Dialectic

definition of dialectic

a : any systematic reasoning, exposition, or argument that juxtaposes opposed or contradictory ideas and usually seeks to resolve their conflict : a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth

6 philosophy : the dialectical tension or opposition between two interacting forces or elements

Fascist Italy

When Americans Loved Benito Mussolini

When We Loved Mussolini
Gian Giacomo Migone’s ‘The United States and Fascist Italy: The Rise of American Finance in Europe‘

The Americans Who Embraced Mussolini
As we confront rightwing extremism in our own time, the history of American fascist sympathy reveals a legacy worth reckoning with.

Why Americans Loved Mussolini
In the 1920s and 1930s, a number of influential Americans sympathized with Mussolini and Italian fascism. They were drawn to fascism due to widespread views about the negative impact of technological change on American democracy, communities, and jobs. This episode in history offers insights into the popular appeal of authoritarian regimes during periods of wrenching economic and social change.

Formation of the National Fascist Party

By the time he returned from service in the Allied forces of World War I, very little remained of Mussolini the socialist. Indeed, he was now convinced that socialism as a doctrine had largely been a failure. In 1917 Mussolini got his start in politics with the help of a £100 weekly wage (the equivalent of £7100 as of 2020) from the British security service MI5, to keep anti-war protestors at home and to publish pro-war propaganda. This help was authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, who was posted in Italy at a time when Britain feared the unreliability of that ally in the war, and the possibility of the anti-war movement causing factory strikes.[55] In early 1918 Mussolini called for the emergence of a man “ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep” to revive the Italian nation.[56] Much later Mussolini said he felt by 1919 “Socialism as a doctrine was already dead; it continued to exist only as a grudge”.[57] On 23 March 1919 Mussolini re-formed the Milan fascio as the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento (Italian Combat Squad), consisting of 200 members.[58]

Nazi Germany

Military Career of Adolf Hitler: First World War – Army intelligence agent

In June 1919 he was moved to the demobilization office of the 2nd Infantry Regiment.[A 5] Around this time the German military command released an edict that the army’s main priority was to “carry out, in conjunction with the police, stricter surveillance of the population … so that the ignition of any new unrest can be discovered and extinguished.”[31] In May 1919 Karl Mayr became commander of the 6th Battalion of the guards regiment in Munich and from 30 May as head of the “Education and Propaganda Department” (Dept Ib/P) of the Bavarian Reichswehr, Headquarters 4.[34] In this capacity as head of the intelligence department, Mayr recruited Hitler as an undercover agent in early June 1919. Under Captain Mayr “national thinking” courses were arranged at the Reichswehrlager Lechfeld near Augsburg,[34] with Hitler attending from 10–19 July. During this time Hitler so impressed Mayr that he assigned him to an anti-bolshevik “educational commando” as 1 of 26 instructors in the summer of 1919.[35][36][37][A 6]

As an appointed Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance commando) of the Reichswehr, Hitler’s job was to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the German Workers’ Party (DAP). While monitoring the activities of the DAP, Hitler became attracted to the founder Anton Drexler‘s antisemitic, nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-Marxist ideas.[38] Impressed with Hitler’s oratory skills, Drexler invited him to join the DAP, which Hitler did on 12 September 1919.[39]

List of intelligence front companies involved in the Holocaust

America’s Forgotten Support of Adolf Hitler
On the anniversary of D-Day, American University’s Peter Kuznick reflects on one of the most shameful chapters in our nation’s history.

American Supporters of the European Fascists
A number of prominent and wealthy American businessmen helped to support fascist regimes in Europe from the 1920s through the 1940s.  These people helped to support Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, as well as Benito Mussolini, and Adolph Hitler.

The CIA’s Worst-Kept Secret: Newly Declassified Files Confirm United States Collaboration with Nazis
Pried loose by Congress, which passed the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act three years ago, a long-hidden trove of once-classified CIA documents confirms one of the worst-kept secrets of the cold war–the CIA’s use of an extensive Nazi spy network to wage a clandestine campaign against the Soviet Union.

Gehlen Organization

The Gehlen Organization or Gehlen Org (often referred to as The Org) was an intelligence agency established in June 1946 by U.S. occupation authorities in the United States zone of post-war occupied Germany, and consisted of former members of the 12th Department of the German Army General Staff (Foreign Armies East, or FHO). It was headed by Reinhard Gehlen who had previously been a Wehrmacht Major General and head of the Nazi German military intelligence in the Eastern Front during World War II.

The agency was a precursor to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND or Federal Intelligence Service) which was formed in 1956.

Operation Paperclip

Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945–59. Some were former members and leaders of the Nazi Party.[1][2]

The effort began in earnest in 1945, as the Allies advanced into Germany and discovered a wealth of scientific talent and advanced research that had contributed to Germany’s wartime technological advancements. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff officially established Operation Overcast on July 20, 1945, with the dual aim of leveraging German expertise to assist in the ongoing war effort against Japan, and to bolster U.S. postwar military research. The Operation was conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), it was largely carried out by special agents of the U.S. Army‘s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). Scientists taken were often involved in the Nazi rocket program, aviation, and chemical and biological warfare.

The operation was characterized by the recruitment of German specialists, along with their families, bringing the total to more than 6,000 relocated to the US for their expertise, valued at US$10 billion in patents and industrial processes. These recruits included notable figures such as Wernher von Braun, a leading scientist in rocket technology, and were instrumental in the development of the U.S. space program and military technology during the Cold War. Despite its contributions to American scientific advances, Operation Paperclip has been controversial due to the Nazi affiliations of many recruits, and the ethical implications of assimilating individuals associated with war crimes into American society.

The operation was not solely focused on rocketry; efforts were directed toward synthetic fuels, medicine, and other fields of research. Notable achievements, under Paperclip, include advancements in aeronautics, leading to significant progress in rocket and space-flight technologies that were pivotal in the Space Race. The operation played a crucial role in the establishment of NASA and success of the Apollo missions to the Moon.

Operation Paperclip was part of a broader strategy by the US to harness German scientific talent in the face of emerging Cold War tensions, ensuring this expertise did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union or other nations. The operation’s legacy is a blend of scientific achievement and ethical controversy, reflecting the challenges of reconciling the pursuit of knowledge, with the imperative to uphold justice and human rights.

Imperial Japan

Japan–United States relations – World War II – 1937-1945

Through the 1930s, Japan’s military needed imported oil for airplanes and warships. It was dependent at 90% on imports, 80% of it coming from the United States.[65] Furthermore, the vast majority of this oil import was oriented towards the navy and the military.[66]
…
The Japanese realized the urgent need for oil, over 90% of which was supplied by the United States, Britain and the Netherlands. From the Army’s perspective, a secure fuel supply was essential for the warplanes, tanks, and trucks—as well as the Navy’s warships and warplanes.

Japan–United States relations – Pre–World War II period

International relations between Japan and the United States began in the late 18th and early 19th century with the diplomatic but force-backed missions of U.S. ship captains James Glynn and Matthew C. Perry to the Tokugawa shogunate. Following the Meiji Restoration, the countries maintained relatively cordial relations.[1] Potential disputes were resolved. Japan acknowledged American control of Hawaii and the Philippines, and the United States reciprocated regarding Korea. Disagreements about Japanese immigration to the U.S. were resolved in 1907. The two were allies against Germany in World War I.[2]

From as early as 1879 and continuing through most of the first four decades of the 1900s influential Japanese statesmen such as Prince Iesato Tokugawa (1863–1940) and Baron Eiichi Shibusawa (1840–1931) led a major Japanese domestic and international movement advocating goodwill and mutual respect with the United States. Their friendship with the U.S. included allying with seven U.S. presidents – Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was only after the passing of this older generation of diplomats and humanitarians, along with the evidence that many Americans believed all Asians to be alike with President Calvin Coolidge‘s signing of the Immigration Act of 1924 that Japanese militarists were able to gain control and pressure Japan into joining with the Axis Powers in World War II.[3][4]

Empire of Japan – Japan during World War I

Japan participated in World War I from 1914 to 1918 as a member of the Allies and played an important role against the Imperial German Navy. Politically, the Japanese Empire seized the opportunity to expand its sphere of influence in China, and to gain recognition as a great power in postwar geopolitics.

Japan’s military, taking advantage of the great distances and Imperial Germany‘s preoccupation with the war in Europe, seized German possessions in the Pacific and East Asia, but there was no large-scale mobilization of the economy.[1] Foreign Minister Katō Takaaki and Prime Minister Ōkuma Shigenobu wanted to use the opportunity to expand Japanese influence in China. They enlisted Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925), then in exile in Japan, but they had little success.[2] The Imperial Japanese Navy, a nearly autonomous bureaucratic institution, made its own decision to undertake expansion in the Pacific area. It captured Germany’s Micronesian territories north of the equator, and ruled the islands until they were transitioned to civilian control in 1921. The operation gave the Navy a rationale for enlarging its budget to double the Army budget and expanding the fleet. The Navy then gained significant political influence over national and international affairs.[3]

Communist Russia

“I’d put Stalin on the OSS payroll if I thought it would help defeat Hitler.” – William J. Donovan, Head of the Office of Strategic Services

The Cold War Hoax – Part 1

The Cold War Hoax – Part 2

Lenin’s Sealed Train

Germany’s Role in the Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution has gone down in history as the victory of the workers and peasants over the czarist rulers. Few people realize the German kaiser was also involved: He gave aid to the Bolsheviks in 1917.

German Foreign Office Documents on Financial Support to the Bolsheviks in 1917
International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-)Vol. 32, No. 2 (Apr., 1956), pp. 181-189 (9 pages) Published By: Oxford University Press

The Best Enemy Money Can Buy

“With mountains of documentation, mostly from government and corporate sources, Sutton shows that Soviet military technology is heavily dependent on U.S. and allied gifts, “peaceful trade” and exchange programs. We’ve built for, sold or traded, or given outright to the Communists everything from copper wiring and military trucks to tank technology, missile guidance technology, computers – even the Space Shuttle.”

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution: The Remarkable True Story of the American Capitalists Who Financed the Russian Communists

Why did the 1917 American Red Cross Mission to Russia include more financiers than medical doctors? Rather than caring for the victims of war and revolution, its members seemed more intent on negotiating contracts with the Kerensky government and, subsequently, the Bolshevik regime.

In a courageous investigation, Antony Sutton establishes tangible historical links between Russian communists and US capitalists. Drawing on US state department files, personal papers of key Wall Street figures, biographies, and conventional histories, Sutton reveals:

  • The role of Morgan banking executives in funneling illegal Bolshevik gold into the US.
  • The co-option of the American Red Cross by powerful Wall Street forces.
  • The intervention by Wall Street sources to free the Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, whose aim was to topple the Russian government.
  • The deals made by major corporations to capture the huge Russian market a decade and a half before the US recognized the Soviet regime.
  • The secret sponsoring of Communism by leading businessmen, who publicly championed free enterprise.

Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution traces the foundations of Western funding of the Soviet Union. Dispassionately, and with overwhelming documentation, the author details a crucial phase in the establishment of Communist Russia.

This classic study―first published in 1974 and part of a key trilogy―is reproduced here in its original form. The other volumes in this trilogy are Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler and Wall Street and FDR.

Lend-Lease Act

Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States (Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States) 77–11, H.R. 1776, 55 Stat. 31, enacted March 11, 1941),[1] was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, Republic of China, and other Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945. The aid was given free of charge on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States.

The Lend-Lease Act was signed into law on March 11, 1941, and ended on September 20, 1945. A total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $719 billion in 2021 when accounting for inflation) worth of supplies was shipped, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.[2] In all, $31.4 billion went to the United Kingdom, $11.3 billion to the Soviet Union, $3.2 billion to France, $1.6 billion to China, and the remaining $2.6 billion to other Allies. Roosevelt’s top foreign policy advisor Harry Hopkins had effective control over Lend-Lease, making sure it was in alignment with Roosevelt’s foreign policy goals.[3]

Materiel delivered under the act was supplied at no cost, to be used until returned or destroyed. In practice, most equipment was destroyed, although some hardware (such as ships) was returned after the war. Supplies that arrived after the termination date were sold to the United Kingdom at a large discount for £1.075 billion, using long-term loans from the United States, which were finally repaid in 2006. Similarly, the Soviet Union repaid $722 million in 1971, with the remainder of the debt written off.

Reverse Lend-Lease to the United States totalled $7.8 billion. Of this, $6.8 billion came from the British and the Commonwealth. Canada also aided the United Kingdom and other Allies with the Billion Dollar Gift and Mutual Aid totalling $3.4 billion in supplies and services (equivalent to $61 billion in 2020) .[4][5]

Lend-Lease effectively ended the United States’ pretense of neutrality which had been enshrined in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s. It was a decisive step away from non-interventionist policy and toward open support for the Allies. Lend-Lease’s precise significance to Allied victory in World War II is debated. Stalin told Nikita Khrushchev that Lend-Lease enabled the Soviet Union to defeat Germany.

Significance of Lend-Lease

Lend-Lease contributed to the Allied victory. Even after the United States forces in Europe and the Pacific began to attain full strength during 1943–1944, Lend-Lease continued. Most remaining Allies were largely self-sufficient in frontline equipment (such as tanks and fighter aircraft) by this time but Lend-Lease provided a useful supplement in this category and Lend-Lease logistical supplies (including motor vehicles and railroad equipment) were of enormous assistance.[35] Much of the meaning of Lend-Lease aid can be better understood when considering the innovative nature of World War II, as well as the economic distortions caused by the war. One of the greatest differences with prior wars was the enormous increase in the mobility of armies. This was the first big war in which whole formations were routinely motorized; soldiers were supported with large numbers of all kinds of vehicles.[36] Most belligerent powers severely decreased production of non-essentials, concentrating on producing weapons. This inevitably produced shortages of related products that are required for industrial or logistical uses, particularly unarmored vehicles. On the Allied side, there was almost total reliance upon American industrial production, weaponry and especially unarmored vehicles purpose-built for military use, vital for the modern army’s logistics and support.[36] The USSR was very dependent on rail transport and starting during the latter half of the 1920s[37] but accelerating during the 1930s (the Great Depression), hundreds of foreign industrial giants such as Ford were commissioned to construct modern dual-purpose factories in the USSR, 16 alone within a week of May 31, 1929.[38] With the outbreak of war these plants switched from civilian to military production and locomotive production ended virtually overnight. Just 446 locomotives were produced during the war,[39] with only 92 of those being built between 1942 and 1945.[40] In total, 92.7% of the wartime production of railroad equipment by the USSR was supplied by Lend-Lease,[35] including 1,911 locomotives and 11,225 railcars[41] which augmented the existing stocks of at least 20,000 locomotives and half a million railcars.[42]

Much of the logistical assistance of the Soviet military was provided by hundreds of thousands of U.S.-made trucks and by 1945, nearly a third of the truck strength of the Red Army was U.S.-built. Trucks such as the Dodge 3⁄4-ton and Studebaker 2+1⁄2-ton were easily the best trucks available in their class on either side on the Eastern Front. American shipments of telephone cable, aluminum, canned rations and clothing were also critical.[43] Lend-Lease also supplied significant amounts of weapons and ammunition. The Soviet air force received 18,200 aircraft, which amounted to about 30 percent of Soviet wartime fighter and bomber production (mid 1941–45).[35] Most tank units were Soviet-built models but about 7,000 Lend-Lease tanks (plus more than 5,000 British tanks) were used by the Red Army, eight percent of war-time production.

A particular critical aspect of Lend-Lease was the supply of food. The invasion had cost the USSR a huge amount of its agricultural base; during the initial Axis offensive of 1941–42, the total sown area of the USSR fell by 41.9% and the number of collective and state farms by 40%. The Soviets lost a substantial number of draft and farm animals as they were not able to relocate all the animals in an area before it was captured and of those areas in which the Axis forces would occupy, the Soviets had lost 7 million of out of 11.6 million horses, 17 million out of 31 million cows, 20 million of 23.6 million pigs and 27 million out of 43 million sheep and goats. Tens of thousands of agricultural machines, such as tractors and threshers, were destroyed or captured. Agriculture also suffered a loss of labour; between 1941 and 1945, 19.5 million working-age men had to leave their farms to work in the military and industry. Agricultural issues were also compounded when the Soviets were on the offensive, as areas liberated from the Axis had been devastated and contained millions of people who needed to be fed. Lend-Lease thus provided a massive quantity of foodstuffs and agricultural products.[44]

According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease had a crucial role in winning the war:

“On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR’s emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany’s might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.”[35]

Nikita Khrushchev, having served as a military commissar and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:

“I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin’s views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were “discussing freely” among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany’s pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don’t think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.”[45]

In a confidential interview with the wartime correspondent Konstantin Simonov, the Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov is quoted as saying:

“Today [1963] some say the Allies didn’t really help us … But listen, one cannot deny that the Americans shipped over to us material without which we could not have equipped our armies held in reserve or been able to continue the war.”[46]

David Glantz, an American military historian known for his books on the Eastern front, offers a contrary view:

“Although Soviet accounts have routinely belittled the significance of Lend-Lease in the sustainment of the Soviet war effort, the overall importance of the assistance cannot be understated. Lend-Lease aid did not arrive in sufficient quantities to make the difference between defeat and victory in 1941–1942; that achievement must be attributed solely to the Soviet people and to the iron nerve of Stalin, Zhukov, Shaposhnikov, Vasilevsky, and their subordinates. As the war continued, however, the United States and Great Britain provided many of the implements of war and strategic raw materials necessary for Soviet victory. Without Lend-Lease food, clothing, and raw materials (especially metals), the Soviet economy would have been even more heavily burdened by the war effort. Perhaps most directly, without Lend-Lease trucks, rail engines, and railroad cars, every Soviet offensive would have stalled at an earlier stage, outrunning its logistical tail in a matter of days. In turn, this would have allowed the German commanders to escape at least some encirclements, while forcing the Red Army to prepare and conduct many more deliberate penetration attacks in order to advance the same distance. Left to their own devices, Stalin and his commanders might have taken twelve to eighteen months longer to finish off the Wehrmacht; the ultimate result would probably have been the same, except that Soviet soldiers could have waded at France’s Atlantic beaches.”[47]

U.S. deliveries to the Soviet Union

If Germany defeated the Soviet Union, the most significant front in Europe would be closed. Roosevelt believed that if the Soviets were defeated the Allies would be far more likely to lose. Roosevelt concluded that the United States needed to help the Soviets fight against the Germans.[51] Because of its utmost importance, Roosevelt directed his subordinates to heavily prioritise shipments of aid to the Soviet Union above most other uses of available shipping.[52] Soviet Ambassador Maxim Litvinov significantly contributed to the Lend-Lease agreement of 1941. American deliveries to the Soviet Union can be divided into the following phases:

  • “Pre Lend-lease” June 22, 1941, to September 30, 1941 (paid for in gold and other minerals)
  • First protocol period from October 1, 1941, to June 30, 1942 (signed October 7, 1941),[53] these supplies were to be manufactured and delivered by the UK with US credit financing.
  • Second protocol period from July 1, 1942, to June 30, 1943 (signed October 6, 1942)
  • Third protocol period from July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1944 (signed October 19, 1943)
  • Fourth protocol period from July 1, 1944 (signed April 17, 1945), formally ended May 12, 1945, but deliveries continued for the duration of the war with Japan (which the Soviet Union entered on August 8, 1945) under the “Milepost” agreement until September 2, 1945, when Japan capitulated. On September 20, 1945, all Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union was terminated.

Delivery was via the Arctic Convoys, the Persian Corridor, and the Pacific Route. The Arctic route was the shortest and most direct route for lend-lease aid to the USSR, though it was also the most dangerous as it involved sailing past German-occupied Norway. Some 3,964,000 tons of goods were shipped by the Arctic route; 7% was lost, while 93% arrived safely.[54] This constituted some 23% of the total aid to the USSR during the war.[citation needed]

The Persian Corridor was the longest route, and was not fully operational until mid-1942. Thereafter it saw the passage of 4,160,000 tons of goods, 27% of the total.[54]

The Pacific Route opened in August 1941, but was affected by the start of hostilities between Japan and the U.S.; after December 1941, only Soviet ships could be used, and, as Japan and the USSR observed a strict neutrality towards each other, only non-military goods could be transported.[55] Nevertheless, some 8,244,000 tons of goods went by this route, 50% of the total.[54]

In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $11 billion in materials (equivalent to $133 billion in 2021):[56] over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386[57] of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans);[58] 11,400 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras, 3,414 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,397 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras)[59] and 1.75 million tons of food.[60]

Roughly 17.5 million tons of military equipment, vehicles, industrial supplies, and food were shipped from the Western Hemisphere to the USSR, 94% coming from the US. For comparison, a total of 22 million tons landed in Europe to supply American forces from January 1942 to May 1945. It has been estimated that American deliveries to the USSR through the Persian Corridor alone were sufficient, by US Army standards, to maintain sixty combat divisions in the line.[61][62]

