprehensive healthcare system than it currently has at the moment. I mean, that's what Nixon wanted, so probably. Well, yeah. Um, so, um, perhaps the New Deal legacy may have been more significant than it was in terms of government, more extensive government programs that might have been brought into existence, kind of thing. But you're entirely right to say that like, it would have suffered the same decline that social democracy suffered, yeah, anywhere in the world, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Talbot is very quick, but maybe it's just because he's a bit of a lib, but he's very quick to be like, he wasn't a communist, though. He wasn't, sure, he was in the Socialist Party, but he's, you know, wait, come on now. He wanted to nationalize things. That's it. Um, yeah, there's a, the point in time when he uses the phrase "hardcore communist." Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Which is clearly coming from someone who like doesn't have any, I mean, like, God bless him and like, um, I guess fair enough. Anybody, or maybe not God bless him, like God bless anybody who, who, who manages to fill their brains with the necessary terminology to differentiate different types of communists in a meaningful way and continue to remain sane and willing to engage with like politics in any meaningful way. What do you think "hardcore communist" means? Do you think that means like council? Or he's just like, he is in the, yeah, they actually look at the by footnote, I actually buy "hardcore communist" and I actually mean, yeah, a particular subset of council communists who are due to a certain kind of principles between '35 and '45, not to be mistaken by the Italian council communists who were effectively like subletting it. [Laughter] That would be amazing. No, I don't think there's any kind of that degree of nuance. Yeah. Um, I'll, let me hit you with my probably what's going to be my last quote of the day, which is, um, FDR talking with some person. But then, um, Talbot goes on to talk about somebody named Mills, C. Wright Mills, who wrote a pretty influential book called "The Power Elite," which is an attempt at a class analysis from someone who is not a communist. Um, and that goes about as well as you think. But it, I, from what I can gather, it's a book that really tries to expose, um, the movers and shakers of the United States who aren't elected and who are private people, right? So it starts out with a quote from FDR. It says, "The real truth," FDR wrote to Colonel Edward M. House, President Wilson's close advisor, "is as you and I know that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson." And quote. For a brief period during the widespread devastation of the 1930s, the Do Neil, the New Deal was able to challenge this plutocracy, as Roosevelt called it, which, come on, Roosevelt, come on now. The Roosevelt presidency did not dismantle the power elite. Mills later wrote, quote, "But it did create within the political arena, as well as in the corporate world itself, competing centers of power that challenged those of the corporate directors." And I think, I think that's kind of what we're getting at, right? So it's like, okay, FDR didn't just die, uh, immediately after that conversation. There definitely would have been alternate, um, centers of power. And I mean, like, you know, again, as we've talked about, everybody who was so excited about Sanders, it was the same thing, but on a much smaller scale, right? It's like, just get some kind of class consciousness going, right? I mean, it's interesting to put yourself in someone's mindset back then in the '30s, as the New Deal was, you know, going, like, how did they perceive of history? You know what I mean? How did they perceive of the word Bolshevik? If you were like a union guy working at the Knox in Seattle, like, how did you perceive of the word, [ __ ]? How did you perceive of the Red Scare of the 1910s in the 1920s? Um, it's interesting because from what I can gather, the American labor movement at that time was so reticent to be militant in a big way, right? I'm not sure what that speaks to. I don't think I could speak to that. But I mean, it's, it's just strange because it's like, these people were willing to put their lives on the line to like defend their families against Pinkertons, but they, I don't know, obviously there were communists back then, but like, trying to put yourself in that mindset is very difficult. And I don't want to apply historical hindsight, you know? So, yeah. Yeah.

It's an interesting question to which I do not really have an answer. Um, you do kind of get the impression that a lot of, well, obviously, like the, the effects and the aftermath of the Wall Street crash and the Great Depression were like catastrophic for America, sure. And I think that you get the impression that like, um, there was a great fear that like American society was really beginning to fracture and was really riven by this, um, and you really get, I guess, so I've got the impression that FDR and the New Deal was an effort to hold the country together, almost. Absolutely. And obviously, like organized labor was heavily involved in that. But what I don't really know is what other sort of like grassroots movement there was for that. I don't really know how big the socialist and communist parties were. I don't really know what their degree of influence was. I don't know whether the something like the IWW was still in existence and what level of strength it had. And sort of to what, to what extent it, um, there was a, an active working-class movement that wasn't just a massive people and their sort of formal representatives in government and in sort of the trade unions, kind of thing. Um, is that the kind of question you were pushing after? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know of one example. There were pretty massive strikes in at around this time period in Seattle on the docks. That's why I bought that up. And, um, there was at one point, I forget exactly where I read this, but at one point, there was a dock worker who was interviewed by a paper who said, "99% of us can agree that the system has to change. So we can't keep doing things like this, but none of us can agree on what that means. If that means militancy, if that means reforms, if that means joining a party, if that means not having a party." And it just kind of fizzled out from there into, "Oh, okay, we'll give you better working."

hours, you know what I mean? Um, I suppose all that is to say, time period. We should know more about, yeah, yeah.

Now, let me hit you with something else, Dad. We talk about how, you know, we throw around this word "Nazi." All right? We throw around this word "fascist" when we're talking about these people, the Herbert Walkers, the Harry Mens, the Bushes. Which, it's not gonna twist it, Prescott Bush. Not see. Um, a lot of people probably know about this, but there was a fella named Smedley Butler, all right? And Smedley Butler was perhaps, uh, I think he's always described as like the most decorated American soldier of old time, whatever the hell that means. Again, I don't really care. Well-respected guy. He fought in Cuba, sadly. He, uh, fought in probably some other places he shouldn't have fought. Might have fought in Mexico. I don't know. Um, really respected guy. He was kind of like, he was, he was like the mad dog of his time, you know what I mean?

[Laughter]

Supposedly, at one point, and when I say supposedly, I mean definitely, he was approached by, when I say allegedly, I mean, I say allegedly, I mean he was approached by Prescott Bush specifically to, um, put together a group, a very large group of disaffected World War I veterans who were understandably very angry about the way the country that they had returned to. And this was a time when people were marching on Washington and sitting in the National Mall and being like, "I have no house, I have no food, everything is horrible, we need to change." Um, and supposedly, he was approached by a group of big, big capitalists. It's kind of implied that this was the Bushes, the Du Ponts, all the, all the good folks, um, to take this group of disaffected veterans. If he could march on Washington under the pretense of, "Oh, FDR is too sick, get him out of here. We need someone strong. We need a Smedley Butler. Put him in place ostensibly as a president," and allow these kind of like big capitalists to rule, um, in the shadows, I guess, so to speak. Basically, to implement, uh, what would probably have gone on to be a Hitler-friendly nation.

Um, Smedley Butler goes, he like plays along for as long as he can, being like, "Yeah, sure, I'll do that." And then he goes to Congress and he's like, "This is what's happened. This is insane. You guys need to arrest all of these people right now, otherwise there's going to be a fascist coup." Uh, they listen to him. The case gets shut down. Nothing ever happens. Nobody ever gets arrested. And then Smedley Butler goes out and this, like, records himself and is like, "This is exactly what happened. I was approached. There's about to be fascists take over." And that goes on some kind of BS about like, "As long as we have free speech, this country will be all right." Anyway.

Um, when we talk about like American capitalists selling stuff to Nazis and playing both sides, that's kind of one thing. But obviously, this is something completely different, right? I mean, this was capitalists making an attempt at making the United States fascist. And I mean, it's, it's funny, right? Because this is something that a lot of libs will kind of brush away as being like, "Well, you know, since Congress never did anything about it, it's probably just crazy Smedley Butler. Probably, you know, who knows?" But like, this is something that, I don't know. I feel like the question that we're gonna answer when we talk about this book going forward is, why did they not try it again? And I think that the answer is, um, they didn't need to. It was just that they didn't need to because they're able to find a way to get everything that they wanted, um, run the world is basically just one big business and regime change all over the place at home and abroad, um, without resorting to this kind of like literal coup. And I think that that's a pretty vital part of history that the left maybe could use a little bit more. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I didn't, I didn't know anything about that. You've reminded me of something I remember reading in the early sections of this book, which I haven't gone back and read since. Oh, but there is, there was a point in this book, I'm fairly sure, where, um, the author is discussing the kind of like general anti-Semitic sentiments of various countries. And he's basically making the point, there was nothing particularly new, unique about the, like, anti-Semitism or the potential to inflame anti-Semitic sentiments in the United States was no different to the potential to do that in Northern Germany. Yeah, yeah.

