00:00:00.420 - 00:00:13.740

Unknown: Existence of a credibility gap, that is a gap between descriptions of reality by the US government and the reality itself has been a permanent component of the making of that policy since the 1890s at least. And his book,

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which is called, or is going to be called, I think credibility gap the manipulation of public consciousness in the conduct of foreign policy from McKinley to Nixon is something that takes on that subject and tries to provide some kind of historical

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perspective. Obviously, Frank, you were at work on this book long before the pentagon papers were published. What led you to get involved in researching this particular question in the first place, and when did the research begin?

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Well, really sprang out of my out of two things that go hand in hand, out of my teaching and out of came out of teaching and out of my own discoveries as I attempted to present what I understood to be the truth about this country to especially in

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lower division survey courses with freshmen and sophomores. Mostly, the further I got into certain kinds of things, the more appalled I became, and as I became more outraged, so what really happened is my own teaching needs, just in terms of

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finding out what happened so that I could present an accurate picture to classes. And then my growing outrage dovetailed. And the more I found out the more I wanted to know, and till I could put together a try to put together a coherent picture of

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what the nature of government is in this country and to what forces it's responsive when, when did the research actually begin? It's really, it is so hard for me to say it seems like it's

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something that I've been working on, oh, for six or seven years without even knowing exactly what I was working on it for. But I've been clipping things, for example, just out of the daily press on Vietnam for six or seven years, accumulating

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things, and I've written some articles and so on. Gradually, I guess it took place. The idea took concrete form, I guess, about two to three years ago. How did you select the beginning period of the 1890s as a matter

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of convenience, or as because you're feeling that it reflected, say, from the 1890s to the 1970s reflected a particular period of development of certain kind of tendencies within American society and tendencies among the members of

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the policy making elite in this country. Or how was that initial decision made? Well, actually, it was decided for me. I mean say the historical actors, the decision makers, did it all, and they

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left enough documentary records. It's funny, people really don't think that they're ever going to be found out. I guess so. They commend all kinds of strange things to papers, basically, up until the Civil except Dean Russell. Yeah, right. He bites

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his tongue. Well, I, you know, if I were in his shoes, I would have bitten my tongue too. He may come out looking better than any of the rest of the war criminals, though that's a matter of debate, up until the Civil Civil War, and immediately

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thereafter, I guess, through the period of reconstruction, the American capitalist class, who were essentially the people who, in The last analysis, control and political decision making, were mostly preoccupied with developing their home markets,

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of doing rivalries with Southern planners and then clearing the continent, which means pacification of the Indians and pacification of the black population, a series of recurrent depressions in the 1870s 1880s and 1890s leads the

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same economic leaders to analyze the how capitalism, which really in industrial capitalism, is relatively new phenomenon for them as well. Many first generation, maybe second generation for them, to analyze how it functions, and the

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analysis that they formulate by the crisis, by the depression of the 1890s which is a hair curling depression, which results in lots of industrial violence, strikes and so forth. The analysis that they formulate is the analysis that guides

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making of the United States foreign policy from then till now, namely, that capitalism confined capitalism in one country, doesn't work that and everybody says that. Andrew Carnegie, who was Mr. Industrialist himself at this

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period of time, says, We have to have we have to have overseas expansion. He is echoed by every major trade and industrial journal in the 1890s and I've got just, I have oodles and oodles of quotations that can just be read off. It makes, it

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makes, as one historian has said, it makes these staid financial and industrial newspapers look like Leninist journals, because they all say the same thing, capitalism. If you can find capitalism here, it doesn't work. You. And we have

00:05:00.420 - 00:05:14.880

to find foreign outlets for our for our produce, especially so that that happens really in the 1890s it isn't fully implemented in the 1890s but that's just because we don't have they don't have the power. It's not because they don't have the desire.

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I wondered about this, particularly in light of a period to which I gave some study, which is the period of the 1840s with Polk as president running the Mexican War right in much the same kind of way. And in fact, this analogy has

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particularly been drawn. Would it be your interpretation that this was in fundamentally a different kind of society than that which the United States has become by the 1890s or Well, something else. No, I would

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say that there, there are great similarities and great differences. The similarities are the foreign policy. That's very interesting, because that's where I started my doctoral dissertation, too, filibustering in Central America and Cuba. So

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I'm somewhat checked out on that. And the conclusion I come to the is that in this period, essentially, you have a Democratic Party running the government for the most part throughout the period, and that responding to slaveholder

00:06:08.580 - 00:06:20.360

imperatives at a time when slaveholders represent a minority in the south and certainly a minority in the United States. And so you have Polk resorting to a kind of McKinley esque and Johnsonian diplomacy, as in the Mexican War

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His own, His little Gulch of Tonkin incident within which he manufactures a confrontation and uses a confrontation escalate into war for the purposes of slaveholders. And again, he has to practice a kind of a very dishonest sort of foreign

