Lewis Strauss and JFK, Part III

Part I: https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/lewis-strauss-and-jfk/

Part II: https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/lewis-strauss-and-jfk-part-ii/

Israel Gets The Bomb

“Israel was the first of the [‘pariahs’] to..develop a nuclear arsenal… Ben-Gurion was acting on the recommendation of Ernst David Bergmann..an organic chemist..expelled from the University of Berlin in 1933… From Germany he emigrated to Palestine where he became the scientific director of the newly created Daniel Sieff Research Institute in Rehovot.” [p237, Spying on the Bomb, by Jeffrey Richelson] Bergmann, apparently, did not stay long in Palestine.

    “Bergmann’s father was one of the most eminent rabbis in Berlin and a close friend of Chaim Weizmann..then living in England…  In 1933..Weizmann arranged for young Bergmann to join him on the faculty of Manchester University..[where he] came to the attention of Frederick A. Lindemann, later [dubbed] Lord Cherwell, a German-born Oxford scientist… [The] Zionist movement in Palestine asked Weizmann in 1936 for a chemist to..produce high explosive for..[the] war against the Arabs and the British… Weizmann assigned the mission to Bergmann…” [p25, The Samson Option] Without Bergmann, insisted Herman Mark, there would have been no Israeli bomb: ‘He was in charge of every kind of nuclear activity in Israel. He was the man who completely understood it…'”[p26, ibid.]

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   “..Hebrew University’s Israel Dostrovsky [came to] play a key role in Israel’s..atomic weapons. Born in Russia in 1918, his family emigrated to Palestine the next year. His studies in..chemistry took him to London [where he was] awarded..a doctorate in 1943. After spending the next five years in England, [Dostrovsky] returned to Palestine in 1948 where he founded the Department of Isotope Research at the Weizmann [renamed from Sieff]. At the same time..[being] a major in the IDF Science Corps, he established Hemed Gemel, a special branch of the corps..[that made]..its first projects..sending geologists into the Negev desert in search of uranium.” [p237, Spying on the Bomb]

   Bergmann used his ‘guest scholar’ status in England to make high-explosives for the Hagannah to use against the British — he left the UK in 1940 for the United States and reconnoitered in New York with his ‘old friends’. Herman Mark, ‘father of polymer science’ who worked closely with Bergmann and became the dean of Brooklyn Polytechnic, had “turned the institute into a haven for Jewish refugees, including Chaim Weizmann. ‘The whole gang came to America,’ said Mark. [p25, The Samson Option] “ ‘Bergmann was anxious..’ said Mark,’that there shouldn’t be too much talk [about Israel’s bomb]. It was super-secret –just like the Manhattan Project.’ There was at least one early occasion, however, when Bergmann couldn’t resist sharing what he knew. Abraham Feinberg, a wealthy New York businessman and ardent advocate of statehood for Israel, was one of Ben-Gurion’s most important and trusted allies in the United States. By 1947, Feinberg was playing a major –and highly discreet– role in fundraising and White House lobbying [Truman’s admin.] for Israel..[and] the Democratic Party. He would operate at the highest levels between Washington and Jerusalem for the next two decades… One night over dinner, added Feinberg,’Bergmann’s eyes lit up and he said, ‘There’s uranium in the desert’. There was no question about the message –that a path was now cleared for Israel to develop the atomic bomb. Feinberg was astonished at such indiscreet talk: ‘I shushed him up,’” [p27, The Samson Option, by Seymour Hersh]

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   Dostrovsky “joined the Weizmann in 1948, shortly before its dedication. Immediately upon joining the staff of Weizmann, he was appointed director of the isotope research department, a position he held for 17 years…” Over the early course of those responsibilities, Dostrovsky also became “chairman of the desalination committee.”  http://www.jpost.com/HealthAndSci-Tech/ScienceAndEnvironment/Article.aspx?id=189590

“Bergmann and the French not only got it done in the Negev..but they kept it secret.” [p23, The Samson Option] “No Frenchman had stronger emotional ties to Israel than Bertrand Goldschmidt, a nuclear chemist [who worked on the Manhattan Project]..and expert in the chemistry of plutonium and plutonium extraction.[p30]…His ties to Israel were heightened by marriage; his wife was a member of the eminent Rothschild banking family…  Goldschmidt and his wife had made the pilgrimage to Israel in the early 1950s and been taken by Bergmann for a memorable meeting with Ben-Gurion..in the Negev…[footnote:] ‘We had a long discussion about atomic energy,’ Goldschmidt recalls. ‘Ben-Gurion asked me how long would it take for nuclear desalination to make the Negev desert bloom? –a favorite Ben-Gurion question. I said fifteen years. He started scolding me..we could do it much faster.’” [p31, The Samson Option, Seymour Hersh]

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   Israeli collaboration with the French appears at the initiation of Francis Perrin: “Perrin was important… A socialist who fled [France] to England in 1940… he became friendly with Bergmann..and traveled to Tel Aviv in 1949. It was after that visit that some Israeli scientists were permitted..[in] Saclay..atomic research center near Versailles.”[p29, The Samson Option] Unmentioned by Hersh is that Francis Perrin was part of the small team attempting an atomic bomb in the Sahara in 1939 with the backing of Union Miniere du Haut Katanga. Perrin used his 1940 entree in England as a way station to the US where he resettled in New York with his family, including his father, Jean Baptiste Perrin, a once scientific rival of Pierre Curie. Some years after Curie’s death, Jean Perrin was supported with Rothschild funding to establish the Institute of Chemistry and Biology at the Sorbonne. Friendship with Bergmann was likely to have evolved in New York during the war.

>>>see Part II ‘comments’ for more about the death of Pierre Curie.

   Attaining nuclear weapons in either France or Israel was dependent on removing obstacles as in the US: “The French debate revolved around..Frederic Joliot-Curie [a noted French Communist]..who was opposed to a French role in NATO and any French link to nuclear weapons. In 1950, [Joliot] was the first to sign the Stockholm Appeal, a Soviet-backed petition [issued by the World Peace Council] calling for a ban on all nuclear weapons…  Joliot-Curie was dismissed after signing the Appeal..[and] replaced by Pierre Guillaumat [..French secret intelligence]..and Francis Perrin, [who was] the first to publish a formula for calculating the critical mass of uranium...  A critical decision..came in 1951 when..[Pierre] Guillaumat authorized..a natural uranium-fueled reactor capable of producing..about twenty-two pounds of weapons-grade plutonium a year… The decision to produce..plutonium would irrevocably propel France down the road to a nuclear bomb, as..the Israelis had to know.” [p29, The Samson Option]

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And so it began –an isotope research program for use in water desalination and reclamation.

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JFK

Kennedy was a third-term congressman in October 1951 when he left for a 7-week junket to Asia with a first stop in Paris “at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE)..on October 3” to meet Eisenhower. From there, along with his brother Bobby, sister Pat, and Congressman Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., the party traveled on to Palestine. “The two brothers had never spent such an extended period together, and these weeks defined their relationship for the rest of their lives.” [p284, The Kennedy Men] “In Israel both Jack and Bobby kept extensive diaries, and there is scarcely any overlap in their accounts. Jack stood back from the..hatreds and emotions… As always with Jack, the omnipresent threat in the world lay in the Soviet empire… One evening in Jerusalem, [they] went to the modest home of Prime Minister..Ben-Gurion for dinner… [JFK] was an observer of men, and by the evidence of his diary, he did not impose himself on this evening as much as take the measure of those around him, including the American ambassador, Monnett Bain Davis, several other Israeli ministers, and..Roosevelt Jr… Like his mother, he was considered a friend of Israel. FDR’s namesake was the center of this evening, not Jack… ‘It was almost as if we weren’t there,’ Bobby recalled…  Roosevelt asked the inevitable question: Could there be a real peace between Arab and Jew? ‘It depended..on the peoples wishes,’ the prime minister said. ‘Present government [is] not concerned with peace’… Ambassador Davis boldly told Ben-Gurion that the Arab states were afraid of Israel. ‘How could Egypt with its large population be frightened,’ Ben-Gurion replied with rhetorical flourish. ‘We wouldn’t want to go back to Egypt again. We had enough the first time.” [p286, ibid.]