I think, really, what he's hinting at is, in the minds of this certain selection of the elite, really, um, one of the things that, um, have been made quite apparent to me is that we shouldn't imagine at this period of time, national capitals or capitalist institutions or collections of capitalists existing within certain national borders. It wasn't certain, it wasn't one capital against another capital located in a set of national borders. Obviously, the connections were a lot more complicated. And I think, obviously, I mean, it would be the most grotesque, like, pro-American rhetoric to say anything counter to what I'm about to say. But, um, to imagine that there was some kind of like virtuous United States against some sort of like, oh, paragon of evil Nazi Germany. Obviously, what happened in Nazi Germany was the pinnacle of evil, as I can imagine it. But, um, there was no virtuous counterpoint to that. Sure.

Absolutely. I mean, I would like to give people, obviously, like the Howard Zinn's of the world, and even just like your friendly, like, you know, grandpa who went to war. They thought that absolutely they were fighting fascism. And good for them. I mean, hell yeah, go fight fascism. That rocks. But like, the truth is that, you know, when you play, people are just playing both sides. And I mean, like, what you're totally right to say that there's this international approach to, um, capital, which is like complicated in some respects. But then it's also like, Brown Brothers, Harry Man, Allen Dulles, and Fritz Thyssen, you know what I mean? It's like people who are like actively attempting to prop up Adolf Hitler. And it's, you know, it's just like, I don't know, it's the third eye. It's just like, "Oh my God." Because you always hear about people saying, "You know, business from playing both sides." But then it's like, when you actually read the names of people who were building the companies that produce the gas to kill the people in the concentration camps, and that they were Americans, it's like, if that doesn't, if that, yeah, I don't know, if that doesn't just absolutely fry your mind and make you realize, "Oh wow, you know, so big change absolutely needs to happen," then nothing will, you know what I mean? Because, you know, you only have to look at the War on Terror or something like that to realize that things like this are absolutely still going on. So, we'll imagine we'll get to there.

Um, anything to say on that, or should we move on to the, uh, to the, to the politics of the post-FDR world? I developed the idea of segway. Okay. My segway was to propose to talk about one particular do-gooder that was exploited by a certain subset of nefarious actors. Oh, I'm interested. But also, I wanted to, wanted to re-highlight and also do a bit of a disclaimer. Jack has been very keen to both focus on the activities of certain individuals, but also put the activities of those individuals in a particular class context, which, um, he is commended to have undertaken an activity. I commend him for undertaking. I, I, I can't but just get really bogged down in just some of the personal stories, some of the individual acts, the neuroses. Yeah, yeah. Some of the sort of like neurotic or psychotic actions or perverted. Yes, there's a great deal of perversion going on.

[Laughter]

There was a point when I was really like, um, this, um, this might well go over the heads of anybody that's not familiar with like the Lacanian school of psychology. But there's a little bit early on in this book when they're talking about, um, the, the sort of like, the family background of the Dulles. And they're like, they're talking about, um, an overbearing mother and an absolute father. And I was like, my, all my sort of like psychosis, right? The everything I know about like amateur attempts to, um, use a psychoanalytic framework to, um, diagnose people. I was like, so, I, I, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm curious of the particular psychological, um, structures that might be at play in the heads of some of the Dulles. Still this, uh, offspring. Can we just pause on the Jungian stuff for a second? Yeah, I didn't read any of that. But if you please don't. Like, I was, Allen Dulles's wife that was, was was analyzed by, analyzed by Jung. Yeah. And apparently, I went after this because it mentions Jung. Who's the other person that he psychoanalyzed? It was someone else. It was some other, like, he was like, "I'm interested in men of power." Which is kind of gross. Well, while you're looking for that, there's an essay, I believe, that Jung wrote. I think it was Jung about analyzing the, uh, personalities of Mussolini and Hitler because apparently he was like, at a dinner and like met both of them. Which like, I don't, I don't really know what dinner that was for his meeting these two people. It says here that, um, Dulles's wife, Clover, but also his wartime mistress, Lary Bancroft, he's both his wife and his wife's mistress. He had analyzed by Jung. Something creepy about Jung doing that. I don't know. It's very odd. Anyway, he was, he was, uh, he wrote some essay about analyzing, trying to use archetypes to analyze, uh, Hitler and Mussolini. And he was like, "Listen, when I met Mussolini, you couldn't help but like the guy." Which I think is really, really funny. He calls him like a tribal strongman, just the archetype of like, "Let's go kick some goddamn ass." Whereas Hitler, he was like, "Tell you what, got a bad vibe from this kid." Which again, fair enough. But he talks about how Hitler was more of the like shamanistic, uh, archetype, which is I think really, really interesting. Of this person who takes all of the paranoia and neuroses of an entire society and then takes them all upon himself and just creates something completely different, which is just this psychopathic rage. Um, I would still like to know what that dinner was that you like met Mussolini and Hitler at. Sounds very odd. Anyway, that's that's one talk about Jung.

So, Allen Dulles stationed in Switzerland as an OSS, sort of like station chief, I suppose. He sort of relishes the activity. He's well into it. Comes home in 1945 and goes back to working his law firm. And all of his former collaborators, um, all of his wartime friends and allies seem to think that their, their spying days are behind them. When you say wartime friends, obviously you're talking about some Americans, but you're not talking about Nazis. Some Americans, some, some Nazis, some legit Nazis, some people who were instrumental in aiding certain Nazis in escaping prosecution. Carl Wolff, Reinhard Gehlen. Who's the other? Yeah, we skipped over certain sort of like wartime activities. Activities. Okay, let's, let's, let's go over it quickly. I'm going to sort of ad hoc what I remember, and you'll have to chip in and fill this kind of thing. As I recall, Allen Dulles's station in Switzerland had cultivated certain relationships with certain influential Nazis. One of them, Carl Wolff, who was advisor to Goebbels or something. One of the, one of the sort of like number two, number three Nazis, kind of thing. Wolff was, uh, sort of chief advisor too, um, but ended up stationed in Italy toward the end of the war. And basically, Dulles was, Allen Dulles was incredibly keen to protect these people, Wolff and some of his underlings in Italy. And he pulled, basically, every lever and every string he possibly could to prevent them, to keep them out of the dock at Nuremberg. Yeah.

