Jefferson Morley has been writing a lot of posts about a memo that Arthur Schlesinger wrote in 1961 on CIA Reorganization.
Why did JFK’s advisers seek to overhaul the Agency in 1961?
The CIA does not want you to know the answer to that question in 2023.
So what is in the Schlesinger memo?
Opening section of the Schlesinger memo.
The memo covers CIA Autonomy, Doctrine, Operations and Policy, Operations and Intelligence, and a conclusion. Note that the entire conclusion is public. Only one section, part of the Operations and Policy section, has been redacted.
The first two subsections are:
1. Clandestine intelligence collection is, by charter, free from State Department control.
2. Covert political operations technically require State Department clearance. In practice, however, CIA has often been able to seize the initiative in ways which reduce State’s role almost to that of a rubber stamp.
We also know the topic of the redacted sub-section from its first sentence, which is unredacted: "The Controlled American Source (CAS) represents a particular aspect of the CIA's encroachment on policy-making functions."
This section was about the stationing of CIA personnel at Embassies and Consulates abroad.
We can answer Morley's questions. First, we know why Schlesinger wanted to overhaul the CIA. Anybody can read the unredacted sections of the memo in question, and I also suggest that people consult Arthur Schlesinger's book, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House.
Here is an important quote from his book: (see pages 426 - 429 in the Kindle edition)
The CIA’s budget now exceeded State’s by more than 50 per cent (though it was less than half that of the intelligence operations of the Defense Department). Its staff had doubled in a decade. In some areas the CIA had outstripped the State Department in the quality of its personnel, partly because it paid higher salaries and partly because Allen Dulles’s defiance of McCarthy enabled it to attract and hold abler men. It had almost as many people under official cover overseas as State; in a number of embassies CIA officers outnumbered those from State in the political sections. Often the CIA station chief had been in the country longer than the ambassador, had more money at his disposal and exerted more influence. The CIA had its own political desks and military staffs; it had in effect its own foreign service, its own air force, even, on occasion, its own combat forces. Moreover, the CIA declined to clear its clandestine intelligence operations either with the State Department in Washington or with the ambassador in the field; and, while covert political operations were cleared with State, this was sometimes done, not at the start, but after the operation had almost reached the point beyond which it could not easily be recalled.
While the redaction seeks to conceal, the white blot of censorship is inadvertently revealing all the same. The redaction of Schlesinger’s post-Bay of Pigs memo lends credence to President Richard Nixon’s suspicion that JFK’s assassination originated in what he often referred to as “the Bay of Pigs thing.”
Nixon voiced that suspicion in October 1971 when he demanded that CIA director Richard Helms produce the Agency’s internal history of the Bay of Pigs invasion. The president needed know more about “the who shot John angle,” he said ominously.
Helms deflected Nixon’s request. But eight months later when Nixon’s chief of staff H.R. Haldeman warned Helms that his failure to help block the investigation of the Watergate burglary might “blow the Bay of Pigs thing,” Helms knew he was attempting to blackmail the CIA over JFK’s death. Helms exploded in anger.
In addition to arguing that a redaction lends credence to a suspicion, Morley's interpretation is erroneous. Here is a blog post about the usage of the phrase "Who Shot John?"
George Lardner wrote about the CIA and the State Department in a Washington Post article from October 21, 1975:
You can tell that Lardner is writing about the Schlesinger memo:
Central Intelligence Agency built up such an undercover bureaucracy overseas that for a time it had almost as many employees abroad as the State Department’s Foreign Service, according to informed sources.
Shortly after the advent of the Kennedy administration, sources said, the CIA had 3,700 employees operating under diplomatic or other official U.S. titles overseas while the State Department had 3,900 bona fide employees working abroad.
The CIA officials were known in U.S. government circles as “CAS” -- Controlled American Sources. Their proportions in U.S. embassies abroad were sometimes startling.
... this source said the current total was "less than half" of the 3,700 officials reported on the CIAs secret roster in mid-1961.
The result, sources said, was often a serious encroachment on State Department policymaking.
There are details in this article that the CIA, or the State Department, might want to be kept secret. For instance, the fact that the "CIA had 3,700 employees operating under diplomatic" cover compared the State Department's 3,900 employees; the fact that 16 our of 20 people in the political section in the embassy in Vienna worked for the CIA; the CIA had 1,500 people under State Department cover by 1961; in the embassy of Chile, 11 of 13 officials in the political section in 1961 were CIA; and the fact that in Paris the CIA had more than 125 people in the embassy.