>>> 1952 –July, Egyptian coup d’etat/revolution overthrow of King Farouk and British colonial domination

   “In this part of the world,” wrote Kennedy biographer Leamer, “history was written with blood and vengeance, and a man who entered politics knew that he might die…   Four days after Jack and Bobby met with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan of Pakistan, he was assassinated. In his diary Jack noted that ‘assassinations have taken a heavy toll of leaders in Middle and Far East,’ and then made a list of some of the murders. Jack tallied seventeen assassinations in the past four years alone. From Mahatma Gandhi in India to Folke Bernadotte in Palestine, murders..changed history the way few laws or mandates ever could.” [p288, The Kennedy Men]

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NOTE: Israel Dostrovsky achieved a succession of appointments in his government’s atomic weapons program including chairman of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) followed by the vice-presidency of the Weizmann Institute under Albert Sabin, creator of the oral (OPV) polio vaccine. Sabin was president of the Weizmann Institute over the course of 1971-1972 when the biology programs there were exploring the uses of SV40 monkey virus as a transgenic (mutation) agent. Dostrovsky succeeded Sabin as Weizmann president in 1972. In that year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published Dostrovsky’s article describing his water program –an evidently perfect cover for the activities at Dimona to which the Israelis acknowledged (‘desalination’), finally, to the Kennedy administration. “Water For Israel”, which includes ‘cheap water’ from cloud seeding and the total capture of Palestine’s water supply, is an instructive read: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=4gsAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA11&lpg=PA11&dq=

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“At the end of 1951, Robert Kennedy began work for the Department of Justice. The Internal Security Division was engaged in investigations of Soviet agents, real and fancied. After a short time [RFK] transferred to the Criminal Division… The work absorbed him… He loved what he was doing…” Nevertheless, Robert Kennedy answered the call to “come up and take over” JFK’s campaign for the Senate. ” ‘We couldn’t win relying on the Democratic political machine,’ Robert said later,’so we had to build our own machine.‘ ” [p94, Robert Kennedy and His Times, Schlesinger]

   The Democrats, nationally, were taking the hit for not merely tolerating but employing communist subversives at high levels of  government: “Harry Dexter White [‘a Russian spy!’] assistant secretary of the Treasury under Roosevelt [Morganthau] had died in 1948 while the House Un-American Activities Committee was searching his past for evidence of espionage. According to [Atty. Gen. Herbert] Brownell both Democratic presidents had appointed White..despite warnings from the FBI.” [p149, No Sacrifice Too Great]

    “National politics and national security are always to some extent interrelated, but in the years of the Truman presidency the relationship became problematic. Trust leeched out of the political system, loyalties waned, betrayal became common. Communism..achieved astonishing influence not in its own right, much less on its own behalf, but as an agent for poisoning American politics.” –Daniel Patrick Moynihan, http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/moynihan-secrecy.html

Meanwhile…

Machinery of other sorts were rolling onto the battleground. Colonel Boris Pash, formerly “Chief of Counterintelligence for the Ninth Army Corps on the West Coast.. [who] spent much of his career hunting communists… considered the Soviet Union America’s mortal enemy.”[p190, American Prometheus] After his ALSOS Europe mission and following attachment to MacArthur in Tokyo, Pash’s next assignment came “In March 1949.. detailed to the Central Intelligence Agency’s Office of Policy Coordination where he oversaw programs in West Germany for three years. Pash then ran special forces planning..in Austria from 1952-1953“… http://huachuca-www.army.mil/files/History_MPASH.PDF

   During this time, Pash organized a special operations unit for the CIA called PB7, said to be an assassination squad. Pash, years later before a congressional committee, denied it conducted assassinations.  Mr. Pash: “It was not an assassination unit. In the first place..I was never an employee of the Agency. I was detailed from the Army for a normal tour of duty to the Agency..and then I was assigned and left for Austria in 1952 as Special Forces Unconventional Warfare Planning Officer. In 1954..[to] early ’56 I was in the Presidio of San Francisco as a deputy G-2 in charge of security..” Mr. Baron:“Let me ask you a particular question..brought to our attention by Artie Lazarus… He said that when he first joined you in PB7, you asked him to read the charter of PB7… [He] said it contained some specific language about PB7 being responsible for assassinations, kidnappings and other such functions as may be assigned by higher authority. Now do you recall that part of the charter of PB7?” Mr. Pash:“I don’t recall that particular wording…It could have been there without my recalling it…” Mr. Baron: “..were you aware of any assassination plans or attempts?” Mr. Pash: “No, I never heard that. There was a small incident..[with a] group of branch chiefs or something like that in Plans and Policy…a discussion with regard to denying the Soviets certain types of individuals…This woman gets out and says why don’t we murder them?…And that’s all” Mr. Baron: “But it would be your testimony that..you never heard such a plan with such a request?” Mr. Pash: “..No, never….[In 1954] I said that the only time..assassination would be justified was if somebody could categorically state that if it was not done..the safety of the United States was at stake..in other words, if you don’t do it the United States is destroyed..and you have no other way to stop [it]..I think it’s all right…” www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=1430&relPageId=23

   Pash seemingly had good recall on when he thought assassination became “all right”. Throughout 1953 he was helping Lewis Strauss and J.Edgar Hoover construct a disloyalty case against Robert Oppenheimer, brought to an AEC tribunal in 1954. During the war, “On June 29,1943, ..Pash..wrote a memo to the Pentagon recommending that Oppenheimer be denied a security clearance and fired.” [p233, American Prometheus]. He agitated against Oppenheimer to such an extent that he was given an overseas assignment –AlSOS.

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As usual, the Education Forum members have interesting notes about Pash: “Pash’s subordinate, Col. Willard White was married to LBJ’s sister Josefa for a number of years”….”Is that Pash [ marked ‘unknown man’ in the photo] standing next to LBJ at Parkland Hospital?”….”I found that Pash, postwar, maintained an office at Oak Ridge”….”There’s a Boris Pash/Sidney Gottlieb connection with the Health Alteration Committee”….etc. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3868&st=15

    A further note on Pash to illustrate (and belabor) a previously mentioned point of using medical institutions to cover for weapons development occurred during ALSOS’s decisive 1944 push into the Nazis’ last holdouts. “The rumours.. [about a Nazi A-bomb] continued to circulate until November when the advancing Allied forces took Strasbourg. It was here that they believed a number of eminent physicists, including von Weizacker and Fleischmann, had been working on the bomb…Within hours, Pash and his ‘Strasbourg Task Force’ had located the university’s physics laboratory. It was in the wing of a local hospital and [the] physicists were found there posing as doctors.” [p109, Oppenheimer, Shatterer of Worlds, by Peter Goodchild]

   In the United States, they did not merely “pose” as doctors but practiced.

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Strauss’s assistant William T. Golden prepared this memo about Sloan-Kettering in 1950: “The Institute connects with Memorial Hospital and the new city-owned Ewing Hospital… Technically SKI is a subsidiary of Memorial Hospital. There is also a tie-in in operating arrangements with the nearby Cornell University Medical Center, New York Hospital, etc. Dr. Conant, Compton, Dr. [Detlev] Bronk, as well as Lewis Strauss and Alfred Sloan, are trustees of SKI. Lawrance [sic] Rockefeller has recently become President of Memorial Hospital, in which his family has long been interested, and which has a relatively large board, including Lewis Strauss… Dr. [Cornelius “Dusty”] Rhoads is eager to obtain supporting grants… He pointed out that much of the work that is being directed toward concise research is closely related to chemical warfare and perhaps not so distant from biological warfare matters… He told me that he has been invited to lunch by Fred Lawton, Director of the Bureau of the Budget on November 10…[and] thinks that Mrs. Lasker may have arranged it.” http://archives.aaas.org/golden/doc.php?gold_id=80

   At some future point on this blog, I hope to write up my thought experiments on the Peaceful Uses of Cancer as a complementary enterprise to the Peaceful Uses of the Atom. In this early ’50s window of time, however, it constitutes future-pacing a problem which was then manisfesting as poliomyelitis.

   The Health Physics field chartered itself in 1947 with the tasks of ”study of casualty effects. Field study of fission clouds, possible injury to water supply, soil, and the like, human damage by population surveys… studies of the transfer of radioactive materials in food chains..eaten and metabolized by higher forms… Feeding experiments using radioactive materials in the foods… [concluding that] Large scale biological work is mandatory” http://polioforever.wordpress.com/health-physics/

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Radiation

An official Hanford plutonium plant document describes [polio] myelitis:   http://www.doh.wa.gov/hanford/publications/health/mon9.htm  “Myelitis, or inflammation of the spinal cord, can occur within 2 to 4 months after a patient being treated with radiation is exposed…. Myelitis is sometimes delayed, not occurring until 4 months to 3 years after radiation exposure… When delayed, a person may experience more severe problems such as paralysis and lack of bladder control.”

A Radiation effects source document used by military planners describes damage: “The phenomena of latent Central Nervous System radiation damage.. has been well documented… [S]peculation on the likely pathogenesis of late radiation lesions reveals (a) radiation may act primarily on the vascular system… …hypertension accelerates the appearance of vascular lesions in the brain after irradiation… vascular and glial changes may be important in the development of late radiation damage to the CNS… ….hippocampal spike discharges..developed soon after irradiation when no other clinical signs of neurological damage or radiation sickness were present.…the hippocampus is important in critical functions like learning, memory, and motor performance….these data suggest that hippocampal electro-physiology may be the most sensitive measure of functional brain changes after irradiation… “It has been known for some time that paralysis of the hind limbs of animals can result from localized irradiation of the spinal cord. Rabbits developed this paralysis at 4 to 33 weeks after exposure of the upper thoracic region [e.g., a chest x-ray]…” http://www.afrri.usuhs.mil/outreach/pdf/tmm/chapter7/chapter7.pdf .