Wolff, in particular, really should have been one of the first and, first collection of Nazis tried at Nuremberg. Basically, sure. And basically, the only appearance he made, ever made at Nuremberg, any of the trials, was to be a witness for the defense of some of the Nazis, which is [ __ ] Christ. Um, and although it was the official policy of the FDR and Truman administrations to, I guess, give low legal quarter to the Nazis and the rulers of Nazi Germany, basically they were all going to be tried for the crimes for which they were committed. Um, which was kind of the first time in history, whether they'd never to do this to, um, the leaders of defeated countries. Ordinarily, like, there would be some leniency given, kind of thing. Certain overlooking of war crimes often went on. Sure. But Allen Dulles disagreed with this policy vociferously. Partly this was motivated, I think, by his very early fears that America was liable to enter very quickly into a conflict with the Soviet Union, with a degree of warm hotness or coldness undetermined yet. But he thought that the Soviet Union posed this sort of grotesque threat to America and American interests. Can I just say, on the note of the trials, who it was that actually said we should have trials? Because Churchill specifically was like, "Get all the main Nazis and shoot them. Hang everyone you can. These people all need to die." FDR was like, "Yeah, sure, why not?" And it was actually Stalin who was like, "We should probably, probably." I forgot about that. Yeah. Although Stalin was a fan of a good trial. Yeah, I know. A show trial. Yeah, of course. But nonetheless, although, yeah, maybe I'll try and remember that quote from Churchill. Every time people, people are quoting Churchill of the future. Yeah, yeah. "Hang and shoot all the Nazis." As Joshua once said. Yeah. As Churchill once said, "I'm sick of living in this goddamn bunker. Kill all the Nazis." I think Allen Dulles's sentiment was that some of these people, however dastardly and evil their deeds may well have been, were going to be necessary for the rebuilding of Germany. Who were they going to put in charge? Yeah. Certainly not Soviets. Yeah. Exactly. Yes. Or certainly not sort of like soft social democrats who might be swayed to sort of the Soviet cause, kind of thing. No, we were going to have to have all these strong men, kind of thing, who had fallen into the Nazi party, but really they were the legitimate rulers of this country, yeah, as thought Allen Dulles. So, yes, suffice it to say, Allen Dulles instrumental in the protection of certain Nazi war criminals, as he was obviously in the, the protection of certain Nazi wealth. Both the wealth that was accrued by American companies through their dealings with Nazi Germany, but also, um, various pools of money that were accumulated by various Nazis, all people collaborated with, appropriated, stolen, um, by certain, um, collaborators with the Nazis, who all sort of seem to end up in the, deposited in certain American bank accounts. All of their legal representation was done by certain American law firms. I wonder which ones. Anyway, anyway.

Um, yeah, and as we were leading to also earlier, um, Allen Dulles quite instrumental, I think, on several occasions during the war, of preventing certain communiques about the severe extent of, or the true extent of the Holocaust. Tactical and strategic decisions of his own. I forget, Dan, did I mention that? I forget. When I was listening off those American companies, did any of them using forced labor, concentration camps? I forgot. You only refer to it very briefly, but yeah. Um, so something to highlight again. Forward, baby. Yeah. Um, yeah, and it's one thing that he was doing that, but it's also like the ways in which information was leaking out of Nazi Germany about the Holocaust was like, specifically, there was one guy who like was in, I forget which concentration camp. He's in a pretty brutal concentration camp, as concentration camps tend to be. And he managed to escape. He managed to, I think there was something like he had to hide in a woodpile for two days while Nazi guards were just like walking by and shooting the [ __ ] escape. Walk like a couple hundred miles across enemy lines, across enemy lines, to like put his report and to like find literally into the house, literally into the hands of Allen Dulles and be like, "My family's dead, everyone I know is dead, they're killing millions of people. America needs to join this war right now. Tell FDR." And he just threw the report in the trash. And this happened several times. It's hard to describe, you know? It is like, we wanted to have like a systemic approach and an analysis of the systems that created these people. But it's so hard not to be like, "This guy was just evil. He was just purely evil." You know what I mean? It's like, "Well, my, my buddy's down in Wall Street, we're making some money off of Dachau." It's like, "I, I can't." Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah, yeah.

I, I struggle not to think of him to some extent as somebody who I feel like had quite a sort of delusional attitude. Well, it was truthful in terms. It wasn't really a delusion, kind of thing. But yeah, that's a thing. A sense of his influence and his importance, even when he wasn't the person who was who should be making the final decision. He always thought he was the person that should be making the decision and did his utmost to have like outcomes that he favored win out. And I find it very easy to look past simple sort of like economic interest, I suppose. Or one of the things that allowed him to do this was a certain, dare I say, perverse sense of self-importance. Um, and sort of self-aggrandizement. But anyway.

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What are the three categories again? [Laughter] Neurosis, perversion, psychosis. I, I, I'm, I'm more into like, there are some, there are some characteristics of perversion which are kind of like, um, a very personal understanding of the law and what's right and wrong. I'm sure which sort of like, I would be, I would be willing to attach to Allen Dulles. Might be the trifecta, quite frankly. Might be the full whammy. He's a grand slam, baby. Um, where were we when we, before we, when we were like, "We need to say what Allen Dulles did during the week." I was about to, um, uh, endeavor to outline his post-war efforts to get back into the spying game. Yes. It's funny, we were talking about him being being an old man and whatever. Like, even at this point, he was referred to by a sort of collection of spying former collaborators as "the old man," kind of thing. And they would sort of gather together at his law firm and sort of like have drinks and talk about the good old days. But Allen Dulles, certainly not willing to be out of this game yet. Oh, absolutely. Particularly because of his fixation with what he thought was the coming conflict with the Soviets. And that America needed a much more robust and offensive, as opposed to defensive, although it was obviously offensive in a lot of other ways. No, sure. Needed to go on the offense against this obvious sort of swiftly and preemptively. He became a very strong advocate for the requirement for American to develop an independent and robust sort of like a strong man's approach. Well, yeah, but like a spying apparatus. Sure. A sort of like, um, intelligence industry. A, um, basically what would become the CIA. Yes. But a very particular type of agency, which was, as I say, robust, went on the offensive, easily independent in a lot of ways, like given of a free reign and a free hand. And although he wasn't responsible for the creation of the CIA, which created, which was created in 1947 as part of the National Security Act, he did manage to get himself, or he was promoted to be on a, um, committee which reported a year later in 1948 about what usage this new intelligence agency ought to be put to. Yeah, I suppose. Um, and this report put forward very much a sort of like Dulles vision of what American sort of like counter-communist or counter-intelligence or intelligence activities ought to be, which was very much like a taking off the gloves approach, kind of thing. Yeah. Um, using some of our allies in Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The same thing. Yeah. Good chaps, I'm sure. So, yeah, FDR and Truman had a huge amount of disdain for the Dulles. FDR in particular. And then Truman, after took over the presidency, and maintained this degree of sort of antipathy to their ideas. Truman, come the '60s, particularly maybe in December of 1963, would have some things to say about Allen Dulles specifically. And so, obviously, Truman was not inclined to put the CIA to these uses. Yeah. Truman really wanted the CIA purely to report information to the president, to the Joint Chiefs, so they could make independent, they could make the decisions on what actions ought to be taken. And I can't remember the particular phraseology he used, but he really warned against the threat that a clandestine and unaccountable CIA might pose, all the kind of activities that it might, yeah. Um, might put itself to. It's easy to follow that logic too, right? Because it's like, if you have an agency whose goal is to do like clandestine intelligence gathering, it's really easy if you're in charge of that agency to just go, "Sorry, we actually can't talk about that right now. We can't tell you about this. This is something that we can't tell anybody about. Can't tell Congress. It'll endanger the operation." And that just gives you a free reign. So that's exactly what wound up happening. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

