BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Posted on 04/27/2009 6:44:33 AM PDT by IbJensen
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.
Tom was born ahead of his time. He'd have been a perfect fit in an Obama administration.
I remember him from “crossfire”.
Me too!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Do you remember the scandal when his wife was appointed to a top govt job for which she had no credentials?
Probably happened before you were born.
Must have been a silly program. I’ve heard of it, of course, but never watched.
He [Braden] was predeceased by his wife of 50 years, Joan Ridley Braden, who died in 1999 . . . . Tom and Joan had an open marriage, and she had notable dalliances with Republican Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, and Robert McNamara.
Why did ABC leave that out of the storyline of Eight is Enough? They could've had a lot fun with that.
If you object to silly programs then you’d best avoid 70s television altogether.
I remember him debating Pat Buchanan daily on the radio in the late 70’s.
Right. 2000’s shows are bad enough.
My generation knows him best as the author of the 1975 autobiographical “Eight is Enough”, that became the TV series that made Dick Van Patten a household name.
He portrays himself as a liberal, no fan of the Vietnam War, but certainly no fan of the hippie movement either, and what it did to some of his kids. He provided a gruesome description of the transformation of his eldest daughter in college from a charming teenager into a “hard-eyed, foul-mouthed” hateful, hardcore leftist. In the book he seemed to portray himself as an ordinary GI sargeant.
Wiki says:
“Tom and Joan had an open marriage, and she had notable dalliances with Republican Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller, and Robert McNamara.[9]”
which sort of puts a dent in the Ozzie and Harriet image and may explain why some of the kids had difficult young adulthoods.
No.
OK, here’s the story. Back in the mid 70s, Joan Braden’s claim to fame was that she was the socialite wife of Tom. She had spent her post-college life raising a family and throwing dinner parties. But they found themselves strapped for cash.
So does Joan show up at an entry level job? No way. She shows up at a top govt job, earning what was then the top of the pay scale for civil servants.
Here is one of the more charitable takes on the events. It’s from PEOPLE, February 1976.
February 02, 1976 Vol. 5 No. 4
Joan Braden’s New $37,800 Job: She Needs It, but Does State Need a Consumer Advocate?
By Clare Crawford
An invitation to one of Tom and Joan Braden’s dinner parties is a hot ticket in Washington. While not so fancy, perhaps, as a reception at the White House or the French Embassy, the Bradens’ bashes are something special. The guest list is likely to include Averell Harriman, a dollop of Kennedys, Alice Longworth (who liked to fondle the family’s nine-foot pet boa constrictor) or Barbara Walters. Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller or Secretary of State Henry Kissinger are sometimes on hand: they are old, warm friends of the Bradens. Joan first met Rocky when she was a college girl teaching Indians to build latrines in Mexico; Tom has known him since Dartmouth. Both Joan and Tom have worked for and borrowed money from Rockefeller.
Despite the elegant facade and their 24-room, $200,000 home in Chevy Chase, however, the Bradens are strapped for cash. The front door is peeling, the stair carpet is threadbare and there are stains on the blue corduroy couches. The two family cars are 1970 models. And then there are all those mouths to feed: 10 Bradens (four of their eight children are in college), six Cambodian refugees who live on the third floor, two of the children’s friends who are permanent guests, the cook, four large dogs, a cat and that snake. Tom, 58, writes a syndicated column for over 50 newspapers, but he is hardly in the same financial league with Art Buchwald. And Joan, 52, has been unemployed since March. So their friends were pleased when her appointment as the $37,800-a-year Consumer Affairs Coordinator in the State Department was announced. What angered the Bradens was the intimation that she had gotten the job through her friendship with Kissinger and Rockefeller. “They’re saying she’s a courtesan—it’s as simple as that,” says Tom indignantly. Or, as Joan puts it, “The asininity that these two important men, who have important decisions, should have thought about what they could do for me is just absolutely...’Never mind about Angola, Henry, what about Joan Braden?’ “
The svelte Mrs. Braden was puzzled, too, by the angry public reaction—letters to editors, a nasty Herblock cartoon and some hard questions from Capitol Hill and Ralph Nader. The job description is vague (”review existing mechanisms of consumer input, thruput and output”) and so were the explanations of what a socialite State Department aide can do for American consumers. Even Joan is uncertain about her duties. For the first week she sat “at a little desk, waiting,” then checked into a hospital with a pinched nerve in her neck.
Intimations of cronyism aside, Joan Braden, daughter of an Indiana banker, is qualified to be a consumer advocate. A trained economist from Northwestern, she has worked on consumer projects, third-world relief and development of underdeveloped countries—in government and private enterprise. And, as a harassed housewife with a huge family, she is aware of consumer problems. “Our heating bill runs about $100 a month,” moans Tom. “Our grocery bill, around $600.”
On her first day at the State Department, Joan got off to a bad start. “I changed clothes three times because one of my daughters had taken the sweater I wanted to wear, one had taken the skirt, one had taken the shoes. I finally got dressed, and as I was whisking off I remembered that one car had broken down the night before. When I opened the front door to get the other car, it wasn’t there. My daughter Nancy had driven a friend to the airport. I took a taxi to work.
“It was the most depressing morning of my whole life. The great friend of great people, the great consumer advocate, has no car, no clothes. I’ve never had such a minus ego.”
That was a funny story about the boa constrictor.
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