In the first weeks and months of the German–Soviet war, the USSR lost a huge number of military aircraft. Some of them were lost at airfields in the first days of the fighting, some were abandoned for various reasons, and some were lost in air battles. The losses of Soviet aviation in 1941 is one of the most controversial topics for military historians and publicists. The situation was aggravated by the loss of many aircraft factories that produced aircraft and components for them, which remained in the territory occupied by the Germans. Some of the factories were hastily evacuated to the east of the country, but it took time to resume production and reach its maximum capacity. In December 1941, all aircraft factories of the Soviet Union produced only 600 aircraft of all types. This was the reason that the supply of aircraft, primarily fighters and bombers, became the main topic in the negotiations between the top leadership of the USSR, Great Britain and the United States. The vast majority of the total number of aircraft received by the USSR under the Lend-Lease program was made up of British Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, American P-39 Airacobra, P-40 fighters, known in Russia under the names “Tomahawk” and “Kittyhawk”, P-63 Kingcobra, American bombers A-20 Havoc, B-25 Mitchell. A significant amount of C-47 Skytrain transport aircraft and PBY Catalina flying boats were also delivered.[63] For the needs of the Soviet Navy, 2,141 aircraft were delivered to the USSR.[64] Not all of the delivered aircraft could be fully called modern models. But even those that could be called obsolete (the English Hurricane and the American Tomahawk) were more advanced and superior in most characteristics than the I-153 and I-16 aircraft that made up the basis of Soviet fighter aviation in the most difficult first months of the war. The superiority in high-altitude characteristics of American and British aircraft, powerful armament and the provision of communications ensured their use in the air defense forces – out of 10 thousand aircraft received by the USSR during the war, 7 thousand were from received via Lend-Lease.[63]

From October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945, the United States delivered to the Soviet Union 427,284 trucks, 13,303 combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline and oil) or 57.8 percent of the aviation fuel including nearly 90 percent of high-octane fuel used,[35] 4,478,116 tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt, etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives, 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35 heavy machinery cars. Ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) provided amounted to 53 percent of total domestic consumption.[35] One item typical of many was a tire plant that was lifted bodily from the Ford Company’s River Rouge Plant and transferred to the USSR. The 1947 money value of the supplies and services amounted to about $11.3 billion.[65][66]

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

“Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg (née Greenglass) were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union. The couple were convicted of providing top-secret information about radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines and valuable nuclear weapon designs (at that time the United States was the only country in the world with nuclear weapons). Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 in the Sing Sing correctional facility in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to suffer that penalty during peacetime. […] Julius Rosenberg joined the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey in 1940, where he worked as an engineer-inspector until 1945. He was fired when the U.S. Army discovered his previous membership in the Communist Party. Important research on electronics, communications, radar and guided missile controls was undertaken at Fort Monmouth during World War II.[9] […] Feklisov learned through Rosenberg that Ethel’s brother David Greenglass was working on the top-secret Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory; he directed Julius to recruit Greenglass.[10]”

Communist Cuba

Good Books about Castro’s Cuba

Books about the Cuban Revolution

Fidel Castro Interview with Ed Sullivan – 1959

Ambassador to Cuba – Earl E. T. Smith’s Letter to the New York Times’ Editorial Board

“Castro could not have seized power in Cuba without the aid of the United States. American Government agencies and the United States press played a major role in bringing Castro to power. I so testified before a Senate committee. As the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba during the Castro‐Communist revolution 1957‐59, I had first‐hand knowledge of the facts which brought about the rise of Fidel Castro.”

The Bogotazo Riots and the Launching of the Cold War Hoax

Most books and articles about the CIA mention the Agency’s first two successful covert operations: the overthrowing of Premier Mossadegh of Iran in 1953 and the overthrowing of President Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954. Some of them spare a few paragraphs to mention the CIA’s alleged first mistake: its failure to predict the Bogotazo riots. But there is more about the Bogotazo affair than the CIA, Fidel Castro, and his CFR masters want us to know.

Fidel Castro’s Sister Juanita was a CIA Agent
Memoir reveals details of secret messages and codes
Recruitment was a rare triumph for US spymasters

Mirta Díaz-Balart

Mirta Francisca de la Caridad Díaz-Balart y Gutiérrez (born 30 September 1928) is a Cuban who was the first wife of Fidel Castro. They married in 1948, had one son together, and divorced in 1955.
[…]
Díaz-Balart is the aunt of anti-Castro Republican politicians Mario Díaz-Balart and his brother Lincoln Díaz-Balart, as well as TV anchor José Díaz-Balart. She is the sister of the painter Waldo Díaz-Balart and politician Rafael Díaz-Balart.

William Alexander Morgan

William Alexander Morgan (April 19, 1928 – March 11, 1961) was an American-born Cuban guerrilla commander who fought in the Cuban Revolution, leading a band of rebels that drove the Cuban army from key positions in the central mountains as part of Second National Front of Escambray, thereby helping to pave the way for Fidel Castro’s forces to secure victory. Morgan was one of about two dozen U.S. citizens to fight in the revolution and one of only three foreign nationals to hold the rank of comandante in the rebel forces.[1] In the years after the revolution, Morgan became disenchanted with Castro’s turn to communism and he became one of the leaders of the CIA-supplied Escambray rebellion. In 1961, he was arrested by the Cuban government and, after a military trial, executed by firing squad in the presence of Fidel and Raúl Castro.[2][3]

Soviet-Cuban Relations, 1956-1960

Extract

In the growing body of literature on the Cuban Revolution, the subject of Soviet attitudes and policy toward Cuba has been neglected. While this neglect holds true for the entire period since 1956, it is particularly evident in the period between Castro’s landing in Cuba in December 1956 and the signing of the Soviet-Cuban economic agreements of February 1960.

The few works which touch upon this period describe the Soviet Union as having no interest in Cuba during Castro’s struggle against Batista and as merely reacting to Cuban events and initiatives thereafter. In contrast to this view, the present paper will argue that the Soviet Union was actively concerned with Cuban affairs from 1956 to 1960. It was, at least partially, in response to Soviet policy that Castro began the negotiations with the Soviet Union that resulted in the economic agreements of February 1960.

The Nixon-Castro Meeting of 19 April 1959

Extract

Much has been made of Fidel Castro’s spectacular eleven-day visit to the United States in April 1959, a scant three-and-a-half months after his revolutionary ascendancy to power in Cuba. While Castro’s public appearances were covered voluminously in the American press, documentation of the interviews Castro had with members of the Eisenhower administration has been slow to appear. Secrecy has prevailed over the most significant of these meetings, an almost three-hour conference with Vice-President Richard Nixon on Sunday afternoon, 19 April. In 1962, Nixon spoke of a confidential memorandum of that meeting and hinted at its contents in Six Crises, and Castro briefly discussed the interview with Lee Lockwood in 1965.1 But continued lack of any substantial documentary evidence prompted one American chronicler of the revolution to remark in 1968 that “the truth about [Castro’s] encounter with American officials will not be known for a long time.”2 Hugh Thomas’s history of Cuba (1971), extensive and intensive as it is, merely cites the reports of Nixon and Lockwood.3

1950s CIA Aid to Castro Reported

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The CIA, which allegedly sponsored numerous assassination attempts against Cuban President Fidel Castro, had secretly provided financial support to Castro’s movement prior to his overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, according to a new book.

Tad Szulc, author of “Fidel: A Critical Portrait,” said the CIA’s apparent goal in providing the movement with “no less than $50,000″ was to purchase good will for the United States among the rebels in the event that they triumphed.

The irony of the CIA’s reported pro-revolutionary role is that the agency sponsored an exile invasion of Cuba in 1961 and later tried eight times to assassinate Castro, according to a 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee report.

“On the one hand, the United States continued to supply the Batista regime with weapons to fight the rebels,” Szulc wrote of U.S. activities during the fall of 1957, “while on the other hand, it secretly channeled funds to the 26th of July Movement (Castro’s guerrilla organization) through the CIA.”

Fidel Castro, Supermole

In November 1959, less than a year after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, Alexandr Ivanovich Alexeev arrived in Havana, ostensibly as a correspondent for Soviet TASS agency. But Alexeev, whose real name was Alexandr I. Shitov, had other duties to perform. He was also a senior KGB officer with a long, successful career. As a Soviet intelligence officer Alexeev had been previously deployed, under different covers, in France (1946-51), the Netherlands (1946-51), and finally in Argentina (1954-58),1 where he polished both his proficiency in the Spanish language and in the mastering of tradecraft.2

The fact that Alexeev was sent to Cuba at such an early date clearly indicates that, from the very beginning, the Soviets saw Cuba and Castro essentially as an intelligence operation. With this in mind, and in order to do justice to the Soviet approach, let’s analyze the unconventional beginnings of the Castro phenomenon the way the Soviet counterintelligence would have: with extreme suspicion, almost to the point of paranoia.

The hypothesis3 of this study, however, is not to prove that Castro is or has been a mole,4 but to suggest that, at least for a time, Soviet intelligence had strong suspicions that he was a mole-an enemy agent infiltrated into the Soviet bloc. To be sure, this is a highly speculative hypothesis, but, considering the elements of suspicion involved in espionage and counterintelligence work, not a farfetched one. Like all counterintelligence cases, the Castro affair is a maze of contradictions that invite alternative explanations.

Communist China

The OSS in Support of the Chinese Communists

OSS in China – New Information about an Old Role

OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency

General Albert C. Wedemeyer Note Signed in Wedemeyer on War and Peace, China

Wedemeyer was a staunch anti-communist. While in China, during the years 1944 to 1945, he assumed command of U.S. forces and was Chiang Kai-shek’s Chief of Staff and commanded all American forces in China. Wedemeyer supported Chiang’s struggle against Mao Zedong and in 1947 President Truman sent him back to China to render a report on what actions the United States should take.

After the fall of China to Communist forces, General Wedemeyer would testify before Congress that while the loss of morale was indeed a cause of the defeat of the Nationalist Chinese forces, the Truman administration’s 1947 decision to discontinue further training and modernizing of Nationalist forces, the US-imposed arms embargo, and constant anti-Nationalist sentiment expressed by Western journalists and policymakers were the primary causes of that loss of morale. Wedemeyer became a hero to US anticommunists, and gave many lectures around the country.

Yale University Group Spurs Mao’s Emergence

120th Anniversary of Yale-China: Mao Zedong and Yale-China

“Yale has helped many young men begin their political rise to power. In the class of 1919, in addition to the 1,000 male leaders graduating in New Haven, Yale-in-China was helping a young man by the name of Mao-Tse-tung. William F. Buckley was not the only Yale figure connected with the Presidential trip to China. Without Yale’s support, Mao Tse Tung may never have risen from obscurity to command China.”