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policy, because the signal contradiction in this period is a contradiction between an ostensibly democratic form of politics at home, and an expansionist foreign policy that's going to satisfy the needs of a small minority, and

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you're going to ask people to pay their taxes and go out and die for the small minority. Obviously, you can't say that's what you're doing. You say something else. Well, the Mexicans attacked us, and we're going to just going to defend

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our American bloodshed on American soil. All right, exactly. But then what you are saying is that there really is a different situation, that once industrial capitalism has arrived in the

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United States, the people who are at the top, who have the influence on those in Washington, who officially make American foreign policy, are representatives of the dominant interest throughout throughout the society,

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right? They take over. The similarity is in the methods. The methods of deception are essentially the same presidential statements attempts to discredit anti war movements and so forth as being communist or subversive. Those are those

00:07:39.440 - 00:07:54.580

you can find a direct continuity from Polks time, and Buchanan is good on that too, and the Kansas struggle. The difference comes in that in the be on whose behalf This is being done, that is saying the earlier periods being done for slaveholders in

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the latter period is being done for industrialists, but the methods are the same, sure what kind of mechanisms exist. I mean, how do these kinds of interlock come to have their effect? Obviously, leaders of large corporate

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structures, people who have a certain kind of very almost tangible private power simply by the actions that they undertake and that they have their agents undertake, make a kind of American foreign policy. But it seems to me that the argument

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you're making goes beyond that, that in fact, the officials, appointed and elected, both who are in Washington are, in a sense, working in a kind of cooperation. How direct is the cooperation?

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Well, it's pretty direct because of two things, several things. I mean, first of all, you don't we have enough studies now of party politics to know that you simply don't get nominated for president by being a socialist. That is to say, people who are

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nominated for high office and who are appointed to high office have have a an explicit belief in the beneficence and goodness of the Capitola system, and believe that the way to promote the welfare of the people in this country, in so far as

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they're concerned with promoting welfare of the people in this country, the way to promote that welfare is by promoting the welfare of corporations. We see that every day just by going out on the street and looking at all his automobiles, as opposed to

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some kind of mass transit. So and people like dumbhoff, who, in his book, who rules America, and his later essay, who makes American foreign policy, he's very explicit in calling attention to the way in which the patterns of socialization

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are administered. That is to say, the private schools that the elite will go to. And he points out that the political elite and the industrial elite are largely they're essentially either one in the same or where, when they're not, when you have

00:09:53.980 - 00:10:07.080

somebody like Dean Russell who's not from particularly wealthy family, they're simply co opted. They first. Who, as in any bureaucracy, the way to advance is by demonstrating that your views are in accord with those who are your superiors. And what

00:10:07.080 - 00:10:19.260

Russell, somebody like Russell, does is say, Sure, yes, I believe in the goodness of capitalism. I certainly believe we have to promote whatever is good for capitalism. In the case of somebody like McKinley, though really, in a way, is you

00:10:19.260 - 00:10:35.720

don't have to go through any kind of elaborate theoretical analysis, because mckinley's bosom buddy, and and and campaign manager finance, and the man who finances or ranges for the financing of campaigns is Marcus Alano, Alonzo Hans,

00:10:35.720 - 00:10:52.540

who himself is an industrialist, and so in a mining too, which is a crucial sector of the economy. So McKinley is not going to be ignorant of what's going on in the industrial and financial community. But the fact is, my dissertation director Tom

00:10:52.540 - 00:11:05.820

McCormick, his dissertation was the book the China market now book the China market quadrangle. And one of the things that strikes me reading his book is that the number of times that the administration actively seeks out wants to

00:11:05.820 - 00:11:18.540

know, what does a business admin and what is business community thinking? What is a business community thinking? And now those things are all institutionalized. Dumbhoff has studied some of the kinds of committees of corporate leaders

00:11:19.020 - 00:11:31.460

that are now officially convoked to tell the President what, what? Here's what we need in Africa, and here's what we need in Asia, and so on and so on. So there's a consensus point of view. I mean, it isn't that you have to bribe people by the time

00:11:31.460 - 00:11:41.620

that you get to the top. You believe that the way to promote the welfare of the United States is promoting the welfare or, as Charles Wilson said, what's good for General Motors is good for the US? Well, that's it. He again, you know, he blundered.

