-Caveat Lector-
In 1975, FLETCHER PROUTY, member of the below-described
secret White House subcommittee in the mid-'50s and '60s, wrote:
"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 who take
orders from the FIVE men of the 'Forty Committee.'
"They authorize covert operations that have a much greater
impact on world events than the more legitimate actions of the
State Department. They perform this function this secretly --
without proper review, without comprehensive experience, and
without anyone but a very few "spooks" ever knowing about it.
"Technically, the CIA cannot be given special powers by the
Forty Committee. The CIA was never granted such power by law,
and legally, the practice should not be permitted to continue.
No new laws are needed to forbid it. All that is needed is that
the present law be followed precisely and enforced. The CIA
exists to perform an INTELLIGENCE function and no more.
"The latest of a long line of secret subcommittees, the
'Forty Committee' was earlier, in the late '50s, called the
'Special Group' -- 'Special Group' 5412 or 5412/2.
"It has always been chaired by a representative of the
President [usually the vice president] whose official title in
this context is 'Presidential Advisor for National Security
Affairs' -- a euphemism for the CIA's man in the White House.
"[At one time, RICHARD NIXON was the President's National
Security Advisor.] At another time, it was NELSON ROCKEFELLER ...
"The [chairman of the 'Forty Committee'] [in 1975] is HENRY
KISSINGER, who, even after becoming Secretary of State, still has
not relinquished his position as White House CIA liaison ...
"The other members of the committee are: the Director of the
CIA, one representative of the Secretary of State and one for the
Secretary of Defense, and since Kennedy's time, 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."
_____________________________________________________________
The following appeared in "Genesis" magazine, Feb. 1975:
The Forty Committee
by L. Fletcher Prouty
"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 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 that 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 '50s it was the Special Group 10/2 and later
the Special Group 5412 or 5412/2.
Ostensibly this organization has always been made up of a
representative of the President (the "Presidential Advisor for
National Security Affairs" -- a euphemism for the CIA's man in
the White House); one 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?
<cont'd in part 2>
Next, the origins of the Forty Committee, and the meaning of
Eisenhower's warning about the "military-industrial complex" ...
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