Some the of materials in the above are cited in the National Security Archives, a project of George Washington University

Listed in http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/dir/mstreet/research/pubs/titles.txt are additional entries such as these:

–“Gilman, P.K., and Baetjer, F.H.. Some effects of roentgen rays on development of embryos. 1904. Am. J. Physiol 10: 222-224.##”

–“Muller, H.J.. Artificial transmutation of the gene.  1927.  Science 66:84-87.##”

–“Stern, S.. Report of thirty-one cases of therapeutic abortion induced by roentgen-ray therapy.  1928.  American Journal Roentgenology,Radium Therapy 19: 133-140.##”

Note the years: 1904, 1927, 1928

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Hmm….fallout vaccine, anyone?

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Stacking the Commission

“By the end of Strauss’s [first] term, the other commissioners, many members of the AEC staff, and most scientists regarded him as a tough, obstinate, and tenacious opponent of the free exchange they desired. For these people, Strauss was the symbol of narrow realism; he, on the other hand, had identified J. Robert Oppenheimer as a symbol of those who, whether disloyal or merely naive, did not support the fight against Communism with full enthusiasm.” [p125, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss stood One-to-Four against his fellow commissioners in the fall of 1949. They were not willing to endorse building H-bombs which were already being touted in the press as 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The GAC (General Advisory Committee), nine-member body of scientists that counseled the AEC of which Oppenheimer was its de facto spokesman, were nearly unanimous against the Super. Strauss allies, Ernest Lawrence, Luis Alvarez, and Edward Teller, flew in to Washington and launched a counteroffensive of intense lobbying. No one had yet been officially told about the  atomic spy-ring in Los Alamos. According to Moynihan’s essay on ‘Secrecy’, Truman was never told about the Venona radio decrypts.

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   “On Sunday, November 7, as the Strausses relaxed in their suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Senator McMahon [on the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy] telephoned..[and] brought the welcome news that Commissioner Gordon Dean, whom McMahon had placed on the AEC, had been converted into an advocate of the super. Now the AEC was divided three to two… On November 23, when the debate over the superbomb was at its height, the White House announced that Chairman Lilienthal planned to resign… Washington gossip identified Strauss as a possible replacement for Lilienthal.” [pp118-119, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss, too, had already planned to resign. “‘I don’t want you to resign,’ [Truman told Strauss] …[but] did not press Strauss to remain [rather] asked who the new chairman should be; Strauss endorsed Gordon Dean, the first to join him in favor of the super…” [p125, ibid.] Like Lilienthal’s promotion out of the AEC, acquired with the help of Albert Lasker, Strauss himself arranged for Chairman Dean to join Lehman Brothers on his exit (in 1953).

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“[W]hen the  time came to seek a replacement for his own seat on the AEC, Strauss remembered  the 45-year old Case president. While some of the Democratic Congressmen involved in the search preferred the appointment of AEC General Counsel Joseph A. Volpe Jr., Strauss used his connections in the White House and the Pentagon to secure Glennan’s appointment…”

   T. Keith Glennan, later, NASA’s first chief, was recruited by Strauss. [Glennan interview:]”Needell: Tell me about Strauss… He’s a rather strong character, I understand” Glennan: “Strong and strange… [I was] asked if I would permit my name to be considered for a post as a Commissoner of the AEC. I said, “You must be crazy. I don’t know the first thing about an atom. I don’t know about a reactor. I don’t know anything about nuclear energy…  [AEC used the] building originally built for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It was the first one they were in, on Constitution Avenue, right next to the Federal Reserve Board… I got there in 1 October, 1950″…  http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/dsh/TRANSCPT/GLENNAN4.HTM

   “Before Strauss left the AEC, he was offered a place on the Federal Reserve Board, which he turned down as too routine.” [p125, No Sacrifice Too Great] Brien McMahon arranged a post on the Atomic Plant Expansion panel and Laurance Rockefeller hired him to manage the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, where he co-incorporated The Population Council. At the outbreak of the Korean War, a 3-billion-dollar appropriation was assigned to the AEC for development.

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GLENNAN: “..it was not a very collegial Commission at that time… I remember Tom Murray calling me names. Things of that kind… We searched for a man to replace [AEC General Manager] Carroll Wilson and finally came up with a Vice President of Esso [Exxon, or Standard Oil of New Jersey]– Marion Boyer– who worked out well..as..Wilson’s replacement… [The] general manager from then on took part in all of [the] executive sessions…  There was Sumner Pike and [Henry] Smythe and [Gordon] Dean and Tom Murray… Eugene Zuckert replaced Sumner Pike…He came I think from the Air Force, Assistant Secretary to Symington over there…  We were concerned with increasing our ability to turn out the weapons grade materials… While I was there, we made the deal with South Africa to take the tailings from the gold cyaniding process, which ultimately provides a lot of uranium… I proposed the Atomic Industrial Forum.  NEEDELL: Did you meet regularly with people like Lawrence? GLENNAN: Yes. Lawrence saw to it that we did. He was an aggressive person… he came in and lobbied the Commission. He’d spend a lot of time alone with Gordon Dean… NEEDELL: You opposed the MTA. [Materials Testing Accelerator, heart of the Livermore Lab] GLENNAN: Yes, just on an engineering basis… The things we were short of were enrichment plants and raw materials and the rest of the fuel cycle. NEEDELL: Now, the MTA was going to be a production facility… you had to somehow meet the challenge of getting more production facilities. GLENNAN: Exactly… Teller wanted to do it and Lawrence wanted to do it. That was the argument…  I got along well with Ernest. With Teller.. not well. I found myself opposing him… and I finally said, “Balls, Edward–all you want is another chance to have some tests to improve the weapons… We got into arguments…  COLLINS: You indicated that one of your interests as a Commission member was somehow working out that government-industry relationship. GLENNAN:”..I finally reasoned that the people who were really doing the work were industry. The scientists had the General Advisory Committee…The public had the Congress, and industry got.. a lot of complaints. … If, as we all then believed, nuclear power was going to be useful and possible, they ought to be in on the ground floor with it… I proposed the Atomic Industrial Forum, for just this purpose, at a meeting of the Manufacturing Chemists’ Association, on 25 November, 1952. I proposed it in just the way I’ve been discussing it now, that industry really ought to get in with both feet and play a part in the development of a nuclear power industry, and not simply take what came out of the interests of scientists.” http://airandspace.si.edu/research/dsh/TRANSCPT/GLENNAN4.HTM

Atomic Industrial Forum: “The AIF was formally incorporated on April 10, 1953 in New York and marked the beginning of the commercial nuclear power industry in the United States. The first Executive Director of AIF was Charles Robbins… As a nonprofit trade association the AIF advocated the peaceful uses of atomic energy and increasing the role of the private sector in its development. Its first order of business was to advocate revising the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 to allow and foster the commercial ownership of non weapons nuclear facilities, such as production of radioactive isotopes and nuclear power plants.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Industrial_Forum

“Mr. Robbins, who helped found the forum in the late 1940’s, was a former member of the national advertising staff of The New York Times and had been with Bozell & Jacobs, a New York advertising firm.”  [Bozell was a family affair; Leo Bozell Jr., Robbins nephew, married the sister of William F. Buckley] http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/11/obituaries/charles-e-robbins-executive-83.html; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Brent_Bozell_Jr.; “Robbins had been the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and later the president of the Atomic Industrial Forum.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Frederick_Robbins

William F. Buckley, “son..of a Texas oil millionaire..joined the Central Intelligence Agency [in 1951]” and became a writer and publisher. His second “book, coauthored with Bozell, was an unabashed attempt to defend a family friend: Joe McCarthy… In September 1960, Buckley, Douglas Caddy and Marvin Liebman established the far right group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)..to [oppose] John F. Kennedy in the forthcoming presidential election.” http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/mobile/JFKbuckleyW_full.htm (sumitted as an example of dot-connecting, typical of Lewis L. Strauss’s relationship hierarchy)

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“When Strauss, who like other retired commissioners was a consultant to the Joint Committee [the JCAE, with McMahon as chair] saw the report of the panel [General Advisory Committee]..chaired by Oppenheimer in December 1950, he concluded Oppenheimer was working against the United States.. [p131, No Sacrifice Too Great] Whether consciously or not, Oppenheimer was helping the Soviet Union… In the interest of national security, Strauss concluded, he must safeguard the AEC from Oppenheimer’s influence. Strauss started his campaign..[on] Fevruary 9, 1951…his purpose was clear: the AEC must get rid of Oppenheimer.” [132, ibid.]