00:11:41.620 - 00:11:57.280

He said it out loud. There is a pluralist analysis of pretty much the same period of history, dating from the coming of industrial capitalism, which would argue that defining the business community as such is a

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fairly difficult proposition. There are groups within it which have very different kinds of interests that in fact, come in conflict. Obviously, there are also their similarities. I mean, they're definitely opposed to organized labor and to certain

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kinds of populist movements among among farmers and people in less metropolitan areas, but that there are conflicts among various segments of an American business community, and that these conflicts have their effect in terms of who has

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access to the people who make official decisions in Washington, as to whose interests say are going to be protected in China or in Latin America, and whose interests aren't going to be protected. What's your feeling and analysis

00:12:46.900 - 00:13:00.720

of this situation? Do you accept any of the premises or findings of this pluralist style of analysis? Yeah, you feel that there's a point, an essential point, that they're missing. Yeah, their findings are valid. It's just their interpretation

00:13:00.720 - 00:13:17.400

is kind of screwed up. I hope Professor Hayes will forgive me my I was at Pitt under Sam Hans, who's one of the pluralists, and as Lee Benson. I was turning into a discussion for historians and historiographers. But it's quite true, there are conflicts

00:13:17.400 - 00:13:32.780

within the business community, but basically when you come down to something like survival. If you if you say the system is unworkable as it now stands, and we have to have certain measures taken in order to maintain the stability, or generate some

00:13:32.780 - 00:13:48.340

stability for the system, there you find that you're going to get broad range consensus. Now, after within that consensus, there will be all kinds of haggling. So it'll be the question of which bankers get the Lou get the tapped to Weldon

00:13:48.340 - 00:14:02.100

deal in China, or which industrialists get the tapped to expand in the Latin America? Sure. And there'll be arguments between shippers and railroad owners and dry goods merchants. All those things are true. Those arguments all exist, but, but

00:14:02.100 - 00:14:15.840

you have levels of generality. They they're second order phenomenon, because what's most important in the 1890s is taking the measures that are viewed as saving the Capitola system, and on that there is a consensus. And later on, people get to get

00:14:15.840 - 00:14:30.260

to arguing, but nobody has really argued this. Nobody at that point is arguing that empire, trade and expansion are bad things in themselves. The overwhelming majority of business spokesmen are all saying the contrary. So

00:14:30.260 - 00:14:44.680

pluralism is true. It's just that at a more basic level, the pluralism evaporates. Do you identify periods of transition, periods of change in the kinds of relationships between people in the private

00:14:44.680 - 00:15:01.980

elite and people in the public elite. How does your analysis carry carry forward from the 1890s to the president present? Do you see different approaches taken by different administrative. Situations as being basically questions of

00:15:01.980 - 00:15:13.140

style rather than a fundamental content or, I mean, there are a lot of questions involved in this general area. Well, you know, I listened last I guess it was Monday. I heard the replay of last week's open hour in

00:15:13.140 - 00:15:27.800

which you had Peter Scott and Fran Sherman and so on. I've gone over this with Peter, and he thinks that he finds fundamental example, he finds fundamental differences between the Kennedy administration, Johnson administration in

00:15:27.800 - 00:15:39.200

Vietnam. I find differences too, but not because of the differences the administration, but because the situation changes. And in order to implement this fundamentally the same policy, you have to, you have to change your methods for

00:15:39.200 - 00:15:56.320

doing so. No, so I don't think I think the only real change that I can can see is that the size of the bureaucracy has grown larger that the Cold War and technology has allowed the executive branch to take over even more control of foreign

00:15:56.320 - 00:16:10.920

policy than it had time of McKinley. But even at that point, McKinley can manipulate both Congress and public opinion quite well, and needless to say, his successors can do it even better yet, and a superficial kind of democratization of

00:16:10.920 - 00:16:23.660

politics. I mean, now you know, we've had an Irish Catholic president and Jewish Supreme Court Justice, that sort of thing, but and a lot of academics, more academic. Well, previously, what happened was you were a man of wealth, and

00:16:23.660 - 00:16:36.080

then you became an academic, then you wrote history. Now the social as Noam Chomsky points out, you become a social scientist first, and then you go to Washington and get to make policy but, but I don't think, I think those are really marginal

00:16:36.080 - 00:16:52.300

differences if you're interested in the overall thrust of foreign policy, and if you're interested in the overall thrust of opinion manipulation in the United States, you talked about work that bill domhoff has done on the institutionalization of

00:16:52.300 - 00:17:11.640

some of these relationships. What are the stages, the ways that this institutionalization takes place between the 1890s in the present? Well, you know what kind of I mean, in a sense, if the institutionalization is complete, it's going to be much

00:17:11.640 - 00:17:24.560

more subtle, and it's going to be operating at the level of assumptions, rather than at a level where letters have to be exchanged, opinions have to be exchanged Well, mostly, it seems to me, it happens through everything is

00:17:24.560 - 00:17:40.160

made much more regular and bureaucratic and predictable. You set up, for example, in your elite Ivy League schools and some of the West Coast schools like Stanford and UC you have institutes or analogous bodies that are set up to study areas

00:17:40.280 - 00:17:53.740

that US capitalism defines its problem areas after Second World War, Soviet institutes, Latin American Institutes, Southeast Asian institutes, that kind of that that amasses the raw material you need by way of information. Not that. It's not

00:17:53.740 - 00:18:10.380

that the information seems to lead, in the case of Southeast Asia, doesn't seem to lead to much enlightenment to read the Pentagon Papers, and that's part of it. The other part of it is, is to make the channels between industry and and the executive