But Dulles, given this sort of snub by Truman, basically just went and set up his own sort of shadow intelligence agency, um, offering, operating ostensibly inside of the sort of State Department apparatus, but basically escaped accountability in exactly the ways he wanted the CIA to operate, kind of thing. Try and find what's the name of the organization that they set up. Is this the one that they set up? Yeah, they're just like cupboard. They're like set up in some like, yeah, I mean, they start meeting it like in a soundproof like room or something like that. Basically, they just start operating like they are running an intelligence agency. And this is like Dulles and lots of collaborators of his from his sort of wartime OSS days. And they begin to sort of like recruit, um, people in Western Europe. A lot of ex-Nazis. They begin to recruit to be sort of agents of theirs. And I think like by the end of the '40s, they're operating this sort of like pseudo-independent, um, spy ring, which basically has about 3,000 employees and like a thousand and a half sort of like contracted people. Um, and they're engaged in all sorts of stuff. They're engaged in, well, and one of the more almost more benign things that they do is, um, collect a huge amount of money and funnel it to the Italian Christian Democrats in an effort to ensure that the Italian Communist Party lose, yep, the sort of elections in '46, which is exactly what happens. Um, but there, I mean, the book alludes to them being involved in far more, um, serious activities, almost going to assassinations, although it doesn't specify who they assassinated. Terrorist acts, especially in Italy. I mean, one of the things that they would do, which is in the form, this is before the CIA, in the '40s, you mean? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, kind of all throughout Italy's history, though, specifically, is like they would fund operations with like fascist groups or like at least very least far-right groups where they would fake communist attacks on the public. Which like, "Okay, that doesn't make any sense." And I go, "God damn communists, they blow up a train station at one point." They would just go around assassinating people and being like, "This is what communists do, man. You believe that?" And that kind of [ __ ] I mean, that worked, right? I mean, uh, what's, what's the guy's name? The pervert who's in charge of Italy for forever? Um, it's the guy's name. The bald fat guy. Uh, I think he went to prison for a little while. Um, Bella Berlusca. There you go. The bald fat pervert. I mean, your description is that I was just like, "I don't think." I mean, it sounds like he's talking about Bella Scoti, but he wasn't. He didn't rule it. It's Lumina 30 in the '40s. Sorry. Sure. But he directly came out of these groups that were founded by. This was its genesis, right? It would directly come out of these groups that were like funded by foreign money. Um, so yes, the, the, the wonderfully benign name of the of the organization that they were operating was the Office for Policy Coordination, inside the State Department. And one of the more outlandish and also dastardly and also incredibly effective operations they ran was one called Operation Splinter Faction. Um, and this is where enters our, um, our naive and well-meaning, um, person who was used thoroughly by the Dulles. A story which was going to repeat itself in history, I think. And also enter another, um, collection of nice Quakers. Yeah, I'm always getting the struggle. We're going to receive another short end of the stick. Particularly, a, a story that revolves around a guy called Noel Field. Who Dulles quite spectacularly sold down the river, really, quite intentionally, despite having quite a long history with them. Somebody who met during the First World War, when Field was still a young boy, and and Allen Dulles had been quite taken by him. Dulles said that's what, what, um, Field would like to, uh, do when he grew up. And Field responded, "I want to work toward world peace." [Laughter] He became somebody who was a very, uh, committed and avowed pacifist, after having seen sort of like both the sort of like caravans of wounded soldiers that were coming through, uh, Switzerland at the time, and then also his dad took him on a, a tour of the battlefields of Europe immediately after World War I, which was, yeah, it's definitely gonna cement, uh, cement one sort of like pacifistic leanings. He, he, uh, ended up working for the State Department in America. But also, um, this is in the '30s, and this partly where the story sort of intersects with the idea of the degree to which, um, socialist leanings in the '20s and '30s sort of had a degree of normalcy, kind of thing. Like he was somebody who clearly had socialist leanings, never joined the Communist Party, but sort of like interacted with, um, that sort of like milieu, I suppose. Um, he taught himself Russian, so that he could read Lenin and and Stalin in the original. And, um, eventually his sort of like communist leanings become apparent to us sort of like a Soviet spy. Him, he sort of ends up sort of like passing information to the Soviets and spends a little bit of time as a Soviet spy. But eventually he's decided he needs to eschew that life because he desperately wants to remain neutral. He wants to remain an American, but also somebody who has sort of like leanings toward the Soviet Union because he's just a nice Quaker. Yeah. Um, this is a pro-do-gooder. But yeah, all right. Say what you will, pro-do-gooder podcast. But then, um, but then during the Second World War, he's working in sort of like as a, some kind of relief agency in Switzerland. And, um, starts to, while it starts to feed information. Another person who's feeding information to Allen, in actual fact, he, he and his wife adopt a, um, such a German refugee, I think, a young girl. And she ends up cycling weapons over the border into France to deliver them to two French resistance fighters there. So, so people who, people who, um, have a strong working relationship with Allen Dulles. So when it is suggested to Allen Dulles in the in the late '40s that, when it's discovered that Field is intending to go for a job interview in Switzerland, that what they might do is through a double agent that they have in Poland, feed to the Soviets, and therefore to Stalin, the idea that Frank Field is in fact the head of a spy ring. Um, the intention being, it works out probably better than they intended. The idea is that they're going to seed in the brain of Stalin the idea that there is this massive spy ring operating against the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. And what they will instill is even greater paranoia in Stalin than normally exists in his head. And it will lead to this tremendous purge across Eastern Europe, seeking out all of the agents of this non-existent spy ring. Um, and it works. It works entirely as they intended. And not only does Noel Field get captured in, um, in the Czech Republic and spend five years in prison, his wife and his brother both go looking for him through contacts that they have in Poland, and they're both arrested and spend five years. And then the aforementioned adopted daughter goes and cycles into East Germany in an effort to reconnect with people that she knows in an office over there, and she's arrested and spent five years in a, in a Soviet gulag, until the death of Stalin. And it's basically revealed that this spy ring and this plot never existed at all, and it was all the influence and machinations of Allen Dulles and his collaborators. So for me, a telling story when it comes to Allen Dulles's willingness to, um, use people without any regard for what it might mean for anybody's life, regardless of the prior relationships that he has with them. But also, um, the, in this case, the degree to which it's quite a successful plot in a lot of ways. It basically, basically very nearly leads to the collapse of the Czech economy. There are hundreds of thousands of people arrested across Eastern Europe. 170,000 Czech Communist Party members are interrogated. Anybody who's basically ever had any connection to, um, Frank Field's wartime activities, which were quite extensive because he was working as a, some kind of relief, yeah, that kind of thing. Um, so, yeah, pro-Quaker podcast. Always trust Quakers. Always just the do-gooders, especially if you're, um, Jose Starwood. Well, that's the thing too. I mean, obviously, this was played off in America as like, "Stalin at it again, baby." Which, you know, not gonna go into that. But like, disaster all around. Complete disaster on the personal level of this poor Quaker and his lovely, presumably beautiful family. And a disaster for the Soviet Union and for the people who lived under it. Absolutely. Um, and again, just shows, it just shows it's just evil. It's just absolutely evil. And it's just this paranoia of like the Cold War beginning of people being like, "Intelligence, I guess, that's got to be the new thing. Like the Americans are recruiting Nazis, so we gotta, we gotta figure out what we're gonna do. We gotta come back." And it's just spirals out of control. And Allen Dulles, say what you will, smart cookie, that guy. If you're willing to completely issue morals, you know. Look into some of the other stuff he does that's even worse. But like, my God, that was, I mean, maybe we should say we don't know about all of these plots that failed, but that one successful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, yeah, a triumph of ruthless amorality, absolutely, I would say.