Yale-China Association

The Yale-China Association (Chinese: 雅礼协会; pinyin: Yǎlǐ Xiéhuì), formerly Yale-in-China, is an independent, nonprofit organization which seeks to develop educational programs in and about China and further understanding between Chinese and American people. Founded in 1901 and originally a Protestant missionary society, Yale-China’s work is characterized by long-term relationships to build Chinese institutional capacity. Current programs include the fields of public health and nursing, legal education, English language instruction, American Studies, and cultural exchange for Chinese and American students. Publications include a regular newsletter, biennial report, and the annual Yale-China Health Journal.

Early years

Between 1919 and 1920, future Chairman Mao Zedong had several encounters with the school: he edited its student magazine, re-focusing it on “thought reorientation,” and operated a bookshop out of its medical college.[1][2]

China Marines

The term China Marines, originally referred to the United States Marines of the 4th Marine Regiment, who were stationed in Shanghai, China from 1927 to 1941 to protect American citizens and their property in the Shanghai International Settlement, during the Chinese Revolution and the Second Sino-Japanese War. Those Marines stationed at the embassy in Peking and the consulate in Tientsin referred to themselves as North China Marines.[1]

Due to the cheap labor available, China Marines lived a relatively comfortable lifestyle, with each squad able to hire Chinese men to do their cleaning and run their errands. This, plus the inexpensive goods available on the local market, made an assignment to the China Marines highly coveted.

Most of the China Marines were withdrawn in November 1941, but the North China Marines in Peking and Tientsin were scheduled to be withdrawn on December 10. (All weapons and ammunition except rifles and pistols had been crated and shipped by rail to the embarkation port.) However, Imperial Japan attacked the United States on December 7, and the Marine Embassy guards, plus a fourteen-man Naval medical detachment, a total of 203 men, were captured and held as slave labor until the war’s end in August 1945. A 204th man, a retired officer who had been living in Peking and recalled to duty, was immediately released. He continued living in Peking until he was included in the roundup of civilians and sent to the Weihsien civilian internment camp in March 1943. He was returned to the U.S. on the exchange ship Teia Maru in September 1943. The last commander of the China Marines was Colonel William W. Ashurst.[2]

With the rapid expansion of the Marine Corps during World War II and the capture of the rest of the 4th Marine Regiment at Corregidor, the surviving China Marines were few in number and highly regarded.

After Japan’s surrender, the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions, also known as China Marines, were sent to occupy northern China from 1945 to 1948.

On January 31, 1996, Marines from the 2nd Battalion 5th Marines, as part of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (31st MEU), Special Operations Capable (SOC), made their first visit to Shanghai, China, since World War II. The 31st MEU-SOC visited China again on November 22, 2006, during a port visit to Zhanjiang.[3][full citation needed]

The Triumph of China Ch. 27. The Dixie Mission

Dixie Mission

The United States Army Observation Group, commonly known as the Dixie Mission, was the first US effort to gather intelligence and establish relations with the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army, then headquartered in the mountainous city of Yan’an, Shaanxi. The mission was launched on 22 July 1944, during World War II, and lasted until 11 March 1947.

The goals of the mission were to investigate the Communists politically and militarily and to determine if the US would benefit from establishing liaison. Communist local governments had cooperated in rescuing American pilots downed in North China after bombing Japan, and the invasion of Japan might still have been launched from China, which would have involved landing American troops in China. John S. Service, of the US Department of State, was responsible for political analysis, and Colonel David D. Barrett, of the US Army, performed the military analysis. Initially, they reported that the Chinese Communists might be a useful wartime and postwar ally and that the atmosphere in Yan’an was more energetic and less corrupt than in Nationalist-held areas. After the war, the Dixie Mission’s reports and Service and Barrett were condemned by pro-Kuomintang factions in the American government. After the war, in the debate over the “loss of China“, many put the blame on wartime China Hands. Service was fired from the State Department, and Barrett was denied a promotion to brigadier general.

Origin

Prior to the Dixie Mission, the US considered military interventions into Communist-held China, such as an unimplemented idea of the Office of Strategic Services to send agents into northern China. The Dixie Mission began, according to John Paton Davies, Jr.‘s memo, on 15 January 1944. Davies, a Foreign Service Officer who was serving in the China Burma India Theater (CBI), called for the establishment of an observers’ mission in Communist territory. Davies argued that the Communists offered attractive strategic benefits in the fight against Japan and that the more the US ignored them, the closer that Yan’an, the capital of Communist-held China, would move to Moscow.[1] With the support of Davies’ superior, General Joseph Stilwell, the memorandum successfully convinced the administration of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to put the plan into motion.[2]

The Roosevelt administration asked Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek for permission to send US observers to visit the Communists. Initially, Chiang was hostile to the proposal and delayed action. He consented after foreign correspondents whom he had permitted to visit Yan’an reported on the Communists to US readers.[3] Chiang agreed after American Vice-President Henry A. Wallace made a state visit to Chongqing, the Nationalists’ capital, in late June 1944. John Carter Vincent, an experienced State Department China expert, assisted Wallace in persuading Chiang to allow the US to visit the Communists in Yan’an without Nationalist supervision. In exchange, the US promised to replace the American commander of the Burma India Theater, General Stilwell,[4] who was removed from command in October 1944.

Lasting impact

The Dixie Mission had consequences for individuals and the United States. Many participants were accused of being communists, such as John Davies and John Service. Both were subjected to multiple congressional investigations, which consistently found that they were not Communist Party members, agents of foreign powers, or disloyal to the United States.[22][23] That did not spare Service from termination at the State Department. He appealed this decision, and ultimately, the US Supreme Court ruled in his favor.[24] Davies was exiled from China, his field of expertise by Hurley. Then, he was hounded from a position in Russia to an inconsequential post in South America. Davies, forced from the State Department, founded the Estilo furniture factory which built award-winning furniture.[25] Hurley accused Colonel David Barrett of sabotaging his diplomacy with the Kuomintang and the Communists. He succeeded in preventing Barrett from promotion to brigadier general even though Barrett’s promotion was endorsed by the theater commander, General Albert C. Wedemeyer.[26] Barrett was retained in the China Theater but placed in an inferior position.

Misperceptions of the Dixie Mission contributed to the nationwide Red Scare in the 1950s and 1960s.[27] Thawing relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China in the 1970s opened a new chapter for the mission.[citation needed] For the first time, the mission, and its participants became the subject of serious scholarship.[citation needed]Many of the mission’s participants were among the first Americans invited to visit China in 20 years.[27] In China, the Dixie Mission is remembered as a positive time between the two nations and a symbol of Sino-American co-operation.[28]

In 2013, the story of the Dixie Mission served as the historical basis for a new World War II novel, Two Sons of China, by Andrew Lam. It was released by Bondfire Books in December 2013.[29]

Harry Dexter White

Harry Dexter White (October 29, 1892 – August 16, 1948) was a senior U.S. Treasury department official. Working closely with the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financial policy toward the Allies of World War II. He was later accused of espionage by passing information to the Soviet Union.[1]

He was a senior American official at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that established the postwar economic order. He dominated the conference, and his vision of post-war financial institutions mostly prevailed over those of John Maynard Keynes, the British representative who was the other main founder. Through Bretton Woods, White was a major architect of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.[2]

White was accused in 1948 of spying for the Soviet Union, which he adamantly denied. He was never a Communist party member, but he had frequent contacts with Soviet officials as part of his duties at the Treasury. Revelations about those contacts and about dubious activities of a few of his friends and colleagues, including through decoded and now declassified Soviet cables intercepted in the Venona Project,[3] added to the suspicions surrounding him.

Venona project

Another example of White acting as an agent of influence for the Soviet Union was his obstruction of a proposed $200 million loan to Nationalist China in 1943, which he had been officially instructed to execute,[66] at a time when inflation was spiraling out of control.[67]

Frank Coe

Virginius Frank Coe (1907 – June 2, 1980) was a United States government official who was identified by Soviet defectors Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers as being an underground member of the Communist Party[1] and as belonging to the Soviet spy group known as the Silvermaster ring.

Later career

Coe was Blacklisted, the US denied his passport (in late 1949) and prevented Coe from traveling to neighboring countries (June 1953) due to his ties to Soviet espionage. Coe sought work abroad, eventually finding a sponsor in the People’s Republic of China, where he joined a circle of expatriates working with the government. Frank changed his name to Ke Fulan and was one of the only foreigners ever entrusted to work in the highly secretive and xenophobic International Liaison Department of the Chinese Communist Party, overseeing overt relations with Maoist Parties around the world and also covert foreign operations as well. He became close to the ILD’s de facto head Kang Sheng, who frequently invited Coe to his Qing-era mansion, to look over his vast collection of priceless Chinese Arts and Antiques, most of which had been looted from wealthy families, museums, and palaces during the Communist takeover and later during the Cultural Revolution. Although his activities in the ILD remain unclear, Coe’s value to his superiors was evidently substantial, so much so that Kang, in an extremely uncharacteristic act, shielded Coe from being purged during the Cultural Revolution, even allowing him to stay in his residence to protect him from the Red Guards. Coe was one of the only people, both Chinese or Foreign, who was ever protected in such a manner by Kang.[14] In 1962, he was joined by Solomon Adler in the circle.[15] Coe participated in Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward, a plan for the rapid industrialization and modernization of China, which in fact resulted in millions of deaths. Coe sought works included articles justifying the Rectification campaign.[16][17]

Solomon Adler

Solomon Adler (August 6, 1909 – August 4, 1994) worked as U.S. Treasury representative in China during World War II.

Adler was identified by Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley as a Soviet spy and resigned from the Treasury Department in 1950. After several years teaching at Cambridge University in England, he returned to China, where he resided from the 1960s to his death, working as a translator and economic advisor.

From the early 1960s, Adler was also affiliated with the International Liaison Department, an important organ of the Chinese Communist Party organ whose functions include foreign intelligence.[1]

Career

Adler became a naturalized US citizen in 1940. In 1941, he was posted to China, where he remained as Treasury representative until 1948. His reports from China to Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr., during the war years were widely circulated and played an important role in shaping American wartime economic policy toward China.[4]

Adler moved to China in the early 1960s,[6] working in the lead group of the team translating Mao Zedong‘s works into English.[7]

Espionage

In addition to his contacts with US espionage groups, while he was serving as Treasury attache in China in 1944, Adler shared a house with Chinese Communist secret agent Chi Ch’ao-ting[12] and State Department officer John Stewart Service, who was arrested the next year in the Amerasia case.