00:18:10.380 - 00:18:21.620

branch shorter, and to make things, again, make them more regular, more predictable. So you have groups like the Committee on Economic Development, Council on Foreign Relations, which are extra governmental bodies that have

00:18:21.620 - 00:18:36.680

governmental functions. In essence, dumbhoff says, quoting his sources, who are inside sources, that Truman essentially had no foreign policy of his own outside of kind of gut level, anti communism, but the Council on Foreign Relations and the

00:18:36.680 - 00:18:49.000

Committee on Economic Development, which are peak groups. I mean, they represent syntheses of corporate executives at the top level, and run the Bundy and Rostow type academics give them the information they need. Groups

00:18:49.000 - 00:19:03.660

like this made Truman's foreign policy, including, I would guess, the decision to drop the bomb on on the bombs on Japan. The man who seems to be instrumental there is one of the people in Hans grew Joseph grew who's like out of the house of

00:19:03.660 - 00:19:23.780

Morgan? Is it part of your argument that the increasing technological power that is put in the service of both the private and the public foreign policies of the United States kind of broadens

00:19:23.780 - 00:19:39.680

the dimensions, the seriousness of what, in fact, the manipulation of public consciousness in conducting foreign policy. Policy means the fact that the technological power that has been applied to Southeast Asia is so much

00:19:39.680 - 00:19:54.040

greater than that which was applied to the Philippines in the 1890s Is this a In other words, is it a cause for increasing alarm? Or what kind of analysis of this aspect of it do you have? Well,

00:19:54.040 - 00:20:05.820

I don't really analyze that very much, per se, it does seem to me, of course, I mean, the more power. You give people, if they're dangerous people to begin with, more power you give them, the more dangerous is going to be for you and the

00:20:05.820 - 00:20:21.620

people that they can exercise that power on. Clearly, well, of course, the Philippine pacification, of the Philippine insurrection, I mean, with such a blood thirsty and gruesome manner that it's hard to see how the technological developments

00:20:21.620 - 00:20:35.840

in the last 70 years could have made it much worse, but I assume it could have been worse. I think that's probably true. And the other thing that's true is that, in a way, the more media you have, the easier it is to manipulate public opinion.

00:20:35.840 - 00:20:48.700

People have more access to information, true, but they have no way to digest what they're bereft of, in most cases, is any frame of reference that would help them to digest that information. So television will show you, for example, the

00:20:48.880 - 00:21:00.540

Marine putting the cigarette lighter to the hooch, but it doesn't give you any frame of reference to judge that on outside of basic humanitarianism, and that's in pretty short supply, too.

00:21:01.860 - 00:21:15.780

Do you contend that there is a basic continuity of principles that dominates shapes the orientations of policymakers, public and private? Sure, yeah. Well, go ahead with your question.

00:21:17.220 - 00:21:31.040

I mean, you've already begun to answer, are there? Are there shifts, though. I mean, do certain principles have greater significance to specific generations of policymakers, and do these kinds of things change over time, or is there just an

00:21:31.040 - 00:21:46.060

elaboration of all of them that goes on so that the harmony is pretty much the same, but maybe it just gets louder? That's a kind of difficult metaphor to take very far. But the only, the only really, well, all right, the I think

00:21:46.060 - 00:22:00.960

what, the only real shift I see is in the sense after Second World War. Because after the Second World War, you get what William Williams has called American arrogance, the arrogance that convinces guys like Henry Luce, this is going

00:22:00.960 - 00:22:12.960

to be the American century, and that they can do anything they want. I mean, you can clearly see that running through the entire Southeast Asian tragedy, but yet, I mean, with a man like Wilson, there is an incredible

00:22:13.380 - 00:22:29.540

argument rhetoric of mission, that really, even if the United States may not yet have the power to impose its sense of what a world order should be like. It has to take a leading role in trying to bring that world order apart and all the

00:22:29.540 - 00:22:42.220

benefits that will accrue therefrom. Well, sure, no, I'm not, I'm not arguing that there's any psychological change, major psychological change. I've gone over this with Joan Wilson, who essentially, I think Joan shares

00:22:42.220 - 00:22:59.620

my views on foreign policy. She teaches foreign policy courses at Sacramento State College, and she's Berkeley, Berkeley graduate, and she says, Well, you know, my emphasis on the 1890s she disagrees with she says that in the 1890s the

00:22:59.920 - 00:23:09.720

decision makers didn't have the power to implement everything they were thinking about. But then that's and I agree. I said, That's right, they didn't have the power, but they had already devised, they'd already set the precedent. So when the power was

00:23:09.720 - 00:23:20.960

there, other people would go ahead and try and implement that. And that's what I'd say about Wilson. Sure, Wilson would like to stamp out of evolution every place that takes place around the globe, but also Wilson knows he still somewhat