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Brien McMahon and Prescott Bush

James O’Brien McMahon, a Yale educated lawyer,  first came to Washington in 1933 as a Special Assistant to the Attorney General. He resigned Justice in 1939, but stayed in D.C. to practice law until persuaded by fellow Democrats to run for the Senate in 1944 from his home state of Connecticut. Known for his energy and eloquence, McMahon authored the compromise (to the May-Johnson) bill that granted civilian control over atomic weapons and power, adopted as the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. “[A] real fight began..when it was suggested that McMahon head the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy. It was unheard of to allow a freshman senator to chair a Congressional Committee….   In 1952 Brien McMahon decided to run for President of the United States…his main platform was to insure world peace through fear of atomic weapons. The campaign was cut short however when it was discovered in June 1952 that McMahon was terminally ill with cancer. On July 27, 1952, despite that he had withdrawn his candidacy and despite his inablity to attend the Democratic National Convention the delegates from the state of Connecticut unanimously nominated McMahon as their choice for President of the United States. The following morning Brien McMahon fell into a coma and died…” at the age of 48. http://www.library.georgetown.edu/dept/speccoll/mcmscope.htm

Had he lived, McMahon would have been John F. Kennedy’s most formidable Democratic presidential challenger.

*

“Shortly after” Prescott Bush “won a special Senate election in 1952 (which was called to fill a vacancy caused by the death of Sen. Brien McMahon)  …Prescott Bush was not known as a conservative Republican in Washington.” http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1988-12-14/news/8802250340_1_george-bush-sen-prescott-bush-reagan-democrats; Bush had been a Greenwich, Connecticut resident since joining W.A.Harriman &Co. in 1926 where he was made the international director of Harriman-controlled U.S. Rubber –along with Philips Electronics, a sponsor of Frenchy Grombach’s Pond, secret intelligence. (see part II).

   In 1928, the Harriman’s bought out Dresser Industries and “installed an old friend, H. Neil Mallon, at the helm.” [p24, Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker] Two years after that, they merged with Brown Brothers. Prescott, “At Yale in 1916..had become close friends with his classmate Roland ‘Bunny’ Harriman…Both Harrimans, like Prescott Bush, were initiates of..Skull and Bones.” [p16, ibid.] ..”In 1950, Dresser was completing a corporate relocation [from Cleveland] to Dallas which..was rapidly becoming a center of the defense industry and its military-industrial-energy elite. Though a virtual unknown on his arrival, Neil Mallon quickly set about bringing the conservative titans of Dallas society together in a new local chapter of the nonprofit Council on World Affairs…a localized equivalent of the Rockefeller-backed Council on Foreign Relations…  Mallon’s Dallas Council..may have had some kind of sanction at the highest levels. [p29] Following Ike’s decisive victory..the administration was filled with Bush allies, including national security advisor Gordon Gray, a close friend of Prescott’s…” [p30, Family of Secrets] Prescott also pitched his first political campaign for the Senate in 1950 and lost, rejected by Connecticut voters. His appointment to McMahon’s office kept him from having to run again until 1956.

   The fact of Prescott Bush taking McMahon’s seat on the Joint Committee for Atomic Energy, whether or not he also took the power, is being/has been scrubbed off the record. According to Baker, “the extended Bush clan truly represented a kind of private-public business combine. For example, within months of Prescott being named to the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy, [George Herbert Walker Jr., Poppy’s uncle] formed a partnership to invest in commercial nuclear energy businesses.” [p33, Family of Secrets]

   Another of Poppy’s uncles, brother of G.H. and Dorothy Walker, Dr. John M. Walker, became the President of Sloan Kettering Institute in 1965 (to 1974). Ironically “Walker had a private practice [Greenwich, CT] until he was diagnosed with polio in 1950…he would eventually need a wheelchair.” The Walkers also lost a daughter to polio in 1955.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Walker

>>>The vast Harriman fortune, just as a reminder, resulted when “Jacob Schiff joined forces with Harriman to reorganize the Union Pacific” and takeover a number of other railroads. http://www.raken.com/american_wealth/Bankers_Gilded_Age/Kuhn-Loeb_5.asp

>>>Kuhn Loeb & Co. partner Elisha Walker, if not a close relative of George Herbert Walker, was still in business with him: both Walkers were directors of American International Corp. (est.1915) along with Otto Kahn, Percy Rockefeller, Pierre duPont, et.al. http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/belgrano.html; Elisha Walker was also a joint owner of Julius Kayser and Co., later merged (c.1943) and owned by Kennedy campaign fundraiser Abraham Feinberg. (see stock certificate http://scripophily.net/julkaycospec.html; is that Eugene Meyer listed as the first of five owners?)

“Elisha Walker was chairman of Bancamerica-Blair Corporation 1929-32 and Transamerica Corporation 1930-32 [founder Amadeo Giannini]; then a partner of Kuhn, Loeb & Company 1933-50. (Elisha Walker, B.A. 1900. Bulletin of Yale University, Obituary Record of Graduates of the Undergraduate Schools Deceased During the Year 1950-1951, pp 45-46.) Mrs. Walker was an activist at Memorial Hospital [Sloan Kettering], N.Y.C., in 1934. (Tea for Cancer Hospital. New York Times, Nov. 2, 1934.)” http://www.smokershistory.com/PHoffman.htm

*

Politics

Kennedy, in the meantime, was compelled to run the Massachusetts race against Eisenhower’s presidential campaign manager, the ‘very busy’ Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., winning by a 3% margin. “The Massachusetts representatives did tend to emphasize the plight of United Fruit…  the region ‘has made a specialty of Latin America’ and..’over 90% of New England’s foreign investment is in Latin America, a large part being..United Fruit Company… this investment was being threatened by the Communists…[and] Guatemala had developed into a ‘situation of great peril’… Thomas Dudley Cabot..had been..president [1948-49] of United Fruit and its registrar bank, the First National Bank of Boston…” [p117, The CIA in Guatemala, Richard H. Immerman]

>>>Thomas Dudley Cabot (1897-1995), CEO of Cabot Corporation 1922-1960 [chemicals, aerogels, drilling fluids]; worked for Truman’s State Department “in charge of a U.S. program arming allies throughout the world…In 1953, Cabot also served as a consultant on a special development mission in Egypt [coups in Egypt and Iran 1953]… Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.[was] also..a director of United Fruit.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Dudley_Cabot

    With James Forrestal dead, Eisenhower’s Republican rival was Strauss’s old friend from “Hoover’s Relief” days, Robert A. Taft. “Strauss supported his friend Bob Taft..[whose] strong points were similar to Strauss’s…[except that Taft]..clung to an isolationism…more suited to the 1920s’..” [p136, No Sacrifice Too Great]

   As the 83rd Congress convened, Robert Taft led the Majority Republicans and Lyndon Johnson was elected to lead the Democrats. “In 1953, the convergence of unusual circumstances gave the Democrats the plurality of the Senate’s membership while the Senate Republicans maintained their majority party status.”– go figure. http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/generic/People_Leaders_Knowland.htm; Taft soon relinquished party leadership to California’s William Knowland.

 Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was appointed by Eisenhower, on his third day in office, to be U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (held to Sep. 1960).

   “The day after the election, the Scripps-Howard newspapers interviewed McCarthy [R-Wis.] and were told that he planned ‘an entirely different role’ for himself..[p187, Senator Joe McCarthy, Richard Rovere] In what remained of the Truman years, McCarthy was nothing but an engine of denunciation… he denounced and accused and blamed and insulted and vilified and demeaned. He was a pure delight now..and the Republican organizations were in hot competition to have him come in with a load of documents on anyone who was giving them trouble.” [p179,ibid.] ..”They planned to take advantage of the atmosphere McCarthy had helped so greatly to create and at the same time to control McCarthy by directing his attention… I [Rovere] remember being told exactly this by Senator Taft early in January of 1953… Taft knew that McCarthy was dangerous..,” [p187, ibid.]..[but] felt he had engineered a brilliant coup by bottling McCarthy up in Government Operations, where he would spend his days studying reports…and by letting the furor over Communism expire under the deadening [mediocre] touch of Jenner and Velde. ‘We’ve got McCarthy where he can’t do ant harm,’ [Taft] said. He went on to say that..he himself had never thought that Communists represented half as serious a menace as the Left liberals and welfare-statists.” [p188, Senator Joe McCarthy]

   “Taft was a tall and large-framed man who posessed exceptional physical stamina and good health until April 1953. Family and colleagues were stunned when..a widespread and rapidly advancing cancer..claim[ed] his life by the end of July.” http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Robert_Alphonso_Taft.aspx

   “Taft’s bottle for McCarthy had never been corked. McCarthy simply poured himself out.” [p190, Senator Joe McCarty]

*

   “On February 10, 1953, three weeks after Eisenhower entered office, AEC Chairman Dean submitted his resignation…shortly after Dean announced his resignation, John A. Wheeler, a physicist at Princeton [IAS], who was consultant to the AEC, lost a copy of a highly classified, extensively technical description of..thermonuclear weapons. Obviously, the AEC must tighten up security; who better than Strauss, with his reputation for protecting secrets, to do so. Senators Taft, Byrd, and Hickenlooper all urged Strauss to accept.” [p137, ibid.]