Together with Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and V. Frank Coe, Director of the Treasury’s Division of Monetary Research, Adler strongly opposed a gold loan program of $200 million to help the Chinese Nationalists control the inflation that took hold in unoccupied China during World War II. Between 1943 and 1945, prices rose more than 1,000% per year, weakening the Nationalist government. The inflation helped the Communists eventually come to power in China, and in later years White, Coe, and Adler were accused of having deliberately fostered inflation by obstructing the stabilization loan.[13]

A Chinese work published in 1983 stated that from 1963 on Adler worked for China’s International Liaison Department, an organ of the Chinese Communist Party whose functions include foreign intelligence.[14] According to historian R. Bruce Craig, Adler’s apartment in Beijing was provided by the Liaison Department, indicating that the department was Adler’s work unit.[15]

Communist North Korea

How an Obscure Red Army Unit Became the Cradle of the North Korean Elite
Former members of the 88 brigade came to form much of the DPRK’s top brass

Korean Liberation Army

The KLA sent troops to fight alongside the British Indian Army in the South-East Asian Theatre of World War II by the request of the British Army,[17] as they needed Japanese speakers.[18] On 29 August 1943, nine KLA personnel were sent to Calcutta. The Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command Louis Mountbatten requested more troops, so the Kuomintang reluctantly arranged for 16 more KLA personnel to go, but this was delayed.[17] The soldiers were deployed on the outskirts of Burma and India (especially the Battle of Imphal during the Burma Campaign).[citation needed]

Eagle Project

Beginning in late 1944, KLA officials began discussing cooperation with agents from the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS). While there was a prevailing sentiment that the Allies would win the war, they expected the war with Japan to last at least another full year and possibly involve an invasion of Korea and mainland Japan. Thus, the KLA sought to offer its services to the OSS in exchange for improved status of the KPG after the war.[17][20]

In September 1944, Lee Beom-seok, then Chief of Staff of the KLA, met with Colonel Joseph Dickey of the US Military Intelligence Service in Chongqing.[note 2] Lee then met with OSS Agent Captain Clyde Bailey Sargent, who was fluent in Chinese and a former professor at Chengdu University. Sargent then suggested to the head of the OSS General William J. Donovan that the OSS collaborate with the KLA. An agreement to collaborate was reached in October 1944.[21]

On 24 February, the OSS finished planning the Eagle Project (독수리작전), and it was approved by US military headquarters on 13 March.[19][22]

In 1945, the KLA was working in cooperation with the US Office of Strategic Services to train men for specialist military operations within Korea. The leading units were due to depart on August 20, with General Lee in command. […] The members of the KLA returned to Korea during late 1945 and 1946. Many of its members, including Generals Ji and Lee, became part of the South Korean government, while General Kim contributed to the North Korean regime of Kim Il-sung, who himself claimed to have been a KLA commander.”

Kim Kyung-cheon

Kim Kyung-cheon (Korean: 김경천; 5 June 1888 – 2 January 1942) was a Korean independence activist and military leader.

Early life

In 1888, he was born in a rich, Yangban-traditioned family in South Hamgyong Province, Pukchong County, as the fifth son of his father Kim Jeong-woo. His original name was Kim Ung-chon. In 1909, he married You Jong. He later entered the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and graduated in 1911, attaining the rank of cavalry lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army.

Korean independence activism

Several sources believe North Korean leader Kim Il Sung stole his identity after his death.[4] Lee Myung-young published a book The Legend of Kim Il-sung in 1974 in which she asserted that the original General Kim Il Sung was an Imperial Japanese Army Academy graduate.

Alexandra Kim

Alexandra Petrovna Kim (Russian: Александра Петровна Ким; born Kim Aerim; February 22, 1885 – September 16, 1918) was a revolutionary political activist of Korean descent. Having joined the Bolsheviks in 1916, she is recognized as the first Korean communist.[1]

Political activism

Kim gave up teaching and moved back to Vladivostok, where she took part in political activities for the cause of Korean migrants.

Her marriage did not last long. She divorced her husband and shifted to the Urals region. In the Urals she began political activism. In 1916, she joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks). In 1917, Lenin sent her back to Siberia to mobilize Koreans there against the counter-revolutionary forces and the Allied Expeditionary Forces.

In Khabarovsk she was in charge of external affairs at the Far-Eastern Department of the Party. There she met with Yi Dong-Wi, Kim Rip and other Korean independence fighters. Together they founded the Korean Socialist Party in Khabarovsk on April 28, 1918.[2][3][5]

Communist Vietnam

How American Operatives Saved the Man Who Started the Vietnam War
Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh guerrilla fighters, led by future NVA General Vo Nguyen Giap, were allies of the Americans and given training by the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, in an effort to defeat the Japanese during the waning days of World War II

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh – Unexpected Allies in the War against Japan

Some will be shocked to find out that the United States and Ho Chi Minh, our nemesis for much of the Vietnam War, were once allies. Indeed, during the last year of World War II, American spies in Indochina found themselves working closely with Ho Chi Minh and other anti-colonial factions—compelled by circumstances to fight together against the Japanese. Dixee Bartholomew-Feis reveals how this relationship emerged and operated and how it impacted Vietnam’s struggle for independence.

The men of General William Donovan’s newly-formed Office of Strategic Services closely collaborated with communist groups in both Europe and Asia against the Axis enemies. In Vietnam, this meant that OSS officers worked with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh, whose ultimate aim was to rid the region of all imperialist powers, not just the Japanese. Ho, for his part, did whatever he could to encourage the OSS’s negative view of the French, who were desperate to regain their colony. Revealing details not previously known about their covert operations, Bartholomew-Feis chronicles the exploits of these allies as they developed their network of informants, sabotaged the Japanese occupation’s infrastructure, conducted guerrilla operations, and searched for downed American fliers and Allied POWs.

Although the OSS did not bring Ho Chi Minh to power, Bartholomew-Feis shows that its apparent support for the Viet Minh played a significant symbolic role in helping them fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Japan’s surrender. Her study also hints that, had America continued to champion the anti-colonials and their quest for independence, rather than caving in to the French, we might have been spared our long and very lethal war in Vietnam.

Based partly on interviews with surviving OSS agents who served in Vietnam, Bartholomew-Feis’s engaging narrative and compelling insights speak to the yearnings of an oppressed people—and remind us that history does indeed make strange bedfellows.

Lucien Conein

Lucien Emile “Lou” Conein (29 November 1919 – 3 June 1998)[2] was a French-American citizen, noted U.S. Army officer and OSS/CIA operative. Conein is best known for his instrumental role in the November 1963 coup against Ngô Đình Diệm and Diệm’s assassination by serving as Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.‘s liaison officer with the coup plotters and delivering $42,000 of the known cash disbursements.[3]

Military career

In 1954, he was sent to work against the government of Ho Chi Minh in North Vietnam, at first in a propaganda campaign to persuade Southern Vietnamese not to vote for the communists and then to help with arming and training local tribesmen, called the Montagnards working under CIA station chief William Colby.[citation needed]

Conein was an intelligence agent in Vietnam in 1961 and 1962. Allen Ginsberg described him as “the crucial person” in the CIA’s link with the Southeast Asian opium trade.[8]

During the November 1963 coup against Ngô Đình Diệm which resulted in Diệm’s assassination, he served as Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.‘s liaison officer with the coup plotters and delivered $42,000 of cash disbursements.[9]

In 1968, Conein left the CIA and became a businessman in South Vietnam.[10]

In 1972, President Nixon appointed Conein as chief of covert operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).[11]

He was considered by former CIA colleague E. Howard Hunt for the group that undertook the 1972 Watergate burglary of the Democratic National Committee. Conein told Stanley Karnow, “If I’d been involved, we’d have done it right.”[2]

Conein retired from the DEA in 1984.[12]

OSS Deer Team

The OSS Deer Team was established by the United States Office of Strategic Services on May 16, 1945 to attack and intercept materials on the railroad from Hanoi in central Vietnam to Lạng Sơn in northeast Vietnam with the hope of keeping Japanese military units from entering China. They sent intelligence reports to OSS agents stationed in China. The team provided training, medical and logistical assistance to Hồ Chí Minh and the Việt Minh in 1945.

The first mission of OSS Deer Team was to help train 50 to 100 Việt Minh guerrillas to help drive Japanese soldiers out of French Indochina. Deer Team worked closely with Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp, whom they knew only as “Mr. Hoo” and “Mr. Van”.[1]

The two groups were friendly and fought as comrades-in-arms to capture the Japanese garrison at Tân Trào, and celebrated that victory by getting drunk together.[2]

The Americans left camp on August 16, not long after hearing the news of Japanese surrender. They traveled on foot with Võ Nguyên Giáp and his troops to Thái Nguyên, the French provincial capital. When guerrilla combatants debuted against French and Japanese troops until the French governor capitulated on August 25, Võ Nguyên Giáp had arranged for the Deer Team to stay hidden away in a safe house on the outskirts of town.[citation needed].

Following the Việt Minh victory, Deer Team stayed for a few days “getting fat, getting a sun-tan, visiting the city and waiting for permission to go to Hanoi. […] The Việt Minh did everything to make our stay as pleasant as possible for us,” said Defourneaux.[1]

Finally, the Americans arrived in Hanoi and returned to the United States. The night before leaving, Major Thomas had a private dinner with Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp.[1] Hồ Chí Minh said to Thomas and his men: “I want to thank each of you for what you have done for us. We are truly grateful. You are welcome to come back at any time.”[3]

Medic Paul Hoagland is reputed to have saved the life of Hồ Chí Minh with quinine and sulfa drugs. Lieutenant Defourneaux explained:[3]

“Hồ was so ill he could not move from the corner of a smoky hut. […] Our medic thought it might have been dysentery, dengue fever, hepatitis. […] While being treated by Pfc Hoagland, Hồ directed his people into the jungle to search for herbs. Hồ shortly recovered, attributing it to his knowledge of the jungle.”[1]

When Hồ Chí Minh discovered a French agent sent with the Deer Team who was apparently part of it: “This man is not an American. Look, who are you guys trying to kid? This man is not part of the deal.” Lieutenant Montfort was arrested and deported to China.[3] Two other undercover French–Vietnamese agents suffered the same treatment.[4] The OSS remained on good terms with Hồ Chí Minh until the United States began overtly supporting France’s occupation of Indochina in the late 1940s.

U.S. Army Special Operations in World War II

Foreword

Special operations-in this context, commando or guerrilla activities-conducted by the V.S. Army in World War II have been the subject of a good many thrilling adventure stories but little sober, historical analysis. Only a handful of works have examined the critical issues underlying special operations, and the Army’s historical series on World War II treats the subject only in passing. Yet special operations had a significant role that should not be ignored. Ranger units captured positions critical to the success of amphibious landings in the Mediterranean, France, and the Philippines. Partisans advised by American military personnel provided essential intelligence to American forces and harassed enemy troops in support of American operations in Italy, France, the Philippines, and Burma. As special operations forces grow in importance within the V.S. Army, we need to look at our experience with such activities in World War II. I recommend this study as an overview for Army leaders and other interested parties of an important, but often misunderstood subject. It fills a gap in the Army’s history of World War II and honors individuals whose efforts, frequently unsung, nevertheless made a major contribution to the American and Allied victory in that war.

