From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk,alt.conspiracy,alt.activism
Subject: Playing God With the Forty Committee
Keywords: CIA's mandate was only for correlation and evaluation of intelligence
Date: 13 Apr 92 15:50:47 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.


             Henry Kissinger . . . did not relinquish [the] CIA-oriented 
      job [of National Security Advisor] when he became Secretary of State.
      This is no doubt an unauthorized and perhaps illegal use of this 
      position because the law requires that the President have a National 
      Security Advisor.  By his very duties this advisor performs functions 
      that are in direct conflict with those of the Secretary of State. . . .
         Since [the mid-50s] the Special Group or Forty Committee has 
      become a power unto itself.  The State Department has thousands of 
      career people who are responsible for the Foreign Policy of the 
      United States to the Forty Committee's five men.  They approve items 
      that have much greater impact on world events than the State 
      Department.  They do this secretly, without proper review, without 
      comprehensive experience and often without anyone but a very few 
      "spooks" knowing about it.
         Technically the CIA does not have this authority, and legally
      this is not the way things should be done.  The CIA was never given
      this power by law and should not be permitted to continue this
      practice.  No new laws are needed;  the present law should be
      followed precisely and enforced.  The CIA is in existence to
      perform an intelligence function and no more.


       the following appeared in the February, 1975 issue of "Genesis:"
    ______________________________________________________________________
                             The Forty Committee
                            By L. Fletcher Prouty
          reprinted this one time only with permission of the author