Researcher Larry Haapanen (who found the Lardner article) wondered if Lardner learned what was in the memo from Goodwin. Lardner interviewed Goodwin in the summer of 1975, just before the above article. I went to the Library of Congress to have a look at some of Lardner's files and I found this note which proved he talked to Goodwin:
And Lardner spoke to Goodwin again on the next night:
And CAS is even mentioned in his notes:
And so we know quite a bit about the Schlesinger memo. When that section is finally unredacted, we will understand why it was kept secret. There might be some operational details that were too sensitive for Goodwin to share or Lardner to print. Perhaps so many tantalizing tidbits that it was impractical, if not impossible, to redact only in part.
Robert Reynolds notes that it was the Department of State (DOS) that wanted this memo redacted. It is listed on the transparency plan that the DOS submitted to Biden in 2022 (page 4 of the 81-page list).
Robert sent me this note:
DOS requested the continued redaction of the Schlesinger memo for the same reasons it requested the continued redaction of several other documents: they all give details of diplomatic cover that might provoke foreign governments to take direct, even public measures to discourage or prevent the U.S. from using diplomatic cover for its intelligence personnel. This would indeed be a serious problem.
Reynolds concludes that "the redactions do not conceal Schlesinger's plan to abolish the CIA, they conceal Schlesinger's airing of Department of State complaints about how to divvy up diplomatic slots abroad."
Consider this censored memo, written in 1961 by White House aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. when JFK was considering “reorganizing” the CIA. In it, historian Schlesinger explained the CIA’s “encroachment on policy-making functions” properly belonging to the president. In 2024, the Agency now suppresses an entire page of Schlesinger’s memo, which effectively deprives American voters of key information about presidential handling of the secretive agency that millions of Americans deeply mistrust and that a leading presidential contender — the nephew of the slain president! — often criticizes. Thus the CIA’s hidden hand limits discussion in the 2024 election, a claim no fact-checker can refute.
The CIA has repeatedly concealed aspects of the Kennedy story. For example, in a June 1961 memo, presidential adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. made the case for reorganizing the clandestine service. Sixty-two years later, the agency asserts that this ancient policy proposal is a threat to national security today. The CIA has redacted more than a page of Schlesinger’s memo — and Republican and Democratic presidents have approved the censorship. That’s real power.
A big thank you to Paul Hoch, Larry Haapanen, and Robert Reynolds. Paul supplied much of the research in this post; Larry found the George Lardner article; and Robert found the Schlesinger memo in the State Department transparency plan.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on the CIA
Morley wrote that there are two redacted memos on CIA reorganization, but there is only one. He wrote about Goodwin's copy as if it was a different memo, rather than a copy of the Schlesinger memo.
The phrase 'who shot John' does not refer to the JFK assassination.
JFK may not have said that he wanted to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Jefferson Morley
Chad Nagle and Dan Storper's article on New Orleans gets everything wrong.
Believing Michael Kurtz is problematic.
Only one word is redacted in Harvey's deposition.
There are no redactions in the Operation Northwoods document.
Kilgallen had nothing to tell.
An underwhelming interview of Marina Oswald.
Morley often repeats stories and changes their meanings.
Chad Nagle claims there was an assassination plot against JFK in Chicago in November 1963. One problem: There is no evidence of such a plot.
A response to Morley's Substack post alleging that I am a CIA apologist.
A rebuttal to Morley's response to my post Was Bill Harvey in Dallas in November of 1963?
There is no credible evidence Harvey was in Dallas in November of 1963.
Morley repeats the claim that Dulles was at a CIA training center during the weekend of the JFK assassination. He wasn't.
Morley's claims about Efron are all wrong.
Morley responded to my article "The Truth about Operation Northwoods." Here is my reply.
W. Tracy Parnell is one of the best JFK assassination researchers out there. Here is his look at Jefferson Morley with several important articles.
Operation Northwoods can only understood as being part of the Kennedys' war against Cuba and Operation Mongoose.
And a response from me.
There is no evidence that Dr. West petitioned the court to examine Jack Ruby before his trial.
There is absolutely no evidence that Dr. Louis Jolyon West interfered with Jack Ruby's case.
Jefferson Morley used a fake Oswald handbill in his press conference for the Mary Ferrell Foundation.
An examination of redactions in the JFK collection of documents.