Preface

In the past decade special operations have achieved an enhanced role in the missions of all of the armed services. The Army has enlarged its Ranger force to a regiment of three battalions, expanded its Special Forces to live groups, further developed its capabilities in psychological operations and civil affairs, established a new 1st Special Operations Command to supervise these units and activities, and developed new doctrines and training techniques. American leaders, in turn, have made increasing use of these special operations forces in support of national interests, most recently in Panama. In recognition of the growing significance of special operations and in honor of the Army’s recent establishment of a Special Forces branch, Brig. Gen. William A. Stom, then Chief of Military History, directed the preparation of a study on the Army’s performance of such activities in World War II. This work is the result of that directive.

The U.S. Air Force in Southeast Asia and the Vietnam War – A Narrative Chronology

Introduction

Thunder from U.S. aircraft first rolled over Hanoi in 1942, two decades before most Americans date U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Japanese activities in Vietnam remained bombing targets for the rest of World War II. Just after the conclusion of the conflict, in September 1945, U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) P–38s buzzed aloft as Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence. USAAF planes had flown aid to Ho and his group of Viet Minh guerrillas and also carried French authorities who were intent on reestablishing France’s colonial claim on Indochina.

The story of how the United States became entangled in Southeast Asia is a long and complicated one, and the U.S. Air Force (USAF) was a part of the equation at every step. The USAAF/USAF was flying in the region from 1942 through the collapse of the U.S.-supported government in Saigon in 1975. This chronology seeks to document, and to honor the service and sacrifice of, U.S. airmen for the full span of U.S. involvement. It ranges beyond strictly Air Force topics to provide a framework of context for why U.S. service members deployed to the region. Much of the context is not as far removed from the USAF as it might first appear, as any time senior leaders discussed potential U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia throughout the 1950s, nearly all scenarios prominently featured air assets of the USAF and/or carrier-based U.S. Navy (USN) aircraft.

Although full-scale fighting broke out between the French and the indigenous, communist-affiliated Viet Minh by the end of 1946, the United States did not begin its more extensive engagement in the region until 1950, after China had fallen to the communists under the leadership of Mao Zedong. The USAF delivered the first military aid to the French in Vietnam in June 1950 during the same week hostilities erupted on the Korean Peninsula. Over the subsequent four years, the United States loaned France what became nearly its entire fleet of aircraft in Vietnam. By 1953, USAF mechanics were deploying to Vietnam to service these planes, in numbers that grew to nearly 500 airmen by the time Dien Bien Phu fell in May 1954. USAF officers and enlisted airmen served in-country through the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) from the time of its establishment in 1950, as did air attachés assigned to the U.S. embassy in Saigon.

One USAF officer who was ostensibly the assistant air attaché in the mid-1950s became one of the most significant Americans to serve in Vietnam during the decade. Col. Edward G. Lansdale was there on assignment with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), although he continued to wear the uniform of the USAF. In addition to his clandestine activities, which have been the subject of much comment and speculation, Lansdale became the most trusted U.S. advisor to Ngo Dinh Diem, the new prime minister of fledgling South Vietnam as of July 1954. Lansdale stood by Diem in the early months of 1955 as multiple issues threatened the viability of his government and many U.S. officials, in both Saigon and Washington, called for Diem to be replaced.

In 1957, the USAF took over training the Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF), which the French had established in 1950 but never fully equipped or trained. The VNAF remained a small subset of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and the U.S. Army-dominated leadership of the MAAG saw little role for the VNAF as it prepared the ARVN in almost exclusively conventional-force strategy and tactics. A nascent communist insurgency in South Vietnam, however, portended a much different kind of conflict. By that time, the USAF was also flying covert operations in Laos, which was receiving more U.S. attention because of the rise of the communist Pathet Lao there.

As the 1950s ended, U.S. attention had drifted from Southeast Asia to more pressing issues in Europe and the Middle East, but growing insurgen-cies in Vietnam and Laos would soon reclaim the focus. Decisions in this earlier period had planted the seeds for the expansive conflict in the 1960s, and for growing U.S. involvement. The story of U.S. engagement in the region in the 1940s and 1950s outlined in this book is essential to understanding U.S. escalation in the years that followed. The USAF was flying during every point of that time.

This study significantly expands the story of the USAF in Southeast Asia during the period covered and includes many details not found in previous books. It is also one of the few works that places the evolution of U.S. and French military involvement within the context of international and U.S. political affairs. The book draws heavily on documents and interviews in the Air Force archives, held by the Air Force Historical Research Agency, many of which have been recently declassified. It has also benefitted from the work of several scholars over the last couple of decades in Vietnamese, French, Chinese, and Russian archives that has greatly enlarged the inter-national context for developments in Southeast Asia.

This book is a product of the Air Force Historical Support Division, under the direction of Dr. Richard Wolf, and owes much to the input of the staff. The depth of documentation is due in large part to the aid and research instincts of Ms. Yvonne Kinkaid, and to her extensive know-ledge of Air Force research materials. Ms. Patricia Engel’s systematic declassification efforts made a wider array of sources available for use in an unclassified study, while Ms. Terry Kiss tracked and retrieved inter-library books and articles with great alacrity. Dr. Priscilla Jones, Dr. Jean Mansavage, Mr. David Byrd, and Dr. John Smith, the now-retired senior historian, reviewed drafts of this work and provided feedback and encouragement, while Mr. Randy Richardson, Dr. Christopher Koontz, and Dr. Robert Oliver helped verify various details along the way.

Communist Cambodia

How Thatcher Gave Pol Pot a Hand
Almost two million Cambodians died as a result of Year Zero. John Pilger argues that, without the complicity of the US and Britain, it may never have happened.

The U.S. Is Even More Guilty Than Pol Pot

(Note: Pol Pot died in April 1998, when the U.S. government was making noises about “trying” him for “genocide”. Nowhere was there any mention of U.S. support for the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, though this had been well documented. The following letter was published in The Montclarion (weekly student newspaper of Montclair State University) of April 23, 1998, page 22, under the title “The U.S. Is Just As Guilty As Pol Pot”.)

Who Supported the Khmer Rouge?

With the conviction last summer of former Khmer Rouge officials Khieu Samphan and Nuon Chea for crimes against humanity, the subject of Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 received a small amount of attention in the Western mass media. What the media failed to mention was how the Khmer Rouge was maintained as a military and political force long after its fall from power. Nor has it been suggested why, at Western insistence, the scope of investigations at the tribunal would exclude the period after 1979.

Allegations of United States support for the Khmer Rouge

The United States (U.S.) voted for the Khmer Rouge and the Khmer Rouge-dominated Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK) to retain Cambodia‘s United Nations (UN) seat until as late as 1993, long after the Khmer Rouge had been mostly deposed by Vietnam during the 1979 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and ruled just a small part of the country. It has also been reported that the U.S. encouraged the government of China to provide military support for the Khmer Rouge.[1][2][3][4][5][6] There have also been related allegations by several sources, notably Michael Haas, which claim that the U.S. directly armed the Khmer Rouge in order to weaken the influence of Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Southeast Asia.

Pol Pot

Early life

Childhood: 1925–1941

His family was of mixed Chinese and ethnic Khmer heritage, but did not speak Chinese and lived as though they were fully Khmer.[3] His father Loth, who later took the name Saloth Phem, was a prosperous farmer who owned nine hectares of rice land and several draft cattle.[6] Loth’s house was one of the largest in the village and at transplanting and harvest time he hired poorer neighbors to carry out much of the agricultural labour.[5] Sâr’s mother, Sok Nem, was locally respected as a pious Buddhist.[7] Sâr was the eighth of nine children (two girls and seven boys),[7] three of whom died young.[8] They were raised as Theravada Buddhists, and on festivals travelled to the Kampong Thom monastery.[9] Despite his family’s prosperous origins, in an interview with Yugoslav television in 1977, Pol Pot claimed that he was born into a “poor, peasant family”.[10]

Cambodia was a monarchy, but the French colonial regime, was in political control of the country at the time.[11] Sâr’s family had connections to the Cambodian royalty: his cousin Meak was a consort of King Sisowath Monivong and later worked as a ballet teacher.[12] When Sâr was six years old, he and an older brother were sent to live with Meak in Phnom Penh; informal adoptions by wealthier relatives were then common in Cambodia.[7] In Phnom Penh, he spent 18 months as a novice monk in the city’s Vat Botum Vaddei monastery, learning Buddhist teachings and to read and write the Khmer language.[13]

In summer 1935, Sâr went to live with his brother Suong and the latter’s wife and child.[14] That year, he began an education at a Roman Catholic primary school, the École Miche,[15] with Meak paying the tuition fees.[16] Most of his classmates were the children of French bureaucrats and Catholic Vietnamese.[16] He became literate in French and familiar with Christianity.[16] Sâr was not academically gifted and was held back two years, receiving his Certificat d’Etudes Primaires Complémentaires in 1941 at the age of 16.[17] He continued to visit Meak at the king’s palace, and it was there that he had some of his earliest sexual experiences with some of the king’s concubines.[18]

Islamic Iran

Iran and the Revolution – An Exposure of the American Plans

US had Extensive Contact with Ayatollah Khomeini before Iran Revolution
Documents seen by BBC suggest Carter administration paved way for Khomeini to return to Iran by holding the army back from launching a military coup

Extraordinary Rendition and the Axis of Evil, How ‘Enemy’ Nations Iran, Syria, Libya Cooperated With CIA

As US President George W Bush made his famous speech about the “axis of evil”, and his administration named countries including Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya as enemies of the US, his security forces were co-operating, directly and indirectly, with those same countries to kidnap, imprison and torture citizens.

A groundbreaking report published on Tuesday shows that more than 50 countries, a quarter of the world’s nations, cooperated with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme – many of them nations publicly hostile to the US.

Blowback: Iran, the Ayatollahs, and the CIA

The historical reality is that Iran had a secular, democratic government, led by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh between 1951 and 1953 — but Mossadegh was removed from power in a coup organized and funded by the CIA and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.

With a handful of exceptions, most mainstream U.S. politicians have little to say about any of this sordid history. In Washington, D.C., Iranian hostility toward the U.S. has long been treated as inexplicable and irrational, while the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup — which set off a chain of events that resulted in the rise of Iran’s ayatollahs and the Islamic Revolution of 1979 — has vanished into a memory hole.