00:23:22.460 - 00:23:37.640

guarded about what he does, because he knows that he has to, yeah, he's ultimately going to be answerable to it. And he has a certain amount of circumspect to a point and that he knows that he cannot fool all the people all the time. To quote

00:23:37.640 - 00:23:48.220

that little homily. So in the writing the intervention against the Soviet revolution. He does have to pull out after a relatively short time, and later, when he goes to Versailles and meets Winston Church on the Paris Peace

00:23:48.220 - 00:23:58.780

Conference, he apologizes, I'm really sorry I couldn't send more troops and leave them in longer but, you know, that's American politics. We just can't. Was reality that much more difficult to control at that point in

00:23:58.780 - 00:24:12.000

time, or I think it was sure. Well, as I say, the American power at the close of the Second World War breeds arrogance. It makes people like Luce think that this is the American century. Which

00:24:12.180 - 00:24:27.260

means, first of all, the whole attempt to manipulate a Cold War psychology in the United States was unprecedented in the sense that the Soviet Union had just gone from being an ally, and now everybody was supposed to drop all of that nonsense, and the

00:24:27.260 - 00:24:38.240

Soviet Union was supposed to become an enemy. And conversely, Germany and Japan were supposed to become our allies. You don't undertake and Arthur Vandenberg, who was a senator at the time, said, well, in order to do this, we're going to have to scare a

00:24:38.240 - 00:24:55.000

hell of a lot of people. But that didn't bother the decision makers. They felt they could scare the Americans and bulldoze the French. Dulles wanted. Dulles offered the French atomic bombs to use against the Chinese or the Vietnamese or anybody he

00:24:55.000 - 00:25:07.620

wanted to bulldoze the French, bulldoze the British, bulldoze Europe into submission, bulldoze the Soviets. Into submission. And Dulles was really quite petulant when he couldn't send troops into when he had to agree to the Geneva conference. I

00:25:07.620 - 00:25:19.140

mean, he was very disappointed about that, because men sitting down in the Hans with Communists, and he could hardly wait till the conference was over before he could start undermining it. So I think that, I guess, what is a division of

00:25:19.140 - 00:25:34.160

omnipotence is what Williams calls it, and I think that that's kind of the thing that's undone these policymakers. But I think it was in that sense, you know, it was inevitable that, given the fact the United States emerges so completely triumphant

00:25:34.160 - 00:25:47.080

from the Second World War and what looks be a monopoly of all the existing kinds of power, industrial, atomic, what have you. Military, it was inevitable they were going to fall into that trap, and we're just now reaping the fruits of it. But,

00:25:47.080 - 00:25:59.020

but the psychology that says that defines American well being as American corporate well being, and defines American corporate well being on the ability to penetrate the underdevelopment well penetrate the remainder of the world that

00:25:59.380 - 00:26:15.780

that has a seamless hole, as far as, like I said, I mean, that's right from Cleveland, really. I mean, Cleveland's time. One of the traditions that does pass through each of these periods, and each instance within them, is this kind of

00:26:15.780 - 00:26:33.860

revolutionary intervention. It begins in the Philippines. I mean, it's there in the Soviet Union, are there, both in factors internal to American society and things that are happening in the world beyond that make kind of kind of

00:26:33.860 - 00:26:51.040

revolutionary intervention really a different kind of animal after the Second World War. I mean, when, when? China, obviously, is the big thing. The fact that the revolution in the Soviet Union is to some extent a success, although the Soviet

00:26:51.040 - 00:27:06.780

Union is extremely weakened by the effort that it puts forth in the Civil War. War, obviously, it is to some extent a question of circumstances. But what are the most significant of those circumstances? Well, as you say, I think what's happening here is

00:27:06.780 - 00:27:18.540

there are two opposing trends, two contradictory trends coming to fruition at the same time. On the one hand, the Second World War is ending with American power heightened as never before. But at the same time, the Second World War is ending

00:27:18.540 - 00:27:31.820

with people who have been subject to formal imperialism, demanding control of their own destiny in a way that they never really have before either. And these, it's clear that these two things are going to hit head on, as they did hit head on, or are

00:27:31.820 - 00:27:52.180

hitting head on right now. And you said China and Korea, South all of Southeast Asia, the Congo Cuba, so the Caribbean and the Latin America with British Guiana, I suspect we'd probably be in Chile now, if were we not in Southeast Asia, that that

00:27:52.180 - 00:28:04.500

kind of thing you have, I think that that has those those two, the collision of those 210, trends or tendencies, has heightened what I guess must be the principal contradiction of the epoch,

00:28:05.280 - 00:28:21.260

what are the principal tools and methods used by both public and private policymakers to manipulate public opinion about the policy and do different sets of policymakers and this, I think, would be primarily in a generational sense, in a

00:28:21.260 - 00:28:36.740

chronological sense, choose different methods or place different emphases on the various tools that are available to them based either on specific conditions that pertain at that point in time or or psychological