      "By God, Prouty, those bastards are going to let them murder
      Trujillo.  They go around telling everyone this shit about
      anticommunism;  invading Cuba with a half-assed task force and then
      when they have one tough son-of-a-bitch right there in the heart of
      the Caribbean, what do they do?  They take away his support.  He'll
      be dead in less than forty-eight hours."
         General Darcy was spitting mad.  He was one of the toughest guys
      who ever strapped himself into a P-51 fighter.  He was a real
      professional.  He believed in fighting the Cold War as hard as he
      had fought the total war against Hitler.  Now, in May 1961, less
      than one month after the Bay of Pigs, he had just come back from a
      meeting of the Forty Committee (then called the Special Group
      5412/2).  They were playing God again and Rafael Trujillo, the
      dictatorial president of the Dominican Republic, was the next
      target for termination.
         "Prouty, before you go back to your shop, go down to personnel.
      Find out what it takes to retire.  This is not my game.  I'm
      getting out."  Before Darcy's papers could be processed, Trujillo
      was dead, murdered in the city that carried his name, by men of his
      own army.
         Tom Darcy had made it clear many times that he had no love for
      Trujillo nor for what he stood;  but despite that he knew Trujillo
      would never condone communism, and anyway, "it is not our business
      to mess around in their internal affairs."
         Assassinations are not *made* by the Forty Committee;  they are
      *permitted*.  When the South Vietnamese military found out that the
      U.S. was withdrawing its support from the Diem brothers in Saigon,
      there was but one thing for the Diems to do.  Take that preferred
      plane ride and leave quickly.  Trujillo was too proud to heed the
      warning, and he was shot down in the streets.  The Diems were too
      stubborn.  They returned to their palace to find that their CIA-
      trained elite guard--their only real personal protection--had
      vanished.  They were defenseless, dead.
         Many of the telegrams that tell this story are contained in the
      "Pentagon Papers."  Anyone can see how this country removed its
      support from the Diems' government and all but engineered their
      murders.  An interesting sidelight to this came up in the Watergate
      testimony:  Charles Colson ordered E. Howard Hunt to doctor up the
      State Department cables pertaining to the Diem murders in order to
      make it appear that President John Kennedy had ordered that act.
      Look at this from another perspective.  Colson, Hunt, and others
      knew that Kennedy had not ordered those murders.  They wanted it to
      look as though he did.  If Kennedy did not order that action,
      someone of lesser authority did.  Was it the Forty Committee?  If
      not the committee, was it the CIA acting alone?  Without belaboring
      this crucial point here, this is what it is all about.  Who has
      this tremendous power?  Who uses this great power--with or without
      presidential consent, let alone without the consent of congress?
      The record is full of these actions.  Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon
      Johnson, and Nixon were all caught in this web.
         When President Salvador Allende's opposition in Chile learned
      that the United States had withdrawn all support of his government,
      they knew it was time to move.  The Forty Committee did not have to
      say, "We have decided to kill Allende."  All it had to do was to
      let the right people know that they would not support him, and that
      they would not censure these people.  Allende should have
      recognized the pattern;  not long before he had witnessed the same
      thing in Bolivia.
         President Victor Paz Estensoro lost favor with Washington.  The
      CIA tipped off General Rene Barrientos Ortuno that the gates of the
      city were open.  In an almost effortless coup d'etat, Barrientos
      and his CIA friends flew into La Paz and the country was theirs.
      Estensoro accepted transport out of Bolivia and flew to exile in
      Lima, Peru.  The committee does not kill anyone, they just welcome
      in the new regime and fling out the old--dead or alive.
         What is this Forty Committee, which has this power over the
      noncommunist world?  Who are its members?  Do they operate within
      any law?  Whom do they represent and whose interests do they
      promote?
         The Forty Committee is the latest of a long line of such
      committees, all of which live in deepest secrecy.  Before it was
      called the Forty Committee it was the 303 Committee.  Before that
      the Special Group.  In the early Fifties it was the Special Group
      10/2 and later the Special Group 5412 or 5412/2 [1]  Ostensibly 
      this organization has always been made up of a representative of 
      the President (the President's Advisor for National Security 
      Affairs--a euphemism for the CIA's man in the White House);  a 
      representative of the Secretary of State and one for the Secretary 
      of Defense.  It also includes the Director of the CIA and since 
      Kennedy's time it has included the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
      Staff.  These five men, representing as they do the principals of 
      the National Security Council, have had thrust upon them the 
      responsibility for international clandestine operations.
         At one time Nelson Rockefeller was the President's National
      Security Advisor.  So were Robert Cutler, McGeorge Bundy, and
      Maxwell Taylor.  The present incumbent is Henry Kissinger, because
      he did not relinquish that CIA-oriented job when he became
      Secretary of State.  This is no doubt an unauthorized and perhaps
      illegal use of this position because the law requires that the
      President have a National Security Advisor.  By his very duties
      this advisor performs functions that are in direct conflict with
      those of the Secretary of State.
         The power of this committee is awesome.  Like the Connecticut
      Yankee in King Arthur's Court, there is almost nothing in the world
      that cannot be done secretly by the might and money of the
      government of the United States.  Consider some of the actions of
      this committee, or at least things that the CIA has done under the
      guise of having the committee's support.
         Years ago the CIA had an old-time oil expert named George
      Prussing who knew the Middle East and its power centers like the
      back of his sunburned hands.  In those days many of the Arab
      countries were weak and the Russian bear loomed large over the
      Caucasus.  Prussing was directed by the CIA via the Special Group
      to plant mines in the oil wells of such countries as Saudi Arabia
      against the day when the Russians might overrun those defenseless
      oil fields.  Did he do it?  Are they still there?  Are they
      effective?  Who knows?  But most of all, who reviews these matters?
      Who knows about such horrendous things?  And if these five men know
      or knew, then from whom do they, or did they, draw their supreme
      power?  Did Eisenhower know about Prussing's assignment?  Did he
      authorize it?  He didn't know about Francis Gary Powers's U-2
      flight.  In 1958, when the Special Group authorized the CIA to
      invade Indonesia and to support more than forty thousand scattered
      rebels against the legitimate government of Sukarno, who really
      gave them that power?  Was it really in the best interest of the
      U.S. for the CIA to mount such a large operation against a
      "friendly" country?  Either the CIA acted on its own or with the
      approval of the Special Group mechanism.  Richard Nixon, as Vice
      President, knew all about this.  He knew that Allen Dulles's
      protege, Frank Wisner of the CIA, was in Singapore directing this
      operation.  After its failure Nixon ordered Dulles to fire Wisner.
      But did Eisenhower know of this?
         When the CIA was created, soon after World War II, the law (the
      National Security Act of 1947) stated clearly what its duties were
      to be.  There are five.  The first four are clearly above-board
      intelligence functions.  It is the fifth duty that opens the door
      to clandestine operations:

        "5) to perform such other functions and duties related to
        intelligence affecting the national security as the National
        Security Council may from time to time direct."