Iran–Contra affair

The Iran–Contra affair (Persian: ماجرای ایران-کنترا; Spanish: Caso Irán-Contra), often referred to as the Iran–Contra scandal, was a political scandal in the United States that occurred during the second term of the Reagan administration. Between 1981 and 1986, senior administration officials secretly facilitated the illegal sale of arms to Iran, which was subject to an arms embargo at the time.[1] The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras, an anti-Sandinista rebel group in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by legislative appropriations was prohibited by Congress, but the Reagan administration figured out a loophole by secretively using non-appropriated funds instead.

Report: Israel Oil Ships in Iran
A shipping firm linked to Israeli billionaire Sammy Ofer allegedly docked seven oil tankers at an Iranian port despite US sanctions.

Germany Stops Israeli Ship Carrying Military Equipment Destined for Iran
A private Israeli ship carrying military equipment was stopped by customs officials at Hamburg yesterday on suspicion that its cargo was bound for Iran, the Israeli Defense Ministry said.

Israeli support for Iran during the Iran–Iraq war

Israel’s role in the Iran–Iraq War consisted of support provided by Israel to Iran during the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to 1988. During the war, Israel was one of the main suppliers of military equipment to Iran. Israel also provided military instructors during the war, and in turn received Iranian intelligence that helped it carry out Operation Opera against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor was a central component of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.

Israel supported Iran during the war so that Iran could provide a counterweight to Iraq; to re-establish influence in Iran which Israel lost with the overthrow of the shah in 1979, and to create business for the Israeli weapons industry. The Israeli arms sales to Iran also facilitated the unhindered immigration of the Persian Jewish community from Iran to Israel and the United States. Israel’s support for Iran during the war was done clandestinely, and Iran publicly denied any cooperation between the two countries.

Ba’athist Iraq

America and Iraq: Policy-Making, Intervention and Regional Politics

Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran
The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand.

When Rumsfeld was Chummy with Saddam
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s current visit to Baghdad brings to mind his visit on another day … and another age when he and Saddam Hussein were on hand-shaking terms.

Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984
Video Clip: “Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein,” Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.

Saddam’s Green Light

From the Archive: An article from the first investigative series published at Consortium News in early 1996 revealed top-secret “talking points” used by Secretary of State Haig in 1981 to brief President Reagan about the Middle East, including an alleged U.S. “green light” for Iraq to invade Iran. Journalist Robert Parry found the document in old congressional files.

Exclusive: Saddam Key in Early CIA Plot

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.

U.S. Covert Intervention in Iraq 1958-1963: The Origins of U.S. Supported Regime Change in Modern Iraq

ABSTRACT

This paper is the result of a three-year research and oral history project intended to document U.S. covert intervention in Iraq from the the Iraqi revolution of July 14, 1958 through the Ba’ath Party coup that overthrew of the Qassem government on February 8, 1963, and its aftermath.  The focus is primarily on the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and its assistance to the Ba’ath party and to other anti-regime elements including Nasser and the United Arab Republic.  This paper provides strong evidence of significant CIA involvement, but with less totality than in Iran in 1953 or Chile in 1973.

The historiography evaluates many of the authors who mention CIA involvement in early modern Iraq, and others who probably should have.  The narrative that follows was constructed from published books, newspaper accounts and journal articles, also relying heavily on U.S. government documents, especially “Foreign Relations of the United States” and papers in presidential libraries.  When these documents contain pertinent unpublished data, copies are included.  The paper also documents the CIA’s ongoing effort to suppress knowledge of its activities against Qassem’s government.  The oral history project unearthed new information about the coup, including previously unpublished information about retired Foreign Service Officers Bill Lakeland and James Akins; former CIA officials Ed Kane, Archibald Roosevelt, and Art Callahan; and coup participant and Ba’ath party cabinet member Hani Fkaiki.

United States Support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War

American support for Ba’athist Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War, in which it fought against post-revolutionary Iran, included several billion dollars’ worth of economic aid, the sale of dual-use technology, military intelligence, and special operations training.[1][2] The U.S. refused to sell arms to Iraq directly due to Iraq’s ties to terrorist groups, but several sales of “dual-use” technology have been documented; notably, Iraq purchased 45 Bell helicopters for $200 million in 1985.[3][4] Of particular interest for contemporary Iran–United States relations are accusations that the U.S. government actively encouraged Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to invade Iran (proponents of this theory frequently describe the U.S. as having given Saddam a green-light), supported by a considerable amount of circumstantial evidence and generally regarded as the conventional wisdom in the Arab world, but several scholars and former U.S. government officials deny that any such collusion occurred, and no direct documentary proof of it has been found.[5][6]

U.S. government support for Iraq was not a secret and was frequently discussed in open sessions of the Senate and House of Representatives. On June 9, 1992, Ted Koppel reported on ABC‘s Nightline that the “Reagan/Bush administrations permitted—and frequently encouraged—the flow of money, agricultural credits, dual-use technology, chemicals, and weapons to Iraq.”[7]

American views toward Iraq were not enthusiastically supportive in its conflict with Iran, and activity in assistance was largely to prevent an Iranian victory. This was encapsulated by Henry Kissinger when he remarked, “It’s a pity they both can’t lose.”[8][9]

Ba’athist Syria

The Anglo-French Patrons of Syria’s Hafez al-Assad

Syria`s Support of U.S. in Gulf War Paying Dividends

Exclusive: The Assad Family Ties to Israeli Business Tycoon
Exclusive: Assad’s uncle is using HSBC and front companies to avoid EU/US sanctions and funnel cash through international tax havens, funding death and destruction back in Syria, al-Araby al-Jadeed reveals.

Henry Kissinger Requested Hafez Assad to Invade Lebanon in 1976
Newly declassified documents show the close coordination between the United States and Syria’s Hafez Assad over the Syrian intervention in Lebanon in 1976. The documents confirm what has been always known in the political and diplomatic domains, that America gave the green-light for such a move in liaison with the Israelis – despite being hesitant.

Our Man in Damascus: the CIA, Syria and the Rendition of Maher Arar

By all accounts Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, and US Secretary of State John Kerry are closing in on a deal that will carve up Syria to suit their own interests (and Israel’s, naturally) and pave the way for the ultimate exit from power of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad,  who has become, justly or unjustly, the media personification of brutality in the Syrian Civil War. It is worth taking note then of a time, not that long ago, when Assad was on more amicable terms with the American regime and opened his dungeons to the CIA for the torture and interrogation of unfortunate people, like Maher Arar, who were mercilessly swept up in the War on Terror. This article is excerpted from my book Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror.

CIA activities in Syria – Extraordinary rendition, 2001–03

The CIA used Syria as an illicit base of operations to torture so-called “ghost detainees“, as part of a program known as extraordinary rendition. This program was established in the mid-1990s and expanded in the 2000s.

One target of this program, Syrian-born Canadian Maher Arar, was detained in New York and sent to Syria, where he was interrogated and tortured. Arar, a telecommunications engineer who has been a Canadian citizen since 1991, was asked to confess his connections to al-Qaeda and to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan. Arar was held for more than a year; after his release, he sued the US government. According to a US Judge (and confirmed by Canadian investigators):[30]

During his first twelve days in Syrian detention, Arar was interrogated for eighteen hours per day and was physically and psychologically tortured. He was beaten on his palms, hips, and lower back with a two-inch-thick electric cable. His captors also used their fists to beat him on his stomach, his face, and the back of his neck. He was subjected to excruciating pain and pleaded with his captors to stop, but they would not. He was placed in a room where he could hear the screams of other detainees being tortured and was told that he, too, would be placed in a spine-breaking “chair”, hung upside down in a “tire” for beatings, and subjected to electric shocks. To lessen his exposure to the torture, Arar falsely confessed, among other things, to having trained with terrorists in Afghanistan, even though he had never been to Afghanistan and had never been involved in terrorist activity.

Arar alleges that his interrogation in Syria was coordinated and planned by US officials, who sent the Syrians a dossier containing specific questions. As evidence of this, Arar notes that the interrogations in the United States and Syria contained identical questions, including a specific question about his relationship with a particular individual wanted for terrorism. In return, the Syrian officials supplied US officials with all information extracted from Arar; plaintiff cites a statement by one Syrian official who has publicly stated that the Syrian government shared information with the United States that it extracted from Arar. See Complaint Ex. E (21 January 2004 transcript of CBS’s Sixty Minutes II: “His Year in Hell”).

The US initially invoked the “state secrets privilege“. When legal proceedings began anyway, the Ashcroft Justice Department was ridiculed for arguing that Arar was in fact a member of al-Qaeda.[31] The Canadian government apologized to Arar but the US has not admitted wrongdoing.[30]

Journalist Stephen Grey has identified eight other people tortured on behalf of the CIA at the same prison (“Palestine Branch”) in Syria. The CIA imprisoned a German businessman, Mohammad Haydr Zammar, and transferred him from Morocco to the Syrian prison. They subsequently offered German intelligence officials the opportunity to submit questions for Zammar, and asked Germany to overlook Syria’s human rights abuses because of cooperation in the War on Terror.[32]

According to a 2013 report by the Open Society Foundations, Syria was one of the “most common destinations for rendered suspects” under the program.[33] Former CIA agent Robert Baer described the policy to the New Statesman in July 2004: “If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear – never to see them again – you send them to Egypt”.[34][35][36]

Jamahiriya Libya

Sir Mark Allen: the Secret Link between MI6, the CIA and Gaddafi
Former counter-terrorism chief is the only British intelligence officer named so far in the Tripoli files

Revealed: How Blair Colluded with Gaddafi Regime in Secret
Libyan government papers pieced together by team of London lawyers show how UK cosied up to Tripoli over dissidents

Cooperation Between British Spies and Gaddafi’s Libya Revealed in Official Papers
Links between MI5 and Gaddafi’s intelligence during Tony Blair’s government more extensive than previously thought, according to documents

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi: the Favoured Son Feted by the West
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, once courted by the West as an arch-moderniser of Libya, has been captured in the desert, marking a firm end to the iron rule his family exerted over the country.

Gaddafi Son at Heart of British Society
A meeting between a dictator’s son and a senior Cabinet minister at a classic English shooting party revealed how deeply the Gaddafi regime wormed its way into the British Establishment.

How MI6 Rescued Gaddafi’s Son Saif al-Islam
British intelligence and Scotland Yard were involved in an international operation to protect Saif al-Islam, the son of Muammar Gaddafi, from an Islamist plot to assassinate him on British soil, secret files have revealed.