*

“As soon as he took office, Eisenhower searched for some way to bring home the awful realities of the nuclear age to the American people… and in July, when he appointed Lewis Strauss to head the Atomic Energy Commission… on the day that Strauss was sworn in, Eisenhower took him into the Oval Office..and said: ‘Lewis, let us be certain about this; my chief concern and your first assignment is to find some new approach to the disarming of atomic energy… The world simply must not go on living in the fear of the terrible consequences of nuclear war.’…[In] August 1953, [Eisenhower] learned that the Russians had detonated their first hydrogen explosion…” [p111, Eisenhower and the Cold War, by Robert A. Divine]

>>>according to AEC liason Robert LeBaron, the Soviets detonated an H-bomb in 1950 or ’51, prior to the successful Teller-Ulam tests of 1951-52. Teller required the help of his Los Alamos assistant Frederick de Hoffman, later the founder of General Atomics (1957) and longtime president of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California.

*

Chairman of the AEC

“Strauss brought a new style of management to the Atomic Energy Commission… he replaced the informal, rambling seminars of his predecessors Lilienthal and Dean with crisp, formal sessions designed to produce quick decisions rather than slowly evolving concensus. Forceful, determined, and impatient once he had made up his own mind, Strauss dragged the other commissioners along… Eisenhower’s defense policy rested on the deterrent power of the hydrogen bomb… aggression by threatening to strike the Soviet Union with overwhelming force… called ‘massive retaliation’ or the ‘New Look’…” [p144, No Sacrifice Too Great]…Strauss’s style of management [dictated that] At each meeting Strauss announced what he planned to do, then addressed each commissioner in turn for comments. In this atmosphere, none of them dared oppose Strauss…”  [p175, ibid.]

“Whoever mastered a thermonuclear explosion employing a dry isotope of hydrogen [instead of the super-cooled liquid] would have the first deliverable [H]bomb.” [p145, ibid.]

   The return of LLS to the AEC chair was the fulfillment of a three-year campaign: by February of 1951 “he warned [Gordon] Dean that the thermonuclear program was not moving quickly enough. He accused Oppenheimer of ‘sabotaging the project’ and added that ‘something radical’ must be done…[he] did not suggest what, but his purpose was clear.” [p132, No Sacrifice Too Great]

   “The Greenhouse test [Marshall Islands, April and May 1951] proved the Teller-Ulam design would work, but considerable technical effort remained… Teller and Strauss hoped the AEC would establish a second laboratory [the Livermore, CA lab] to further work on fusion..[and] remove the hydrogen bomb from Los Alamos where they believed Oppenheimer exercised excessive influence… Among the many influential men who thought so were Strauss, Teller, AEC Commissioner Thomas E. Murray, GAC [advisory panel] member Willard F. Libby and Berkeley Dean Kenneth S. Pitzer. All but Strauss voiced their suspicion of Oppenheimer..to the FBI..” [p133, ibid.]

   The October tests of 1952, Operation Ivy’s ‘Mike’ shot, “Three years plus a month after Strauss first called for a hydrogen bomb, [‘Mike’] transformed the atoll of Elugelab in the Eniwetok chain into a coral crater” by aerosolizing 100 million tons of soil and water. Biographer Pfau wrote, “the process obviously worked… By this time, only five [of nine] members of the GAC that had followed Oppenheimer..in 1949 remained… his two closest..allies, Lee A. DuBridge and James Conant..stepped down… the other two veterans –Isidor I. Rabi and Oliver E. Buckley– backed away from Oppenheimer’s advocacy..to become at least lukewarm supporters of the fusion weapon.” [p134, ibid.]

>>>Buckley was the president (1940-1951) of Bell Laboratories. Isidor Rabi was later sent to Israel’s Dimona plant as a U.S. inspector.

*

    The significance of the Oppenheimer case, and the way in which Strauss handled it, is an indispensable display of method prior to the JFK assassination. Oppenheimer was proposing in essence the policy of flexible response eventually recommended to, and adopted by Kennedy.  “Strauss would use every resource he could mobilize to win the case.” [p160, No Sacrifice Too Great] and having an appropriate Commander-in-Chief on his side was required.

   “Taft’s opponent was General Dwight D. Eisenhower..[and] the contest was very close, but Eisenhower won..[helped] especially by a group from Texas that Taft was accused of stealing. The contested delegations helped put Eisenhower over the top…” [p136, ibid.]. It was also the refusal of the presidentially ambitious Earl Warren of California, who lost early in the convention polls, to cede his supporters to Robert Taft.

   Eisenhower assumed office, AEC Chairman Dean resigned, John Wheeler lost his H-bomb manual, and Strauss “quietly took control of atomic policy.” [p138, No Sacrifice Too Great] “On March 30, 1953, he presented a set of recommendations to the National Security Council.. [in] the context of the president’s desire to reduce the size of the federal budget [with] proposed savings of half a billion dollars in the atomic energy program by paring away nonessential spending… [He] pointed out that the stockpile of nuclear weapons..[had] potential for great benefit… [T]he fissionable material in the bombs could be converted into fuel for reactors. So, it was a good policy to continue the manufacture of weapons… Strauss recommended major reductions in spending in three areas: the cost of security, to be achieved by declassifying as much data as possible; the cost of weapons tests…and the cancellation of $200 million allocated for a reactor to drive..an aircraft carrier. The National Security Council and the president approved all of Strauss’s recommendations. By canceling the large ship reactor..he left [Adm. Hyman] Rickover angry.” [p149, ibid.]

   “Eisenhower nominated Strauss [to the AEC chair]..on June 24..and three days later the full Senate confirmed him without a ripple of dissent. On July 2, surrounded by family and friends in the president’s office, Strauss took the oath of office again. [p141] Strauss had marked the Bible on which he took the oath at a well-known passage… Micah 4:3, “And He shall judge between many peoples and shall decide concerning mighty nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” [p142]

   “There was a poignant note to the ceremony: Bob Taft was making his last visit to the White House where he had lived as a boy and where he hoped to live as a man… Three separate medical examinations [at Walter Reed, NYU, and Sloan Kettering] confirmed..a fast growing cancer had reached its final stage, but he insisted on attending..limping painfully on crutches. Taft died within the month.” [pp143-144, No Sacrifice Too Great]

   Strauss wrote: “Only a few weeks earlier, I had sat with him at his home in Georgetown, where, behind closed doors..I brought him a final and terrible verdict from Dr. Cornelius Rhoads of Memorial Hospital in New York. It was the diagnosis that multiple metastases of a cancer would take his life… After a long silence, he asked if there was anything to be done… I told him..odds were very long against..his case.” [p335, Men and Decisions]

Had he lived, Robert Taft would have challenged Eisenhower’s second term.

*

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer and Strauss claimed to have first met each other in the course of picking Japanese targets in mid- 1945.  About this same time, LLS replaced Lessing J. Rosenwald on the Board of Trustees of Princeton IAS, “and when Frank Aydelotte prepared to retire as director, Strauss headed the committee to select his replacement.” [p92, No Sacrifice Too Great] “At first, Strauss and Oppenheimer appeared to get along well..[p93]” but soon “fought over atomic policy, at first secretly and then openly beginning in the summer of 1947. One issue was atomic power. Whereas many people expected atomic energy to lead mankind into a golden age of cheap, plentiful electricity, Oppenheimer..sought to quell such unrealistic hopes…and warned that nuclear power would not provide ‘any considerable portion’ of the world’s electricity for [at least] twenty years.” [p99, ibid.]

*

On his return to the AEC, “Strauss attached only one condition to his acceptance, he told [Eisenhower]: Oppenheimer could not be ‘connected in any way’ with the AEC.” [p139, No Sacrifice Too Great] “In June of 1953 McCarthy was considering an attack on Oppenheimer. As soon as Strauss learned [of it] he wrote Senator Taft that it would be ‘ill-advised and impolitic’ for McCarthy to proceed. His reasons..were that ‘some of the so-called evidence will not stand up…and the present is not the time.’ FBI Director Hoover and Vice-President..Nixon also helped turn McCarthy away from Oppenheimer…” [p140, ibid.] …”While Strauss..looked for proof of Oppenheimer’s disloyalty, he sponsored an increase in Oppenheimer’s salary...[which] may have been designed to keep Oppenheimer from recognizing the depth of Strauss’s hostility toward him.” [p148, ibid.]

   Oppenheimer was less than right this time on the power issue –it took longer. Even though a commercial plant was opened in Shippingport, PA in 1955, the US taxpayers footed its operations for years while it served as a model for attracting private operators to nuclear power generation. The Shippingport operators sold the electricity and kept the earnings.

