The Untold History of the United States

by Oliver Stone

  A week later a badly decomposed body was pulled from the bay and identified as Paisley’s by Maryland police. It had a gunshot wound in the head. The police quickly concluded that it was a case of suicide. But if so, it was a bizarre suicide indeed. The body found had two nineteen-pound diver’s belts strapped across its midsection. It was four inches shorter than the five-foot, eleven-inch Paisley. And, according to writer Nicholas Thompson, “If the body was his, and if he had done himself in, he had chosen an awkward method. Paisley was right-handed, but he would have had to have attached the weights, leaned over the side, and shot himself, execution style, through the left temple.”18

  In addition to the investigation by the Maryland State Police, investigations were conducted by the CIA, the FBI, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Meanwhile, the CIA put out various cover stories, which were quickly discredited. The CIA described Paisley, who had supposedly left the Agency in 1974, as a “part-time consultant with a very limited access to classified information,” a description that a former high-level staffer on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) found “shocking.” “There is no question that Paisley, at the time of his death, had access to highly classified intelligence information,” he informed the Baltimore Sun, which conducted its own three-month investigation.

  One former PFIAB White House staffer revealed, “It was Paisley who developed the list of people who would serve on the B Team. It was his job to get these guys clearances . . . to discuss their backgrounds with us. Then, after the team had been selected, he would schedule the briefings. He shaped the entire process.” The Sun reported that at the time of his death, Paisley was writing a “retrospective analysis” of Team B for an in-house agency publication. Among the papers found on the boat were Paisley’s notes on the history of the project. Other highly classified documents relating to Soviet defense spending and the state of Soviet military readiness were also in his possession.19

  Speculation abounded that something more nefarious had occurred. Some CIA insiders told reporters that they believed the KGB had murdered Paisley. Others contended that he was a KGB “mole,” who had been whacked by the CIA.20 Paisley’s wife charged that the body didn’t belong to her estranged husband and hired an attorney and investigator. “My feeling is that something very sinister is happening,” she said, accusing the CIA of telling “lies” about her husband. Two prominent insurance companies initially refused to pay benefits to Mrs. Paisley because of doubts that her husband was actually dead. After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Intelligence Committee decided to keep its report secret. The mystery has never been solved.21

  Meanwhile, the hard-line antidétente forces were roiling the waters on a number of fronts. In March 1976, Nitze, James Schlesinger, and former Undersecretary of State Eugene Rostow had set in motion what in November would become the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD). A committee by that name had been established once before in 1950 to back Nitze’s NSC 68. Three Team B members—Nitze, Pipes, and William Van Cleave—served on the executive committee. Among the early supporters were Mellon heir Richard Mellon Scaife and the future Director of Central Intelligence William Casey. Members included Commentary magazine editor Norman Podhoretz, Richard Perle, Dean Rusk, and Ronald Reagan. The CPD’s founding statement warned that the Soviet Union sought dominance through “an unparalleled military buildup” and that under the cover of arms control, it was preparing to fight and win a nuclear war.22

  The Team B and CPD efforts to subvert the intelligence community and drive the country to the right were cheered on by a network of newly formed foundations and think tanks funded, in part, by the Scaife family, the Coors family, and William Simon, president of the John M. Olin Foundation. Among the recipients of such largesse were the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Federalist Society, the Washington Legal Foundation, the Institute for Justice, the Hoover Institute, Freedom House, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. These interests backed a series of right-wing publications, including National Interest/Public Interest, Commentary, and The American Spectator.

  This burgeoning right-wing network had little use for a relative moderate like Gerald Ford. Its members itched to put a real right winger like Reagan into the White House. Ford and his White House chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, attempted to mollify Ford’s critics. They engineered a major cabinet shake-up in October 1975, known as the “Halloween Day Massacre.” Rumsfeld took over for Schlesinger at Defense. General Brent Scowcroft replaced Kissinger as national security advisor. Bush replaced William Colby at the CIA. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld’s deputy, took over as White House chief of staff. And Vice President Nelson Rockefeller was informed that he was off the ticket in 1976. Kissinger, furious, drafted a letter of resignation that he never sent. Many saw Rumsfeld’s fingerprints all over this shake-up. Nixon had described Rumsfeld as a “ruthless little bastard.”23 Kissinger later said Rumsfeld was the most ruthless man he’d ever met.

  Spurning his once-moderate views, Rumsfeld had moved steadily to the right, positioning himself as a staunch defender of Team B and foe of Kissinger’s détente policies. He helped block a new SALT treaty in early 1976. “The opposition came from Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and I recognized that they held the trump card,” Ford later wrote.24 Rumsfeld began warning that the Soviets threatened to overtake the United States in military strength and that détente was not in the United States’ interests. Ford got the message, announcing in March 1976, “We are going to forget the use of the word détente.”25

  Trying to placate their critics on the right, Ford and his chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld, engineered a major cabinet shake-up in October 1975, known as the “Halloween Day Massacre.” Among other changes, Rumsfeld took over for James Schlesinger as secretary of defense. Many saw Rumsfeld, whom Nixon had described as a “ruthless little bastard,” behind the shake-up. From his new post at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld began warning that the Soviets threatened to overtake the United States in military strength and that détente was not in the United States’ interests.