How Libya Seems to Have Helped the CIA with Rendition of Terrorism Suspects

A treasure trove of hundreds of thousands of secret documents uncovered by TIME and several other news organizations in the Libyan capital on Friday apparently reveals that the CIA and Britain’s MI6 maintained a close — even intimate — relationship with their Libyan counterparts dating as early as 2002, before the CIA had set up a “permanent” mission in Libya (which, according to the documents, began in 2004). United Nations sanctions were lifted in September 2003. U.S. economic sanctions ended in Sept. 20, 2004.

Talibanic Afghanistan

The Real Winner of the Afghan War? It’s Not Who You Think.
Pakistan, nominally a U.S. partner in the war, was the Afghan Taliban’s main patron, and sees the Taliban’s victory as its own. But now what does it do with its prize?

As Humanitarian Disaster Looms, U.S. Opens Door for More Afghanistan Aid
The Treasury Department and the United Nations offered new protection for aid from sanctions meant to pressure the Taliban.

E.U. Pledges $1.15 Billion in Afghan Aid as U.S. Talks to Taliban
Europe and America are offering stopgap humanitarian aid for a country on the brink of collapse, but larger decisions about the new Taliban government remain on hold.

CIA Director Had Secret Talks With Taliban in Kabul
The CIA director, William J. Burns, traveled to Kabul for talks with the Taliban leadership, American officials familiar with his visit said on Tuesday, conducting the administration’s highest-level in-person talks so far with the new de facto leaders of Afghanistan.

Amid Afghan Chaos, a C.I.A. Mission That Will Persist for Years
The spy agency had plans to de-emphasize counterterrorism operations to focus on rising global powers. History got in the way.

Trump Denies Releasing 5,000 Taliban Prisoners — But His Administration Negotiated For Their Release
Former President Donald Trump on Monday blamed the “inept Afghan government” for releasing 5,000 Taliban prisoners last year, even though the Trump administration called for prisoner swaps in an agreement with the Taliban.

Afghanistan to Release Last Taliban Prisoners, Removing Final Hurdle to Talks
The decision clears the way for the last of 5,000 insurgents to be freed. President Ashraf Ghani announced the release after convening an assembly of 3,000 representatives to seek their advice.

At an Abandoned American Base, a Notorious Prison Lies Empty
Taliban fighters now guard the prison at Bagram Air Base, which once held thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda members who were set free in August.

Islamic Terrorism

The Jihad Legacy of World War I

The Unlikely Founding Fathers of the Islamic State

Kaiser Wilhelm Sought to Use Jihad to Win First World War

The Kaiser’s Jihad
The Kaiser provoked Islamic holy war among Muslim soldiers during World War I

Germany’s Grand WW1 Jihad Experiment
A little-known PoW camp just outside Berlin was dedicated to turning Allied Muslim soldiers into jihad warriors

The Kaiser’s Jihad
Kaiser Wilhelm II sought to stir up pan-Islamist fervor across the Arab world in a bid to cause trouble to the British throughout their colonies

Germany’s Secret Weapon in World War One: A Global Jihad
England had Lawrence of Arabia to mobilize the Arabs to undermine the Ottoman Empire, Germany’s ally. Germany had Baron Max von Oppenheim to arouse the millions of Muslims in the British Empire to shake off the imperial yoke.

Max von Oppenheim

Baron Max von Oppenheim (15 July 1860, in Cologne – 17 November 1946, in Landshut) was a German lawyer, diplomat, ancient historian, and archaeologist. He was a member of the Oppenheim banking dynasty. Abandoning his career in diplomacy, he discovered the site of Tell Halaf in 1899 and conducted excavations there in 1911–13 and again in 1927–29.[1] Bringing many of his finds to Berlin, he exhibited them in a private museum (The Tell Halaf Museum) in 1931.[1] This was destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II. However, most of the findings were recently restored and have been exhibited again at Berlin and Bonn.

Oppenheim was a controversial figure before and during World War I because he was considered a spy by the French and British. He did in fact engage in anti-Allied propaganda, aimed at stirring up the Muslim populations of the Allied-controlled territories against their colonial masters.

Hamas is a Creation of Mossad

Israel Gave Major Aid to Hamas

How Israel Helped Create Hamas

How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas

Analysis: Hamas History Tied to Israel

Israel Knew Hamas’s Attack Plan More Than a Year Ago
A blueprint reviewed by The Times laid out the attack in detail. Israeli officials dismissed it as aspirational and ignored specific warnings.

How Israel Inadvertently Created Hamas

In the late 1960s and 70s, Israel had propped up the founder of Hamas as a counterweight to the Palestine Liberation organisation. Ex-Israeli officials have admitted to politically and financially supporting the group that preceded Hamas. It was only in the late 1980s that Israel realised its mistake.

Why Netanyahu Blocked Israel Army Action On Hamas, Allowed Cash Flow To Gaza For Years

Even as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to eradicate Hamas, his critics are accusing him of letting the Palestinian group grow and strengthen over years. They say that Netanyahu allowed this so that he could divide Palestinians and keep the rulers of Gaza and West Bank – Hamas and Fatah – at odds, so that they could not press for the two-state solution. Watch the full video for more.Israel Funded Hamas?

Benjamin Netanyahu Channeled Funds To Hamas

Israel has pledged to destroy Hamas. It is, however, ironical that Israel’s governments under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consciously channeled funds to Hamas and helped it gain the strength and power that it has today. But why did Israel do so and how did its calculations go awry? Benjamin Netanyahu’s government worked with the singular purpose of trying to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state, according to experts. It also sought to buy peace by giving Gaza residents a glimpse of a better life by funneling money and providing work permits.The issue of funneling “Qatari money” to Hamas by the Israeli government was mentioned in public by Saudi Arabia’s former intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, in an address on October 20. Al-Faisal’s remarks came after Hamas terrorists on October 7 butchered over a thousand Israelis and took over 200 hostages.Al-Faisal’s statement surprised many, as people couldn’t make sense of the contradiction – why would Israel funnel funds to Hamas in the first place?

Blowback: How Israel Helped Create Hamas

Did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback? Former Israeli official Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s, told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat. Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009 that Hamas is “Israel’s creation.” Hamas was the result of this, as Mehdi Hasan explains. First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.

Our Terrorists

Who Is Osama Bin Laden?

Bin Laden comes Home to Roost

Hillary Clinton: ‘We Created Al-Qaeda’

US Intelligence Links to Islamic Militancy

How the U.S. Helped Create Al-Qaeda and ISIS

Britain and the Muslim Brotherhood: Collaboration during the 1940s and 1950s

Hillary Clinton: “The people we are fighting today, we funded twenty years ago.”

Operation Cyclone

C.I.A. Al-Qaeda Controversy

United States and State Sponsored Terrorism

Covert United States Foreign Regime Change Action in Iraq

Covert United States Foreign Regime Change Action in Iran

Covert United States Foreign Regime Change Action in Syria

Covert United States Foreign Regime Change Action in Afghanistan

Osama bin Laden: “To counter these atheist Russians, the Saudis chose me as their representative in Afghanistan. I settled in Pakistan in the Afghan border region. There I received volunteers who came from the Saudi Kingdom and from all over the Arab and Muslim countries. I set up my first camp where these volunteers were trained by Pakistani and American officers. The weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis”

Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam

“Backed by extensive archival research and interviews with dozens of policy makers and CIA, Pentagon, and foreign service officials, Robert Dreyfuss argues that this largely hidden relationship is greatly to blame for the global explosion of terrorism. He follows the trail of American collusion from support for the Muslim Brotherhood in 1950s Egypt to links with Khomeini and Afghani jihadists to cooperation with Hamas and Saudi Wahhabism. Dreyfuss also uncovers long-standing ties between radical Islamists and the leading banks of the West.”

Top Ten Indications ISIS is a U.S.-Israel Creation

The Roots of ISIS

Who Finances ISIS?

America’s Allies are Funding ISIS

How the West Created the Islamic State

How the U.S. helped Create Al-Qaeda and ISIS

U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of al-Baghdadi

White House knew U.S. was Arming Islamic State

U.S.-Backed Moderate Syrian Rebels In North Defect

3 Times U.S. Foreign Policy helped to Create the Islamic State

In Rise of ISIS, No Single Missed Key but Many Strands of Blame

Intelligence Files Support Claims Iraq Invasion helped Spawn ISIS

Ex-Intel Officials: Pentagon Report proves U.S. Complicity in ISIS

Obama Administration Ends Effort to Train Syrians to Combat ISIS

Officials: Islamic State arose from U.S. Support for Al-Qaeda in Iraq

For Many Iranians, the Evidence is Clear: ISIS is an American Invention

David Petraeus’ Bright Idea: Give Terrorists Weapons to beat Terrorists

Only 4 to 5 American-Trained Syrians Fighting against the Islamic State

Suspicions Run Deep in Iraq that C.I.A. and the Islamic State are United

Gen Petraeus’ Mad Plan to bring Syrian Al-Qaeda into U.S. War against ISIS

The US is Protecting ISIS to Weaken Rivals, Expand US Occupation of Syria

3,000 ‘Moderate Rebels’ Defect to the Islamic State – U.S. Preparing 5,000 More

US Task Force Smoking Gun Smuggles Weapons to Syria: Serbia Files Part 2

Now the Truth Emerges: How the U.S. Fueled the Rise of ISIS in Syria and Iraq

Pentagon Report Predicted West’s Support for Islamist Rebels Would Create ISIS

Damascus has Proof U.S. talked to ISIS Militants ahead of Airstrike on Syrian Forces

ISIS is Likely Receiving Funding from People Living in Countries Allied with the U.S.

Intelligence Agencies are Running al-Qaeda Camps in North Africa — UN Consultant

Exclusive: Obama Administration Knowingly Funded a Designated al-Qaeda Affiliate

Islamic State Weapons in Yemen Traced Back to US Government: Serbia Files Part 1

Iraq: US military Admits Failures to Monitor Over $1 Billion Worth of Arms Transfers

Syrian Foreign Minister: Bombing of Syrian Troops no Mistake, U.S. is ISIS Accomplice

Leaked Arms Dealers’ Passports Reveal Who Supplies Terrorists in Yemen: Serbia Files Part 3

Former D.I.A. Chief Michael Flynn says Rise of ISIS was ‘Willful Decision’ of U.S. Government

America Enabled Radical Islam: How the CIA, George W. Bush and Many Others Helped Create ISIS

How the West Bankrolls ISIS: Millions from Governments and NGOs Funding Radical Islamic Terror Group

New Documents: Obama Administration knew Arms were moving from Benghazi to ISIS before 2012 Election

Defense Intelligence Agency: “Establish a Salafist Principality in Syria”, Facilitate Rise of Islamic State “In Order to Isolate the Syrian Regime”