   On July 7, 1953, five days after his swearing-in, Strauss “acted quickly to cut off Oppenheimer’s access to the AEC’s secrets… [He] ordered the AEC Security Division to phase out the classified library that Oppenheimer maintained [at Princeton’s IAS] and replace it with a new facility under the commission’s direct charge..and control..” [p145, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss also wrote to the FBI and requested a reinvigoration of the atomic dual-agent program: memos from August indicate that “if the Director felt it advisable, Strauss..had certain programs in mind which would incidentally, if put into effect, require additional appropriation for the FBI.” Director Hoover politely responded to Strauss of the necessity for the AEC to get its own house in order. These were the last memos made available until 1964; the very last memo concerning the fate of the whole dual-agent correspondence.   http://www.governmentattic.org/4docs/FBIundercoverAECfacilities_1949-1964

*

William T. Golden

    Golden, who was “assistant to Admiral Strauss exclusively… I was the only assistant; the other commisioners didn’t have assistants“, gave an oral history in 1989 [at age 80] on his recollections: [Question:] “Was Oppenheimer under a cloud yet in 1950?” [Golden:] “No, but yes. Oppenheimer had always been suspect… But Groves used Oppenheimer very effectively. They were a marvelous team…but at any rate, no charges had been brought..at the time…” [Question:] Oppenheimer was not in favor of a “new OSRD” [Strauss’s Office of Naval Research]…apparently..very much in favor of a strong grants program in the NSF [National Science Foundation].. [Golden:] Yes… [Question:] You submitted a memorandum to Robert Lovett [Brown Brothers Harriman] Deputy Secretary of Defense about the Research and Development Board…and you recommended George Merck as a new chairman of the RDB and the one to reorganize it… [Golden affirms:]..gradually the feeling has become one of increasing recognition of peaceful uses of atomic energy..and that atomic weapons should never be used again… [Question:] Right. Nuclear energy for electrical power… [Golden:] ..there had been..great enthusiasm for that, and especially for the breeder reactors… It was looked on as a wonderful development for society. And there was not much worry given to the..dangers, and how to avoid them. [Question:] Nuclear waste was not an issue? [Golden]..not a big issue…it was not regarded as the big problem that it has in fact become.” http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/goldenw.htm

   Early on, Golden had been a Wall Street securities analyst for ten years before induction into the Navy in 1941. He was assigned to the Bureau of Ordnance and given the rank of Lt. Commander, the same rank as Strauss — virtually shadowing Strauss on his way up the ladder. Golden was another, along with Robert Taft and Arthur Krock, to give Strauss first council on accepting Truman’s offer of AEC commissioner [in July 1946]. Golden remembered,”I couldn’t think of anything more exciting than the AEC.” He remained Strauss’s shadow with special assignments, returning with him to the AEC “part time”, he said, through 1958.

   There is at least one easy-to-find (lawsuit) record of Golden’s business dealings (1953-54) helpful to Abraham Feinberg and Israel: a stock sale that enabled Feinberg to fold his textile holdings into the larger company which he controlled, Julius Kayser & Co. The transfer brought more centralized control of a base of manufacturing plants in Greensboro, North Carolina; by happenstance a base for the Smith Richardson Foundation– connected to the American Security Council (see part II)– alleged to have trained private paramilitary for sensitive National Security ops . Golden and others in the sale “were directors of..Kayser” who then “resigned as directors” so that Feinberg and friends could be “elected as directors.” http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/224/753/146185/

*

Abraham Feinberg

   Feinberg and his associates were already well known and heavily documented by FBI counterintelligence as smugglers of arms and people. At least 70 people in Los Angeles were in the files.  “Feinberg was deeply involved in the Haganah arms smuggling network in the United States… [and] more recently..in undermining US nuclear nonproliferation policy… Ben-Gurion noted in his diary [in 1958] a conversation ‘he had with Abraham Feinberg’..to raise funds for Israel’s nuclear weapons program among ‘benedictors’ in the United States… [Feinberg’s] close associate, David Wahl,..among other Feinberg associates, was a longtime undercover Soviet agent (beginning in the 1930s…)” http://www.irmep.org/ila/feinberg/

   Feinberg had initially sought his political influence through Robert Hannegan, FDR’s Commissioner of Internal Revenue, “responsible for brokering the deal that made Truman Roosevelt’s running mate in 1944.” Hannegan by then was the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hannegan  Feinberg said, “I realized that it became important for me to know the people around Truman..[e.g.] David Niles… Through him I became friendly with Matt Connelly…  Eddie Jacobson..of the B’nai B’rith.. [who] had been a partner of Truman and a very close friend…  [Jews] around the country..understood that without Truman, Israel would have had very difficult days..to even come into existence… He often said, ‘If not for my friend Abe, I couldn’t have..been elected.’ ” http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/feinberg; In 1960 Feinberg founded AIPAC and funded JFK: “I think [Truman] was a better statesman than Kennedy, although you can’t tell because Kennedy had no chance.“

*

“By 1953, the scientific team at the Weizmann Institute had developed the improved..mechanism for producing heavy water and a more efficient method for mining uranium. Both concepts were sold to the French..[which] led to a formal agreement for cooperation in nuclear research that was signed by the two nations…  Goldschmidt [the Rothschild family plutonium expert] was serving as director of chemistry for France’s Atomic Energy Commission… [p31, The Samson Option] Israeli scientists were the only foreigners allowed access throughout the secret French nuclear complex at Marcoule. Israelis were said to be able to roam ‘at will’...  [Goldschmidt explained:] ‘We weren’t really helping them [the Israelis]…We were just letting them know what we knew –without knowing where it would lead’… Bergmann had made the..point..’It’s very important to understand that by developing atomic energy energy for peaceful uses, you reach the nuclear option. There are no two atomic energies. [p.26, ibid.] …The intellectual spokesman for the French nuclear program..Pierre Gallois..[said it] came down to this: ‘When two nations are armed with nuclear weapons, even if they are unequally armed, the status quo is unavoidable.’ Gallois was taken very seriously by the Israelis.” [p.40, The Samson Option]

*

The U-2

“Eisenhower came into the presidency in 1953 concerned about the lack of aerial intelligence..and ordered the CIA to do something about it. A Photographic Intelligence Division was promptly set up… Eisenhower’s next major step was to authorize a daring reconnaissance program –primarily targeted at the Soviet Union– and assign the development of [a] revolutionary airplane..jointly to the CIA and the Air Force..[to be] built under cover by the Lockheed Aircraft Company in Burbank California, and known as the U-2.” [p.47, The Samson Option]

*

Polaroid

   When the Korean War kicked into gear and nuclear tests moved to Nevada (Jan.1951), Edwin Land joined another small group to study and recommend military development; they called themselves the Beacon Hill group and issued a highly classified report on ideas for aerial reconnaissance and atmospheric monitoring. Land’s fellow in these studies, James R. Killian (pres. of M.I.T), was later to pick him as chair for the special intelligence committee. In 1954, Land and Killian, together, went to Eisenhower with the plan for the U-2 spy plane. It was at Land’s urging and arrangement that Kelly Johnson of Lockheed was brought into the project, and potentially many other contributors as well. “He [Land] knew much of the country’s scientific establishment personally. He was a visiting lecturer at M.I.T. and would later persuade Killian to join Polaroid’s board… Land quickly assumed a leading role…”  For much of its early existence, Polaroid functioned as a think tank more than a product-wielding corporation. In 1937, Polaroid was officially reorganized  “Under the enthusiastic sponsorship of Jimmy [James A.] Warburg, [as] a group came together that included W. Averell Harriman, Lewis Strauss and Strauss’s partners at Kuhn Loeb, and several members of Schroder-Rockefeller… The board directors [were] Warburg, Harriman, Strauss…” [p55, Land’s Polaroid] https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/morgification/

Eastman Kodak

Eastman Kodak, in which Strauss not only owned stock but matched to the inventors of Kodachrome, became a significant  collaborator in the U-2; the laboratory that Kuhn Loeb partners Strauss & Wiseman urged George Eastman to provide for Kodachrome development in 1922 may have been the actual premises of Kodak’s Hawkeye Works, the CIA’s photo analysis branch. A proprietary interest is clear. Kodak and Polaroid held each others’ stock.

   [From part I:] …”Kodak’s early commercial success was built on the production of x-ray film plates… In the early 1920s, the Hawkeye plant was making..the first 16mm movie camera.” http://www.city-net.com/~fodder/16mm/film.html Kodachrome would become Kodak’s stock commercial movie film. In time, Hawkeye produced classified aerial maps for the NRO and CIA (i.e.Project Bridgehead) and prepared the images of Soviet missiles in Cuba that were shown to JFK in October of 1962. The Zapruder film copy that came into the hands of Navy photo analysts on the weekend of JFK’s assassination is said to have been processed first by Kodak’s Hawkeye works.”

   “George Eastman [d.1932, by suicide] funded the creation of the Rochester University School of Medicine and Dentistry and its affiliated Strong Memorial Hospital under the courtship of Abraham Flexner: “at the time secretary of the Rockefeller General Education Board.” ” Flexner then founded Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study in 1930…and “[Rochester became the] headquarters of Manhattan Project human medical experiments with radionuclides [isotopes] and fluorine.” Among those experiments at Rochester were outdoor night-time hijinks by scientists spraying radioactive liquids around the school and medical campuses.