And so, yeah, as you say, the CIA goes from being this thing that was founded originally to just give the president information to this absolutely clandestine, out of control, doing whatever it wants agency, ostensibly part of the State, that is able to access state funds, but is also getting off-the-books funds from a number of illegal activities, including selling drugs and probably just stealing money as well. But also presumably from the private sector in America as well. I mean, well, you know, define private sector. But like capitalists, nonetheless. I mean, these people were all operating. It's not like after World War II, Dulles was like, "I don't want any of my Sullivan & Cromwell friends to call me ever again." He's doing all of these things for the specific goal of making people at home a lot of money and stopping communism, which tied pretty closely together. Do you want to talk about one of America's most beautiful? One of California's most beautiful children? Should we talk about California's most beautiful children soon? But should we talk about one of America's most drunkest men first, as a way of introducing one of California's most beautiful boys? Okay, okay. The drunkest man in history, ladies and gentlemen. You probably know him from American history books. Is that time that we got a little bit too much like The Crucible, or I guess the other way around, maybe? But, um, our lovable, scotch-drinking boy, Joseph McCarthy. He enters this story as, um, someone who, I'll be honest, I have a bit of a hard time reading. Because ostensibly, it's easy to read the McCarthy story as somebody who's set up by the people, by people like the Dulleses, by private interests, and of course, the state as well, to squash anything that even reeks of communism in the United States. Quash unions, squash, you know, radical progressives, anything like that. Film directors who, you know, have like went to a party once where somebody was wearing red, and red is a communist color. Arrest everybody there. Um, it's easy to read his story as that. But as this book makes clear, as McCarthy's reign of like anti-communist, call everybody before the House on American Activities Committee, and if not, arrest them, humiliate them, for being even remotely left, that spiraled out of control pretty quickly. And as this book makes clear, the people who set him on anything with a monocle of left-wing activity began to regret it. Is that fair to say? So, especially one, uh, John Foster Dulles. Author of the War Guild Class. And maybe we should say, this whole time, John Foster Dulles has been, um, uh, a State Department guy. And he's been kind of like a mover and shaker in the more political ends of things. Whereas Allen Dulles has been the spy brother. Yeah, yeah. It almost feels like Allen Dulles has been groomed for this role basically his entire life. There is a degree to which the Dulles family almost lays claim to the role of Secretary of State and a connection to the connection to that department, I suppose. And it's almost like a family heirloom. Yeah. It wasn't his. I'm just looking it up now. Wasn't his father, the grandfather, and his uncle both served as Secretary of State? So, yeah. Okay. Absolutely. Yeah. And there is this sense between the two Dulles brothers that like, John Foster is entitled to be Secretary of State, and Allen Dulles is entitled to be head CIA chief, basically. And they're the roles that they expect to have. And their so much of their maneuverings and recognitions are all designed to get themselves to the point where they can take on those two roles, kind of thing. Um, and therefore, uh, instill their vision of what American foreign policy ought to be, I suppose. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And domestic policy as well, as we see with, um, our drunk boy. Sure. Yeah.

It's not, um, it's really worth fixating on and pointing out quite how useful the idea of anti-communism becomes in this period. And it's not just, um, it's not just sort of like Senator McCarthy's reign of terror that sort of extends between like 1950 and 1954, kind of thing. But, um, the, the House Un-American Activities Committee predates him and has a significant committee member in the form of Richard Nixon. And like, even Richard Nixon's first political campaign against Jerry Voorhis, it's like, it becomes very apparent to all involved, not just Nixon, and not just to his victims, not just his victim Voorhis, but also to, um, the Dulleses and the cabal of people around the Dulleses, quite how useful it will be to purge all of these former New Dealers from government, or not even if they're in, not in government anymore, but to destroy their reputations, to sort of create this, um, specter and spectacle of secret communists hiding throughout the government, hiding through our American institutions. Um, and at the root of all of these purges, particularly the ones that they take particular interest in, is usually some personal, uh, desire to advance some sort of, um, personal interest of all kind or other kind of thing. Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I don't know. It's important to kind of realize, as we were saying earlier, that when we talk about the New Deal consensus, this is like 10, not this is five years after World War II ended. This is five years after FDR died. And was like, "Yeah, you're right, we have to get rid of every Republican ever." It's not exactly, you know what I mean? So like, this was a pretty concerted and pretty successful effort at getting rid of. Well, we should say they replaced the term "New Dealer" with "communist." And if you were Voorhis, you're a communist. If you were, you know, anybody who's smacked of not the Wall Street establishment, although we'll get to what happened later, uh, you were a communist, right? One of the things that really tickled me in this story of the Nixon-Voorhis contest was one of Nixon's strategies was for his operatives, I suppose, to cold call people and just say, basically, their line was, um, "This is a friend of yours. I can't identify myself, but don't you know Joey Voorhis is a communist?" I'd be like, "Damn, nice, Jerry." Well, quite. Yeah. But apparently spreading, spreading, spreading. Well, basically like relentlessly calling somebody a communist, regardless of their actual political connections. Um, it turns out, when's your election? When your elections get rid of those damn New Dealers. And I mean, yeah, we should say what winds up happening with McCarthy is obviously it spirals way out of control. And do you have the stat that you shared with me at first started recording, Dan, about how many people from the State Department wound up getting, uh, sacked? So it wasn't the State Department, but eventually Senator McCarthy turns his gaze on the State Department. And this is at a time when after '50, after the election of '52, after the election of Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles is now head of the State Department. And Foster Dulles basically acquiesces to letting this purge, this witch hunt, run rampant through the institution that he now, uh, represents. And one of the, the sub departments of, um, the State Department, which comes under under particular scrutiny is Voice of America, which was America's like European propaganda arm. Yeah. What I assume is equivalent to the British World Service. And the stat is, of its 1,400 employees, fully 807 of them, including its director, have lost their jobs. And let's make it clear, these were not really New Dealers. [Laughter] Yeah. Not people who had any particular connection to like substantial, um, policies of FDR. They hadn't fulfilled like significant positions in any government departments, kind of thing. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, clear too that this happens because McCarthy runs out of people who he can reasonably claim might have something to do with communism, then might have something to do with the New Deal, then might be kind of just a Democrat. And then he's just like, "I don't, I'm still going. I'm drunk. I don't know. I'm drinking a bottle a day, baby." There, there is a point also when his, his, I don't know what role he fulfills, his assistant, Cohn, Roy Cohn, ladies and gentlemen, who you probably heard quite a lot of him. So this is the same Roy Cohn is currently, or very recently, because you told me he was Trump's lawyer. But I was like, "He couldn't possibly be now. He must be, we must be talking like in the '80s." He died in the '80s. But he is our significance now. Just, just kick. He was the one who set Trump. Okay, so we do need to go off. We do need to have kind of an important conversation here, which is that when there are times, Dan, when you talk about, um, events that took place, that is really easy to come across as like a loony conspiracy theorist. But the reason that that happens sometimes is because of things like this. It's because it's the same people showing up over and over again. In like, uh, Oliver North, the guy who was involved in Iran-Contra, wound up running the NRA under Trump. It's like, these people, there are just a group of people. Oh, I don't want to say it's a group of people. There's a small selection of people who keep coming up throughout history. And Roy Cohn is one of these people. And Nixon's one of these people. It's like, the reason that these people, the Eastern Establishment latched on to Nixon is because they went, "Now, here's a dude who will just do anything to lick our boots. He's there's." Well, we'll get to Nixon in a second. I don't want to ruin that. But it's like McCarthy had both Roy Cohn, who went on to be Trump's lawyer, on his team as like his second in command, and Nixon. It's like, it's important to understand that when you talk about some of these things, it can sound crazy, but that's just the nature of the system operating as it should. Because it's just, it's, it's like a boys' club. It's just these people keep showing up. And it drives you insane. Throughout this entire book, you're like, "Wait a minute, that was the guy who was working with the Nazis in World War II, and now he's in Guatemala, and now for some reason he's in Deal Plaza." Wait a minute. What? Like, I don't know. It's important to realize that like, I don't know, that this is not crazy. It's just the system operating as it should. In that, if you are willing, as Nixon was, as Roy Cohn was, as the Dulleses were, to just submit yourself to capital, you're going to keep coming up in some of the most dastardly events in American history. The most American, the most committed American sins for capital keep showing up. Exactly. There you go.

And yeah, again, to calm down a little bit, Nixon served as the connection between the Dulleses and between the Eastern Establishment to McCarthy. And he was kind of supposed to be the one that they could, uh, deal with. Yeah. Reign. Yeah. They, there are multiple occasions when they set Nixon with the task of reigning McCarthy in. It just completely fails. Like, he's failed at literally everything in his entire life. I hate to say it, but Nixon is such a duck. Like, just go back and watch videos of him trying to speak. It's like, "Oh my God, this guy." Yeah. Why was that? Why was he considered to be such a successful and competent politician? Well, I, I think they somehow managed to chart the course between pretending to be, um, I mean, maybe it's because he doesn't come from this privileged background, right? He's so desperate to get in, in with this this crowd of sort of like, um, Eastern Establishment, New York, uh, lawyers, Princeton alums, that he will basically just do anything for it. But he does. They also seem to be able to both pass himself up as, uh, as the everyman, but also be thoroughly in the pocket of all these characters. Opportunist. Yeah. The only word for Nixon. Complete opportunist. Yes. Um, I mean, yeah, I mean, he, he all but admits that all of his anti-communist rhetoric is opportunism because that's how he wins. Like, this kind of thing. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. There's a, there's a quote after he's defeated Voorhis. Um, he is confronted by some, a sort of like war, he's representative. He's basically confronting him about the things he said about Voorhis. And the more Nixon says to this representative, "Of course, I knew he wasn't a communist, but I had to win the election. And you do whatever you need to do to win elections. And anything else is naive." Yeah. An interesting quote in 1946. Yeah. Reflecting on the rest of Nixon's career. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah.