  That capitulation was not enough to placate the party’s resurgent right wing. Ronald Reagan excoriated the “moderate” policies advocated by Nixon, Ford, and Kissinger, which, he believed, were weakening the United States in the fight against its mortal Communist foes. In late March, he accused Kissinger of saying “The day of the US is past and today is the day of the Soviet Union. . . . My job as Secretary of State is to negotiate the most acceptable second-best position available.”26 Kissinger, not surprisingly, denied having ever made such remarks.27

  Ford managed to stave off the attack from the neocon-infused Republican Right but was narrowly defeated in November by former Governor Jimmy Carter, a millionaire peanut farmer and longtime Sunday school teacher from Plains, Georgia. Carter, an evangelical Baptist, ran as a populist and an outsider, appealing to blacks, farmers, and disaffected youth. More of a New South agribusinessman than a small farmer, Carter, as historian Leo Ribuffo pointed out, harked back to the pre–World War I progressives, who stressed scientific efficiency and public morality, more than to the New Deal and Great Society reformers, who wanted to strengthen the welfare state.28 Carter promised to restore trust in government and heal the wounds resulting from divisions over Watergate, the Vietnam War, and years of generational, gender, and racial discord.

  Jimmy Carter leaves a church while campaigning in Jacksonville, Florida.

  A Carter supporter holds up a campaign sign at the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York City. A millionaire peanut farmer and longtime Sunday school teacher from Plains, Georgia, Carter narrowly defeated Ford. Running as a populist and an outsider, appealing to blacks, farmers, and disaffected youth, he promised to restore trust in government and heal the wounds resulting from divisions over Watergate, the Vietnam War, and years of generational, gender, and racial discord.

  The littl
e Carter knew about foreign policy came from meetings of the Trilateral Commission, an organization founded in 1972 by Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller, who also headed the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Rockefeller and many of his establishment cronies were troubled by recent developments. Not only was the United States suffering a monumental defeat in Vietnam, it was facing a destabilizing economic crisis. Many found Nixon’s response threatening. By abandoning the gold standard and imposing wage and price controls and a tariff on imports, Nixon was undermining the liberal internationalism that had reigned supreme since 1945. When Nixon’s measures were viewed alongside labor’s and Congress’s efforts to limit imports and punish multilateral corporations that shipped jobs overseas, some members of the CFR feared the resurgence of economic nationalism and even the outbreak of an international trade war.29

  Looking for a new instrument to help stabilize the international order—the CFR had been rendered largely ineffectual by a sharp split over Vietnam—Rockefeller seized upon the approach suggested by Columbia University Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski. In his 1970 book, Between Two Ages, Brzezinski called for a “community of developed nations” from Western Europe, the United States, and Japan to guide the international order.30 The two New Yorkers, who vacationed near each other in Seal Harbor, mapped out the kind of organization that could bring this to fruition.

  At the June 1972 annual meeting of the secretive Bilderberg Group, held at the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, the Netherlands, Rockefeller proposed forming an organization that would bolster the world capitalist order by strengthening ties among leaders on the three continents. Brzezinski, who was a member of both the Bilderberg Group and the CFR, enthusiastically seconded the proposal. Seventeen members attended a planning meeting at Rockefeller’s New York estate the following month. Beginning with sixty members on each continent, they set up offices in New York, Paris, and Tokyo. Most rejected the CPD’s knee-jerk anticommunism, hoping instead to lure the Soviets into an international system that promoted economic interdependence and free flow of trade and capital. Third-world economic and political problems would be addressed outside the Cold War framework.31

  Brzezinski served as executive director of the commission’s North American branch. The son of a Polish diplomat and probably the most unreconstructed anti-Communist among the founding members, he tapped Carter for membership.32 He and Rockefeller saw in Carter a rising, though still little-known, southern governor who was eager to be educated about the world. Always confident and ambitious, Carter was already discussing a run for the presidency with his close advisors. He had yet to make a splash on the national scene. When he appeared on the television show What’s My Line? in December 1973, none of the panelists, Arlene Francis, Gene Shalit, Soupy Sales, could identify what he did for a living. Perhaps Brzezinski was impressed that Carter had nominated hard-line anti-Communist and neocon favorite Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson for president at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

  Brzezinski and Rockefeller saw something in Carter that convinced them that he was worth cultivating and got behind his candidacy early. Carter’s deputy campaign manager Peter Bourne revealed that “David and Zbig had both agreed that Carter was the ideal politician to build on.”33 Brzezinski served as Carter’s foreign policy advisor and speechwriter during the campaign. Carter filled out his administration with twenty-six fellow Trilateralists, including Vice President Walter Mondale, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal, and Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. At the CIA, Carter replaced Trilateral Commission member Bush with fellow member Stansfield Turner. Trilateralists, including Warren Christopher, Anthony Lake, and Richard Holbrooke, also populated the secondary ranks. Most significantly, Carter selected Brzezinski as his national security advisor. Trilateralist Kissinger was not offered a position in the administration.