*

Fallout and Weather

   Albert Lasker died of stomach cancer in 1952, but his widow Mary carried on the couple’s special interests. This included sponsorhip of Israel’s cloud seeding program, evident in at least 3 boxes of Mary Lasker’s papers at Columbia showing multi-party correspondence from 1953 to 1958. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/rbml/Lasker/

   A point about weather control from 1952 to 1955 is that many countries, eventually numbering around 50 or so, started cloud seeding operations:

   Due to the British program called ‘Cumulus’, “one of the worst flash floods ever to have occurred in Britain” devastated the town of Lynmouth on August 15, 1952. The discovery of a cloud seeding cause emerged from documents uncovered in a BBC investigation showing that Cumulus ran operations from 1949 to 1955 before it too [the program] disappeared. The UK government denied seeding clouds before 1955. ”The documents also talk of rainmaking having a potential ‘to explode an atomic weapon in a seeded storm system or cloud. This would produce a far wider area of radioactive contamination than in a normal atomic explosion.”

>>>The U.S. program was called ‘Cirrus’ and officially canceled in 1953 although records of ongoing work extend through 1957.

    Rockets and missiles, as they came available, were tools of the trade in cloud seeding– so imagine them carrying small nuclear warheads or clad explosives. Could they be distinguished from lightning and thunder inside a storm? How likely is it that no country ever tested this method of radiological warfare when it stands as a ‘white paper’ by the British? The U.S. and U.K. were staging joint atomic operations from 1952 onwards.

    My first conventional view of radioactive rain, measured widely in the U.S. in 1953, was that cloud seeding reduced detectable atmospheric radiation and hid the extent of  U.S. testing from other countries, though it’s certainly possible that large tests were actually masking localized weather war. Princeton IAS was running a cutting edge weather program during this time with the help of John von Neumann’s supercomputer; Strauss was the IAS chairman and Von Neumann later became an AEC commissioner. Ernest Lawrence, Strauss’s greatest ally for building the Super, was also the loudest proponent among scientists for radiological war.

U.S. cloud seeding technologies were evolved by high-explosive experts. https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/weather-control/

*

“In June 1946..before Oppenheimer’s arrival at the Institute [IAS], Johnny von Neumann had begun to build a high-speed computer in the boiler room basement of Fuld Hall. Nothing so practical had ever existed [there, or] so expensive. The trustees initially gave von Neumann $100,000…And then, in a rare departure from Institute policy he was allowed to obtain additional funding from the Radio Corporation of America… Oppenheimer and von Neumann formally unveiled the Institute computer in June 1952. At the time it was the fastest electronic brain in the world…” [p376, American Prometheus]…”Von Neumann was unusual…And, like Edward Teller, he was rabidly anti-Soviet. One night at a party..discussion of the..Cold War..von Neumann said quite matter-of-factly that it was obvious: The United States should launch a preventive war and annihilate the Soviet Union… [Von Neumann]wrote to Lewis Strauss in 1951..’the USA-USSR conflict..will very probably lead to an armed ‘total’ collision and maximum rate of armament is therefore imperative.’ [p378, ibid.]

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Oppenheimer’s Tribunal

By September of 1953, after the dual-agent FBI/AEC memos fizzle, Strauss initiated the FBI’s active surveillance of Oppenheimer–he was followed, bugged and wiretapped, and by December, the bugs extended to his home and lawyers’ offices. “Strauss elevated his scheme to end Oppenheimer’s influence… He told the AEC’s..counsel..that ‘if this case is lost, the atomic energy program..will fall into the hands of left-wingers… it will mean another Pearl Harbor… if Oppenheimer is cleared, then ‘anyone’ can be cleared…” [p.491, American Prometheus] “Strauss [then] turned his attention to selecting the judges. He needed three men…[and] settled on Gordon Gray to chair the board. Gray was..president of the University of North Carolina..whose family money came from the R.J.R. Tobacco Company…[he was also a close friend of Prescott Bush]… Strauss [next] selected..Thomas Morgan, chairman of the Sperry Corporation… For the third member, Strauss chose..Dr. Ward Evans, whose..qualifications were..science..and his unblemished record of voting to deny clearances on previous AEC hearing boards… From Strauss’s point of view, they were the perfect empty vessels.” [p.492, ibid.]

   Before the proceedings against Oppenheimer were to begin in April, the AEC had scheduled a  major thermonuclear test series in the Marshall Islands –Operation Castle– six high-yield H-bombs tested with the intention of seeking “radsafe” levels of exposure.

Castle-Bravo

“At 6:45 on the morning of 1 March 1954, eight years after the testing in the Marshall Islands began, the US detonated a bomb codenamed ‘Bravo’ on the island of Bikini..equivalent to 17 megatons of TNT, 1,300 times the destructive force of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima… That morning the wind was blowing in the direction of two inhabited atolls, Rongelap and Utrik, roughly 100 and 300 miles from Bikini. During previous tests Rongelap and Utrik had been evacuated. For some reason never yet divulged, there was no attempt to evacuate them before Bravo.” [p24, Day of Two Suns, by Jane Dibblin] “Bravo was an unecessarily dirty bomb– it delivered huge quantities of fallout… it detonated low off the ground and the fireball scooped up..Bikini’s coral reef…”[p.59, ibid.] “[D]octors on the ground didn’t even keep records… When the Rongelapese were taken to Kwajalein their urine samples were analyzed only as a pool sample instead of individually…The Atomic Energy Commission averaged the values of radionuclides found in land, fish, and fruits..thus concealing the expected effect on..an individual…[p54]

   “Senior weather technician [for the US] who was on Rongerik [and also exposed] at the time of the Bravo test says someone must have known for days that the wind was blowing towards Rongelap. [He said]‘The wind had been blowing straight at us for days before the test… it was blowing straight at us after it. The wind never shifted.’ [p61, Day of Two Suns]

   “[A] magistrate on Rongelap..tells what happened… ‘The next day..we noticed the water turned to yellow. I warned the people not to drink from..water catchments, and told them to drink only [coconut milk]. The people began to get sick with vomiting, aches all over..and fatigue…’ [p25] It was two days before the Navy arrived to pick up the Rongelap islanders and US personnel– two days in which they breathed, slept and ate the fallout. [p26] ‘After two days..my fingernails came off and my fingers bled. We all had burns..and our hair began to fall out’..[p27, ibid.]

   Strauss was there— Castle was the only test series he was known to attend. The next day, “March 2, 1954, [Oppenheimer lawyers] Garrison and Marks themselves appeared in Strauss’ office and confirmed that Oppenheimer was willing to accept [submitting his resignation]… Strauss, confident of victory, dismissed this..as ‘out of the question’.” [p.496, American Prometheus]. According to Strauss’s own memoir, he was still in the Pacific: “On my return from Eniwetok on March 29, 1954, I reported to President Eisenhower on the Castle..series. The President had been greatly concerned over the reports of..fall-out..on the atolls of Rongelap, Rongerik, and Uterik and on a Japanese fishing vessel… The next morning..the President..asked me to tell the press substantially what I reported to him… The shot was fired, the wind failed to follow the predictions, shifting south..and the little islands..were in the path of the fall-out.” [pp410-411, Men and Decisions]

>>>Operation Castle lasted from March 1  to May 14: two shots in each of the three months (6 shots)

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The Polio Shots

one shot in each of the three months (three shots)

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Small-scale human testing of the new Salk “inactivated” polio vaccine (IPV) began in 1953, overlapping Dr. Hammon’s G.G. program in Iowa and Texas. Author Jane S. Smith wrote that “during the summer of 1953..the mass distribution of gamma globulin [G.G.] became a rehearsal for the polio vaccine field trials expected for the following year. [The NTS was running Operation Upshot-Knothole from March to June of 1953, all kiloton range]. The National Foundation [for Infantile Paralysis, NFIP, or ‘March of Dimes’] had developed valuable experience in mass purchasing and distribution, the public had been introduced to the idea that you cured polio by lining up for injections at schools or other public areas, and the administrators of the Public Health Service had realized that they had to step in or let [the NFIP] create..in effect, a shadow network of health services.” [p.250, Patenting the Sun] “Tom Rivers..put it squarely; ‘The Public Health Service would eventually have to license the vaccine,’ he said, ‘and nobody in the Public Health Service knew anything about polio… we had an awful time teaching them about polio.’ ” [p.251, ibid.] “In November [1953], Basil O’Connor..announced that the trial would begin no later than the first week in February [1954]. By February they were hoping for early March.” [p.253] “…the journalistic blitz was on. The New York Times Magazine had featured Salk in January… Life..made the vaccine its cover story on February 22. Time featured..Salk surrounded by..crutches, leg braces and syringes on the cover of its March 29 issue… Better Homes and Gardens, victim of an early deadline..featured a story in its March issue..as though the trial had actually started in February, complete with fabricated quotations from children... [p255, ibid] …By this time, the start of the field trial had been postponed yet again, to April 26.” [p.258, Patenting the Sun] The vaccine trial, postponed even further, did not begin until late May. The Castle tests ended on May 14.