         This is the exact language of the law.  This is the law today,
      and despite countless efforts by the CIA to have us believe
      otherwise, this is the only law that properly lists the duties of
      the CIA.[2]  It has not been changed and it has not been augmented.
         The CIA would like to have us believe that it has the right to
      perform clandestine activities.  It does not have this authority in
      law--unless it is directed by the National Security Council to
      perform such an activity.  Even then the law is most explicit:  it
      adds, "from time to time. . . ."  As when the CIA is authorized to
      perform a clandestine operation, that authority does not carry over
      to another.
         The law further limits the CIA by saying "As the National
      Security Council may . . . direct."  In such important matters
      there is a vast difference between "direct" and "authorize."  When
      the NSC *directs*, that means that the highest authority in the
      country has originated the idea, approved it and resolved to carry
      it out.  When the NSC believes that the plan must be carried out,
      and only then, the NSC *directs* that it be done.  And the NSC has
      the authority to direct any agency, not just the CIA.
         After Allen Dulles had been appointed Director of the CIA by
      President Eisenhower, he began a deft campaign to water down this
      prescribed process.  Working in conjunction with his brother John
      Foster Dulles, who was then Secretary of State, Allen Dulles put
      his proposal in the following terms:  because the members of the
      NSC are the busiest people in Washington, because they have the
      cares of the world on their shoulders, because the President or the
      Vice President cannot be at every meeting, it is proposed that
      representatives be appointed to a sub-committee of the NSC which
      can meet regularly in place of each member to act upon CIA
      clandestine matters.
         This sounded logical from an administrative point of view.  But
      was it legal?  Congress and federal law already said how this
      should be done.  Congress knew that the NSC would be busy.  They
      also knew that those top men would be most responsible and
      ultimately discreet.  So Congress did not provide for a
      subcommittee.  But it was done.
         The CIA had prevailed upon the NSC to publish a series of
      National Security Council Intelligence Directives (NSCIDs).  One of
      these, NSCID 10/2, came close to giving the CIA what it wanted.  In
      that document the NSC had spelled out that the CIA could get into
      clandestine work.  However (and I used to have one of the original
      drafts of this directive in my files in the Office of the Secretary
      of Defense), President Eisenhower had written in his own
      handwriting on the side margin of NSCID/10/2 a stipulation to the
      effect that neither the military nor any other branch of the
      government was to provide the CIA with men, money, materials, or
      overseas base facilities in such quantity that the agency would
      have the ability to carry out a series of operations, a large
      operation, or a long-term operation.  Eisenhower knew that if he
      cut off its men, money, and supplies, the CIA could not get deeply
      involved.  The full meaning of this interpretation cannot be
      overemphasized.  Yet the CIA eventually got around this device.
      Even the written directives of Presidents are ignored.
         For years Eisenhower's stipulation slowed Dulles down.  But
      through a procedure found in the complexities of the national war
      planning process, of which the CIA's a part, he was able to find
      another loophole and to build up supplies as though they were part
      of his "Fourth Force" augmentation during wartime.  The military
      fell for this and gave him more war materiel then he could ever
      use, even in peacetime.  Then the CIA penetrated the military with
      cover units.  At one time more than one thousand military units of
      varying strengths belonged to the CIA.  Even though they were not
      large, they permitted men and materiel to flow anywhere--and at no
      cost to the CIA.
         Then Allen Dulles got the Special Group established and it
      became the platform for the development of a capability for
      clandestine operations.  With meticulous care Dulles saw to it that
      the men designated as representatives of the White House and of the
      State and Defense Departments were men with strong connections with
      the CIA.  At one time General Edward G. Lansdale attended meetings
      for the Secretary of Defense.  Lansdale had served with the CIA for
      most of his active "military" career.
         By 1955, when I began my daily work within this secret
      framework, the Special Group was regularly approving items brought
      to it by the CIA.  Very rarely, if ever, did the NSC "direct" the
