Stauffenberg and Doolittle

Stauffenberg and Doolittle 

I'm back to JFK after spending time reading Nicholas Shakespeare's 800 page biography of Ian Fleming, and will be posting more frequently now. I will post a link to my review as soon as it is available. 

For starters, I recently picked up two other biographies at a used book store - Stauffenberg - The Architect of the Famous July 20 Conspiracy to Assassinate Hitler, by Joachim Kramarz and an introduction by H.R. Trevor-Roper (Macmillan, NY, 1967) and Gen. James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle's autobiography "I Could Never Be So Lucky Again." (Bantam, 1991).

Kramarz's Stauffenberg is a very objective study of the plot, that was also, according to Desmond FitzGerald,  "studied in detail" by the CIA to be used against Fidel Castro, a study that despite being lost by the CIA, can be seen to have developed into the AMLASH plot involving Dr. Rolando Cubela. 

Kramarz does mention Hans B. Gisivious, the Nazi officer who was befriended by Allen Dulles and kept Dulles informed of the development and ultimate failure of the plot, but Kramarz does not have much confidence in Gisiviou's perspective of things. Items that I will quote at length ASAP. 

As for Doolittle, I was less interested in his planning and leadership of the bombing raid over Tokyo than I was of his appointment by President Eisenhower as head of the Doolittle Commission, the three man overview of CIA covert intelligence operations. 

Doolittle says that only one copy of the report was made and he handed it directly to President Eisenhower, and only devotes a few paragraphs of the book to this important aspect of his career. 

Doolittle writes: "In November 1952, General Eisenhower was elected to the presidency. Despite the controversy I seemed to raise whenever I was party to a government stud and its resultant report, someone was pushing my name with the planners of the incoming administration to become the next Secretary of the Air Force. I was not and am not a politician. My identity has always been with aviation technological progress, and I do not like partisan politics to enter into the equation when it comes to issues affecting aeronautical developments. Being active in the Air Force Association at that time, I realized that politics entered into many basic technological decisions affecting the future of our defense establishment , but I was never comfortable when I felt the nation's survival depended on technical decisions made solely to satisfy biased political ends. 

I did not feel that accepting a political appointment as the civilian head of the Air Force fitted my nature or my desire to serve in a nonpartisan capacity.....

....In 1954, President Eisenhower asked me to chair a committee to study the Central Intelligence Agency. Sen. Joseph McCarthy had loudly claimed that communists had infiltrated the agency, and he had raised such a fuss that the President had no choice but to have a committee appointed to look into his accusations. Concurrently, he appointed General Mark Clark to head another committee to study the possible reorganization of the agency.....

We could not reveal the details of our CIA investigation, but our committee found the agency was doing a creditable job and was "exercising care to insure the loyalty of its personnel." 

I so reported to the President. In my cover letter I noted that there were important areas in which the CIA's organization, administration, and operations could and should be improved. The agency was aware of those problems, and steps were being taken toward their solution. Only one copy of that report was made and I handed it personally to the President.

He wrote me a thank-you letter saying, "Both the report itself and the discussion I was privileged to have with the group when the report was presented here were of unusual value in providing an appraisal and stocktaking of those operations." 

My appointment had its detractors. Westbrook Pegler, a nationally syndicated columnist, called our study a "whitewash" and wrote: 

"I see no reason to place any value on the report which James H. Doolittle has made for President Eisenhower, on the mysterious, secretive, and sinister agency of our government called the Central Intelligence Agency. To begin with, I know a little about Doolittle's career but absolutely nothing which seems to qualify him as a competent man in this field.....He was a friend of Ike and a protege of Roosevelt and he was favored by an overload of rank which presents him to history as a Lieutenant General. Although, this inflation, or dilution, of rank has worked to the popular discredit of the titles of Admiral and General in their several degrees..." 

Naturally, this column made me furious but I knew there was nothing I could do about it. It was his opinion and he was privileged to render it in print, but I have often wondered what the basis was for it......

It is very interesting that our old friend William Pawley was also a member of this committee. 

The Doolittle Report - From the CIA site: 
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86B00269R000100040001-5.pdf

More on Gisivious and Stauffenberg coming as well.