So, I mean, yes, let's talk about California's most beautiful boy. Something that I will never be able to cleanse myself of, Dan. I've told you this before, is that the way that Nixon's career has started is that a group of businessmen get together in California and they basically say, they basically say, "There's this guy in Orange County." Which is really funny because that's not what Orange County would be now. They say, "There's this guy in Orange County who's causing a lot of problems for businessmen, and that's Jerry Voorhis, right? He's talking about nationalizing oil. Whoa. We're not gonna, you know, deal with that. What we need is the most bribable, lick-spittle-esque, just disgusting toad of a human to just be paid by us, uh, to then run against him, and just will do anything to win, and we'll do what we want when he's in office." That, of course, winds up being Nixon. But the thing that disgusts me, Dan, should we have a look under the nervous rock to see who we find lurking there? Well, I hate to say it, because it's going to be me. All right.

Oh, I think because I just thought of this part of the story, because, because the place that these businessmen met to organize this, uh, uh, career of Nixon's, to literally, to almost literally pass around a hat to just get a bunch of money, was the hotel that I used to work at when I was in high school, when I needed a summer job. And they probably had these conversations at the pool that I used to work at. It makes me want to vomit. It's like, wait a minute, I worked for this place. I read that in the book. And I think the closest place you've been geographically to American history. Exactly. Yeah. I was like, no, probably served one of these people's grandkids.

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Okay, but, uh, I was suggesting a different rock. Oh, okay. To find lurking underneath a different, uh, significantly more sinister character right now. Angry one. Alan Dulles. Ah, what do you know? Who do you think it was that put all of these businessmen up to promoting Richard Nixon in this campaign? It wasn't me. I was, I wasn't born yet. I wasn't at the pool. Initially, in this book, the suggestion is, well, this, the narrative is begun with the suggestion that Alan Dulles and Richard Nixon meet on a fact-finding mission to Europe in like 1946 or something, to, in an effort to convince Nixon, um, that Truman's plans for post-World War II European development, what would become the Marshall Plan, was something that he, or vote for. But a little later in the narrative, it becomes apparent that in actual fact, Alan Dulles and Richard Nixon have had a previous encounter when Richard Nixon was still a naval officer. He, in 19, at the end of the war, basically, he was in, came into receipt of a certain collection of documents and cables, amongst which he found some highly incriminating evidence of Alan Dulles and his connection to, um, certain of his aforementioned Nazi connections, Nazi activities, some of the, uh, funneling of Nazi wealth that he was doing into America. Um, and it was at this point that Richard Dixon, Richard Nixon and, um, Alan Dulles struck up a deal that Alan Dulles would support Richard Nixon's, um, campaign to be the congressman from Orange County, um, if it were to be the case that Richard Nixon would disappear, shall we say, sort of this incriminating evidence.

What do we think those doc, what do you think those documents were? You think it was just like, "Dear Nazi, thank you, Alan Dulles." He's like, "I thought I burned that one."

Um, so, yeah, I mean, it's fair to say that Alan Dulles also had reason to want to get rid of Jerry Voorhis for very similar reasons that Jerry Voorhis wanted to launch a probe into these people and their history. Absolutely. With the Nazis. Yeah. And I think let's take one further step back in history to re-talk about psychoanalyzing. Get your psychoanalysis book out, because we're gonna psychoanalyze Nixon. Nixon is from, I think he's from Whittier. He went to Whittier College. Whittier College, great school. Um, all of these people that we're talking about in the, like, Eastern establishment, either went to Yale or like another Yale, Harvard, I don't know, whatever the other ones are. But mainly Yale. And if you really wanted to be one of the big boys, you had to be like a Yale grad, basically. And all the people at Sullivan and Cromwell, who were making these moves, you know, the DuPonts, the Bushes, all of these people, uh, they were all part of this club. This very specific club. This was like before, you know, as we talked about Mike Davis, before there were like, kind of these centers of capitalists that could compete with the Eastern establishment. This is where these people were. Nixon wanted to be part of these people, part of this gang. But he went to Whittier. Come on, you're not gonna be part of the gang if you went to Whittier.

Nixon, of course not. And so there's an amazing point in this book where he relates a young, probably beautiful Richard Nixon, um, sitting in the lobby of Sullivan and Cromwell, hoping for an interview with the law firm. And like, he really, like feels, Talbot really feels himself with this. He's like, you know, his feet dug into the thick, luxurious carpet, and he saw the fine oak paneling on the walls. And basically, they didn't even offer. They were like, "Could you please leave?" He managed to get the interview. He didn't meet with Phyllis or anybody like that, like, "Get outside." But not before he was significantly, or sufficiently enamored with the entire environment. Yeah. Um, and always seemed to believe that, um, that was the place where he belonged. And that was what was most ironic about this meeting that happened in this Ojai hotel was that it was, it seemed to have been prompted by the fact that Richard Nixon, um, was low, he was willing to win for office, but he was loath to accept such a small salary. Yeah. Based on the premise that he would be able to get a much more lead, a much more lucrative career at a New York law firm in the private sector, which is true. So that's why all these dudes, I mean, like his previous, previous efforts to secure himself a position at a New York law firm not going physically well. Yeah. So it may have been a little bit of a fear about his partner. He thought that he deserved all this extra cash. Yeah. It worked though, because they literally passed around a hat. And really, yeah, a lot of different things. We need to pay a lot of people to call everyone in Whittier and tell them Jerry Voorhis is a communist.

Um, so thus begins the rise of Tricky Dick. And Tricky Dick then obviously, as you say, gets on the boat and finds these documents somehow, and then, and gets in with Alan Dulles, which must have felt good. Yeah. I hope he didn't destroy them. I hope he kind of kept them. Yeah. But probably didn't do anything with them after that. Um, and then, yes, he gets on the, uh, uh, McCarthy bandwagon. And, uh, I suppose it all kind of falls apart, um, for Richard Nixon. For Richard. Yeah. Well, yeah, for McCarthy, certainly. Sure. How did that? Did McCarthy just die? Or was he just way too drunk ever and was like, "All right, chill out, dude." I don't know. Yeah, I forget. I don't know. Whatever happened. I think, I think, I mean, I think it was just that he pissed off. I mean, I don't know. I'm just guessing now. I think he pissed off all the wrong people. I mean, maybe you can Google it and find out. Um, I mean, well, basically, basically after, after, after, well, after McCarthy's, um, gaze had fallen upon the State Department and he thoroughly ravaged that institution to the point where John Foster Dulles was terrified that he was going to lose his job just through the association and scandal of all of these like air quotes communists that he was potentially harboring. Um, Nixon, no, McCarthy turned his gaze upon the CIA. And Alan Dulles took a totally different strategy, which was one of total refusal to cooperate. Yeah. There was, um, there was somebody that, um, McCarthy wanted to subpoena at the CIA. And basically Alan Dulles hid this guy from McCarthy, or from the people that were trying to deliver these subpoenas. Sure. Um, and they sort of continually tried to subpoena other people and tried to subpoena Alan Dulles at one point. Um, and Alan Dulles just basically refused to go and go and give his testimony to the committee, kind of thing. Yeah. Um, but I think it was at this point that like everybody started to dig around in their big mounds of dirt, yeah, to try and see what they could fling at different people, kind of thing. And, um, I think there was quite a lot of dirt that stuck with Dr. McCarthy, amongst other people.