      CIA to get itself involved in some activity.  Rather the CIA, as
      Dulles has visualized, found itself creating and originating
      exercises one after the other, with the Special Group rubber-
      stamping them.  In those days, when the CIA made a request of the
      Department of Defense, we would screen top-secret Special Group
      logs.  If we found that the Defense Department representative had
      "voted" to approve the "fun and games," we would provide the men,
      materiel, and overseas resources through an elaborate "cover"
      process that was global in its capability.
         On the other hand, when we found that the operation had not been
      presented to the Special Group, we would notify the Secretary of
      Defense immediately and await his instructions.  Between 1955 and
      1959 we had the power to stop CIA requests that had not been
      approved by the Defense Department.  Sometimes the CIA would
      attempt to get around us and tie one operation to another or
      otherwise attempt to beat the system.  We learned to put
      knowledgeable experts in the field--pilots, doctors, and so on--who
      would detect their plans and report them immediately.  Once, when I
      was asked to move a squadron of Marine helicopters from the Laos
      CIA operational zone to South Vietnam, I found no precedent and no
      approval.  I informed the Secretary of Defense of this item and he
      did not approve the project.  At that time it would have been the
      first such move of major "hardware" into South Vietnam.  The CIA
      battled this decision for weeks and finally prevailed, as they
      usually did, by using the weight of the Special Group and the White
      House.
         Since those days the Special Group or Forty Committee has become
      a power unto itself.  The State Department has thousands of career
      people who are responsible for the Foreign Policy of the United
      States to the Forty Committee's five men.  They approve items that
      have much greater impact on world events than the State Department.
      They do this secretly, without proper review, without comprehensive
      experience and often without anyone but a very few "spooks" knowing
      about it.
         Technically the CIA does not have this authority, and legally
      this is not the way things should be done.  The CIA was never given
      this power by law and should not be permitted to continue this
      practice.  No new laws are needed;  the present law should be
      followed precisely and enforced.  The CIA is in existence to
      perform an intelligence function and no more.
         It would not take much to conclude that the Forty Committee
      possesses sufficient leverage over international affairs to
      overthrow Allende.  To give money to the opposition party in Italy?
      To train King Hussein's elite bodyguard?  To create and build up
      the Shah of Iran?  To grant soft drink bottling concessions to
      Marshall Sarit of Thailand in order to make him the most powerful
      and wealthy man of that CIA-pawn country?  To create Willy Brandt
      in West Germany and then to knock him down when it wished?  To
      overfly Chinese nuclear plants at will?  To arm and equip Indian
      Border Police?  To infringe on the air rights of Norway?  To
      bolster the Katangese rebel government of the Congo while the State
      Department was working with the legal government?  To overthrow Paz
      Estensoro?  To spy in Antarctica despite an international treaty
      prohibiting it?  To play dirty "dirty tricks" at several Olympic
      Games until the Games now have become political battlegrounds?  To
      spy with U-2's on the French and British at the Suez in 1956?  To
      place so many CIA personnel in other branches and agencies of the
      American government that the CIA is internally powerful in almost
      every agency?  If the Forty Committee did not authorize these
      things, then is the answer that the CIA did them on its own,
      illegally?
         When Gary Powers's U-2 spy plane went down in the Soviet Union
      in 1960, President Eisenhower did not know about it until after he
      heard the news from Khrushchev.  Rather than admit that a tiny
      irresponsible cabal had sent the U-2 out, Eisenhower had to say
      that he knew about it.  After the Bay of Pigs, when John Kennedy
      learned about the CIA's role, he wrote three strong orders intended
      to control the CIA.  But he did not live to complete that task.
      Lyndon Johnson admitted that the CIA ran a "damned Murder Inc." but
      confessed that he had been unable to do anything about it.
         The combination of the Forty Committee and the CIA has outlived
      any usefulness that it may once have had.  It must be abolished and
      the CIA must be so controlled by Congress and the Executive that it
      will be removed from the business of clandestine operations
      altogether.  After all, there are other ways to do these things.
      We'll discuss them at a later date.



                         *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   



[1] A segment of NSC 5412 follows below.  Known as the Special Group 5412/2,
    this subcommittee of the National Security Council was the descendant of 
    the Special Group 10/2 which, as described above, produced a document 
    NSCID 10/2 that "came close to giving the CIA what it wanted" in terms 
    of being able to conduct clandestine operations.  NSC 5412, "National 
    Security Council Directive on Covert Operations," effectively 
    neutralized such oversight functions as were intended to be carried out 
    under the authority of the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) which was 
    a part of NSC by law.  OCB was intended to be a group of senior 
    individuals, who would follow the decisions made by the National 
    Security Council and make sure that the bureaucracy carried them out.

  ____________________________________________________________________________

   The following comes from "The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part I,
   1945-1961," prepared for the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate,
   by the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, printed by the
   U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1984.  Declassified in 1977,
   NSC 5412 is located at the National Archives, RG 273.  Also important to
   note here is the wording that defined "covert operations."
  ____________________________________________________________________________


    NSC 5412, "National Security Council Directive on Covert Operations,"
    which continued to be the U.S. Government's basic directive on covert
    activities until the Nixon administration's NSC 40 in 1970, began with
    this statement of purpose:

          The National Security Council, taking cognizance of the vicious
        covert activities of the USSR and Communist China and the
        governments, parties and groups dominated by them . . .  to
        discredit and defeat the aims and activities of the United States
        and other powers of the free world, determined, as set forth in
        NSC directives 10/2 and 10/5 [of the Truman administration], that,
        in the interests of world peace and U.S. national security, the
        overt foreign activities of the U.S. Government should be
        supplemented by covert operations. . . .
          The NSC has determined that such covert operations shall to the
        greatest extent practicable, in the light of U.S. and Soviet
        capabilities and taking into account the risk of war, be designed
        to

              a. Create and exploit troublesome problems for International
            Communism, impair relations between the USSR and Communist
            China and between them and their satellites, complicate
            control within the USSR, Communist China and their satellites,
               and retard the growth of the milltary and economic potential
               of the Soviet bloc.

              b. Discredit the prestige and ideology of International
            Communism, and reduce the streneth of its parties and other
            elements.

              c. Counter any threat of a party or individuals directly or
            indirectly responsive to Communist control to achieve dominant
            Power in a free worid country.

              d. Reduce International Communist control over any areas of
            the world.

              e. Strengthen the orientation toward the United States of
            the peoples and nations of the free world, accentuate,
            wherever possible, the identity of interest between such
            peoples and nations and the United States as well as favoring,
            where appropriate, those groups genuinely advocating or
            believing in the advancement of such mutual interests, and
            increase the capacity and will of such peoples and nations to
            resist International Communism.

              f. In accordance with established policies and to the extent
            practicable in areas dominated or threatened by International
            Communism, develop underground resistance and facilitate
            covert and guerrilla operations and ensure availability of
            those forces in the event of war, including wherever
            practicable provisions of a base upon which the military may
            expand these forces in time of war within active theaters of
            operations as well as provision for stay-behind assets and
            escape and evasion facilities.

      NSC 5412 defined "covert operations" as ". . . all activities
    conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed
    that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to
    unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can
    plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.  Specifically, such
    operations shall include any covert activities related to:  propaganda,
    political action;  economic warfare;  preventive direct action,
    including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition;  escape and evasion and
    evacuation measures;  subversion against hostile states or groups
    including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillias
    and refugee liberation groups;  support of indigenous and
    anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world;
    deceptive plans and operations;  and all activities compatible with
    this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing.  Such operations
    shall not include:  armed conflict by recognized military forces,
    espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military
    operations."
      To approve and coordinate most covert operations, (some were
    required to be approved by the President) NSC 5412 established what
    became known as the 5412 Committee, also given the nonspecific title,
    the Special Group, to reduce chances of exposure.  (In 1964, after
    the term "Special Group" became known, the Group was called the 303
    Committee.  In 1970, it was renamed the 40 Committee.)  The 5412
    Committee and its successors consisted of the Deputy Under Secretary
    of State, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the President's Special
    Assistant for National Security Affairs, and the Director of the CIA,
    with the latter serving as the Group's "action officer."  In 1957,
    the Chairman of the JCS also became a member.



[2] Section 403, paragraph d of the National Security Act of 1947, which 
    defined the powers and duties of the CIA:

     Section 403.  Central Intelligence Agency

     (d) Powers and Duties
     
           For the purpose of coordinating the intelligence activities 
         of the several Government departments and agencies in the 
         interest of national security, it shall be the duty of the 
         Agency, under the direction of the National Security Council--

          (1) to advise the National Security Council in matters 
              concerning such intelligence activities of the 
              Government departments and agencies as relate to 
              national security;

          (2) to make recommendations to the National Security 
              Council for the coordination of such intelligence 
              activities of the departments and agencies of the 
              Government as relate to the national security;

          (3) to correlate and evaluate intelligence relating to 
              the national security, and provide for the 
              appropriate dissemination of such intelligence within 
              the Government using where appropriate existing 
              agencies and facilities:  PROVIDED, That the Agency
              shall have no police, subpoena, law-enforcement 
              powers, or internal-security functions:  PROVIDED 
              FURTHER, That the departments and other agencies of 
              the Government shall continue to collect, evaluate, 
              correlate, and disseminate departmental intelligence:  
              AND PROVIDED FURTHER, That the Director of Central 
              Intelligence shall be responsible for protecting 
              intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized 
              disclosure;

          (4) to perform, for the benefit of the existing 
              intelligence agencies, such additional services of 
              common concern as the National Security Council 
              determines can be more efficiently accomplished
              centrally;

          (5) to perform such other functions and duties related 
              to intelligence affecting the national security as 
              the National Security Council may from time to time 
              direct.


--
                                             daveus rattus   

                                   yer friendly neighborhood ratman

                              KOYAANISQATSI

   ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language)  n.  1. crazy life.  2. life
       in turmoil.  3. life out of balance.  4. life disintegrating.  
         5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.