President's Corner
By John F. McManus, President, The John Birch Society    

Newspaper articles about the death on April 3rd of Tom Braden at 92 appeared in most large newspapers. While much was stated about his many high-level connections and his activity amongst the nation's movers and shakers, much was left out. That he was a committed internationalist who used the numerous posts he attained to promote leftist causes cannot be denied. A short survey of his career provides a glimpse into the subversive operations in which he was involved — operations that surely continue today through the secretive Central Intelligence Agency.

Born in Iowa and educated at Dartmouth, Braden served in both the British and U.S. armies during World War II. In 1944, he transferred to the Office of Strategic Services, the wartime intelligence organization whose director boasted that he had filled it with communists. After World War II, OSS became the Central Intelligence Agency, and Braden shifted to it and became a top assistant to Allen Dulles, the soon-to-be-named CIA Director. One of Edward Mandell House's disciples, Dulles participated in the formation of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Married to a Nelson Rockefeller assistant, Braden dabbled in the newspaper industry for a time with loans acquired from his wife's patron. He then returned to the CIA. In 1967, he wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled, "I'm Glad the CIA is Immoral." In it, he boasted that he had helped to funnel taxpayer dollars, through 20 dummy foundations controlled by the CIA, to the leftist National Student's Association, the left-wing United Auto Workers, socialist labor leaders in Europe, and even Communist Party founder Jay Lovestone. He once defended the CIA's secrecy because he said congressional approval of what he and his colleagues were doing "was about as likely as the John Birch Society's approving Medicare." During a television program he co-hosted with Pat Buchanan in the 1980s, he casually remarked that CIA funds had even kept the Communist Party's Daily Worker alive. Very few Americans have any idea of this type of activity being undertaken with money extracted from them in taxation.
  
One of the published obituaries noted that Braden's regular house guests included Henry Kissinger, labor leader Lane Kirkland, Robert McNamara, and David Brinkley, all CFR members. He himself held membership in this seat of the Eastern Establishment for many years.

Other than Braden's occasional boasts, very few have ever provided a glimpse into the subversive activity of the CIA. Even his revelations provided a tiny hint about what goes on within the operations of this brilliantly conceived agency. With billions at its disposal and next to no congressional oversight whatsoever, the organization continues both within our nation and in a multiplicity of foreign countries to carry out the wishes, not of the American people, but of a conspiratorial cabal determined to bring about world government. Its ready condemnation by people in foreign nations and its leadership by a procession of CFR members are not accidents.

Every nation needs an intelligence agency. But expecting the CIA to be working for the best interests of our nation and freedom itself is expecting what has never been its role. While there have been some patriotic individuals within the ranks of the CIA, history has shown that they were few indeed, and that they were unheeded and customarily cashiered. The CIA should be abolished.