It looks like, uh, eventually, uh, the Senate, uh, censured him, um, and they made him stop. And then several years later, he died of hepatitis. So the sad ending for one McCarthy, America's drunkest man. Let that be a lesson, folks. Um, however, Richard Nixon's legacy would go on, although not without some hiccups. Certainly not without some hiccups. Um, I don't know. Do we, is there anything? I would like to talk about one other piece of Richard Nixon's history. Sure. Uh, with a heavy dose of Alan Dulles, okay, sprinkled on top. All right. Or sprinkled beneath, I suppose. Um, Richard Nixon managed to get himself, thanks to Alan Dulles, his endorsement and the endorsement of, um, his, his New York cabal, managed to get himself on the presidential ticket of one Dwight D. Eisenhower, um, as his vice presidential running mate. Um, and somebody's gaze falls upon Richard Nixon is a, a journalist named named Drew Pearson, who uncovers several pieces of quite incriminating evidence. One, um, relates to a slush fund that was set up for Richard Nixon, surprise, surprise, which, um, Richard Nixon manages to, um, I think perhaps quite masterfully wriggle out of through giving of a, a televised public address where he's seen to defend himself quite well and give this sort of powerful speech and endear himself to the American public. Um, and then almost days before election day in 1952, Pearson starts to perpetuate this new story of the connection between Richard Nixon and a, um, Romanian oligarch. Oh, this guy. Forgot about this guy. By the name of, um, Nicolae Malaxa. The suggestion is that Malaxa has paid Nixon a hundred thousand pound bribe in the hopes of gaining Richard Nixon's help in fast-tracking his, um, uh, settled status in the U.S. Basically, he wants to move to the U.S. and gain settled status there. And the person who put Malaxa in contact with Richard Nixon was one, uh, Alan Dulles. Wait a minute. This guy, Alan Dulles, who was Malaxa's lawyer, and I think represented, uh, Malaxa's vast fortune, which he'd sort of like gradually sequestered into lots of bank accounts in the U.S. and also sort of spread it all over the place, kind of like that. Everybody, everybody's, yeah, money crap, basically. My note that I wrote down was "Malaxa money everywhere." So I was just like, there was just this sort of taint of it all over the place. Alan Dulles, incredibly implicated. Um, from what we've already talked about already, I don't think it's incredibly incredible to believe that, um, Alan Dulles wanted to create, to protect, uh, this person's ill-gotten gains, shall we say. Sure. Yeah, we can say that. Yeah.

Um, so a little bit about Nikolai Malaxa. A humble background. I think made his fortune in transportation, I think in Romania, maybe trains or something like that. There's one, there's one very peculiar [Music] or telling, I suppose, anecdote in the book where, um, Malaxa has, he manages to get his way in, make his way into the circles of power in Romania because he befriends the king's mistress, and then manages to set his own daughter up as the mistress of the, the king's son, so sort of like the prince in Romania, which is, which in the book is described as a "Game of Thrones" maneuver. But it does the job of getting him into the circles of power, as it were. I suppose. But as, um, the sort of rising tide of Nazism in Europe and, um, anti-Semitism and the influence of Nazi Germany begins to spread in the '30s, there is this growing nationalist and anti-Semitic movement in Romania, who are called, um, not a total fascist name, the Iron Guard. It's very, it could be a Space Marine chapter. Um, who, who the Iron Guard eventually see to the toppling of the king and the installation of a pro-Nazi regime in Romania. Before this, this happens, Malaxa has already, um, successfully managed to cut his ties with, with the king of Romania and literally begins to fly the flag of the Iron Guard from his castle and manages to install himself as what would seem to be like the leader of this group, or a pseudo-leader of this group, or somebody who's seen to be a significant connection to it. So much so that when this coup is finally put down, um, he goes to prison. Worth mentioning that the Iron Guard, which he is seen to, well, clearly allied himself with and was keen to be allied with, um, are responsible for some really brutal pogroms. Sure. Um, which I won't sort of like tell you the details of, but like, you know, what a problem, horrific, horrific. Um, he, he is removed from power, but then somehow manages to curry the favor of the new communist regime that comes into place after the Soviet, Soviet Union retakes Romania, making deals. Um, and so he has this connection to both Nazism, brutal anti-Semitic acts in Romania, and then also a connection to the new Romanian communist regime. But I think he knows where the wind is blowing and knows that he really needs to get out of Romania.

"What were you doing for the last five years?" Um, and as we've already ascertained, Alan Dulles is someone who, um, is amoral to his core and really only interested in protecting people's money. Um, and is quite keen to, uh, promote and protect this person once they reach America and puts them in contact with Richard Nixon to fast-track his immigration. Um, an immigration process which is incredibly difficult from Malaxa, because his list of crimes, shall we say, is basically repugnant to absolutely everybody. There is really nobody in the American establishment at all, minus Richard Nixon and Alan Dulles, it would seem, who saw any possible reason why they would want to protect this person at all. Like, his CIA and FBI files were just like, full of grotesque sort of, um, activities and deeds that he'd been involved in. Um, so he, he stunk, stunk to high heaven. But, uh, he successfully managed to, well, he gave this bribe to Richard Nixon, and Richard Nixon started to, started to, um, make efforts to intervene on his behalf, to pull strings, for levers. It really wasn't going very well. They set up a phony corporation in California, which has the delightful name of the Western Tube Corporation. They just made it was, um, essential to Californian and American, uh, pipeline laying for oil. Um, I mean, it was a total, it was a phony corporation. It didn't exist. California is half tubes, but it didn't. But it did manage to result in a massive tax break for Malaxa. Suffice to say, the, this aforementioned journalist Pearson had gotten hold of this story, knew that this bribe had happened, but they really couldn't successfully manage to get it to stick onto Nixon. And there was one incriminating piece of evidence out there in the world, but unfortunately Pearson couldn't get hold of it. Um, the check that had been given to Nixon by Malaxa, um, was copied by a Romanian, um, emigrant to the U.S. and an opponent of Malaxa's, and it was handed off to somebody else, and then who eventually handed it to someone at the CIA. So the crucial, the crucial piece of evidence that could have seemed to basically scupper Nixon's political career in 1953 was handed to the one person who was most keen on protecting, um, the longevity of his career. Which, to be clear, not many other people cared about Richard Nixon's career. Very uncharismatic, uninteresting fellow. So suffice to say, Alan Dulles managed to make this piece of incriminating evidence, um, disappear.