00:28:36.740 - 00:28:52.600

preference. No, I think that they do, and I I tend to under a or underplay psychological preference, for example, in the well, in the 20s, and let's say first third or first half of the century, something that now seems to be waning in

00:28:52.600 - 00:29:05.580

effectiveness, was then a principal medium for this kind of indoctrination. That's the public school system. One of the fascinating things is to go back and read educational literature from the 20s, because that point in time, the curriculum was

00:29:05.580 - 00:29:18.480

being Americanized. That was the word that was used. It's difficult for us to remember all of this now, but at this period of time, first of all, there's enormous population that was immigrant and even non English speaking, roughly a million a

00:29:18.480 - 00:29:32.300

year for 20 years. So just after the turn of century, and there were others before there was a socialist and communist movement, a viable socialist and communist movement, up until the First World War, that it was explicitly anti capitalist,

00:29:32.540 - 00:29:46.600

which, of course, now we're beginning to see the revival of but haven't until the last four or five years there was, there was widespread opposition to the first world war among German speaking peoples who were not, not necessarily socialist

00:29:46.600 - 00:30:01.140

radical or or anything, but just didn't want this country to go to war with Germany. So you have all of these things occurring at the same time, and you again, you have a conscious effort by business groups, national security, law. And other groups.

00:30:01.140 - 00:30:14.940

The Johannes studied some of them, kind of in passing and strangers in the land. These business groups get together and form a consortium and say they're very worried about the threat, the Red Menace, and what have you. And one of the things

00:30:14.940 - 00:30:32.060

they hit on is Americanization, which was to be the immigrants are to be Americanized through classes in the factory for which they will be paid time off to go to the children will be especially Americanized by the Kees everything with the entire

00:30:32.060 - 00:30:50.200

curriculum will be Americanized. I've got some place in my notes here, one of the guys who wrote a book. He was the superintendent of schools in Boston, and he wrote the book through a Carnegie Foundation grant. So you can see that

00:30:50.260 - 00:31:01.800

again, we're not talking about somebody who's often a corner someplace. We're talking about the guy's name is Frank Thompson, and it's called schooling the immigrant published in 1920s and he moans and groans about in certain

00:31:01.800 - 00:31:16.200

places, for example, again, something that's difficult for us to conceive, but many schools didn't have their languages conducted in English, they're conducted in German or Spanish or Japanese. That all had to go he thought that was horrible.

00:31:16.560 - 00:31:28.100

And let's see. Here's how, here's what. Here are some of his concepts of American Americanism that are to be taught democracy means freedom of action of groups, so long as their convictions do not interfere with the well being of

00:31:28.100 - 00:31:44.260

the state. National ideals is exemplified in the lives of great Americans. That usually means the presidents, because that's how you teach English conversation to immigrant children, the ideal of obedience to lawful authority, which is an

00:31:44.260 - 00:31:59.920

important component of American ideals, beliefs, attitudes and points of view. Inculcating Americanism through history, through civics is important. Is an important method training for citizenship. He says, Here is the ultimate end and sole

00:31:59.920 - 00:32:17.460

justification of the entirely literate in English, public schools are of vast importance. Now, I tend to think in post war period, they're probably that we now have Richard Nixon superstar, a guy who knows he really can manipulate all of the

00:32:17.460 - 00:32:32.960

media and places more reliance on the media than on the public schools, but the public schools and newspapers were the backbone of that up until say that the Second World War after Second World War, public the television eclipses those schools. I think.

00:32:33.440 - 00:32:47.080

Is this simply to make the same kinds of things possible, or are there really deep, deeper differences than that. I mean, the manipulation, it seems to me, can now be carried on by the political actors themselves. Oh

00:32:47.080 - 00:32:57.940

yeah, sure, you don't need the intermediates anymore. Besides, the intermediates are inefficient. As you can see, the public school system doesn't work people. What I find is people are just sick of hearing about how Washington cut down

00:32:57.940 - 00:33:10.260

the cherry tree and Lincoln freed the slaves. But it does work in another way, though. What it does do is turn people off of history. I mean, it induces the old kind of apathy that the public school system, Santa in Gulch Kees was trust

00:33:10.260 - 00:33:23.300

and your betters because they know what they're doing, and you don't have to think the new kind of apathy is it's all such a terrible bore. Nothing ever happens, all this folklore and it's all this fabulous mythological stuff about Lincoln

00:33:23.300 - 00:33:39.140

and Washington and Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, and I'm just forget it into the toilet. As Lenny Bruce would have said, the publication of the Pentagon Papers certainly provides excellent documentation for part of the thesis that you've been

00:33:39.140 - 00:33:55.480

arguing. It provides material about 25 years, really, of decision making and decision implementation, that and indications, both of what was known to the people in policy making positions, which can now be compared with what they were

00:33:55.480 - 00:34:12.780

saying all those points and times and the contrast are very obvious in actually, the two programs that we've done with Franz Sherman and Peter Scott and others who have kept track of the politics of escalation, they have have talked about both

00:34:12.780 - 00:34:26.540

how this process of widening involvement was was managed, and to somewhat lesser extent, what was being told to the public at this Time. But they've also talked about how at various points in time, there were people within the decision

00:34:26.540 - 00:34:44.380

making elite who counseled caution and who finally managed, by various means, to place limitations on exactly how deeply, how broadly the United States would get involved in Southeast Asia, and their analysis of the publication of

00:34:44.380 - 00:35:04.920

the Pentagon Papers themselves is that it represents, at least to some extent, a split within this policy making and policy implementing elite that with consequences that can only. Be imagined, speculated on at this point in time, the last chapter

00:35:04.920 - 00:35:20.420

of your manuscript is subtitled permanent counter revolution, or a new society. What kind of perspective Do you have? Not so much, on what the Pentagon Papers have revealed as on what their publication at this time indicates, and the fact that

00:35:20.420 - 00:35:39.800

they were even drawn up starting in 67 and 68 indicates Sure. No, I think that that's quite true. I think that there's a split in opinion in the ruling class, and that goes back, actually several years at least, to 68 to the effect that if you

00:35:39.800 - 00:35:53.920

keep on with the war over the if you keep on, if you keep on with the war, you're going to destroy what you're what it is you're fighting for, namely, going to the society at home is going to be so eroded by a variety of pressures and tensions, and,

00:35:53.920 - 00:36:12.300

heaven knows, we've seen those, all that in the end, it's going to be self defeating. And there's that split certainly exists now, that is, that is, I guess, would be step one, or point one in the syllogism. But again, the next point in the

00:36:12.300 - 00:36:25.640

syllogism doesn't seem to command that much unanimity, namely, well, all right, if that's true, what should we do? We should withdraw now. And I hear I'm using a variety of things. For example, the ABA, which represents legal opinion,

00:36:25.640 - 00:36:39.080

which, in turn represents corporate opinion, to some degree, just voted down. Nixon's just voted down a withdrawal plan. Last year, Nixon spoke to a group of 100 top business executives right after the Cambodian incursion, and was all

00:36:39.080 - 00:36:50.260

it was. There were no press, but there were press outside in the corridors, and they asked what had happened, what the tone of the meeting was. And they said, Well, some people are unhappy with Nixon's economic policies, but by and large, they gave him,

00:36:50.320 - 00:37:05.400

they supported what it was he was doing. It's like you've glimpsed half of a problem. And again, it's sort of reminiscent of the 1850s in that respect, you glimpsed half of a problem. You see that if you persist in the war in Vietnam, you

00:37:05.400 - 00:37:17.820

ultimately are going to you run the risk of ripping apart the social fabric at home and destroying capitalism that way. On the other hand, the will to withdraw isn't there throughout the entire ruling class, clearly, because if it were, we

00:37:17.820 - 00:37:29.840

would be out by now. And the reason for that is because there, there there are risks from staying, to be sure, but there are risks from leaving. What are the risks from leaving? That's where the domino theory comes in. They the people, the

00:37:29.840 - 00:37:40.960

decision makers, believe in the domino theory, but the dominoes themselves seem to believe in the theory. That's the interesting thing. I've got Johannes Sosa, who, if he's still alive, was the leader of a Guatemalan revolutionary

00:37:40.960 - 00:37:53.140

movement, explicitly said several years back that, look, we're watching the Vietnam War. We're waiting to see how that comes out, if the Vietnamese win and expel the Americans. That shows that any well organized group of revolutionaries

00:37:53.140 - 00:38:07.500

anywhere can do it. It may take a long time to be sure, but so that, and that's, that's what's for grabs. Up for grabs. Now you see ball, George ball was right in that sense that if you commit all, if you commit the United States to the suppression, if

00:38:07.500 - 00:38:18.300

you make it not simply that we're assisting the South Vietnamese elite to suppress counter revolution, but we are actively in there suppressing any damn well. Had better suppress it, because if you don't suppress it, you will, you

00:38:18.300 - 00:38:30.440

can't bluff it through next time, next time you go in and you say, okay, look, Allende, denationalize this or that, or send in the Marines, and Allende can say, well, you send in the Marines. We're ready, you know, we'll fight 15 or 20 years.

00:38:31.340 - 00:38:47.500

An implication that's been found in the kind of analysis that is carried out in the Pentagon Papers themselves is that if the American public, in fact, knew had access to the information that the decision making Elite has access to, that perhaps some

00:38:47.500 - 00:39:05.580

very different kinds of things would be happening. And kind of a corollary to that is that the publication of the papers, the fact that someone would take them and Xerox them and provide them to various newspapers. Indicates that perhaps this is

00:39:05.580 - 00:39:21.020

going to set a new pattern that there that the public in the United States is going to have more access to information, to some of the same information as the policymakers have access to. Do you think that this is a correct analysis, and if so, do

00:39:21.020 - 00:39:36.560

you think that this may lead to removing, or at least lessening, the kind of manipulation of consciousness that has been so characteristic of how the policy makers have kept their game going?