>>>Thomas Milton Rivers, “Director of the Hospital of the Rockefeller Institute” spent his entire adult life working for the Rockefellers. “Between 1922 and 1955, Rivers molded Rockefeller into the preeminent laboratory for research on viruses“. In 1945 he was assigned to oversee the Atomic Bomb Casulaty Commission. There is no indication that oversight of the ABCC (or its successor) was temporary: “studies..suggested a duration of the work of the ABCC on the order of one hundred years.”  Rivers’ work for the Salk vaccine trial put him in close contact with the man who ran the program, Dr. Thomas Francis. Dr. Francis, who was Jonas Salk’s mentor and Rockefeller Hospital alumnus, was hired to reorganize the work of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission after completion of the polio vaccine trials in April of 1955. The ABCC project became the “Lifespan Study” of Japan’s atomic survivors who lived past 1950 and had no leukemia (solid tumors only). Following that, Francis undertook “large population surveys” gathering health data from his base at the University of Michigan, just as the Health Physics mandate recommended. The Ford Foundation built him a “peaceful uses” nuclear reactor in 1957: “The reactor operated from September 1957 until July 3, 2003” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nuclear_Reactor

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So, the Salk polio vaccine trials were supposed to be timed for coordination with Operation Castle (March to May of 1954) –as the Provo G.G. trials coordinated with Nevada’s Buster-Jangle (Oct-Nov 1951)– but, perhaps the exceptionally dirty Bravo test caused the delay and put fear into the designers, since no amount of additional time was going to improve the vaccine.

   “What had made the bomb so dirty? The answer was discovered by K. Kimura, one of the Japanese scientists who analyzed the fallout on the Lucky Dragon’s deck. In this debris from the bomb he found a substantial amount of a rare isotope of uranium –uranium 237. It happened that Dr. Kimura himself was the original discoverer of this isotope; he had created it in the laboratory 14 years before [as].. a product of the bombardment of the common uranium isotope 238 by neutrons… The bomb must have had a thick blanket of uranium 238 surrounding its fission-fusion core; fast neutrons from the fusion reactions fissioned the U-238 blanket and thus multiplied the force of the bomb –and also the output of fission products. In short the weapon builders had found a way to use the neutrons that would otherwise have gone to waste: they had made a fission-fusion-fission bomb in which common uranium 238 was added to the fuel… One can immediately see a great gain in economy over the ‘primitive’ Hiroshima bomb. To produce a 20 megaton explosion with only the original fuel, uranium 235, would require 11,000 pounds..of this rare isotope, separated so laboriously from U-238, and cost about a hundred million dollars. Using U-238 as fuel, however, we can get our 20 megatons at the bargain-basement price of a quarter of a million dollars. (The same size of explosion with TNT would cost ten billion dollars!)” http://polioforever.wordpress.com/fallout/

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The Salk IPV trials, which took place across the U.S., Canada, and Helsinki Finland, dodged a major bullet by waiting. (The city of Helsinki still thinks of itself as the former “spy capital of the world”).  With less tweaking than was probably anticipated, the delayed trial data proved a success. Controversial as the subject must be, the radiation vaccine got the go-ahead and postponed its reckoning to the next year during 1955’s Operation Teapot –Nevada’s first full-scale thermonuclear series. In areas where fallout was intensified by weather, post-vaccine polio increased as much as 700% from the previous year –oops– blamed on faulty vaccine preparation.

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Private Ownership of nuclear fuels and energy facilities was amended to the atomic charter in August of 1954: “the Commission may issue licenses to transfer or receive in interstate commerce, manufacture, produce, transfer, acquire, possess, import, or ex-port under the terms of an agreement for cooperation..” http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/library/treaties/atomic-energy-act/trty_atomic-energy-act_1954-08-30.htm Strauss continued to exert expanded authority over this trade in his one-year pro-tem office as Secretary of Commerce (June 1958-June 1959)

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Oasis in Israel

   Before 1954 was through, Strauss proposed his diplomatic agenda as the spokesman of Atoms-for-Peace: “he recommended a solution for the Arab-Israeli dilemma built around the use of atomic power to operate desalinization plants along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean. All Countries in the Middle East could share the fresh water..[and] replace tension with amity. By this time, Strauss..supported the nation of Israel.” [p.223, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss and Eisenhower called it The Oasis Plan. Of course, Strauss always supported Israel– the Zionist v. non-Zionist debate among Jews in the U.S. was based primarily on U.S. immigration policy, a holdover from the WWI era when non-Zionists, like Jacob Schiff, sought restraint from incoming Russian Jews.  U.S. Zionists favored unrestricted immigration.  By WWII, and in Palestine particularly, the situation reversed; Zionists, like Weizmann, wanted tight immigration controls and non-Zionists, like Feinberg, wanted free entry.

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Overflight

“The first Soviet two-stage hydrogen bomb was successfully tested in 1955… The first U-2 flights [1956] over the Soviet Union provided dramatic evidence that the Soviets were not nearly as advanced in conventional arms as the Pentagon assumed. There was no “bomber gap” or “missile gap”… The administration’s truth-teller continued to be the U-2, whose pilots, including Gary Francis Powers, later to be shot down, were usually assigned to overfly the Soviet Union. But there were other standing U-2 targets in sensitive areas…and that description fit the Middle East in 1958… Gary Powers and his colleagues, who had continued intermittently to overfly the Middle East, were now steadily back at work in the area. The CIA’s photo interpreters were suddenly seeing a lot of activity at an Israeli Air Force..range south of Beersheba…” [pp.50-51, The Samson Option]

   “The U-2 went operational from a secret base in West Germany on July 4, 1956… It was a spectacular asset… [p.48, ibid]… Among the inevitable by-products of the [nuclear] manufacturing process are radioactive gases which are vented into the atmosphere. The analysts of the early U-2 photography learned to look for..distinctive chimneys…” [p.52, The Samson Option] The U-2 planes also carried particle filters mounted in air scoops as earlier detection flights had done.  By the time Dimona started taking shape (1957-58), “the U-2 continued to overfly the Negev. Lundahl [chief of photo analysis] also relayed the findings on Dimona to Lewis L. Strauss..who [was]..cleared for U-2 intelligence.” [p.54, ibid.]

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Dimona

[apologetics from Seymour Hersh:]

“Strauss certainly knew as much about Dimona as as anybody in the intelligence community… There is no evidence, however, that he raised questions about the Israeli weapons progam while in government; nor was he known to have ever discussed Dimona after leaving office. Strauss chose not to talk..because, as a Jew with deep feelings about the Holocaust, he approved of it… He was insistent on continued nuclear testing… At the same time, he championed Atoms for Peace..[on] the assumption, which turned out to be dreadfully wrong, ..that smaller nations once supplied with.. a nuclear power plant, would have no incentive or desire to develop nuclear weapons… Strauss’s activities on behalf of a Jewish homeland apparently were not known… At some point in his AEC career [believed to be the 1955 Geneva meeting on the Peaceful Uses of the Atom] Strauss met and befriended his Israeli counterpart, Ernst David Bergmann…Neither Strauss’s biographer nor his son Lewis..knew that the two had met [but].. in the fall of 1966, Strauss used his influence to get Bergmann..as a visiting fellow at the..Institute for Advanced Study… rules were bent for Strauss. [The IAS’s new director at the time said] ‘It became clear that [Bergmann] and Strauss were close, and also clear that he was working on [the Israeli nuclear] weapons program.’ …Strauss..did not tell anyone..about Dimona. Fair or not, the issue of ‘dual loyalty’ –exemplified by Strauss’s actions– has been a very real concern…” http://www.american-buddha.com/lit.samsonoptionhersh.7.htm

   Hersh’s writing career, as noted in the JFK Conspiracy Con, was underwritten by Julius Rosenwald’s grandson, Philip Stern, from a family centrally tied to the creation of Lee Harvey Oswald’s “legend” and secretly invested in nuclear technology.  It is the Sterns’s business partner, Zalman Shapiro, who appears as the object of Hersh’s exoneration in the The Samson Option, and yet it’s Strauss’s legend that gets the most fortification from Hersh. “Holocaust guilt”, or guilt of any kind, is a wash. Strauss exuded neo-Maccabean pride, built agencies in service to it, and regretted only that he could not do more– an expression easily twisted into holocaust guilt. Without a Holocaust there would have been no Bomb.

    The problem is not ‘dual loyalty’ but loyalty to the mental poison of duality and absolutism.  Hersh and others, continually hiding Strauss’s early medical background in Rothschild employ and his lifelong association to biological warfare, dissemble on the real nature of the game –the self-canceling schism of rival degeneracy. Very gnostic and very “Protocols”. The exceptionalism in it, and the place where Strauss assumed his power and profit, was in the middle of it all where the ends are bent to form an apex –the node of dialectical form: summit of a pyramid.

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…to be continued: epilogue, story timeline and JFK assassination events…