Um, but there you go. There you go. The characters connected with even more deaths of the characters, um, engaged in underhand scheming to protect their interests at all costs and ensure that nobody sees any form of justice for any type of evil that they've engaged in. Tell you why, so that they could set people up in careers where they could go and do even more dastardly and evil things in the future. Tell you what, Watergate not looking so bad. No. No, not at all. It's just like, they tapped some phones. Who cares? Again, it's, it's, it's almost like these stories are written to make you go insane because it's like, as you say, keep turning over rocks and it's just the same people. It's just like, it's like Alan Dulles died, presumably, wouldn't say happy, but presumably comfortable and presumably never faced any kind of issues for what he's done. The stuff that we're talking about that he's done so far, I hate to say it, but pales in comparison to the stuff that he'll do in these later parts of his career when it comes to foreign policy. The amount of deaths and suffering that he is directly responsible for in various countries around the world, um, we'll get into that some other time. But like, again, I, I don't know. And unless there's something else that you kind of want to say on any like specific of these, uh, stories, like I forget exactly what it was that we talked about a little while ago, but we said something along the lines of, um, any kind of left-wing movement, kind of like worth its salt, needs to use like everything in its arsenal to get people to listen to them, right? And, uh, when we were having a conversation, we were talking about like parliamentarianism and trees and all that kind of stuff. But like, when it comes to any movement, whether it's socialist, you know, from progressive to communist, anarchist, whatever, if you're on the left, so much of your ideology does come down to just getting people to listen to you and getting people to understand how exploited they are and how things would work better if they controlled their own lives, basically. And there are a lot of ways to go about that. Um, but these stories make it pretty clear who your enemies are, right? They make it pretty clear that it's not just some, you know, if you're like a libertarian, it's not just the state that's making these problems. Alan Dulles wasn't doing this for the benefit of the American state, right? Obviously, at some, some things he did, he was, and mainly for his own power, to make his influence greater. But like, it makes it clear that your enemies are also, you know, capitalists. And also that these capitalists will do anything they can. They'll murder you, they'll torture you, to make you live a life not worth living. And they'll do that to as many people as possible, just to get what they want. And so when we talk about like building some kind of left-wing movement worth its salt with any amount of like a large following, all of these stories so far have made me so much more mad than obviously like any kind of value theory. Because I'm, that's not to like, you know, be like, uh, you know, all we need to talk about is the conspiracy theory stuff. But it's like, obviously, uh, the hard science stuff, the economics, all that is vitally important to any kind of movement. But it's like this stuff elicits such an emotional reaction for me of just disgust and anger that it's like I can't help but thinking that these stories in some way need to be used outside of the far right as conspiracy theories. And that like, as they actually exist, could be a vital use to some left movement. Yeah. Well said. Well said. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there aren't any, there's no, um, use in abstract epidemic theories if they don't actually speak to people's real existence of how they experience, um, their day-to-day lives and toiling under capitalism. Um, I don't know how good a job we've done necessarily of connecting like abstract theory to lived reality, although I hope that like people could start to fill in some of those things in their own lives if they so wish, um, or if it helps them at all. Um, and similarly, like abstract political theories are of no use if you don't like connect it to actual political, um, actual networks of power. Um, there's no use speaking abstractly about how states operate, how political economies operate, without looking at the actual histories of those systems, of the people involved, and sort of fully understanding the array of forces that are potentially, um, collected in opposition to you, supposing that we want to rally our own forces. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, again, it's, it's worth, if nobody talks about this stuff, as we've seen over and over and over again, the right wing just lays claim to it immediately, whether it's the like, the like, amazing man who shows up to QAnon rallies claiming to be JFK Jr. as part of this like grand bastardization of like some kind of crazy JFK conspiracy theory that stems from like real events about the Dulles, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But like, it is worth emphasizing as much as possible that these events are the system operating as it should. These are not anomalies. This is exactly what's supposed to happen. Yeah. I mean, if there's one conspiracy theory that's been totally, um, taken over by the right, it's the idea of the deep state. Exactly. And I think we deserve to be able to reclaim some of those ideas in some small measure, kind of thing. Like, there are institutional sort of imperatives that operate below the surface that maintain sort of a degree of continuity in the system, kind of thing.

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Some of these people that we've talked about today are representatives of that sort of institutional maintenance of power, I suppose. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I kind of, I kind of, I kind of tend to like cringe a little bit whenever I hear like the word "cabal" get thrown around a lot. But like, it does, I think at this point, it smacks a little bit too much of conspiracy theory. But when you do realize that like, oh well, okay, if your definition of a like deep state is just capitalists being capitalists, like, okay, then like, yeah, I guess I agree with you. Um, yeah, yeah. Or like, like, um, representatives of certain government agencies who understand which influence interests it is that they serve. Um, and seek to support those interests dispassionately, kind of thing. I mean, it only comes back to some of the things we were reading in Miliband about the idea of the state and about the idea of class and about these arenas not being neutral ones, but one sort of like with class interest. Yeah. Um, yeah. And I mean, even if you're trying to explain this to like the dude that you work with, like, and trying to get that person maybe to go from being like a crazy QAnon conspiracy theorist to maybe seeing the light, like John Foster Dulles, Alan Dulles, two of the most, uh, uh, influential American, hesitate to say politicians, but like people of their era. And obviously, all you need to say is, you know, if you still believe that like, you know, voting, I'll exercise my political power by voting and I'll make a change by just doing that and nothing else. None of these people were ever elected. Obviously, Alan Dulles never won an election. Nixon won an election, somehow. I don't know how anybody voted for Nixon. But like, yeah, I guess that just goes back to the idea of like this, you know, whenever liberals, specifically, have done a very good job of whenever anybody says deep state or anything like that, any kind of continuity of ideology beyond simple voting, that, um, they make that person out to be a conspiracy theorist. But it's pretty clear here when we talk about what is and isn't a conspiracy. No, it's just capitalism. Yeah. The idea of a deep state is so offensive to liberals because the idea from the liberal, the liberal imaginary, I suppose, is that, um, is of a pluralistic state, right? Of like all interests represented equally or having the same access to, to the corridors of power, I suppose. When, like, we already knew, but we have greater evidence now, that like certain people have certain interests and certain connections to power and maintain that power ruthlessly. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Anything that they need. Absolutely ruthlessly. Is like, almost, we haven't gotten into the foreign policy stuff, as we will, I would imagine, at a later episode sometime in the future. But, um, ruthlessly almost doesn't even begin to cut it because it's like, yeah, these people helped facilitate the Holocaust, and then they did it over and over and over again to people just like us, right? And they wouldn't hesitate to do it to us if it meant they would make more money either. Um, I would just like to say that the last sentence of Nikolai Malaxa's, um, Wikipedia page is, "Having apparently never applied for American citizenship, Malaxa died at his residence in New Jersey." It's just Wikipedia being like, "Wait a minute, how did this happen?" Yeah. It feels like there's quite a lot missing from this Wikipedia. Very strange. I guess he could have been a citizen. I find something, there's something slightly contradictory going on. Yeah. Exactly. Um, oh well. I'm sure it's all fine. Just some kind of bureaucratic snafu. A box wasn't checked. Um, well, folks, I hope you now, uh, think about something different other than cool, sweet, sugary, carbonated refreshment next time you reach for a Fanta. Um, and that you understand that, uh, perhaps this, this, uh, American brand of capitalism, maybe we could do better. Maybe we could do better. Maybe something else could, uh, be done because this stuff is all still continuing. Um, as we've said, yes, this book doesn't even get into the stuff that Alan Dulles really is infamous for, or I mean, it does, sorry, but we haven't covered it quite yet. This is all like leading up to the height of his power because he's definitely not at it yet with Nixon. Um, but we will probably get there eventually. And God help us, we might even talk about the third part of the book. I will say, this book, you're gonna have to sit through some kind of like liberal-ish stuff. Extraordinarily well-researched, though, and written more like a novel than it is popular history, I suppose. Yeah. But, um, yeah, Talbot, dude, did his, did his homework. Yeah. Good book. Good book. Good book, folks. Just wild, if nothing else. Um, anything else, Dan? I gotta, I haven't even eaten dinner. No. Yeah. Um, thank you everybody who sat through this entire thing. I, I don't know how long it is, but I feel like it's a long one. [Laughter] Then recording for two hours and 15 minutes. [Laughter] We've covered two chapters. Yeah. We have been going up. Um, maybe we'll trim it down a little bit, but yes, uh, we commend your, your stamina. Absolutely commend your stamina. Well done. Um, and again, thank you to our sponsors, IBM, Coca-Cola, Chase, Ford, GM, Dow Chemicals, Brown Brothers, Harrymen, and Standard Oil. Um, this is always has been, uh, Jack and Dan, um, coming to you live from the Sullivan & Cromwell offices, um, in a penthouse. Um, yeah, I've been Jacked. Um, thank you very much. See you next time.

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The music you heard this episode was "Music to Kill Bad People Too" by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. If you like this song, you can check it out and much, much more on their Bandcamp at kinggizzard.bandcamp.com. Be sure and follow us up on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And if you like what you heard, be sure and tune in next week for some more kami discussion. Until next time.