Updating The New Reality

Countrymen,

First, sorry that almost two weeks has elapsed since I provided fresh clues as to what has been happening to our country beneath the establishment-directed media blitz throughout the recent decades. We managed our semiannual relocation -- to New Hampshire for the summer -- and had to bring the entire operation, including the internet hookup -- up to speed.  Wearing, especially the afternoon of sparring with folks in New Delhi.

One bounty even these early postings has provolked is messages from friends old and new in response to what I wrote.  For example, my old pal Judge Peter Kilborn, who was in the military during the fifties, has contributed his immediate reminiscences as to how close we did come to jumping into the Hungarian revolution during the Eisenhower era.  Another friend, the writer and legal scholar Richard Cummings who produced the outstanding biography of Allard Lowenstein, points out that after a nod from Ike the fledgling CIA bumped the aged premier Muhammad Mossagedh out of power in Iran to protect the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, predecessor to BP, and set in train the events which have produced the reign of the Ahatollahs.  A year later the Dulles brothers engineered a revolution in Guatamala to protect the properties of United Fruit, a client of John Foster Dulles' law firm.  Hundreds of thousands ultimately died and only in recent years has that battered country begun to recover.

In fact, I dealt with both of these geopolitical travesties in great detail in The Old Boys. The point worth making here is that, ugly as these incidents were, neither sucked us into a major conflict. As with Ronald Reagan, who backed us out of Lebanon after the marine barracks in Beirut was bombed, at the presidential level a sense of proportion was maintained.  While researching The Old Boys I spent several afternoons with Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy and himself a historian -- he taught at Harvard as a young man.  Kermit was full of regret at the results the Agency had often produced in the Middle East; he himself had squeezed Nasser into power in Egypt as well as destroying a functioning democracy in Iraq.  The CIA's traditional role as a collection agency for Western special interests has regularly induced our intelligence services to boost proteges we would ultimately regret and have to deal with, from Fidel Castro to Noriega to Osama bin Laden.  When you start climbing under the covers internationally you had better make sure you are not embracing a Gorgon.

Musings on a Wednesday morning.  Best to you all,

Burton