Beetle Smith’s last act as CIA director is to come up with the idea of a CIA “Murder Board”. After Eisenhower is elected POTUS, the new CIA director is Allen Dulles, brother of the new Sec of State, John Foster Dulles.

Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

#187 – KNEEL SUCK CRACK

The CIA’s first attempt to train foreign agents and parachute them into Soviet territory ended in disaster. So did their second attempt. And their third. And so on. But they did it anyway. Then the Korean War happened and Bedell Smith became the fourth CIA director in as many years. He inherited a disaster.

#184 – Abortive Missions

The CIA wanted to secretly funnel American cash to European politicians, criminals and businesses that would do their bidding. They also wanted to influence public opinion about capitalism, communism, but without appearing to. To accomplish this, they set up an enormous number of front groups, many of which still exist today. They also hid known fascist murderers in the US because they thought they might be useful.

#183 – CIA Hearts Nazis

#182 – CIA Front Groups

On September 1, 1948, Frank Wisner took charge of the CIA’s covert operations. Known as the OPC - The Office of Policy Co-ordination. Although the CIA was a publicly known entity, the OPC was top secret. One of the first things he did was establish a multinational media conglomerate for spreading anti-Communist and pro-American propaganda. He spent millions trying to tip the political scales around the world by interfering in elections. In his mind, he was preparing for WWIII. According to one of his earlier hires: “We ran things. We were seen as kings. We went all over the world and we did what we wanted.'' Meanwhile the US Government passed a secret law saying that if the CIA was caught out doing something illegal, official policy was to lie about it to the American people and to the world.

#181 – Plausible Deniability

Taking a short break from our CIA series this week to talk to retired U.S. Major Danny Sjursen. Danny was a U.S. Army strategist and history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. These days he’s an outspoken critic of American imperialism. Danny talks to use about his journey from being your typical post-9/11 U.S. soldier wanting revenge, to the war critic that he is today. We also talk about the nature of the military-industrial complex, the so-called “West Point Mafia”, Trump’s military track record, Biden’s pick for Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and what might happen if Trump tries to declare martial law. Follow Danny at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris “Henri” Henrikson.

#180 – Ret. U.S. Major Danny Sjursen

Even the CIA’s original legal counsel warned them that covert missions were illegal - but they did them anyway. On December 14, 1947, they were ordered to execute “covert psychological operations designed to counter Soviet and Soviet-inspired activities." Their first mission was to spend tens of millions of dollars of secret cash to influence the Italian elections. “We were terrified…. and going beyond our charter,” according to an early CIA operative.

#179 – Covert Psychological Operations

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In the early 1920s, violence between Muslims and the Jews continued to escalate. Because they didn't trust the British to defend their interests, the newly formed (and illegal) Jewish self-defense organization, the Haganah, was formed.  Churchill came to visit Palestine - and made things worse.  Without a doubt, the British military continued to favor the Arabs. General Sir Walter Congreve, commander of British forces in the Middle East, said in October 1921: “In the case of Palestine [the sympathies of the Army] are rather obviously with the Arabs,… the victim[s] of the unjust policy forced upon them by the British Government.”

#144 – The 1929 Riots

#143 – Fascist Jews

#142 – The Unjust Policy

When the British finally captured the Middle East from the Ottomans in October 1918, under the command of General Edmund Allenby, with the support of TE Lawrence and his Sharifians, Hussein and Faisal, the British immediately tried to walk back on the Sykes-Picot agreement.  They figured they did all the hard work, so fuck the French. 

#141 – Dirty Idle Wasters

The Rothschilds And Zionism - The Balfour Declaration took the form of a letter, dated November 2, 1917, from the foreign secretary to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a British banker and zoologist, who headed Britain’s Zionist Federation.

#140 – The Rothschilds And Zionism

Things in Palestine really started to heat up in 1908 - the year of The Young Turk Revolution. It was around this time that the violence between the Jews and the Arabs started to escalate beyond what was mostly localised troubles over property rights. And it took on a nationalist feel. The Jews started to arm themselves. The governor of Jerusalem, Azmi Bey, wrote: “We are not xenophobes; we welcome all strangers. We are not anti-Semites; we value the economic superiority of the Jews. But no nation, no government could open its arms to groups … aiming to take Palestine from us.” In 1915, Britain and France sat down to work out who was going to control what in the Middle East after the war - what became known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. By 1917, when the Allies were bogged down on the Western Front, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration. They hoped it would bring the American Jews to their cause, would help bring the United States into the war and keep Russia involved - and would stop the Jews from allying themselves with Ze Germans.

#139 – The Balfour Declaration

Americans were SHOCKED to discover that Russia had interfered in their 2016 Presidential elections. How dare they interfere with the democratic process of a sovereign nation! Of course, those same Americans probably have no idea that their own country has, according to the research done by my guest today, done the same thing over 80 times since the end of WWII. Today I interview Dov H. Levin Ph.D, Assistant Professor, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong about his research on what he calls his Partisan Electoral Intervention by the Great Powers dataset (PEIG). It shows how many times the USA and USSR/Russia intervened in foreign elections in the years 1946 - 2000.

#138 – Intervening In Foreign Elections

A NSFW, detailed and funny long-form podcast about The Cold War.

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Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

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