00:39:37.040 - 00:39:50.560

It's really, you know, that's a difficult question to say, because it's all been so recent, but I can see a tendency that runs in a straight line from McKinley through Nixon in terms of news managing like when McKinley was out there

00:39:50.560 - 00:40:05.820

annihilating the Filipinos, he tried to bar newspaper reporters from from the Philippines, and he tried to censor their dispatches, same same trip as Nixon is on, absolutely and. And Wilson did the same thing when he with the intervention, and

00:40:05.820 - 00:40:18.060

not only with the intervention in Russia, but the intervention the First World War, he set up the Committee of Public misinformation, and which was a gigantic factory for turning out reams and reams of propagandistic material. It's

00:40:18.060 - 00:40:33.380

hard to believe that, since that is an advantage that goes with being the being in office. It's hard to see that won't be, that advantage won't be exploited. It may be now, the people that there will be, the underlings who disagree with policy, will

00:40:33.380 - 00:40:45.940

be more willing to leak things out. But what I hope for is because, I mean, we can't really that's sort of episodic, too, in a way. I mean, we can't wait for Daniel Ellsberg or somebody to come along and rip off one of these sets of 47 volumes and

00:40:45.940 - 00:40:59.080

have it published. I'm glad that he did it. But mean, as he himself said, you know, like, well, in the interim period, 9000 men have died. What I hope is that we'll get a new public, actually. I mean, we'll get a public that then learns how to

00:40:59.080 - 00:41:13.560

read newspapers and learns what the what one well, one a public that is willing to tolerate radical analyzes. Because the interesting thing to me is things that radicals were saying at the time about the Gulch of Tonkin, for instance, about his

00:41:13.560 - 00:41:24.080

fabricated nature, and about the war in Laos, everything the radicals have been saying about this war, turns out, in the from the Pentagon, as far as the Pentagon as far as the Pentagon Papers comment about them at all. It turns out the radical

00:41:24.080 - 00:41:35.300

analysis was correct. So I would hope that what we're having now is an upsurge of skepticism, and from the polls, I've been seeing in the newspapers that that seems to be the case. People learn how to read the papers, learn how to think about what's

00:41:35.300 - 00:41:48.760

happening and learn learn to protect themselves by keeping them their own consciousness under lock and key. So in other words, they have to break the Presidential religion. You know, one of the saddest things I've ever, I think I've ever seen was

00:41:48.760 - 00:42:01.800

a I read the public opinion polls. I think you know that they're fallible, but I think they were interesting. One was taken in some working class districts in Detroit, which had a referendum on ending the war some months back and won, and

00:42:02.160 - 00:42:12.720

the referendum won and did best in the working class districts. And so the pollsters went in and said, Well, you guys aren't for the war. So no, we're not for the war. We're just against those demonstrators. It was that they, like my father, for

00:42:12.720 - 00:42:23.000

example, who left school at the eighth grade, their religion, as I said, is president, worship in American patriotism and all they really they know that the war is wrong. They know that it's destroying them, their society, their everything, their

00:42:23.000 - 00:42:36.500

families, their wages and what have you, but they also still believe that it is wrong to protest that they owe they owe this. They owe a kind of filial obligation regardless. Well, I hope that that thing gets eroded, and of course, with over

00:42:36.500 - 00:42:50.080

time, it will get eroded, because this generation doesn't feel that way any additional comments you'd like to make? Frank, where are we in time? Gee Whiz. No. I just,

00:42:51.100 - 00:43:05.520

I Yeah, the one comment I think I'd like to make is read some history and and look at, in particular, try and try and read something about, what about the United States conquest of the Philippines? You know, we went, Well, how much? What do I have

00:43:05.520 - 00:43:16.680

about a minute or something? Yeah, yeah, United States goes to war with Spain, ostensibly over Cuba, and we end up taking the Philippines. And it isn't that bizarre, Funny how that could have and of course, it was just like the Gulch of Tonkin.

00:43:17.160 - 00:43:29.720

Tom McCormick has researched and found out McKinley had a plan set to take the Philippines well ahead of the war, and the Cuban thing was ephemeral, but the methods used to subdue the Cuban, the Philippine population, as I said before,

00:43:29.720 - 00:43:43.300

are exactly the same methods, burning down huts, killing civilians to intimidate the gorillas, lock, stock and barrel. So in that sense, very little has changed. And I would like to, I hope that sense of skepticism is on the increase,

00:43:43.300 - 00:43:54.580

and I would urge people to look at, look into the details of the Philippine campaign by the United States. Maybe that will even give them a new dose of skepticism for reading the daily paper.

00:43:55.240 - 00:43:56.800

Thank you very much. Oh, my pleasure. You.