Category: Watergate

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Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

The Man Nobody Knew

The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby is a 2011 documentary by his son Carl exploring his life and career at the CIA.

The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby is a 2011 American documentary film exploring the life and career of former CIA director William Egan Colby

What is rather revealing are not insights from his wife Barbara. Rather, interviews with America’s most powerful voices from that era is a “Who’s Who” of America’s entire war in Southeast Asia is key.

Willam left law school to fight in World War II and joined the OSS (CIA) taking a leading role in Norway receiving a Silver Star. William first moved his family to Rome in order to thwart the rise of Italian communism. The CIA’s early role in Vietnam led by William is presented front and center, revealing a deeper understanding of America’s early entry into the French war.

William’s move to Vietnam in 1959 occurred less than five years after Dien Bien Phu. He brought his family to Saigon from Rome. In fact, the Colby children attended a special school for American families in Vietnam with their oldest daughter attending with the niece of Ngo Dinh Diem. Very interesting backstory to Barbara’s life in Italy. Yet, after settling into Saigon, she noted “It’s strange to think the threat from North Vietnam wasn’t easily seen.”

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Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

Latest read: The Vietnam War: An Intimate History

The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey Ward and Ken Burns have authored one of the finest efforts to address the war from multiple perspectives and is perfect for Gen X and Millennials. This compliments Burns’ highly acclaimed 2017 PBS series.
The Vietnam War: An Intimate HistoryMany already recognize that Ken Burns is a gifted storyteller mixing media together to produce: The Civil War (1990), Baseball (1994), Jazz (2001), The War (2007), The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (2009), Prohibition (2011), and The Roosevelts (2014).

Prior to the PBS 10-part series, I knew Burns would deliver another great experience. For the book release, Ward and Burns do not disappoint. Their detailed stories and personal testimonials from soldiers and their families are deeply moving. Many young and old will more accurately understand a very tumultuous period in our nation’s history.

Burns’ access to newly released interviews and declassified materials from both sides show greater insights that inject confusion to long-held beliefs. This will lead many to question truths on all sides, from past government leaders to military generals.

Burns and Ward offer a number of key revelations:

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Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

Latest read: The Pentagon Papers secret history

The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War by Neil Sheehan and The New York Times is an amazing story. Just re-published in December 2017, Sheehan, was an established, respected reporter on Vietnam. This period was an extraordinary time of change in our country as President Nixon expanded the war in Vietnam.

The Pentagon Papers: The Secret History of the Vietnam War by Neil SheehanSheehan obtained a complete copy of the top secret Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg, a RAND consultant and contributor to the papers. The publishing of the Pentagon Papers would lead Nixon’s re-election committee, somewhat appropriately named CREEP to plan and execute the Watergate break-in. This action was a direct result of the Pentagon Papers leaking, and ultimately, Nixon’s resignation.

However the Papers, initiated by his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara date back to 1945. The initial volumes reveal the American effort to save Vietnam was effectively lost before 1960.

The most striking reports of early failure in Vietnam and Indochina occurred prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and stretched through the 1954 Geneva Conference. This put to rest an notion Vietnam was a development of the Kennedy administration.

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Education Reading Watergate

Latest read: The Emperor’s New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11

Richard Ben-Veniste’s book The Emperor’s New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11 is a unique look at the political coverups that have engulfed Washington and the country. I find his approach to understanding the facts of highly publicized events to be a lesson in approaching internal reporting.
The Emperor's New Clothes: Exposing the Truth from Watergate to 9/11Ben-Veniste proves in The Emperor’s New Clothes that time will not and cannot alter Washington’s presidential change of power and the implications when tragic mistakes lead to institutional change.

It is clear to Ben-Veniste that established, solid governance can actually alter the accepted, institutional approaches in seeking important answers to events that bring organizations to the edge of collapse.

Clearly lessons from Watergate still ring true today. Since The Emperor’s New Clothes was published in 2009 Ben-Veniste‘s experiences as a commissioner on the 9/11 Commission have been given time to understand his successful, seasoned approach in dealing with the Nixon Administration and the conflict over Archibald Cox and the Saturday Night Massacre provide lessons in dealing with Condoleezza Rice and Attorney Generals (John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales) under W. Bush regarding executive privilege, another throwback position to Nixon and his defense of the White House taping system.

It would not be pressing to understand how Ben-Veniste is an accomplished lawyer, Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District service from 1968 to 1973. And then from 1973-1975 serving as the lead prosecutor on the Watergate Task Force. He was also a presidential appointment to the US Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group in 2000.

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Education Reading Vietnam War Watergate

CIA torture report: The role of enhanced interrogation methods

Enhanced interrogation is simply today’s political spin to a torture technique used for over 500 years. Waterboarding as a method of torture dates back to Spain in the 1500s. The Senate’s declassified report regarding the role of the CIA’s use of torture in the war on terror after 9/11 has been a most revealing so far. I wonder if the full report will ever be declassified. Maybe to further strengthen our democracy it should take less than the 40 year wait for the Pentagon Papers.

torture

In today’s instant twitter-world of “news” the world has learned of CIA techniques as abhorrent as rectal rehydration and a technique — so innocent at first glance — prolonged standing until you realize how this form of torture, as written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago is hideous to a human under interrogation.

Torture is simply inhumane. I am respectful of US Senator John McCain’s address on the floor of the Senate indicating his view that the CIA’s torture was wrong. The US can be better by not torturing prisoners. Proven, established interrogation methods (not torture) firmly established provide information needed in the war on terror. Senator McCain himself was tortured as an American POW during the Vietnam War. He speaks from a point of view that most Americans cannot fully understand. I applaud his service to our country during the War in Vietnam and more importantly his personal survival as a tortured prisoner of war. As outlined in the Pentagon Papers the US military used waterboarding in Vietnam.

In just reading the Senate’s executive overview the most chilling issue is that the CIA specifically withheld their acknowledgement of torture to the President. The second most important, but seemingly forgotten is the destruction of videotapes by the CIA of prisoners under torture. Clearly the CIA learned from Nixon’s Watergate.

I am beginning to feel again, after reading the Pentagon Papers that our democracy and leader of nations in today’s complex world has taken a temporary step backward.