  Despite his inexperience, Trilateralist connections, and centrist instincts, Carter came into office with a moderately progressive vision of what the United States could become. Among his top priorities was cutting defense spending. During the campaign, he had denounced U.S. nuclear hypocrisy: “by enjoining sovereign nations to forgo nuclear weapons, we are asking for a form of self-denial that we have not been able to accept ourselves.” Rejecting the typical double standard that powerful nations imposed on weaker ones, he recognized that the United States didn’t have the “right to ask others to deny themselves such weapons” unless it was actively moving to eliminate its own nuclear arsenal. “The world is waiting, but not necessarily for long,” he realized. “The longer effective arms reduction is postponed, the more likely it is that other nations will be encouraged to develop their own nuclear capability.”34

  Such honesty was refreshing, as was his promise to restore the United States’ moral standing in the world and learn from Vietnam. He declared that “never again should our country become militarily involved in the internal affairs of another nation unless there is a direct and obvious threat to the security of the United States or its people.”35 He vowed never to repeat the “false statements and sometimes outright lies” that his predecessors had used to justify the U.S. invasion of Vietnam. He raised the hopes of mankind by announcing that the United States would “help shape a just and peaceful world that is truly humane. . . . We pledge . . . to limit the world’s armaments. . . . And we will move this year a step toward the ultimate goal—the elimination of all nuclear weapons from this Earth. We urge all other people to join us, for success can mean life instead of death.”36

  Just how heartfelt Carter’s comments on Vietnam were is difficult to ascertain. They clearly represented a welcome departure from the apologetics of his predecessors and successors. But they may have represented a kind of dissembling intended to make the new president seem much more liberal than he actually was or than his record as president would suggest. While campaigning in 1976, Carter responded to a reporter’s question about Vietnam by asserting, “I called for a complete pullout” in March 1971, after having previously taken a more typical southern prowar position. However, in August of that year, he had written a column saying that he had supported the initial U.S. involvement in Vietnam to fight “Communist aggression,” but now, “since we are not going to do what it takes to win, it is time to come home.” The following year, he had supported Nixon’s bombing of North Vietnam and mining of harbors and urged Americans to “give President Nixon our backing and support—whether or not we agree with that decision.” Even as late as April 1975, with Saigon about to fall to the Communists and their supporters, he had told reporters that he supported giving the Saigon regime $500 million to $600 million in military aid for another year to help stabilize it.37

  Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT II. For all the treaty’s fanfare, it was only a measured success. Both sides were actually allowed to continue their nuclear buildups at a reduced rate.

  Thus, Carter may never have been as liberal on foreign policy as many assumed he was. But he did manage to rile the CPD crowd by selecting dovish Paul Warnke to head the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, appointing liberal former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, an African American, as UN ambassador, and siding, at least initially, with Vance’s lawyerly pragmatism and commitment to détente over the toxic anticommunism of Brzezinski. That allowed Carter to score some significant early successes. He successfully renegotiated the Panama Canal treaty. In 1978, he helped secure the Camp David Accords, which led to Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory captured in the 1967 war and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. He also made headway in arms control. Warnke negotiated the SALT II treaty with the Soviets, mandating a reduction in nuclear missiles and bombers, and helped convince Carter to resist the Pentagon’s pressure to build the B-1 bomber. SALT II, for all the fanfare surrounding its signing in June 1979, was only a measured success, actually allowing both sides to continue their b
uildups at a reduced rate. Both parties were permitted to add another four thousand warheads by 1985 and deploy one new weapons system over the five-year life of the treaty. CPDers denounced the treaty, claiming that it would give the Soviets “strategic superiority” and open a “window of vulnerability.”38 They called for massive growth in defense spending and civil defense. With the Scaife Foundation pouring over $300,000 into the CPD, foes of SALT II outspent treaty backers by fifteen to one.

  But Carter’s lack of foreign policy experience would come back to haunt him, and his growing reliance on Brzezinski and other hawkish advisors would doom his progressive agenda, leaving the administration’s foreign policy awash in a sea of Cold War orthodoxy. Brzezinski quickly instituted a significant change in procedure that allowed him to exert inordinate influence on the president. Whereas in the past, a top CIA official had given the President’s Daily Brief, Brzezinski arranged to do this himself, with no one else present. “From the very first day of the Presidency,” he wrote, “I insisted that the morning intelligence briefing be given to the President by me and by no one else. The CIA tried to have me take a briefing officer with me, but I felt that this would inhibit candid talk.” Brzezinski overruled Turner’s objections.39

  In his memoirs, Brzezinski outlined the deliberate, systematic process whereby he came to shape Carter’s thinking on foreign policy issues: