BY RUSS BAKER
IS UP AGAINST
The following article was originally posted on TruthOut.org.
THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY of Barack Obama’s
historic election finds many of his supporters already grousing. Fair enough: Obama has been more vigorous in some areas than oth- ers. But one essential question goes unasked: How much can any President accomplish against the wishes of recalcitrant power cen- ters within his own government? We Americans harbor a quaint belief
that a new President takes charge of a government that eagerly awaits his next
tion. Obama, then, has to contend not only with the big donors and corporate lobbies. His biggest problem resides right inside his “team.”
The internal battles between American
Presidents and their national security establishments are not much reported. But if it is an invisible game, it is also a devious and even deadly one. Our civilian leaders end up mirroring the chronically nervous
South Vietnam, deliberately undermined Kennedy’s agenda. Kennedy called the trigger-happy generals “mad” and spoke angrily to aides of “scattering the CIA to the wind.” The evidence is growing that he suffered the consequences. In the 1950s the late Colonel L. Fletcher
Prouty, a high-ranking Pentagon official, was assigned by CIA Director Allen Dulles to help place Dulles’s officers under military cover throughout the federal government.
An award-winning investigative journalist
chronicles how U.S. Presidents have continually buckled under to the Pentagon and CIA.
command. Like an orchestra conductor or perhaps a football coach, he can inspire or bludgeon and get what he wants. But that’s not how things work at the top, especially where “national security” is con- cerned. The Pentagon and CIA are power- ful and independent fiefdoms character- ized by entrenched agendas and constant intrigue. They are full of lifers who see an elected President largely as an annoyance and have ways of dealing with those who won’t come to heel. Compound that with the Bush-Cheney
Administration’s aggressive seeding of its staunch loyalists throughout the bureau- cracy, and you have a pretty tough situa-
WWW.SEXYBLISS.CO.UK
chiefs of state of the fragile democracies to our south. Those who do not kowtow to the spies
and generals have had a bumpy ride. FDR and Truman both faced insubordination. Dwight Eisenhower, who had served as chief of staff of the U.S. Army, left the White House warning darkly about the “military- industrial complex.” (He of all Presidents had reasons to know.) John Kennedy was repeatedly countermanded and double- crossed by his own supposed subordi- nates. The Joint Chiefs baited him; Allen Dulles despised him (more so after JFK fired him over the Bay of Pigs fiasco); and Henry Cabot Lodge, his ambassador to
As a result, Dulles not only knew what was happening before the President did, but had essentially infiltrated every corner of the President’s domain. One Nixon-era Republican Party official told me that in the early 1970s there were intelligence officers everywhere, including the White House. Nixon was unaware of the true background of many of his trusted aides, particularly those who helped drive him from office. Remember Alexander Butterfield, the so- called military liaison, who told Congress about the White House taping system? Years later, Butterfield admitted to CIA con- nections. In December 1971 Nixon learned of a
HUSTLER | ISSUE 40 37
OBAMA
WHAT
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